Course Descriptions

Undergraduate Courses

• English 401: Childhood in Literature. Mary Galbraith MWF 12:00-12:50 p.m. AH 2112
  
  Into the Wild
  Most stories about childhood stay within limits set by adults. Conventional adult perspectives dominate, and adult desires win in the end. Books like this are not children's literature. Children's literature expresses the point of view of someone small with the artistic mastery of someone big.Writers and picture book artists of genius seem to have "left the gate open" to the child they once were. They create haunting narratives out of their early fantasies and experiences. Their books have a wild streak. All the books we will read this semester go "into the wild." They tell a different kind of history.Welcome to Childhood's Literature.

  Tentative Reading List (some will be read in excerpt):
  Andersen, Hans Christian. Andersen's Fairy Tales
  Bemelmans, Ludwig. Madeline
  Browne, Anthony. Gorilla
  Burningham, John. Come Away from the Water, Shirley
  Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Game
  Dahl, Roald. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
  Kipling, Rudyard. The Jungle Books
  London, Jack. The Call of the Wild
  Rey, H. A. Curious George
  Ringgold, Faith. Tar Beach
  Seuss, Dr. And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
  Steig, William. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
  Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
  Van Allsburg, Chris. The Polar Express
  Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House on the Prairie

Undergraduate/Graduate Courses

• English 502: Adolescence in Literature. Alida Allison. MW 2:00-3:15 p.m. M-265
  
  Some of the most exciting publishing being done these days is in Adolescent/Young Adult fiction, as represented by the booklist below. Short stories and movies (Master Harold… and the Boys, and Osama) are part of the course as well. Short papers, quizzes, and a final are required.

  Tentative Booklist:
  Matt de la Pena, We Were Here
  M.T. Anderson, Feed
  Karen Hesse, Out of the Dust
  Walter Dean Myers, Fallen Angels
  Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
  Buchi Emecheta, The Slave Girl

• English 502: Adolescence in Literature. Authenticity and Self. Mary Galbraith. MWF 10:00-10:50 a.m. CSQ 201
  
  "[Literature] is that very fragile language which men set between the violence of the question and the silence of the answer."--Roland Barthes

  The literature of adolescence raises the great existential questions: what is the meaning of my life? who must I become? must I betray my deepest self in order to be loved and accepted? In this course we will consider the ways these questions have been (un)answered in outstanding works of literature over the past 200 years. Can such novels end authentically without killing off the protagonist or falsifying their premises?

  Tentative reading list (some will be read in excerpt, others in their entirety):
  
  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
  Hans Christian Andersen, "The Little Mermaid" (1837)
  Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847)
  Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861)
  Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
  Jack London, The Call of the Wild (1903)
  D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (1913)
  Richard Wright, Native Son (1940)
  J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye (1951)
  Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy (1964)
  Jose Lezama Luna, Paradiso (1966)
  Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War (1974)
  Peter Pohl, Johnny My Friend (1985)
  Yu Hua, Cries in the Drizzle (2007)

  Note: Literature published before 1923 is in the public domain and is therefore freely available as etext on the internet. Many class texts are also available in thrift editions (less than five dollars).

• English 501 P. Serrato. Tu/Th 2:00-3:15 p.m. HH206
  
  This edition of English 501 will be an ambitious one (is there any other way to design a class?) that will see us starting with some classics of children’s literature (Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh) and sliding (by way of Pippi Longstocking, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) toward more contemporary fare (Prietita and the Ghost Woman, Me and the Pumpkin Queen). We will also spend some time with some less “distinguished”—yet still highly interesting and instructive—works such as The Adventures of Captain Underpants and Danger on Vampire Trail. While it goes without saying that my overarching aim is to facilitate a savvy acquaintance on your part with each of the assigned texts, I must note that I will be especially interested this semester in using each text as a medium for introducing a specific theoretical approach. By the end of the semester, you will have had some practice with, among other things, psychoanalysis, existentialism, Marxism, deconstruction, and Chicana feminism, and you will have an acquaintance with the work of scholars such as Robyn Wiegman, Lisa Lowe, James Moy, Annette Wannamaker, Joseph T. Thomas, Jr., Barbara Creed, and Carole-Anne Tyler.

