Spring 2014 Course Descriptions

100-Level
100-Level | 200-Level | 300-Level | 400-Level

107.001: Greek Myth

T 16:00-18:30
Sheri Karmiol, metzger@unm.edu

In the ancient Greek world, gods and goddess were everywhere. They could be found in the art, the architecture, and the drama presented on stage. The stories of these gods form the basis for many of the myths that we will study this semester. The myths, themselves, have been told and retold, revised, and made contemporary in film; however, our interest lies primarily in their expression in the Greek world. The mythical stories of ancient Greece were recounted in drama and lyric, and given additional dimension in art. In this class on Greek mythology we will explore the poets, dramatists, and philosophers of Greece. Their works depict the myths and the gods whose stories form the basis for much of the literature that we read today--and yes, that even includes the Harry Potter novels. Along the way, we will explore a world that is largely responsible for the ideas, traditions, and beliefs that have served as the foundation of our Western world.

Texts: Norton World Literature, Vol A & Homeric Myth (packaged together at UNM Bookstore) Additional handouts, available at ereserve

Course Requirements Active participation in class discussions, which includes attendance of course. 4 short quotation analysis papers 2 analytical papers, at least one of which focuses on art. Out-of-class exam

150.001: The Study of Literature

TR 11:00-12:15
Erin Murrah-Mandril, emurrah@unm.edu

English 150 is the introductory course for non-English majors. This course will help you develop skills in literary analysis, critical thinking and writing that will enrich your enjoyment and engagement with literature. We will read poetry, drama, short stories, and at least one novel in the course of the semester. These will be will be a combination of traditional "classics" in American and British literature as well as some non-canonical texts. We will explore different ways of looking at texts through formal features like plot structures, genre conventions, and poetics as well as different aspects of thematic content including representations of class, race and gender. An important part of engaging with literature is finding what interests you and exploring it in more depth, and I will encourage you to do so in our class discussions and your writing projects. There will also be two short exams covering key themes and modes of analysis for the works we have read as well as occasional reading quizzes.

150.002: The Study of Literature

MW 1730-1845
Nicholas Schwartz, nschwar@unm.edu

This course will introduce non-English majors to a variety of texts across a number of literary genres from the medieval period all the way up to the present day. Authors will include Geoffrey Chaucer, John Donne, William Shakespeare, Leslie Marmon Silko, and T.C. Boyle, among others. During the semester we will focus on building the skills that are essential to the appreciation and understanding of great literature. Students will learn to identify the conventions of particular genres, themes, writers' techniques, and other aspects of literary analysis. They will also learn what is necessary to competently respond to literature in writing. Course requirements include a presentation, quizzes, class participation, two substantial papers, and short response papers.

150.620: Burning Harry Potter? Censorship & Children's Books

MWF 9:00-9:50
Sheri Karmiol, metzger@unm.edu

Warning: This class is linked to English 102. You MUST enroll in English 102.620 also.

If you need to take English 102, this is an opportunity to write essays about the kinds of books that you love to read. In this Learning Community class we will examine the ways in which literature for children and young adults is governed by the social, religious, and political influences that a particular community may embrace. Should children's books focus on topics such as child abuse? Should fairy tales be censored? While we may not be able to resolve these issues, we will emerge from this class with a better understanding of the interaction between community values, censorship, and children's books. This LC requires that students focus on skills that include the complex analysis of texts, using fairy tales, short stories, novels, poetry, and drama as a way to discuss censorship. Students identify both the objectionable elements and the strengths of a text, and then demonstrate their understanding through written assignments and in-class exams. The final assignment requires that students demonstrate a working knowledge of how objectionable content in a text can also provide important life lessons about social behavior.

Texts:

  • Steig, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
  • Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
  • Blume, Blubber
  • Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian
  • Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
  • William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice (you must use an edition with footnotes or annotations)
  • Reading packet, available at DSH copy center, 1st floor.

Course Requirements:

  • Active participation in class discussions, which includes attendance of course.
  • 4 short quotation analysis papers
  • 4 exams--fairy tales & short stories, novels, poetry, & drama
  • Creation of a children's picture book

150.634: The Study of Literature

MWF 10:00-10:50
Deborah Fillerup Weagel, dweagel@unm.edu

"LOVE, LUST, AND PASSION"

In this course, which is linked to CJ 130 (Public Speaking) as part of a Learning Community, we will seek to understand the differences between love, lust, and passion as presented in literature and film. We will read a novel, a play, short stories, poems, and nonfiction texts. We will also view films that depict a variety of human relationships. In our discussions we will analyze the relationships in relation to our own lives. How can we learn from both the good examples and mistakes of others, real or fictional? Students will keep journals, write three 2-page response papers, a love poem, a 3-page memoir, and a final 6-8 page research paper. They will also give an oral presentation that is based on their research project. We will attend an artistic performance related to our discussions and hold an Academy Awards day.

200-Level
100-Level | 200-Level | 300-Level | 400-Level

219.003: Technical Communication for Engineers

MWF 1000-1050
Natasha Jones, nnjones@unm.edu

This course is designed to introduce you to the types of writing and communication that you will need in order to be successful in your engineering discipline. In addition to helping you to develop a better understanding of the types of communication in which engineers engage, you will also learn how to analyze and understand readers' needs as well as develop a coherent structure, clear style, and compelling layout for written, verbal, and visual texts. You will learn useful writing and research strategies that you can use as you write and design correspondence, definitions and descriptions, presentations, proposals, infographics, and multi-page reports. By the end of the semester, you will also have experience presenting technical information using powerpoint and web-based tools while increasing your oral presentation skills.

219.022: Technical and Professional Writing

Online
Stephen Benz, sbenz@unm.edu

In English 219, students learn how to write and design documents commonly found in the professional workplace. The course covers principles related to structure, style, research methodology, audience analysis, and document design. Assignments include creating professional letters, memos, procedures, manuals, proposals, and analytical reports.

220.001: Monster Theory and the Zombie in Popular Culture

MWF 8:00-8:50
Breanna Griego, mamapeep@unm.edu

The zombie is an compelling figure in American popular culture. We are fascinated by the living dead, their hunger for human flesh, their mindless group mentality, and the fallout caused by their existence. Yet we also are aware that the zombie offers more than just a gory depiction of the macabre. Monsters represent a broader commentary on the individual, race relations, survival instincts, natural disasters, scientific progress, gender roles, and the collective social consciousness, among other things. This class will explore monster theory, the historical foundations behind common fears, and the fascination with demons, witches, mutants, and vampires. We will spend a large portion of the semester exploring current issues including cannibalism, gun control, natural disasters, perspectives on the end of the world, and mental illness. TV shows, movies, music, comics, and advertisements all work together to create a broad base of content knowledge, therefore this course will f unction as a multimodal learning experience. A multimedia and multimodal approach will improve student progress and retention of the material, and will allow students to actively engage with the outcomes outlined by the English department.

We will begin the course by studying Islamic, Jewish, and Christian notions of the demons and the end of the world. Next, we will move through medieval female spirituality, early modern identification of demons and persecution of heretics. We will also evaluate contemporary theories about borderlands and the notion of "the other." The second half of the course will focus on the rhetoric of American popular culture. We will read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, World War Z, and also explore the popular series of graphic novels, The Walking Dead. Film plays a large role in constructing the mythos surrounding monsters and zombies, and our class will spend time analyzing motion pictures including George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Zombieland, 28 Days Later, and The Walking Dead TV series. The assignments for this course will involve film analyses, an annotated bibliography, and rhetorical analyses. The final paper will be an in-depth research paper on a pre-approved subject of their choice.

REQUIRED READING:

Asma, Stephen T. On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.
Austen, Jane, and Seth Grahaeme-Smith. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2009. Print.
Brooks, Max. World War Z: An Oral History on the Zombie War. New York: Broadway Publishers, 2006. Print.
Kirkman, Robert. The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye. Illustrated by Tony Moore. Berkeley, California: Image Comics, Inc., 2006. Print.
Sellnow, Deanna D. The Rhetorical Power of Popular Culture: Considering Mediated Texts. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.: 2010. Print.

220.002: Expository Writing

MWF 10:00-10:50
Richard Gunther Robb, fish123@unm.edu

220.003: Expository Writing - Writing About Food

MWF 11:00-11:50
Jack Trujillo, jacktru@unm.edu

This class in expository writing will use writing about food as a springboard to a discussion of and practice in expository writing. We will focus particularly on the sentence and paragraph level. Class will require completion of two short and one longer paper, a great deal of reading, and an expectation of active classroom participation. Texts will include Rewriting by Joseph Harris and the latest edition of Best Food Writing.

220.004: Expository Writing: The Cultural Hero

MWF 1:00-1:50
Mark Caughey, mcaughey@unm.edu

This course will explore not only how cultures construct their heroes but also how heroes construct a sense of cultural identity. We will consider both the hero's ancient origins and its transformation over time and across cultures -- from the epic hero to its latter-day counterpart: the superhero. To that end, we will examine such texts as The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Saga of the Volsungs and Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. Along the way, we will develop a framework that will help us understand how some characteristics of the hero remain constant while others arise from specific cultural beliefs and values. Students will hone their writing and research skills through assignments that include reviews, comparative analyses and annotated bibliographies.

