UMKC :: English

Fall 2009/Spring 2010 Course Descriptions

S2010-Undergraduate | S2010-Undergraduate/Graduate | F2009-Undergraduate | F2009-Undergradute/Graduate | F2009-Graduate

Spring 2010
Undergraduate

English 200
Introduction to Undergraduate Study in English
Michelle Boisseau
T-R 2:00-3:15

In this class we will explore the many ways English studies approaches, examines, and produces texts. You will look closely at multiple genres in multiple eras, learning to identify shady characters, metaphoric subplots, rhetorical warfare, and narrative doom. The works discussed will be multifaceted in their effects--serve cherries without a stone, turn men into asses, commit adultery with china, cook children, animate a vase, dance on five feet, snarl at monks, and draw pictures with a blind man; in response, you will marshall your imaginations and strengthen your analytical powers in order to think deeply, ravel arguments, write fluidly, and prepare for further study in English. In the end you will feel assured that becoming an English major was one of the best decisions you have made. Texts and authors likely to include Medieval lyrics, Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Donne, Marvell, Wycherly (A Country Wife), Swift, Keats, Browning, Faulkner, Larkin, O'Connor, Baldwin, Hayden, Bishop, Carver, and work by living writers. Short writing assignments, two exams, two papers.

English 214
Introduction to Fiction
Scott Ditzler
M-W-F 9:00-9:50

In this section of English 214 we will be covering the canon of American fiction from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Our focus for the semester will be on elements of the Gothic, its tropes and its trends, its tradition and its progression, in short stories and novels. We will begin the semester with canonical writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne and then move through to the twentieth century with writers like Flannery O’Connor and John Cheever. The last third of the semester our reading will focus on writers contributing to the canon today such as Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, and Jeffrey Eugenedes. In addition to developing a working definition of American Gothic Fiction, students will study the fundamentals of fiction as a craft. Throughout the semester we will break down stories and discuss the various mechanisms of storytelling. The vast majority of the reading for this course will be short stories, with each student choosing a single novel to work on during the last third of the semester. Other writers we’ll be looking at include Henry James, Ambrose Bierce, William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, Shirley Jackson, Sylvia Plath, Steven Millhauser, and Joyce Carol Oates.

English 214
Introduction to Fiction
Kristin Huston
T-R 5:30-6:45

This course will explore how fictional works from the middle ages to today depict the act of storytelling. In the process, we will try to discover why people tell stories, what role stories play in the formation of individual and group identities and what stories reveal about their author and their audience. We will read excerpts from Arabian Nights and The Canterbury Tales, as well as works by Henry James, Amy Tan, and Salman Rushdie, among others. As we examine the act of storytelling in fiction, we will also study the fundamentals of fiction as a craft. Semester assignments will include reading responses, team projects and a final research paper.

English 215
Introduction to Poetry
Hadara Bar-Nadav
M-W 2:00-3:15

A way to allow people to feel the meeting of their consciousness and the world,
to feel the full value of the meanings of emotions and ideas in their relations with each other, and to understand, in the glimpse of a moment, the freshness of things and their possibilities . . . There is an art which gives us that way; and it is, in our society, an outcast art.
—Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry

This Introduction to Poetry course will help you become active and analytical readers of literature and, by extension, of life. Following are some questions we will consider in this course: What is your definition of poetry? How does it differ from other forms of writing? What influences have shaped your definition? What does poetry require of its readers? How do your beliefs, values, and personal experiences affect the way you interpret what you read? What role does reading play in your life?
As an introductory course, we will develop strategies for reading poetry, learn to recognize technical elements (ie, poetic devices, verse forms, etc.), and study a range of poetry from across centuries and continents. Course texts will include an anthology and individual collections of poetry.
Requirements include rigorous reading of course texts, energized class participation, weekly response papers, presentations, attendance at poetry readings, and a final research paper, as well as curiosity and imagination.

English 215
Introduction to Poetry
Rebecca Seyferth
M-W 5:30-6:45

An introduction to the study of poetry for students desiring a basic course either to develop a greater appreciation of poetry or to prepare for more advanced courses in literature or creative writing. Class discussions will focus on close readings of poems and analysis of poetic techniques. Writing assignments will complement reading and class discussion and will enable students to develop their own critical and creative skills.

English 300 CD
American Social Film
Joan Dean
T-R 12:45-3:00 p.m.
TIVOLI THEATRE/MANOR SQUARE

This cluster course (English, History, and Communication Studies) looks at American dream as represented in film. The class integrates various approaches to the American sound film between about 1930 and 1990. On most Tuesdays we will screen a film, such as Modern Times (1936), Rebel without a Cause (1955), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), or The Graduate (1967). On Thursdays each of the professors (Dean from English, Poe from Communications Studies, and Wynkoop from History) will lecture on the film.

Students are evaluated by two examinations (including the final as scheduled) and two writing assignments. Most of the readings for the class are in the required textbook, John Belton's American Cinema/American Culture. Class attendance is required.

The class meets at the Tivoli Theatre in Manor Square in Westport.

