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Undergraduate Course DescriptionsCurrent English courses are described below. For descriptions of all English courses, refer to the Undergraduate Catalog. FALL 2008Creative Writing
Linguistics and TESOL
Literature
Rhetoric and Composition Senior Seminars CREATIVE WRITINGEnglish 405: Creative Writing: Elements of StructureTR 2:00 - 3:15 Writers must know architecture. They must know scaffolding, design—we’re talking blueprints here. And then we must know even more: If your text is a house (or even a room), it isn’t good enough to simply develop a blueprint. We must also build the thing ourselves; we’re craftsmen, right? So we won’t forget the jambs, studs, wainscoting, shutters, chimney flashings, cripples, girders, sashes, balusters, risers, shoes, downspouts, and so on. In this class, from micro to macro, we are going to explore structure. Reading is an element of writing, so we will read voraciously in this class. Our reading list will include The Next American Essay edited by John D’Agata, Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Stern, and Flash Fiction: Very Short Stories edited by James Thomas, Denise Thomas, and Tom Hazuka. Additional material will be distributed via handout and electronic reserve. As we read, we will focus on structure in two ways: analyzing professional examples, and then creating our own work, using many of our readings as guides. We will also write from the world around us. Anything can provide a model for structure, as you will see in our readings: John Mcphee uses the game of Monopoly; Gail Griffin uses shapes; Nancy Williford uses a deck of Tarot cards; Nicole Lamy uses photographs; Wendy Rawlings uses email; Michael Martone postcards; and Georges Perec uses the buildings, shops, gardens, and cobblestone alleyways of Paris. What will you use? Requirements: Over the course of the semester, you will write two flash fiction pieces, two short nonfiction pieces (3 pp), and one longer work. One of these texts will be work-shopped, and revised. Other requirements will include: quizzes, exercises, short writing exercises, and critical reading responses. English 406: Advanced Creative Nonfiction (Memoir)TR 5:00-6:15 P.M. This advanced writing workshop will focus on the writing of real lives—your lives—and the navigation of those slippery spaces between remembering and forgetting, truth and invention. Because every good book list is rooted somewhere, we’re going to anchor ours at the beginning of memory—in childhood. We’ll read greedily with a writer’s attention to style and technique as we get in the practice of asking the questions that are essential in the crafting of real-life material. My hope is that when we apprentice ourselves to the memoirs on our reading list, we will practice the habit of art, honing our technical skills while we locate the patterns in our lives that have something to say about the human condition. In order to write well, we must read, and so we will split our time between workshops of student work and the discussion of published texts. In addition to essays in the contemporary journal of creative nonfiction, River Teeth, our reading list may include: Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin, The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard, Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bick Minh Nguyen, Childhood by Nathalie Saurrate, Falling Through the Earth by Danielle Trussoni, and This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff. Over the course of the semester, you will write two essays (6-8 pp) and a final long revision (12-16 pp). Other requirements will include: quizzes and short writing exercises, creative reading responses, and workshop critiques. English 407: Fiction Writing IIIW 6:30 - 9:10 p.m. In this class we will continue many of the concepts of English 307, with an expectation of advanced complexity. The class will focus on student manuscripts in the genre of short fiction. We will give critical feedback on these student texts. We will underscore the necessity of careful and considered revision. Writing is an art and craft, creative inspiration blended with very hard work. In this class, we will focus on the work—reading, writing, discussing fiction, both professional examples and our own personal writing. We will continue our examination of craft and technique. The majority of the class will be dedicated to workshop, or peer review, of your own original fiction (knowing this, you shouldn’t submit any work that you aren’t comfortable sharing with the class). Every student is expected to thoroughly read their peers’ work, and to give thoughtful and respectful feedback (including, typed feedback to writer and instructor, written comments on the actual text, and verbal comments during the class meeting). Readings will include Telling Stories edited by Joyce Carol Oates, along with handouts and stories on reserve and/or Blackboard. Contact Professor Lovelace (salovelace@bsu.edu) with any questions
English 489: Practicum in Literary EditingT 6:30-9:10 The students in this class will be responsible for producing the Spring 2009 issue of The Broken Plate, a literary magazine produced by Ball State undergraduates. This year, we will begin taking open submissions, and accepting work from writers around the country, as well as writing from Ball State undergraduates. Student editors will be responsible for all aspects of magazine production, including soliciting submissions, selecting quality work, designing the magazine, and promoting and selling the issue. Other requirements include magazine and book reviews, readings and quizzes, software tutorials, and an individual literary editing project. Texts may include literary magazines, Merriam-Webster’s Manual for Writers and Editors, and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. English 489 is now a year-long, 6-credit, immersive learning course. Students will also enroll in English 299X in Spring 2009. Please email Mark Neely at maneely@bsu.edu if you are interested in this class. LINGUISTICS AND TESOLENGLISH 320: English LinguisticsTR 9:30-10:45 The aim of this linguistics