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Fall 2011 Course Descriptions
ENGL 110 ENGL 301 ENGL 407 ENGL 531
ENGL 120 ENGL 303 ENGL 408 ENGL 532
ENGL 125 ENGL 308 ENGL 415 ENGL 590
ENGL 209 ENGL 309 ENGL 419 ENGL 591
ENGL 225 ENGL 315 ENGL 422 ENGL 593
ENGL 226 ENGL 330 ENGL 425 ENGL 995
ENGL 227 ENGL 357 ENGL 429 ENGL 996
ENGL 228 ENGL 372 ENGL 500 ENGL 998
ENGL 229 ENGL 397 ENGL 501L ENGL 999
ENGL 235 ENGL 398 ENGL 510 ENGL 520
ENGL 271
ENGL 272
ENGL 110
College Composition I: Expository Writing
3 credits
The object of this course is to train students in techniques of college-level reading and writing so they become active participants in the projects of analysis and interpretation that constitute the work of the university.
In a flexible workshop setting, you will learn strategies of revision and intellectual reflection, learning how to work recursively as you read, re-read, write, and re-write intellectually challenging essays that mediate between theoretical frameworks and real-world examples (both personal and cultural). While the focus of the course is on “expository”, scholarly prose, you will read a variety of texts (paintings, advertisements, videos, buildings, automobiles, etc.).
With the help of the instructor and your peers, you will draft, critique, and revise your work, building a collection of rough drafts and final drafts for evaluation by the instructor. Grading criteria and common expectations for the amount and kinds of writing to be produced in the course are spelled out in the course packet distributed to each student at the beginning of the semester.
This is an Essential Studies course and will satisfy your distribution requirement in Communication (1).
Required Texts:
Ways of Reading
They Say, I Say
UND Guide to College Composition (4th ed.)
ENGL 120
College Composition II: Writing from Research
3 credits
Writing from Research teaches independent research in the academy. The course builds on the techniques and skills learned in English 110, by teaching critical research writing. English 120 is designed to stimulate thinking and writing on a broad range of topics within a specific field of research. Individual sections are organized around a particular subject or issue, but the purpose of English 120 is common to all sections: by mid-semester we expect each student to be doing critical research in an area of interest that is both personal and academic.
Students in 120 are invited to become active researchers, developing ways of understanding unfamiliar subjects by building on personal interest and knowledge. By the end of the semester students will produce a long critical research paper that develops an argument by applying skills of academic analysis to a particular case study. Instructors will offer guidance in the development and revision of theoretical ways of thinking, teaching students how to conduct independent research and how to make scholarly use of research materials.
Writing from Research is designed to invite all students to find a way of becoming passionate about a particular aspect of academic writing. The texts used in the course are designed to get things started, but it is the responsibility of the individual student, in collaboration with the other participants in the class, to make the subject personally interesting.
This is an Essential Studies course and will satisfy your distribution requirement in Communication (2).
Required Text:
Varies with instructor
ENGL 125
Technical and Business Writing
3 credits
Technical and Business Writing is designed as a writing course to follow at least one semester of freshman composition (English 110 being the standard expected prerequisite). It is a course in composition for students interested in professional careers, particularly for future scientists, engineers, technicians or writers of nearly any kind of specialized report.
This course is specifically designed to provide for the technical or professional student who desires to develop technological work, particularly the process of researching, preparing, and writing a professional report substantial in length and competent in quality.
This is an Essential Studies course and will satisfy your distribution requirement in Communication (2).
Required Text:
Varies with instructor
ENGL 209
Introduction to Linguistics
3 credits
Jessica Zerr
2 sections:
12:30-1:45 TR
2:00-3:15 TR
This course is designed to give you an overview of the study of language as well as a greater appreciation for language. We will familiarize ourselves with the structure of language, ask how language works to make meaning, consider how people acquire language(s), discuss how language is used in particular social contexts, and examine the dynamic nature of language. We will also briefly consider how language is encoded into writing systems and how literacy skills relate to language. While we may look at examples from many different languages, English will provide the basis for most discussion and analysis.
Required Text:
Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams. An Introduction to Language. (9th ed.) Thomson-Wadsworth.
ENGL 225
Introduction to Film
3 credits
Chris Jacobs
3 sections:
1. 2:00-2:50 W / 2:00-4:00 TH
2. 3:00-3:50 W / 2:00-4:00 TH
3. 4:00-4:50 W / 2:00-4:00 TH
This class will introduce you to the basics of film production, narrative, performance, style, cinematography, editing, sound, etc. It will also expose you to a variety of films produced in the U.S. and other countries from the very beginnings of the medium in the 1890s, through the so-called "silent era" of the 1910s-20s and the "golden age" of Hollywood in the 1930s-50s, up to the present, including some films in foreign languages with English subtitles. Students interested only in the latest Hollywood hits are in the wrong class and should drop immediately to make room for serious students. We will be viewing films to see how they function as commercial/entertainment/artistic artifacts, as well as how we might place them within certain historical/cultural perspectives, and why these ways of seeing film might be more or less important to us as viewers. You will learn how filmmakers can guide and manipulate audience response. By the end of this class you will become adept at viewing films with an eye toward how they affect you as a person. There will be two papers and three unit tests, but no comprehensive final exam. Our text will be Richard Barsam and Dave Monahan's "Looking at Movies" (third edition), which comes with two DVDs of tutorials and short films.
This is an Essential Studies course and will count towards your distribution requirement in Humanities.
ENGL 225
Introduction to Film
3 credits
Michael Flynn
2:00-2:50 M / 2:00-4:00 T
This course is an introduction to the critical study of film. That is, it will ask you to push beyond the appreciation of film as a popular mode of entertainment, and to work toward an understanding of it as an art form used by “authors” (writers, producers, directors, actors, and a slew of other contributors) to explore and make statements about the human experience. We’ll examine the ways in which the thematic meaning of a film is shaped by the technical aspects of its medium – by lenses and film stocks, by framing and camera angles, by editing and the incorporation of visual and sound effects. We’ll also talk about less tangible factors that affect a film’s meaning, like the process of transforming a written screenplay into a multimedia production, the ability of the director to stamp his or her own distinct style onto a film, the need to cast actors or actresses who bring with them associations with previous roles, and the pressure to conform to well-defined film genres.