220.005: Constructs of Race in Popular Culture

MWF 10:00-10:50
Margie Montanez, margie@unm.edu

What is race? What is Popular Culture? How do these two topics seemingly converge--in other words, what does Popular Culture have to do with race anyway? Together we will flesh out two competing racial ideologies: 1. The Biologic of Race: is race biological, reducing individuals to phenotypes and genotypes?; or 2: The Sociocultural Logic of Race:, is race formed by what we do, how we act, the music we listen to and thus a multidimensional process? In addition we will also come to understand what constitutes Popular Culture and how it informs the construction of racial identities. This course will investigate both race and popular culture as paradigms that are not static but rather shift throughout our nation's history. Overall this course will analyze different racial and ethnic representations in popular culture to gain a broader understanding of the race-as-social- construction position in the United States. Specifically, this course will examine popular films, lit erature, and folklore as texts that reveal the unstable and complex meanings of race that are continuously being contested, created, and transformed.

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220.006: Expository Writing - Intro to Legal Writing

MWF 16:00-16:50
Soha Turfler, turflers@unm.edu

This course is designed as an introduction to legal writing and methodology for undergraduate students who are considering entering law school after graduation or who want to learn "how to think like a lawyer." Although we will study and practice the strategies which lawyers use in analyzing legal cases and preparing claims for trial, the reasoning and writing skills developed through this class will have application far beyond the courtroom. All students will gain knowledge and skills which will assist them in the future workforce, regardless of their intended major or field.

We will begin our semester by studying how the American legal system is structured and how legal reasoning works. Students will explore basic legal concepts such as justice, equity, rules, standards, precedents, and public policy. We will also practice reading public legal documents--including statutes, regulations, and case law--while studying strategies for understanding these and other complex texts. Finally, students will learn how to conduct basic legal research into a narrowly defined legal question. Our semester will culminate in an in-class moot court exercise, during which students will advocate on behalf of the argument they have prepared using multimodal strategies.

220.007: Hipster Irony and Yolo Culture: The Problem of Nihilism in the Secular Age

MWF 1:00-1:50
Jennifer Gammage, jgammage@unm.edu

Have you ever wondered why YOLO (you only live once) is used as a justification for eating 300 donuts at once? Or why ironic moustaches are so hip? Do you want to know what Nietzsche's slogan that "God is dead" really means? Popular YOLO culture seems to suggest that without the promise of an afterlife and/or higher purpose anything goes, from recklessly immoral behavior to hedonism. Hipster irony has been said to point toward a tendency to avoid truly meaningful and creative dialogue in favor of a more apathetic attitude. These two aspects of pop culture offer a lens through which we can approach the problem of nihilism left in the wake of the scientific revolution, enlightenment and humanist ideologies, and the decline of religion's moral authority. As we work through these issues, we will think and write critically and reflectively about questions of the good life, ethics, meaningful experience, popular relativism, and cultural trends. Through attention to textual and cultural interpretation, we will engage in rhetorical analysis, critical and analytic writing, multimodal composition, and research as modes of examining our own ethical commitments, beliefs, and actions.

220.008: Investigating (with) Nonfiction

TR 1700-1815
Ben Dolan, bdolan@unm.edu

In ENGL 220: Investigating with Nonfiction, we'll be exploring writing based in fieldwork. To develop a framework for our writing, we'll use Sunstein's text, Fieldworking: Reading and Writing Research. We'll also read a number of long-form pieces produced by writers who journeyed out into the field, whether it be a foreign country (as Mary Roach did in Spook), or a local high school (as Dave Cullen did in Columbine), or a lobster festival (as David Foster Wallace did in "Consider the Lobster"), in an effort to discover fieldwork techniques and theories that we can employ in our own writing. We'll use writers like Mary Roach, Dave Cullen, Truman Capote, Luke Dittrich, Joan Didion, Jonathan Franzen, and David Foster Wallace among others, plus a number of recent long-form pieces published in periodicals like The New York Times Magazine and Harper's, as models for our own work. Along with weekly readings and discussions, students will be write several essays based on observations, interviews, shadowing, and research. Therefore, students will be required to attend a handful of outside meetings of their choice, perform interviews, and complete observations of an event or experience outside the classroom. This outside time requirement will be balanced with reading and journal assignments in a way consistent with the outside requirements of a typical lecture course. In this class, immediately accessible experience will be our textbook (along with the assigned texts, of course) and our material for writing.

220.009: Expository Writing

TR 8:00-9:15
Deborah Fillerup Weagel, dweagel@unm.edu

In this course we study literary works that inspired various musicals. We analyze the process of adaptation, the incorporation of visual and aural components (such as dance and music) with a literary text, and elements of general creativity. We read Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera, George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm, Maria Augusta Trapp's memoir, Joseph Harris' text Rewriting, and academic essays. We also view and analyze corresponding musicals that are based on the literary works. In addition, we read and complete exercises in Twyla Tharp's book, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life, in order to stimulate our own creativity in academic and creative endeavors. Students keep journals, write five short response papers, a 5-page memoir/report, a 5-page literary and/or film analysis, a 3-page reflective essay, and a 6-8 page research paper. They give an oral presentation at the end of the semester that is based on their research paper and take four short quizzes.

220.011: Expository Writing

TR 11:00-12:15
Matthew Tougas, mtougas@unm.edu

Literacy in Action: The Ethics and Efficacy of Community-Based Writing

Are you tired of writing courses that seem useless beyond the campus walls? Have you ever thought about writing as a social act--something that connects us all to the communities we inhabit? If you're interested in discovering the many ways in which writing literacies shape our identities and cultures, and you have a desire to reach out into the community rather than always stay confined to the classroom, this course is for you. In this English 220 course, Literacy in Action: The Ethics and Efficacy of Community-Based Writing, we will work with writing genres that are more unconventional. From multi-media projects, to service learning reflections, to website analyses, we will explore the multitude of ways writing can make us more conscientious agents of change.

220.012: Coming to You in Living Color: The Media on War and Peace

TR 9:30-10:45
Kyle Fiore, kfiore@unm.edu

The United States has been at war throughout all our lives. This class will investigate how war, violence and more peaceful alternatives are reported and portrayed in texts and media, and how those portrayals effect on our day to day lives and culture. We will read, write about, look at, listen to and evaluate various materials by reporters, writers, film makers, politicians, and artists and will consider oral history, essays, film, photo essays, radio shows, digital presentations, and comics, to mention a few. We will investigate how authors and artists of war shape their works for different audiences and analyze the strategies the use to advance their points of view. Resources will include Orson Wells' War of the Worlds, Tim O'Brian's The Things They Carried, the United States Peace Index, TV shows, documentaries and movies such as Dr. Strangelove and Charlie Wilson's War. We will also read and/or watch letters, news articles, and political spee ches.

We will investigate and analyze these diverse works using multiple forms of media including text, blogs, discussions and varied electronic presentations.

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220.021: Expository Writing: War, Famine and Zombies--The End is Nigh

Online
Emilee Howland-Davis, ehowland@unm.edu

In this class we will examine how apocalyptic writers frame their end-of-the-world narratives, and the similarities and differences that exist between such texts. We will use a variety of secondary sources to discuss the rhetorical choices apocalyptic/dystopian writers make. After analyzing the ways that authors create dystopian worlds we will then examine a variety of apocalyptic creations such as books, poetry, movies, and video games. For example we will look at; The Hunger Games, World War Z, The Stand, Zombie Haiku, Logan's Run, Mad Max, Marvel Zombies, and others. In addition, your writing assignments will ask you to compose beyond the alphabetic, and you will create a variety of multimodal texts such as videos, podcasts, or PSAs.

220.023:(Re)Writing the Wild West: Gender and Sexuality in Fiction, Film, and Theory

Online
Julie Williams, juliew@unm.edu

In this course, we will examine the American West from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, using literature, art, film, and history to raise and analyze a number of key questions about the idea of the West. Through readings, class discussions, and written responses on a variety of styles and genres of texts, we will explore a range of cultural expressions of "the West" from the 1800s to today. We will start by examining the role of the "frontier" in developing a distinctly American (and distinctly masculine) identity, and then explore topics and themes such as cowboy mythologies, discourses of femininity and masculinity, non-normative sexualities, and Native American and Chicano/a cultural identities. Through examinations of fiction, film, historical documents, and theory, we will investigate the ways in which writers deal with gender, sexuality, and cultural themes in representations of Western identity. Some questions we will use to guide our analysis include: How do women live in and represent landscapes and settlements that have been culturally overdetermined as spaces for men and manliness? What themes and rhetorical moves link texts to create a distinctive regional tradition? Our readings remind us that the West isn't always a destination, that it isn't always wild, and that it isn't always masculine.

220.031: Coming to You in Living Color: War and Peace in the Media

TR 11:00-12:15
Kyle Fiore, kfiore@unm.edu

The United States has been at war throughout all our lives. This class will investigate how war, violence and more peaceful alternatives are reported and portrayed in texts and media, and how those portrayals effect on our day to day lives and culture. We will read, write about, look at, listen to and evaluate various materials by reporters, writers, film makers, politicians, and artists and will consider oral history, essays, film, photo essays, radio shows, digital presentations, and comics, to mention a few. We will investigate how authors and artists of war shape their works for different audiences and analyze the strategies the use to advance their points of view. Resources will include Orson Wells' War of the Worlds, Tim O'Brian's The Things They Carried, the United States Peace Index, TV shows, documentaries and movies such as Dr. Strangelove and Charlie Wilson's War. We will also read and/or watch letters, news articles, and political spee ches.

We will investigate and analyze these diverse works using multiple forms of media including text, blogs, discussions and varied electronic presentations.

