Spring 2010 Short Course Descriptions
(as of 10/22/2009)
FENGL 2123.001 Creative Writing with Professor Honoree
Jeffers
Becoming a writer is about becoming an intellectual. Thus, this
class is not just about creating the primary source (the poem or story); also
it is about reading, revision, and learning the work of the creative
writer. This course is designed for the beginning creative writer who
wants to learn how to become a serious creative writer. Course objectives
are to 1) learn the basics of what makes a poem or story; 2) learn how to
discuss the critical means and terms of poetry and fiction; and 3) learn how to
write both poetry and fiction.
FENGL 2123.995 Creative Writing with Professor Agymah
Kamau
This is an introductory course in creative writing and is the
prerequisite for fiction writing courses. Assignments will include a
short story and one creative nonfiction essay. Chat room discussions will
focus on analysis and discussion of fellow student’s stories and the analysis
of assigned published fiction with an emphasis on the technical aspects of each
work. The course is taught online.
CANCELLED FENGL 2133.001 Autobiographical Writing with Susan Kates
This course is designed to help you tell the stories you
wish to tell about your life. If you
work hard in this class, you will develop your skills as a writer, increase
your control over the process of writing, and hone your awareness of how a
sense of audience, persona, tone, and other elements of style can influence the
ways that readers make sense of and respond to your writing.
English 2133 is designed around the “workshop” method—which means
working in groups to share your own writing and respond thoughtfully to that of
others. Although much of the work in
this class will consist of your own writing and the reading and discussion of
your classmates’ writing, we will also read and analyze essays by a number of
American essayists.
FENGL 2213.001 Introduction to Fiction with Michael Snyder
This class will emphasize diverse Twentieth
Century American fiction by gay, African American, Native American, and Latin
American writers. The exception is Melville's novella Billy Budd, which
is thematically linked with two later authors, Williams and Purdy. We will be reading
some stories from Tennessee Williams' Complete
Stories and James Purdy's 1967 novel Eustace Chisholm and the Works. These
three authors, the latter two being "out" gay writers, all deal
with same-sex desire and repression. Mumbo
Jumbo is a postmodern early 1970s African American novel by Ishmael
Reed that is about the Jazz Age 1920s. Black
Eagle Child is a postmodern, genre-defying autobiographical novel
by a Mesquakie Native American author, Ray Young Bear. Finally, The Short Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
is a recent, popular novel about the Dominican American immigrant experience
and hybridized identity.
FENGL 2213.002 Introduction to Fiction with Tommy White
The Structure and Substance of Fiction: ENGL 2213
is designed to make students familiar with fiction as a specific genre of
writing. For this reason, we will
explore the different conventions of writing that make fiction unique from
poetry, drama, scholarly essays, and so on.
Our class will discuss the techniques of form many authors use to
enhance the content of their fiction as well as analyze the reciprocal
relationship between substance and structure.
In order to accomplish this task, we will read a number of short stories
and develop critical interpretations of each as well as formulate a scholarly
analysis of one novel at the end of the term.
F ENGL 2313.001 Introduction to Critical
Reading and Writing with Professor Chris Carter
In this course we study a broad range of poetry,
plays, novels, and criticism, practicing a variety of interpretive techniques
and developing an analytical vocabulary along the way. Although the primary
texts differ considerably in style and substance, they share an interest in the
personal and social traumas produced by warfare and/or imperial aggression. The
course literature addresses the American Civil War, historical tensions between
England and Ireland, World Wars I and II, as well as conflicts in Vietnam and
the Persian Gulf. Through close and carefully historicized readings of the
assigned works, we consider what they reveal—and what they disguise—about the
long-term impact of combat on soldiers, families, nations, and other modes of
personal and collective identity. At least as importantly, our close readings
raise issues of general concern to literary theorists, some of which include
the textual circulation of ideology, the politics of canonicity, and the
narrative innovations of modernist writing. As we move through multiple genres,
we consistently attend to the interplay of form and content, assessing how the
presentation of a text mediates and enters into its meaning. With each new
piece, we address how this nexus of form and content marks an attempt to
represent or cope with trauma, and thus to contain experiences that refuse to
be contained.
FENGL 2313.002 Introduction
to Critical Reading and Writing with Professor Ken Hodges
Theme:
Magicians, Mad Scientists, and Machines
The
purpose of this class is to teach the art of reading literature, not just for
the literal meaning, but for a full engagement with the language – its sound,
its structure, its connotation and nuance and suggestion. It is also to begin to talk about ways of
connecting the readings of individual works to larger questions and issues that
extend well beyond one particular instance.
This class will therefore begin with a unit on poetry, focusing on basic
issues such as structure, meter, imagery, and tone. The purpose here will be to hone the skills
of close reading. We will then proceed
to study longer works of literature, where the skills in close reading can be
the base for discussion of larger themes and issues.