Over the course of the term, we’ll hone your critical thinking skills through in-class discussions of the topics listed above; through detailed screening reports in which you’ll practice analyzing the component parts of film art; and through a series of formal essays in which you’ll select, interpret, and synthesize evidence in order to make arguments about the artistic quality, thematic meaning, and cultural significance of individual feature films.
This is an Essential Studies course and count towards your distribution requirement in Humanities.
ENGL 226
Introduction to Creative Writing
3 credits
Eric Haagenson
1:00-1:50 MWF
An introduction to the types and basic principles of creative writing, taught through a combination of class discussion and practice-writing.
This is an Essential Studies course and count towards your distribution requirement in Fine Arts.
ENGL 226
Introduction to Creative Writing
3 credits
Sara Dupree
2:00-2:50 MWF
An introduction to the types and basic principles of creative writing, taught through a combination of class discussion and practice-writing.
This is an Essential Studies course and count towards your distribution requirement in Fine Arts.
ENGL 226
Introduction to Creative Writing
3 credits
Heidi Czerwiec
12:30-1:45 T TH
In this class, you will become familiar with the basic elements of craft that writers use to write fiction and poetry. You will learn to recognize and discuss these elements in assigned readings, apply them to your own writing in short in-class exercises and longer writing assignments, and critique them in each other’s work during workshops.
Course Requirements:
• Regular attendance and active participation in class discussions
• One written piece for each assignment (about one per week)
• Specific comments on class members’ writing for workshop
• Portfolio of revised work at end of semester
This is an Essential Studies course and will count towards your distribution requirement in Fine Arts.
Required Texts:
Writing Poems (7th ed.). Ed. Boisseau, Wallace, and Mann. New York:
Pearson Longman, 2008.
40 Short Stories (3nd ed.). Ed. Beverly Lawn. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins,
2009.
Photocopies of your own work for workshops
ENGL 227
Introduction to Literature and Culture: Political Satire and Humor in U.S. Fiction
3 credits
Errin Jordan
11:00-12:15 T TH
Arguably, the most memorable events of the 2008 presidential election were not the interesting debates or the charismatic slogans. What many remember from that heated competition is Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin. Indeed, some commentators have claimed that Fey’s impersonation was much more than funny entertainment; that parody affected the outcome of the election in a substantial way. This influence of political parody and satire, this impact that political humor has on U.S. culture, will be the focus of this course. We will begin the course with an exploration of the current state of political satire and its influence on United States society and political sensibility. We will first read Stephen Colbert’s I Am America, and So Can You and Jon Stewart’s America: The Book. We will also review contemporary political satire on television, such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the Tina Fey/Sarah Palin Saturday Night Live parodies, and the Colbert Report in order to understand the popularity of these programs and what impact they have on how Americans understand news and politics when mixed with humor.
This discussion will then lead us into the reading of past political satire in the United States. We will read Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and discuss how satire and parody are represented in this early example of American political satire. We will also read P.J. O’Rourke’s Give War a Chance in order to explore how humor is used to discuss controversial and crucial topics in U.S. politics. Throughout the semester, we will try to develop an understanding of why critics of politics turn to humor in order to evaluate and assess the state of U.S. society.
This course has no prerequisites, assumes no previous college work in English, and is open to students at all levels.
This is an Essential Studies course and will count towards your distribution requirement in Humanities.
ENGL 227
Introduction to Literature and Culture: Film, Comics, and India
3 credits
Jody Jensen
1:00-1:50 MWF
What image comes to mind when you think of India? Do you think of films like Slumdog Millionaire, Outsourced or Harold and Kumar Visit White Castle? Or video games such as Sid Meyre’s Colonization or Paradox’s East India Company? Or maybe television characters like Big Bang Theory’s Rajesh Koothrappali, House’s Dr. Kutner, or Phineas and Ferb’s Baljeet?
In this course we will explore how we see and experience representations of India through popular television shows, films, cartoons, and comics. Over the course of the semester, we will move back and forth between well-known narratives (like House and Big Bang Theory) and fresh texts (like Parismita Singh’s The Hotel at the End of the World and Rajkumar Hirani’s 3-Idiots). We will want to question and examine representations of India in popular culture and navigate conversations of what those representations mean to us in North Dakota.
Over the course of the semester, we will encounter narratives about wedding crashers, a shop keeper in Delhi, an Engineering student who witnesses the murder of a nun, and the quest to find an elusive journal containing scandalous secrets about British Administrators. Each of our readings will present us with an oppertunity to take a step back from our viewing, consider our sources, and examine how our culture is created in contrast to, in relation to, and through the same means as Indian culture.
All backgrounds and knowledge levels are welcome in this course. This course has no prerequisites, assumes no previous knowledge of work in English or studies of India, and is open to students at all levels.
This is an Essential Studies course and will count towards your distribution requirement in Humanities.
ENGL 228
Diversity in Global Literature: Arabs on the Road
3 credits
Mosab Bajaber
12:00-12:50 MWF
To study travel literature in the Arab World makes good introduction to Arabic culture. Since antiquity, Arabs have constantly hit the road. Their traveling served both as a method of living and sustenance and as an apparatus for improving knowledge, observation, self reflection, and social critique.
This course examines literature produced by and about Arab travelers on the road: historical travelers who traveled in search for answers about their lives and the world they inhabit; and fictional travelers who traveled to party crash, escape loaners, defend misers, encounter monsters, discover mystical worlds, defeat barbarians, rescue princesses, and preform all sorts of duties make-believe travelers habitually do.