220.032: Fandom and Fanfiction

TR 1400-1500
Megan Abrahamson, maeglin@unm.edu

Everyone is a fan of something, to whatever extent they participate in fandom communities. Fanfiction is, by one definition, a text dependent on a pre-existing canon of events and characters in an "original" source, but it is nevertheless highly debatable where "fanfic" ends and "original" material begins. In today's popular culture, we are bombarded by the fact that very little is "original" anymore, blurring this line. Fandom is an even more pervasive social phenomenon, whereby non-creators and non-originators (fans) of any form of entertainment become participants in and, in effect, partial owners of a text. Students will explore the fluidity of these concepts of who owns a text in the face of copyright legislation, definitions of intellectual property, and freedom of information. Ultimately students will form their own conclusions and definitions of what it means to be a fan and a conscientious consumer in the information age, and also how to define the boundary between derivative and original material.

220.033: Critical Literacy in the Study of Education Inequality

TR 17:001-18:15
Julie Bryant, julieb97@unm.edu

Through the use of rhetorical and critical analysis of film, texts, and peer reviewed articles, students will use critical literacy strategies to examine their own understandings and biases of their educational experiences in both K-12 and at the university level. Class discussions, weekly blogging in small discourse community groups, reading assignments, and multimedia presentations in addition to formal writing assignments will give students avenues to expand their critical reading and writing skills.

220.035: Ideas of Education

MWF 1300-1350
Maya Alapin, maya.alapin@gmail.com

What do we want from our education, and are we getting it? As children we are mostly told that education is priceless, yet we don't really know how our education has been designed. This course explores texts related to education from ancient to post-modern times. Students will explore the roots of education in the West and particularly in America through readings, classroom activities and discussion, and by using various online sources. Readings for the course will include excerpts from the most well-known texts on education throughout Western history. Authors include Plato, Rousseau, Dewey, Vygotsky, Piaget, Alfred North Whitehead, and others. We will also read shorter excerpts/hear videos from "teachers" of other fields in order to explore a variety of approaches to education. These include Gandhi, Einstein, Steve Jobs, Bill Clinton and a few others.

The three main assignments for this class include a traditional text-based essay, a web-based publication and a final multimedia "personal educational manifesto" designed by each student. In this final project students will be expected to assess and analyze the course readings and materials and to make a personal statement about their education. This course will include some online work, so students who enroll must have access to a reliable computer and be connected to the internet.

220.036: Literacy in Action

TR 1400-1515
Caroline Gabe, cgabe@unm.edu

Using examples from current and past popular culture, this course will explore the classical archetypes and ensembles that help to create timeless figures, while also developing academic writing skills. The class will introduce students to the connection between our contemporary culture and historic, mythological, and iconic archetypes. Well known books and movies like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and even The Hunger Games incorporate a standard set of archetypical characters. Both the historic roots and modern implications of such archetypes will be explored and critiqued in this course.

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224.001: Introduction to Creative Writing

MWF 10:00-10:50
Michelle Brooks, mbrooks7@juno.com

This class will introduce the basic elements involved in writing fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. We will spend a large portion of the class on structure and character development. Some time will be allotted for student workshop in addition to reading outside material.

224.002: Introduction to Creative Writing

MWF 1:00-1:50
Michael Noltemeyer, man@unm.edu

"Read! Read! Read! And then read some more. When you find something that thrills you, take it apart paragraph by paragraph, line by line, word by word, to see what made it so wonderful. Then use those tricks the next time you write."

That quote from W.P. Kinsella, author of the book that became Field of Dreams, will serve as our guiding principle this semester. Through careful (and considerable) reading, we will attempt to elucidate conventions and issues of craft in three different genres: literary fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. We will then use that understanding to produce work in all three genres, though we will not attempt or expect mastery of any of them--the goal here is exploration, not conquest. Students will be expected to complete substantial reading, writing, and revision; participate actively in class; and prepare a final portfolio including stories, essays, and poems written over the course of the semester. Thus, while no background is necessary, effort will be required.

224.003: Introduction to Creative Writing

TR 11:00-12:15
Samantha Ocena, tetangco@unm.edu

English 224, the Introduction to Creative Writing, is a multi-genre course. Together, we will explore fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry through close readings, in-class writing, and live readings. Our time will be divided between developing the writing process, learning from and responding to published works, and responding to the works-in-progress of our peers. Course work will involve a number of writing exercises, craft response essays, and a final 50-page portfolio of creative work.

224.004: Introduction to Creative Writing

MW 1700-1815, hybrid class
Lisa Chavez, ldchavez@unm.edu

This introductory course will introduce students to the craft of writing literary fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. We will begin with issues that all genres share, and then go on to look at some of the conventions of the individual genres. Students should be prepared to learn to read like a writer, to try out a lot of different exercises, to learn the art of revision, and to write in all three genres. This is a hybrid class, and part of the class will be online rather than face to face. Lively discussion of the assigned readings are expected, either online or in person, and there will also be an introduction to peer review in small groups. A final portfolio will include work in all three genres that has been revised during the course. The text for this class is Burroway, Janet. Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft. 3rd edition.

224.005: Introduction to Creative Writing

MWF 11:00-11:50
Mark Caughey, mcaughey@unm.edu

This course will introduce students to the craft of writing in the genres of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction. In the first half of the course, assignments will stress generative strategies; in the latter half, we will focus on structuring, revising and refining our work. Likewise, while the first few weeks will address issues of craft common to all genres, we will ultimately be focusing on those concerns and conventions that define and distinguish each genre. Although each student will be writing in all three genres, no one will be expected to master any of them. After all, the goal is exploration, not conquest. Because one cannot be a thoughtful writer without first being a thoughtful reader, we will be engaged in quite a bit of reading -- using stories, poems and essays by established authors as models for our own work. Moreover, students will be expected to give considerable and considerate feedback on their classmates' writing.

224.006: Introduction to Creative Writing

TR 9:30-10:45
Lucy Burns, lkburns@unm.edu

English 224 is an introduction to writing fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. We will read a variety of established writers in each genre, carefully analyzing their work in order to develop a toolbox of writing techniques. Students will explore elements of craft and the related vocabulary for each genre in the works we read, and then apply them in their own writing. This course should provide students with the background and confidence to approach creative writing in each of these genres.

224.007: Introduction to Creative Writing

MWF 9:00-9:50
Sarah Sheesley, sshees12@unm.edu

224.008: Introduction to Creative Writing

TR 1700-1815
Samantha Ocena, tetangco@unm.edu

English 224, the Introduction to Creative Writing, is a multi-genre course. Together, we will explore fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry through close readings, in-class writing, and live readings. Our time will be divided between developing the writing process, learning from and responding to published works, and responding to the works-in-progress of our peers. Course work will involve a number of writing exercises, craft response essays, and a final 50-page portfolio of creative work.

240.001: Traditional Grammar

TR 5:00-6:15
TBA

240.002: Traditional Grammar

MWF 11:00-11:50
James Burbank, jimbu@unm.edu

248.001: Middle Ages in Young Adult Lit

MWF 1:00-1:50
Justin Larsen, jlarsen1@unm.edu

This course will introduce students to the concept of medievalism (the post-medieval use of medieval ideas) through the lens of literature for young readers. We will examine what it means to be "medieval" and how modern writers have adapted and manipulated these ideas and traits to suit modern audiences and accomplish specific rhetorical and thematic ends. During this course we will examine social, cultural, and historical ideas like gender roles and class distinction from both the Middle Ages and the 20th and 21st centuries in books written for a young audience. As such, we will read modern works along with the medieval texts that informed and inspired them, including the work of Sir Thomas Malory, Geoffrey Chaucer, and theBeowulf poet. Texts will include Sydney Lanier's The Boy's King Arthur, Elizabeth Janet Gray's Newberry Medal-winningAdam of the Road, and Rebecca Barnhouse's Peaceweaver, as well as several medieval texts in translation. Students will submit three short (1-2) analysis papers and two longer (6-7 page) argument papers, one of which will be a comparative analysis of a children's book of their own choosing. Additional in-class assignments and participation in course discussion will also be required.

250.001: Literary Textual Analysis

MW 5:00-6:15
Daoine Bachran, bachran@unm.edu

This course introduces the theory and practice of literary analysis as well as the various methods, terms, conventions, and theories that guide scholars as they approach texts. We'll become familiar with canonical and non-canonical writers and read from a variety of genres, including fiction, plays, poetry, and film. Readings consist of both creative and critical works that together form the vocabulary, theoretical methods, and literary tools we will utilize in oral and written assignments in literature courses generally, and this class specifically. In addition to becoming adept at close reading and writing persuasive literary analyses, the class introduces specific critical lenses that scholars use to focus and construct readings including Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction, Marxism, Feminism, and Postcolonial Studies.

250.002 : Literary Textual Analysis

TR 2:00-3:15
Feroza Jussawalla, fjussawa@unm.eduu

250.003 : Literary Textual Analysis

MWF 11:00-11:50
Kathryn Wichelns, wichelns@unm.edu

This course will provide students with the methodological and theoretical tools necessary to college-level reading and analysis of literatures in English. We will examine how select works of drama, poetry, and fiction reflect the complex history of the development of the category of "literature." The act of reading is never neutral; in our close engagements with Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Marianne Moore, Suzan-Lori Parks and others, we will address the influence of sociopolitical and historical forces as well as intellectual and artistic movements on theories of reading and critical writing. Through regular writing assignments, students will learn how to engage in close reading, focused research, and comparative analysis. A final research paper of 8-10 pages in length will require students to demonstrate their ability to present a clear, informed, and compelling argument about literary works and back it up with specific, relevant textual evidence.

250.04: Literary Textual Analysis

TR 9:30-10:45
Natalie Kubasek, nkubasek@unm.edu

This course introduces students to multiple perspectives, methodologies, vocabularies, and conventions for conducting literary analysis in the twenty first century. Students will read a variety of traditional and non-traditional literary forms of short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, the novel, the graphic novel, digital fiction, and film, and consider how literary texts are influenced by historical, cultural, social and technological conditions. Students will also learn to conduct literary analysis from multiple critical frameworks by composing both traditional and innovative scholarship.

