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ENGLISH COURSES, FALL 2009

 

ENG 218 [45784] SURVEY OF MINORITY WRITERS: This course will focus on the intersection of gender and ethnicity in contemporary short stories and novels. Writers to be studied include Sandra Cisneros, Jamaica Kincaid, Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, Amy Tan, and Jhumpal Lahiri. We will look at the characters and stories they construct to represent their own memories and experiences as newly arrived immigrants or hyphenated Americans. And we will consider the ways in which these fictions both reflect and revise the realities on which they are based.  This section of ENG 218 fulfills both the women writers and diversity requirement for secondary education majors. R 7:30, Barstow

ENG 220 [45797] SURVEY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE I: American Literature has its beginnings in the oral histories and legends of Native Americans, in the writings, speeches, and sermons of New England’s Puritans, in the travelogues, humor, and bawdy wit of Mid-Atlantic plantation owners, and in the songs and autobiographies of African slaves. This course will examine early American writing from those beginnings through the literature of the Revolutionary and early national period and into the American Renaissance of the 1840s. Students in this class will write response papers, take two exams, and author a longer essay.  MW 1:30, Sinche

 

ENG 225W [43705, 43424, 47812] INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING: The course will introduce students to the fundamental craft issues involved in producing and editing a work of short fiction, poetry and drama.  We will learn the conventions of each genre, read examples, write ourselves, and discuss our own writing in workshop format.  Weekly assignments will focus on developing skill in such elements of creative writing as character development, plot, dialogue, metaphor, image, and versification.  Students will be assigned a minimum of 25 pages of graded writing, including writing exercises, revisions, and peer review. Completion of this course enables students to register for upper-division writing seminars in fiction, poetry, playwriting, and the personal essay.  Writing Intensive. TR 2:05, Staff;  MWF 11:30, Grossberg, W 7:30, Staff

 

ENG 226W [44867] SOPHOMORE SEMINAR: IN SEARCH OF IDEAL LOVE: Literary figures down through the centuries have portrayed love from every imaginable perspective.  This seminar will examine the various stages of ideal love, beginning with sexual attraction and ending with consummate love and, more realistically, the obstacles to finding ideal love   It will consider literary examples of love as ennobling and empowering; as cruel, painful, and destructive; and as a psychotic state.  The course also provides an introduction to literary theory and criticism and will familiarize students with the tools of research.  Literary selections will be drawn from writers ranging from the Renaissance to the present—e.g., Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Keats, D.H Lawrence, Annie Proulx, Toni Morrison. TR 9:25, Logan

ENG 310W [44868] CREATIVE WRITING: POETRY: This course will focus on approaches to poetry composition.  We will investigate and practice a series of different poetic strategies, in order to expand our understanding of how a poem can serve to record and explore our moment. Topics will include: uses of narrative; various types of lyric and the refrain; the dramatic monologue; the direct address; figurative language; and the range of diction in contemporary verse.   Class time will be divided between workshop discussion of student texts, writing exercises, and analysis of examples.  Students will be assigned a minimum of 25 pages of graded writing, including original poems, short analytical papers, and peer review.  Prerequisite: ENG 225W.  MW 2:55, Grossberg

ENG 311W [44532] CREATIVE WRITING: FICTON : This is an advanced writing workshop where students will  develop a deeper facility with the elements of fiction, including character development, plot, scene, point of view,  dialogue, and setting, among others. Students will evaluate craft elements in both published writing and peer writing,  and will experiment with and revise to improve craft elements in their own short fiction. Outside reading will be  drawn from anthologies of contemporary fiction and essays on the craft.  Students will be assigned a minimum of 25 pages of graded writing, including exercises, multiple drafts of creative work, evaluations, and reactions.  This course may be repeated for credit more than once with written permission of the department chair.  Writing intensive.   Prerequisite: ENG 225W.   TR 3:30, Staff

ENG 313W [44533] PLAYWRITING: This class considers the basic elements of playwriting, particularly character, dialogue and plot. We will also consider established practice, and will take the opportunity to view and discuss local live performances.  The seminars will involve the workshop testing of students’ own work, allowing further development. Writing exercises in and out of class will culminate in a longer work which may be performed in a rehearsed reading.  Pre-requisite: one of the following: Introduction to Creative Writing, an introductory drama or theatre course, permission of the instructor.   MWF 9:30, Striff

