english department14 booklet...5 courses required for the major english major: 40 credits gateway...

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College of St. Benedict and

St. John’s University

English Department Course Descriptions

Spring 2014

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Table of Contents

Courses that meet Common Curriculum requirements....4

Courses required for the Major ………………...…….…...5

Advising Sheets for Majors and Minors………………..6-9

100-level Courses………………..…………….............10-12

Gateway Courses………………………………………..13-16

Writing Courses:

Lower Division………………………....................17-18

Upper Division…………...……………................19-21

Electives:

Lower Division…………………………...............22

Upper Division…………………………...............23-29

Capstone Requirement……………………………….........30

Internship........................................................................32

NOTE: Checklists for the English major and minor as well as

internship guidelines are available on the English department website. The

URL is:

http://www.csbsju.edu/english/

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Courses that meet Common Curriculum

Requirements Humanities (HM):

Engl: 120A, 120F, 120H, 221B, 221C, 223C, 286, 352, 381*, 382, 386

Engl Abroad: 385E

Gender (GE): Engl: 221B, 221C, 365, 381*, 382, 386

Intercultural (IC): Engl: 221C, 382

\

Experiential Learning (EL):

Engl: 214, 397

*pending

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Courses Required for the Major

Gateway Courses

See pages 13-16

English 243: Literary Theory and Criticism

See page 16

English 311: Writing Essays See pages 19-20

English 365: Current Issues in

Literary Studies See page 31

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English Major: 40 Credits

Students who entered in Fall 2011 or later

Requirements:

_____ 8 credits of ENGL 221-223 (must be differently numbered):

221: World Literatures 222: Literatures in English

223: Literature of the Americas

_____ 4 credits of ENGL 243: Literary Theory and Criticism

_____ 4 credits of ENGL 311: Writing Essays

_____ 4 credits of Capstone:

ENGL 365: Capstone

HONR 398 Honors Senior Essay, Research or Creative Project

EDUC 362 Student Teaching

20 additional credits of English electives:

ENGL _____

ENGL _____

ENGL _____

ENGL _____

ENGL _____

At least 16 credits of coursework counted toward the major must be 300-

level:

ENGL _____; ENGL _____; ENGL 311; Capstone

Students may apply only one course from 120-124 toward the major.

Students must have sophomore standing to enroll in 300-level courses.

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English Major with Creative Writing Concentration: 44

Credits


Requirements:

_____ 4 credits of ENGL 213: Creative Writing—Fiction and Poetry


221: World Literatures

222: Literatures in English




_____ 4 credits of ENGL 313: Advanced Creative Writing

_____ 4 credits of Capstone

ENGL 368: Creative Writing Capstone

HONR 398 Honors Senior Creative Project

16 additional credits of English electives*:

ENGL _____

ENGL _____

ENGL _____

ENGL _____

*Students may apply 4 credits from COMM 245: Media Writing; COMM

345: Advanced Media Writing; or THEA 211: Playwriting

At least 16 credits of coursework counted toward the major must be 300-

level:

ENGL _____; ENGL 313; ENGL 311; Capstone

Students may apply only one course from 120-124 toward the major.

Students must have sophomore standing to enroll in 300-level courses.

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English Major: Concentration in English – Communication

Arts/Literature for 5-12 Education Licensure (44 credits)


Required Courses:


221: World Literatures

222: Literatures in English




_____ 4 credits ENGL 382: Race and Ethnicity in U.S. Literature or

ENGL 383: Post-Colonial Literature

_____ 4 credits of ENGL 387: English Language (Linguistics)

_____ 8 credits of required courses from the Communication Department+

2 credits of COMM 200: Public Speaking

2 credits of COMM 252: Listening

4 credits of COMM 103: Mass Communication

_____ 4 credits of EDUC 362 (Capstone)

_____ 8 additional credits of English electives*

ENGL _____ ENGL _____

*The English Department strongly recommends ENGL 352: Shakespeare as

4 of these credits.

