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Courses
105. Freshman Writing Seminar (Staff )
A focus on writing as a tool for learning and communicating. Students will develop critical thinking skills, productive writing habits, and a style appropriate for college-level writing. Several short papers and one longer paper are taken through stages of the writing process. Instructional formats include class discussion, workshop sessions, and individual conferences. A sequence of library assignments introduces students to the use of Beeghly Library and online resources as an integral part of the liberal arts education.
Freshmen may enroll in any of the one-hundred-level courses. Those who have exempted ENG 105 are encouraged to enroll in one of the one-hundred-level courses offered as an R-course.
Required of All Majors and Minors
150. Introduction to Literary Study. Required of all majors and minors. (Long, Musser, Poremski)
A course to help students appreciate and understand the conventions of fiction, poetry, drama, and the essay. It raises fundamental questions about the nature of literature: What is it? Why read it? How is life transformed into imaginative works and how do they transform our lives? Does literature offer a unique form of knowledge? What distinguishes one literary text from another, or from other kinds of texts? Is some literature better than other literature? Although works and approaches vary with the instructor, the emphasis of this course remains the same: it focuses on close reading and analysis to develop students’ critical skills and to enrich their emotional and intellectual experience of literary texts. F, S.
410. The Portfolio (0.25 units). Required of all majors and minors. (Staff )
Only second-semester seniors may enroll. Students will collect representative work from all their English courses (essays, essay examinations, etc.), write an introductory essay summarizing their experiences as majors or minors, and produce a curriculum vitae or resume. Designed to help students make the transition from college to further study or the world of work. This course is graded on a satisfactory/no entry basis. S.
Theme courses are designed to explore the expanding literary canon and its contexts.
145. Reading [a text or texts] (Staff )
A course designed to help students develop their reading skills. Students will read and analyze texts, consider their conventions and contexts, and practice various strategies to respond to and interpret them. The course content will vary, but all instructors will emphasize reading strategies that can be adapted to any text or reading assignment. Texts may include essays, poetry, or fiction, and may concentrate on selected works, one longer work (such as a novel or long narrative poem), an author, or a genre (such as memoir or poetry).
- Shakespeare (Prindle) F.
- The Classic British Novel (Allison) F.
- 20th-Century Women Writers (Disler) F, S.
176. Alternative Worlds in British and American Literature (Staff )
A variable content course that explores alternative literary worlds and modes of discourse. Although reading lists vary, all sections address the power of language to represent alternative realities—alternative either to perceived reality or to reality as represented in another medium. Thus the course may consider the literary representations of ideal worlds, immaterial universes, science fiction, utopias and dystopias, and visionary states in literature written in English. Or it may consider the alternative versions of a common world represented in different media, always including literature in English (e.g., jazz and poetry, the novel and film, portraits in paint and verse, urban images in stories, songs, movies, and folklore). F.
- Comedy and Satire (Musser) S.
- Legends of King Arthur (DeMarco) S.
180. Narratives (1): The Short Story (0.5 unit; Disler, Olmstead, Hipsky)
This course focuses on the form of the short story and the primal pleasure of story telling. F, S.
182. Narratives (2): Longer Forms (Novella, Novel) (0.5 unit; Disler, Olmstead, Hipsky)
This course focuses on longer narrative forms, particularly the novella, with special attention to the strategies and demands of an extended narrative. F, S.
224. African American Images (Ryan)
This course examines both literature and film, focusing on the representation of African Americans, and the artistic and socio-cultural functions of those representations. Possible topics include: “Images of Black Women in Fiction and Film,” “Figures in Black,” “Black Women Film Makers.” Also listed as BWS 224. F.
226. American Images (Caplan, Carpenter, Poremski, Ryan) (Not offered 2008-09)
A survey of selected poets, novelists, and essayists from the breadth of traditions and countertraditions in American literature. Works will be read to reveal how “America” has been imagined and to shed light on the question of what it means to be an “American.” F.
228. British Images (Allison, Long) (Not offered 2008-09)
A survey of selected poetry, fiction, prose, or drama from across the spectrum of British literature. This course will probe the diversity of traditions and countertraditions in British literature, reading selected texts against the appropriate contexts and backgrounds. Reading and course content will vary by instructor. S.
254. Introduction to Film (Carpenter)
A critical and historical approach to film. The course provides an overview of the development of filmmaking and a survey of representative film genres, directors, and international film movements. S.
