Spring 2010 Course Descriptions
First-Year Writing Courses
Introductory and Advanced Writing Courses
Introductory Literature Courses
Advanced Literature Courses
Introductory and Advanced Film Courses
Special Courses
College Catalogue (PDF)
First-Year Writing Courses
Spring 2010
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:
ENGL 151 01 Fighting Words: Narrating American Wars
MWF 10:00 am-10:50 am
ENGL 151 05 Fighting Words: Narrating American Wars
MWF 11:00 am-11:50 pm
Professor Jessica Maxwell
In this course we will examine how the story of America’s wars has been told in the 20th and 21st Centuries. You will be asked to critically engage with literary representations of war, as well as journalism, historical accounts, films, documentaries, photographic images, and memorials. As a class we will ask how an understanding of war is shaped through these different media and how, in turn, cultural consciousness is shaped through our understanding of a particular war. In other words, we will be asking what “work” these representations do. Do they re-write certain wars as part of a nation-building exercise, or, conversely, do they work as elements of protest? Do they attempt to complicate and dismantle previous assumptions regarding a particular war? We will work through these questions and many more by exploring such texts as Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial, and William Wyler’s 1946 film The Best Years of our Lives. For this course, you will be required to engage in regular classroom discussions, participate in writing workshops, and submit a final research project accompanied by a brief oral presentation and an annotated bibliography.
ENGL 151 02 Composing Reality: Writing, Texts, and Life
MWF 09:00 am-09:50 am
ENGL 151 04 Composing Reality: Writing, Texts, and Life
MWF 10:00 am-10:50 am
Professor Emily Lindner
How do we gauge what is “crafted” and what is “real” in our world? Do texts reflect or shape personal and cultural identity? Are the boundaries between fact and fiction always clear and detectable? Reflecting on such questions and our own choices as writers, we will consider how acts of composition may or may not differ from other life experiences. As a writing community, we will develop our own literacy narratives, explore how cultural artifacts and practices can be read as living texts, and investigate how a variety of media genres complicate our understanding of what is written and what is real. Possible areas of inquiry include “reality” TV, memoir and autobiography, movie adaptations, documentaries, computer gaming, advertisements/product placement, and blogs/internet sharing sites. Using exploratory writing, 3-4 focused draft sequences, and frequent critical reflection, you will refine your drafting, revising, and editing skills as well as your reading, interpreting, and critical thinking proficiency. At the conclusion of the semester, you will compile a portfolio of written work.
ENGL 151 03 Crossroads to Freedom Primary Research Seminar
MWF 09:00 am-09:50 am
Professor Rychetta Watkins
In this course you will engage in research and writing activities modeled after the online archive Crossroads to Freedom. This archive, located at www.crossroadstofreedom.org , “connects a digital archive of materials from the Civil Rights era in Memphis, TN, to community education and engagement. The purpose of the archive is to promote and support discussions of the impact of this historical period on our community today.” In particular, this section of English 151 will focus on the history of the African American freedom struggle in Memphis and the South by exploring the stories of veterans of World War II, the Korean conflict and Vietnam who were active or came of age during the “heroic” period of the Civil Rights Movement. We will critically assess, through oral history, readings, archival documents, speakers, documentary films, and other primary materials, how their personal experiences contribute to the larger story of the struggle for Civil Rights in Memphis, the South, and nationally. We will explore this theme by listening to the voices and perspectives of people who have lived, experienced, and “made” our history firsthand and by refining our own voices and perspectives as we reflect on our role as researchers and writers throughout the course.
ENGL 151 06 Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
TR 08:00 am-09:15 am
ENGL 151 07 Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries
TR 09:30 am-10:45 am
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 08 The New Yorker
TR 09:30 am-10:45 pm
Professor Rebecca Finlayson
In this section of English 151, we will read The New Yorker, a highly respected and popular weekly magazine with current news, short fiction, poetry, humor, and—most significantly—essays covering a variety of fields, including politics, medicine, the arts, science, history, international relations, religion, business, and music. Our class discussions will focus on analyzing these texts, in particular the arguments they make and the rhetoric they employ. Writing assignments will likewise respond to and critique the reading
ENGL 155 01 The New Yorker
R 12:30 pm-01:45 pm
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. Students may not take both English 151 and English 155.
