Spring 2012 Course Descriptions

100-Level

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

150.001: The Study of Literature

TR 8:00 - 9:15
Bruce Carroll

The purpose of most disciplines is usually self evident: science is to know material reality (at least ideally it is), philosophy is to know immaterial reality, history is to know the events—in their order—of the lifetime of our species, business to capitalize on the modern economy, etc. But what purpose does a study of the arts serve? What is the purpose of literary study specifically? It is interesting that we must ask this question, since literature pre-dates all the above disciplines in every known human culture. Perhaps, then, the answer to the question rests in the possibility that 'the story' is as natural to any member of our species as is the affection we have for an aging parent, or the motive to stay in touch with a distant cousin, or the longing we experience when we remember a now estranged old friend or lover (whom we can't even locate via Facebook).

Every one of our readings this semester explores some such facet of human experience, which no other discipline is designed to explore. Seamus Heaney explores both the paths and inevitability of death; Saul Bellow the tension between resentment against and love for our parents; Sandra Cisneros the anguish of doomed love. From each reading we should be able to glean one more small answer to our principal question. And by semester's end, each of you will hazard an answer, and present your answer as an argument, with support from the literature we've read, to your classmates. "Literature is not things but a way to comprehend things." So says someone quoted on page one of our textbook. The course's central question, What is the purpose of literature, is designed to excavate that 'way to comprehend things', those things being our relationships, motivations, lives.

You will write five short response papers and one paper of average length. Apart from these, daily participation is a significant part of your final grade.

150.002: The Study of Literature

MWF 9:00 - 9:50
Marisa Sikes

English 150 is an introduction to the study and appreciation of literature for non-English majors. This course shows how understanding writers‟ techniques increases the enjoyment of their works; relates these techniques to literary conventions; and teaches recognition, analysis, and discussion of important themes.

Outcomes: Upon completing English 150 students will be able to recognize and analyze basic themes in literature; recognize and describe literary conventions in the genres of poetry, fiction and drama; and write brief essays in response to questions about literature. These outcomes will be met through class discussion of assigned texts during which we will apply literary terms to various works, and through the assignment of increasingly longer papers that will also increase in overall point value. Mastery of terms and themes is also to be achieved in preparation for tests that consist of short definition and passage identification and explication.

200-Level

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

220.001 Expository Writing

MWF 8:00-8:50
Natalie Kubaske

220.002 Expository Writing: Poe's Tales

MWF 9:00-9:50
Suzanne Richardson

This 220 will focus on reading the entire works of Edgar Allan Poe including poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. By reading one writer so completely we will explore the life, historical context, literary genius, and failures of one man. Because Poe was a multi genre writer we’ll be able to immerse ourselves in his preferred subject matter, voice, and ideas from all angles. Through reading Poe’s works and a biography about him alongside his works we’ll get a sense of the man, as well as the writer. Projects required in this course are dense weekly readings, some biographical readings, and in addition weekly reading responses via journal entries that are shared on WEBCT. A midterm paper or presentation (6-8 pages in length) and a final paper (8-10 pages in length) are required to complete this course. Paper topics can range from in depth literary analysis of Poe’s work, essays which compare and contrast Poe’s themes and subject matter, and personal essays that explore the experience of reading his entire works. If you’re a fan, you’ll be right at home. If you’re a skeptic, join us and see what Poe can do for you.

220.003 Expository Writing: The Rhetoric of Bodies and Fashion

MWF 11:00 - 11:50
Jamie Denison

How is the relationship you have with your body mediated through culture? Do you view your body through the gaze of others? Where do expectations of being “muscular”, “slender”, or “beautiful” come from? Does fashion serve other purposes beyond just consumerist tendencies and social status? What can our bodies express in art and sartorial fashion that cannot be expressed by language? We will be exploring these questions throughout this course, analysing in various contexts how bodies are manipulated, represented, mediated and used for expression and status. We will look at the formation of body ideals of gender that stem from the Enlightenment, the blurring of lines from transgender identities and intersex bodies, the sociological and artistic interests in fashion, and theories concerned with expression through movement, thus revealing how something as material as the body is often experienced through “abstract” developments of theory and imagination.

Students will be reading articles from a range of disciplines, including philosophy, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, literary theory, film theory, sociology, art history, and dance theory. The major projects will include a visual analysis, a dance performance review, a fashion show review, and an ethnography. Although we will be focusing on the relationship between subjectivity, body, and culture throughout the semester, each project will reveal a new rhetorical situation to be analyzed that emphasizes specific aspects of this connection. By the end of the class, students should have a significant understanding of how bodies are used and related to in our culture, and specifically how we can use writing to articulate those interactions.

220.004 Expository Writing

MWF 1:00 - 1:50
Marisa Clark

English 220 is an expository writing course designed to hone and advance your academic and critical reading and writing skills. In this section, we will focus on the genre of book-length comics and assess their value as works of art and literature. We will look specifically at graphic memoirs as a medium for conveying stories from the artist-author’s life; we will also look at how aspects of history and culture serve as a backdrop for these stories. Naturally, we will examine how pictures and words work together to enrich a text. Given that comics is so often viewed as a childish genre, we will give ample consideration to the target audience for such works. Does the use of pictures allow for a broader readership? Is the storyline ever made more simplistic because of the dependency on pictures? Do the pictures clarify certain elements of the written text or add complexity and depth to the artist-author’s perspective? Does the style of the artwork affect the readability of the book?

While the bulk of our reading will be graphic works, we will also look at a few traditional essay-length memoirs for comparative purposes. Our writing assignments will arise from our discussions and analyses of readings, and we will also work on a graphic project of our own. (Yes, I know this isn’t an art class! The quality of your artwork won’t be part of your grade; your effort will.) Texts include Maus I, Persepolis I, and Fun Home, as well as Understanding Comics.

220.005 Expository Writing

MWF 12:00 - 12:50
Katie Pelletier

In a 2007 New York Times essay, Steven King writes that while the American Short Story is still “alive” it is no longer “well.” He says that the short story is “apt to deteriorate in the years ahead,” but that short stories do still matter. Do you agree? What is the American Short Story? Is the American Short Story still relevant? To whom? In this English 220 section we will investigate the short story genre, its conventions, and innovations. We will read a variety of American short stories from Hawthorne and Poe to selections from recent editions of “The Best American Short Stories.” We will also view and analyze film adaptations of American short stories, investigating the way in which context might shape the genre and other rhetorical decisions made by short story writers and film directors.

Discussions and writing assignments will develop facility interpreting visual and written rhetoric, advance critical thinking skills, and further improve your ability to write and present ideas and arguments. We will write film reviews, literary analyses, proposals, reading responses, and at the conclusion of the course, a critical research essay on a relevant topic of the student’s choice.

220.006 Expository Writing: The Rhetoric of Revolution

MWF 4:00 - 4:50
Daoine Bachran

The world changes. Boundaries shift, laws are written and struck from the books. People make this happen. Writers. Speakers. Activists. Lawyers. Rulers. Peasants. College students. Why do people feel the need to shape their world? Why do they risk everything to change what they see as unjust? And most importantly, how do they manage this change? This class will investigate these questions as it teaches you (hopefully) to be the shaper of your own world with writing. We will look at the arguments of writers, artists, poets, web-site designers, and try to synthesize their persuasiveness and claim it as our own. You will learn to write for college, yes, but more importantly, I hope that you will learn to write for change, for improvement in your life and the lives of those around you.

