Spring Courses | University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Spring 2017

ENG 107: INTRODUCTION TO IMAGINATIVE WRITING

Instructor: Cheryl E Cardiff

001-004: MWF10:00:00 AM-10:50:00 AM

ENG 107: INTRODUCTION TO IMAGINATIVE WRITING

Instructor: Hannah Pittard

005-013: MWF1:00:00 PM-1:50:00 PM

Welcome to college. This class will break your heart, blow your mind, and show you what it means to be a creative reader and writer. This is an introduction to the genres and craft of imaginative writing, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Students will study and practice writing in various modes through composition, peer critique, and research. Attendance and participation are required.

Only freshmen may enroll in ENG 107-013.

ENG 107: INTRODUCTION TO IMAGINATIVE WRITING

Instructor: Frank X Walker

014: TR2:00:00 PM-3:15:00 PM

This course is designed to offer an introduction to the genres and craft of imaginative writing, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Students will study and practice writing in various modes through composition, peer critique, and research. This is an introductory course in creative writing for the novice. Participants will examine, discuss and put into practice how poetry and prose can express ideas and emotions. Classes will consist of large lectures and discussion and crafting in smaller groups. Some sessions will occur on line.

ENG 130: LITERARY ENCOUNTERS: The Road in American Culture

Instructor: Andy Doolen

001: MWF9:00:00 AM-9:50:00 AM

This course explores the significance of the road narrative in American culture. Experiences of travel have provided writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians with many opportunities to test themselves, to remake their identities, and to imagine new futures unencumbered by the past. The road narratives that we will study are essentially about a journey towards self-discovery, but this pervasive theme is inspired by the author’s irresistible desire to break free from society’s restraints—from poverty, racial segregation, and stifling hometowns, to sexism, geographical isolation, and the moral prohibitions of an older generation. Stories about the road often dream of freedom and possibility, even as the author, ironically enough, is being forced into exile. We will pay close attention to how the unique experiences of race, class, gender, and citizenship influence the themes and issues of road narratives. The course will examine a range of texts, including literature, film, photography, art, and music.

ENG 130: LITERARY ENCOUNTERS: Vampires on the Page and Screen

Instructor: Michael W Carter

002: MWF1:00:00 PM-1:50:00 PM

Blood. Seduction. Sex. Eternal life. What more could describe the appeal of the vampire in today’s popular culture? From the folktales of the Carpathian Mountains, and early 19th century literature comes one of the most enduring creatures to capture the audiences: vampire, Dracula, night walkers. This undead creature has its roots in Romanian folklore and history as Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler, and found its way into short stories and novels, early and recent films, and television. This class will examine the roots and the ongoing literature and visual media that indeed gives the vampire life eternal. Coursework will include readings and two 5-6 page creative nonfiction essays, one collaborative project (a web page or other presentation), as well as shorter writing and discussion assignments.

ENG 130: LITERARY ENCOUNTERS: Encountering Style

Instructor: Randall Roorda

003: TR12:30:00 PM-1:45:00 PM

What is style? Is it something you put on or take off, apply or strip, like a garment or a coat of paint? Or is style not so much something you wear as something you are, part of your identity? How is it we often can tell without peeking who made a song, painting or story, as if the maker were controlled by the style, not the other way around? Why do some things go out of style, and why do we find it so damning when they do? (How did my lapels all of a sudden get so skinny?) Perhaps with style, it’s like what Supreme Court Justice Potter said in a ruling about pornography, that he could not define it but he knew it when he'd seen it. But perhaps style has aspects that surpass its scattered realms, ones we can pin down and ply. That’s the working assumption for this loose-limbed class. We’ll find ways to talk about and do things with prose style; explore connections between writing and other styles (as in some authors’ stylized modes of dress); trespass on cinema, graphic arts, music, couture and cuisine as we see fit. Activities will range between tight prose exercises, descriptive analyses, and open-ended creative forays, in keeping with the play between preparation and improvisation that is style’s essence in all its realms.

ENG 142: GLOBAL SHAKESPEARE

Instructor: Joyce M MacDonald

001: MWF11:00:00 AM-11:50:00 AM

In this UK Core course, students will read Shakespeare as he’s played around the world. Even though most of us know his plays through English-language versions, they’re been produced on every continent except Antarctica, in dozens of languages, and in a range of international cultural contexts. What is there about Shakespeare’s plays that make them such rich raw material for these international encounters? How do his meanings change in non-English speaking countries, in nonChristian cultures, or outside the western world? What is different about global Shakespeare, and what remains familiar in these worldwide treatments of his work? ENG 142 fulfills UK Core requirements in the humanities and in global dynamics. It has no prerequisities and requires no foreign languages. The course may also count towards the English minor.

ENG 191: LITERATURE AND THE ARTS OF CITIZENSHIP

Instructor: Jeffory A Clymer

001-002: MWF11:00:00 AM-11:50:00 AM

In this course, we will use literature to help us think about what “citizenship” has meant in the United States. Citizenship is a term with a legal meaning, of course, and we will use that to incite a good deal of thinking about what citizenship has really meant as an inclusionary/exclusionary idea for Americans over the last two centuries. The novels, short stories, and creative nonfiction that we will read all feature heroes and heroines who quest for something better, who feel a restless pull toward freedom or a better life just around the corner. Our readings will combine some of the most famous and worth-reading-again books in American literature (for example, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby) and other books that are equally amazing, but which you are less likely to have read, or perhaps even to have heard of previously (Don DeLillo’s White Noise, Amy Waldman’s The Submission, Asali Solomon’s Disgruntled). Grade will be based on short writing assignments, quizzes, exams, as well as attendance and participation. This course can be used to fulfill either the UKCore requirement, “Community, Culture and Citizenship in the USA” or “Intellectual Inquiry in the Humanities.”

Only freshmen may enroll in ENG 191-002.

ENG 207: BEG WKSP IMAG WRIT: Nonfiction A Sp. 17

Instructor: Janet Carey Eldred

001: MWF11:00:00 AM-11:50:00 AM

This workshop focuses on how to use techniques of fiction and nonfiction to write about real people, actions, events, and memories. The course is divided into three units: Writing about People, Writing about Places, and Writing about Passions (a.k.a. stuff you really like). Each week, you will read short models, write a short piece yourself (1-2 pages), and “workshop” the pieces that you and others in the class have written. At the end of each unit, you will extend one of your short pieces to a longer 5 pp. draft.

