ENGLISH DEPARTMENT ADVISEMENT GUIDE for Fall 2010
(scroll down to see descriptions of individual courses)
(scroll down to see descriptions of individual courses)
In order to register for Fall 2010 classes, Senior, Junior, and Sophomore majors must see their departmental advisors in order to receive their Registration PINs. Dual majors also have advisors and may consult them about registration matters. A list of advisors is available in CT-916 or online at www.canisius.edu/english/. Contact your advisors directly at least one week to ten days prior to the opening of your registration window.
Courses Offered in Fall 2010
| General Requirements: | 299 | Intro to English Studies (Major requirement) | Pribek |
| 299 | Intro to English Studies (Major requirement) | Wolf | |
| 322 | Shakespeare I (Major requirement) | Greenberg | |
| Writing: | 205 | Varieties of the Essay (Writing Minor, Writing, Writing Intensive) | Reber |
| 389 | Business Communication (Writing, Writing Intensive) | Hammer | |
| *394 | Creative Writing (Field 3, Writing Req., Writing Minor, Writing Intensive) |
Cochrane, Gansworth, McNally | |
| 402 | Creativity and Composition Theory(Writing) | Coward | |
| 411 | Playwriting (Field 3, Writing Req., Creative Writing, Writing Minor) | Schneiderman | |
| British Distribution: | 305 | Seventeenth C. Literature (I) | Dompkowski |
| 308 | Nineteenth C. British Literature (III, WST) | Fisher | |
| 309 | Modern & Contemporary British Lit (IV) | Schroeder | |
| 325 | British Women Writers (II or III, WST) | Wolf | |
| 372 | The Novels of Charles Dickens (III) | Sroka | |
| American Distribution: | 315 | American Literature (I, WST, Diversity Attribute) | Desiderio |
| 317 | Heroes & Heroines in American Lit (II) | Butler | |
| 371C | American Drama (II) | Stephenson | |
| Electives: | *147 | Acting I (English Elective, Theater Minor, Oral Communication skill) | Dugan |
| *346 | Intro to Theater (Field 3, Theater Minor) | Dugan | |
| 396N | Eng. Hon. Sem: Novels of Dostoevsky | Cookson | |
| Field 3: | 201 | Poetry | Cookson |
| 202 | Drama | Hodin | |
| 211 | Science Fiction (WST, English Elective) | Reber | |
| 222 | Vampires in Literature & Culture (WST) | Greenberg | |
| 376 | Film as Literature (American II) | Gansworth |
*Starred courses may be taken for Field 3 (formerly AS III) credit by both English majors and non-majors. No more than two 200 level courses can be taken for English Elective credit for majors.
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS FOR FALL 2010
No more than two 200 level courses (in addition to ENG 299) may be used for English Major Elective credit. Any 300 or 400 level course may be used for English Major Elective credit.
ENG 147: Acting I
Eileen Dugan
English Major Elective, Theater Minor, Oral Communication Skill
If you enjoyed acting in high school, (or ever) this is a course for you. Using theatre games, improvisation, technique exercises, scenes and monologues, students explore how an actor trains, rehearses and performs. The atmosphere is relaxed and supportive, a great place to express your inner "ham," or to gain confidence if the idea of public speaking or performing terrifies you.
There is NO pre requisite, and FRESHMEN ARE WELCOME!!!! Acting I is taught by Eileen Dugan, a professional actor, director and theatre instructor for more than twenty years, and director of Canisius College's Little Theatre.
ENG 201: Poetry
Dr. Sandra Cookson
Field 3, English Major Elective
This course is designed as a broad-based and culturally deep introduction to poetry for college students. Broad-based because it covers a wide range of historical periods, culturally deep because it includes poetry by diverse voices writing in English, and some poems in translation as well. The range of writing assignments may include, in addition to critical analysis of poems, students’ own poems in response to class readings, and oral presentations. Mid-term and final exams.
ENG 202: Drama
Dr. Mark Hodin
Field 3, English Major Elective
This course surveys a range of drama in order to analyze, interpret, and appreciate this diverse literary genre. Although our reading list emphasizes work done in the twentieth century, the selected plays should get us to think broadly about essential dramatic concepts (i.e. tragedy, comedy, tragic-comedy) and important theater movements and theories (like Naturalism, Expressionism, Absurdism, Epic Theater, and Postmodernism). Along the way, we consider how the various styles selected by our playwrights may have looked in performance to particular theater audiences.
