FAll 2008 courses From Literature.sdsu.edu

 
 
 note! Some courses that we plan to offer are presently suppressed, but MAY appear here soon! Undergraduate Course Descriptions: NOTE: Course offerings listed below are subject to change. All courses may not be listed here. Refer to the Fall 2008 schedule or glass case in front of the English and Comparative Literature Department office for the most current listing. CLT 270A WORLD LITERATURE C. GUTHRIE MWF 12:00-12:50pm This course will survey primarily ancient and medieval world literature while offering comparisons with several contemporary novels and films.  We will, for example, pair Euripedes' Medea with John L'Heureux's The Shrine at Altamira, medieval French and English romances with Alain de Botton's comic novel On Love, and wisdom literature both West and East (St. Teresa of Avila, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Tao Te Ching) with Sean Penn's film Into the Wild.  In addition to the novels, our primary text will be the Norton Anthology of Western Literature, Vol. 1. C LT 270B WORLD LITERATURE C. GUTHRIE MWF 11-11:50 A survey of world literature from the 18th century to the present, this course will include writing from Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, considering new understandings that arise from cross-cultural comparison.  Taking the aesthetic, psychological, political, and ethical dimensions of the texts into account, we will also discuss comparisons amongst the works in light of the texts' historical contexts and literary history.  Our primary texts will be the Norton Anthology of Western Literature, vol. 2 and several selected novels. C LT 270B WORLD LITERATURE I. KAMINSKY M 3:30-6:10pm (Ecstatic, Erotic, Quixotic: International Poetry) This class is about the joy and madness of poetry. We explore poetry written around the world during various periods, movements and political regimes. In short, this is your chance to discover what makes the English language beautiful: we will be reading poetry written about love and heartbreak, passion and devotion, war and silence and God. Poems that make fun of us and make fun of other poems, writings about love-making and about talking to the dead. Poetry is one way humans have found to express something essential inside all of us. This class will attempt to find that essential moment and illuminate it in our conversations. We will attempt to understand, imitate, and learn from great poets of other ages and of our own. Poets from around the world such as Bacho, Pablo Neruda, Emily Dickinson, Brecht, Sapho, Li Young Lee, Celan, Akhmatova, Ernesto Cardinal, Walt Whitman, Carolyn Forche, Anna Swir, William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop, and many others, will be our companions this semester. We will discuss their work on line-by-line basis, consider what makes their genius relevant to our ears and mouths and days. We will adventurously compare their works, write about them, and attempt to imitate their words in our own writing, in order to get inside the skin of a poet of another age and nation, if only for a moment. Active participation. Frequent in-class writing. Three open-book in-class essays. Presentation. No final exam. C LT 405 THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE R. WHITAKER TTh 12:30-1:45pm Is the Bible literature? Who wrote it? When and why did they write it? How long did it take? Are there different types of biblical writings? Are the biblical characters real? Can one truly read it with understanding? These are just a handful of the questions this course will examine. To be sure, every serious thinker must not only think-through these questions but also tackle the Bible itself. It is no accident that it tops the bestsellers list. Within its covers, contain tales of betrayal, sibling rivalry, murder, stories-within-stories, comedy, tragedy, horror, melodrama, character formation, sagas, end times, and romance. The Bible is a must read. This class is first and foremost an educational experience! It is truly a multidimensional, multidisciplinary, and multimedia engagement with the Bible as a literary piece of art. Besides exposing the interplay between biblical content/form, prose/poetry, and fiction/non-fiction, this class aims at making each of us better literary critics: deconstructing ourselves as we deconstruct the text. If one leaves the class thinking exactly the same way about the Bible as when they entered, then the class has not done its job. Although this is not a biblical theology class, however relevant religious motifs will be explored. That is, this class is not meant to support or repudiate personal convictions. The Bible will be studied as literature. New trends in literary theory and criticism of the Bible will be explored too. The Bible will be the primary reading. Individual books will be contextualized and analyzed; while not losing sight of how the parts construct the whole. C LT 440 AFRICAN LITERATURE L. EDSON TTh 11:00-12:15pm An investigation of African literatures from various countries representing the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-independence periods. Texts to be read include Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (Nigerian), Flora Nwapa's Efuru (Nigerian), Ferdinand Oyono's Houseboy (Cameroon), Ousmane Sembene's God's Bits of Wood (Senegalese), Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood (Nigerian), and Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions (Zimbabwean). In class writing assignments, oral reports, mid-term and final exams. C LT 445 MODERN LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE M. JAFFE MWF 12:00-12:50pm (Contemporary Latin American Literature and Film) Along with the analysis of literary texts, Comparative Literature 445 will investigate the intersection of art and politics in Latin America. Readings will include works from Neruda, Ernesto Cardenal, Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Luis Borges, García Márquez, Manuel Puig, Augusto Monterroso, Octavio Paz, Luisa Valenzuela, and Laura Esquirel. Films will include Frida, Missing, Central Station, Like Water for Chocolate and Kiss of the Spider Woman. C LT 513 19TH CENTURY EUROPEAN LITERATURE Q. BAILEY MW 2:00-3:15pm The “long” nineteenth century in Europe might be said to start in 1789, with the French Revolution, and end in 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War. At its beginning, life moved by foot and by horse, as it had for millennia; by its end train, planes, and automobiles had changed life in a fundamental way. This course offers the opportunity to confront some of the major responses to this revolutionary century, from Balzac’s Père Goriot to Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, by way of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss, and Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. We will focus, in particular, on the representation of character in these works: How is character conceived? How is it represented? How does it change in the course of the century? And we will ask to what extent these changes are cultural? aesthetic? political? economic? C