ENG 207: BEG WKSP IMAG WRIT: Poetry Sp. 17

Instructor: Bernard Clay

002: TR9:30:00 AM-10:45:00 AM

In this class, you will learn about the building blocks of poetry. Workshops with some lecturing will be the focus of the class and students will be assigned reading, will participate in discussions, and perform peer evaluations with a focus on revision. Through these practices, students will gain the knowledge of the fundamentals of poetry and how to use them. Students will maintain a creative writing journal, build a portfolio of new and revised poetry, and participate in an end of term public reading. Additionally, students will be expected to attend public readings and turn in brief critiques of the events throughout the semester.

ENG 207: BEG WKSP IMAG WRIT: Nonfiction B Sp. 17

Instructor: Chadwick Gilpin

003: TR1/11/1900 11:00:00 AM-12:15:00 PM

Writing creative nonfiction means employing literary styles and techniques to craft factual but engaging narratives from our own lives and the lives of those around us. In this class, we will explore different types of creative nonfiction and learn to shape our experiences into works of art. Reading assignments will focus on exploring the variety and techniques of the genre, while writing assignments will ask you to employ those techniques in crafting your own unique stories.

ENG 207: BEG WKSP IMAG WRIT: Fiction A Sp. 17

Instructor: Cheryl E Cardiff

004: W4:00:00 PM-6:30:00 PM

ENG 207: BEG WKSP IMAG WRIT: Fiction B Sp. 17

Instructor: Gurney M Norman

401: M5:00:00 PM-7:30:00 PM

English 207 Fiction is an introductory creative writing class designed to offer the student a laboratory situation in which she or he may develop fiction writing and reading skills. Class members provide a sympathetic audience for each student’s work-in-progress. During the semester students are asked to write three original short stories (or chapters or personal narratives) to be turned in at the beginning of each month for detailed critique by the professor. At least once during the semester each student will be invited (but not required) to present a story to the class for peer critique. Between the major writing assignments, students will be asked to perform weekly in-class and out-of-class writing exercises designed to give the student practice with various story elements and techniques such as dialogue, description, characterization, plot, and point of view. Such exercises usually take ten or fifteen minutes to complete and result in about two pages or six hundred words of “practice” writing. Counting the exercises, typically a student will produce 30-40 or more pages of original work during a semester. At semester’s end the student’s polished stories, samples of the writing exercises as well as written commentaries on some of the assigned readings are to be submitted as a portfolio to the professor.

ENG 230: INTRO TO LIT: Tale of Villainy

Instructor: Mike Genovese

001: MWF10:00:00 AM-10:50:00 AM

How often have you been reading a book and the bad guy seems so much more appealing than the forces of good? Or how often have you wondered whether the villain in the book is really so guilty of wrongdoing? Is the "good guy" really so clearly beyond reproach? In this course we will explore plays, novels, short stories, and poems in which villains clearly emerge, but our goal will be to look beyond good and evil. What is the nature of the villainy? What is its significance? Does the bad character represent something bigger than himself, or is he an anomaly? Is evil always some version of the same thing, or does it work differently depending on the context? How does the literature contain the threat he or she poses, and are you buying it? Readings will be drawn from British and American sources from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century. The class will feature a few papers as well as a midterm and final exam.

ENG 230: INTRO TO LIT: Banned Books: From Mid 19th Century to Today

Instructor: Michael W Carter

002: MWF11:00:00 AM-11:50:00 AM

Why are school districts and some parents afraid of Harry Potter, Huckleberry Finn or others? Why are certain works and their characters’ words either avoided or expurgated to gain admittance into the corridors of high schools and libraries? This course will read these works and examine the historical and cultural reasons for the books’ being challenged in the past or today. Poems such as Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” and Ginsberg’s “Howl” have rallied opponents to suppress their inclusion in anthologies. We’ll try to redeem or reject these texts through close readings and research into the complaints about the books and into the themes of the texts. Coursework will include readings and two 5-7, one collaborative project, as well as shorter writing assignments.

ENG 230: INTRO TO LIT: Treachery, Traps, and Tricksters: Clandestine Narratives from Antebelleum America to the Electronic Age

Instructor: Megan Pillow Davis

003: TR9:30:00 AM-10:45:00 AM

A loved one disappears without a trace. A close friend reveals something so terrible that you realize they are not at all who they say they are. A darkened house is supposedly empty, and yet there are footsteps in the hall. It is into these tense and terrifying scenarios that clandestine narratives – stories that harbor life-altering secrets and surprises – transport us, and the trap doors and trick mirrors in these texts prove them to be far more complex than they first appear. In this course, we’ll examine clandestine narratives from before the Civil War to the early twenty-first century. Together, we’ll look at how writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Mark Z. Danielwski use a variety of narrative techniques to structure and sustain their texts. We’ll also explore how these writers articulate and complicate cultural concerns about difference, deceit, autonomy and fear that pervaded the nation during this period.

ENG 230: INTRO TO LIT: Treachery, Traps, and Tricksters: Clandestine Narratives from Antebelleum America to the Electronic Age

Instructor: Megan Pillow Davis

004: TR11:00:00 AM-12:15:00 PM

ENG 230: INTRO TO LIT: War Stories

Instructor: Armando J Prats

005: TR2:00:00 PM-3:15:00 PM

Western civilization is coeval with war. In the Western literary tradition there is no known time that preceded war. Indeed, by the time that the Iliad (the first epic poem) begins, the Trojan War has been going on for ten years. So Western civilization begins as a contradiction: the time of peace writes about the time of war, and the narrative of war incites a new generation at peace to go to war. This section of ENG 230 will undertake an investigation, based on readings and film screenings, of the moral and cultural paradoxes of war: why, for instance, are nations most united and inspired just before they set out to destroy other nations? Why is it that stories of war—stories of destroying other civilizations or cultures—so often constitute the bases of cultures, of civilizations? How do the passions of war justify killing in the name of a nation’s loftiest ideals? What happens to good men and women in war? Where, if anywhere, do we draw the line between the heroic and the barbaric? And why then if war is the bane of civilizations do men and women write poetry and fiction and memoirs about it? Why is it that the hero—Achilles or Rambo—is so often the most bloodthirsty of soldiers? And if societies revere the hero, do we implicitly worship violence? We will read a fair amount of texts and view a fair amount of films in an effort to consider some of these questions. REQUIRED: attendance, quizzes, midterm, final, and multimodal project. NO cell phones or laptops allowed.

