Fall 2013 Course Descriptions

150.001: A Literary Journey for Non-Majors

TR 11:00-12:15
Katherine Alexander

This course will offer non-English majors an opportunity to study selected literary works from the seventeenth century to the present time in the genres of poetry, fiction, and drama from a variety of countries. Learning key terminology and techniques applicable to each genre and work, students will engage in close reading of these texts and then write about them. Assignments will include weekly blog posts and several papers as well as class presentations. The skills offered in this class will help students become good readers and good writers, both of which are desirable for most professions. We begin with writers such as Andrew Marvell, Sor Juana, and others from the seventeenth century. Moving through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, the class will also offer selected works from both female and male writers. Modern writers will include William Faulkner, Seamus Heaney, Jamaica Kincaid, and Sherman Alexie, to name a few. Join us if you want to sharpen your understanding of literature and enhance your writing skills.

150.002: Studies in Literature

MWF 1:00-1:50
Diane Thiel

This course is an introduction to the study and appreciation of literature. We will focus on the genres of fiction, poetry and drama, with some additional focus on nonfiction. Students will gain an understanding of writers’ techniques and a basic knowledge of literary conventions in the various genres. Students will write 20-25 pages which will be collected in the final portfolio. This will include three 4-6 page papers and several shorter writing assignments in response to questions about literature.

220.001: Fandom and Fanfiction

MWF 9:00-9:50
Megan Abrahamson

Do you like entertainment? Do you enjoy movies, music, books, or sports? If so, you are a “fan,” and therefore a member of a “fandom.” Fan-fiction is, by definition, a text dependent on a pre-existing canon of events and characters in an “original” source, but it is nevertheless highly debatable where “fanwork” ends and “original” material begins. In today’s popular culture, we are bombarded by the fact that very little is “original” anymore: one need look no further than the recent box office for a barrage of remakes such as Red Dawn, franchise series’ like Marvel’s line of comic book movies, and film adaptations of books such as The Hobbit. In this class we will learn about fans and fan activities as well as explore the fluidity of “originality” in popular culture, including who owns a text in the face of copyright legislation, definitions of intellectual property, and freedom of information. Ultimately you will be encouraged to form your 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.

220.002: Fishy Representations of the Shark: Into the Belly of the Beast

MWF 10:00-10:50
Nichole Neff Gauntt

Are you afraid of sharks? Do you hate them? Love them? Why?
In 1596, a crew under Captain (later Sir) John Hawkins, the founder of the triangular slave trade, coined the English word “shark,” and the animal became an iconic and horrific figure of the slave trade and its horrors. When the slave trade was banned and issues of class arose in periodicals, the fish evolved into the loan-shark. With the twentieth century came the 1916 summer of shark attacks off New Jersey shores which would later inspire Jaws (1975) and would later in turn be historicized in a twenty-first century television episode “Blood in the Water” during Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. We will dive into all of these representations and much more to recognize that the shark raises important issues to our everyday lives such as politics, (pseudo)science, race, environment, gender, economics, religion, ethics, and more. We will explore together how discussions and debates that surround these issues are presented and how the shark is a figurative tool for ideology and rhetoric. Students will be encouraged to research these areas using rhetorical, literary, and creative styles and strategies of writing.

220.003: Introduction to Legal Writing

MWF 1100-1150
Soha Turfler

This expository writing class is designed as an introduction to legal writing and reasoning for undergraduate students who either want to go to law school or just want to learn “how to write like a lawyer.” However, as we will also practice general research, writing, and reasoning strategies, this class will teach students skills that will be useful in a wide variety of contexts. In particular, students will learn how to conduct basic legal research and will study strategies for understanding and applying American law. Students will also refine their oral and written advocacy skills through several interrelated writing assignments and multimodal presentations. Our semester will culminate in a moot court exercise, during which students will debate about a narrowly defined legal issue.

220.004: It's Bigger Than Hip-Hop

MWF 12:00-12:50
Clare Russell

Both hip hop fans and haters are welcome to this class. Together we will define an understanding of contemporary hip hop. We will study its journey from an underground movement to mainstream status. We will examine the racial, social, political, and economic issues that we really talk about when we talk about hip hop music. In the words of rappers Dead Prez, we will learn that “it’s bigger than hip hop.” (If you don’t know who Dead Prez are, you’ll find out!) Did you know Jay-Z wrote a book? (Actually, he wrote two) You will read one of them in this class and be able to argue what Jay-Z really meant when he said, “I got 99 problems/But a b!@#% ain’t one.” In addition to reading about and researching aspects of hip hop culture, you will be required to listen to hip hop music from the 1980's until present day. You will keep a hip hop listening journal, write frequent response papers to readings and films, and participate in classroom discussions. The final product will be either a rhetorical analysis of hip hop lyrics of your choice, or a multimedia presentation incorporating sounds, images, writing, and possibly live performances.

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

MWF 1:00-1:50
Matthew Tougas

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.

