Spring 2017 Course Descriptions

Spring 2017


2822 ENGL 202-01 Introduction to Creative Writing:MWF 10-10:50am HM111 (Professor Weinberg)


 

 

2823 ENGL 202-02 Introduction to Creative Writing: MWF 2:00-2:50pm HM113 (Professor Kiefer)

This Introduction to Creative Writing course will allow students to gain an understanding of three genres of creative writing: poetry, fiction, and drama. Students will read examples from each genre and analyze the craft techniques and choices the authors made and how they might utilize such techniques in their own writing. Students will examine and practice craft techniques such as image, point of view, rhyme, dialogue, and so on as a working foundation. Students of this class will produce their own work through in-class exercises and will work on building a strong vocabulary for peer workshops. A strong focus of the course will be on utilizing technique and revision practices to develop their writing. For this section, students will produce a small collection of poems, one short story, and one ten-minute play or scene, in addition to reading responses, writing exercises, written responses to peer work, a cover letter for a final portfolio, and revised pieces.

    

 

3061 ENGL 202-03 Introduction to Creative Writing:T/Th 11:00-12:15pm HM111 (Professor TBA)


 

 

 

5451 ENGL 202-04 Introduction to Creative Writing:T/Th 4:00pm-5:15pm HM122 (Professor TBA) 


 

 

 4153 ENGL 300-01 Introduction to English Studies-WR:MWF 11-11:50am DA104 (Prof Adams)

 This course will serve as an introduction to literary genres, including lyric poetry, drama, short fiction, and the novel. Though we will read texts from various historical periods, most of our readings will center on the relationship between the individual and the community. The class will be discussion-based and, although it will provide a foundation for future English majors, no familiarity with literature will be assumed. Requirements will include careful reading, regular participation, a class presentation, and a few short papers.

 

4154 ENGL 300-02 Introduction to English Studies-WR:MWF 12-12:50pm HM101 (Prof Maxwell)

This course will introduce students to English studies. We will engage fiction, poetry, nonfiction, film, and television organized around the theme of “the body.” Students will practice close reading and contextual analysis and become familiar with methods of reading and writing practiced within the English discipline and, ideally, discover new “pleasures of the text,” to borrow from Roland Barthes, one of the theorists whose work we’ll consult. Texts include Marge Piercy’s Sex Wars, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water, Ronaldo Wilson’s Poems of the Black Object, Jillian Weise’s The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, and Jeffrey Eugenide’s Middlesex.

 

4597ENGL 300-03 Introduction to English Studies-WR: T/Th 9:30am-10:45pm SH001 (Prof Mattes)

This introduction to the English major will cover a range of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama while introducing students to central terms and methods of literary criticism and history. In addition to giving close attention to the “internal,” aesthetic elements of texts, we will consider the social contexts in which such texts are written and read. These contexts include broader social, economic, and cultural currents in which our readings are embedded and to which they speak; changing disciplinary attitudes regarding issues of art, genre, canon, and more generally, the politics of literary study; and the contributions literary studies make to conversations across disciplines.

 

 

 

6966 ENGL 300-04 Introduction to English Studies-WR:T/Th 4:00-5:15pm HM221 (Prof Adams)

 This course will serve as an introduction to literary genres, including lyric poetry, drama, short fiction, and the novel. Though we will read texts from various historical periods, most of our readings will center on the relationship between the individual and the community. The class will be discussion-based and, although it will provide a foundation for future English majors, no familiarity with literature will be assumed. Requirements will include careful reading, regular participation, a class presentation, and a few short papers.

 

2825 ENGL 302-01 Sur of Brit Writ:Romance-Modern & 20th C:MWF 9-9:50am DA107(Prof Hadley)

This course will explore literary responses to the culture developing in context of a British society coming to terms with the French and Industrial Revolutions, the slave trade, and with what Wollstonecraft called the "revolution in female manners". As the period witnesses the development of a distinctively modern consciousness, we will also address topics such as the increasing numbers of women’s voices, the evolution of lyric, poetic expression, and of modern bourgeois identity. We will conclude with attention to British imperialism and to post-colonialism. The course will address a variety of texts and genres, both fiction and non-fiction. Students will gain a working familiarity with the materials and practice in critical thinking, including the creative analysis of literature in its thematic and cultural-historical contexts.

