SUNY New Paltz: Department of English

200-level Courses

ENG 200-1: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
Michelle Woods

ENG 200-2: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
Mary Holland

ENG 200-3: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature ONLINE
Mary Fakler

ENG 200-4: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature ONLINE
Mary Fakler

ENG 200-5: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature

ENG 200-6: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
Robert Singleton

ENG 200-7: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
Robert Singleton

ENG 205-1: General Honors English 1
Harry Stoneback

ENG 205-2: General Honors English 1
Donna Baumler

ENG 205-3: General Honors English 1
Kathena DeGrassi

ENG 206-1: General Honors English 2
Alice Gertzog

ENG 206-2: General Honors English 2
Jeanne Stauffer-Merle

ENG 206-3: General Honors English 2
Rudolf Kossman

ENG 210-1: Great Books Western
Kenneth Moss

ENG 210-2: Great Books Western
Marlis Paffenroth

ENG 210-3: Great Books Western

ENG 211-1: Great Books Asian Classics
Andrew Schonebaum

ENG 211-2: Great Books Asian Classics
Heinz Insu Fenkl

ENG 224-1: Expository Writing

ENG 224-2: Expository Writing
Donna Baumler

ENG 224-3: Expository Writing
Doris Stewart

ENG 224-4: Expository Writing
Lauren Yanks

ENG 226-1: Practical Grammar
Doris Stewart

ENG 230-1: Women in Literature
Marystella Deen

ENG 230-2: Women in Literature
Vicki Tromanhauser

ENG 230-3: Women in Literature
Vicki Tromanhauser

ENG 231-1: American Women Writers of the Twentieth Century
Amelia Rose

ENG 231-2: American Women Writers of the Twentieth Century
Amelia Rose

ENG 231-3: American Women Writers of the Twentieth Century
Alice Gertzog

ENG 255-1: Contemporary Issues and Literature
Rhonda Shary

ENG 255-2: Contemporary Issues and Literature
Landan Gross

ENG 299-1: Contemporary Asian Film
Heinz Insu Fenkl

ENG 299-2: Writing for Publishing
Mark Bellomo

300-level Courses

ENG 399-2: Research Methods
Goretti Vianney-Benca

400-level Courses

ENG 404-1: Medieval Literature
Daniel Kempton

ENG 406-1: Shakespeare 1
Thomas Festa

ENG 406-2: Shakespeare 1
Cyrus Mulready

ENG 407-1: Shakespeare 2
Tina Iraca

ENG 407-2: Shakespeare 2
Tina Iraca

ENG 417-1: The Romantics
Jackie George

ENG 418-1: Victorian Literature
Jed Mayer

ENG 419-1: 20th Century British Literature
Vicki Tromanhauser

ENG 423-1: 20th Century Criticism
Nancy Johnson

ENG 436-1: 19th Century American Literature
Fred Anderson

ENG 445-1: Creative Writing Workshop 2
Laurence Carr

ENG 445-2: Creative Writing Workshop 2
Dennis Doherty

ENG 450-1: Seminar in Poetry
Pauline Uchmanowicz

ENG 451-1: Senior Seminar--American Literature of the 1960s
Fiona Paton

ENG 451-2: Senior Seminar--Humanism in Contemporary American Literature
Mary Holland

ENG 452-1: The Craft of Fiction
Heinz Insu Fenkl

ENG 454-1: The Craft of Creative Nonfiction
Jan Schmidt

ENG 460-1: Classic Juvenile Fantasy Literature
Fiona Paton

ENG 465-1: Young Adult Literature
Jan Schmidt

Graduate Courses

ENG 500-1: English Proseminar
Michelle Woods

ENG 500-2: English Proseminar
Thomas Olsen

ENG 505-1: Shakespeare
Cyrus Mulready

ENG 507-1: 17th Century English Literature
Thomas Festa

ENG 515-1: Modern Theories of Writing
Matt Newcomb

ENG 524-1: Virginia Woolf
Marystella Deen

ENG 536-1: 20th Century American Fiction to 1945
Harry Stoneback

ENG 576-1: Studies in 18th Century English
Nancy Johnson

ENG 577-1: Studies in English Romanticism
Robert Waugh

ENG 585-1: Studies in Contemporary Criticism
Daniel Kempton

ENG 593-1: The Bible and Literature
Christopher Link

ENG 593-2: Postcolonial Literature
Heather Hewett

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

200-level courses

ENG 200-1 Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
MR 10:50-12:05

Professor Michelle Woods: woodsm@newpaltz.edu

Course description and Texts
In this course, we will focus on close readings of different literary genres, starting with the short story (with writers such as Kafka, O'Connor, Carver, and Joyce), memoir (Martha Gellhorn) and drama (Samuel Beckett, Václav Havel), poetry (with writers ranging from Shakespeare to Szymborska) and the novel (Kafka and Milan Kundera). The aim of the course is to give students analytic tools with which to approach literary texts and to learn how to write critical and analytical appraisals of them.

ENG 200-2: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
TF 12:15-1:30

Professor Mary Holland: hollandm@newpaltz.edu

Course Description and Objectives
English 200 entails three major objectives: to introduce you to a wide variety of literature; to sharpen your analytical and close-reading skills; and to teach you how to write about literature and improve your writing skills in general. Covering five major genres-poetry, drama, short fiction, the novel, and film-and spanning from the sixteenth century to the present, this course will introduce fundamental literary terminology while exploring the diverging and often surprising ways we manufacture meaning, especially in the twentieth century. You've been reading literature for years, so you already bring to the classroom many tools with which to analyze literature; we'll review and expand upon some of these traditional ways of reading-devices like symbol, metaphor, allegory-and explore new ways of reading through various critical approaches to literary expression and reception, while also paying attention to the relationship between content and form. Our discussions of literature will focus on making arguments about literature: reading critically to amass evidence that supports interpretations of texts. Your papers will do the same, giving you a chance to make your own unique arguments about literature, while practicing and honing your skills at planning, organizing, and revising written work.
In order to accomplish all of these goals, we need energetic participation from you: English 200 is not a lecture course (though I will provide you with plenty of information and guidance), but a forum for the kind of discussion and debate that will help you learn how to make literary arguments and allow you to express your opinions about what we are reading. Therefore, you need to be ready to invest significant time preparing for each class, reading all assignments closely and, often, repeatedly, and you need to be willing to engage with the literature and with me and your fellow students in class. You will also be doing a lot of writing-over twenty pages of revised writing over the semester-so jump in with both feet right away! Think of it as a literary rave-too much, too fast, a bit overwhelming, but it's all great stuff so you can't help but have a good time.

This leads me to one more objective for this course: I want you to love it, to enjoy literature in new ways, to find new reasons to read, to experience literature as you may never have done so before. I want you, for just fifteen weeks, to immerse yourself in great literature and see why some of us can feel that nothing else is quite so important or beautiful in the world. That said, English 200 will also bring many practical bonuses your way: writing skills that will improve your performance on any written task a university class or workplace might throw at you; the necessary tools for a blossoming English major; and the ability to critically read anything-whether it be a movie you just saw, advertising, a new wave of video games, your boy/girlfriend's subtle gestures, your college professors, or. . . yourself.

Required Texts, all available at the Campus Bookstore
DeLillo, White Noise (Penguin edition)
Kirszner and Mandell, Portable Literature, 6th ed.
Standards and Style (SUNY New Paltz Department of English)

Recommended: (available at all major bookstores)
American Heritage Dictionary (or comparable college dictionary)
Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus (or comparable thesaurus)
a writing handbook, such as LB Brief or Keys for Writers
On Writing Well, William Zinsser

ENG 206-1: General English Honors 2
MR 1:40-2:55

Alice Gertzog, Instructor

Course Description
General English Honors 2 is a composition course designed to meet the needs of students who have already demonstrated excellent writing skills. It is organized around a unifying theme, seduction in this case, but its primary intention is to introduce students to a variety of writing experiences. Seduction, for our purposes, is broadly defined. Throughout history, philosophers, theologians, poets, playwrights, composers, novelists, short story writers, essayists, film makers and graphic artists have utilized their crafts to explore the concept of seduction as an element of human experience. Each of the works we will consider raises important issues related to human seduction. In a larger sense, each demonstrates the interrelationships between many humanistic disciplines as well as the ways in which artists establish relationships with their audiences – readers, listeners or viewers. In addition to dealing with substantive material – that which we read, regard, hear and produce – the course aims to help develop crucial skills that are needed both as students and as members of society, including reading, listening, seeing, conceptualizing synthesizing and judging. Thinking critically and exchanging ideas become the means by which we can “claim” responsibility for our own educations. Finally, the course aims to provide a context in which we can find pleasure and enjoyment in literature, art, poetry, drama, music, film and the other media which constitute the material for the course.

