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Spring 2007

Summer 2007

In Class

Fall 2007 Course Offerings

—Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire, Wales

English majors seeking courses to satisfy distribution requirements in the old major will find parenthetical abbreviations listed in appropriate course descriptions: (pre-1789), (pre-1789 British), (A) American literature, (B) British literature, (MCW) Multicultural or World literature. In the new English major, English 209 is now English 200.

Beginning in Fall 2007, English 300—the second course in the introductory sequence—will be offered each semester. Two of the fall 300-level offerings are upper-level sequence courses. English 395 acquaints students with a particular aspect of the field of English studies and exposes them to primary and secondary texts as well as historical and cultural contexts. ENG 495 completes the year-long sequence.

For information or questions about the new English program, please contact your advisor, or the department chair, Dr. Mark C. Long, at mlong@keene.edu.

ENG 200–01 Literary Analysis
Antrim MW 12–1:45
Designed primarily and required for those intending to major in English, this course concentrates on writing critical essays and analyzing types of narrative, poetry, drama, and experimental texts. Serves to introduce students to literary themes. Must be taken prior to completion of 13 credits in English. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 200–02 Literary Analysis
Charry MW 2-3:45
See course description for 200–01. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 202–01 Expository Writing
Tirabassi TR 2-3:45
Extensive writing and reading of various types of expository essays and other prose forms. Emphasis on stylistic techniques and rhetorical devices. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 202–02 Expository Writing
Tirabassi TR 4-5:45
See course description for 202–01. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 202–03 Expository Writing
DiSabato TR 8-9:45
See course description for 202–01. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 202–04 Expository Writing
Smith MW 10-11:45
See course description for 202–01. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 203–01 Women's Writing
Lichtenstein TR 2-3:45
Focuses on effective rhetorical strategies for communicating women's experiences, opinions, and knowledge, as well as personal, political, and feminist issues. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 204–01 Creative Writing
Friedman TR 2-3:45
Introduction to the basic strategies and techniques of writing fiction and verse. Assigned exercises, accompanied by readings, discussed in class. Opportunity to develop creative and critical skills through assignments and independent work. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 204–02 Creative Writing
Friedman TR 12-1:45
See course description for 204–01.

ENG 208–01 Topics: Creative Writing: Cooking, Eating, and Dreaming
Friedman TR 4-5:45
A writing workshop in which your stories and poems emerge from the rituals of cooking, eating and dreaming. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW .

IIENG 210–01: Introduction to American Studies: The 1930s
Lebeaux TR 10-11:45 (A)
This interdisciplinary course will explore the major social, cultural, and political issues of the 1930s in America . Among the specific topics/issues to be considered will be the Great Depression; the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; shifting American values; the labor movement; women and minorities; the political spectrum and political ideologies; radicalism; literature, including proletarian literature; the Dust Bowl, concepts of the land and farmers, and the experience of migrants from the Dust Bowl; Woody Guthrie, his Dust Bowl Ballads , the Almanac Singers, and political folk music; the arts; and the arrival/impact of WWII. Among the writers to be considered will be John Steinbeck, Tillie Olsen, Meridel LeSueur; and Richard Wright. Oral history, film (including documentary film), and documentary photography will also be examined in the context of understanding the 1930s and the Great Depression. Crosslisted with IIENG 210-01 and IIENG 210-02. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