 

2826 ENGL 303-01 Scientific and Technical Writing-WR: MWF 1-1:50pm DA308 (TBA)


 

 

2827 ENGL 303-02 Scientific and Technical Writing-WR:T/Th 2:30-3:45pm SK208 (Prof Johnson)

The focus of English 303 is recognizing and responding in writing to different rhetorical situations in scientific and technical discourse communities. A student in English 303 should expect to create and revise documents in multiple genres. Each document should establish a clear purpose, sense of audience awareness, and sense of the writer’s presence and position. In this course, we approach writing as a “contact zone”—a point where an individual scientist addresses his/her field, a field as it addresses and works with another community of scholars, and institutions speaking to the public. Mediating between all of these exchanges is a heap (to use the technical term) of communication—reports, articles, grants, conference presentations, general correspondence, articles in popular periodicals, etc. For aspiring scholars in STEM fields, learning to navigate these many folds will be crucial for working through the challenges facing STEM fields in the near (and far) future. This course is approved for the Arts and Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR).

 

 

8188 ENGL 304-01 Creative Nonfiction:T/Th 11:00am-12:15pm NS130 (Professor Mozer)

Creative nonfiction applies the creative techniques  typically assigned to fiction—setting, narrative structure, character development, dialogue—to true stories, making our tales of real life more interesting and compelling. Some subgenres of creative nonfiction include memoir, personal essay, and some forms of journalism like food and travel writing.
In this class, we will get to know the genre by reading the work of both published and student writers; both longer works of memoir and lots and lots of shorter essay. We will talk about bending and blurring genre lines. We will talk about craft. We will read a lot, write a lot, and talk--a lot. Students will do a series of short writing assignments across the semester.

Our textbooks will be 2 essay collections: Best American Travel Writing 2016 (ed. Bryson) and Best American Essays 2016 (ed. Franzen).

We will workshop at least one piece from each student at some point in the term--if you're shy about sharing your work with others, this might not be the class for you. But I hope it is. We all have stories to tell. Come craft and hone the telling of yours.

(Prerequisite note: Students must have completed a basic, introduction to creative writing course similar to UofL's ENGL202 in order to take 304. This is a 300-level creative writing course. We will build upon a foundation that 202 has already put in place.)



 

2828 ENGL 305-01 Intermediate Creat Writing: Poetry:MWF 10-10:50am NSLL30 (Prof Maxwell)

This course is designed to help poets and students interested in poetry hone their craft, expand their bank of compositional strategies, and experiment with language and content. Class participants will also be expected to deepen their reading practices and to provide thoughtful feedback on their peers’ work and insight into the work of published poets, which will include Monica McClure’s Tender Data, Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds, and Bianca Stone’s Someone Else’s Wedding Vows. We will also practice literary citizenship by reviewing a set number of books and attending a set number of readings. The class will culminate in a chapbook (~15-20 pages of poems) and an optional bookmaking session for those interested in binding and distributing their work.


 

4183 ENGL 305-02 Intermediate Creat Writing: Fiction:T/Th 2:30-3:45pm NSLL30 (Prof Griner)

Welcome to English 305, fiction.  You know better than I do what you hope to get from the course, and the most important goals are probably the ones you discover and define.  Personally, I expect to see all of you improve as writers, readers and critics.  That doesn’t necessarily mean I expect you to become more polished writers; in some cases it may mean you’re more willing to take risks, while in others it may mean you’ll gain greater expertise in things you already do well.  The focus of the course is student work.  We’ll read published pieces, and have various exercises, designed to help improve writing, generate ideas, etc., but the majority of class periods will be taken up with workshops. 

 

5168 ENGL 309-01 Inquiries in Writing-WR:M/W 4:00-5:15pm DA208B (Professor TBA)

 

 

2835 ENGL 309-02 Inquiries in Writing-WR:T 1-3:45pm HM215 (Professor Rogers)

This section requires permission from the instructor

 

 

2836 ENGL 310-01 Writing About Literature-NonmajorWR:MWF 1:00-1:50pm DA209B (Professor Adams)

 This course will serve as an introduction to writing about literature for non-English majors. The goal of the course is to allow students to develop methods and skills for writing essays on literature, including poetry, drama, and fiction. The class will be discussion-based and no familiarity with literature or with writing about literature will be assumed. Requirements will include careful reading, regular participation, and a few short papers and revisions.
 

2837 ENGL 310-02 Writing About Literature Nonmajor-WR:MWF 9-9:50am LF102 (Prof Sheridan)


 

4599 ENGL 310-03 Writing About Literature-Nonmajor-WR:T/Th 4-5:15pm HM215 (Prof Kopelson)

Reading and writing about literature are acts that involve us fundamentally and uniquely in perspective-taking or perspective-shifting. When we read literature, we must first and foremost imagine and believe in an unreal world, and sometimes, in the case of fantasy or science fiction, in a wholly unrealistic world. When we read literature we must find ways to identify with, or at least see through the eyes of, narrators and characters we might not otherwise identify with at all, or like, or even believe. Writing about literature also involves us deeply in imagining the perspectives of others. When we write about literature, whether for a class or for publication, we must project ourselves into the minds of our audience—understand who they are, what they know, what they need to know, and what kinds of interpretations and claims they will accept as valid and persuasive.

