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Course Offerings for Summer 2013

If you don't see a description for the course you are interested in, contact the instructor for more information. We try to keep this information about English department course offerings as accurate, timely, and complete as possible. However, schedules may change, and students are advised to consult the Banner schedule as the most authoritative source for scheduling information. Fall course descriptions can be found here.

301 • Reading, Writing, and Research • TTh 3:00-5:05 pm • Quinlan

This course is designed to prepare English majors and minors especially for more advanced work in the discipline.  Hence we will give more than usual attention to reading, discussing, evaluating, writing about, and documenting a relatively small number of iconic texts in poetry, fiction, and drama (just one play).  The importance of genre, the development of literature as an academic discipline, the value of a handful of theoretical approaches for exploring texts, and the integrating of exposition and critical commentary will also receive significant focus.

Requirements will include reading quizzes, short exercises, short papers, and an annotated bibliography.

350 • Introduction to Linguistics • TTh 5:20-7:25 pm • Basilico

Areas of linguistics and fundamentals of linguistic science; world language families. Prerequisite: EH 102 or equivalent.

427/592 • Classics of Detective Fiction • TTh 12:40-02:40 pm • Siegel

This class will offer an introduction to the detective fiction genre in England and America, from its nineteenth-century origins, to the Golden Age, to the private eye novels of the mid-twentieth century. We’ll look at the impulses that drive the genre: the allure of the detective, the thrill of investigation, the fascination of crime in all its forms. We’ll also consider the competing social agendas served by detective fiction, from the assertion of law and order to the undermining of institutions and political regimes.

We’ll read works by Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, and others. In addition, we’ll watch some of the major detective and suspense films, and we’ll study critical essays about the detective genre. Formal coursework will include two papers and a final exam. 

452/552 • Grammar & Usage for English Teachers • W 4:50-9:00 pm • Basilico

(Also LING 452.) Intensive review of structure of English; usage, punctuation, and style as these relate to grammar. Prerequisite: EH/LING 250 or EH/LING 251 or written permission of instructor.

462/562 • American Literature, 1820-1870 • MWF 9:40-11:00 am • Temple

The years between 1820 and 1870 gave rise to some of the most significant economic and cultural transformations in the history of the United States. Phenomena like the opening of the Erie Canal, the development of the railroad, the invention of the telegraph, unprecedented Westward expansion, and the entrenchment of capitalism, inspired Americans with a tremendous sense of hope and promise about the nation’s future. That optimism was tempered, however, by anxiety over just exactly what kind of society those changes would ultimately create. Institutions and practices such as slavery, Native American “removal” and genocide, and the continued disenfranchisement of women, represented what many felt was a profoundly unethical corollary to the much ballyhooed “progress” of the day. Would the United States fulfill the promise of its democratic ideals? Or would new developments instead create a land of shallow, opportunistic, self-serving individualists who shun traditional ideals in favor of wealth and power? In English 462/562 we will investigate how writers of this period in American history addressed these important questions, and we will further attempt to mine their significance to our lives in the present day. Among the authors we will read are Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Stoddard, Henry David Thoreau, and Martin Delany. Course requirements will include midterm and final exams and a term paper.

464/564 • American Literature, 1914-1945 • TTh 7:40-9:40 pm • Quinlan

“Make it New!” was the mantra of American literary culture at the beginning of the 20th century. Following a conflict in social and religious outlooks between the older and younger generations—compellingly depicted in Willa Cather’s My Antonia and Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night--the era presented a startling degree of experimentation in all of the arts. This experimentation was intertwined with other innovations of the age—cars, skyscrapers, radio, and movies (for which several of the writers worked). At the same time, the Great War served as yet another disruptive marker between the coherent past and the fragmented present. We will explore these issues in texts by O’Neill, Cather, Stevens, Eliot, Faulkner, Hughes, and others as we reel our way through the Jazz Age and the bewilderments that followed.

482/582 • 18th Century: Theory and Interpretation • M 4:50-8:50 pm • Graves

Monsters, Mayhem, and Melancholy: The Dark Side of Enlightenment Literature

In this course we will explore works written during the long eighteenth century (1660-1832) which focus on bodies in pain and minds in terror. The eighteenth century has often been described as the Age of Reason—an era in which mind triumphed over matter, logic held sway over emotion, and mighty science burst the shackles of religious superstition. However, just as our own contemporary audience lingers in delicious dread among imaginary twilight spaces inhabited by werewolves, phantoms, and vampires, eighteenth-century literature attests that readers of that period remained both fearful of and fascinated by the prospect of painful and terrifying events on either side of the grave. 

Course Texts

  • Shelley, Frankenstein, Oxford World’s Classics
  • Beckford, Vathek, Oxford World’s Classics
  • Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, Oxford World’s Classics
  • The Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol C: The Restoration and Eighteenth Century, Norton

Course Assignments

  • Midterm 100 pts.
  • Final 100 pts.
  • Final Essay (8-10 pages) 100 pts.

690 • Major Authors: Byron • MTWRF 10:55-1:35 • Grimes • May Term

Byron was, along with Napoleon, one of the two most prominent personalities in Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century.  This will be an intense, two-week seminar on Byron's poetry and on "Byronism."  We will read most of the major poetic works (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage I-IV, The Giaour, Manfred, Don Juan, and The Vision of Judgment) as well as a selection from Byron's fascinating correspondence and journals and some critical and historical materials. Reading, discussion, two short presentations, and a final paper/project.