To
give ourselves a theme for the class, we will look at science fiction, very
loosely defined – or, more precisely, works that look at moments when knowledge
or the search for knowledge may become excessive and dangerous. We will read Dr. Faustus and The
Tempest, some Hawthorne short stories and Shelley’s Frankenstein,
Wells’s Time Machine and Stoppard’s Arcadia, finishing with
Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the inspiration for the
movie Bladerunner). There will be
a number of paper assignments and an expectation of active participation in
group discussion.
FENGL 2413.001/002
Introduction to Literature with Michael Snyder
This course will be using the Bedford Compact
Intro. to Lit. anthology. We will be reading a variety of short stories
and poems from different nationalities and eras, but many of them will be
American and from the Twentieth Century. We will be studying The Glass Menagerie by
Tennessee Williams, and also two short plays by his contemporary, James Purdy
(they will be buying Purdy's Selected
Plays.)
FENGL 2413.003 Introduction
to Literature with Professor Orit Rabkin
In this course we will cover Western literature,
fiction, poetry, and drama, while stressing a historical perspective. We will
focus on literature written in England and the United States. Some of the
questions we will answer will be: What
is “literature” and how has the concept changed? What did the concept mean for
Shakespeare? What did it mean for 19th century British and American
writers? What were the major themes and the major attitudes towards characters?
We will read some of the most famous, best celebrated writers within our focus
such as William Shakespeare, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Wolf,
and Ernest Hemingway (and more). In addition to the readings, we will watch
film adaptations of the dramas.
FENGL 2443.001/002
World Literature from 1700 with Professor Nyla Khan
Writing and
Imperialism. In this course in postcolonial literature, we will
read and discuss novels, short stories, memoirs, essays and film from former
British colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, as well as from the
postcolonial diaspora. Emphasis will be
placed on the common experience of a “postcolonial condition” across various
regions, even as we acknowledge their specific historical conditions. The course will give students of postcolonial
literature grounding in some key themes in the field, including: imperialism
and its “civilizing mission,” the incomplete emancipation brought about by
independence, whether in terms of class, gender, or ethnic equality, the
complex racial/cultural situation of the indigenous, English-educated elite, the
postmodern moment of postcolonial literature, and the impact of migration and
globalization on the postcolonial subject.
FENGL 2653.001 English
Literature from 1700 to Present with Professor Alex Bain
This course surveys literature and its
contexts during the centuries between Great Britain’s recovery from the Civil
War/Commonwealth period (1642-59) and the unfinished present of its
“post-imperial” condition. In short, we
will try to tell the story of a nation by looking at the stories that nation
told about itself. We’ll examine poetry,
prose fiction and non-fiction, autobiography, sociology, film, and music, and
look at some major themes that these artistic forms tried to grapple with. These themes include London’s increasing
centrality to national consciousness; 18th-century battles between the freedom
of trade and the freedom of persons; 19th-century tensions between religious
doubt and national optimism; the collapse of the Empire and the claims made by
new kinds of British citizens; and the ongoing problem of how, by whom, and for
whom the nation should be governed. As
we acquaint ourselves with some of the most enduring and endearing characters,
stories, and images of this long history, we’ll see how literary forms and
techniques function in relation to the ideas they seek to convey, and how
innovations in literary style have affected changes in other realms of social
behavior.
FENGL 2653.002 English
Literature from 1700 to Present with Professor Joanna Rapf
This section of the survey of English Literature from 1700-present is a
Gen Ed Core Area IV "Western Civilization & Culture" course and
is designed for majors. Rather than cover a large number of texts
superficially, the course will look in depth at a smaller number significant
works that in various ways are "sign posts," "beacons,"
"icons," "reflections," and/or "creators" of
their times. In examining the
historical, intellectual, social, and cultural forces that helped to inform
these texts, the course will also include art, music, and film.
FENGL 2743.001 American
Indian Literature: Modern & Contemporary with Professor Joshua Nelson (counts as a multicultural course)
Modern and Contemporary American
Indian literature offers some of the edgiest work being written today. By turns
controversial, poignant, revolutionary, and beautiful, Native American writers
are challenging genres and identities in remarkable ways. This course will
sample exciting fiction, poetry, and film from established authors like Leslie
Marmon Silko, Linda Hogan, and Sherman Alexie in addition to emerging voices
like David Treuer, Adrian Louis, and Sterlin Harjo. We will also examine works
by writers like Sesshu Foster that may yet redefine the boundaries of the field
of American Indian literature. Throughout the course, themes of belonging,
violence, displacement, the confrontation of stereotypes, and radical
resistance will inform our discussions.
