Spring 2006 course menu!
san diego state university
two flavors-->undergraduate & graduateNOTE: Course offerings listed below are subject to change. All courses may not be listed here. Refer to the Spring 2006 schedule or glass case in front of English and Comparative Literature Department office for the most current listing.
CLT 270A: World Literature T. Cummings
"Keep them separated-"
The Offspring weren't referring to literature when they made their suggestion, but it resonates in our field. We often keep different parts of our life separated: the sacred and the profane, the private and the public. Indeed, when these parts of our lives come together, the collision is explosive. It's dramatic.In this class, we'll read a variety of texts from Ancient Greece, China, Persia, and Early Modern Europe in which the drama arises from the collision between either the sacred and profane or the public and private. We'll explore how we attempt to maintain a separation between these parts of our lives and how the separation is artificial. The public shapes the private; the private shapes the public. The sacred and profane mix in fascinating ways. No matter what, the collisions make for good stories and gorgeous poetry. While it may be impossible to do as the Offspring suggest and "keep them separated," our attempts and failures to do so create great literature and will make for lively discussion.
Text: The Bedford Anthology of World Literature. This anthology not only includes a number of marvelous texts, it gives historical and thematic contexts to help enrich our understanding of the literature. It also provides us with ways of understanding the literature from our own historical era. Previous knowledge of literature prior to 1500 is helpful but not required. Your own knowledge and your willingness to explore enduring themes in literature and life will be far more helpful.
Requirements: In order to keep the lines of communication open between us, we'll have response papers, quizzes, and discussion about the texts. We'll also have two papers and a creative project.
CLT 270B: World Literature Laurie Edson
In this course we will read and analyze major modern texts from authors of various countries writing in a variety of genres. Authors include Achebe, Ibsen, Balzac, Moliere, Kafka, Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky, Morrison, and Rhys. In-class writing assignments, oral reports, mid-term and final exams.
CLT 405: The Bible as Literature F. Boe
This is a course in literature, not religion. Theological arguments will be ruled out of order; proselytizing will not be tolerated. While a great deal of the subject matter of the Bible is of course religious, we will be approaching it from the strictly non-sectarian viewpoint of literary history and criticism. The biblical text will not have a privileged status: it will be subjected to the same kinds of analysis as other literature is in other courses. The instructor's position will be secular. The purpose of the course is to acquaint you with the nature of the Bible as a literary document: the history behind it and in it; the history and development of the text itself--its range of literary forms (genres), their structures, techniques, imagery, style, etc. The primary focus is on the biblical text itself. I will expect you to become familiar with the assigned portions of that text and to demonstrate that familiarity by active participation in class discussions and by your performance on weekly quizzes and two tests. This is a general education course open to students of all majors; the course does not assume any particular prior study of literature on your part or previous experience of the Bible, though either or both will certainly be helpful.
CLT 455: Classical Asian Literature William Rogers
Wednesday, 1530-1810
Spanning Chinese and Japanese literatures from their written beginnings (for China about 600 BCE and Japan 700 CE) to the mid-nineteenth century (when contact with the West had far-reaching consequences), this course will explore two great literary traditions through poetry, prose narratives, essays, drama, and novels, as well as anecdotes, parables, and jokes. Students with curiosity about non-western cultures and literatures (and a sense of adventure!) should find much in CL 455 to engage them, both conceptually and esthetically. Particular background or expertise in Asian culture is NOT assumed by the instructor. Requirements (depending on class size) will include two examinations (one of which will be take-home), a research essay, short written responses, and active participation in class discussion.CLT 490: European Romanticism F. Boe
"European" here means continental Europe as opposed to Great Britain. We will study only two writers as the quintessential representatives of the "movement," Jean Jacques Rousseau and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Active class participation required, a reading journal, no tests.CLT 513: Nineteenth Century European Literature Laurie Edson
An investigation of 19th century European literature that includes close analysis of novels by Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola, the poetry of Baudelaire, and the drama of Ibsen and Strindberg. Issues to be discussed include realist representation, the realist novel as portrait of society, the politics of the family, the nature of desire, naturalism, Symbolist poetry, and the semiotics of the theatre. In-class writing assignments, oral reports, mid-term and final exams.CLT 530: Women in Modern Chinese and Japanese Literature William Rogers
Thursday, 1530-1810
CL 530 will explore how Chinese and Japanese writers in the 20th century (both female and male) have used the short story to present/express/contest "woman" and "woman's place" in their societies. The critically-inflected question to be considered, story by story, is how two (highly literate) Asian cultures have constructed gender roles and how writers have either replicated or challenged those roles. All students with curiosity about non-western cultures and literatures (and a sense of adventure!) should find much in CL 530 to engage them, both conceptually and esthetically, since the chosen stories are rich in human drama and incident. Particular background or expertise in Asian culture by students is NOT assumed by the instructor. Requirements (depending on class size) will include two examinations (one of which will be take-home), a research essay, short written responses, and active participation in class discussion.CLT 561: European Children's Fantasy Fiction J. Farber
Let's define terms. "Fantasy" here is to be understood in the broad sense: not just epic fantasy, but fantasy in general. "European": we'll be reading fiction from Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Germany, and Austria. "Children's": Ah, well . . . where do I start? Even though children's literature has become an important and respected area within literary study, I still feel that there is something like a "secret" that most of us who study literature have to learn (perhaps re-learn) for ourselves: great children's fiction is great fiction. Period. But that doesn't mean that this is some sort of connoisseur's course that simply appropriates children's fiction for adult reading. We'll be reading these works in the context of the history of children's literature and in relation to some of the principal issues that have been raised in the academic study of children's literature. I hope that this will be a worthwhile course both for people who are pursuing a specialization in children's literature and for people who are just looking for a really good comparative fiction course.CLT 594: The Imperial Bedroom: Literature and the Arts William A. Nericcio
Picture these handsome textual couples caught, as it were, en flagrante: Greek poet Homer's epic lyric The Odyssey in a salacious tryste with Irishman James Joyce's landmark novel Ulysses; Chinese writer Sei Shonagon's curious 11th-century memoir, The Pillow Book, between the sheets with Welsh & English director Peter Greenaways classic film, The Pillow Book. What do we see here? Couple-texts, the imperial bedroom serving as a grandiose stage of sorts, and, curiously enough, coupled texts: Joyce, reshaping the contours of English fiction forever, turns to a Greek classic to order his sinewy fiction; Greenaway, a gifted director and artist, turns to a centuries-old memoir to guide his very twentieth century eye. Literature, Cinema, and Art, sister arts or lover arts co-mingled in a lurid and lyric ménage-a-trois?