220.006: Expository Writing:  The Cultural Hero

MWF 2:00-2:50
Mark Caughey

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.

220.007: Strange, Scary, Sexy: Vampires in Western Folklore

MWF 3:00-3:50
Laura Perlichek

From diminutive bloodsucking demons to sparkling Hollywood heartthrobs, from Nosferatu to an arithmomaniac purple puppet, the vampire (and all of the boundless variations of it therein) has maintained a strong presence in a number of different cultures for centuries. This course will survey the history of the vampire in the Western tradition specifically, beginning with depictions in pre-modern religious doctrine. We will then cross the pond with John Polidori and Bram Stoker. Finally, we will end the course by exploring the vampire's contemporary representation in American popular culture (including viewings HBO's True Blood and, yes, Catherine Hardwicke's Twilight). Readings and films will be supplemented with instruction in history and theory (such as that of Sigmund Freud), as well as individual research, in the hope of rationally explaining these seemingly irrational beings. Does the vampire represent a deeply-rooted subconscious fear or desire? As social and cultural ideologies change over time, can we find a correlation to the varied representations of the vampire as well?

This course will help students hone their skills in critically reading and analyzing an array of texts and media (including academic essays and articles, novels, and film/television). Writing assignments, to constitute both low-stakes responses and short essays (of 3-6 pages in length), will challenge students to articulate their critical thought processes into coherent and structured written argumentation. By the end of the semester, students will be able to posit their ideas into a well-defined thesis that can be explored through longer expositions (in this case, 8-10 pages).

220.008

TR 5:00-6:15
Staff

220.021: The Rhetoric and Writing of Addiction

Online
Vincent Basso

This course is intended to support the writing and analytical skills of its participants through a content focus on addiction studies. We will read both fiction and non-fiction in order to gain a greater understanding of how addiction is represented in literature, and, further, work through theoretical essays and reports in order to grasp the scope of addiction in America, its social determinants and implications to public health. Our class will learn to articulate the issue of addiction both in terms of social problem and ontological experience. While the category of addiction is a broad umbrella, the majority of our work will be concerned with drug and alcohol addiction, as they represent the behavioral compulsion of addiction in perhaps its most widespread and radical form.

Students will gain an understanding of the history of drug laws in the United States, as well as the genesis of American drug culture. Our class will develop the analytical skills necessary to an understanding of the topic in a holistic sense, and write critically in response to it. In addition to assigned readings and class discussion, work for this class will consist of regular writing assignments inclusive of literary and genre analyses, rhetorical analyses, and reports. Your work will culminate in a final 8 to 10 page critical essay.

220.022: Nature Writing and the American West

Online
Julie Williams

In this course we will examine the landscape of the American West from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, using literature, art, film, and history to raise and analyze a number of key questions. Through readings, class discussions, and written responses on a variety of styles and genres of texts, we will explore a range of cultural expressions that reveal the changes in how we think of the land around us from the 1800s to today. We will start by examining the variety of ways authors explore relationships between human and non-human nature. Then, in order to learn more about the places we live we’ll put the tools of nature writing—observation, memory, exploration, research, analysis, and expression—to work. We’ll ask questions such as: How do relationships between humans and their environments reflect and shape literature? How do gender, race, ethnicity, and class shape an author’s standpoint toward the natural world? What is the relationship between nature and culture? What alternative views of nature (and culture) are possible? How does our attitude toward nature affect our reading of literature? What is the purpose and importance of writing about nature? Through examining these issues, the political consequences of how we view the land around us will start to emerge, and we will move on explore topics and themes such as cowboy mythologies, Native American and Chicano/a cultural identity, environmentalism, urbanism, and tourism. In looking at a wide selection of fiction, film, historical documents, and theory, we will investigate the ways in which writers deal with gender, sexuality, and a variety of political themes in representations of Western landscapes.

220.031: The Profits and Pitfalls of Higher Education

TR 8:00-9:15
Jill Walker-Gonzalez

What is the purpose of higher education in today’s world? In this course, we will begin with this basic question, and use it as a jumping off point to examine the myriad debates and issues surrounding college education. Through class discussions and articles from various points of view, we will explore questions about higher education and tolerance, freedom of thought, freedom of information, diversity, the academy as a marketplace, the place of athletics, the arts vs. the sciences, political correctness, affirmative action, ethics, student loan debt, massive open online courses (MOOCs), online education, government funding and politics, and so on. Beyond this, students will also explore controversial issues in their specific fields of study.

220.032: Playing with Fire: Civil Disobedience and Academic Discourse

TR 9:30-10:45
Genevieve Garcia de Mueller

In this course, students will develop their own writing identities as emerging scholars by considering how language, power, and identity influence how we read (are shaped by) and write (shape) our communities. By actively, collaboratively, and critically engaging with course readings, community-based research, and the writing process itself, students will practice and reflect upon the moves made by successful academic writers, gain a greater understanding of the complexity of issues related to language, power and identity within their own communities, and explore the strategies of community activists for acting as responsible agents of change.