Tentative Required Texts

M. Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
M. Puig, Kiss of the Spiderwoman
B. Schlink, The Reader
W. Wasserstein, “The Heidi Chronicles”
And other works as assigned

ENG 206-03: Honors English 2
MR 4:30-5:45

Professor R.R. Kossmann

Course Objectives
To perfect composition skills and analysis of literary texts through the frequent writing of essays on selected short stories. To (re)acquaint oneself with the mythology of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Texts (available at the Campus Bookstore):
The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 7th ed.
A college-level dictionary (not a paperback)
Standards and Style: Writing for English Studies
The Simon & Schuster Handbook for Writers
Edith Hamilton -- Mythology

ENG 211-2: Great Books Asian Classics
MR 4:30-5:45

Professor Heinz I. Fenkl

Course Description
This course is an introduction to the ancient cultures of Asia through their seminal literature. By examining selected literary/religious texts, we will attempt to understand fundamental ideas that form the worldviews of some of the great cultures of Asia. Throughout the semester, we will be studying texts that give insight into Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism -- religious/philosophical systems that form the infrastructure of contemporary Asia and which have a profound influence even today. Although we will be reading "old" texts, a significant amount of our time will be spent in drawing comparative or illustrative examples from contemporary Asian and Western culture.

Required Texts (at the campus bookstore)
Eastern Philosophy for Beginners, Jim Power & Joe Lee
Bhagavad Gita, Juan Mascaro, ed.
Tao Te Ching, Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English, tr.
Buddhist Scriptures, Edward Conze, ed.
A Dream of Nine Clouds, James Gale, tr. (free online edition)
Monkey, Arthur Waley, tr.
Film: Little Buddha

ENG 230-2: Women in Literature
MR 1:40-2:55

ENG 230-3: Women in Literature
TF 10:50-12:05

Professor Vicki Tromanhauser: tromanhv@newpaltz.edu

Course Description:
In this course we will think through the roles that women play in literature as characters, as readers, and especially as writers. We will examine representations of women in different historical periods, from the classical world to the present day. Reading texts from a variety of genres, we will consider how the idea of authorship relates to gender and how women conceive a literary tradition of their own, as distinct from and often in resistance to masculine traditions. Over the course of the semester, we will tackle some of the thorniest questions that surround the subject of women and literature. How do particular works challenge or affirm conventional ideas about women? Does imagining an autonomous women's literary tradition necessarily entail the rejection of masculine modes of writing? Are forms of expression inherently masculine or feminine, or is it possible to envision a way of writing that is androgynous? How do anger and madness relate to gender and creativity? In what ways might race, class, and nationality complicate the stories women tell about themselves? The writing-intensive component of the course aims to hone students' skills of critical reading and thinking essential for persuasive argumentation. To this end, students will be asked to write regular short papers in response to the reading, which will help to promote lively discussions in class, as well as to compose several longer essays.

Texts for the Fall 2008 semester may include:
Sophocles, Antigone
Aristophanes, Lysistrata
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (1688)
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929)
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
Selected poetry (Sappho, Marie de France, Plath), nonfiction (Wollstonecraft), and short stories (Gilman) on Blackboard.

ENG 231-3: Twentieth Century American Women Writers
MR 3:05-4:20

Alice Gertzog, Instructor

Course Description
“Twentieth Century American Women Writers” is designed to investigate the ways in which shifting perceptions, behaviors and treatment of women were depicted by twentieth century American authors. To this end students will read novels, short stories, poetry, plays and essays and address such questions as: 1) what ideas and images are associated with women in modern literature? (This includes their political, social, and creative struggles, as well as the ethical issues raised by gender roles.) 2) what impact does changing contextual circumstance have on our understanding of the ways in which women are represented? 3) how does the artistry of the author add to the description of women? 4) does the author seek to stabilize or destabilize traditional presumptions about women?

This is a writing intensive course. Therefore, three four to six page papers, two in-class essays and a final examination are required. Students are also expected to submit questions about the texts that will promote class discussion. If it appears that the material is being read with sufficient care, there will be no quizzes. Any plagiarism, intended or unintentional, will result in failure for the entire course and may be subject to further action. An additional major goal is to help students find increased pleasure and enjoyment in reading and all selections have been chosen with that aim in mind.

Tentative Required Readings
Alvarez, J. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent
Cahill, Susan, ed. Women and Fiction
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening
Ibsen, Hendrik. A Doll’s House
Mukherjee, Bharati. Jasmine
Mamet, David. Oleanna
Morrison, Toni. Sula
Vogel, Paula. “How I Learned to Drive”
Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own
Other writings as assigned

300-level courses

ENG 301-1: English Literature 1
MWR 9:25-10:40

Professor Robert Waugh: waughr@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
The course moves from the oral epic Beowulf to selections from the literary epic Paradise Lost, in between these two mammoth achievements stopping to investigate typical works in the history of English Literature. Besides several lyrics from different periods, including such authors as Sydney, Donne, Herbert, and Marvell, we also look at such major authors as Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare. Grades are based upon one page of response writing each week, two quizzes, a three-page paper at the end, and a final.

Texts included in a recent course, from The Norton Anthology of English I, 8th ed.:
Beowulf
"The Dream of the Rood"
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Miller's Tale
The Wife of Bath's Tale
The Pardoner's Tale
"The Death of King Arthur" from The Morte d'Arthur
Book I of The Fairie Queene
Twelfth Night
L'Allegro and Il Penseroso
Lycidas
Books I and II of Paradise Lost

ENG 301-2: English Literature 1
MWR 8:00-9:15 a.m.

Professor Thomas Festa: festat@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
This course is an introduction to the major works of English literature from its inception to the age of Milton. Its primary focus is on the great works of the English canon in disparate literary genres including epic, dramatic, and lyric poetry as well as a variety of prose forms of writing. The course furthermore seeks to examine what it means for a work of literature to be “canonical,” and we will therefore ask fortuitously throughout the term what makes a work literary, what makes certain works particularly important to a tradition, and what connections persist between this literature and our present culture. While emphasizing a contextual overview of the historical and social worlds from which these works emerged, we will work to establish a clear sense of the skills required to read closely and well regardless of literary period. We will also endeavor to develop the kinds of critical argumentation necessary for success in the English major.

Required Texts
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 1, 8^th edition (2006). Ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al.
Thomas More, Utopia, trans. Clarence Miller (Yale University Press, 2001).

ENG 301-3: English Literature 1
TWF 1:40-2:55

Professor Cyrus Mulready: mulreadc@newpaltz.edu

Course Description and Objectives:
This course covers nearly a thousand years of what could easily be the most rich and diverse literature in the English language: from medieval fairy tales and Chaucer's travelers' stories to Elizabethan drama, Shakespeare's sonnets, biblical allegory and erotic love poetry. Our study will explore the very foundations of both English and American literary traditions, as we study the period that produced many literary "firsts": the first published collection of English poetry, the first English epic, and the first professional theatrical productions in England. The course will introduce students to this literature, but also further familiarize them to the skills of literary analysis, critical writing, and research. Course requirements include four critical writing and research exercises, two group presentations, periodic quizzes, class participation, and a final exam.

Required Texts, all available at the Campus Bookstore
The Norton Anthology of English Literature (8th Edition, Volumes A & B)
Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (Folger Edition)
Standards & Style

ENG 302-1: English Literature 2
MWR 3:05-4:20

Professor Jed Mayer

Course Description and Objectives
This course will survey some of the major literary works from the last several hundred years, emphasizing connections between these works and the spread of British Empire and industry. We will explore the ways poets and novelists responded to these changes, and how literature provided an imaginative space for exploring ethical problems raised by the innovations of modernity. As the British Empire expanded its dominion, its literature came increasingly to address global concerns, and in this course we will consider these works as both critical of, and complicit with, British colonial attitudes. The environmental impact of industrialization provided a similar field for ethical speculation in British literature, and we will read a number of literary works which address concerns we continue to grapple with today. This course will emphasize close readings of many of the era's most significant works of literature, making connections between literary form and historical context, style and substance. Students will learn to develop these close readings in classroom discussions and in formal essays that will help students in articulating complex issues, from the past to the present.

Texts:
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (1726) (Penguin, 8.00)
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (1688) (Penguin, 11.00)
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (Signet, 5.00)
English Romantic Poetry Anthology (Dover Thrift, 3.50)
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (Signet, 5.00)
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass (Signet, 4.00)
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift, 4.00)
H. G. Wells, War of the Worlds (Signet, 4.00)
Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway (HBJ, 13.00)
Angela Carter: The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffmann (Penguin, 15.00)

ENG 302-2: English Literature 2
TWF 9:25-10:40

Professor Mary Holland: hollandm@newpaltz.edu

Course Description and Objectives
This course will introduce students to more than three centuries of English literature in the context of the socio-historical moments out of which it sprang. Beginning with Neoclassical literature, we will move through Romanticism, the Victorian period, Modernism, Postmodernism, and contemporary literature, encountering along the way changing notions about politics and governmental rule, history, science, rationalism, empire, gender, and the nature of the individual and her role in society. As societal views change literature changes with them, adapting to reflect new ideas about what art is and what it can accomplish in the world. So we will also notice formal developments as we read four different genres (poetry, novel, play, essay) of literature. Our method of reading will be close textual analysis: looking carefully at textual form and language as the basis for drawing larger conclusions about the work as a whole. To this end, we will study poetic and narrative techniques and practice observing these techniques in poetry and prose as we craft our own critical essays about them. The course will also introduce and employ MLA style formatting and citation.