ENG 242: SURVEY OF BRITISH LITERATURE II

Instructor: Peter J. Kalliney

001: MWF10:00:00 AM-10:50:00 AM

In this survey class, covering the period 1700 to the present, we will use the related themes of belonging and dissent to frame our discussions of British literary history. How do various writers express and critique forms of affiliation to national, religious, economic, ethnic, social, and intellectual communities? Under what conditions do texts consolidate group identities, and when do writers employ literature to critique or challenge boundaries of inclusion and exclusion? Over the course of the semester, students will become acquainted with some of the major British authors and movements since the turn of the eighteenth century. By the end of the class, students will be able to appreciate the distinctive intellectual and stylistic concerns of individual writers, but I also hope the course will encourage us to consider how texts create their own group identities by borrowing, modifying, and inverting existing literary creations. Readings will include poetry, drama, fiction, and essays. Examinations, quizzes, writing assignments, attendance, and level of preparedness will be used to evaluate student performance.

ENG 251: SURVEY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE I: American Contact Zones

Instructor: Michelle R. Sizemore

001-002: MWF12:00:00 PM-12:50:00 PM

Emily Dickinson. Frederick Douglass. Susanna Rowson. Edgar Allan Poe. Phillis Wheatley. Herman Melville. (And many more). In this survey of American literature from its origins to the Civil War, we will cover authors whose names have become synonymous with early American literature, as well as authors whose names you have never heard but will long remember after reading them. A course that spans a minimum of three centuries must be selective. We will therefore focus on key literary problems and developments during this period and the social conditions in which this literature was produced—colonization, slavery, revolution, the emergence of women’s rights. Our guiding approach to “America” and “American” literature is through multiple “contact zones” wherein diverse participants perpetually renegotiate geographical, social, political, and literary boundaries. This framework opens up a range of topics for our consideration, from the dynamics of colonial encounters to canon formation and reformation. Lecture on Mondays and Wednesdays, discussion on Fridays. Three exams, one essay, class participation. Fulfills ENG major Historical Survey Requirement and Early Period requirement.

ENG 252: SURVEY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE II

Instructor: Alan M Nadel

001-002: MWF11:00:00 AM-11:50:00 AM

This course will look at the major works of American fiction and poetry published between the end of the Civil War and World War II. We will study how they reflect changing literary and cultural trends, including Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, Expressionism, and Imagism. We will attend to an author’s characteristic stylistic and thematic traits, especially in regard to the ways in which they reflect their historical moment. The writers whose work we will consider include Whitman, Frost, Eliot, W.C. Williams, Twain, Wharton, James, Fitzgerald, Hurston, Crane, and Faulkner. There will be three take-home exams, several short quizzes, and a final.

ENG 260: INTRODUCTION TO BLACK WRITERS

Instructor: Rynetta S Davis

001: TR9:30:00 AM-10:45:00 AM

English 260 is an introductory survey of African-American literary texts that represent and explore what it means to be black and “American.” This course will examine literary texts from 1901 to the present that reveal how American identities are informed by race, class, and gender. We will consider how African American literature has evolved and significantly influenced various social and political movements in this country, such as Emancipation and Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, (black) feminism, and Hip Hop.

ENG 260: INTRODUCTION TO BLACK WRITERS

Instructor: Michael Trask

002: TR3:30:00 PM-4:45:00 PM

This course will introduce students to the rich and varied tradition of African-American letters with emphasis on 20th-century texts. We’ll begin with the 19th-century slave narrative, one of the most important genres in American history. Our examples will be the memoirs of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. We’ll next look at the 1903 masterpiece of W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, a book that sets the crucial terms for thinking about race in modern US culture—the most important of which was Du Bois’s insight that one can neither separate a specific “black” identity and experience out from American life at large nor assimilate such identity and experience seamlessly into a monolithic Americanness. The class will also pay attention to the explosion of black creative expression in the Harlem Renaissance, the black arts movement of the 1960s, and the rise of a new black aesthetic in the age of Black Lives Matter. Representative texts will include Nella Larsen, Passing, Jean Toomer, Cane, James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon, Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me. We shall also look at both film and music traditions in the history of black aesthetics (Steve McQueen’s Twelve Years a Slave, Louis Armstrong’s and Ella Fitzgerald’s Ella and Louis, Jay-Z’s The Black Album, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly). Requirements other than reading will include a short (5pg) paper, a series of 3 brief reflection papers (1-2 pgs), a midterm, and a final exam.

ENG 265: SURVEY OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE I: CANCELLED

Instructor: Nazera S. Wright

001: TR12:30:00 PM-1:45:00 PM

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Owen Horton

001: MWF9:00:00 AM-9:50:00 AM

This is a basic introduction to the study of film, which includes film history as well as elements of film form such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound, editing, film genres, and the narrative structures of films. Our course will focus on depictions of Crime as a means of understanding how film functions in dialogue with culture. Crime-- whether from the street-level perspective of the police officer or the criminal or from the macro-perspective of the government or the drug lord-- has long fascinated movie goers. Sometimes, as with the case of the mafia don, crime is romanticized; other times, crime is villified. In this class, we will examine the different ways crime is portrayed across all eras of cinema, and what those portrayals tell us about society at the time. Films watched will include, among others, Public Enemy, Scarface, and Boyz N The Hood.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Walt Foreman

002: MWF10:00:00 AM-10:50:00 AM

This section of ENG 280 is an introduction to the study of the movies as a narrative art and a cultural document, with emphasis on the former. The movies we will watch will be chosen from a variety of genres, national cinemas, and time periods. The course will develop students' skills in interpretation and analysis of film and in evaluating competing interpretations of films. The "evaluation" of movies we will do will not be about assigning stars or pointing thumbs up or down, nor will the evaluation of interpretations necessarily be designed to accept one and reject its competitors. All the movies for this section will be about—though not at all exclusively about—monsters. What makes something a "monster"? How are monsters made? Who makes monsters? What is the relation between "monster" and "point of view"? "Monsters" are a thread, a common theme we will follow through the course, though we will by no means treat each movie as simply a "monster movie." We are not tracing a genre: only two or at most three of our movies would be likely to show up in a list of either "monster" or "horror" movies. We will visit many other genres: westerns, private eye movies, comedies (silent and screwball), science fiction, psychological thrillers, musicals, and more. Offers UK Core credit for Intellectual Inquiry in the Humanities. Does not fulfill ENG premajor requirement. Can be taken for ENG Major Elective credit. Provides ENG minor credit. Credit will not be given to students who already have credit for ENG 281.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Owen Horton