265.001: Intro to Chicano/a Literature

MWF 10:00-10:50
Diana Noreen Rivera, drivera1@unm.edu

This introductory course to Chicano/a literature will examine a variety of literary genres -- short fiction, poetry, drama, political treatise, and the novel -- to explore the historical development of Chicano/a social and literary identity. We'll cover several time periods, beginning with the nineteenth century and concluding with contemporary works. Our focus will be directed on important issues such as race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, identity, family, education, language, sense of place and space, and the act of writing itself. We'll examine the way writers represent the complexities of being caught between Mexican and American cultures, and we'll also consider key literary concepts that shape and define Chicana/o literary production. By the end of the course, we'll have a comprehensive understanding of the literary and historical formation of Chicana/o identity and the complex, even contradictory, experiences that characterize Chicano/a culture.

281.001: African-American Literature I

MWF 10:00-10:50
Finnie Coleman, coleman@unm.edu

287.001: Introduction to Poetry Criticism

MWF 3:00-3:50
M. R. Hofer, mrh@unm.edu

While poems may be easy to recognize, they are notoriously hard to define, and often any literary artifact that isn't easily categorized as "prose" is by default called a "poem." For our purposes here, a poem--regardless of shape or length, theme or occasion--is any instance of literary language charged to carry the greatest possible degree of meaning. Poems are about images, music, ideas, perceptions, and, sometimes, feelings. However, in a poem, how a thing is said is as important as what is said, or who is saying it, or where, or why. This is what form adds to mere communication, and it is why poems (unlike technical manuals) continue to interest readers who can accurately paraphrase their content.

This introductory-level poetry course is literary critical: its purpose is to help you attain the skills necessary for rigorous analysis as well as meaningful evaluation. By examining one poetic feature or effect at a time--i.e., tone, speaker, situation, setting, language, sounds, internal structure, and external form--we will build a foundation for complex critical thinking, which means both a consideration of what poems can do and what critics can do with them. Successful students will not only acquire a range of strategies for approaching difficult texts with confidence but also develop a vocabulary that is specifically suited to a crucial process of differential reading, word for word, line by line, in order to comprehend whole works fully.

The course, though it is specifically designed to serve students majoring in English language and literature, is open to students with majors other than English and those who have yet to declare a major. There is no prerequisite other than an active curiosity about poetry; however, English 250 is strongly recommended.

Our reading is deliberately not limited by either period or nationality, and what you will learn in this course is designed to be portable to many other English classes as well as your own future reading and/or writing. We will hone our skills by reading and discussing some of the most interesting, memorable, and accomplished poems written in English (i.e., well-crafted or powerfully conceptual), from the Renaissance to the present, always concentrating on influential work that stands as a definite contribution to the art of verbal expression in the English language. This will ultimately help you understand and appreciate the rich poetry culture of the present day. Despite what people may say--usually people who don't read poems--poetry is not dead. Far from it.

290.002: Introduction to Professional Writing

MW 17:00-18:15
Stephen Benz, sbenz@unm.edu

The main purpose of the course is to give you a basic understanding of what professional writers and editors do. This course introduces you to the practices and procedures of professional writing and editing. It also covers career opportunities available in professional writing. You will learn about expository writing style, persuasion, and document design. You will also learn how to deal with ethical situations that often arise in corporate, professional, private, and public workplaces. Projects in this course will guide you through the process of document development and introduce you to the most common genres of workplace writing. These projects are designed to help you create some initial materials for a portfolio you can use when looking for an internship or employment in the field.

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293.001: World Literature 17th Century - Present

MWF 9:00-9:50
Annarose Fitzgerald, afitzger@unm.edu

This course will introduce you to key texts that span centuries and regions from seventeenth-century Japan to present-day Haiti. Not only will you analyze these stories, poems, plays, and essays in and of themselves, but you will also familiarize yourself with some of the political, social, and cultural contexts by which they were shaped. Furthermore, you'll consider how the issues raised in these texts might continue to form some of your own perceptions of current events, social norms, political ideologies, and cultural constructs.

293.002: World Literature 17th Century - Present

TR 11:00-12:15
Stephanie Spong, sdspong@unm.edu

"World Literatures: Seventeenth Century to the Present," introduces students to a representative sample of influential works from a variety of the world's literary traditions from the past five centuries. Readings include works by writers from the Americas, China, Japan, Egypt, Europe, India, and Nigeria, and comprise a variety of genres including some philosophical, historical, as well as poetry and prose. Our goal is to examine world literatures within different historical contexts as well as from different socio-cultural angles to better understand the rich and nuanced landscape of this vast body of texts. Students will use close reading strategies to formulate arguments about these texts, and support their interpretations with other works from the course as well as scholarly secondary material.

295.001: Survey of Later English Literature

MWF 10:00-10:50
Aeron Hunt, aeron@unm.edu

This course will introduce students to British, Irish, and postcolonial literature of the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern/Postmodern periods (from the 1790s onward). We will read examples of poetry, fiction, and drama that represented and shaped the artistic, social, and cultural concerns of these eras of dramatic social transformation and intellectual upheaval.

Authors we read may include: William Blake, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Mary Prince; Jane Austen; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Robert Browning; Matthew Arnold; Robert Louis Stevenson; Rudyard Kipling; Oscar Wilde; Thomas Hardy; T. S. Eliot; William Butler Yeats; Virginia Woolf; Harold Pinter; Salman Rushdie.

Course requirements: two exams, two papers (5-6 pages each), discussion questions and short response papers, class participation.

295.002: Survey of Later English Lit

TR 5:00-6:15
Calinda Shely, cshely@unm.edu

This course covers the major literary movements in English literature from Romanticism to the present. We will read a variety of genres, including poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction prose in this survey and explore their treatments of particular subjects and themes related to the cultures from which they were produced. Students will write five short (2 page) analysis papers and one longer analytical argument (6-8 pages) that incorporates scholarly research.

297.001: Later American Literature

TR 1230-1345
Belinda Deneen Wallace, bwallace@unm.edu

What, exactly, does it mean to be an "American" and how did this "American" identity come about? This section of English 297 will explore this question. The course's objective is to expose students to an array of American ideologies, politics, and cultures, as represented in our literary selections, in our quest to unpack "America." Through this exposure, students will increase their understanding of America, American-ness and American cultural identity--as the central theme of this course is "the making of an American." While students will examine form and genre, the class is especially concerned with content and context as we investigate the many layers of an "American" identity. This course is a survey class that examines selected American authors representing the major periods, schools, and traditions in late American to modern American literature (1865-1945).

297.002: Later American Literature

MWF 1300-1350
Julie Williams, juliew@unm.edu

In this course, we will study the development of American literature from the end of the Civil War to the present era as we examine the major authors and literary movements that developed as the nation healed from war, expanded across the continent, and grew into a global superpower in the twentieth century. This course will help broaden your understanding of American literary history as we study the major literary movements in the late 19th and 20th centuries and consider texts in the context of Realism, Naturalism, Regionalism, Modernism, and Postmodernism. At the same time that we will work to identify and understand the characteristics and important works from each of these movements, we will also work to recognize that many texts resist easy categorization, and that just as "America" is not limited to a single identity or set of meanings, neither is its literature. Additionally, we will place literary texts within their cultural contexts, exploring issues of gender, race, class, ability, regional identity, and Westward expansion to come to a better understanding of the multitude of American identities and histories.

297.003: Later American Literature

MW 500-615
Karen Roybal, kroybal1@unm.edu

This course covers the development of American literature from the end of the Civil War to the present. We'll study a variety of writers, genres, and movements representative of the people, histories, and themes that make up the nation. We'll also study literature as art, analyzing its forms, use of language, and overall aesthetics; and we'll put literary texts within their historical contexts. Using an interdisciplinary approach to literature, the class incorporates other narrative forms (film, art, and other forms of cultural production) to analyze the literary texts we read. The course will help you become familiar with the writers of this era, help you to achieve a broad understanding of American literary history, and learn how to discuss the materials you read/view using literary and interdisciplinary methods of analysis. Through the course, you will develop your reading and critical thinking skills and learn how to apply those skills through written analysis.

300-Level
100-Level | 200-Level | 300-Level | 400-Level

300.650: Twentieth-Century Irish Drama

TR 8:00-9:15
Maria Szasz, deschild@unm.edu

This class is part of the Inventing Ireland Learning Community, so students must also take HIST 300.650

"In Ireland, the nation is staged rather than told." --Christopher Murray.

What comes to your mind when you hear "Ireland"? Melodic harps, pouring rain, the color green, fertile land, Celtic designs, tiny fairies, or sentimental music? Or, do you immediately think of a nation fraught with political and religious tension? Twentieth-Century Irish Drama, part of the "Inventing Ireland" Learning Community, will explore the rich history of the Emerald Isle primarily through its drama. We begin with mythology: first, several comical depictions of the "stage Irishman," followed by more serious plays that depict Ireland's folk history, which were popular with the early Abbey Theatre audiences. Next, we move to mid-to-late twentieth century plays that explore the country's complex social and political history, including Romantic Ireland; the Great Famine; the Irish Diaspora; the Irish struggle for independence from England; the 1916 Easter Rising; the Anglo-Irish War; the partition of Northern Ireland; the Anglo-Irish Treaty; the Irish Free State; the establishment of the Republic of Ireland, and The Troubles. We will explore how Irish playwrights have "held the mirror up to nation," as they scrutinize their country's myths, history, women's rights, religion and politics. As critic Christopher Murray has commented, Irish drama has been "instrumental in defining and sustaining national consciousness." To understand this Irish national consciousness that began to develop in earnest in the twentieth century, we will read, discuss, debate and watch plays that examine Ireland's fruitful past. Consider taking this "Inventing Ireland" Learning Community to join us in our quest to ponder how Ireland's theatre has contributed to the development of its national identity, as Irish dramatists continually question, revive and reinvigorate Ireland's cultural consciousness, or what John P. Harrington calls the country's "sustaining image of itself, its uniqueness and its dignity." Please note: Twentieth-Century Irish Drama is part of the "Inventing Ireland" Learning Community, which is linked to Twentieth-Century Irish History (HIST 300.650), so students must take both of these classes.