IIENG 210-03 Introduction to American Studies: Basketball and the American Cultural Landscape
Antonucci MW 4-5:45
If baseball is the national pastime and football is the national passion, basketball might be understood as the national looking glass. This section of “Introduction to American Studies” will examine basketball from a variety of perspectives in order to gain insight into the sport’s capacity to reflect significant features of the American cultural landscape. Specific attention will be devoted to discussions of how American notions about gender, race, ethnicity, and class become manifest in the game. Texts will include Wideman’s Hoop Roots and Carrols' Basketball Diaries, Boyd and Shropshire’s Basketball Jones as well as several films such as He Got Game, Hoop Dreams, and Above the Rim. Our engagement with these materials will allow us to understand what basketball tells us about the United States, American culture and American identity, in both international and national contexts. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 220–01 Readings: Writing Gender: Age of Shakespeare
Charry TR 8–9:45 (B pre-1800)
This course will survey writings by Englishmen and Englishwomen who lived in the English Renaissance. We will look at how gender roles were conceived of at that time –what did it mean to be a “man” or a “woman” in England nearly 400 years ago? How are their experiences of masculinity and femininity different from their own, and where can we identify overlaps? How did literature contributed to further defining and consolidating gender identity. Are gender identity and sexuality purely “individual” and “personal” matters or are they linked to “larger” socio-political issues ranging from religious conflicts to voyages of exploration to distant lands? These are some of the questions we will ask ourselves as we read texts (plays, poetry and non-fiction) by Shakespeare and some of his best-known contemporaries. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 220–02 Readings: King Arthur in Literature, Art and Film
Pages MW 4-5:45 (B pre-1800)
The tale of the legendary King Arthur continues to fascinate and inspire our collective imagination. But, who was Arthur? Was he a Celtic warrior chieftain fighting against the Saxons or a symbol of the sophistication and refinement of medieval courtly love? Was there really an Arthur or is he a completely fictional figure, a myth perpetrated through the ages. This course will focus on the development of the Arthurian legend from the early Middle Ages to the present day. We will begin with Celtic and English narratives that emphasize the portrayal of Arthur as a man of action. We will then continue with depictions of Arthur in French and English romances that stress the adaptation of Arthur and his legend to a courtly audience of knights and ladies. Later on in the course, we will look at nineteenth-and twentieth-century interpretations of the Arthurian legend in literature and art. Throughout the semester we will also watch and discuss scenes from cinematic adaptations of Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 220–03 Readings: King Arthur in Literature, Art and Film
Pages TR 2-3:45 (B pre-1800)
See description for ENG 220-02. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 220–04 Readings: James Joyce
Grayson W 6-9:30 (B)
We will read Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man . Students should prepare for the first class meeting by reading the first story of Dubliners . Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 240-01 Readings: Literature of the Open Road
DiSabato TR 2-3:45 (A)
What is it in our bones that itches to be moving—what is it that makes our hearts thrill at the words "road trip"? Influenced by the legacy of Pilgrims and pioneers and by the conventions of Romantic quest narratives, American literature is filled with self-reliant, often rebellious individuals who shoulder a pack and take to the open road in search of adventure. In this course we will read a selection of relevant texts and discuss the ways in which travel serves as an emblem of self-exploration. Students will read texts by authors such as Whitman, Thoreau, Austin, Twain, Muir, Kerouac, Robinson, Bryson, and Krakauer. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 240-02 Readings: Modern American Poetry
Cunningham TR 8-9:45 (A)
Introduction to the nature, language, structure, and content of poetry. Analysis, critical evaluation, and aesthetic appreciation are stressed; demonstration of these skills in a number of written and oral assignments, which may be expository or non-expository in nature. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 240-03 Readings in American Literature: Confidence
Antonucci MW 2-3:45 (A)
Class members will consider ways in which Confidence plays, including scams, cons, and set-ups, impact American experience, particularly when examining its aesthetic, social, political, and cultural forms. Reading American literary works in conversation with critical and theoretical texts, film, journalistic pieces, and other non-fiction materials, we will explore Confidence as an American attitude and action, present and easily accounted for, from the halls of legal power to the chambers of high finance, on the road, in the home & the market place as well as at work and in leisure pursuits. Texts such as Melville’s The Confidence Man, Ellison’s Juneteenth and Alexie’s Reservation Blues frame ways in which confidence functions within the discourse of race, ethnicity and difference in American life, particularly with respect to practices that define the race line, including minstrelsy, “passing,” and Indian hating.

