Baruch College - English Department

ENGLISH ELECTIVES

BARUCH COLLEGE - ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

Fall 2014

Naked English
English 3001
Prof. E. Block
Mon/Wed 4:10-5:25PM / In this course, we will look at the skeleton structures of English: its bones [or structure] and the ways to put “meat” on them. That is, the content of this course will cover the basic construction of English sentences and the ways to create variety in sentences and in paragraphs. We will look at the traditional topics that challenge writers and cause confusion and uncertainty in writing: verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, parallelism, relative clauses, dangling constructions and as well as many others that may emerge as concerns.
We will then move on to study and practice the techniques that create unity and connection within paragraphs and larger pieces of prose. Throughout the course, class participants will practice editing both their own and professionally-generated materials.
Mastery of the course material should give participants the tools to become more insightful readers and more effective writers.
In addition to maintaining a language journal and completing class assignments, each student will present a topic to the class. Although no research papers are required, there will be a midterm and a final.
Introduction to Literary Studies
English 3005
Prof. T. Aubry
Tue/Thu 9:30-10:45AM / What does literature do, and how does it do it? Why do some literary works excite and inspire us, and others bore and annoy us? Is there such thing as an objectively great work of literature or is greatness simply a matter of personal preference? What are the best strategies for making sense of a text and unlocking its secrets? How much do the reader’s biases and prejudices influence the meaning that he/she gets out of a particular book? This course will provide an overview of the methods and models used by critics to examine literary texts. Through the study of various literary genres and critical approaches, students will develop a working vocabulary of literary terms, practice close reading and other modes of reading and writing appropriate to the English major, and write interpretive essays. By the end of the course, students should have a sharper understanding of themselves as readers and an expanded set of tools for making sense of all variety of literary works. Readings will include short texts and excerpts from major authors, including Sophocles, Shakespeare, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, and Toni Morrison, as well as essays by major literary critics, including Aristotle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Erich Auerbach, Cleanth Brooks, Roland Barthes, Eve Sedgwick, and Hortense Spillers.
Survey of English
Literature I
English 3010
Prof. L. Silberman
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45PM / Find out what inspired Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. See how Satan first became a glamorous anti-hero. In this course, we will be reading representative works of English literature from Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight through selections from Milton’s Paradise Lost. Other readings will include selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales—the romantic, the bawdy, and the moral--one of the plays of Shakespeare, a Renaissance epyllion—a short, erotic narrative--and selected Renaissance love lyrics. There will be two short, critical essays, a midterm and a final exam.
Survey of English
Literature II
English 3015
Prof. S. O’Toole
Tue/Thu 5:50-7:05PM / This course surveys English literature from the Romantic period to the twentieth century. We will see how imaginative writers from three of the most celebrated periods of literature responded to the major historical and cultural developments of their time: the revolution in thought and expression sparked by the visionary and rebellious Romantics; the development of realism in the nineteenth century as the Victorians grappled with the horrors of industrialization and the challenge of science to traditional beliefs; and the Modernists’ rejection of conventional values in experimental literary forms. In addition to familiarizing ourselves with literary history, we will be concerned throughout the course with significant and decisive issues that have a bearing on the social and cultural map of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain and on our own position in history: the contradictory demands of “individuality,” the consolidation of a global capitalist Empire, class conflicts, the fracturing of gender roles, and polarizing definitions of sexuality. The class will proceed by lecture, discussion, small group work, and brief student presentations.
Survey of American Literature I
English 3020
Prof. J. Lang
Tue/Thu 11:10-12:25PM / The historical span of this course goes from the first colonists and Puritanism through the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers up to the Civil War and its aftermath. The literature to be studied is as varied as sermons and captivity narratives, essays and novels, treatises and poems. The period we will study saw the emergence of many of America’s defining myths and themes: the city on the hill, the frontier, the wilderness, Manifest Destiny. Such myths and themes are often taken as defining the United States as a nation. American literature is often looked to as a way of establishing the image of the Nation, in a search for a uniquely American self, an American space, an American destiny. As we survey American literature, we also critically ask whether literature can really serve such a purpose and investigate the ways in which American literature has often been against the grain of American history and American identity. A major emphasis in the course, after looking at 17th- and 18th-century texts, will be the major writers of the 19th century: Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Stowe, Thoreau, Whitman, Melville, Dickinson, Twain, and James.
Survey of American Literature II
English 3025
Prof. T. Allan
