English
In the Spring
Course Descriptions
Department of English
Ouachita
Baptist University
Spring 2004
Table of
Contents
Course
Page
2013 English
Studies
3
3003 Advanced
Composition
3
3083 Advanced
Creative
Writing/Fiction 4
3113 American
Literature Since
1877 4
3253
Twentieth-Century English
Literature 5
4013 Special
Methods in
English
5
4023 History
of the English
Language 6
4103 Studies
in American
Poetry 7
4243
Milton
8
4303 Studies
in
Drama
9
4903 Senior
Literature
Seminar
10
English
2013: English Studies
Dr. Jay
Curlin 1:00-1:50 MWF Lile Hall 200
The purpose of this course is to introduce
fledgling English majors and minors to the discipline of the literary
scholar, and the primary goal to equip students with every tool needed for a
successful completion of a major or minor in English. To achieve these
ends, we shall be exploring the major genres of literature, learning the
terminology and techniques associated with those genres, and acquiring the
basic skills needed to conduct the type of research practiced by the
literary scholar. While using X. J. Kennedy’s Literature: An
Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama as our primary introduction
to the genres, we shall take particularly close looks at the genres of
narrative and verse by reading the Norton Critical Editions of Jane Austen’s
novel Persuasion and Lord Tennyson’s verse elegy In Memoriam.
For these studies, we shall also employ three reference texts essential to
the library of any student of literature: The Harper Handbook to
Literature, Poetic Meter & Poetic Form, and The MLA Handbook.
The grade for the course will be based on daily quizzes, recitation of
memorized lines of verse, two examinations, two literary essays, and a
research paper.
English 3003:
Advanced Composition
Dr. Amy
Sonheim 8:30-9:45 TTh Lile Hall 220
Students have
informed me of a schizophrenic writing experience: using one style, they
write riveting stories; using another, they write bland research. Wouldn’t
it be nice if we could write academic papers as creatively as we write
stories? Advanced Composition helps students do so. Furthering the
work begun in Grammar & Rhetoric, this course offers writers
opportunities to design their own essays, developing skills of critiquing,
revising, and editing in the process. (Graduates of the course have also
informed me that they develop skills for teaching writing, too.) One means
of learning to write better is learning to read better. To that end, we’ll
read the following: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, Atonement
by Ian McEwan, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph
Williams, and Reading Rhetorically by John Bean & Virginia Chappell.
English 3083:
Advanced Creative Writing/Fiction
Dr. Johnny
Wink 2:00-3:15 TTh Lile Hall 200
Using as our
vade mecum The Best American Short Stories of 2002, we will read and
write a busy semester’s worth of fiction, including at least one short
short story, a short story, and an opening chapter of a novel.
English
3113:American Literature Since 1877
Dr. Tom
Greer 8:30-9:45 TTh Lile Hall 210
This course,
the second part of a two-semester survey of the literary history of America,
begins with that period just after the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Sometimes called the Gilded Age, the last twenty-five years of the
nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century
contain literature commonly referred to as realistic and naturalistic.
Familiar names such as Mark Twain, Henry James, Kate Chopin, and Edith
Wharton appear in this period. Spiller and Thorpe, in their work A
Literary History of the United States, refer to the period between World
War I and the Great Depression as the Second Renaissance of American
Literature, the first having been the 1860’s. During the decade after World
War I, the names of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Crane, Eliot, Anderson, and
Cather grace the literary stage. From the 1930’s to the present, a collage
of ideas including existentialism, absurdist drama, black comedy, and
ethnicity appear. Writers such as Steinbeck, Faulkner, Baldwin, O’Connor,
Welty, Morrison, and Updike dominate the American literary scene.
Since the course is a survey, the
requirements will be along that line. A lot of reading will be assigned,
and major tests will be given, the main purpose of which will be to evaluate
one’s understanding of the scope of literature from the late nineteenth
century to the present.
English 3253:
Twentieth-Century English Literature
Dr. Doug
Sonheim 12:30-1:45 TTh Lile 200
We will study
twentieth-century English literature by dividing our attention between
writers whom we know by initials (A.E., T.S, W.B., D.H., E.M., W.H., V.S.,
and recently named Nobel Prize winner, J.M., to name a few) and those we
know by first name (Thomas, James, Rupert, Virginia, Joseph, Samuel, Edith,
George, Doris, Nadine, to name a few). Along the way, we will study 1) the
poets who lived through or died in WWI, 2) the writers of the teens and
twenties so influential on the last—and this—century, 3) the mid-century
poets and short story writers, and 4) the so-called "global" writers of the
last generation or so. Using the Norton Anthology of English Literature,
Volume 2C: The Twentieth Century, we will have access to a Timeline,
very fine Selected Bibliographies, "Geographic Nomenclature," "British
Money," "The British Baronage," "Religions in England," a most helpful
"Poetic Forms and Literary Terminology," and an Index. Evaluation for the
course will consist of quizzes, three response-type essays, and one formal
paper.
This course
substitutes for either ENGL 3203: English Literature to 1800 or ENGL 3213:
English Literature Since 1800.