English 305WI
Theory and Practice of Composition
Sheila Honig & Pat Huyett
T-R 11:00-12:15

This course will focus on literacy and the ways our educational system enables and disables people as they pursue the power of the printed word. This course will help you begin to understand the complexities of literacy through examining your own classroom and personal experiences with reading and writing and through exploring articles and books about literacy in American culture by writers such as Deborah Brandt, Mike Rose, Linda Brodkey, and Sapphire. Through personal exploration and thoughtful engagement with the readings, discussions, and research, you will come to a greater understanding of how powerful classroom experiences and social/philosophical beliefs about literacy can be in our lives. From this exploration, you will be in a more powerful position to begin to formulate your own hopeful vision of literacy education and ways to make that vision a reality in a writing classroom. Counts as a literature elective for English Literature and Language majors.

English 310
Introduction to Linguistics/Language Science
Jeannie Irons
M-W-F 10:00-10:50

This course will introduce you to the study of human language. In this course, we will investigate what we know about the structure and use of language (i.e. the sounds, words, phrases/sentences, and meanings). We will examine language from historical and sociological perspectives and study the various social factors that contribute to language development and diversity. This course should enrich your curiosity about how language works, and in particular, help you understand how we use it.

English 311
American Literature I
John Barton
M-W 12:30-1:45

This course surveys U.S. literatures from the colonial period to just before the Civil War. It begins with Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación, a narrative of Spanish contact with the “New World,” and concludes with the poetry of Whitman and Dickinson, major precursors of the modernist movement. The course will cover a wide range of important literary works from many different genres and examine them in relation to the cultural and historical contexts within which they were produced. In our exploration of American literature before the Civil War we will give special attention to questions about race and gender.

Course Texts (available at the UMKC Bookstore)

Heath Anthology of American Literature, Fifth Edition
The Account: Álvar Núňez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación (Arte Publico Press)

English 311
American Literature I
Ben Furnish
W 7:00-9:45

This course examines the emergence and development of colonial and U.S. American literature from its beginnings to 1865. We will consider how key American literary genres such poetry, fiction, drama, and various nonfiction (including religious, political, and historical writing) developed. We will read and discuss works that are foundational to our understanding of American culture’s origins. These works will include readings from Native American stories, early explorers and religious thinkers, and writing by such figures as John and Abigail Adams, Anne Bradstreet, Royall Tyler, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Edgar Allen Poe, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and others. We will view these writers and their works in their historical and cultural contexts as well as analyzing their aesthetic qualities.

English 312
Creative Writing I Fiction
Christie Hodgen
T-R 9:30-10:45

In this introductory-level workshop we will devote ourselves to the reading, writing, and study of short fiction. Using several collections of short stories as our guides, we will examine the basic elements of craft – characterization, plot, setting, etc. – and then practice applying these craft lessons to our own writing. By the end of the semester we well not only be better writers, but better readers and analysts of short fiction. Both the beginning and the experienced writer are welcome here.

Our reading will include collections by Alice Munroe, Charles D’Ambrosio, Edward P. Jones, Mary Gaitskill, Donald Barthelme, and more. In addition to writing two short stories (10 pages each), our coursework will include written responses to the assigned reading, a number of short exercises, regular attendance and participation in class, and written critiques of peer stories.

Eng 312
Creative Writing I Fiction
Jedsen Williams
M-W-F 12:00-12:50

The course will begin with a brief study of several great stories and craft lessons from The Making of a Story by Alice LaPlante. Then we'll do some guided writing designed to teach the basic elements of story writing, including characterization, description, dialogue, point of view, plot, and scene.

The student's chief responsibility will be to become a better writer by learning to pay closer attention to how and why you make the creative choices you make, and how to base more of your decisions on good writing craft.

English 315
Creative Writing I Poetry
Joni Lee
T-R 8:00-9:15

Writing and rewriting poems, with discussion of techniques needed to produce desired effects. Analysis and evaluation of student work. Examination of technical means utilized in selected poems by accomplished poets.

English 315
Creative Writing I Poetry
Alysse Hotz
M-W-F 11:00-11:50

"If prose were beer, poetry would be a shot of whiskey: a moment condensed, a distillation of experience." -Michelle Boisseau

This class emphasizes the poetry writing process from the invention of the poem, to developing it through many manifestations into the creation of a polished draft. Through a combination of writing exercises, close readings, and workshops, this class will 1) help you understand what is involved in writing good poems and help you discover how to write them yourself 2) show you how contemporary poetry is composed, structured, and revised, 3) help you develop your skills in deploying poetic devices like image, metaphor, and rhythm 4) help you develop skills in evaluating the poems of others and your own poems and to develop revision strategies 5) introduce you to the recent work of some contemporary American poets and help you discover how to use others' poems as a launching pad for your own. Appropriate for creative writing majors, English majors and minors, and anyone eager to test their writing muscles.

Texts: Boisseau, Writing Poems, 7th ed., and some recent collections of poetry.