Introductory and Advanced Writing Courses
Spring 2010
ENGL 200 01 Introduction to Poetry Writing: Form, Theory, Workshop
TR 02:00 pm-03:15 pm
Professor Tina Barr
Tina Barr has been teaching poetry workshops for over 20 years. She has developed methodologies and exercises to help students generate poems. She encourages them to transfer their own visions onto the page, translating those ideas into writing that becomes valuable to others. By focusing on word choice and the use of the five senses, students find their own voices. With reference to the advice of Rainer Maria Rilke, Richard Hugo, and through readings of work by Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Dave Smith, Robert Burns, James Wright, Emily Dickinson, Yusef Komunyakaa, Marianne Moore, William Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence as well as poems by former Rhodes students, participants will learn to write basic narratives, as well as received forms such as villanelles, and to find forms suitable for their own work. Prerequisites: English 151 or the permission from the instructor.
ENGL 201 01 Introduction to Fiction Writing: Form, Theory, Workshop
MWF 10:00 am-10:50 am
ENGL 201 02 Introduction to Fiction Writing: Form, Theory, Workshop
MWF 01:00 pm-01:50 pm
Professor Barrett Hathcock
A study of narrative form and theory, leading to a workshop in which students present their own fiction for discussion. Prerequisites: English 151 or permission from the instructor.
ENGL 301 01 Intermediate Fiction Workshop
TR 12:30 pm-01:45 pm
Professor Barrett Hathcock
Practice in the craft of fiction with an emphasis on elements of narrative form, including point of view, character development, plot, temporality, and tone. Includes close readings of fiction mostly from the first half of the 20th century. Prerequisites: English 201 and permission from the instructor.
ENGL 400 01 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Theory
TR 11:00 am-12:15 pm
Professor Tina Barr
This course is designed to help students develop their own voices and aesthetic sensibilities, to extend further their explorations in the process of revision, re-envisioning different directions for a poem, and different kinds of poems, to open themselves up to different kinds of aesthetics, and to read and discuss poetics and the theories of poetry. The class is a workshop, but readings will include crucial essays, central to the study of poetry, by Aristotle, Longinus, Dante, Puttenham, Sidney, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Brooks, Olson, and Hass. In addition, students will read aesthetic considerations of poetry by Eliot, Paz, Lorca, Shapiro, Plath, Williams, Jarrell and Heaney. Prerequisites: English 300 and permission from the instructor.
Introductory Literature Courses
Spring 2010
MWF 12:00 pm-12:50 pm
Professor Gordon Bigelow
F4, F2i
Since the rise of market capitalism in the eighteenth century, literature in Britain and America has provided especially focused commentary on economic issues, dealing with poverty and wealth, consumerism, market behavior, and financial crisis. This course will explore central ideas and debates in economics through readings in modern literature, from the 18th to the 20th century. Likely readings will include: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, a primary fable of capital accumulation; North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell, a book about Industrial Manchester in the nineteenth century; The Professor’s House by Willa Cather, about artistic life and intellectual property; and William Gibson’s breakthrough sci-fi novel Neuromancer. No prior coursework either in economics or literature is required, though students with experience in either field are welcome. This course will count toward the English major or minor. First Years and Sophomores only; however, ENG-151 is not required as a prerequisite for this course.
ENGL 190 02 Medieval Frame Tales
MWF 01:00 pm-01:50 pm
Professor Lori Garner
F4, F2i
The frame tale—that is, a framing narrative depicting a series of oral storytelling performances by the frame’s characters—was widespread and popular throughout the Middle Ages. This enormously flexible genre offers modern audiences an entertaining and representative introduction to the medieval world, since a single frame could encompass a range of story types as diverse as romance, fabliaux, saints’ lives, and allegory. While the course will focus primarily on Western frame tales, such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Boccaccio’s Decameron, and Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron, we will also explore Eastern predecessors, such as the Panchatantra and The Arabian Nights. All works will be read in translation, and no prior knowledge will be expected. This course will count toward the English major or minor. First Years and Sophomores only; however, ENG-151 is not required as a prerequisite for this course.
