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Winter Term 2015 Course Descriptions, School of Writing, Literature, and Film

Course ENG 104: Intro to Literature – Fiction Harrison Introduction to Fiction. Required texts: 1) Coleman Dowell: The Houses of Children. 2) Flannery O'Connor: Wise Blood. 3) Italo Calvino: If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. 4) Gilbert Sorrentino: Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things. ENG 104: Intro to Literature – Fiction Dybek The novelist Richard Ford says, “If loneliness is your disease then the story is the cure.” Though a well-told story certainly has the power to engage us, one need not be unhappy or otherwise infirm to appreciate the power of a fictional narrative. (I have it on good authority, for example, that Homer was quite cheerful and always a hit at the big sacrificial feasts!) But what is it about stories—fictional stories, in particular—that fosters this powerful, even curative, emotional and intellectual engagement? In this course, we will attempt to answer that question by reading and discussing several short stories and three novels with an eye towards how each is made, identifying and interrogating the author’s use of tools such as point of view and image. This attention to craft will ultimately help us become better, closer readers, able to pick apart the means by which texts illuminate and critique the mysterious world in which we live and reveal the surprising, familiar secrets that lurk in our lonely hearts and minds. ENG 104: Intro to Literature – Fiction Larison Introduction to Fiction offers you a chance to read, ponder, and explore some of the most influential short stories of the last century. Specifically, we’ll be focusing our explorations on issues of theme, context, and craft. Expect an inspiring and intellectually rigorous—class, one in which you will produce several short writing assignments and two papers. ENG 104: Intro to Literature – Fiction Bushnell This course introduces students to prose fiction through the short story, novella, and novel, with particular (but not exclusive) focus on 20th-century American writers. Students will learn to read closely for fundamental craft concepts such as descriptive detail, plot, characterization, point of view, structure, symbolism, and theme. By the end of the term, students will have received exposure to a broad array of narratives, cultures, and ideas, and will have developed the skills to analyze them for meaning and value.

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ENG 104: Intro to Literature – Fiction Delf What is a story? How does fiction create or reflect the culture and historical moment in which they are written? Why do we (or why should we) read literature at all? In this class, we will build answers to these foundational questions. Using a critical lens, we will work to understand both the implied and stated meaning of short stories from the last two centuries, as well as developing our knowledge of the key elements of fiction.

ENG 104: Intro to Literature – Fiction Larison Introduction to Fiction offers you a chance to read, ponder, and explore some of the most influential short stories of the last century. Specifically, we’ll be focusing our explorations on issues of theme, context, and craft. Expect an inspiring and intellectually rigorous—class, one in which you will produce several short writing assignments and two papers. ENG 106: Intro to Literature – Poetry Biespiel Study of poetry for greater understanding and enjoyment. ENG 106: Intro to Literature - Poetry Elbom, G. Through a close reading of traditional and innovative poetry, we will introduce and explore a variety of poetic devices and forms. We will examine a collection of approximately 50 famous poems from different perspectives: historical, comparative, structural, theological, and so on. Our required texts: The Top 500 Poems (edited by William Harmon) and The Jazz Poetry Anthology (edited by Sascha Feinstein and Yusef Komunyakaa). ENG 106: Intro to Literature - Poetry Brock What is a poem? Why do poems matter? In this class, we will begin to look at poetry through a critical lens, and we’ll begin to answer these questions, looking at both the stated and implied meanings in a variety of different poems. We will also develop an understanding of the tools poets use. Participation in class discussions and short quizzes testing reading comprehension will make up a significant part of your grade. A writing portfolio composed of in-class and out-of-class writings will be submitted for credit at the end of the term. Two in-class exams will illuminate your understanding of various poems we’ve read and discussed.

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ENG 106: Intro to Literature - Poetry Tolar Burton English 106, Introduction to Poetry, provides a general introduction to the study of poetry for students in all majors. Emphasis will be placed not only on technical aspects of interpreting poetry but also on the value of poetry for our lives and our society. We will especially focus on how a poem “works,” and you will gain practice in analyzing and interpreting poems, mostly British and American, from a wide range of time periods and styles. ENG 107: Introduction to Creative Nonfiction Verzemnieks Over the centuries, writers have been drawn to nonfiction, and to the essay form in particular, out of a deep hunger to explore and understand the world around them. In that same spirit, this class will also be all about exploration—putting ourselves in new and unexpected places, then observing, reflecting upon, and writing about what we discover. We’ll seek out the strange, as well as try to see the familiar through new eyes. We’ll do this in two ways: together we will read essays—lots of essays—that will introduce you to the vast range of possibilities that exist within the genre, from writing that mines our hidden interior spaces to works of literary journalism that require deep inhabitation of other people’s lives to essays that are driven by visual approaches and other experimental techniques. And then, we’ll also be doing our own writing, carefully analyzing what we are reading with an eye toward imagining how we might launch our own literary explorations of the world around us. In other words, you’ll have some chances to give the approaches you are reading about a try (and try is the operative word—any successful exploration always involves a certain amount of risk and embrace of the unknown). ENG 200: Introduction to Library Resources Nichols English 200 Introduction to library resources such as catalogs, Google Scholar, JSTOR, MLA International Bibliography, primary resources, etc., and to scholarly issues including intellectual property and scholarly practices for the study of literature. Required for English majors. ENG 202H: Shakespeare Olson An introduction to the second half of Shakespeare's career. This course is designed to help students become more confident readers (and audience members) of Shakespearean drama by focusing on language, historical context, and staging. Plays include Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest. This course is included in two Baccalaureate Core categories: Western Culture and Literature and the Arts.