LT 561 MODERN FICTION L. EDSON TTh 12:30-1:45pm An investigation of the modern novel with special attention to narrative voice, strategies of representation, the role of language, perception, and issues of truth and authority. Texts to be read include Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Buchi Emecheta's The Bride Price, Albert Camus' The Plague, Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, Toni Morrison's Sula, Marguerite Duras' The Lover, and Albert Camus' The Fall. In-class writing assignments, oral reports, mid-term and final exams. C LT 580 MULTICULTURAL BRITISH WRITING E. FRAMPTON MWF 11:00-11:50am (Reinventing Home, Reconstructing Identity) Since the arrival of the steamship Empire Windrush, on June 22nd, 1948, carrying hundreds of Caribbean men and women to their new home in England, Britain has been “reinvented,” through the arrival of new communities of people, many from its various former colonies across the globe. In this class, we will read contemporary literature by British writers from a diverse range of racial and cultural backgrounds, who are significant contributors to the changing cultural and literary scene of the new Britain. As a part of our reading, we will raise broad questions about the U.K. as a multicultural nation and the degree to which traditional notions of “Britishness” have been undermined, reinforced, or re-imagined in recent decades. We will read works such as Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, Bernardine Evaristo’s Lara, Hanif Kareishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Diran Adebayo’s Some Kind of Black, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, Andrea Levy’s Small Island, and Caryl Philips’ The Final Passage. We will also explore the perspectives of various theorists of postcolonial theory, such as Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, and Gayatri Spivak. The class will require active participation in group discussions and debates, brief written assignments, regular short reading quizzes, a brief presentation to the class, and a final essay. ENGL 220 INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE M. BORGSTROM MWF 9:00-09:50am One of the primary values of literature, the novelist Richard Ford notes, is that it helps readers to see things "that are so well-known to us that they are not well noticed." Taking Ford's comment as our guide, this course examines some of the key elements of literature by reading and discussing several short stories, poems, plays, and novels. By paying attention to narrative technique, we'll look at how texts are constructed and how they reflect both philosophical and aesthetic values. We will also explore how literature operates across a range of cultures and cultural perspectives. Through close reading and active discussion, the course aims to hone students' analytical skills and to provide a critical vocabulary necessary for literary study. ENGL 220 INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE T. NELSON M 7:00-9:40pm How is the "narrative impulse" both the highest form of truth-telling and the lowest form of lying?or is it vice-versa?  This course will be an inquiry filled with questions, speculations, and conditional answers on the subject of how the narrative impulse represents an enduring human practice--maybe one hardwired into us--and therefore has importance not only to our understandings of literature and the arts (poetry, prose tales, plays, operas, symphonies, movies, etc.) but to practically every endeavor in our collective private, personal, and cultural lives. As we examine different types of literary, quasi-historical, and film narrative the course will focus on how the idea of narrative--to include its techniques, structures, and themes-- informs not only such things as the writing and telling of fictional stories, actual histories, scientific theories, and tales of political spin/vision (e.g., a certain presidential campaign going on in our midst), but how it is an essential factor in the perpetual human struggle between cherished "belief narratives" and disillusioning "truth narratives" that are redefined and/or recycled from one generation to another.  Readings will include two plays by Shakespeare, a play by Tennessee Williams, an historical novel about the American Civil War, Salinger's A Catcher in the Rye, Capote's In Cold Blood, and Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find."  Films seen and discussed will include Casablanca, Touch of Evil, Full Metal Jacket, a Hitchcock movie, and No Country for Old Men.  Students will be asked to write brief essays on specific aspects of narrative; compose narratives on assigned topics of current interest; and complete an in-class final exam. ENGL 220 INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE (CHILDREN’S LIT.) S. POTTS MW 2:00-3:15pm This introduction to the critical reading of literature will begin with some popular children’s classics. We will be focusing on questions of literary technique, psychological value, and popular culture, and on skills such as critical thinking and writing. Having investigated the structures, methods, and patterns that produce a readable work of literature, we will gradually read up through the age levels, seeking new themes and satisfactions in stories of pubescence, adolescence, and young adulthood. It is likely that this is the only course in which you could begin with Charlotte’s Web and end with Fight Club. ENGL 22 INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE naked mirrors, fractured souls: an intro to film and lit | mondays 4-6:40 NERICCIO Our Fall 2008 experimental, dynamic, and controversial class will use the concept of nakedness to explore the minds, bodies, and art of women and men in some of the tastiest, most outrageous and eye-opening literature this side of the planet. We will find that "naked" souls are common to the world of literature--in poetry, short stories, novels and theater--and that to do justice to the concept of "literature" we may well have to get naked in the process! Puritans need not grow faint: bathrobes and tents will be provided! The various naked minds, bodies, and psyches we encounter this term will teach us to rethink what it is we think of when we imagine the dimensions of the human mind--in the process we will learn again just how instrumental the "seductive mirror" of LITERATURE can be in exposing the riches and excesses of this mind. We will not limit ourselves to the written word in this seminar, as we will explore as well naked souls in graphic narrative, photography, painting and cinema. This course is open to ALL undergraduates without regard to your selected major and assumes no expertise in literature, film or fine art. If you are breathing, have an imagination and are not easily offended by adult issues, themes and images then you should seriously consider coming along for the ride. Readings include books, films, art, plays, and photography by Junot Diaz, Spike Jonze, Orson Welles, Franz Kafka, Meret Oppenheim, Rosario Castellanos, Oliver Mayer, Man Ray, Rene Magritte, Frida Kahlo, Los