SPRING 2009
(Click Here for Fall 2008)

ETS 107-1 Living Writers AND ETS 107-2 through 9
W 3:45-6:30
Instructors: Staff
This class gives students the rare opportunity to hear visiting writers read and discuss their work. The class is centered on six readings and question-and-answer sessions. Students will be responsible for careful readings of the writers' work. Critical writing and detailed class discussions are required to prepare for the question-and-answer sessions with the visiting writers.

ETS 115-1 Topics in British Literature: Modern British Comedy
TTH 12:30-1:50
Instructor : Sanford Sternlicht
This course is about comedy as drama: literature for stage performance. It will attempt to determine what distinguishes modern British comedy through the works of playwrights such as George Bernard Shaw, Noel Coward, Joe Orton, Willy Russell, and Caryl Churchill. Comedy theory will be discussed in depth. Romance and satire will be differentiated. A minimum of seven plays will be read. The historical contexts and the political implications of these comedies will also be addressed. Gender values and treatment will signify in the course. Four essays will be assigned. An attendance requirement will be enforced.

ETS 118 Survey of American Literature since 1865
MWF 10:35 - 11:30
Instructor: Rachel Collins
In this course we will examine American literature produced between the Civil War and World War II. During this period increasing urbanization, immigration, and industrialization were shaping American culture and manifesting themselves in American literary production. As such, our course texts are concerned with urban poverty and growing class conflict, African Americans' "great migration" to the North, contestations over women's social place, and the rapid expansion of a consumer-oriented society. We will pay particular attention to the three major fictional modes of the period—realism, naturalism and modernism– and will place them in a sociohistorical context in order to understand how the larger social conflicts and upheavals of the period prompted writers to become dissatisfied with inherited forms of literary representation. In addition to fiction, we will read a sampling of poetry, plays, and nonfiction from this period. Writers will likely include: Henry James, Emily Dickinson, Kate Chopin, Stephen Crane, Jane Addams, Edith Wharton, W.E.B. DuBois, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and William Faulkner, among others.

ETS 145-1 Reading Popular Culture
MW 11:40-12:35
Film screening W 7:00-9:50
Instructor: Steven Cohan
ETS 145-5 & 7 Discussion Sections F 10:35-11:30
ETS 145-8 & 9 Discussion Sections F 11:40-12:35
This course pivots around the question of how to read the media-oriented culture which we inhabit. Using the methodology of cultural studies—which operates on the premise that lived culture and its artifacts are appropriate objects of academic study, as readable as any literary or artistic text—the course will introduce students to critical strategies for thinking about the world in which they live, and for approaching the work of popular culture historically as well as analytically. It will concentrate specifically on film and television—on popular narratives in their dominant mode of circulation, which, for participants and observers alike, comprise so much of the materiality of American culture today both in the US and globally. We will pay close attention to the textual features and conventions that compose a film or TV show as an entertainment form, while also investigating its production (considering the import of the corporate enterprises that produce film and television, for instance) and reception (looking at fan formations on the internet or YouTube parodies to see what kind of alternate meanings they construct). The weekly screening scheduled for this course is required.

ETS 151-1 Interpretation of Poetry
MW 2:15-3:35
Instructor: Sarah Harwell/ Bruce Smith
The course will consist of discussions of poems from the various traditions of poetry. I'm interested in what makes the poem memorable and moving, how it is a vehicle for the emotions.  I'm interested, too, in what provokes and challenges us, what gives the poem its power to seduce and trouble and soothe, what gives it its music and voice as distinct from speech.  

Students will be asked to write 8 short two-page papers in which they examine closely a single poem by a poet from the text.   Students may opt to write more papers (up to 10) and receive extra consideration for them. In addition, students will be asked to choose a contemporary poet and present the work of the poet in class. Attendance at the readings on campus is encouraged.  Emphasis in discussions will be on style and substance, music and image. Multiple ways of reading poems will help the students expand their understanding of the range of poetic possibilities.

ETS 152-1 Interpretation of Drama
TTH 11:00-12:20
Instructor: William West
Ritual, pageant, mime, dance, vocal display: all have been instrumental in creating drama—a powerful mirror reflecting the lives and customs of a people and of individuals. This course examines this 'mirror' as it has evolved in European and American culture from the Greek Drama of ancient Athens to the present, beginning with a reading of Aristotle's Poetics , and continuing with one of the great 'problem' plays of Shakespeare, Measure for Measure . We'll also examine the beginnings of modern drama with two plays be Henrik Ibsen ( A Doll's House and Ghosts ), followed by five great twentieth-century American plays: Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night , Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour , Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge , August Wilson's The Piano Lesson, and David Mamet's Oleanna .

