English in the Spring

Course Descriptions

Department of English

Ouachita Baptist University

Spring 2003

 

English 2013: English Studies

Dr. Susan Wink                2:00-3:15 TTh                     Lile Hall 210

Required for all English majors and minors.

This course introduces students majoring or minoring in English to a variety of areas with which their continuing study will be concerned: literature, linguistics, and literary criticism.

This spring we will concentrate on two literary genres, the novel and poetry, by reading and studying Jane Austen’s Emma and selected poems by the great Victorian poet, Robert Browning. We will use a Critical Edition of Emma, so we will also have the advantage of reading together scholarship which addresses a work with which we will be intimately familiar.

We will also spend three or four weeks surveying linguistics, one of the most rapidly expanding fields open to students of English. We will not have time to explore the field in any depth, but you will be introduced to five of its major components: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.

In connection with our reading of Browning, we will study Paul Fussell’s Poetic Meter & Poetic Form. Two other books used in the course which will be extremely valuable for you, both as a student and beyond, are The Harper Handbook to Literature and The MLA Handbook.

We will have two or three examinations, numerous daily reading quizzes, weekly two-page informal papers on your reading, and one scholarly paper.

English 3073: Linguistics

Dr. Susan Wink               2:00-3:15 MW                    Lile Hall 200

Prerequisite: English 2013.

This course presents a survey of the various branches of linguistics such as phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics.

The aim of this course is to provide you with a broad knowledge of the primary concerns and methods of modern linguistic theory, analysis, and investigation.

By the end of the course, you should be able to

1)    transcribe regular spelling and speech into broad phonetic transcription,

2)  transcribe broad phonetic transcription into regular spelling,

3)   demonstrate an understanding of basic phonology and phonological rules,

4)      identify free and bound morphemes,

5)    demonstrate, with diagrams and transformational sequences, a basic understanding of modern English syntax and the theories and methods of transformational grammar,

6)     describe and apply the basic methods of investigation used in historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics,

7)    describe current ideas and theories concerning language acquisition,

8)    describe current ideas and theories concerning how language means and demonstrate an understanding of methods of semantic investigation,

9)     and sing the Ouachita Alma Mater in reverse.

English 3083: Advanced Creative Writing/Fiction

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

Employing Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft as our vade mecum, we shall learn by going where we have to go.  I'll ask each of the participants to compose two short short stories, two short stories, and the opening chapter of a novel.  At least two of the compositions must be submitted to the class at large for perusal and critique.

English 3093: Advanced Creative Writing/Poetry

Dr. Jay Curlin            2:00-3:15 TTh                           Lile Hall 200

This poetry workshop will focus on the craft of the poet by examining the tradition and elements of closed and open form in British and American verse.  Guided by Helen Vendler’s Poems, Poets, Poetry, workshop participants will study and imitate the works of both British and American poets to produce original creations of their own.  Along the way, they will have the pleasure of occasional reading quizzes, will know the infinitely greater pleasure of filling their memories with at least two hundred lines of verse, and will write a number of original poems in a variety of forms both old and new.

 

English 3113: American Literature Since 1877          

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

Beginning with Walt Whitman, we will read, quiz, and write our way through nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature. Along with our reading of the expected gems by such writers as Twain, James, Porter, Crane, Cather, Frost, Stevens, and Faulkner, we will read a few contemporary poets and fiction writers.  Possible works for our consideration will include those with provocative and intriguing titles, such as “Lost in the Funhouse,” “Roast Possum,” “The Half-Skinned Steer,” and “Yes! No!”  I would like to include several dramatic works as well, and so will have to choose from among the works of O'Neill, Shepard, Albee, Williams, Miller.  We will contemplate the visual art in--and on the cover of--our anthology, the tenth edition of The American Tradition in Literature (Vol. II), edited by our pair of Perkinses, George and Barbara. We will have weekly quizzes, weekly short Findings/Discussion papers, and three examinations.  At the end of the semester, those who have survived will read aloud Charles Simic's poem “My Weariness of Epic Proportions.”

 

English 3233: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century English Literature  

Dr. Jay Curlin            11:00-11:50 MWF                    Lile Hall 200

In this, the second part of our new four-part survey of English literature, we shall spend equal time in two particularly glorious centuries of English literature, one the century of such giants as Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, and Milton, the other the period of Pope, Swift, and Johnson and the beginnings of English Romanticism.  Using as our text the second and third volumes of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Seventh Edition, we shall simply try to read as much of such wonderful literature as we possibly can, tracing the metaphysical and cavalier styles of Donne and Jonson from the beginning of the century to the death of John Dryden in 1700, then moving in the second half of the course from the classicism of Alexander Pope to the anticipation of Romanticism in the works of such poets as Collins, Gray, and Cowper.  Along the way,  you will enjoy daily quizzes, memorize two hundred lines drawn from the verse of both centuries, dazzle me with two examinations, and sparkle in two brief papers.

