Spring Intersession 2014 Course Descriptions

150.005: Children's Books & Censorship

MTWR 0900-1400; 2 week class
Sheri Karmiol, metzger@unm.edu

In this English 150 we will examine the ways in which literature for children and young adults is governed by the social, religious, and political influences that a particular community may embrace. Should children's books focus on topics such as child abuse? Should fairy tales be censored? While we may not be able to resolve these issues, we will emerge from this class with a better understanding of the interaction between community values, censorship, and children's books  Texts: JK Rowling's Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone, Judy Blume's Blubber, Sherman Alexie's Diary Of a Part-Time Indian, Wm Steig, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, a selection of fairy tales and poetry (available at ereserves). Assignments: 2 essays and 4 short exams.

295.001: Survey of Later English Literature

MTWRF 0900-1400; no class Memorial Day
Aeron Hunt, aeron@unm.edu

This course will introduce students to British, Irish, and postcolonial literature of the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern/Postmodern periods (from the 1790s onward). We will read examples of poetry, fiction, and drama that represented and shaped the artistic, social, and cultural concerns of these eras of dramatic social transformation and intellectual upheaval. Authors we read may include: William Blake, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Robert Browning; Matthew Arnold; Rudyard Kipling; Oscar Wilde; Thomas Hardy; T. S. Eliot; William Butler Yeats; Virginia Woolf; Harold Pinter; Doris Lessing, Salman Rushdie. Course requirements: final exam, quizzes, short response papers, class participation.

304.002: Bible as Literature

1000-1630; 05/19/14-05/22/14, 05/27/14-05/29/14, 05/30/14
Anita Obermeier, aobermei@unm.edu

The Bible is the text with the most significant influence on western literature. This non-doctrinal examination of the Bible is an invaluable tool for students of literature and will increase their cultural literacy. We will read the Bible like a literary anthology, aiming to familiarize ourselves with major parts of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and to become conversant in the most influential stories, myths, and images from the Judeo-Christian tradition. We will study the Biblical texts as we would study other literature, emphasizing authorship, character, plot, setting, theme, literary modes and genres as well as use literary analysis, methods of inquiry, and terminology. Our discussions will con centrate not only on the structure and meaning of individual works but also on the ways in which these works reflect the historical people and times that produced them.