course is to raise your awareness of the complex organization and systematic nature of language, the primary means of human communication. In a sense, you will be studying yourself since you are a prime example of a language user. Most of your knowledge of language, however, is unconscious, and the part of language that you can describe is largely the result of your earlier education, which may have provided you with confusing or misleading notions about language. This course is intended to clarify your ideas about language and bring you to a better understanding of its nature by introducing you to the basic principles of linguistic science and the major areas of the field, including, but not limited to, phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. This is not a course about just one particular language, but about human language in all its aspects. Some of the data to be analyzed will come from languages with which students are familiar, but students will also work with data from languages with which they have no prior familiarity. English 437: Methods and Materials in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)W 6:00-8:40 p.m. The aim of this course is designed to help teachers of K-12 students understand, recognize and address the language acquisition challenges of non-native English speakers, both in the U.S. and abroad. Students will receive hands-on experience in local schools, familiarizing themselves with the standards for English language learners, while they develop and use practical techniques and materials to teach ESL/EFL based on second-language acquisition principles. Students will also consider and develop strategies that help English language learners acquire the language, academic, and social skills they need in order to become fully participating members of their schools and communities. LITERATUREEnglish 351: Contemporary American Literature: Queer Literature and Queer TheoryTR 12:30 - 1:45 We will read contemporary American literature written in a variety of genres with homosexual themes and characters, including David Sedaris' hilarious short story/memoir _Me Talk Pretty One Day_, as well as poems, plays, and novels from the American Library Association's Stonewall Award winners. We will watch film versions of some of the texts, and the literature reading will be supplemented with seminal articles from queer theory and gender science. Students will write two short papers and make one significant project that may be a paper or a short film. The course is discussion-based, and attendance will be required. Everyone with a respectful interest in the topic is encouraged to enroll. This course is open to non-English majors as well as gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgendered, and straight students. English 367: British Literature since 1930: “Black” British LiteratureMWF 10:00-10:50 AM "Black British" literature is loosely defined as literature written by English writers of Caribbean, Asian, and African descent. The tradition goes back as far as Olaudah Equiano, but this course will focus on literature since 1948, when the "Windrush Generation" arrived in England--so named for the immigrants who arrived from the Caribbean on the Empire Windrush ship in 1948. Immigration has had an intense, creative impact on English culture, transforming literature, film, and popular music. This course will survey Black British literature of the period, focusing on how writers negotiate between cultures, literary traditions, and concepts of identity. We will also explore how English society responded to immigration, ranging from anti-immigrant riots to artistic collaboration. Texts will include Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen; Linton Kwesi Johnson, Mi Revalueshanary Fren; Grace Nichols, The Fat Black Woman’s Poems; Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River; Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses; Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners; Zadie Smith, White Teeth English 421: Issues in Literary HistoryMWF 11-11:50 In this class we will examine four interrelated issues in the construction of literary history in English: the use and misuse of literary biography, periodization, textual editing, and the economics of book production. It may be useful to think of each issue in terms of a question to be addressed: literary biography: how are authors' lives written, and what if anything can they tell us about texts? periodization: how useful is it to talk in terms of literary "isms"-Romanticism, Realism, and so forth? textual editing: how do manuscripts, letters, diaries, and other unpublished texts become "literature"? and the economics of book production: how do commercial considerations like marketing, readership, production, and distribution influence the creation and interpretation of texts? ENG 421 is an advanced, elective course in literary study. While there are common, required readings--all available online or on reserve at Bracken Library--much of the work you do will be on your own, on topics of your choosing that relate to the issues discussed in class. I will assume that each student in the class has experience talking about literary texts, writes competently and correctly, and knows at least the fundamentals of library research. The goals of the class are