Our Comparative Literature course will spend hours upon hours in the imperial bedrooms of novels, cinema and painting. The "bedroom" is imperial, in that it rules the domestic space of the house-a site of power, without question, which architecturally mirrors in strange ways the psyche of that space's inhabitants. Not for nothing will Odysseus do war with Sirens and Cyclops on his wearying journey back to his beloved Penelope; similarly, Leopold Bloom braves the streets of Dublin on his quest for the affections of his connubial satyr, the inimitable Molly Bloom. The name of our course derives from the ironic stylings of British composer, Elvis Costello-his album, too, Imperial Bedroom, will be one of the required works of this utterly experimental, purposely eclectic class. So Music too, along with Literature, Cinema and Art, will have something to teach us this term. While this course is designed for English and Comparative Literature majors and film aficionados, any student interested in books, film, and bedrooms won't be bored during the semester. Other coupled works for the semester include Aura, by Carlos Fuentes, with Sunset Boulevard, by Billy Wilder; and, time permitting, Adaptation, by Susan Orleans, with Adaptation, written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. Mondays from 3:30 to 6:10 in Communications 206.
English 220: Introduction to Literature P. Herman
This class is designed to introduce non-majors to why literature is important, and why it is worth studying. Throughout the semester, we will be looking at a wide variety of books that date from Greek antiquity to the present, and we will look at how each of these works raises important questions and issues. We will see, in other words, how literature invites the reader to think complexly about complex issues, and we will see that literature accomplishes this feat while still being compelling and at times, funny. Some of the issues we will be dealing with include the problem of war, the proper uses of technology, the meaning of life, and the resonances of the Holocaust. Some of the books will include Oedipus the King, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, and Shakespeare, King Lear. Evaluation will consist of three exams and one short paper.English 250A: Literature of the U.S. R. Gervais
A survey of U.S. literature from its beginnings to just after the Civil War. The first part of the course will deal with the question of emerging American identity in the discovery, colonial, and early national periods, while the second part will deal with the great figures of American Romanticism: Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Foe, Hawthorne, and Melville. The course will conclude with a transitional figure between Romanticism and Realism, Emily Dickinson.
Four in-class, open book, essay exams.English 260A: English Literature (The Supernatural in Early English Literature)
A. Minard
The course is a survey of the greatest hits of early English literature over a thousand-year period from the 700s to the 1700s, with a concentration on works from Old and Middle English, and a thematic
emphasis on the supernatural, the mythological, and the monstrous.English 260B: British Literature from the Romantics to the Present S. Ramachandran
We cover three periods of English Literature in this course: The Romantic (1798-1832), the Victorian (1832-1880), the Modern (1800-Present). We will spend one-third of the semester on each period, reading texts by major writers that reflect the conflicts and preoccupations of the times. The readings are in three genres-poetry, non-fiction prose, and fiction. Some of the writers covered are Blake, Wordsworth, Browning, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Salman Rushdie. Course requirements include active class participation, exams, written and oral responses to readings, and two formal papers. English 260B should be attractive to anyone who has an interest in reading, thinking about, and analyzing literature-or an interest in developing these skills. Daily attendance is required in this course.English 301: The Psychological Novel Sinemadness or An Asylum Striptease
Professor William A. NericcioA year and a half ago, I taught an Introduction to Literature course entitled Sinematic Bodies; four years ago I taught an E301 entitled Sinema-this course, Sinemadness or An Asylum Striptease (a twisted version of what the SDSU General Education calls "The Psychological Novel") is the bastard child of both earlier incarnations. The premise of this class is quite simple: in literature and films of the 20th, and now, 21st, centuries, there appears a significant body of works that feature characters with significant psychological problems born from their relationship with cameras or from movies somehow impacting on their minds. In these tales filled with both sin and cinema, the "I," that peculiar, one-letter pronoun/nickname we give to our psyche, is overwritten or, at the very least enchanted, by some odd parallel tale of the EYE. During the semester, we will spend NO LITTLE time reading books, watching films, studying poetry, and voyeuristically devouring pieces of art that feature curious, damaged, individuals (shattered bodies, twisted psyches) who find solace or further madness from that asylum we call "Hollywood"-as we read, we will simultaneously witness a psychoanalytic striptease of sorts, as various kinds of psychological pathologies reveal themselves to us. Think of the movies, books, and photographs we will study this term as an influenza, and of cameras as a kind of psychic syringe, and you get an idea of the kinds of themes we will collectively pursue. The working list of required books and movies (subject to last minute change include): A selection of Man Ray photographs from Spezial Fotografie Portfolio Number 35, Sigmund Freud's On Dreams, Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust, Junichiro Tanizaki's The Key, Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, Tino Villanueva's Scene from the Movie Giant, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, Sam Mendes's American Beauty, and Giuseppe Tornatore's Nuovo cinema paradiso. Playing Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 to 10:45 in GMCS 301, this SDSU GE Foundations class is open to ALL majors and minors!
English 302: INTRODUCING SHAKESPEARE D. Kehler W 4:00-6:40 SS1401
This is the jumbo (120 students) weekly introductory Shakespeare class. It will consist of lectures and movies and is therefore especially suitable for shy people with long attention spans. English 302 is a G.E. elective intended for students who are not English majors. I'm interested in the ways in which the plays are constructed poetically and structurally, the political and social codes Shakespeare depicts, and the plays' significance for us. We will see films or TV productions of all the plays we study-The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and, optionally, King Lear. Written quizzes on each play, two exams.English 306A: Children's Literature Mary Galbraith
"All children, except one, grow up." Find out why this one became an author instead. We'll look at what Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Dickens, Margaret Wise Brown, and Roald Dahl have to say about their own childhoods, and we'll ponder the relationship between childhood fantasizing and children's literature. Weekly reading of fairy tales, novels, picture books and memoirs; weekly writing assignments.