ENGL 4013:
Special Methods in English and Social Studies
Mrs.
Beverly Slavens 3:30-4:45 TTh Lile Hall 210
If you plan to
teach English and/or social studies in middle/secondary schools, take this
course to explore methods of presenting and evaluating the literature,
composition, and grammar skills required of your students. The text is a
practical guide to using those pedagogical skills and terms tested by Praxis
II and used in teacher-certification programs. In addition to the text, you
will work with secondary-school textbooks and small groups of high-school
students as you develop objectives, lesson plans, and evaluation instruments
to use in your classroom. (Also open to social-studies majors.)
English 4023:
History of the English Language
Dr. Susan
Wink 3:30-4:45 TTh Lile Hall 200
In this
course, we will examine the origins, history, and development of the English
language from its Proto-Indo-European roots to the present day, with special
attention to three stages in its development: Old English (i.e.
Anglo-Saxon, the language of Beowulf, c. 700), Middle English (the
language of Chaucer, c. 1400), and Early Modern English (the language of
Shakespeare, c. 1600). The course is designed to acquaint you not only with
the history and development of English but also with the techniques of
historical and comparative linguistics. You will also have the great good
fun of learning to pronounce Old English and Middle English so that you’ll
be able to astonish your friends by reading excerpts from the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle to them in its original language and quoting Chaucer like a
pro.
Your texts are
The Origins and Development of the English Language (4th ed., Pyles
and Algeo) and Algeo's accompanying workbook, Problems in the Origins and
Development of the English Language (4th ed.).
We will have
three major exams, and, in addition to a number of special assignments
primarily entailing the phonetic transcription of given passages, you will
do a project (which most of the students who have taken this course in the
past have very much enjoyed doing) toward the end of the term.
English 4103:
Studies in American Poetry—Robert Frost
Dr. Susan Wink 2:00-3:15
TTh Lile Hall 210
The purpose of
this course is to examine the life and works of Robert Frost, and, to that
end, we will read a recent biography of Frost and as much of his poetry as
we possibly can. Jay Parini’s book, currently considered the definitive
biography of Frost, provides not only a thorough, well-written account of
Frost’s life, but also excellent commentary on many of his poems. I think
that you will find that Frost’s wry humor, penetrating wit, stunning insight
into the human condition, and consummate craft make him one of the most
satisfying of poets to study, and that a careful reading of his work will
never cease to reward and surprise us.
We will have
two exams, daily reading quizzes, a number of short response papers, and one
major paper, which you will also present to the class (and any other
interested parties) near the end of the semester.
English 4243:
Milton
Dr. Jay Curlin 11:00-12:15
TTh Lile Hall 200
This course is a
survey of the life and works of the great English poet and writer John
Milton, a giant of the seventeenth century whose impact upon English
literature has been profound. To explore the depths of so complex and
prolific a genius would require at least a lifetime, but the four months of
the term should be sufficient to expose you to Milton’s major works of
poetry and prose. Using Merritt Y. Hughes’s Complete Poems and Major
Prose for our survey of Milton’s major English verse and prose and
Barbara Lewalski’s The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography for
our introduction to Milton’s life and historical context, we will spend the
semester among such glories as Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained,
and Samson Agonistes, and enjoy such pleasures as we find on this
side of Paradise: daily quizzes, two examinations, and a scholarly paper.
English 4303:
Studies in Drama
Dr. Stan Poole 8:30-12:45
TTh Lile Hall 200
In this course, we
will trace the development of western drama from the late nineteenth century
through the end of the twentieth century. Along the way, we will sample a
variety of plays by modern masters such as Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, and
George Bernard Shaw; by American modernists such as Eugene O’Neill,
Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller; and by contemporary playwrights
including Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Caryl Churchill, and August Wilson.
Besides gaining a
better understanding of the historical development of modern and
contemporary drama, we will also cultivate our skills as sensitive readers
of dramatic texts and viewers of theatrical productions. In order to
accomplish these goals, students will attend and respond to a number of
local productions and, if all goes well, will make one or more class trips
to take in performances in other cities. In addition to reading
approximately twenty plays, students will take quizzes, write responses to
assigned plays, compose performance reviews, write a longer interpretive
essay (8-10 pages), and take three exams, including a comprehensive final.
English 4903:
Senior Literature Seminar—Samuel Johnson
Dr. Doug Sonheim 2:00-3:15
MW Lile Hall 200
Hack, poet,
essayist, biographer, lexicographer, travel journalist, literary cricket,
dramatist, Christian, hypochondriac, talker, moralist, friend of the
down-and-out, melancholic, lethargic, English—such was Samuel Johnson,
son of a bookseller and the subject of our study in this version of English
4903: Senior Literature Seminar. Born in 1709, having died in 1784, Johnson
dominated the literary world from the 1750s to the end of his life, so much so
that subsequent generations of literary historians were wont to call the latter
half of the eighteenth century The Age
of Johnson. The OBU catalog says that this course requires that students
engage in "advanced research techniques," and so we shall. Each student shall
write a scholarly final paper to be presented at the Senior Literature Symposium
at the end of the term.
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
