University of Michigan - Flint

MW 9:30-10:45 with Professor John Pendell

This course will introduce students to various forms of narrative prose fiction, from short (stories) to long (the novel), and some stops in between (the not-so-short story, or novella).  One major goal of the course is to explore the art of the storyteller in a wide range of cultural contexts and time periods.  Another is to gain familiarity with the array of narrative strategies authors use to draw readers in to unfamiliar worlds, to shock them, to upend or defy their expectations, and to engage with social, historical, and political issues in innovative ways.  The anthology includes works from major short story writers (Faulkner, Joyce, O’Connor, etc.) as well as more recent and experimental selections.  The novel is from a contemporary master of the genre.  Requirements include quizzes and exams, short analysis and research assignments, a class presentation, and regular participation in discussion.  

Required Texts
 Cassill and Bausch, eds.  The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 7th ed.  
Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

Tues and Thurs 12:30 – 1:45 with Professor Vickie Larsen
 
We will study the canonical New Testament along with the excised Gospel of Judas, and the recently discovered Gospels of Mary Magdalene and Thomas.  We will consider these texts as literature, concerning ourselves with their literary forms, authorial styles, cultural and historical contexts, and the role they have played and forms they have taken in Western civilization. Course requirements will include three exams, an oral presentation, collaborative work, and regular participation in class discussion.
 
Required texts:
The Oxford Study Bible
Understanding the Bible by Stephen Harris

This course provides an introduction to the rich and varied traditions of African American literature. We will look at literature in several genres, including novels, poetry, music, and autobiographical writing. In addition, we will examine the socio-historical context that influenced the writers whose texts we are reading. The course is arranged historically around the theme of migration. We will be examining both literal and metaphorical movement as we make our own semester-long journey. We will begin with the Middle Passage and examine representations of forced migration; then, we will examine the movement out of enslavement, the Great Migration, and the movement to attain civil rights. Finally, as our survey moves into the present, we will examine the role of the past in the present and the problems and possibilities of social change for the future.

Course Texts:

• The Vintage Book of African American Poetry edited by Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walter
  Vintage Books (paper); ISBN: 0375703004
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Dover Thrift Editions)
  by Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison
  Dover Publications; ISBN: 0486284999
• The Marrow of Tradition
  by Charles Waddell Chesnutt
  Penguin USA (Paper); ISBN: 0140186867
• Quicksand and Passing
  by Nella Larsen, Deborah McDowell (Editor)
  Rutgers Univ Press; ISBN: 0813511704
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
  by Zora Neale Hurston
  HarperCollins (paper); ISBN: 9780060838676 (10-digit ISBN: 0060838671)
• Kindred
  by Octavia Butler
  Beacon Press; ISBN: 0807083054

MW 12:30-1:45 with Prof. Stephen Bernstein

Through discussion, lecture, and group work this course will focus on strategies for reading, analyzing, and writing about the major literary genres of fiction, poetry, and drama.  Papers, discussion, tests.

Text
Kirszner & Mandell, Portable Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing.  Thomson Wadsworth, 6th edition.

MW 5:30-6:45 pm with Dr. Alicia Kent

Ever thought about why we read literature? In this course  we will read literature in a variety of genres, focusing on short stories, poetry, and drama, in order to learn how to analyze literature. To this end, we will analyze not only what the texts say, but how they are written, how authors choose and use words, and what effect these choices have on us. This course functions in part as a skills-based course in which you will learn methods of textual analysis, the formal elements of literary texts, and the vocabulary of literary analysis. Throughout the semester, we will ask ourselves why we read literature, and while we may not come up with the answer, the many answers we develop will hopefully lead you to ask new questions about literature and to develop a new joy for analyzing texts of all kinds. By the end, you should emerge from this course with an expanded vocabulary of concepts for interpreting literature on the thematic and formal levels with a richer sensitivity to the nuances of literary texts and the range of questions that a literary text can pose.

