Undergraduate Faculty Handbook
Department of English
2005-2006
Table of Contents
CURRICULUM......
Goals and Objectives for the English Curriculum
Foundation......
Praxis......
Objectives for Teaching Writing......
Objectives for Teaching Reading......
Objectives for Teaching Critical Analysis......
Programs......
Objectives for the Rhetoric/Composition Program......
Objectives for Introductory Literature Courses......
Objectives for the Undergraduate Major......
Rational for Course Numbering......
Concentrations and Electives......
Creative Writing Concentration......
Literature Concentration......
Literature Concentration......
Writing and Culture Concentration......
Writing and Culture Selected Electives......
The English Minor......
Undergraduate Honors Program......
Guidelines for General Education Courses......
Goals and Objectives......
Reading
Writing in 2000-level courses......
Writing in 3000-level courses......
General Education Advisory Committee......
Sample Proposals......
Guidelines for Sequence in the Chronological Study of
Major Authors and Texts......
Guidelines for English 2002/3002......
Goals and Guidelines for Teaching Writing in the English
Curriculum......
2000-level......
3000-level......
4000-level......
PROCEDURES......
Scheduling Guidelines......
Scheduling Procedures......
Area Groups......
Ordering Textbooks......
Submitting Grades......
Teaching Evaluations......
The Mentor Program......
Course Rosters......
PAWS......
POLICIES......
Course Syllabus Guidelines......
office hours......
Grading Policies and Grade Appeals......
Academic Misconduct......
Attendance......
Final Exam Policy......
STUDENT PRIVACY......
Abiding by the Buckley Amendment......
Faculty Attendance/Illness......
Sexual Harassment......
Learning Disabilities......
Grade Inflation......
Fraternization......
Grade Challenges......
Adds/Drops......
Concerns about Teaching......
RESOURCES......
Advising Information......
Course Development and Faculty Development......
CURRICULUM
GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR THE ENGLISH CURRICULUM
FOUNDATION
We define the subject of our curriculum thus:
how English speaking peoples have imagined and represented themselves and their
cultures in language.
Although most of our courses emphasize written texts, some also consider language in oral and visual texts. Although our province is, strictly speaking, the English language, we also teach literature in translation as it affects English-speaking cultures. So, although our courses and specializations may vary widely, they all converge in creating, interpreting, and analyzing texts in English. This is our common ground.
We can represent this common ground in four apparently simple assertions:
Texts are authored.
Texts have audiences.
Texts use the formal properties of language.
Texts exist within contexts.
We know, however, that in any act of writing, interpretation, or analysis these attributes of texts interact simultaneously in complex ways. This complex process of interaction is the foundation of all our courses.
For example, in a writing course, whether freshman composition or a creative writing workshop, we help students discover and author their ideas and feelings. We encourage them to communicate their meaning through diction and metaphor, syntax and rhythm, organizational strategies and narrative pacing, etc.; through a tone appropriate to their purpose and audience; and through the different conventions of, for example, the short story and the report.
In a literature course, whether a sophomore introduction or a course for undergraduate majors, we help students understand the author’s ideas and those of his/her culture. We attend to shades of connotation, rhythm beneath syntax, the implications of metaphor, and the conventions of, for example, satire and the love sonnet, which shape poems for different purposes and audiences in different historical and social contexts. In their own writing, students attend to the same process that they are learning to recognize in literature: making meaning in language within a context.
In linguistics, popular culture, folklore, film, and drama courses, we also analyze texts produced by writers and speakers within systems of signs and within formal and social contexts. Although the focus here may not always be the written text, students nevertheless use the skills of textual analysis practiced in all our courses.
Thus issues of authorship, audience, language, and context are basic to all our varied approaches to texts. Sharing this common ground, we can define a common goal:
to help students become competent and responsible readers and writers through attending to the formal properties of language that allow texts to mean and to move emotions, through understanding how context limits and enables meaning, and through recognizing the ethical dimensions of the use of language.
Once we have agreed on our common subject and goal, we can enrich our curriculum with courses that approach texts from widely varying perspectives. Sometimes we may concentrate on challenging students to discover their ideas and communicate them effectively; at other times, we may emphasize reading, interpretation, and analysis. Some of us may focus on the formal and aesthetic properties of language and / or literature. Others may emphasize the social, economic, religious, and / or political contexts in which writing takes place. Still others may question the ability of language to stabilize meaning. If we adhere to a common pedagogical goal and respect our colleagues' differing expertise in areas of special study, our diversity of methodology and ideology can spark a dynamic interchange that will both serve the university and attract students.
PRAXIS
We meet our goal through three interrelated objectives: helping students
(1) write and communicate,
(2) read and comprehend, and
(3) analyze critically the processes of writing and reading.
Although students learn to read and write and think about these processes simultaneously, they differ in their levels of literacy. Intelligent, percipient readers may not write well, and excellent writers may never have studied, for example, the generic conventions of literary texts, and neither may know anything about linguistic structures or critical theory. Therefore, our approach to achieving these three objectives should recognize both the common ground these objectives share and their differences.
