ENG 212: Classic English and American Novel
Dr. Chris Blum
English elective
In his 1987 book, The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom asserts that the literary canon is an important list that represents the viewpoints and shared experiences of contemporary societies worldwide. What makes a text authoritative? During the course of the semester, we will examine this issue through an examination of texts that individuals agree are a part of the canon. As we construct a definition of the term “classic” that would classify the text as a part of the literary canon, we will examine contemporary works to see if these standards can help us predict the text’s future resonance and associated sustainability. Or do these texts illustrate that terms like “classic,” “excellence,” and “canon” will forever be in a state of flux, where later generations continue to deconstruct and reconstruct the meaning of these terms as well as the associated list of canonical works.
ENG 213 Word & Image
Heather Bidell
English elective
This course will explore the interpenetration of image and word in relation to contemporary global literary movements. We will investigate multiple literary genres including avant garde literature, poetry, speculative fiction, and short stories in conversation with visual texts such as film, advertisements, visual art, and graphic design. Our goal will be to understand how each of these social texts functions to communicate, shape, and mold our contemporary notions of race, gender, sexuality, and the body within a transnational context. We will also investigate artists whose work incorporates both literary and visual components, and what effect their work has on these various socio-historical discourses. Students will be expected to read across literary and artistic genres, to examine various types of visual and non-visual texts, to work with multimedia tools, and to produce work that fuses both the critical and creative.
ENG 300 Introduction to English Studies
Dr. Mark Hodin
Required of all English majors
English 300 is a gateway course for our major, so this class is designed to move you from the work you have done in English 102 to the kind of literary study you can expect to do in your English major coursework. First, we sharpen the close reading and comparison skills you have already developed by analyzing and relating similar stories told through different perspectives and genres. Next, we learn about the discipline of English Studies—what it means to be an English “major” rather than someone who reads and writes in English. In addition to building your library research skills, you will be introduced to several theoretical approaches to literary study. Finally, you apply these skills and theory to the literature we discussed earlier in the semester through a researched critical paper.
ENG 310 British Literature IV: Angry Artists of the 20th C.
Prof. Mel Schroeder
British IV
We will study novels, stories and plays of writers who have been called the "Angry Young Men." (There are women who belong to, or relate to, this category.) Among the possibilities: John Osborne, Alan Sillitoe, Shelagh Delaney, and Arnold Wesker.
We will study other writers who can be related to the "Angries." Among the possibilities: Hanif Kureishi, Kingsley Amis, Aldous Huxley, Anthony Burgess, George Orwell, Zadie Smith.
We will study selected films, some made from our printed texts. Among the possibilities: "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner," "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning," "A Taste of Honey," "Look Back in Anger," "A Clockwork Orange," My Son the Fanatic," "If," and "O Lucky Man."
We will include Rock music. Near the end of the semester, each student will do a paper or class presentation on music of their choice.
Writing will include essay exams--in class and out--preparation journals, and, perhaps, selected and limited research reporting. I prefer frequent and various sorts of writing to few but long papers.
ENG 312: American Women Poets: Reading and Writing
Dr. Sandra Cookson
Creative Writing, Writing, WST, American Literature II
This course serves a dual purpose. It examines women’s poetry from about the 1960’s to the present, through reading, analysis, and practice in both writing about the published poems in the anthology and writing original poems in response to the readings. Students will keep a journal of the readings and class discussions, and will practice constructive critical readings of their own poems and those of their classmates in workshop sessions. COURSE REQUIREMENTS. Written assignments will include (in addition to poetry journal), critical essays, and a portfolio of students’ own poems, as well as regular participation in class discussions and reading of poems.
Eng 319 Hawthorne and The American Literary Literature
Dr. Roger Stephenson
American I or II
This course—centering on stories and “tales” as well as novels—focuses on the direct and indirect impact of Hawthorne on the development of American fiction. It will examine how Hawthorne’s unique blending of “romance” and regionalism impacted later 19th century American writers such as Melville and his first biographer, Henry James. Hawthorne’s continuing influence on 20th century writers such as R.P. Warren, Thomas Wolfe, Eudora Welty, and William Faulkner will involve tracing distinctly American themes as well as direct connections between the formal features of individual works (as in THE BLITHDALE ROMANCE and ABSALOM, ABSALOM!, for example).
ENG 323 Shakespeare II
Dr. Rachel Greenberg
Shakespeare req.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “popular” means: “prevalent or current among the general public” or “Of, relating to, deriving from, or consisting of ordinary people or the people as a whole.” Seen in this light, how popular was Shakespeare? Indeed, though Shakespeare is often credited as the greatest playwright of all time, he was also the son of a glove-seller. In other words, Shakespeare was very much one of “the people,” and his plays were typically staged for a public and popular audience. In this course, we will consider the role of the “popular” or “the people” in a range of Shakespeare’s plays, and the range of social and political associations these terms evoke. In particular, we will consider how Shakespeare’s plays negotiate often conflicting views of the “popular,” as well as how they might have registered with their most common spectators. Some secondary readings and film clips will likely accompany the plays themselves. Active participation, response papers, a midterm and final exam, and a final paper are required. Assigned plays will likely include: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, The Tragedy of King Lear, The Winter’s Tale and Coriolanus.