FENGL 2883.001 American
Literature with Professor Francesca Sawaya
This course examines American literature and letters from the Civil War
to the present. It will provide an
overview of different literary movements in the US (including regionalism,
realism, naturalism, modernism, and post-modernism). At the same time, it will introduce you to
some of the central critical and historical debates about these movements. While we will pay particular attention to
thematic and formal questions, we will nonetheless also explore larger
theoretical questions: What is the
relation between social/political/economic history and literary texts and
movements? What are the rhetorical
strategies of different forms and literary genres? How do different reading strategies construct
the question of literary value? How have scholars sought to define an American
literary tradition, and what problems does definition pose?
FENGL 2883.900 American
Literature with Professor Henry McDonald
This course will survey American
literature from the Civil War to the present. Among the authors we will read
are Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Jack London, Ambrose Bierce,
Bret Harte, Henry James, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Kate Chopin,
Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Abraham
Cahan, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Richard
Wright, James Baldwin, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, and Toni Morrison.
FENGL 3113.001 Writing
about Nature/Environment/Science & Tech with Professor Catherine Hobbs
This interdisciplinary advanced composition course
offers students a chance to focus on reading and writing about the natural
world, the environment, and science and technology. Centered on the mode of writing called
“creative non-fiction,” students will write a spectrum of more autobiographical
essays to more “objective” reportorial pieces about our topics. The course aims to develop students abilities
in reading, writing, critical thinking, research, informed discussion, and
creativity.
FENGL 3133.900 Poetry Writing with Professor Honoree
Jeffers
Beginning Poetry 3133 is designed for the
poet who has had experience with creative writing, but who wants to learn how
to become a serious poet. Course objectives are to 1) learn the basics of
what makes a poem; 2) learn how to discuss the critical means and terms of
poetry; and 3) learn how to write in both traditional form and free verse.
FENGL 3143.001 Studies in Literacy and Rhetoric with Professor Catherine
Hobbs
Course subtitle: Rhetoric and Propaganda: What is
Rhetoric and why are they saying those terrible things about it! We are bombarded with messages that play on
our thoughts and emotions every day.
This course will ask and attempt to answer questions such as: How do speech, writing, images, and
contemporary media discourse work to persuade anyone? How do rhetoric and propaganda work with
politics and power? Can we judge uses of
language as deceptive or manipulative without becoming overly cynical or
paranoid? Students will be reading each
week and bringing one-page responses to class.
In addition several short papers (5-6 pages each) will be required –
planning, writing and revising each to come up with final versions.
FENGL 3193.001 Working
with Writers with Professor Michelle Eodice
This course is focused on writers and
writing. First, we will review the history of writing instruction,
peer tutoring, and collaborative learning. Then we will read about more recent
concepts of writing consulting and discuss models, such as writing across the
curriculum, writing fellows, and writing coaches. The course will include
reading, writing, discussion, presentations, practice, and participatory
activities. Each experience will lead to developing new strategies for
dialoging with writers and facilitating learning.
FENGL 3223.001 Oklahoma
Writers/Writing Oklahoma with Professor Susan Kates
Subtitle: Region and Representation.
This course provides an introduction to regional writing about Oklahoma.
We will read primarily works by Oklahoma writers whose voices have been shaped
by place, as well as a few works by non-Oklahomans whose writing has
contributed to constructions of the state in various historical moments.
Through an examination of fiction, poetry, essays, photography and film, we
will trace a history of words and images that tell stories about
Oklahoma. In particular there will be a focus on Oklahoma cultures as a
source for literature and on the creative work of the course participants
themselves. The first half of the semester the reading load will be
heavier than the writing load, and the second half of the term students will
continue to read as they design and implement their own writing projects about
Oklahoma. These projects will be heavily drafted and revised with help
from the course participants and the professor. The primary work of the
course will be to analyze cultural representations of the region and its
inhabitants in terms of one another as we consider what regional writing is and
how it functions to deliver the essence of place.
FENGL
3243.001 Special Topics in Film: Spike Lee with Professor Catherine John
(counts
as a multicultural course)
This
course has evening film screenings.
This class is a study of three early
films and documentaries of Spike Lee. We will watch and discuss one of
his films each week. We will analyze his storytelling and narrative
style, his filmmaking techniques, as well as his message
and audience. We will situate his films within the context of both
Hollywood Cinema and Black Independent Cinema. There will be a course packet
with selected readings as part of the required material. Films include:
She's Gotta Have It; School Daze; Do the Right Thing; Mo
Betta Blues; Jungle Fever; Crooklyn; Clockers;
Bamboozled; Four Little Girls and
When the Levees Broke
FENGL 3313.001
Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies with Professor Jim Zeigler
This
course examines competing ways of reading that have initiated, inspired,
transformed, and antagonized the disciplines of literary and cultural studies,
particularly in universities across the United States since the emergence of
“English” as a field in the late 19th century. This class in methodology begins with the
observation that all reading is informed by at least a tacit theory of how we
arrive at an understanding of a text’s meaning and any convictions about its
value. Our course will also promote the
notion that “theory” is an exciting field within literary and cultural
studies. Major assignments include three
papers ranging from three to six pages, an annotated bibliography, and a
comprehensive final examination.