Required Texts, all available at the Campus Bookstore
Norton Anthology of English Literature, volumes C, D, E, and F
MLA Handbook or Standards & Style
Text selections on electronic reserve

ENG 302-3: English Literature 2
TWF 12:15-1:30

Professor Stella Deen: deenm@newpaltz.edu

Course Description and Objectives
This course will introduce students to English literature in the Neoclassical, Romantic, Victorian, Modern, and Contemporary periods. As we sample the poetry, nonfiction prose, and prose fiction of these periods, we will consider how the formal and thematic features of each work reflect religious and political controversy; scientific and philosophical ideas; or debates about the competing claims of society and the individual. These considerations will lead us to contemplate the continually shifting literary tradition in which each work claims a place, particularly by considering changing notions of what art is or does. In addition to studying representative literature for each era, this course will give students tools for reading texts closely and enable them to practice developing critical arguments about works of literature.

Required Texts, all available at the Campus Bookstore
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th edition, volumes C, D, E and F
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Penguin Classics)
Standards and Style: Writing for English Studies (SUNY New Paltz English Department)

ENG 306: Modern Fantasy
MR 12:15-1:30

Professor Robert Waugh: waughr@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
As usually taught the course is an investigation of the genre of fantasy from the Grimm brothers to the present. It focuses on selected works from various periods, the Romantics, the Victorians, the fantasists of the First World War, the Inklings with typical works from Lewis, Williams, or Tolkien, and the renaissance of the field after the success of Tolkien in the 1960s. This is the stuff of fairy tales, heroic fantasy, and magic realism.

A typical course might include these texts:
Anon. "Hansel and Gretel"
Mozart, The Magic Flute
MacDonald, Lilith
Andersen, Fairytales
Tolkien, The Hobbit
Peake, Titus Groan and Gormenghast
Crowley, Little, Big
Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

ENG 307-1: The Novel--The Coming of Age Story
TF 9:25-10:40

Professor Jackie George

Course Description
In this course, we will consider the history of the coming of age novel, which has become a staple of popular books and movies (think Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, or Garden State). Coming of age stories are so familiar that, at best, some readers take them for granted and, at worst, some readers dismiss them as naïve or simplistic. In this class, we will look at coming of age novels more critically by considering their forms, narrative structures, styles, and themes, as well as the cultural values and social contexts that inform them. The course syllabus will span a wide era, from the 18th century up to and including the 21st century, allowing us to consider the changes in the Bildungsroman across time. We will also consider how the coming of age story has been represented for young people.

Course requirements will include will include regular attendance; active participation; written responses; two literary critical essays; a final exam; and a group presentation.

ENG 307-2: The Novel
MR 1:40-2:55

Professor Michelle Woods: woods@newpaltz.edu

Course Description and Objectives
This course will give students the opportunity to expand their knowledge of the novel and theories of the novel. This will include close readings of narrative, voice, style and their relation to wider critical issues and historical contexts, such as postcolonialism, gender, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, war, exile and translation. In order to do this, we will focus on the modern and contemporary European novel, looking at authors such as: Jean Rhys, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Joseph Roth, Franz Kafka, Marguerite Duras, Irène Némirovsky, Flann O'Brien, Olga Tokarczuk and Milan Kundera. The aim of the course is to give students an understanding of the novel as literary genre; its makeup, poetics and narrative structure; to allow students to gain an understanding of the historical and social contexts of the modern novel; and to allow students to gain proficiency in the writing of research papers.

ENG 308-1: Short Story
MR 3:05-4:20

Professor Rudolf R. Kossmann

Course Description
A study of the short story as a literary genre through reading and analysis of selected short stories by 19th-21st-century authors, American, British & European. Also, acqainting/reacquainting oneself with the mythology of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Texts (available in the Campus Bookstore):
The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 7th ed.
A college-level dictionary (not a paperback)
Standards and Style: Writing for English Studies
Edith Hamilton - Mythology

ENG 308-3: Short Story
MR 12:15-1:30

ENG 308-4: Short Story
MR 3:05-4:20

Professor Dennis Doherty: dohertyd@newpaltz.edu

Course Description and Objectives
Students will read short stories from the nineteenth century "prose tale" to the contemporary. Through lecture, class discussion, and examination, students will learn to analyze and evaluate similarities and differences in content and form, uses of the form as a social and historical tool and moral gauge, and the workings of the short story as a literary device. Students should be able to: identify major passages from each story and discuss their significance; compare and contrast characters as they are used to illustrate and engage social and historical themes; compare and contrast authors in terms of style, approach, and philosophical slant; describe and analyze the literary and aesthetic characteristics within each story; become conversant with the language of literary criticism in general and the short story in particular; evaluate the moral decisions and the resulting consequences for the major characters, exploring the problem of good and evil and where virtue lies; present analysis in clear, coherent prose that demonstrates the ability to narrow a topic, create a thesis, and organize specific supporting evidence for that thesis; critique, revise, edit, and proof read discourse.

Required Text
Fiction 100 (11th ed.), James Pickering, Ed.

ENG 331-1: American Literature 1
MWR 3:05-4:20

Professor Christopher Link

Course Description
This four-credit course is intended for serious students seeking a broad-based and often in-depth introduction to American literature from its Colonial beginnings through the nineteenth century. Students may expect to gain a better understanding of the major authors and themes as well as some of the historical and ideological contexts of American literature from this period. Students will also be introduced to various practical and theoretical aspects of literary criticism and will develop skills in writing about literature. It should be noted that this four-credit survey course requires heavy reading every week. Authors treated include Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Olaudah Equiano, Thomas Paine, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, and others.

Required Texts
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vols. A and B, 7th Ed., New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Norton Critical Edition, 3rd Ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.

ENG 331-2: American Literature 1
MWR 4:30-5:45

Professor Jan Schmidt

Course Description
This course is an introduction to American literature through 1900. We will begin with the writings of the early explorers and recorded Native American myths and continue through to the naturalist writers of the late 1800s. The authors chosen for this course represent only some of the many writers whose works reflect the cultural climate of this nation from the early colonial settlements through the Civil War and to the end of the nineteenth century. This course will help you to put some of America's national literature into an historical and social perspective that will add to your understanding of the "American" experience. In an attempt to understand how these texts have come to be defined as "American," we will examine their historical, social, and political contexts. We will approach selected canonical and non-canonical works as active agents that have participated in the creation of multiple visions of "American" identity. As we proceed through the class, we will entertain the following questions: How do these writers deal with the problem of "American" identity? What are the metaphors and images of "American" identity and the "American" experience that are represented in the texts? How have they been conceived and reconceived? What are visions of the American dream? What is the underside of the American dream?

Required Texts
Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 7th Ed. Vols. A and B. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.
Standards and Style: Writing for English Studies
Stephen Crane, Monster (on Blackboard)
Additional text selections on Blackboard

English 331-3: American Literature 1
TWF 3:05-4:20

Instructor: Fred K. Anderson

Course Description and Objectives
to study the major trends and developments, seminal works, and major writers of American literature (fiction, poetry, essays) from the Seventeenth Century to the end of the Nineteenth Century.

Required Texts
Baym, Nina, et al, Eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature vol. A, B, C ,7rh ed.
New York: Norton, 2007

Crane, Stephen: "The Blue Hotel"
"The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky"
"An Episode of War"
--source to be announced

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Blithedale Romance

ENG 331-4: American Literature 1
TWF 9:25-10:40

Instructor Erin Newcomb: newcombe@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
American Literature 1 features texts from the colonial period through the Civil War years. Readings will include letters, essays, short stories, poetry, and at least one full-length novel. Pieces from within and beyond the traditional canon will be included to provide multiple perspectives on each historical period and literary movement. Students will be expected to recognize correlations between key texts and their historical, social, and political contexts; to examine critical themes like religious freedom, slavery and abolitionism, native and colonial land ownership, democracy and the formation of a new nation; and to discern the diverse approaches to founding national identity within pieces. The tentative text for the course is the W.W. Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter 7th Edition (Volumes 1 and 2-ISBN 0393930580).

ENG 332-2: American Literature 2
MWR 12:15-1:30

Professor Rudolf R. Kossmann

Course Description
A study of selected works of American literature since 1900. Starting with Edwin Arlington Robinson, we will read and analyze works by Edgar Lee Masters, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Willa Cather Ellen Glasgow, Robert Frost, Sherwood Anderson, Susan Glaspell, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and many others, including Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and Edward Albee. We will also acquaint/reacquaint ourselves with the mythology of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Writing assignments: 1. one close-reading/explication paper, 5-7pages long, on an assigned reading; needs instructor approval of topic plus library research; will be done in stages: tentative title plus explanatory paragraph, first draft, final version. 2. one brief interpretive paper, 3-5 pages long; needs instructor approval of topic; on one of the assigned readings; may be done in stages (see above); library research encouraged.