003: MWF11:00:00 AM-11:50:00 AM

This is a basic introduction to the study of film, which includes film history as well as elements of film form such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound, editing, film genres, and the narrative structures of films. Our course will focus on depictions of Crime as a means of understanding how film functions in dialogue with culture. Crime-- whether from the street-level perspective of the police officer or the criminal or from the macro-perspective of the government or the drug lord-- has long fascinated movie goers. Sometimes, as with the case of the mafia don, crime is romanticized; other times, crime is villified. In this class, we will examine the different ways crime is portrayed across all eras of cinema, and what those portrayals tell us about society at the time. Films watched will include, among others, Public Enemy, Scarface, and Boyz N The Hood.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Travis Martin

004: MWF12:00:00 PM-12:50:00 PM

An introduction to the study of films as narrative art and cultural documents. The course involves viewing and analyzing films from different genres and investigating a unified theme or set of topics. Students will learn how to view films closely, how to relate films to their contexts, and how to employ the basic terms and concepts of film analysis. Attention will be paid to student writing, particularly to devising a thesis, crafting an argument, and learning how to use supporting evidence. What is it about the Star Trek universe that has made it so enduringly popular? This class, which occurs just prior to the launch of an all-new Trek series, Star Trek: Discovery, will answer this question. Today, the Star Trek canon features more than a dozen films, hundreds of episodes of television, an animated series, and an array of video games, comic books, and other media, all of which expand the Trek universe. With Star Trek as our major example, we will look at how science fiction and sci-fi films comment on the modern world, on issues as complicated and long-lasting as poverty, race, gender, and war. Students will encounter Star Trek films, comparing them to others considered foundational within the genre—Invasion of the Body Snatchers, V for Vendetta, Gattaca, to name just a few. Students will also engage with the online universe available in Star Trek: Online, completing assignments that facilitate a greater appreciation for the scope of the Star Trek universe, but also in order to discuss critically the means by which that universe and its fandom have expanded into new forms of media. Assigned readings will deepen our conversations, focusing on the formal and thematic analysis of film, which will help us to deepen our appreciation for the ways motion pictures are constructed and address social issues.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Travis Martin

005: MWF1:00:00 PM-1:50:00 PM

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Benjamin Wilson

006: MW3:00:00 PM-4:15:00 PM

This course serves as a broad introduction to both the art and craft of film. The cinema is perhaps the most dominant form of 20th century media, and we will consider a variety of films from across the spectrum, from the silent German expressionist film "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," to the modern comedy, "Mean Girls," to the genre-bending cult classic "The Big Lebowski." Students will learn to analyze films for their content, techniques, and genre expectations. We will also pay close attention to the historical and social contexts that surround each film. By considering film both as an art form and as a collective, shared experience, we will begin to get a handle on both the meaning of film and the challenge and pleasure in being attentive film viewers.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Benjamin Wilson

007: MW4:30:00 PM-5:45:00 PM

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM: Visions of the Past and Future in Film

Instructor: Katherine Whaley

008: TR8:00:00 AM-9:15:00 AM

While many films analyze the everyday lives of the present moment, others reflect on the past and predict the future. The period film invites us to revisit the past as it offers an interpretation of those events. The science fiction film warns us of dangers of technological innovation and the ethical standards humanity might leave behind in the wake of progress. As we look to the past and future, we will also ask what these films tell us about the cultural moment of their production. We will consider what role nostalgia plays in depicting historical events, how film rewrites history in our cultural memory, and how futuristic worlds stage current debates. Students will learn to identify and employ film techniques to develop interpretations of cinematic meaning, analyze the meaning of the act of historicizing and prophesying, and consider how these depictions of the past and future impact cinema as an artistic medium and cultural document. Good Morning, Vietnam!, Pleasantville, Minority Report, Gattaca, and The Big Short are just a few of films we will be examining throughout the course.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM: Visions of the Past and Future in Film

Instructor: Katherine Whaley

009: TR9:30:00 AM-10:45:00 AM

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Frederick Bengtsson

010: TR11:00:00 AM-12:15:00 PM

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM: Kiddie Flicks

Instructor: Kyle W. Eveleth

011: TR12:30:00 PM-1:45:00 PM

Film is a uniquely positioned technology that is capable of making its viewers “feel like a kid again.” The sentiment is that, through the lens of the film camera, the world can be made new, replicating that feeling of wonder and anticipation we so often associate with youth. It is no surprise, then, that making films specifically for children is a multi-billion-dollar business in 2017. And business is booming! Currently, six of the top ten highest-grossing films of all time are children’s movies; only twelve of the top fifty are not. Children’s films, far from being ephemeral stuff to entertain the wee ones, are instead a crucial part of American culture. Even more surprisingly, only three major companies create the films children watch, split between the Disney conglomerate, 21st Century Fox, and Time Warner. In this class, we will watch kiddie flicks throughout American cinematic history, from the first animated films to the most recent Pixar blockbuster sequel, from The Sound of Music to A Nightmare Before Christmas, and everything in between. Along the way, we will seek to answer a cluster of questions central to our conceptions of children and film: what makes a children’s film, well, for children? Why do so many adults, even those without kids, enjoy them? How did “cinema” evolve into “kiddie flicks”? Finally, are children’s films, to quote J. Zornado echoing Frederick Wortham, seductions of the minds of innocent children? Or are they core elements of a child’s moral education, as Monique Wonderly contends? Perhaps most importantly, what does the primacy of children’s film in American culture say about us, as Americans?Students can expect to view between 12 and 14 films and to read one textbook, as well as small selected criticism of films. Some group work will occur. The course is writing intensive, including three essays and short weekly response journals.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Frederick Bengtsson

012: TR2:00:00 PM-3:15:00 PM

Since the earliest days of cinema, filmmakers have transported us into the future. They have journeyed on space odysseys to the moon and beyond, have warned about the rise of the machines and artificial intelligence, have explored the creative and destructive potential of science and technology, and have imagined both the triumph and the end of humanity. This course will introduce students to the study of cinema as a medium by exploring these visions of the future, asking how and why they are made, what is at stake in these representations of times to come, and what they want to tell us about our present moment. We will move beyond simply watching films toward analyzing them, learning how a deeper knowledge and understanding of the elements of film form (genre, cinematography, mise-en-scène, editing, sound, etc.) can allow us to interpret films and gain insights into how filmmakers create meaning in their work.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM: Kiddie Flicks

