Summer 2017 & Fall 2017
Summer Two (July 10 - August 17)
English 579 Special Topics Seminar: African American Short Fiction (Course ID 1437)
Professor Louis Parascandola
Tuesdays & Thursdays 6-8:55 PM
This course will examine masterpieces of African American short fiction from the Harlem Renaissance to the present. Some authors we will discuss include Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Edward P. Jones, Jamaica Kincaid, Junot Diaz, ZZ Packer, and Edwidge Danticat. Most of the works are classics, ones that you should become familiar with as writers and as scholars. Almost all of them are works that could be taught in high school or in LIU Brooklyn's English 16 or English 63 courses. However, there will be some by authors whom you might not be familiar with such as Eric Walrond, Becky Birtha, and Thomas Glave. The goal in the class is to make you not only a better reader and critical thinker but also a better writer, teacher, and researcher. Students will be asked to write three short essays (3 pages each) on particular stories and a longer (8-10 pages) research paper on two or three stories we have discussed (or others by authors we have studied). You may use ONE of the stories you wrote about for the short essays if you wish. You may also write your own short story (influenced by, not imitating, a story we’ve read) with a metatext to substitute for the longer research paper. It is also possible to write a lesson plan on one or two of the stories instead of doing the longer research paper.
Fall 2017
English 503 Theory of Writing: Reading & Writing Across Literary Movements (ID 5295)
Professor Erica Hunt
Mondays, 6:30-9 PM
The course surveys “theories of writing” that have propelled development in fiction and poetry over the last one hundred years. The course will introduce and selectively dive into writing by writers on the elements of literature: word, sentence, line, character, plot, narrative, collage, and experimental forms, as well as consider the individual and social context that frames literary creation. We will write, too, working to discover our own affinities and points of departure for original literary expression. Along the way, we will read the modernist manifestoes and consider Surrealism, Harlem Renaissance, Negritude, feminist, new fiction and other movements. Among the authors we will read, discuss and with whom we will contend in our own writing, are: Andre Breton, Aime Cesaire, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Gertrude Stein, Helene Cixous, bell hooks, Trin Minh Ha, Amiri Baraka, Susan Howe, Lydia Davis, Maggie Nelson and more.
English 523 Fiction Writing Workshop: Naming the Nameless -- A Workshop for Experimental Fiction (ID 5035)
Professor Eugene Lim (Visiting Writer)
Wednesdays, 6:30-9 PM
Audre Lorde defined the literary arts as “the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.” In this workshop we’ll try to identify the tacit “nameless” assumptions regularly made in the construction and analysis of fiction. We’ll also try to ask the question why does the nameless stay nameless? Experimental fiction is often historically described by its assault on traditional aesthetic elements of character, continuity, and plot. We’ll see how this is so, but also how fiction innovation may also be seen to include investigations of hidden assumptions of class, race, gender, sexual identity, taboo, and other hierarchies of power.
We will have assigned reading from a wide variety of experimental writers, including: César Aira, Clarice Lispector, David Antin, Dennis Cooper, Karen Tei Yamashita, Fran Ross, Percival Everett, Renee Gladman, Jarett Kobek and Tan Lin.
We will regularly discuss structural questions of fiction and engage in writing exercises aimed at revealing some of our underlying assumptions of fiction. Much of our time will be spent in the reading and supportive analysis of each other’s work.
English 524 Poetry Writing Workshop: See Sun, Think Shadow (ID 5036)
Professor Lewis Warsh
Tuesdays, 6:30-9 PM
Cancelled due to under-enrollment.
“Sun” and “shadow” are states of mind and also emotional states--the external world of the sun (what we see) and the interior world lost in shadow (what we’re feeling). One goal of poetry is to transcribe the shifts from one state to another and also recreate the experience of what it feels like to be in the sun and in the shadow simultaneously.
We will use this workshop to expand the range of what’s possible as poets and will begin by exploring the traditions and various forms of poetry (among them the sonnet, the sestina, the villanelle). One primary concern is the way poetry changes through time (in the same way painting and music change) and how poetry reflects the time in which it is written. We will also discuss the notion of invention, of taking risks, moving forward into our own place and time, and with our own language, and how writing is an act of risk-taking; i.e. without taking risks nothing ever changes. Among the poets we’ll look at closely are Louis Zukofsky, Langston Hughes, Ted Berrigan, Sonia Sanchez, Leslie Scalapino, Lyn Hejinian, Renee Gladman, Akilah Oliver, Bernadette Mayer, Fred Moten, Alice Notley, Jack Spicer, Anne Waldman, Frank O’Hara and Allen Ginsberg.
