ENGL 300

Spring 2017 All Classes

All Classes

Writing About Lit Text&Culture

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Credit: 3 hours.

Writing-intensive, variable topic course designed to improve English majors' ability to write clear, well-organized, analytically sound and persuasively argued essays relevant to literary studies. Introduces students to some strategies of literary criticism and research through examination of critical texts appropriate to course topic. For majors only.

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement; one year of college literature or consent of instructor.

This course satisfies the General Education Criteria in Fall 2022 for:

Advanced Composition

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ENGL 300 class schedule data for spring 2017
CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
32121	Lecture-Discussion	P	11:00AM -12:15PM	TR	127 English Building	Hansen, J	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/17/17-05/03/17 Degree Notes: Advanced Composition course. Section Title: Heroism and National Identity Section Info: Topic Section P: Heroism and National Identity Over the last few years we’ve been subjected to a great deal of heroic rhetoric, much of which has had a particularly partisan and political flavor. Of course, in the wake of global terrorism, we’ve witnessed nations that invoke bellicose rhetoric, but we’ve also seen a nearly unprecedented wave of superhero and super-spy texts that attempts to respond to, challenge, and, in many cases, foster this rhetoric. Why have heroes become so political? Well, that’s precisely what we’ll aim to figure out in this course. The class will trace out the logic of Western cultural nationalism by assessing its need to establish heroic ideals as ideological apparatuses. Certain heroes, it seems, pop into the cultural imaginary at moments of crisis, and this course will explore what function these fictional heroes serve for a nation’s real populace. We will also pay close attention to texts that question traditional models of heroism, texts that tend to think that heroism, like more vulgar forms of nationalism, never really hold up to careful scrutiny. Readings will include theoretical texts by Louis Althusser, Etienne Balibar, and Frantz Fanon and literary texts such as: Virgil’s The Aeneid, Poetry by Alfred Tennyson and Wilfred Owen, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Major Sherlock Holmes Stories, W.B. Yeats’s Cuchulain Play Cycle, H.Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger, Siegel and Schuster’s original Superman stories, Lee and Kirby’s Fantastic Four Masterworks Vol. One, Lee and Romita’s The Death of Gwen Stacy, and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. We will also view and respond to several films. Requirements will include weekly short essays, three 6-8 page essays, and active class participation. It is strongly recommended that all English and Teaching of English majors take ENGL 300 and ENGL 301 BEFORE taking any other 300- or 400-level courses.
51758	Lecture-Discussion	P2	11:00AM -12:15PM	TR	131 English Building	Freeburg, C	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/17/17-05/03/17 Degree Notes: Advanced Composition course. Section Title: The Afterlives of Slavery Section Info: Topic Section P2: The Afterlives of Slavery This course focuses on slavery, performance, and the idea of black culture from Zora Neal Hurston’s writing on black singing to W.E.B’s historical texts to Saturday Night Live’s (SNL) comedic skits. In addition to these cultural texts we will examine important debates about slavery and black social life from the 1950s to the present as well as visual and performance artists’ responses to these very public conversations about America’s past. By enriching and expanding what counts as social life, self-revelation, and freedom, this course will discuss slavery and black culture beyond abstractions like “resistance” and “power.” We will bring together and analyze materials from literary studies, performance studies, and theories of culture. This course has two goals, to think critically about writing and to explore the emergence and representation of slavery through a variety of genres that include poetry, fiction, and artistic performances. We will focus on developing close readings of texts, locating and incorporating secondary sources, and revising and editing critical essays.It is strongly recommended that all English and Teaching of English majors take ENGL 300 and ENGL 301 BEFORE taking any other 300- or 400-level courses.
47579	Lecture-Discussion	Q	12:30PM -1:45PM	TR	127 English Building	Saville, J	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/17/17-05/03/17 Degree Notes: Advanced Composition course. Section Title: Strange Victorian Love Poetry Section Info: Topic Section Q: Strange Victorian Love Poetry Strangeness can take a broad spectrum of forms from the unfamiliarity of the past that with a little study becomes accessible, to the more radical strangeness of difference so shocking that we cannot accept it no matter how hard we try. The first layers of strangeness in this course concern love within marriage of the British Victorian period (1837-1901)—a time of intense debate over the injustice of many laws especially those affecting women. Not surprisingly, with the reform of marriage laws, love and marriage became prime topics of public conversation with many myths and narratives circulating about ideal male and female lovers. Studying these will lead us into ever stranger textures of love: some voices like those of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet singers may be only mildly strange for they prefigure models we recognize today, but others may be more troubling even to those of us who think of ourselves as “progressive.” By virtue of the imaginative and challenging ethical questions they pose, strange Victorian love poems make inviting material for exercises in writing about literature. Examining such instances as the Sapphic love of Michael Field, the deadly obsessives in Robert Browning's “Porphyria's Lover” or “My Last Duchess,” or the alienating passion of necrophiliacs and sado-masochists in Algernon Charles Swinburne's “The Leper” and “Anactoria,” we will undertake a variety of writing exercises: for instance, unpacking a poetic metaphor, shaping a précis of a critical argument, integrating secondary material into literary discussions, as well as researching and documenting a substantial critical paper. We will aim to produce approximately 25 pages of graded writing in the course of the semester. [Textbook warning: We will use Victorian Literature 1830-1900 edited by Dorothy Mermin and Herbert F. Tucker. Buy early and your book should cost less than $10. Buy late and it will get very expensive.] It is strongly recommended that all English and Teaching of English majors take ENGL 300 and ENGL 301 BEFORE taking any other 300- or 400-level courses.