Current Course Offerings
ENGL 1001: Introduction to Literature -- Dr. Druann Bauer
11-11:50 MWF Dukes 130
1-1:50 MWF Dukes 130
Course Description
In this course, we will read a variety of short works of fiction (stories, not full-length books) that are considered classics of literature as well as a selection of poetry and drama. Each genre (fiction, poetry, drama) will receive equal attention, approximately five weeks each. Students will learn about the devices (character, symbol, point of view, theme, tone, etc.) that create effects on the reader and bring meaning to literary works. Students will also identify a question about or problem in a literary work, develop a response to the question or problem, and support their response with evidence from their target text. This will be in the form of a 5-page analytical paper.
Performance Evaluation:
This course is discussion-based, but students will also take short quizzes on the reading material, as well as write a 5-page analytical paper. The final exam is comprehensive.
University Learning Outcomes:
This course fulfills the following ONU General Learning Outcomes:
#7--Informed responses to aesthetics in art or nature
Percentage of course: 70%
#1--Effective communication
Percentage of course: 30%
Prerequisites: None
ENGL 2081 Topics in Drama: Modern World Drama--Dr. Eva McManus
11:00-11:50 MWF Dukes 109
Course Objectives:
We will examine plays from the late 19th century through the mid-to-late 20th century, from Western and non-Western countries, starting with Ibsen and Chekhov and moving to more contemporary artists. We will look at the influences leading to the development of modern drama--cultural, historical, social, political, literary and theatre-related. We will also consider the direction of drama into the 21st century.
Text:
The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama, edited by W. B. Worthen, 6th edition.
Course Requirements:
The course will be set up with a balance between reading and writing about the literature. Course grades will be based on two papers, a midterm and a final examination, quizzes and dramatic group readings of scenes from some of the plays.
University Learning Outcomes and Artifacts:
This course is designed to help you develop proficiency in one learning outcome and will produce one artifact for that general education objective.
The Outcome is #7, Informed responses to aesthetics in art or nature.
One six to seven-page essay will develop an effective analysis of the aesthetic qualities of a play under discussion in the class and will explore its performative qualities as part of its aesthetics.
ENGL 2091: Topics in Poetry -- Dr. Geoffrey Babbitt
TR 3:00-4:15 Dukes
Modernist Poetry & Early Film
What do poetry and film have to do with each other? More than you might think.
One of Hart Crane’s most popular poems from his first book is in homage to Charlie Chaplin. Poet Ezra Pound provided Fernand Léger with an optical prism that the director covered his lens with in Ballet Mécanique. And H.D., Pounds’s protégé and friend, starred in and helped write Paul Robeson’s Borderline. While these connections are very direct, poetry and film more often share subtler relations, which this course will spend the semester exploring.
The course will provide students with an introduction to the literary and artistic movements of the Modernist avant-garde. In other words, we will study the “-isms” of the early twentieth century: Symbolism, Imagism, Futurism, Cubism, Vorticism, dada, Surrealism, the Beats, and the Black Mountain school. We will study these movements through poetry and film—and occasionally through visual art. At times, the films will illustrate or reify aesthetic concepts that you encounter in the poetry, and at others, we will see how their methods and sensibilities conflict or diverge. In other cases, we will simply try to articulate their connection.
Writers will likely include: Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Pound, Eliot, H.D., Marinetti, Loy, Moore, Williams, Apollinaire, Reverdy, Stein, Breton, Duchamp, Schwitters, Olson, Ginsberg, and more. Filmmakers will likely include: Lumière Brothers, Griffith, Eisenstein, Chaplin, Léger, Méliès, Bragaglia, Fischinger, Buñuel and Dali, Deren, Bergman, Antonioni, Leslie, Brakhage, and more.
University Learning Outcomes
This course fulfills the following ONU General Learning Outcomes:
#7--Informed responses to aesthetics in art or nature. Percentage of course: 60%.
#2--Critical and creative thinking. Percentage of course: 40%.
