200-level Courses 
ENG 200-1: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
Jackie George
ENG 200-2: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
Mary Holland
ENG 200-3: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
Mary Fakler
ENG 200-4: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
Mary Fakler
ENG 200-5: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
Amelia Rose
ENG 200-6: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
Robert Singleton
ENG 200-7: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
Amelia Rose
ENG 205-1: General Honors English 1
Harry Stoneback
ENG 205-2: General Honors English 1
Kathena DeGrassi
ENG 205-3: General Honors English 1
Kathena DeGrassi
ENG 206-1: General Honors English 2
Jeanne Stauffer-Merle
ENG 206-2: General Honors English 2
Rudolf Kossmann
ENG 206-3: General Honors English 2
Rudolf Kossmann
ENG 210-1: Great Books Western
Kenneth Moss
ENG 210-2: Great Books Western
Marlis Paffenroth
ENG 210-3: Great Books Western
Marlis Paffenroth
ENG 211-1: Great Books Asian Classics
Andrew Schonebaum
ENG 224-1: Expository Writing
Lauren Yanks
ENG 224-2: Expository Writing
Goretti Vianney-Benca
ENG 224-3: Expository Writing
Doris McCabe
ENG 224-4: Expository Writing
Lauren Yanks
ENG 226-1: Practical Grammar
Doris McCabe
ENG 230-1: Women in Literature
Abigail Robin
ENG 230-2: Women in Literature
Vicky Tromanhauser
ENG 230-3: Women in Literature
Vicky Tromanhauser
ENG 231-1: American Women Writers of the Twentieth Century
Sarah Wyman
ENG 231-2: American Women Writers of the Twentieth Century
Sarah Wyman
ENG 231-3: American Women Writers of the Twentieth Century
Penny Freel
ENG 255-1: Contemporary Issues and Literature
Tina Iraca
ENG 255-2: Contemporary Issues and Literature
Rhonda Shary
ENG 299-1: Contemporary Asian Film
Andrew Shonebaum
ENG 299-2: Writing for Publishing
Mark Bellomo
300-level Courses
ENG 301-1: English Literature 1
Robert Waugh
ENG 301-2: English Literature 1
Thomas Festa
ENG 301-3: English Literature 1
Cyrus Mulready
ENG 301-4: English Literature 1
Michelle Woods
ENG 302-1: English Literature 2
Jed Mayer
ENG 302-2: English Literature 2
Vicky Tromanhauser
ENG 302-3: English Literature 2
Jackie George
ENG 307-1: The Novel
Michelle Woods
ENG 308-1: Short Story
Dennis Doherty
ENG 308-2: Short Story
Rudolf Kossmann
ENG 327-01: The Development of Modern English
Daniel Kempton
ENG 331-1: American Literature 1
Christopher Link
ENG 331-2: American Literature 1
Jan Schmidt
ENG 331-3: American Literature 1
Andrew Higgins
ENG 331-4: American Literature 1
Matt Newcomb
ENG 332-1: American Literature 2
Harry Stoneback
ENG 332-2: American Literature 2
Rudolf Kossmann
ENG 332-3: American Literature 2
Fiona Paton
ENG 332-4: American Literature 2
Mary Holland
ENG 345-1: Creative Writing Workshop 1
Laurence Carr
ENG 345-2: Creative Writing Workshop 1
Laurence Carr
ENG 345-3: Creative Writing Workshop 1
Dennis Doherty
ENG 345-4: Creative Writing Workshop 1
Dennis Doherty
ENG 345-5: Creative Writing Workshop 1
Claire Hero
ENG 348-1: Dramatic Writing for Stage and Screen
Laurence Carr
ENG 355-1: The Bible
Christopher Link
ENG 356-1: Greek and Roman Literature
Robert Waugh
ENG 366-1: Contemporary Ethnic Literature of the US
Sarah Wyman
ENG 372-1: Fiction into Film
John Langan
ENG 385-1: Theories of Writing
Robert Singleton
ENG 393-1: To Hell and Back
Kenneth Moss
ENG 399-1: Understanding Poetry
Sarah Wyman
ENG 399-2: Research Methods
400-level Courses
ENG 406-1: Shakespeare 1
Cyrus Mulready
ENG 406-2: Shakespeare 1
Cyrus Mulready
ENG 407-1: Shakespeare 2
Tina Iraca
ENG 423-1: 20th Century Criticism
Nancy Johnson
ENG 425-1: The Epic Tradition
Thomas Festa
ENG 427-1: Contemporary Literature
Mary Holland
ENG 435-1: Early American Literature
Andrew Higgins
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
Andrew Higgins
ENG 451-1: Senior Seminar
Fiona Paton
ENG 451-2: Senior Seminar
Jed Mayer
ENG 452-1: The Craft of Fiction
John Langan
ENG 454-1: The Craft of Creative Non-Fiction
Jan Schmidt
ENG 460-1: Classic Juvenile Fantasy Literature
Jed Mayer
ENG 465-1: Young Adult Literature
Fiona Paton
ENG 476-1: Graphic Literature
Pauline Uchmanowicz
ENG 493-1: African Literature and Film
Heather Hewett
ENG 493-2: Cowboy, Samurai, Shaolin Monk
Andrew Schonebaum
Graduate Courses
ENG 500-1: English Proseminar
Michelle Woods
ENG 500-2: English Proseminar
Thomas Olsen
ENG 503-1: Chaucer
Daniel Kempton
ENG 505-1: Shakespeare
James Schiffer
ENG 515-1: Modern Theories of Writing
Matt Newcomb
ENG 517-1: English Romantic Literature
Jackie George
ENG 523-1: Joyce
Robert Waugh
ENG 533-1: 19th Century American Fiction
Christopher Link
ENG 536-1: 20th Century American Fiction to 1945
Harry Stoneback
ENG 555-1: 20th Century Literary Criticism
Nancy Johnson
ENG 560-1: Forms of Autobiography
Jan Schmidt
ENG 581-1: Studies in 20th Century American Fiction
Harry Stoneback
ENG 593-1: The Epic Tradition
Thomas Festa
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
200-level courses
ENG 200-01: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature: Monsters and Critics
TF 12:15-1:30 p.m.