In a sense, the course is a journey in itself. It voyages through the domains of poetry, fiction, autobiographies, movies and other literary forms to seek better understanding of the Arab travel genre, its development, characteristics and themes. The bounties for accomplishing the objectives of the course are tangible and worthy: enhanced understanding of a remote culture and fulfillment of an essential UND course requirement through means of colorful adventure.
No prior familiarity with Arabic literature or language is required or expected. Students in this course will mount on their voyage carefully, advance steadily, and allow themselves to fully embrace every single stop along the road.
Texts:
Crichton, Michael. Eaters of the Dead
Muhsin Mahdi. The Seven Voyages of Sindbad
Ibn Battutah. The Travels of Ibn Battutah
Mahfouz, Naguib. The Journey of Ibn Fattouma
Salih, Tayeb. Season of Migration to the North
The Adventures of Saif bin Dhi Yazn
This is an Essential Studies course and will count towards your distribution requirement in Humanities. This course also meets the Global Diversity special emphasis area.
ENGL 229
Diversity in U.S. Literature - The 1890s: Like It Was Yesterday
3 credits
Elizabeth Barnum
12:30-1:45 T TH
The 1890s in the United States was a time of rapid and dislocating social change involving issues with which we still struggle in our own era. In the reverberating aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, ideas about race and racial identity were in flux; as more women went into the work force and began demanding a political voice, traditional notions of gender were also being challenged. And writers of the period did what artists do in every period: they explored the impact of these changes on individuals and society, reflecting on and raising questions about racial and gender identity. In this class, we will read some of this literature and explore these same questions. For the first half of the semester we will read both white and black authors as we look at how race was classified in light of the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case that established the legality of “separate but equal” for black and white in public accommodations. For the second half, we will turn our focus to the construction of female identity through looking at the contested image of the “New Woman” and how writers of both genders were commenting on women’s roles and lives. Throughout, we will use these explorations of race and gender from a long-ago era to understand how we construct identity today, how we understand ourselves as individuals and as members of groups, and how we understand our multicultural society. Among the works we might read will be Iola Leroy by Francis Harper, first novel to be published in the U.S. by an African-American woman author; and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, as well as poetry and short stories by a variety of authors.
This is an Essential Studies course and will count towards your distribution requirement in Humanities. This course also meets the United States Diversity special emphasis area.
ENGL 235
The Art of Filmmaking: Film-Style Video Production
3 credits
Christopher Jacobs
3:30-6:00 T
Recommended prerequisites: any introductory class in film, drama, popular culture, creative writing, script writing, media, or video production, a completed screenplay of at least 5 to 30 pages, up to 100 pages.
This is intended as a concise but comprehensive course on using recent digital technology for personal self-expression in the dominant literary form of the past century—moving pictures—starting with the written word (the screenplay). While learning cinematic storytelling concepts, the class will work together to develop a script and follow it into a finished movie through the various stages of preproduction, production, and postproduction, spending about a month on each phase. Class members will take turns performing the various crew functions to gain a broad range of experience. Some time will also be devoted to discussing options for distribution and exhibition for the independent moviemaker. The first part of the semester, the class will view one or more episodes of “Project Greenlight” each week. Several feature films (Hollywood and independent) will also be viewed and discussed as examples of motion picture production realities and/or what can be done with limited means. Each student will write one script from which the class project(s) will be chosen. Occasional short critical papers will be assigned but the final grade will depend heavily upon class participation, as the main project(s) for the class will be a group effort (by the whole class or two or more smaller groups, depending upon prior experience and/or length of the script chosen to produce). There will be no exams.
This is an Essential Studies course and will count towards your distribution requirement in Fine Arts.
ENGL 271
Reading and Writing about Texts
3 credits
Adam Kitzes
10:00-10:50 MWF
What sort of activity takes place when we read? Is there more than one way to read a text? If so then what makes one method better than another? What happens when we designate a text as “literary” – what sorts of claims are we making about the nature of the language, our expectations for what we might learn from the text? What sorts of objectives are we after when we write about a text, and what approaches can we take in order to reach them?
What kind of knowledge do we produce when we write, say, an analysis of a story or a poem? These are a few of the basic questions which will guide us through the selections of readings, and which determine the nature of our assignments. This course is not designed to be a survey of an historical period, nor an introduction to a genre (e.g. “Poetry”). By no means is this a “Great Books” course. The readings here were selected in order to offer you a sample of different types of literature. You are not expected to like everything – though hopefully you will like many and dislike only a few. You should have no trouble finding yourself engaged with all of them.
Likewise, your writing assignments are designed to give you experience with different approaches to writing. You will not simply write “essays.” Different assignments will ask you to work on specific techniques, make specific types of arguments, and engage both critical and creative parts of your mind. Because this course is designed to be an advanced writing course, we will emphasize writing as a process. Many assignments are designed in stages, with opportunities for revision along the way.
It is always my hope to get people excited about literature. It is also my expectation that, over the course of the term, you will become more thoughtful about what it means to read and write about literary texts.
This is an Essential Studies course and will count towards both your Humanities and your Advanced Communication requirements.
ENGL 271
Reading and Writing about Texts
3 credits
Crystal Alberts
1:00-1:50 MWF
What does it mean to be an English major? This class will focus on the kinds of work scholars do in constructing the discipline of English. We will consider poetry, short fiction, the novel, drama, film, and hypertexts, using the basic formal features of each genre to explore the ways literary texts produce meanings. We will practice the basic interpretive skills that every scholar of English draws on, breaking down literature into component parts which you will be able to put back together in future classes. As we do so, we will improve your ability to write and revise effective interpretive arguments. In addition, the class will introduce you to many other facets of the discipline of English – linguistics, rhetoric, creative writing, editing, and cultural studies – and explore that discipline’s relevance in our society today. By considering your coursework in this larger context, you will become more aware of the professional options available to you, and be able to make better-informed choices about your future course of study.
This is an Essential Studies course and will count towards both your Humanities and your Advanced Communication requirements.
