English
in the Fall
Course Descriptions
Department of English
Ouachita
Baptist University
Fall
2002
Second
Summer Session, July 1-July 26:
4213 Studies in the British Novel
Dr.
Jay Curlin
The
Barsetshire Novels
Dr. Jay Curlin
1:00-2:50 MTWThF
Lile Hall 200
Those
who can join me in July for a lovely month immersed in the six novels of
Anthony Trollope’s Barsetshire series will quickly understand not
only why Trollope was greatly beloved in the nineteenth century but why modern
readers continue to rank him among the masters of the English novel. My ambition for the
course is simply to spend the humid days of July absorbed in the most famous
series of one of our language’s best novelists, learning something of his
life, something of the issues and themes with which his novels are most
commonly concerned, and something of what modern scholarship has ventured to
say of his work.
English 2013: English Studies:
“The Importance of Writing Burden'th”
Dr. Amy Sonheim
8:30-9:45 TTh
Lile Hall 200
Required
for all English majors and minors.
English Studies introduces students wishing to major
or minor in literature to ways of writing about the principle genres--poetry,
fiction, drama, and film. Students
will write four papers on Selected Poems of Keats, Vanity Fair
by Thackeray, The Importance of Being Earnest by Wilde, and a film (to
be unveiled at a later date). To further our work, we will use invaluable
references: The Harper
Handbook to Literature, Poetic Meter & Poetic Form, and The
MLA Handbook. Practicing our
new found discipline, we will also memorize lines of Keats and complete a
comprehensive final.
English 2023: Advanced Grammar
Dr. Susan Wink
3:30-4:45 MW
Lile Hall 338
Prerequisite:
English 2013.
Following an intensive review of traditional grammar
using an adaptation of the Reed-Kellog diagram, we will consider the insights
provided by generative-transformational grammar into the fascinating and
challenging questions regarding how the English language–-indeed, human
language–-works. Do not be
intimidated by either of the following:
1)
thinking that you "hate grammar"–-most people who think
they hate grammar don't; even if they do hate something they call grammar,
it's almost always what is properly called usage–-how to make verbs agree
with subjects in Standard American English, when to use semicolons–-stuff
like that. This course is NOT a usage course.
2)
the reputation that this course has for being difficult–-there's no
question–-it IS difficult, but you shouldn't be intimidated by that; grades
in this course are generally higher than in any other course I teach, and it's
not because I grade leniently; it's because students rise to the challenge and
love doing it.
We
will have three or four exams.
English
2043: Introduction to Creative Writing
Dr.
Jay Curlin
2:00-3:15 TTh
Lile Hall 200
This courses introduces students to both the craft and
the profession of the creative writer. To
explore the major genres available to the writer, we shall read a handful of
successful works in the areas of poetry, prose fiction, and drama and compose
original works in each of these genres. As a writing workshop, the class will provide students a
forum in which to read and discuss one another’s material. In addition to the original works generated by the workshop
participants, we shall read Jack Heffron’s The Writer’s Idea Book
and Robin Behn’s The Practice of Poetry and utilize the 2002
Writer’s Market to explore the possibility of publication.
English 3013: Technical and
Professional Writing
Debbie
Pounders 9:00-9:50
MWF
Lile Hall 200
Technical
writing is a problem-solving process involving the central elements of good
composition. Using selected
models, we shall consider the nature of technical writing, learn the qualities
of good technical writers, and practice the techniques of effective formal and
informal technical writing. We
shall move from simple writing assignments such as memos, e-mail, and
report writing, to major writing such as résumés with accompanying letters
and projects appropriate to the student's professional needs.
The course culminates in a major writing project and class presentation
of that project.
English 3103: American Literature To
1877
Dr. Doug Sonheim
12:30-1:45 TTh
Lile Hall 200
We will begin our study of
American literature by reading the diaries, travelogues, letters, and journals
of the first settlers in the New World, as well as transcribed stories from
the Native American cultures. Our
reading will include such writers as John Smith, Anne Bradstreet, Edward
Taylor, Washington Irving, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman
Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others.
We will read Michael Wigglesworth's "The Day of Doom."
We will have three examinations and one paper.
Required text: Perkins and Perkins, The
American Tradition in Literature, Volume I (10th edition).