220.033: Travel and Adventure in Medieval Literature

TR 12:30-1:45
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.

220.035: Intermediate Expository Writing

MWF 8:00-8:50
Joe Serio

Students will write about issues as they are presented in film, television, written, and stand-up comedy ranging from the 1700s to today, how arguments about these issues are presented, and how humor is used to further and empower these arguments. The issues will include but not be limited to war/politics, sexuality, masculinity/femininity, economic issues, identity, and technology. Critical techniques, rhetorical devices and argumentative styles will be studied and employed. Students will explore the importance of humor in argumentation and the variety of styles it may take, including Internet memes, cartoons, essays, and journalism. A variety of research and writing projects will sharpen and advance rhetorical writing skills.

220.036: The Profits and Pitfalls of Higher Education

TR 9:30-10:45
Jill Walker Gonzalez

What is the purpose of higher education in today’s world? In this course, we will begin with this basic question, and use it as a jumping off point to examine the myriad debates and issues surrounding college education. Through class discussions and articles from various points of view, we will explore questions about higher education and tolerance, freedom of thought, freedom of information, diversity, the academy as a marketplace, the place of athletics, the arts vs. the sciences, political correctness, affirmative action, ethics, student loan debt, massive open online courses (MOOCs), online education, government funding and politics, and so on. Beyond this, students will also explore controversial issues in their specific fields of study.

250.001: Analysis of Literature

MWF 9:00-9:50
Stephanie Spong

This course introduces students to the study of literature as a discipline. We will work with the major genres of Anglophone Literature—poetry, drama, prose—as well as strategies for engaging with those genres through critical analysis. The goal of this course is to familiarize students with the terminology, theory, and interpretive strategies necessary to write a convincing argument about a literary text. Reading a wide range of texts from Langston Hughes to Jeanette Winterson, we will think about the ways culture, historical periods, and theoretical frameworks affect literary works and our interpretations of those works. We will use close reading strategies to formulate arguments about these texts, and support interpretations with other literary works as well as scholarly secondary material.

250.002: Analysis of Literature

MW 5:30-6:45
Lisa Myers

English 250 is the gateway course for English majors and minors at UNM, and as such, this course will concentrate on introducing the student to a variety of methods of literary analysis and on sharpening the student’s critical writing skills. The course is organized around several genres and sub-genres of literature including poetry, drama, and fiction. Additionally, the course will approach these texts through a variety of theoretical methods such as Formalist, Feminist, Marxist, Psychoanalytic and Postcolonial. The student will learn the terminology and major approaches necessary for the study of literature. Successful completion of this course will ensure that students are prepared for upper division literature courses.

250.003: Analysis of Literature

TR 12:30-1:45
Aeron Hunt

This course will introduce you to the practice of literary analysis: the methods, terms, conventions, and conversations that guide scholars as they approach texts. We will practice close reading texts from three major literary genres—fiction, poetry, and drama—and develop a critical vocabulary for discussing them. In addition, we will examine some of the more significant recent movements in literary criticism and theory—New Criticism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Cultural Poetics/New Historicism, and Postcolonialism—to enable you to recognize and participate in the debates that animate literary studies today.

The overarching aim is to help you move from impressions and reactions into good, sustained, literary critical arguments about the texts you read. To do this, we will pay close attention to just what makes a “good, sustained, literary critical argument.” In particular, we will discuss what constitutes a compelling thesis—one that doesn’t leave the reader thinking, “So what?” And we will work on generating textual evidence and deploying it persuasively to support a thesis. You will have the opportunity to practice library research skills and will learn the bibliographic conventions that literary critics employ.

Course Requirements:

• 4 out-of-class, formal essays, between 3 and 6 pp.
• 5 short response papers (1-2 pp.)
• Discussion questions/in-class exercises
• Participation.

250.005: Analysis of Literature

MWF 2:00-2:50
Feroza Jussawalla

This is a basic introduction to reading, interpreting, situating and explicating literature. We will use Bonnycastle’s In Search of Authority (the newest edition PLEASE as published by Broadview) together with the Norton Anthology of English Literature ( the Twentieth Century and after Volume F, also the newest edition PLEASE) We will learn approached to Literature from close readings to Postcolonialisms. We will do library tours, learn how to do the MLA bibliography, write a research paper and two reaction response papers. This class is meant to make you adept at writing research papers for your other Literature classes.

290.001: Introduction to Professional Writing

MW 5:00–6:15
Steve 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.

292.001: World Literatures—Ancient World through the 16th Century

MWF 9:00-9:50
Annarose Fitzgerald

This course will introduce you to key texts that span centuries and regions from ancient Mesopotamia to Elizabethan England. 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 today.