Bros. Hernandez, and others to be determined; note also, that surprise visits by living writers and artists are VERY likely for this class! NOTE: upper-division undergraduates and graduate students wishing to take this class for upper-division special study credit or graduate credit should email Professor Nericcio, memo@sdsu.edu as soon as possible for details. ENGL 260A ENGLISH LITERATURE E. FRAMPTON MWF 8:00-8:50am (Articulating Identities from Beowulf to Robinson Crusoe) Within this introductory survey course, we will gallop through eleven centuries of literature written in the English language, analyzing a sampling of significant literary texts, from the Anglo-Saxon period through the eighteenth century. To enliven and unify our study of this long and diverse span of literary history, we will employ a thematic approach, focusing on the degree to which a sense of personal or cultural identity is created in relation to outsiders, in terms of gender, race, economics, nationality, religion, or alternative categories. For instance, we will consider to what extent narratives of what it is to be a “man” or a “woman,” “civilized” or “barbarian” are formulated in binary terms, within a range of literary genres, including fiction, autobiography, poetry, the essay, and drama. Along the way, we will engage with the work of such writers as Aphra Behn, Margery Kempe, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Jonathan Swift, and Daniel Defoe. In addition to tracing the shifting perspectives and diverse techniques of these writers and others, you will be encouraged to relate what we read to your own experiences and knowledge of the world and to responses of other students, critics, and theorists. The class will require active participation in group discussions and debates, brief written assignments, regular short reading quizzes, and a brief presentation to the class. ENGL 260A ENGLISH LITERATURE E. KUGLER T 7:00-9:40pm (Inventing Identities: creating individuals, others and nations in literature of the British Isles) Course Information: English 260A is meant to give students a general introduction to literature from the British Isles from the Anglo-Saxon era through the eighteenth century. However, examining over eight hundred years of literary history raises the question of how to organize and sift through all that material. This course will examine its texts from three angles: the cultural context that produced the texts, thematic connections between the texts, and how these texts connect to our lives today. Two of the main questions running through the course: how does the text categorize people (hero vs. villain, native vs. alien, man vs. woman), and how does its perspective differ or connect with our own? Many of the texts went on to actively shape their society and still impact our popular culture today, so in addition to examining the texts in relation to their historical contexts, students will be encouraged to link this work to their own interests and perspectives Course Goals: By the end of the course, besides gaining a general sense of English literary history, students will be able to analyze a text, form an argument based on evidence from the text, and be aware of alternative positions to their argument. ENGL 260B ENGLISH LITERATURE Q. BAILEY W 7:00-9:40pm This course is a “Greatest Literary Hits” of the past two centuries, focusing on the period from the French Revolution of 1789 to the present time. This roughly two--hundred year period breaks down into 4 general sections: (i) The Romantics, (ii) The Victorians, (iii) The Modernists, and (iv) The Post-Moderns. Within each of these sections, the course will explore the relationship between historical and social events and the literary productions of the period. For the Romantics, for instance, the course will consider the effect of the American and French Revolutions on writers like William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In the Victorian section the impact of the industrial revolution will be assessed in terms of the work of Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The course will also consider the effect of the political, social and psychological developments of the early twentieth century on writers like Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, T.S Eliot and James Joyce, and will finish with a look at the different possibilities –from the serious to the playful – that writers like Stevie Smith, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney have explored in contemporary life. ENGL 281 INTRODUCTION TO SCREENWRITING M. JAFFE MW 2:00-3:15pm English 281 is an introductory course in writing the screenplay. We will cover the basic format of developing a script: essential terminology, character, conflict, plot, sequence, resolution, and dialogue. We will also view a number of films and parts of film from a writer’s standpoint and come to see what makes a successful screenplay. In addition, we will “workshop” your partially completed screenplay of ten pages, due by the term’s end. ENGL 301 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL NOVEL H. POLKINHORN TTh 2:00-3:15pm 
In this course we will take our experiences reading a wide variety of literature from different traditions in order to examine the structure of the mind. What can we learn about human emotions, cognition, stages of psychological development, and the like from some of the great works of literature? Special emphasis will be placed on exploring some of the fruitful distinctions between imaginative, literary-critical, and clinical forms of discourse. Weekly readings and short lectures will form the basis for our class discussions. There will be one mid-term essay exam and the final essay exam. Also, students will be expected to write brief responses to the readings. ENGL 302 INTRODUCING SHAKESPEARE T. CUMMINGS TTh 2:00-3:15pm Who is that guy? What do you do when you hear about some man, feel a little curious, and want to get to know him better? If you're courageous, you will just start talking. Those of us who are a little suspicious or shy might ask others about him and get some background information before asking to be introduced. Ultimately, however, if you really want to know that guy, you have to converse with him, do things together, and see what happens over time. 
     We're going to do all these things in this introduction to Shakespeare. You have undoubtedly heard about him already. Perhaps you know a lot about him and what he wrote, but perhaps you relate to him only as an icon, an unbreakable picture that is eternal and remote. In any case, if we want to introduce ourselves to him, we'll have to find out about the time when he lived, see what we do know about him as an historical personage, hear what others have to say about him, and read his work.
     Of course, as soon as we start reading, we'll notice that he speaks a different language! So, we're going to learn to understand it by hearing it spoken and by closely reading his plays. I think you'll find his language is stunning, gorgeous, and you might even find yourself quoting him regularly, not even on purpose.