ENG 247-01 Indian Studies: Culture of Plains Indians
Joyce MW 12-1:45 (MCW)
This course is an introduction to the culture of Plains Indians. The focus will be on themes of self-understanding and individualism, the relationship between the Plains Indians and their environment, and the relationship between Indian personal experience and tribal heritage and continuity. Most of the writers are Lakota/Dakota, Blackfeet, or Gros Ventre, but the readings may include writers from other tribes as well: Kiowa, Crow, or Northern Cheyenne . Written literature will be supplemented with videos and tapes on cultural contexts, writers, and texts. Cross-listed with AMST 250-01. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 250–01 Continental Literature: Age of Reason to Age of the Absurd
Kaladiouk TR 8-9:45 (MCW)
The course is a survey of European literature from the 1750s to the 1950s. As we focus on the major aesthetic movements of the period, we will both analyze their distinctive features and ask questions about legitimacy of the strict divisions between them. In addition to intellectual and aesthetic contexts, we will also consider each work's historical background. Readings will be chosen from a list which includes such authors and works as Diderot ( Rameau's Nephew ), Voltaire ( Candide ), Goethe ( Faust ) Byron, ("Prometheus" and Manfred ), Lermontov ( A Hero of Our Time ), Dostoevsky ( Crime and Punishment ), Freud ( Civilization and Its Discontents ), Woolf ( Mrs. Dalloway ), Kafka ("Metamorphosis", "Prometheus"), Beckett ( Waiting for Godot ). We will read all texts in English translation. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 250–02 Continental Literature: Age of Reason to Age of the Absurd
Kaladiouk TR 10–11:45 (MCW)
See course description for English 250–01. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 260-01 Readings in World Literature: International Short Fiction
Morton MW 12-1:45 (MCW)
This course presents a worldwide selection of contemporary short fiction. The class will read and discuss works by writers from Central and South America, Africa, Asia and Europe, as well as the U.S. and Canada . In addition to reading a short fiction anthology, students will use a world atlas and related documents to gain understanding of unfamiliar settings and living conditions. We will approach stories as a common denominator with which to understand human experience. We will examine the way writers from different cultures employ similar storytelling techniques—plot, setting, character, point of view, imagery. Through short fiction, this course seeks to expand our knowledge of diverse cultures. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 260-02 Readings in World Literature: International Short Fiction
Morton TR 12-1:45 (MCW)
See course description for 260–01. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 261–01 Classical Literature of Greece
Antrim MW 4-5:45 (MCW, pre-1789)
Exploration of the literature of ancient Greece ; Homeric epic, Athenian drama, and Platonic dialogue. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 280-01 Interpreting American Culture: The Folk Music Revival
Lebeaux F 10-1:30
An exploration of the folk music revival of the 1960s, its roots in the decades that preceded it, and its legacy. We will consider the many cultural, historical, political, and musical influences that culminated in the folk revival; the emergence of folk music into the mainstream of popular culture; and the significance of the folk revival in the context of the 1960s and American culture. We will read about, listen to, discuss and interpret the music and achievements of such individuals and groups as Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, the Almanac Singers, the Weavers, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Phil Ochs, and we will consider other musical figures/groups/singer-songwriters, events, and developments associated with the folk (and folk-rock) scene. Cross-listed with AMST 250-01. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 286-01 Children's Literature
White TR 10-11:40
Reading and discussion of representative works from the seven genres of children's literature: traditional, fantasy, modern realism, historical fiction, biography, poetry, and information books. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 286-02 Children's Literature
White TR 2-3:45
See course description for 286–01. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

ENG 298 Independent Study
Reading/writing in a selected area of English with a faculty member. Must be four credits to count as one of the two 200-level courses required for the English major. Prerequisite: ENG 101, permission of instructor.

ENG 300-01 Literary Form and History
Doreski TR 4-5:45
We will examine the aesthetic, formal, and psychological relationships among poets and will trace the evolution of poetic form—particularly forms of lyric poetry—from the Classical era to the present to understand how poets revive and recirculate ancient poetic ideas while rethinking the role of poetry in their private and public lives. Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ITW and English 200.

ENG 302 -01 Poetry Workshop
Doreski T 6:00-9:30
Class discussion of original student work combined with extensive reading in poetry and poetics. Analysis of major theories, technical innovations, and innovators. Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ITW and one 200-level English course.