292.002: World Literatures—Ancient World through the 16th Century

TR 9:30-10:45
Calinda Shely

In this course we will study key texts from literature and cultures that span the world from ancient times through the 16th century. Our course will focus on journeys—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Earlier texts will include the epic journeys of Gilgamesh and Odysseus, the mental journeys within Confucius and the The Rāmāyana of Vālmīki. We will discuss pilgrimages such as those depicted in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Koran, and the Bible and then continue with the spiritual journeys displayed in The Divine Comedy and The Conference of the Birds. Students will be required to produce five 2-3 page response papers, take a midterm and a final exam, and lead class discussion of one text as well as participate in daily discussions and activities during each class.

294.001: Earlier English Literature

TR 5:00-6:15
Colleen Dunn

In his 1978 biography, C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought,Paul Holmer quotes Lewis as having once said, “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.” Since literature is a product of a particular time and place, readings in this course will have a dual focus on the issues of gender and politics, both of which will serve as the lenses through which we will investigate over 1,000 years of literature and history, covering major British texts from the earliest surviving works of the Anglo-Saxons to the close of the 18th century.

294.002: Early English Literature

MWF 10:00-10:50
Carolyn Woodward

In this survey of literature from the eighth through the eighteenth centuries, we’ll read traditional texts such as Beowulf and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night as well as less-known pieces such as a 12th-century romance by Marie de France and 17th century poetry by Aphra Behn and John Wilmot (“Rochester”) surprising modern in its graphic details about sex.  We’ll make use of Norton’s Web resources to enrich our readings: for example, of Chaucer with medieval writings on the ideals of knighthood, and of Olaudah Equiano’s slave narrative with 18th-century arguments for and against the slave trade.  Central to our study will be the construction in Anglo-Saxon epic poetry of basic features of the novel, the creation in the Renaissance of sonnet form, and the 18th-century development of musical comedy.

296.004: Earlier American Literature

MW 5:30-6:45
Daoine S. Bachran

This early American literature course will cover the development of American literature from the mid-16th century to 1865. We’ll study a variety of writers, genres, and movements representative of the variety of people, histories, and themes that make up the nation. We’ll appreciate literature as art, analyzing its form, style, and use of language, and we’ll also consider literary texts within their cultural contexts, exploring issues of gender, race, class, colonialism, and nationalism. Along the way, we’ll learn the vocabulary and techniques of literary studies, acquire a sound, broad base of American literary history, and most importantly, we’ll hone our critical reading and thinking skills through written analysis.

304.001 Bible as Literature

TR 11:00-12:15
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.

305.002: Mythology

TR 9:30-10:45
Renée Faubion

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’sMetamorphoses, 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.

315.002/AFST 397.045/AMST 357.002: Rewriting Slavery

MWF 1:00-1:50
Kadeshia Matthews

Brief Course Description: 2013 marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which initiated the federal dismantling of slavery in the U.S. Given the remarkable changes that have occurred in that century and a half, how do we remember slavery, and what are the implications for and consequences of the ways in which we do (and do not) remember? This course examines a variety of rewritings of slavery from the antebellum era to the present. We’ll look at literary, historiographic, cinematic and pictorial representations of slavery as institution and set of practices in order to explore how they have shaped our understandings of freedom, labor, race, racism, masculinity and femininity, and American history and culture more broadly.

322.001: Intermediate Poetry Workshop

MWF 10:00-10:50
Diane Thiel

In this intermediate workshop course, class sessions will focus on particular techniques or elements of poetry (i.e.: diction, perspective, rhythm, forms of poetry, etc.). Exercises and assignments will accompany these discussions. Because students arrive in workshop courses with a variety of backgrounds, styles, and interests in poetry, discussions about lineage and the different schools of thought in poetry will be a vital element of the class. Some of this discussion will arise from the workshop of student poems.

323.001: Intermediate Creative Nonfiction Writing

MW 4:00–5:15
Marisa P. Clark

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.

323.002: Intermediate Creative Nonfiction

TR 12:30-1:45
Michelle Brooks

We will study creative nonfiction in terms of structure, voice, and other concerns. This class will focus on essays by contemporary writers and the generation of new material for students.

334.001/CLST 334.001/COMP334.001: Tyranny in Greek Thought

TR 12:30-1:45
Lorenzo Garcia

Tyrants loom large in ancient Greek literature and culture. They were reviled for their despotic powers and petty meanness, but were admired for their individuality and charisma. They were individuals writ large and provide the first instances of a “cult of personality” in the Western world. This course will explore the figure of the tyrant in Greek history, literature, and culture, and try to understand why these figures were both so alluring and repulsive at the same time.

339.001/COMP 339.001/JAPN 339.001: Supernatural Japan

MW 2:00-3:15
Lorie Brau

“Supernatural Japan” explores Japanese ideas about otherworlds, altered states, ghosts, demons, and other supernatural phenomena in Japanese fiction, film, drama and folklore. Our readings cover over 1000 years of Japanese culture, and include chapters from the Tale of Genji, medieval nô plays, folktales, ghost stories and plays from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and contemporary short stories. We will examine changing representations of what we in the west would call “supernatural” elements in Japanese literature and culture and consider the socio‐historical conditions that affect the form in which the supernatural appears.  You do not need to know any Japanese to take this course.