FENGL
3313.002 Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies with Professor
Jonathan Stalling
In English 3313, “Introduction to Literary
and Cultural Studies” (Prerequisite: 2313), students will focus on close
readings of literary texts through different theoretical approaches
(Structuralist, Poststructuralist, Feminist, Multi-Ethnic, New Historicist
etc.). Using key literary terms and techniques, students will engage larger
cultural and historical issues leading up to the rise of multiculturalism in
the last several decades. Students will participate in class discussions, write
weekly responses or answer questions, write one formal essay, and take a
mid-term and final exam.
FENGL
3313.001 Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies with Professor
Rita Keresztesi
This course focuses on influential texts in
contemporary cultural theory concerning the role of the intellectual in
facilitating social change. We examine
the relationship between knowledge and power within and against the discursive
confines of society. Our readings help
us rethink hegemonic notions of history, language, justice, morality, culture
and power. During the semester, with the
help of our readings, we will assemble a “toolkit” of theory. Michel Foucault defines the “notion of theory
as a toolkit”: “(i) The theory to be constructed is not a system but an
instrument, a logic of the
specificity of power relations and the struggles around them; (ii) That this investigation can only be
carried out step by step on the basis of reflection (which will necessarily be
historical in some of its aspects) on given situations” (Power/Knowledge, 1980: 145).
We will compare and contrast Eurocentric theory with Afrocentric
approaches to knowledge and power.
Films will include Xala (Dir. Ousmane Sembene, Senegal, 1974); Life and Debt (Dir. Stephanie Black, United States/Jamaica, 2001);
and *Bamako (Dir. Abderrahmane
Sissako, Mali, 2006)
FENGL
3353.001 American Indian Nonfiction Writing with Professor Kim Roppolo
American Indian Nonfiction Writing
deals with various forms of nonfiction writing by American Indians. This
semester's course will focus on contemporary texts to avoid overlap with the
content of ENGL 2733 and will include works by authors such as Robert Warrior,
Donald Birchfield, Vine Deloria, Jr., Leslie Silko, Winona LaDuke, Woody Kipp,
James Welch, Mary Brave Bird, and Anna Lee Walters. A variety of nonfiction
genres will be included, ranging from histories to political commentaries to
personal and other nonfiction essays to autobiography.
FENGL
3363.001 Films and Contexts: Films of
1930’s with Professor Joanna Rapf
This
course has evening film screenings
The purpose of this
course is to gain an overall perspective about the kinds of films produced in
Hollywood during the 1930s, from the Stock Market Crash in 1929 to the
remarkable year, 1939, during which Hollywood turned out more “classics” than
any other in the decade, including Stagecoach,
The Wizard of Oz, and Gone with the Wind. The course will
examine the kinds of films made during these troubled times in America, such as
the gangster cycle, musicals, comedies, the fallen woman cycle, westerns, and
the social problem film. All the films will be explored in their historical
context, recognizing that the movies of any era offer a fantasized reflection
of the hopes, fears, and values of their audiences awhile also being a product
of political, social, and cultural events of their time.
During the Spring
semester, the Fred Jones Museum of Art will be running an exhibit of ethnically
diverse Depression-era paintings and sculpture, and our course will work in
conjunction with this special event, including a gallery talk, a special
screening, and hopefully a concert of ‘30’s music, a reading of a ‘30’s play,
and perhaps even a Will Rogers impersonator and tour of WPA murals in nearby
Oklahoma towns.
Although the focus of
this course is on the films of the 1930s, its purpose is to provide as broad a perspective
as possible on the issues and creative work of the decade.
FENGL
3403.001 The Graphic Novel with Professor Jim Zeigler
The books for this class have a lot pictures,
but reading them won’t be easy. This
course -- Graphic Narratives, Comic History
-- seeks first to develop and test a narrative theory suited for works of
sequential art. Our attention to the
history of graphic novels will concentrate on the recent emergence of a “canon”
of works of literary esteem, but we’ll also investigate the vigilante
commercial icon Batman. The comic
artists covered include Jason, Alison Bechdel, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes,
Frank Miller, Marjane Satrapi, Art
Spiegelman, Craig Thompson, and Chris Ware.
We’ll supplement our study of their texts with choice scholarly articles
in narrative theory, moral philosophy, gender politics, and
historiography. These readings will help
us address the ethical and political stakes of representing history in graphic
narratives. All of the required readings
will instruct and reward our understanding of the popular culture of the 1980s,
1990s, and 2000s. Assignments will
include four essays ranging from three to seven pages and a comprehensive final
examination. A book list for this course
is available through Grettie Bondy, 132 Gittinger.