266. Women’s Literature in English (Carpenter, DeMarco, Poremski)
This course features works that focus on questions of feminine identity, or works by women writers, inquiring into a variety of experiences that cut across lines of class, race, age, and sexual orientation. Texts and approaches will vary with the instructor. Serves as a Women’s and Gender Studies core course. F
Genre, Criticism, and Language Courses
369. Genre Studies in African American Literature (Ryan)
Variable course focusing on a specific genre—narrative, poetry, novel, drama, essay—within African American literary tradition. The course will examine both literary and socio-political factors that have influenced the development of the specific genre. Course content will vary. Possible topics include: “Toward a Re-Definition of Slave Narrative,” “Contemporary Black Drama.” Also listed as BWS 369. S.
380. Critical Methods (Allison, Hipsky)
Introductory readings in the theory and practice of contemporary literary-critical approaches. This course aims not only to familiarize students with issues central to literary criticism as a discipline, but to give them some practical command of its current interpretive methods. Approaches may include: formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, feminism, Marxism, and new historicism; as well as reader response theory, reception theory, gay and lesbian studies, cultural studies, multicultural criticism, and textual criticism. S.
391. Issues in English Linguistics (DeMarco) (Not offered 2008-09)
In this course students will be exposed to various ways of analyzing the structure of the English language, and will explore the interplay of language and social identity as it is shaped by gender, race, class and regionality (e.g., dialects). The course also addresses issues such as how the English language has changed over time, how children acquire language, and how language use defines what it means to be human. F.
395. History of the English Language (DeMarco)
This course offers answers to questions such as, “Why is English spelling so crazy?” and “Why does English language vary so much from Beowulf to Chaucer to Jane Austen to Alice Walker and other contemporary writers?” The course looks at the origins and traces the development of the English language from prehistoric (Indo-European) times, through the Middle Ages, to the present with reference to English literature across the ages, and with the aid of audio and videotapes. F.
260. Writing Essays (Disler, Musser)
A course on the process of writing and revising non-fiction essays, concentrating primarily on improving organizational skills, developing style, and accommodating readers. Students will write different kinds of non-fiction essays and will read and analyze essays by professional writers. F, S.
265. Elements of Style and Rhetoric (Disler, Musser)
A course in non-fiction writing suitable for majors in all fields. The course focuses on learning to manipulate voice and rhetorical stance by considering the variables of speaker, subject, audience, purpose. Students should expect to do some writing either in class or at home for every class meeting. These short experiments will focus on a range of modes, from parody to propaganda, and from self-expression to communication, as well as on a range of voices, from informal to formal. F, S.
310. Writing for the Workplace (Burns, Poremski)
In this course, students learn to write the kinds of letters, memoranda, and reports most common in the workplace. They sharpen their writing style and their revising and editing skills. They learn to appeal to business and professional audiences while seeking to achieve specific purposes. Because employers expect the use of Edited American English (Standard English) and professional-quality page layout, this course teaches and enforces high standards of style, mechanics, and graphic design. Since oral communication skills are vital in the workplace, this course requires students to make both formal and informal oral presentations. F, S.
312. Writing for the Sciences (Burtt) (Alternate years. Not offered 2008-09.)
An introduction to three different types of scientific writing. After learning how to access scientific literature, students write a scientific paper. Students then assume the role of research supervisor and write a report for company management that interprets and generalizes recent laboratory results. In the last paper students become newspaper reporters who must write a feature scientific article based on scientific papers and technical reports. The writing process is emphasized throughout the course. F.
314. Writing Fiction (Carpenter, Olmstead)
This workshop is for those who wish to study narrative technique and to express themselves in short fiction. Students study fiction and a fiction handbook, and write technical exercises, critical analyses, and one or two revised and complete short stories to be discussed by the workshop. F.
316. Writing Poetry (Caplan, Musser)
The workshop consists of lecture and discussion, study of the work of established poets, and group discussion of student work. Students write exercises in verse technique and critical analyses of poetry, and complete a group of revised and polished original poems. F.
318. Playwriting (Gardner)
In this workshop in script development the student is guided by readings of plays and a drama handbook, written exercises, and revisions to complete a one-act play. Prerequisite: 265 or consent of the instructor. Also listed as THEA 369. F.
319. Screenwriting (Olmstead) (Not offered 2008-09)
Designed to introduce the student to screenplay form and technique, this workshop moves from readings through written exercises to a completed dramatic script of about thirty minutes in length. Prerequisite: 260 or 265 or consent of the instructor. F.
480. Advanced Creative Writing Workshop (Caplan, Olmstead)
The capstone creative writing course, this workshop is for students who have successfully completed two of the four genre workshops: Writing Fiction (ENG 314), Writing Poetry (ENG 316), Playwriting (ENG 318), or Screenwriting (ENG 319) and wish to do advanced work in their chosen genre. Prerequisite: 314, 316, 318, or 319. S.