349.001: From Beowulf to Arthur

MWF 9:00-9:50
Staff

This course serves as an introductory survey of early and later British medieval literature between 700 –1450 AD. The texts, originally in Old and Middle English, Welsh, Latin, and Anglo-Norman will be read in Modern English translations, though some time will be spent on specific terms in the vernacular and the difficulties of accurate translation. The course aims to give students a basic knowledge of the variety and range of the genres of the period, including epic, romance, drama, lyrics, history, myths, saint’s lives, and inscriptions, as well as to impress upon the student the continuity and cultural complexity of medieval literature. The course will be augmented by art-historical presentations, manuscript studies and paleography exercises, and discussions about historiography and feminist critique. Texts: Beowulf (Seamus Heaney translation) The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Medieval Period.

351.001: Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

MWF 10:00-10:50
Staff

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.

352.010: Early Shakespeare

Online
Renée Faubion

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.

353:001: Later Shakespeare

TR 12:30-1:45
David Richard 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. 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.

353:002: Later Shakespeare

TR 2:00-3:15
David Richard 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. 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.

356.001: The Nineteenth Century

TR 11:00-12:15
Aeron Hunt

This course will introduce students to the literature of nineteenth-century Britain—in other words, the literature of the Romantic and Victorian periods. By reading a wide variety of poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction prose, students will explore the culture of this era of revolution and reaction, industrialization and urbanization, empire building, scientific discovery, and social conflict. Authors to be studied may include William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Keats, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Charlotte Brontë, John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, Charles Darwin, Rudyard Kipling, and Oscar Wilde.

Course requirements: Two papers (6-8 pages), in-class midterm and final exam, discussion questions, class participation

360.001: Jane Austen: Once is Not Enough!

MW 4:00-5:15 pm
Carolyn Woodward

Inspired by all, some or even none of Austen’s literary achievements, novelists and film-makers have blessed or cursed us with sequels and spin-offs much too numerous to list. Through close reading of Austen novels followed by investigation into Austen-redux novels and films, we’ll attempt to answers these questions: What do Austen novels tell us about the Georgian and Regency periods in England? What do these sequels and spinoffs tell us about our own cultural moment? Most important, what is it about an Austen novel that inspires filmmakers and writers of fiction to believe that “Once is Not Enough”?

360.002: Hawthorne and Melville

MWF 2:00-2:50
Jesse Alemán

This course examines the life, times, and major works of two of nineteenth-century America’s most celebrated and complex writers—Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. By necessity, the course will span biography, cultural history, and literary studies as a way of understanding a selection of letters, essays, short stories, novellas and novels by both authors. We’ll study each author, but we’ll also compare their works for influences and aesthetic innovations, especially in The Scarlet Letter andMoby-Dick. By the end of the class, we will have read the major works by each author; we will have covered each author’s biography, as well as their much-debated special relationship; and we will also emerge with a fairly solid understanding of US literary history and culture during the mid-nineteenth century.

Possible texts: Selections from Twice Told Tales; Mosses from an Old Manse; The Scarlet Letter; The House of the Seven Gables; The Blithedale Romance; Typee; Benito Cereno and Other Stories; Moby-Dick. Selected letters and essays.

365.001: Chicano/a Cultural Studies—Horror in Folklore, Fiction, and Film

W 4:00-6:30pm
Jesse Alemán

This course will examine specific forms of Chicano/a horror in folklore, fiction, and film as a way of understanding the social and cultural significance of figures such as La Llorona, the chupacabra, vampires, zombies, and other markers of Chicano/a expressive culture that resonate with horror. We’ll study the way Chicano/a horror works as a reactionary mode in which Chicano/as are figured as horrifying (i.e. aliens, vampires, demons, and monsters) and as a radical kind of critique that exposes how the history, dispossession, and alienation of Chicano/as in the US is itself the stuff of horror. The course will span a variety of selections from folklore, fiction, and especially film to analyze the different forms and functions of Chicano/a horror.

Readings will include folktales, selected ghost tales, and scholarly essays on Chicano/a folklore and the horror genre; novels such as . . . and the earth did not part, The Rag Doll Plagues, and Black Widow’s Wardrobe; and films screened in class such as Mexican Werewolf in Texas; The Wailer; All Souls Day; and Constantine.

388.002/AFST 397.001/AMST350.006: Race, Africa and African Diaspora Films

M 5:30-8:00 pm
Gbenga Olorunsiwa

In addition to examining the ways race matter in the society and the impacts of this in people’s lives, this class will explore how people of African descent worldwide are expressing their experiences, cultures, identity, distinctiveness, important concerns and heritage through cinematic images across the globe. The class will take a comprehensive approach in the examination of films from across the wide spectrum of the African Diaspora in order understand, grasp and appreciative their richness, beauty and diversities in terms of cultural, political, social and aesthetic significance. Some of the films to examine in the class include Black Skin White Mask (1996, Directed by Isaac Julien), Bamako (2006, Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako), Different but Equal (1984, directed by Basil Davidson) and Xala, the Curse (1975, directed by Ousmane Sembe).