 This section of English 310,Writing about Literature for Non-Majors, foregrounds and then highlights the issue of perspective-taking further by having us read texts which feature characters whose worlds, and/or ways of seeing, and/or lived, embodied experiences are likely very different from our own, and yet, whose worlds and perspectives and embodied experiences we must enter and inhabit as part of the act of reading. Texts will also often feature characters who themselves struggle with adopting the perspectives of others.

In this course we will read (and write about) two novels, one play, and several short stories, most all of which will be located in the contemporary period. In addition to our literary texts, we will read (and write about) many pieces of literary criticism in order to understand, analyze, and master the conventions of literary analysis and academic argumentative writing as instantiations of discipline-specific discourse. 

 
  

3641 ENGL 311-01 Amer Lit I:Cult,Texts,& Media in Early Amer:M/W 2-3:15pm DA104(Prof Kelderman)

This course will explore early American texts by writers from different national, colonial, and indigenous contexts. From New England and the Caribbean to New Spain and the Great Lakes, the people of the early Americas inhabited a multimedia landscape, weaving together manuscript writing, oratory, print publishing, and other forms of communication. Through an overview of American texts from roughly 1580 to 1860, we will ask how writers from different regions and periods voiced their beliefs and anxieties about nationhood, identity, and belonging. Rather than trace a progressive narrative from “colonial” to “post-colonial” American literature, we will historicize how these writings addressed ongoing questions of colonialism, diaspora, immigration, domination, and liberation. In doing so, we will think about the different genres and media they used, and what those tell us about American culture in the past and present. Requirements will include a presentation, quizzes and exams, and two papers. 

 

2839 ENGL 312-01 American Literature II:MWF 1-1:50pm DA104 (Prof Anderson)

This course will examine developments in American Literature after the Civil War, and help students understand the complex relationships between this literature and its historical and social contexts, such as the Civil War itself, rapid urbanization and industrialization, the expansion of American political, military, and economic power, immigration and migration, increasing cultural diversity within the United States, two world wars, the Great Depression, and so on. Similar to other 300-level English courses, this course will help students to learn the basic terms, conventions, and scholarly methods for studying literature. Grades will be determined by exams, quizzes, homework, in-class writing, and class participation.

 

6123 ENGL 325-01/LING 325-01 Introduction to Ling.:T/Th 1-2:15pm HM103 (Prof Stewart, Jr.)

Description: Linguistics is the study of the forms and functions of human language. The study of language forms includes the description and analysis of speech sounds (phonetics & phonology), word forms and their relationships (morphology), building phrases and sentences (syntax), and meaning units and combinations (semantics). The study of language functions includes the analysis of the role of dialects and registers in society, the dynamics of language variation, processes of language change, and the ways in which language is acquired and develops.

Objectives: By the end of this course, a student will be able to:

*          think and speak about language in a nuanced, sophisticated way, using objective, descriptive concepts and terms;

*          identify the individual/psychological and social/institutional ways in which language shapes and is shaped by human abilities and experiences; and

*          distinguish between plausible claims about language and folk-legends about language that are cited as "common sense," but that have no basis in fact.

 Note: This course is a Core course in the Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics. For more information, see https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__bit.ly_UG-5Flingminor&d=AwIFAg&c=SgMrq23dbjbGX6e0ZsSHgEZX6A4IAf1SO3AJ2bNrHlk&r=tkSeDW0NIXIAgpt_lLVcSMdTO3EdlEa50r2zcL9K7hQ&m=N1_dhuDtGhm4KSe-SRBNCoQBknjECTwj9SMUbonKH3Y&s=xV1PFjXTEqbDt0Jq5-8ArOMfFEMo5bOa44-L1-YWf2k&e= .

 

7985 ENGL 330-01/LING 330 Language and Culture:MW 2-3:15pm HM117 (Professor Swinehart)

 Language allows us to connect with others on scales both large and small--from groups of friends to entire societies and global networks. We need language for culture, but language is itself a cultural inheritance, so how are language and culture tied up in one another? Do linguistic structures shape our perception of reality? What is language and how does it differ from other sign systems? What is the relationship between writing and language? How do people’s views about language maintain social inequalities? Can inequalities be subverted through language? Students in this course address these questions and more through readings in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and philosophy and also through research into language use in their own lives.