CANCELLED: FENGL
3453.001 Afro-Caribbean literature and Culture with Professor Catherine
John
(counts
as a multicultural course)
This course will
explore select Afro-Caribbean writings by male and female writers looking at
some of the historical and cultural influences that have shaped this
literature. We will look at how various
writers psychologically represent the impact of colonialism on the cultural
identity of Caribbean people. We will
examine writings which attempt to re-imagine community and have a hopeful
vision for the future despite the violence and pain of the past. We will pay attention to the relationship
between the writers’ literary style and their subject. Along the way we will incorporate references
to music, film, politics, and everyday life.
We will discuss the impact of these other forms of cultural expression
on Caribbean identities.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
Dandicat, Edwidge --- Brother I’m
Dying; Gunst, Laura --- Born fi Dead
[Secondary Reading]; Hodge, Merle ---
Crick Crack Monkey; Kamau, Agymah ---
Pictures of a Dying Man; Kincaid,
Jamaica --- Lucy; Lovelace, Earl --- Wine of Astonishment; Schwarz-Bart --- The Bridge of Beyond; Spence, Vanessa --- The Roads are Down
A Course Reader (containing some of the required essays and short fiction) is available
at Crimson & Cream Copy Center [in the Student Union, Rm. 126. 325-4294]
FILMS will be: Sankofa
[required viewing]; Sugar Cane Alley [required viewing]; Cuba: An African Odyssey [required viewing]; Life & Debt [required viewing]; Dancehall Queen [required viewing]
FENGL
3483.001 Native American Writers: Renaissance with Professor Joshua
Nelson
(counts
as NWC and as a multicultural course)
Native American Writers: Renaissance
With the 1968 publication of N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, American
Indian literature forcefully reentered American and world literary
conversations. Following Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch, and Louise
Erdrich (among others) offered stunning contributions to the emerging movement.
Despite their prolificacy, prominence, and influence, these authors are often
linked with one or two works only, leaving many of their best writings unread.
This course will take an in-depth look at the trajectories of these four
novelists’ oeuvres by emphasizing their lesser-known works and how they fit
into or challenge our understandings of the politics and aesthetics of the AI
Renaissance.
FENGL
3623.001 20th Century English Literature with Professor Alex Bain
This course surveys poetry, fiction, music,
non-fiction prose, film, drama, and political discourse in Great Britain and
its world from the dawn of the 20th century to the present. We’ll trace Britain’s transformation from
globe-straddling empire to whittled-down nation to multicultural commonwealth,
and examine how literature and popular culture have registered the traumas,
transitions, and possibilities of the period.
We’ll examine questions like: what was “modernism,” and how did it
work? What does it mean to be “English,”
“British,” “Irish,” “working-class,” etc., in wartime, in the aftermath of
empire, or in the European Union? How
have individuals and communities from the peripheries of empire sought freedom,
control over the English language, and stability amid the pressures of
globalization? We’ll also take a look at
the possible futures that British literature has imagined—for itself, for the
nation, and for the world.
FENGL
3713.001 Introduction to American Studies with Professor Geary Hobson
This course presents an opportunity
for examining key ideas contributing to the development of American
culture. Manifest destiny, the Noble
Savage/Red Devil syndrome, Puritanism, Democracy(ies), Science vs. Pseudo-Science,
Social Darwinism, “Mainstream” or serious art vs. popular arts, the military
industrial complex, “Free World” vs. Communism, Finite Planet---these are a few
of the notions/ideas that have been prominent throughout the generations of
American life, and, hopefully, we will be examining some of them.
FENGL 4133.001
History of the English Language with Professor Dan Ransom
We shall study
the development of the English language from its earliest known origins up to
its current forms. This endeavor will
involve consideration of the sounds of the language, how these changed, how we
are able to track the changes, and how they affected the grammatical structure
of the language. We will practice
together pronouncing passages from Beowulf, Chaucer, and
Shakespeare. We will also look at how
the vocabulary of English has evolved over time, how historical circumstance
encouraged changes in the lexicon, and how the peculiarities of modern spelling
came about. We will investigate the
formalizing of English, a relatively modern undertaking, and how it has
affected the language and our perception of English. Finally, we will examine some of the specific
features and varieties of American English.
FENGL 4203.001
Contemporary Poetry with Professor Jonathan Stalling
What is contemporary poetry? To respond to
this question, this class will explore various movements of twentieth-century poetry
that lead up to the heterogeneous world of 21st century-poetry. Part of our
class will explore the origins of contemporary lyric and narrative based poetry
in the “confessional school” (and other movements) and discuss the importance
of the “poetry workshop” as an important aspect of contemporary lyric/narrative
poetry in particular. Yet we will also spend time exploring various historical
avant-garde movements that have lead up to contemporary experimental poetry
movements like “LANGUAGE writing” “Flarf” and “Conceptual Writing.” Finally, we
will investigate the increasing popularity of poetry that fuses these two
general poetic lineages into what is being called “Lyric Postmodernism.” We
will also have several poetry readings and class visits by prominent writers.