ENG 205: Varieties of the Essay
Dr. Thomas Reber
Writing Minor, Writing, English Major Elective, Writing Intensive
Writing Minor, Required Writing Course for the Major, Core Writing-Intensive Designation; non-majors are welcome.
The course will focus on the production of various kinds of essays by the students. Readings will include models of essays focusing on personal issues, cultural issues, political issues, nature and the environment, and perhaps travel and food. Much attention will be given to the writing style of the model essays and the essays produced by the members of the class, but many other aspects of writing will be explored, including the situation and audience of the respective essays, as well as different methods of organizing texts.
Students will produce 3-5 polished essays, at least half of which will be written in stages, with a draft turned in for critiquing by the students and/or the instructor before the final version is produced. Shorter homework assignments will probably include brief critical pieces (400-500 words or so) analyzing the model essays.
ENG 211: Science Fiction
Dr. Thomas Reber
Field 3, English Major Elective, WST
While all literature, however "realistic," is ultimately about imaginary worlds and imaginary beings, science fiction writers give a special accent to the word "imaginary," often setting their scenes not in the world with which humans are familiar, but in "strange new worlds" populated by equally strange creatures (as in James Cameron's recent film Avatar). In this course we will read several works from the science fiction tradition, studying the kinds of ethical, social, and political issues which all literature addresses but which science fiction addresses in its own uniquely speculative way. At the same time, we will examine the literary techniques which science fiction writers use to make their alien settings seem realistic, to design plots that engage our interest, and to create characters who are both believable and intriguing. Probable readings include short stories by Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the novel on which the film Blade Runner is based), Joe Haldeman's novel The Forever War, and Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End. We will also view at least parts of several films. Class discussion will be an important part of the course.
No prior knowledge of science fiction is required, but Trekkies and other aficionados of the genre are welcome!
ENG 222: Vampires in Literature and Culture
Dr. Rachel Greenberg
Field 3, WST, English Major Elective
This course will examine the image of the vampire in English and American literature and culture over a broad historical period. We will focus particularly on the vampire’s literary roots and traditions, as well as the variety of cultural meanings we associate with vampires and which continue to evolve. Indeed, the vampire has proven to be an especially adaptable and therefore persistent figure in literature, television and film, and thus, a reliable gauge of a range of cultural anxieties, ranging from deviant sexualities to xenophobia to HIV/AIDS, to name just a few. In reading the vampire through a range of cultural metaphors, the course will provide a partial history of the vampire in literature, while also considering vampires in literature and culture today.
ENG 299: Introduction to English Studies
Jim Pribek, S.J.
Required of all English majors
This introduction to English studies, a requirement for majors, presents a more comprehensive and systematic approach to literary scholarship. It will revisit English 101’s considerations of literary genre and vocabulary, but will examine context more closely through a survey of seven major periods and movements in Western literature. It will move into the realm of literary criticism through an examination of seven commonly used critical approaches. The class will also devote special attention to the distinctiveness of the British, American, and Irish literary traditions. Finally, it seeks to give direction to a student’s subsequent English studies at Canisius and beyond.
ENG 299: Introduction to English Studies
Dr. Amy Wolf
Required of all English majors
This course will balance close reading with more theoretical analysis and concentrate on three genres—drama, poetry, and prose narrative. Texts will include critical editions of Shakespeare’s King Lear, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a volume of contemporary poetry (probably Galway Kinnell’s Book of Nightmares), and several works of literary criticism for each text. We will develop a critical vocabulary and consider different ways to read and write about literature, and whether or not that vocabulary and those ways of reading change according to historical time and place, genre, and background. How do we bring who we are to our reading of literary texts? What does it mean to read “like an English major”? How do we balance the qualities in a text—language, imagery, and symbols for example—to qualities outside a text—biography, history, culture, for example? We will aim for depth over breadth, concentrating on just a few works but reading or re-reading them from different angles and from different critical perspectives. Four essays, six to eight homework papers, and class discussion required.
ENG 305: The Seventeenth Century: The Age of Revolution
Dr. Judith Dompkowski
British I or English Major Elective
Following the death of Elizabeth I, England faced great political unrest, including The Gunpowder Plot and the outbreak of Civil War. Yet beyond this apparent turmoil there were other forms of unrest, silent but as powerful. The “era saw important changes in poetic fashion” (Abrams and Greenblatt) as major Elizabethan writers and forms fell out of fashion.
In this course we will examine that falling out. We will begin the semester by examining some examples of 16th century literature, overthrown by the new school of 17th century writers, and how these later changes continue to exert strong influence on some writers even today. Featured 17th century writers will include Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughn, Andrew Marvel. There will be particular focus on John Donne and John Milton.