Texts (available in the Campus Bookstore):
The American Tradition in Literature, 11th ed., vol. 2 (McGraw-Hill)
Fitzgerald -- The Great Gatsby
Hemingway -- A Farewell to Arms
A college-level dictionary (not a paperback)
Standards and Style: Writing for English Majors
Edith Hamilton -- Mythology

Eng 332-03: American Literature 2
MWR 9:25-10:40

Professor Fiona Paton: patonf@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
This 4-credit survey course covers twentieth-century American literature from the perspectives of modernity and post-modernity. Important social, technological, and artistic changes are linked to some of the most influential and innovative writers of the past 100 years including Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, Tennessee Williams, Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, and Toni Morrison. The multidisciplinary approach includes movie clips, painting, and music and makes extensive use of Blackboard for both online discussion and supporting materials. Through close analysis of texts in class we will test various interpretations and practice the skill of literary argument. Class time will be a combination of open discussion, small group activities, and in-class writing. You will take midterm and final exams consisting of short answer and essay sections, and you will write two papers, one short response piece and a longer research paper. Attendance is required and regular participation is expected.

Required Texts
The Norton Anthology of American Literature Volumes D and E.
A Glossary of Literary Terms by M.H. Abrams (8th edition)

ENG 345-1: Creative Writing Workshop 1
TF 9:45-10:40

ENG 345-2: Creative Writing Workshop 1
MR 12:15-1:30

Laurence Carr, Lecturer: carrl@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
This is an introduction to creative writing where students learn the foundation components of narrative: plot, character, point of view, genre, and theme among other basic writing tools. Students explore their "writer's voice" through a series of writing exercises and short formal assignments. Over the course of the semester, students work on a variety of forms and genres including the memoir, short story, and dramatic scene. Reading selections are matched with each writing form that is studied and are discussed in the sessions. An in-depth poetry unit concentrates on both free and metered verse, as well as readings of both well-known and more obscure published works. All student writing will be critiqued by the Instructor and by peer writers in the class. A final portfolio of student selected work will be presented as part of the final project.

Texts:
Required:
Strunk, William, Jr. and White, E.B.,The Elements of Style 3rd edition or newer, New York: MacMillan, 1979.or a similar style book that is accepted by the Instructor.
Carr, Laurence (editor). Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers, New Paltz: Codhill Press, 2007.
Plus: Readings from the numerous texts and articles, on reserve or e-reserve in the SUNY Library, distributed as handouts, or read aloud in class.

ENG 345-3: Creative Writing Workshop 1
TF 12:15-1:30

Professor Dennis Doherty

Course Description and Objectives
This course explores and practices the forms, traditions, and creative possibilities in the four literary genres (dramatic writing, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry). Along with readings and in-class exercises, students will submit a minimum of 2 poems and 1 prose narrative draft for class workshop. Authors will turn in copies of work for class distribution to be read and critiqued by classmates as REQUIRED HOMEWORK. The following class, authors will read their work aloud, when possible, after which the class will discuss in detail the qualities and weaknesses of each piece. Authors will then respond: defend decisions, field questions and ask them, take suggestions, etc. Classmates MUST also return the work with written comments and a critique sheet to the author. All students are expected to actively participate in the give and take of discussion and the critiquing process. This will be an important aspect of your grade. The course will provide students with an opportunity and constructive atmosphere to rigorously pursue their interest in creative writing; to provide a real-life cross-section audience of instructor and peers to listen and respond to students' work; to hone analytical skills in your own writing by encouraging habitual critical thinking and voicing observations in an open exchange; to promote courage, pride, integrity, imagination, and discipline in writing; to improve writing skills and to deepen students' understanding of the creative genres and their constituent elements; and finally, to study major works from past and contemporary authors to ascertain a feel for the quality, variety, depth, tenor, and general thrusts of top-notch literary prose and poetry."

Required Texts
Telling Stories, Joyce Carol Oates, Ed.
The Making of a Poem, Strand and Boland, Eds.

ENG 345-5: Creative Writing Workshop 1
TF 1:40-2:55

Professor Heinz Insu Fenkl: fenkli@newpaltz.edu

Course Description:
This course is an introduction to creative writing in a variety of forms, including fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry; it is designed for those who wish simply to explore possibilities in creative writing as well as those who are planning to continue on to the upper-level creative writing courses at New Paltz. Students will explore a range of potential modes of expression through writing exercises, focusing on the foundations of each form (with close attention to theories of writing). The first half of the course will emphasize careful analytic reading with particular emphasis on language and structure. The second half of the course is conducted as a writing workshop in which students will read and critique each other's works in class. Students will also revise selected works and assemble a final portfolio by the end of the semester.

Representative Texts:
Selected works on reserve, online, or distributed in class.

ENG 348: Dramatic Writing for Stage and Screen
TF 12:15-1:30

Laurence Carr, Lecturer: carrl@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
Dramatic Writing for Stage and Screen (The Basics): The art, craft and business of dramatic writing are explored through writing exercises, readings, lecture, discussion and student presentations. Writers are mentored through four major projects (the ten-line micro-play, a short one-act, the short film script, and the organization of a major play and feature film. This work focuses upon preparing the student for the competitive film, TV, and theatre markets as well as graduate writing programs. It is not a requirement that the student to take this class before taking the more advanced Craft of Dramatic Writing, but it is recommended.

Texts
(Required) Paging Playwrights, The Basics of Dramatic Writing. A lecture series and organized exercise workbook by Laurence Carr (available at S/A Graphics on campus)

A variety of books and articles on theatre and film will be on both regular and electronic reserve the SUNY library. These can include:
Writing Your First Play by Stephen Sossaman
Take Ten: New Ten Minute Plays edited by Eric Lane and Nina Shengold
Vanguard Voices of the Hudson Valley: New Plays from the SUNY New Paltz Dramatic Writing Program
30 Ten-Minute Plays for Two Actors edited by Dixon, Wegener and Petruska
Writing the Killer Treatment by Michael Halpern
Elements of Style for Screenwriters by Paul Argentini

English 385: Theories of Writing
MR 4:30-5:45

Professor Matt Newcomb

Course Description
This course is designed to aid you in teaching writing at a variety of levels in a research-informed, theoretically-backed, and consciously-chosen manner. The course will provide students with a history of how writing has been taught at various levels (with particular emphasis on secondary schooling). Students will also learn about and practice numerous strategies and approaches to teaching writing. Aspects of teaching writing that the course will focus on include invention (coming up with material or an idea), argument, grammar and style, forms of assessment, lesson planning, connections between reading and writing, research and citation, and narrative. Questions in the course may include, "Does every paper need a thesis?", "How do I deal with all these comma splices?", "What readings should I assign?", "Is there any fair way to grade a paper?", "Should my teaching value the writing process, the product, or both?", and "What kind of writing do students need to know how to do?" Students will be expected to do their own writing, respond to the writing of others, and create writing opportunities and lessons in the course. Readings will mostly be numerous articles about writing and teaching writing-with some student writing samples and other short essays as well. A few potential readings include "The Rhetorical Situation" by Lloyd Bitzer, Errors and Expectations by Mina Shaughnessy, Everyone Can Write by Peter Elbow, The Composing Process of Twelfth Graders by Janet Emig, and current articles from publications such as English Journal.

ENG 393-1: Special Topics: To Hell and Back
TF 1:40-2:55

Instructor Kenneth Moss: mossk@newpaltz.edu

Course Description and Objectives
Intended as a continuation of Great Books West, the first half of the course deals with classical versions of the descent into the underworld, of characters going "to hell and back." Longer selections include Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost, and variations on the Faust legend. The second half offers a challenging shift into modernist re-conceptions foreshadowed by Nietsche, Jung, and relativism and the fiction of Rimbaud, Hesse, Lawrence and Lessing. Discussions seek to clarify issues of responsibility, judgment, punishment and possible redemption that continue to color our view of ourselves and "the enemy." Discussions and papers will focus on our most fundamental memes: forbidden knowledge; selling one's soul; sanity in an insane world; the divided self. Learner-active strategies will be employed throughout including independent research, presentations and workbooks. Relevant art and music will augment the journey.

Required texts available at the Campus Bookstore
The Inferno, Vintage Classics
Paradise Lost, Norton Critical Edition
Faust (part one), Penguin classics
A Season in Hell, New Dimensions Paperback
Demian, Dover Thrift Editions
The Man Who Died, the ECCO Press
Briefing for a Descent into Hell, Flamingo Press
Additional material will be made available on Blackboard
Standards and Styles or MLA handbook

ENG 393-2: The Chinese Novel
MR 12:15-1:30

Professor Andrew Schonebaum

Course Description
The Chinese Novel is at once a survey of the most popular novels in the world, considering that China is the world's longest continuous civilization, and also a survey of books that have often been banned and censored. Most of these books are still unavailable in Chinese on the mainland, but have been rendered faithfully into English. We will read classics of martial arts fiction, erotica and the quotidian from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as contemporary novels of political and social commentary from little-known authors who may be the next Nobel-prize winners. We will also consider the definition of the "novel" and which critical approaches translate to non-western cultures. We will also read some traditional Chinese literary criticism. We will read The Carnal Prayer Mat, Notes of a Desolate Man, Wolf Totem and portions of The Story of the Stone, Plum in the Golden Vase, The Three Kingdoms and Outlaws of the Marsh.

