Selected Spring 2010
1000-Level Course Descriptions

ENGL 1001:
ENGL 1260-007: TR 02:00-03:15 PM with Instructor John Leffel
ENGL 1600-001: MWF 08:00-08:50 AM, ENGL 1600-002: MWF 09:00-09:50 AM with Instructor Andrew Daigle
ENGL 1600-006: TR 11:00-12:15 PM, ENGL 1600-007: TR 02:00-03:15 PM with Instructor Erin Kingsley
ENGL 1600-008: TR 03:30-04:45 PM, ENGL 1600-009: TR 05:00-06:15 PM with Instructor Ann Emmons
ENGL 1800-001: MWF 9:00-9:50 AM, ENGL 1800-002: MWF 10:00-10:50 AM with Instructor Judy Strathearn

ENGL 1001: Freshman Writing Seminar: Animal Kingdoms
Description:

This writing-intensive course teaches close reading and the argumentative essay through the study of literature. Students' reading of stories, poems, essays, and a graphic novel will form the basis of frequent short writing assignments and revisions toward crafting five finished essays over the course of the semester.

The major theme of the course is animal kingdoms, asking what place human beings occupy within it? Are humans more like or unlike other animals, and on what bases should we define their similarities and/or differences? Should humans enjoy special rights and privileges above other animals, and if so, on what grounds? What systems of classification have we developed to describe humans and animals, and with what ethical and practical consequences? What distinguishes scientific descriptions of human and animal relations from mythological, religious, or other accounts? What imaginative work do animals perform culturally, in our traditions, stories, and other representational forms?

Such questions about human and animal relations shape the governing themes of the literary texts we will read in this course. Exploring these themes across different literary genres, the course will develop writing and analytical skills by closely reading literary language and developing clearly reasoned arguments about its meanings. Over the course of the semester you will learn how to become a critical reader: to explore and speculate on a particular problem, issue, or theme by anchoring your ideas in textual evidence. Your essays will be built up in stages from the building blocks of close reading, selection of evidence, drafts of theses and introductions, and so on. We will also use peer-editing and grammar worksheets to refine your writing and editing abilities. Cumulatively, the assignments will teach you how to write an argumentative essay, including the design, development and support of an engaging thesis. The main goal of this course is to enable you to transform a personal response to a literary work into a crafted, thought-provoking, analytical essay.


Required Texts:
Diana Hacker, A Writer's Reference, 6th edition (handbook)
Art Spiegelman, Maus, a Survivor's Tale, Volumes I-II (graphic novel)
J. Paul Hunter, ed. The Norton Introduction to Poetry, 9th edition (poetry anthology)
Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (short stories)
Franz Kafka, The Basic Kafka (short stories)
J. M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals Princeton UP (fictionalized essays)


ENGL 1260-007: Intro to Women's Lit
Instructor: John Leffel
TR 2:00-3:15 PM, CLRE 301

This section will explore British, American, and post-colonial women writers' treatments of race, gender, colonialism, and the slave trade from the 17th through to the 19th centuries.  Genres will include the novel, poetry, prose, drama, and slave narrative, by such writers as Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, George Coleman, Mary Prince, Phyllis Wheatley, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More, Anna Yearsley, Katherine Mansfield, Harriet Beacher Stowe, and others. Requirements include frequent short writing assignments, response papers, a midterm, and a final exam.

ENGL 1600-001, -002: Masterpieces of American Literature
Instructor: Andrew Daigle
001: MWF 8:00-8:50 AM, HLMS 137
002: MWF 9:00-9:50 AM, HLMS 229

In this course, we will pay particular attention to modes of realist and naturalist representation in 19th and early 20th century American Literature. Key issues under consideration: What are the methodologies for and consequences of attempts to represent the "real" through fiction? How do concepts of geographical space and travel figure into distinctions between physical nature and social reality? How do we distinguish realism/naturalism from modernism and/or romance? Why is realism so concerned with defining itself through such genre binaries?

Authors will likely include: Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Frank Norris, Willa Cather, Richard Wright, Richard Ford, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, Alice Munro, Mark Twain, Robert Hayden, and Cormac McCarthy

ENGL 1600-006, -007: Masterpieces of American Literature: Home Space
Instructor: Erin Kingsley
006: TR 11:00-12:15PM, KTCH 301
007: TR 2:00-3:15 PM, KTCH 303

In this course we will interrogate the construct of American writing, examining the representation of home space and asking the crucial questions: is the home “natural” or a socio-political construct?  Is it a source of joy or of sorrow?  Is it physical or interior; found, lost, or sought after?  Is it something that can be defined for oneself—viewed apart—or something that is utterly enmeshed in the social fabric?  How does the conception of home space inform American identity?  We will discuss the shifting meaning of the home across the literary landscape, especially as this meaning is informed by overarching constructs of race, class, sexuality, gender, and nationality.  Texts include DeLillo's White Noise, Cather's The Professor's House, and Danielewski's House of Leaves.

ENGL 1600-008, -009: Masterpieces of American Literature
Instructor: Ann Emmons
008: TR 03:30-04:45 PM, KTCH 303
009: TR 05:00-06:15 PM, HLMS 229

Course Description
The University of Colorado and the English Department have designed “Masterpieces of American Literature” (ENGL 1600) to provide an introduction to centrally significant works of American literature, to enhance students’ ability to read critically, and to enhance students’ understanding of the complex relationship between the artist and his/her society. Within these broad guidelines, I have organized my sections of ENGL 1600 around two central themes suggested by the course title: The Canon (or, what constitutes a masterpiece and who decides?) and The Nation (or, how does/does literature represent or construct the American nation?).

Possible Course Texts:  
Excerpts of: Winthrop, “Model of Christian Charity”; Franklin, Autobiography; Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia”; Emerson, “Divinity School Address”; Douglass, Narrative of the Life; Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”; Whitman, “Song of Myself” (1855);  Walcott, Omeros; Herman Melville, “Benito Cereno”; Washington Irving, Sketchbook (select stories); Melville, Moby Dick; Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; Toni Morrison, “Strangers” and Beloved; Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony; Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

ENGL1800-001, -002: American Ethnic Literatures
Instructor: Judy Strathearn
001: MWF 9:00-9:50 AM, ECON 2
002: MWF 10:00-10:50 AM, CLRE 104

Course Description: 
American Ethnic Literatures focuses on significant texts by African Americans, Latino/a Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans.  For this course, we will work within 20th and 21st century texts (poetry, drama, novel, and non-fiction essay) and critical materials. We will read these texts and materials through historical, political, sociological, economic, and cultural frames.  Texts for the course include: Miguel Pinero “Short Eyes”; James Baldwin “Sonny’s Blues”; James Welch Winter in the Blood; Iceberg Slim Pimp; Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God; Arturo Islas The Rain God; Julie Otsuka When the Emperor Was Divine; Ishmael Reed, ed. From Totems to Hip Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas.  The course will focus on close reading as well as large and small group discussion. Assignments for the course include response papers and a final project.