Course Text:
The Norton Introduction to Literature, Shorter 9th Edition. eds. Booth, Hunter and Mays. ISBN: 0-393-92615-X

Tues and Thurs 4:00-5:15 with Professor Vickie Larsen
 
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer’s remarkable 14th century experiment in narrative form, explores nearly every medieval genre: the chivalric romance, the bawdy fabliau, the saint’s life, the sermon, the exemplum, the beast fable, the Breton lai.  It also allows its author, filtered through two dozen disparate narrators, to survey late medieval controversies---the corruption of religion, the purpose of sexuality, the good marriage, the function of consumer goods, the commercial markets, the death of chivalry, the meaning of the body, the fear of the Jewish and Islamic other.  Because we will read the Tales in its original language, we will devote some time at the beginning of the semester to learning to speak and read Middle English.  No prior experience with Middle English is required.  Course requirements will include recitation and translation exercises, two response papers, collaborative work, a presentation, a larger researched paper, and a final exam.
 
Required texts:
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (original spelling edition), ed. Jill Mann. Penguin Classics, 2005.
Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: A Casebook. Ed. Lee Patterson.  Oxford University Press, 2006.

MW 2:30-3:45 with Prof. Stephen Bernstein

Between 1780 and 1810 writing in Great Britain underwent tremendous change and innovation. In this course we will read poetry and fiction, major writers and minor ones, in an attempt to understand one of the most fascinating periods in British literature.  Featured writers include the novelists Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen and the poets Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Blake.  Papers and other writing, discussion, exams.

Texts
Greenblatt, Stillinger, & Lynch, eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. D: The Romantic Era.  W. W.  Norton, 8th edition.
Ann Radcliffe, The Italian.  Oxford Univ. Press, 2008 reprint edition.
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey.  Broadview Press, 2nd edition.

MW 4-5:15pm with Dr. Stephanie Roach

English 340 has two purposes.  The first is to provide a broad overview of competing theories in the field of Composition and Rhetoric, including some historical views that have helped influence the teaching of composition and shape the academic field of Composition and Rhetoric as we know it today.  The second purpose is to investigate the writing process of accomplished writers in order to better understand writing and the writing process from theoretical and practical standpoints.  Students critically examine competing theories of composition and analyze writing and the writing process of scholars, professionals, peers, and self.  Students come to know and apply principles of the field of Composition and Rhetoric by engaging in the history, theory, and practice of writing.

“Conversations with Tariq Ali: Writing, the Individual, and Resistance”  

Thursdays 5:30-8:15 with Dr. Mary Jo Kietzman

Tariq Ali is a Pakistani-born political activist, social commentator, historian, film-maker, and novelist who lives in London. He is known for his criticisms of religious fundamentalisms and of the United States’ foreign policy in the Middle-East. This course will be run as a reading group that will discuss both selected novels as well as the literary dimensions of Tariq Ali’s political and autobiographical writing. The course will investigate the role literature and artists play in times of political, ideological, and religious warfare. It will dovetail with Tariq Ali’s visit to campus as Winegarden professor, his public lectures and screenings of his films at the Flint Institute of Arts.

This section of ENG 359 will count toward the “group 2 elective” in the Middle Eastern Studies minor.
 
Tentative Works
Shadows of the Pomegranate Trees
The Stone Woman
Bush in Babylon
Street-Fighting Years
Speaking of Resistance: Conversations with Tariq Ali

Online with Dr. Suzanne Knight

This course takes a principle-centered approach to the teaching of literature in the secondary English classroom. The goal is for you to understand and be able to apply the principles of literature instruction shown to enhance and support student learning and success through decades of both practice and research. Thus, while the course will suggest ways in which you might enact these principles in the English classroom, it is not intended to equip you with a “bag of tricks” for teaching literature. Rather, it will provide you with an understanding of the guiding principles for literature instruction so that when you plan your teaching (using materials from any number of resources including the Internet, colleagues and peers, literature textbooks, collections of lesson plans, your own imagination, etc.) you will make thoughtful and purposeful decisions to ensure student learning and success.

Course texts include:
Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents
Talking in Class: Using Discussion to Enhance Teaching and Learning
“You Gotta be the Book”: Teaching Engaged and Reflective Reading with Adolescents

Online with Dr. Frederic Svoboda
 
We will begin with a brief overview of some happenings during the period we cover (roughly WWII to the present), drawing on the Chronology found in the Course Documents.   We then will go to careful examination of representative individual works to assure your understanding of them. We'll also discuss the larger patterns of American literature and culture since World War II; the exams and course paper will ask you to look at some pattern you discern.  You should plan to access the class web site regularly and to participate in our discussions on line.
 