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ENG 205: Survey of British Literature Gottlieb As the middle part of the British Literature survey, this course begins with the literature of the late seventeenth century and runs through the first decades of the nineteenth century. As we examine the best-known writers of the age (including Milton, Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth, and Austen), we will read great works in most of the major genres: poetry, fiction, and non-fiction prose. Our challenge will be to understand these texts in their historical contexts, while simultaneously appreciating their artistic qualities. Grades will be based on participation, two exams, and a term paper. ENG 208: Literature of Western Civilization Davison This is a survey course that engages both intellectual contexts and key literary texts of Western literature from the late 18th through the 20th century, a period often referred to as Enlightenment Modernity. We will first attempt to read, position, and understand Enlightenment pieces of literature as they give way the Romantic movement of the late-18th and 19th centuries. A study of both English and Continental first generation Romantic poetry will move into an examination of the second generation Romantic writers referred to as the Decadent movement in Western literature. We will also read background materials and fiction from the Realist and Naturalist schools of literature. Finally, we will consider how Romanticism, Symbolism, and Naturalism planted the seeds of literary Modernism. If time permits, we may also attempt to move further into the 20th century and study texts that continue the Modernist aesthetic into the Postmodern, as well as address the more overt politics of race, colonialism, class, and gender in the mid-to-late 20th century. Grades will be based on a take-home mid-term exam and a two-hour, in class final. ENG 213: Literatures of the World: Middle East Elbom, Gilad This class will focus on modern Middle Eastern narratives from multiple perspectives: cultural, political, religious, historical, postcolonial, geographical, linguistic, structural, stylistic, thematic, comparative, and other points of view. The texts on our reading list include a self-referential Palestinian novel, a feminist narrative from Egypt, a curious bildungsroman from Yemen, and a surrealistic, hallucinatory, self-deceptive novel from Iran. We will also watch and analyze several Middle Eastern movies.

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ENG 215: Classical Mythology Barbour Tales of the ancient Greek and Roman deities, epic heroes/heroines and their monstrous adversaries speak to our primal concerns about the origins and destinies of human beings, the nature of the world, and the mysteries of the spiritual realm. This course will trace the mythic genealogy of the first beings, the Titans, the Olympians, and heroic humans, examining their domains, conflicts, journeys, and amorous encounters. We will study the myths in their primary ancient sources, which include some of the most significant and influential works in the “Western” literary tradition, and relate them to narratives important in our culture today. Interrogating the human uses of story-telling and other muse-inspired arts, we will also examine the representation of the myths in painting, sculpture, and music. ENG 220/FILM 220: Topics in Difference, Power, and Discrimination St. Jacques This course will concentrate on analyzing representations of sexuality in relation to difference, power and discrimination in contemporary Western cinema. Viewing films that represent a diversity of sexual vantage points in a variety of directorial styles, ENG220 participants will evaluate the construction of sexualities in contemporary film. Beginning with overtly heterocentric films, such as What Women Want (Nancy Meyers, 2000) and Fatal Attraction (Paul Verhoeven, 1992), students will learn to critically explore and evaluate typical and atypical representations of hetero- and homosexuality, queerness, sexual aggression and homophobia, transvestism, transsexualism and intersexuality ­ as well as intersections of sexuality and discrimination in terms of age and race. Our exploration will be activated through student participation in research, writing, experiential exercise, group discussion forums and personal reflection. ENG 253: Survey of American Literature: Colonial to 1900 Robinson The course will focus on American Literature before 1900 (before literature began to decline). It will be a great lineup, beginning with the divine Edgar Allan Poe, and including Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Charles Chesnutt, the one and only Mark Twain, and a selection of short stories by Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and other American women. Require­ments are an in-class midterm essay, an analytical essay, and final comparative essays. Don’t sign up for this one if you aren’t eager to write. ENG 254: Survey of American Literature: 1900 to Present Betjemann The second portion of the introductory American literature sequence, this course covers the period from 1900 to the present - and covers literature ranging from conventional narrative to experimental poetry and prose. Among other themes, we will consider the effects of an increasingly global culture on American identity, the pressures of violence and war on a literary history that has often idealized the pastoral or rustic, and the situation of American literature in new places (California, Harlem) or new landscapes (suburbia, the neon city).

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ENG 253: Survey of American Literature: Colonial to 1900 Robinson This course will focus on American literature before 1900, emphasizing representative works that illustrate accomplished literary form and address central issues in American history and culture. In the first section of the course we will read two longer narratives, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, his autobiographical account of his secluded life in the woods, and Harold Frederic’s novel The Damnation of Theron Ware, an examination of American innocence and its loss. In the second section we will study the poetry of Emily Dickinson, America’s greatest poet of the inner life, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, one of America’s earliest and most significant African American poets. We will conclude with a section on short fiction, focusing on the chilling and complex work of the Gothic genius Edgar Allan Poe, and also reading examples of the remarkable outpouring of women’s fiction in the later nineteenth century. Detailed analytical papers and in-class written exams will be the basis for the course grade. ENG 254: Survey of American Lit:1900 to Present Betjemann The second portion of the introductory American literature sequence, this course covers the period from 1900 to the present - and covers literature ranging from conventional narrative to experimental poetry and prose. Among other themes, we will consider the effects of an increasingly global culture on American identity, the pressures of violence and war on a literary history that has often idealized the pastoral or rustic, and the situation of American literature in new places (California, Harlem) or new landscapes (suburbia, the neon city).

ENG 260: Literature of American Minorities

León Study of the literature of American minorities: North American Indian, black, Chicano/Chicana, Asian, Middle Eastern, gay and lesbian. Not offered every year. (H) (Bacc Core Course) PREREQS: Sophomore standing.

ENG 275H: The Bible as Literature, Honors

Anderson In this class we’ll try to set aside everything else and look closely at the language and style of the four canonical gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as if we are reading any other story, the work of any other creative writer: the narrative arcs, the development of character, what the stories say and what they don’t. I’ll ask you to do a short warm-up essay, a take-home essay midterm, and a take-home essay final. There’ll also be pop quizzes along the way, as well as frequent in-class freewriting. Our emphasis will be on ways of reading--on kinds of truth and methods of interpretation. Satisfies Bacc Core Literature and the Arts; Western Culture.