304.001 Bible as Literature

TR 1230-1345
Janet Gaines, jhgaines@unm.edu

The Bible contains some of the most powerful stories of all time. This course will explore the literary/critical possibilities for reading biblical sagas of love and war, faith and doubt, salvation and degradation. We will examine literary elements of biblical tales, determine how these narratives have shaped our culture, and study what they reveal about our world. Units of study include heroic narratives (including non-traditional heroes such as Jezebel and Lilith), history of the Davidic monarchy (from Saul through Jesus), wisdom literature and poetry (such as Job and Psalms), prophetic literature (several Minor Prophets), the letter as literature (the writings of Paul and his contemporaries), and apocalyptic literature (strains of Joel, Ezekiel, and Daniel that reappear in Revelations). Mid-term, final, and one analytical or creative seven-page paper.

305.002: Mythology

MWF 10:00-10:50
Renee Faubion, sanren@unm.edu

This class will provide students with a survey of archetypes and theories of myth, including creation stories, marriage, the scapegoat, and a variety of interpretations of the hero pattern. Those patterns and theories will be considered by reading and analysis of a cross-section of myths from a variety of cultures. Featured texts will include The Odyssey, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and selections from The Prose Edda, Le Morte Darthur, the Bible, and the Popol Vuh. Course requirements will include three exams, three essays, and a variety of short assignments.

308.001: Jewish American Literature

TR 1400-1515
Janet Gaines, jhgaines@unm.edu

This course will examine works by the most thought-provoking American Jewish writers. Units of study include American Views of European Roots, The Immigrant Experience, The World War II Years, and Post-War America. Required reading includes short stories, novels, and a graphic novel by Nobel Prize authors Isaac Singer, Bernard Malamud, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Art Spiegelman, and others. Class discussion will focus on the varying worldviews of this diverse group of Jewish authors who are vastly different yet whose common heritage is undeniable. As we explore their individuality and struggles with their culture and religion, we will also determine the universality of their sentiments. Mid-term, final, one five-page paper.

315.001: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Literature

TR 2:00-3:15
Janet Gaines, jhgaines@unm.edu

315.002: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Literature

TR 2:00-3:15
Andrea Mays, amays@unm.edu

315.004: Special Topics in Asian American Literature

TR 1230-1345
Ying Xu, yingxu@unm.edu

This interdisciplinary course will consider formulations of Asian American racial formation, identity, history, community, and politics with an emphasis on Asian Americans as cultural objects, producers, and consumers. By reading a range of historical, legal, theoretical, cultural and literary texts, we will underscore the historical contexts from which Asian American texts have been produced and explore the significance of class, gender, sexuality, and nation to Asian American identities.

The course poses the following questions as a starting point: What are the formative experiences and histories that define Asian America? What is the relationship of Asian Americans to the U.S. nation-state? Who is included in the category of "Asian American"? Who/What decides? How have conceptions of Asian America shifted over time? And last but not least important, what is the significance of us studying Asian American literature and culture in New Mexico? In approaching these questions, the course will focus broadly on the topics of formations of identity and community, immigration, citizenship, Asian Americans and the law, gender, sexuality, labor, Orientalism and (post)colonialism, and Diaspora in Asian American literature and culture. As we move through the course, we will become not only familiar with major issues and concepts in Asian American literature, but will examine the configuration of race and ethnicity with gender, sexuality, and class in the ongoing process of Asian American identity formation.

315.009: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Literature

TR 9:30-10:45
Antonio Marquez, amarquez@unm.edu

315.650: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Literature

TR 8:00-9:15
Maria Szasz, deschild@unm.edu

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320.001: Writing Across Academic & Public Cultures

TR 2:00-3:15
Michelle Kells, mkells@unm.edu

English 320 is an advanced introduction to composition from a rhetorical perspective. (*English 102, 219, 220, or 290 is prerequistite to English 320). The course will focus on the writing process, organization, style, revision, editing, communication strategies, and the use of ethnographic, library, and electronic sources of information. The course is designed to promote the cultivation of a network of relationships conducive to the development of emerging writers (through digital literacy, ethnographic, bibliographic, and other literacy sponsorship practices).

The aim of ENG 320 is to actively engage you in writing and publishing for diverse audiences by helping you analyze rhetorical situations, construct interpretations of texts, and generate writing samples in a variety of genres. This course will explore the distinguishing features of genre as well as examine how the boundaries of genre become blurred in academic and public culture. During the semester, you will have extensive practice in writing, editing, and presenting your work. To support the emphasis on the writing process, multiple drafts of major projects are required as well as pre-writing and in-class assignments designed to develop critical thinking skills.

Group work, writing circles, conferences, peer review, reader response journal writing, film viewing, and field exercises, and oral presentations are integral features of the course. Production of writing samples suitable for submission for publication and/or presentation in academic, popular, or public on-line venues will represent the capstone project of this course.

The first half of the course will concentrate on the formation of the writer by exploring multiple voices and genres of writing.
You will produce: Reader Response Journal; Literacy Narrative.

The second half of the course will focus on generating texts for different readers by
Writing and Publishing for Academic Culture;

Required Texts
The Norton Field Guide to Writing, Richard Bullock.
Field Working: Reading and Writing Research. Bonnie Stone Sunstein and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater.
This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women. Eds. Jay Allison and Dan Gediman.

321.001: Intermediate Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction

MW 16:00-17:15
Jack Trujillo, jacktru@unm.edu

This is a craft-based class in short literary fiction. The focus of our work is on the specific elements of craft that writers (that's you) use to construct stories and an examination, using your own writing and the writing of others, of how those craft elements can be manipulated to achieve different narrative ends. The first half of the semester is spent attacking the first short story you write in multiple ways: changing point of view, strengthening verbs, starting the story at an entirely new place, removing back story, for example. The second half of the semester is spent workshopping a second story written for the class. Both stories have specific limitations and rules (known lovingly around UNM as "Jack's Creativity-Destroying Rules"). Class requires much writing, much reading, two complete stories, a live reading review, a craft review of a collection of short fiction and written critiques of each of your fellow students' stories. Texts are Deepening Fiction by Sarah Stone and Ron Nyren and Nights I Dreamed of Hubert Humphrey by Daniel Mueller.

321.002: Intermediate Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction

TR 11:00-12:15
Jack Trujillo, jacktru@unm.edu

This is a craft-based class in short literary fiction. The focus of our work is on the specific elements of craft that writers (that's you) use to construct stories and an examination, using your own writing and the writing of others, of how those craft elements can be manipulated to achieve different narrative ends. The first half of the semester is spent attacking the first short story you write in multiple ways: changing point of view, strengthening verbs, starting the story at an entirely new place, removing back story, for example. The second half of the semester is spent workshopping a second story written for the class. Both stories have specific limitations and rules (known lovingly around UNM as "Jack's Creativity-Destroying Rules"). Class requires much writing, much reading, two complete stories, a live reading review, a craft review of a collection of short fiction and written critiques of each of your fellow students' stories. Texts are Deepening Fiction by Sarah Stone and Ron Nyren and Nights I Dreamed of Hubert Humphrey by Daniel Mueller.

322.001: Intermediate Creative Writing Poetry

MWF 10-10:50
Nick DePascal, depascal@unm.edu

In this intermediate poetry course we'll be exploring the weird and wonderful world of American poetry from the mid-20th century to the present, with an eye always on what these poems can teach us about a variety of poetic craft elements, including: voice, tone, metaphor, line breaks, forms, experimentation, revision, and more. In addition to reading widely, we will also write widely, using exercises to generate new material and re-imagine the old. We will of course also hone our criticism and craft skills through the workshop, as we read and critique student poems.

323.002: Intermediate Creative Nonfiction Writing

MWF 3:00-3:50
Michelle Brooks, mbrooks7@juno.com

This class will focus on the fundamentals of writing creative nonfiction. We will spend time discussing the differences in fiction and creative nonfiction, potential subject matter, and form. Students will be required to submit material for workshop.

323.003: Intermediate Creative Nonfiction Writing

TR 11:00-12:15
Marisa Clark, clarkmp@unm.edu

This intermediate creative nonfiction course will introduce you to the many possibilities of creative nonfiction, including memoir and the personal essay, literary journalism, travel and nature writing, humorous writing, and graphic nonfiction. The writing you do for the class will ask you to draw from your past experiences and passions, your interests and observations. In the first half of the semester, you will read a number of published essays and do a variety of short exercises intended to target various craft elements of literary nonfiction and generate material for full-length works. The second half of the semester will be devoted to writing and workshopping your own literary-quality essays. You will draft two essays in our class, one of which will be read and evaluated in workshop by the entire class and significantly revised at the end of the semester. Class discussions throughout the semester will concern elements of literary craft, naturally, but also the special kinds of responsibility that fall on writers of nonfiction.

If you wish to contact me about the class, my email address is clarkmp@unm.edu.

