Undergraduate Literature Courses Fall 2007
ENGL 1923. 001-004 Great Works of Lit / Wallen
Lecture MWF 2:30-3:20 / Discussion Groups Various Times on Friday
In a recent ruling, the Supreme Court has announced that not only are some books better than others but there are even those that are simply GREAT. This class will take on those activist judges and find out once and for all if a great book is also a masterpiece. Lecture with discussion groups; 3 exams.
ENGL 2413. 701 Intro to Literature (H) / Fitz
TR 12:30-1:45 An introduction to poetry, drama, fiction, and film. English majors and non-majors will develop their abilities to think critically and write analytically about literature. Both papers and essay exams.
ENGL 2543. 001 Survey Brit Lit I / Mayer
MWF 12:30-1:20 From Beowulf to Boswell – a thousand years of literary history. The course treats key texts and writers like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer, The Faerie Queene, Milton, Behn, The Rape of the Lock, and Dr. Johnson. It also aims to see those writers and works in the context of the changing nature of Britain from the Anglo-Saxon period to the beginning of the modern age. Along the way, the class will read and discuss epic poetry, romance, lyric poetry, satire, tragedy, comedy, and prose fiction. Tastes good and it’s good for you too.
ENGL 2653. 001-002 Survey British Lit II / Staff
TR 12:30-1:45 / MWF 1:30-2:30 England ’s literary tradition after 1798. Read works by Wordsworth, Keats, Browning, Yeats, Lawrence, and others.
ENGL 2773. 001 Survey American Lit I / Staff
MWF 11:30-12:20 An interdisciplinary tour through early American culture andhistory, from the voyage of Columbus to the end of the Civil War. We will read and learn about early colonial encounters, Puritan faith and experience in New England, Enlightenment and Revolution, the struggle to overthrow slavery, and the emergence of distinctly American poetry and fiction.
ENGL 2883. 001-002 Survey of American Lit II / Staff
TR 9:00-10:15 / MWF 10:30-11:20 How did “these United States” become “the United States?” Why are the last 100 years called “the American century?” We’ll ask, and tentatively answer, such questions as we explore American literature and culture from 1865 to present.
ENGL 3153. 001 Literature by Women / Austin
MWF 1:30-2:20 Novels and short stories by Joanna Scott, Arundhati Roy, Alice Munro, Anita Brookner, and Jhumpa Lahiri, among others. Two papers, one final, participation in class discussion a must.
ENGL 3163. 001 World Lit I / Pesta
MWF 9:30-10:20 A selective and thematic study of the classics of Western Literature. Representative authors might include Homer, Sappho, Virgil, Dante, Cervantes, Goethe, and Dostoevsky. Emphasis on the way these writers engage with each other in continuous dialog through the centuries. All the books you should have read but haven’t! Quizzes, Midterm, Final, Paper.
ENGL 3183. 701 Youth Culture in American Indian Culture (Honors) / Smith
TR 10:30-11:45 This course will cover works by several young, up-and-coming Native authors. Readings will focus on authors’ representations of adolescence and youth culture in contemporary Native America, including urban, small-town, and reservation settings. In addition to studying texts by Sherman Alexie, Tomson Highway, Ray Young Bear, Susan Power, and Gregory Sarris, students will also have opportunities to learn more about young Native filmmakers, artists, and musicians. Class attendance and preparation are mandatory. Course requirements include two exams and two essays
ENGL 3190. 001 Readings in Postcolonial/Multiethnic Lit: Ethnicity and the American City / Smith
TR 12:30-1:45 This course will introduce students to ethnic American literatures that portray life in urban centers such as New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Our study will cover authors such as Henry Roth, Oscar Hijuelos, James Baldwin, Chang Rae-Lee, Susan Power, Sandra Cisneros, Sherman Alexie, and Karen Tei Yamashita. Class attendance and preparation are mandatory. Course requirements include two exams and two essays.
ENGL 3243. 351 Lit Theory & Critism / Austin
MWF 12:30-1:20 We shall begin with the seminal texts (Plato and Aristotle) and read some of the classics (Sidney, Kant, Wordsworth, Nietzsche) before moving in the second half of the semester to consider more recent essays that examine how we interpret and assess the value not only of literature, but of other arts. Midterm, final, and two short papers.
ENGL 3333. 001 Short Story / Eldevik
MWF 11:30-12:20 Development of the short story as a distinctive literary genre, from 1800 to the present. Intensive focus on a small number of authors from a variety of countries and time periods. Midterm and final exam, take-home writing assignments, oral presentations.
ENGL 3363. 001 Readings in Drama / Macvaugh
MW 2:30-3:15 All the world's a stage, but what do plays written for the contemporay stage tell us about the second half of twentieth century America? While developing the skill of analyzing drama and understanding dramatic conventions, we will explore the plays of dramatists such as Amiri Baraka, Luis Valdez, Sam Shepard, August Wilson, David Henry Hwang, Tony Kushner, Anna Deavere Smith, Suzan-Lori Parks, Tomson Highway, and others. 3 informal responses/presentations, 1 critical essay, 2 essay exams, and a review of one play performed at OSU.
ENGL 3410. 351 Pop Fiction: Detective Fiction / Fitz
TR 2:00-3:15 This course is designed to encourage students to familiarize themselves with the mystery or detective story as it has evolved from its beginnings to the present and to encourage reflection on the ideology and theory that inform this popular form of written and film narrative. Some of the texts to be read and films to be seen include Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Dashiell Hammet’s The Maltese Falcon, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, and Quentin Tarentino’s Pulp Fiction. We will also read some of the most recent short narratives from the 21 st Century. No guns may be carried in class!