220.007 Expository Writing: Women and Film

MWF 1:00 - 1:50
Carmen Halstead

Writing assignments in the course will focus on women’s cinema and women’s relationship to film. What do films reveal about us as human beings? How do cinematic representations provide insight to social roles and norms? How do we interpret depictions of women’s power and sexuality? Historically and culturally how have women’s roles altered in the collaborative process of cinematic creation? Through film viewings, class discussions, research presentations, and written responses we’ll seek to answer these questions for ourselves. We’ll analyze and interpret visual, written, and oral rhetoric while developing research strategies and evaluating both primary and secondary sources. Students will have the opportunity to explore their own individual research interests in film. We’ll examine women’s role in cinema from silent films and film noir to Classic Hollywood to current female directors and international cinema. This course will develop our understanding as writers of rhetorical situations and will help students develop sophisticated written interpretations

220.008 Expository Writing: Transforming Genre Through Sherlock Holmes

TR 5:00 - 6:15
Olubunmi Oguntolu

From text to screen Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes reflects the transforming Victorian world, prosperity swaddled in poverty. Through Holmes, Conan Doyle provided and continues to provide social insight and political commentary to the world of his readers. What then does the world of Sherlock Holmes say about us? How is it that Sherlock Holmes remains in our modern world? Since his creation, Conan Doyle's great detective has continually been the subject of stage, film, and television through adaptation and homage. As we unlock the world of Sherlock Holmes, we will use Holmes' world to unlock mysteries of writing. We will examine literary devices such as plot, setting, and characterization along with cinematic techniques such as mise en scène, cinematography, and editing constructs to explore Conan Doyle's social commentary and how film and television directors manipulate storytelling elements to adapt literary text to screen.

In this course we will read Conan Doyle's entire Sherlock Holmes canon and examine plays, graphic novels, television serials, and films adapted from Conan Doyle's text. Our writings will include research journals for analyzing supplemental sources; persuasive letters between Holmes and figures outside the texts; and argumentative articles, critical essays, and visual analyses evaluating the texts and topics we will discover through the world of Sherlock Holmes.

220.011 Expository Writing: War and Peace

TR 12:30 - 1:45
Kyle Fiore

For more than half our lives, the United States has been at war. This class will investigate war and its day-to-day effects on us and our culture. We will also consider peace and other alternatives to war and violence as these alternatives have happened both here at home and abroad. We will read, write about, look at, listen to and evaluate materials by writers, film makers, politicians and artists. We will investigate how authors of war and peace shape their documents for different audiences and analyze the strategies they employ, such as logos, ethos and pathos, to advance their points of view. Resources will include Tim O'Brian's “The Things They Carried”, the United States Peace Index, and Sebastian Junger's blog on Afghanistan, as well as TV shows, movies and documentaries. We will also consider letters, news articles, and political speeches.

To write about war and peace, we will investigate the many forms in which nonfiction authors, reporters and artists portray these related aspects of life: oral history, essays, film, photo essays, radio shows, digital presentations, and comics, to mention a few. We will read and analyze these diverse forms of documentation, considering the interplay between the medium and the message, or story that it portrays.

220.012 Expository Writing: Religion and American Culture

TR 9:30 - 10:45
Jeremy Ricketts

This advanced expository writing class will operate under the premise that religion and American culture are inextricably linked and their interrelation has important consequences for culture, politics, and society in general. Whether we identify with a major religion, a minor religion, a spiritual tradition, or no religion, the cultural landscape teems with religious and spiritual meaning and signs. In this writing-driven course, we will examine a multiplicity of texts to try and unravel the ways in which religion and American culture are intertwined and the implications of this relationship. Students will write numerous short papers and embark in a semester-long writing process that will culminate in a final research paper that draws together the major themes of the course. Through the examination of primary and secondary sources, we will analyze how religion has played a role in shaping America. By closely analyzing literature, films, and other media, we will seek to recognize how an analysis of American history and culture is inextricably intertwined with an analysis of religion.

220.021 Expository Writing: Conquistadors, Katsinas, Lowriders & the Bomb: Discourses of Identity in 21st Century New Mexico

Online
Elise Trott

For centuries, the state of New Mexico has been a site of intense conflict and negotiation over issues of race, culture, and identity. In official state discourses, New Mexico is represented as a place of “tri-cultural harmony,” where Native American, Nuevomexicano (or Hispanic/Latino), and Anglo populations separately and happily coexist. However, the rhetoric of “tri-cultural harmony” over-simplifies the complex realities of ethnic identity in New Mexico while attempting to hide the state’s history of conflict and colonialism. In this course, we will examine and interrogate discourses of “tri-cultural harmony” and their relationship to structures of power and inequality. Where are these discourses found and in what forms? How do they represent or misrepresent the historical roots and everyday experience of ethnic identity for New Mexicans? What are the purposes of these discourses and how do they impact the lives and political possibilities of New Mexico’s citizens?

Throughout the course, we will examine the varied ways in which different discourses of identity are deployed in the contexts of tourism, natural resource conflicts, political struggles and artistic expression. Students will learn to read, analyze, and respond to a variety of challenging contemporary texts, both written and visual. These will include academic analysis, literature, maps, museum exhibits, art and consumption (such as murals, graffiti, and lowrider culture), as well as political rhetoric. Over the course of the semester, students will engage in ethnographic activities, such as observation and interview, in addition to both analytic and personal writing. The course will culminate in an ethnographic project in which students will identify a site of discourse around New Mexican identity and investigate its meanings, purposes, and implications.

220.022 Expository Writing: Pop-Culture Archetypes

TR 5:00 - 6:15
Caroline Gabe

Using examples from current and past popular culture, this course will explore the classical archetypes that help to create timeless figures. The course 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.

The class will be divided into two halves. The first portion of the semester is focused on exploring and researching traditional archetypes in relation to both past and present examples. Instead of focusing solely on what Jungian archetypes should be included in a well written narrative, this class will take a more anthropological and historic slant on the concept. The first third of the course will be divided into 3-4 week sections that explore individual archetypes, culminating in short essay assignments where the students evaluate information and present their perspective on a topic. After a basic repertoire of possible archetypes is available to the students, another sequence will compare the use of specific archetypes in past “pop culture” based on the rhetorical, historical, and cultural situations in which they were developed. This activity will explore how the historic context and likely audience affect an archetype. Both halves will help lay the foundation for students to find and analyze characters in individual research for the final semester project.

220.031 Expository Writing: Folklore

TR 11:00 - 12:15
Nicholas Schwartz

Because English 220 is a writing course, the class will be concentrated on writing before anything else. The writing in the class will, however, be focused on a particular area of study: folklore. The wide field of folklore is one which invites us to practice analyzing and explaining, for folklore—by which I mean riddles, myths, urban legends, fairy tales, etc.—does not merely consist of stories told solely to entertain others. These cultural artifacts hold within them the values, anxieties, and prejudices of the society which produced them. Furthermore, the formulaic nature of much of the examples of folklore which have survived suggests that in many ways we, in the 21st Century, are not that all dissimilar from people in previous ages—especially when it comes to those emotions most basic to all of us: love and fear (especially of the unknown).

220.032 Expository Writing: Travel and Adventure in Medieval Literature

TR 2:00 - 3:15
Colleen Dunn

This course will explore the themes of adventure and travel in medieval literature, beginning chronologically with the Old English poem “The Wanderer” and ending with the Middle English Alliterative Morte Arthure. In the beginning of the semester, students will first consider concepts of “home” in order to establish a framework within which they can understand the two larger themes of this course. Once the foundation is set for understanding medieval ideas of “home,” students will then focus on pieces of literature that represent the various motivations medieval figures had to leave home, such as: adventure, glory, pilgrimage, and war.