English 317
British Literature I
Virginia Blanton
T-R 8:00-9:15

This course provides a survey of British Literature and culture from its beginnings to the 18th century. Starting with Anglo-Saxon riddles and poetry, we will examine the values of early warrior culture before moving to the later Middle Ages and reading a variety of texts in Middle English on knighthood and female power, including two of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and a portion of Malory's The Death of King Arthur. Two additional texts (to be read in translation) are Lanval and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. As we study the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, we will concentrate on poetic forms, reading short poems by Wyatt, Whitney, and Jonson, as well as long poems, including a portion Spenser's Faerie Queene and Milton's Paradise Lost. The class will then take up Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Miriam to consider how female behavior is being inscribed before concluding with Behn's ethnographic narrative, Oroonoko, a tragedy about a royal slave. Students can expect these assignments: a series of short papers, two exams, and a group project.

British Literature I is:
*one of the four required surveys for English majors focusing on language and literature.
*one of two sequences a Creative Writing student may select to complete the survey sequence.
*one of the courses that fulfills the general education requirement in literature.
*one of the courses that a core requirement in many of the English minor programs.

English 317
British Literature I
Larry McCloud
M 7:00-9:45

A survey of British Literature and culture from its beginnings to the 18th century, including works by Chaucer and Milton.

English/Classics 319
Myth and Literature
Cynthia Jones
M 2:00-4:45

The course offers a study of classical mythology in translation and the role of classical myth in English literature. Included are analysis of selected myth in later literature, art, film and music, and a study of contemporary definitions and approaches to myth. The course is held at the Tivoli Theater. The thematic focus is an interpretation of Hercules as represented in myth, Euripides and film coved in conjunction with a study of the development of major themes present in myth: origins of the universe, hierarchy in the heavens reflected on earth; gender roles; worship; cause and effect; and basic social structures (i.e.: family, war, retribution and redemption).

English 321
American Literature II
Anthony Shiu
M-W 3:30-4:45

Every paragraph, every phrase, brought up some new aspect of the world-transformation which had taken place, and led my thoughts on long and widely ramifying excursions. Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000-1887

In our time together this semester, we will be examining a broad range of American literature from the Civil War to the present: poetry, prose, essays, film, autobiographical writing, and a novel. Like Bellamy’s narrator in the above epigraph, we will be time-traveling readers, mulling over how our shared reading of literature contributes to our growing understanding of how Americans have tried to make sense of their past and present by writing for the future. By focusing on three main areas of investigation (identities, contexts, and the significance the two), we’ll be able to appreciate how writers have described larger issues in American society while keeping an eye on what their visions(s) of the future are in relation to the literary styles and forms they employ. We will use an anthology, supplemented by short readings and film (Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times and John Ridley’s and David O. Russell’s Three Kings). We’ll be moving quickly this semester, but, if anything, American literature is an “excursion” or, as the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary put it, an “escape from confinement.” What could be more refreshing?

English 321
American Literature II
Henrietta Rix Wood
T 7:00-9:45

Since the Civil War, Americans have used writing to define their identities, imagine their communities, and negotiate gender, race, ethnicity, and class. These are some of the issues that we will explore in this survey of literatures of the United States from 1865 to the present. As we address poetry, prose, and drama, we will consider texts within their cultural and historical contexts. Our readings will range from Mark Twain to Zitkala-Sa to Toni Morrison, acknowledging authors long regarded as canonical as well as those who only recently have been recognized as important. In the process, we also will examine the literary movements that these writers helped to shape. Class assignments will encourage students to practice close reading, critical thinking, collaborative learning, rhetorical and literary analysis, and effective academic writing skills.

English 323
Shakespeare
Laurie Ellinghausen
M-W 5:30-6:45

Why do the poetry and plays of William Shakespeare remain so popular and widely influential nearly 400 years after his death? Because these writings contain nearly limitless potential for interpretation, debate, and creative imagining, as scholars and artists from Shakespeare’s lifetime to our own will readily attest. This course presents an opportunity for undergraduates to delve into Shakespeare’s works, their historical and literary contexts, and their impact on modern culture. Assignments will require students to examine Shakespeare from a variety of angles: language use, source study, live performance, film, and visual art. We will cover plays from each of the four genres (comedy, history, tragedy, and romance) as well as a selection of sonnets. Due to the fundamentally collaborative nature of Shakespeare’s art, active classroom participation will be expected of all students.

English 323
Shakespeare
April Austin
T-R 11:00-12:15

In 1623 Shakespeare’s plays were posthumously gathered and printed on large pages measuring fourteen by nine inches – a folio. Shakespeare’s reputation as poet and playwright was already solidified as brilliant. The aim of this course is to remind students that Shakespeare was a dynamic and exciting poet and playwright. But the question remains: Why do we still need to read the Bard in the 21st century?

To help you answer this important question, we will focus on an intensive critical study of his writings in various contexts (historical, social, political, literary, contemporary, etc.). Readings will encompass at least 8 plays and will include at least one comedy, history, tragedy, and romance. Assignments are creative and challenging, but most of all, enjoyable!

