Fall 2004
ENG 5000.01: Practical Literary Criticism
Stover
We all use some kind of interpretive strategy whenever we read, view, or listen to texts. One purpose of this course is to make you more aware of the variety of assumptions people make about literary texts and the implications these have for critical reading and writing. This course should help you develop awareness of reading as a creative act with social and political implications as you learn the theory of and practice several major critical approaches. You will learn about expectations for graduate-level research while expanding your expertise in academic writing. (All incoming graduate students need to take this course).
ENG 5040.01: History of Language and Linguistics
Monteverde
Recognizing that any description of this course is destined to be off-putting, let me begin by stating that ideally this course should make your own language come alive for you as a living entity whose current form is the result of all its childhood experiences and whose future shape though predictable to some extent is also yet to be determined. We will study the growth of our language from its origin as a descendant of the Indo-European language family in distant prehistory to its current position as the 2nd most widely known language in the modern world. Tests will be augmented with a variety of assignments, such as a personal language history, designed to help you appreciate the on-going and individual process of change that can be experienced in the study of English. An optional service learning unit can also be taken as part of the course. While class content is the same for undergraduates and graduates, out of class assignments differ, with graduate students, for example, producing either a teaching unit or researched essay in conjunction with the course. Note: I may also be offering a small section of this course for EDU graduate students this summer; please contact me for information if you have a time conflict in the fall.
ENG 5820.01: Readings in British Literature II
Murray
This course offers an expansive but also intensive survey of British Literature during the following eras: the 'Long Eighteenth Century' (comprising the Restoration Period, the Age of Swift and Pope, and the Age of Johnson); the Romantic Period; and the Victorian Period. We will examine both the 'traditional' canon of works as well as the new, more extensive canon. Authors to be considered include Dryden, Behn, Wycherley, Pope, Swift, Defoe, Fielding, Johnson, Austen, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley (both Mr. and Mrs.), Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Dickens, Hopkins, Hardy, Eliot and Wilde. We will examine current scholarly formulations of the eras which produced this literature (the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Victorianism), and we will examine literature in light of the cultural constructs of its era. Students should read several of the following novels over the summer: Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Austen, Emma; Dickens, Hard Times; Eliot, Middlemarch.
In this class, you will write nearly-weekly 2-page papers on assigned topics and take one comprehensive final exam. As much of the Please consult me at murrayd@mail.belmont.edu for information about this class.
ENG 6140.01: Shakespeare
Wells
This course is geared toward both beginning and experienced graduate level-readers of Shakespeare. For those new to Shakespeare, the course will provide of an accelerated introduction to his language with the goal of helping students become competent readers of his plays. We will move from competency to a more accomplished literacy whereby we study how Shakespeare's plays form complex arrangements of bodies and language that yield inexhaustibly pleasurable experiences through poignancy, irony, paradox, and wit. As in many graduate literature courses, the purpose here will be to introduce students to the professions of studying and teaching Shakespeare. Therefore, we will not only study Shakespeare's plays but will also study how to study them. To these ends we will read six Shakespeare plays and two or three articles per play with a particular eye to the techniques and assumptions scholars employ when analyzing his work.
ENG 6440.1SL: Reading and Writing About the Environment
Pinter
Are you looking for a chance to write for publication, while learning about the literary response to the environment? This graduate course explores how the environment is connected to the individual human response, as well as how it's connected to larger social and political systems. We will read literary and informational examples of excellent writing on environmental issues, while developing your ability to write in this genre. You also will have the opportunity to write for a real audience, readers of The Tennes-Sierran, a publication of the Tennessee Sierra Club. As a class, we will read and write about issues involving the community?some authors include Annie Dillard, Barbara Kingsolver, H. D. Thoreau, Willa Cather, Mary Oliver, and Jon Krakauer.