482. Non-Fiction Writing Workshop (Disler, Musser)
This capstone course helps juniors and seniors who want to polish their non-fiction writing style(s). The workshop will focus on various modes of non-fiction writing, with an emphasis on analytical and persuasive writing. Students will write short weekly papers, will edit the essays of their peers, and will revise at least three papers. Prerequisite: 260, 265, 310, 312, 314 or 316. S.
330. Medieval Literature (DeMarco)
English literature from its Anglo-Saxon beginnings through the 15th Century. The works read in the course illustrate the generic range and imaginative spirit of this near-millennium: Beowulf The Wanderer, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, Piers Plowman, The Pearl, and selections from The Book of Margery Kempe and from Julian of Norwich’s Showings. S.
334. Chaucer and his Contemporaries (DeMarco) (Not offered 2008-09)
This course focuses on the works of “the father of English literature,” Geoffrey Chaucer, especially The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde. In order to explain the historical, social, and political issues to which Chaucer reacted, the course might also include readings from John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, William Langland’s Piers Plowman, and the Paston Letters, as well as selections from present-day studies of medieval literature and culture.
336. Studies in Shakespeare (Long) (Not offered 2008-09)
A survey of Shakespeare’s plays and poems through the lens of a specific theme. Readings will sample a range of the genres in which Shakespeare wrote (comedy, tragedy, history, romance, lyric and narrative poetry) and span the breadth of Shakespeare’s career. Whenever possible the plays read will be viewed in performance or on film. Possible topics include: “Shakespeare on Love,” “Shakespeare and Religion,” “Shakespearean Cross-Cultural Encounters,” “Shakespeare and Trauma,” and “Shakespeare on Film.” Students will read different plays in ENG 336 than in ENG 338. S.
338. Shakespeare: This Great Stage (Long)
An investigation of the theatrical world of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Readings will include representative works by Shakespeare and other playwrights from major genres associated with the Renaissance stage: e.g., revenge tragedy, city comedy, history play, and tragicomedy and romance. Whenever possible, the plays read will be viewed in performance or on film. Students will read different plays in ENG 338 than in ENG 336. F.
340. The Renaissance Author (Long) (Not offered 2008-09)
How did Renaissance authors go about creating their art? This course uses Renaissance poetic theory and practice as a framework for studying major works of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature. Among the contexts to be considered are humanism, classicism, court culture, theology, gender ideology, and print culture. Authors studied may include More, Shakespeare, Marlowe, the Sidneys, Spenser, Wroth, Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Herrick, Marvell, and Milton.
346. The British Restoration and Eighteenth Century (Musser) (Not offered 2008-09)
The literature of the eighteenth century (1660-1800) reflects, shapes, or informs the radical changes in society, culture, and politics during the period. This course will focus on literature related to one or more of those changes: 1) the satirical attack on apparent disorder and chaos; 2) the abandonment of cynicism for sentiment; 3) the increasing emphasis on individual feeling as opposed to reason; 4) the desire to ground ideas in experience rather than notion and theory; 5) the search for a balance between self-interest and the social good. Writers react to these changes with irony, satire, comedy, biography, novels, comedies of manners, and evocations of sentiment and feeling. The more important writers include Dryden, Pope, Swift, Defoe, Johnson, Fielding, Richardson, Fanny Burney, and Jane Austen.
348. The British Romantics (Allison)
An overview of major themes of the Romantic period (1789-1825), including poetic and political revolutions, the preeminence of the imagination, and the valorization of the natural world. Texts include an array of poetry and prose by the six major Romantic poets (Blake, William Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Percy Shelley, Keats) and two important writers of prose (Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Shelley). Class time is divided between paying close attention to individual texts, and considering larger trajectories within and between the works of the writers studied. S.
350. The Victorians (Allison) (Alternate years. Not offered 2008-09)
A wide-ranging study of British literature and culture during the Victorian period (1837-1901), an era characterized simultaneously by a profound domestic and imperial confidence and a set of deep anxieties surrounding changing understandings of the individual, society, and the natural world. Topics include empire, gender and class divisions, industrialization and urbanization, the challenge science offered to religious faith, the dilemmas of post-Romantic poetry, and the evolution of the novel. Novelists may include C. and E. Brontë, Carroll, Dickens, Eliot, Gaskell, Hardy, Trollope, Wilde; poets may include E. B. and R. Browning, Hopkins, C. Rossetti, Tennyson; prose writers may include Arnold, Carlyle, Cullwick, Darwin, Ellis, Mayhew, Mill, Ruskin.
