English 128 Early British Literatures -- Monsters, Shape-shifters, and Outsiders in Early British Literatures (ID 4921)

Professor Sealy Gilles

Thursdays, 3-4:15 PM

This course was cancelled due to under-enrollment.

This course is required in the Literature concentration. It can satisfy a Literature requirement in either the Creative Writing concentration or the Writing & Rhetoric concentration. It can also be applied toward the English minor.

Welcome to the strange and wonderful world of pre-modern England! In 1000 C.E. England was Europe’s far west frontier, an unsettled island of competing fiefdoms and migratory peoples. By 1600 London was the western world’s largest city and Queen Elizabeth I ruled over a colonial power soon to become the British Empire. The early literature of this island nation reflects the multiple identities of the English people, but it is also troubled by an often violent history and by the specter of strange beings, both benign and monstrous. This semester our cast of aliens stars Grendel, the swamp dwelling humanoid, a werewolf, and a giant Green Knight. Outsiders in human form include Chaucer’s gender-bending Pardoner and Shakespeare’s Moor. As we explore the alien in works ranging from Beowulf to Shakespeare’s Othello, you will be asked to write frequently, participate actively, and read closely. You may expect that I will respect your ideas and respond quickly and fairly to your work.

English 158 Early Literatures of the United States (ID 4053)

Professor Carol Allen

Thursdays, 6-8:30 PM

English 164 Explorations in Creative Writing -- Spiritual and Oral Storytelling: Finding Our Own Lives Through Our Own Stories (ID 4816)
Professor John High
Thursdays, 6-8:30 PM

This course is required in the Creative Writing concentration. It can satisfy a general English elective requirement in the Literature concentration. It can satisfy the Creative Writing requirement in either the Literature concentration or the Writing & Rhetoric concentration. It can also be applied toward the English minor. Any student may take this course a second time for credit.

We all have our stories. We live and tell them every day, sometimes even the most secret ones. But how do we develop the concentration and confidence to get them down on the page?

This workshop will focus on the ways spiritual autobiography and oral storytelling overlap and how the past can be fictionalized as a way of giving it a new voice, a strong voice—to give the writer both distance from and freedom to enter her/his own life stories. In class we will tell stories—our own and those from writers around the world. We will practice getting our language down, from the heart to the street to the page, in very short, flash fictions—some as short as a paragraph but none longer than a few pages. The premise is that the source of much fiction is based on memories and dreams and talking them through and writing them down.

We will strive to give voice to the voiceless.

There will be weekly creative writing games and improvisations, workshops, and discussions, as well as commentary on the writing process and how to make it come alive for you. We’ll share our stories and help one another revise them. This will be the equivalent of a writers’ studio and will include playing out dreams, secrets, journals, memories, observations, overheard conversations, magazine cut-ups, family tales, random fragments of language, as well as episodes from our childhoods up through the present. We’ll give readings or performances of the work as we go along. You will also have the opportunity to explore NYC with fieldwork for your stories in your neighborhoods and with the attendance of a literary reading. Your final project will be the creation and compilation of your developed and revised collected writings in the form of a short book (chapbook)/video/or performance, accompanied by a meta-text and artist statement.

We’ll look at writers ranging from Jean Toomer, Marguerite Duras, Toure, Jorge Luis Borges, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Jamaica Kincaid, Yasunari Kawabata, Michael Ondaatje, Lydia Davis, Edwidge Danticat, Akilah Oliver, Karen Russell, Junot Diaz, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Sherman Alexie (among others), who often blur the borders between oral storytelling, the dream, spiritual—true-life story. We will watch videos / listen to oral stories / performers from The Moth and the Nyorican Poets Café.

English 165 Poetry Workshop -- No Secrets (ID 4088)
Professor Lewis Warsh
Mondays & Wednesdays, 4:30-5:45 PM

This course will satisfy a Creative Writing elective requirement in the Creative Writing concentration. It can satisfy a general English elective requirement in the Literature concentration. It can satisfy the Creative Writing requirement in either the Literature concentration or the Writing & Rhetoric concentration. It can also be applied toward the English minor. English majors concentrating in Creative Writing may take this course a second time for credit.

Our ideas about poetry are often instilled in us at a very young age—and often those ideas are based on a narrow concept, as if poetry were just one thing written in one way. Our goal in this course is to expand the definition of poetry—to see what’s possible, both as writers and readers. We’ll do this by exploring the traditions of poetry and the various forms of poetry (among them the sestina and the villanelle) and by paying close attention to the way that poetry changes through time and how much great poetry is a reflection of the age in which it was written. We’ll also discuss the act of writing poetry as one of risk-taking and investigation, and how nothing ever changes unless you experiment or try something new. Is all great writing, for instance, experimental writing? In what way is writing poetry similar to scientific discovery or invention? We’ll discuss, at length, what “experiment” means in relation to poetry. Most important, we’ll try to trace the relationship between poetry and daily life.

Among the poets we’ll look at closely are Ted Berrigan, Langston Hughes, Bernadette Mayer, William Carlos Williams, Charles Reznikoff, , Anne Waldman, Elizabeth Bishop, Akilah Oliver, Robert Creeley, Amiri Baraka, Wang Ping, Jack Spicer, Gary Snyder, Alice Notley, Eileen Myles, Frank O’Hara, and Allen Ginsberg.

