The Department of English Spring 2018

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1 TR 9:35-10:55 FH TR 12:55-2:15 FH MW 5:30-6:50 FH MW 7:00-8:20 FH MW 11:10-12:30 FH 2430 CREATIVE WRITING GEIGER The purpose of this class is to acquaint students with the art and craft of creative writing poetry and fiction. To this end we will study the terminology and techniques used by writers, then put those techniques into practice through in-class exercises and revision. For the most part, the class will be a discussion/workshop format; one half of the semester will be spent on fiction writing, the second half on poetry. At the end of the semester students will assemble a portfolio of their own favorite short stories and poems to be turned in for a final grade. CREATIVE WRITING ADAIR-HODGES In this class students will read and write poetry and short fiction, and perhaps some hybrid forms. Class time will be distributed between discussion of the genres, reading assignments, and workshopping each others writing. The goals are to learn the fundamentals of poetry and short fiction, and to develop a vocabulary for discussing and responding to what you read: both your own work and the work of others. PLAYWRITING WAC BRADLEY In this class, you will learn how plays are the result of both creative impulses as well as logical choices on the part of the writer. This class is designed to help you learn to use the tools of writing a play as you go from week to week. Each weekly writing exercise is designed to help you know not only the story you want to tell but how you want to tell it. This is a WAC class which means you will be doing a lot of writing, both creative and critical writing. You will develop the craft of writing plays by studying the elements that go into the making of a playscript: character, dialogue, action, setting, plot. Through tightly focused and directed writing exercises you will develop characters whose desires and conflicts will drive your plot forward. Please note, your work will be read aloud in class and critiqued by your professor as well as your classmates, so don t be shy about sharing your work or about sharing you insights into the work of others TR 11:10-12:30 FH 1310 THE ART & THE PROCESS OF THE BOOK GEIGER In this class students will learn about the history of the book, from scrolls, to the codex, to electronic publishing. We will examine the relationship between authors and publishers, in regards to the American small-press movement, in order to develop a deeper appreciation for the concept of the book. Students will learn the fundamentals of operating a smallpress, and will have hands-on experience in the book arts, by producing (printing and binding) a limited edition letterpress chapbook of their own design. Page 1 of 8

2 3150/ TR 2:30-3:50 FH / TR 4:00-5:20 FH 2050 INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS: LINGUISTIC PRINCIPLES COLEMAN The goals of this course are slightly different for undergraduate and graduate students enrolled. For undergraduates, the primary goal of the course will be to gain an overall understanding of the nature of human communication, especially through speech and writing. The difference between speech and writing as things people actually do and language as an ancient explanation of what people do will be examined. Students will receive some exposure to formal methods of description and analysis used in contemporary linguistics. For graduate students, a significantly greater emphasis will be placed on formal linguistic analysis. Assignments for undergraduates: quizzes, two midterm exam, and final exam. Assignments for graduates: same as for undergraduates, but with additional reading and required homework. 3190/ L TR 4:00-5:20 FH 2060 SOCIOLINGUISTICS REICHELT This course covers factors influencing language variation, including region, language contact, gender, and ethnicity. Additionally, the course addresses language change and language planning TR 11:10-12:30 CL 0500C THE DETECTIVE STORY - WAC COMPORA This web assisted course examines classic and modern fiction that focuses on the detective as an archetypal literary figure. Classic mystery authors such as Chandler, Doyle, Hammett, Poe, and Christie will be examined. In addition, due to recent developments in forensic science, international terrorism, and cybercrime, the examination of works by more modern authors will be examined. Two essays, short writing assignments, and quizzes will be completed TR 12:55-2:15 FH 2200 AMERICAN LITERARY TRADITIONS REISING Rather than surveying the entire range of American literature, this course will focus on important examples of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry from the nineteenth and twentieth century. Writers to be studied include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Richard Wright, Ken Kesey, and Tom Robbins. Students will write two papers and take a final examination. Page 2 of 8

