Course Listings for First-year Students
Fall 2008
151. First-Year Writing Seminar.
Degree Requirement: F2
A course that develops the ability to read and think critically, to employ discussion and writing as a means of exploring and refining ideas, and to express those ideas in effective prose. Individual sections of the course will explore different topics in reading, discussion, and writing. Topics are selected by individual professors and are designed to help students develop transferable skills of analysis and argumentation, applicable to the various disciplines of the liberal arts and sciences. Several papers will be required, at least one of which will involve use of the library and proper documentation. The seminar will emphasize successive stages of the writing process, including prewriting, drafting, and revision, and will provide feedback from classmates and the instructor.
TOPICS:
Writing in the Margins: Insider and Outsider Voices
Professor Emily Lindner
In this course, we will consider how and why people are included in and excluded from a multitude of groups, categories, and spaces, both in life and in literature. We will investigate our own roles as insiders and/or outsiders and discuss authors and artists who focus on the struggle to live in between groups (in the margins) and to overcome such labels. We will work with both conventional forms of writing (e.g., essays, short stories) and more experimental texts (e.g., performance poetry, comics/graphic novels) in order to explore how language and images are used to create and navigate categories of identity, place, and genre. Using daily exploratory writing and 3-4 focused draft sequences, you will refine your drafting, revising, and editing skills as well as your reading, interpreting, and critical thinking proficiency. Throughout the semester, we will literally, figuratively, and theoretically write in the margins.
ENGL 151 01 MWF 08:00 am-08:50 am
ENGL 151 02 MWF 09:00 am-09:50 am
TOPICS:
Writing in the Margins: Insider and Outsider Voices
Professor Emily Lindner
In this course, we will consider how and why people are included in and excluded from a multitude of groups, categories, and spaces, both in life and in literature. We will investigate our own roles as insiders and/or outsiders and discuss authors and artists who focus on the struggle to live in between groups (in the margins) and to overcome such labels. We will work with both conventional forms of writing (e.g., essays, short stories) and more experimental texts (e.g., performance poetry, comics/graphic novels) in order to explore how language and images are used to create and navigate categories of identity, place, and genre. Using daily exploratory writing and 3-4 focused draft sequences, you will refine your drafting, revising, and editing skills as well as your reading, interpreting, and critical thinking proficiency. Throughout the semester, we will literally, figuratively, and theoretically write in the margins.
ENGL 151 01 MWF 08:00 am-08:50 am
ENGL 151 02 MWF 09:00 am-09:50 am
Writing in the Margins: Insider and Outsider Voices
Professor Emily Lindner
Writing in the Margins: Insider and Outsider Voices
Professor Emily Lindner
ENGL 151 01 MWF 08:00 am-08:50 am
ENGL 151 02 MWF 09:00 am-09:50 am
Contemporary American Representations of Friendship and the Platonic Tradition
Professor John Ronan
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Contemporary American Representations of Friendship and the Platonic Tradition
Professor John Ronan
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Contemporary American Representations of Friendship and the Platonic Tradition
Professor John Ronan
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
Throughout Western philosophy, from Plato onwards, friendship has been figured as the ideal mode of human interaction. While erotic, familial, financial, or ethnic relations are inextricable from obligation or self-interest, friendship, the argument typically goes, offers the promise of free and disinterested love. But, as Jacques Derrida has shown, each time a philosopher has posited a version of perfect or true friendship, it has turned out to be a relationship that would be compromised with its enactment. In other words, friendship as an ideal and friendship as a practice are two very different things. Is true friendship a theoretical abstraction or fantasy, therefore, with no correlation to actual experience? In this writing seminar, we’ll explore the ways in which contemporary American essays, short stories, novels, and films about friendship answer this question. Readings will include philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Montaigne, literary works by Sherman Alexie, Paul Auster, Gish Jen, and Toni Morrison, and magazine articles from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We will also discuss and write about the films E.T., Men in Black, and Mean Girls.
ENGL 151 03 MWF 10:00 am-10:50 am
ENGL 151 04 MWF 11:00 am-11:50 am
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Darkness in the Land of Light
Professor Jason Richards
Seen from the perspective of Puritan settlers, early America was an unsettling contradiction. It was a land of freedom, promise, and renewal but also a vast and terrifying landscape, a “howling wilderness” they perceived as the devil’s domain. From the start a dark shadow has haunted this land of optimism and light as Gothic and transcendental forces have together shaped the American experience. Gothic is obsessed with how the past haunts the present, but it is also filled with a sense of impending doom. Transcendental thought seeks to free us from our bondage to the past while offering a hopeful vision of the future. In this writing-intensive seminar, we’ll study the competing energies of the Gothic and transcendental in American cultural life. We’ll first identify the origins of these forces in the fatalism of Puritan ideology versus the more liberatory thinking of Unitarianism. Then we’ll examine how American authors have absorbed and worked against these rival energies. While we’ll analyze the Gothic and transcendental in literature and film, we’ll also notice how Gothic conventions have crept into non-fictional realms and how real-life people have transcended antagonistic forces. Prompts for critical thinking and writing may include works by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Emily Dickinson; films such as Psycho, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Forrest Gump; and the political discourse leading up to the 2008 presidential election.