English 306A: Children's Literature P. Serrato
To your amusement, fascination, dismay, horror, and/or surprise, this semester we will explore the amazing complexity of children's literature. We will begin by acquainting ourselves with some classics, such as Heinrich Hoffman's Struwwelpeter, Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Then we will look at some more recent works, including George Selden's The Cricket in Times Square, Gary Paulsen's Nightjohn, and, in anticipation of the author's visit to SDSU in the spring, Francisco Jiménez's The Circuit. Finally, we will focus our attention on the ways that different genres of literature create different types of reading experiences for young people by analyzing books such as Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants, Jim Murphy's An American Plague, and a biography about George W. Bush. By the end of the course you will wield an expertise in children's literature that will allow you to think, talk, and write about children's literature in wonderfully sophisticated-and perhaps unusual-ways. Requirements include one paper, 2 exams, a final exam, and a presentation.Required Texts
Heinrich Hoffman, Struwwelpeter (Dover; ISBN 0486284697)
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (Dover 0486416585)
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (Dover 0486407845)
George Selden, The Cricket in Times Square (Yearling 0440415632)
Franklin Dixon, The Secret of Skull Mountain (Grosset & Dunlap 0448089270)
Gary Paulsen, Nightjohn (Laurel Leaf 0440219361)
Gloria Anzaldúa, Friends from the Other Side (Children's Book P 0892391308)
Francisco Jiménez, The Circuit (U of New Mexico P 0826317979)
R.L. Stine, Welcome to Dead House (Scholastic 0439568471)
Dav Pilkey, Captain Underpants (Scholastic 0590846280)
Laurence Yep, Dragonwings (HarperTrophy 0064400859)
Jim Murphy, An American Plague (Clarion 0395776082)
Beatrice Gormley, President George W. Bush (Aladdin 068984123X)English 491: American Film to 1960 T. Nelson
An introduction to developments in American film to 1960, to include its narrative and thematic traditions; its structures and psychological conventions; its genres and styles; its cultural/ideological tendencies; and the important studios, directors and actors who helped shape its evolution. Comparisons will be made between the so-called Classic Hollywood Narrative and more personalized Modernist Narratives, between mainstream filmmaking and an emerging "autuerist" cinema, and between genres and their evolution into the Sixties. Films for study include: The General (Keaton), Casablanca (Curtiz), Stagecoach and The Searchers (Ford), Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil (Welles), Shadow of a Doubt and Psycho (Hitchcock), Scarlet Street (Lang), Sunset Boulevard (Wilder), On the Waterfront and A Face in the Crowd (Kazan). Essay exams.English 494: Modern Fiction of the U.S. R. Gervais
A course in fiction from around the time of World War I to the present. We shall start with a collection of short stories by such authors as Cather, Fitzgerald, Porter, Steinbeck, Malamud, Updike, Oates, O'Conner, Carver, O'Brien, and Lahire, and read them chronologically to get an over-view of this long stretch of literary history and a sense of the distinctive periods within it, then we will read two significant short novels, Faulkner's As I Lay Dying from the Modern period (1920-1950) and McCarthy's All The Pretty Horses from the Contemporary period (1950-present).
Five in-class, open-book, essay exams.English 501: Literature for Children P. Serrato
This semester we will traipse through some classics, frolic with some contemporary works, and wrestle with some particularly edgy books for children. Among other things we will attend to issues of gender, race, sexuality, Gothicism, the body, borders, and brats. To facilitate our appreciation (or condemnation) of the books that we will read, we will invoke and apply a number of critical approaches and theoretical tools, including psychoanalysis, deconstruction, existentialism, feminism, and Marxism.Current List of Required Texts
Heinrich Hoffman, Struwwelpeter (Dover 0486284697)
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan (Dover 0486407837)
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (Dover 0486416585)
A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh (Dutton 0525444432)
Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (Puffin 0141301155)
Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking (Puffin 0140309578)
Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Goes on Board (Puffin 0140309594)
Franklin Dixon, Danger on Vampire Trail (Grosset & Dunlap 0448089505)
Gloria Anzaldúa, Friends from the Other Side (Children's Book P 0892391308)
Gloria Anzaldúa, Prietita and the Ghost Woman (Children's Book P)
Francisco Jiménez, The Circuit (U of New Mexico P 0826317979)
Sebastian Rook, Vampire Plagues: London, 1850 (Scholastic 0439799023)
Laurence Yep, Dragonwings (HarperTrophy 0064400859)
Beatrice Gormley, President George W. Bush (Aladdin 068984123X)For the finalized list of required texts, please email the instructor in mid-December.
English 503: American Regionalism and Children's Literature J. Cummins
In this course we will study children's books from various regions of the United States. We will closely examine how children characters in these books develop a sense of their own identities as well as how the narratives within them construe the idea of being American. How do ethnicity, immigration, migration, and other topics influence this idea? Dividing the United States into regions and reading books from different locations and time periods, we will explore whether American identity is ultimately a fluid or fixed idea.English 521: Early American Literature Michael Borgstrom
Drawing on texts from the 15th through the late 18th centuries, this course will explore the various ways in which America came to be constructed as a nation. We will pay close attention to the intersections (and often the conflicts) among issues of race, religion, class, and gender in the country's foundational years, and in so doing we will trace the formation of an identifiable (though hotly-contested) "American" identity. The course will be loosely organized around narratives of exploration, contact, settlement, revival, and revolution, with particular attention paid to the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. We will read a wide range of documents, including diaries, travel narratives, sermons, captivity narratives, poems, narratives of contact (and conquest), slave narratives, autobiographies, and various court documents. We will end the course by examining the development of the novel in the New Republic, focusing on the emergence of the literary gothic (Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland) and the novel of seduction (Hannah Foster's The Coquette).English 522: Literature of the U.S. 1800-1860 R. Gervais
A course in the Romantic period of American literature, when the individual self, the imagination and emotion, and the mysteries of nature were placed at the center of art. We will see how Romanticism was a way of thinking and seeing the world that corresponded closely to the new national consciousness that was awakening in American, our own new myth of the American self and landscape. We will compare and contrast the light Romantic school of faith and hope-Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, with the dark Romantic school of fear and doubt-Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, concluding with the merging of both schools and the transition from Romanticism to Realism in Emily Dickinson. There will be four in-class, open-book, essay exams.