ENGL 2141: British Literature 2 -- Dr. Robert Scott
8:00-8:50 MWF Dukes 112
Course Description
The purpose of this survey course is to sharpen your personal response to British literature from the late eighteenth century through to the present by teaching you to read with attentiveness and critical discernment. Through this course you will further develop and refine your critical and analytical reading skills, and your ability to write about fiction, poetry, and drama should therefore also improve. This class will also prepare you for advanced literary study by acquainting you with the literary conventions used by Romantic, Victorian, and twentieth-century writers and by providing you with the critical vocabulary for interesting and adept analysis.
Format
While I will lecture from time to time (particularly in the beginning of the term), most of our class sessions will be spent discussing the reading assignments and film clips.
Written Work
You will write two critical essays for this course. In addition to these essays, you will also take a midterm and final examination.
Texts
M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, editors; The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors, Volume B (Eighth Edition)
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Reading List
The Romantic Period
William Wordsworth, “We Are Seven,” “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” “She dwelt among the untrodden ways,” “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” “London, 1802,” “The world is too much with us,” “Surprised by joy”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Frost at Midnight,” “The Pains of Sleep”
John Keats, “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode on Melancholy,” “To Autumn”
The Victorian Age
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Kraken,” “The Lady of Shalott,” “Break, Break, Break,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade”
Christina Rossetti, “After Death,” “An Apple-Gathering,” “Goblin Market,” “No, Thank You, John,” “Promises Like Pie-Crust”
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” “Spring,” “The Windhover,” “Pied Beauty,” “Felix Randal”
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
The Twentieth Century
William Butler Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” “Adam’s Curse,” “The Second Coming," “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Among School Children”
Philip Larkin, “Church Going,” “Talking in Bed,” “Ambulances,” “High Windows,” “Aubade”
Seamus Heaney, “Digging,” “The Forge,” “Punishment,” “Casualty,” “The Sharping Stone”
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
ENGL 2191: Topics in World Literature -- Dr. John Paul Kanwit
MWF 10:00-10:50 Dukes 153
Latin American Literature in Translation
Course Description:
This course will consider a variety of genres of literature (novels, poetry, essays, and short stories) representing a range of Latin American cultures including Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, and Peru. We will assay features of Latin American literature in general—especially magical realism and different conceptions of time—as well as distinctive traits of individual countries and writers. Selected works of literature will be studied in historical, cultural, and political contexts. Whenever possible, we will examine literature alongside of appropriate visual texts—for example, the film as well as literary version of Kiss of the Spider Woman.
University Learning Outcomes and Artifacts:
This course is designed to help you develop proficiency in two of the University Learning outcomes and produce two “artifacts” for your general education portfolio. These outcomes are:
4) An understanding of diverse cultures and their effects on human interaction
7) Informed responses to aesthetics in art or nature
Two 6-8 page essays will be required in the course, each meeting one of the artifact requirements for the outcomes listed above. One essay will require students to analyze how a text creates meaning through the use of literary forms (outcome #7). The other essay will allow for a comparison of two or more cultures as represented in course texts (outcome #4).
Texts:
Isabel Allende, Paula
Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera and selected short stories
Manuel Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman
Mario Vargas Llosa, Death in the Andes
Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
Pablo Neruda, The Essential Neruda
Octavio Paz, selected poems and essays
ENGL 2521 Journal Publishing Practicum -- Dr. Eva McManus
1-3 Credit hours, to be determined in consultation with course instructor.
Date and Time TBA
Course Objectives:
This course is a practicum class offering students the opportunity to work on a professional publication, Shakespeare and the Classroom. This is an international journal directed to instructors who teach Shakespeare at all academic levels, theater professionals, and others interested in the topics. Students will copy edit, proofread, and handle layout of the edition. Student editors may also be asked to research and write short articles for the publication and to design ads.
Course Requirements:
Course credit will be based on the student editors’ timely, professional and thorough work on the publication.
ENGL 2541: Screenwriting Workshop -- Dr. Margot Cullen (1-3 Credit Hours)
W 6:30-8:30 Heterick 301
Everyone at the university is welcome to participate in the weekly Screenwriting Workshop.