+ These courses count toward the English major only for students who

complete the Education

minor

See also the Education Department's listing of courses required for a 5-12

licensure.

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English Minor (20 credits)


_____ 20 credits of English courses, including at least 12 at the upper-

division level*

ENGL ____

ENGL ____ ENGL 3___

ENGL 3___

ENGL 3___

*The English Department strongly recommends that students take English

311.

Students may apply only one course from 120-124 toward the minor.

Writing Minor (20 credits)


_____ 12 credits of writing courses within the English major*+

ENGL ____

ENGL ____

ENGL ____

*Students may substitute COMM 245: Introduction to Media Writing and

COMM 345: Advanced Media Writing

+ The English department strongly recommends that students take English

311.

_____ 8 additional elective English credits

ENGL ____

ENGL ____

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100-Level Courses

English 120A-01A: Science Fiction:

Aliens/Outer Space

Days: MWF Professor: Jane Z. Opitz

Time: 3:00-3:55 p.m. Office: Quad 266, HAB 103

Room: Quad 344

Who are we? Are we alone in the universe? What does it mean to be

human? How do we determine ethical standards when dealing with “others”?

Are the laws of nature forever the same in all places and times? These are

some of the fundamental questions that Science Fiction asks and this course

explores. After briefly examining and defining the genre and its fit into the

literary cannon, we read short stories, excerpts from applicable critical theory,

and novels that exemplify three specific themes: Encounter with Aliens

(Childhood’s End), Questions of Time (The End of Eternity), and Artificial Life (Genesis). Students select and present extra materials that further develop the

target themes. This course meets on three evenings (dates not yet set) for a

three-hour video lab.

No prerequisites; HM designation.

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English 120F-01A: Monstrosity and

Metamorphosis in Fiction

Days: TR Professor: Rachel Marston

Time:9:35-10:55 Office: Quad 357A

Room: Quad 360

Monsters are an integral part of our narrative experience, from childhood ghost stories to updated contemporary tales of vampires and

zombies. We are fascinated with monsters, the creatures that are like us

but not quite.

This course will examine literary representations of the mon

strous. We will ask: How do we conceive of the monster and the mon

strous? What forms can the monstrous take? What is the relationship be

tween monsters and desire? What does monstrosity teach us about narra

tive forms? And above all, what does the monster reveal or show us about

ourselves, especially how we understand and construct individual and so

cial identity?

Texts will include Frankenstein, The Metamorphosis, “The Company of Wolves,” among others.

This course is an introduction to fiction with emphases on close

reading, critical thinking, discussion and writing skills.

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English 120H-01A: City Mysteries

Days: MWF Professor: Yvette R. Piggush

Time: 9:10-10:05 a.m. Office: Quad 352B

Room: Quad 339

In many ways, modern fiction is both product and producer of

the modern city. Our urban areas are spaces of technological achieve

ment, intellectual enlightenment, and logical, narrative order. They are

also places of heterogeneity, desire, and mystery. This class uses the in

tersection of fiction and the city to explore the nature of fiction, its formal construction, and its interpretation. We will read classic and contempo

rary mysteries featuring cities by writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur

Conan Doyle, and Diane Liang and study the development of the mystery

genre across time periods and cultural contexts. We will also examine

works, such as Mohsin Hamid’s Reluctant Fundamentalist and Alejo Car

pentier’s The Chase, that use the mysteriousness of the city to pose funda

mental questions about human knowledge, identity, and social order.

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Gateway Courses

English 221B:

Early Western Literature: Homer to Dante

(HM) (GE)

Days: MWF Professor: Jessica L. Harkins


Room: Quad 365

These authors are everywhere. In political discourses and in psy

chology, in film, in painting and in literature, we continue to speak in

terms of their masterpieces. This course will take us into the heart of their

great works. The personalities of these authors leap off of the page; their

characters are audacious, unlikable, heart-rending, hilarious, and conflict

ed. These poets—Ovid, Homer, Sophocles, and Virgil—write about gods

and men, exploring themes of love, of violence and change, and of causes

and consequences. By the medieval period, these classical writers have

become “pagans,” and writers that value them greatly, such as Dante and Chaucer, struggle (at personal risk) to protect and to newly translate their

books. Our conversation will include a careful reading of how these au

thors construct gender and sexual norms—and we will look to how female

writers, such as Sappho and Christine de Pizan, depict their sex in their

own words while carving out a place for women within a masculine tradi

tion. Students in this course may expect to encounter some of the brilliant

minds who have shaped the course of western thought and struck deeply

into the human imagination.