Mon/Wed 5:50-7:05PM / This course explores the development of American literature from the Civil War to the present. As we read representative works of fiction, poetry, prose, and drama, we willexamine the historical, social, and literary contexts that have produced a uniquely American creative expression. Among the writers to be studied are: Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Crane, Robert Frost, William Faulkner, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston,Richard Wright, Eudora Welty, TennesseeWilliams, Sylvia Plath, James Baldwin, Flannery O'Connor, Joyce Carol Oats, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker.
Contemporary Literature from Asia, Africa, and Latin America: The African Novel
English 3030
Prof. M. Eatough
Mon/Wed 9:30-10:45AM / The African novel is often recognized as one of the most vibrant sites of cultural production in the modern world. In part, perhaps, due to the relative newness of novel writing in Africa, fictional narratives from the continent frequently demonstrate a dizzying blend of oral traditions, folk histories, experimental styles, and political engagement. In this course, we will focus on African novels from the post-World War II period, investigating how these novels engage with the realities of decolonization, genocide, the AIDS epidemic, global capitalism, and the African cultural “renaissance.” Our readings will stretch from the first generation of post-independence writers (Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o), to later dissident texts (Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer), and finally to contemporary narratives about child soldiers and AIDS (Phaswane Mpe and Chris Abani). We will use these texts to help us examine both the success and the challenges that African writers have faced in producing independent cultural traditions.
Ethnic Literature: Latina/o Literature
English 3032
Prof. R. Rodriguez
Tue/Thu 4:10-5:25PM / This course will introduce students to the study of Latina/o literature. The term “Latina/o” is used to describe people of Latin American descent living the U.S., though members of this fast growing minority group often choose terms of identification that reflect incompatible histories, dispersed migratory trajectories, and diverse hemispheric affiliations. We will examine how this plurality of experience leaves its mark on a rich spectrum of artistic expression ranging in voice and style from border-crossing aesthetics and neobaroque figurations to mean-streets lyricism and bilingual experiments born out of the necessities of an unevenly developing world. Close scrutiny of these literary forms and their traditions will enable students to understand how Latina/o writing and performance participate in the globalization of literature written in English and the transformation of American culture.
We will cover a range of genres including novels, short stories, drama, poetry, memoirs, graphic novels, and film. Readings may include works by the following authors: Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, Jimmy Santiago Bacca, Jaime Hernandez, Francisco Goldman, Daniel Alarcón, Junot Díaz, Piri Thomas, Justin Torres, Giannina Braschi, Cristina Garcia, Nilo Cruz, and H.G. Carrillo.
Survey of Caribbean Literature in English
English 3038
Prof. K. Frank
Tue/Thu 5:50-7:05 PM / Day-O or Burn! Who is Caribbean? What is essentially Caribbean? How and why do answers to such questions matter? Ads on subway cars and elsewhere remind us that for many people the Caribbean exists merely as a “creole,” escapist paradise, there to accommodate any and all tourist fantasies: “No problem mon!” Yet, paradoxically, as the dominance and influence of dancehall music indicates, the Caribbean is also seen as a territory offering certain “authentic” experiences, so much so that Ellie Goulding could rule the UK charts (and run up the charts elsewhere) by “appropriating” dancehall. In this survey course, we will examine this paradox and try to separate Caribbean romance (myth/idealization) from Caribbean realism, with a consistent focus on authenticity, along with issues of alienation, agency, and creolization. Speaking of creolization, “Let’s get together, and feel all right?/!”
Children Literature
English 3040
Prof. A. Curseen
Mon/Wed 9:30-10:45AM / This course is an introduction to the study of children’s literature. We will explore a variety of literature regarded as “for children,” including myths and traditional stories, modern fairy tales, classics, poetry, modern realism, film adaptation, and new literary trends. Through lively and creative analysis of form, content, and historical context, we will interrogate the various ideas (overtly and subtly) conveyed in these texts. We will consider both changes in literature for young readers over time and changing notions about childhood and who and what constitutes a child. Throughout the course we will ask: “what is children’s literature?”; “what does it do?”; what is the relationship between children’s literature and “adult” literature; and how does language, theory, politics, and ideology intersect in the literature we regard as “for children”?
Topics in Politics and Literature
English 3201
Prof. E. S. Chou
Mon/Wed 11:10-12:25PM / The recent political histories of many countries contain enormous and often ongoing changes, both peaceful and violent. At such times, writers emerge who ask large questions about what they are witnessing and the history behind such changes. This course asks questions such as: What can literature teach us about politics?What is the impact of politics on literature? This semester the course will focus on fiction and politics from China, India, and Indonesia, which are three of the four most populous countries in the world (the US is the third of the top four), and also fiction from Japan and, possibly, Korea. Some of the writers we read directly confront political topics of power, democracy, revolution, economic equity; other writers show situations and stories that lead readers to discover these political topics. Students will receive credit for either ENG 3201 or POL 3201.