English 327
British Literature II
Lorna Condit
M-W-F 8:00-8:50

English 327 provides a survey of some of the significant works by British writers from the late 18th through the early 20th centuries—sometimes identified as the long 19th century—a period dominated by three successive (though sometimes overlapping) literary-aesthetic/intellectual movements: Romanticism, Victorianism, and Modernism. Given the vast and diverse range of literature produced during this period, our survey of the field will necessarily be limited; however, by the end of the course, you will have encountered many important literary figures and discussed some of the key issues that have defined British literature and culture.

English 327
British Literature II
Stephen Dilks
T-R 12:30-1:45

We will use a variety of texts to examine the four main periods of British literary culture from 1780-1989 (Romanticism; Victorianism; Modernism; Postmodernism); plus we will assess the characteristics of the current era in British literature and culture (ie post-1989).

Our goal is to more fully understand Britishness and British literary culture since 1780 by examining texts that explore English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh identity *and* by thinking about publishing, the literary marketplace, and the status and function of professional authors. In addition to Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (1800), Mathew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy (1869), Dylan Thomas’s Under Milkwood (1954), Irvine Welch’s Trainspotting (1993), and Jeremy Paxman’s The English: A Portrait of a People (1998), we will read a selection of shorter texts by writers identified with each of the nation-states of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland” (as it was in 1800-1921), including “Northern Ireland” (created in 1921). At the same time as we consider issues of British history, politics, aesthetics and culture, we will examine publishing as an industry and authorship as a profession.

English 330
History of the English Language
Thomas Stroik
T 7:00-9:45

English 330 will study the historical origins and the social development of the English language. In this course, we will investigate the many linguistic and sociological pressures that have come together to create the historical forms of “English.” Although we will focus on the lexical, phonological, and morphological changes in English from its Indo-European roots to its present day forms, we will also briefly look at some syntactic and semantic changes.

COURSE OBJECTIVES: The primary objectives of English 330 are to

introduce you to the Indo-European roots of English
present the historical developments of English, from Old English to Present Day English
introduce you to the linguistic and sociological forces that have shaped the changing forms of the English language
introduce you to the role language variation has played in the historical development of the English language by studying one dialect of American English (African-American Vernacular English) in-depth.

English 331
African-American Literature I
Jeff Williams
SAT 9:00-11:50

This course provides a survey of African American literature from its beginnings to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. Areas of interest will include abolitionist literature (especially Slave Narratives), turn-of-the-century literature and the Harlem Renaissance. This course will examine any or all of the following literary forms: fiction, poetry, drama, autobiography and essay. It will view African American literature in its historical and cultural contexts.

English 345WI
Women and Literary Culture
Kristin Huston
T-R 2:00-3:15

This course will focus on representations of nineteenth-century bodies, both male and female, in fiction written by women writers. Works, including those of Mary Shelley, Charlotte Brontë, Ellen Price Wood, Victoria Glendinning and Jean Rhys, will be read in an effort to understand how these writers describe femininity, masculinity, and sexuality in ways that conform to, subvert, and directly challenge social norms. The first half of the class will focus on nineteenth century female writers, while the second half will look at contemporary novelists writing novels about the nineteenth century. Critical readings will include works by Helena Michie, Pamela K. Gilbert, Mary Russo, and Judith Butler. Assignments will include a major research project along with reading responses, a team project, and presentation.

English 351
Special Topics: Rhetorics of New Media
Dan Mahala
T-R 3:30-4:45

How are the uses and functions of alphabetic literacies changing under the pressure of new media today? What are the implications of the shift from alphabetic literacy to visual and networked multimodal media for persuasion, for public discourse, and for democracy?

In this class, we will explore the emerging rhetorics of new media by examining both new media texts themselves (including networked media, multimedia art and performance, and films ranging from avant garde works such as Vertov’s The Man With The Movie Camera, to mainstream popular films such as Minority Report). Our aim will be to examine the outpouring of recent theoretical and historical work on media epistemology, visual ways of knowing, the rhetoric of text/image interactions, as well as the political economy of networks and uses of new media for social activism.

Students will have the option to integrate new media into their academic writing in experimental ways. However, the course will NOT be focused on technical instruction in using audio-visual equipment and software. Technical familiarity with multimedia equipment and software is neither expected nor required.

English 365WI
Contemporary Novel
Jennifer Phegley
M-W 2:00-3:15

This Writing Intensive course focuses on contemporary historical novels about the nineteenth-century, often referred to as Neo-Victorian novels. The novels we will read explore a variety of themes (disease, murder, sexuality, religion, technology, and addiction among them) in a range of locales including Australia, Canada, England, and the United States. As we analyze the worlds created in these historical novels, we will seek to understand the recent fascination with the nineteenth century and uncover the meanings, methods, and motivations of these postmodern fictional accounts of the past. This course will devote significant attention to the writing process, employ multiple forms of writing, including a screenplay, and require peer response sessions and instructor conferences.