 ENGL 306A CHILDREN'S LITERATURE J. CUMMINS-LEWIS TTh 9:30-10:45am In this class, we will survey various aspects of children’s literature, with emphases on fairy tales, picture books, and novels. In addition to learning basic literary terms and concepts, you will learn about various genres of children’s literature, including adventure, fantasy, and realism. We will learn to analyze children’s books through various perspectives to help us consider how children’s books are used and understood—by both children and adults. Throughout the course, we will be especially concerned with how children’s literature reflects–or creates–social attitudes toward children. Special note: This section of 306A may include some newer educational technologies. You are not at all required to have prior experience with technology in the classroom, but you should be open to learning about and using it. ENGL 306A CHILDREN'S LITERATURE S. POTTS M 7:00-9:40pm This course provides a comprehensive introduction to children's literature for students who are planning careers in elementary or middle school. Together we will read classics like Charlotte's Web and Newbery winners like Holes as well as a range of other materials for the young from picture books and children's verse to popular chapter books. The course will be organized along developmental lines, beginning with books for early readers, progressing through those for older children, and concluding with a sampling of YA novels. In the process, we will discuss not only the literary merits of each text but questions of audience, child development, and applicability in the classroom environment. Of course, a high value will be placed on the primary purpose of reading: entertainment. Just follow the Yellow Brick Road. ENGL 405 THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE R. WHITAKER TTh 12:30-1:45pm Is the Bible literature? Who wrote it? When and why did they write it? How long did it take? Are there different types of biblical writings? Are the biblical characters real? Can one truly read it with understanding? These are just a handful of the questions this course will examine. To be sure, every serious thinker must not only think-through these questions but also tackle the Bible itself. It is no accident that it tops the bestsellers list. Within its covers, contain tales of betrayal, sibling rivalry, murder, stories-within-stories, comedy, tragedy, horror, melodrama, character formation, sagas, end times, and romance. The Bible is a must read. This class is first and foremost an educational experience! It is truly a multidimensional, multidisciplinary, and multimedia engagement with the Bible as a literary piece of art. Besides exposing the interplay between biblical content/form, prose/poetry, and fiction/non-fiction, this class aims at making each of us better literary critics: deconstructing ourselves as we deconstruct the text. If one leaves the class thinking exactly the same way about the Bible as when they entered, then the class has not done its job. Although this is not a biblical theology class, however relevant religious motifs will be explored. That is, this class is not meant to support or repudiate personal convictions. The Bible will be studied as literature. New trends in literary theory and criticism of the Bible will be explored too. The Bible will be the primary reading. Individual books will be contextualized and analyzed; while not losing sight of how the parts construct the whole. ENGL 494 MODERN FICTION OF THE U.S. P. SERRATO MW 2:00-3:15pm This semester we will read an intriguing sampling of fiction by U.S. authors such as Edith Wharton, John Steinbeck, H.P. Lovecraft, Don DeLillo, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Junot Díaz. Texts as diverse as Ethan Frome, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Unaccustomed Earth will allow us to explore subjects as diverse as love, class, race, identity, and madness. Presently, the works that we will be reading include: Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie Edith Wharton Ethan Frome Truman Capote Breakfast at Tiffany’s John Steinbeck The Winter of Our Discontent H.P. Lovecraft The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Grant Morrison and Dave McKean Batman: Arkham Asylum Don DeLillo White Noise Toni Morrison Love: A Novel Junot Díaz The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Jhumpa Lahiri Unaccustomed Earth For a finalized reading schedule for this course, feel welcome to email the instructor (pserrato@mail.sdsu.edu) during the summer. You’re also welcome to email me if you’d like to request that I add to our reading list something that is of special interest to you. ENGL 501 LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN M. GALBRAITH MW 2:00-3:15pm The world from a child's or animal’s perspective. As written by adults who left a window open... 
 Most books are available from the library.  Orson Scott Card Ender's Game  Charles Dickens David Copperfield  Mark Twain Tom Sawyer Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden
Astr:d Lindgren Pippi Longstocking  Lois Sachar Holes  Roald Dahl Matilda  David Shannon No, David! E.B. White Charlotte’s Web
Hans Christian Andersen The Ugly Duckling BeatrixPotter Peter Rabbit  Jack London The Call Of The Wild Rudyard Kipling Jungle Books A. A. Milne Winnie The Pooh
Anthony Browne Gorilla  Felix Salten Bambi Dr. Seuss The Cat In The Hat Jean de Brunhoff The Story of Babar ENGL 502 ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE P. SERRATO TTh 11:00-12:15pm & TTh 12:30-1:45pm This semester we will survey the ways that adolescence has been depicted in a splendid sample of texts. We will begin by accompanying Alice, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys on their adventures in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Secret of the Old Clock, and The Tower Treasure, respectively, contemplating on the way how the experience of adolescence is configured in these early texts. Then we will take an interesting look at the landscapes of male adolescence drawn out by James Joyce and J.D. Salinger in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and The Catcher in the Rye. After looking at some other classics like Judy Blume’s Deenie and S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and asking, What’s with Deenie’s secret place? and, Why does Pony Boy have Paul Newman on his mind? We’ll plunge into more contemporary fare that expands the parameters of adolescent literature. We’ll consider the breakthroughs managed by Patricia McCormick in Cut, Zoe Trope in Please, Don’t Kill the Freshman, Juan Felipe Herrera in Downtown Boy, and Darren Shan in the first installment of his new Gothic/horror series Demonata. To close the semester, we will step back and explore the politics of the representation of adolescence with Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Requirements include 2 exams, a final exam, a paper, and frequent in-class writing. ENGL 519 ETHNIC LITERATRUE OF THE U.S. J. BROOKS MWF 11:00-11:50am (Native American Women Writers) Can you name one American Indian woman writer? Can you name more than one? What matters to Native women writers? What do they have to teach us about the past? What are their visions for the future? In this course, we will find answers to these questions as we read powerful and moving essays, poems, novels, and plays by American Indian women authors and learn about the historical and cultural contexts that have shaped this rich and important body of American literature.   Required Texts: Andrea Smith (Cherokee) Conquest Joy Harjo (Mvskoke) and Gloria Bird (Spokane) Reinventing the Enemy’s Language Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo) Storyteller Louise Erdrich (Annishinabe) Love Medicine Jaye Darby and Stephanie Fitzgerald (Cree) Keepers of the Morning Star   Course Requirements: Attendance and participation, presentation, book review, short papers, quizzes, research project. ENGL 525 LITERATURE OF THE US 1960-PRESNT J. THOMAS TTh 12:30-1:45pm (Contemporary American Literature: American Apocalypse) This is a course in contemporary American literature--with a twist. The literary scene of the last, say, fifty years--that is, post 1960--is complicated and contested. It has produced more wonderful writers producing more wonderful works than you could read in a lifetime. Thus, I have eschewed the coverage model for this class, for how could we "cover" such a field? Even if we read those writers now deemed most "important," those canonized by their own peers, how could we know that those writers would be deemed most important in fifty years, in a hundred years? Indeed, given the topic of this course, how can we know that America (or the United States, more properly) will even be here in fifty years, in a hundred? So, instead, I have taken a alternate view, and, rather than selecting safely from the canon, such as it is, I have chosen a wide array of books from various traditions, prose, poetry, visual literature, which engage what it means to be American, and, in particular, what it means to be an American in times of crisis, when, as Art Spiegelman seems to feel in In the Shadow of No Towers, the world as we know it has ended. Some say that we should be judged not by how we behave in times of plenty, but by how we behave in the worst of times, in times of crisis. So. We'll be the judge of America, and contemporary American literature. 