ETS 152-2 Interpretation of Drama
TTH 3:30-4:50
Instructor: Jo Ann Davis
In this course we will examine major periods in the evolution of dramatic form and content. We will consider the impact of the physical theater on the playwrights' choices of format, story, and characters by examining such plays as Antigone , Way of the World , and Doll's House .

Play texts require interpretation by the director, actor, designer, and audience who together produce the transient act of an evening's performance.  As readers we need to recognize and incorporate the multiple agents of production in an act of reading that is quite different from our reading relationship with a novel or a poem.  Thus, one objective is to develop a “dramatic imagination” that is aware of and embraces the theatrical aspects of movement, gesture, light, costume, and sound as well as the verbal expression in which they are embedded.  In close reading of lines, we depend not only on stage directions (where they exist) but most importantly on the “embedded stage directions” contained in the lines themselves to enable our imagination to encompass the wider impact of the dramatic event.  We will also investigate theatrical conventions and staging that the texts presume but recognize that this knowledge does not limit a modern director's decisions. As part of the course work we will attend productions of two plays we read and will also study those productions as texts.

There will be in-class writings, two papers, two reviews, and a midterm.

ETS 153-1 Interpretation of Fiction
MWF 9:30-10:25
Instructor: Bob Gates
This course takes up the subject of fictional characters who are in some way or another trying to “interpret” the “fictions” of their lives. We will look at characters who confront the experience of a “self” that is expressed, revealed, or acted out but is felt to be “other” than their already known experience of self--who they think they “are,” their constructed fiction of a “self.” The notion that an "other," previously unknown, self may become known to us by speaking or acting through us derives from Freud's discoveries that the "self" of every person is not simply our conscious thoughts, ideas and self-perceptions, but includes a vast area of unconsciousness of which we are unaware. We will read novels and short stories in which such characters try or fail to come to terms with the expressions, verbal or otherwise, of these unknown "other" selves. These expressions will range from memories and dreams to compulsive behaviors, lies, fantasy figures, artistic expressions, seeing "aliens," and spontaneous speech. What these "self-expressions" all have in common is that they are initially strange and incomprehensible (i.e. "unreadable" or “fictional”) to the very people who would seem to be their "authors."

ETS 153-2 Interpretation of Fiction
TTH 8:00-9:20
Instructor: William West
The course will discuss the nature of narrative (story-telling and plot), fiction, and the novel. Having established these boundaries, we shall then study examples from different historical periods and cultural traditions, all of which have as an important element in their narrative the societal role of women. Novels for study and discussion will include Jane Austen's Emma (1816), Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), E. M. Forster's A Room with a View (1908), André Gide's novella, The Pastoral Symphony (1919), F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), and Ann Patchett's Bel Canto (2001).

ETS 153-3 Interpretation of Fiction
MW 3:45-5:05
Instructor: Jon Singleton
In this course, students will sharpen their skills of reading, discussing, and writing about fiction. We will read a diverse collection of short stories and one novel, written by a variety of writers from different nations and periods. As we read, we will practice the discipline of “close reading,” which requires one to draw interpretive conclusions from details in a text. In a larger sense, we will explore the nature of fiction and the ways that narrative shapes our under standing of current events, world news, the people around us, and even our own lives. Students should expect to do a lot of discussion and creative, critical thinking in this class.

As a writing intensive course, ETS 153 familiarizes students with the thought processes, structures, and styles associated with writing in the liberal arts. Students will complete daily reading assignments and quizzes. They will also take a mid-term exam and write three essays (900, 1200, and 1500 words respectively) that require them to use close reading and interpretive skills.

ETS 153-4 Interpretation of Fiction
MW 3:45-5:05
Instructor: Soumitree Gupta
This course will introduce you to ways of closely reading and interpreting fiction. We will begin by exploring the relationship of fiction to narrative. This will include close reading of the formal and rhetorical aspects of fiction, like point of view, plot, narrative structure, character, language, and genre. At the same time, we will examine the specific historical and cultural contexts within which hese fictional texts have been produced and read. Thus, we will examine the relationship between form, content, and historical context in works of fiction in order to analyze (a) what kinds of meanings are produced in these texts; (b) how textual meanings are contingent on not just the historical-cultural location of the author, but that of the reader too; and (c) how these meanings draw on, challenge, or subvert existing cultural-political discourses of self and society. We will explore these broader interpretive questions in works of fiction—chosen from a wide range of national, cultural, and generic traditions—while focusing on textual constructions of home, nation, and identity. Texts will likely include Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea , Toni Morrison's Beloved , Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things , Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis , and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home .