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ENG 313: Studies in British Poetry Holmberg In this course, we will study the poetry and selected letters of three British poets of the 19th century—John Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Thomas Hardy—and will consider innovations in poetics and poetic form that can be traced to them, such as negative capability, instress and inscape, and adaptations of the sonnet and the ballad as forms. In addition, we will consider literary legacy and influence, particularly of Keats on the Pre-Raphaelites. The course will end with a week-long consideration of Wilfred Owen, whose Romantic heritage owes the most to Keats, and who, like Keats, died at only 25. ENG 318: The American Novel Malewitz This course will examine a stylistically and conceptually diverse group of American novels written during the 1920s and 1930s. The key questions that we will ask concern the relationship between these texts and the broader, international literary movement called Modernism. We will examine the ways that American Modernists, like their European counterparts, depict central events taking place throughout the Western world such as the first World War and the industrialization of urban centers. We will explore the complex and competitive relationship between literature and other forms of art such as American jazz and post-Impressionism. We will investigate the ways that modern ideas of psychoanalysis, economics, and communication technologies enter the literary sphere. Finally, we will examine the “American-ness” of American Modernism through discussions of regional literature. ENG 318: The American Novel – The Modernist Period Elbom, G. Focusing on some of the prominent thematic, stylistic, historical, and cultural aspects of American modernism, this class will combine famous classics with important texts other than the ones commonly perceived as canonical. Through close textual analysis and active participation in ongoing class discussions, we will examine seminal works of American modernism that have paved the way for previously silenced voices, paying attention to the rise of nontraditional authors, characters, literary strategies, and subject matters. ENG 319: The American Novel: Post-World War II Bushnell During his twelve years at Oregon State, Bernard Malamud, “The Human Sentence,” winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, burned his first novel in a barrel, then wrote his finest and most enduring books locked in his campus office, wrapped in a blanket, taking lunch through the window from his wife. In this course we will read those books, examining the distinctive writing style and moral vision Malamud developed here, and how he finally applied them to Oregon State’s campus life, the subject of what became perhaps his most controversial novel.

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ENG 321: Studies in Word, Object, and Image Malewitz This course provides a rapid introduction to some of the key artists, styles, and theories associated with the literary genre called graphic narrative. The key questions that we will ask concern the productive tensions that are generated in graphic narratives by the fusion of “low” comic forms and “high” narrative themes. We will explore the ways that contemporary graphic narratives repurpose superhero conventions to make political and philosophical arguments about the world. We will examine the ways that American comic artists use the form to document personal and filial conflict and tragedy. We will explore the ways in which these personal stories often intersect with larger histories including the Holocaust, Vietnam, and the Cold War. Finally, we will investigate the methods by which literary artists represent race, class, gender, and sexuality within and beyond the United States. In so doing, we will determine how graphic narratives relate to more conventional narratives within the period labeled “postmodern.” Texts include Art Spiegelman's The Complete Maus, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, Los Bros Hernandez's Love & Rockets Vol 7: The Death of Speedy, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Chris

Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, and Alan Moore's Watchmen.

ENG 345: Introduction to Literary Criticism and Theory

Gottlieb This course focuses on the study and analysis of critical frameworks and methodologies for the interpretation of literature and culture. Contemporary theory derives from the radical conceptual upheavals of the late-nineteenth century, at which time three major Western thinkers – Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx – revolutionized how we understand ourselves and interpret the world around us. With the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure as our bridge to the twentieth century, we will then read selections from a number theorists who have made major contributions to the modern critical study of literature, language, and culture, including Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, Michel Foucault, Gloria Anzaldua, and Judith Butler. The course will conclude with a series of readings that take us into the New Materialism, a “post-postmodern” theoretical approach so new that it is not even included in our anthology (gasp!). Grades will be based on attendance/ participation, mid-term and final exams, a term paper, and a written assignment using the online Johns Hopkins Online Guide to Theory and Theory (available as a Database through the OSU Valley Library website).

ENG 416/516: Power and Representation León Latina/os have been on the stage of America since its inception. Yet contemporary media headlines often report an increasing, and often alarmist, “browning” of America. In this class, we will look to Latina/o literature and art to note how aesthetics tell a different story, one that is complex, fluid, and highly contestatory. As we consider the multiplicities of Latina/o narratives, we will reflect upon questions of indigeneity, colonial hauntings, migration specificity, gender pluralities, and queer configurations. We will pay special attention to how these aesthetic pieces respond to (or resist) cultural expectations to perform a Latina/o script.

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ENG 425/ 525: Studies in Medieval Literature Williams There are many examples of magic in medieval literature, from the conventional (enchanted maidens and elf-made swords) to the surprising (a giant green headless knight). In this class, we will read a selection of medieval texts in which magic is particularly significant and explore how they represent and use magic. We will also examine different theories of wonder as well as the rapidly growing field of research on the history of magic, investigating how closely medieval attitudes toward magic resemble our own and how medieval ideas about magic continue to influence contemporary culture, from the Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter. This course fulfills a pre-1800 requirement.

ENG 440/540: Studies in Modern Irish Literature Davison, Neil Irish fiction, in the forms of the short story, novella, and novel, influenced Modernist and Postmodern aesthetics as well as the representation of the colonized and postcolonial subject throughout the 20th century. Questions pertaining to nation-building; social, sexual, and creative freedoms; anti-imperialism; racial identity; gender controversies; and organized religion each arise alone or in combination in much of this literature. The range of individual texts in this course runs from early-century stories that draw on an Irish cultural penchant for folk beliefs, magic, the landscape, and storytelling; to the Naturalist pieces of George Moore’s collection The Untilled Field (1893), to the Impressionist/Symbolist work of James Joyce’s Dubliners (1914), to Liam O’Flaherty’s action melodrama of the Anglo-Irish war era, The Informer (1925) to Elizabeth Bowen’s elegiac Anglo-Irish novel The Last September (1930) to mid-century inheritors of Joyce’s aesthetic and political questions, such as Flann O’Brien, Brian Moore, and Edna O’Brien (1950’s though 80’s). Through this range of works, 20th-century Irish fiction can be seen as a study of the evolution of genres as well as a conversation about the politics and psychology of a colonized yet racially white people within Europe. In this course we will study a wide selection of short stories from the generation of Moore and Joyce, and then turn our attention to some central novelists of the generation of the postcolonial era of the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. We will begin the course with a brief study of modern Irish history. Students will be evaluated through an all essay mid-term and a formal critical essay-paper due toward the close of the term. ENG 454: Major Authors: Dickens & Hardy Ward As cities, factories, and for-tunes grew, stories of upward mobility were important to the Victorians. But not every story of upward mobility has a happy ending. This course will examine three stories of mobility (sometimes up, sometimes down) by two of the most popular and enduring Victorian authors, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. We’re begin by reading David Copperfield, Dickens’s most autobiographical novel and one in which he describes his own upward climb. We’ll then read consider two Hardy novels later in the period, The Woodlanders and Jude the Obscure, in order to see what happens to Dickensian self-improvement in a post-Darwinian world.

