Spring 2018 Engl Course Descriptions

SPRING 2018 ENGL COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

2000-4999, face-to-face

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ENGL 2303-002 Textual Contraception

8am TR, Dr. Tavera

This course examineshowwomen writersaddress reproductive health subjectsacross a wide body of literary texts and periods. As a field, gynecology and obstetrics was founded by male medical practitioners who largely defined the female body in terms of dis/ability. Since the late nineteenth-century, women writers have used literature as a space for challenging cultural attitudes toward women's bodies and reproductive health. From Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Judy Blume, how do women writers define "woman" and the female body? How do they use literary spaces, and fiction especially, as a platform for teaching readers about reproductive health subjects including birth control, puberty, and sexually-transmitted diseases? What implications are exist among such definitions,attitudes, andnarratives for race,class, sexuality, and even disability? We will discuss these issues throughout the semester in this special topics literature course on "Textual Contraception."

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ENGL 2303-004 Necessary Magic: Contemporary Trends in Magical Realism

530pm TR, Dr. Mariboho
Magical realism is often associated with twentieth century Latin American or postcolonial texts that use the combination of realism and the fantastic to depict political, cultural, or social trauma. However, there is a growing body of twenty-first century works of magical realism that underline the genre’s appeal to artists portraying contemporary issues and anxieties in popular culture. Building on the rich tradition established by authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, and others, twenty-first century works of magical realism encompass a range of literary and visual texts, from young adult novels to award winning films to Beyoncé’s Lemonade. This course examines the pop culture impact of magical realism in the twenty-first century by analyzing recent novels and films that use elements of magical realism in conjunction with the twentieth century works that inspired them.

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ENGL 2303-005 Working Class Literature
1pm MW, Ms. Shaffer
What exactly is Working Class? What defines it? Who makes the rules? What percent of the population falls into the category of Working Class? How does any of this relate to literature?
This course will help you understand the answers to the above questions and more. You'll develop an understanding of the central debates surrounding the Working Class. To achieve these goals you will read a number of texts, both literary and critical; discuss the ideas in the texts with your colleagues and your instructor; and pursue a film project exploring the work and developing a thorough presentation about one working-class film. Class lectures and discussions will focus on ways of understanding and interpreting the works and on locating them in their historical, cultural, and intellectual milieus. Also, one major essay will demonstrate your ability to discuss a text in an academic format.

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ENGL 2303-008 Trees and Forests in Literature

11am TR, Mr. Hogue

This course will explore a variety of literary depictions of green spaces, ranging from Robin Hood’s greenwood to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden woodland to the vanishing forest of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax. The course will also engage with a number of individual literary trees such as the speaking tree of Anglo-Saxon lore in “The Dream of the Rood,” Tolkien’s mystical Old Man Willow and Treebeard, and Shel Silverstein’s beloved “Giving Tree” of children’s poetry. We will use this theme to think about the relationship of humans with their immediate environments as well as with the Earth itself in an age of climate change and ecological uncertainty. Students will consider the value of literature in our current era and weigh the extent to which literary representations of trees and forest spaces change or affect the way people understand themselves, plants, and the relationship between them. Additionally, students in this course will evaluate the concept of plant agency and the idea of viewing the world from a “plant’s-eye view” in order to better imagine complex ecological enmeshments. Furthermore, students will engage with literature to trace the ways that our understanding of trees and forests has changed over time. Possible genres for the course include poetry, novels, plays, short stories, essays, and films.

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ENGL 2303-012 Representations of Children and Childhood

11am MWF, Dr. Miller

This course explores the textual construction of children and childhood across a variety of literary and cultural forms including film, graphic novels, novels, novellas, and short stories. We also explore these representations through a variety of genres including realist, speculative, and autobiography. Texts are paired with accessible criticism and relevant theoretical work in childhood studies, gender studies, and literary studies. Additionally, course lectures introduce key words and concepts to prompt critical engagement with the material studied.

Required Texts

I recommend purchasing print versions of graphic novels.

David Small’s Stiches (Graphic Memoir)

Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye (Novel)

Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (Graphic Memoir)

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (Novel)

John Boyne’s The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket (YA Novel)

Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child (Novella)

Ma Vie En Rose (Film)

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ENGL 2329 American Literature

9am MWF section 001

930am TR section 003

10am MWF section 004

Dr. Tavera

This course focuses on the journey motif across several sub-genres of life-writing including travel narratives, confessional poetry, short essays, blogs, and autopics (films). How is the concept of the journey used in American women’s life writing? How does it function as a writing technique, impacting the organization, setting, prose, and character(s)? What does it mean to construct one’s identity as a woman through life-writing? Why is the journey important for these writers in their exploration of identity and womanhood? We will discuss life writing as a literary form by exploring such questions in texts written by American women from the late-nineteenth through twenty-first centuries.