ENG 308: 19th Century English Literature: Secrets and Scandals
Dr. Jane Fisher
British III, WST, or English Major Elective
We’ll take our inspiration from Matthew Arnold’s essay Culture and Anarchy and the anxiety about change that it revealed, an anxiety characteristic of the British nineteenth century. Caught between an age that was dying and one powerless to be born, Arnold sought to preserve cultural perfection from the anarchy of industrialization, urbanization, and mass culture.
Like our current historical period, the nineteenth century in Britain was an era of unpredictable and enormous social change. The cultural anxiety accompanying this social change found expression in the recurrence of secrets and scandals in its literature, both in the literary works themselves and in the circumstances surrounding their performance and publication. Secrecy could mask the anxiety concerning a hidden or forbidden issue only to a certain extent until it became public and risked becoming a full-blown scandal known to all. Issues generating cultural anxiety during this period were the declining importance of religion, the changing nature of gender roles and the family, the rise of the British Empire, and the changing balance between the country and the city.
We’ll examine a range of nineteenth-century works drawn from narrative, poetry, drama and essays by Wordsworth, Byron, Bronte, Arnold, Collins, Barrett Browning, Browning, and Wilde. Course requirements include a series of ungraded portfolio essays on every writer we read, a research project, several graded essays, and a final exam.
ENG 309: Modern and Contemporary British Literature
Professor Melvin Schroeder
British IV, or English Major Elective
This is a – necessarily – selective survey of important writers of modern and contemporary British literature. Among my possible choices for fiction writers: E. M. Foster, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Ford Maddox Ford, D. H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, Alan Sillitoe, Anthony Burgess, Virginia Woolf, Hanif Kureishi, and Zadie Smith. Among the possible poets: Thomas Hardy, W. B Yeats, T. S Eliot, W. H Auden, Stephen Spender, and selected poets of World War I.
I favor frequent, relatively brief, writing work of considerable variety. Some writing assignments are to serve as study and preparation for class; some are to prove your literate mastery of our readings. Exams are always “essay” exams, and are done with books and notes to work with.
I always look for active participation in class – and that will be a factor in your course grade, along with the grades you earn on written work.
This course can be taken as a part of requirements for English Majors, or as an Area III core course, or as a free elective.
My office is Tower 915 – I would be ready, willing, and able to talk with you about this course, should you care to drop in and do so.
English 315: American Literature I, “Origins”-1865
Dr. Jennifer Desiderio
American Literature I, WST, Diversity Attribute, or English Major Elective
This class will introduce students to the literature of America, from its “origins” to its “renaissance” in the mid-nineteenth century. We will think about this literature in terms of nationalism and nation-building, analyzing particularly how the writing of the period reflects, interacts with, and responds to the political, cultural, and social environment of its historical moment. We will also consider how texts correspond to the dominant literary movements of the period, including neo-classicism, romanticism, sensationalism, sentimentalism, transcendentalism, and realism. By reading a selection of captivity narratives, sermons, autobiographies, poems, slave narratives, and novels, we will increase our knowledge of different literary genres and become familiar with a broad range of authors, including Mary Rowlandson, Samuel Sewall, Charles Brockden Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, and Harriet Jacobs. We will also pay particular attention to the profession of authorship and its gendered expectations.
ENG 317: Heroes and Heroines in American Literature
Dr. Robert Butler
American II, English Major Elective
This course provides an in-depth study of various American heroic figures and the nature of their experiences. Strong emphasis will be placed on defining the unique features of these heroic figures and how they differ from the representative heroes and heroines of European and English literature. Careful attention will also be paid to studying the special characteristics of American heroic literature and how they reflect uniquely American values. Representative literary texts and films will be studied in careful detail. A broad range of American writers from a wide variety of literary periods will be studied, including James Fenimore Cooper, Horatio Alger, Mark Twain, Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, Malcolm X, and Anne Tyler.
ENG 322: Shakespeare I
Dr. Rachel Greenberg
English Major Requirement
The course will serve as a broad introduction to Shakespeare’s plays, their various themes, and the many historical and cultural issues they address in the time Shakespeare was writing. We will cover all of Shakespeare’s dramatic genres: comedy, tragedy, history and romance, as well as discuss how the plays often blur or break down generic distinctions. While much of our focus will be on close-reading and exploring Shakespeare’s dynamic language, we will also explore how the plays both represent and comment upon early modern views of gender and sexuality, nationhood and imperialism, kingship (or queenship), social class, and race. Secondary readings (historical texts and literary criticism) and film clips will also accompany the assigned plays. Regular attendance, active participation, response papers, a group performance & presentation, a midterm and final exam, and a final paper are required. Assigned plays will likely include: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, Richard II, Twelfth Night, The Tempest and Titus Andronicus.