 

2840 ENGL 334-01 Shakespeare II:MWF 10-10:50am  NS128  (Professor Wise)

In the wake of the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death and following the First Folio exhibit at the Frazier Museum in Louisville, we will focus on Shakespeare’s refashioning of “history,” myth, and legend in several of his English and Roman plays as well as his narrative poems.  We will study these works, using diverse critical lenses, in order to unravel the material themes and complex human concerns that captured his imagination, permeated his language, and led him to embrace the theater as his universe.  Our activities will include short lectures, group discussions and projects, performance exercises and informal and formal writing assignments.

 

8054 ENGL 342-01 Black Women Novelists-WR-CD1:MW 2:30-3:45 DA205 (Professor Logan)

 

 

7133 ENGL 368-01 Minority Trads Engl Lits – CD2:MWF 10-10:50am HM121 (Professor Sherman)

In our exploration of very recent novels and short fiction by Anglophone writers from around the world, we will encounter the wrenching ways in which the modern novel is fissured by the same kinds of social and political destabilizations, anxieties, and uncertainties that burst forth in daily headlines. The difference is that the morally imaginative writer enables us to experience the critically transformative ingredient of empathy, a difference that can change everything. The novels will present the subjectivities of a variety of national, ethnic, and religious identities and help us grapple with a range of often marginalized identities. What does it feel like to be a young Jewish woman in contemporary England? How can an expatriate writer from the Middle East living in Canada illuminate the violent Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What does 21st century America look like through the eyes of a Vietnamese refugee tormented by his memories of war; through the eyes of a Western-educated Muslim living in Pakistan after 9/11? What is it like to be a gay young man in a repressive Arab country? Major topics and themes we will address include exile, minority literatures, the malleable nature of identity, and diasporic consciousness. Assignments will include short position papers and longer essays  and students are expected to participate passionately in class discussions.

 

 

3816 ENGL 369-01 Min.Trad: Lit History of Native N. Amer.:MW 4-5:15pm HM114(Prof Kelderman)

This course is an exploration of indigenous literatures from tribal nations in the United States and Canada. Since the late eighteenth century, Native American and First Nations authors have produced an important body of literature in the English language. This course presents the works of indigenous authors within their historical context, covering fiction, political writings, poetry, and drama from the early-nineteenth century to the present. Together these works reveal the many ways that indigenous authors have thought about the ongoing colonial relationship between tribal nations and settler states. Moreover, we will use these texts to think about the complex roles that members of tribal nations have played in shaping contemporary North America—for instance as writers, teachers, missionaries, tribal leaders, soldiers, physicians, politicians, and college graduates. In the course of the semester, we will learn important critical terms in Native American and indigenous studies. Requirements will include a presentation, quizzes and exams, and two papers. 


 

8189 ENGL 372-01 Literature of the Horse:T/Th 11-12:15 HM114 (Professor Stansel)

No animal has impacted the course of human development more than the horse. The domestication of these animals fundamentally changed human history, allowing individuals to survive under otherwise impossible circumstances, making possible the migration of peoples, and helping to transform fledgling cultures into great empires. Thus, horses have become symbols of power, beauty, even transcendence. It is no wonder, then, that they have also been potent forces in literature. In this course we will investigate the roles horses play in contemporary stories, essays, novels, plays, and memoirs. We will discuss the traditions of the Western, the conventions of mysteries, the culture of the racetrack, and the impact of gender construction in the “horse world,” among other topics and themes. The course will use horses as a lens through which we will examine both literature and American culture.

 

 

2756 ENGL 373-01 Women in Literature-CD2:MWF 11am-11:50am HM108 (Professor Sheridan)


 

 

3302 ENGL 373-02 Women in Medieval Literature-CD2:T/Th 2:30-3:45pm HM108 (Professor Rabin)

The Middle Ages (ca. 500-1500) are often depicted as a “dark age” for women during which rigid gender roles were rigorously enforced, traditional heterosexual relationships were the norm, and oppressive religious authority stymied all possibility of non-conformity or rebellion. The reality, however, was far more complicated.  In this course, we will examine the various ways in which medieval authors, both male and female, treated issues of gender and female identity in their works.  As we shall see, not only was the understanding of female identity more complex than the traditional view admits, but narratives centered on gender also offered a lens through which authors could consider larger problems of authority, selfhood, and ethical psychology.  The texts we will read each approach these themes from very different perspectives, and I encourage you to bring your own ideas and interests into class as well. 