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ENGL 2329-015 American Literature

1230pm TR, Mr. Stratman

If America is (and has often been) in crisis mode, a site of tension and ever-possible chaos, what is its source, and how does literature address it? In this course we will be exploring questions of American crisis across a broad range of texts that touch upon such vital and challenging topics such as race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, species, and environment. As such, we will discuss and debate how literary texts reflect multiple forms of identity clashing and coalescing, forming and reforming, forcing us to reexamine the relationships we have with each other, our world(s), and ourselves. Our texts for the semester will focus on the 20th and 21st centuries, will incorporate multiple genres (novels, short stories, poetry, film, etc.), and include authors, artists, and filmmakers from multiple points of view who pose difficult questions about how we came to be where we are and where we may be headed as a culture and society. By critically and creatively examining these texts, perhaps we can formulate some tentative answers to the challenges they pose, maybe even illuminating ways to think and move through times of crisis and uncertainty.

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ENGL 2338 Technical Writing

1pm MWsection 003

530pm MW section 002

7pm MWsection 008

Mr. Huff

2338 is a technical approach to academic argument. It encompasses correctly formatted, persuasive emails and business letters. 2338 includes visual argument in the form of an informative brochure stressing layout and other forms of graphic design in the presentation. Letters of applications and resumes are designed, formatted, and worded to put your best foot forward. Business teamwork is introduced in researched how-to documents called Team Instructional Projects (TIP) and a final project called a Team Feasibility Project (TFP) includes surveys, research, business graphs, and other aspects of graphic design including argument, both visual and rhetorical. The group projects celebrate synergy, team work, and they honor disciplined time frames. The common denominator of all writing in this course is an ethical presentation of yourself, your team, and your audience.

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ENGL 2338 Technical Writing

2pm TRsection 007

530pm TR section 005

Dr. Worlow

This course provides students with an introduction to technical and professional communication. Through this course, students will practice developing an effective writing style focusing on concision and clarity. Students will also produce a variety of professional documents, including flyers, resumes, cover letters, memos, instructional materials, proposals, and more. We will work with the UTA FabLab on service learning and Maker’s Literacies projects, and the course provides students with the chance to begin building a portfolio of technical/professional writing documents they can point to while also starting to learn a skillset that can make any graduate more marketable. This course is also a co-requisite for the Department’s Certificate in Technical Writing and Professional Communication.

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ENGL 2338 Technical Writing

9am MWF section 012

930am TR section 011

1230pm TR section 009

Dr. Miller

In ENGL 2338 students develop the skills required of communicators in today’s fast-paced, information driven, and collaborative workplace. The course introduces students to the fundamentals of technical writing. We consider the distinctions between academic and technical writing, study the writing process, and learn to identify and write for different audiences and purposes. Students work both alone and collaboratively to write a variety of technical documents including memos, emails, formal letters, reports, and process descriptions.

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2350 Introduction to Analysis and Interpretation

10am MWF section 004

11am MWF section 001

Dr. Savic

This course is designed to introduce current and potential English majors to what is required of them as students of literature. The course will teach student to (1) identify characteristics of genres, (2) recognize and understand critical and literary terms, (3) develop methods and strategies for analyzing and interpreting texts, and (4) demonstrate a command of these methods and strategies in written work. This course is a prerequisite for all upper-level English courses.

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ENGL 2350 Introduction to Analysis and Interpretation

930am TR section 003

11am TR section 002

Dr. Ingram

“What do we do when we read? How do we arrive at an interpretation of a text’s “meaning”? Can a text have more than one “meaning”? Why does interpretation matter? How do you translate an interpretive reading into a piece of analytic writing? In this course, we will examine these questions and issues related to them through an introduction to some of the key concepts in English studies.”

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ENGL 2384-001 Structure of Modern English

10am MWF, Dr. Martin

We will examine English grammar, not to teach you “proper” grammar but to discover what is unique about the structure of this particular language. In other words, we will discover the “real” rules, rules you already know as speakers of the language. To see these structural rules in operation, we will use Chomsky-style diagrams in our analysis of sentences and phrases. This is the kind of language knowledge useful to anyone working with the English language: writing coaches, editors, or teachers, including ESL teachers.

We will also discuss topics in linguistics particularly relevant to teachers, for example, language acquisition in children (versus adults) and dialect differences.