Texts may include:
Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace
A. S. Byatt, Angels and Insects
Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
Victoria Glendenning, Electricity
Sheri Holman, The Dress Lodger
Meg Wolitzer, Fitzgerald Did It: The Writer’s Guide to Mastering the Screenplay

English/Classics 376
Ancient Models of the Hero
Cynthia Jones
T-R 9:30-10:45

This course evaluates the heroic model through literature and history by reading selected works of poets and historians. The course will primarily focus on the works Homer, and Herodotus, and contemporary graphic novels. Through this format students will examine the impact the heroic model has on modern literature, art, film and social structure. By studying poets, historians, military strategists, and filmmakers who have imagined the timeless link between the heroic warrior models from ancient societies to the present we will seek to evaluate this timeless link.

English 408/5508
The Harlem Renaissance
Professor Bar-Nadav
MW 5:30-6:45 p.m.

This discussion-based course is designed to further your critical reading and awareness of literature by writers of the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance, or The New Negro Renaissance, of the 1920s and 30s was the first large-scale arts movement of Black artists in the United States. We will read such widely anthologized authors such as Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston as well as lesser known writers of the period (particularly women), such as Anne Spencer, Helene Johnson, and Mae Cowdery.

Course texts will include a multi-genre anthology, individual books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, and critical works. In addition, we also may examine visual art and music. Emphasis will be placed on issues regarding identity and its construction and the interconnected subjectivities of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation thematized in much of the literature. We also will explore reading strategies and engage in contextualized readings of the social, political, historical, cultural, and personal conditions out of which authors of the Harlem Renaissance wrote.
Requirements include rigorous reading of course texts, energized class participation, weekly response papers, presentations, and a final research paper.

English 418/5518
19th-Century American Literature: Whitman and Dickinson Professor Boisseau
T 4-6:45 p.m.

*This course counts toward the Manuscript, Print Culture, and Editing minor and MA concentration*

This course will be an immersion in the work of the two great American poets of the 19th century, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Through them we will consider, in particular, the poets' composition and revision strategies as evidenced in manuscript, revision, and edition, and consider, in general, 19th-century readership, authorship, and publishing in America.
Whitman and Dickinson afford us two poles of the American poet. One sends his barbaric yawp across the universe. The other selects her own society and shuts the door. Whitman not only self-published his works, he advertised them and wrote his own reviews. Dickinson turned down many offers to publish her work (though admirers managed to spirit a few into print), yet she sent her poems in letters to friends all over the world. Whitman is the open road. Dickinson is the slant of light. Whitman's poems sprawl, and swing, and stretch in long lines and in catalogues of celebration and rabble-rousing; Dickinson poem's move inward, in the verse form of the hymn, her syntax leading us forward and astray. Both poets saw poetry as the eternal.

While we will be looking closely at the art of the poems, we will do so in terms of how each poet's vision challenged and confounded contemporary notions of poetry and the poet, and how the versions of their poems (accessible in many editions) reveal the changing poets as much as the changing readers. We will look at how Whitman presented his "book of himself" in its earliest edition and how he revised his Leaves of Grass in response to his changing vision of America and his place in it. We will look at how Dickinson collected and stitched her poems into small collections, or "fascicles," and how a hundred years of editors (from her brother's mistress in the 1890s to textual editors in the 1950s and 1990s) have presented and represented her work (and still haven't--and won't get it "right.") Assignments will include exams, short analytical papers, imitations of poems, presentations, and a long project. Likely texts: Leaves of Grass, Norton Critical; Poems of Emily Dickinson, reading edition, R. W. Franklin ed., Harvard UP; Blackboard postings; and the websites, e.g., Dickinson Electronic Archives (http://www.emilydickinson.org) and The Walt Whitman Hypertext Archive (http://etext.virginia.edu/whitman). This course qualifies as a Manuscript, Print Culture, and Editing class.

English 432
Graduate Seminar Creative Writing Prose
Professor Terrell
T 7-9:45p.m.

This course will focus on writing and publishing short fiction and novels. It will be arranged in the “workshop format.” Three times during the semester, you’ll submit a short story or a novel excerpt to me and that piece will be read and discussed by the entire class. I’ll also line-edit them and conference with you individually on each piece.
This course will focus heavily on craft and revision. But craft will only get you so far and so the hope here will be to create an environment that allows us to investigate the what other tools we can beg, borrow or steal to create fiction that is, as John Gardner puts it, “intellectually and emotionally significant.”

Aside from doing your own writing, you must read, edit, and submit a written comment on your fellow classmates’ work. We’ll also have readings from traditional realist authors like Russell Banks and Alice Munro as well as postmodernists like David Foster Wallace, Aimee Bender and Donald Barthelme. Much is made of the difficulty and pain of fiction writing but, on the side of optimism, I’ll quote Gardner again: “Almost no one mentions that for a certain kind of person, nothing is more joyful or satisfying than the life of a novelist.”
The instructor, Whitney Terrell, is the New Letters Writer-in-Residence at UMKC.

English 433/5533
Histories of Reading, Writing, and Publishing
Professors Barton and Phegley
W 5:30-8:15 p.m.