Ultimately, the goal is to bring these texts together to understand the different ways in which travel and adventure can both reflect and create a sense of social identity. Over the course of the semester, students will address this topic in three major writing assignments, including a rhetorical critique, a research journal, and a literary analysis.

220.033 Expository Writing: Relationship Advice in Popular Culture

TR 5:00 - 6:15
Annarose Fitzgerald

In this 220 section, you will advance your critical thinking skills through the reading, writing, and analysis of texts that portray the silent yet understood rules governing interactions with family, friends, romantic partners, professional colleagues, and the people we meet at the bus station. By writing for, about, and with various texts that create and reflect the societal norms for relationship dynamics, you will engage with the core writing outcomes on an intermediate level and build on the foundation laid in 100-level composition.

We'll be examining academic and popular articles, film clips, song lyrics, and other texts that articulate how relationship dynamics work: from friendship to romance, spouses to siblings, roommates to neighbors.Through readings, class discussions, and written responses on a variety of styles and genres of texts, we’ll explore the voices that have shaped—and continue to shape—our understanding of relationship dynamics in today’s world and work on developing voices of our own.

220.035 Expository Writing: Media and Popular Culture

MWF 1:00 - 1:50
Ashley Carlson

What do The Daily Show, Twilight, Rihanna, and The Hangover have in common? They are all extremely popular and they all reflect and define aspects of American culture and values. This course will examine trends in current popular media, including television, film, music, bestselling books, and even advertising. We will read critical essays about media and culture and conduct our own case studies. We will discuss how various media portray gender, race, and class, and ask what messages they convey about social norms. Grades will be based on class participation, regular short assignments, and three major essays.

Required Text: Dines, Gail. Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader

220.036 Expository Writing

Online
Julie Williams

In this course we’ll explore writings about landscape and environment, with the goal of helping students to think critically about the politics of place. We will look at both recent and foundational texts that help define the “West”, a concept that has changed both geographically and ideologically in the American imagination throughout our country’s history. We will first explore the complex relationships between humans and their environment, looking at ways that “nature” are reflected, constructed, and deployed in American literature and culture. Second, in order to learn more about the places we live, we’ll put the tools of nature writing to work, using observation, memory, exploration, research, analysis, and expression to explore the landscapes we inhabit here in New Mexico.

Some questions that will guide our inquiries into the politics of landscape: What are the origins for various American myths about nature and landscapes, and what are the modern day consequences? How have notions about frontiers and empire impacted the way contemporary cultures view nature? How do relationships between humans and their environments reflect and shape literature and culture? How do gender, race, ethnicity, and class shape an author’s standpoint toward landscape?

224.001 Introduction to Creative Writing

MWF 10:00 - 10:50
Adam Nunez

224.002 Introduction to Creative Writing

MWF 1:00 - 1:50
Katie Pelletier

224.003 Introduction to Creative Writing

TR 11:00 - 12:15
Tanaya Winder

224.004 Introduction to Creative Writing

MWF 5:00 - 5:50
David Rubalcava

224.005 Introduction to Creative Writing

MWF 11:00 - 11:50
Laurel Coffey

Through close readings of contemporary writers, we will systematically examine the craft elements of image, voice, character, setting, and story, thereby stocking our writerly toolboxes with these skills during the first half of the semester. In the second half of the semester, we will write fiction, nonfiction, and poetry pieces using these learned craft elements. You should expect the workload for this course to consist of daily reading assignments, short focused writing exercises, and oft-revised original writing in all three genres collected into the final portfolio. My class will prepare you for future workshops and teach you how to approach, analyze, and glean the best morsels from a piece of writing.

224.006 Introduction to Creative Writing

TR 9:30 - 10:45
Sharon Warner

Introduction to Creative Writing: A beginning course in the writing of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Introduces issues of craft, workshop vocabulary, strategies for revision, and the habit of reading as a writer. In keeping with the catalog description, we will begin with issues of craft applicable to all three genres. Thus, we will spend the first five weeks of the semester on image, voice, character, setting, and story. Writing exercises and readings will augment our discussions of these “areas of imagination,” as Janet Burroway refers to them.

In the second six weeks, we will turn our attention to the processes of development and revision. How do creative writers draft and revise a piece? How do creative writers decide whether the material is most suited to the genre of fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction? At this point in the semester, we’ll begin our exploration of the three genres, using both reading and writing to guide us. By then, you’ll have completed a number of exercises and journal entries, and these will become the fodder for the short fiction, poetry, and essays you produce. You’ll have the opportunity to try your hand at all three, not to prove your mastery but your mettle. We’ll write one short-short story, one short essay, and a smattering of poems.

Every class session will include both writing and reading. They are equally important and, in fact, inextricable. While writing can be viewed as a solitary occupation it’s actually a collaborative act. Best to know from the get-go that whatever you write will be influenced by all that you’ve read. But you needn’t take my word for it. Here are words to the wise from several masters:

“Learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.” —Eudora Welty
“I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.” —Samuel Johnson
“The best training is to read and write, no matter what.” —Grace Paley

TEXTS: Burroway, Janet. Imaginative Writing: Elements of Craft. 3rd Edition. Penguin Academics, 2011
Henderson, Bill, Pushcart Prize XXXVI: Best of the Small Presses. Pushcart Press.

224.007 Introduction to Creative Writing

MWF 9:00 - 9:50
Elizabeth Tannen

224.008 Introduction to Creative Writing

TR 5:00 - 6:15
Natalie Scenters-Zapico

224.009 Introduction to Creative Writing

Online
Lisa Chavez

This online 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. I also expect lively online discussion of the assigned readings, 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.

240.001 Traditional Grammar

TR 5:00 - 6:15
Melissa Huffman

240.002 Traditional Grammar

MWF 12:00 - 12:50
Calinda Shely

248.001 Heroes of the Middle Ages

MWF 2:00 - 2:50
Lisa Myers

Ever since its inception in the Middle Ages, the legend of Robin Hood has captivated audiences and each generation has reworked the original tales of jolly ol’ England and the famous forest outlaw to suit its own ideological needs. Robin Hood has served as a figure in popular ballads, a Disney cartoon fox, a comedic movie character, a swashbuckling hero and as the subject of graphic novels and comic books. This course will study the development of the Robin Hood legend from its earliest forms in medieval England, examining the historical evidence of an original Robin Hood as well as the evidence for a mythic origin. The course will mainly focus on the various reiterations of the Bandit of Sherwood and how the numerous imaginings relate to social and cultural changes. Graded assignments include two exams and two short papers. Anticipated texts include: Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography by Stephen Knight, The Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle (children’s book), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (movie), Outlaw: The Legend of Robin Hood by Tony Lee (graphic novel). Some materials are available online or in e-book editions for free.

250.001 Analysis of Literature

MW 5:00 - 6:15
Paul Formisano

This course aims to provide you with a number of useful tools to better understand literature and its various genres including poetry, short stories, non-fiction essays, and plays. You will learn specific terms relevant to each genre along with key concepts of some of the major theoretical movements that have shaped literary scholarship over the last century like Formalism, Deconstruction, Marxism, Feminism, and Ecocriticism. Assignments will include short written responses, group discussions and activities, and longer writing assignments that will allow you to demonstrate your own understanding and engagement with course readings and the theoretical principles discussed throughout the semester.