Professor Jacqueline George
Email: georgej@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
In this class we will think seriously about the kinds of things we do with and say about literature. How do we decide what "literature" is? How can different assumptions and theories about literature change the ways we interpret a single work? In exploring these questions, we will talk not only about the books we read, but how we read them. Readings will include works of prose and poetry from a diverse range of time and place, all of which speak to our course theme, "Monsters and Critics." Over the course of the term, we will examine texts that in some way speak to the notion of monstrosity, be it in the form of monstrous people, monstrous events, or actual monsters. We will also consider if and when critics can also be called monstrous for "picking apart," "over-analyzing," or otherwise "ruining" a text.
Texts (subject to change):
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market
Selected short stories and poems on Blackboard.
Standards & Style (the English Department style manual)
ENG 200-02: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
MR 9:30-10:40
Professor Mary Holland
Email: hollandm@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
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 truly 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:
DeLillo, White Noise (Penguin edition)
Kirszner and Mandell, Portable Literature, 6th ed.
Standards and Style
ENG 200-04: Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
Instructor: Mary Fakler
Course Description:
When we ANALYZE anything, we separate it into parts; then we consider those parts closely, in order to understand the whole thing. When we analyze literature, we separate a poem, historical piece, play, diary entry, etc., according to its 'parts', or elements, such as dialogue, characterization, setting, plot, themes, language, etc.
When we INTERPRET literature, we search for meaning by looking at the analyzed parts; for example, why does Hamlet hesitate to act? This is a thematic consideration.
Why does the narrator of Dylan Thomas' poem, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," exhort the "father" to "rage, rage against the dying of the light?" Who is the "father?" (Language and Character).
Using Responding to Literature, edited by Judith Sanford, as our text, our objective is to learn to read, analyze and interpret various plays, poems, short fiction and non-fiction pieces.
ENG 200-07 Analysis and Interpretation of Literature
Instructor: Amelia Rose
Course Description:
In this course we will study a variety of literary forms - drama, prose, poetry - in addition to viewing films. We will analyze and interpret these works according to their relevance in the time in which they were written, and for their relevance in today's society. Assignments include several short writing assignments, a journal in which you analyze the works, and a short research paper collected at the end of the term. The class meetings will center on discussions. Lectures, if given at all, will be brief and informal. Group discussions will also be an integral a part of the course.
ENG 206-01: The Mystery Narrative and its Derivatives: A Landscape of the Surreal
Instructor: Jeanne Stauffer-Merle
We will look at a variety of genres (fiction, poetry, art, film-noir and an example of surreal cinema,) in order to examine how the mystery or detective narrative has been stretched and distorted into an uncomfortable journey of the self. Authors could include, but are not limited to, mainstream fiction writers like Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith, but we will also explore masters of Magical Realism such as Julio Cortazar and Carlos Fuentes. We will finish the semester having fun with a selection of more experimental writers such as Alain Robbe-Grille, John Barth and Robert Coover. Throughout the term, we will look at how poets like Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Anne Sexton, as well as various visual artists from the Surreal period, "investigate" the deeper regions of self and society.
Instructor: Mary Fakler
Course Description:
What is documentary writing? Do photos and text collaborate, or are they independent of each other?
Why do we like what we like?In Ways of Reading Words and Images, editors David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky offer the reader excerpts from the writings of noted critics who discuss questions surrounding the study of photography. Writing in response to these articles, students develop critical thinking and reading abilities, in addition to developing skills in writing in various modes. The online writing focuses on weekly group discussions and an individual presentation; the culmination of the course is the creation of a photographic documentary essay.
ENG 210-01: Great Books Western
TF 3:05-4:20
Professor Kenneth Moss: mossk@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
The course presents the great works of Western civilization chronologically from the earliest surviving written record through early Christian writings. The class provides a unique vehicle for understanding of the roots of our culture: the fundamental concepts and choices of the past 4500 years. Major themes in the course come from the works themselves including the values they endorse and the metaphors for understanding life they offer. Learner-active strategies will be employed throughout including a wide range of student response journals, oratory options, and engaged class discussions.
Works to be studied:
The poetry of Mesopotamian Goddess culture
Gilgamesh: New English version
The Epic of Creation
Genesis
The Iliad by Homer
Sapphic poetry
Lysistrada by Aristophanes
Selections from Plato and Aristotle
The Aenead by Virgil
The Metamorphosis by Ovid
Early Christian writings (some not included in the New Testament)
ENG 224-02: Expository Writing
Instructor: Goretti Vianney-Benca
Course Description:
Intensive practice and guidance in the technique of expository prose, with emphasis on clarity and logic; reading of selected essays; class discussion of student writing.
Instructor: Abigail Robin
Course Description:
This course is an introduction to Women in Literature from around the world with a focus on British and American writers. Students are required to write a weekly response of two and a half pages and a ten page research paper. This course will cover writers from the 17th Century to the 20th Century. The following authors will be explored: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Edith Wharton, Anzia Yezierska, Marge Piercy, Maya Angelou. Participation is very important, so students will be required to have questions ready for selected readings, which will appear on Blackboard. Students are encouraged to make connections between life today and literature of yesterday.
ENG 230-02: Women in Literature
TF 10:50-12:05 and TF 4:30-5:45
Professor Vicki Tromanhauser
Email: 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 2009 semester may include:
Sophocles, Antigone
Aristophanes, Lysistrata
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
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 231-03 American Women Writers of the Twentieth Century
M/R 1:40-2:55
Penny Freel: freelp@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
Art is a reflection of life. Through literature, one can see how society and societal expectations, rules, and regulations, conduct and consideration changed and changed lives, defined and redefined lives. Over a time frame of 100 years or so, it will be interesting to see what literary themes were evident and what themes have emerged.
This course will provide opportunities for students to critically assess, examine, and analyze literature of 20th century American women writers. We will discuss the background and backdrop for each author by examining the biographical, historical, social, and political time frame in which each author wrote. This course is designed to enhance understanding of elements of prose (and poetry): setting, plot, character, conflict, theme, language, imagery, etc., and to help strengthen essay writing and documentation skills. Students are required to write 3 short papers and brief in-class responses. This course fulfills the GE III intensive writing requirement.
