English

Upper Level Courses: 2000-Level

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FALL 2012
FALL/WINTER 2012-13
WINTER 2013

Unless specifically noted, you do not have to take 2000-level courses before you take 3000-level courses. The prerequisite for all upper-level English is 6 credit hours in first-year English, and a few courses have additional prerequisites or permissions required. English courses fulfill the UW’s Humanities requirement. All students are welcome to take courses in English, provided they have the prerequisites. Students considering a major in English should read about our innovative Degree Programs.

FALL 2013

THE CREATIVE PROCESS 
ENGL 2002(3) – 001
Professor C. Hunter
(F)     Tuesday/Thursday     11:30 – 12:45 p.m. 

This course focuses on the creative process involved in the making of literature, especially fiction and poetry. We will look at all stages of the process, from inspiration through composition, editing, and publishing. Using authors' drafts, we will concentrate on studying the effects of changes the writers made during revision, coming to an understanding of the significance of rewriting as a crucial stage in the creative process. We will also discuss the events, people, and ideas that influence the development of a published work. The literary texts we will study include poems in Ariel by Sylvia Plath, the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the film American Beauty by Alan Ball, short stories by W.D. Valgardson, and the short essays in The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. Assignments include two short exercises, one research essay, and a final exam. Please note that regular class attendance is necessary to pass this course. The lectures, discussions, films, and visiting speakers introduce facts and concepts that are not in any of the texts. Prerequisite: 6 credit hours of First-Year English, including ENGL-1001(6) OR ENGL-1000/3. No portfolio is required. No permission is required. 

INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING 
ENGL 2102(3) – 003
Professor M. Sweatman
(F)     Tuesday/Thursday     4:00 – 5:15 p.m.

In this course, students will concentrate on developing a portfolio of creative writing of many kinds: poetry, fiction, or short dramatic sketches. The course will introduce students to strategies for developing creative work through improvisational exercises, close reading and critical analysis. Emphasis will be placed on the skills involved in self-editing, in workshopping creative work, and the professional preparation and submission of manuscripts suitable for a portfolio. You will be required to submit three creative writing assignments (at least one of which should be poetry), and one parody or homage of a published work. You will also attend at least one literary reading in the community (on campus or elsewhere) and write a critique. You will give one oral presentation of a memorized poem, and contribute to the class as a reader and a writer. Recommended for students who plan to enroll in further creative writing courses at the undergraduate level. Prerequisite: 6 credit hours of First-Year English, including ENGL-1001(6) OR ENGL-1000/3. No portfolio is required. No permission is required. Restrictions: May not be taken by students already holding credit in ENGL-3101/6, ENGL-3112/6, ENGL-3113/3, or ENGL 3114/3.

LITERARY COMMUNITIES: The “Inklings”
ENGL 2185(3) – 001
Professor M. Evans
(F)     Tuesday/Thursday   11:30 – 12:45 p.m.

Literary communities provide significant contexts for the writing and study of literature. This course will explore the literature of the “Inklings,” a group of twentieth-century English writers preoccupied with the interrelationships of literary texts, imagination, medievalism, religion, and other domains of culture. While the Narnia books of C.S Lewis and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien are probably the most famous Inklings texts, the detective novels of Dorothy L. Sayers, the supernatural thrillers of Charles Williams, and the cultural critiques of Owen Barfield only sample the many genres of writing they have produced, including literary criticism, apologetic, letters, and drama. The course also aims to place the Inklings as a literary community in relation to modernism as well as explore the film and digital afterlives of Tolkien’s Rings and Lewis’s Narnias. Given the wide-ranging nature of course material, I will be encouraging students to choose areas of particular interest to them for their term work, which will likely include an essay and a revision of that essay. Classes will proceed by class discussion and mini-lecture.

ENGLISH LITERATURES AND CULTURES 700-1660
ENGL 2220(3) – 001
Professor Z.Izydorczyk
(F)     Tuesday/Thursday   2:30 – 3:45 p.m.

This course invites students to read and consider early English literature in the context of the significant political, religious, and philosophical movements of the medieval and early modern periods in England. Creative works will be read alongside essays, treatises, letters, and other cultural documents. In this way, students will gain some insight into the way in which works traditionally thought of as “literature” are often themselves engaged in the same rhetorical and ideological enterprises as more explicitly political works. Over the course of the term, students will be introduced to a number of schools and techniques of literary criticism, and will be asked to apply some of these techniques in a variety of contexts, including individual response papers, essays, workshops, and quizzes.

SHAKESPEARE
ENGL 2311(6) – 001
Professor B. Christopher
(F)     Monday/Wednesday   2:30 – 5:15 p.m.

This course offers students the chance to study in depth the dramatic works of William Shakespeare. In it, we will read a representative sample of his plays, from the range of genres in which he wrote. Students will be invited to think about these works in a variety of ways – aesthetically, theoretically, historically, for example – both as individual plays and as part of a body of work. In addition to reading and writing about the plays, students will be required, in groups, to edit and to stage a scene from one of the plays studied this year. Other assignments include quizzes, essays, and a response paper.