ENGL 221 01 Novel of Manners
TR 08:00 am-09:15 am
ENGL 221 02 Novel of Manners
TR 11:00 am-12:15 pm
Professor Jennifer Brady
F4, F2i
This course studies the development of the novel of manners through the work of the writers most identified with the genre: Jane Austen, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. Novels will include Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey, James’s Washington Square and The Spoils of Poynton, and Wharton’s The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country. We will read Wharton and James’s fiction in particular through the lens of Veblen’s classic socioeconomic study, The Theory of the Leisure Class. We will also view William Wyler’s The Heiress, a film adaptation of James’s novel Washington Square. Prerequisites: English 151 or permission from the instructor.
ENGL 230 01 Shakespeare’s Major Plays
MWF 09:00 am-09:50 am
ENGL 230 02 Shakespeare’s Major Plays
MWF 11:00am-11:50 am
Professor Scott Newstok
F4, F2i
A participation-based course on Shakespeare’s works, with special attention to the problem of "genre," as well as some reflection on what counts as “major.” We begin by closely reading and memorizing selected sonnets. We then examine ten representative “Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies” from his earlier, middle and later periods, concluding with a generically mixed "romance." While we will concentrate our efforts on the literary analysis of the plays, along the way we will be exploring the greater context of Shakespeare, from the sixteenth-century meanings of individual words to the performance of his works today. Final projects require considerable scholarly research. The course is designed to provide students with extensive practice in the close textual analysis of Shakespearean drama, in preparation for enjoying Shakespeare throughout their lives. This course coincides with a Shakespeare symposium on March 26, 2010. Counts as a pre-1800 course for the English major. Prerequisites: English 151 or the permission from the instructor.
ENGL 265 01 Special Topics - "Becoming American"
MWF 11:00 am-11:50 am
ENGL 265 02 Special Topics - "Becoming American"
TR 09:30 am-10:45 am
Professor Rychetta Watkins
F4, F2i
What does it mean to be “American”? This question of who belongs and when will be at the heart of our inquiry this semester. Part of America′s legacy as a colony is an anxiety about belonging that has informed our country′s literary tradition from its very inception. A narrative of American citizenship and belonging also shapes our country′s legal record. If equal protection under the law is the basic measure of citizenship, its evolving definition and application can be discerned in the ever-changing relationship between “American” and “alien” in the legal and artistic discourses of this nation. During the semester, we will read legal and historical documents alongside fictional works from an array of authors like William Wells Brown, Chang Rae-Lee, Carlos Bulosan, Leslie Marmon Silko, Julia Alvarez, and Toni Morrison, in order to trace the development of themes of citizenship, identity, longing, and belonging in twentieth century ethnic American literature. Prerequisites: English 151 or permission from the instructor.
ENGL 285 01 Text and Context
MWF 12:00 pm-12:50 pm
ENGL 285 02 Text and Context
MWF 01:00 pm-01:50 pm
Professor Leslie Petty
F4, F2i
This course assists prospective majors and minors in acquiring the necessary tools for middle– and upper-division classes in English. Each seminar will focus on the necessary skills for reading literary texts, the development of critical argument, and the ability to situate the text in relation to significant contexts. Such contexts might include a text’s historical and cultural circumstances, or its situation within the wider history or discipline of literary studies. Not open to seniors. Prerequisites: English 151 or permission from the instructor.
Advanced Literature Courses
Spring 2010
ENGL 325 01 Chaucer
MWF 10:00 am-10:50 am
Professor Lori Garner
Through careful reading of the well-known Canterbury Tales, selections from Chaucer’s dream visions, and Troilus and Criseyde—all in the original Middle English—we will work to develop proficiency in and appreciation of the language written and spoken in fourteenth-century London. This course will examine the creative ways in which Chaucer combined tradition and innovation within his poetic compositions and will explore Chaucer’s engagement with such issues as genre, social class, gender, and religion. To help fully contextualize Chaucer’s verse, we will also read some works by his influences and contemporaries as well as recent scholarly interpretations of his writings. Course requirements include active class participation, oral readings of prepared passages, a series of short writing and translation assignments, a longer research paper, and examinations. Textbooks include the following Norton Critical Editions: The Canterbury Tales: Fifteen Tales and the General Prologue (ed. V.A. Kolve) , Dream Visions and Other Poems (ed. Katherine Lynch), and Troilus and Criseyde (ed. Stephen Barney). Counts as a pre-1800 course for the English major. Prerequisites: Any 200-level literature course or permission from the instructor..