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ENG 454/554: Major Authors: Jonson Barbour The man who praised the late William Shakespeare as “not of an age, but for all time” was the most respected living poet and playwright in England at the time. Yet no one has suffered more for not being Shakespeare than Ben Jonson. Eclipsed by the star-power of “the Bard,” Ben Jonson wins far less attention in theaters and English departments today than he deserves. This course will give Jonson some serious respect. We will read and interrogate his prose, poetry masques, and plays. Jonson’ career and works are fascinating, high-energy performances that distinguish him vividly from Shakespeare and engage the social and material realities of Renaissance London in brilliant, often hilarious ways.

ENG 465: Studies in the Novel: Detective Fiction . Elbom, G. This class will focus on the golden age of hardboiled American detective fiction. Our first three novels are seminal works that have shaped the genre and defined its formulas. In The Dain Curse, the famous Continental Op wrestles with a secret cult, a remarkably convoluted plot, and a perpetrator too sophisticated to be caught. In The Big Sleep, Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe is hired to sort out a blackmailing scheme, which quickly leads us to an underworld of pornography, gambling, extortion, and murder. In Nightmare in Pink, Florida detective Travis McGee finds himself in New York, trying to protect an attractive woman—and himself—from hallucinatory drugs, a lobotomized millionaire, and a corrupt medical institution. We will also read two novels that use familiar formulas in an attempt to offer interesting variations on detective work, crime investigations, codes of masculinity, narrative structure, literary conventions, and other textual components. In The Investigation, a young Scotland Yard lieutenant, despite elaborate detective work, seems unable to solve a complex statistical mystery. Is he dealing with a metaphysical phenomenon? Does he suspect the wrong person? Is he trying to solve the wrong mystery? Odd Number has been described as a novel that “resembles the various firsthand accounts the detective must sort through in a classic detective story—except that in this case the stories contradict each other so blatantly, and the characters give so much obscure, irrelevant, and unnecessary information, that the detective himself becomes mired in their competing histories, and asks questions as irrelevant and obscure as the answers he gets.” Does the novel mock the genre itself? Is it possible to keep track of all the twists and turns, tangents and digressions, complex crimes and shifting alliances in this novel? ENG 465/565: Studies in the Novel: Lost Generation(s): Writing Between the Wars Robinson Historians and economists recognize the First World War as a crucial moment in Western Civilization, when the foundational assumptions of the culture were shaken. Novelists recorded those tremors in the weirdly boisterous decade that followed. This course will first consider two novels that record the war and its impact directly: Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier, a moving depiction of the psychological trauma of war, and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, the best-selling, Hollywood enshrined tale of love during war. The second phase of the course will examine the period of intense creativity and dissipating excess remembered as the “Jazz Age.” The era is brought to life in Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic story of the shattered American Dream, The Great Gatsby, and in Elizabeth Bowen’s “To the North,” a portrayal of the era of new woman in Great Britain of the 1920s and 1930s. As context for these novels, we will also partake of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, his chronicle of the “Lost Generation” in 1920s Paris. We will conclude with Nine Stories, the novelistic collection of J. D. Salinger’s portraits of deceptively vapid 1950s America, by a writer who directly experienced the severest traumas of the Second World War. His book is a coded register of those traumas.

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ENG 489: Writing, Literature and Medicine Estreich In this course, we'll read literature about medical experience, exploring illness from the perspectives of doctors, patients, and caregivers. Examining fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and drawing on scholarly points of view from Rita Charon, Eric Cassel, and others, we'll work together to develop and refine "narrative competence"--the ability to attend more closely to the nuances and ramifications of others' stories. Requirements include regular readings, two 6-8 page papers, one 5 page personal narrative, and active class participation. ENG 507: Seminar: Lit. TA Practicum Betjemann May be repeated for credit as topics vary. CROSSLISTED as AMS 507. This course is repeatable for a maximum of 16 credits. PREREQS: Departmental approval and graduate standing required. ENG 580: Studies in Literature, Culture, and Society: First Person Narrative Dybek Writing fiction in the first-person can be a confounding and contradictory enterprise: this point-of-view can feel simultaneously natural and unnatural (Who better to tell the story than a character who takes part in the action and can employ direct observation? Then again, who does that character think he's talking to? And why is he describing his every action?); accessible and elusive (The narrator speaks directly to the reader in an intimate and often conversational tone. But is the narrator telling the reader everything or keeping some facts concealed?); unconstrained and restricted (The narrator need not obey formal rhetorical conventions or grammatical rules. On the other hand, the narrator is unable to use language that does not fit her character or experience). In this class, we will examine this technically demanding point-of-view, so fraught with pitfalls and possibilities, by closely reading texts that make expert but varied use of this rich perspective. Special attention will be paid to texts that experiment with point-of-view, and attempt to extend the notion of the “I” by creating first-person narrators who transcend expected limitations. By discussing these texts and experimenting with first-person point-of-view in our own writing, we will engage a variety of topics, including but not limited to: unreliable narrators, retrospective narrators, “voicey” narrators, narrators who are placed at a distance from the central action, and narrators who not only inhabit their own stories but imagine or tell the stories of other characters.Partial Reading List: Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Kazuo Ishiguro, Remains of the Day Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow Alice Munro, “The Albanian Virgin” Jeffery Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