Instructor: Kyle W. Eveleth

013: TR3:30:00 PM-4:45:00 PM

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Matt Godbey

014: TR9:30:00 AM-10:45:00 AM

What does the American classic, The Wizard of Oz (1939) have in common with Gimme the Loot, an independent film from 2012 about teenage graffiti artists, or the 2015 boxing hit Creed? ? How can Dorothy’s trip down the yellow brick road help us understand the characters and stories found in both these films? How did John Wayne’s character Ethan Edwards in the quintessential western The Searchers (1956) pave the way for a host of other famous movie characters who stride across our screens dispensing justice? What does the enduring popularity of this type of character tell us about ourselves and about American culture? Introduction to film is a course designed to help you answer these questions. This semester we're going to watch a variety of movies that will help us answer questions such as these, and many more, as we work to understand the basic structures on which American movies are built. One name for this type of analysis is archetypal criticism. Archetypes are recurrent, universal patterns that can be found in the symbols, images, characters, plot structures, and other elements of the movies we all watch. Archetypes draw on traditions, beliefs, myths, and stories passed down across generations or those that are more closely tied to specific cultures. Whether universal or local, they connect us, both consciously and unconsciously, to the movies we watch. Further, they provide a context for analysis by allowing us to track how different directors or screenwriters evoke, manipulate, or transform the archetypes according to historical/cultural context and to the needs of their specific movies.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Matt Godbey

015: TR12:30:00 PM-1:45:00 PM

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Dan Howell

016: TR11:00:00 AM-12:15:00 PM

This is a basic introduction to the study of film, which includes film history as well as elements of film form such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound, editing, film genres, and the narrative structures of films. Each of those subjects brings with it an array of terms that we’ll use when discussing and analyzing films; our required text, The Film Experience (3rd. ed.), will be the source of those terms and a resource for explanations and illustrations, supplemented by the frequent in-class screening of clips, trailers, and shorts (even a cartoon or two). But our primary focus will be 12-13 feature-length films that range across time -- from the 1920s to this century -- and genres (comedy, horror, western, crime etc.). There may be one silent film and/or one foreign film, several black-and-white films, and R-rated films; all will be screened twice on the day before we discuss them, and all will be on reserve in the library. Each week will feature a different film, and by the end of the semester you will have seen some of the world’s great films, plus you’ll be acquainted with many film artists and films that are new to you -- you’ll be a much more sophisticated filmgoer. Your grade for the course will be based on weekly short quizzes, film responses totalling fifteen pages, and a final exam.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Dan Howell

017: TR5:00:00 PM-6:15:00 PM

This is a basic introduction to the study of film, which includes film history as well as elements of film form such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound, editing, film genres, and the narrative structures of films. Each of those subjects brings with it an array of terms that we’ll use when discussing and analyzing films; our required text, The Film Experience (3rd. ed.), will be the source of those terms and a resource for explanations and illustrations, supplemented by the frequent in-class screening of clips, trailers, and shorts (even a cartoon or two). But our primary focus will be 12-13 feature-length films that range across time -- from the 1920s to this century -- and genres (comedy, horror, western, crime etc.). There may be one silent film and/or one foreign film, several black-and-white films, and R-rated films; all will be screened twice on the day before we discuss them, and all will be on reserve in the library. Each week will feature a different film, and by the end of the semester you will have seen some of the world’s great films, plus you’ll be acquainted with many film artists and films that are new to you -- you’ll be a much more sophisticated filmgoer. Your grade for the course will be based on weekly short quizzes, film responses totalling fifteen pages, and a final exam.

ENG 280: INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Instructor: Alan M Nadel

018-019: TR1:00:00 PM-1:50:00 PM

Focusing primarily on the Classical Hollywood style, we examine a dozen films that illustrate basic elements of film art: staging, photography, editing, sound, and narrative. We will also look at the conditions of production and culture that affect style and narrative. The course requires viewing films outside of class, either through independent rental services such as Netflix in a viewing room in the library, where they will be on reserve. The course has a required textbook, regular quizzes on the reading, three take-home exams, and a final.

ENG 290: INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN'S LITERATURE

Instructor: Cheryl E Cardiff

001: MWF12:00:00 PM-12:50:00 PM

ENG 330: TEXT AND CONTEXT: Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath

Instructor: Michael Carter

001: MWF9:00:00 AM-9:50:00 AM

In the middle of the Great Depression, John Steinbeck wrote novels that connected directly to the common man’s plight. These novels took the American dream and found a lens through which to see the struggles the people faced and culminated in the popular work The Grapes of Wrath. We will examine these works focusing specifically on Grapes, and look at the author as well. Is he a misogynist? Is he anti-American? Does he stereotype the characters and the system in which they exist? We will address these and many other issues this Nobel winning writer lays on the table. Some short essays, one longer essay are the work we will do aside from the pleasures of reading and writing about literature.

ENG 330: TEXT AND CONTEXT: Hamlet and Revenge

Instructor: Walt Foreman

002: MWF11:00:00 AM-11:50:00 AM

This section of the English major core course will focus on the close reading and analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet in the contexts of (a) London theater conditions around 1600, (b) other "revenge" plays produced around the same time (such as Kyd's Spanish Tragedy and Middleton's Revenger's Tragedy, as well as other plays by Shakespeare), (c) some other texts from the period (including writings by Francis Bacon and Thomas Nashe) or beyond, (d) the political, social, and economic situation in England and Ireland in which Hamlet appeared, and (e) the concept of revenge and the basis of the human impulse to revenge: why do we feel we have to get back at people? In addition to reading Hamlet and other revenge plays, we will view and discuss in detail the 2009 film version of Hamlet directed by Gregory Doran and featuring David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as both Claudius and the Ghost. In addition, one of the paper options will give students the opportunity to examine two other film versions in relation to the play. As noted in the general catalog description, students will develop analytical and interpretive skills that deepen their historical and conceptual understanding of literature, as well as their skills of critical reading, writing, and presentation. In particular, in this section we will seek to develop the involvement in literature fostered by aural/oral immersion.

ENG 330: TEXT AND CONTEXT: Lolita

Instructor: Andrew Ewell

003: TR12:30:00 PM-1:45:00 PM

Lolita tells the story of a middle-aged European man’s seduction of a teenage American girl. But that’s like calling Moby-Dick a book about a whale, or War and Peace a novel about Napoleon. Lolita is also about love, language, storytelling, art, aesthetics, education, memory, history, beauty, poetry, romance, identity, class, and childhood. Lolita is an enduring object of both delight and derision, admiration and approbation, appreciation and confusion. It’s also an undeniable masterwork of twentieth-century American fiction that will challenge what we think a novel can—and ought—to do. We’ll begin by reading Lolita as Nabokov himself would have us read it—by “lovingly collect[ing] [the] sunny trifles of the book.” Then we’ll situate the novel within a variety of other critical and historical contexts. Over the semester, we’ll read Nabokov’s essays on literature, look at some of the novel’s touchstones—Poe, Wordsworth, Byron—read Nabokov’s memoir, Speak, Memory, as well as his interviews, look at Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation, and take a gander at some of the re-interpretations that have popped up over the years, from the likes of Camille Paglia, The Police, Jonathan Lethem, and others. Short essays and other writing assignments will build toward an oral presentation and long research essay.