NOTE: This is a compressed 6-credit hour course running only in Fall term. Class meets for 3 hours twice a week.

PLAY ANALYSIS
ENGL 2703(3) – 001
Professor P. Brask
(F)     Monday/Wednesday/Friday   9:30 – 10:20 a.m.

This is a practical course for actors, directors, and designers in the analysis of plays in rehearsal and pre-rehearsal situations. A variety of interpretive strategies are developed in approaching the problems of form, character, and theme in plays of different styles and periods. The emphasis is on Stanislavsky-derived techniques. This course is required for all theatre students in the Honours or the General program. This course can be used towards the Humanities Requirement.

WOMEN WRITERS AFTER 1900
ENGL 2912(3) – 001
Professor H. Milne
(F)     Monday/Wednesday/Friday   1:30 – 2:20 p.m.

Women Writers after 1900 examines a variety of works by women writers from the turn of the twentieth century to the present. This course is by no means a comprehensive survey of writing by women; such a feat would be impossible in such a short course. However, this course will offer a starting point for a consideration of some of the themes and issues that have been of interest to women writers, and that arguably reflect aspects of women’s experiences. In examining how women use literary forms as aesthetic, personal and political sites, we will consider how issues of identity and social and historical context might inflect and inform their writing strategies.

FALL/WINTER 2013-14

FIELD OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
ENGL 2003(6) – 050
Professor C. Tosenberger
(FW)     Wednesday 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

This course is an introduction to the study of children's literature, and therefore of necessity, also a study of childhood itself: to understand what constitutes the category "children's literature," we need to understand what constitutes the category "child," as children's literature is a literary genre defined by its audience. We will survey the place of children in history from the Middle Ages to the present, concentrating especially on the development of the "Romantic child" in the late 18th century and on the rise of "teenager" as a category in the early 20th century - and how the ideas popularized during these periods influence our concepts of young people and their literature today (especially in the arena of what is considered "appropriate" for children). We will study and discuss a wide range of material aimed at young people, including religious instruction, fairy tales, poetry, famous works of the "Golden Age," picture books, series fiction, fantasy, young adult literature, and films. We will also look at writing by children and teenagers, and discuss how these texts compare to the material produced for them by adults; particular attention will be paid to the issues of young people in cyberspace. Throughout, we will interrogate our received ideas about "kids' stuff," and about kids themselves.

PICTURE BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
ENGL 2113(6) – 001
Professor N. Hamer
(FW)     Tuesday 2:30 – 5:15 p.m.

In this course, we will explore the evolution of the contemporary picture book as a popular genre for children. We will survey historical and contemporary trends in content and design, influential and ground-breaking picture book texts, as well as the role of picture books in theories of early childhood education and literacy learning. We will also address the adaptation of popular children’s picture books to television, film, digital games, and toys. We will apply a number of critical approaches for the analysis of picture books from the areas of literary theory, children’s literature criticism, semiotics, visual studies, communication and media studies, and art history criticism. We will discuss how theories related to visual art, performance, graphic novels, and film may be used to examine the complex relationship between words and pictures in picture books. We will have the opportunity to have hands-on experiences with a large range of picture books throughout the course with more focused study of specific authors, texts and analytical approaches through essays, reflective written responses, and group presentations. Throughout the course, students will be required to assemble a critical portfolio that includes reviews of key picture books and analytical approaches.

FAIRY TALES & CULTURES
ENGL 2114(6) – 050
Professor C. Tosenberger
(FW)     Monday 2:30 – 5:15 p.m.

In this course students study fairy tales, focusing not only on original source material, but on literature written specifically for children based on these borrowed forms. Students trace the history of fairy tales from their origins in myth and folklore to their impact on contemporary culture today. Students read and write critically about these tales and engage in comparisons on multiple fronts, exploring major themes and characteristics of these tales as well as the social and psychological aspects of them. The goal is to enrich our appreciation of these tales by strengthening our critical understanding of them as well as to gain insight as to how these tales function in our selves and our society.

FIELD OF LITERARY AND TEXTUAL STUDIES
ENGL 2142(6) – 001
Professor K. Venema
(FW)     Wednesday 8:30 – 11:15 a.m.

This course offers an in-depth introduction to, and practice in the skills of, literary and textual studies. Over the span of the course, we explore the histories of literary and textual studies, including literary criticism and critical theories. We specifically practice the skills of close reading and textual analysis, reading through the lenses of critical theories, researching, assembling bibliographies, and analyzing literary and cultural scholarship. We use a variety of formats – including oral presentation, seminar discussion, and formal, written, textual analysis – to examine the questions, methods, and modes of interpretations that underpin literary and textual studies in the 21st century. We may generate more questions than answers, which will be excellent preparation for a sustained study of cultural texts and, possibly, for ongoing work in this field. 