Texts: The Weather by Kenneth Goldsmith; The Fall of America : Poems of These States 1965-1971 by Allen Ginsberg; This Connection of Everyone with Lungs : Poems by Juliana Spahr; The Western Lands by William S. Burroughs; White Noise by Don DeLillo; Modern Life: Poems by Matthea Harvey; Feed by M.T. Anderson; Jam Alerts by Linh Dinh; & In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman ENGL 533 SHAKESPEARE P. HERMAN TTh 12:30-1:45pm (Shakespeare and the Problem of Genre)
 
In this course, we will read representative examples of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances (time will not allow us to sample his non-dramatic poetry) with an eye toward how Shakespeare uses and puts into question the generic theories of his time. According to Shakespeare’s contemporaries, what makes a comedy a comedy? What makes a tragedy a tragedy? What assumptions did Shakespeare’s audience have when they went to see a play billed as a comedy or a history? As we will see, Shakespeare regularly invokes generic expectations only to challenge them. We will also be paying attention to the social and economic backgrounds of his plays, and how Shakespeare both intervenes and shapes the contexts of his plays. Because Shakespeare wrote in all genres throughout his career, the readings will be chronological rather than separated into different categories. Readings will include Titus Andronicus, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Measure for Measure, King Lear, The Tempest, and The Winter’s Tale. Evaluation will include exams and a research paper. ENGL 537 MILTON M. GRATTAN TTh 12:00-13:15pm This course entails a critical examination of the major works, including Paradise Lost, by an author who was both a central figure in English political life in a revolutionary age and, in the view of most critics, the greatest non-dramatic poet in the English language. Despite these lofty accolades, we will not read Milton merely to venerate him, but rather to assess his writings as they engage with significant social, political and theological issues of his day. To this end, we will read selections from a brief history of the period to better understand the complex milieu in which Milton’s works were produced. Primarily, however, we will study Milton’s poetry and prose, including his arguments concerning censorship and divorce, and his justification for the execution of a monarch. ENGL 541A ENGLISH DRAMA E. FRAMPTON MWF 9:00-9:50am (Early English Comic Drama: Text and Performance) In this course, we will consider early English dramatic literature, from the Middle Ages through the Elizabethan Era and just beyond, with a particular focus on comedy. The emphasis will be on plays as blueprints for performance and on performance as the realization of dramatic scripts. Therefore, in addition to reading the dramatic texts, we will have the opportunity to attend a professional production together, to watch films of stage productions, and to screen clips of major film versions of some of the comedies that we read. During the semester, you will write a production plan for a play, based on your critical interpretation; and, at the end of the semester, you will perform either an extended monologue on your own or a scene with other students in the class, using costume elements and props. While we will situate the plays within their original historical, social, and cultural contexts, we will also address ourselves to the ways in which they are read, performed, and understood today. Scholarship on the period, on performance theory, and on the genre of comedy will be considered alongside the primary texts and the productions. The class will require active participation in group discussions and debates, written assignments, and regular short reading quizzes. ENGL 543 BRITISH LITERATURE 1800-1900 Q. BAILEY T 7:00-9:40pm (The Romantics) This course is focused on the major issues, controversies and authors of the English Romantic period and the range of answers that writers offered to the social, political and economic questions posed by the upheavals of the age. We will look, in particular, at the French Revolution of 1789 and its effects on writers like Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Shelley. We will also consider the controversy over the slave trade that invigorated public debate in the 1780s; the Napoleonic wars that engulfed Europe for the best part of twenty years; and the emergence of new cultural forms (like museums, art galleries and periodicals) that took place in the Romantic period. These considerations will take us to Byron and Keats, but also to Mary Shelley, Hannah More, Ann Yearsley and William Hazlitt. The overarching objective is to consider the broad array of writing – both canonical and alternative – that the era produced and to look, in detail, at the poetic breakthroughs that characterized the Romantic movement. ENGL 549 TRANSATLANTIC LITERATURE E. FRAMPTON MWF 12:00-12:50pm (Contemporary Fiction in English from Around the Globe) In recent years, literary theorist Homi Bhabha has called for a turning away from the “notion of a core culture and its others,” proposing the alternative perspective of “hybrid cosmopolitanism,” which would involve “new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting beyond one’s particular society.” He envisions “supraregional” solidarities and sensibilities, which would not erode cultural difference nor merely universalize on the basis of a Western standard. This cosmopolitanism would manifest the “desire to reach beyond the nation-space to embrace a wider humanity,” by means of “translation or transformation.” In keeping with such theorizations, in this course we will focus on contemporary fiction written in the English language that adopts a transatlantic, or “cosmopolitan” perspective, exploring the intersections of different cultures as characters travel from country to country, across the globe, and encounter new worlds and experiences. Much of what we will read could be categorized as “postcolonial” literature, in that it issues from such former colonies of Britain as India, Jamaica, and Nigeria. Using the theories of Bhabha as a launching pad, we will explore notions of assimilation and difference, of alienation, of hybridity, and of home – as both nation and domestic space. We will read literature such as Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby, Michèle Roberts’s Daughters of the House, Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, J.M. Coetzee’s Foe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, Erna Brodber’s Myal, and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. The class will require active participation in group discussions and debates, written assignments, regular short reading quizzes, and a brief presentation to the class. ENGL 549 LITERATURE AND TERRORISM P. HERMAN TTh 9:30-10:45am

The purpose of this class is to examine how various writers and artists have dealt with the pre-eminent question of our time: terrorism. How has mainstream literature in the West represented terrorism?   How have contemporary novelists, filmmakers, and songwriters confronted 9/11 and similar events? What makes terror “terror”? What does it do and how does it do this? How has this topic been dealt with in earlier literature? In the mainstream Western tradition, terrorism is something outside of us, something beyond the limits of civilizations and its institutions and values.  Terrorism is what threatens us from beyond, be it a supernatural monster, as in Beowulf, or from a cave in Afghanistan. Yet as we will see, literature often demonstrates that terrorism is something that has its roots deep within our culture, that there is a link, a kinship even, between the terrorist and the object of terror. We will also investigate how the various literary treatments of 9/11 continue yet differ from previous literary imaginings of terrorism. Readings will include works by William Shakespeare, John Milton, John le Carré, John Updike, Don DeLillo, Bruce Springsteen, Toby Keith, and Leonard Cohen.  Students should be warned that some of the works required in this class contain graphic violence and sexuality. Student discretion is advised. Evaluation is uncertain, but will include a research paper.