ENG 330: TEXT AND CONTEXT: Toni Morission: The Bluest Eye CANCELLED

Instructor: Nazera S. Wright

004: TR2:00:00 PM-3:15:00 PM

ENG 330: TEXT AND CONTEXT: Shakespeare and Melville

Instructor: Armando J Prats

005: TR3:30:00 PM-4:45:00 PM

“Dolt & ass that I am I have lived more than 29 years, & until a few days ago, never made close acquaintance with the divine William.” So wrote Herman Melville to his friend and literary sponsor, Evert Duyckinck during the time that he was writing Moby-Dick. From a young age Melville had suffered from bad eyesight, and so had never seriously read Shakespeare because most editions were printed in too small a font. But he had recently gained access to a seven-volume Complete Works in large print. It was for him an awakening with profound consequences. Until that time in his life, Melville said to Nathaniel Hawthorne, he had not been a creature of much deep thought: he had, it is true, written five novels before Moby-Dick, but his literary reputation was for the most part bound with his reputation as a man who had “lived among cannibals” in the Marquesas. Now, he aspired to deeper things, and his reading of Shakespeare seems so to have moved him to be an American Shakespeare. This course proposes to read (whole or in parts) some of the plays that inspired Melville—and that are palpably present in Moby-Dick, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd. The Shakespeare plays that we will read whole are Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. But we will also dive into Timon of Athens, The Tempest, Measure for Measure, Julius Caesar, and others.

But we will read Shakespeare with a view not only to identifying Melville’s references and allusions (that the snob’s shallow game), but to ascertaining how he may have in fact integrated and transformed Shakespeare’s characters, language, and even plots into a genuinely and highly original—and most of all American—literary achievement; for if Melville revered Shakespeare to the extent of referring to him as the Messiah, he also scorned the English devotion to Shakespeare that had devolved into an unseemly “superstition,” one that explicitly dismissed the possibility that anyone—least of all an American—could ever reach his heights of literary achievement. Ours, then, is not a competition between Shakespeare and Melville, English and American but a search for insights into the ways that “influence,” with or without an attendant “anxiety,” can account for the persistence of literary genius.

Short papers, multi-modal projects, attendance, curiosity and enthusiasm.

NO CELL PHONES OR LAPTOPS IN CLASS.

ENG 337: LIT AND GENRE: Scorn not the Sonnet!

Instructor: Frederick Bengtsson

001: TR9:30:00 AM-10:45:00 AM

For centuries, the jewel-like sonnet has been seen as one of the crowning achievements of lyric poetry. Poets from Shakespeare to Shelley to Bishop have tested their poetic mettle both against the strictness and brevity of the form, and against generations of sonnet-writers who have struggled with these maddening fourteen-liners. Far from being oppressive, what Wordsworth called the sonnet’s “scanty plot of ground” has instead generated some of our most enduring, and most beautiful, poetry: explorations of the contradictions and complexities of love and sex; evocations of memory and expressions of grief and mourning; and attempts to wrestle with mortality, death, and the inevitable passage of time. The sonnet also offers a unique opportunity to explore genre. Its brevity will allow us to range both widely and deeply as we explore the evolution of the sonnet from its courtly beginnings, through its Renaissance and Romantic heydays, to 20th- and 21st-century experiments with the form. We will see how genre plays a pivotal role in literary development, allowing writers to innovate within established forms as they respond to and react against other writers, past and present. With a relatively light reading-load, the class will offer both wide coverage and intense focus, as we engage with—and indulge in—this extraordinary genre.

ENG 337: LIT AND GENRE: The Graphic Novel

Instructor: Matthew W Godbey

002: TR2:00:00 PM-3:15:00 PM

This course will introduce students to an emerging genre in contemporary American literature: the graphic novel. To do so, we will focus less on its history and more on its form, reading a variety of contemporary graphic novels that represent the breadth and diversity of the output over the past 25-30 years. Students can expect to read such works as Art Spiegelman’s Maus I and II, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Charles Burns’ Black Hole, selections from Chris Ware, etc. Students will explore the aesthetics of sequential narrative and consider the graphic novel’s place in contemporary literary and popular culture. Among the questions we will be asking are: What is the grammar of comics and how does its mode of simultaneous seeing and reading complicate conventional approaches to reading literature? Can graphic novels become literature? As well, we will examine these graphic novels in the broader context of American literature and culture, with an eye toward continuing to develop and improve the core skills of literary analysis, critical thinking, and argumentative writing.

ENG 339: AUTHOR STUDIES: GEORGE ORWELL - HONORS

Instructor: Peter J. Kalliney

001: MWF11:00:00 AM-11:50:00 AM

What makes George Orwell such a compelling writer, now? Is it his deceptively plain style, his willingness to speak out against hypocrisy, his stubborn belief in democratic socialism? Even as the major political concerns that animate his writing have passed into history--the Spanish Civil War, fascism, totalitarianism, European imperialism, the Cold War--his writings somehow retain their ability to speak to contemporary audiences. In this course, we will think about these questions as we read a range of Orwell's writing: novels, documentaries, political essays, ethnographic writing, war reporting, and book reviews. Highlights will include Down and Out in Paris and London, "Politics and the English Language," and 1984.

ENG 342: SHAKESPEARE

Instructor: Emily E Shortslef

001: TR12:30:00 PM-1:45:00 PM

An introductory survey of Shakespeare’s plays with a thematic focus on close and complicated relationships (between friends, family, lovers, and enemies). We’ll explore acts of trust, betrayal, and forgiveness, kindness and cruelty, in plays that span Shakespeare’s career and cover the range of dramatic genres in which he wrote. At the same time, we’ll examine how Shakespeare’s use of language (especially figurative language) creates meaning; discuss the theatrical cultures and social worlds in which these plays were written and have been performed; and think about the exciting interpretive possibilities of performance—all questions having to do with the relationship these plays have with their audiences, in Shakespeare’s time and now. Plays will include The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Othello, and Twelfth Night. There will be a midterm and final exam, and two short papers.