A overview of the course:
Every week ONU students gather in Heterick Library 301, enjoying comfortable chairs, a great HD screen, and a stimulating group experience exploringboth the art and skill of creating screenplays of various kinds. We also explore varied aesthetic aspects of screenplays, including their production in film and video. As part of that exploration, we will examine the intersections of these arts with other genres of writing such as stage plays, fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. In addition we will work with connections between screenplays/film/video and other artistic forms such as music and visual work. Overall, we also hope to expand our understanding of screenplays/film/video in the context of rapidly changing globalized contexts for these arts.
The weekly Screenwriting Workshop is unique in that it encourages, but does not require, out of class writing by participants. Each person has the choice about when and what he or she wants to write. Some people write immediately and others after immersion in the workshop. Still others prefer to join in the weekly activities and yet not write independent projects themselves. We welcome many different levels of participation.
The Workshop also collaborates with collegiate actors and the ONU Theatre department to add to the dramatic impact of the writing. In addition, group members will have an option to submit a short piece of work for a funded ONU screenwriting contest, among other related activities.
Complementing our other work in the course, we learn about professional aspects of screenwriting, such as marketing, copyright protection of scripts, networking, etc.
No doubt, too, our time together will help us to understand more about human nature and culture.
THIS WORKSHOP IS OPEN TO ALL INTERESTED STUDENTS AT ONU. YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR TO PARTICIPATE. THERE ARE NO PREREQUISITES.
Weekly activities
Wednesday night sessions are a mix of discussion, writing workshop, other creative mini-projects,
film analysis, and other related activities. We enjoy each other’s unique contributions to group.
Screenwriting texts
Our background text for this workshopis Making a Good Script Great by Linda Seger 3rd edition.
ENGL 2561 Department Newsletter -- Dr. Eva McManus
3:00-3:50 MWF Dukes 151
Course Objectives:
Characters, the English newsletter, provides a window into the life of the English Department and offers students, faculty, alumni, and prospective students the opportunity to stay current with what is happening in ONU English. The creation of the annual department newsletter involves interviews, writing articles, layout and design.
English majors only and with instructor approval.
Please note the change in credit hours for this class; it is now a 3-credit hour course and will be offered only one semester per year. This new course replaces the two sequenced two-credit hour classes under the quarter catalog.
Students will interview faculty and visiting authors, will provide overviews of student travel, their presentation of papers at conferences and other professional experiences, and will provide updates on facilities, staffing, and other changes and opportunities in the department.
Course Requirements:
Grades will be based on completion of assignments in an effective, timely and professional manner to ensure publication of Characters by Honors Day or soon after.
ENGL 3191 Renaissance/Jacobean Literature -- Dr. Eva McManus
1:00-1:50 MWF Dukes 109
Course Objectives:
In this course we will read and study the works of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, many of whom were his co-participants in launching the great age of theater in England. We will look at the trends in drama they create and respond to, will consider the social, political and cultural influences on the drama of this period and will analyze the plays for ways in which these influences are depicted within them. Our discussions will also focus on the plays’ performative qualities. Authors will include John Lyly, Thomas Kidd, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Webster, Frances Beaumont, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton.
Course of study will include lecture, discussion, videos, oral presentations, and written work.
Texts:
Renaissance Drama, 2nd Ed., by Arthur F. Kinney, ed.
The Roaring Girl, by Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton
Course Requirements:
Course grades will be based on the following:
Two short papers
One long paper
Report/ outline
A final examination
Class participation
ENGL 3421: Screenwriting Course -- Dr. Margot Cullen (3 Credit Hours)
TR 3:00-4:15 Dukes 152
A overview of the course:
The Screenwriting course seeks to increase participants’ knowledge of both the art and skill of writing screenplays. It will also explore various aesthetic aspects of screenplays/film/video. As part of that exploration, we will examine the intersections of these arts with other genres of writing such as stage plays, fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. In addition we will work with connections between screenplays/film/video and other artistic forms such as music and visual arts. Overall, too, we also hope to expand our understanding of screenplays/film/video in the context of rapidly changing globalized contexts for these arts.
As a workshop course, Screenwriting provides those involved with the opportunity to share screenplay (and possibly other) writing with their colleagues. We will also work collaboratively with collegiate actors and the ONU Theatre department to add to the dramatic impact of the writing. In addition, class members will have an option to submit a short piece of work for a funded ONU screenwriting contest, among other related activities.