324.003: Introduction to Screenwriting

T 1800-2100
Matthew McDuffie, mcduffie@unm.edu

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325.009: Southwest Literature & Film

TR 9:30-10:45
Antonio Marquez, amarquez@unm.edu

This comparative study of literature and film will examine Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo perspectives on the Southwest. It will consider the social, political and cultural themes presented in significant works of fiction and reflected in cinema. Novels and films will include: Abbey, "The Brave Cowboy"; McMurtry, "The Last Picture Show"; Bradford, "Red Sky at Morning"; Anaya, "Bless Me, Ultima"; Nichols, "The Milagro Beanfield War"; Silko, "Ceremony"; Hillerman, "Skinwalkers"; McCarthy, "No Country For Old Men." The conjunction of reading the novels and viewing the films will lead to critical discussion of cultural material, themes, techniques and comparative study of literature and film. Requirements: (1) a mid-term exam (2) a final exam (3) a final paper.

331.001: Contemporary China in Literature and Film

MW 11:00-12:15
Xiang He, xhe@unm.edu

332.037: North African Literature and Culture

TR 2:00-3:15
Mohamed Ali, mohamedeaali@gmail.com

An analysis of some of the works of major writers of North Africa and their usage of African symbols to portray Africa of the past and the present.

335.001: Paris 4

TR 12:30-1:45
Pamela Cheek, pcheek@unm.edu

Exceptional cities incite great leaps of the imagination, while works of art shape urban life. As Charles Baudelaire wrote, "Parisian life is, in spite of everything, fertile in marvelous poetic subjects . . . it surrounds us like the air we breathe but do not see." This course explores the relationship between writing and one of the greatest cities, Paris. We will read some of the greatest French novels by writers like Montesquieu, Françoise de Graffigny, Balzac and Zola. It is partly a history of culture. We will look at the significant artistic and literary movements grounded in Paris between the late seventeenth and the early twentieth centuries, including Salon sociability, the Enlightenment, the rise of the novel, Realism, the invention of the modern, Naturalism, and Surrealism. And it is partly a cultural history. We will examine important historical moments and questions, including the great revolutions, the invention of public life, the rise of consumerism, the diversity of people in the city, the distance between rich and poor, the social roles of women and men, and the influence of other cultures. How can we understand the conundrum of Paris? Is Paris, as American writer Henry James wrote, "the most brilliant city in the world"? What did the German philosopher Nietzsche mean when he wrote, "As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris." And do you agree with the British writer Oscar Wilde that "When good Americans die they go to Paris"? [All readings are available in English and, for students wishing to tackle the original, in French].

338.001: Modern Russian Culture

MW 2:00-3:15
Katherine Reischl, khreischl@unm.edu

339.001: Imperial-Postcolonial Japan

T 1600-1830
Andre Haag, haag@unm.edu

347.001: Viking Mythology

TR 9:30-10:45
Geoffrey Russom, Geoffrey_Russom@brown.edu

English culture can be traced back to a "high barbarian" culture centered in Denmark that had occupied adjacent areas of Northern Scandinavia, Holland, and Germany. This ancestral culture, called "Germania" by the Roman historian Tacitus, survives to us in two closely related forms of traditional narrative: epic, represented by the Old English Beowulf; and mythology, represented by Viking sagas and Eddic poems. The Viking materials supply what is missing in Old English literature, which has no mythological narratives and no high-quality prose fiction. Studying the culture of the Norsemen can be remarkably helpful when we seek to determine whether contemporary problems are due to human nature or to the way our society is organized. If we fail to find a problem in Viking narratives, it is probably due to social change in a later era. We begin with pre-Christian mythological texts, considering the interpretations of them offered by the Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson.

Then we turn to the Viking sagas, which interweave mythological themes with heroic adventures and stories closer to ordinary life. Comparative perspective will be provided by Beowulf and by stories from the nearby Celtic realm of Ireland. Requirements: (1) faithful reading of complete assignments; (2) engagement in class discussion, which will make a significant contribution to the final grade; a 5-page midterm paper; (4) a midterm exam; (5) a 10-page final paper; and (6) a final exam. No incompletes will be given for this class. Texts: Seven Viking Romances, trans. Palsson and Edwards; The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, trans. Jesse Byock; The Saga of the Volsungs, trans. Byock; Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. Anthony Faulkes; Early Irish Myths and Sagas, trans. Jeffrey Gantz. Students who have never read Beowulf in translation should do so before the first class, which will review aspects of the poem relevant to the class.

350.001: Medieval Tales of Wonder

MWF 9-9:50
Marisa Sikes, msikes@unm.edu

The medieval period is rife with literature of wonder, a word that has a number of meanings in Middle English, one of which is "a strange thing, an unusual phenomenon or event," and another that is "a manifestation of divine greatness or benevolence." This course will immerse students in the reading of a variety of texts from the Middle Ages that will range in genre from saga, to chivalric romance, to Breton lay, to saints' lives. We will find heroic knights, explore the worlds of visionaries and their miracles, plunge into the underworld and go on pilgrimages--Christian and otherwise, watch as virginal martyrs humiliate their pagan tormentors, and uncover the monstrous races of the medieval world.

This class will include readings in Modern English translations as well as one Middle English reading, but no previous experience with Middle English is necessary. We will go beyond a simple reading of the texts to an analytical study of the wonder produced in and by these texts and progress towards an exploration of how these stories resonate today and allow us to consider contemporary social issues despite our pragmatic world of science and rationalism. This will be achieved through an immersion in the texts and their manuscript history, writing, some individual research, a creative project, and lively and informed class and small-group discussions.

351.001: Chaucer’s Love Visions

MWF 10:00-10:50
Christine Kozikowski, ckozikow@unm.edu

In this course, you will read Chaucer's first major poem, along with everything else he wrote aside of the Canterbury Tales. Students often think of Chaucer as the poet who brought us the Miller's Tale and the Wife of Bath in the colorful and earthy idiom of our ancestor language--Middle English. But Chaucer is more than the author of the Canterbury Tales--for his medieval audience, he was the "neo-pagan singer of love," the poet who extensively engaged the classical past and its authors. This course is designed to offer interested students an opportunity to study critically Chaucer's best poem, Troilus and Criseyde, his most intriguing female figure, Criseyde, and all his other love visions. Delve into the medieval anatomy of love and find out where many of our modern romantic notions come from.

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352.010: Early Shakespeare

Online
Renee Faubion, sanren@unm.edu

Come meet one of the greatest writers in all of literature! In addition to close study of the texts themselves, students will receive instruction in cultural trends influential to Shakespeare's work (regarding developments in economic classes and Renaissance notions of race, for example); in Elizabethan history and theatrical conventions; and in some of the most important sources for the plays and poetry. Students will also perform assignments requiring them to review and respond to scholarship on Shakespeare's work. Readings will include Titus Andronicus; Romeo and Juliet; The Merchant of Venice;Much Ado about Nothing; Henry IV [parts I and II]; and Hamlet. Course requirements will include three papers, a variety of short assignments, and a research project.

352.011: Early Shakespeare

TR 12:30-13:45
Lisa Myers, myersl@unm.edu

This course covers the Elizabethan-era works of William Shakespeare. In examining his drama and poetry, the course will focus on the various conventions of the sub-genres of comedy, tragedy and history as well as the sonnet and epyllion. The student will gain familiarity with the early works of Shakespeare and an understanding of the Elizabethan theater as well as the importance of Shakespeare's dramatic and poetic innovations. Texts include: The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III, Henry V, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, Venus and Adonis and selected sonnets.

353.001: Later Shakespeare

MWF 2-2:50
Marisa Sikes, msikes@unm.edu

This course explores some of Shakespeare's later plays, and while we will occasionally view clips of scenes in class, we are primarily interested in the text rather than questions of modern performances of Shakespeare's works.

353:002: Later Shakespeare

TR 2:00-3:15
Marissa Greenberg, marissag@unm.edu

Shakespeare wrote some of his most powerful and enduring works in the latter part of his career, including Othello, Macbeth, and The Tempest. These plays continue to fascinate because of their haunting representations of racial hatred, ambition, and redemption, their provocative portraits of gender bending and nation building, and their surprising reflections on theater itself. In this course, we will read these and other plays as both dramatic poems and theatrical scripts. Through discussion of the political, social, and religious world in which Shakespeare lived, we will explore what these plays meant for their original audiences in early-seventeenth-century England; and through recent literary criticism, stage productions, and films, we will examine their meanings for modern-day audiences around the globe. Students will be required to complete frequent reading quizzes, to write several short essays, and to conduct a formal research project.

354.001: Milton: Paradise Lost and Adaptation

TR 11:00-12:15
Marissa Greenberg, marissag@unm.edu

What do Neil Gaiman, Ursula Le Guin, and Philip Pullman have in common? Each has found inspiration in Paradise Lost, John Milton's seventeenth-century epic retelling of the biblical story of the fall. In this course, we will read Paradise Lost and some of its literary responses, appropriations, and offshoots. Through in-depth reading of Milton's epic poem alongside some of his earlier writings, we will explore the characterizations of Satan, Adam, and Eve and the themes of free will, temptation, virtue, and poetic invention. Then, we will read adaptations of Paradise Lost in several genres--short story, graphic novel, novella, novel, poetry--and examine the ways in which Milton's characters and themes have taken on new meaning in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Students should be prepared to write short essays and a research paper and to engage actively in class discussion.

355.001: Enlightenment Survey

TR 9:30-10:45
Carolyn Woodward, woodward@unm.edu

Wondrous things upon the earth? With microscope and telescope, in drops of water, across oceans, and in the expanse of the heavens, people marveled at a plurality of revealed worlds. Shocking ideas were formulated and published during this time, sometimes at people's peril as they challenged not only received opinion but sometimes church and government authorities in philosophical treatises, clandestine literature, visual narrative, travel writing, newspapers, dictionaries and encyclopedias, and the novel. Major figures include John Locke, Mary Wortley Montagu, the naturalist Gilbert White, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We'll read selections from writers of African origins living in London, North America, and the Caribbean, as well. The semester will close with Jane Austen's extended thought experiment on reason and passion in her novel Sense & Sensibility. Two formal papers, three discussion questions, a midterm and a final examination.