*This course counts toward the Manuscript, Print Culture, and Editing minor and MA concentration*

In recent years, nineteenth-century sensationalism has attracted much attention among scholars of both American and British literature and culture. Sensation literature, however, has yet to be examined in a transatlantic context, despite the fact that the genre emerged within a transnational publication system that shaped its development from the early 1800s to the end of the century. This course seeks not only to map the development of the “sensation novel”—the nineteenth century’s best-selling genre on both sides of the Atlantic—but also to account for the emergence of a new kind of writing that informed a range of genres and was determined by reciprocal influences that defy traditional conceptions of a one-way cultural flow from the “Old World” to the “New.”

In the course, students will be introduced to two burgeoning literary fields: transatlantic and sensation studies. While focusing on the novel and emphasizing issues related to race, class, and gender, the course will offer an exciting exploration of criminal behavior and punishment, eroticism and sexual exploitation, medical and technological innovations—topics that captivated large audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Throughout the course we will give special attention to publication contexts and readers’ responses that influenced shifts in generic conventions and the adaptability of sensation literature throughout the nineteenth century.

Course texts may include stories by Harrison Ainsworth, Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allan Poe, E.D.E.N. Southworth and the following novels: Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, George Lippard’s The Quaker City, William Gilmore Simms’s Martin Faber: The Story of a Criminal, George Thompson’s City Crimes; or Life in New York and Boston.

Announcing English 435/5535
Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry
Robert Stewart, New Letters & English dept.
W 6:00-8:45 p.m.

[There is] only one problem in the whole world -- to restore spiritual meaning to people's lives – to reawaken their capacity for spiritual disquiet . . . . It is impossible to survive on refrigerators, politics, balance sheets, and crossword puzzles, you see. It is impossible. It is impossible to live without poetry and color and love.

-- Antoine de St. Exupery, from a letter left in his barracks on the day he disappeared, 1944, piloting his plane for the Free French Forces in preparation for the Allied invasion of southern France.

This is an advanced poetry workshop; if you have not yet mastered the art of the complete and effective sentence, please avoid this course. In Advanced Poetry Writing, we have an opportunity to spend the semester reading great poems and writing them, discussing poetry as craft and as a means of transcendence. The course includes intensive reading of contemporary poetry, with the aim that each student will create a portfolio of good poems; the course includes readings in modern and contemporary poetry, discussions of the creative process, intense work on language and craft, and individual consultations. The focus of the course will vary to address a variety of topics such as metaphor and closure; imitation and the line; form and voice. May be repeated once for credit. Prerequisite: For Undergraduates Restrictions: English 315 or equivalent.

English 437/5537
PROSE FORMS: The Shape of Story
Professor Pritchett
TH 7:00-9:45 p.m.

The making of a work of prose requires expertise with the structure of the chosen form, and an understanding of relationships between form and content. This class teaches techniques for planning and drafting major prose forms which can include the long story, novella, novel, linked-story collection, episodic novel, essay novel, the creative nonfiction book, and others. Students will learn how to create particular prose forms and how to use content as a guide to inventing new forms. We will examine texts on poetics and theory related to structure, and examples of newly invented prose forms.

English 441/5541
Girls and Print Culture
Professor Jane Greer
TH 5:30 to 8:45

This course explores girls’ relationships with print culture in the U.S. since 1865. We will examine various representations of girlhood by adult women writers, explore texts (e.g., children’s books, conduct manuals, teen magazines) directed at girls, and study the writing of girls themselves. How have girls been shaped by American literature and culture? How do writers, publishers, educators, and tastemakers use the figure of “the girl” to further their own social agendas? How have girls responded to the opportunities available to them to read and write in both public and private arenas? Recovering and amplifying the voices of girls is an essential step in acknowledging the active roles they can play in shaping our culture through print.

Students enrolled in this course also will complete a primary/archival research project that focuses on the literacy life of a girl or girls. Students enrolled in this course for graduate credit will be expected to produce a more in-depth research project and do a formal class presentation.
This is course is among those included in the English Department’s offerings in Manuscript, Print Culture, and Editing

Tentative Reading List: Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women
Bonnin, Gertrude Simmons (Zitkala Sa). “Impressions of an Indian Girlhood”
Brown, Rita Mae. Rubyfruit Jungle
Cather, Willa. My Ántonia
Cantu, Norma Elia. Canícula
Finders, Margaret J. Just Girls: Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High.
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye.
Various school essays, poems, diaries, scrapbooks, yearbooks, and letters written by girls from 1865 to the present.

English 449A
Publication Practicum
Professor Stewart Times arranged, (graduate or undergraduate credit) On campus, 5101 Rockhill Road, University House

*This course counts toward the Manuscript, Print Culture, and Editing minor and MA concentration*

Students can choose one, two, or three-credit hour programs to work in the offices of New Letters, UMKC’s award-winning national journal of writing and art, plus help learn book publishing at BkMk Press, and interviewing for broadcast at New Letters on the Air radio series. Meet international writers, learn literary publishing and editing, and advance your own writing skills in the process. Students write press releases, proofread, evaluate manuscripts, manage contest entries, produce research on bookstore distribution, and much more for the magazine, press, and radio series. See www.newletters.org internships. Consent required; contact Robert Stewart.