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English 221C-01A:

World Literature: Modern Western

Literature: Voltaire/Nabakov

Days: TR Professor: Christina Shouse Tourino


Room: Quad 365

In this course we will read some Masterworks of Western litera

ture and drama in translation. Our reading list includes some very fa

mous texts, and other equally fascinating reads that may be less familiar

to you. Our texts come from Europe, Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil and

may include: Voltaire’s Candide, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Chekov’s

Uncle Vanya, Kafka’s The Trial, James’ The Ambassadors, Freud’s Civi-

lization and its Discontents, Camus’ The Plague, De Beauvoir’s The Sec-

ond Sex, Rulfo’s Pédro Páramo, García Márquez’ Chronicle of a Death

Foretold, Lispector’s Hour of the Star, and Calvino’s Once upon a win-

ter’s night a traveler.

This course carries GN, IC, and HM designations. It is also cross-listed

with GWST.

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English 223C-01A:

Revolutionary Americas

Days: MWF Professor: Yvette R. Piggush

Time: 3:00-3:55 p.m. Office: Quad 352B

Room: Quad 361

“How is it,” the English writer Samuel Johnson asked in 1775,

“that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?” Johnson’s stinging question reveals that the struggles for political

independence in the Americas at the end of the eighteenth century were

inextricably intertwined with the existence and expansion of chattel slav

ery. This course introduces students to the discourses and intersecting

cultural production of forms of freedom and unfreedom—particularly gen

der inequality, slavery, and racism—in North America and the Caribbe

an. We will examine how discourses of race, masculinity, and femininity

shape ideas of liberty in the United States, Haiti, and the British West In

dies. We will then trace the repercussions of these discourses through the

British abolition of slavery in 1833 in to the end of chattel slavery in the

United States during the Civil War. Our discussions will focus on the messy and incomplete processes of social and personal transformation us

ing a wide range of readings, from Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the

Declaration of Independence and the Haitian Constitution of 1804 to fic

tional works that shed light on the revolutionary roads not taken, such as

Leonora Sansay’s Secret History (1808) of the Haitian Revolution and

Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” (1855).

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English 243-01A:

Literary Theory and Criticism

Days: TR Professor: Luke Mancuso


Room: Quad 360

Rock Your (Reading) World: A (Medium) Cool Introduction to Lit-

erary Theory and Criticism My approach to the study of critical theory echoes Charles

Lemert’s assertion, “Social Theory is a basic survival skill.” From Karl

Marx’s revolutionary vision of the state to Donna Harraway’s revolution

ary vision of female identity, this course will explore some of the theoreti

cal work that has sought to define connections between the material condi

tions of human lives, the institutions and domains that people negotiate

daily. The course will follow a general trajectory from formalist thought

through structuralism to contemporary cultural studies, and it will aim to

introduce students to theoretical work based in several perspec

tives: history, identity politics, psychoanalysis, post-marxism, gender

studies, queer studies, cultural studies, and class studies among them. These theories will rock your reading world. Trust me.

Lively and focused discussion is central to this course. Requirements

include excellent preparation (reading and notes), lively participation in

and leadership of discussions, 5 one-page analysis sketches, and a theoret

ically-informed literary essay, on a poem/fiction/film text of your choice.

This course is a requirement of the English Major.