Objectives for Teaching Writing
To help students to discover what they wish to say and to convey their ideas and feelings through language and format appropriate to audience and purpose. Students should learn to observe closely and to think critically and creatively. They should practice strategies for writing (rhetoric, construction of a plot, techniques of characterization, etc.), and acquire conventional skills (usage, spelling, mechanics, poetic forms, etc.). All students should learn to describe, analyze, and persuade within and beyond the academic setting; many will write for self-understanding, self-expression, and / or artistic creation. Ideally, students will come to appreciate the utility, strength, and beauty of their language, and to find that writing enables self-determination and richer participation in their culture.
Objectives for Teaching Reading
To help students comprehend and interpret different levels of meaning in a text as influenced by form, style, and genre, by the cultural and historical contexts in which the text was written, and by the author's and students' experiences. Students should read, discuss, and write about a wide variety of texts written in different historical periods and cultures, in different genres, and from different perspectives. All students should learn to read within and beyond the academic setting, to read for comprehension and pleasure. Ideally, students will come to value reading and to find that, like writing, it enables self-determination and richer participation in their culture.
In our curriculum, students learn not only process, but also content. While they became competent readers and writers, they are simultaneously gaining knowledge of culture through an expanding canon of texts in various stages of the English / American English language. In our curriculum students should study those authors and texts which have represented and shaped the cultures of English-speaking peoples. We should include texts not only from the traditional canon of British and American authors, but also from women, African-Americans, other ethnic and racial minorities, Canadians, Australians, and authors from post-colonial cultures.
Objectives for Teaching Critical Analysis
To help students analyze the complex processes of making meaning in language--from the level of words and the overall grammar that employs them to the level of culture, where language both constructs and mirrors culture. In detail appropriate to their levels within our curriculum, students should be introduced to the basic structures of the language, the major critical approaches used to analyze and interpret texts, and the central concepts and terminology of linguistics and/or literary criticism.
LEVELS
Many, indeed most, of us contribute to three major levels of our curriculum: the first-year writing program; the introductory literature courses; and the undergraduate major in English. Thus we need to establish what we expect students to learn upon completion of their first-year writing requirements, introductions to literary study, and requirements for a major in English.
Objectives for the First-year Writing Courses
Our goal is to offer a sequential program that helps students become better writers. Students will develop rhetorical strategies while attaining basic competencies. More specifically, at the end of the program, students should be able
to identify, analyze and address particular audiences,
to adopt a voice appropriate to purpose and audience,
to write a text with a controlling thesis which addresses the task,
to supplement personal observation and experience by locating and using source material,
to adhere to conventions of Standard Edited English.
While the first-year writing program focuses on developing students' writing abilities, it simultaneously teaches them to read their own and others’ texts more critically.
Students should also be able to think about the process of writing itself--its demands, its contexts, and its ethics. They should be able to identify the demands of a given writing task and, on the basis of these specific demands, choose among a variety of writing processes for planning, drafting, revising, and editing. They should begin to understand that their writing is embedded in larger cultural contexts. They should recognize their obligation to report facts accurately, to quote accurately, and to use source material fairly in accordance with recognized conventions of citation.
Objectives for Introductory Literature Courses
Introductory literature courses must serve the needs of prospective English majors and minors, liberal arts majors, and students majoring in more scientific or technical fields. Each course will delimit its own subject matter, which students will be expected to learn. Yet fundamental objectives in reading, writing, and critical analysis are common to all these offerings.
Since reading is a major focus of these courses, students will practice a variety of interrelated reading and interpretive skills. More specifically, upon completion of their requirements in introductory literature courses, students should be able
to paraphrase passages accurately,
to read closely in order to explicate the literal and figurative meaning of passages,
to identify larger themes, structures, and patterns in a literary work as a whole,
to begin to relate a literary work to relevant discursive contexts, such as generic conventions and literary traditions, and
to begin to understand the larger cultural contexts of a literary work, both diachronic
and synchronic.
These courses should further develop students' writing in coordination with the objectives of the rhetoric/composition program. Students should write frequently to communicate their critical and interpretive insights about literary texts. Their writing should move beyond merely retelling a story, into analysis, interpretation, and argumentation.
Students should also think about the process of reading itself. They should be able to identify and use effectively terms basic to literary interpretation, and to be aware that a variety of methodologies may be used to analyze texts.
Objectives for Courses in the Undergraduate Major
The structure of the curriculum for English majors should balance breadth and depth of knowledge. Regardless of their concentration, majors should be proficient in skills fundamental to participation in linguistic culture, and should have a basic knowledge of the range of writing in English. They will study one area, their chosen concentration, in more depth. While further developing skills practiced in composition and introductory literature courses, the curriculum should move majors toward participating in the complex interactions through which texts both shape and reflect culture.
English majors should be proficient writers, able
to communicate with a generally educated audience or an audience with specialized training in the study of literature and language;
to revise and edit others' and their own writing;
to articulate rhetorical issues of voice, form or genre, and audience, as well as issues of content;
to distinguish among styles; and
to locate commentary on texts, quote published material, and document their borrowings according to conventions of publication.