ENGL 272
Introduction to Literary Criticism
3 credits
Yvette Koepke
11:00-12:15 T TH
Designed as the second part of the introduction to the English major, this class surveys dominant ways of approaching literature, known as “theory.” This knowledge will show you how the discipline works, help you understand your coursework in a larger context, and deepen your ability to analyze texts. At the same time, this class is also about recognizing how and why you already interpret literature in the ways you do, and what the social and political implications of those interpretations are. Critical theory gives us a shared vocabulary to talk about what we do as readers and writers of texts, as thinkers, as historical and cultural subjects; it challenges us to make more thoughtful choices as members of academic and social communities; and enables us to revisit our basic assumptions and values, and try on new ways of thinking. What if there are no texts? What if the author is dead? What if reality is constructed? We will be debating these and other fascinating, crucial questions as we survey the major strains of critical theory that underpin not just the study of literature, but much of the academy. The course will balance accessible explanations of critical theory with examples of primary thought, and applications of theoretical concepts to literary texts with discussion of abstract theoretical issues and implications beyond the classroom.
ENGL 301
Survey of English Literature I
3 credits
Michelle Sauer
12:30-1:45 T TH
British Literature I is designed to give students a basic understanding of medieval and Early Modern literature. Moreover, this course will also introduce the historical, political, social, and cultural environment within Britain from 449 CE to 1700 CE.A fundamental part of the major as well as an Essential Studies course, our main purposes are to become familiar with the basics of critical literary inquiry and to gain an understanding of the underpinnings of modern Western literature and society.
ENGL 303
Survey of American Literature I
3 credits
Susan Koprince
11:00-11:50 MWF
This course will examine developments in American literature from its beginnings (the period of early European exploration and colonization) to the end of the Civil War. We will study major literary periods and movements (Puritanism, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Transcendentalism) and consider questions such as: What does it mean to call literature “American”? How was a national literature created in the New World? In what ways does this literature reflect the voices of a culturally diverse nation? Our readings will include fiction, poetry, and autobiography as well less conventionally “literary” genres such as creation myths, sermons, diaries, and slave narratives. Although our primary focus will be on the literary works themselves, we will also try to set these writings within a larger social and historical context, paying special attention to issues of race and gender.
Course Requirements: Several short papers, a midterm and final exam, and in-class writing assignments.
Texts:
Baym, et. al., eds., The Norton Anthology of American Literature,
Seventh Ed., Volumes A and B
Alcott, Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)
ENGL 308
The Art of Writing Nonfiction
3 credits
Kathleen Dixon
12:00-12:50 MWF
This is the first of two advanced composition courses where the emphasis is on nonfiction writing of various types. We expect that close attention to prose, generally, will result in your improvement as a writer in a variety of genres and situations. Because students frequently desire to write personal essays, this course will build upon that interest. In doing so, we will need to consult fiction writers who have experience in creating coherent prose featuring human actors, which they call characters. That's what we'll call them, too, including ourselves (if we write autobiographically); we'll be known as "narrators" and "characters," both of whom will abide by the laws of their own internal logic.
In this specific section of English 308, we will concentrate on two great themes of human existence: history and gender. The first big assignment will be to write a biography of someone two generations older than yourself. The second will be to write a memoir, that is, an autobiographical piece. In both of these instances, an understanding of gender will be instrumental to writing the nonfiction essay. What did manhood mean in 1940, in this part of the U.S.? What does womanhood mean today?
So in addition to attending to language as we ought (including grammar), we'll enjoy ourselves in crafting prose that can broadly be called nonfiction. We’ll also perform some exploration of what it means to be a woman or a man in these unusual times.
Required Texts (most recent editions, unless otherwise noted):
- Gerard, Philip. Creative Nonfiction
- Cameron, Deborah. The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages? 2009.
- Tannen, Deborah. You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. 2001
Recommended Texts:
- Strunk and White. The Elements of Style (any edition)
This is an Essential Studies course and will count towards your distribution requirement in Fine Arts.
ENGL 309
Modern Grammar
3 credits
Xiaozhao Huang
11:00-12:15 T TH
This is an introductory course to modern English grammar for students who are interested in improving their grammatical knowledge or performing grammatical analysis. The course concentrates on the essentials of Modern English structure from both linguistic and pedagogical point of view. Topics include word formation and classes, phrasal structures, basic sentence types and transformations, finite verb clauses, and nonfinite verb phrases. Course requirements: assignments and examinations.
Required Textbook:
Klammer, Schultz, & Volpe (2010). Analyzing English Grammar. 6th ed. Pearson Longman.
ENGL 315
Shakespeare
3 credits
Adam Kitzes
9:00-9:50 MWF
This course is designed to help students become more familiar with the texts and performances of Shakespeare’s plays. We will carefully read, discuss, watch (when available), and write about eight Shakespeare plays. These plays range from the early to middle part of his career, when the young man from Stratford was just learning his craft. We will examine the ways that Shakespeare developed as a playwright, to try to get a sense of how he composed his scripts – and how he turned them into performances. We also will explore many topics throughout the semester, including the following: the relation between friendship and romantic love; the tensions that inhere within family relations; the power of disguise; the close relation between comedy and tragedy; drugs, dreams, and other hallucinatory agents. Other topics undoubtedly will emerge. Part of what makes Shakespeare a playwright for “all time” is his ability to continually lead to new discoveries.
This course is designed for all UND students. English majors, theater majors, and curious-minded individuals are welcome one and all. That said, the expectations are high. We will read, on average and with some variations, one play every two weeks. Take it for granted that you will read each play carefully, and more than once. (The weekly schedule does not specify reading assignments, but I will assume that everybody has finished each play we are covering by the second scheduled discussion day, respectively.) There are a number of writing assignments, each of which asks you to examine the plays from different perspectives. Everybody will be expected to be involved in class discussions, participate in activities, and make one semi-formal presentation on a topic related to the major themes of the class.
This is an Essential Studies course and will count towards your distribution requirement in Humanities.
