Syllabi
American Literature 1912-1945
“Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. / Shantih shantih shantih” concludes T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” the poem still widely regarded as the most radical and brilliant development of Modernism (433-34). At the mysterious ethical and religious commands that end the work (doubly mysterious because they are in Sanskrit), we feel a certain awe, a piety in the presence of something ultimate. However what that something is isn’t quite clear. As demonstrated in the poem, meanings are ambiguous, emotions ambivalent, and fragments do not make an ordered whole. This, however, is the human condition in the period between 1912 and 1945 (David Perkins, A History of Modern Poetry).
Although Eliot may get credit for having been the first to poignantly capture the ruins, he was certainly not the last. And whereas Eliot looked at the world and found a wasteland, some early twentieth-century writers saw renewal. In this undergraduate course, students are introduced to modern American literature by sampling representative works from the “Lost Generation,” “The Harlem Renaissance,” and the “Jazz Age.” We will pay close attention to innovation and how the modernist writers, to borrow from Ezra Pound, made it new. We will explore how these authors grappled with some of the century’s great issues and conflicts, which include identity, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, trauma, and freedom.
Business Writing
When asked what business courses should teach more of, venture capitalist and Silicon Valley marketing executive Guy Kawasaki responded: “teach students how to communicate in five-sentence e-mails and with 10-slide PowerPoint presentations. If they just taught every student that, American business would be much better off.” In this course, students will learn to do that and more. English 202D introduces students to the conventions, genres, and strategies of business communication. In particular, it focuses on skills in rhetorical analysis, document design, reader-centered writing, and professional discourse. Students create written messages including e-mails, memos, letters, and reports. They also learn productive techniques for interviews and presentations, as well as communicating professionally in an increasingly global workplace.
Literary Methodology
This course prepares English majors and minors with the basic critical and technical skills and understanding for subsequent literary study in 3000- and 4000-level courses towards the major. Students learn how to study and interpret literature through critical analysis, including using key literary terms and concepts related to elements of the basic literary genres: prose fiction (plot and structure, point of view, characters, setting, imagery, language, theme); poetry (speaker and tone, diction and syntax, figures of speech, sound, rhythm and meter, theme); plays (plot and structure, characters, stage directions and setting, imagery, language, theme); essays (voice, style, structure, ideas).
Through short assignments, students develop skills in exposition, argument, description, comparison, emphasis, analysis, summary, and style. In terms of critical thought, they learn how to avoid fallacies and to build logic, organization, clarity, interpretation, and invention. They develop peer-editing skills as they revise their research papers.
Students learn correct MLA citation methods and other composition elements of scholarly writing, as well as research methods, including library and database research. The course has students use research techniques in each of the four writing assignments. The course’s literary texts include the genres of poetry, short story, novel, and drama.
In addition, the course briefly introduces major areas of literary criticism in order to build students’ awareness of the variety and value of critical approaches to literature. Coursework includes four papers, peer and draft work, scholarly
research, occasional in-class writing, quizzes, and class participation. No exams are involved.
Seminar in Composition
In their book on academic writing, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein state that “the best academic writing has one underlying feature: it is deeply engaged in some way with other people’s views” (“They Say/I Say”). This introduction to college-level writing takes a process-based approach that emphasizes rhetorical competency to prepare students for a variety of disciplinary discourse. Students learn to analyze and contribute to the communications that surround them. They work on gauging the way language is perceived and produced according to the speaker, the intended audience, and the essay’s purpose.
The goal of English 110 is to provide students the tools to engage with the on-going conversations and to guide them as they become more confident and capable readers and writers. Students will become more attuned to their goals as a writer and more resourceful in terms of the appropriate delivery of their information, the rhetorical appeals at their disposal, and the needs and expectations of their audience.
Twentieth-Century Literature
“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” wrote theorist Theodor Adorno in 1949, anticipating the problem of representation for the 20th-century artist. Deeply affected by the devastation of the world wars, writers responded by registering humanity’s increasing inhumanity.
This course examines some of the major literary works of the twentieth century written in English and explores ways in which authors have expressed the age, its great issues and conflicts, in order to gain an historical perspective that will help us relate the present to the recent past. Similar works have been paired so that we can compare and/or contrast them. Students will perform close readings of texts, engage critical thinking skills, and respond to literary works.