352. Modern British Literature (Hipsky) (Alternate years. Not offered 2008-09)
Studies in the major literature of British, Irish, and London-based writers of the period 1900-1940. The course will be centrally concerned with the stages of a developing modernism: the feminist, realist, and impressionist fiction-writers of the Edwardian period; the Imagist and Vorticist avant-gardes of the 1910s; the flowering of “High Modernism” in the 1920s; the social satire of the politicized 1930s. Fiction writers may include Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster, May Sinclair, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce, Rebecca West, Virginia Woolf, Christopher Isherwood, and Aldous Huxley; poets may include W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, F. S. Flint, and W. H. Auden. S.
354. Contemporary British Literature (Hipsky)
Studies in the major literature of British and postcolonial writers of the period 1940 to the present. The course will be centrally concerned with the changing shapes of British literary genres under the shadow of the Cold War and in the wake of Empire. Fiction writers may include Doris Lessing, Jean Rhys, Iris Murdoch, Angela Carter, George Orwell, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Burgess, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Martin Amis, Irvine Welsh, and Salman Rushdie; playwrights may include Samuel Beckett, Edward Bond, and Tom Stoppard; poets may include W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, and Eavan Boland. F.
342. Drama and Theatre to 1700 (Long)
A survey of European drama from the Greek theatre of Classical Athens to the Golden Age of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans. This is the drama principally of Greece, Rome, and Northern Europe in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. The course serves theatrical as well as literary interests, with careful study of the relationship of each period of the drama to the society it played to, the theatre it played in, and to the literary figures and styles that influenced it. In addition to reading plays, students work on independent projects and have the opportunity to observe or help perform short student productions of scenes from the early European drama. Also listed as THEA 351. S.
344. Drama, 1700-1900: The Development of “Realism” (Long) (Not offered 2008-09)
Beginning with a review of the stock character types in the theatre of antiquity and Commedia dell’ Arte, the class will trace the evolution of more nearly “realistic” characters, sets, special effects, lighting, and stage designs, until we encounter a revolt against them in modern theatre. Masterpieces of English drama and concurrent European plays will be examined as acting scripts, not only as literary masterpieces. Beginning with the proscenium arch and perspective painting of sets, students shall trace the evolution of verisimilitude through Elizabethan, Restoration, Neo-Classical, Romantic, and Naturalistic periods. Obviously social and cultural conditions will also be considered as students read Shakespeare, Wycherley, Sheridan, Molière, Racine, Büchner, Chekhov, Ibsen, and Pirandello. Also listed as THEA 361.
268. Black Women’s Literary Traditions (Ryan) (Not offered 2008-09)
Examines a variety of texts by Black women writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Ann Petry, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, Paule Marshall, Bessie Head, Lucille Clifton, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Ama Ala Aidoo, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Jamaica Kincaid, Merle Coffins and others. Explores the ways in which Black feminist critical methodologies have been important to the recovery and interpretation of Black women’s texts. Possible topics include: Black Women’s Literature and Spirituality, Black Women’s Autobiography, and Twentieth-Century Black Women Writers. Also listed as BWS 368. S.
273. Approaches to African American Literature (Ryan)
Variable course focusing on a critical movement (such as The Harlem Renaissance or The Black Arts Movement) or a prominent figure (such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin or Toni Morrison) in the African American literary tradition. Also listed as BWS 273. F.
278. Native American Literature (Poremski)
This course will introduce students to the rich variety of literary expression by Native Americans. Based on the assumption that Native American (or American Indian) literature must inform our discussion of just what American literature means, it will address questions common to other literature classes, yet asked with a different resonance: What makes a text literary? How are race, culture, and gender represented in literature? What are the connections between myth and contemporary literature? What is the relationship between oral and written literature, and between artistic expression in writing and other artistic/cultural expression? What are the intersections and dissonances between Native American literature and U.S. literature? The course will bring to students’ attention in at least some specificity the tribal affiliations of the authors presented, and will introduce students to resources for learning more about Native American literature, culture, and history. F.
336. Studies in Shakespeare (Long) (Not offered 2008-09)
A survey of Shakespeare’s plays and poems through the lens of a specific theme. Readings will sample a range of the genres in which Shakespeare wrote (comedy, tragedy, history, romance, lyric and narrative poetry) and span the breadth of Shakespeare’s career. Whenever possible the plays read will be viewed in performance or on film. Possible topics include: “Shakespeare on Love,” “Shakespeare and Religion,” “Shakespearean Cross-Cultural Encounters,” “Shakespeare and Trauma,” and “Shakespeare on Film.” Students will read different plays in ENG 336 than in ENG 338. S.