ENGL 330
Studies in English Fiction: Austen, Woolf and Narrative
3 credits
Sandra Donaldson
11:00-12:15 T TH
In describing the composition of A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s essay on women and fiction, she opens with these caveats and assurances:
Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and licences of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here . . . . I need not say that what I am about to describe has no existence; Oxbridge is an invention; so is Fernham; “I” is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being. Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them . . .
In A Room Woolf classes Jane Austen with Shakespeare as perhaps the only two British writers whose work was “incandescent,” burning away all distractions, including their own presence in their work. Similarly, regarding the parallel of the rise of the novel with the rise of women in the nineteenth century, she classes Austen with Emily Brontë as perhaps the only two women novelists who had the integrity “in the midst of that purely patriarchal society, to hold fast to the thing as they saw it without shrinking.”
We might say the same of Woolf herself as a novelist – born and raised during the last two decades of the Victorian period and maturing as an author in the early decades of the 20th century.
In our exploration of narrative theory in the works of these two prolific authors, we will consider not only Woolf’s speculations but those of our contemporaries, such as Peter Brooks in Reading for the Plot. We will read several novels by Austen and Woolf during the semester, beginning with enhanced paperback editions of two of Austen’s works to give us examples of a variety of types of literary analysis: the Bedford Case Studies in Criticism edition of Emma (978-0-312-20757-1) and the Norton Critical Edition of Northanger Abbey (978-0-393-97850-6). We will chose the other Austen works as a class. Works by Woolf will include the Norton Critical Edition of Jacob’s Room (978-0-393-92632-3) and others by her, chosen as a class.
Requirements include weekly reading journals, class participation with occasional short reports, and a medium-length (5 to 8 pages) paper on each author or a related subject.
ENGL 357
Women Writers and Readers
3 credits
Michelle Sauer
9:30-10:45 T TH
This course examines a wide range of female-authored texts from the Ancient, Patristic, Medieval, and Early Modern eras, ranging in date from 2200 BCE through 1700 CE. This body of work is remarkable for its size and its range, given the limitations often placed on women’s writing. Indeed, one of the major problems we will confront is the nature of women’s writing. Can we find essential characteristics of female-authored texts, can we locate a female literary ethos in particular genres, or are we encountering a fortuitous selection of “typical” literature? Towards these ends, we will also examine several male-authored, or male-collaborated, texts as contextual reference.
Much of our time will be spent on how women viewed themselves, their social and economic situations, and their own bodies, and on how they responded to descriptions imposed upon them. Female (and male) bodies have always been constrained by a complicated network of social, economic, and political forces, and these intersected with activities that we think of as historical, literary, and theological. The result is a complex interaction that conveys the ideas of “Woman.”
This is an Essential Studies course and will count towards your distribution requirement in Humanities.
ENGL 372
Literary Theory
3 credits
Eric Wolfe
10:00-10:50 MWF
According to Slavoj Žižek, "Cinema doesn't give you what you desire—it tells you what you desire." This statement suggests that film is a medium best understood through the lens of psychoanalysis, a set of theories that seek to understand how—and why—and what—it is that people desire. Film and psychoanalysis have long been linked—perhaps because they are both products of the modern era—and our goal this semester will be to explore the connections between them.
So what does it mean to approach film from a psychoanalytic framework? Contemporary psychoanalytic film critics spend a lot of time thinking about the audience’s relationship to film, and they understand film as presenting audiences with a kind of fantasy. Yet, as Žižek suggests, these critics do not see film-viewers as simply consuming this fantasy (and the desire at its core); rather, viewers are also shaped by the fantasy the film presents. Indeed, psychoanalytic film critics would suggest that we—and our desires—are all shaped by the popular culture we watch, read, or listen to.
No prior familiarity with psychoanalysis or film theory is expected. We will start slowly, coming to a basic understanding of the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Lacan, while we move back and forth between film (e.g., Hitchcock's Rear Window and Vertigo), psychoanalytic theory, and psychoanalytic film criticism (Mulvey, Žižek, and others). Our goal is to build to a more sophisticated understanding of both film and psychoanalysis by the end of the semester.
ENGL 397
Cooperative Education
1-8 credits, repeatable to 15
Prerequisites: 15 credits completed in English; 2.5 GPA; 2.75 GPA in English.
A course designed to offer English majors work experience related to their disciplinary training in close reading, careful writing, and interpretative analysis. S/U grading only.
ENGL 398
Independent Study
1-4 credits
For English majors only.
Prerequisite: Written consent of the department. Supervised independent study. Only 6 hours may apply to the 36-hour English major.
ENGL 407
Studies in 20th Century Literature: The Political Novel
3 credits
Michael Beard
11:00-11:50 MWF
The meaning of this course’s title may seem self-evident, but I don’t think so. There are at least two ways to define “political.” It could mean novels that deal overtly with the work (game) of government, a category which includes the opposite activity, with opposition to government authority. It could also mean novels not explicitly about politics, novels which argue a political position indirectly. That is, there are books which describe people affected by politics without realizing it, or people who act on political pressures without realizing it (i.e., ideology).
We’re sometimes suspicious of books which argue a political position. Tendentious novels, engaged novels, committed novels, biased novels, novels which betray the much-praised neutral point of view which should govern a work of art: it is not at all rare to write them off. That will be one of the subjects of the course too. Critical suspicion is relevant to a study like this.
I’ve chosen a series of books (not all of them novels) to represent different ways politics can enter (complete? erode? spoil?) a work of imagination. I’ve chosen works from more than one culture. The center of gravity is the 19th Century, the great age of the political novel, and if I decide there are too many I’ll find a way to cut this list down.
Readings:
Buechner, Danton’s Death
Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma
Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
Dostoevsky, The Possessed (also trans’d as The Devils)
Dickens, Hard Times
Berthold Brecht, Mother Courage
Nathanael West, A Cool Million
Huxley, Brave New World
Lu Xun, Collected Short Stories
Haifa Zangana, Dreaming of Baghdad
[I am thinking I may add Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, but I’m wavering because I haven’t read it yet.]