ENGL 332 01 "Green Shakespeare: Eco-criticism and Renaissance
Literature"
TR 02:00 pm-03:15 pm
Professor Scott Newstok
This seminar will explore Shakespeare′s plays through a "green," environmental studies lens. In response to this emerging critical practice, we will consider to what extent Shakespeare′s poems and plays are conducive to being interpreted "eco-critically," with special attention to topics such as: the pastoral mode, and fantasies of retreat from the city and court; early modern ecological ruination; the idea of "nature"; notions of "grafting"/manipulation of genetic stock; and relations between humans and animals. Throughout the course, we will also seek to question our own desire for a "green Shakespeare." Readings will concentrate on the late Romances in particular, but we will also survey other plays and sonnets, as well as literature and history by Shakespeare′s Renaissance contemporaries. Students′ work will culminate in a substantial research paper, surveying this critical practice and applying it to a close reading of Shakespeare′s plays. This seminar coincides with a symposium on the topic on March 26, 2010, which students will be expected to attend. Counts as a pre-1800 course for the English major. Prerequisites: Any 200-level literature course (preferably ENGL 285) or permission from the instructor.
ENGL 355 01 Nineteenth-Century British Fiction
MW 03:00 pm-04:15 pm
Professor Gordon Bigelow
A study of major works, with particular attention to changes in reading habits and publishing practices that altered the shape of the novel during this period. Readings may include work by Austen, Scott, Dickens, Brontë, Thackeray, Collins, Eliot, Hardy, and Gissing. Prerequisites: Any 200-level literature course or permission from the instructor.
ENGL 373 01 Developments in Contemporary Literature
MW 02:00 pm-03:15 pm
Professor Tina Barr
Twentieth century poetry has developed in response to many influences, including wars, political and social movements, the recognition of diverse cultural groups and their literatures, and innovations in critical theory. This course provides an opportunity to study the history and development of this century’s poetry, based on two main groups of practitioners: symbolists and objectivists. We will also examine aspects of contemporaneous poetry, including non-narrative work and language poetry. We will “map” the ground of 20th c poetry by reading the work of Wallace Stevens and his symbolist contemporaries and successors (Cullen, Lowell, Bishop, Moore, Plath, Komunyakaa, Cole, etc.), William Carlos Williams and his successors (Zukofsky, Creeley, Olson, Duncan, etc.) and finish the semester by reading the challenging work of poets such as Ashbery, Graham, Harvey, Coolidge and Bernstein. The idea of taking a poetry course can be challenging, but it is the professor’s job to help you learn to read it, and to create a lively, challenging and charged classroom in which to do so. Prerequisites: Any 200-level literature course or permission from the instructor.
ENGL 380 01 The Novel of Development
TR 12:30 pm-01:45 pm
Professor Brian Shaffer
This course will focus on the modern Bildungsroman, or novel of education, initiation, or development. The course will consider the ways in which a series of novels—by Behr, Bronte, Chopin, Forster, Joyce, McGahern, Rhys, and Robinson--engage in a “dialogue” with each other, with their times, and with conventional models of narrating lives in fiction. Prerequisites: Any 200-level literature course or permission from the instructor.
ENGL 385 01 Jr. Seminar: Critical Theory and Methodology
TR 12:30 pm-01:45 pm
ENGL 385 02 Jr. Seminar: Critical Theory and Methodology
TR 03:30 pm-04:45 pm
Professor Jason Richards
An examination of major developments in literary criticism and critical theory, designed to prepare students for advanced research. To be taken during the spring semester of the junior year. (Those studying abroad may take the course in the senior year.)Prerequisites: Any 200-level literature course or permission from the instructor.