ENG 322 [45810] AMERICAN POETRY: American poetry since the Civil War is the bastard offspring of an oddly matched but prolifically (re)productive couple.  They are Walt Whitman, the self-celebrating Kosmos of Manhattan, and Emily Dickinson, the self-effacing belle of Amherst.  We will explore the interplay of their maximalist and minimalist poetics b y studying their literary descendents from Robert Frost to Sylvia Plath.  TR 2:05, Stull

ENG 328 [45823] STUDIES IN WOMEN’S WRITING: This course will look at what has been designated "women's writing" from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Are there constant themes that traditionally have been considered appropriate from women writers, or has that changed with each new era and culture? Authors will range from Margery Kempe (a medieval woman who wrote the first autobiography in English) to Tsitsi Dangarembga (a twentieth-century African novelist). T 7:30, Abeles

ENG 333W [48449] AERIE INTERNSHIP: A supervised in-house internship requiring a significant commitment to the work of preparing the annual University of Hartford undergraduate literary magazine, Aerie. Includes solicitation of creative work, reading and ranking submissions, compilation of a collection for publication, and editing and proofreading the collection. Prerequisites:ENG140; ENG225W; and  permission of the instructor. Recommended: RPW375 Submit an email application to grossberg@hartford.edu, describing your interest and the coursework that has prepared you to become an Aerie editor. F, 1:30, Grossberg

ENG 349/DRA 349 [45849] MODERN DRAMA: 1920-PRESENT : This course will consider how a variety of theatrical and intellectual trends developed what we understand as Modern Drama.  We will discuss works from a variety of writers, such as Chekhov, O’Neill, Ibsen, and Strindberg.  The class will begin with a discussion of melodrama, moving on to consider such topics as the rise of the director, realism, naturalism, and experimental artistic movements.  MWF 10:30, Striff

ENG 360 [45862] CHAUCER: A course on Chaucer is in many ways a course on the genres of medieval literature. He does it all!  From the bawdy fabliau of the Miller to the morality tale of the Pardoner, Chaucer masterfully weaves together hilarious comedy with beautiful poetry in the Canterbury Tales. This course will begin with a look at Middle English, move on to Chaucer's famous poem Troilus and Criseyde, and close with a reading of The Canterbury Tales nearly in its entirety.  TR 10:50, Abeles

ENG 361/DRA 331 [43877] SHAKESPEARE: PLAYS BEFORE 1600:  Studies of seven major plays written during the first half of Shakespeare's career, representing his variety in different genres: Richard II, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV, Part I, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, and As You Like It. Attention will be paid to historical context, critical approaches, and performance. The course will culminate in a Shakespeare Scene Festival in which students will perform scenes from the plays studied.  T 5:00, Logan

DRA 366 [45888] MODERN ENGLISH NOVEL: We will read many of the classic "modern" novels written by British and Irish writers in the first half of the 20th century: Joseph Conrad,  James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, Ford Madox Ford, and Samuel Beckett. We will ask: "What was Modernism?" in the eyes of contemporary novelists and their readers?  Among our themes will be:  the role of the artist in modern society, the re-definition of human psychology and sexuality, the effects of colonialism and War on the individual and society, and the search for new gods in mythology and anthropology.  MW 4:50, Ross

ENG 465W [43374] THE CAPSTONE COURSE: FICTION OF THOMAS HARDY & D.H.LAWRENCE:  We will sample fiction by two critics of Victorian/Modern mores and celebrants of the erotic life, examining their depictions of sexual identity, their struggles against censorship, and the nature of literary influence in Lawrence’s recreation of Hardy.  Works include: Far From the Madding Crowd & Jude the Obscure by Hardy and The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley's Lover by Lawrence.  Also, classroom workshop activities to assist in completing required portfolios.  W 7:30, Ross

 

Course Descriptions

University of Hartford

Department of English

200 Bloomfield Avenue

West Hartford, CT 06117

860-768-4315

 

galin@hartford.edu

For General Course Descriptions, see the English section of the University Bulletin. A suggested timeline for literature majors and creative writing majors is also available.