ENGL 151 05 MWF 01:00 pm-01:50 pm
ENGL 151 06 MWF 02:00 pm-02:50 pm
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
Professor Elise Lauterbach
When we read a novel or watch a movie, we recognize that no matter how “real” the story seems, it’s a manmade work of fiction. But how do we interpret fictions presented as fact? This introduction to college writing and argument explores a variety of fakes, frauds, and forgeries, including con artists, circus sideshows, photographs of ghosts, blackface minstrels, mockumentaries, and writers working under assumed identities. Some of our subjects—like counterfeit money—have joined the real world without being seen, while others—like artists who adopt alternate personas—raise questions about the very nature of “the real.” Our course material, which spans some three-hundred years of history, won’t provide us with a comprehensive history of fakers, but it will help us investigate issues of authenticity, identity, authorship, performance, and that trusty old standby, reality. In addition to a final research project, you will write three shorter essays related to the course material and work closely on improving your own rhetoric and style: In your prose, you’ll practice that smooth presentation that helps you take down your mark. Successful academic argument shares some of the skill set of the confidence man.
ENGL 151 07 TR 08:00 am-09:15 am
ENGL 151 08 TR 09:30 am-10:45 am
The Making of Identity
Professor Kristin Cole
From the organizations we choose to join to our carefully constructed online profiles, we put on many different faces or identities each day. This course asks you to consider how people use the forces of inclusion and exclusion to craft identities at various levels, from the personal to the national. We will look at identity from historical and sociological perspectives, and we will evaluate mainstream and fringe groups and their interactions. We will exploit the context of the 2008 election, probably addressing Michelle Obama’s comment about being proud of America for the first time and the furor it aroused, the many kinds of voting Americans and how pollsters slice and dice them, and other issues that necessarily rely on identity such as gay marriage and illegal immigration. Course materials will include excerpts from the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History Of England and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech. We will also consider films that deal explicitly or implicitly with identity such as American History X and Transamerica.
ENGL 151 09 TR 09:30 am-10:45 am
ENGL 151 11 TR 12:30 pm-01:45 pm
Negotiating Limits: Self, Society, Nature
Professor William Dolphin
This class doesn’t ask you to think for yourself; it requires it. As part of a community of writers with shared goals and problems, your own experiences and ideas will be fodder for writing, reading, and discussion. Your first task will be a practical, collaborative exploration of how classroom assessment is constructed and experienced. Together with your classmates, you will investigate the range of your personal evaluative experiences as you negotiate a self-constituting document for the class. Insights we gain from this process will then be brought to bear on other questions: To what extent are people and plants codependent? What are the limits of medical manipulation of athletes and average citizens? Why are some social problems solved with criminal penalties? Where are the boundaries of human interaction with nature?
ENGL 151 10 TR 11:00 am-12:15 pm
Polemics and the Presidency
Professor William Dolphin
All politics is born of rhetoric. The language of political persuasion, past and present, will be this class’ focus, with an emphasis on the ’08 Presidential campaign. But your first task will be grappling with the politics of the classroom. After a practical, collaborative exploration of how learning is evaluated and those evaluations are experienced, you will negotiate a consensus on assessment and collaboratively write a self-constituting document for the class. The insights gained from that process will then be applied as we read commentary on the ’08 campaign as it unfolds, as well as speeches of the candidates themselves, comparing conservative and liberal perspectives and analyzing how the rhetoric of persuasion works. We will also look back in time to accounts of the 1972 Nixon and McGovern campaigns (Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail) and 1992’s contest between Clinton and Bush (Joe Klein’s Primary Colors).
ENGL 151 12 TR 02:00 pm-03:15 pm
155. First-Year Writing Seminar
Degree Requirement: F2
An alternative to English 151 offered to outstanding first-year writers, by invitation only. The course is limited to twelve students who meet as a group once a week and individually with the instructor once a week. Students will turn in five one page themes each week. Some research and writing will be required and students will use their daily themes as the basis for two longer papers: one at midterm and the other at the end of the semester.
TOPIC:
Daily Themes
Professor Rebecca Finlayson
Professor Rebecca Finlayson
In English 155, the Daily Theme alternative to English 151, each student will submit daily (one page) writing assignments, largely analyzing the argument and style of our weekly readings from The New Yorker magazine, a highly respected and popular weekly magazine with essays covering politics, medicine, the arts, science, history, international relations, religion, business, and music. Additionally, students will write themes employing specific rhetorical strategies. Twice during the term, you will write longer argumentative and research papers. Class time will be spent discussing the readings and your writing. By Invitation Only.
ENGL 155 01 R 09:30 pm-10:45 pm
190. Introductory Literature Courses
TOPICS:
Novel of Manners
Professor Jennifer Brady
A study of the evolution of the novel of manners from Jane Austen’s Regency-era comedies through the fiction of Henry James and Edith Wharton, set in Europe and in the United States, and written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. We will read Wharton’s work in particular through the lens of Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class. Texts will include: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion; Henry James, Washington Square, The Aspern Papers; William Wyler’s film, The Heiress; Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class; Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country. Will count toward English Major. This course may also be applied to a women’s studies minor. Prerequisites: First Years and Sophomores only.
ENGL 190 02 MWF 10:00 am-10:50 am
Shakespeare on Screen
Professor Scott Newstok
What happens when Shakespearean dramas written for a 17th century theatre audience get ‘translated’ to a 20th century cinematic medium? What interpretative strategies shape film adaptations? This course will survey Shakespeare on screen from a range of periods, directors, nations, and media in order to confront the full span of adaptation, and to complicate conventional notions of “fidelity” to the “original text.” After reading the plays, we will evaluate versions of three ‘major’ tragedies (Macbeth, Othello, King Lear) as well as As You Like It, a comedy that will be performed in the Memphis area this fall. Final projects require that students explore a contemporary adaptation of one play, in dialogue with earlier versions we viewed as a class. Will count toward English Major as well as pre-1800 credit. Thursday night screening 'lab' encouraged. Prerequisite: First Years and Sophomores Only.
ENGL 190 03 MWF 02:00 pm-02:50 pm, R 07:00 pm- 10:00 pm