They should be skilled readers, able
to paraphrase accurately and understand, with the help of scholarly notes, passages from literature beyond the confines of their immediate experience, for example, a soliloquy by Shakespeare, a passage from James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist, or the dialogue in a short story by Zora Neale Hurston;
to read closely with attention to nuances of meaning and form, with sophistication that does not limit them to literal meanings, and with sensitivity that does not violate literal meanings;
to relate patterns, structures, and themes into an interpretation of an entire work;
to identify basic conventions of such modes as pastoral and satire, of such genres as epic and tragedy, of such forms as sonnet and short story; and
to summon those basic contexts--historical, social, religious, economic, and/or literary--which enable reading of a given text.
They should also be knowledgeable readers, having read
works in the traditional canon of British and American literature, and
works offering perspectives not always included in the traditional canon--such as works by women, African-Americans, other ethnic and racial minorities, and Anglophone authors beyond Great Britain and the United States.
They should begin to develop a sophistication of critical analysis that will lead them
to see significant connections and differences between texts, styles, genres and modes, authors,
periods of literary history, literary cultures, etc.;
to recognize some of the complex ways in which text and context interact;
to discover their bases for judging the value or importance of a text;
to be aware of the processes of canon formation; and
to recognize a range of critical approaches used for interpreting texts.
Through their writing, reading, and thinking about these processes, English majors should come to see themselves as shaping and sustaining the literary culture they study.
RATIONALE FOR COURSE NUMBERING
2000-level courses--Introductions (courses that teach the basic terms and approaches used in a field)
3000-level courses--Surveys and/or courses that presume a knowledge of basic terms and approaches (courses that give an overview of a historical period of literature, a genre, an approach to literary study, and courses that build on the skills acquired in 2000-level courses)
4000-level courses--Studies in depth (courses within a designated area, but whose specific focus within that area may vary from semester to semester). Studies in _____ courses at the 4000-level may be repeated once for credit. Multiple sections of any Studies in _____ course may be offered in one semester. Short specific titles can be listed in the Registration Schedule of Classes (if submitted by the copy deadline) and on students' transcripts. More detailed course descriptions will appear in the departmental handout prepared for preregistration.
CONCENTRATIONS AND ELECTIVES
CREATIVE WRITING CONCENTRATION
6 hrs. from2025 Fiction (General Education)
2027Poetry (GE)
2029 Drama (GE)
2123 Studies in Literary Traditions and Themes (GE) or 2823 (Honors
Equivalent)
2148 Shakespeare (GE)
2220 Major British Authors (GE)
2270 Major American Authors (GE)
9 hrs. from3020 British Literature I (GE)
3022 British Literature II (GE)
3070 American Literature I (GE)
3072 American Literature II (GE)
3 hrs. from4137 Studies in Chaucer
4147 Studies in Milton
4148 Studies in Shakespeare
6 hrs. from2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 (Creative Writing Courses)
6 hrs. from4000, 4001, 4005, 4006, 4007, 4008, 4009 (Creative Writing Courses)
3 hrs. 4021 Capstone Seminar in Creative Writing
3 hrs.English Electives
______
36 hrs. (minimum) Total
LITERATURE CONCENTRATION
Distribution Requirement: Maximum of 9 hrs. at the 2000-level. Minimum of 6 hrs. of literature courses at the 4000-level.
6 hrs. from2024 Critical Strategies (GE) or 2824 (Honors Equivalent)
2025 Fiction (GE)
2027 Poetry (GE)
2029 Drama (GE)
2123Studies in Literary Traditions and Themes (GE) or 2823 (Honors
Equivalent)
2300 Interpreting Discourse (GE)
2148Shakespeare (GE)
2220 Major British Authors (GE)
2270 Major American Authors (GE)
9 hrs. from3020 British Literature I
3022 British Literature II
3070 American Literature I
3072 American Literature II
3 hrs. 3024 Criticism or 3084 Modern Criticism
3 hrs. from4137 Studies in Chaucer
4147 Studies in Milton
4148 Studies in Shakespeare
3 hrs.Requirement to insure breadth: one course chosen from:
2593 Images of Women: An Introduction
2673 Literature and Ethnicity
2674Introduction to African-American Literature
3593 Survey of Women and Literature
3674 Survey of African-American Literature
4674 Studies in African-American Literature
4593 Studies in Women and Literature
3 hrs.4101 Capstone Seminar in Literature
9 hrs. English Electives
______
36 hrs. (minimum)Total
SECONDARY EDUCATION CONCENTRATION
6 hrs. from2024 Critical Strategies (GE) or 2824 (Honors Equivalent)
2025Fiction (GE)
2027 Poetry (GE)
2029 Drama (GE)
2123 Studies in Literary Traditions and Themes (GE) or 2823 (Honors
Equivalent)
2300Interpreting Discourse (GE)
2423Introduction to Folklore