Assignments will include weekly writing exercises a mid-term exam, and a final
research paper (10 pages).
FENGL
4343.001 Indian in American Popular Culture with Professor Geary Hobson
This
course is about the various appearances and roles, stereotyped and otherwise,
that American Indians have traditionally been pigeon-holed into throughout
American’s five centuries of recorded history.
After beginning with Captain John Smith and the Colonial era, and
toughing on the Romantic period of Longfellow and Cooper, the course ends with
analysis of modern-day writers such as Waters, LaFarge and Lafferty, as well as
movies and television.
FENGL 4443.001 Contemporary
World Literature with Professor Nyla Khan
This course aims to give an overview of Contemporary Literature by
exploring and analyzing ideas, movements, historical and social contexts,
themes, and literary characteristics of Contemporary Literature and their
authors through a brief introduction to various novels, short stories, memoirs,
essays/political tracts. This course will incorporate films
covering Contemporary Literature as supplementary material in order to
trigger students’ motivation and interest. The course also involves literary
criticism by studying and understanding the basic concepts of literary analysis
and critical appreciation. The course requires close study and careful reading
to understand and interpret literature.
FENGL 4533.010 Shakespeare
Tragedies with Professor James Yoch
Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Lyric Poetry. Close reading and analysis of Shakespeare's
writing from the intimacy of lyrics to the spaciousness of heroic visions,
earthly and heavenly. Texts will include Hamlet,
Julius Caesar, King Lear, Othello, Sonnets,
Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece
and Troilus and Cressida. Helpful support for discussions will come
from critics and theorists as well as movie and YouTube versions (such as Jude
Law in Hamlet). Performance theory and practice in
interpreting dramatic texts have primary roles in the class.
“. . . things are
better, more incredible, more wonderful than they actually are.” Baz Luhrmann
Class Goals include: 1) To read
creatively and to interpret skillfully the works of Shakespeare. 2) To become
comfortable with the language. 3) To learn to write adeptly about feelings,
thoughts, moral constructs, rhetorical patterns that Shakespeare shaped in his
plays, and 4) To participate in the large community of new friends in the
audiences and commentators, directors and playwrights who have had a good time
with Shakespeare for four centuries.
FENGL 4543.001 Tudor and Stuart
Drama with Professor David Anderson
The theatre world of Renaissance London was dominated by the monumental
talent of Mr. William Shakespeare, who towered above his competitors like a
colossus—or so it seems to many in the twenty-first century. But in fact, Shakespeare was surrounded by a
number of talented dramatists, many of whom were widely admired and who deserve
to be better known. This course will
focus on a number of tragedies produced by the playwrights of Elizabethan and
Jacobean England. We will read one or
two plays by Shakespeare, but they will be read alongside authors such as
Marlowe, Kyd, Webster and Middleton, who collaborated and competed with one
another during this remarkably productive era of English literary culture and
who wrote about such things as class, power, sexuality, violence and the social
order. These plays have much to tell us
about the period of widespread change in which they were written, and are
fascinating and often delightful in themselves.
FENGL 4553.001 Milton with
Professor David Anderson
This course will study the major poetry and prose of John Milton. Much of our focus will be on Paradise Lost, undeniably one of the
masterworks of European literature.
However, we will also read Milton’s earlier poetry and his remarkable
tragedy Samson Agonistes. We will also look at important selections
from his political prose to understand how Milton viewed the revolutionary
changes in English society in the mid-1600s.
The aim will not be to reduce Milton’s poetry to a set of political
concerns, but rather to understand how the poet and the politician complemented
each other in his work. Milton
considered Paradise Lost to be a
prophetic re-imagining of scripture, but it is nonetheless deeply invested in
its historical moment and reflects the poet’s best hopes for the English
people. We want to appreciate how the
cosmic perspective of heaven and hell, the fall and redemption, creation and
apocalypse comments on the volatile social and political situation of Milton’s
England.
FENGL 4563.001 Restoration & 18th
Century Drama with Professor James Yoch
Explorations into the randy, valiant,
righteous, and deceitful characters who enliven plays from the reign of Charles
II to George III. These include Sir
Fopling Flutter, the aptly named Horner (who gives horns to the husbands of the
wives he seduces in The Country Wife),
Antony (whose wife and mistress Cleopatra meet in Dryden’s All for Love), couples like
Mr. Fainall and Mrs. Fainall in The Way
of the World, the criminal Peachum and Polly in the popular/ satirical Beggar’s Opera set in a prison and mirroring
politicians of the time, Lady Sneerwell/ Lady Teazle/ and Sir Benjamin Backbite
in The School for Scandal, and Cato
the hero of George Washington’s favorite play.
Discussions will focus on the range of
concerns from high moral issues to lechery and greed as they take varied shapes
on stages central to London social and political life. Assignment options will include critical
papers, performance, and playwriting that turns methods from the period to a current
literary 2010 subject.
