3000-Level Course Descriptions
ENGL 3021-802: Intermediate Poetry Workshop
Instructor: Professor Sidney Goldfarb
This class is intended for those students who wish to intensify their consideration of the poetic form from a variety of angles, in the hopes that the class will serve as a means of raising the nature of their writing to a more serious level. This does not mean that we will not have fun. Each student will produce a small chapbook of their poems over the course of the class, and groups of students will produce small magazines. There will be no exercises as such, but steady deadlines to complete work for class discussions. Conferences with the instructor are mandatory. Each student will give a brief presentation on one of the poets on the reading list.
Poets to be discussed include: Charles Baudelaire, T.S. Eliot, Charles Reznikoff, William Carlos Williams, Susan Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge.
Please contact the instructor for further information: s.goldfarb@comcast.net.
ENGL 3226: Folklore 1
Instructor: Professor Michael J. Preston
Folklore 1 is an introduction to and a survey of contemporary American folklore, the uninstitutionalized side of our lives, with emphasis upon Anglo American traditions but supplemented with Mexican American materials. American college traditions are included. Although not foregrounded, everyday life theory, language theory, performance theory, genre theory, and text theory underpin the course. Students are encouraged to integrate what they have learned in other English courses and in other disciplines, but the emphasis is to be on understanding the texts of folklore.
The course will begin with a redefinition of folklore in order to separate it from obsolete romantic notions about "merrie olde England" and to base it in contemporary American practices. Although designed to enable the student to understand and to enjoy more fully his or her cultural heritage, contemporary issues will be addressed. This course will not involve just alligators in the sewers of New York, but rather representations of women and minorities, AIDS and computer viruses, and the differences between stereotypes (racial and national) and ephemeral joking scripts, as well as dominant culture's appropriation of various traditions. The metaphors and mythology of contemporary society will be considered, including legends/rumors in the marketplace and the controlling metaphors of academe, the stockmarket, the sports world, etc. Joking and legend traditions will be emphasized, as most common today, but relatively minor traditions, such as contemporary riddle traditions (e.g., in personal ads), will not be ignored. Special emphasis will be placed on how we modern "folk" adapt developments in our technology in order to enhance our participation in millenia old traditions, thus making something new of the old to reflect our contemporary situations. This will not be a comfortable course for some, because we are not always "politically correct" in what we actually do, nor is every eccentric belief reinforced. The course requires intellectual honesty and candor, and every humanly possible attempt is made to avoid bashing or to cushion the bashing of any individual.
There will be essay type mid term and final exams. The centerpiece of the course will be a major collecting effort which begins almost journal like with the odd bits of folklore each student encounters in his or her life; a first short analytical paper will be due before mid course. Each student's collecting effort will then focus on a particular area (genre, group, etc.) and be "topped off" by an analytical essay for which the collecting project will serve as the primary "texts" for analysis. At least one half hour discussion with the instructor will be required.
Please contact the instructor for further information: preston@colorado.edu
ENGL 3246-001 and 002: Gothic Horror
Instructor: Professor Kelly Hurley
This course is concerned with the serious analysis of literature and film often dismissed as merely popular and escapist. Our time will be divided between consideration of various methodological approaches (structuralist, psychoanalytical, historical) to Gothic Horror and close readings of the texts themselves. Primary materials will include nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature by such authors as Octavia Butler, Steven King, H. P. Lovecraft, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and H. G. Wells, and films from such directors as John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Guillermo del Toro, Alfred Hitchcock, George A. Romero, and Ridley Scott. Secondary readings will help us theorize the cultural instrumentality of Gothic Horror, and attempt to define the parameters of popular genres. Class time will be devoted primarily to discussion, but will include lectures and student presentations.
Please contact the instructor for further information: kelly.hurley@colorado.edu.
ENGL 3377-001 and 002: African-American Women Writers
Instructor: Professor Cheryl Higashida
In her ground-breaking 1977 essay, “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism,” Barbara Smith argues that “Black women writers constitute an identifiable literary tradition.” That is, “thematically, stylistically, aesthetically, and conceptually Black women writers manifest common approaches to the act of creating literature as a direct result of the specific political, social, and economic experience that they have been obliged to share.” Smith foregrounds some of the ways that contributing to, defining, and studying this powerful literary tradition is both an aesthetic and political act. For against tremendous forces that have threatened – and continue to threaten – their very annihilation, African-American women keep alive their histories, cultures, and voices, and in doing so, they present a challenge to the dominant racist, patriarchal, and capitalist ideologies of our times.