(To students: We give consent numbers for English 449A, Publication Practicum, to any student who qualifies and requests consent; however, only the first three students who actually register each semester will get into the internship. A consent number, by itself, does not guarantee the student a place in this course/internship.)

ENG 450
FRN-LNG (Foreign Languages) 480A
Lindsy Myers
Thursdays 4:30-7:15 p.m.

Are you proficient in a particular (or more than one!) Romance Language? Or are you a linguist interested in exploring the rich field of Romance Linguistics? Do you want to know what it really means to be a member of the Romance Family? Do you enjoy critical analysis and close comparison?

If yes, then welcome! In Introduction to Romance Linguistics we will discover connections between history, languages, society and formal linguistics. We will examine the structure and (social) history of the Romance Language family both from the perspective of individual languages and as the family as a whole. Major linguistic features of each language including phonology (sound system), morphology (word formation), syntax (sentence structure) and lexicon (vocabulary) will be studied especially in terms of shared and distinctive components.

English 450/5500P
Ulysses
Professor Dilks
M 7-9:45

The entire semester is devoted to a chapter-by-chapter reading of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922). Each week we will work with one chapter (sometimes two), using different contexts for reading a book that uses a variety of techniques to represent events and people in Dublin during a 22-hour period on June 16, 1904.
We will analyze Ulysses in terms of different approaches and models of understanding including Aestheticism, Discourse analysis, Gender studies, Greek mythology, Intercultural theory, Irish history and politics, Manuscript studies, Modernist and Postmodernist technique, Postcolonial studies, and the history of Publishing and the Literary Marketplace. We will also examine film adaptations of the novel including Ulysses (1967) and Bloom (2004).

Our aim is to enjoy Joyce's novel while developing understandings of its place in literary history, intercultural studies, and the publishing industry. Undergraduates are required to develop a portfolio of analytical writing adding up to a minimum of twenty pages (5000 words); graduate students are expected to write at least one conference-style presentation (2000-2500 words) plus one long research essay (3000-5000 words).

English 463/5563
Contemporary Drama
Professor Dean
T-TH 9:30-10:45 a.m.

The critic Martin Esslin writes that after World War II playwrights searched for a dramatic forms appropriate to their ³a sense of the senselessness² of human experience. This course examines the emergence and evolution of major dramatic trends since WWII in Europe and the US. Topics covered include the Theatre of the Absurd, East European theatre and American drama.

We will look at Beckett¹s Waiting for Godot, Genet¹s The Balcony, Ionesco¹s Rhinoceros, Stoppard¹s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Churchill¹s Top Girls, Kane¹s Blasted, Mamet¹s American Buffalo, Mrozek¹s Tango, Pinter¹s The Birthday Party, McDonagh¹s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, and other plays.

Students will write two analytical papers, a midterm, and a final.

English 465/5565
Studies in the Modern Novel
Professor Hodgen
T-TH 11-12:15 p.m.

“And so the smashing and the crashing began.” ~ Virginia Woolf
In her influential essay, “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,” Virginia Woolf famously stated that, “on or about 1910, human character changed.” This change in human character encompassed “religion, conduct, politics and literature,” and created, amongst other challenges, a predicament for the modern novelist. In a newly-dawned age one could no longer write in the old style, using outmoded tools and themes. Instead one must build a new kind of novel, from modern materials, taking care to smash and crash convention along the way.

So what does the modern novel look like, and from what materials is it constructed?

In this course we will study three writers who refashioned the novel in three very different ways. We will start with Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway; To The Lighthouse; The Waves) and Faulkner (The Sound and The Fury; As I Lay Dying; Light in August) – both fond of lyrical prose, stream of consciousness, and fragmented narratives, and yet fundamentally different writers. We will end with Kafka (Amerika; The Trial; The Castle), who uses precise and straightforward language to construct novels of unprecedented strangeness. In addition to our primary texts we will also read several critical works, including Jesse Matz’s The Modern Novel and Deleuze and Guattari’s Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature.Coursework will include reading responses, regular attendance and participation in class, and three papers.

ENGLISH 5555E
Graduate Seminar in American Literature II: America and the Limits of the Future
Professor Shiu
M 7:00-9:45 p.m.

“[W]e mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” The Declaration of Independence

Despite a checkered past, America declares herself as an ethical project, concerned with others to the point of sheer sacrifice. At the same time, American society has a troubled history of internal divisions, social hierarchies, isolationism, colonialism/imperialism, and the like. How does modern and contemporary American literature help us understand these concerns while thinking America anew? What comes before such limit(ation)s? How may literature speak to America’s potentialities? In our seminar, we’ll examine twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature and filmic texts—both traditional and experimental—that explore and analyze American society in search of alternative visions and futures. Along the way, we’ll also read theory and criticism that addresses these issues, including basic work in genre theory, feminism, postmodernism, and poststructuralism—from Fredric Jameson’s “critical utopias” to Judith Butler’s “performative” identities to Jacques Derrida’s “democracy to come.”