250.002 Analysis of Literature

ARR
Gail Houston

English 250.011, .012, .013, .014 is an online course that introduces students to literary studies. This course assumes that the study of literature is a formal, academic field with rules and conventions of its own that require skills in close analysis, critical thinking and writing. There are many approaches to literature that are currently being practiced in the field of English. In this class, we will focus on some of those theoretical approaches and you will use them to analyze works of literature, including, Formalism, Deconstruction, Feminism, Marxism, and Psychoanalytic theory. We will also study literary examples of three major genres: fiction, drama, and poetry. In addition, to help the student learn the conventions of the academic field of literature, the student will be expected to learn general literary terminology.

You will do the following in this class:

Read and discuss literary texts carefully and articulate your ideas about the reading through various forms of homework and class activities
Demonstrate knowledge of key literary terms and genres through taking 3 quizzes
Learn to apply a variety of critical approaches to the texts, and, using those approaches, demonstrate your ability to develop an original generalization or thesis about a literary work or works and support it with specific evidence from the text(s);
Practice skills involved in writing and revising formal papers that analyze literature through using a particular theory.

TAs:
Kate Alexander kalex@unm.edu
Christine Kozikowski ckozikow@unm.edu
Calinda Cae Shely cshely@unm.edu

250.003 Analysis of Literature

ARR
Katherine Alexander

You will do the following in this class:

Read and discuss literary texts carefully and articulate your ideas about the reading through various forms of homework and class activities
Demonstrate knowledge of key literary terms and genres through taking 3 quizzes
Learn to apply a variety of critical approaches to the texts, and, using those approaches, demonstrate your ability to develop an original generalization or thesis about a literary work or works and support it with specific evidence from the text(s);
Practice skills involved in writing and revising formal papers that analyze literature through using a particular theory.

TAs:
Kate Alexander kalex@unm.edu
Christine Kozikowski ckozikow@unm.edu
Calinda Cae Shely cshely@unm.edu

250.004 Analysis of Literature

ARR
Christine Kozikowski

You will do the following in this class:

Read and discuss literary texts carefully and articulate your ideas about the reading through various forms of homework and class activities
Demonstrate knowledge of key literary terms and genres through taking 3 quizzes
Learn to apply a variety of critical approaches to the texts, and, using those approaches, demonstrate your ability to develop an original generalization or thesis about a literary work or works and support it with specific evidence from the text(s);
Practice skills involved in writing and revising formal papers that analyze literature through using a particular theory.

TAs:
Kate Alexander kalex@unm.edu
Christine Kozikowski ckozikow@unm.edu
Calinda Cae Shely cshely@unm.edu

250.005 Analysis of Literature

ARR
Calinda Shely

You will do the following in this class:

Read and discuss literary texts carefully and articulate your ideas about the reading through various forms of homework and class activities
Demonstrate knowledge of key literary terms and genres through taking 3 quizzes
Learn to apply a variety of critical approaches to the texts, and, using those approaches, demonstrate your ability to develop an original generalization or thesis about a literary work or works and support it with specific evidence from the text(s);
Practice skills involved in writing and revising formal papers that analyze literature through using a particular theory.

TAs:
Kate Alexander kalex@unm.edu
Christine Kozikowski ckozikow@unm.edu
Calinda Cae Shely cshely@unm.edu

265.001 Introduction to Chicano/a Literature

MWF 10:00 - 10:50
Daoine Bachran

A survey of Chicana/o novels, short stories, essays, poetry, and drama from nineteenth century to the present, with emphasis on major themes such as history, culture, identity, language, and region.

290.001 Introduction to Professional Writing

MWF 1:00 - 1:50
Jim Burbank

This course introduces students to the various genres and situations the professional writer encounters in the workplace. Students prepare for the Professional Writing Internship Program. Interns, internship mentors, and professionals present to the class to familiarize students with career opportunities in the diverse fields of Professional Writing. The course provides a solid preparation for students considering how their various career paths can involve Professional Writing.

290.002 Introduction to Professional Writing

TR 5:00 - 6:15
Stephen Benz

The main purpose of ENGL 290 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.

293.001 World Literature 17th Century through the Present

MWF 9:00 - 9:50
Stacy Kikendall

This course will introduce students to a representative sample of influential works from a variety of the world’s cultural traditions from approximately 1700 to the present. We will examine the works by historical period and the general theme of boundary crossing. We will read major authors/texts from the Americas, Africa, India, China, Japan, Egypt, and Europe, including (but not limited to) Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Swift, Voltaire, Olaudah Equiano, Matsuo Basho, Rousseau, Coleridge, Mori Ogai, Rabindranath Tagore, Wole Soyinka, Dostoevsky, Joyce, Walcott, and V.S. Naipaul. In addition, in order to situate the texts within a larger cultural and historical context, we will read several “In the World” sections from the Bedford Anthology. Assignments will include several exams, five shorter writing assignments, and a presentation.

293.002 World Literature 17th Century through the Present

TR 11:00 - 12:15
Jennifer Nader

This course seeks to explore the balance between identity and difference across and within cultures, and will introduce you to some of the most important literary works from a variety of the world’s cultural traditions, from about 1700 to the present. Our readings will be organized by historical period, with a general theme of crossing cultural boundaries, especially through travel. We will read major works by authors from Africa, India, Bangladesh, China, Japan, Europe, America, and Russia, and will work to interrogate the complex negotiations of identity in cultural contact zones by placing texts in continual conversation with each other. Initially we will look at both fictional and non-fictional narratives of travel in the eighteenth century, and will then shift to looking at radical Otherness of the supernatural and fantastic briefly. We will then shift our focus to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and will consider the effects of identity, colonization, and globalization, as well as race, class, and gender while acknowledging multiple points of view. Throughout the course, we will consider the impact of the past on our own present global culture, and how things are intricately woven together.

Objectives
By participating in class discussions, writing several short papers and taking a midterm and final examination, students will engage in a dialogic and reflexive conversation about literary texts. Students will analyze, contextualize, and compare and contrast literary and extra-literary works from diverse traditions, show how those texts are related to their places and times of origin, and identify recurrent themes, motifs, genres, and literary movements. Students will also identify and evaluate the relationships among those works, as well as what makes each work distinctive. In addition, students will be introduced to and discuss problems of translation and transculturation, and they will learn to recognize and evaluate the rewards, as well as the problems and limits, of reading across time and place, across cultures and languages.

295.001 Survey of Later English Literature

MW 5:00 - 6:15
Genesea Carter

This course is a survey of English literature from 1798 to the present. The readings of this course will roughly follow the themes of empire, gender, science, religion, and class issues with the intention of examining the text's rhetorical purpose and cultural context. Thus, this class will teach students how to be rhetorically aware when analyzing literature and its relationship to the cultural values of the period. Particularly important to the rhetorical context is our understanding of the cultural anxieties and changes embedded within these themes, so students will become familiar with conducting primary, periodical research in order to inform their interpretations. Assigned readings will include Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "A Curse for a Nation," William Dodd's "The Narrative of William Dodd, a Factory Cripple. Written by Himself," and J. M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan; Or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.” Course assignments include periodical research essays, close analysis essays, a midterm, and a final.

295.002 Survey of Later English Literature

TR 12:30 - 1:45
Aeron Hunt

This course will introduce students to the 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. Writers that we study may include: Blake, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Austen, Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Hopkins, Stevenson, Wilde, Kipling, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats, Joyce, Walcott, Pinter, Rushdie.