  Here is a preliminary list of the texts that we will cover. For a finalized list, feel free to email the instructor (pserrato@mail.sdsu.edu) over the break.

  Readings:
  Hoffman, Struwwelpeter
  Barrie, Peter Pan
  Milne, Winnie the Pooh
  Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking
  Yep, When the Circus Came to Town
  Dixon, Danger on Vampire Trail
  Kennedy, Me and the Pumpkin Queen
  Anzaldúa, Prietita and the Ghost Woman
  Pilkey, The Adventures of Captain Underpants
  Pilkey, Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy, Part 1: The Night of the Nasty Nostril Nuggets
  Scieszka, Cowboy and Octopus
  Alarcon, Angels Ride Bikes and Other Fall Poems
  Collier, Punch and Judy: A Short History with the Original Dialogue
  Reilly, Punch & Judy

• Engl 503. Children’s Lit Now. Jerry Griswold. Mondays, 1900-2140 (7:00 p.m. - 9:40 p.m.) HH210 (confirm time & place in the online Class Schedule)
  
  A hands-on course about reviewing Contemporary Children’s Books and Films:
  
  • We will examine very recent children’s movies (Disney’s “Up,” Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” Wes Anderson‘s “Fantastic Mr. Fox”) and how film reviewers wrote about them. Then we will review new Spring releases (like Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” starring Johnny Depp).
  • We will study contemporary prizewinning books (“The Tale of Desperaux,” “Skellig,” “The Higher Power of Lucky,” and “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”) and how book reviewers have written about them. Then we will review Spring releases and the newest prize-winners (starting with the announcement of the Newbery Award in January 2010).
  
  The instructor reviews books and films for the New York and Los Angeles Times, and this course is a kind of apprenticeship program. Students and would-be reviewers will be afforded opportunities to publish their work.
  
  
• ENGL 528: Shel Silverstein: Am Icon. Joseph Thomas, Thursdays 4:00-6:40 pm
  
  New seminar investigating the life & work of Shel Silverstein offered this spring! This course engages Shel Silverstein's diverse artistic output: his short plays, screen writing, comic strips, cartoons, picture books, poetry, music, fiction, travel writing (for Playboy magazine, no less), & of course, his lifetime project of living the life of the unrepentant, iconoclastic wag, Shel Silverstein.
  
  
• Engl. 528. Mark Twain: Dark Laughter. Jerry Griswold. Tuesdays 1530-1810 (3:30-6:10 p.m.) Hepner Hall 210. (Confirm the class meeting time in the published or online Class Schedule)
  
  (2010 marks the 175th anniversary of Sam Clemens’s birth, the 100th anniversary of his death, and the 125th anniversary of the publication of Huckleberry Finn. This course will be offered in conjunction with Love Library’s “Mark Twain Centenary Celebration” during Spring Semester.)

  The man in the white suit. The “Lincoln of our literature.” The man with the doubled name. This course will focus on four novels and on literary criticism about those works: Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper and Puddn’head Wilson. We will also read Justin Kaplan’s biography Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain and attend events at the Library’s Centenary Celebration: lectures, theater, displays and videos. We will have more than a few laughs. And we will examine Twain’s humor, as well as the subjects of race, crossdressing, religion, and twins.

Graduate Courses

• English 727: Children’s Literature and Film. June Cummins. Wednesdays, 3:30 to 6:40 p.m.
  
  In this class, we will explore the at times symbiotic and at other times parasitic relationship between children's books and the cinema. Why and how do certain texts for children get adapted into movies? What happens to these texts when the adaptation occurs? What are audience’s expectations for children’s films as opposed to or in tandem with their expectations of children’s books? How does the heightened emphasis on the visual in movies affect the narratives of literature that began in books and then moved to screens? What role does economics play in the adaptation of children’s books into film? How do other media, such as the Internet, affect the book/film relationship? How do movies serve up visions of childhood? We will examine and question the aesthetic, technical, and most of all cultural aspects of the ever-increasing phenomenon of adapting children’s books into movies.