ENG 393-3: Literatures of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands
MR 4:30-5:45

Instructor Claire Hero: heroc@newpaltz.edu

Course Description and Objectives:
Peter Carey's recent novel True History of the Kelly Gang begins with an epigraph from William Faulkner which might be seen as an epigraph for all Australasian texts: "The past is not dead. It is not even past." From the penal colonies of Australia to the planned Protestant communities of New Zealand to the imagined tropical paradise of the Pacific Islands, Australasia has often been remade by Europeans in the image of their own culture, and yet native cultures and ecosystems have over and over challenged their assumed sovereignty. In this course we will explore the ways in which the colonial past remains present by juxtaposing colonial texts with postcolonial texts, examining the way the past is shaped by and in turn shapes each generation's, and each ethnicity's, sense of national identity. We will also consider the way in which gender, class and ethnicity impact upon traditional aspects of literature such as narration, form and genre. This course will begin with a firm foundation in a history of Australasia, but will come to emphasize literature as the most compelling historical record of this complex region.

Required Texts, all available at the Campus Bookstore
Carey, Peter. True History of the Kelly Gang
Duff, Alan. Once Were Warriors
Edelson, Phyllis Fahrie, ed. Australian Literature: An Anthology of Writing from the Land Down Under
Figiel, Sia. Where We Once Belonged
Flanagan, Richard. Gould's Book of Fish
Frame, Janet. Owls Do Cry
Stevenson, Robert Louis. South Sea Tales
Sullivan, Robert. Star Waka
Text selections on electronic reserve

ENG 399: Understanding Poetry
M 6:00-8:40 p.m.

Professor Joann Deiudicibus: deiudicj@newpaltz.edu

Course Description and Objectives
This is a one credit modular course meeting once a week over five weeks. A different lecturer and/or performer will conduct each class. Thus, students will be exposed to a variety of poetic forms and literary movements, a variety of ways of looking at the genre, and the possibilities that poetry can explore, from the effect of both lyric and narrative poems (and songs), to the power of brief, epigrammatic forms, to the influence of the ballad tradition and beyond. Students will see that there is no one agreed-upon definition for what poetry is, but will perhaps hone a clearer sense of what poetry is for them, as individuals, and how it may remain relevant in and coalesce with contemporary, media-dominated culture. Here we hope to reclaim poetry as an art beyond the English class, one of music, laughter, meditation, storytelling, political and social critique, and as communal text. Please note: this modular course will not provide an overview of all poetic sub-genres, forms, and movements. It will include only basic prosody.

Requirements: Students write one paper, typed, of 3-4 pages, in response to any of the performances or lectures, or an aspect of combined lectures/performances. Grades are pass/fail.

Attendance: More than one unexcused absence will result in failure.

400-level courses

ENG 404-1: Medieval Literature
MR 1:40-2:55

Professor Daniel Kempton: kemptond@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
The title of this course refers to literature written before 1500 in either Old or Middle English. It is a vast body of work that cannot be covered in its entirety in a single semester, and we will therefore focus upon a particular topic, or pair of related topics: translation of the Bible and representation of the Church in medieval literature. We will see that the Bible, though the foundational text of the medieval period, was freely appropriated and imaginatively recreated in literature, from the epic treatment of biblical episodes in Anglo-Saxon poetry, where spiritual heroes resemble Beowulf, to the dramatic realization of Christian history in fifteenth-century mystery cycles, where biblical characters resemble next-door neighbors. The Church was the dominant institution of the middle ages, but by the end of the period it had become an object of wide-spread criticism, and we will study Chaucer's ecclesiastical satire in the Canterbury Tales, as well as popular anti-clericalism in such works as Margery Kempe's Book.

Texts
From the Anglo-Saxon period texts will include Dream of the Rood, Judith, Elene, Genesis A and B; from the Middle English period texts will include Patience (by the author of Sir Gawain), excerpts from Margery Kempe's Book, excerpts from the York mystery cycle, and selections from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (e.g., Wife of Bath's Prologue, Pardoner's Prologue and Tale, Friar's Tale, Summoner's Tale, Nun's Priest's Tale, Prioress's Tale). We will also read the biblical texts upon which these vernacular works are based.

ENG 406-1: Shakespeare 1
MR 10:50-12:05

Professor Thomas Festa: festat@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
This course is a survey of the works of Shakespeare, and as such we will read some of his early narrative and lyric poetry along with a variety of plays that span his entire career in the theater. Although this is a 400-level course, the discussion will offer something of an introductory emphasis in the hope that this will lead to a more profound engagement with Shakespeare’s language and culture and therefore with the author’s works. You are welcome to take this course even if you have already taken Shakespeare 2 (407). We will proceed according to a rough chronology in order to facilitate the growth of a sense of the scale and nature of Shakespeare’s accomplishment. Along the way, we will challenge the normative claims about his thought and art that have circulated since their creation through careful readings as well as screenings of select performances on film and stage. I hope that the course will challenge you to think hard about what it means to read well and deeply, and this entails developing an appreciation of the various contexts in which these amazing works were written, performed, and variously conceived.

Required text
The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al., 2^nd ed. (2008).

ENG 406-2: Shakespeare 1
TF 10:50-12:05

Professor Cyrus Mulready: mulreadc@newpaltz.edu

Course Description and Objectives:
This course will offer students an in-depth look at the drama and poetry of Shakespeare and the culture of his early modern England. We will read a wide range of plays and poetry as we consider Shakespeare's canon in all of its stunning variety: from teasing love poetry to political thrillers, piercing revenge tales to moving stories of mercy and forgiveness. Texts will likely include The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, Othello, Richard III, Hamlet, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, and selections from the Sonnets. Lectures, discussions and writing assignments will focus on helping students gain a rich knowledge and comprehension of Shakespeare's language, how his plays were performed, and the scholarly criticism that it has inspired. Along the way, we will also find opportunity to probe the deeper social questions raised by his plays. How should a society treat people of different races and classes? Are gender and sexuality like actors' roles, parts to be learned and played? When is vengeance (and the violence that inevitably accompanies it) morally justifiable? We will also look at several modern performances of Shakespeare's plays as we consider the continued popularity and influence of Shakespearean drama in our own time. Course requirements include a short critical essay, a longer final essay, reading quizzes, a group performance, and a midterm and final exam. No previous coursework on Shakespeare is necessary or expected for students enrolled in the course.

Required Texts, all available at the Campus Bookstore
The Norton Shakespeare (1st or 2nd Edition)
Standards & Style
Text selections on electronic reserve

Optional Text
The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare (2nd Edition)

ENG 407-1: Shakespeare 2
TF 9:25-10:40

ENG 407-2: Shakespeare 2
TF 8-9:15

Instructor: Tina Iraca

Course Description
This course will examine a variety of Shakespeare's plays and explore the cultural contexts in which they were produced. We will consider how themes such as love, power, weakness, villainy, obsession and/or rebellion weave their way through these texts. We will pay particular attention to the plays as poetry, as works of art that exploit the full resources of language. Shakespeare's drama depicts men and women in a world of radically shifting structures and values. Within the limits set by their world, Shakespeare's characters must create meaning and value. Above all, Shakespeare's plays profoundly inform us about our own humanity. We will study and discuss the plays closely, read scenes aloud (actors rejoice!!) and view film adaptations. We will write critically about the plays in unique ways, exploring the gap between Shakespeare's language and modern translation, as well as trying our own hands at crafting scenes that we imagine to precede Shakespeare's opening acts.

Text:
The Riverside Shakespeare, Second Edition, Houghton Mifflin is my anthology of choice, but you may use any collection or series of works.

Suggested Texts
Diana Hacker's Rules for Writers
Joseph Gilbaldi's MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers

ENG 417: The Romantics--Romanticism & Revolution
TF 12:15-1:30

Professor Jackie George

Course Description
The Romantic Era, 1780-1830 (or so), was one of great ferment, both politically and in the arts. In this class we will look in detail at the philosophical ideas accompanying and sometimes propagating the great revolutions that made America into an independent republic and toppled the monarchy in France. We will also examine several revolutions in literary form: the overturning of poetic conventions and turn to the ”ordinary”; the ballad and sonnet revivals; politically radical fiction; the assault in literature on British colonialism and imperialism. Finally, we will consider the ways in which British Romantic writers conceived of their own, internal revolutions and renewals of self via the production and reading of literature. Our driving questions in this course will include: How do formal and political innovations go together? What is the relationship between literature and subjectivity? What does it mean to call a piece of literature “Romantic”?

Course requirements will include regular attendance; active participation; written responses; two literary critical essays; a final exam; and a group presentation.