American Literature 1912-1945
“Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. / Shantih shantih shantih” concludes T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” the poem still widely regarded as the most radical and brilliant development of Modernism (433-34). At the mysterious ethical and religious commands that end the work (doubly mysterious because they are in Sanskrit), we feel a certain awe, a piety in the presence of something ultimate. However what that something is isn’t quite clear. As demonstrated in the poem, meanings are ambiguous, emotions ambivalent, and fragments do not make an ordered whole. This, however, is the human condition in the period between 1912 and 1945 (David Perkins, A History of Modern Poetry).
Although Eliot may get credit for having been the first to poignantly capture the ruins, he was certainly not the last. And whereas Eliot looked at the world and found a wasteland, some early twentieth-century writers saw renewal. In this undergraduate course, students are introduced to modern American literature by sampling representative works from the “Lost Generation,” “The Harlem Renaissance,” and the “Jazz Age.” We will pay close attention to innovation and how the modernist writers, to borrow from Ezra Pound, made it new. We will explore how these authors grappled with some of the century’s great issues and conflicts, which include identity, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, trauma, and freedom.
Business Writing
When asked what business courses should teach more of, venture capitalist and Silicon Valley marketing executive Guy Kawasaki responded: “teach students how to communicate in five-sentence e-mails and with 10-slide PowerPoint presentations. If they just taught every student that, American business would be much better off.” In this course, students will learn to do that and more. English 202D introduces students to the conventions, genres, and strategies of business communication. In particular, it focuses on skills in rhetorical analysis, document design, reader-centered writing, and professional discourse. Students create written messages including e-mails, memos, letters, and reports. They also learn productive techniques for interviews and presentations, as well as communicating professionally in an increasingly global workplace.
Literary Methodology
This course prepares English majors and minors with the basic critical and technical skills and understanding for subsequent literary study in 3000- and 4000-level courses towards the major. Students learn how to study and interpret literature through critical analysis, including using key literary terms and concepts related to elements of the basic literary genres: prose fiction (plot and structure, point of view, characters, setting, imagery, language, theme); poetry (speaker and tone, diction and syntax, figures of speech, sound, rhythm and meter, theme); plays (plot and structure, characters, stage directions and setting, imagery, language, theme); essays (voice, style, structure, ideas).
Through short assignments, students develop skills in exposition, argument, description, comparison, emphasis, analysis, summary, and style. In terms of critical thought, they learn how to avoid fallacies and to build logic, organization, clarity, interpretation, and invention. They develop peer-editing skills as they revise their research papers.
Students learn correct MLA citation methods and other composition elements of scholarly writing, as well as research methods, including library and database research. The course has students use research techniques in each of the four writing assignments. The course’s literary texts include the genres of poetry, short story, novel, and drama.
In addition, the course briefly introduces major areas of literary criticism in order to build students’ awareness of the variety and value of critical approaches to literature. Coursework includes four papers, peer and draft work, scholarly
research, occasional in-class writing, quizzes, and class participation. No exams are involved.
Seminar in Composition
In their book on academic writing, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein state that “the best academic writing has one underlying feature: it is deeply engaged in some way with other people’s views” (“They Say/I Say”). This introduction to college-level writing takes a process-based approach that emphasizes rhetorical competency to prepare students for a variety of disciplinary discourse. Students learn to analyze and contribute to the communications that surround them. They work on gauging the way language is perceived and produced according to the speaker, the intended audience, and the essay’s purpose.
The goal of English 110 is to provide students the tools to engage with the on-going conversations and to guide them as they become more confident and capable readers and writers. Students will become more attuned to their goals as a writer and more resourceful in terms of the appropriate delivery of their information, the rhetorical appeals at their disposal, and the needs and expectations of their audience.
Twentieth-Century Literature
“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” wrote theorist Theodor Adorno in 1949, anticipating the problem of representation for the 20th-century artist. Deeply affected by the devastation of the world wars, writers responded by registering humanity’s increasing inhumanity.
This course examines some of the major literary works of the twentieth century written in English and explores ways in which authors have expressed the age, its great issues and conflicts, in order to gain an historical perspective that will help us relate the present to the recent past. Similar works have been paired so that we can compare and/or contrast them. Students will perform close readings of texts, engage critical thinking skills, and respond to literary works.