ENG 325: British Women Writers
Dr. Amy Wolf
British Literature II or British Literature III, Women’s Studies, or English Major Elective
This course focuses on the literary tradition in England from the Restoration through the Victorian era, concentrating on the work of women writers. We will examine how these writers re-shaped but sometimes reinforced gendered ideas about genre and how they fit into or challenge traditional literary histories of Restoration drama, Romanticism, the “rise” of the novel, epistolary fiction, etc. Writers will include Haywood, Behn, Finch, Inchbald, Austen, Eliot, Gaskell, Wollstonecraft, Rossetti. Six short homework papers, three longer papers, and class discussion required.
ENG 346: Intro to Theater
Eileen Dugan
Field 3, English Major Elective, Theater Minor
This course is designed to give students an overview of theater as an art form, profession, and cultural/social phenomenon. What exactly IS theater? What is it that actors DO? What is the role of the director? How or why does live theater still exist in an age of television and movies? What makes a great play? Course work will include exploration of the development of modern theater--from ritualistic roots, through the major changes in stages and scenery, acting styles, and societal influences that affect the theater's impact and product. We will use this background to appreciate actual theater performances--the artists, technicians, designers and producers: what each contributes to this uniquely collaborative art form, and what audiences expect, and what they find when the house dims and the curtain rises. Attendance at local theater performance events may be required.
ENG 371C: American Drama
Dr. E. Roger Stephenson
American II, or English Major Elective
This survey of American drama begins with a consideration of the “Heritage of Realism” and its impact on the melodrama dominant in late 19th American theater which preceded it. Starting with the experimental productions of early Eugene O’Neill and the Provincetown experience, this course will trace the development of American drama through the social realism of the 1930’s and 40’s , through the second generation Naturalists and Expressionists of the 60’s and 70’s to the post modernists of the end of the 20th Century. Dramatists to be treated will include: O’Neill, Glaspell, Odets, Sherwood, Williams, Miller, Albee, Hansberry, Shepard, Wilson, Mamet, and Smith.
While ENG 371C is a literature course—dramatic literature, that is—production issues , including the development of acting “schools” and stage technique strategies will also be discussed.
Eng 372: Education in the Novels of Charles Dickens
Dr. Ken Sroka
British III, or English Major Elective
We will examine the texts of five of Charles Dickens’ best known works: A Christmas Carol (1843), Oliver Twist (1837), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1860) and view film of the Royal Shakespeare 1980 stage production of “Nicholas Nickleby” (wr. 1839). A major focus will be Dickens’ concern with “Education,” a term that has several layers—biographical, socio-historical, literary, and psychological. Dickens was self-educated, an obsessive reader in the British Museum Reading Room, who eventually became a conscious crusader for education and an unconscious advocate for the educational benefits of reading fiction. All of Dickens is implicit in A Christmas Carol, so we will begin there. By the time we move from that early parable through the darker courses of Oliver Twist, Hard Times, and Nicholas Nickleby to the poetic history of A Tale of Two Cities, we will look at Dickens in his least self-conscious, most artfully designed, most universal achievement in Great Expectations. There will be short supplementary readings as well, short papers, and two exams. We will set aside an extra one-hour per week screening time for our use when we need it. If you like to lose and find yourself in great fiction, join us to learn why Dickens has been called the English writer “second only to Shakespeare”!
ENG 376: Film as Literature
Professor Eric Gansworth
Field 3, American II, or English Major Elective
The course is an exploration of the relationship between two distinctly different aesthetic forms: film and literature. The development within the semester relies heavily on the original written piece of literature, and in each case, later explores the interpretation of another artist’s (film director) vision of thematic statements within the work. We will read full-length works, primarily novels, and then examine the ways in which these pieces have been adapted to the medium of film. We will not be using highly commercial films that have been adapted from blockbuster novels, but instead will focus on novels which have inherently rich literary content, and film adaptations in which the screenwriters and directors have committed themselves to work of the same high caliber, while not necessarily maintaining a worshipful word-for-word adaptation. This semester’s selections will heavily explore “the American landscape” as a primary focus point for thematic content.