ENGL 408
Advanced Composition
3 credits
Kimberly Donehower
10:00-10:50 MWF
The central goals of English 408 are to help you improve your written communication and your information literacy skills. As you come to the end of your undergraduate career, you will want to consider what you have to communicate to others about the substance of your learning. This course asks you to take a piece of writing in your major and rewrite it for two very distinct audiences: experts, and the general public. In the course of doing so, you must engage in sophisticated rhetorical analysis of your own and others’ writing. You must also do significant research both to expand your original work and to make good decisions about the best ways to reach your target audiences. Texts for this course will be determined once we see which mix of majors enrolls in the class.
This is an Essential Studies course and will count towards your Advanced Communication requirement.
This course also fulfills UND’s Essential Studies Capstone graduation requirement and is open to all upper-division students who are completing their degrees in any UND department or professional school.
ENGL 415
Special Topic in Literature:
Suburban Scrawl--Later 20th Century American Fiction
3 credits
Crystal Alberts
12:00-12:50 MWF
Dad, Mom, 2.5 kids, and a house with a white picket fence—for a period in the mid-twentieth century, this was the definition of the American Dream. Courses on post-1945 American literature often feature texts that rebel against this notion, focusing on “counterculture” movements, such as the Beat Generation, the Civil Rights Movement, the Sexual Revolution, the Feminist Movement, protests against Vietnam, and the like. These classes explore the ways that individuals felt trapped, were alienated from and/or were otherwise disenfranchised by the powerful majority who believed in the aforementioned version of the American Dream. However, as recent depictions of the era (like Mad Men) suggest, those who attempted to conform to the suburban ideal frequently became disillusioned as well.
In this class, we will read texts written during the Cold War (1945-1991), a time when America emerged as a superpower, experienced substantial cultural shifts (as alluded to above), and was haunted by uncertainty (as well as occasional paranoia and outright fear). In particular, we will focus on works that are seemingly the opposite of the “counterculture” movements: texts where men put on their best gray flannel suits and drive to the office day after day, where women bring Jell-O molds to Tupperware parties and try their best to emulate June Cleaver, but where all involved discover that, golly gee, even in the suburbs, maybe things aren’t so swell.
Students in this class will be expected to participate in detailed discussions about the readings, conduct research, and write thoughtful, argumentative essays.
This course fulfills UND’s Essential Studies Capstone graduation requirement and is open to all upper-division students who are completing their degrees in any UND department or professional school.
Possible Texts Include:
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955), Sloan Wilson
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), Ken Kesey
The Group (1963), Mary McCarthy
The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Thomas Pynchon
Expensive People (1968), Joyce Carol Oates
Rabbit Redux (1971), John Updike
Humboldt’s Gift (1975), Saul Bellow
White Noise (1985), Don DeLillo
The Broom of the System (1987), David Foster Wallace
ENGL 415
Special Topic in Literature: The Dangerous Pleasures of Satire
3 credits
Sheryl O'Donnell
11:00-12:15 T TH
Lions, wolves, and vultures don’t live together in herds, droves or flocks. Of all the animals of prey, man is the only sociable one.
--John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1729)
Contemporary studies of wolves and lions belie Gay’s distanced views, as, paradoxically, does his refusal to sentimentalize human viciousness. You’d be hard-pressed to find a satirist celebrating the earnest and silly discourse of animal lovers whose literalist sentiments inspire them to stuff their children inside wolf dens so that the kids might “experience the wild” in Minnesota. This course explores satire as both a genre and a mode of witty performance--mocking, seductive,. predatory. We’ll read philosophers (Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville), literary theorists of satire ( Bakhtin, Frye, Kernan), We’ll read classical satirists (Rabelais, Swift, Pope) in classical forms, including the Manippean. We will read political tracts, experience music, painting, street ballads and pamphlets, agricultural bulletins, criminal trials and hangings and madhouses as part of our study. We might dramatize a coffeehouse or conduct a cabal, but we’ll not kid ourselves into thinking that writers of the past are “just like us” except for the funny wigs and little snuffboxes.
Questions for the course involve the function of satire: does it support the status quo by offering moral or aesthetic norms which crush revolutionary aspiration? Are paternal confusions and maternal promiscuities driving the social organization of sex? How does current “satire,” which celebrates power and despises weakness and vulnerability, illuminate our current fears and obsessions?
Class assignments include weekly response papers, critical responses, a class project of some kind, and a longer paper.
The work of two scholar/teachers of satire, Carter Kaplan and Lee Kruger, will be included in this course, partly to demonstrate how recent PhD work at UND Department of English leads to the tenure-track teaching positions and critically acclaimed publications!
This course fulfills UND’s Essential Studies Capstone graduation requirement and is open to all upper-division students who are completing their degrees in any UND department or professional school.
Required Texts (others will be added)
M. Bakhtin, Rabelais
Martin Price, The Restoration and Eighteenth Century
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels and Other Writings
ENGL 419
Teaching English as a Second Language: Theory and Methods
3 credits
Xiaozhao Huang
9:30-10:45 T TH
Prerequisite: English 209 or permission of the department chairperson or the instructor.
This course is principally designed for those who are interested in teaching English as a second language. It integrates TESL theories and classroom practice, so that participants can become not only more proficient and resourceful as ESL teachers, but also more knowledgeable about the differences between teaching English to L1 and L2 students as well as how TESL methods work. Topics include TESL theories and methods based on different linguistic schools, assessment of language proficiency, TESL textbook evaluation and selection, syllabus design, lesson plan preparation, ESL tests design and evaluation, and especially methods and techniques to teach listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Text:
Alice Omaggio Hadley (2001). Teaching Language in Context. 3rd ed. Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
ENGL 422
Middle/Secondary Methods and Materials: Teaching Literature and Reading
3 credits
Susan Koprince
9:00-9:50 MWF
FOR ENGLISH EDUCATION MAJORS ONLY
This is one of two Methods courses required of all majors who plan to become licensed as middle/secondary English teachers.