Complementing our core work in the course, we learn about professional aspects of screenwriting, such as marketing, copyright protection of scripts, networking, etc.
No doubt, too, our time together will help us to understand more about human nature and culture.
THIS COURSE IS OPEN TO ALL INTERESTED STUDENTS AT ONU. YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR TO PARTICIPATE. THE PREREQUISITE IS PASSING WRITING 2 OR WRITING SEMINAR 2121 OR 2131.
Class activities
The class will be a mix of discussion, workshops, film analysis, and other relevant activities. The written work will be film analysis, film review, and screenplay texts.
Participants’ accomplishments will be evaluated on their successful completion of assignments and reasonable progress in screenwriting, not on external professional standards.
Screenwriting texts
Making a Good Script Greatby Linda Seger 3rd edition
ENGL 3551: Feature Writing -- Dr. Druann Bauer
2-2:50 p.m. M W F Dukes 151
Course Description:
“Feature writing” can be defined as creative, subjective articles that are designed to inform AND entertain readers. They take many different approaches and forms and always go beyond the cold, hard facts. They often emphasize the unconventional or the different. Feature articles are emotional, and they involve readers. They demand reaction because they can be serious or light, timely or timeless, funny or sad. Feature writing is not fiction writing. It deals with reality. However, some of the best feature writers incorporate the styles and techniques of fiction writers in their work.
Teaching strategy:
This course has been designed for journalism, professional writing, public relations, and creative writing majors. It is writing intensive, so there will be no exams. I take a very hands-on approach to teaching, with reading assignments, followed by short lectures, followed by field trips to gather information to write articles. We will take at least two road trips—for the entertainment feature as well as the travel one.
Performance Evaluation:
In this class, we will write seven articles:
• Descriptive and local color writing (can you “capture” Ada?)
• Profiles/personality sketches
• Seasonal features (spotlighting the holidays)
• Entertainment features (Reviews of restaurant, movie, or play, for example)
• Aftermath, follow-up, in-depth story (after the “news” happens, revisit the story and provide all the details the readers want to know. For example, how are the families doing after the tornado?)
• Travel Writing—we will go on a road trip—class chooses destination.
• Service Feature (counts as final exam) with presentation—Students will go out into the community, adopt a service agency/program/sorority/school, research the goals and activities of the agency, then spotlight some aspect of its mission in a feature (standard length), focusing on its contribution to society. Students will also give a 15-minute presentation on their agency during the last week of class. With some expansion, this assignment might serve as a capstone project, especially for Professional Writing majors.
Prerequisites: NONE—open to all majors.
∗This is a new course.
ENGL 3651: American Novel -- Dr. Robert Scott
9:00-9:50 MWF Dukes 112
Course Description
This course, "Growing Pains," will examine the ways in which the coming of age process is depicted in nine American novels. In particular, we will look closely at the tensions inherent in this literary genre, namely between youth and experience, self and society, and innocence and awareness. In addition, we will also consider the following questions: How do the coming of age experiences of male protagonists differ from those of female protagonists? How do such factors as race and class affect the maturation process? Why is mental instability a frequent component in these novels?
Format
While I will lecture from time to time (particularly in the beginning of the term), most of our class sessions will be spent discussing the reading assignments and film clips.
Written Work
You will write two critical essays and take a final examination. In addition to the essays and exam, you will also be responsible for an oral presentation.