ENG 418: Victorian Literature: Victorian Environments
MR 1:40-2:55

Professor Jed Mayer

Course Description
One of the more exciting recent developments in literary study has been the practice of reading texts as records of natural environments. In this course we will survey many of the major works of Victorian literature with an eye towards the ways in which they reflect nineteenth-century environmental values. This period is a particularly rich one for "eco-critical" approaches to literature. The Victorians witnessed a number of significant transformations in their environment, from the emergence of railroads and automated factories to intensive farming and urban sprawl. At the same time, natural history study became a popular pursuit and the first animal welfare and environmental advocacy groups were formed in this period. In response to these changes, Victorian literature becomes a zone of ecological conflict, articulating a variety of competing values and ideas. In the works of a wide range of novelists, poets, and social critics such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lewis Carroll, William Morris, Christina Rossetti, and Thomas Hardy, as well as in the writings of natural historians of the nineteenth century, including Charles Darwin and T.H. Huxley, we will explore the multiplicity of Victorian Environments embodied in literature.

ENG 419: Twentieth-Century British Literature
MR 3:05-4:20

Professor Vicki Tromanhauser: tromanhv@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
The catastrophic violence of the First World War signaled a cultural upheaval that threatened to topple many of Britain’s entrenched institutions and prompted heated debates over its class system, imperial ambitions, and gender hierarchy. These lively debates extended well into the decades that followed, inspiring a period of tremendous literary production and experimentation. Britain’s writers seized upon this climate of crisis and introduced formal innovations across all genres, including poetry, memoir, the short story, drama, and the novel. This course aims to reproduce the vital contest of ideas that took shape during the first half of the twentieth century. To this end, we will place special emphasis on modernism, the period’s dominant aesthetic movement, whose fanatical obsession with its own novelty led writers to sacrifice the old on the altar of the new in an effort to demonstrate their departure from preceding traditions. We will examine several themes central to British literature during this period, including: empire and social hierarchy, World War I and commemoration, violence and psychological trauma, sexuality and the unconscious, industry and urban life. The course also aims to help you hone your skills in literary analysis, conduct research on focused topics, and develop
historically informed arguments about the literature of the period.

Texts for the Fall 2008 semester may include
P. G. Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves (1925)
Pat Barker, Regeneration (1991)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
James Joyce, Dubliners (1914)
Samuel Beckett, Endgame (1958)
Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955)
Selected poetry (Great War poets, Eliot, Yeats, Auden), short stories (Lawrence), and autobiography (Orwell, Wyndham Lewis) on Blackboard.

ENG 423-1: 20th-Century Literary Criticism
MR 3:05 - 4:20 p.m.

Professor Nancy E. Johnson

Course Description and Objectives
The goal of this course is to introduce students to the major schools of literary theory and criticism of the twentieth century. These schools of theory include Russian Formalism, New Criticism, Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Gender Theory, Structuralism, Postmodernism and Postcolonialism. All theoretical readings will come from the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, a collection of essays and excerpts from major theoretical texts. The readings are interdisciplinary, gleaned from aesthetics, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, political and transnational theory. A secondary goal will be to begin to apply these theories to literary texts. We will consider how literary theory broadens, deepens and complicates our readings of literature. Literary readings will be available online.

Required Texts
Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism

English 436: Nineteenth Century American Fiction
MR 3:05-4:20

Instructor: Fred Anderson

Course Description and Objectives
The Nineteenth Century saw the ‘flowering' and maturation of American literature. We shook off our literary and intellectual dependence on Europe, and developed our own literature, based on American models and conditions. The first two thirds of the century saw the development of American Romantic literature, culminating in the American Renaissance. Following the War of Northern Aggression, American Literary Realism appeared on the scene, followed by its offspring, Naturalism and Literary Impressionism. In this course we will study representative fiction of Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism, as well as a number of sub-genres such as the Gothic, Regionalism or Local Color, the International Novel, Southern Literature, Western Literature, the Novel of Manners, and the Urban Novel, as they developed during the years between the beginning of the century and the first War of American Imperialism.

Required Texts:
Brown, Charles Brockden, Wieland
Clemens, Samuel( aka Mark Twain). A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court
Crane, Stephen. Maggie
Garland, Hamlin. Main Traveled Roads
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House of the Seven Gables
Howells, William Dean, A Hazard of New Fortunes
James, Henry. What Maggie Knew
Melville, Herman, Moby Dick
Nagel, James, and Tom Quirk, Eds. The Portable American Realism Reader
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Composition Program Handbook
All except the Nagel and the Poe may be downloaded from Gutenberg Project at http://www.gutenberg.org

ENG 445-1: Creative Writing Workshop 2
MR 9:25-10:40

Laurence Carr, Lecturer: carrl@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
This second level creative writing course continues the work begun in Creative Writing I, and explores the various forms of narrative and poetry. Students will write micro-fiction, memoir, short story, dramatic monologues and scenes and poetry in both free verse and structured forms. Lectures on the components of creative writing will be delivered by the Lecturer throughout the semester. Greater emphasis is given to analysis of readings, group work, peer critiquing and oral presentation, all of which will be a major part of the student's assessment. A final portfolio of the semester's work will constitute the final project. This class prepares the student writer for the higher level craft classes in fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and dramatic writing.

Texts:
Required Texts:
Strunk, William, Jr. and White, E.B.,The Elements of Style 3rd edition or newer, New York: MacMillan, 1979 or a similar style book that is accepted by the Instructor
Carr, Laurence (editor). Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers, New Paltz: Codhill Press, 2007.

Plus: Readings from the following texts, on reserve or e-reserve in the SUNY Library, distributed as handouts, or read aloud in class, such as:
Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. New York: Vintage/Randon House, 1983.
Forster, E.M. Aspects of the Novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1927, 1954 (or later edition)
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones. Boston: Shambhala, 1986 (or other editions).
Bernays, Anne and Pamela Painter. What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers. New York: Harper Collins, 1995.
Bishop, Wendy. Thirteen Ways of Looking for a Poem: A Guide to Writing Poetry. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.

ENG 445-2: Creative Writing Workshop 2
TF 9:25-10:40

Professor Dennis Doherty: dohertyd@newpaltz.edu

Course Description and Objectives
This is Creative Writing 2, second in a 4-class sequence. As such, a high level of motivation and engagement is expected, and writing will be judged at a higher standard than the introductory course. During the semester, students considering moving on to major or minor in creative writing should keep an eye toward compiling a portfolio of their best work for review and acceptance into the program, and into the next course in the program, a genre-specific craft course. Creative Writing 2 continues work in the four creative genres (dramatic writing,fiction, nonfiction, poetry). Readings and exercises will be given in all the genres, and students will workshop both poetry and prose. The course will provide students with an opportunity to further pursue their interest in creative writing through a real-life cross-section audience of instructor and peers to listen and respond to students' work; to hone analytical skills in students'own writing by encouraging habitual critical thinking and voicing observations in an open exchange; to promote courage, pride, integrity, imagination, and discipline in writing; to improve writing skills and to deepen understanding of the creative genres and their constituent elements; and finally, to study major works from past and contemporary authors to ascertain a feel for the quality, variety, depth, tenor, and general thrusts of top-notch literary prose and poetry.

Required Texts
Doubletakes, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Ed.
Poems.Poets.Poetry, Helen Vendler, Ed.

ENG 450-1: Seminar in Poetry
MW 9:25-10:40

Professor Pauline Uchmanowicz

Course Description
The seminar surveys poetry by contemporary authors who have earned the honorific "Poet Laureate of the United States" in recognition of their outstanding achievement in the literary arts. In reading the poems, we will think critically and write about contexts (including author biographies), themes, literary influences (including world poetry), and literary styles (e.g., symbolism, hermeticism, surrealism, meta-poetry, ordinary-language poetry, New Formalism, etc.) by considering prosody and applying poetics. We also will explore approaches to teaching poetry and poetry writing.

Required Texts
Collins, Billy. Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems. New York:
Random House, 2001.
• Poet Laureate of the United States, 2001-2003
Glück, Louise. The First Four Books of Poems. New York: Ecco, 1995.
• Poet Laureate of the United States, 2003-2004
Simic, Charles. My Noiseless Entourage. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2005.
• Poet Laureate of the United States, 2007-2008
Others: TBA

ENG451-1: Senior Seminar--American Literature of the 1960s
MR 12:15-1:30 pm.
Professor Fiona Paton: patonf@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
Senior Seminar is an advanced course for English Liberal Arts majors in their senior year. The course provides advanced training in research methods and extensive practice in developing and drafting high-quality research papers. The topic of this section is "Voices of Dissent: American Literature of the 1960s." You will read a wide variety of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama, while also sampling the visual arts, music, and film of the decade. We will debate the goals and achievements of various social movements (such as civil rights, feminism, gay rights, environmentalism) and their representation in the literature of the period. Writers studied include Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Sylvia Plath, Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, Gary Snyder, and Rachel Carson. Course requirements include regular participation in Blackboard's online discussion forum, a research bibliography, a research paper, and an oral report. Attendance is required and regular participation is expected.