ENG 324 Reading and Writing in Early America
Dr. Rita Capezzi
American I, WST
In the 17th Century, Cotton Mather promised to “fill this Countrey with devout and useful books.” In the 1860s, Abraham Lincoln credited the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe with “making” the Civil War through Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Central to issues of books in early America are the readers to whom the writing was directed. Much writing of the era is marked by explicit instruction of readers—in ways of reading as well as in the appropriate cultural values held dear by writers. The emergence of women, African-American, and working class readers complicated the contest for literary authority and cultural literacy. Even while writers shaped the habits and expectations of audiences, readers both embraced and challenged the perspectives of writers.
Over the course of the semester, we will read a variety of texts--including instruction manuals, magazine writing, works by women and African-Americans, as well as classic literature of the period--in order to explore some central questions: Why were literacy and writing important to the culture of early America? How were literacy and literature variously defined and by whom? And, how can issues of literacy and literary production in early America further an understanding of these issues in the 21st Century?
Assignments will include descriptive and analytical assignments, as well as evaluative and comparative essays, as well as a synthetic research project.
ENG 350 The Theatre Experience
Eileen Dugan
This is a course for anyone who has ever watched a play and wondered “how do they do that?”And then wondered, “Could I do that???” The course is designed to give students a “hands-on” look at work of theatre professionals. We’ll look at what each member of the theatre team contributes, and how it all comes together in a cohesive performance.
We will attend plays, and meet with professional designers, directors, theatre managers, and actors who will share their back stage insights and experiences. Students will have the opportunity to work on their own projects in costume and sound design, acting, and directing.
(If you have taken Intro to Theatre, this is a great follow up---and a chance to try your hand at some of the jobs we looked at in that course. If not, this is a chance to find out what the theatre professions entail, and to plunge right in to the experience.)
ENG 368 Native American Literature
Professor Eric Gansworth
American II, Diversity, WST
This course is designed as a survey of contemporary Native American Literature. We will be covering major authors as well as some lesser known authors, tracing origins of traditions, both thematic and structural. The shorter works we will read in the first part of the semester illustrate many of these traditions and we will eventually examine landmark larger works to explore these relationships more fully. Grading will be based on formal critical essays, exams and participation.
ENG 371B Drama: Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson
Dr. Jack D’Amico
British I
We will study six plays by the three pillars of Elizabethan theater: beware the fiends, witches, con artists and lawyers who lie like truth. On the theme of early mercantilism we will compare The Jew of Malta, The Merchant of Venice, and Volpone and on knowledge and power Dr. Faustus, Macbeth and The Alchemist. In addition to a close reading of each play, we will also examine the different theatrical traditions and conventions that the plays embody. There will be either a short essay, or in class exam on each play and a final take home exam that will offer a choice of topics.
ENG 373 Jane Austen
Dr. Amy Wolf
British Literature II
Jane Austen is as popular as ever in the twenty-first century, the subject of fictionalizations, adaptations, films, books clubs, and fan clubs. Her lively characters, social realism, and pointed satire still fascinate and move readers. We will read all of Austen’s novels and some of her letters and juvenilia, along with literary criticism and other eighteenth-century texts that will help us understand her and her time. We will consider the role biography, history, and culture play in our interpretations of texts as well as the meaning and significance of her novels individually and as a body of work. Requirements include active discussion, in-depth close reading, three literary analysis essays, including a long compare/contrast paper, as well as regular homework assignments.
HON 375 All-College Honors Seminar Storytellers, Writers, and Authors in American Literature
Dr. Jennifer Desiderio
American I or II
This course will examine depictions of American storytellers, authors, and writers. Thus, we will read texts that feature an author-figure or storyteller as a protagonist or central character. This character will illustrate for us the challenges, anxieties, responsibilities, and hopes of the American author. We will look closely at how these figures view the purpose of their craft and their responsibility to readers, publishers, and the country, and how they respond to popularity and aesthetic movements. We will follow the depiction of the author in four historical periods: early national, antebellum, postbellum, and early twentieth century. It is throughout this time period when we see authorship turn into a viable profession. For example, the course will begin with poor regional writers nervously penning the first American novel in the newly independent nation and will end with international authorial celebrities typing “the great American novel” in Pamplona. As a result, we will discuss what it means to be an author versus a writer, or what it means to be a professional author. We will read a selection of novels, poems, slave narratives, and short stories by a wide variety of authors, including Charles Brockden Brown, Harriet Wilson, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Charles Chesnutt, and Ernest Hemingway. Race, class, and gender will be discussed regularly, since issues of identity are integral to understanding authorship and the dynamics of authority.
