ENGL 105 - Composition and Literature

FDR: FW, GE1
Credits: 3
When Offered: Fall, Winter

Topics for Winter, 2010:

ENGL 105A: Composition and Literature: The Nature of Nature. This course is an exploration of the human understanding of nature. How have writers, poets, and thinkers understood their relationships to “the natural world”? What is nature? How are we able and unable to define it? We read widely within environmental literature. Emerson, Whitman, Darwin, Annie Dillard, and Wendell Berry, among others, frame our discussion of “nature,” “truth” and the relationship of these ideas to one another. We explore the implications of such understandings for a modern world in which ecological concern is a matter of daily news and attention. Green

ENGL 105B: Composition and Literature: The Bad Girl’s Guide to the Open Road.  This course examines five different texts in which women take a variety of road trips; through these texts, we study the historical, emotional, gendered, raced, spiritual and economic perspectives of traveling, and look closely at how road trips are a literary structure that allows writers (and readers) to explore the formation of individual and national identity. How and why do women take road trips? Do age, race, and economic status figure into these journeys? How do outward journeys serve as metaphors for inner explorations? Do women travel differently than men? Are road trips inherently more dangerous for women? Do women’s road trips function as vehicles for classic coming of age mileposts such as rebellion, testing, passage into adulthood, or is there something else going on? If so, what function does the road trip serve for women in American literature? How are road trip narratives useful structures for examining women’s lives? Are women who take to the open road represented as deviants, undomesticated, or “bad girls” and if so, why? What is the appeal of the open road for women writers and travelers in American literature? Miranda

ENGL 105C: Composition and Literature: Coming of Age.  This course examines a number of literary works that deal with the process of coming of age – the fundamental human movement from youth to adulthood, naiveté to awareness, innocence to experience. In discussions and essays, we focus on the tensions, pains, joys, myths, and realities of this transition. Major questions include: what are the crucial stages involved in coming of age? How do issues such as authority, rebellion, and conformity affect one’s coming of age? How does the process differ for men and women? What roles do sexuality and desire play in this process? What larger patterns – mythic, religious, social, economic – are reflected in this movement? How is coming of age related to love? to death? What happens if the “normal” pattern is broken? Readings include Dickens’s David Copperfield, Brontë’s Jane Eyre, two plays by Shakespeare, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Conner

ENGL 105D: Composition and Literature: I See Dead People. The course analyzes literary representations of ghosts and the afterlife. Major texts may include: Henry James, The Turn of the Screw; A. S. Byatt, The Conjugal Angel; Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit; Thornton Wilder, Our Town; Caryl Churchill, Top Girls; Toni Morrison, Beloved. Gavaler

ENGL 105E: Composition and Literature: Coming of Age. This class explores the experience of youth and its transition into adulthood through the works of William Shakespeare, the English romantic poets, Charlotte Brontë, and William Faulkner.  Dransfield

ENGL 105F: Composition and Literature: The Country and the City. In this course we read literary works that explore ideas about place. What makes a place significant? How does place function in creating personal and communal identities? How do representations of place change according to historical and linguistic contexts? We read works in a variety of genres, periods, and national traditions. Some representative writers could include Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Whitman, Dickinson, Bishop, Linda Hogan, Tom Stoppard, Aldo Leopold, Barry Lopez, Rick Bass, and Pattiann Rogers. Warren

ENGL 105G: Composition and Literature: Wicked Women. This section begins with Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and ends with recent essays on Hillary Clinton. We look at witchcraft, femme fatales and prostitutes as a way of considering literary approaches towards women and men’s power and sexuality. The course is not for women only – for instance, our discussion of witchcraft and wizardry runs from Miller’s The Crucible through excerpts from Harry Potter. Brodie

ENGL 105H: Composition and Literature: Faith, Doubt and Identity. In this writing-intensive seminar, we explore the topic of belief and how it shapes a person’s selfhood. How does being a part of a religious community, or a variety of religious communities, shape one’s identity? How does identity change with the adoption of either belief, skepticism, or another culture? We ask these questions primarily through the genres of novels and short stories, examining lives of faith and doubt. Texts include Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel Gilead, about a Congregationalist minister descended from abolitionists; James Wood’s The Book Against God, a novel on a philosophy student’s repudiation of his father’s Christianity; selected short stories from Flannery O’Conner, poems by Native American Joy Harjo, and a story by Jhumpa Lahiri, from her Pulitzer-prize story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, on an Indian woman immigrant to American who makes shrines to the Virgin Mary. Gertz

ENGL 105I: Composition and Literature: Gossips and Con Artists. This course explores literary representations of two prominent social discourses: gossiping and conning. Through critical reading, collaborative learning, and argumentative writing, we explore diverse characterizations of the gossip and the con artist in a variety of genres and texts, ranging from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. We analyze the various schemes and rhetorical strategies that gossips and cons employ in their texts to exert social influence, their understanding and manipulation of the status quo, their motivations and rewards, and their efforts upon both the individual and the larger community. To further our practice of sound argumentative writing, we juxtapose the discourses of gossip and con artistry with our own modes for persuading readers. In addition, we think critically about our personal susceptibility to the influences of the gossip and the con as well as our inclinations to (sometimes?) play their roles. Wall