Required Texts:
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Sula by Toni Morrison
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
**** Please Note: An additional reading packet is also required for this course.
Other authors: M.W. Freeman, E. Glasgow, S. Glaspell, K.A. Porter,
Flannery O'Connor, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, Zora N. Hurston, Amy Tan,
M. Kingston, Bobbie Ann Mason, Barbara Kingsolver.
N.B.: This list is tentative. I would like to incorporate as many authors as possible, including some poets as well.
ENG 255-02: Contemporary Issues and Literature
T/F 3:00 - 4:20
Professor Rhonda L. Shary: sharyr@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
Theme: "American Angst in the 21st Century: Criminality, Celebrity, and (Super)Heroes"
This course examines current cultural and social issues in North America as reflected in contemporary literature and other narrative forms. The theme changes for each section of the course: this section will examine the changing nature of the American romance with outlaws, celebrities, and the idea of heroes - and why we feel so conflicted about them all. The assigned works will trace the lineage of the hero to classical archetypes, and identify variations that are specific to our times and our culture. We will examine the modern conception of traditional bad guys and good guys of the American West and the less clearly defined villains and heroes of contemporary and futuristic, corporate and digital America, in search of our moral center, our national identity, and the sources of our contemporary, collective angst. We will examine works of "high culture" (literature and independent film) and popular culture (comix and graphic lit, sci-fi and speculative fiction, commercial films) that each express the human craving for the heroic, and the often ambiguous nature of good and evil. Finally, we will see what conclusions we might draw about how literature helps us to understand our nature and our times, and to approach the uncertainty of our current age surrounding basic needs, like trust and work and love - and survival.
In addition to fulfilling Liberal Arts and Effective Expression/Written requirements, this course also fulfills the following University requirements:
• General Education/Diversity: Multicultural texts: authors, actors, and directors include Native American, Women, Latino/Latina, and African American cultures and diverse economic classes
• Writing Intensive: Four 1,000-word papers; Final 1,500-word paper; Frequent in-class writing focused on critical thinking and expression of ethical argument
Texts and Materials:
Two Novels and Two Story Collections
• Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk; Look at Me by Jennifer Egan; Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson; The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
Four Films (and possibly some TV episodes)
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007); Elektra (2005) (and Alias TV episodes); Children of Men (2005); The Matrix Trilogy (1999 - 2003)
Required Supplemental Materials
• Secondary readings posted on Blackboard, including selections from: Homer, The Odyssey; Edith Hamilton, Mythology; Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces; others
• The MLA Handbook (New 7th Edition)
• Standards & Style (English Department style manual)
ENG 299-02 - Writing for Publishing
Instructor: Mark Bellomo
A one credit, modular course that is designed to acquaint students in an array of methods that will encourage them to publish in an array of different genres and modes: poetry, magazines & e-magazines, academic publishing, journalism, fiction, nonfiction, memoir fiction, and drama. The course will feature a wide variety of speakers familiar with the publication process who will share information and advice concerning the publishing process, as well as provide samples of some of their own work as published writers. Students are expected to attend all sessions and to submit a 5-page paper. Graded S/U.
ENG 301-03: English Literature I
Professor Cyrus Mulready
Email: 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 the great Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf 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:
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th Edition)
Standards & Style
ENG 301-01: English Literature I
Professor Robert Waugh
Email waughr@newpaltz.edu
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 examination.
A recent course included:
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 301-02: English Literature 1
MWR 9:25-10:40 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, 8th edition (2006). Ed. Stephen
Greenblatt et al.
Thomas More, Utopia, trans. Clarence Miller (Yale University Press, 2001).
ENG 301: English Literature ITWF 10.50-12.05
Professor Michelle Woods: woodsm@newpaltz.edu
Course Description
This course is a survey of English literature from Beowulf to Paradise Lost. It is not only an introduction to some of the classic pre-18th century texts but a course that shows how our contemporary notions of character and plot have their genesis in these old texts. We will look at how these stories served to create a notion of English (and, by extension, American) identity from a multicultural melting pot of identities: Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Normans etc. and the importance of outside influences (especially French and Italian) on ‘English' literature. We will focus on the importance of myth, the supernatural, and religion in the construction of both gendered and national identity. Above all, the course will enable you to discover the excitement of stories of monsters, dragons, snakes, witches, wizards, knights, and damsels and defiant women.
Texts:
Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol 1 (8th edition)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Simon Armitage (Norton, 2008)
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (Folger)
ENG 302-01: British Literature 2
MWR 12:15-1:30
Professor Jed Mayer: mayerje@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
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 (a representative list, but subject to change):
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
English Romantic Poetry Anthology
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
H. G. Wells, War of the Worlds
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
J. G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun
The MLA Handbook (new 7th edition)
Standards & Style (the English Department style manual)
ENG 302-02: English Literature 2
TWF 1:40-2:55
Professor Vicki Tromanhauser: tromanhv@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
This course will introduce students to some of the major works of English literature from five distinct periods: Neoclassical, Romantic, Victorian, Modernist, and Contemporary. Throughout our survey of these periods, we will examine writing from a range of genres including poetry, drama, the novel, and the short story as well as various forms of non-fictional prose. Along the way, we will consider what grants a particular work canonical or exemplary status, what makes it especially representative of a period, and how it asserts its place within a tradition. The course is also intended to give students the tools for understanding literature in the light of its social and historical contexts as well as to help them to develop their skills of reading texts closely and forming critical arguments about the works.
Texts, available at the Campus Bookstore:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature (8th edition, volumes C, D, E, and F)
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, ed. Donald Gray, 3rd ed. (Norton Critical Edition, 2001)
ENG 302-03: English Literature II: The Country and the City
TWF 9:25-10:40 a.m.