ENG 389: Business Communication
Prof. Mark Hammer
Writing Intensive
ENG 389 is taught as a practical introduction to a wide variety of communication methods that students will find present in their future work environments. Students are asked to produce short (letters, memos) and lengthy (business plan) pieces of writing, many of which mimic workplace requirements that they'll encounter in their professional lives. Discussion moves from how to find a job to corporate culture, management styles to marketing plans, all in the context of a pseudo-business environment. ENG 389 is a communication primer for the student who will soon be entering an American workplace where employees must "communicate or die!"
ENG 394A: Introduction to Creative Writing
Dr. Mick Cochrane
Field 3, Writing Requirement, Creative Writing, Writing Minor, Writing Intensive
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
Professor Eric Gansworth
Field 3, Writing Requirement, Creative Writing, Writing Minor, Writing Intensive
This course is designed as an introduction to the foundations of creative writing, specifically the forms of poetry the short story, and creative non-fiction, and the technical qualities that facilitate each. Much of the course time will be spent in workshop, using student work from the class as major texts. We will also explore meaningful revision as a critical and necessary part of the writing process. Additionally, we will examine the work of published writers, toward the goal of understanding the choices these writers made, in crafting work of lasting merit. Because of the workshop approach, participation is imperative and each student will be responsible for daily meaningful contributions to the discussion. There will be frequent writing assignments, exercises and responses to texts, as well as major works for the semester. Grading will be based on a portfolio of work, including exercises and responses, the level of consistent meaningful participation, the major works, which you should consider actively revising as you learn different techniques and a reflective essay on your performance at the semester’s conclusion.
ENG 394C: Introduction to Creative Writing
Janet McNally
Field 3, Writing Requirement, Creative Writing, Writing Minor, Writing Intensive
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 of both published writers and student work.
ENG 396N: English Honors Seminar: The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky
Prof. Sandra Cookson
English Major Elective
Fyodor Dostoevsky stands as one of the two Russian novelists of the nineteenth century whose works have had the greatest impact on modern Western Literature. In his portrayals of the modern consciousness—its apprehension of division, isolation, and alienation, Dostoevsky has been called the first existentialist. Nietzsche considered him “the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn.” Freud thought creative writers the true discoverers of the unconscious, and Dostoevsky the greatest of all novelists. The nihilistic narrator of Notes from Underground and the murderer protagonist of Crime and Punishment are prototypical modern anti-heroes.
Our journey into Dostoevsky’s novels centers upon Crime and Punishment, his first major novel, but we begin with an examination of his shorter earlier works. These will introduce students to the distinctly Russian character of Dostoevsky’s “dreamers” and to the city of St. Petersburg, his representative modern city—vivid, corrupt, at times nightmarish, in which most of his works are set. Our reading of Crime and Punishment will be accompanied by excerpts from his prison memoir, The House of the Dead. We will select from the three later novels probably The Brothers Karamazov to conclude the seminar.
In keeping with the seminar format, students will give regular oral presentations on critical and background issues in the works of Dostoevsky and will write a substantial research paper. Mid-term and final exams will be given.
ENG 402: Creativity and Composition Theory
Dr. Pat Coward
Writing, English Major Elective
Creativity and Composition Theory, primarily a writing theory course, addresses a variety of composing patterns and strategies found in the invention, development, and revision of writing for different purposes and audiences. The course purposely crosses disciplines as well as cultural environments so that students are encouraged through class work and assignments to synthesize the knowledge they have gained in their own writing experiences with composition theory; thus, students model in the academic setting the creative and critical thinking processes they will be expected to use in the real world of writing. Students also experience holistic as well as close editorial evaluation. Creativity and Composition Theory is recommended in particular to future teachers, writers, and communication specialists.
ENG 411: Playwriting
Kurt Schneiderman
Field 3, Writing Requirement, Creative Writing, Writing Minor
UNLEASH THE PLAYWRIGHT WITHIN! Those who write plays are called playWRIGHTs – like cartWRIGHTs – because playwriting is a craft. Plays are not simply written; they are WROUGHT through a process of blood, sweat, and tears. In this course, we will study that process in depth. We will explore techniques for developing all the ingredients of dramatic writing: conflict, character development, monologue, dialogue, plot structure, and much, much more. We shall wring wisdom from the greats by analyzing some of the most famous plays of the American Theatre. And, naturally, we will write. We will write, write, and write some more. Students will be called upon to perform a number of in-class and out-of-class writing exercises while simultaneously developing dialogue of their own creation. Ultimately, all students will emerge with at least one fully crafted scene of theatre. Don't deny your muses a moment longer, come spread your playwriting wings!