I read and teach literature as an aesthetic representation of life, appealing to us by its beauty and truth.ENGL 526: Significant Others: Literature and Sexuality in the United States Michael Borgstrom
This course will examine representations of sexuality in American culture, beginning with what the philosopher Michel Foucault identifies as the "invention" of homosexuality (and the subsequent invention of heterosexuality) in the 19th century and continuing up to the present day. We will examine the evolution of sexual knowledge and identities, and we'll consider how the issues they represent might affect literary narration, plots, characterizations, and themes. Possible topics include changing definitions of gender; reconfigurations of marriage and intimacy; civil rights movements; and the AIDS epidemic. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which representations of sexuality also overlap with contemporary understandings of "other" minority categories - especially gender, race, class, and ethnicity.Readings will likely include works by Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Sarah Orne Jewett, Walt Whitman, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, Gloria Anzaldúa, Allen Ginsberg, Willa Cather, Tony Kushner, Tennessee Williams, Gertrude Stein, Audre Lorde, Jewelle Gomez, John Rechy, Rita Mae Brown, Langston Hughes, and Armistead Maupin, among others. If time permits, we may also examine one of the most under-analyzed genres of American cultural expression: the Broadway musical.
English 526: Henry James and the American Romance C. Wall
This course will be acceptable as three units toward fulfillment of the requirement for courses in Literature of the United States or an elective. The romance (a form of fiction different from the novel) flourished in the 19th century. James Fenimore Cooper, who wrote The Last of the Mohicans (1826), and Robert Montgomery Bird, author of Nick of the Woods (1837), among others, wrote what I call scapegoat romances. They have a cast of type characters who play set roles that keep "light" and "dark" people apart. The dark people here are "Indians." There is also a kind of romance using the same type characters that works a genuine cultural transformation. Hester Prynne heads a cast that produces a transformative ritual in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850). With these books as context, we will read three of Henry James's late 19th century novels, The American, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Ambassadors. We will finish by giving you a new look at Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, which is a scapegoat romance of the 20th century. I may assemble a course book with material from Carl Jung and others. Quizzes and two exams, three papers.English 527: Contemporary American Poetry Lynda Koolish
Wednesdays 3:30-6:10
Office hours Adams Humanities 4178:
Office phone: 594-5565
e-mail: lkoolish@mail.sdsu.edu
Course Description:
We will be covering primarily the past three decades of American poetry in roughly chronological order, but also including some important poems from 1945 through 1970 in the first few weeks of the course.The course will be conducted as a seminar, with class participation not only encouraged, but essential. Although we will emphasize close readings of often difficult poems, I encourage you to consider enrolling, regardless of whether you have much of a background in the reading of poetry. I hope that part of the pleasure of the course for each of you will be the process of learning--in a supportive and non-competitive environment--how to fall in love with poetry, with language, how to pay attention to image, line and breath, how to discover your own intuitive gifts of imagination, empathy and intellect.
Requirements include two (7-8 page) papers on topics of student's choice (but to be approved in advance by the instructor, and to focus on a more complex topic than a reading of a single poem ). Collaborative papers are encouraged. Weekly freewrites on a single poem to be discussed from each week's reading are due, posted on SDSU's Blackboard no later than 3PM on the Tuesday before class, so that I will have time to read (and at least some of the time) respond to the freewrites before class, and so that the class as well will have the opportunity to read one another's freewrites before class. This assignment should take at most 30 minutes a week: 5-10 minutes to decide which poem you want to write about; 5 minutes to read the poem to yourself at least twice, and ten minutes or on rare occasions, fifteen minutes (timed please) to type your freewrite directly onto your computer with no edits, spelling changes etc. This assignment is not busywork or to check up on you to make sure you did the week's reading. Rather, it is an exercise designed to help you feel comfortable responding to, thinking about, and writing about poems. They will not be individually graded or commented on, but in order to pass the class, you must complete all but two of the weekly freewrites on time, with one late freewrite allowed, and one skipped freewrite allowed (but not encouraged). Students whose freewrites show consistent effort and energy will be given the benefit of the doubt if they are between grades. Because this class meets only once a week, students who miss more than two classes without a compelling reason will have their grades seriously affected. There will be no quizzes, midterms or final exams (which is why attendance and participation in class is crucial: that's where most of the learning in the course takes place!)
Grading:
20% Active class participation and freewrites
40% each : midterm paper and final paper.Required texts:
A. Poulin and Michael Waters, eds., Contemporary American Poets
Adrienne Rich, Dream of a Common Language
Yusef Komunyakaa, Neon Vernacular
Carolyn Forché, Angel of History
Lynda Koolish, ed., Course Reader for English 527 (available 1/20 @ Cal Copy)Poets covered:
Naomi Shihab Nye
Michael McClure
Gwendolyn Brooks
Robert Bly
Allen Ginsberg
Robert Duncan
Robert Creeley
W.S. Merwin
Robert Lowell
James Tate
William Stafford
Sylvia Plath
Carolyn Kizer
Anne Sexton
Shirley Kaufman
Muriel Rukeyser
Elizabeth Bishop
Denise Levertov
Robert Hayden,
Clarence Major
Audre Lorde
Ishmael Reed
Al Young
June Jordan
Michael S. Harper.
Adrienne Rich
Olga Broumas
Judy Grahn
Sharon Olds
Mary Oliver
William Everson
Tom Absher
Czeslaw Milosz
Yusef Komunyakaa
Rita Dove
Victor Hernández Cruz
Tess Gallagher
Carolyn Kizer
A.R. Ammons,
Mark Doty
Alan Shapiro
William Dickey
Stanley Kunitz
Reynolds Price
Billy Collins,
Toi Derricotte
Charles Wright
Robert Pinsky
Lucille Clifton
Forrest Hamer
Li-Young Lee
Gary Snyder
Stanley Kunitz
Donald Hall
Mark Strand
Robert Hass
Philip Levine
Galway Kinnell
Donald Justice
Carolyn ForchéEnglish 533: Shakespeare T. Nelson
An introduction for English majors to Shakespeare's dramatic achievement in history, comedy, and tragedy. Focus on approaches to reading (i.e., literary criticism) and interpreting the complexities of Shakespeare's language, his dramaturgy, and his ideas. Course will stress Shakespeare's development as an artist and thinker, in the context of late Elizabethan and Jacobean intellectual/cultural history, as well as relationships that exist between plays written in different time periods and in different dramatic genres. Plays for study will include: Richard II, 1 Henry IV, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, Othello, Hamlet. Essay exams.English 533: Shakespeare D.A. Shojai
This course will provide a close reading of five plays of Shakespeare's middle period (1594 - 1601), including two comedies, two English history plays, and a tragedy. The plays will be, in order of presentation, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, Part 1, and Hamlet. The writing will consist of three in-class tests: the first on the comedies the second on the history plays, and the third on Hamlet. Regular class attendance and participation will significantly affect the final grade. The class discussions will include viewings of the BBC productions of the plays. This class will be limited to 40 students.English 534: STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE D. Kehler
W 2:00-3:15, AH2112
* This is the advanced Shakespeare course. It cannot be taken prior to or concurrently with the introductory courses.