 ENGL 563 FEMINIST LITERATURE ALL-STARS J. BROOKS MWF 10:00-10:50am Everyone is welcome in this class, where together we’ll read high-octane women writers who have rocked the world:  Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, Alice Walker, Dorothy Allison, Helene Cixous, and others.  What do these feminist literary all-stars have to say about truth, love, death, sex, and freedom?  Can books change the way you see your body, your childhood, your love life, your future, and the world?  Requirements:  Weekly informal writing; quizzes; presentations; one final 10 page paper. ENGL 577 TECHNIQUES OF SCREENWRITING N. KENDRICKS T 7:00-9:40pm In ENGL 577, artist, filmmaker, writer and MCASD Film Curator Neil Kendricks will lead adventurous students on an exploration of the screenwriter’s creative process, techniques, discipline and vital role in shaping the content and thematic concerns of contemporary cinema. The course’s lively discourse will delve into reading such award-winning screenplays as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Diablo Cody’s Juno, Paul Schrader’s Taxi Driver, and other powerful examples of contemporary screenplays that dare to make viewers’ experiences of the cinema into an active engagement for both the intellect and the senses. During the course, the instructor will screen excerpts from films (along with select feature-length and short films to be screened in their entirety) to further examine the screenplay’s function in primarily narrative-driven films. These examples will also facilitate engaged class discussions on how great screenplays help to establish a solid foundation of compelling storytelling that makes remarkable filmmaking possible. Kendricks - who is a talented visual artist, filmmaker, photographer and writer - has also assembled an informative ENGL 577 Reader, which includes many of his published interviews with such filmmakers as Tarantino, Anderson, and other notable cinematic artists, as well as numerous short pieces on jump starting your creativity as an aspiring screenwriter. In addition to looking at the screenplays of established filmmakers, this experiential course will incorporate a workshop where students will develop and write their own original short-film scripts, following the format and techniques used by working screenwriters and auteurs alike. Students will also write either a treatment for a feature-length, narrative film or a documentary proposal for a non-fiction film project. During the course’s workshop sessions, students will share their writing, as well as receive and offer feedback to their fellow budding screenwriters. Throughout the course’s investigation of the screenplay’s central role in the filmmaking process, as well as students crafting their original short-film scripts, ENGL 577 will also look at how the other arts-- literature, painting, photography and other creative disciplines-- often impact the cinema and screenwriters’ ambitious quests to create compelling and insightful, moving, and illuminating cinematic worlds. ENGL 580 THE WRITING OF POETRY M. JAFFE M 4:00-6:40pm English 580 is an advanced poetry workshop for the beginning and more experienced writer. Besides discussing traditional forms of poetry, we will also examine less familiar forms, such as the prose poem, epistolary (letter), "found" and "imitation" poems. Requirements: four poems and a short paper on a poet who informs your own work. ENGL 581W THE WRITING OF FICTION M. FREILICHER M 7:00-9:40pm Students will write two complete short stories, in drafts. The first story will be critiqued by me and members of your peer group. Your revised version will then be graded, but you can continue working on this story, showing me as many drafts as you wish: in that case, your grade would be based only on the final version you submit. The second half of the semester will be devoted to reading and critiquing everyone’s first drafts of story #2: you’ll need to supply copies to the whole class. (You’ll be responsible for providing written critiques for about half of these drafts.) Revised story #2 will be due finals week. Course readings include fiction by Kafka, Edith Wharton, Isaac Babel, Clarice Lispector, Kenzaburo Oe, Jane Bowles, John Cheever, Lydia Davis, Stephen-Paul Martin, Julio Cortazar, Nella Larsen, and others. We’ll talk about the rich social, historical and autobiographical contexts from which these diverse works emerged: you will not be responsible for knowing that information, but hopefully it will be helpful in understanding and appreciating this literature. Scheduled reading quizzes will not ask you to interpret the stories: they function to show me that you’ve done the reading, and to stimulate class discussion. Several analytic writing exercises on these stories will focus on their structures and the writers’ rhetorical strategies. ENGL 581W THE WRITING OF FICTION H. JAFFE T 7:00-9:40pm Office Hrs.: 5:30-6:45, Tuesday and Thurs. Office phone: 594-5469 E-Mail: hjaffe@mail.sdsu.edu This course is designed for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, English majors and other majors, who are writing fiction. Each student will be required to submit six short fictions, five of which will be graded. The story assignments are graduated in difficulty, each text concentrating on a different aspect of the medium, such as dialogue, characterization, point of view, and plot. A few of these exercises will be begun in class and completed at home. I will also supply several writing prompts. Every student will get at least one opportunity to have her/his story xeroxed and read aloud. Each class session will consist of four or more xeroxed stories to be read aloud. Then two (rotating) student-critics will each deliver a fairly brief (five to ten minutes) commentary on the particular story. Finally the class and instructor will comment on the text. Each student will have written her/his commentary, and these comments (signed), along with the instructor's, will be passed on to the writer whose story has been critiqued. Besides reading and critiquing your fiction, we will discuss stories and texts from the reader (Create Unacceptable Images) which bear on your writing. And we will discuss questions of writing, art and culture which seem relevant to our concerns as fiction writers. ENGL 584W WRITING INFORMAL ESSAYS M. JAFFE W 4:00-6:40pm English 584W is a creative writing workshop in nonfiction, especially the essay as an art form, as investigative reporting, or as a confessional memoir. We'll discuss point of view, characterization, plot development, and so forth. Our readings will include In Cold Blood; Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness; Nickel and Dimed; Me Talk Pretty One Day; and Persepolis (a graphic memoir). Films will include Capote, The Thin Blue Line; Roger & Me; and Sicko. Graduate Course Descriptions: NOTE: Course offerings listed below are subject to change. All courses may not be listed here. Refer to the Fall 2008 schedule or glass case in front of the English and Comparative Literature Department office for the most current listing. ENGL 600 INTRODUCTION TO GRADUATE STUDY J. BROOKS M 7:00-9:40pm This class will serve as an orientation to the advanced study of literature. Think of literary criticism as a long conversation that has taken place across the centuries. My goal is to prepare you to join the conversation with an understanding of its basic critical terms, a sense of its rules, forms, and customs, as well as a healthy sense of your own interests, instincts, and goals as a reader and critic. Our readings will allow us approach the work of literary criticism both in theory, through a review of the big questions and important terms that have structured contemporary literary inquiry, but also in practice, as we conclude the semester with a collective reading of Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich.   