ENG 303 -01 Nonfiction Workshop
Tirabassi M 6:00-9:30
Nonfiction essay writing, focusing on style, rhetorical theory and strategies, and publication. Workshop format. Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ITW and one 200-level English course.

ENG 312 -01 : Descriptive Grammar
Joyce TR 4–5:45
Examination of English grammar and theory, including traditional, transformational-generative, and case grammar. Collateral readings will focus on applied linguistics and American dialects. Students develop skills for teaching grammar through written/oral exercises. Required for secondary English teacher certification. Open only to junior and senior English majors, or by permission of instructor. Prerequisites: Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ITW and one 200-level English course.

ENG 326 -01 English Renaissance Literature
Charry MW 10-11:45 (B, pre-1789)
Intensive study of the drama, poetry, and prose of the English renaissance. Special attention will be paid to a particular social or aesthetic dimension of these literary texts. Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ITW and one 200-level English course.

ENG 330-01: British Literature: Yeats and Ireland
Antrim TR 2-3:45 (B, pre-1789)
Reading the poems and plays of W.B. Yeats as they successively enact imaginations of Ireland in a world at war. Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ITW and one 200-level English course.

ENG 345-01 Black American Literature
Antonucci TR 4-5:45 (A, MCW)
Writings by men and women of African descent, produced during three centuries of experience in Anglo-North America and the United States. By reading and critically evaluating selected narratives, novels, poems, sermons, short stories, speeches, class members will engage Black literature and explore its capacity to serve as both a vehicle for artistic expression and social and cultural critique. Focusing on works by African-American writers will bring particular attention to the ways in which literature reflects, shapes and responds to public discourse concerning the status of African-Americans and condition of American identity at-large. The impulse toward freedom and literacy, explorations of history and memory, the blues, orality and the slave experience, will connect the texts covered in the course. Students will gain familiarity with issues and strategies that have shaped Black literature over the past three hundred years which will prepare them to read and evaluate work by African American writers produced in the contemporary moment. Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ITW and one 200-level English course.

ENG 346-01 Transcendentalism
Lebeaux MW 12-1:45 (A)
Explores American Transcendentalism. Intensive reading and discussion of such writers as Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Whitman. Prerequisite: ENG 101 and one 200-level English course. Same as AMST 390-01.

ENG 381 -01 Women Writers
Mallon TR 2–3:45 (MCW)
Emphasis on the images, forms, contexts that shape women's literary expression and that identify women's lives in cultural, social, political spheres. Prerequisites: ENG 101 and one 200-level English course. Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ITW and one 200-level English course.

ENG 395-01 Sequence: American Indian Literature and History
Joyce MW 4-5:45 (A, MCW)
This course focuses on the intertextual relationship between American Indian literature and American Indian history. Students will read major pieces of prose and poetry by American Indian writers and will take up several of the theoretical issues central to reading, interpreting, and writing about American Indian literature. Writers may include Momaday, Silko, Ortiz, Erdrich, Alexie, Red Shirt and Cook-Lynn. Students will read historical/cultural background texts, as well as literary criticism. Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ITW, English 200, and English 300.

*This course is the first in a full-year sequence. The Sequence I course acquaints students with a particular aspect of the field of English studies and exposes them to primary and secondary texts, as well as historical and cultural contexts. Students then complete the advanced seminar, ENG 495: Sequence II, to complete the year-long sequence.

ENG 395-02 Sequence: Romanticism: Texts and Contexts
Stroup TR 10-11:45 (B)
This course is centered around the careful study of key Romantic period texts (roughly 1789-1832), primarily in British Literature, with an emphasis on poetry. This is the age of William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Anna Barbauld, John Clare, Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Shelley, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Felicia Hemans, to name only British writers. In the Fall semester we will learn how to read their works both voluminously and well while discussing their key themes, their important differences from each other, their historical moment, and their yet astonishing artistry. Those who enroll for Eng 495 in the Spring will study the range of critical and theoretical debates generated by the response to these writers in the lively, contentious field of Romantic studies. Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ITW, English 200, and English 300.