Required Texts
The Portable Sixties Reader (Penguin 2003)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers

ENG 451-2: Senior Seminar--Humanism in Contemporary American Literature
W 12:15-2:55

Professor Mary Holland: hollandm@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
If you have read much postmodern fiction, or read about it, you might think of it as at best a collection of word games and ruminations on the inability of language to say anything except that nothing is real or true. You might also have noticed that postmodern literature rarely seems to be about anything, in the way that traditional novels are about things that matter to us, like love, family, and earnest self-discovery. But there’s a lot more going on in language-obsessed novels than wordplay, and many more traditional concerns and story lines than this literature gets credit for. Furthermore, literature of the last few years doesn’t even hide its earnest, loving heart in mind-bending examinations of the failure of language anymore. It remains mindbending, to be sure, but it uses its postmodern, hypertextual, fragmented narrative structures to ask the same questions that literature has been asking throughout the ages: how do we communicate with each other and build viable communities in today’s world? How do we live and love well? What does it mean to be human? In beginning to answer these questions, this course will consider some of the most exciting, innovative, and enjoyable prose fiction of the last twenty-five years. Noticing the very different answers offered by literature of the 80s and 90s versus that of the last few years, it will also ask whether “postmodern” is even an accurate description of our literature today, or whether something so new is happening that we need another period designation entirely. All the while we will be concentrating on notions of humanism from the past and present, and staying alert to how these texts adopt and adapt notions of humanism and the human in increasingly bold and clear ways. At bottom, this course will ask what the novels itself are asking today: not what and whether can we know, but how do we believe?

Informing our readings of novels will be excerpts of philosophical, cultural, and sociological perspectives on language and humanism, as well as critical essays on the novels. One practical goal of the seminar will be discovering effective methods of finding, evaluating, and using secondary material to support one’s own textual argument. To this end, we will discuss these secondary materials in class in detail, analyzing them for effectiveness, and learning from what we read how to write our own useful critical analyses of literature.

Required Texts
Danielewski, Mark. House of Leaves (2000)
DeLillo, Don. The Names (1982)
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Homes A. E. Music for Torching (1999)
Tomasula, Steve. The Book of Portraiture (2006)
Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest (1996)
Critical and theoretical essays and excerpts available via Blackboard

ENG 452-01: The Craft of Fiction
TF 4:30-5:45

Professor Heinz Insu Fenkl: fenkli@newpaltz.edu

Course Description:
This is a prose writing workshop in fiction and creative nonfiction, so it means you will be doing a significant amount of writing throughout the semester. Although not all of it will be "finished," you should be prepared write approximately 50 pages of narrative, not including what you will do in your journals and for your exercises. Writing, of course, is not done in a vacuum. You will also be doing a great deal of reading for this class-close and careful reading- which you will be expected to discuss intelligently and constructively. Through close engagement with literary works from a range of sources, you will be learning to read "deeply" and to apply the insights you gain in your own writing and in the discussion of your classmates' works. Because the exact nature and pace of this class will be determined by its particular make-up in any given semester, we will not have a formally scheduled syllabus. The timetable we follow is the workshop schedule, which will be established after the first three weeks. For the first quarter of this course, you will be doing writing exercises and assigned readings, both of which will be topics of discussion in class. During the last three quarters of the course, the class will be run as a primarily as writing workshop, focusing on student works. At the end of the course, you will have written an analytic review and three prose pieces, one of which will be ready to submit to a national literary journal.

Representative Texts:
Best American Short Stories (various eds.)
Narrative Design (Madison Smartt Bell, ed.)
Other texts to be distributed in class.

ENG 454: The Craft of Creative Nonfiction
MR 10:50-12:05

Professor Jan Schmidt

Course Description
This course will focus on approaches to, theories of, and the craft of the personal essay, memoir and creative nonfiction. The course will begin with an examination of classic personal essays, autobiographical texts, and a critical study of the form. It will move to a discussion of autobiography and memoir and culminate in an exploration of forms of contemporary, creative nonfiction. The course also will treat techniques of creative nonfiction and focus on such elements of the genre as point of view, perspective, tone, use of descriptive detail, literary elements, narrative and multi-genre forms, traditional and experimental postmodern structures of the essay. Finally, the course will treat forms of creative nonfiction: the personal essay, autobiography, profiles of people and places, cultural memoir and/or critique, nature, travel, and community writing, literary journalism, and experimental, hybrid texts (for example, those that mix prose and poetry or visual and verbal elements).

Selected Texts
Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard eds., Writing Creative Nonfiction
Robert L. Root Jr. and Michael Steinberg, eds. The Fourth Genre
Selected Essays on Blackboard

Note: Students will select at least one full-length work from a selected list of memoirs, volumes of personal essays, cultural criticism, literary journalism, nature or travel writing during the last weeks of the semester. In addition, students will be asked to read selections from contemporary magazines and online journals.

ENG 460: Classic Juvenile Fantasy Literature
TF 12:15-1:30

Professor Fiona Paton: patonf@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
This course has been designed with English Education majors in mind, but it is also open to English Liberal Arts majors as an elective. We will read a wide range of
classic fantasy for children and young adults from the Victorian period to the present, including The Princess and the Goblin by G. MacDonald, Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone by J.K. Rowling, The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman, and Tithe by Holly Black. Scholarly and theoretical articles will be paired with the primary texts on Blackboard. Class discussion will focus on both literary technique and content, with some attention given to the psychology of young readers and the role of fantasy in childhood development. Course requirements include a short interview paper, a research paper, midterm and final exams, and regular participation in class discussion.

ENG 465: Young Adult Literature
MR 1:40-2:55

Professor Jan Schmidt

Course Description
The course will focus on major genres and forms of young adult literature. It will include such classic, traditional works as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird as well as such contemporary works as Gene Yang’s graphic novel, American Born Chinese and Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. The course will introduce students to major authors, genres, and trends in young adult literature as well as psychological, developmental issues for adolescents and approaches to literacy learning and reading and writing instruction in the middle and high school. Another objective of the course will be to develop students’ competence in analyzing and evaluating fictional and nonfictional texts for young adults in a variety of formats including print, visual and electronic media. Students also will be responsible for creating an online Young Adult Literature project, an online resource that will present selected, short reviews of works from representative genres including classic literature; historical fiction; modern fantasy, horror, and science fiction; contemporary realistic fiction; memoir and biography; and graphic novels and ideas for teaching. The course will be organized according to the following thematic topics, drawn from the Facing History curriculum: concepts of identity, visions of self and other, issues of difference, conformity and obedience, stages of the Holocaust, and visions of resistance and activism. Several works of Holocaust literature will be included: Elie Wiesel’s Night, Jane Yolen’s The Devil’s Arithmetic, Art Spiegelman’s MAUS I and MAUS II, and Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief.

Graduate Courses

ENG 500-1: English Proseminar
T 6-8:40 p.m.

Professor Michelle Woods: woods@newpaltz.edu

Course Description and Objectives
In this course we will focus on the practice of close reading of literary texts, beginning with the novel, then a range of poetic forms, drama, and the short story. To do this, we will also look at modern and contemporary literary theories as we approach different texts. Material will cover literature in translation as well as English-language texts, and is likely to include writing by: Milan Kundera, Ralph Ellison, James Joyce, Jean Rhys, Shakespeare, Petrarch, Gwendolyn Brooks, Seamus Heaney, Sergei Esenin, Anna Akhmatova, Sylvia Plath, Isak Dinesen, Franz Kafka, Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett. The aim of the course is to enable students to become sophisticated readers of the texts who will be able to parse open texts at a close level but also connect this close reading with wider historical and social issues.

ENG 500-2: English Proseminar
M 6-8.40 p.m.

Professor Thomas Olsen: olsent@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
The Proseminar is the English Department's introduction to graduate studies, a required course designed to acquaint students, as early as possible in their graduate careers, with the fundamental principles and practices of advanced English Studies. In this section we will begin by practicing close analysis of poetry, prose fiction, prose non-fiction, and drama; in class discussions we will work together on the approaches and techniques of close reading, and you will put your knowledge into practice in short, focused assignments and in longer exploratory essays. In addition, the course will introduce other essential skills for success in graduate studies: systematic literary research using online and print resources, MLA-style documentation and formatting, abstracting techniques, and writing conventions in the discipline of English Studies. Throughout the semester we will also read a selection of critical essays illustrative of influential critical methodologies and theoretical positions. In sum, the course is designed to give students the methods, practice, understanding, and self-confidence necessary for success in our graduate program.

Texts for the Fall 2008 semester are still to be determined but representative works may include
William Shakespeare, The Sonnets (selections)
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
An extensive selection of lyric poetry, short fiction, and prose passages (available on Blackboard)

ENG 505: Shakespeare and the Critics: 1592-2008
R 6-8:40 p.m.

Professor Cyrus Mulready: mulreadc@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
Hamlet is neurotic. The overt homoeroticism of the Sonnets was scandalous in Shakespeare's time. Prospero is an avatar for Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a genius. Shakespeare could not have written his plays. What are the origins of some of our most enduring ideas about Shakespeare and his art? In our survey of Shakespeare's major works we will take up this question as we examine the significant trends in Shakespearean criticism over the past 400 years-from neoclassicism and Romantic criticism to psychoanalysis and New Historicism. Participants will explore how the work of criticism has shaped the way we understand Shakespeare's plays and poetry. To what extent do we read Shakespeare through the lens of his critics and editors? How has Shakespeare been adapted through history to fit the artistic, theoretical, political, or ideological climate of a given place and time? We will also ground our study in a thorough consideration of how Shakespeare's drama and poetry were produced in their time, and what kinds of critical responses his work generated in early modern London. Texts for the course will likely include selections from Shakespeare's Sonnets, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Richard II, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, The Merchant of Venice, and The Taming of the Shrew. Course requirements will include two short critical essays, a longer research paper and annotated bibliography, vigorous class participation, and a final exam.

