March 22, 2024 FALL 2024 200-level English Course Guide Registering for a 200-level English course for Fall 2024? Learn more about our exciting courses! EH 207-01 Readings in Literature and Culture I: Storytelling Animals—Beginnings to 1605 Dr. Lacy Marschalk-Brecciaroli Online“One of the most intrinsic things about [humans],” says author Salman Rushdie, “is that we're storytelling animals. The need to understand the world through our stories is profoundly embedded in human nature” (Shelf Awareness). In this course, we will study extant literature from ancient times through the so-called “Age of Discovery.” In particular, we will be examining the history of storytelling, of how stories are told and why they are told, in cultures from around the world. To answer these questions, we will analyze works within their social, historical, and philosophical contexts while paying special attention to the forms of stories and their narrative structures and techniques. Readings will include works from world mythology, the epic tradition, ancient and early modern drama, and the early novel. EH 207-02 Readings in Literature and Culture I: Embodying Purpose in the Pre-Modern WestProf. Angela Balla T/TH 11:20am-12:40pmThis course will introduce you to Western literature from antiquity to the seventeenth century to help you find and develop your sense of purpose. Even as the liberal tradition, with its emphasis on the inherent value of the individual, faces challenge for contributing to national and global disparities of access to an array of resources, that same tradition offers a unique emphasis on a powerful tool for helping to correct these disparities: the conscience. So this course will sketch a literary history of personal purpose or vocation, a history shaped by the conscientious objection to problematic uses of power and authority, whether political, religious, social, or economic. Along the way, we will consider what is at stake in any form of principled objection. Yet this course will move beyond investigating literary forms of opposition in order to probe forms of constructive, creative action. Such action depends on the imagination of a life lived beyond mere opposition, a life of harmonious flourishing in community. Central to this second investigation is knowledge of personal purpose not just in certain contexts, such as a profession (a vocation in the narrower sense), but also in a person’s wider life. Hopefully, our joint construction of a literary history of personal purpose or vocation will inspire us to rethink our own vocations and how we pursue them. To these ends, we will read texts in a variety of genres and modes from several time periods (antiquity, the middle ages, and the early modern period), attending to literary form and historical background. Classes will engage our readings through mini-lectures, short presentations, and discussions. Evaluation will be based on participation (oral and written) and other assignments (e.g., quizzes, a response paper, a midterm exam, and a final essay). EH 208-01 Readings in Literature and Culture II: Disturbing Modernity Heather Cross MW 9:40am-11amWe will look at the ability of literature to put you into a place or mind that is disturbed or disturbing. Themes of discrimination, mental instability, social issues and identity will be experienced via short stories, novels and other writings. Texts by Swift, Twain, Welty, Coates, Whitehead and others will be examined to uncover what makes us as readers and humans uncomfortable. EH 241-01 Literature Without Borders Dr. David St. John T/TH 1pm-2:20pmWorld Literature class with a focus on borders and globalization. There will be three short novels. Assignments include a weekly journal, an autoethnography paper, literature review/annotated bibliography, and a multimodal project. EH242-01 Mythology: “Tell Me A Story”: old texts; new contexts Prof. Chad Thomas OnlineWe will examine ancient and modern myths including Theogony, Popul Vuh, Prose Edda, Ramayana, "Cupid and Psyche," Carl Jung on Dreams, "The Hero's Journey," Raven stories from North America, Daniel Boone stories, Stagecoach/Firefly, Vampire stories, and contemporary poetry and short stories in many formats such as movies, graphic novels, video games, YA fiction and emblems of contemporary society. EH 242-02 & -03 Mythology: The Persistence of Myth: Stories of the Trojan War & Beyond Dr. Lacy Marschalk-Brecciaroli OnlinePerhaps no event stirred the Ancient Greek imagination more than the Trojan War. The subject dominated epic poetry, drama, and artwork in antiquity and has continued to inspire countless retellings and depictions in fiction, poetry, and other artforms throughout history. In this class, we’ll examine the earliest mythology of the Trojan War and its aftermath, as well as how those stories have been adapted, embellished, and transformed throughout history. We will also discuss what those transformations mean for the places and times in which they occur, including the present. Readings will include Emily Wilson's translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey, Euripides’ The Trojan Women, Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships, Madeline Miller’s Circe, and excerpts from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. EH 243-01 Protest Literature: Write to FightHeather Cross MW 11:20am-12:40pmThe production of writing in all genres to protest and fight for change will be examined. Texts that present social and cultural issues that writers and fighters protest for and against occupy a complex rhetorical stance. To read and see the fight in words and media we will read Swift, Lewis, Takei, Coates, and others as well as produce writing that protests and pushes our readers to fight. EH 244-01 & 02 Heroes &/or MonstersProf. William Taylor Online EH 244-03 Heroes &/or MonstersProf. Joe Conway MW 2:40-4pm EH 245-01 Love &/Or Romance You Belong With Me: Representations of Love in Literature Dr. Colleen Noletto TR 9:40-11:00 amWhat is love, actually? Is it delicate or dangerous? Fixèd or fleeting? Marvelous or maddening? Mundane or miraculous? In EH 245, we’ll explore how poets, novelists, and dramatists depict the many faces of love–including friendship, romantic love, familial love, and more. Authors will include Jane Austen, Anton Chekhov, William Faulkner, C.S. Lewis, Toni Morrison, Joy Harjo, and Jhumpa Lahiri, and others. EH 246-01 & -02 Speculative Realities: Science Fiction: The Art of Cognitive EstrangementProf. Eric D. Smith -01: T/TH 1pm-2:20pm -02: T/TH 11:20am-12:40pm We will explore the form’s evolution from its historical roots and contexts to its contemporary global expressions, primarily with the short story form, but two short novels and two films included. Readings will include: Jeff Vandermeer’s The Big Book of Science Fiction, Vandana Singh’s Of Love and Other Monsters, and Vauhini Vara’s The Immortal King Rao. EH 246-03 Speculative RealitiesDr. William Ryan Brown OnlineThis course will focus on speculative genres like Science-Fiction, Fantasy and Horror in the study of authors like Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson. Readings of various short stories and films will be paired with theoretical scholarship about the manifestations of ecological and social anxieties represented in the texts and evident in contemporary cultures across the world.