Prerequisites: T&L 325 and 345. Students should also be close to completion of their English major and have taken English 309 and English 308 or 408.
Corequisite: T&L 486.
The course will introduce students to some basic reading strategies and will offer practical advice on the teaching of literature (short stories, novels, poetry, and drama). We will discuss topics such as how to lead an effective discussion, how to teach vocabulary, how to make daily and long-range lesson plans, and how to motivate adolescents to become better readers. The course will also acquaint students with the variety of materials available to the English instructor, including scholarly research on the teaching of literature.
Course requirements:
Lesson plans, practice teaching, two unit plans, a review of a young adult novel, and other reading and writing assignments.
Texts:
Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Sheridan, Teaching Secondary English (2nd Edition)
Olson, The Reading/Writing Connection (3rd Edition)
ENGL 425
Intro to Editing and Publishing
3 credits
Sandra Donaldson
2:00-3:15 T TH
Introduction to Editing and Publishing will provide an overview of ways that materials are distributed to communities of readers. From time to time, we will hear from professionals currently engaged in this enterprise, sharing their knowledge and experiences. Our main focus will be on the print product, which has a rich history of practices and procedures that inform electronic editing and publishing as well.
The history of the book from scroll to screen will be explored, as will the roles and responsibilities of editors and publishers. Among the questions addressed will be the ethics of changing an author’s text and similar interactions between editor and author.
Students do not need to have experience in or knowledge of these activities, just the desire to learn by reading, doing, discussing, and considering. Students are expected to participate in class discussions and activities; a final project will be to produce a work that will be read, revealing, I hope, the satisfactions in helping to create a worthy work. Brief mid-term and final exams and regular reading quizzes are also part of the class.
A goal of the course is to explore editing and publishing as a career, a tradition fundamental to the development of the life of the mind and to the expansion, conservation, and critique of culture.
This course is one of the core requirements for a Certificate in Writing and Editing from the English department.
Students may not take this course for graduate credit.
Texts:
Packet of readings
Editors on Editing, ed. Gerald Gross 3rd ed.
ENGL 429
Studies in Writing and Editing
3 credits
Michael Beard
9:00-9:50 MWF
The course will be divided into two distinct parts. Really distinct.
The first section will a historical summary of editing & editing ventures, a way of seeing editors as they look from outside. The profession as a spectacle.
Adam Nicolson, God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible (Harper Collins ISBN 0-06-018516-3)
Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub (1704) (Oxford) ISBN 0-19-283593
Alexander Pope, The Dunciad in The Poems of Alexander Pope: A Reduced Version of the Twickenham Text, ed. John Butt (Yale University Press) ISBN 978-0300000306
The Commerce of Everyday Life: Selections from The Tatler & The Spectator, Ed. Erin Mackie (Bedford / St. Martin’s) ISBN 0-312-11597-0
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962) (Everyman’s Library) ISBN 978-0-679-41077-5
... plus occasional handouts to fill in the historical gaps
The other half of the course will be a workshop in editing in which I’ll make mss available that I have worked with in my own work. I’ll make them available to you in original form and allow you to work with them on your own. We’ll compare your work with the version that resulted in print.
This course is one of the core requirements for a Certificate in Writing and Editing from the English department.
NOTE: Students may not take this course for graduate credit.
ENGL 500
Introduction to Graduate Studies
2 credits
Christopher Nelson
3:00-4:50 W
This course will explore a variety of issues within the discipline of English Studies, largely by analyzing (and practicing) the kinds of critical writing that are produced within the profession. We will begin with an examination of the history and disciplinary contours of English Studies. From that we will move onward to an extended examination of the rhetoric of literary criticism, before finishing with two projects in the final weeks of the course. The first of these will be the analysis of an academic journal (one of the key institutions that functions—in part—to define conventions of writing in the discipline). The second will be your opportunity to develop your own written interpretation of a literary work (still to be determined), putting into practice what you have learned about the rhetoric of criticism.
ENGL 501L
Teaching College English Lab
1 credit
Lori Robison
3:00-4:50 M
This course will give us the opportunity to discuss and to share practical teaching issues and also to continue to develop the strategies that we explored in the Fall Workshop. New teachers are encouraged, through this course, to reflect on their own teaching practices and to think about those practices in the context of the Composition Program’s larger pedagogical objectives.
ENGL 510
History of Literary Criticism
3 credits
Sheryl O'Donnell
2:00-3:15 T TH
An overview of selections from the Richter anthology (from Plato and Aristotle to Derrida and Kristeva to Zizek, West, and Chow). I will pay specific attention to the history of what, in the fifties, was called “literary criticism” and what now might be called interpretation, evaluation, analysis, and poetics. I will work especially hard in this course to close the gaps between various branches of English studies: creative writing, literary and cultural studies, linguistics, composition and pedagogy. By reading the critical canon in sequence we can see how issues of representation, narrative, genre, readership, authorship, etc. are culturally and politically bound to questions of power and influence. I am not assuming that “theory” is sacrosanct, that race/sex mantras must be solemnly intoned, or that literary criticism is for credentialed professionals only.
I am assuming that we will take our work seriously, that we will read deeply, widely, and promiscuously, and that we will produce writings which embody our own passionate commitments to knowing how and why great works of literary criticism are cherished and fought over today. I expect students to join the fray, to dig in and study. As we will soon come to realize, too much is at stake nowadays to let literary criticism trot along in harnesses made of market studies, state-approved memoirs, and flash mobs on some corporate payroll.