 

5994 ENGL 402-02/HON 436/HON 446:Cult Hist Emotion,19thC:T/Th 9:30-10:45am TH132(Prof Ryan)

“Toward a Cultural History of Emotion: Literature and Affect in the 19th-Century United States”

 We’re accustomed to thinking of emotion as psychological and, more recently, as physiological, but it’s also a culturally mediated and historically contingent phenomenon. Drawing on recent scholarly work that addresses sentimentalism, sensation, and grief, among other matters, this course examines how the history of affect and American literary/cultural history are interdependent and mutually illuminating. We’ll address at least some of the following questions: How do 19th-century literary and cultural texts attempt to create or channel or resolve readers’ emotional experiences? How does affect shape the persuasive strategies at work in these texts?  And how do such modes of persuasion inform readers’ aesthetic or evaluative responses?  How might significant intellectual touchstones (ranging from Adam Smith’s famous account of how sympathy works in his Theory of Moral Sentiments to the late nineteenth-century development of psychology as a discipline) have shaped the production and consumption of the era’s literature?

 The course will require active class participation, several brief writing assignments, a research presentation, and a substantial final paper.

 

4754 ENGL 403-01 Advanced Creative Writing:T/Th 11:00-12:15 DA206 (Professor Griner)

Welcome to English 403.  You know better than I do what you hope to get from the course, and the most important goals are probably the ones you discover and define.  Personally, I expect to see all of you improve as writers, readers and critics.  That doesn’t necessarily mean I expect you to become more polished writers; in some cases it may mean you’re more willing to take risks, while in others it may mean you’ll gain greater expertise in things you already do well.  The focus of the course is student work.  We’ll read published pieces, and have various exercises, designed to help improve writing, generate ideas, etc., but the majority of class periods will be taken up with workshops.  Please keep in mind that this is a multi-genre course.  While there is no requirement that you write in more than one genre (though you are free to do so), you will be asked to read and critique poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and perhaps drama, and you should be prepared to do so.

 

 

8190 ENGL 413-01 Brit Lit Beg to Shks-WR:MWF 11-11:50am SK209 (Professor Turner)

This course will look at humor in the popular literature of early Britain. We will read riddles, bawdy works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and others, as well as poetry that pokes fun at men, women, marriage, and other facets of medieval society. We will ask what accounts for the widespread popularity of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, for example, or Shakespeare’s comedies? And why are these texts so often funny?

 


6113 ENGL 414-01 British Lit Skakespeare Neocl – WR:T/Th 1-2:15pm DA207 (Prof Biberman)

In this course we will survey a range of exciting and engaging literature beginning with Shakespeare and Ending with Jane Austen.   We will study the evolution of drama, the rise of the novel, and development of lyric poetry in England from roughly 1600 to 1800.  Other authors to be assigned include William Blake, Thomas Otway, John Dryden and John Milton.Requirements include occasional in-class and at home journal exercises, as well as a take home midterm and a final.

 

8560 ENGL 415-01 19thC British Lit-WR: Sisterhood:T/Th 2:30-3:45pm DA303 (Professor Lutz)

Female characters in nineteenth-century literature—and the women who wrote it—formed powerful groups or couples. Actual sisters wrote novels in collaboration, such as Emily, Charlotte, and Anne Brontë. Or authors relied heavily on a sister to support their writing lives, like Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra. For this class, we will define “sisterhood” in broad terms. Female fellowships involved in women’s (and humanitarian) rights will be central, as will intense friendships between women (sisters or not) and erotic and sexual connections. More broadly still, the class will explore ideas about gender and sexuality in nineteenth-century literature, culture, and beyond. We will read works by Austen, the Brontës, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Christina Rossetti, and the two lesbians who called themselves Michael Field.

 

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8384 ENGL 421-75 American Lit 1910-1960:WR:T/Th 5:30-6:45pm HM114 (Prof Adams)

The Rise and Fall of Modernism.

This course concentrates on the development and critique of modernism in American fiction, poetry, and drama in the 50 years between 1910 and 1960. We will play close attention to the ways in which texts written in this period complicate common sense notions of personal or national identity, and we will examine how writers in various genres responded both to large historical changes as well as changes in the understanding of the nature and function of literary art. Authors discussed will include Cather, Eliot, Pound, Faulkner, Hurston, Larsen, O’Neill, Welty, and others.


 

 

5396 ENGL 422-01 American Literature 1960-Present – WR:MW 4-5:15pm NS128 (Prof Golding)

In this class, we’ll look at the evolution of the mixed-genre or hybrid text in late 20C and early 21C literature. This focus will enable us to acquaint ourselves with some of the major and most influential work of the period, and to consider in particular how a range of writers have used hybrid forms to address questions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class / economics. While I have not yet finalized the reading list, possible candidates include Robert Creeley, Pieces; Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands / La Frontera; Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior; Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee; Claudia Rankine, Citizen; Kristin Prevallet, I, Afterlife; Mark Nowak, Shut Up Shut Down or Coal Mountain Elementary; and recent work in documentary poetics.  Requirements: regular discussion board posts, in-class essay midterm, final presentation, final research-based paper.