*This course is the first in a full-year sequence. The Sequence I course acquaints students with a particular aspect of the field of English studies and exposes them to primary and secondary texts, as well as historical and cultural contexts. Students then complete the advanced seminar, ENG 495: Sequence II, to complete the year-long sequence.

ENG 490-01 Russian Modernism and Post Modernism
Kaladiouk T 6-9:30 (MCW)
The course will contemplate the following two questions. What is postmodernism and how does it differ from modernism? Does Russian postmodernism exist or is it a label with no referent, an invention of those eager to adopt Western concepts to Russian context? The writings of Foucault, Barthes, Derrida, Jameson, Habermas, Norris, Bakhtin and Epstein will help us understand the terms of the debate and create an intellectual framework for the reading of representative texts of Russian modernism and postmodernism. Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ITW, one 200-level English course, and one 300-level English course.

ENG 490-03 Seminar: The Saracen Princess
Pages MW 2-3:45 (MCW, B)
To medieval Europeans, the Saracens--the term used to designate Muslims in the Middle Ages--were a source of both terror and fascination. It is hardly surprising, then, that Saracen characters occupy such a prominent role in medieval literature, where we encounter valiant Saracen knights and evil sultans, but also aggressive Saracen princesses who fall in love with Christian knights and betray, connive, and kill until they have liberated their lover and converted to Christianity. Are these women, who act in the benefit of Christianity, ultimately positive or negative figures? Why are they given so much independence of though and action? In this seminar, we will study the representation of the Saracens in medieval Christian texts, focusing particularly, but not exclusively, on the ambiguous and elusive figure of the Saracen princess. Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ITW, one 200-level English course, and one 300-level English course.

ENG 498 Independent Study
(TBA)
Advanced reading/writing in a selected area of English with a faculty member. Must be four credits to count as one of the three 400-level courses required for the English major. Repeatable for up to 8 credits. Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ITW, one 200-level English course, one 300-level English course and permission of instructor.

Fall 2007 American Studies Courses

IIAMST 210-01 Introduction to American Studies: The Thirties
Lebeaux TR 10-11:45
See IIENG 210-01 for course description.

IIAMST 210-03 Introduction to American Studies: Basketball and the American Landscape
Antonucci MW 4-5:40
See IIENG 210-03 for course description.

IIAMST 210-04 Introduction to American Studies: The Fifties
Leduc MW 2-3:40
See IIENG 210-04 for course description.

IIAMST 210-05 Introduction to American Studies: Changing Identities
Dubois TR 12-1:45
An interdisciplinary introduction to the methodology, resources, premises, and problems of study of the American experience.  Historical and literary texts dominate in this course but various disciplinary lenses are utilized. The focus of the course will be a study in place and culture of the unique New England region from the 1600’s to the present.  Major texts which will be studies include: David Glassberg’s Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life, William Cronin’s Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance, Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs, Russell Banks’ Affliction, and Richard Russo’s Empire Falls. Poetry, essays, short stories, and chapters of texts from other 19 th, 20 th, and 21 st century writers will also be included.  Film, art, and environmental components of the curriculum will help provide a more comprehensive understanding of New England and its people. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

AMST 250-01 Interpreting American Culture: The Folk Music Revival
Lebeaux F 10-1:30
An exploration of the folk music revival of the 1960s, its roots in the decades that preceded it, and its legacy. We will consider the many cultural, historical, political, and musical influences that culminated in the folk revival; the emergence of folk music into the mainstream of popular culture; and the significance of the folk revival in the context of the 1960s and American culture. We will read about, listen to, discuss and interpret the music and achievements of such individuals and groups as Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, the Almanac Singers, the Weavers, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Phil Ochs, and we will consider other musical figures/groups/singer-songwriters, events, and developments associated with the folk (and folk-rock) scene. Cross-listed with ENG 280-01. Prerequisite: ENG 101 or ITW.

AMST 250-02 Indian Studies: Culture of Plains Indians
Joyce MW 12-1:45 (MCW)
Cross-listed with ENG 250-01 for course description.

AMST 390-01 Critical Approaches: Transcendentalism
Lebeaux MW 12-1:45
See ENG 346-01 for course description.