FIELD OF LITERARY AND TEXTUAL STUDIES:

Madmen (& Madwomen), Solitary Poets, & Dead Authors: Changing Ideas about Art & the Artist
ENGL 2142(6) – 002
Professor K. Ready
(FW)     Tuesday 2:30 – 5:15 p.m.

 This particular iteration of Field of Literary and Textual Studies will survey the history of literary and aesthetic criticism from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the twentieth century, encompassing such intellectual and aesthetic movements as Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Aestheticism, Decadence, and Modernism, with some attention paid to other critical developments such as Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism, structuralism, and post-structuralism. A major interest will be the changing historical ideas about the cultural importance of literature and other arts and related assumptions concerning their proper purpose and function. Another will be the changing criteria employed to judge and to interpret the arts. In addition to criticism we will look at a variety of literary works from different periods, where writers are engaging questions related to the importance, purpose, and function of art and attempting to construct a particular image of the artist.

FIELD OF CULTURAL STUDIES
ENGL 2145(6) – 001
Professor B. Cornellier
(FW)     Monday 2:30 – 5:15 p.m.

This course introduces students to the key concepts in the field of cultural studies. The course includes readings in theory and criticism and the study of cultural forms and practices, such as written texts, film, television, visual and performance art, music, print and electronic media, as well as the institutions that shape them. Since cultural studies is overwhelmingly interdisciplinary, the course also offers instruction in research methods, interpretive strategies, and writing. Issues covered include subjectivity, identity, and agency; ethnicity and race; urbanism, nationalism, transnationalism, diaspora, and globalization; sex, gender, and sexuality; TV texts and audiences; digital media culture; youth cultures; cultural policy; and the politics of representation.

WINTER 2014

INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING: Developing a Portfolio 
ENGL 2102(3) – 004
Professor P. DePasquale
(W)     Tuesday/Thursday     10:00 – 11:15 a.m.

This course is designed for students who want to develop work habits and strategies that will enable them to write effective fiction and poetry. Students will learn creative writing techniques by reading, analyzing, and discussing successful models and by writing and workshopping their own creative works. Attendance and participation are essential. The goal of this course is to complete by the end of the term a portfolio that could be submitted for entrance into the Creative Writing stream offered by the English Department.

BRITISH LITERATURES & CULTULRES 1660 - 1901
ENGL 2230(3) – 001
Professor M. Evans
(W)     Tuesday/Thursday   2:30 – 3:45 p.m.
 
This course offers an extensive survey of the history of literature produced in England from the mid-seventeenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. We will read texts from the broad periods traditionally identified as Restoration, Eighteenth Century, Romantic, and Victorian. These texts will likely include poetry, drama, fiction, and works of theory and criticism. We aim to understand changing views about the production, reception, and role of literature in society, and its historical, political, social, religious, philosophical, and artistic contexts.  We seek to understand the reasons for period divisions and the descriptors used to identify them. But we will also interrogate these divisions and classifications, in the process questioning the construction of "canon," the idea that certain Great Books by Great Authors are perennially worthy of reading and study.

MORPHOLOGY
ENGL 2805(3) – 001
Professor I. Roksandic
(W)     Monday/Wednesday/Friday   1:30 – 2:15 p.m.

This course introduces students to the concepts and methods of word analysis.  Students investigate the nature of morphemes (smallest units of meaning), their different types and function, and the different ways they are organized into words.  The course explores the process of word formation through derivation and compounding as well as grammatical uses of inflectional morphemes.  Based largely in English, both lectures and exercises also draw on various other languages to highlight key morphological features and constructs. 

TOPICS IN WOMEN WRITERS: Asian American Women Writers
ENGL 2922(3) – 001
Professor J. Wills
(W)     Monday/Wednesday/Friday   1:30 – 2:15 p.m.

This course introduces students to a variety of Asian American women writers from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will begin with a discussion about immigrant subjectivity, wherein we will address topics like assimilation, xenophobia, autoethnography, stereotypes, and diasporic longing. From there we will move on to consider 1.5 and second-generation identities, thinking about cultural memory, intergenerational conflict, revisionism, cultural nationalism, and multiraciality. We will end the course by analyzing writers who challenge the limits of what constitutes Asian American literature and how women can be represented in contemporary Asian America; here we will investigate the ways that the “model minority,” “forever-foreigner,” “Dragon Lady,” and “Butterfly” stereotypes are deconstructed through authors’ uses of irony and pastiche. Throughout this course we will come back to the ways that race, ethnicity, and gender are inextricably linked for Asian American women and writers. Texts may include: “The Americanizing of Pau Tsu” (Sui Sin Far), The Woman Warrior (Maxine Hong Kingston), Blu’s Hanging (Lois-Ann Yamanaka), “Ravine” (Mông Lan), “The English Canon” (Adrienne Su), Dictée (Theresa Hak Kyung Cha), Leave it to Me (Bharati Mukherjee), “The Blossoming of Bongbong” (Jessica Hagedorn), The Mindy Project (Mindy Kaling), and Notorious C.H.O. (Margaret Cho).