REQUIRED TEXTS: Richter, ed. Falling into Theory (2d edition) Lentricchia Critical Terms for Literary Study (2d edition) Erdrich Love Medicine (Harper, 2006)   COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Journals, presentation, research assignment. ENGL 601 LITERARY STUDY IN A MULTICULTURAL WORLD J. ROBINETT T 4:00-6:40pm 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 the 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 empire is central to our exploration. Readings may be supplemented during the semester, but the basic list of required texts includes: 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 Study Possible 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. ENGL 604A SEM: 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE T 4:00-6:40pm J. CUMMINS-LEWIS Now that we are well into the 21st century, we can look back over the 20th century and discern certain patterns and trends in children’s literature. What can we determine about 20th-century culture through examining these patterns? Can we reach conclusions about American concepts of childhood, families, institutions, and of the nation itself through children’s literature? Why did certain books become classics and what do these classics tell us about ideologies and agendas? Why are some books seen as iconoclastic and what cultural work do these texts do? In all the books we read, how are attitudes toward gender, class, sexuality, and race solidified or challenged? How powerful, ultimately, is children’s literature in creating—or subverting—norms and values? We will examine an array of books in order to do our investigation. Proceeding somewhat chronologically, we will look at books considered to be “classics,” such as Caddie Woodlawn; books that have been very popular with children and young adults, including breakthrough novels such as Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and The Outsiders; and books that broke new ground in their representations of Americans, such as Parrot in the Oven and American Born Chinese. We will examine books for children of varying ages. The titles listed above are possibilities and could change; in addition, the list is far from exhaustive. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions of titles, please email me at jcummins@mail.sdsu.edu. English 604C Eighteenth-Century European Literature J. Farber This course will focus on major works of the period, with an emphasis on literature of the later eighteenth-century in France, England, and Germany. We'll be studying the literature in its cultural context, and particularly in the context of the Enlightenment and what are sometimes regarded as “pre-Romantic” developments, such as “sensibility” and Sturm und Drang. The reading list includes Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Lespinasse, Beaumarchais, Laclos, Montagu, Collier, Smollett, Blake, Wollstonecraft, Austen, Goethe, and Novalis. We’ll also be looking at some visual art, reading a short biography of Mozart, and listening to music by eighteenth-century composers including Vivaldi, Handel, Bach (and his sons), Scarlatti, Boccherini, Haydn, and Mozart. With all due respect to the very legitimate reservations one might have about our ability to “enter into” another age, still, it has to be said that what I have in mind for this particular course is a kind of time travel. ENGL 624 SHAKESPEARE'S SISTERS C. FIELD Th 4:00-6:40pm Shakespeare’s Sisters: Reading the Bard in the Context of Renaissance Women’s Writing Since the publication of Virginia Woolf’s famous lament in A Room of One’s Own, for the lost women writers of the past (including Shakespeare’s Sister), scholars have found that, in fact, many women in early modern England were literate and well-educated, and they often chose to write in a variety of modes and genres. They kept diaries, collected recipes, exchanged letters, and some also composed poetry, romances, translations, and plays. In this course, we will read some of these writings by early modern English and European women within the context of Shakespearean drama. We will read the diary of Anne Clifford; part of Mary Wroth’s fantasy-romance, Urania; a maternal legacy by Elizabeth Jocelin; religious poetry by the prolific Eleanor Davies; love poetry by Queen Elizabeth I; a closet drama, Miriam, by the Catholic writer, Elizabeth Cary; selected essays by the Frenchwoman Marie de Gournay; and a memoir attributed to Catalina de Erauso, a Spanish transvestite nun who ran away from a convent to live in the New World. We will study these women writers alongside of four of Shakespeare’s plays which profile women who challenge traditional, Renaissance ideals of femininity: Rosalind in As You Like It, Viola in Twelfth Night, Ophelia in Hamlet, and Katharine in The Taming of the Shrew. By reading these plays within the context of early modern women’s writing, we will explore how women created and explored modes for speaking and writing in a patriarchal society that discouraged women’s self-expression. Assignments will include an annotated bibliography, a conference-length paper and a seminar paper. The emphasis will be on developing an understanding of Renaissance women writers within their historical and literary contexts. The course will also emphasize students’ professional development as scholars and teachers. Students will be encouraged to submit their papers to professional conferences and/or peer-reviewed journals, and a list of publication venues will be given out at the beginning the semester. ENGL 630 FORM & THEORY OF POETRY S. ALCOSSER W 4:00-6:40pm Physicist Niels Bohr pointed out in his theory of complementarity that the best overview we can have of the world is always partial and incomplete; only by entertaining multiple points of view, building from a composite picture, can we approach the real richness of the world. You can see this overview in the meditative poems of Anne Bradstreet (1666) and Wallace Stevens (1915), as well as in the postwar poems of Eastern European writer Czeslaw Milosz, the autobiographical explorations of Derek Walcott, and the postmodern constructions of Lyn Hejinian. This course will explore the long poem--the modern poetic sequence and its variations: epics, cantos, serial poems, verse novels, poetic essays, polyphonic voice constructions, collaborations et alia. M.L. Rosenthal and Sally M. Gall define The Modern Poetic Sequence as the result of each poet’s need to mobilize and give direction to otherwise scattered energies. A sequence encompasses disparate and often powerfully opposed tonalities and energies, a complex music involving a number of radiant centers. The modern poetic sequence goes many-sidedly into who and where we are. Each writer will spend the semester: reading and responding to long poems, creating a chapbook that contains one long poem (or sequence of shorter poems or hybrid texts) that explores a question or idea. The question may be tragic, comic, domestic, metaphysical, political; the challenge will be to find a rhetorical form that holds some possibility