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Writing Courses: Lower Division

English 213-01A: Seminar in

Creative Writing:

Fiction, Poetry and Song Writing

Days: TR Professor: Michael Opitz

Time: 9:55-11:15 Office: Richarda, N. 27

Room: BAC A108

Seminar in Creative Writing 213 had been designed to give stu

dents practice writing short fiction and poetry. Because the song has been such an important genre in the last fifty years, this section will include

song writing as an option for interested students. Thus, each person in the

seminar will be able to focus on two of these three genres. Each genre will

provide the subject matter for approximately one third of the course, and

will serve as the basis for discussion about the principles and techniques of

writing. A short collection of poetry (fifteen polished poems) and a piece

of polished prose fiction (fifteen-twenty pages) or a collection of songs

(length to be determined) will be the major work for the term. Each major

work will follow a process that involves writing drafts, using these drafts

for in-class workshops, participating in group conferences and revising

drafts in light of feedback. At the end of the course, we will produce an

anthology of the writing for the semester.

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English 214-01A:

Creative Writing:

Writing the Experience (EL)

Days: TR Instructor: Chris Bolin

Time: 8:00-9:20 a.m. Office: QUAD 359D Room: QUAD 349

In this creative-writing course, students will gain the skills neces

sary to teach poetry-writing and fiction-writing in local schools, while

developing a deeper engagement to their own poetry and fiction writing.

This course will focus on helping students tie writing poetry and fiction to

teaching creative writing. Students will participate in writing workshops

of peer work, closely examine published stories and poems, and co-teach

creative-writing sessions at a local, elementary school. Ultimately, this

course will help students develop and refine an understanding of how "service" and "art" complement one another. This course will help stu

dents write stronger poems, and stories, by illuminating concerns of craft,

technique, and process. Additionally, this course will connect students

with a community of peers to foster extra-curricular, creative growth.

This course fulfills the Experiential Learning (EL) designation.

This course has a $20 supplemental fee for background checks.

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Writing Courses: Upper Division

English 311-01A:

Writing Essays

Days: MWF Professor: Matt Harkins

Time: 3:00-3:55 p.m. Office: Quad 352C

Room: Quad 339

Put simply, we’ll be committing “creative nonfiction.” Like the

writers we’ll be reading, we’ll try to discover exactly what we want to

say—and then say it so well that others will want to read our writing.

In inventing the essay as we know it, Montaigne noted how his

work remained provisional and exploratory—“essays” or attempts at his

subject. In a very real sense these qualities stemmed from his drive to keep

diving deeper and deeper into his prose to try to discover what it was ex

actly that compelled him to write in the first place. Subjects are difficult

like that. E.B. White, writing about the first moon landing, went through

multiple drafts, writing and rewriting until finally satisfied with his narra

tive tone—and thus understood what it was he wanted to say.

We’ll be paying a good deal of attention to how this “what” takes

shape largely through “how” an essay comes together; form cannot be sep

arated from content. Small, telling details, precisely rendered, ground

one’s work in the world, letting a series of thoughts take root. Developing

this precision will be at the heart of our writing. Everything submitted this

semester should be the product of multiple drafts—some turned in, some

not—as, apprentices of a demanding craft, we hone our skills.

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English 311-02A:

Writing Essays

Days: TR Professor: Rachel Marston

Time: 12:45-2:05 Office: Quad 357A

Room: Quad 365

The essay is a capacious form, one that evokes its definition as an

“experiment” and an “attempt.” In this class, we will experiment with the essay form, attempting to further refine our style, word choice, and sense

of the essay structure. We will read published works, write essays in a

variety of forms, and examine what it means to write well. We will pay

careful attention to language, form, and ways of making meaning.

The class also includes frequent in-class writing, peer workshop,

as well as the important and challenging process of revising.