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ENG 580: Studies in Literature, Culture, and Society: Modernism, Style, and Politics Sheehan What is the relationship between a text’s form and its political content and effects? The course addresses this fundamental question in the context of early twentieth century literary modernism, a movement that re-imagined the form of fiction and poetry in an era of social upheaval. Assigned readings include foundational and recent theoretical work on the relationship between style and politics—including scholarship in Marxist aesthetics, gender studies, sexuality studies, affect studies, feminist theory and critical race theory—as well as key works of modernism. The course readings include fiction and poetry by such authors as Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen as well as criticism by György Lukács, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Pierre Bourdieu, Fredric Jameson, bell hooks, Ellen Rooney, Rita Felski, Lauren Berlant, Sara Ahmed, and Sianne Ngai, among others. ENG 580: Studies in Literature, Culture, and Society: Literary Magazines Passarello The primary goal of this course is to develop a deeper understanding of the opportunities available in the world literary magazines. Over the course of the term, we’ll study over a dozen nationally recognized journals, some in print and some on-line (and some both), including Normal School, Agni, Hobart, and Tin House. After looking at several issues, we will discuss the characterizing elements of one publication’s selected poetry, prose, and “special features.” We will use Skype to conduct in-class discussions with a half-dozen editors, readers, and contest judges about the submission, review, editorial and publishing process. There also will be a creative element to the class, for which students will write and workshop potential submissions pieces and try their hands at some of the supplemental features (reviews, columns, craft essays) that are common among contemporary literary publications.

FILM 125: Intro to Film Studies: 1945-Present Rust An introduction to the academic study of world cinema, 1945-present. Class lectures will offer a variety of historical, critical and theoretical approaches. We will screen and discuss films from a variety of nations and geographical regions, including Europe, Asia, and Latin America. However, in order to meet the Baccalaureate Core Western Culture requirement, there will be extra emphasis placed on the development of the film industry in the United States. This focused area of study will enable us to engage more fully in discussions of the industrial and aesthetic development of the US cinema and cultural and ideological aspects of film production and exhibition, such as race, class, and gender. Class readings, lectures discussions, and assignments will engage students in critical thinking and analysis in order to develop a more fulfilling engagement with cinema.

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FILM 220: Diff, Power & Discrim: Sexuality and Film St. Jacques This course will concentrate on analyzing representations of sexuality in relation to difference, power and discrimination in contemporary Western cinema. Viewing films that represent a diversity of sexual vantage points in a variety of directorial styles, ENG220 participants will evaluate the construction of sexualities in contemporary film. Beginning with overtly heterocentric films, such as What Women Want (Nancy Meyers, 2000) and Fatal Attraction (Paul Verhoeven, 1992), students will learn to critically explore and evaluate typical and atypical representations of hetero- and homosexuality, queerness, sexual aggression and homophobia, transvestism, transsexualism and intersexuality ­ as well as intersections of sexuality and discrimination in terms of age and race. Our exploration will be activated through student participation in research, writing, experiential exercise, group discussion forums and personal reflection.

FILM 245: The New American Cinema Fech This class will attend post-rating system Hollywood (1968-present) by closely examining the important films and filmmakers of the period along with key events in the business of developing, producing, distributing, and exhibiting motion pictures. There are no prerequisites for this course. This is not a film appreciation class. FILM 256: World Cinema 2: 1968-Present TBD Particular cinematographers, movements, types, conventions, or problems in film. Topics change from term to term; see Schedule of Classes. Lecture and separate screenings each week. Film fee required. Not offered every year. (H) (Writing Intensive Course) This course is repeatable for a maximum of 8 credits. PREREQS: Sophomore standing; 8 credits of ENG 200-level or above. FILM452/552: Studies in Film: Film Criticism, Theory, and History Lewis This course offers an in-depth study of the important schools of film criticism, theory, and history. Assignments should include individual and group class presentations and a final paper. Weekly screenings will supplement class readings, lectures and discussions. Texts: Corrigan et al, Critical Visions in Film Theory Smoodin et al, A Film History Reader HC 407: Seminar (Honors College) Drummond This course is repeatable for a maximum of 16 credits. PREREQS: Honors College approval required.

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WR 121: English Composition Staff WR 121 is designed to help you develop and strengthen your writing skills and prepare you for other writing you will do at Oregon State and beyond. Emphasis in WR 121 is placed on the process of writing, including acts of reading, researching, critical analysis, pre-writing, drafting, and revision. Complementing this approach is our focus on the final product—quality compositions that demonstrate rhetorical awareness and evidence of critical thinking. We envision this course as the beginning of and foundation for your writing development as an undergraduate at OSU. WR 201: Writing for Media Munk, Jennifer In recent years, journalism has been transformed by information technology, corporate media systems, and new social media. This class introduces journalistic techniques and concepts that will enable you to participate in writing for newspapers, magazine, blogs, and other popular media forms. Although these various styles sometimes use different storytelling techniques, they all value the writer’s ability to generate tight, accurate, exciting stories at a moment’s notice. Students begin WR 201 by learning to write hard news, summary leads, and headlines using the inverted pyramid style. After gaining command of this basic writer’s toolbox, students’ progress to writing their own feature stories and in-depth profile articles, which are placed in a blog gallery for sharing and discussion. Students will also study basic media theory concerning ethics, First Amendment law, and the fight for objectivity in the worlds of corporate and citizen journalism.