ENG 343: REN DRAMA AND SOCIETY

Instructor: Joyce M MacDonald

001: MWF10:00:00 AM-10:50:00 AM

This course is designed to explore what Renaissance drama looks like without Shakespeare. Although many of us tend to see Shakespeare as the representative Renaissance playwright, he was only one member of a brilliant generation, and his work is often radically different in tone and structure from that of his contemporaries. This course will concentrate on the plays that everyone else was writing, in popular genres that Shakespeare either adapted so heavily that he essentially transformed their nature (e.g., revenge or domestic tragedy), or that he didn’t work in at all (such as city comedy). Recurring topics will include sex, romance and jealousy, social relations, national identity, urban life and the value of money, and racial and religious difference. By the end of the semester, students will understand the operations of varied dramatic types, recognize the styles and preoccupations of individual playwrights, and be able to provide an account of what their work contributed to the vitality and distinction of Renaissance drama.

ENG 345: BRITISH POETRY: Victorian Poetry

Instructor: Jill N. Rappoport

001: TR9:30:00 AM-10:45:00 AM

The nineteenth century was a time of startling and dramatic changes: railroads and industry gave England a new pace; colonial projects expanded its sense of space; and the theory of evolution gave it a new idea of its place in history. What role did poetry have—what forms did it take—in these shifting contexts? How did it gauge and respond to the changing times? This course explores the ways in which poetic forms dealt with and deflected the challenges of modernity. Poets and poetry critics borrowed, rejected, or sought to surpass the past by grappling with their individual, national, and poetic inheritance. In the process, they created a wealth of poetry that was both inviting and innovative; sharp and sensual; moving and remarkably modern. Whatever your relationship to poetry is—whether you write your own or really only read prose!—this class will help you to better read, appreciate, discuss, and analyze verse. We’ll explore a range of rich and provocative ballads, dramatic monologues, and lyric and narrative verse by Tennyson, Browning, Barrett Browning, C. Rossetti, D. Rossetti, Hopkins. We will also spend time on the sounds of poetry. While today we tend to think of poetry as a private experience, during the nineteenth century poetry was often read aloud, and written with that reading in mind. Speaking and listening to poetic language will help us to better understand its rhythms, form, and meanings. Course requirements include a final recitation, frequent short written assignments, and two essays.

ENG 347: THE RISE OF THE BRITISH NOVEL

Instructor: Mike Genovese

001: MWF12:00:00 PM-12:50:00 PM

What is the novel and how did it begin? Why did it develop at a specific moment in history and what counted as fiction before that time? What makes one novel “literature” and another “trash”? In this course we will explore the early decades of the novel to better understand prose fiction and how it came to be a dominant genre in English literature. We will be reading eighteenth-century novels with an eye toward identifying what made the novel rise, if indeed it did at all. Of special interest for this class will be the female protagonist and the way that early British novels represent the experiences of women. What, if anything, does the popularity of female protagonists add to our exploration of the novel’s origins?

ENG 349: MODERNISM

Instructor: Jonathan M Allison

001: TR 11:00:00 AM-12:15:00PM

A course on Modernist Literature: British, Irish and American writing from the first half of the twentieth century. Famously, Virginia Woolf once wrote: “On or about December 1910 human character changed.” Much of the writing of the period—including fiction, poetry, plays and essays—might be read as an attempt to record and explore that process of change. Readings will include the work of writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis and Gertrude Stein. The literature of the period will be examined in relation to various contexts and backgrounds, including the experience of war, the breakup of empire, and other major events. Provides ENG Major Elective credit and ENG minor credit.

ENG 353: AMERICAN LIT AND CULTURES POST-1900

Instructor: Michael A Trask

001: TR2:00:00 PM-3:15:00 PM

An examination of American fiction since around 1980 as well as the diverse categories by which its critics and readers have sought to identify it: minimalism, hyperrealism, postmodernism, cyberpunk, magic realism. The class will begin by pairing the work of two influential and seemingly opposed authors of short fiction—Raymond Carver and Donald Barthelme—in order to generate the key terms and problems for approaching work by writers of diverse genres, from science fiction to historical novels and self-consciously “literary” fiction. We shall read novels and short fiction by Marilynne Robinson, William Gibson, Karen Joy Fowler, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead, Jhumpa Lahiri, George Saunders, Margaret Atwood, Nicholson Baker, and Adam Johnson. Requirements other than reading include two short (5pg) papers, a midterm, and a final exam.

ENG 369: AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN'S WRITING

Instructor: Rynetta S Davis

001: TR11:00:00 AM-12:15:00 PM

English 369 investigates representations of black womanhood in nineteenth- and twentieth-century black women writers’ literary texts. Reading an antebellum narrative, political tracts, essays, novels, short stories, poetry, and plays, we will examine how black women writers from the Antebellum Era through the contemporary period entered the print public sphere, and in their writing, responded to injustices such as exploitive labor practices, political disenfranchisement, interracial violence, and rape. To facilitate these inquiries, our reading list includes a mix of canonical, non-canonical, underappreciated, and recently rediscovered black women’s literary texts.

ENG 395: INDEPENDENT WORK

Instructor:

001: N/A12:00:00 AM-12:00:00 AM

ENG 399 INTERNSHIP IN ENGLISH-RELATED WORK EXPERIENCE. (1-3)

The Department of English internship is available for qualified students to receive academic credit through applied and practical experience with a variety of private and public entities, including but not limited to the University Press of Kentucky and to the law firm of Ward, Hocker, and Thornton. The student will identify a field-, community-based, practical or applied educational experience and locate a sponsor to host their internship, which will be supervised by both a responsible person on site and by an English Dept. faculty member (usually the Director of Undergraduate Studies). A learning contract must be completed by the student, the faculty supervisor, and the on-site internship supervisor, then filed with the English Dept.’s Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) in order to receive credit for this course. Credits: 1-3 credit hours, depending on the time required and nature of the internship. Approximately 10 hours a week of internship work equals three credit hours. At midterm, the faculty and on-site supervisors will communicate about the student’s progress so that the faculty member can submit a midterm grade. English 399 will be graded only on a pass-fail basis. Repeatable for a total of up to 6 credit hours. Prereq: To be eligible for the internship, students must (1) be sophomores, juniors or seniors, and (2) have completed both parts of the CCR/composition and communication requirement.

APPLICATIONS due to pearl.james@uky.edu by October 17.