ENGL 485 01 SENIOR RESEARCH SEMINAR:
Topic: American Gothic
MW 03:00 pm-04:15 pm
Professor Jason Richards
While America was conceived as a land of hope, light, and liberty, it has its dark side of persecution, brutality, and moral decay. From the horrors of Indian massacre to the Salem Witch Trials to the institution of slavery and beyond, America has all too often fallen short of its ideals. America’s troubled past has long furnished writers with material for an extreme literature known as American Gothic, a genre that pulls back the veneer of smiling society to expose the hypocrisy, corruption, and secrets beneath. Such writing is distinguished from the Gothic literature of Europe, where the genre originates. Though populated by haunted houses and sorrowful landscapes, American Gothic substitutes the mysterious castles and cathedrals, malevolent aristocrats and lecherous monks of European Gothic with its own cultural phenomena, giving voice to its own nightmares--nightmares that disrupt, mock, and ghost around the American dream. This course offers an intensive study of American Gothic. Over the semester, we will explore what is distinctly "American" about this genre, absorb its many conventions, and appreciate the Gothic, which has been disparaged as empty and escapist, as a mode of social criticism. In the second half of the course, students will develop research projects focused on a particular text within the American Gothic tradition. Authors may include Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and Joyce Carol Oates. Enrollment by permission only.
Introductory and Advanced Film Courses
Spring 2010
ENGL 245 01 Special Topics in Film: Chick Flicks and Macho Movies: Gender, Genre, and American Cinema
TR 03:30 pm-04:45 pm, W 07:00 pm-09:30 pm
Professor Rashna Richards
This course is about men, women, and the movies. Specifically, it offers an exploration of how contemporary genre films reinforce, challenge, and destabilize gender norms in American popular culture. We will consider whether genres are always already gendered, ready to activate deep-seated anxieties about sexual difference and gender politics; examine how specific genres have absorbed revisionist tendencies; and investigate how gender and genre intersect with other kinds of identity formations, including race, class, age, and sexuality. Drawing on a range of critical tools and theoretical insights, from psychoanalysis to feminism to masculinity studies to postmodernism, we will explore such issues as the rise of chick culture in the postfeminist age, the link between fashion and femininity, the crisis of masculinity, the return of the angry white male, queerness, and homosocial bonding in contemporary American cinema. Films may include Legally Blonde, Something′s Gotta Give, The Watermelon Woman, Deliverance, Ransom, and Brokeback Mountain. Prerequisites: English 151 or permission from the instructor. All students must attend a weekly screening.
ENGL 382 01 Film Theory
TR 02:00 pm-03:15 pm, T 07:00 pm-09:30 pm
Professor Rashna Richards
This course provides a comprehensive history of film theory as it has developed over the "century of cinema." We will begin with classical film theorists, such as Rudolf Arnheim, Sergei Eisenstein, and André Bazin, evaluating their twin concerns of cinema′s relation to reality and its status as art. Then, we will direct our attention to writers who challenged the classical tradition and destabilized the meaning of such terms as art, nature, reality, illusion, author, work, and artist. Assessing the semiotic turn in film theory, we will analyze the influence of new interpretive approaches, such as psychoanalysis, feminism, and critical race theory. Finally, we will focus on the latest developments in contemporary film theory, tracing in particular the role of globalization and digitization. We will end by reflecting on the future of film and film theory in an age of new media. Prerequisites: Any 200-level film class or permission from the instructor.
Special Courses
Spring 2010
Professor Jennifer Brady
Junior English majors wishing to read for honors are required to enroll in a preparatory tutorial in the spring semester. Although required for honors, enrollment in this course does not guarantee acceptance into the Honors Program.
Professor Gordon Bigelow
A directed internship in which students will apply analytical and writing skills learned in the classroom to situations in business, journalism, not for profit organizations, and the professions. (Pass/Fail credit only. English 460 does not satisfy an upper-level English course requirement for the major.)
Professor Rebecca Finlayson
Theoretical and applied study of one-to-one writing instruction.
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