ETS 153-5 Interpretation of Fiction
TTH 11:00-12:20
Instructor: Peter Mortenson
In this course we will read fiction written between 1800 and the present, and we will view some films. In the process we will consider ways of talking about and interpreting fiction; we will get some knowledge of social history and literary tradition; and we will get some reading experience with very different styles of writing. Course requirements will include short papers and two exams. Readings will include short stories, Jane Austen's Emma , Fannie Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes , and David Lodge's Nice Work .

ETS153-9 Interpretation of Fiction
MW 5:15-6:35
Instructor: Charles Robinson
What is fiction? Often, ‘fiction' is opposed to ‘fact'—we know something ‘fictitious' or ‘fictional' is not exactly truthful. And yet, fiction is a mainstay of literature, of art that tells stories so powerful that they are often seen as expounding truths so profound as to be timeless, beyond mere historical fact. In understanding fiction—what it is, how it works, and why it is appreciated—so much depends on interpretation. This class will explore concepts like plot, narrative structure, character, and genre—even ‘history' itself as a concept—all with the goal of sharpening our interpretative skills and clarifying our understanding of fiction.

Thematically useful in this undertaking will be an ensemble of works wondering and worrying about the distinction of truth from lie, of fiction from fact. This ensemble will include novels by Mark Z. Danielewski, Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, Jonathan Safran Foer, Chuck Palahniuk, and Salman Rushdie. We will also read short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin, Eudora Welty, Henry James, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, and David Foster Wallace.

ETS 154-1 Interpretation of Film
MWF 11:40-12:35
Film Screening M 7:00-9:50
Instructor: CJ Dosch
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the interpretation of film. Regarded as the quintessential medium of the last century, cinema has profoundly shaped the ways in which we see the world and understand our place within it. Focusing principally on classic and contemporary English language cinema, we will investigate precisely how meaning is produced in cinema. The course integrates a close attention to the specific aesthetic and rhetorical aspects of film with a wide-ranging exploration of the social and cultural contexts that shape how we make sense of and take pleasure in films. We shall also devote attention to questions of history: How may one interpret a film in relation to its historical context? How should the history of cinema be written? Film history incorporates not only the films that have been produced over the past one hundred years, but also an understanding of how the practice of movie going has transformed over time. No prior film experience is required. Weekly screenings are mandatory.

ETS 154-2 Interpretation of Film
TTh 3:30-4:50
Film Screening TH 7:00-9:50
Instructor: Michael D. Dwyer
Nearly everyone is familiar with watching films, but how does one interpret film? This course is designed to serve as an introduction to the skills needed to identify and interpret the ways in which films produce meaning. Focusing primarily on English-language Hollywood film, this course will introduce students both to the formal aspects of cinema—mise en scene, cinematography, editing and sound—as well as the practices of production, exhibition, and reception that guide our understanding of “what movies mean.” Assignments will include weekly discussion board posts, short response papers, a midterm and final exam, as well as a final essay. Weekly screenings are mandatory. No prior experience with film studies is necessary.

ETS 154-3 Interpretation of Film
WF 12:45-2:05
Film Screening W 7:00-9:50
Instructor: Gohar Siddiqui
This course will teach you how to analyze films and to that end seeks to familiarize you with the practices of making meaning in film studies. How do films influence us? How do their forms and methods teach us to make sense of our world? How do films represent the world we live in and why is it important to study them? These are some of the questions that we will try to answer in this course. We will be looking at aesthetic, formal and rhetorical aspects of films along with the socio-historical and cultural factors that affect and inflect them. In addition to contemporary and classical cinema, we will study some international films to consider how different film industries develop their own conventions of representation. This course can provide a foundation for those seeking to take advanced courses in film studies.

This is a writing intensive course so assignments will include short papers, one long essay, and weekly Blackboard posts in addition to the midterm and final exam. No prior film experience is necessary. The weekly screening is mandatory.