Professor Jacqueline George: georgej@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
This course will survey some of the major literary works to emerge from Great Britain over the last several hundred years or so. Along the way, we will explore connections between the formal and thematic elements of each work, as well as the social, cultural, and political concerns of its era. Central to our concerns will be the changing cultural and literary relationships between the country and the city in Britain during this time, particularly within the context of imperialism and industrialization. Our readings will include poetry, nonfiction prose, drama, and prose fiction, all organized under five broad literary-historical categories: Neoclassical, Romantic, Victorian, Modern, Contemporary. In addition to studying these works, the course will offer students tools for reading texts closely and practice in developing critical arguments about literature.
Texts (subject to change):
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th ed., volumes C,D,E and F
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Standards & Style (the English Department style manual)
ENG 307: The Novel
TF 1.40-2.55
Professor Michelle Woods: woodsm@newpaltz.edu
Course Description
In the wake of the huge success of Twilight and True Blood (based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels), this course will focus on the gothic novel genre from the 18th century to the present. The course presents some questions: where and when did our obsession with the undead start? Why is the novel genre so important to exploring vampires and horror? Are these novels pulp fiction or important social commentary on their times? Why is the transgressive subject (sex, death and the undead, for a start) often connected to a conservative intent and a conservative novel form? On the other hand, are some of the novels subversive and revolutionary? Why are discourses of race and sexual identity so important to these novels?
Required Texts:
Stephanie Meyer, Twilight
Charlaine Harris, Dead Until Dark (and HBO's True Blood)
John Polidori, The Vampyre
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Canterville Ghost
Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Stephen King, The Shining
ENG 308-03: Short Story
Professor Rudolf Kossmann
Course Description:
The study of the short story as a literary genre through reading and analysis of selected short stories by 19th - 21st-century authors.
Texts:
The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 7th ed. (eds. Richard Bausch & R.V. Cassill), W.W.Norton, 2006
A college-level dictionary (not a paperback)
Standards and Style: Writing for English Studies (also available on line --- English department)
ENG327.01 Development of Modern English
MTWR 10:45A-12:40P
Professor Daniel Kempton
Email: kemptond@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
This course will provide an introduction to the history of the English language from its Indo-European roots through the eighteenth century, when the language had largely achieved its modern form. Attention will also be given to the political and cultural context in which the language developed and to the literature produced at each major stage of language development. The course will cover the following topics:
The Indo-European family of languages and the distinctive features of the Germanic languages, to which English belongs.
Old English phonology (or the sound of the language), inflectional forms, vocabulary, and literature.
Middle English phonology, inflectional forms, and literature.
The early modern period and the language of Shakespeare.
The eighteenth century and the first dictionaries.
Note that the course satisfies the English language requirement for the Adolescence Education-English major track (443) and is one of the eight courses of which three must be chosen in the Early Childhood (609)/Childhood (641) Education-English major tracks.
Texts:
Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language. 5th ed. London: Routledge, 2002.
Cable, Thomas. A Companion to Baugh & Cable's A History of the English Language. 3rd ed.
ENG 331-01 American Literature I
MWR 3:05-4:20 P.M.
Professor Christopher Link: linkc@newpaltz.edu
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.
Anticipated 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 331-02: American Literature I
Dr. Jan Zlotnik 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 do these works shape concepts of the American character? We will specifically focus on ways that these texts create versions of American identity and character.
The major texts for the course are Volumes A and B of the Norton Anthology of American Literature.
ENG 332-04: American Literature 2
MWR 12:15-1:30
Professor Mary Holland: hollandm@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
This course will introduce students to key formal developments in American literature, while covering such modes of writing as naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism. It will also touch on important socio-historical moments and their related literary movements, including the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights era, four major wars, and contemporary ethnic pluralism. As we move through a century of poetry and prose, we will examine how our notions of what language is and what it can do have evolved dramatically. And we will consider how, again and again in their stunningly diverse ways, American writers contemplate the role of language and letters in creating, shaping, and making sense of both self and world. Appropriately, 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.
Texts: (may change)
Heath Anthology of American Literature, vol. 2
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
Jonathon Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated (2002)
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926)
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1977)
ENG 332.02 American literature 2
Professor Rudolf Kossmann
Course Description:
A study of American literature through reading and analysis of selected works by American authors of the 19th-21st centuries.
Required Texts:
The Am. Tradition in Literature, 12th ed., vol. 2, McGraw-Hill, 2009
F. Scott Fitzgerald --- The Great Gatsby (Scribner's)
Ernest Hemingway --- A Farewell to Arms (Scribner's)
A college-level dictionary (not a paperback)
Standards and Style: Writing for English Studies (also available online -- English department
ENG 348-01: Dramatic Writing for Stage and Screen/ Larry Carr
Laurence Carr, Lecturer
Fall 2009
Office: JFT 216 (phone 845-257-2347)
Class time and place TBA:
carrl@newpaltz.edu
Office Hours: M/T/H/F 10:45-Noon and by appt.
Course Rationale and Expectations:
Dramatic Writing for Stage and Screen (The Basics): The art, craft and business of dramatic writing are explored through writing exercises, readings, lectures, 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.
Texts:
Paging Playwrights, The Basics of Dramatic Writing. A lecture series and organized exercise workbook by Laurence Carr
A variety of books and articles from theatre and film will be on both regular and electronic reserve the SUNY library. These included:
Books:
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
Articles:
"What I Know About Being A Playwright" by Terrence McNally, American Theatre Magazine, November, 1998.
"Manifesto For Playwrights" by Waldmar Hansen, The Dramatists Guild Newsletter, 1996.
A variety of theatre and film websites will be listed to visit throughout the semester.
A sequence of handouts and scripts are distributed to the students over the course.
ENG 355-01 The Bible
MR 10:50 A.M.-12:05 P.M.
Professor Christopher Link: linkc@newpaltz.edu
Course Description
This course is a formal introduction to the academic study of the Bible, a collection of diverse texts which function as the sacred Scriptures of Jewish and Christian religious traditions and which also stand significantly in the background of much Western (as well as non-Western) literature and culture. The aim of the course is to familiarize students-at least in part-with texts from both the Hebrew Bible (known, in different configurations, as Tanakh or as the Old Testament) and the New Testament. In addition to becoming acquainted with many of the significant narratives, characters, and themes of the Bible, students will also gain a basic understanding of the formation of the biblical canon(s) and will be introduced to the methods and problems of biblical interpretation. Intended to be much more than an "appreciation course," ENG 355 is designed to help students think critically about these profoundly influential ancient texts.