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English 313-01A: Advanced Seminar:

Creative Writing

Advanced Poetry Workshop

Days: TR Professor: Jessica L. Harkins


Room: Quad 361

Are you secretly a poet? Do you love to write? This course offers

a careful study the art of poetry and the writing life. Together, we read a

wide variety of styles and forms of poetry as we write original poetry

throughout the semester. Students may expect readings to supplement their

study of craft, and many writing exercises to engage them with formal and

experimental modes of poetry. Frequent writing workshops provide a lot of

feedback on student writing—as well as create opportunities for everyone to

exercise reading and editing skills. As part of the course students meet with

visiting writers, participate in a poetry reading, and ultimately design a portfolio of their own poems. The course primarily aims to develop creative

writing skills and to help students grow as writers; additionally though, the

course enhances students’ ability to read and discuss poetry, expands stu

dents’ knowledge of poets writing in English, and exposes students to con

temporary poetry journals, reading audiences, and new forms of literary

publication.

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Electives: Lower Division

English/Communication 286-01A:

Intro to Film Studies

Welcome to Film Heaven: An Introduction

to Active Spectatorship

Days: MWF Professor: Luke Mancuso


Room: Quad 360

In film heaven, we will go beyond the level of “two thumbs up”

and will work toward a more theoretical and historical understanding of

Hollywood film and film history. Students will gain an understanding of

the history of film in the U.S. and abroad, and we will look at aesthetic

and technical aspects of filmmaking. Students will also become familiar

with film terminology. 2G2BT.

We will watch many cinema masterworks in the course of the

semester, and there will be a lab scheduled for this purpose. We will also

read film theory, reviews, and other texts to broaden our understanding of

the medium and its genres. Attendance at film lab is mandatory.

Students will do presentations, writing, and will be expected to

participate actively in our discussions. They will also be expected to keep

up with readings and screenings. There may be a nominal cost for

photocopied materials.

Attention: This course requires vigorous and active participation.

This course is cross-listed with COMM 286.

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Electives: Upper Division

English 315B-01A:

Editing and Publishing

Days: TR Professor: Cynthia N. Malone

Time: 9:35-10:55 a.m. Office: Quad 357

Room: Quad 361

“Every generation rewrites the book’s epitaph; all that changes is the who

dunit.”

--Leah Price, “Dead Again,” New Y ork Times Book Review,

August 10, 2012

As e-book sales rise, book publishers knit their brows and try to

forecast demand for print books and e-books. “[L]ast year,” Leah Price notes, “Amazon announced it was selling more e-books than print books

— hardcover and paperback combined.” That announcement has prompt

ed a new round of hand-wringing about the future of the book.

The shift from print to electronic format has had—and continues

to have—enormous consequences. Claims that this shift spells the death

of books, however, need careful examination. In English 315, we’ll ex

plore the rapidly changing book-publishing industry, looking closely at the

ways in which industry developments and new technologies affect writers

and readers. We’ll begin by studying the traditional book-publishing

model, and then we’ll study the effects of digital technologies on the

transmission of writers’ works to audiences of readers.

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English 352:

Shakespeare

Days: MWF Professor: Matt Harkins

Time: 11:30-12:25 Office: Quad 352C

Room: Quad 353

This course will focus on reading closely, discussing, and writing about key representative plays from Shakespeare’s career. We’ll consider

how his work both contributed to, and moved past, the conventions of

Elizabethan and Jacobean theatrical genres. We will move in a roughly

chronological order, in order to consider the trajectory of the plays as well

as historical and cultural shifts. Plays will likely include The Merchant of

Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry IV Part One, As You Like It,

Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Winter’s Tale.

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English 365-01A:

Current Issues in Literary Studies

Show Business: Race and the

American Imaginary

Days: TR Professor: Christina M. Shouse Tourino

Time: 11:10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Office: Quad 354B

ROOM: QUAD 349

What can we make of the stubborn New World habit of giving

symbolic power to black populations while simultaneously denying them

real social power? Why are whites so often comfortable “at play” in black

cultural forms? Our primary texts will be novels from the U.S., mostly

from the second half of the 19th Century; we will also consider other fine

arts forms such as minstrelsy, classical music, jazz, painting, and photography, as well as writings from Political Science, New Musicology, Liter

ary Theory, and Cultural Studies. Since this is a seminar, students will

take central responsibility for their learning: expect a vigorous reading

load, a substantive seminar presentation, and a research paper. We begin

with Eric Lott’s Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American

Working Class. Novels may include: Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn

(1884), James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

(1912), and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Music may

include works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin,

George Gershwin, The American Songbook, and Charlie Parker.