WR 201: Writing for Media St. Jacques, Jillian Since the golden days of print journalism, and the rock solid reporting of correspondents like Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow and Kit Coleman, there has been an explosion of media culture and forms. We still have “traditional” media—magazines, journals, newspapers, newsletters, press releases, television shows, and radio. But the advent of interactive media has also given us Twitter, Facebook, blogs, podcasts, flash mobs, citizen reporting … and whatever forms of “new media” are in the works even as we speak. Although each of these media forms engages in a different style of representation, and (sometimes) conforms to a different set of rules, their core skills involve the ability to generate tight, accurate, exciting stories at a moment’s notice. Students begin WR201 by learning how to write headlines, deks and summary leads using the inverted pyramid style. Once participants are able to fully command their basic writer’s toolbox, they progress to pitching and generating their own reviews, feature stories and profiles. Along the way, they learn to conduct interviews, assemble evidence packets, and utilize journalistic databases such as Lexis-Nexis to strengthen the factual muscle of their stories.

WR 214: Writing in Business All Instructors Writing is a social act. Through writing we preserve or change the attitudes and beliefs of others, build and maintain relationships, and persuade others to take specific actions. To communicate effectively in the workplace, it is essential to read contexts, think critically, and write clearly. This course focuses on the rhetorical nature of organizational communication and will help you develop a better understanding of audience, argument, convention, and expression. Your work in this course will help prepare you to engage with a wide range of institutions; however, you are encouraged to

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use coursework to develop a better understanding of workplaces within your major.

WR 222: English Composition All Instructors

This course aims to increase your textual power by increasing your ability to read, think, and write about ideas and issues in academic and civic conversations. To do this, we will consider what “they say” and what “you say” in response, as well as why (so what? who cares?). You will analyze viewpoints (with a close look at how different authors and stakeholders are situated) and study the elements that go into crafting powerful written and visual arguments in both public and academic realms. Reading contemporary and classic arguments from the textbook and the New York Times provides a sense of our rhetorical tradition over time. You will be responsible for analytical reading, thinking, discussing, researching, and writing. Instructor conferences and peer review as well as consultation with the Writing Center will guide you through various drafts. This classroom is a learning community, so we will show respect for the ideas of all individuals.

WR 224: Introduction to Fiction Writing

All Instructors

WR 224 is a Writing II course that seeks to unveil the mysteries of writing literary fiction. We’ll read both craft advice and short stories as we learn the concepts and practices behind vibrant and compelling stories. Students will be expected to “workshop” the short stories of their peers, as well as write short stories of their own. WR 239:Intro to WR: Fiction and Creative Non-fiction Katz This class explores how to write good stories, whether real or imagined. We'll read and write in both genres, identifying the elements that make stories more vivid, more human, and more true. Students will write informal pieces and one longer work in each genre, and will workshop one story and one essay. Students will read and write both memoir and short fiction pieces. In recent years the lines that separate these two genres have become increasingly blurry. Memoirs sometimes read like novels, and short stories often sound more true than invented. As writers, how do we know the best vehicle to tell the stories we’ve lived and observed? This course addresses this question directly. In the reading component, we’ll look at works in both genres centered around themes: parents and children, friends and lovers, living with death, and telling stories. We’ll examine and discuss the ways the tools of each genre are used to reveal the heart of the story. In the writing component, students will write one piece in each genre, using techniques from the published pieces we’ve read. Through this exploration, students will gain a deeper understanding of the ways they can use the elements of good storytelling—voice, point of view, characterization, dialogue, description, setting, and rhythm—to bring any story to life, whether true or imagined. This course combines approximately 90 hours of instruction, online activities, and assignments for 3 credits.

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WR 241: Intro to Poetry Writing Biespiel We'll break down and transform the writing of poetry so that the typical fears of writing won't apply. We'll work on self-portraits, imitations, inventions, examinations, and tapping into memory and dream. Through an expressive process that emphasizes doing instead of making products, we'll explore not only what you're writing about but also the pleasure of making new discoveries. Students must be comfortable with experimenting and working in traditional forms-- and most important, students must be willing to take risks WR 241: Intro to Poetry Writing Roush “The art of poetry is ultimately an art of attention—Michael Blumenthal.” Throughout this course, we will consider the tools necessary to approach poetry more attentively as both readers and writers. This course will provide a firm grounding in the rudiments of poetic craft such as word choice, line breaks, imagery, figurative language, and structure as well as an introduction to different forms available to poets. We will consistently work through writing exercises and read the work of various poets in order to aid us in the generation of our own poems. I hope that you will become genuinely attached to the works/words of a few, if not all, of the poets we engage. I’d like to think you might leave this course with a deeper appreciation of language and dare I say be excited by the prospect of writing. WR 323: English Composition Peters Writing and the reading of writing are social processes that encourage the reader to interpret and respond to texts in varied, unique, and often complex ways. Students in WR 323 will be asked to read and respond to the work of others and compose their own texts with a heightened awareness of style, or the way in which language is used to clearly and gracefully articulate one’s own worldview. Students will be challenged to conceive of and develop their own style, focusing on elements of diction, tone, emphasis, shape and clarity. WR 323: English Composition Passarello This section of WR 323 investigates non-fiction forms that emphasize stylistic creativity. Our goal in this investigation will be a clearer understanding of the diverse ways in which language can be used to gracefully and persuasively articulate emotional, collective, or logical “truth.” My goal for this class is to give every student some experience in the life of a creative writer. Successful writers almost always READ extensively, take tons of daily NOTES, DRAFT essays long before their polished due dates and REVISE a piece several times (or several hundred times) before they consider it publishable. To mirror this lifestyle, you will be reading at 20-30 pages of text a week in my class. You will be writing and responding at least 500 words per week as well. Please seriously consider whether or not you can commit to this reading and writing workload before joining me.

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WR 324: Short Story Writing Jameson Study and writing of the short story. (FA) (Bacc Core Course) This course is repeatable for a maximum of 8 credits. PREREQS: WR 224 and /or instructor approval required. WR 323: English Composition Peters Writing and the reading of writing are social processes that encourage the reader to interpret and respond to texts in varied, unique, and often complex ways. Students in WR 323 will be asked to read and respond to the work of others and compose their own texts with a heightened awareness of style, or the way in which language is used to clearly and gracefully articulate one’s own worldview. Students will be challenged to conceive of and develop their own style, focusing on elements of diction, tone, emphasis, shape and clarity.

