ENGL 350

Spring 2021 Part of Term 1

Part of Term 1
Jan 25-May 5

Writing about Literature, Text, and Culture

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Credit: 3 hours.

Writing-intensive, variable-topic course designed to improve English majors' ability to produce clear, well-organized, analytically sound and persuasively argued essays relevant to English studies. Introduces students to research techniques through the examination of critical texts appropriate to the course topic.

Credit is not given for ENGL 300 and ENGL 350. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement; one year of college literature or consent of instructor. For majors only.

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

Advanced Composition

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ENGL 350 class schedule data for spring 2021
CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
70307	Online	F	2:00PM -2:50PM	MWF	n.a.	Jenkins, C	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/25/21-05/05/21 Degree Notes: Advanced Composition course. Credit: 3 hours Section Title: Writing Lit, Text & Culture Section Info: ENGL 350 - Black Speculative Fiction (Writing About Literature, Text, and Culture) How do black writers and thinkers envision futures for black lives? How do these creatives re-imagine and revise our collective past, and give voice to alternative possibilities for the present? In what ways do such cultural producers employ “the speculative”—defined by Gwendolyn Pough and Yolanda Hood in 2005 as “what if, if only, and if this goes on”—to speak to, through, and against persistent anti-blackness? In this course, we will read a selection of 20th and 21st century black speculative works—science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and other “genre” and genre-bending efforts—and consider how such projects theorize black subjectivity and imagine otherwise for future, past, and present black lives. Our list of materials will include work by W.E.B. DuBois, Octavia Butler, Rivers Solomon, N.K. Jemisin, and Kai Ashante Wilson, among others. Requirements: participation, in-class presentation, short response papers, final paper.
70308	Online	M	9:30AM -10:45AM	TR	n.a.	Prendergast, C	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/25/21-05/05/21 Degree Notes: Advanced Composition course. Credit: 3 hours Section Title: Writing Lit, Text & Culture Section Info: Overview - Canonical literary both British and American are riddled with disabled characters. The figures of the blind man, the mad woman, the cripple lord, the autistic savant occur again and again. In this course we will examine, and write about, how these famous works of literature have made use of these characters to drive narrative, symbolize moral and national failure, and engage in experimental style. Rather than assume the posture of the abled reader these works assume, we will read against the grain, examining the disability rights community’s reaction to, and appropriation of, the portrayals of disability. This is a writing intensive class so writing, informal and formal, will be required in abundance. Required Texts Sophocles, Oedipus Rex [Oedipus the King]; Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre; D. H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird; Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and articles by disability studies scholars.
70306	Online	S	2:00PM -3:15PM	TR	n.a.	Mahaffey, V	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/25/21-05/05/21 Degree Notes: Advanced Composition course. Credit: 3 hours Section Title: Writing Lit, Text & Culture Section Info: English 350, Writing about Literature The Complexity of Identity (Racial and Sexual) in 20th-Century Irish and American Short Fiction - Spring 2021 - Professor Vicki Mahaffey How is race different from (and how does it overlap with) ethnicity? Does this category of identity relate to sexual categories, and if so, how? We will investigate these questions in a careful, nuanced way by examining them through literature. Our working hypothesis will be that what is really at stake in categorizing groups by race and gender is not only enfranchisement, but also complexity itself. The less enfranchised groups are the ones most subject to stereotyping or even caricature. We will read stories by James Joyce, William Trevor, Mary Lavin, Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, and James Baldwin. We will then build on what we learn by turning to more contemporary writings by Toni Morrison and Patrick MacCabe. The course will conclude with selections from Noel Ignatiev’s book, How the Irish Became White. Writing assignments will be short and frequent, taking the form of one-page papers to be presented orally (as well as in writing) to the entire class. Thoughtful, informed participation and sustained engagement will be heavily weighted in grading (along with the oral-written essays).