ENG 407: INTERM WKSP IMAG WRIT (SR): The Structure of Fiction

Instructor: Andrew Ewell

001: T4:00:00 PM-6:30:00 PM

This is a course for writers with some prior workshop experience and a degree of understanding about the mechanics and terminology associated with the craft of fiction. In brief: you’ve done a bit of this before. Now, here’s your chance to sharpen your skills through close reading, attention to technique, and focused critique. You’ll write at least two complete stories and a thorough revision over the semester, building towards a piece of art that aims, as John Gardner advised, to clarify life.

ENG 407: INTERM WKSP IMAG WRIT (SR): Poetry and the American Voice

Instructor: Dan Howell

002: TR2:00:00 PM-3:15:00 PM

This course will build upon the foundation established in ENG 207 and (for some of you) ENG 407. Students will be expected to demonstrate greater understanding of the art and craft in published poems; to employ their heightened knowledge and skills in poetry exercises, including more work with formal verse; and to write poems that always strive for their best possible expression, which our conscientious and constructive workshopping will try to help them attain. In our reading we will look at poems in the American poetic tradition, from Dickinson and Whitman to Stevens and Williams and beyond. Course-work: in-class and out-of-class exercises; informal written responses to published poems; active participation in annotating and workshopping poems by peers; twelve poems.

ENG 407: INTERM WKSHP IMAG WRTNG(SR): Poetic Forms

Instructor: Julia M. Johnson

003: M4:00:00 PM-6:30:00 PM

We meet once a week for a meeting of intermediate poets. We will leave our comfort zones. This class is devoted to poetry by you and by others. It is a workshop-based class. We will together access and read an extensive amount of work by contemporary poets, with a particular focus on poetic forms. The class is a casual operation, largely student driven. What you don’t ask, formulate, present, question, interrogate, assert, or wonder aloud, etc. will remain forever in the empty cavern of your heart. Students will also write in poetic forms, perhaps outside of their usual form--such as the sestina, the villanelle, the sonnet, and even their own "nonce" form.

ENG 407: INTERM WKSHP IMAG WRTNG(SR): Sub-Genres of the Fourth Genre

Instructor: Erik A Reece

004: W4:00:00 PM-6:30:00 PM

The term "creative nonfiction" asks us to begin thinking of the essay as a story that uses many narrative devices of fiction-writing to not only tell the truth, but to shape the truth. ENG 407 builds on many of the elements of nonfiction writing that students encountered in ENG 207: establishing voice, creating a sense of scene, rendering complex portraits of people, recreating anecdotes and dialogue. Because ENG 207 is not a prerequisite for this course, we will begin ENG 407 with these basic building blocks of creative nonfiction. Then we will push beyond the personal essay to explore other forms of creative nonfiction. Students will read selections from some of the best nonfiction writers working today, and they will uses those works as models for their own essays.

ENG 425: ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING

Instructor: Randall Roorda

001: TR3:30:00 PM-4:45:00 PM

This class will sample a range of genres or modes of writing lumped under its title—landscape evocation, natural history description, field guides, scientific ecology, travel pieces, crisis reportage, polemic, reflection, lamentation, celebration and so forth. We’ll get briefed on EW’s influential precursors and acquainted with its present state. We’ll dwell on writing as a practice of engaging with place, of becoming (so to speak) environed. Having surveyed the terrain, participants will be invited to go and do likewise, in writing projects of their own submitted in stages and reviewed in workshop groups. At least one field trip will be mandatory for the class, with dates and details announced at the outset.

ENG 440G: STUDIES IN BRITISH LIT: Arthurian Literature

Instructor: Matt Giancarlo

001: TR2:00:00 PM-3:15:00 PM

In this course we will read a series of Arthurian narratives spanning from the earliest chronicles to the Victorian era. Readings will include excerpts from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, a 12th century quasi-historical chronicle; Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthurian Romances, the 12th century French foundation for romantic Arthurian literature; and the 14th century alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The centerpiece of the course will be Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th century Le Morte D’Arthur. We will conclude with the 19th century Arthurian romances of Alfred Tennyson and Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Discussion and analysis will focus on 1) themes important to the Arthurian tradition (romantic love; gender roles and expectations; society and social unity; the forces of history; the demands of justice, religion, and war); and 2) the social significance of the works themselves as reflections of contemporary culture. Work will include reading quizzes, one short essay and one major research essay. No final exam.

ENG 470G: COMPARITIVE AND TRANSNATIONAL STUDIES IN LITERATURE: Border Stories

Instructor: Andy Doolen

001: MWF10:00:00 AM-10:50:00 AM

This course focuses on the literature and film of border crossing, exile, and displacement. We will primarily read contemporary works from three literary traditions—Native American, Latino, and African American—and explore the ways in which they depict the experiences of inhabiting “contact zones” and traveling “between” cultures and nations. We will learn how to recognize and interpret the specific types of borders that are imagined, and traversed, in these texts. How do those fictional borders relate to the lived realities of border crossing in North America? How do race, gender, citizenship, and class influence the ways in which characters and communities negotiate these borderlands? How do acts of border crossing, through real and imagined borderlands, infuse the author’s alternative social and political vision? The course will focus largely on 20th and 21st century literature and film.

ENG 495: HONORS SEMINAR: Blood, Sex, and Scandal: Tragedy on the Renaissance Stage

Instructor: Emily E Shortslef

001: TR11:00:00 AM-12:15:00 PM

Early seventeenth-century English tragedy is famously messy. The elaborate and frankly bizarre plots of these plays feature dangerous sexual entanglements (forbidden love affairs, secret marriages, incest); devious and intricate schemes for money, power, or revenge; shadowy political intrigue and cover-ups; betrayals of responsibility and trust; and grotesque murders (stabbing, poison, dismemberment). Excess of every sort is on display here. Set in claustrophobic environments in which rumors abound and characters are almost always under surveillance, these plays construct worlds in which moral and political corruption, obsessive desire, and spectacular violence are the norm. In this class we’ll study 7–8 plays by authors including Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster. Discussion of the plotting, staging, and aesthetic style of these tragedies will likely include their treatment of gender and sexuality, their foreign settings, their preoccupation with revenge, their metatheatricality, their baroque language, and their dark, ironic humor. To help us make sense of these plays we’ll also explore the extent to which they reflect the political environment, events, and gossip of early seventeenth-century England; the cultural desires and anxieties (both early modern and modern) that they express; their participation in particular theatrical traditions; and their relation to theories of tragedy. Expect to do weekly discussion board posts, two short papers, and a longer, final paper.