FENGL 4593.001 Medieval Film
with Professor Joyce Coleman
This
course has an evening film screening.
In
this course, we will view a broad selection of medieval films, reading them
against both medieval texts (in translation) and modern film-studies. Class
discussion and reports will lead us into a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary
conversation embracing issues such as historical accuracy, anachronism, gender,
and, throughout, the ways, means, and motives of cultural reinvention. The goal
is to deepen our understanding and appreciation both of medieval culture and of
modern cinematography.
In addition, the class will
participate in the planning and presentation of the Medieval Film Series to be
run in the spring by the organizers of Norman’s Medieval Fair. This series
screens selected medieval films free of charge to the general public,
introduced by a speaker who also runs a question-and-answer session after the
film is over.
(Non-Medieval Film Series films will be viewed on Monday evenings and
discussed in class on the following Tuesdays and Thursdays.)
FENGL
4623.001 English Romantic Poetry with Professor Daniela Garofalo
This
course will examine British literature from 1789 to 1832, otherwise known as
the Romantic period. We will study the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake,
Shelley, Byron and Keats as well as other poets. We will examine how these
poets addressed a period of political revolution, of increasing
industrialization and urbanization; we will study how Enlightenment ideas about
equality challenged Britons to struggle for gender, race, and class equality.
Exams, short papers and a longer research paper required.
FENGL 4713.001 American
Authors of the 19th Century with Professor Francesca Sawaya
James Baldwin famously called Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(1851) a “cornerstone of American
social protest fiction.” For
FENGL 4723.001 Issues in 19th
Century American Literature with Professor Henry McDonald
This course will contrast the
literatures of the pre- and post-Civil War periods, relating the different kinds
of works produced during these periods, from romance and domestic fiction to
realism, naturalism, and proto-modernism, to the social, cultural, and
political forces that helped to shape them. Such authors as Hawthorne, Poe,
Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Fanny Fern, and Emily Dickinson will be
compared with later writers such as Mark Twain, Henry James, Kate Chopin,
Stephen Crane, Jack London, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
FENGL 4853.001 Capstone: Poems, Poets, Poetry with Professor Alan
Velie
This course will teach students to analyze
and discuss poetry of all sorts--lyric, dramatic, and narrative. Reading list
includes selections from The Norton
Anthology of Poetry and works by Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Moliere, Goethe, Pushkin, Eliot, Donne, Stevens, Keats, Wordsworth, and others.
Assignments will include a journal, short and long paper, and a final.
FENGL 4853.900 Capstone: Gothic Horror with Professor Daniela
Garofalo
This course will examine mid- to
late-nineteenth-century horror literature. We focus on the later gothic’s
fascination with the city, industrial development, and the British empire. We
will read classics such as Dracula
and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as
lesser known works by authors such as Wilkie Collins. Exams, short papers and a
longer research paper required.
FENGL
4950.001 WLT: Puterbaugh Conference
Course with Professor Johua Nelson
Native American writer and poet Sherman
Alexie will be the featured Puterbaugh Fellow in spring 2010. This course will meet six times (mostly on
Wednesday evenings from 5:30-8:00 pm) during the semester with students
required to attend all six class meetings as well as all events associated with
the two day conference, March 25-26. A
final paper is due at the end of term.
Interested students are encouraged to apply for Puterbaugh fellowships
through World Literature Today, www.ou.edu/worldlit.
HON 2973.004 Honor Perspective: Chicano
Literature with Professor RC Davis
Course introduces
Chicano (Mexican-American) literature and culture, including their defining
problems and themes, from the middle 1960s through the present. You will learn
about the history of Mexican-Americans and the Chicano Movement that started in
the 1960s and ended around 1970. Course will explore the work of major literary
figures—Tomás Rivera, Rudolfo Anaya, Corky Gonzales, Sandra Cisneros, and
Demetria Martínez, among others—and will follow the rise of Chicano literature
in the Chicano Renaissance of the 1970s and some of the social, historical, and
cultural developments that made Chicano literature rich and influential from
its beginning. We will also explore important Chicano films, music, art, and
the healing practices of curanderismo (traditional natural healing). Guest
speakers will come to class and discuss music and art. By course's end, you
will have a good working sense of what "Chicano" literature and
culture are and the direction that Chicano culture and Latino culture are moving
for the future.
HON 2973 Honor Perspective: American Character with Professor Alan
Velie
This course will be team taught by an English professor
and the former US attorney in OKC. We will discuss why Americans are the way
they are, using writings by Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and others.
HON 3993 Honor Colloquia: Hebrew & Christian
Scriptures - An Overview with
Professors Alan Velie and Barbara Boyd
If you have taken ENGL 3653 Bible as Literature,
you cannot take this course as too much of the content is the same.