for improvisation. We will cultivate the poetics of Dorothy Richardson who believed that the writer’s best place is to be in all camps and no camp at once. ENGL 631 FORM & THEORY OF FICTION H. POLKINHORN Th 3:30-6:10pm A study of the theory of fictional forms conducted through examination of a range of fiction and ideas about literary/textual forms. Required readings form the basis for class discussions and come from several national literatures. Students will be encouraged to develop their own theories of fictional form growing out of and informing their creative work. English 724          D. H. LAWRENCE AND HIS WORLD                               G. BUTLER M  7:00-9:40pm           We will read some of the most important work (fiction, poetry, essays) of D. H. Lawrence as well as work by other authors from his world – Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and Aldous Huxley – in order to understand him in his own cultural context, and we will also in class discussion try to see to if what he is saying is or not relevant, in whole or in part, to our world today. A seminar paper that contributes to either of these concerns is required, and there will be a final examination (essay) on the reading.   ENGL 725 SEM: HAUNTING IN AMERICA M. BORGSTROM M 4:00-6:40pm (Spectral Nation: Minority Identity and the Culture of Haunting) This course will examine textual and cultural representations of ghosts and haunting as a way to acknowledge the racial, gender, and sexual identities not traditionally given a voice in early American culture. By exploring the ways that the spectral figure demands recognition from the living, we will analyze how the undead exposes the cultural space between what counts as real and what does not. We will pay particular attention to the tradition of the American Gothic and its transgressive representations of illicit desire. We will explore how spectral figures frequently engage in socially unacceptable behaviors, and we will consider how such manifestations might stand in for those identities understood as different, unconventional, or perverse. Through these considerations, we will examine the ways in which ghosts and haunting offer an indirect commentary on social subjectivity in the early years of the nation as they provide a voice for those who are pushed to the margins of United States culture. Possible literary works by Brockden Brown, Poe, Spofford, Hawthorne, Crafts, Stowe, Melville, Chesnutt, Keckley, James, Wharton, and Morrison. Possible critical works by Terry Castle, Avery Gordon, Cathy Davidson, Toni Morrison, Avital Ronell, Jacques Derrida, Ruth Brandon, Diana Basham, Bret Carroll, Kathleen Brogan, Teresa Goddu, Karen Halttunen, and Robert K. Martin. ENGL 726 SEM: POSTCOLONIAL WOMEN WRITERS L. EDSON T 4:00-6:40pm 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), and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria). 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. ENGL 750F MFA SEMINAR: FICTION WRITING H. JAFFE Th 7:00-9:40pm AL 269 Office Hrs.: 5:30-6:45, Tuesday, Thurs. Office phone: 594-5469, E-Mail: 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." A characteristic session will consist three xeroxed 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. 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 the text, offer remedial suggestions where necessary, and briefly summarize. I will collect and read all the commentaries, which will constitute one of the requirements for the course. It is possible, even likely, that I will alter the reading and critiquing format, depending on input from the class. Specifically, I would like to bring more culture to bear on the classic films, music, books, and the bleeding world outside the university. ENGL 750P MFA SEMINAR: POETRY WRITING I. KAMINSKY M 7:00-9:40pm (Short Poem: Its Craft and Uses Around the World) The course will consist of three elements: poetry workshop, lecture/discussion, and individual mentorship, which will not be treated separately, but rather as integral components of a course in poetry and poetics. During our workshop sessions, your work will be discussed, and you will receive commentary from each member of the class. During our lecture/discussion we will concentrate on our study of various short poems from around the world. I have created this class in response to the fact that too much attention is being paid in workshops elsewhere in America to how the manuscript should be arranged to best attract a publisher's attention. However, not enough time is spent on perfecting the lyricism and craft of poems themselves. As a result our bookstores are flooded with beautifully & thoughtfully arranged books of rather weak individual lyrics. Therefore, our lecture/discussion in this class will focus on the craft of writing an effective, powerful, and unforgettable short poem. On line-by-line basis, we will discuss the process, the forms, and possibilities of music, image, and tone in the short piece. We will try to find guidance in short poems from various traditions of France, Russia, Japan, Ireland, India, Africa, Germany, Australia, Poland and our own English/American tradition. We will read these poems very attentively and respond extensively with our own writings. Because this class, in many ways, will be about creating your own connections to a larger tradition, I will expect to spend a great deal of time working with each of you during our individual mentorship sessions. You will be asked to meet with me individually--for several one-hour long meetings during the semester--to discuss your poetry on line-by-line basis. This course is open to MFA and MA students. Interested undergraduate students should contact the instructor directly before signing up. ENGL 750P MFA SEMINAR: POETRY WRITING S. ALCOSSER Th 4:00-6:40pm (Experiments in Postmodern Poetic Form) You are invited to explore what Lou Robinson calls the nuances of postmodern expression: writing that breaks formal limits, dismantles conventional notions of genre, merges poetic line with prose sentence, shakes up hierarchical relations within syntax, and dissolves the boundaries between self and other, narrator and author, writer and reader. We will read the poems and essays of modern and contemporary writers and respond with our own dramatic monologues, polyphonic voice constructions, collaborations and prose poems. We will create analogues as we assume the voices that surround us: detective stories; sermons; operas; situation comedies. Each poet will write, assemble, and revise a chapbook of eight poems during the semester. These poems will be circulated individually and discussed in workshop. On the final evening, one of your poems will step off the page. It might be a performance piece, an art installation, or a yet-undiscovered form that will actively extend the borders of text and context. http://literature.sdsu.edu/2008/fall/naked/index.htmlmailto:memo@sdsu.edu?subject=heyABOUTthat220forUPPERdivisionCREDITmailto:pserrato@mail.sdsu.edumailto:hjaffe@mail.sdsu.edumailto:jcummins@mail.sdsu.edumailto:hjaffe@mail.sdsu.edushapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3shapeimage_1_link_4shapeimage_1_link_5

The Department of English and Comparative Literature

San Diego State University

The Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University continues to feature some of the West Coast’s most dynamic experiences in literature, literary history, cultural studies, and critical theory.