Course requirements: two exams, two papers (5-6 pages each), in-class exercises/small assignments, class participation

297.001 Later American Literature

TR 9:30 - 10:45
Melina Vizcaino-Alemán

This later American literature course will cover 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 the text within its historical context. Emphasizing an interdisciplinary approach to literature, the class incorporates other forms of cultural production, particularly architecture, film, and photography, to analyze the literary texts we read. We’ll become familiar with the writers of this era, and also learn how to discuss them using literary and interdisciplinary methods of analysis. Most importantly, we’ll hone our critical reading and thinking skills and apply them to written analyses.

297.002 Later American Literature

MWF 1:00 - 1:50
Belinda Wallace

297.003 Later American Literature

TR 5:00 - 6:15
Noreen Rivera

Later American Literature… Twain, Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Steinbeck, right? Though, we will indeed study literature from the “big four,” this course provides a chronological survey of the various forms of literature and literary movements peoples created within the United States, from the Reconstruction Era (post-U.S. Civil War) to the Present.

The study of our nation’s rich literary culture will begin with the exploration of gender, transnational, national, regional and racial themes at work by a range of Post Civil War writers, such as Twain, Dunbar, Ruiz de Burton, London, and Chopin, to name a few. Then, we will transition to late nineteenth century works by Chinese, Black, Latino and Native American writers that question the politics of what it means to be “American.” Our study of the nineteenth century will offer us the opportunity to examine the aforementioned themes using a variety of literary genres in the form of poems, novel excerpts, folktales, short stories, and corridos. Next, we will move into the early twentieth century and read literary works produced during the pre- and post- World War I era to study shifts in theme and political issues by popular and recovered writers of the “Lost Generation.” At this point in the course, we will pause our chronological procession to assess how and why our readings as a whole illustrate the dynamic cultural, political and social concerns of the eras covered. This course continues its charge into the Modern Era with an examination of the New Negro Renaissance, Great Depression writers, along with Cold War and Civil Rights literatures and movements that challenge nostalgic national memory of a 1950s and early 1960s ideal. This course concludes with a study of literary expressions that celebrate and criticize matters of culture, gender and national politics from Vietnam literature to the present. Drama, autobiography, speeches and song lyrics round out the list of new genres we will add to our study of later American literature. Again, we will close by questioning how and why literature in the 20th and 21st centuries represents the desires and dreams of a complex and diverse American people.

As you can see, this course is a survey in every sense of the word. We will move swiftly, but you will gain a broad comprehension of the various literary movements, and cultural and national ideologies expressed by the diverse peoples who have contributed to our nation’s literary tapestry.

300-Level

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

304.001 The Bible as Literature

TR 12:30 - 1:45
Janet Gaines

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).

Midterm, final, and one analytical or creative ten-page paper.

305.001 Mythology

TR 9:30 - 10:45
John McKinnell

Viking myth and legend provide a unique opportunity to study some of the basic foundations of literature: the origins of symbol, the ways in which 'significant' stories evolve, and how the religious and moral understanding of them has changed over the centuries. The most important and extensive pre-Christian mythology that survives from Northern Europe is that of Scandinavia and the other lands colonised by Norse-speaking people during the Viking Age. It is preserved chiefly in the anonymous anthology of poems known as the Poetic Edda and in the Prose Edda, a guide for poets composed in the early thirteenth century by the poet, scholar and historian Snorri Sturluson; translations of these two works will form the core reading for the course.
We shall begin by approaching the questions 'who were the Norsemen?' and 'why do their pre-Christian myths survive when those of most other Christian peoples do not?' We shall then study the individual myths, starting from translations of the texts themselves, most of which are short, action-packed narrative poems. Topics covered will then include: Fertility gods, male and female, and their human devotees; Thor, enemy of giants and friend of the common man; Odin, patron of secret wisdom and poetry (and also the great seducer); The downfall of the gods; Mockery of the gods, and Loki the trickster; Faded gods, mysterious spirits and the process of change. Our governing question will be: What were the myths for, and why did Christians continue to use them?

You will need two course books: The Poetic Edda, trans. Carolyne Larrington, World Classics, Oxford / New York: OUP, 1996.Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. Anthony Faulkes, Everyman's Library, London: Dent, 1987. Each week's reading will consist of selections from these, together with some other translated material which you will be able to download from e-reserve. Other sources and background critical reading which can be consulted in the library will appear in a bibliography which will also be posted on e-reserve.

The assessment of the course will consist of four quizzes (each counting for 5% of your overall mark), one essay, to be submitted in week 9 (or 10) of the course (not more than 3,000 words, counting for 40% of your mark), and a final two-hour examination, counting for 40% for your mark. Essay and exam questions will allow you a wide choice of topics, both myth-historical and literary.

305.002 Mythology

MWF 10:00 - 10:50
Sandria Faubion

306.001 Arthurian Legend and Romance

TR 3:30 - 4:45
Anita Obermeier

The Arthurian Legend has been the single most prolific literary motif in Western literature. This course will investigate this enduring strength and attraction of Arthurian legends from their pan-European beginnings in the medieval period to contemporary literature, popular culture, and film. We will read masterpieces from the Celtic tradition, Chrétien de Troyes, the French Lancelot-Grail Cycle, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Thomas Malory, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Mark Twain, Naomi Mitchison, and others. This way, we can observe how each version serves a new authorial, political, or cultural agenda—whether it is to establish a national foundation myth, to endorse specific religious values, to revive medieval values in an industrial age, or to challenge gender stereotypes in modern times. We will also focus on the evolution of other important Arthurian characters, such as Gawain, Tristan, Perceval, Morgan le Fay, Galahad, Merlin, Lancelot, and Guinevere.

308.001 The Jewish Experience in American Literature and Culture

TR 2:00 - 3:15
Janet Gaines

315.002 American Masculinities

MWF 10:00 - 10:50
Daniel Worden

From Theodore Roosevelt's endorsement of the "strenuous life"to Fight Club, American masculinity is often thought to be in crisis. Particularly in the twentieth century, masculinity seems to be a reactionary gender category, saturated with nostalgia for a time when “a man could be a man.” Is masculinity always yoked to nationalism, racism, and sexism? Or, does masculinity have a more complex role in American culture? This course will explore masculinity in a variety of literary works and films from the twentieth- and twenty-first-century U.S. We will analyze these works alongside critical texts from gender studies, queer theory, history, and sociology.

Course texts will include literary works by Junot Diaz, Leslie Feinberg, Ernest Hemingway, Patricia Highsmith, Norman Mailer, and Richard Wright, along with early Superman comic strips; critical and theoretical texts by Judith Butler, R.W. Connell, Ken Corbett Frantz Fanon, Sigmund Freud, Judith Halberstam, Michael Kimmel, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Kathryn Bond Stockton; and films such as Rebel Without a Cause, The Searchers, Midnight Cowboy, Boys Don't Cry, When Were Were Kings, Fight Club, and Where the Wild Things Are.

