Course Offerings, Spring 2010
ENGL 2013: English Studies
Required for all English majors and minors.
Substitutes for CORE 1053: Composition II for all OBU students.
Pickwick (Dr. Jay Curlin)
TTh 8:30-9:45 and TTh 11:00-12:15 Lile 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. Using Kennedy and Gioia’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 Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre 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: A Handbook to Literature, Poetic Meter & Poetic Form, and The MLA Handbook. The grade for the course will be based on daily quizzes, recitation from memory of one hundred lines of verse in a variety of poetic forms, two examinations, two literary essays, and a research paper.
ENGL 3003: Advanced Composition
The Emperor of Ice Cream (Dr. Sonheim, The Man)
MWF 1:00-1:50 Lile 200
“I like the essay, have always liked it, and even as a child was at work, attempting to inflict my young thoughts and experiences on others by putting them on paper.” So says one of the great essayists of our time, E.B. White. In this course, we’ll work hard to become better writers so that we may, as White says, “inflict our thoughts and experiences” on others. In addition to the personal essay, we will (as student’s needs dictate) work on academic and, to some extent, professional writing.
Some class time will be spent critiquing drafts in a workshop format. Assignments will include a variety of short personal essays, one book or film review (you choose the book or film), and one longer persuasive paper. As we work toward clear and effective writing, we’ll make use of Joseph Williams' Style: 10 Lessons in Clarity and Grace. We’ll also delight in and imitate the elegant prose of two of our greatest modern essayists: E.B. White and C.S. Lewis.
Texts:
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Joseph Williams, Style: 10 Lessons in Clarity and Grace.
E.B.White, Essays of E.B. White (Perennial Classics 1999 edition)
ENGL 3083: Advanced Creative Writing/Fiction
Prerequisite: ENGL 2043 or consent of instructor.
Dr. Thunderlizard (Dr. Johnny Wink)
MWF 9:00-9:50 Lile 200
Beginning with six-word autobiographies and moving ultimately to long short stories, we’ll try to get better as writers of fiction by reading and writing a lot of the stuff.
ENGL 3113: American Literature Since 1865
Tonks (Dr. Mary Beth Long)
MWF 8:00-8:50 Lile 200
In this second half of our survey, we will continue to get our hands and minds dirty with the soupy mud that is recent American literature, including among letters, poems, short stories and essays the new (to us) genres of film and novel. To this irresistible, inevitable mess you will apply the clarity of your own critical soap, taking regular reading quizzes, sitting for two exams, and writing a couple of short papers.
ENGL 3253: Twentieth-Century English Literature
Tonks (Dr. Mary Beth Long)
MWF 11:00-11:50 Lile 200
“Beyond” is a good word to keep in mind for this course, for twentieth-century British literature stretches beyond national borders, beyond print pages, even (to quote one of its poets, Agha Shahid Ali “beyond English.” We will read three novels—one by Forster, one by Rushdie, and one TBA—and we will view two films, The Third Man and This is England. Our remaining hours will be spent among the great words of Hardy, Housman, Owen, Yeats, Woolf, Joyce, Lawrence, Mansfield, Orwell, Auden, Stoppard, Murray, Heaney, Coetzee, Rushdie, Muldoon, and Duffy…or most of those, anyway. You will take regular reading quizzes, sit for two exams, write a couple of shortish papers, and daydream about eating scones (before midterm) or curry (after midterm).
ENGL 4023: History of the English Language
Railwoman (Dr. Susan Wink)
TTh 2:00-3:15 Lile 200
As the course title implies, 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). I strongly urge students who plan to teach any literature written in English before 1900 to take this course because a knowledge of the state of the language at the time works were written is essential to a thorough understanding of them.
Students will learn not only the history and development of the sounds, word formation, vocabulary, spelling, meaning, and syntax of English but also the techniques of historical and comparative linguistics, so those with an interest in general linguistics can begin to explore in more depth one of the many fascinating aspects of the field. You will also have the great good fun of learning to pronounce earlier forms of the language so that you can, for example, astonish your friends by reading excerpts from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to them in Old English.
Your texts are The Origins and Development of the English Language (5th ed., Algeo and Pyles) and the accompanying workbook, Problems in the Origins and Development of the English Language (5th ed., Algeo and Butcher).
We will have probably three major exams, and, in addition to assignments in the workbook and phonetic transcriptions, you will be doing a project which you will begin within the first couple of weeks of class but which will not be completed and turned in until toward the end of the term.
ENGL 4243: Milton
Pickwick (Dr. Jay Curlin)
MWF 10:00-10:50 Lile 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 A. N. Wilson’s The Life of John Milton for our introduction to Milton’s life and historical context, we shall 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, memorization of Miltonic verse, two examinations, and a scholarly paper.
ENGL 4903: Senior Literature Seminar
Beefboy (Dr. Johnny Wink) and Pickwick (Dr. Jay Curlin)
TTh 12:30-1:45 Lile 200
In December of 1996, after years of memorizing together over three hundred poems drawn from a wide variety of British and American poets, we decided to tackle something a bit more coherent and ambitious: all of the sonnets of William Shakespeare. Thirteen years later, during which time our memorization has been sporadic as our energies and distractions have waxed and waned, we still have about fifty sonnets to go; but we have a long tradition, at least, of meeting each Saturday afternoon to walk around the area while saying to each other as many of the sonnets as can be fit into about forty minutes. This pleasant and healthy habit has helped us keep most of what we have memorized fairly fresh in our memories, but it has also made the sonnets come alive to us in unexpected ways. Saying the sonnets to each other expressively over the years has made them seem very much a conversation between friends; and patterns, themes, and endless applications to our own circumstances have appeared that we would never have seen otherwise. After thirteen years of dwelling upon the sonnets, we have the opportunity, in this spring’s Senior Literature Seminar, to share something of what we have found and to make all sorts of new discoveries with a larger group of readers.
As the capstone course for graduating English majors, the senior seminar will be conducted as a graduate seminar, reflecting the entire process of independent research: reading; discussing; and writing a proposal, article review, annotated bibliography, and research paper, the last being delivered in a symposium to the English faculty at the close of the course. The texts required for the course are Stephen Booth’s superb edition Shakespeare’s Sonnets and, to place the sonnets in a cultural and historical context, Robert Matz’s The World of Shakespeare's Sonnets: An Introduction.
LATN 2213: Elementary Latin II
Winkle (Dr. Johnny Wink)
MWF 2:00-3:15 Lile 220
We’ll pick up where we left off in the first course, moving slowly but surely down the road to a genuine reading ability in the language of the Romans. On the way we’ll try to learn to write at least a little in Latin and to get a few of its goldenest moments by heart.
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