GRADUATE COURSES:
CANCELLED FENGL 5133.001 Teaching Technical Writing
with Professor David Mair
This
course is restricted to new English graduate assistants who will be teaching
technical writing courses for the department.
FENGL
5313.001 Literary Criticism Survey with Professor Tim Murphy
FENGL 5373.001 Current Native
American Literary Criticism with Professor Kim Roppolo
This graduate seminar will focus on
the most current Native American critical theory being put forth by Native
American literary critics, at first focusing on the ideas of Robert Warrior,
Craig Womack, Jace Weaver, and David Treur, then building to the dialogic text
by the Native Critics Collective, Reasoning Together. Students will apply what
they have learned at the end of the semester by producing a seminar paper on a
work of Native literature that employs some of the theory and methodology from
studying these critics and theorists.
FENGL
5403.900 Introduction to CRL with Professor Chris Carter
This course introduces some major areas of inquiry in Composition,
Rhetoric, and Literacy studies from the nineteenth century to the present.
Beginning with debates about the meaning and institutional status of CRL, we
examine historical work on the consolidation of the field while tracking the
intellectual currents that inform its research and pedagogies. Early in the
term, we compare the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin and Kenneth Burke, both of
whom study how power relations enter into the multiple and often competing
discourses in which subjects participate. Bringing their work into conversation
with field histories by James Berlin and Sharon Crowley, the course foregrounds
rhetoric and composition’s relationships to larger institutional politics and
socioeconomic trends, examining both the critical potential of literacy
instruction as well as its contributions to social sorting and material
inequity.
FENGL
5423.001 Classical Rhetoric with Professor Kathleen Welch
FENGL
5533.900 Seminar: Romance, History
and Nationalism in Early Modern England with Professor Ken Hodges
Inspired by both current debates over the
origins of nationalism and explorations of the transition between the medieval
and the early modern, we will look at how Shakespeare and Spenser used English
history, real and fantastic, to imagine English identity. We will read Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History
of the Kings of Britain, the first three books of The Faerie Queene,
and a number of Shakespeare’s plays, including Cymbeline, King Lear, and
a number of the history plays. In
addition, we will read Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and
Richard Helgerson’s Forms of Nationhood.
FENGL 5623.001 20th Century English
Literature with Professor Catherine John
Potential texts include: How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney (Guyana); Black Skin White Masks by Frantz Fanon
(Martinique); The Wretched of the Earth by
Frantz Fanon (Martinique); Cahier D’un
Retour au Pays Natal by Aime Cesaire (Martinique); Brother I’m Dying [Memoir] by Edwidge Dandicat (Haiti); Return to the Source by Amilcar Cabral
(Guinea Bissau); Death and the King’s
Horseman by Wole Soyinka (Nigeria); Decolonizing
the Mind by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (Kenya); Of
Water and the Spirit by Malidoma Patrice Some (Burkino Faso); Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangaremba
(Zimbabwe); Monsoon Wedding [film] by
Mira Nair (India); “Can the Subaltern Speak” & “Who Claims Alterity” by
Gayatri Spivak; “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse” by
Homi Bhabha; Unburnable by Maria-Elena John (Dominica); Cuba: An African Odyssey (documentary) (Cuba); Chocolat by Claire Denis (film) (Cameroon); “The Day They Burned
the Books” [short story] by Jean Rhys (Dominica); “Girl” [short story] by
Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua); “Joebell and America” [short story] by Earl Lovelace
(Trinidad); “Is the Post in Postcolonial the Post in Postmodern?” by Kwame
Anthony Appiah (Ghana); and Halfway Tree by
Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley [music album] (Jamaica)
FENGL 5803.001 20th Century American
Literature with Professor Rita Keresztesi
Seminar: Harlem
Renaissance in the African Diaspora. This course surveys and evaluates the literature
and political agenda of the Harlem Renaissance.
During the period between the 1920s and 1940s artists, writers, and
musicians employed culture to work for goals of civil rights and social equality. Harlem, a diverse community of African
Americans, West Indians and Africans, also became home to civil rights
organizations such as the NAACP, the National Urban League, the all-black
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids, the African Blood Brotherhood,
and Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. Besides studying the major figures of the
Harlem Renaissance, we will situate this movement within a larger transnational
context of the African Diaspora.
FENGL 6113.001 Issues in Contemporary Theory: Violence & Literature with Professor Dan
Cottom
This
will be a theory class focusing on the topic of violence in many contexts, but
with special reference to the study of literature and culture. In addition to analyzing three relevant
literary works (a play, a story, and an essay), we will be studying works of
theory that represent a wide variety of approaches to this topic—many of them
specifically concerned, in part, with thinking through the relationship between
violence and literature. Among other
things, our readings will address violence in relation to the nature of
language and reason; the foundations of morality, law, and modernity; the
construction of gender and subjectivity; and the history of war, colonialism,
racism and anti-Semitism, sacrifice, and torture.