3 MW 4:00-5:20 FH 2230 LITERATURE OF POSTCOLONIAL, DIASPORIC, AND NON- WHITE COMMUNITIES - AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS MACK This course will examine the ways in which 19 th - and 20 th -century African American female writers have articulated notions of womanhood, femininity, and American citizenship through their representations of black female narrators and characters. The class will begin with Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted by Frances Harper (1892) one of the first novels published by an African American woman and end with Sarah Phillips by Andrea Lee (1984). Other possible required primary texts include Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and Meridian by Alice Walker. Through weekly reading assignments, lectures, and discussions, this class will culminate in final papers about one of our course texts MW 11:10-12:30 MH 1002 WORLD LITERATURE & CULTURES SARKAR This course, by focusing specifically on the theme of "crossing borders" in contemporary literature will explore how border crossings (national/racial/sexual) influence an individual s identity in the twenty-first century. By examining literary works from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the United Kingdom and the United States and adopting a multigenre approach (fiction, memoir, poetry, drama and film), we will try to probe the reasons behind the increasing emphasis on border crossing in modern times. In particular, we will try to answer some of the following questions. How do transnational migration and a rapidly flourishing consumer culture affect individual identity in the twenty-first century? Does racial/sexual politics assume new dimensions with the rising tide of worldwide displacement and migration? How do migrants resolve tension between tradition and modernity? And what happens to individuals who embrace/ resist the onslaught of rampant consumerism, undoubtedly a side-effect of globalization? Simultaneously, as we will discover, all the texts, in some form or other are coming of age narratives. Along with the above questions then, we will also try to explore what it means to grow up and live in a postcolonial world at a time when words like consumerism, commodity culture, body image, and advertising have assumed a new sense of urgency. In other words, through our analysis of contemporary literature, we will make an attempt to unpack these buzzwords that have become part of our daily vocabulary. Additionally, over the semester, students will be encouraged to develop critical thinking skills as well as hone their speaking and writing abilities TR 9:35-10:55 FH 2060 FOUNDATION OF LITERARY STUDY WAC ERBEN Writing across the curriculum (WAC) course. An overview and introduction to the discipline of literary study, its history, its methods, and its specialized languages. Prerequisite: Comp. II or its equivalent (required). Humanities core course. Page 3 of 8

4 TR 5:30-6:50 FH 2060 FOUNDATION OF LITERARY STUDY WAC REISING I will approach this course as the English Department intends--as a threshold class for English majors. We will address important topics, terms, and debates in contemporary literary studies by studying some influential literary theories. We will also engage in practical criticism by working closely with a variety of literary works from various genres. Students will contribute regularly to class discussions with reports and questions, will write three papers, and take a comprehensive final examination TR 7:00-8:20 FH 2050 SHAKESPEARE I ROYSTON In this introductory course, we will explore a bit of everything Shakespeare. Focusing on genre and covering the full chronology of his plays, parts of our course will use cultural objects from Shakespeare s historical moment to open up new ways of reading well-known dramas like Hamlet, while other parts will take us to less-frequently-traveled Shakespearean territory as we investigate tragicomedies like The Winter s Tale or brutalbut-comic early works like The Comedy of Errors. This class aims to offer students multiple ways to engage and think with this monumental author and his historical moment, whether you come to the class having loved Shakespeare for years, feeling skeptical about his position in modern Western culture, or completely unfamiliar with his work. Together we will work to improve our close-reading and writing skills, increase our knowledge of the breadth of Shakespeare s drama, and gain experience using a variety of methods to read and analyze early modern English texts. Assignments will include several very short writing responses, a short close-reading assignment, and a longer final paper on a Shakespearean topic and play of your choice TR 2:30-3:50 UH 4440 DISABILITY AMERICAN LITERATURE DAY Disability In American Literature addresses a wide range of contemporary literary productions, including novels, graphic novels, plays, short stories, poetry, memoir, and personal essays, connecting these productions to an American literary genealogy and recognizing the deployment and resistance to ableism in American Literature. At the course s conclusion, students will be able to understand how literature interacts with cultural stereotypes, ultimately understanding how literature can be utilized for disability justice and social change TR 2:30-3:50 FH 1700 WRITING WORKSHOP POETRY ADAIR-HODGES This workshop-format course is for the practicing poet. Each class will begin with a serious discussion of a poetry-related topic, or a reading assignment, and advance into the actual workshop itself. Students will work towards achieving a final unified portfolio of completed poems (a chapbook). Grades will be based on that portfolio (chapbook) and on class discussion and participation. Page 4 of 8