Shakespeare's Tragedies. The ultimate literary experience! Ten fascinating tragedies plus Troilus and Cressida. All critical approaches welcome. Weekly written responses or quizzes, two exams, research paper. Pre-requisite: English 533 or 302.English 536: British Literary Periods, Beginnings to 1660 P. Herman
In this class, we will look at the literary treatments of the various "others"women, Jews, non-Christians of various persuasions or ethnicities, people of various classes, in Renaissance England. Using plays, poetry, and prose fiction, we will investigate how each author treats the "other" in question, whether the author confirms the "other's" status as outsider, or uses literature as a vehicle for criticizing how the "other" is constructed. The readings are split into four sections. In the first, we will look at the problem of women on the Renaissance stage, using plays by Dekker and Shakespeare. In the second, we move to religion, and see how Judaism, Islam, and Catholicism fared in such texts as Spenser's Faerie Queene and Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. Next, we look at the problem of the New World, looking at how the discovery of North America led such authors as Thomas More (Utopia) and Bishop Francis Godwin (The Man in the Moon the first example of science fiction) to question their culture's values, and how they used the New World for their own purposes. The class will conclude with an examination of the problem of class in early modern England, in particular, we will look at two works (Deloney's Jack of Newbury and Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday) that propose alternatives to a social organization that privileges the aristocracy.English 540: English Fiction Dr. Edith Frampton
Transatlantic Literary Engagements: Fiction in English Through the Long-Eighteenth Century
Within this seminar we will analyze a variety of significant literary texts written in the English language between 1688 and the turn of the eighteenth century. In order to lend unity to our study of this long and diverse period, we will maintain a focus on the ways in which the Anglophone literary imagination traverses the Atlantic Ocean, both bridging and differentiating the cultures of Britain, colonial America, and Africa, within this time of intense exploration, nation building, and institutionalized slavery. In particular, we will consider how such oppositional notions as "light" and "dark," "civilized" and "barbarian," and "self" and "other" are constructed and perpetuated within a variety of novels. We will read both well-established writers, such as Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, and Frances Burney D'Arblay, and those that have more recently begun to attract critical attention, such as Aphra Behn, Olaudah Equiano, Eliza Haywood, Delarivier Manley, and Unca Eliza Winkfield. In addition to tracing the shifting perspectives and diverse techniques of these writers, you will be encouraged to relate what we read to your own experiences and knowledge of the world, as well as considering the responses of other students, critics, historians, and theorists. There will be a final research essay, a midterm, and a final exam, as well as other forms of assessment. The reading load will be significant, as is appropriate to an upper-division course.English 541A: English Drama P. Herman
This class will have two overlapping goals. The first is to give students a snapshot of early modern public theater and the variety of plays made available to the public. The second purpose is to put Shakespeare's plays, which are always privileged over and above the work of his contemporaries (sometimes for good reasons, but often not), in conversation with other works written at roughly the same time that deal with similar themes. In other words, rather than studying Shakespeare or other playwrights in splendid isolation, we will look at how early modern dramatists as a group dealt with similar issues, and how their plays reflect, comment, and refract upon each other. For example, while the cross-dressing in Shakespeare's history plays are well-known, but it is less well-known that Shakespeare's As You Like It is common knowledge, it is much less well-known that other plays explicitly addressed cross-dressing, and we will be reading one (The Roaring Girl) written about an infamous woman who dressed as a boy and whom the authorities tried to punish (with little success). Similarly, Shakespeare's history plays shared the stage with many other plays on similar subjects, and we will read some of these plays alongside one by Christopher Marlowe and another by Thomas Heywood. Hamlet was Shakespeare's contribution to the revenge tragedy genre, and we will read the play that established this tradition (Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and a play that directly alludes to Hamlet, Tourneur's Revenger's Tragedy. As we will see, early modern dramatists relied on the audience knowing the other plays, and in so doing, participated in the creation of a new cultural venue that reflected the views of the middle class, the people who paid good money to see these plays performed.English 543: British Romanticism F. Boe
The six "major" British Romantic poets--Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats--plus a few "minor" poets such as Charlotte Smith, and a bit of prose as well, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Probably best if you've had English 260A & B (or equivalent courses) already. Active class participation required, a reading journal, no tests.English 544: Victorian to Modern: British Literature 1890-1924 S. Ramachandran
This course examines the literature of transition from the "Victorian" 19th century to the "Modern" 20th century. The British Empire was at the height of its power at the end of the 19th century, but this was also a period of growing conflict as women, the working classes, and "uncivilized" colonies organized mass movements to demand democratic rights. The course will focus on how technological advances, imperialist conquest, and warfare shaped the literature of this exciting, dangerous, and tragic period in history. Some of the writers covered are Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, E.M. Forster, and the World War I poets. Course requirements include active class participation, written and oral responses to readings, exams, and two analytical papers.English 544: British Literature 1950-Present D. A. Shojai
Britain's situation after World War II and its loss of colonial possessions and imperial status have led to extraordinary changes within its culture and society. The works read will reflect these changes and explore how literary artists responded to them. The writers covered include the late T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden, Kingsley Amis, Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, John Osborne, Doris Lessing, Muriel Spark, John Fowles, Fay Weldon, and Kazuo Ighiguro, and a number of leading contemporary poets. Short papers on the readings, a midterm examination, and a final exam.