Texts:
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1971)
Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato (1978)
Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)
Gish Jen, The Love Wife (2004)
Selected American Poetry read on line.

Tuesdays 4:00-6:45 with Dr. Suzanne Knight

This course is designed to help prospective—and practicing—teachers of writing to think about how to meet the varied demands and expectations for writing instruction in 7-12 classrooms, while at the same time guiding and supporting students’ efforts to become more effective thinkers and writers.  In this course, we will consider the writing demands of different “types” of writing and work to identify the knowledge and skills students need to produce effective writing.  The idea is that if we learn the process(es) of identifying the knowledge and skills specific writing tasks demand, then we can go through that same process(es) for other types of writing that we either want—or need—to teach.

Finally, this course will consider various theories of writing and issues in writing instruction.  We will work with some common texts and also “read across” other texts that address issues in writing instruction to gain some insights into the questions and concerns of prospective and practicing writing teachers.

Course texts include:
Getting it Right: Fresh Approaches to Teaching Grammar, Usage, and Correctness
Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching

M 5:30-8:15 with Dr. Frederic Svoboda
 
English 436/536 examines American films within the context of American culture, but also will examine film as a genre or art form. We primarily will be viewing films in the main stream of American film making in order to discover what they tell us about American concerns during the period we will cover, roughly 1954 to the present.  Five brief papers plus a final paper.
 
Tentative Schedule of Films:
Rear Window (1955)
The Searchers (1956)     
Dr. Strangelove  (1964)
The Graduate (1967) “R”
In the Heat of the Night (1967) not rated <http://us.imdb.com/Posters?0103074>
Chinatown (1974) “R”
The French Connection (1975) “R”
Annie Hall (1977) “PG”
Heartland (1980) “PG”
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) “PG”
Field of Dreams (1989) “PG”       
Do the Right Thing (1989) “R”
Thelma & Louise (1991) “R”
Smoke Signals (1998) PG-13

W 5:30-8:15 with Prof. Stephen Bernstein

What are the ways, throughout history, that readers of literature have found to talk about their reading? This course will survey the great variety of approaches to literary criticism, from classical Greece to the mid-20th-century United States.  Papers and presentations.

Texts
Leitch, et al. eds.  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  W. W. Norton.
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex.  Dover Publications, 1991.  (any edition is acceptable)
Schakel & Ridl, eds.  250 Poems.  Bedford/St. Martins, 2nd edition.  

“Rereading the Past, Writing the Future”

Mixed Mode with Dr. Alicia Kent
Meets on campus: W 7-9:45pm (will likely end earlier) during the first 7 weeks (Jan 7, 14, 21, 28, Feb 4, 11, 18), April 15, and Exam Week

This course examines contemporary literature by American women from different ethnic backgrounds (including African American, Arab American, Asian American, Jewish American, Mexican American, Native American from different nations, and Puerto Rican, even as we complicate these categories). Using historically and culturally informed approaches and theory by ethnic women about ethnic women, we will focus on novels and poetry. In our journey we will examine the role of writing and experimental writing strategies; the intersections of cultural, gender, and sexual identity; crosscultural solidarity to address economic and political injustices; and connections to historical and ancestral pasts. Collectively we will work to create connections that cross borders and blur boundaries while recognizing the diversity of experiences among American women writers.

Tentative Readings:

• Novels by Ana Castillo, Edwige Danticat, Louise Erdrich, Jhumpa Lahiri, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gloria Naylor.
• Poetry by Chitra Divakaruni, Nikki Giovanni, Joy Harjo, Pat Mora, Marge Piercy, Gina Valdes.
• Theory by Gloria Anzaldúa, Barbara Christian, Elizabeth Cook-Lynne, bell hooks, June Jordan, Elaine Kim, Audre Lorde, Cherríe Moraga, Leslie Marmon Silko, Laura Tohe, Trinh Min-ha, Bonnie TuSmith.