 

3281 ENGL 423-01 African/American Lit 1845-WR: CD1:MWF 10-10:50am DA303 (Prof Chandler)

This course will focus on realism and fantasy as two important traditions in African American literature. Realism is a literary mode that emphasizes true-to-life or verifiable experiences, and it is central to many African American texts, from the 18th- and 19th-century autobiographies to novels, short stories, drama, and even poetry. Yet fantasy has been an important feature of African American literature, too, including early representations of conjure or magic, as well as important experiments in science and speculative fiction. In this course we will explore key realist and fantasy texts. Assigned writers may include Frederick Douglass, Martin Delaney, Charles Chesnutt, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Pauline Hopkins, George Schuyler, Octavia Butler, Walter Mosley, and Toni Morison.

 
 

 2841 ENGL 450-01 Cooperative Internship in English Studies: Internship:(Prof Chandler)

This section requires permission from the instructor

 

 

 

6327 ENGL 455-01 Cooperative Internship in English Studies: Internship:(Professor Chandler)

This section requires permission from the instructor

 

       

 

8192 ENGL 460-01 Studies in Authors-WR:T/Th 9:30-10:45am WS002 (Professor McDonald)

This course will focus intensively on the literary works and cultural legacy of the iconic American author, William S. Burroughs. Hailed alternately as the “theorist” of the Beat Generation, a progenitor of postmodernism, and the “Godfather of Punk,” Burroughs holds an iconic place in postwar American culture. Beginning with his first novel, Junkie (1953), we will read across Burroughs’s eclectic oeuvre to gain a nuanced understanding of what we might call the “Burroughsesque”—the distinctive aesthetic and political qualities of his work. In so doing, we will ask how the recurring themes of violence, torture, and drug-abuse in Burroughs’s work relate to his deep anxieties about global capitalism, social control, and addiction. We will consider the value of his formally innovative techniques as strategies of social resistance, and we will ourselves experiment with some of these methods: the cut-up, the fold-in, the tape-loop, and “time travel,” to name a few. Throughout the semester, we will engage with an assortment of writings, film, art, and music in order to trace Burroughs’s sizeable impact on postmodern art and culture, particularly in the realm of cyberpunk, science fiction, and media art. No exams.

Artists, authors, filmmakers, and critics may include: Franz Kafka, Tristan Tzara, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Delaney, David Bowie, Kathy Acker, Donna Haraway, William Gibson, Laurie Anderson, Patti Smith, Gus Van Sant, David Cronenberg, Alan Moore, DJ Spooky.

 

2842 ENGL 491-01 Interp Theory:New Crit-Present:T/Th 9:30-10:45am HM114 (Prof Biberman)

Required of the English Major, this course is designed as a survey of critical methods commonly used by English professors in their scholarship.  We will read a range of critical essays with an eye to understanding the methodologies deployed.  Frequent in class and at home  writing assignments, take home mid-term, take home final.

5067 ENGL 501-01 Independent Study:TBA


 

 

3282 ENGL 504-01 Advanced Creative Writing II – Fiction: T/Th 1–2:15pm DA303 (Prof Stansel)

This upper-division fiction course offers students who have already completed introductory and intermediate workshops the opportunity to further refine their craft. The discussion-based class will focus on the craft of short story writing, with a secondary and simultaneous examination of linked, or connected, stories. Through this we will begin to examine strategies for longer narratives, while still practicing the short form. We will read several collections of linked stories. Week-by-week, the class will examine different aspects of the storytelling craft, including scene-building, plot and sub-plot development, writing voice, among others. In addition to creating and workshopping short stories, students will work on developing story ideas and structuring approaches for a longer piece of writing.

 

 

2843 ENGL 506-01 Teaching of Writing-WR;CUE:MW 5:30–6:45pm HM219 (Professor Horner)

This course focuses on issues in the teaching of academic writing—commonly called “composition pedagogy”—primarily at the post-secondary level.  We will be attempting to make useful sense of composition scholarship by examining the terms, concepts, assumptions, and concerns that seem to be key in some of the literature constituting that scholarship.  Issues to be explored include classroom discourse, writing processes, reading in the teaching of writing, the making of knowledge through student writing, assignment design, teacher response to student writing, errors, language difference in writing, modality in writing, and the vexed issue of “standards.”  Students will be expected to attend all class meetings, participate actively in class discussions, and write and revise their writing frequently.