English 169 Non-Western or Post-Colonial Literature -- The Caribbean (ID 5503)

Professor Maria McGarrity

Tuesdays & Thursdays, 4:30-5:45 PM

This course will examine the issues of language, identity, and diaspora of the Caribbean. In The Repeating Island, the Cuban theorist, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, called this island chain a “meta-archipelago” because the sea and land borders that might seem initially to separate these isles in fact link them beyond the boundaries of the nation-language-island. This class will focus on the literatures of such nations as Haiti, Cuba, Antigua, Dominica, St. Lucia, Guadeloupe, and the Dominican Republic. We will study the work of Nobel Prize-winning St. Lucian, Derek Walcott as well as such writers as Danny Laferrière (whose most recent work charts the aftermath of Haiti’s recent earthquake), Jean Rhys, Maryse Condé, Reinaldo Arenas, Alejo Carpentier, Jamaica Kincaid, and Junot Díaz. Our reading of short stories, poetry, longer fiction, and film will take us from the height of European imperialism in the 19th century through the 20th century struggle for decolonization.

Evaluation: Attendance/Participation/Preparation 25%, Paper 25%, Mid-term Exam 25%, Final Exam 25%.

Required Texts: Arenas, Mona and Other Tales; Carpentier, The Kingdom of This World; Condé, Winward Heights; Díaz, This is How You Lose Her; Laferrière, The World Was Shaking All Around Me; Kincaid, A Small Place; Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea; Walcott, “The Schooner Flight” and selections from Omeros.

English 171 Introduction to Classical Rhetoric (ID 5306)

Professor Michael Bokor

Mondays, 6-8:30 PM

This course was cancelled due to under-enrollment.

This course will satisfy a Writing & Rhetoric elective requirement in the Writing & Rhetoric concentration. It can satisfy a general English elective requirement in the Literature concentration. It can satisfy the Writing & Rhetoric requirement in either the Literature concentration or the Creative Writing concentration. It can also be applied toward the English minor. For students in other disciplines, this course is an elective that can help you understand the persuasive effect of language in your personal life, your communities, and your career in journalism, law, business, education, or other professions.

This course explores classical rhetoric as conceptualized and practiced in ancient Greece and how it has influenced persuasive discourse over the past 2400 years. Students will examine why classical rhetoric plays a key role in our traditions of democratic politics, law, journalism, education, and business.

Students will learn concepts from classical rhetoric and use them to analyze persuasive discourse in the contemporary society, focusing on such aspects as culture, media, institutions, communities, and personal lives.

By the end of the course, students will have developed the ability to:

Understand concepts of classical rhetoric;
Use such concepts to analyze and write persuasive texts of their own; and
Develop their sensitivity to the power and persuasiveness in others’ discourse and become more empowered and persuasive in their own written discourse.

This course is independent of the Topics in Contemporary Rhetoric course (English 172), although students who are familiar with concepts of contemporary rhetoric are encouraged to apply their knowledge to our exploration of classical rhetoric.

English 180 Genre Studies -- American Detective Fiction (ID 6269)
Professor Donald McCrary
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 3-4:15 PM

This course will satisfy the Literature requirement in either the Creative Writing concentration or the Writing & Rhetoric concentration. It can satisfy a general English elective requirement in the Literature concentration. It can also be applied toward the English minor. Any student may take ENG 140, 150, 170 or 180 a second time for credit.

According to critic Brian McHale, the detective novel, in its search for truth and certainty, is the quintessential modernist fiction. Even in our so-called postmodern society, detective fiction is wildly popular, as evidenced by the proliferation of detective novels that address unique perspectives of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and, yes, postmodernism. While the roots of American detective fiction are widely debated, with critics locating diverse sources from classical literature to Edgar Allen Poe, it is indisputable that American writers created a unique type of detective fiction, influencing everything from French cinema to modern constructions of masculinity. In this course, we will analyze social, cultural, and academic ideas and themes within American detective fiction. The readings will represent detectives of different genders, ethnicities, races, and sexual orientations, illustrating the inclusiveness of the genre.

We will read novels such as The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosely, Blanche and the Talented Tenth by Barbara Neely, and Snakeskin Shamisen: by Naomi Hirahara.

Honors College students should note that when taught by English Department faculty, Honors electives 100 and above may be applied toward the English major or the English minor. However, please discuss your plan with Wayne Berninger in the English Department to confirm which requirement the course may be used to satisfy. The following are Honors electives being offered in Fall 2016.

HHE 128 Advanced Elective Seminar -- A Coney Island of the Mind (ID 6426)
Professor Louis Parascandola / Mondays 6-8:30 pm

HHE 133 Advanced Elective Seminar -- Tracing The Shifting Landscape of The American Dream from the 1940's-1960's -- Where Are We Now: Gender, Race, Rebellion, and Freedom through Literature, Film, & Pop Culture (ID 6431)
Professor Andrea Libin / Tuesdays 6-8:30 pm

Contact the instructor(s) or the Honors College director(s) for further information about these courses.