WR 324: Short Story Writing Brock, Isabelle In this course, you will work to develop an understanding of the fundamental tools employed by fiction writers, including character, dialogue, point of view, narrative distance, image, and language. You will also work to become an effective and respectful critic of peer writing, learn to think critically about short fiction, and become, through the practice of reading and writing, a textually literate citizen. Additionally, as this course satisfies the Writing II requirement for Bac Core, you will work to:

• Apply multiple theories, concepts, and techniques for creating and evaluating written communication.

• Write effectively for diverse audiences within a specific area or discipline using appropriate standards and conventions. • Apply critical thinking to writing and writing process, including revision.

WR 327: Technical Writing All Instructors Technical Writing (WR 327) will prepare you to produce instructive, informative, and persuasive documents aimed at well-defined and achievable outcomes. Technical documents are precise, concise, logically organized, and based on factual information. The purpose and target audience of each document determine the style that an author chooses, including document layout, vocabulary, sentence and paragraph structure, and visuals. To this end, this course will teach processes for analyzing “writing contexts” and producing effective, clean, and reader-centered documents in an efficient manner. You can expect to gather, read, and present the technical content of your field to various audiences in attractive, error-free copy, as well as to learn strategies for presenting that content orally.

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WR 330: Understanding Grammar Brock, Isabelle Through a variety of learning activities, you will demonstrate that you: • Are able to recognize and use a range of sentence structures and punctuate them correctly • Are able to compose rhetorically effective and grammatically correct sentences • Have the vocabulary to think about and discuss language, especially the structure of sentences • Are able to recognize and avoid the twenty most common errors in your writing • Are able to think critically about rhetorical choices in grammar and syntax based on purpose and audience • Understand language differences, including ethnic, international, and disciplinary differences • Understand ways that language usage and correctness connect with issues of power in our culture • Are able to analyze your own style and syntax • Are capable of effectively revising and editing / proofreading your own writing You will learn through reading assignments, Discussion Board assignments, two short formal writing assignments, and two exams. Completing all assignment will be essential for your success in this course.

WR 341: Poetry Writing Richter This course is designed to sharpen the writing, critiquing, and close-reading skills gained in WR 241. Through in- and out-of-class exercises, you will work to improve the imagery, voice, lineation, and rhythm of your poems. In this course you will practice the stages of writing—from generative brainstorming to composing solid drafts to polishing accomplished work; revision will be emphasized at every stage. In our rigorous, supportive workshop, we will discuss your poems in depth and offer useful, insightful feedback. We will also read, study, and imitate a variety of contemporary poets as models and inspiration. Prerequisite: WR 241. WR 353: Writing About Places Fearnside Whether you have lived your whole life in one place or moved often, whether you are studying at home or abroad, this course will help you write about the places in your lives. We will read and critically evaluate contemporary authors of placed-based writing, exploring the American West, Antarctica, and beyond through their words. Our primary focus will be on the practice of writing and critiquing each other’s work, through which we will create a new place as a community of writers.

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WR 362: Science Writing Jameson You will learn and practice the conventions for writing scientific materials for a variety of audiences, including print and digital publishing sites, adapting the materials and texts as needed to become increasingly sophisticated critical thinkers and writers who can shape material effectively. While working on good writing to create engaging feature articles which explain science to a general educated audience, the course will also look at the history of science writing and compare to scientific writing. You can work in the areas of science that most interest you and/or fields in which OSU excels. You will interview scientists outside of class to gather information for assignments. In addition, a service learning project may be available and guest speakers may present, such as from OSU’s Terra Magazine, for example. This 3-credit course involves writing and research assignments, lecture, and in-class and on-line activities. WR 383: Food Writing Griffin Writing about food is a way of looking at the world through a specific lens. In this way, you’ll find that food is so much more than a favorite recipe or warm memory at the table (although of course it is that, too). Where there is food there is also the lack of it. Where there is a dish you’ll never forget for the best of reasons, there is also one remembered for the opposite. We learn who we are through what and how we eat. Food is political. It is personal. Writing about it is a complex and essential business. In this course, you will read the greats of yesterday and today who all use the act of cooking, eating, sharing, and recalling to connect their readers to larger and important truths. You’ll jump in with these writers to adapt your own work for multiple audiences and in multiple formats from the memoir essay to the feature article. Along the way, you will refine your palettes and expand your understanding of what food means and how to write about it effectively and meaningfully. We will use time outside of class to engage with the local food scene and culture here in the Willamette Valley. WR 411/511: The Teaching of Writing Pflugfelder In WR 411/511, The Teaching of Writing, we’ll study research about the teaching of writing and practice what it means to assign, evaluate, and respond to student writers. This course is designed to introduce current and future teachers of writing to theory and pedagogy in composition studies, to help us become aware of and strengthen our own writing processes, and to enable us to make and express connections between classroom experience and composition theory. We’ll be looking at assessment, response, assignment creation, grammar, literacy, multimedia, process, and genre as we explore composition and writing. Students will be expected to complete substantial reading assignments, informal and formal writing assignments, collaborative and digital assignments, reading responses, and oral presentations, as well as participate in class discussions and activities. Because this course is four credits, some meetings outside of class time will be expected (we will schedule these meetings during the term), and because this course is at the 400/500-level, readings will be more complex and (at times) theoretical. Coming out of this class, you’ll be better prepared to teach and evaluate your students’ writing and likely feel more confident in your own writing.

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WR 414: Advertising and Public Relations St Jacques Writing news releases, annual reports, brochures, newsletters, and other PR materials. Writing advertising copy. PREREQS: WR 214 and upper-division standing. WR 420/520: Studies in Writing: Writing and Women’s Lives Detar This course explores how women’s lives are transformed from lived experience into written texts of many different forms: from autobiography, memoir, poetry, fiction, personal essays, and academic writing, to comics and films. We will explore what moves us to write the story of our lives or someone else’s and how questions of genre and form are related to the story being told. Selected texts highlight lives and communities historically marginalized in one way or another, and as we read, we will pay particular attention to articulations of self that both inhabit and resist cultural configurations of gender, sexuality, race, class and ethnicity. What does that resistance to these categories look like in textual form? What are its possibilities and its limits? Through these discussions, we will explore how the acts of writing are “performative” and strategic representation of the self and of personal experience. To articulate this, we will draw from literary theory and feminist and post-colonial studies.