ETS 181-1 Class and Literary Texts: Victorian Literature and Class
TTh 12:30-1:50
Instructor: Jessica Kuskey
In this course we will study Victorian literature and culture in order to understand and theorize how literary texts represent class and maintain or challenge cultural categories of oppression and privilege. Victorian England witnessed important cultural transformations in social class resulting from industrialism: new kinds of poverty, new kinds of class antagonism, and new kinds of exploitation and resistance. These cultural changes are visible in the period's literature which sought to represent, understand, and theorize social classes. In this course we will read about some of the lives and labors of Victorian people: factory workers, captains of industry, prostitutes, pick-pockets, wives, and mothers. We will analyze the ways texts construct class as a category of difference, and we will study the way class is constructed as a social relation. In addition to Henry Mayhew's investigations into London's underworld, and Marx and Engels's writings on class, we will read novels, poetry, ghost stories, fairy tales, and detective stories by some of the period's most popular writers, including Charles Dickens ( Oliver Twist and Great Expectations ), Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes stories), Thomas Hardy ( Tess of the D'Urbervilles ), Elizabeth Gaskell ( North and South ), Christina Rossetti, H.G. Wells, and others. This is a writing intensive course and classes will be discussion based.

ETS 182-2 Race and Literary Texts: Introduction to Asian American Literature
MW 12:45-2:05
Instructor: Nancy Kang
This survey course introduces the rich cultural and literary history of Asian Americans. We will focus exclusively on American writers of East Asian descent (primarily Chinese, Japanese, and Korean). Although Asian American writing occurred prior to the twentieth century, most of the texts we examine were published after 1900.

Asian Americans comprise a powerful and discrete literary and cultural community. Their voices have been obscured by racist stereotyping, exclusionary canon formation, and the false assumption that the culture is merely an offshoot of global Asian societies. Obviously, this is not the case.

The objective of this course is to provide intellectual foundations to Asian American literary experience. Students will read and write critically about novels, poems, criticism, and short stories by such authors as Hisaye Yamamoto, Amy Tan, John Okada, David Marshall Chan, Shawn Wong, Elaine Kim, and Sui Sin Far. As with any literature course, originality and clarity of insight, analytical skill, and technical competency will be evaluated.

ETS 182-3 Race and Literary Texts
TTH 3:30-4:50
AND
ETS 182-4
TTH 2:00-3:20
Instructor: Meera Lee
This course is an invitation to broadly critique and understand the historical, cultural, and political representation of race through literary texts and critical theories. Drawing on Foucault's hypothesis that we should historically examine the relation between power and sexuality instead of producing another repressed discourse of sexuality alone, the quintessential question concerns how the concept of race is “operationalized” or “deployed” in the west. Given that the current geopolitical circumstances are very complex, the course will also assist students to explore the notion of race and racism not only from the western multicultural perspective, but also from within cultures outside the west. T he course discussion will, accordingly, engage students in a constructive criticism of race in relation to ethnicity, class, sexuality, diaspora, empire, diversity, and terror(ism). We will read a broad spectrum of writings, from the critical theories of Foucault, Fanon, Memmi, and Said, to contemporary ethnic literature, including works by Toni Morrison, Karen Tei Yamashita, Michael Ondaatje, and Junot Diaz. We will also view the films, tentatively, Heading South and M. Butterfly in class.

ETS 184-1 Ethnicity and Literary Texts: Introduction to Indigenous Literatures
MW 12:45-2:05
Instructor: Scott Lyons
This course will introduce students to indigenous literatures in North America and around the world, with particular attention paid to the writing of American Indians in the United States . “Indigenous” refers to Native peoples and communities dealing in some way with settler colonialism—some have called this particular social formation the Fourth World—and we will construe “literature” broadly to include a wide range of cultural expressions, from oral traditions to print media and film. Indigenous people have been writing back to the colonial center since the Spanish discovery of the New World, and we will examine the enduring themes that have emerged as a result of this ongoing process: religious and cultural difference, political relationships between settlers and Natives, “race,” identity, and tribal nationalism. Notable authors will include William Apess, Gertrude Bonnin, D'arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Sherman Alexie, as well as representatives from Aotearoa/New Zealand, Guatemala , Native Hawaii, and Chiapas , Mexico .
Meets with NAT 200 M002

184-2 Ethnicity and Literary Texts
MW 3:45-5:05
Instructor: Erella Sofer-Brown
Meets with REL 231-1/JSP 231-1/LIT 231-1