 

 

4155 ENGL 510-01 Graduate Coop Internship-MA Level:TBA (Professor Schneider)



 

6446 ENGL 522-50/LING 522-50 Structure of Modern English:Distance Ed. (Prof T. Stewart)

Course description and objectives:

This course is designed as a linguistic exploration of the various forms and combinations of words, phrases, and sentences that contemporary speakers of English typically recognize as belonging to that language.

To help in this exploration, students will:

*          examine both popular and technical conceptions of "grammar"

*          examine that variety of English referred to as Standard American English (SAE)

*          consider some of the ways in which one can vary from SAE and still be speaking English

*          consider the role of situation, audience, etc., in determining "appropriate use"

*          acquire terminology and methods that permit clear description of English grammar

*          collect real-life examples of actual English usage for detailed description

*          identify and monitor trends in English usage to evaluate "changes in progress"

 Note: This course can count in the Theoretical Track concentration or as an Elective for the Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics.

Student learning outcomes:

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

1.         Distinguish between language issues that are fundamental to the construction of English sentences and those that     constitute "pet peeves" and "complaint triggers";

2.         Identify English examples in terms of grammatical categories, inflectional forms, clausal functions, and syntactic constructions;

3.         Produce original examples of each of the types listed in (2) above; and

4.         Describe, compare, and contrast example English structures in detail through the rigorous application of the concepts, categories, and methods of descriptive linguistics.

**This class will meet on the following MANDATORY dates: Tuesdays, 2:30-3:45:

    Jan. 10, Jan 24, Feb. 7, Feb. 21, March 7, March 28 and April 11-Final Exam, Friday, April 28, 11:30-2

 

 

6455 ENGL 522-51/LING 522-51 Structure of Modern English: Distance (Prof T. Stewart)

Course description and objectives:

This course is designed as a linguistic exploration of the various forms and combinations of words, phrases, and sentences that contemporary speakers of English typically recognize as belonging to that language.

To help in this exploration, students will:

*          examine both popular and technical conceptions of "grammar"

*          examine that variety of English referred to as Standard American English (SAE)

*          consider some of the ways in which one can vary from SAE and still be speaking English

*          consider the role of situation, audience, etc., in determining "appropriate use"

*          acquire terminology and methods that permit clear description of English grammar

*          collect real-life examples of actual English usage for detailed description

*          identify and monitor trends in English usage to evaluate "changes in progress"

 Note: This course can count in the Theoretical Track concentration or as an Elective for the Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics.

Student learning outcomes:

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

1.         Distinguish between language issues that are fundamental to the construction of English sentences and those that constitute "pet peeves" and "complaint triggers";

2.         Identify English examples in terms of grammatical categories, inflectional forms, clausal functions, and syntactic constructions;

3.         Produce original examples of each of the types listed in (2) above; and

4.         Describe, compare, and contrast example English structures in detail through the rigorous application of the concepts, categories, and methods of descriptive linguistics.

**This class will meet on the following MANDATORY dates: Tuesdays, 2:30-3:45:

    Jan. 10, Jan 24, Feb. 7, Feb. 21, March 7, March 28 and April 11-Final Exam, Friday, April 28, 11:30-2

 

 

4422 ENGL 523-01 Hist-English Language:T/Th 9:30-10:45am HM111 (Professor T. Stewart)

Description: This course traces the development of English from Old English (Anglo-Saxon) origins, through the Middle English (e.g., Chaucer) and Early Modern English (e.g., Shakespeare) periods, to Present-Day English. The course has a double emphasis:

*          Internal history (diachronic change), or how grammar and vocabulary change with use over time and space, and

*          external history (language and dialect contact), including influences such as the 9th century settlement of Vikings in Britain and the 11th century Norman-French conquest of Britain.

Because English hasn't been "perfected" (whatever that would mean), it hasn't stopped changing and it won't, as long as people use it as a living language. In order to speculate as to how English might change in the future; this course will also consider regional dialects, and both current and post-colonial English vernaculars around the world.

Note: This course can count in the Theoretical Track concentration or as an Elective for the Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics.

Successful completion of this course will provide the student with:

*          Greater appreciation for the fluidity of language usage,

*          Broader understanding of the socio-political contexts for language change, and

*          increased ability to describe language phenomena objectively.

Required textbook:

Jan Svartvik & Geoffrey Leech. 2016. English: One Tongue, Many Voices (2nd edn.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN: 978-1-137-55022-4.