The primary focus of this course will be upon the literary (i.e., narrative, poetic, and rhetorical) dimensions of the Bible; this, however, is not to say that the religious, theological, social, and historical aspects of the Bible will be ignored or relegated to secondary considerations only. Rather, for religion or history or any other aspect of the Bible to become manifest for consideration at all, we must start with a close reading of the biblical texts. For this reason, students must be prepared to attend carefully and diligently to the assigned readings, both in the Bible itself and in the supplemental critical materials. Course grades are based on quizzes, analysis/exegesis papers, attendance and participation, and a final exam.
Anticipated Required Texts
The New Oxford Annotated Bible (with the Apocrypha), 3rd Edition, New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). Michael D. Coogan, ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible, 7th Edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2006.
ENG 356-01: Greek and Roman Literature
Professor Robert Waugh
Email waughr@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
The course studies Greek and Roman authors who formed the basis of the Western literary tradition. Though it is not a study in mythology, it introduces students to the Olympian gods as the Greeks and Romans conceived them at different points in the history of the ancient world. Also we consider the various treatments of the epic, tragedy, comedy, dialogues, and lyric poetry. Such authors are included as Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pindar, Plato, Virgil, Horace, Catullus, and Ovid. The grades will be based on a midterm, composed of the identification of quotations and take-home essays, a five-page final paper upon assigned topics, and a final examination.
A recent course included as texts:
Homer, The Iliad
Aeschylus, The Oresteia Trilogy
Sophocles, Philoctetes
Plato, The Symposium and The Apology
Horace, The Odes
Ovid, The Erotic Poems
Virgil, The Aeneid
ENG 366-01: Contemporary Ethnic Literature of the United States
Professor Sarah Wyman
Course Description:
Questioning the complexities of North American identity, we will read some of the most celebrated recent works by authors who speak from particular ethnic backgrounds.
Together, these texts work towards redefining the US literary canon to reflect today's cultural richness.
Emphasizing individual experience and the unique expression a text reveals, we will practice close reading various genres (memoir, novel, short story, film, poetry and drama). Our texts develop themes including the challenges of immigration and assimilation, maintaining cultural identity in a colonized state, finding a voice, stereotypes, misunderstandings, and humor as a means of resistance. This course provides an introduction to some of the ways race and ethnicity are problematized and theorized in US society.
ENG 393-1: Special Topics: To Hell and Back
TF 12:15-1:30
Professor Kenneth Moss: mossk@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
The first half of the course deals with classical versions of the descent into the underworld, of characters going "to hell and back," while the second half offers a challenging shift into modernist re-conceptions foreshadowed by Nietsche, Jung, and relativism. 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 extensive, personal workbooks. Relevant art and music will augment the journey.
Major Works to be studied:
The Inferno by Dante
Paradise Lost by Milton
The Faust legend
A Season in Hell and the Drunken Boat by Rimbaud
Demian by Hesse
The Man Who Died by D. H. Lawrence
Briefing for a Descent into Hell by Doris Lessing
Prerequisite(s): Fulfillment of composition requirements
ENG 399-01: Understanding Poetry
Professor Sarah Wyman
Course Description:
During 5 evening meetings, this modular, 1 - credit course will introduce students to the basics of reading, appreciating and crafting poetry. We will review poetic techniques, formal verse and various modes of expression.
Visiting poets will discuss their creative projects and entertain student responses to their poems. We will discuss various genres including narrative poems, experimental techniques, portrait poems, occasional verse and concrete poetry. This sampling will provide a view to the finely feathered field of poetry in English.
ENG404.01 Medieval Literature
MR 1:40P-2:55P
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: aristocratic literature of love and war and popular imitations/critiques of this body of literature. We will also restrict ourselves to the late medieval period and give special emphasis to one author, Geoffrey Chaucer, whom we will read in the original Middle English. We will expand the purview of the course in one way, however, by studying selected works from the French traditions out of which late medieval English literature developed.
Texts
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Ed. V. A. Kolve. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.
Chrétien de Troyes. Arthurian Romances. Trans. Carleton W. Carroll. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2004.
Froissart, Jean. Chronicles. Trans. Geoffrey Brereton. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
Guillaume de Lorris. Romance of the Rose. Trans. Frances Horgan. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.
Marie de France. Lais. Trans. Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.
ENG 406-01 and -02: Shakespeare I
Professor Cyrus Mulready
Email: mulreadc@newpaltz.edu
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)
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 Much Ado about Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, Othello, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, The Tempest, 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.
ENG423.01: Major Trends in Twentieth-Century Criticism
MR 1:40-2:55 p.m.
Professor Nancy E. Johnson: johnsonn@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
This course is an introduction to the major schools of twentieth-century literary criticism and theory, such as New Criticism, Marxism, Gender Theory, Postmodernism, and Postcolonialism. We will be reading selections from the work of major theoretical and philosophical figures, such as Eichenbaum, Marx, Freud, Bloom, Sedgwick, Bakhtin, Foucault, Jameson, and Said. We will examine each theory individually and in relation to theoretical movements. In addition, we will read two contemporary novels in the context of various theories to gain some practice in the application of theory to the literary text.
Texts (the two novels listed below are subject to change):
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 1st ed., W.W. Norton.
Marguerite Duras, The Lover
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Standards & Style (the English Department style manual)
ENG 425: The Epic Tradition
MR 12:15-1:30 p.m.