184-3 Ethnicity and Literary Texts: The Great Jewish Writers
TTH 12:30-1:50
Instructor: Ken Frieden
This course will function as an introduction to some of the best fiction written by Jewish authors such as S. Y. Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel, S. Y. Agnon, Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Philip Roth, and I. B. Singer.  Topics include modernization, rebellion against authority, alienation, childhood, superstition, and the Holocaust.  We will watch pertinent film clips from movies such as Fishke the Lame (1939), Tevye (1939), Goodbye, Columbus (1969), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Cabaret (1972), Shadows and Fog (1992), and Life is Beautiful (1997).
Meets with REL 131-1/JSP 131-1/LIT 131-1

ETS 192-1 Gender and Literary Texts:
Victorians Under Construction: Gender and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain
MW 2:15-3:35
Instructor: Lizz Porter
This class will engage with many issues of gender and identity prevalent in Victorian fiction and non-fiction. In the nineteenth century, as literacy and the availability of publications increased, questions of authorship and readership became intertwined with the construction of identities both inside and outside texts. We will investigate and discuss gender from all angles including but not limited to masculinity, femininity, homosexuality, and homosociality, and also consider how these constructions influenced social structures such as the home, public spaces, and schools. In this class we will work with a variety of texts ranging from familiar publications such as Jane Eyre to less familiar works such as children's literature, poems, domestic manuals, and self-help books. We will also consider the periodical press which daily influenced how people saw themselves and those around them, with special consideration to how anonymous publication allowed female writers access to a predominately masculine literary market. Gender in nineteenth-century Britain was and continues to be an incredibly complex and fascinating topic that will fuel our discussions throughout the semester. This course fulfills writing intensive and critical reflections requirements.
Meets with WSP 192

ETS 192-3 Gender and Literary Texts:
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, Readers Are From Earth
TTH 2:00-3:20
Instructor: Wendy Jones
We will read and explore the representation of gender and sexuality through fiction and poetry by authors who have an appeal outside the academy, and who therefore might not find their way into ETS courses. These texts are especially important to considering gender and sexuality in our society since they are read by ordinary smart people in all walks of life. Addressing a wide audience, they have greater influence on our cultural ideals than books read primarily in the academy. There will be some overlap between “collegetown” and “main street” (smart main street, that is!)—e.g. Toni Morrison. But we will also explore popular phenomena such as chick lit, men's books, graphic novels, Oprah's book club, and fiction popular with teens as well as adults.
Meets with WSP 192

ETS 192-4 Gender and Literary Texts: The Female First-Person Voice
MW 3:45-5:05
Instructor: Rinku Chatterjee
The first-person narrative treads a thin line between autobiography and the assumption of a persona. In this course, we shall study first-person narratives by women through history—from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries; writing in various genres—poetry, novel, short story; and across social classes. As we read materials as diverse as short poems by Elizabeth I, a novel by Charlotte Bronte, or a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, we will continue to question whether femininity is a biological, social, and cultural given, with its parameters set, or whether it is a more fluid category that lends itself to reconstructions.
Meets with WSP 192

ETS 215-1 Sophomore Poetry Workshop
TH 12:30-3:20
Instructor: Brooks Haxton
A poem is a private, personal moment of expression and, at the same, an effort to reach the imagination of a reader one may never meet. The purpose of this course is to find the sources of feeling in the writer's psyche, and to develop the skill, to present an experience in language accessible to others. Students will read each other's poems and give specific, constructive responses. Everyone will write one new poem each week, some in response to assignments. At least four of these new poems must be revised into carefully considered form. Requirements include reading, written analysis of poems, and memorization. The course is open to anyone committed to this work. No prerequisites.

ETS 217-1 Sophomore Fiction Workshop
T 3:30-6:20
Instructor: Arthur Flowers
Worship Format. Emphasis on development of craft, production skills, literary vision, and sophistication. The Class Reader will serve as our text.

ETS 242-1 Reading and Interpretation
TTH 9:30-10:50
Instructor: Patricia Roylance
AND
ETS 242-2 Reading and Interpretation
MW 2:15-3:35
Instructor: Jolynn Parker
ETS 242 introduces students to the discipline of English and Textual Studies, stressing not what is read but how we read it. The goal is not only to learn how meanings are created through acts of critical reading, but also to demonstrate the consequences of pursuing one mode or method of reading over another. This course will enhance your ability to read and interpret diverse works contextually as well as closely, and to draw connections between reading and writing. Through close, deep, and thoughtful reading of literary and non-literary texts as well as essays by critics and theorists, we will explore the ways texts mean and the way readers produce meaning. Each section of ETS 242 takes up issues of central concern within contemporary literary and cultural studies. These include representation; author/ity, textuality, and reading; subjectivity; and culture and history.