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English 381-01A:

Literature by Women

Days: TR Professor: Madhuchhanda Mitra

Time: 1:05-2:25 Office: Richa P28

Room: HAB 115

This course is designed to introduce students to the diversity of

women’s writings from Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. Mainly through novels, but supplemented by poetry, essays and

memoirs, we will explore the ways in which women writers have articulat

ed their concerns, challenged or re-inscribed societal and familial roles,

responded to political and cultural pressures, and formulated a literary and

feminist aesthetic.

A major objective of the course is to examine some of the central

issues in the field of gender/women’s studies: the socio-cultural construc

tion of femininity and masculinity; the meanings and practices of hege

monic patriarchy; the politics and economics of gender relations/identities.

Some of the writers we will read are Nawal El-Saadawi (Egypt),

Huda Barakat (Lebanon), Alia Mamoudi (Iraq), Marjane Satrapi (Iran),

Sahar Khalifeh (Palestine), and Kamila Shamsie (Pakistan).

This course is an English major requirement. Registration preference given to English majors.

Prerequisite: Completion of Fir st-Year Seminar or the equivalent

and Junior standing.

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English 382-01A:

Race and Ethnicities in US Literatures

Days: TR Professor: Christina M. Shouse Tourino

Time: 12:45-2:05 Office: Quad 354B

Room: Quad 353

This course is an introductory survey of race and ethnicity in the

literatures of the United States. Ethnic literatures are generally produced

out of cultural, political, and/or economic crises by members of a marginalized group. We will think about how texts respond to such crises, pay

ing special attention to recurring themes such as assimilation, inter-

generational conflict, slavery, borders, translation, memory, and witness

ing. In addition to race, color, class and ethnicity, gender and sexuality are

important categories of analysis for this course. Our discussions will be

grounded in the historical, cultural, and theoretical contexts of each text.

The very topic of “ethnic literature,” however, defeats any effort at

a survey. While these texts stem from several ethnic communities—

Jewish American, Italian American, Black, Mexican American, Japanese

Canadian, Dominican—they do not “represent” such communities. Such

“representation” is impossible. The arbitrary nature of their selection is, itself, a problem for the field (and the course), and any concept of

“coverage” is impossible. Part of our work together will be to learn how

to challenge the framework of this course, as well as current ideas such as

“multiculturalism” and “diversity.” What are the institutional and political

consequences of a course in Race and Ethnicity in United States literatures

as opposed to diasporic literature, or simply, American literature? Does it

make sense to think about literatures springing from global migrations

(often caused by United States foreign policy and/or global capitalism)

instead of immigrant literature? What impact does the fact that women

and children often constitute the largest percentage of all refugees globally

have on our consideration of what constitutes “ethnic” literature?

Continued on Pg. 28...

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English 382-01A: Continued

Texts may include: Israel Zangwill’s “The Melting Pot,” Alan

Crosland’s “The Jazz Singer,” Gordon Parks’ “Shaft,” Anzia Yezierska’s

Bread Givers, Charles Chesnutt’s “The Wife of His Youth,” Pietro Di Donato’s “Christ in Concrete” (selection), Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible

Man, Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled,” Melvin Van Peebles’ “Classified X,”

Tomás Rivera’s And the Earth Did Not Devour Him , Guillermo Gomez-

Peña’s “Border Brujo” Richard Rodriguez’ Hunger of Memory, Joy

Kogawa’s Obasan, Junot Diaz’ Drown, and Joshua Marston’s, “Maria Full

of Grace.” Theoretical writers include Rosaura Sánchez, Tomás Rivera,

Cornel West, Henry Gates, Anthony Appiah, Lisa Lowe and Toni Morri

son.

Evaluation is based upon participation, short formal written com

ments, and a book review. Assignments and texts are subject to change.

This course carries HM, GE, and IC designations. It is also cross-listed with GWST.

