English

in the

Fall

Course Descriptions

Department of English

Ouachita Baptist University

Fall 2001
           

English 2013: English Studies

Dr. Doug Sonheim        11:00-11:50 MWF                  Lile Hall 200

Required for all English majors and minors.

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 explore the major genres of literature, learn the terminology and techniques associated with those genres, and acquire 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 verse and narrative by reading the Norton Critical Edition of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the medieval narrative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  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 quizzes, recitation of memorized lines of verse, two examinations, three literary essays, and a research paper.

English 2023: Advanced Grammar                                                

Dr. Susan Wink                2:00-3:15 MW                     Lile Hall 220

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. Johnny Wink       3:30-4:45 TTh                          Lile Hall 200

In this class, we'll learn by going where we have to go.  We'll not have a required text; however, as we write the short story, one-act play, ode, sonnet, villanelle, and free verse lyric that we'll be compelled to write (your old teacher will be joining you in these writerly ventures), we'll gather and study canonical instances of those genres in the hopes of becoming better authors in them ourselves.

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. Jay Curlin                                                            8:30-9:45 TTh            Lile Hall 200

This course, the first part of a two-semester survey of the literary history of our nation, starts well before our forefathers began to agitate for independence from Mother England, when seventeenth-century English colonists of the New World first began to pen journals and travelogues of their adventures in a wild and alien land.  From these colonial beginnings with such luminaries as Captain John Smith and the poet Anne Bradstreet, we shall move happily through two and a half centuries of American literature and history, noting the parallels of American colonial literature with literary movements in England and Europe and tracing the gradual development of a literary voice unique to America.  Along the way, of course, we shall enjoy the pleasant diversions of daily reading quizzes, two examinations, and a final scholarly paper, while also committing two hundred lines of verse to memory.

The sole text required for the course is George and Barbara Perkins’ American Tradition in Literature, Vol. 1, 9^th ed.

 

 

English 3203: English Literature to 1800

Dr. Amy Sonheim     10:00-10:50 MWF                     Lile Hall 200

Using The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1, as our required book, we will sample the major authors and genres, representing the chief periods of British literature from the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History to William Cowper’s “Castaway,” beginning with a monk and ending with a madman. Such diverse readings demand varied approaches.  So, we will appreciate these masterpieces through reading them, writing about them, discussing their literary contexts, viewing theater productions of them, and memorizing salient passages, all the while linking their significances to the history of Britain. There will be four examinations combining essay and objective questions.

English 4073: Literary Criticism                                                    

Dr. Doug Sonheim    12:30-1:45 TTh                         Lile Hall 200

Prerequisite: English 2013.

This course is designed to provide at least four services for the student of letters.  To begin with, we shall survey, in a regrettably condensed form, the  history of literary criticism, providing as stable a foundation as possible by which to understand what may often appear to be the babble of the present age.  Secondly, we shall examine, in more thorough fashion, eleven basic schools of twentieth-century literary theory and criticism, employing Charles E. Bressler's Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice to set each school in its historical and philosophical context.  Thirdly, we shall enjoy a brief respite from such theoretical matters by reading Jane Austen’s Emma.  Lastly, we shall see what modern literary criticism makes of such a novel by examining Emma through the lenses of modern critical approaches.  Along the way, you will have the pleasure of taking reading quizzes, writing two scholarly papers, and performing any number of impressive feats on two examinations, the first administered at midterm, the second at the close of the course.

English 4203: Studies in British Poetry--The Romantic Poets    

Dr. Susan Wink         11:00-12:15 TTh                        Lile Hall 200

In this course we will study the poetry and poetic theories of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. In addition to healthy doses of these poets’ shorter poems, we will read in their entirety and devote several weeks each to the two great epic-length poems of the period: Wordsworth’s The Prelude and Byron’s Don Juan. Students will be required to write weekly response papers and one major paper and to memorize a certain number of lines. We will have two or three exams.

 

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 willing 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