Professor Thomas Festa: festat@newpaltz.edu
*N.B.: This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for Liberal Arts English Majors
Course description:
This course is designed to introduce students to the worlds and ways of epos-the songs, tales, poems that tell at length of heroic deeds in cultures long past. Or rather, this course will seek to reintroduce students to a most ancient genre of literature still talked about, still deployed in casual adjectival use (an "epic" sporting event, movie, airport layover, election cycle, etc.), but mostly treated as if it were as dead as the languages in which the original epics were composed. The course has several objectives: to give students the long view of a form of literary art that was right at the center of European civilization for something like 2400 years; to cultivate an awareness of the importance of violence, deception, and sacrifice to that tradition; to inspire further exploration of the poems' representations of religious devotion, political action, and the performance of gender roles; to allow students the rare opportunity to immerse themselves in the greatest adventures ever written down. Theoretical and historical considerations will inform our discussion throughout the semester, but students will be encouraged in a final project to analyze a work from our time in order to make the case that it deserves to be included in this most hallowed of storytelling traditions.
Texts will be drawn from the following:
Homer, Iliad
Homer, Odyssey
Virgil, Aeneid
Dante, Inferno
Ludovico Arisoto, Orlando Furioso
Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
ENG 427: British and American Literature since 1945
MR 3:05-4:20
Professor Mary Holland: hollandm@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
The "contemporary period" is a puzzling term, the literature signified and collected by it changing according to who defines it and when. Further complicating its canon-forming, the period of the contemporary constantly grows and shifts as we drag it along with our unfolding present. We will wrestle with various approaches to and understandings of the "contemporary" as we read novels, short stories, and poems written after 1945 by some of its most well-known and respected British and American authors. Along the way, we will consider how "contemporary" overlaps with and/or diverges from other currents within recent literature, including postmodernism, poststructuralism, and ethnic pluralism, while also revising earlier modes and movements such as realism and minimalism. We will do so in the context of cultural and historical forces that inform this literature, asking how the literature comments on them both. Whatever else it is, the contemporary period is certainly one of shocking upheaval, shattering change, and fiercely intellectual contemplation of a new linguistic landscape. But in the midst of these heady attempts to theorize a world never before conceived, we will find individual voices doing what they have always done in writing-describing and creating their own piercingly intimate visions of now.
Texts:
Samuel Beckett, Endgame (1958)
Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus (1984)
Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985)
Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1965)
Electronic reserve: poetry (Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, Eavan Boland), short stories (Salman Rushdie, Raymond Carver), essays (Joan Didion)
ENG 435-01: Early American Literature
Tuesday & Friday 9:25-10:40
Professor Andrew Higgins: higginsa@newpaltz.edu
Course Description
Most people don't get excited about early American literature. But the first two centuries of American literature is, in fact, a period of rapid social change, profound political and religious zeal, and some brilliant writing. Our goal in this course is to burn through the stereotypes of early American culture-Native American, Puritan, Revolutionary, and more-and understand these people through their writings. By the end of the course, you will have read the major and minor voices of American literature, understand the genres that dominated that period and seen the births of American fiction and poetry. In addition, you will understand the Puritans and the Revolutionaries not as dry and humorless, but as passionately committed peoples, with a range of emotions and character every bit as diverse as our own.
Books
Nina Baym (ed), The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol A
Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland
John Bunyan, The Pigrim's Progress
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa
Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
English 436-01: Nineteenth Century American Fiction
Instructor: Fred K Anderson: Permadjunct@aol.com
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.
Texts may include:
Brown, Charles Brockden. Wieland
Chopin, Kate. At Fault
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
Jewett, Sarah Orne. Deephaven
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
ENG450.001: Seminar in Poetry: Form in Twentieth-Century Poetry
W 1:40-4:20
Professor Andrew Higgins: higginsa@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
Does contemporary formalist poetry seem to you to be stiff and wooden? Does much free verse strike you as haphazard and uncrafted? In this course we will take a close look at what poets are doing with form today. Our goal will be to figure out a field guide to formal practices in contemporary poetry. While an academic course and not a workshop, this course is well-suited for practicing poets-and even people unfamiliar with or uncomfortable with poetry. Our main activity in the course will not be traditional literary interpretation and cultural study (though we will do some of that), but rather to understand how the poems function as formal artistic objects. We will start with an overview of formal elements-the language poets use to describe poetry. Then we will spend the first half of the semester reading a wide range of contemporary poets. In the second half of the course, we will look closely at several recently-published books of poetry.
Books (list subject to change):
Jorie Graham, Erosion
Yusef Komunyakaa, Pleasure Dome
J. D. McClatchy, The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry
Kay Ryan, Say Uncle
A. E. Stallings, Archaic Smiles
Timothy Steele, All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing
ENG 451-02 Senior Seminar-The Animal Presence in Victorian Literature
W 3:05-5:45
Professor Jed Mayer: mayerje@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
In the nineteenth century animals came to play a variety of new and unexpected roles in British cultural life. Domestic pets proliferated in cities as never before, people of all classes flocked to zoos and menageries, physiologists experimented on animals, animal rights activists protested such experiments, and evolutionary theory revealed that humans are also animals. Victorian literature reflects this broad cultural interest in the nonhuman, and in this course we will trace animal presences in a variety of works of fiction, with an emphasis on genres traditionally regarded as outside of the civilized domain of classic literature, such as children's literature, sensation fiction, gothic, fantasy and science fiction. We will also consider the uncertain boundary between the human and nonhuman animal, examining the ways in which the Victorians considered issues of gender, class, and race with reference to the nonhuman world. By turns domesticated and wild, friendly and ruthless, the Victorian animal appears in many guises, and in this course we will develop strategies for reading these creatures in all their variety and complexity.
Texts (a representative list, but subject to change):
Wilkie Collins, Heart and Science. (Broadview)
H. Rider Haggard, She. Ed. Andrew M. Stauffer. (Broadview)
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Ed. Scott Elledge. (Norton)
Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books. Ed. W. W. Robson (Oxford)
Anna Sewell, Black Beauty
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Ed. Katherine B. Linehan. (Norton)
Bram Stoker, Dracula. Ed. Nina Auerbach. (Norton)
H. G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau.
The MLA Handbook (new 7th edition)
Standards & Style (the English Department style manual)
ENG 454-01: The Craftshop of Creative Nonfiction (Eng 454)
Dr. Jan Zlotnik 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, 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, and literary journalism. Students also will be expected to survey and read articles from such online journals as Salon, Slate, Orion, Brevity, WorldHum.com as well as selected online sites that present essays-"Your Turn" columns from Newsweek, for example, and "Summerscape" and "Modern Love" essays from The New York Times. The class also will read the works of selected editorial writers including Maureen Dowd, Nicholas Kristof, and Bob Herbert whose work regularly appears online.