Required Texts:
David Richter, ed. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary
Trends (3rd ed) Bedford St. Martin’s, 2007. ISBN 0-312-41520-6
Robert Eaglestone, Doing English (3rd ed) Routledge, 2009. ISBN
978-0415496742
Stanley Fish, How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One. Harper,
2011. ISBN 978-0061840548
ENGL 520
Studies in English Literature: The Neo-Victorian Novel
3 credits
Michael Flynn
6:00-8:30 M
In the aftermath of World War I, all things Victorian fell into . . . well, “disrepute” isn’t a strong enough word; at its core, Modernism is a scornful and wholesale rejection of the values, ideas, and aesthetics of the society which had led Britain into its ghastly wartime experience. Victorian fiction suffered the same devaluation as the culture which had produced and consumed it; Modernist authors and critics complained of the genre’s naïve ontological security, its stultifying linearity, its bourgeois realism, and its insular domesticity. Postmodernism, however, has gradually rehabilitated Victorian fiction, and found ways to incorporate, adapt, and experiment with its characteristic content and techniques. A subgenre known as the Neo-Victorian novel or the Post-Victorian Victorian novel has become increasingly recognizable in recent years, and has started to garner critical attention. In this course, we’ll read a selection of PVVNs – twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels which are set in the Victorian period and which play with the conventions of Victorian fiction – and work towards an understanding of their raisons d’être, their artistic principles, and their cultural significance.
Ideally, the course will appeal to students of the Victorian period, to students of British postmodernism, and to anyone interested in parody, intertextuality, or historical fiction. (It’ll also appeal to anyone interested in the sex and violence that lie just beneath the surface of Victorian literature, because most of the texts we’ll read insist on making those forces explicit.) A basic familiarity with the nineteenth-century novel will be useful, but for those who need a primer or a refresher, we’ll spend the first few weeks of class reading a characteristic Victorian novel and discussing the aesthetic hallmarks of the form. That done, we’ll turn to a series of PVVNs by major contemporary authors (two of the books among the possible texts below are Booker Prize winners, and a third was shortlisted) and by academic Victorianists turned novelists. Given that one of the trademarks of the Victorian novel is its popularity, we might also dip our toes into “subliterary” Neo-Victorian fiction: we won’t go so far as to read one of the countless Harlequin romances set in the period, but we might look at something like Alan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell or at a representative of the steampunk genre.
Possible texts:
A. S. Byatt, Possession (1990)
Peter Carey, Jack Maggs (1997)
Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda (1988)
Clare Clark, The Great Stink (2005)
Michael Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White (2002)
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969)
Charles Palliser, The Quincunx (1989)
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
Sarah Waters, Affinity (1999)
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith (2002)
Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet (1998)
If you’re interested in taking the course and have other PVVNs you’d like to propose, please drop me a line and run them by me.
ENGL 531
Seminar in English Literature: The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer
3 credits
Michelle Sauer
5:00-7:30 TH
Geoffrey Chaucer, the “father of English poetry,” was a remarkable artist, full of energy, awareness, insight, and contradictions. Fully immersed in the noble culture of his day, Chaucer also came from the lower ranks, and maintained perspective on the upper classes. A forthright member of the Pre-Reformation Christian Church, he also shrewdly discusses the merits of religion in his turbulent time. Today, he continues to be considered one of the most important and influential authors of all times.
We will read most of the Chaucer corpus, starting with his early works and dream visions, moving on to Troilus & Criseyde, and finishing with The Canterbury Tales. These works will be read in Middle English as they were written. (Be sure to purchase the Riverside Chaucer.)
As a focus, we will be considering “gendered Chaucer.” While this includes looking at women in Chaucer, it will also cover other types of gender questions, such as constructions of masculinity, courtly love inversions, queer possibilities, etc. Other sources will include Carolyn Dinshaw’s Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics along with additional selections.
ENGL 532
Seminar in American Literature: American Poetics
3 credits
Heidi Czerwiec
5:30-8:00 T
This graduate seminar will provide an overview of the American poetry of the 20th century via focused readings and discussions of some of its most important poetry collections. The course will begin with a grounding in the meters, forms, and terminology of poetry. Then, using as a frame Gioia’s anthology Twentieth-Century American Poetics, a collection of essays on poetic craft and criticism by major American poets, we will read and discuss some of the touchstone poetry volumes of the last hundred years in terms of their critical and aesthetic arguments, and their influence on American poetics. This course will take the approach of 524: Form & Theory of Poetry, but will apply it to an American Literature seminar; therefore, it will benefit anyone interested in a deeper understanding of American poetry and poetic craft.
Texts (a few of these will be handouts):
Twentieth-Century American Poetics, Ed. Gioia, Mason, and Schoerke.
Boston: McGraw-Hill,2004.
Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems
Williams, Spring and All
Stein, Tender Buttons
Hughes, The Weary Blues (found in his Collected Poems of Langston
Hughes)
Bishop, Geography III
Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems
Plath, Ariel (the 1966 edition ordered by Hughes, since it’s how readers first
experienced it, though we’ll also discuss Plath’s ordering of the poems)
Brooks, Bronzeville Boys and Girls (from her Selected Poems)
Olds, The Dead and The Living
Doty, My Alexandria
Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
Graham, The End of Beauty
Howe, Frame Structures
Stallings, Hapax
Lee, Rose
Fairchild, The Art of the Lathe
ENGL 590
Readings
1-4 credits
American Literature; Cinema; English Literature; English Language; or Creative Writing. Supervised independent study. Repeatable. Department consent required.
ENGL 591
Readings for the Ph.D. Comprehensive Exam
1-4 credits
Supervised independent study on approved topics. Repeatable for a maximum of 6 credits. This course is exempt from the normal "Incomplete" reversion schedule. A grade is assigned upon completion of the appropriate comprehensive examination. Department consent required.
ENGL 593
Research
1-4 credits
American Literature; Cinema; English Literature; English Language; or Creative Writing. Independent study of a problem in the field resulting in a long research paper or a series of short reports. Repeatable. Department consent required.
ENGL 995
Scholarly Project
2 credits
As a common course number uniform throughout the graduate school, English 995 Scholarly Project will serve the purpose described in the graduate catalog as a required component of the non-thesis option in fulfillment of the M.A. degree. Department consent required.
ENGL 996
Continuing Enrollment
1-12 credits
Continuance in the program. S/U grading only. Department consent required.
ENGL 998
Thesis
1-4 credits
Department consent required.
ENGL 999
Dissertation
1-15 credits
Department consent required.