5 MW 12:55-2:15 HH 3422 WRITING WORKSHOP FICTION BRADLEY The goal of this course is to further develop writing skills which have been established in an introductory writing course. Students will study narrative conventions by considering theories of how stories are put together as well as how they can be taken apart. Students will review the rules of writing a traditional short story as they also consider ways to bend and break these rules. At the end of the quarter students will have written thirty pages of fiction and a revision. One story will be read and critiqued by the class. Although this will be basically a writing workshop, we will also read model stories from an anthology. Text to be used is Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. 4090/ M 7:00-9:45 FH 2860 CURRENT WRITING THEORY WAC BRANSON A study of current theory and research connecting reading, critical thinking and writing with applications of theory to students writing practice. 4100/ TR 2:30-3:50 FH 2210 THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH REICHELT This course is a survey of the social, historical, political, and linguistic forces that have shaped the English language. This course examines the history of English from its origins in the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, through its modern position as the most widely spoken language on the planet. We will be interested in both "internal" developments, such as changes in the sounds of the language and the ways sentences are structured, and "external" factors, such as the social and political forces that carried English around the world. Cross-listed with LING-4100/5/ MW 2:30-3:50 FH 2050 BRITISH LITERATURE: THE RENAISSANCE MATTISON During the reigns of Henry VIII and his three ruling children, including Elizabeth I, writers of England developed a wide variety of new literary styles, influenced by Italian and French poetry but quintessentially English. We will discuss the emergence of this literature in the context of the history of the period and the relationships that formed between writers of the time. The principal focus will be on the English sonnet, which was a new innovation, based on earlier Italian models. We will read the sonnets and other lyric poems of Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, members of Henry VIII s court, and the sonnet sequences of Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare. We will also discuss the role of poetry in politics, religion, and culture and vice versa and the distinctive cultural force of Elizabeth as a ruler, a writer and speaker, and a national symbol. Page 5 of 8

6 4540/ MW 12:55-2:15 FH 2260 LITERATURE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE: 1850-PRESENT SARKAR This course offers an introduction to the literature produced in Britain and its former colonies from the late nineteenth century to the present age, focusing on the way writers deal with Britain s imperial legacies. The nineteenth century witnessed some major historical changes -- unprecedented industrial growth and production following the Industrial Revolution, Britain s growing imperial ambitions and the seeds of the women s movement, the effects of which continued well into the twentieth century. And with the Nationality Act of 1948 and the arrival of the Empire Windrush, Britain s demographics were fundamentally altered. In this course, will seek to answer, among others, the following broad questions: Were the major British writers proponents or opponents of imperialism? How did the British intelligentsia react to the rapid transformation of Britain from an agrarian to an industrial economy and how did the devastating effects of the world wars fundamentally change Britain? With the fading away of the empire, how did British writers envision a new Britain? How are contemporary British novelists like Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi and Zadie Smith re-imagining what it means to be British, citizens of a postcolonial and multicultural Britain faced with social and political instability and the growth of Islamic fundamentalism? We will study mostly novels, essays and film, but will also try to focus on how the assigned texts both engage and reflect the social and cultural anxieties of the times MW 5:30-6:50 FH 2050 AFRICAN AMERICAN WRITERS-PRE-20 TH CENTURY: MACK This course examines the autobiographical impulse in early African American literature and culture. In this class, we will put different modes of African American autobiographical expression, including slave narratives, autobiographies, fictional prose, poems, and song lyrics, in their historical and cultural contexts. Required texts will include The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African by Olaudah Equiano, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass; Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects by Frances E.W. Harper; Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs; The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson; Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington; and The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. We will also engage in a larger discussion about autobiography and the line it straddles between truth and fiction. We will question what constitutes autobiography, and ask if it is possible (or even desirable) for an autobiography to be objectively truthful. In what ways might narrators lie to tell a more honest story? Through weekly reading assignments, lectures, and discussions, this course will culminate in final papers about a text and the rhetorical strategies and conventions the narrator or speaker uses to tell a compelling version of his or her life story. Page 6 of 8

