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Creative Writing Position: Fiction Writer
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Topics for English 413 (3) —Senior Research and WritingThis course offers one of two ways to fulfill
the senior capstone writing requirement. See the
details on the Senior
Honors Thesis for the other option. If you
are not doing a senior honors thesis, you must
participate in the 413 selection process. This
page announces 413 sections available in fall and
winter. There will be no spring term capstones. A
413 course may count towards distribution,
depending on its topic and your paper topic.
Creative capstone courses don't count towards
distribution, but they do fulfill the capstone
requirement. Click
here for the process and
further instructions. English 413: Personal Writing and Testimonial (Gertz) This course has two major parts, one historical and one creative. We begin the first three weeks with readings related to the rise of the autobiographical voice in English literature. We study early autobiographical texts, especially Augustine’s Confessions, and other self-writing of the early modern period, such as heresy trial accounts, spiritual autobiographies, diary entries, and travel narratives. As we read through these texts, we will consider what experiences, as well as potential audiences, authorize writers to speak about themselves. Is it religious conversion, mistreatment by peers or authorities, prophetic revelation, observation of another culture, the desire to vindicate oneself before accusers, the need to account for one’s belief, or a privileged viewing of the bizarre or marvelous? We then move to modern autobiography and the personal essay, sampling a range of writers , such as George Orwell, C.S. Lewis, Adrienne Rich, Mary McCarthy, Doan Didion, Annie Dillard, James Baldwin, and Frank McCourt. We focus more on writing strategies with these authors—what voice they use, what part of their lives they focus on, how they avoid complaint while still describing their suffering. At the same time, we will be working on our own autobiographical material, doing free-writing based upon a series of exercises (i.e., recalling a first memory; recounting an experience of unjust treatment; recollecting events or feelings related to family photographs, etc.). In the second half of the term, students will each select an autobiography or memoir that they want the rest of us to read and critique. Final student work will result in either 1) a research paper of 20-25 pages on a chosen autobiographical text, either early or modern; or 2) a creative, autobiographical piece from 25 to 30 pages in length. English 413: Lyric Poetry: Medieval to Modern (Jirsa) Lyric poetry has been variously defined as the “utterance that is overheard” (Mill), the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Wordsworth), and an “intensely subjective and personal expression” (Hegel). One of our richest and oldest literary genres, the lyric is notoriously difficult to define on account of its long and diverse history, which extends back to ancient Greek melic and choral verse. This course will afford students with a wide perspective on lyric poetry and better their understanding of the genre’s development through several major periods of English literary production. Much attention will be devoted to reading (and pronouncing!) Old and Middle English models, including long narrative romances that incorporate short lyrics, such as Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. From there we will progress through the Renaissance and beyond, paying special attention to the Metaphysical poets (e.g., Donne, Herbert, Crashaw) and the Romantics (e.g., Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats). Students will ultimately have the opportunity to pursue lyric poets of their choosing and direct our investigation of the changing face of the genre throughout English literary history. How do people use poetry? How does poetry itself resist being useful? In this section we will read a series of poems, manifestoes, and critical statements that argue for poetry as entertainment, education, and a vehicle for social change in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Students will also be required to volunteer two hours per week in a poetry-related service placement arranged by Aubrey Shinofield, Service Learning Coordinator. Student research projects, commenced at midterm, may spring from our joint readings or the service placements. Alternately, they may concern other, related phenomena: independent presses and magazines as communities, poetry in medicine, poetry performance, poetry’s role in personal and public ritual, internet-based poetry communities, poetry’s role in social movements, and contemporary educational projects such as Poets in the Schools and the National Poetry Recitation Project. WINTER TERM, 2009: English 413: Epic and Violence—on the Screen (Adams) A study of the history and theory of one of literature and art’s dominant forms with particular attention to the aesthetic and ethical debates surrounding graphic violence. Because epic seems drawn to experimenting with longer, even gigantic, narratives, this course will turn to film for practical instances to study epic’s fascination with the centrality of violence in human experience. We will begin with perhaps the most ambitious film epic, D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, before examining two major epic film series. Possibilities include the King Kong films, John Ford’s western trilogy, the Godfather, the Alien, the Bourne, or the Star War films: I’m leaning toward the Godfather and the Alien films, but will poll the students early on to see their preferences. The class will thereby carefully explore the kinds of ethical, cultural, artistic, financial, and practical problems surrounding such gigantic, popular, and violent texts. In the second half, each student will be free to explore his or her own interests in this problem in terms of his or her own selection of a film or, if preferable, an epic novel or poem. English 413: Studying Literature in Action (Keen) Explores the impact of literature on readers using empirical methods as well as introspection and traditional literary analysis. Shared theoretical readings will augment individual directed readings in poetry, narrative fiction, drama, or children’s literature, depending on the student’s area of interest and expertise. The dynamic process of literary composition can be studied by reading online email novels, blog fiction, and hypertexts. A service learning option involving work with young readers through community schools or libraries is a possibility. More traditional literary critical options will also be discussed. In any case, students will each write a significant independent essay on topics they develop themselves. Students will also assist Professor Keen in her research on emotional responses to reading. In this course we will investigate the relationship between nature and culture through a focus on literary theory. Readings in the history of literary theory will lead to discussions of themes such as textual recovery, literary history, genre, cultural geography, material culture, ecofeminism, and environmental justice. We will also use an anthology of environmental literature to build our knowledge of primary texts. The possibilities for research projects are numberless, and I will try to guide students toward projects that join theoretical concerns with literary texts. We will work together as a study group, but each student will produce a research paper on a topic of individual interest. |
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