WR 424

Scribner In this course we will read and write fiction. Using published stories as models, we’ll discuss methods of characterization, plotting, scene-setting, dialogue, and so on. Much of our work together will involve close reading and analysis of the texts in question. Our emphasis will be on writing more complicated and sophisticated stories with concision and economy WR 424: Advanced Fiction Writing Larison “Studies in the Novel” is sequence of classes designed with the budding novelist in mind. Each term, we’ll read two or three exquisitely crafted novels, a well-regarded book on fiction theory, and the work of our colleagues. Through private study, craft presentations, and workshop sessions, we’ll develop our critical reading skills, our writer’s vocabulary, and—most importantly—our craft routines. The content for this sequence is accumulative (meaning the content builds on what was covered in the prior term), providing students with a sustained, graduate-level look at the novel and its particular challenges. (However, students are welcome to start any term: fall, winter, or spring).

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WR 449: Critical Reviewing Strini As a student in WR449 Critical Reviewing, you will staff an online magazine dedicated to music, theater, visual art, architecture and dance. You will write and edit original copy at the quick tempo of online publishing. Class sessions will cover not only planning and scheduling, but also address the philosophy, history and techniques of critical writing and good writing in general. We will analyze our most recent stories and as a group find ways to improve them. Then we’ll go back into the stories and fix them -- you can do that on the internet. You will also help name and design the magazine, which we will build on the Google Blogger platform. And you will help to market what we write, primarily through social media. We want an audience. lYou will write for the public, not merely for your teacher. Your teacher will be Tom Strini, former editor of the Third Coast Daily online magazine and for 27 years prior to that the music and dance critic of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Strini has published and edited thousands of stories and mentored many young writers who have advanced in the field. Strini will serve as the magazine’s editor in chief. He believes in hard work, deadlines and relentless pursuit of the clearest, most economical expression of ideas. He also believes that hard work in the arts ought to be fun. WR 518: Teaching practicum: English Comp Jameson This practicum prepares graduate students to teach professional writing for the workplace, specifically OSU’s WR 214 Writing in Business (Business Writing). It provides grounding in rhetorical theories and practices for effective teaching of this course. The curriculum for WR 518 is consistent with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Two-Year College Association (TYCA) recommendations for graduate preparation for teaching workplace writing for undergraduates. The course will include familiarity with rhetorical principles in the workplace, typical textbooks, standard syllabus and schedule, typical assignments, managing workload, and using software such as Track changes, Excel and PowerPoint common in the workplace. Visits to current WR 214 classes will provide first-hand experience of the class in action. OSU Career Services and WR 214 instructors may visit the practicum to share their expertise and discuss issues. WR 521: Teaching Practicum: Fiction Writing Sandor WR 521 Winter Term (one credit) is the Fiction Writing Teaching Practicum, restricted to MFA candidates in their second year who have taken WR 521 the

spring of their first year and are teaching WR 224 in the current term. We will meet once a week for a hands-on, trouble-shooting tutorial in coordination with your own teaching of Introduction to Fiction Writing.

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WR 522: Teaching Practicum: Poetry Writing

Richter

In WR522, Poetry Teaching Practicum, students will prepare teaching materials (syllabus, reading packets, guideline sheets, exercises, and workshop strategies) necessary to teach WR241: Introduction to Poetry Writing. Students also will develop and articulate a statement of teaching philosophy for the teaching of poetry writing. Practical matters of the course include: choosing readers and handbooks; designing poetry assignment guidelines and relevant exercises; work-shopping strategies; commenting on student work; teaching prosody and close reading skills; assessing one’s course. This class is offered every spring, and must be taken by any poetry MFA student who wants to teach poetry writing in their second year.

WR 524: Advanced Fiction Writing

Sandor

COURSE OUTCOMES: 1. To demonstrate a sophisticated working knowledge of the elements of a fiction writer’s craft, including point of view, imagery and setting, character development, voice, and dramatic structure. 2. To develop the ability to articulate, with fairness and specific support, a professional level of editing and constructive criticism of student fiction, both in written and oral form. 3. To strengthen your ability to articulate your own aesthetics as a writer, and to open yourself up to the understanding of a range of aesthetics and styles in contemporary literature. 4. develop practices of revision to produced polished and/or publishable work; 5. To plan and conduct research appropriate to thesis and book-length projects, including digital and print sources.

WR 540: Nonfiction Workshop Verzemnieks In the next phase of this year’s workshop sequence, we will build on the generative work you have done this fall to focus on fully developed essays. You are welcome to write on any subject, and in any style you wish. But the goal should be toward self-contained work, essays that are trying to find a way to capture and contain the ephemeral nature of experience within some sort of clearly defined frame. To help guide our discussion and help deepen our skills of observation and reflection when it comes to our own nonfiction work and the work of others, we will be turning to some sources of parallel inspiration. We will be reading Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida to see how his mediations on photography might be applicable to our perceptions of our work as essayists--from Barthes’ description of the way every photograph is “a certificate of presence,” to his ideas of the studium (the meaning that is universally identifiable and can be immediately articulated) and the punctum (those qualities which inspire a highly personal, piercing reaction, a “temporal hallucination”). Armed with pinhole cameras, we will put our discussion of dedicated looking and framing into practice, exploring how a simultaneous visual engagement with the world around us might hold possible answers for the approach we take in defining just what our essays can hold.

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WR 541: Advanced Poetry Writing Biespiel Each workshop we will review a poem or two of yours. Plus, you will make one 30-minute presentation about a poet born before 1920 with an emphasis on appreciation and encouraging the rest of us to read your poet. No final exam.