English 527 Professional Writing Workshop (ID 5953)
Professor Michael Bokor
Wednesdays, 6:30-9 PM
Cancelled due to under-enrollment.
You may be familiar with the rhetorical concept of “style” and even have your own “style” of writing. A writer cannot choose between using “style” and leaving it out of the discursive event. But what exactly is “style” and where does it come from? What is valued as “style”?
Focusing on the role of the English language in discursive practices, this course explores the cultural, theoretical, and practical perspectives of “style” to help you understand fully the relationship between language, culture, and personality and how these forces converge to define and shape the writer’s projection of individuality (commonly perceived as “style.”
Some of the pertinent questions to consider include:
i. Is style “innocent” or is it the reflection of the personality, taste, and experience of the writer of the text or the culture of the writer’s society? Is it true that style is the writer in disguise?
ii. Does style exist on its own, independent of the writer? Before the work, in the work, or outside it?
iii. What shapes style? Is it the writer’s purpose and attitude to the audience?
Through various assignments, you will interrogate the functions of style and learn the numerous ways in which writers adapt their expressions (texts) to their purposes. By the end of the semester, you should:
This course is particularly good for students seeking opportunities to improve their rhetorical skills for effective academic, creative, and professional writing.
For more information, contact Professor Michael Bokor at Michael.Bokor@liu.edu, or in room H. 446 on the fourth floor of the Humanities Building, or by phone on 718–488–1050 Ext. 1112.
English 573 The Nineteenth Century British Novel: Gothic Fiction (ID 6243)
Professor Louis Parascandola
Wednesdays, 4-6:30 PM
We will explore the growth of the gothic (horror) novel during the nineteenth century in England. This period saw the rapid development of the sciences and social sciences, which often legitimized (while at the same time questioning) the prevailing Divine, social, scientific, and political hierarchies. The works examine the uneasy tension between rebellion (especially in the earlier Romantic Age, about 1789-1832) and following the established order (especially in the Victorian Age about 1832-1900) which marks the beginning of the modern sensibility. The period also marks the vast expansion of the British colonial empire, which is reflected in several of the works. We will also be looking at some of the many movies made of these works and discussing why they are so attractive to filmmakers and cinema audiences. Readings will include classic works that can also be taught in high school or in introductory college literature classes such as Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Carmilla, Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Island of Dr. Moreau. Students will be asked to write three short essays (3 pages each) on particular works and a longer (8-10 pages) research paper on a selection works we have discussed (or others by authors we have studied). You may use ONE of the works you wrote about for the short essays if you wish. You may also write your own short story (influenced by, not imitating, a story we’ve read) with a metatext to substitute for the longer research paper. It is also possible to write a lesson plan on one or two of the stories instead of doing the longer research paper.
English 646 Individual and Small Group Writing Instruction (ID 3911)
Professor Donald McCrary
Thursdays, 4-6:30 PM
Cancelled due to under-enrollment.
The course is designed to introduce tutors and teachers to the theories and practices of tutoring writing (one-to-one, online, and small groups), with an emphasis on the specific needs of the writers who use the LIU Brooklyn Writing Center.
The course is a practicum that focuses on praxis, the relationship between theory and practice, inside both the classroom and the Writing Center. Students in the course will begin tutoring writers in the Writing Center after observing senior tutors and demonstrating knowledge of the Writing Center approach.
The course will familiarize students with the writing philosophies and approaches at LIU Brooklyn, including those of the Writing Program and Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC). Throughout the semester, the course will address important aspects of the tutoring of writing such as structuring sessions and setting goals; assessing, diagnosing and responding to student writing; and recognizing and teaching rhetorical strategies. Other areas the course will discuss include tutoring in a multicultural environment, working with multimodal texts, tutoring across academic disciplines, helping students read critical and creative texts, and responding effectively to areas of mechanics in student writing. The course requirement involves intensive reading and writing about theories and practices of teaching and tutoring writing. In addition to responding in writing to course texts, students write self-reflection and observation papers as well as a major final paper with draft(s).