Selected Texts: Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard eds. Writing Creative Nonfiction; Robert L. Root Jr. and Michael Steinberg, eds. The Fourth Genre; and selections from The Best American Essays and The Best Non-Required Reading.
ENG-460-01 Classic Juvenile Fantasy Literature
TF 4:30-5:45
Professor Jed Mayer: mayerje@newpaltz.edu
Course Description
While people have always told stories to children, children's literature as a distinct genre is a fairly recent phenomenon. Early stories for children emphasized morality and good behavior, but thankfully this changed in the nineteenth century when writers came to recognize the importance of fantasy in liberating the child reader's imagination. In this course we will focus on British children's fantasy literature of the last two hundred years, from fairy tales to Victorian Wonderlands to Hogwarts. We will consider the potential for fantasy literature to subvert traditional social values, providing an imaginative space from which children may question the world of adults. At the same time, we will also examine the ways in which adult authors may construct their fantasy worlds to indoctrinate child readers into moral and social structures. This course will help you to reconsider your childhood favorites through the looking glass of critical analysis.
Texts (a representative list, but subject to change)
Daisy Ashford, The Young Visiters
J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy and Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (ed. Zipes)
Frances Hodgson Burnett , The Secret Garden: Norton Critical Edition (ed. Gerzina)
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (ed. Richard Kelly) Broadview Editions
Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising
Michael de Larrabeiti, The Borribles
Alan Garner, The Owl Service
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
George Macdonald, At the Back of the North Wind
Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3)
Maria Tatar (ed.), The Classic Fairy Tales: Norton Critical Edition
The MLA Handbook (new 7th edition)
Standards & Style (the English Department style manual)
ENG 476-01 Graphic Literature
Professor Pauline Uchmanowicz
Overview:
This course explores the recent evolution of "graphic literature," texts in which visual images and words converge, including comic books, comix, graphic novels, graphic memoirs, and how-to manuals. In studying several of these creative works, we will think critically and write about their historic contexts, themes, literary styles, and visual techniques, using genre-specific terms and concepts to guide our interpretation and analysis. Topics will include genre formation, literary-canon formation, filmic and other adaptations, visual format and technique, visual ideology, and the subversive imagination.
Required Texts (available at Campus Bookstore, SUB):
Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Clowes, Daniel. Ghost World. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 1993-98; 2005.
Marchetto, Marisa Acocella. Cancer Vixen: A True Story. New York: Knopf, 2006.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Reprint ed. New York:
Harper Collins, 1994.
Miller, Frank. The Dark Knight Returns. New York: DC Comics, 1986.
Moore, Alan. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics, 1986.
Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2003.
---. Persepolis II: The Story of a Return. New York: Pantheon, 2004.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus I: My Father Bleeds History. New York: Pantheon, 1986.
---. Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon, 1991.
Tomine, Adrian. Shortcomings. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2007.
Yang, Gene. American Born Chinese. New York: Roaring Press, 2006.
Selected Shorter Works: Blackboard Reserve ("Course Documents") or handouts.
Films
Zwigoff, Terry. Crumb (excerpts). 1994.
Zwigoff, Terry (with Dan Clowes). Ghost World. 2000.
ENG 493-01: African Literature and Film
TF 10:50-12:05
Professor Heather Hewett: hewetth@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
This course examines African literature and film created throughout the entire continent. Students will examine such issues as the traditions of oral storytelling; the impact of colonialism on the development of Europhonic and vernacular African literatures; the place of literature and film in anti-colonial, women's, and human rights movements; the particular challenges faced by women writers; the role of literature and film in the wake of national traumas; the impact of globalization, migration, and diaspora on literary and filmic production; the reception of African literature and film outside of the continent; and the relationship between African creative production and literary/film representations of Africa produced in the West. All readings and viewing will take place in English (including work translated into English).
Texts and films may include
Chinua Achebe, Arrow of God
Wole Soyinka, Death and the King's Horseman
Assia Djebar, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
Dinaw Mengestu, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears
Yvonne Vera, Under the Tongue
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus
Fatima Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood
Ismael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Veronique Tadjo, The Shadow of Imana: Travels in the Heart of Rwanda
Marguerite Abouet, Aya
Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier, The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry
Short stories by Nadine Gordimer, Leila Aboulela, Uwem Akpan, Monica Arac de Nyeko
Films such as Xala, Bamako, Everyone's Child, and Hotel Rwanda
ENG 500-01: English Proseminar
M 6-8:40 p.m.
Professor Michelle Woods: woodsm@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
Proseminar is an introduction to graduate studies in English. We will read a variety of literary works: poems, novels, short stories and drama in order to focus on sophisticated reading, writing and researching skills. We will "close read" a range of literary works by writers such Jean Rhys, Ralph Ellison, Milan Kundera, Shakespeare, Gwendolyn Brooks, Franz Kafka, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett; learn how to efficaciously apply a variety of critical articles to these authors; familiarize ourselves with theoretical terms; and explore research methodologies to enable you to write incisive and well-researched graduate-level papers. Coursework involves group presentations, short written pieces and a final 12-page research paper.
Texts (a representative list, but subject to change):
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
William Shakespeare, "Dark Lady" Sonnets and The Tempest
Gwendolyn Brooks, "Gay Chaps at the Bar" (sonnets)
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
ENG 500-2: English Proseminar
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)
ENG503.01 Chaucer
M 6:00P-8:40P
Daniel Kempton kemptond@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
This introduction to Chaucer will focus on the early dream visions and selections from The Canterbury Tales. Course objectives also include a systematic study of Chaucer's dialect of Middle English; an overview of the political, social, and cultural history of the 14th century;
and a survey of the critical tradition.
Texts:
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Ed. V. A. Kolve and Glending Olson. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.
---. Dream Visions and Other Poems. Ed. Kathryn L. Lynch. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007.