321.001 Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction

MWF 12:00 - 12:50
Samantha Tetangco

321.002 Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction

TR 11:00 - 12:15
Jack Trujillo

321.003 Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction

TR 5:30 - 6:45
Jack Trujillo

322.001 Intermediate Creative Writing: Poetry

MWF 10:00 - 10:50
Michelle Brooks

323.001 Intermediate Creative Writing: Nonfiction

MWF 11:00 - 11:50
Marisa Clark

323.002 Intermediate Creative Writing: Nonfiction

MWF 3:00 - 3:50
Marisa Clark

350.001 Medieval Tales of Wonder

MWF 11:00 - 11:50
Juliette Cunico

The tales of magic and wonder such as those collected by the brothers Grimm in the late 18th and early 19th centuries are classified as ‘fairy tales,’ although very few of them actually contain a creature called a fairy. Instead, as J.R.R Tolkien has pointed out, these tales are of the land of ‘Faerie’; ‘the perilous Realm itself, and the air that blows in that country. ...Faerie cannot be caught in a net of words; for it is one of its qualities to be indescribable, though not imperceptible.’ These stories of magic, enchantment, heroic quests and courtly romance form a cultural heritage thousands of years old, dating back to the oldest written epics and further still to tales spoken around the hearth-fire. We will discover that these tales of wonder differ from novels of social realism in their freedom to portray the world in bright primary colors; a dream-world half remembered from childhood when all the world was glistening and strange; a fiction unembarrassed to tackle the truths of Good and Evil, Honor and Betrayal, and Love and Hate.

It is these tales and epics that we will be studying; stories about the Celtic ‘otherworld’, monsters (both human and other) in Scandinavian poetry, mysterious animals and lovers in Russian folk epics, talking beasts with strange attributes in medieval bestiaries, and encounters with the dead in the Italian version of Hell. Along the way we will also encounter gods and goddesses, knights and wizards, philosophers, heroes, villains, artists and buffoons.
In this class we will go beyond a simple reading of the texts to an analytical study of the individual’s reaction to experiences with the ‘otherworld,’ and progress towards an understanding of why these stories resonate through the ages and maintain an importance even today in our pragmatic world of science and rationalism. This will be achieved through an immersion in the texts, frequent writing in and out of class, extra-curricular research, and lively and informed class discussions.

Texts will include works from the Irish Ulster Cycle, the Welsh Mabinogian, the Scandinavian Poetic Edda, The GermanNibelung Cycle, The Finnish Epic Kaleva, Boccaccio’s Decameron and Dante’s Inferno, Russian Byliny, Medieval Bestiaries, and Old English Wonders of the East.

351.001 Chaucer

MWF 10:00 - 10:50
Christine Kozikowski

In this course, we will explore Chaucer’s most famous work, the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer’s collection of pilgrimage tales is one of the greatest, most imaginative, and varied pieces of all English literature. Consider its fascinating historical backdrop in late fourteenth century England: a generation prior, the plague had swept through Europe decimating the population; political unrest and religious turmoil; a child king had taken the throne; peasants rose up in rebellion; the Bible was translated into English; and heretics were burned at the stake—a world of both decay and renewal, of catastrophic violence and decline for some, but dazzling possibility for others. Through the voices of colorful storytellers, Chaucer’s last great poem tests the boundaries of social possibility in a “disenchanted” age, weighing the competing claims of allegory and realism, chivalry and commerce, men and women, traditional authority and individual experience. And it does so in our ancestor language of Middle English, simultaneously a colorful, earthy, and lofty idiom. We will, in essence, ride along with the pilgrims on our own journey to Canterbury and through the Middle Ages.

352.001 Early Shakespeare

MW 2:00 - 3:15
David Jones

An introduction to Shakespeare's first decade of creation, beginning with a fairly simple comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, and ending with his first great tragedy, Hamlet. Other plays include the history Richard III, the comedies A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, and As You Like It, and the tragedies of Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar.

My approach is a blend of literary criticism, intellectual context, and theatre history with particular stress on the performance qualities of the plays. I make extensive use of short clips from videos of the plays as an aid to understanding.

Class format is lecture and discussion. Requirements include midterm and final exams, one paper, and six quizzes.

352.002 Early Shakespeare

TR 11:00 - 12:15
Carmen Nocentelli

During the course of the semester, we will read and discuss several plays penned during the first part of Shakespeare's career, including The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and Henry V. The primary goal of this course will be to assist you in becoming active and perceptive readers of early modern drama. This means not only to be able to find out for yourself what a particular play amounts to, but also to perform independent research, synthesize scholarly articles, and show by careful and consistent argument how you have arrived at your reading. This also means that there will be relatively little lecturing on my part, and that you will be required to attend regularly, read all assigned material carefully (using the supplied reading guides as appropriate), and contribute thoughtfully to class discussion. A variety of written assignments will complement our in-class activities.

353.001 Later Shakespeare

MW 4:00 - 5:15
David Jones

An introduction to the last decade of Shakespeare's work, the period in which he finished a line of great comedies with Twelfth Night and morphed the form into the problematic Measure for Measure; when his tragedies climaxed with Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear; and he began an entire new form of writing with the romances The Winter's Tale and The Tempest.

Class format is lecture and discussion. Requirements include midterm and final exams, one paper, and six quizzes.

355.001 Enlightenment Survey

TR 9:30 - 10:45
Carolyn Woodward

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, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Frances Burney. 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.

Four 4-6 page papers, one midterm & one final examination.

Texts:
Longmans Anthology of British Literature (Restoration & Eighteenth Century) 4th ed, packaged with Austen’s Sense & Sensibility
Margaret C. Jacob, The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents
Voltaire, Candide
Vincent Caretta, ed. Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the 18th Century.
Frances Burney, Cecilia

356.001 The Nineteenth Century

MW 5:00 - 6:15
Ashley Carlson

360.001 Bloomsbury

MWF 3:00 - 3:50
Mary Power

This course will be devoted mainly to three of Bloomsbury’s most celebrated writers-----Virginia Woolf, E.M.Forster and Lytton Strachey. We’ll Read Woolf’s novels Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway and to the Lighhouse. Then we’ll study E.M.Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread, Passage to India, Howard’s End and Maurice. We’ll go on to consider Lytton Strachey’s radically new ‘psychological biographies’ including Eminent Victorians, Queen Victoria, and Elizabeth and Essex. We’ll also look at some paintings by Virginia Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and explore their connection to the literature of Bloomsbury.

360.002 Faulkner

MWF 1:00 - 1:50
Antonio Marquez

360.003 D.H. Lawrence

MWF 11:00 - 11:50
Feroza Jussawalla

This is a major author course that will read the works of D.H. Lawrence, consider the controversies around his writing, the banning of his books and whether he can be considered colonialist or not. we will also read materials pertinent to Lawrence in New Mexico and if possible take a trip to Taos. We will start with some short stories and read Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterly's Lovers and The Plumed Serpent.

400-Level

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

410.001 Criticism and Theory

R 4:00 - 6:30
Jesse Aleman

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 to put 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 read several short stories as “case studies” for different theoretical possibilities.

Required text: Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, eds. Literary Theory: An Anthology (2nd edition)

417.001 Editing

MWF 11:00 - 11:50
Jim Burbank

The course in editing provides students with practical experience in copyediting print and on-line documents. The class develops a theoretical, rhetorical, linguistic, and historical analysis of style, grammar, and usage. Document design, developmental, and project editing expand the student’s understanding of editorial concepts and applications.

418.001 Proposal and Grant Writing

MWF 1:00 - 1:50
Kyle Fiore

In this course you will learn how to write effective grant proposals and understand how to locate and evaluate requests for proposals to ensure the proposals you write are able to persuade a client or funder to fund your project. You will also analyze existing proposals to understand the persuasive moves they make.
Because proposal writing is not a solitary task, but rather a process of working with others to identify needs, locate opportunities, and develop a persuasive solution, it is helpful to understand how the process works in the real world. To accomplish this need for real world experience, the major project for the course will be to write a real proposal by working with a local organization in a service learning experience. As you write the proposal, you will draw off the principles of rhetorical analysis, learning how to

Develop a clear description of the problem,
Offer achievable objectives,
Design a logical solution,
Create specific and accurate budgets, and
Present your organization powerfully.