411.001/WMST 379.008/AMST 330.008/PHIL 341.001 Queer Theory

TR 11:00-12:15
Rachel Levitt

Within the ever widening field of Queer Studies, queer theories have sought to theorize race, class, gender, sex, sexuality, nation, empire, and settler colonialism as constitutive components of systems and structures of regulation and violence. This class will touch on some of the early foundations of queer theory and use that foundation as a spring board to explore queer of color, queer migration, queer diaspora, postcolonial queer, and queer Native studies scholarship. Queer studies has inherited a lot of baggage, not the least of which is the ways in which non-normative sexualities have provided ample opportunities for the colonialist tourist gaze of the academy and the global gay consumer to participate in imperial projects. By merging insights and tensions between and among various queer theories this class will examine how race has been historically as well as contemporaneously sexualized, and how sexuality has been racialized within discourses of colonialism, nationalism, human rights, citizenship, migration, tourism, diaspora, and indigeniety. Along the way, we will question the ways the nation-state, identity, and subjectivity are producers of and produced in settler colonial sexual modernities.

414.001: Documentation

MWF 3:00–3:50
Steve Benz

This course in advanced technical communication is about writing technical documents in organizational contexts (business, government, nonprofit agencies). In the first part of the course, we will learn what technical writers do and what skills they need. We will review the technical writing process and the two predominant workflows authors follow to complete the steps in this process. We will also learn about the project management tools that every technical writer needs. The second half of the course addresses skills such as how to get information, organize information, and write content. As we practice these skills, we will also learn about other tasks in the content development process, such as creating visual content, production editing, and indexing. The course concludes with an overview of “structured authoring” and Web 2.0 trends in technical communication. Assignments include writing documents that can become part of a professional portfolio.

415.001: Publishing

R 5:30-8:15
David Dunaway

This course introduces students to the publishing industry, in the U.S. and internationally, from the multiple perspectives of the author, the editor, the agent, and the publisher. Our goal is to provide a successful strategy for publishing your work in journals, magazines, books, and on the Internet.

The class begins with a survey of trends, then a history of publishing in the U.S.; followed by an overview of ownership and control in the modern era. We will discuss procedures and standards for submissions of articles and book proposals to publishers of literary, scholarly, technical, and trade (general-adult) materials. We examine in detail the roles of editors and agents in manuscripts—with an emphasis on the increasing digitization (e-books) and globalization of publishing/media activities. Any writer interested in these topics is welcome.

418.001: Proposal and Grant Writing

MWF 1:00–1:50
Kyle Fiore

In this course, you will learn to write a real and persuasive proposal by writing for a nonprofit organization in a service learning experience. You will learn how to locate funding opportunities for nonprofits and evaluate requests for proposals to ensure that your proposal contains the right information. We will work closely with two to three local organizations and study a variety of genres in addition to proposals, including annual reports, appeals letters, and newsletters.

Proposal writing is not a solitary task, but rather a process of working with others to identify needs, locate opportunities, discover methods, and develop a persuasive solution. To become fully versed and skilled at proposal writing, you need to understand first-hand how the process works in the real world.

418.002: Proposal and Grant Writing

MWF 11:00–11:50
Kyle Fiore

In this course, you will learn to write a real and persuasive proposal by writing for a nonprofit organization in a service learning experience. You will learn how to locate funding opportunities for nonprofits and evaluate requests for proposals to ensure that your proposal contains the right information. We will work closely with two to three local organizations and study a variety of genres in addition to proposals, including annual reports, appeals letters, and newsletters.

Proposal writing is not a solitary task, but rather a process of working with others to identify needs, locate opportunities, discover methods, and develop a persuasive solution. To become fully versed and skilled at proposal writing, you need to understand first-hand how the process works in the real world.

420.001: Writing with Classical Tropes

TR 9:30-10:45
Jerry Shea

This course focuses on rhetorical tropes and schemes, on recognizing them and using them in our writing. You will develop a store of particularly useful tropes to amaze your friends and confound your enemies. Not only will we write, but we will analyze other writings, learning to spot the coy apophasis, the elusive hypophora, the flashy chiasmus, the bullying bdelygmia, and many more. No exams, just writing: five or six short papers.

420.002: Visual Rhetoric and Ethics in Technical Communication

TR 2:00-3:15
Tiffany Bourelle and Natasha Jones

The goals of this course will be to introduce students to the concepts behind visual design. This class teaches all aspects of technological literacy. Students not only learn to choose the appropriate document and medium based on the needs of the audience, but they also learn an often overlooked aspect of technological literacy: developing a critical awareness of how technology impacts communication within society. Practically, they will learn to create digital texts and develop literacy skills imperative for substantive civic engagement in the 21st century.

420.004: Blue Mesa Review

W 2:00-2:50, F 3:00-5:00
Justin St. Germain

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 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.