Required Texts, all available at the Campus Bookstore
The Norton Shakespeare (1st or 2nd Edition)
The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare (2nd Edition)
MLA Handbook or Standards & Style
Critical selections on electronic reserve

ENG 507: Seventeenth-Century English Literature
R 6:00-8:40 p.m.

Professor Thomas Festa: festat@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
God, sex, death, drinking, politics, law, vengeance, madness, and science: these are the topics obsessively revisited in the literature of the seventeenth century. Before winding up in the so-called Age of Reason, the seventeenth century witnessed political upheaval and religious transformation on an unprecedented scale—so much so that the century has, with some justice, been deemed “early modern.” This course seeks to chart the rise of a new style of selfhood and its accompanying sensibility about literature in seventeenth-century England by uniting the study of ideas with the close study of texts. Much of the semester will be spent reading the poets of the so-called Metaphysical school in the light not only of key stylistic and generic innovations, but also of the scientific, religious, and juridical contexts of the age. We will place emphasis on the experimental quality of English thought in poetry, prose, and drama, all the while working toward redefining the traditions within which and against which identities might be constructed in the period. The historical and theoretical aspects of the period will also receive emphasis through selected secondary reading to accompany our main texts.

Texts for Fall 2008 may include
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Thomas Middleton, The Revenger’s Tragedy
John Donne, Poems and Selected Prose
Sir Thomas Browne, Selected Prose
Poetry of George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan, Ben Jonson, Katherine Philips, Robert Herrick, John Wilmot (2^nd earl of Rochester), John Dryden, and others.

ENG 515: Modern Theories of Writing
T 6-8:40 p.m.

Professor Matt Newcomb

Course Description
This course will both prepare you to teach writing in a theoretically-informed way and involve you in contemporary research and conversations about writing, composition, and rhetoric. While the course will cover some key historical figures for composition studies (Aristotle, Plato, Quintilian), the majority of the time will be spent on key debates and issues in the field of composition studies as it has existed since the first Conference on College Composition and Communication in the middle of the twentieth century. Those topics will likely include (but are not limited to) the rhetorical situation, theories of argument, the role of composition courses, assessment concerns, new technologies and writing, the role of the author, approaches to grammar and style, public and cultural aspects of writing, and writing across the curriculum. Many readings will be key journal articles and academic books from the last several decades. Students will also gain a larger historical understanding of the movements within composition studies and will be encouraged to develop and try alternative theories and strategies in their writing and in their teaching of writing. Students will enact their own research into the field of composition and will prepare materials for teaching writing as well (such as lesson plans, syllabi, textbook reviews, and/or assignment sheets). Authors students can expect to find in the course include (but again are not limited to) Peter Elbow, David Bartholomae, Janet Emig, Sharon Crowley, Mina Shaughnessy, Kenneth Bruffee, Donald Stewart, Lester Faigley, Marie Secor, and James Berlin.

ENG 524-1: Virginia Woolf
W 4:30-7:10

Professor Stella Deen: deenm@newpaltz.edu

Course Description and Objectives
This course will engage us in intensive study of one of the most important twentieth-century writers. We will supplement our study of Virginia Woolf's major novels and essays with biographical material (including Woolf's memoirs), with selected criticism of Woolf's works, and with brief samples of her own reading. Our study will concentrate on Woolf's development of fictional forms to capture "reality"; on her influential feminist manifestos; on her relation to literary tradition; and on her engagement with contemporary artists, writers, and thinkers.

Representative Texts, all available at the Campus Bookstore
The Voyage Out
Jacob's Room
Mrs. Dalloway
To the Lighthouse
A Room of One's Own
Orlando
The Waves
Three Guineas
Between the Acts
Moments of Being
Text selections on electronic reserve

ENG 576: Studies in 18th-Century English Literature
R 6:00 - 8:40 p.m.

Professor Nancy E. Johnson

Course Description and Objectives
The goal of this course is to study the English novel of the later eighteenth century in the context of sentimentalism and sensibility. We will trace the development of sentimentalism from the philosophy of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson to its emergence in the novel, beginning with Richardson's Pamela, Mackenzie's Man of Feeling, and Walpole's gothic novel Castle of Otranto. We will then consider the shift from sentimentalism to sensibility in novels such as Burney's Evelina, Wollstonecraft's Wrongs of Woman and Austen's Sense and Sensibility. The latter texts, in particular, will be read in the context of late eighteenth-century history. In addition to the novels, we will be reading theoretical texts and literary criticism on sentimentalism and sensibility.

Required Texts (*the following list is subject to change; specific editions TBA)
Samuel Richardson, Pamela
Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey
Horace Walpole, Castle of Otranto
Frances Burney, Evelina
Mary Wollstonecraft, Wrongs of Woman: or, Maria
Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

ENG 577 Studies in English Romanticism
T 6-8:40 p.m.

Professor Robert Waugh: waughr@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
This course will be a study in the works of William Blake and John Keats, as poets in whom the gradual unfolding of psychic individuation, always complicating itself and darkening, proceeds unabated from their early works to their late works. In Blake, besides such works as Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, we will especially spend time looking at his late prophetic works, The Four Valas, Milton, and Jerusalem, as he energetically complicates his system. In Keats we will look at his growth through the sonnets to the odes and his major works of narrative speculation, Sleep and Poetry and I Stood Tip-toe, Endymion, Isabella; or The Pot of Basil, St. Agnes' Eve, Lamia, Hyperion, and The Fall of Hyperion, a Dream.

ENG 585: Studies in Contemporary Criticism
M 6-8:40

Professor Daniel Kempton: kemptond@newpaltz.edu

Course Description
This course will address the idea of the subject in contemporary theory. The term subject is used to cover, or displace, such familiar words as self and individual. We will begin by reviewing the humanist idea of the subject as an autonomous and undivided self who is the bearer of consciousness, source of meaning, and possessor of agency. Turning to contemporary theory, we will find that the subject is no longer understood as a free individual but as the object of constitutive historical, psychological, and/or semiotic forces. Of particular interest will be the possibility offered within each theoretical discourse for resistance on the part of the subject to the forces that construct it. We will study the theological subject (Augustine), the enlightenment subject (Descartes, Rousseau), the materialist subject (Marx, Althusser, Foucault), the gendered subject (Freud, Irigaray, Wittig), the poststructural subject (Saussure, Barthes, Derrida), and the hybrid subject (Anzaldúa, Bhabha).

Texts will include:
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera
Augustine, Confessions
Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes
René Descartes, Discourse on Method
Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis and New Introductory Lectures
Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions
Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind

ENG 593-1: The Bible and Literature
W 6-8:40 p.m.

Professor Christopher Link

Course Description
This course is an intensive, graduate-level introduction to the critical, comparative study of the Bible and literature. Through close reading of primary texts and key secondary critical literature, students will examine a number of literary-critical approaches to the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Students will also consider a selection of literary texts inspired by biblical themes, characters, and situations, including works by Milton, Blake, D.H. Lawrence, Flannery O'Connor, and others. Graduate students with little or no previous knowledge of the Bible will find the course a useful introduction to this important cornerstone of Western culture and literature. All students-including those with more advanced knowledge of the Bible-will be invited to consider complex matters of textual and intertextual interpretation. The course is conducted as a seminar with lecture material; a significant degree of student participation is expected in weekly discussions and individual student presentations are conducted throughout the term.

(Representative) Required Texts
The New Oxford Annotated Bible (with the Apocrypha), 3rd Edition, New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
D.H. Lawrence, The Man Who Died
John Milton, The Complete Poetry (ed. John T. Shawcross)
Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)
Additional selections, including critical essays, poems, and excerpts, are posted on Blackboard.

ENG 593-2: Postcolonial and Transnational Literature
T 4:30-7:10

Professor Heather Hewett

Course Description
The field of Anglophone postcolonial and transnational literary studies examines the diverse range of English-language texts emerging out of disparate regions around the world. While the framework of postcolonial studies emphasizes the common history of EuroAmerican colonization shared by many nations, the term "transnational" suggests the ways in which literary production and reception is an increasingly global affair that surpasses national boundaries. In this course, we will examine 20th and 21st century literary and filmic works produced in postcolonial and transnational contexts. We will explore some of the major questions and debates raised by postcolonial and transnational literature and theory, including literary canon formation; strategies of representation; the choice of written language; political and aesthetic strategies of resistance and decolonization; the impact of globalization, migration, and diasporic communities on identity formation; the role of cosmopolitan urban centers; and the implications of a globalized publishing landscape for literary production, circulation, and reception.

Texts for Fall 2008 may include
Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
Assia Djebar, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
Nuruddin Farah, Maps
Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
Chris Abani, GraceLand
Dinaw Mengestu, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictée
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones
Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust

State University of New York at New Paltz: Department of English

Course Descriptions for FALL 2008