7 4860/ MW 9:35-10:55 MH MW 5:30-6:50 FH T 7:20-9:45 FH 1250 EMILY DICKINSON LUNDQUIST Tell all the truth but tell it slant -- In this course, we will read and discuss as many Emily Dickinson poems as possible from The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition edited by R.W. Franklin. We will consider Dickinson s recurrent themes: death, love, eroticism, marriage, freedom, solitude, nature, war, religion, truth and her numerous poems about the art of poetry itself, learning to appreciate her complex, idiosyncratic writing style. We will look at Dickinson s own mode of publication: her famous fascicles. We will read excerpts from her letters, and biographies about her, as well as crucial examples from the substantial critical history. We will consider Dickinson as a quintessential American poet, a feminist poet, a contemporary of Whitman and Emerson, and investigate her influence on modern and postmodern poetry. Frequent informal writing, two papers, and a summary of a critical article will be required, as well as regular class participation. HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM MATTISON Literary criticism is a practice well over 2000 years old, with both distinct and overlapping approaches in all of the languages in which long-term literary traditions exist. Its history is far too vast to survey adequately. Instead, this course will examine several points in that history ancient, early modern, and modern in considerable depth, investigating both the purposes of critical efforts in relation to specific historical periods and the concerns those efforts have in common across periods. It will focus on several issues confronting critics as they have been treated at different periods in history, including: how to determine and understand the basic ingredients of a literary work (its text, author, time and place of composition, and so on); how to understand its relation to the context in which it was produced; what categories (such as genre) it should be placed in; how to evaluate it; how to understand the meaning it could or should have for readers; and the role of criticism itself in conveying or determining (or, perhaps, changing) that meaning. Critics to be discussed may include Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Philip Sidney, George Puttenham, Isaac Casaubon, Girolamo Vida, Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, Germaine de Staël, Virginia Woolf, Eric Auerbach, William Empson, James Baldwin, Eve Sedgwick, and others. The course will feature a visit by Roland Greene, the 2015 president of the Modern Language Association, to discuss his work. STUDIES IN AMERICAN ROMANTICISM - THE LONG 1850S REISING This seminar will examine main texts and trends in American literature from the tales of Poe and essays of Emerson through the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Texts will include various Poe stories and Emerson Essays, Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave; Written By Himself, Store's The Minister's Wooing, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Melville's Moby-Dick, and Thoreau's Walden. Students will write two papers, including a substantial seminar paper due at term's end, and make several presentations to the class. No background is required, although some work on these authors and/or this era of American literature will be very helpful. Page 7 of 8

8 W 7:00-9:45 FH 1700 SEMINAR - POST-SOUL AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE & CULTURE MACK In this course, students will engage contemporary African American literature and expressive culture including visual art, music, and film created by artists who emerge after the Civil Rights Movement and whose works carve out a space for multiple black identities, voices, and experiences. Some possible required primary texts include Caucasia by Danzy Senna, Sarah Phillips by Andrea Lee, The Sellout by Paul Beatty, I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett, and Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. We will also read excerpts from critical works such as Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic by Mark Anthony Neal, and we ll engage films like Dear White People, Afro-Punk, and Electric Purgatory: The Fate of the Black Rocker. Through weekly reading assignments, lectures, and discussions, this class will culminate in final papers about one of our course texts R 7:20-9:45 FH 1700 CERTIFICATE CAPSTONE EDGINGTON This course provides teachers of writing the opportunity to draw together the theories, methods, and practices they have studied in previous courses. This directed research project will include opportunities to participate in a service learning project, guidance in carrying out a critical ethnography of student writing, assistance in constructing a discourse analysis of a selected feature of student writing, experimental course design incorporating the newest writing technologies, or some other project that directly but richly engages the student in the professional work of the field of composition studies. Students will carry out research work independently, meeting weekly with other students and professor to review progress and raise questions MW 7:10-8:40 FH 2480 INTERNSHIP ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE COLEMAN The course is taken twice. The first and last few weeks of the semester are spent in preparatory / tie-up, seminar-style meetings with the professor. Assigned material is to be read before seminar meetings. Students are expected to understand the readings well enough to be prepared to discuss them in depth. For the remainder of the term, students will (the first time through) observe experienced interns teaching and write reflective analyses of what they observe or will (the second time through) practice team-teach the Basic ESL Tutorial which the UT Department of English offers free to the community and to write reflective analyses of their own teaching and others'. All students are expected to have read lesson plans closely, even if they are not assigned to teach. The course is graded S/U. Page 8 of 8

CREATIVE WRITING, MW 11-12:15, FH 2430 GEIGER A workshop introducing the craft of poetry, short fiction and drama,

THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH COURSE DESCRIPTIONS SPRING SEMESTER 2016 3010-001 CREATIVE WRITING, MW 11-12:15, FH 2430 GEIGER A workshop introducing the craft of poetry, short fiction and drama, with the emphasis