Elements of Poetry: Presenting Subject Matter

English 3640
Prof. G. Schulman
Tue/Thu 5:50-7:05PM / You don’t have to be a secret poet to enroll in The Elements of Poetry (although secret poets are welcome, too). If you love good books, if you enjoy reading Shakespeare or Chaucer or Dickinson, if you have ever been moved or disturbed or frightened by the sounds of the language, if you have wanted to write but can’t get started, this course is all yours.
You will learn to present emotion in images, which will unlock your innermost feelings. You will be writing in basic forms, such as the riddle, as well as in freer forms. You will be writing about poetry, and learning how major poets, from Shakespeare to Elizabeth Bishop to Langston Hughes, convey their thoughts and loves and passions.
Best of all, you will be sharing your poems with the class in a workshop, and learning to use language in ways that will convey your wishes, fears, and dreams.
Your professor is Grace Schulman, whose latest book of poems is Without a Claim (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Mariner Books), and whose new book of essays is First Loves and Other Adventures (U of Michigan). She was Poetry Editor of The Nation (1972-2006) and Director of the Poetry Center, 92nd Street Y (1974-84).
Advanced Essay Writing: Style & Styles in Prose
English 3680
Prof. E. Shipley
Mon/Wed 7:30-8:45PM / This course focuses on style in writing: what it is and how to get it. We will read the work of professional writers and discuss what kinds of choices they make and why. Who’s the intended audience of a piece? What’s its purpose? What kind of mood is the author trying to create? After discussing the choices writers make, students will have the chance to experiment with different options to develop their own distinctive writing style(s). Students will compose short pieces on topics of their choice that they will share with one another and the professor and, over time, develop into longer, more complete works. We will mostly write creative non-fiction essays (we will study and discuss this genre in class), but students are free to choose their own topics and write to any intended audience. Classes will be part lecture on issues of style, including sentence and paragraph construction, repetition, voice and tone, showing vs. telling, metaphor, humor, irony, vividness, and rhythm; part discussion of passages by major American essayists such as Thoreau, Twain, Hughes, Fitzgerald, Baldwin, Walker, Didion, Tan, and Dillard; and part work-shopping of student writing.
Lyrics as Literature: Stephen Sondheim: Examining His Works
English 3685
Prof. J. Entes
Wed 2:30-5:25PM / Some say Stephen Sondheim‘s shows sound spectacular; the lyrics scintillate. His splendid songs soar. He has reached a supreme status by his eight Tonys, eight Grammys, and a Pulitzer Prize. We will study his success and style. Specifically, we will see his shows and read Stephen Sondheim: Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981). Several classes will be scheduled at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Introduction to Linguistics and Language Learning