Final grades will be based on two research-based oral reports (20% each), a course paper (40%), and class participation and preparation (20%). An optional in-class final exam may replace the grade on one of the oral reports. Questions? Email me at rhabich@bsu.edu. ENG 425: Film and LiteratureTR 9:30- 10:45; weekly screening W 3-5 This class is an introduction to the critical viewing and analysis of films. Students will develop a working vocabulary of terms that allows you to analyze, discuss, and write about various aspects of film, including technical matters (types of shots, sound, lighting, narrative structures) and more theoretical issues, including the relationships between films, their audiences, and their cultural contexts. We will explore the fundamentals of how film as an art form communicates meaning, particularly how story and film style combine to convey ideas and move us emotionally. We will discuss the nuts and bolts of how films are made and marketed. We will raise questions about how films influence us, and how we, as their intended audience, shape them. Students should emerge from this class with an enhanced appreciation for the artistry of cinema. English 464: ShakespeareTR 2:00 - 3:15 This course offers a close study of nine plays. While keeping an eye on Shakespeare’s present “cultural currency,” we will situate the plays in the historical context of the English Renaissance – a period characterized by the rebirth of classical learning, the Protestant Reformation, the formation of capitalist economies, and considerable colonial expansion. The plays that we will read may include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Richard II, 1 Henry IV, Henry V, Measure for Measure, All’s Well That Ends Well, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Cymbeline and The Tempest. Pairing each play with a critical essay, we will also discuss some of the methods that contemporary scholars use to approach Shakespeare’s work. Course requirements include regular short writing assignments and a final twelve- to fifteen-page paper. English 490: Literature and Gender: Performing Gender on the Renaissance StageTR 3:30 - 4:45 “Then, these goodly pageants being done, every mate sorts to his mate, every one brings another homeward of their way very friendly, and in their secret conclaves (covertly) they play the sodomites, or worse.” -- Phillip Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses (1583) In theater of the English Renaissance, boys played the parts of women. They did so in large part to protect real women from the violating gaze of the public eye. But as you might expect, a transvestite theater also troubled the very idea of a “real woman,” not to mention a “real man.” Puritans frequently denounced the theater as a breeding ground of gender-bending sexual deviants, and many playwrights seem to grant more than a little truth to these charges. In this course, we will use the transvestite theatre as a stage for exploring both Renaissance and contemporary understandings of gender and sexuality. What connections do plays establish between the performance of gender and sexual (im)propriety? How is the theater understood to affect the sexuality of its audience? Can the theater ever serve sexually conservative ends? Students should be prepared to read a significant amount of both primary and secondary material, including literary and queer criticism. We will read a number of plays that are explicitly about cross-dressing, including John Lyly’s Gallathea, William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair and Epicene, Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West, and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl. Additionally, we may read Christopher Marlowe’s play about the fine line between friendship and sodomy, Edward II; Thomas Middleton’s salacious comedy of philandering and fertility, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside; Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher’s syphilitic satire of romance fiction, The Knight of the Burning Pestle; John Ford’s defense of incest, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore; and Margaret Cavendish’s “lesbian” closet drama, The Convent of Pleasure. In the first half of the course, we will also screen three films: Shakespeare in Love, Stage Beauty, and She’s the Man. Course requirements include regular short writing assignments and a final twelve- to fifteen-page paper. RHETORIC AND COMPOSITIONEnglish 303: History of RhetoricTR 2:00 - 3:15 Beginning with ancient rhetoric and focusing on major historical periods, surveys the historical development of rhetoric, emphasizing the cultural context of ideas and the construction of rhetorical “traditions.” ENG 303 is a required course for the Rhetoric and Composition Major, and can serve as an elective for the English Studies, Literature, and English/Language Arts Majors, as well as the English Minor. Text: The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An Introduction, 3rd ed, James A Herrick SENIOR SEMINARSENG 444 (section 1): Utopian and Dystopian Visions in Literature and FilmMW 3:00-4:15 This course will offer a transcultural, transhistorical view of how various authors and filmmakers have imagined the best and worst possibilities of human society. There will be a strong emphasis on how authors and filmmakers have used their utopian and dystopian visions to respond to what they see as positive or negative trends in their own societies. This course will encourage students to think about the kind of world they would like to help bring about, as well as the various social problems that may darken the future of the human race. Readings will include excerpts from The Republic, Utopia, excerpts from Gulliver’s Travels, The Communist Manifesto, Herland, Brave New World, Ecotopia, and The Handmaid’s Tale. We will also screen the films Metropolis, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and excerpts from Woodstock. Students will be evaluated on a midterm exam, a final exam, a research project, a class presentation, informal response assignments, and participation in class discussion. Contact Dr. Nowatzki with questions at rnowatzki@bsu.edu. English 444 (section 2): Multimodal EthnographyTR 9:30-10:45 In this senior seminar, students will immerse themselves for an entire semester in a subculture of their choice to tell the story of their experience in a substantial final project: a multimodal composition that uses images, words, artifacts, video, and/or sound. Past students have studied a prison classroom, pool players, a sex education program, churches, workplaces, online gamers, and other local communities. This course will draw on your well-honed English major skills—researching, interpreting, analyzing, storytelling, and persuasion. Yet, it will challenge students to use these skills in ways that will be new for many students either in scope, in method, or in genre.
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