English 3223: Medieval and
Renaissance English Literature
Dr. Susan Wink 2:00-3:15 MW
Lile Hall 200
In this survey of English literature from its
beginnings to 1603, we will consider at least three larger works (we will not,
alas, be reading all of all of them) -- Beowulf, The Canterbury
Tales, and The Faerie Queene -- and many shorter works. One of the
major aims of the course will be to study the development of drama through the
periods covered by the course; a second will be to examine the appearance in
England and subsequent development of the sonnet, especially as it became
manifest in the phenomenon known as the sonnet sequence. We will have daily
reading quizzes, two or possibly three exams, and a couple of papers. This
course replaces ENGL 3203: English Literature to 1800.
English 4073: Literary
Criticism--Traditional to Trendy
Dr. Amy Sonheim
11:00-12:15 TTh
Lile Hall 200
In this
course, you will meet the traditional literary critics from the past and the
trendy ones from the present. Though some might argue that a course devoted to
critics of art, rather than to the art itself, might squelch one's pleasure
with art, I have found the case to be otherwise.
These critics inform us of quite fertile ways to enjoy art even more on
intellectual terms. We will read the critics themselves in Kaplan's Criticism,
then read a gloss of these critics in Tyson's Critical Theory Today.
Our understanding will be furthered by directly applying the theories
to Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Lessing's The Fifth Child.
Weekly reading logs, one essay, one research paper, one mid-term and
one comprehensive final will chart our progress.
English 4213: Studies in the British
Novel—Charles Dickens
Dr. Johnny Wink
3:30-4:45 TTh
Lile Hall 200
George
Santayana thought that mankind had never had a better friend than Charles
Dickens, and during the 1990’s I came to agree with him.
What you will do in this course is read five of Dickens’ masterpieces
(“The Pickwick Papers,” “Our Mutual Friend,” “Bleak House,” “David
Copperfield,” and “Martin Chuzzlewit”), discuss them with me, and write
short papers in response to our quintet of novels and a longer paper in
response to a novel by Dickens of your choosing which is not on our reading
list.
English 4223: Shakespeare
Dr. Jay Curlin
11:00-11:50 MWF
Lile Hall 200
If
you think of Shakespeare as primarily a dramatist you associate with a handful
of famous plays, it is time to meet a fellow whose range as a poet and
dramatist is so vast that he is universally acknowledged as the greatest
writer in English literature. We
shall read all of his non-dramatic verse before moving happily into the world
of his drama, reading examples from each of the categories into which
Shakespeare’s plays are traditionally grouped.
To place his works within the context of his life and times, we shall
also read Paul Honan’s Shakespeare: A Life, while all of our
Shakespearean readings will employ The Riverside Shakespeare.
Along the way, you will
enjoy daily quizzes, memorize two hundred lines drawn from Shakespeare’s
non-dramatic and dramatic verse, dazzle me with two examinations, and sparkle
in a final scholarly paper.
Why
Study English Language and Literature at Ouachita?
The
English faculty here at Ouachita believes that through your diligent study of
the English language and of English literature, you will gain practical
skills. You will learn to read
carefully and analytically, looking for ways the parts relate to the whole.
You will wrestle with complex ideas, ambiguity and multiple
interpretations. You will learn
more words, and you will learn more about words--their histories and
complexities and mysteries. In
short, you will learn to read complex texts and you will learn to write more
clearly. Whether your future
holds law school, Sunday school, high school, or homeschool, your diligent
studies in English will enrich your work for God's kingdom.
To
these very useful skills of analysis, synthesis and verbal expression,
studying English will increase your appreciation for beauty and design. You
will study the forms of language and literature in a way that will allow you
to move beyond impulsive reactions to works of art; you will gain an
appreciation for whatever is truly lovely, and you will discriminate between
the tawdry and the genuine, the false and the true, the mediocre and the
excellent.
Because
literature by its very nature explores what it means to be a human being, it
confronts the questions that humans have always faced, questions about fate
and free will, about our place in the cosmos, about our relationships with
each other. Literature does not
merely tell us about these questions; rather, literature presents
human experiences in a concrete form. Thus,
if we as readers will submit ourselves momentarily to the premises and demands
of the work before us, then we can safely encounter a limitless number of
human stories. We agree with C.S.
Lewis, who describes the expansive effects of reading by saying "I become
a thousand men and yet remain myself."
Above
all, while there are many skills we gain from studying language and
literature, we believe that such study changes us; we study literature not
merely for what it will do for us, but for what it does to us.
On
behalf of the English Department faculty, I hope you will be enriched and
challenged by your studies in English. God
be with you.
Dr.
Doug Sonheim
Associate
Professor of English