ENGL 105J: Composition and Literature: The 1960s. This course explores a variety of American literary responses to the growing social unrest that characterized the decade. Texts include several produced during the 1960s as well as several that look back from increasing distances. Writers represented may include Updike, Pynchon, Mailer, Morrison, August Wilson, and others. Crowley

ENGL 105K: Composition and Literature: Misfits, Rebels and Outcasts. The title of the course leaves out a lot. If extended, it might include strangers, visionaries, fanatics, prophets, artists, lovers, criminals, transients, deviants, freaks, monsters, and so on. We read stories, poems, and plays about individuals challenging the status quo, either directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. We consider, among other things, what happens to the individual in the process, and what happens to the status quo. Oliver.
 

Topics for Fall, 2009:

ENGL 105A: Composition and Literature: American Gods (3). Students in this class consider the creeds and values that have jostled together in the literatures of the United States and, more generally, what Americans hold sacred. Our readings include 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century poetry and fiction, from Melville and Dickinson to Ginsberg, Kingston, and Silko. Wheeler

ENGL 105B: Composition and Literature: Wicked Women (3). This section begins with Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and ends with recent essays on Hillary Clinton. We look at witchcraft, femme fatales and prostitutes as a way of considering literary approaches towards women and men’s power and sexuality. The course is not for women only - for instance, our discussion of witchcraft and wizardry runs from Miller’s The Crucible through excerpts from Harry Potter. Brodie

ENGL 105C: Composition and Literature: Gossips and Cons (3). This course explores literary representations of two prominent social discourses: gossiping and conning. Through critical reading, collaborative learning, and argumentative writing, we explore diverse characterizations of the gossip and the con artist in a variety of genres and texts, ranging from Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. We analyze the various schemes and rhetorical strategies that gossips and cons employ in the texts to exert social influence, their understanding and manipulation of the status quo, their motivations and rewards, and their effects upon both the individual and the larger community. To further our practice of sound argumentative writing, we juxtapose the discourses of gossip and con artistry with our own modes for persuading readers. In addition, we think critically about our personal susceptibility to the influences of the gossip and the con as well as our inclinations to (sometimes?) play their roles.  Wall

ENGL 105D: Composition and Literature: Nonconformity and Community (3). What is the proper role of nonconformity in a healthy community? How much conformity is needed to sustain a culture? Are complete nonconformity and strict conformity even possible? Reading and discussing classic and contemporary texts, we ask questions about the importance of sameness and difference within the various communities to which we belong. Pickett

ENGL 105E: Composition and Literature: Ethnic Lives and Ethnic Lies (3). This course considers a particular and frequently-recurring strain of “literary hoax,” or fabricated memoir: ethnic autobiographies “unmasked” as fakes and fictions. Through close readings of such notorious shams as The Education of Little Tree, I, Rigoberta Menchu, and the more recent Misha and Forbidden Love, we ask what these literary hoaxes - and their subsequent “outing” - suggest not only about our expectations of truth in the memoir but also about what constitutes an “authentic” ethnic identity in today’s world. Darznik

ENGL 105F: Composition and Literature: Films of Kubrick (3). Stanley Kubrick is widely considered one of the most brilliant and disturbing directors of the 20th century. This auteur-based approach attends to all the films of Stanley Kubrick from Paths of Glory through Eyes Wide Shut with a strong emphasis upon the relation of his life to his films and upon his strategies for adapting novels. Important novels/films include Lolita, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket. Adams

ENGL 105G: Composition and Literature: Misfits, Rebels and Outcasts (3). The title of the course leaves out a lot. If extended, it might include strangers, visionaries, fanatics, prophets, artists, lovers, criminals, transients, deviants, freaks, monsters, and so on. We read stories, poems, and plays about individuals challenging the status quo, either directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. We consider, among other things, what happens to the individual in the process, and what happens to the status quo. Oliver

ENGL 105H: Composition and Literature: I See Dead People (3). The course focuses on literary representations of spirits and the afterlife. Texts may include: Henry James, The Turn of the Screw; A. S. Byatt, The Conjugal Angel; W. P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe; Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit; Thornton Wilder, Our Town; Toni Morrison, Beloved. Gavaler

ENGL 105I: Composition and Literature: The Age of Chaucer (3). This courses focuses on the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer and his late-medieval predecessors and contemporaries, such as John Gower, Marie de France, and the Gawain-poet. Readings emphasize gender and class roles, chivalric ideals, and the medieval concept of the natural world. Short-response papers and critical essays encourage close reading and help students develop analytical writing skills. All texts are read in modern English translation. Jirsa

ENGL 105J: Composition and Literature: The Nature of Nature (3). This course is an exploration of the human understanding of nature. How have writers, poets, and thinkers understood their relationships to “the natural world”? What is nature? How are we able and unable to define it? We read widely within environmental literature. Emerson, Whitman, Darwin, Annie Dillard and Wendell Berry, among others, frame our discussion of “nature,” “truth” and the relationship of these ideas to one another. We explore the implications of such understandings for a modern world in which ecological concern is a matter of daily news and attention. Green