338. Shakespeare: This Great Stage (Long)
An investigation of the theatrical world of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Readings will include representative works by Shakespeare and other playwrights from major genres associated with the Renaissance stage: e.g., revenge tragedy, city comedy, history play, and tragicomedy and romance. Whenever possible, the plays read will be viewed in performance or on film. Students will read different plays in ENG 338 than in ENG 336. F.
340. The Renaissance Author (Long) (Alternate years. Not offered 2008-09)
How did Renaissance authors go about creating their art? This course uses Renaissance poetic theory and practice as a framework for studying major works of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature. Among the contexts to be considered are humanism, classicism, court culture, theology, gender ideology, and print culture. Authors studied may include More, Shakespeare, Marlowe, the Sidneys, Spenser, Wroth, Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Herrick, Marvell, and Milton.
360. Early American Literature (Carpenter, Poremski) (Alternate years. Not offered 2008-09)
Studies in American Literature from the beginnings to the nineteenth century. May include not only the traditionally studied works of the Puritans and eighteenth-century non-fiction writers, but also popular works such as narratives of Indian captivity, Gothic tales, and narratives of seduction.
362. Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Carpenter, Poremski) (Alternate years. Not offered 2008-09)
Studies in American literature from post-Revolutionary times through the Civil War to the turn of the century. May include not only the traditionally studied works of the American Romantics, Transcendentalists, realists, and naturalists, but also slave narratives, the sentimental novel, local color writing, and other popular forms of writing.
372. Modern American Literature (Caplan, Carpenter)
Studies in American literature from the early twentieth century to World War II. Focusing on selected poets and/or novelists, this course will examine the central tendencies of American modernism. Attention will be given to understanding both innovations in literary form and the cultural significance of innovative works. Poets may include Eliot, Frost, H.D., Hughes, Moore, Pound, Williams, Stein, and Stevens. Novelists may include Anderson, Cather, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Hurston, West, and Wright. S.
374. Contemporary American Literature (Caplan) (Alternate years. Not offered 2008-09)
Studies in American literature since World War II. Focusing on selected poets and/or novelists, this course will explore the formal and cultural diversity of contemporary American writing. Authors may be studied in relation to various social movements or centers of literary activity. For the poets, these include: the New York School, Black Mountain College, the San Francisco Renaissance, confessional poetry, objectivist poetics, and Language writing. For the novelists: existential realism, the civil rights movement, feminism, anti-war protest, meta-fiction, and postmodernism.
490. Independent Study
Prerequisite for non-majors: one ENG course in the 200 level or above with a grade of B or higher. Regular courses may NOT be taken as Independent Studies.
491. Directed Readings
Prerequisite for non-majors: one ENG course in the 200 level or above with a grade of B or higher. Regular courses may NOT be taken as Directed Readings.
495. Apprenticeship in Non-fiction Writing
Individually arranged apprenticeships both on and off campus. Opportunities have included (among others) Ohio Wesleyan’s Communications Office, Battelle Memorial Institute Laboratories, marketing firms, Ohio Magazine. The student must apply to the English Department Executive Committee with the support of a faculty sponsor. The department views an apprenticeship or internship as an extension of the major, not as a substitute for a course.
496. Editing Apprenticeship: The OWL (Carpenter, Caplan, Olmstead)
Two semesters of editorial work for one unit of academic credit. The student is involved in every aspect of publication, from soliciting submissions, through selection and editing of works, to publicity and sales. An English major or minor may apply for the apprenticeship to the faculty advisor in the spring term of the academic year preceding the apprenticeship. The department views an apprenticeship or internship as an extension of the major, not as a substitute for a course.
415. Special Topics in Literature and Language (Staff )
A variable content course that will address significant issues in literature not encompassed by other courses. Examples: comparing works normally separated by traditional boundaries (national, historical, generic); concentrated study in a particular genre or author; concentrated study of a particular literary movement or historical development; the history of criticism; the history of English prose style.
- Rhetoric of the Novel (Musser) F.
- Turn-of-the-Century British Literature (Hipsky) S.
484. Seminar in British Literature (Staff ) (Not offered 2008-09)
The content will vary. The seminar will focus on a major British author (or authors) or period, literary movement, literary critical question or position, or literary historical issue. Students will be expected to apply their critical reading skills in discussion and writing.
486. Seminar in American Literature (Staff ) (Not offered 2008-09)
The content will vary. The seminar will focus on a major American author (or authors) or period, literary movement, literary critical question or position, or literary historical issue. Students will be expected to apply their critical reading skills in discussion and writing. F.
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