We’ll explore a diverse set of readings spanning a number of genres, most likely including pulp fiction, travel narratives, border literature, transnational literature, science fiction, utopian/dystopian fiction, and film. Likely texts/films include Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart, Samuel R. Delany’s “Aye, and Gomorrah,” W.E.B. DuBois’ “The Comet,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, Michael Gold’s Jews without Money, Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, Ernest Hemingway’s Garden of Eden, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Joanna Russ’ The Two of Them, Toshio Mori’s The Brothers Murata, and B. Traven’s The Death Ship, as well as Errol Morris’ The Fog of War and Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris. We’ll also read from a variety of critical and theoretical fields by examining the work of several theorists, likely including Randolph Bourne, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, Fredric Jameson, and Jean-Luc Nancy. The seminar’s work involves classroom discussion, presentations by students, occasional reading responses, and a research paper.

Spring 2010
Graduate/Undergraduate

ENG 408/5508
The Harlem Renaissance
Professor Bar-Nadav
MW 5:30-6:45 p.m.

English 418/5518
19th-Century American Literature: Whitman and Dickinson Professor Boisseau
T 4-6:45 p.m.

*This course counts toward the Manuscript, Print Culture, and Editing minor and MA concentration*

English 432
Graduate Seminar Creative Writing Prose
ProfessorTerrell
T 7-9:45p.m.

English 433/5533
Histories of Reading, Writing, and Publishing
Professors Barton and Phegley
W 5:30-8:15 p.m.

*This course counts toward the Manuscript, Print Culture, and Editing minor and MA concentration*

435/5535
Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry
Robert Stewart, New Letters & English dept.
W 6:00-8:45 p.m.

-- Antoine de St. Exupery, from a letter left in his barracks on the day he disappeared, 1944, piloting his plane for the Free French Forces in preparation for the Allied invasion of southern France.

English 437/5537
PROSE FORMS: The Shape of Story
Professor Pritchett
TH 7:00-9:45 p.m.

English 441/5541
Girls and Print Culture
Professor Jane Greer
TH 5:30 to 8:45

English 449A
Publication Practicum
Professor Stewart
Times arranged,(graduate or undergraduate credit) On campus, 5101 Rockhill Road, University House

*This course counts toward the Manuscript, Print Culture, and Editing minor and MA concentration*

ENG 450
FRN-LNG (Foreign Languages) 480A
TH 4:30-7:15 p.m.
Lindsy Myers

English 450/5500P
Ulysses
Professor Dilks
M 7:00-9:45 p.m.

English 465/5565
Studies in the Modern Novel
Professor Hodgen
T-TH 11-12:15 p.m.

So what does the modern novel look like, and from what materials is it constructed?

ENGLISH 5555E
Graduate Seminar in American Literature II: America and the Limits of the Future
Professor Shiu
M 7:00-9:45 p.m.

“[W]e mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” The Declaration of Independence

Eng 5550M
Graduate Seminar in Rhetoric and Composition: Rhetorical Traditions in the Information Age
Professor Mahala
T 5:30-8:15 p.m.

This course will examine how traditional concepts of rhetoric have been challenged by postmodernity and by newly emergent communication technologies. We will begin by surveying ancient, modern, and postmodern formulations of the concept of the “public sphere” and competing political theories of the roles of persuasion and public discourse in a democracy (Aristotle, Habermas, Jameson, Roberts-Miller) . How far can traditional notions of rhetoric derived from speech and print be applied to new media ecologies and at what point do they break down? How might we revise our conceptions of rhetoric if we hope to communicate and act effectively within new media ecologies?

Here are some interesting areas we will explore:

How do traditional ideals of persuasion, argument, evidence, ethos, etc. remain relevant in media environments where sophisticated tools of digital editing and manipulation are now routinely employed (Morris)?
How have emerging visual technologies affected political rhetoric in the past (Manovich, Bolter and Grusin), and how might we accommodate the increasing use of visual rhetoric in composition theory and the teaching of writing?
How do new media ecologies test the limits of customary and legal notions of “free speech” and “expression,” “privacy,” “fair use,” “censorship,” and so on? What “latent ambiguities” (Lessig) in these ideals are thereby exposed?

While our inquiry will be wide-ranging, we will frequently return to practical issues. How might we re-conceive the field of rhetoric and composition, and the teaching of writing, against this backdrop of altered landscapes for democratic expression?
Tentative Readings:
Aristotle, Rhetoric
Barthes, Image, Music, Text
Bolter and Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media
Feenburg, Transforming Technology
Graff, Walzer, Atwill, eds. The Viability of the Rhetorical Tradition
Habermas, The Philosophical Discourses of Modernity (selections)
Jameson, Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Lessig, Code 2.0.
Manovich, The Language of New Media.
Errol Morris, essays, films such as Thin Blue Line, and The Fog of War
Roberts-Miller, Deliberate Conflict : Argument, Political Theory, and Composition Classes
Selber, Multiliteracies for a Digital Age

Spring 2010 Course Descriptions

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