You will also learn methods of writing persuasively that are both ethical and effective as well as study how to use document design to enhance readability.

418.002 Proposal and Grant Writing

TR 11:00- 12:15
Valerie Thomas

In this course you will learn how to write effective business and grant proposals and understand how to locate and evaluate requests for proposals to ensure the proposals you write are able to persuade a client or funder to fund your project. You will also analyze existing proposals to understand the persuasive moves they make.
Because proposal writing is not a solitary task, but rather a process of working with others to identify needs, locate opportunities, and develop a persuasive solution, it is helpful to understand how the process works in the real world. To accomplish this need for real world experience, the major project for the course will be to write a real proposal by working with a local organization in a service learning experience. As you write the proposal, you will draw off the principles of rhetorical analysis, learning how to

Develop a clear description of the problem,
Offer achievable objectives,
Design a logical solution,
Create specific and accurate budgets, and
Present your organization powerfully.

You will also learn methods of writing persuasively that are both ethical and effective as well as study how to use document design to enhance readability.

419.020 Visual Rhetoric

Online
Valerie Thomas

This course will prepare you to work with visual elements of textual communication – page design, graphic design, webpage design, poster design, etc. Design in its broadest sense is an academic and professional discipline that requires years of study. For this course, you will consider yourself a writer who, because of the demands of computer technology, must understand principles of proper design and how to communicate visually in the documents you create. Thus your goal is to create effective layout and design work and to be able to talk sensibly to professional designers and printers. To reach this goal, you will need to develop and demonstrate facility with computer programs. After completing this course, you should be able to

Understand how to analyze the rhetorical situation (purpose, audience, and context) that influences the documents you create.
Analyze documents in terms of their ability to use visual design principles to communicate effectively with their intended readers.
Understand the principles of design and be able to implement these principles in the documents you create.
Use software (Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and Adobe InDesign) to create documents that implement effective document design.
Understand publishing considerations so you are able to work efficiently with printers to create professional documents.

420.001 Blue Mesa Review

CRN 39828
Justin St Germaine

420.002 Stylistics Analysis

TR 9:30 - 10:45
Jerry Shea

Stylistic Analysis (aka “Prose Style”) is unlike any writing course you have ever taken. We get down and dirty at the sentence level; my aim, as in all my courses, is to rub your nose in the prose. What makes for good prose? What makes for wretched prose? We shall try to find out. Do you know the difference between noun style and verb style? Between hypotaxis and parataxis? Have you ever thought about the different assumptions we bring to poetry and to prose? Has it ever occurred to you that sometimes we look AT prose and sometimes we look THROUGH prose? Take this course and revel in these questions. Six or seven short assignments. No midterm or final.

420.004 Writing in the Natural Science

W 4:00 - 6:30
Lynn Beene

Writing for the Natural Sciences/Biology is a research based, project-focused course designed to address the needs of students doing research in the natural sciences. It is not a course in nature writing. The advanced workshop/course begins by covering many of the basic forms of professional writing students will encounter in their careers (e.g., abstracts, literature surveys, research reports, and grant proposals). In this workshop, students will first analyze central values, conventions, and discourse practices of the discipline. Then they will practice those conventions, with a particular emphasis on written and oral discourse that accomplishes rhetorical aims and on mastering disciplinary standards for format, genre, and citation. Each student then develops an individual project involving research in an area of specialty, culminating in a project proposal or journal article (possibly for publication in a journal for undergraduate science). I assume that the students in the course are or will soon be engaged in actual laboratory research in their field, and the course is designed to support that work. Students currently engaged in research are urged to consider writing a journal article; students not yet engaged in research should write a grant proposal.

Course Texts: Ann Penrose and Steven Katz, Writing in the Sciences; Victoria McMillan, Writing Papers in the Biological Sciences; grammar review
(to be assigned).

420.011 Marketing Business & Nonprofits

ARR
Kenneth Davis

A course in "copywriting": writing to market products, services, even ideas. Working in simulated ad agencies, students will write copy for print ads, direct mail pieces, brochures, catalogs, press releases, and other marketing vehicles. They will revise their best copy for inclusion in a final professional portfolio. Texts for the course are Blake and Bly's The Elements of Copywriting and Heath and Heath's Made to Stick (2008 edition). These will be supplemented by videos of the instructor discussing examples of marketing copy he has written for business, government, and the nonprofit sector.

421.001 Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction

TR 12:30 - 1:45
Sharon Warner

“The main rule of the writer is never to pity the manuscript.”
--Isaac Bashevis Singer

“I’m happy when the revisions are big. I’m not speaking of stylistic revisions but of revisions in my own understanding.” --Saul Bellow

This course is an advanced-level workshop, and the focus will be on large and small-scale revision. The philosophy that informs this course is that stories and novels are not so much written as rewritten. Students who enroll must have completed English 224 and 321 or have the consent of the instructor.

In taking 224 and 321, you’ve no doubt accumulated several stories that proceed haltingly and then sputter to half-hearted conclusions. Or perhaps they get off to a roaring start and then lose direction and crash into trees or trucks or defenseless old ladies. Your stories may be flashy but insubstantial, or so deep and ponderous that the reader wades in only a page or two before turning back. We’ll take what you have on the page and give it several go-rounds. As a group and as individuals, we’ll reconsider, rework, re-envision these drafts and find our way to satisfying conclusions.

Requirements: Successive revisions of two different stories, an essay on a contemporary short story paired with a presentation to the class, and regular responses to readings.

Texts: Blue Collar, White Collar, No Color: Stories of Work by Richard Ford; The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot by Charles Baxter;
Alone With All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom about the Craft of Fiction by David JaussFee: $20.00 for photocopying

421.011 Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction

ARR
Diane Thiel

422.001 Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry

TR 3:30 - 4:45
Lisa Chavez

This advanced creative writing workshop in poetry presupposes a certain understanding of the genre: the use of image, line, and form. Our goals in this course will be to hone craft, try new styles and forms of poetry, and practice revision skills. You will be expected to try out a number of different styles and forms of poetry in exercises, as well submit poems to our class workshop.

Expect to do a lot of reading of contemporary poetry, a lot of writing and critiquing other’s work. You will be expected to turn in a final portfolio of polished poems at the end of the semester.

423.001 Advanced Creative Writing: Nonfiction

TR 3:30 - 4:45
Justin St Germaine

This is a creative writing workshop course in the genre of creative nonfiction, which includes memoir, the personal essay, reportage, the lyric essay, and hybrid forms. In addition to prerequisite courses, students should have an existing knowledge of the basics of narrative craft – scene, voice, point of view, and so on. Students will read and respond to published writing by prominent authors who push the boundaries of the genre, read and critique the writing of their peers, and have their own creative work read and discussed by the class. Course goals are to refine our understanding of craft, to practice providing constructive criticism and the process of revision, and to explore the possibilities of creative nonfiction.

440.001 Language and Diversity

TR 2:00 - 3:14
Michelle Hall Kells

ENGL 440/540 will provide intensive study in language and literacy for teachers of college writing (as well as K-12). This course will bring three intellectual operating spaces into conversation: Sociolinguistics, Composition Studies, and Second-Language Literacy Education. The aim of this course is to guide the examination of current theoretical and applied approaches to teaching ethnolinguistically-diverse populations. Selected readings will center on the nature of human language, the processes of discourse acquisition, and the multiple dimensions of communicative competence.