ENG 382 African American Literature
Dr. Robert Butler
American II
This course will survey African American literature from slae times to the present. Great care will be taken to view representative masterworks in their historical and cultural contexts. Individual masterworks such as Douglass's Narrative of Frederick Douglass, Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Wright's Native Son, and Ellison's Invisible Man will also be studied in careful detail as literary masterpieces and "seminal" texts, books which helped to shape the rich tradition of African American literature.
ENG 388 Literary Publishing
Dr. Mick Cochrane
English Elective, Creative Writing Minor
The theoretical component of the course will involve a study of the history of the literary magazine from the founding of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in 1912 to the present time. We’ll attempt to understand both the function of the magazine as a literary force and the interaction of design and text. Readings will be supplemented by guest speakers—professional editors, publishers, designers, writers, and a bookseller—who will add their perspective. The practical component of the course will focus on editing The Quadrangle, the Canisius College literary and visual arts magazine. The work will include soliciting and selecting material, copy-editing and proofreading, design, layout, printing, publicity, and distribution. You do not have to take the course in order to work on the literary magazine, but you do have to work in a significant role on the magazine in order to take the course.
ENG 394A Introduction to Creative Writing
Dr. Mick Cochrane
Field 3, Writing Requirement, Creative Writing, Writing Minor
This is an intensive writing course, designed for those students who are serious about writing and who are willing to work long and hard at the process. Its goal is to help students become more skillful writers of poetry and literary fiction. Reading as writers, we’ll study strong stories and poems to see how they work and to learn how their writers solve the same problems all writers face. We’ll practice the skills necessary to write engaging, convincing, and original poetry and fiction. We’ll focus on the steps in the writing process, from discovering and developing fresh material to drafting, revising, and editing. Frequent exercises will provide the opportunity to practice, to imitate, and to experiment. A final portfolio of revised, polished work will demonstrate each student’s proficiency. The class will be conducted as a workshop and will, therefore, often focus on the discussion of students' work.
ENG 394B Introduction to Creative Writing
Janet McNally, MFA
Field 3, Writing requirement, Creative Writing, Writing Minor
This course will allow students to explore the fundamental skills of fiction and poetry writing, and is designed around the belief that one must read widely and closely in order to write well. This is an intensive writing course, meant for students who are dedicated readers and serious about the process of writing. We will examine the works of both established and emerging writers in hopes of discerning and emulating the qualities of good poetry and fiction. Frequent writing exercises will provide the opportunity to practice, to imitate, and to experiment. Class members will work together to create a welcoming and productive workshop, including extensive in-class discussion on both published writers and student work.
ENG 396 Yeats and His Times
Professor Melvin Schroeder & James Pribek, S.J.
English Honors Seminar, British IV
The long literary career of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) began in romanticism and ended in high modernism. Throughout this time, he turned his hand to a number of styles and achieved mastery of nearly every form he employed: most notably poetry, but also prose (especially the essay), and drama, blending the eastern and western traditions. He recorded his own experience nearly from cradle (the opening paragraphs of “Autobiographies”) to grave (his deathbed poems). To study Yeats is to study his times, from the Victorian Era to the height of the Second World War; it is also to study Ireland, from its post-famine malaise through renaissance and revolution into early statehood, in which Yeats served two terms as senator. On the personal level, Yeats provides a glimpse into a remarkably talented and influential family of painters, printers, and craftspeople. Prof. Mel Schroeder and Fr. Jim Pribek will guide students in this study of the rich life and work of W.B. Yeats and the times that, according to T.S. Eliot, cannot be understood without him.
ENG 401 Texts, Contexts, and Subtexts
Dr.Thomas Reber
Writing requirement, required Writing Minor
We will study a variety of texts, ranging from poems to advertising to movies to conversation. Texts from popular culture will be prominent. We will consider not only how these texts are constructed but why they come into being and how they are received. Thus, we'll view texts both as objects composed of language and as cultural artifacts with particular meanings for their audience. To help us to understand these texts, we will consider the metaphors they display, the issues of gender and language they raise, and the power relationships they imply.
Assignments will likely include several short papers to show your understanding of the course material, a small-group presentation on a critical approach to texts, a transcript and analysis of a real conversation you will have audio-taped, and a final exam. Texts will probably include Deborah Tannen's bestselling book You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, and Barry Brummett's Rhetoric in Popular Culture, 2nd ed., 2006.
ENG 494 Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction
Professor Eric Gansworth
Writing req.
This course builds on the foundations established in the Introduction to Creative Writing course, with a concentration solely on fiction. Throughout the semester, we will explore further techniques and sophisticated use of those techniques, with the goal of composing short stories that inherently feature the hallmarks of contemporary literary fiction, including subtlety, nuance, and stories that are much more concerned with realistic characters portrayed with depth and honesty, rather than stories relying on unlikely plot elements, narrative gimmicks and surprise endings. Students will produce at least two major works and an optional third that may involve some of the previously introduced characters. Intensive workshop is complemented by the study of established writers, in exploration of appropriate contemporary techniques and approaches used in the field.