 

8194 ENGL 545-01 Social Protest Lit of the Turn of 18thC:MWF 11-11:50am DA308 (Prof Hadley)

The late 18th and early 19th centuries marked a period of rapid industrialization, with accompanying social problems such as the conditions in factories and mines, the precarious circumstances of child labor, the continued use of slave labor, violence against women, enclosure of land, poverty, and epidemics arising from poor sanitation, over-crowding, and sexually-transmitted disease. Politically, repressive measures were enacted and enforced against the populace in the effort to protect English soil from the exportation of French revolutionary fervor. Within this context, a number of socially-conscious forms of literature arose, garnered toward the middle classes in the effort to challenge the corruptions of industry and government. We will address a number of literary genres within this category, including social protest novels, political satire, dialogues, drama, essays, and poetry. Two exams will be given, and a staged research project will be assigned. Graduate students will submit a more sustained research project and otherwise participate regularly.

 

 

6974 ENGL 546-01 Victorian Travel Narratives:T/Th 1-2:15pm DA204 (Professor Rosner)

How did specific Victorians construct versions of Africa and their places in it? To find answers to that question, we’ll read and discuss several examples of Victorian travel/exploration stories (fiction and non-fiction).

Tentative texts

Nonfiction:  Sections of David Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa as well as Amelia Edwards’ A Thousand Miles Up the Nile.

Fiction:  Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mine or She, Doyle’s The Tragedy of the Korosko, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, some short stories.

Expect reading quizzes, written homework, participation in class and in the discussion list, and critical reading of several academic essays.  Since this 500-level course is a CUE course, you will also have to write a 8-10 page paper (with MLA Works Cited). Any graduate students enrolled will also be responsible for a research project as well as for teaching part of a class.

 

 

8195 ENGL 549-01 Stud Post-Col/Eth Lit-CUE:MWF 12-12:50 LF102 (Professor Willey)

Women Writers from the African Diaspora:  In this class we will start with two African writers, Mariamba Ba and Bessie Head (or Buchi Emecheta), then move on to the Caribbean (probably Maryse Conde and Audre Lorde), then we’ll turn to America with Paule Marshall and Toni Morrison or other representative writers.  The class will explore how Diaspora is constructed and how definitions of femininity/motherhood/family etc change from contact to context.


 

61180 ENGL 599-01 Adv Acadm Writ Across Discp-WR: MW 2:00 – 3:15pm DA206 (Prof Olinger)

This course is designed for graduate and professional students in any department, as well as for advanced undergraduates in any department who are conducting research, writing theses, or considering graduate programs that will require extensive research-writing and literature reviews. Students who speak English as a second, third, or fourth language are especially welcome. In this course, students will:

•       Investigate best practices for research, writing, and publishing in their discipline

•       Reflect on their literacy and language background, habits, and goals

•       Analyze articles in their discipline for particular linguistic and rhetorical patterns

•       Apply what they’ve learned to an extended writing project of their design

•       Improve their ability to edit for grammar, word choice, and punctuation and to craft more incisive         prose

•       Participate in a community of peers who share their work 

 Feel free to contact the instructor, Dr. Andrea Olinger (arolin01@louisville.edu), if you have any questions about the class.

 


6447 599-02 Adv Studies in ENGL-A Reintro to Books:WR-CUE:T/Th 4–5:15pm HM113 (Prof Mattes)

How do people “know” themselves and their worlds through books? What is distinctive about knowledge that is created through the writing, reading, publishing, and collecting of books? How does book knowledge—that is, bibliographic knowledge—shape our world? Most importantly, what are the social consequences of knowledge created in such a way? This semester we will try to find some provisional answers to these questions. First, we will tackle case studies that examine the bibliographic underpinnings of literary, cultural, and media theory. Then, armed with tools from these fields and some familiarity with the role of books and allied media in their development, we will consider works from a diverse range of genres and social contexts that can, in part, be read as a series of polemics about the role of bibliographic knowledge.

In analyzing how literature is aesthetically, thematically, rhetorically, and physically bound up in books, we will trouble the everyday ordinariness of “the book”—a thing, a practice, and a standard that is so often taken for granted. Readings and writing assignments, at once theoretical, historical, and technical, point to the heterogeneity and ubiquity of bound-and-inscribed forms and place them in relation to a vast array of communication technologies and practices. Students will foster and demonstrate this “intermedial” awareness during in-class reading responses and a significant final project. In addition to these traditional assignments, this course has an obligatory hands-on component—object lessons that I am calling “book studies.” Students will transcribe across paper structures and digital platforms, survey artists’ books, explore local expressive cultures, and delve into the memoirs of a laboring printer and publisher in order to consider how books are a means of interpretation. By demanding rigorous attention to media practices, this course not only asks how other people think with books—it implores us to do so, too.