Special focus will be given to the teaching of Composition informed by sociolinguistic theory and research. We will attend to issues of: ethnolinguistic identity, social stratification, linguistic racialization, language attitudes, institutionalized discrimination and non-standard language varieties as well as the ethical and social implications of hate-speech.

This syllabus extends beyond the study of language structure and use (grammar and function) and moves toward applications of effective literacy practices as intellectual/critical acts of social participation. The core objective of this syllabus is to cultivate theoretical and pedagogical approaches to literacy education (informed by linguistics) that enhance student access and success.

448.001 Beowulf

T 4:00 - 6:30
Helen Damico

This is the introductory course to Beowulf, and as such it is primarily a linguistic and literary study of the first vernacular English poetic epic. It is meant to lay the groundwork for an intermediate and advanced seminar. The student will continue studying Old English grammar and syntax. Over half of the poem will be translated from the original in class, although students are required to know the entire poem. Yet, this is not a course that focuses only on translation. After mid-semester, students will engage in short, introductory paleographical and metrical exercises on selected portions of the poem. This will allow students to become closely acquainted with the manuscript, Cotton Vitellius A.xv and to begin to arrive at an understanding about the making of a secular epic in the vernacular. Topics discussed in the course will include: Old English poetic language and form; formula and formulaic systems; Old English versification; the history of the manuscript; the dating of the poem; problems of translations; structure and unity; methods of narration; relationship of fantasy and "reality".

Course requirements: Midterm, short exercises in metrics, final, and individual and class final projects. PRE-REQUISITE: 447/547 Old English, or the equivalent. This course challenges the student, and applies toward the IMS Minor in Medieval Studies and the MA and Ph.D. Concentrations in Medieval Studies in English. Required Texts: Klaeber's Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 4th ed., edited by R.D.Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, University of Toronto Press; Orchard, Andy. A Critical Companion to Beowulf. Cambridge, 2001. pb; A Beowulf Handbook. Edited by Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles. Lincoln, NE.: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, pb; Orchard, Andy, Pride and Prodigies: The Monsters in the Beowulf Manuscript.

459.001 Irish Literature

MWF 2:00 - 2:50
Mary Power

The contemporary novels of Ireland forge new ground in style and subject matter, bring the old world into the new and make few efforts to conceal or embellish. We’ll read John Banville’s The Sea, Roddy Doyle’s Paula Spencer, Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, William Trevor’s Love and Summer, Edna O’Brien’s In the Forest, Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, Anne Enright’sThe Gathering and Emma Donaghue’s Room

463.001 Modern American Literature

MWF 12:00 - 12:50
Daniel Worden

American modernist writers struggled to reimagine the literary forms that they inherited from the nineteenth century. For example, Ernest Hemingway streamlines the popular boy's adventure story into a set of minimalist short stories in In Our Time, while Edith Wharton revises the conventional seduction narrative in Summer. In this course, we will explore the multiple and often divergent ways that American modernist writers shape literary form, as they rework narratives from the past and develop new formal strategies for representing the past, present, and future. Over the course the semester, we will read from a variety of experimental and popular narratives from the first decade of the twentieth-century to the years immediately following World War II, as well as critical and theoretical works on modernist aesthetics.

464.001 Advanced Studies in Native American Literature

TR 2:00 - 3:15
Kathleen Washburn

Debates about reservation lands, treaty rights, Indian boarding schools, the Ghost Dance, and BIA reform are just some aspects of the so-called “Indian problem” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For the first half of this course, we will focus on texts from the turn of the century, a period in which a new generation of indigenous writers found new markets for their work. We will investigate the range of literary strategies that writers employ in order to represent modern Native communities and contest the American mythology of a noble but vanishing race. In the second half of the course, we will turn to more recent texts that invoke and reimagine this earlier period for contemporary audiences. In doing so, we will address the ways in which debates from the so-called “assimilation era” continue to shape Native American literature and film today as well as critical debates about cultural translation, literary history, and interdisciplinary methodologies. Texts will include Charles Eastman’sFrom the Deep Woods to Civilization, Francis La Flesche’s The Middle Five, Luther Standing Bear’s My People The Sioux, Louise Erdrich’s Tracks, and Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water. Course requirements include short response papers, a research project, and an exam.

468.001 The 19th Century American Novel

TR 11:00 - 12:15
Jesse Aleman

This course is an advanced introduction to the nineteenth-century American novel understood in historical context. We’ll examine novels as literary works and as cultural artifacts shaped by wider social, political, and economic pressures. We’ll focus on the role of the novel at the beginning of the nineteenth century, on the movement from antebellum romanticism to post-war realist and naturalist modes, and on the cultural significance of the novel as a genre. We’ll study the way key American novels respond to or reproduce contemporaneous conflicts occurring around market culture; family, sexuality, and gender; and race and nationhood. In the end, we’ll come to understand the complex relationship between the rise of the American novel and the rise of the nation in the nineteenth century. Selection of texts will be based on narratives that were formative for defining and re-defining the novel as a genre in the nineteenth century.

Titles most like to include: Charlotte Temple; Edgar Huntly; The Last of the Mohicans; Hope Leslie; The Scarlet Letter; Ruth Hall; Moby-Dick; Dead Wood Dick; Huckleberry Finn; Ramona; McTeague; and Iola Leroy.

474.001 Contemporary Southwestern Literature

TR 11:00 - 12:15
Melina Vizcaino-Alemán

This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to southwestern literature by focusing on how literary representations of the region dialogue with other forms of visual culture. We will survey texts ranging from the late nineteenth century, early twentieth century, and contemporary periods by Anglo, Native American, and Mexican American writers. In addition to grasping important historical and cultural concepts pertinent to the Southwest and its formation, students will learn how to discuss and analyze literature as a cultural text and as an art form. We will also consider how southwestern literature converses with visual media like film, art, and architecture. To this end, the class will consider how southwestern literature represents the landscape, westward expansion, sacred ritual, modernization, and race and gender, among other themes, alongside of visual depictions of the region. The class will read novels, short fiction, folklore, and poetry, and it will view films in their entirety and in sequences, as well as learn about key artists and architectural structures that inform the body of assigned literature. Lectures will provide important concepts and context for texts, and classroom discussions will focus on a particular theme, craft, and/or historical era relevant to the assigned literature. Other assignments include two in-class exams, several written reviews, and a critical essay.

479.001 Postcolonial Literatures

MWF 9:00 - 9:50
Feroza Jussawalla

This is an introduction to literature written in English from the postcolonial world , i.e. from India, Africa and the Caribbean. We will read such works as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Rushdie's Satanic Verses and a hybrid novel like Zadie Smith's White Teeth. We will consider questions such as hybridity, identity, globalization-- concepts necessary to ur living in this changing contemporary world. all the readings are fun and sometimes have movies that accompany them. There will be reaction response papers and one longer research paper

499.001 Internship

MWF 2:00 - 2:50
Jim Burbank

The Internship Seminar is the capstone course in the Professional Writing sequence. The course prepares Professional Writing students for the career search process they will engage in after they graduate. Students should take the course the first semester of their senior year and should obtain an internship before taking the course, as the class focuses on the internship experience as a professional preparation for the career search. (Please visit the Professional Writing Internship page on the English Department web site and the Professional Writing Facebook page for further information.) Students interested in taking this course should contact James Burbank, Professional Writing Internship Director at jimbu@unm.edu.

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