ENGL 380 - Advanced Seminar

FDR: HL, GE3
Credits: 3
When Offered: Fall, Winter

Prerequisite: Six credits in 200-level English. Enrollment limited.A seminar course on a topic, genre, figure, or school (e.g. African-American women’s literature, epic film, Leslie Marmon Silko, feminist literary theory) with special emphasis on research and discussion. The topic will be limited in scope to permit study in depth. Student suggestions for topics are welcome. May be repeated for degree credit with permission and if the topics are different.

Topic for Winter, 2010:

ENGL 380: Advanced Seminar: 20th-Century American Immigrant Literatures (3). An introduction to the comparative study of American immigrant literatures. Beginning with literature from the early decades of the 20th century and ending with writing produced in the post-9/11 period, we read novels, memoirs, and poetry by a diverse group of first and second generation immigrant writers, considering their connections to both mainstream American and imported literary traditions as well as historical, legal, and cultural debates about immigration, assimilation, and citizenship. Individual traditions represented include Jewish-American, Latino, and Asian-American literature. (HL, GE3) Darznik

Topic for Fall, 2009:

ENGL 380: Advanced Seminar: Flannery O’Connor (3). An examination of the fiction of Flannery O’Connor employing her stories, novels, letters and lectures, as well as a sample of critical perspectives and the recent best-selling biography by Brad Gooch. We focus on the genre-bending aspect of her fiction, which orchestrates the conventions of 20th-century realism, allegory, lyricism and the gothic, and we try to place her in the overlapping constellation of mid-century Southern fiction and the American short story. Assignments include critical papers, journal/blog, group presentations, and one creative writing exercise. (HL, GE3) Smith