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ENGL 2384: 004Structure of Modern English

TR 11am, Dr. Fay

This course will teach you the grammar of Modern English. Sound boring and pointless? And aren't you are already using English just fine without necessarily knowing much about its grammar? Yes, you are. However, think for a moment—aren't you driving your car fine also, even though you don't know how the engine works? But wouldn't it be helpful to know more about the engine of your car in case you ever break down or have to figure out whether you are being overcharged by a mechanic? After all, your car is the only way you have to get around. Similarly, but much more importantly, language is the most precise medium we have by which to communicate our feelings, our thoughts, and our dreams to other people. Without it we would be islands to each other or even, as many scholars argue, lack coherence as individuals entirely. And if language were a body, grammar would be its skeleton. So think of this class as a crash course in the anatomy of the English language, starting with sounds, and then continuing with word-formation, and then how words are put together into clauses and sentences. At the end of the course you will not only know when an English sentence is "correct," but also why it is.

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ENGL 3333 Dynamic Traditions: Islands

9am MWF, Dr. Martin

Islands abound in literature, especially English literature (go figure!). An island can be a prison, a private kingdom, even someone’s idea of paradise. At all times an island setting provides a writer with a petri-dish to display human behavior: a solitary survivor on an uninhabited island, a group of survivors held captives, or an island nation striving for independence from oppression. For us the readers it’s an opportunity to observe the changing attitudes toward nature and to study the various “social experiments” humans have conducted on our insular planet.

We will read novels from different genres--including science fiction and the detective novel--short fiction, and also a couple of plays. Our common texts will come from British literature, stretching from the late Renaissance to the postcolonial present, but we will also look sideways at island texts from other cultures.

Our texts:

William Shakespeare,The Tempest

Daniel Defoe,Robinson Crusoe

H.G. Wells.The Island of Doctor Moreau

J.M. Barrie,The Admirable Crichton

D.H. Lawrence, “The Man Who Loved Islands”

Agatha Christie,And Then There Were None

William Golding,The Lord of the Flies

Olivia Manning,The Rain Forest

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ENGL 3333 Dynamic Traditions: Romanticism

11am MWF, Dr. K. Warren

Dynamic Traditions is a new requirement for the English major that focuses on changes over time to a movement, genre, or motif.In this section we'll be studyingRomanticism, a literary movement thatbegan inEurope in the 18th century but persists--one could argue--to the present day. Romantics across time and geography share a belief in the power of the imagination, the importance of self-creation, the primacy of emotion and impulse over reason and restraint, and the idea that poetry can change the world. Our focus in this course will be on the British and American Romantics (the first and second waves of Romanticism in English, from the late eighteenth century to the late nineteenth). In our study of these figures and their writing, we will seek to discover commonalities and differences, influences and departures. We will conclude our course by investigating Romantic strands in contemporary art and culture.

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English 3333 Dynamic Traditions: “Eat your Words: Literature and Food Studies”

11am TR, Dr. Tigner

This course grapples with the dynamic traditions and innovative ideas about how food functions in literature. We will consider, among other topics, food sustainability, food ways, ethics, aesthetics, health, cooking as literature, and literature about cooking and eating. The course also contains a substantial historical component, providing a solid grounding in the ideas of recipes, food, cooking, and eating, as they have developed through time and place. We will be reading a variety of texts, written in English, but representing cultures from around the world, and secondary criticism that discusses these works. Some of the authors include: Nicole Mones, Monique Truong, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, Laura Esquivel, Isak Dinesen, Michael Pollan, Anita Mannur, Ken Albala, and Marion Nestle. The course will also have an experimental culinary component, in which we will make and taste recipes.

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ENGL 3333 Dynamic Traditions: Oceans

1230pm TR, Dr. Alaimo

An introduction to literary study that focuses primarily on changes over time to
a movement, genre, or motif. This section of 3333 will focus on oceans
and ocean life in literature. We will read a diverse range of literature, including
a play, poetry, novels, a graphic novel, speculative fiction, and nonfiction,
from Shakespeare to AfroFuturism. Readings will most likely include,
Shakespeare, The Tempest; Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,
a novel or story by Melville; Hogan, People of the Whale; selected poetry;
Hayes, The Rime of the Modern Mariner; Montgomery, The Soul
of an Octopus; and Okorafor, Lagoon.

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ENGL 3347 The Life and Times of S. Carter

1pm MW, Dr. Rambsy

“The Life and Times of S. Carter” places Jay Z’s music in a broad African American literary continuum of autobiographical and semi-autobiographical works. This course, different from previous course offerings on the rapper, will focus primarily on Jay Z’s 4:44 album. We will explore thematic issues related to patriotism, civil and economic rights, infidelity, and spirituality—all themes from canonical African American novels and autobiographies that Jay Z addresses on his latest album.