Required texts: Longmans Anthology of British Literature (Restoration & Eighteenth Century) 4th ed, packaged with Austen'sSense & Sensibility; Margaret C. Jacob, The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents; Voltaire, Candide Norton Critical Edition; Verlyn Kinkenborg, Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile Vintage/Random House; Vincent Caretta, ed., Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the 18th Century Univ Press of Kentucky.

364.001: Native Literatures and Rhetorics

MWF 3:00-3:50
Kathleen Washburn, washburn@unm.edu

In debates about indigenous cultural traditions and American literary history, Native American nonfiction texts (autobiographies, treaties, essays) and novels under the broad rubric of "literary fiction" often take center stage. This course focuses instead on Native genre fiction: detective novels, horror, Westerns, science fiction, and young adult literature. What are the effects of taking up such popular and distinct genres for indigenous subjects? What are the various expectations and creative possibilities for Native literature in relation to popular and academic audiences? What would it mean to indigenize genre fiction? We'll investigate such questions through close attention to genre studies, analysis of literary style, and debates about how various cultural and historical contexts shape literary production, circulation, and reception. Texts for the course will include Mourning Dove's Cogewea (1927), Todd Downing's The Cat Screams (1934), Stephen Graham Jones's The Fast Red Road (2000), and Tom Holm's The Osage Rose (2008), along with selections from Francis La Flesche, E. Pauline Johnson, Sherman Alexie, Drew Hayden Taylor, and Leslie Marmon Silko.

Requirements for the course include active participation in class discussion, short papers, a group presentation with a research component, and two exams.

400-Level
100-Level | 200-Level | 300-Level | 400-Level

410.001: Literary Criticism and Theory

R 4:00-6:30
Jesse Alemán, jman@unm.edu

This course charts the rise of major schools and movements in literary theory and criticism from Marxism to post-colonial studies. We'll study psychoanalysis, structuralism, and post-structuralism; feminism, gender studies, and queer theory; new historicism, cultural studies, and post-colonial theory. The class will consider the intellectual foundation of each theoretical paradigm and explore what's at stake with the questions specific theories pose, but our overall goal will be to work toward understanding how ideas, terms, and concepts overlap, undermine, or repeat with a difference theories of meaning, being, identity, and representation. By the end of the course, we'll have a broad repertoire of critical tools at our analytical disposal. Most of the reading will comprise of the primary theoretical texts--dense work that requires the time to read more than once, with dictionary in hand. We'll also use several short-story case studies, which will be available on e-reserve.

413.001: Scientific, Environmental, and Medical Writing

MW 1700-1815
Joseph Bartolotta, jbartolotta@unm.edu

This course will explore writing on issues pertaining to Scientific, Environmental, and Medical issues for both lay and specialist audiences.

417.001: Editing

TR 11:00-12:15
Monica Kowal, kowal1@unm.edu

In this class, you will learn how to edit technical documents, from proofreading for errors at the surface to ensuring that the document contains appropriate content, organization, and visuals for audiences. Students will also learn how to use traditional editing marks, editing functions within word processing software, and principles of layout and design.

This class will feature a service-learning component in that students will benefit from working with real clients on real editing projects. A choice of final project with a contracted client will give students the opportunity to interview and negotiate with clients and consider readers needs and expectations. Your editing experience will have an enhanced sense of value when you can earn the respect of clients and anticipate their editing needs.

418.002: Proposal and Grant Writing

TR 9:30-10:45
Monica Kowal, kowal1@unm.edu

This advanced workplace writing course concentrates on long, formal documents, specifically proposals and grants, found in a wide variety of organizations. Through a semester-long, service-learning project, students will be given a real-world opportunities to enhance their professional writing skills by working with local organizations. Through the course, students will develop the critical thinking and writing skills required to:

  • Work with an organization to effectively define a problem or recognize an opportunity;
  • Map a viable plan in partnership with their community partner;
  • Research funding options and create funding relationships; and
  • Communicate information to their client and leverage collaboration.

Students will become familiar with the funding environment, distinguish among different types of grants, identify potential funders, plan and write a grant, and understand the submission and review process. Through selected learning opportunities (e.g., lectures, discussions, case studies, guest speakers, and class activities), students will experience the range of activities involved in grant writing and proposal development. Students will have the option of writing for a pre-determined organization or developing their own relationship with a nonprofit business or organization to develop their final proposal project.

419.001: Visual Rhetoric

TR 1530-1645
Cristyn Elder, celder@unm.edu

Visual Rhetoric is the art of using images to inform or persuade one's audience. This course introduces students to the fundamentals of visual argumentation and will cover various aspects of document design, including layout, use of headings, typography, photos, illustrations, charts, tables, and graphs for both for personal and professional contexts. The assignments in the course involve a series of projects that can ultimately become part of a professional portfolio.

420.001: Blue Mesa Review

F 1500-1700
Justin St. Germain, jstgerma@unm.edu

This class introduces you to the production of UNM's national literary magazine, Blue Mesa Review. We receive hundreds and sometimes thousands of submissions each year from authors hoping to see their stories, essays, or poems published in our journal. Your primary responsibility in this course is to assess these submissions--collectively called "slush"--for possible publication in BMR. In addition, you will keep an informal journal about your participation in slush, attend discussion meetings, and write a few short papers. This class requires you to be self-motivating; in some respects, it is very much like an independent study. You must be able to keep up with the workload on your own--and often on your own time.

NOTE: The meeting times listed for this course may include open computer lab hours which are NOT mandatory. Mandatory class meetings will occur on Fridays from 3-4. Please contact instructor for more information on requirements and meeting times.

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420.002: Stylistic Analysis

TR 9:30-10:45
Jerome Shea, jshea@unm.edu

Stylistic Analysis is a wide-ranging course that tries to find out what makes for good prose (and what makes for wretched prose). We will study periodic sentences and running sentences, noun style and verb style, parataxis and hypotaxis. We will ponder such questions as "What do we mean by 'voice'?"; "What assumptions do we bring to prose that we don't bring to poetry?"; and "What do me mean by 'high style' and 'low style'?" We will question whether prose is opaque or transparent--or both--and what the ramifications of that are. Five or six short papers, no exams.

420.004: Professional Writing in a Globalized World

TR 1100-1215
Todd Ruecker, truecker@unm.edu

This course arises out of the recognition that there are more nonnative than native speakers of English and that we can increasingly expect to communicate with people from a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds in our professional lives. The class will begin by giving students a theoretical grounding in cross-cultural communication with readings primarily from scholars in applied linguistics and rhetoric that focus on issues such as native/nonnative speaker power hierarchies, communication styles, and cultural situatedness. As the semester progresses, the readings will focus on cross-cultural communication considerations when communicating in different professional settings: journalism, advertising, technical communication, and internal corporate communication. Projects include a facilitated cross-cultural exchange with an accompanying reflection essay, a cross-cultural media analysis, a group wiki project focused on exploring communication styles in different cultu res, and various applied projects.

420.005: Blogging

MWF 10:00-10:50
James Burbank, jimbu@unm.edu

421.001: Advanced Fiction Writing

TR 12:30-1:45
Marisa Clark, clarkmp@unm.edu

This advanced fiction-writing workshop will emphasize the analysis, production, and revision of literary short stories. Each student will write, workshop, and significantly revise two stories, as well as work on a number of exercises. In order to broaden our knowledge of the possibilities of fiction writing, we will read a variety of published works by authors such as T.C. Boyle, Junot Díaz, Louise Erdrich, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ha Jin, Alice Munro, Lori Ostlund, Tom Perrotta, Alice Walker, and David Foster Wallace. This class emphasizes literary fiction and is designed for writers who may be completing a major in creative writing, considering attending an MFA program, and/or hoping to be published in literary journals. I also welcome the opportunity to discuss with you how this course can help you meet your individual goals as a fiction writer. If you wish to contact me about the class, my email address is clarkmp@unm.edu.

422.001: Advanced Creative Writing-Poetry

TR 11:00-12:15
Luci Tapahonso, tapahons@unm.edu

423.001: Advanced Creative Nonfiction Writing

MWF 11:00-11:50
Michelle Brooks, mbrooks7@juno.com

This course will focus on the fundamentals of writing creative nonfiction. We will consider student work in addition to published examples of the genre. Students will learn how to write a query letter and submit their work for publication.

423.002: Advanced Creative Nonfiction Writing

TR 3:30-4:45
Marisa Clark, clarkmp@unm.edu

English 423 is a workshop-driven class in which you will use the skills you learned in English 323 and build on them, hone them, expand on and experiment with them. Each student will write, workshop, and significantly revise two essays, as well as work on a number of exercises. We will read a variety of published works intended to broaden our knowledge of the subgenres of creative nonfiction, with an emphasis on literary journalism. We will use The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction, along with one of the following: Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Rafael Campo's The Desire to Heal, Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, Luis Alberto Urrea's The Devil's Highway, Joan Didion's The White Album. This is an advanced creative writing course, and I expect your creative works and participation in discussions to reflect an advanced level of understanding of the genre.

If you wish to contact me about the class, my email address is clarkmp@unm.edu.