Asking why and how literary and other cultural forms are suited to these tasks allows us to consider how African-American women writers adapted, appropriated, and revised different genres, including the slave narrative, the novel, poetry, film, and literary criticism and theory. This endeavor requires us to embark on two seemingly distinct but often necessarily convergent paths. On one hand, we will embed ourselves within these rich and varied texts, bringing to bear our close reading skills. On the other hand, we will move outwards and study issues such as the larger cultural, social, political, and historical conditions shaping and shaped by these texts. We will also consider the relationship between African-American women’s literature and other genres such as American literature, women’s literature, and post-colonial literature; and the ways that African-American women writers theorize race, gender, sexuality, and nationality. Finally, we will look at how some of these writers contest formulations of African American and Black identity that marginalize or exclude queer voices as well as those stories that exceed the boundaries of the U.S. nation-state.
Course requirements will likely include a short essay, a midterm, a long final essay, and of course consistent attendance and participation. Through written and oral work, we will develop close reading, critical thinking, argumentation, and composition skills.
Possible primary readings include Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Frances E.W. Harper, Iola Leroy; Nella Larsen, Passing; Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men; Ann Petry, The Street; Angela Davis, An Autobiography; and Michelle Cliff, No Telephone to Heaven.
Films include Illusions, directed by Julie Dash; Life and Debt, directed by Stephanie Black; and The Watermelon Woman, directed by Cheryl Dunye.
Please contact the instructor for further information: cheryl.higashida@Colorado.EDU.
ENGL 3377- 003: U.S. Latino/a Literature: Chicanos y Boricuas on the Move
Instructor: Professor John L. Escobedo
This course will provide a historical analysis of the development of Mexican American and Puerto Rican literature in the United States. In order to appreciate the richness of this trajectory, authors from both the nineteenth and twentieth century will be discussed throughout the semester. As such, this course will focus on the developmental stages from Mexican American and Puerto Rican literature to Chicano and NuyoRican literature. Special topics of interest for the course: significance of cultural politics, use of urban and rural landscapes, creation of hybrid identities, and the rise of Chicana/Latina feminism.
Please contact the instructor for further information: John.Escobedo@colorado.edu
ENGL 3856-002: Modes of Learning in Fiction and Non-Fiction
Instructor: Professor Sidney Goldfarb
This class will explore the ways knowledge is constructed in fiction and non-fiction, and the ways we acquire it, if we acquire it. The methods in each form will be discussed, and the relations between fiction and non-fiction explored. Authors to be discussed are, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, D,H. Lawrence, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Saul Bellow, George Orwell, Michael Herr, Gayl Jones, Juan Rulfo.
Requirements: several short papers of a comparative nature.
Please contact the instructor for further information: s.goldfarb@comcast.net.
English 3856-010:
Genre Studies: The Graphic Novel
Instructor: Professor William Kuskin
The comic book pamphlet developed as an independent literary form in the 1930s and early
1940s and has been a favorite of adolescent enthusiasts and cult devotees ever since. Recently, it
has entered into a process of
transformation, moving from a
species of pulp fiction on the margins
of children’s literature to an
autonomous genre, one Will Eisner labeled the graphic novel. This
transformation has been noted in such
literary venues as the New York Times
and the New Yorker, as well as in an
increasing number of university
classrooms and bookstore shelves.
English 3856 presents a survey of
the major graphic novels in
circulation today. Its governing
question is simple: by what terms can
we discuss comic books as literary
art? Behind this question lies one of
form. For the graphic novel makes a
unique appeal to the magic of the
book: jointly pictorial and textual it
represents the human condition
through both words and images.
English 3856 will be held in Monday and Wednesday lectures with seminar-style discussion sections on Friday. Coursework will likely include two essays, three fifty-minute exams, a final exam, and participation in writing a short comic. Finally, as this literature is essentially engaged with contemporary cultural issues, it is not for the faint of heart.
Please contact the instructor for further information: william.kuskin@colorado.edu.
For additional information on Professor Kuskin, please visit his faculty page here.
Frank Miller, The Dark Knight Returns (DC Comics, 1986)