421.002: Advanced Creative Writing--Fiction

TR 9:30-10:45
Sharon Oard Warner

“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.”   So says W. P. Kinsella, author of Field of Dreams.

This semester, our mode of inquiry will be imitation.  Think of it as a grand experiment, or as a way of honoring those who’ve come before.  Consider that you learn any craft by observing and imitating others.  Why not writing, too?  Of course writing, too! 

In this advanced fiction workshop, we will be learning from the masters—which means reading carefully and writing copiously. Students should have “an abiding love of reading,” a passion for writing (and revising), and the prerequisites—English 224 and 321 or consent of the instructor. Expect to write and revise two complete stories and to try your hand at a number of writing exercises. 
Texts: The Sincerest Form: Writing Fiction by Imitation by Nicholas Delbanco, The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction by Robert Boswell

422.002: Advanced Poetry Workshop

MWF 12:00-12:50
Diane Thiel

Because students arrive in an advanced workshop with a variety of backgrounds, styles, and interests in poetry, our readings, workshop, and commentary reflecting lineage and the different schools of thought in poetry will be a vital element of the class. The assigned readings from authors of various backgrounds will encourage conversations about the connections between culture, form and content. Although the assigned readings might not always be discussed explicitly, they will inform and enrich the workshop discussions.

Numerous creative exercises and assignments will accompany discussion of the particular elements. Students will also be workshopping several poems throughout the course. Students will write one essay due at the end of the semester; this piece will focus on a poet or poets selected from our class texts. The essay might respond to the selected work in a “personal” way (as a writer engaged in the art). Class portfolios will be due at the end of the semester. Grading will be based on the portfolio of work produced during the class, as well as workshop participation. Portfolios will be about 20-25 pages, including poetry, revisions, a revision narrative, and the essay.

423.001: Advanced Creative Nonfiction

TR 3:30-4:45
Michelle Brooks

This class will focus on creative nonfiction in terms of substance, style, and current trends. We will employ workshop as well as other methods to produce essays.

423.002: Advanced Creative Nonfiction Writing

MW 12:30–1:45
Marisa P. Clark

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. I welcome your input.

451.001/LING 490.001: Old Norse Language and Literature

MW 2:00-3:15
Helen Damico

This course introduces students to the chief features of the language, literature, and culture of medieval Iceland, what we in the 21st century might consider as being the language of the Vikings. The primary objective will be to develop an understanding of the grammatical structure and acquire a reading knowledge of Old Norse/Old Icelandic by reading excerpts from texts drawn from the vast and varied prose and poetic corpus. The secondary focus will rest on general aspects of the culture and literature of Early Iceland. In order to accomplish these goals, thoughtful attention to the assigned paragraphs on grammar and some memorization of paradigms will be necessary. Translation techniques will include both close reading of texts with sentence analysis (parsing/identifying grammatical forms) and rapid reading for content only, with the help of reading guides. Expect to meet in the original: Snorting Freyja & Thor in Drag; Loki & Sleipnir horsing about; Leif and Tyrkir getting drunk in Newfoundland; Njal on his death-bed; Egil’s defeating of Gunnhildr; and perhaps, the wrestling match between Grettir & Glamr. There might also be some slightly evil ladies running around as well. Some knowledge of Old Norse and its literature is essential to any attempt at understanding Anglo-Saxon culture and literature of the eleventh century, one of the most prolific literary periods in Anglo-Danish England during the first period of Conquest under the reign of the Danish King Cnut (AD 1016-1035). In fact, the excerpt from Egil’s saga takes place in England. The start of the eleventh century also marked the discovery of Newfoundland which connects Norse/Icelandic culture with North America, an event documented in two sagas written in later centuries, from which we will read excerpts. Quizzes, midterm, and final; and a short translation project. Texts: E. V. Gordon, An Introduction to Old Norse. Oxford: Clarendon, rev. ed. 1957 (or later edition). Other translation and grammar aids will be provided. And, of course, there will be a slide introduction to Iceland. A supplementary list of books will be on Hardcopy Reserve at Zimmerman.

451.003: Uppity Medieval Women

R 4:00-6:30
Anita Obermeier

This course examines medieval discourse about women and by women. Even though many dichotomous labels exist for women in the Middle Ages—such as saint and sinner, virgin and whore—these belie the variety of subcategories within the spheres of medieval women: handmaidens to God, virgin saints, mystics, anchoresses, trobairitz, courtly ladies, etherealdolce stil nuovo women, bourgeois merchants, lovers, witches, and writers. The course will explore female characters penned by male authors and works written by medieval women. Women in the Middle Ages can be “uppity” in a number of ways but especially through sword, pen, and sex. For instance, female authorship is a transgressive act. We will examine in which ways the writing of medieval men differs from the works by women, both in British and continental literary texts. For the theoretical framework, we will apply medieval authorship theories, ancient and medieval gender theories, and modern feminist approaches. Authors and texts may include, but are not limited to, Sappho, Ovid’s Heroides, trobaritz poetry, Lais of Marie de France, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise,Julian of Norwich, Celtic Women, the Virgin Mary, Christina of Markyate, Margery Kempe, Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Silence, Chaucer, Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan, The CondemnationTrial of Joan of Arc, the Malleus Maleficarum.