ENG 517-01: English Romantic Literature: Reading Romanticism
R 6:00-8:40 p.m.
Professor Jacqueline George: georgej@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
From Google Books to the Amazon Kindle, the current "digital revolution" of texts has raised new questions about what it means to read. It is within this context that we will study the literature of the Romantic era, another time in which the concepts of "reading" and "reader" were shifting as a result of political, cultural, and technological changes. In this course we will consider major texts written in Britain between 1780-1830 (or so) with an eye toward situating these works within their cultural context-including, but not limited to, Romantic-era notions of books and reading. At the same time, we will consider some key works of literary criticism in order to identify and assess the various modes of critical reading that have shaped and re-shaped the Romantic literary canon. Our driving questions in this course will include: What was/is it like to read a Romantic text? How have philosophical ideas about reading influenced Romantic studies? How do we know "Romanticism" when we see it?
Texts (subject to change):
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th ed., volume D
Mary Shelley, The Last Man
Selected secondary readings on Blackboard
Standards & Style (the English Department style manual)
Professor Robert Waugh
Email: waughr@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
Though we shall say a few words at the beginning of the course about Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the main texts of the course will be Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. In these books we will be interested in their structure, their stylistic variety, their themes, the problems they offer a critical response, and of course their humor. We shall ask and offer provisional answers to such questions as what is happening, and many handouts shall be provided. The teacher knows how fearfully some students view these works, so he shall attempt to be as supportive as possible. The grades will be based on students' presentations in class about certain critical works, a midterm, composed of the identification of quotations and take-home essays, a twenty-page final paper upon assigned topics, and a final examination.
ENG 533-01 American Fiction in the Nineteenth Century: Studies in Identity, Alterity, and Ambiguity
W 6:00-8:40 P.M.
Professor Christopher Link: linkc@newpaltz.edu
Course Description
"He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man."-Washington Irving, "Rip Van Winkle"
This course is a graduate-level course devoted to the critical study of selected works of nineteenth-century American fiction (short stories and novels). The overarching theme of the course for the Fall 2009 semester is "Identity, Alterity, and Ambiguity." Close consideration will be given to various literary constructions of "the self" and "the other" from this period, including, but not restricted to, representations of race, gender, and class differences. Special attention will be devoted to texts in which the very notions of "identity" and "otherness" are problematized, challenged, or made ambiguous. More than a simple survey of "greatest hits" in nineteenth-century American fiction, this thematically focused course will frequently address (in secondary critical texts and lecture material) significant historical, cultural, and ideological contexts of the period: e.g., slavery and Abolitionism, the "color line," reform culture, the Women's Rights movement, Transcendentalism, etc. The course will be conducted as a seminar with expectations of regular student participation each week.
Anticipated Course Texts for Fall 2009
Washington Irving, selected tales ("Rip Van Winkle," etc.)
James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans
Robert Montgomery Bird, Sheppard Lee
Edgar Allan Poe, selected tales ("William Wilson," etc.)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, selected tales ("The Birthmark," etc.)
Walt Whitman, Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins
Henry James, selected tales ("The Real Thing," etc.)
Plus secondary critical selections (Blackboard)
ENG555.01: Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism
M 6:00 - 8:40 p.m.
Professor Nancy E. Johnson: johnsonn@newpaltz.edu
Course Description:
This course is a graduate-level introduction to the major schools of twentieth-century literary criticism and theory, such as New Criticism, Marxism, Gender Theory, Postmodernism, and Postcolonialism. We will be reading selections from the work of major theoretical and philosophical figures, such as Eichenbaum, Marx, Freud, Bloom, Sedgwick, Bakhtin, Foucault, Jameson, and Said. We will examine each theory individually and in relation to theoretical movements. In addition, we will read a sampling of literary texts (poems, short stories) in the context of various theories to study the application of theory to literature.
Texts
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 1st ed., W.W. Norton.
MLA Handbook (new 7th edition)
Standards & Style (the English Department style manual)
ENG 560: Forms of Autobiography
Dr. Jan Zlotnik Schmidt
Course Description: The course will introduce students to forms of contemporary, multiethnic women's autobiography. The class will provide an historic and critical overview of the genre; discuss features of autobiographical writing; analyze several contemporary women's autobiographies; explore themes of women's lives; and prompt students to engage in acts of autobiographical reminiscing, reflecting, and writing. The course will focus on women's personal essays and diaries and journals as well as memoirs. Selected texts include Virginia Woolf's Moments of Being, Etty Hillesum's An Interrupted Life, bell hooks's Bone Black, Laura Shane Cunningham's Sleeping Arrangements, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: A Memoir of a Childhood Among Ghosts, Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying, Marguerite Duras's The Lover, and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis I and II.
ENG 593: The Epic Tradition in English R 6:00-8:40 p.m.
Professor Thomas Festa: festat@newpaltz.edu
*N.B.: This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement
Course description:
Much like the books it is designed to survey, this course will attempt the impossible: close study of the epic genre from antiquity to the Renaissance. This most ancient and capacious of genres always seems to threaten dissolution into a variety of component parts and set pieces, tropes and topics and formulae-in other words, smaller, more manageable bits. Yet the grandeur and sweep of the epic derives from its uncompromising nature, its encyclopedic scope, its centripetal / centrifugal synthesis, and its profound and often haunting violence. The traditional epic has, by almost all accounts, been supplanted by more accommodating forms such as the novel and film. As attentive study of the genre reveals, however, epic itself haunts other narrative forms, in some ways as their emulated origin, and in others as their repressed alternative. The reception of epic into English will receive some consideration through comparative analysis of English translations that have now become classics in their own right. In order to understand the contours of the genre and its impact on literary creation in subsequent ages, we will conclude the course with an assignment that asks students to analyze a modern work that either rightly or wrongly makes a claim to belong to the genre.
Primary texts will be drawn from the following:
Homer, Iliad
Homer, Odyssey
Virgil, Aeneid
Dante, Inferno
Ludovico Arisoto, Orlando Furioso
Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Additionally, selections of celebrated early English translations (Chapman's and Pope's Homers, Dryden's Virgil, etc.) and secondary readings will be available via Blackboard.