This course substitutes for either ENGL 3203: English Literature to 1800 or ENGL 3213: English Literature Since 1800.

Required Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Seventh Edition,  Volume 1B: The 16th and Early 17th Centuries and Volume 1C: The Restoration and the 18th Century.

English 3303:Children’s Literature

Dr. Amy Sonheim       8:30-9:45 TTh                           Lile Hall 200

You may have heard of children’s literature courses taught as means to ends—the ends of  teaching children, entertaining them, or influencing them in some way. These goals are good; our goal is different. The English Department offers in Children’s Literature ways to appreciate fairy tales, fantasies, and picture books as art. To engage with fairy tales, we will read the Grimm Brothers’ The Juniper Tree and George MacDonald’s The Gifts of the Child Christ:  Fairytales and Stories for the Childlike, afterwards doing a comparative study of Walt Disney’s cinematized version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.  To engage with the genre of fantasy, we will read MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind and The Princess and the Goblin; Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland; and Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring.  Because picture books are designed as hand-held art, we will approach them as such. Turning the pages ever so slowly, you will hold in your hand Sendak’s trilogy Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and Outside Over There; Binch’s Amazing Grace; Stewart’s The Gardener; and Wisniewski’s Golem.  To understand what you have read, you will write one essay at the end of each study of genre, three altogether, plus an in-class essay for the final examination.  A productive field among students of English, children’s literature offers rich possibilities for employing, as you write, critical theories of African-American studies, art history, feminism, Marxism, structuralism, and theology, concerning questions about human creativity and inexplicable suffering.

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 MW                          Lile Hall 200

One of the brightest and liveliest of our recent graduates told me recently that, although it had a lot of tough competition (Advanced Grammar, music, and literature courses among them), this course  was finally the one she enjoyed the most at Ouachita.  We will study the origins and development of the English language from its Indo-European roots through Anglo-Saxon (a.k.a. Old English—the language in which Beowulf was composed), Middle English (the English of Chaucer), Early Modern English (the English of Shakespeare), to Modern English.

Not only should this course give you a deeper understanding of and appreciation for English, but it will also give you a clearer notion of how all human language is interconnected.  Furthermore, where else are you going to learn to dazzle your friends by reading passages from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in Old English!

We’ll have a couple of exams, almost daily workbook exercises to prepare, and one project/paper that I think you will very much enjoy doing.

 

English 4113: Studies in the American Novel

Dr. Amy Sonheim       11:00-12:15 TTh                       Lile Hall 200

This course offers the richness and variety of award-winning American novels:  we read The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner, Native Son by Richard Wright, All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren, Rabbit is Rich by John Updike, Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich, and Black Mountain Breakdown by Lee Smith. Your understanding of the seven novels will be assessed by two essays (concerning your two choices from the list of seven), Tuesday reading quizzes, a comprehensive final, and one critical essay comparing a novel to its cinematized version, the grade of which will constitute your mid-term.

English 4253: Lewis

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

One of the most popular and influential Christian writers of the past century, C.S. Lewis offers much wisdom to students of literature, to lovers of fantasy, and to believers struggling to understand the Great Questions about human life.  In our study of Lewis's fiction and non-fiction, we will find that he consistently challenges us to enlarge our being; indeed, he tells us that, like eggs, we must "hatch or go bad."  As we struggle to hatch, we will read and write about Lewis.  We will read the following books: Chronicles of Narnia, the Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength), Till We Have Faces, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, The Four Loves, Experiment in Criticism, and  Surprised by Joy. Class assignments will include weekly quizzes, two papers (one on the fiction, one on the non-fiction), and three examinations.

 

English 4903: Senior Literature Seminar—William Butler Yeats

Dr. Johnny Wink        1:00-1:50 MWF                        Lile Hall 200

In this course, we will read and discuss the bulk of Yeats's lyric poems, a handful of his plays, and a reasonable sampling of his literary critical prose.  Students will take weekly quizzes, will write about half a dozen small papers in response to what they're reading, and will compose term papers, ambitious in scope and scholarly in nature concerning particular volumes of Yeats's poetry.  The fruits of the seminarians' research will be presented to the departmental faculty and other interested parties at a closing symposium.