458.001: Modern British Literature

MWF 2:00-2:50
Matthew Hofer

This course will consider the shifting meanings of the terms “modern” and “British” in literary practice from the late nineteenth century to approximately the mid-twentieth. Together we will discuss a wide range of novels, poems, poetics essays, and manifestoes in order to identify and analyze the key themes, forms, and problems of the “literature of transition” into modernism, the moment of “high” modernism, and the various permutations of “late” modernism.

461.001: American Romanticism

TR 12:30-1:45
Kathryn Wichelns

In this course we will read the work of authors associated with American Romanticism—Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Poe, Whitman, Melville—in the context of their tumultuous period, from the 1830s to the outbreak of the Civil War. Focusing our attention on conflicts surrounding Indian removal, slavery, abolitionism, religious evangelism, and workers’ and women’s rights movements, we will frame our understandings of canonical literature through an analysis of other influential writers. Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Stoddard, Harriet Jacobs, George Lippard, Sarah Wakefield, John Rollin Ridge and others will enable us better to understand the difficulties involved in traditional notions of this era as synonymous with the emergence of a national literature. In addition to participating in class discussions, students will submit regular short response papers and a final essay of 12-15 pages in length.

463.002: Modern American Literature

TR 4:00-5:15
Daniel Worden

During the first half of the twentieth century, American writers struggled to reimagine the literary forms that they inherited from the nineteenth century.  For example, Ernest Hemingway turned the romance into a narrative about woundedness and disillusionment in A Farewell to Arms, while Edith Wharton revised the novel of manners in The House of Mirth. In this course, we will explore the multiple and often divergent ways that American writers shaped literary form in the early 20th century, as they reworked narratives from the past and developed new formal strategies for representing the past, present, and future. Key to this course, as well, will be the differences and connections between popular and literary fiction of the period. Readings will include novels by Raymond Chandler, Charles Chesnutt, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurtson, Anita Loos, D'Arcy McNickle, Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, and Edith Wharton. Course assignments will include one group presentation, two short essays, and one final research essay.

472.001: Contemporary Literature

MWF 11:00-11:50
Scarlett Higgins

This course will cover the literature and culture of the period post-World War II through the 1990s. We will read across genres, including poetry, prose (fiction and non-fiction), and drama, and will view several films as well. This course will contain a special emphasis on literature that has responded to the socio-political tensions that defined the post-World War II era: these include the political struggles between liberalism and communism, feminism, civil rights, the sexual revolution, and the Vietnam war.

Assignments will include bi-weekly short writing assignments, bi-weekly quizzes, a research paper and accompanying annotated bibliography, and a final research paper or exam.

Questions: email shiggins@unm.edu

480.001: Expatriate Identities: English Romanticism and the Mediterranean

TR 9:30-10:45
Gary Harrison

Marilyn Butler has described the circle of British Romantic expatriates living in Italy during the post-Napoleonic years as the “cult of the South.” From 1818 until their deaths in Italy and Greece, respectively, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron lived and wrote some of their major literary works from Italy, where they immersed themselves in Italian literature and culture, adapting Italian verse forms, and fashioning what Maria Schoina calls an “ambivalent bicultural identity.” In addition to the Shelleys and Byron, other important Romantic and early Victorian writers took up residence, short-term and long-term, in Italy, which Shelley dubbed the “Paradise of exiles.” This course will focus primarily, but not exclusively, on the Shelleys and Byron to explore the way their experiences in Switzerland, Italy, Greece, and the Levant shaped the imaginative geography of their work, as well as their poetics, politics, and identities.

497.003: Tutoring Writing Online

ARR
Andrew Bourelle

The English Department is offering a new course for students who are interested in working as online writing tutors for English 102 classes. Students enrolled in this course will learn pedagogical perspectives about responding to student writing and tutoring in online environments. At the same time, students will be paired up with online English 102 instructors, and they will gain hands-on experience helping the teacher and providing feedback on student writing. The course should be valuable for students who are interested in pursuing a career in teaching, attending graduate school in writing-related fields, or working as editors, as well as students who simply want to improve their skills responding to the work of other writers. This is a new course, so it is being offered under the English 497 (Individual Study) heading. Students who are interested should contact Dr. Andrew Bourelle for more information (including how to register) at abourelle@unm.edu.

499.01: Professional Writing Internship

TR 12:30-1:45
Natasha N. Jones

This seminar focuses on preparing professional writing students for career development. This capstone course in the professional writing sequence focuses on encouraging students to develop and present career materials such as the resume and a professional portfolio (electronic and hardcopy). The class engages the professional writing internship experience to develop student awareness of current professional and marketplace trends that affect those who are developing and implementing career and job development campaigns following college. Students who wish to learn how to deploy effective, winning career plans will find this seminar to be of great value.