Instructor: Jerry Phillips

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010, 1011, or 2011; open to sophomores or higher

The twentieth century has been described as “the American century.” How did that description come about? Was it still operative as the twentieth century came to a close? If not, why not? What will the twenty first century hold for American society, particularly in its relationship to the rest of the world? American literature is a vital cultural terrain on which these questions might be considered, as writers and artists are heavily involved in the work of national self-conception. In this course, we will read a range of writers including James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Leslie Marmon Silko, Thomas Pynchon, Russell Banks and Toni Morrison. Course requirements: three papers and a final examination.

W.

Topic: Train Reading: Short Fiction Since 1945

Instructor: Kathy Knapp

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010, 1011, or 2011

This course will examine short fiction that originally appeared in The New Yorker and its role in reflecting, shaping, and educating the burgeoning middle class of the postwar years and resituating them in the contemporary era. By reading the stories of John Cheever, John Updike, Philip Roth, and J.D. Salinger among others, as well as that of contemporary writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Sherman Alexi, George Saunders, and Junot Diaz among others alongside cultural, historical, and literary criticism and essays, we will see how this fiction has helped readers of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC) form their identity as they came to “arrive” in the suburbs or transform the city by way of gentrification. Indeed, many of these stories wrestle with the ephemeral anxieties peculiar to their readers’ station in life: numbing conformity, debilitated manhood, marital woes, and perceived professional slights. Still others challenge readers to imaginatively engage in a rapidly changing and increasingly globalized world in ways both productive and problematic. These stories have alternately offered the middle class a glamorized version of themselves, exposed their weaknesses, preyed upon their fears, and both challenged and confirmed their assumptions concerning race, gender, class, and privilege. We will supplement our reading by sampling and discussing representations of the PMC in films, television, and advertising. This course should fulfill the objectives of a General Education course and an Honors course, which is to say it is designed to help you write and think more critically and deeply about the way that fiction interacts with our perceptions of ourselves and the larger world.

CA 1.

Instructor: Margaret Breen

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010, 1011, or 2011

In this course we will engage a range of American and British literary works—from the Renaissance to the present—and in the process encounter such great writers such William Shakespeare, Charlotte Brontë, and Alice Walker. We will be reading across genres: poems, plays, short stories, essays, and at least one novel. We will explore how form and social context shape writers’ development of a theme or exploration of an idea, and begin to consider how a particular critical approach can direct our textual analysis. Three 5-6-page essays, as well as several short response pieces.

CA 1, W.