English 549: British Poetry and Its Medium J. Farber
This course will focus on British poetry from the early sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries in relation to its aesthetic medium. In other words: poetry as poetry. We'll be looking at versification, imagery, diction, figurative language, structure, density, tone, and resonance. This will be a useful course for anyone with a special interest in poetry, and it should also be very helpful-I would hope, even transformational-for those who feel that they haven't yet made, but would very much like to make, a strong aesthetic connection with the British poetic tradition. We'll be reading the work of a great many poets, beginning with Skelton, Wyatt, Surrey, Spenser, and Sidney (and including often neglected poets such as Anne Finch, Charlotte Smith, and Jane Taylor), but there will be particular emphasis on William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, John Keats, Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Butler Yeats, and Dylan Thomas.The study of versification is only one element in this course, but it is an indispensable one; you'll need to know a great deal about meter, rhyme, etc. to get through the course. If you're reluctant to immerse yourself in the "technicalities" of meter, this will probably not be your cup of tea. But you don't need to come in with any knowledge in this area. It's perfectly OK if you're starting from scratch; just be ready to learn an enormous amount about versification in the first few weeks of the course.
English 580: Writing of Poetry David Matlin
Wednesday
The course will focus on both the composition of poetry and required readings. We'll begin with an examination of early American modernism in relationship to William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, H.D., and move forward in to the twentieth century with an eye on how the visual arts, mythology, the city, and the presence of war influenced these major poets and their imaginative foundations and, in turn, how the poet might, through these readings and examinations, begin one's own personal discovery of new expressive possibilities.English 581W: The Writing of Fiction David Matlin
Thursday
Creative writing workshop in Fiction. Emphasis on the disciplines of writing.
Concentration on process, awareness of the word-by-word formation of texture, tone, the intricate close work of balancing life events and language and how these instances of possibility might be intensely combined into the tangles of perception; wonders that might be able to include the currents of a lived world as the expressive reservoirs of language and narrative might discover, quick, without prediction, never standing still. The emphasis will include required readings, writings, and workshop participation.
graduate classes
NOTE: Course offerings listed below are subject to change. All courses may not be listed here. Refer to the Spring 2006 schedule or glass case in front of English and Comparative Literature Department office for the most current listing.
English 601: Literary Study in a Multicultural World Dr. Jane Robinett
This course will investigate selected issues in literature, cultural criticism, post-colonialism and imperialism. Readings include texts and essays that challenge the idea of cannon, the definitions of genre and dominant cultural views, and offer alternative visions and structures (literary and otherwise). The focus will be on intersections of class, ethnicity, gender, race, diversity, and on various avatars of colonialism/imperialism/nationalism and post-colonialism. We will focus on the exploration of literature as the site where social and cultural values are inscribed and from which they are also derived. The destruction and re-shaping of cultural values under the influence of colonial powers and the fate of those constructions following the end of the empire is central to our exploration.Required texts:
Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart
Argueta, Manlio One Day of Life
al-Shaykh, Hanan Women of Sand and Myrrh
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel One Hundred Years of Solitude
Kincaid, Jamaica Lucy
Ninh, Bao The Sorrow of War
Roy, Arndhati The God of Small Things
Silko, Leslie Marmon Ceremony
Lentreccia, Frank and Thomas McLaughlin, eds. Critical Terms for Literary StudyPossible additions to this list (in the form of short stories and readings from Hardt and Negri' Empire and Said's Culture and Imperialism) may appear as handouts.
English 604B: MARLOWE, SHAKESPEARE, WEBSTER D. Kehler
M 7:00-9:40pm AH2133
We'll be studying Marlowe's five and Webster's two major plays in addition to as much Shakespeare as we can make time for. We'll not only make the obvious comparisons--e.g., Marlowe's Edward II and The Jew of Malta with Shakespeare's Richard II and The Merchant of Venice--but we'll try to develop a sense of the changing times, of what Shakespeare learned from Marlowe, and what Webster learned from both his remarkable predecessors. Assignments will include reading a little history and criticism. Incessant annoying quizzes will motivate you to keep on top of the reading; also anticipate a midterm, final, and a short research paper.English 606A: American Environmental Literature R. Gervais
The environmental imagination, as expressed in classic works of American nature writing. How American writers have responded to the natural world in ways that, while scientifically informed, are also marked by a personal voice and a concern for literary values. Emphasizing the impressive flowering of nature writing in recent decades, and its extraordinary range of genre-pushing achievement, mainly in the non-fiction, prose, personal narrative, but also as seen in selected works of fiction and poetry that put the natural world at their thematic centers. The course will be organized both chronologically, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, but also in thematic pairings of books: Emersons Nature and Thoreau's "Walking" as manifestoes and prolegomena; John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra and Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire as religious and philosophical conversion experiences upon first encounter with wild nature; Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac and Sue Hubbell's A Country Year as personal witnesses to the restorative natural rhythms of the seasons; Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard as spiritual pilgrimages in the natural world; Gretel Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces and Terry Tempest Williams' Refuge as solace and refuge in nature from human losses and suffering; Norman MacLean's A River Runs Through It and Cormac McCarthy's All The Pretty Horses as tragic pastorals, of fly-fishing and religion, and horses and history; and Gary Snyder's Turtle Island and Mary Oliver's American Primitive, Pulitzer Prize-winning collections of poetry by the pre-eminent modern American nature poets who try to get us to think back, even as we think forward, about our natural world.
Course requirements: an open mind about a newly emerging literary genre and critical approach, engaged discussions, oral reports, and a paper dealing with a theme or other element-voice, tone, symbolism, characterization, style, point of view, idea, structure-that runs through our readings.English 606: Graduate Seminar in African American Literature Lynda Koolish
Tuesdays 7-9:40 PM
Required texts:James McBride, The Color of Water
Toni Morrison, Beloved (Plume edition)
Jewelle Gomez, The Gilda Stories (a novel)
John Edgar Wideman, Cattle Killing
Ernest Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying
Rita Dove, Thomas and Beulah
Yusef Komunyakaa, Neon Vernacular
Lynda Koolish, ed, African American Literature Course ReaderRequirements:
1. As a graduate seminar, active, thoughtful participation in class discussion is not only encouraged, but essential.2. One thoughtful, provocative, interesting, discussion-engendering, open-ended discussion question approximately one-half to one page, or one 10-15 minute poetry or fiction freewrite (timed please) for each week's readings, submitted on Blackboard, and due by 3 PM on the Monday preceding Tuesday's class, so that I will have time to read (and at least some of the time) respond to the freewrites before class, and so that the class as well will have the opportunity to read, and if they wish, comment on, one another's freewrites before class. Freewrites should take at most 30 minutes a week: 5-10 minutes to decide which poem or brief fiction passage you want to write about; 5 minutes to read the text to yourself at least twice, and ten minutes or on rare occasions, fifteen minutes (timed please) to type your freewrite directly onto your computer with no edits, spelling changes etc. This is not busywork, but a place to discover, without an internal judging censor, "what you didn't know you knew" about a work of literature.