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English/Communication 386 -01A:

Studies in Film (HMU)

English 386—Studies in Film (DS) (GN)

Days: TR Professor: Michael J. Opitz

Time: 2:20-3:40 Office: Richa N27

Room: Quad 346

A working title for this course could be “An Epistemology of

Romance and Marriage in Films.” As short definition of epistemology:

the study of how we know what we know. Thus this course asks us what

we know about romance and marriage and what we have learned to think

about these subjects from watching movies. The central theoretical texts

will be Stanley Cavell’s Pursuits of Happiness: the Hollywood Comedy of

Remarriage, Walter Benjamin’s essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of

Mechanical Reproduction,” and Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer,

“The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” We will view

films which Cavell calls “the comedies of remarriage;” among them are

such classics as The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, The Lady Eve, It Happened One Night and Adam’s Rib. We will also view Woody Allen’s

great trilogy: Manhattan, Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters. Other

films will include Pedro Almadovar’s Women on the Verge of Nervous

Breakdown, Michael Gondry’s The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

and Marlene Gorris’ Antonia’s Line. In addition to viewing films, we will

also read works of fiction and poetry that will serve as counterpoints to the

films. Some of these works will be chosen from the following titles: Tillie

Olsen’s “Tell Me a Riddle,” Grace Paley’s The Little Disturbances of

Man, and poetry by Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. Other theoretical read

ings will be chosen at a later date. Our goal will be to think critically and

theoretically about the ways our culture envisions, describes, creates and

mythologizes the roles we play in relationship, romance, love and marriage. Requirements will include several short writing assignments, dis

cussion assignments and a longer term project. A film viewing lab will

also be required.

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Capstone Requirement

ENGL 365: Current Issues in Literary Studies See page 33

ENGL/HONR 398: Honors Senior Essay,

Research or Creative Project. See Honors Department Website

EDUC 362: Student Teaching 5-12 See Education Department Website

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English 365: Current Issues in Literary Studies

Days: TR Professor: Dr. Mike Opitz

Time: 9:55-11:15 am Office: Richa N27 Room: BAC A108

This course offers a culminating opportunity for English majors to

synthesize their college work, especially much of what they have learned

in their English courses. The English Department has established this

course to bring English majors into contact with each other over a semes

ter to read, reflect, and write about a common reading list. Students in this

course will gain a heightened awareness of the history, content and theo

retical approaches to the discipline of English, will develop a substantial

understanding of their major within the larger context of its discipline, and

will come to know well their immediate community of majors.

“Current Issues in Literary Studies” is organized around a reading list

entitled “Books Every English Major Should Read.” Because this course

is a requirement of the English Department, it will be taught at different

times by different faculty members and each faculty member will have a

different reading list. My list will include novels, collections of poetry,

films, works of Critical Theory, and Cultural Studies. Each category will

be represented by selected works that “every English major should” know.

The major texts for the course will be chosen from the categories

listed above. Our texts will include: Ernest Hemingway, Winner Take

Nothing (short stories), Walter Mosley, A Red Death (novel in a series), W. B. Yeats, Selected Poems, Anne Sexton, Transformations, Adrienne

Rich, An Atlas of the Difficult World or The Art of the Possible, Gary

Snyder, Turtle Island, Walter Benjamin, Illuminations or Reflections.

One or two other texts including another novel will be chosen at a later

date and films will be chosen in consultation with the class. I will provide

a list of further reading suggestions; these suggestions will serve as souve

nirs of a CSB/SJU English major and may be read at any time in the fu

ture.

This course is an English major requirement.

32

English 397: Internship

Days: TBD Professor: Dr. Madhu Mitra

Period: TBD Office: Richarda P28

Room: TBD

Completed Application for Internship form REQUIRED.

S/U grading only.

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, pre-internship seminar, and appli

cation to the English department two semesters prior to the anticipated

internship.

NOTE: (See Internships bulletins on the Internship website at

http://www.csbsju.edu/internship/links.htm)

Contact Julie Christle, Internship Program Coordinator, for additional in

formation

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