424.001: Creative Writing Workshop - Script

R 1700-2000
Matthew McDuffie, mcduffie@unm.edu

432.001: Magic, Witchcraft, Science

TR 1400-1515
Carmen Nocentelli, nocent@unm.edu

440.001: Chicano Ecology & Rhetoric of Environmental Justice

W 4:00-6:30
Michelle Kells, mkells@unm.edu

This course will explore Chicano/Latin American Ecology and environmental writing through the critical lens of rhetorical theory. We will examine diverse textual representations of the environment (constructions of Greater Mexico, the US-Mexico border, and Latin America) as exigences for social action. Half of the course material will focus on Latin America and the other half will focus on US-Mexico border issues. The purpose of this class is to create a community of environmental thinkers and to cultivate opportunities for considering our roles as citizens, activists, scholars (of place). Participation in field exercises, field trips (as a group), and new media (online) learning environments will be integral to this course. Our reading list will include environmental texts within and beyond the Southwest region to include Greater Mexico and Latin America (as places and rhetorical constructions).

NOTE: This course has been designed for undergraduate and graduate students in Rhetorical Studies (Department of English), Latin American Studies, Chicano Studies, Sustainability Studies, Political Science, and Sociology. We will focus on the range of arguments (across genres and discourse communities in public/popular cultures) about the environment and ecological ethics land/earth literacies) throughout the 20th century--applying a pragmatic approach to modern rhetorical theory as a critical lens. Final course projects will be adapted to the specific needs, interests, and genre-practices of the students in my course with respect to their different disciplines and scholarly goals.

441.001: English Grammars

TR 12:30-1:45
Bethany Davila, bdavila@unm.edu

The English language is a complex, rule-governed system that most of us use every day without having to think about what you need to know in order to speak English. In this course, we will attempt to bring your tacit knowledge to the surface. We'll begin with an overview about language in general--what is the nature of language change and acquisition? Then we'll focus on grammar--what are the categories and rules? What is the effect of grammar? How is English actually used?

We'll discuss not only "standard" English but also multiple variations of English. And, finally, no conversation about grammar is complete without considering the social and educational issues tied up in language, including attitudes toward dialects, the teaching of "standard" English, language and gender, and bilingual education.

Course work will consist of frequent short assignments, several short formal papers, and a final research project.

447.001: Old English

MW 2:00-3:15
Jonathan Davis-Secord, jwds@unm.edu

In this class, we will return to the earliest recorded form of English and read some of the oldest literature ever written in the language. We will read of a queen-turned-abbess, a divinely inspired cowherd, a tale of betrayal, and other texts, all in the original Old English. The first portion of the semester will entail studying grammar in preparation for reading original texts. For daily work during the majority of the semester, students will prepare translations and read scholarly articles. No prior knowledge of Old English is required.

448.001: Beowulf

MW 4:00-3:15
Jonathan Davis-Secord, jwds@unm.edu

Beowulf is the most celebrated and studied Old English poem, yet it remains ambiguous and contested. Modern scholars continue to scrutinize difficult points in the text and wrestle over approaches to the poem. This course will be devoted to a close reading of Beowulf in the original Old English, coupled with pertinent scholarship on specific points in the poem along the way. We will explore the roles of women in the text, the meanings of the monsters, the patterns of gift-giving, the linguistic intricacies of the text, and many other topics. For daily work, students will read secondary literature and prepare translations of the poem; we will meticulously analyze the language of the text and discuss its interpretation in light of the secondary literature. Students will write a critical research paper for the semester. Prerequisite: Old English.

450.001: Middle English Heroes, Saints, and Lovers

TR 11:00-12:15
Anita Obermeier

This course is an introductory sampling of medieval literature (and some art) produced in England and the immediate Continent between 1066 and 1500. We start this historical, linguistic, and literary enterprise with the Bayeux Tapestry--art with text--fighting alongside Anglo-Saxon warriors. Then we will pray with English saints, sleuth with historians, learn the art of courtly love from medieval knights and ladies, look at the nature of God with mystics, and watch biblical drama unfold. The original texts are in Latin, Anglo-Norman, and various dialects of Middle English, which we will study in modern English, in bilingual facing-page translations, and the easier ones in Middle English. The texts cover various secular and religious genres, including epic, debate, saints' lives, fabliau, lais, romance, drama, allegory, and lyrics. The goal of the course is to highlight the variety and range of texts of the Middle English period, and to place those writings in their cu ltural, linguistic, and historical contexts.

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462.001 American Realism & Naturalism

MWF 1:00-1:50
Kathryn Wichelns, wichelns@unm.edu

As literary movements, American realism and naturalism simultaneously respond to and articulate the crisis in national identity that characterizes the post-Civil War period. The era is marked by a series of profound cultural shocks: demographic shifts, as non-Protestant and non-white immigration to the U.S. increases; unprecedented economic inequality, urbanization and overcrowding; federal withdrawal from the South and the rise of Jim Crow; continued Westward expansionism and the series of conflicts known as the Western Indian Wars; the 1898 Spanish-American War; the emerging visibility of working women; and scientific discourses arising in the wake of Darwin. Writing in the period of the railroad, the typewriter, and the photograph, the authors we will read together call for an end to literary romanticism, seeking to depict life as it really is. They grapple with questions about the influences of environment, race, heredity, and gender on individual development.

Our course will focus primarily on short fiction, nonfiction prose, poetry, and novels by writers including Rebecca Harding Davis, Henry James, Mark Twain, Jacob Riis, Ida B. Wells, Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, Zitkala-Ša, Sarah Orne Jewett, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Charles W. Chesnutt, Sui Sin Far, and W.E.B. DuBois. Students will submit regular short writing assignments and a final argumentative research paper of 10-12 pages in length.

464.002: Advanced Studies in Native Literatures and Rhetorics

TR 1230-1345
Luci Tapahonso, tapahons@unm.edu

468.001: Wright, Baldwin, Himes, Ellison

TR 9:30-10:45
Kadeshia Matthews, kadeshia@unm.edu

This course explores the intersecting careers and concerns (literary, social, political) of Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Chester Himes and Ralph Ellison. Scholars generally agree as to Wright's central importance to mid- to late 20th century African American literature, with some even identifying him as the most important African American writer of the 20th century. Certainly, in his various roles as commercially successful black writer, friend and mentor, literary and cultural critic, permanent expatriate and global citizen, Wright made possible and indelibly shaped, in ways direct and indirect, the careers of Baldwin, Himes and Ellison. Through consideration of these authors' fiction, criticism, interviews and correspondence, we will interrogate their sometimes complementary, but more often conflicting, visions and philosophies of black manhood (and gender and race more broadly); violence; sexuality, American identity, history and culture; global blackness; and the role of the black intellectual and the purposes of black art.

468.002: Literature of the American West

MW 5:00-6:15
Kathleen Washburn, washburn@unm.edu

This course takes up the literature and film of the American West and Southwest. We will investigate how the West as distinct region is represented in various periods as a natural landscape, contested frontier, and site for both apocalyptic and utopian pasts and futures. In doing so, we will address the complex cultural and historical contexts for texts from the mid-nineteenth century to the present while also attending to dominant and emergent discourses of the American West in popular forms. Areas of focus will include competing global interests for territory and natural resources, narratives of cultural continuity and personal reinvention, and the role of gender imagining region, nation, or planet. In addition, students will examine various critical models for analyzing the literature of the American West, from borderlands theory and indigenous history to transnational and hemispheric networks of exchange. We will address novels by John Rollin Ridge, Mourning Dove, Willa Cather, Leslie Marmon Silko, Ana Castillo, and Cormac McCarthy, with additional attention to poetry, film, and nonfiction. Course requirements include short response papers, a longer essay, one group presentation, and a final exam.

480.001: Romantic Topographies

MW 1400-1515
Gary Harrison, garyh@unm.edu

Romantic-era writers' relationship to the natural world is at best paradoxical: on the one hand, they imagine an intimate connection between human beings and the natural world; on the other, they celebrate the breach of human consciousness from nature as a mark of transcendent difference. This dialectic of identity and difference explains in part the contradictory disposition of contemporary environmental writers to Romanticism: Some find in Romanticism the foundation of modern ecological thought; others dismiss Romanticism as a nostalgic and idealistic impediment to ecology. Beginning with Jean Jacques Rousseau and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, this course will explore these contradictions in Romantic-era writing from Britain, Italy, France, and Germany. By situating some key poems, novels and natural history writings within the discourses of aesthetics, natural history, and sensibility in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, we explore the role of landscape a nd nature in the formation of individual, local and national identities. Our reading will include works by Rousseau and Goethe; the Wordsworths, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charlotte Smith and John Clare; Alphonse de Lamartine, Alfred Vigny, and Giacomo Leopardi; and possibly Jane Austen and / or Emily Brontë. We will also read some contemporary ecocritical and ecological writers--Timothy Morton, Jonathan Bate, Ursula Heise, and others--to put the Romantic era writers in conversation with contemporary perspectives on literature, ecology, and nature. Our overall goal will to sort out the treatment of nature as an instrument of self-aggrandizement from the acknowledgement of nature for its own sake--to reconcile the human sense of community with nature with the sense of human autonomy from it. (Also offered as European Studies Seminar: INTS 410.002.)

499.001: Internship

TR 1700-1815
Joseph Bartolotta, jbartolotta@unm.edu

This course will focus on your professional development as a Professional or Technical Writer. All students are expected to either place into an internship or have held an internship in the past year. Students will write about their internship experiences for class, discuss documents they have drafted in their internships, and create professional online portfolios. Topics pertaining to pursuing graduate education, writing for government, non-profit, science, medical, and private-decor writing will also be covered.

Department of English Language and Literature
Humanities Building, Second Floor
MSC03 2170
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001

Phone: (505) 277-6347
Fax: (505) 277-0021

english@unm.edu