3. One shorter (6-7 pages) and one longer (10-12 page) paper on topics of student's choice (but to be approved in advance by the instructor). Collaborative papers are encouraged; they can be an incredible learning process, if you are willing to put in the work that it takes to do a first-rate job.
4. Each student also will be responsible for a 15-20 minute presentation (no longer, please!), at the beginning of the seminar hour, introducing some important aspect of the week's reading. These presentations can be student-led discussions, or a more formal talk, but students may not simply read a prepared paper. This is meant to be a teaching exercise as well as a way to get students more deeply into the material.
5. The week before Spring Break will be left open for a student-compiled addendum to the course reader (poems, short stories and essays) for discussion that day. Please plan to bring
to class by mid-February a Xeroxed copy of any material you want the class to discuss that day so that we can duplicate a reader.6. Depending on the size of our class, and student wishes, we may also elect to have everyone present a brief talk on their seminar paper during the last class session.
GRADES
* Shorter paper: 35%
* Longer paper: 45 %
* Class participation including seminar presentations and a holistic evaluation
of your discussion questions and free writes: 20%
* There will be no examsEnglish 607: Topic: Picturebooks C. Scott
Some people think that picturebooks are short, simple books, usually with big pages, written for the youngest children and very easy to understand. In fact they are often an extraordinarily complex form of children's literature and, for me, an endless source of fascination. Some are aesthetically beautiful and capture the attention of artists and art critics; some are beautifully written and capture the attention of poets and lovers of literature. Pictureboooks also share with artists' books innovative modes of presentation including graphic experimentation, non-traditional use of materials, cut-outs, three-dimensionality and non-linear presentation of event.Because they combine verbal and graphic communication techniques in a wide variety of relationships, ranging from the harmonious to the dissonant, it's important to understand how pictures and text interact to form an "iconotext." Harmonious forms expand and complement each other, while dissonant effects come from counterpointing or even contradictory relationships - for example when a verbal text may be realistic while the pictures present fantasy. Irony and humor are often the outcome of dissonance, but sometimes we are posed mysteries and deep psychological ambiguities. In these cases they offer a wealth of perspectives and interpretation - and will lead to a great deal of discussion about how each of us navigates the puzzles to come to a solution.
There will be a core book list which we will use to learn the technical vocabulary for describing and analyzing picturebooks, and to sharpen our ability to "read" the iconotext as we examine such features as format, layout and graphic style, adult/child address, point of view and narrative stance, humor and irony, setting, characterization, time, change and causality.
These core books will be supplemented not only by a variety of picturebooks on reserve in the library, but by power-point and other visuals shown in class. Picturebooks from other countries are hard to get and expensive, so I have been making electronic scans to share some of my collection of outstanding international books (yes, we will be in a "smart" classroom). I also have a brilliant wordless book from a famous Swedish illustrator available for each person in the course. In addition to these primary works, there will be some assigned critical readings on picturebook analysis and theory.
Beginning with simpler texts, we will move on to those involving sophisticated techniques which reflect both literary movements and artistic innovation. Surrealism, gender studies, postmodernism and metafiction are a few of the topics that will be relevant, as well as concepts like dual audience and cross writing which are characteristic of much of children's literature and especially significant for picturebooks.
Since this is a graduate seminar, active participation in discussion is essential, and I will be expecting a research/analytic paper from each student at the end of the semester. Possible topics for these will be discussed with each person individually, to ensure that the work will be motivating and really rewarding. In addition, I will be asking everyone to make in-class presentations, and there will be some writing exercises in class to help you develop your ideas and to gauge your own progress.
English 624: Fallen Women in Victorian Fiction Jeanette Shumaker
Wed. 3:30
Why do Victorian writers focus upon the adulteress, the seduced young woman, the thief, or the prostitute? Our seminar will examine the portrayal of the "fallen" woman in classic and little-known Victorian novels. To create a broader context for these works, we will also read some seminal "fallen"-woman narratives by Europeans. Since most of the criticism about "fallen"-woman narratives has been written by feminists, we will examine their ideas, as well.
To enlarge our frame of reference, oral reports will cover novels about "fallen" women that are not in print and other topics related to our course.
A workshop approach will be taken to the two ten-page essays that you will write; drafts will be revised after peer-review sessions. You may opt to combine the two essays into one twenty-page paper if you like.Reading list:
Dickens. Dombey and Son.
Eliot. The Mill on the Floss.
Hardy. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Collins. Armadale.
Haggard. She
Flaubert. Madame Bovary
Tolstoy. Anna KareninaEnglish 626: West Asian and Mediterranean Literatures D. Shojai
In conjunction with the formation of the Modern Language Association's new Discussion Group on West Asian Languages and Literature, this course will attempt to redefine and to explore the cultural topography of a region of the world interconnected in human history but viewed as being oppositional and fragmented from the Middle Ages down to the present. Colonial terms such as Near and Middle East will be replaced by indigenous terms such as West Asia in an effort to discern the cultural ties that reflect the integrative aspect of the region's long and rich literary history. Within this context, the literature of North Africa is not apart from that of Europe but a product of the Mediterranean world linked to West Asia through common language and history. Selective readings of major literary works will be drawn from three periods: the Ancient, the Renaissance, and the Modern. Also Edward Said's major critical work, Orientalism, will be considered closely. This course will involve a midterm paper in response to a question, short paper, a class presentation, and a research paper.
English 631: Form & Theory of Fiction Hal Jaffe
AH 3114, Office Hrs.: 5:30-7:00, Tuesday-Thurs.
Office phone: 594-5469
E-Mail: hjaffe@mail.sdsu.edu
I have taught Eng 631 many times and each time I change about 70% of the course readings. Hence the Spring '06 version is still in the formative stages.My idea of narrative is elastic and the texts will include visual art, art brut, film, fiction, docufiction, cultural theory, and other kinds of "narrative" discourse.