Reading List
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain
Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero
Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone
Paul Theroux, The Mosquito Coast
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
ENGL 4241: Victorian Literature -- Dr. John Paul Kanwit
MWF 11:00-11:50 Dukes 153
“Victorian Revolutions”
While we often think of a “revolution” as the overthrow of an existing government, Britain’s government remained surprisingly stable during the Victorian period (1832-1901), despite significant political changes elsewhere in Europe. Nevertheless, Victorian Britain experienced a number of revolutions in the sense of “great changes or alterations in affairs” (Oxford English Dictionary), including the development of modern capitalism, the growth of socialist and communist movements, the changing roles of women, dramatic shifts in traditional class lines, the growth of colonialism and colonial resistance, the founding of evolutionary theory and other scientific advancements, an explosion in visual culture, and increased attention to divergent sexualities. The Victorians were also “revolutionary” in a very different, sometimes conservative or even reactionary, sense: in their desire to “turn back” to earlier periods of time. Prominent Victorian authors—some now little known, some still famous—responded to and shaped these forward- and backward-looking “revolutions” in diverse and fascinating ways. This course will focus in particular on changing conceptions of the child and childhood; new developments in science and the accompanying questioning of religious faith; and “new” ideas about seeing and feeling. In doing so, we will examine such authors and texts as Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Dickens, Hard Times; Darwin, The Origin of Species; Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto; Wells, The Time Machine; Tennyson, In Memoriam; Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry; Robert Browning’s “artist” poems; and Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market.” Note: Students who wish to do so may write their capstone projects during and in conjunction with this course.
ENGL 4401: Advanced Poetry -- Dr. Geoffrey Babbitt
TR 1:30-2:45 Dukes 150
Course Description:
Although this is an advanced course, it is open to everyone. Because of the semester conversion, most current students have not taken “Introduction to Creative Writing” or “Intermediate Poetry” (the sequential precursors to this course under the new curriculum), and I have designed this course with that fact in mind. I am not expecting a previous body of knowledge. I welcome anyone interested in studying poetry.
Our approach will differ from that of an introductory or intermediate course because, rather than focusing exclusively on strategies for writing successful individual poems, we will also emphasize building compelling connections between poems in a collection or series. We will do this in two primary ways. First, we will study recent books of poetry whose identities are especially strong as cohesive poetic projects. And second, you will gradually assemble your own collection—approximately 12-18 pages, given the length of the semester. While our professional poets will provide the bulk of our reading material, we will devote the last three weeks or so toward the student collections.
Because of the course emphasis, our syllabus will feature exciting, splash-making texts, including Anne Carson’s Nox—whose form is not so much a “book” as a Jacob’s ladder foldout facsimile of her elegiac "collage journal"—and Ely Shipley’s Boy with Flowers, the first book of poetry published by a transgendered poet. While I do not yet know whether Shipley will be able to visit our class, Rebecca Lindenberg, this year’s featured poet for the Spring Celebration of the Arts, will be our guest in April. McSweeney’s Books is launching its poetry series with her hotly anticipated Love, An Index, which is an elegy for her former partner, the poet Craig Arnold, who disappeared while exploring a volcano in Japan. We will read Arnold’s Made Flesh. In addition, I will also set up Skype readings or interview opportunities with other contemporary poets.
Texts will include:
C.D. Wright, Deepstep Come Shining
Richard Siken, Crush
Ely Shipley, Boy with Flowers
Donald Revell, A Thief of Strings
Timothy O'Keefe, The Goodbye Town
Maurice Manning, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions
Rebecca Lindenberg, Love, An Index
Claudia Keelan, Missing Her
Susan Howe, The Midnight
Anne Carson, Nox
Craig Arnold, Made Flesh
ENGL 4521: Rhetorical Theory--Rhetoric and Everyday Life -- Dr. Scott Rogers
TR 9:30-10:45 Dukes 150
This course will explore Rhetorical Analysis as a strategy for understanding how language controls meaning in any social, cultural, or political context. This control over meaning is particularly important in the workings of everyday life where we consume cultural signs without much conscious reflection (see: Reality Television and the fact that Ke$ha has an actual career). As such, our course will take as its focus the very real and always ongoing rhetorics of everyday life and popular culture. While we will begin with an overview of the rhetorical tradition, our primary subject matter will be the stuff we experience every day: politics and media, music and film, visual culture, the design of space, constructions of self and identity (along lines of race, class, gender, and so on). Readings will include Barry Brummett’s Rhetoric in Popular Culture 3rd ed., Ralph Cintron’s Angels’ Town: Chero Ways, Gang Life, and the Rhetorics of the Everyday, and selections from Isocrates, Aristotle, Burke, Foucault, Gates, Anzaldúa and many more. These readings will help us to understand how individuals from diverse and wide-ranging backgrounds employ rhetoric as a tool of power, self-definition, and subversion.