Among the writers and artists I am considering are Assata Shakur, Clarice Lispector, The Guerrilla Girls, B. Traven, Jean Genet, Hannah Arendt, Sophie Calle, Amiri Baraka, JG Ballard, Che Guevara, John Berger, Antonin Artaud, John Cage, Adolf Wolfli, and Fiction International's Sacred/Shamanic issue. Stone Butch Blues, Dorothy Day, Also Kafka, Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Tom Phillips, Primo Levi.
Each class participant will be asked to keep a reading/thinking/imagining journal, generated by responses to the assigned texts. Individuals will read from their journals at particular junctures, and I will collect, read, and comment on the journals at the end of the term. Additionally, participants will be asked to make collaborative, oral presentations (performances) on one of the required texts. And there will be a number of imaginative and critical writing exercises generated by the readings and class discussions.
*Ideally I would like every student who is considering taking the class to speak with me individually before the end of the fall term.
English 700: Faulkner C. Wall
This will be a heavy reading and writing course. You will read about ten of Faulkner's books and a good deal of criticism as well, to produce a crisply written (no repetition allowed) 20-25 page final seminar paper. During the semester, you will contribute three short papers on critical articles or chapters, which you will distribute via email or in paper copies to the class. Discussion of the reports on criticism can be conducted mainly by email. Because most of you will have read only a very little of Faulkner's work, most of our class time will go to discussion and analysis of the fiction. During the final three or four meetings of the class, each student will give a ten minute presentation of the central argument of her or his long paper. The first things it is necessary to know to understand Faulkner's fiction are the history of the slave-holding South and its culture as expressed in specific social rules for behavior. I will assign readings and reports on criticism on these topics. Faulkner's fictional techniques are also centrally important. I reserve the right to give a final exam. While I am happy to see excellent work and give many A's, I also give C's to work that deserves the grade. If you intend to enroll in this course, start reading in early January: The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, Go Down, Moses.
English 700: Seminar: James Joyce S. Little
1600-1840 Wednesday
AH3127
Critical reading and analysis of the major works by James Joyce: Dubliners, Stephen Hero, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and a brief introduction to Finnegans Wake. Survey of scholarship on Joyce and his work.
Because I see a seminar as a site where we will be exploring and sharing the knowledge we will be accumulating during the semester, the bulk of the class activities will be informal , brief oral and written reports. Some may be a result of collaborative work. These reports will support your research interests and the final, formal seminar paper, which is the culminating project for the class.
English 726: Postcolonial Women Writers Laurie Edson
A study of postcolonial women's writing produced in a wide range of cultural contexts. Authors to be studied include Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria), Maryse Conde (Guadeloupe), Assia Djebar (Algeria), Mariama Ba (Senegal). Primary texts to be supplemented with theoretical and critical articles by Nawal el Saadawi, Fatima Mernissi, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Ketu Katrak, Penina Mlama, Evelyne Accad, and others. Oral presentations, reading journal, mid-term and final papers.English 730: Seminar: Literature and Psychoanalytic Theory H. Polkinhorn
This is a reading-discussion seminar designed to explore contemporary psychoanalytic theory, its clinical and research dimensions, applying this knowledge to literary texts. The semester will begin with historical works in psychoanalysis, progressing to the more recent schools of ego psychology, self psychology, object relations, and the relational and interpersonal movements. This work will provide the basis upon which literary works from different historical and cultural periods will be interpreted. In addition, students will develop individual research projects under the guidance of the instructor and will share the result of their work with the seminar.English 750W: M.F.A. Seminar: Fiction Writing Hal Jaffe
AH 3114, Office Hrs.: 5:30-7:00, Tuesday, Thurs.
Office phone: 594-5469, Email: hjaffe@mail.sdsu.edu
This course is designed principally for MFA students who are writing short or extended "serious" fiction. Each participant will be required to submit a minimum of two individual texts, or self-contained segments of a lengthier work. In addition, there will be occasional brief texts generated by "prompts." At least a few of these texts will be collaborative.A characteristic session will consist of three Xeroxed (or electronically distributed) fictions to be read aloud. Then a student-critic will deliver a fairly brief (five to ten minutes) commentary on the particular text. Finally the class and instructor will comment on the text.
Each class participant will have written her/his commentary, and these comments (signed), along with the instructor's, will be passed on to the writer whose text has been critiqued. (The critical commentaries may also be sent electronically to the author).
Specifically, each participant will be obliged to comment carefully and at reasonable length on each Xeroxed fiction. The commentary (which also includes the oral commentary) may be playful and "meta"; but it must also accomplish three overlapping purposes: describe what the text appears to be doing, address those aspects of the text that work in its favor, and offer remedial suggestions where necessary. Everyone will send me a copy of his or her commentary as a word attachment, so that I can read them.
Your timely critiques of your colleagues' writings will constitute one of the core requirements of the course. The other requirements are your own writing submissions and your ongoing presence in the weekly class meetings throughout the semester.
*It is possible that we will alter the reading and critiquing format, depending on input from the class.
English 750F: M.F.A. Seminar: Fiction Writing David Matlin
Wednesday
Time 7-9:40pm
e-mail: dmatlin@cox.net (Please do not leave any messages on my office phone)
An advanced Creative writing workshop concentrating on the writing of fictions. Students will be required to produce new works and to discuss those works in both the workshop and in consultation with the teacher. Because of this advanced level, students will be expected to produce and to demonstrate the evolution of their works on a week-to-week basis. The workshop will explore the particular kinds of fiction each student will be writing, the language, the ideas, the arrangements and rearrangements, and the processes of editing and hearing which will help to bring the work to its "breathed breath of life." What are the modes of articulation and what do those modes require to make a story work or a novel begin to work to both the ear and the eye, to give it stability and the energies of discovery and what those discoveries do to connect to the world and to the reader? What is at stake, what is at risk in the actual making itself? The course also includes a series of defined readings of both prose and poetry which are assigned to help the writer to, among other specific processes, discover consistency of voice, fundamental senses of character identity which arise in the transmission of story, narrative enactment, and the drama of being as it comes to its relentless inner logic, interrogation, and metamorphosis. If, what is at the center of narrative, as the storyteller, poet, and restless investigator, David Antin says is "the confrontation of experience ... the threat of transformation or the promise of transformation" then what labors of concentration can the writer create in order to be at the center of a ceaseless interrogation of metamorphosis and, even Truth as these elements appears in either a novel, a novella, or a short story?