ENGL 3813. 001 Readings in the American Experience: Americans Abroad / Decker
MWF 11:30-12:20 Travel Writing by American Expatriates and Sojourners. Authors will include Mark Twain, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, Maya Angelou, Paul Theroux, and Eva Hoffman. Three papers (one of which may be a short travel narrative) and a final examination.
ENGL 3933. 001-004 Shakespeare / Pesta
Lecture MWF 11:30-12:20 / Discussion Groups various times on Friday
An overview of the plays of Shakespeare designed for beginners. No one understood human nature like Shakespeare. His comedies expose the romance and folly of love, and his tragedies and histories offer profound insights into mortality and probe the depths of human nature. A college degree without a course in Shakespeare is like a degree in medicine without a course on anatomy.
ENGL 4120. 351 Studies in 17th-C Brit Lit: Literature, Gender, Politics, & War / Jones
MWF 12:30-1:20 The English Civil War produced a diverse set of responses from men and women writers in seventeenth century England. We will look at how early modern concepts of gender are expressed in the representations of masculinity in the poetry of Marvell, Herrick, and Milton and the depiction of women in civil war newsbooks and pamphlets. The age’s concern with reform will be examined in the visionary writing of Anna Trapnel and Gerald Winstanley, the political writing of John Lilburne and William Walwyn, and the autobiographical writing of Lucy Hutchinson. 2 Papers, 2 exams, one tutorial.
ENGL 4160. 001 Studies in 19th-C Brit Lit: 19th-C Nightmares: Terror, Paranoia and Delusion / Wallen
MWF 11:30-12:20 This course will ask a simple question: were the paranoid nightmares that gripped England throughout the nineteenth century a side-effect of drug use or an accurate depiction of reality? Through poems, essays, and novels (traditional and graphic) we shall find out why the most powerful country in the world spent so much energy fretting over bugaboos. Class projects, exams.
ENGL 4170. 001 Studies in 20th-C Brit Lit: The City / Walkiewicz
MWF 2:30-3:20 We will examine the concept and depiction of The City in twentieth-century British fiction, poetry, drama, and film. Along the way, we will take up such matters as technical innovation, class and gender issues, and the impact of science and technology. Works by Anthony Burgess, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, Doris Lessing, Harold Pinter, Virginia Woolf, and others. Two papers and two essay exams.
ENGL 4220. 001 Studies in 20th-C Amer Lit: Alienation & Activism / Walkiewicz
MWF 1:30-2:20 We will begin by examining some early fictional responses to the growing industrialization, urbanization, and materialism of American society. Concentrating on works that either express the alienation and anomie caused by such developments or that implicitly or explicitly call for political change, we will move forward through the twentieth century, concluding with reactions to the Vietnam War. Works by Sherwood Anderson, Allen Ginsburg, Ernest Hemingway, Ralph Ellison, Ken Kesey, Adrienne Rich, Edith Wharton, and others. Two papers and two exams.
ENGL 4310. 001 Studies in Modernism: Modernist Short Story / Grubgeld
MWF 10:30-11:20 Starting with the influential tales of Flaubert (France) and Chekhov (Russia), we will turn to collections of stories by Conrad, Joyce, Moore, Hemingway, Wright, and O'Connor. We'll look at both formal considerations like narrative construction and the cultural issues addressed by each writer, but much of the interpretive focus will be determined by the class. Course journal, paper, final, miscellaneous small assignments. Consistent reading and active participation in discussion essential.
ENGL 4320. 001 Studies in Postmodernism: Time, Space, and Gender / Mason
TR 9:00-10:15 We will examine postmodernism both as a crisis in the stability of form and meaning and as an opportunity to rethink how literature and other cultural productions create gendered spaces and times. In addition to critical theory, we will read Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, short stories by Bobbie Ann Mason, and Liebegott’s The Beautifully Worthless.
ENGL 4400. 801 Regional Lit: Oklahoma Authors ( Tulsa) / Miller
R 4:30-7:10 Oklahoma Authors will focus on the unique contribution of Oklahoma authors, reaching beyound regional boundaries and stereotypes to examine Oklahoma's unique contribution to American literature. Featured authors will include Angie Debo, Michael Wallis, N. Scott Momaday, Joy Harjo, S.E. Hinton, Billie Letts, and Ralph Ellison. One of the highlights of the course will be the opportunity to interact personally with some of the legendary authors.
ENGL 4600. 001 Studies in Chaucer / Price, M.
TR 9:00-10:15 In this class we will be reading several shorter Chaucerian works, but concentrating chiefly on Chaucer’s most approachable long poem, The Canterbury Tales. All readings will be in Middle English, which we will work on both independently and together as a class. Before the end of the class, you will be a fluent reader of Middle English. Assessment includes quizzes, a presentation, and two papers. Our text will be The Riverside Chaucer; please notice that the paperback edition is half the price, but may not be available in the bookstore, so you may wish to try amazon.com ahead of time.
ENGL 4710. 001 Single Author post-1800: Flannery O'Connor and Bernard Malamud / Grubgeld
MWF 2:30-3:20 What could these two mid-century writers of fiction possibly in common? Flannery O'Connor was a practicing Catholic who rarely left the rural Georgia in which she set her stories; Malamud was the son of immigrant Russian Jews much like those who populate his Brooklyn tales. Yet both O'Connor and Malamud are wildly comic and deeply serious, treating the often absurd conditions of 20th century life as a high-stakes arena for tests of character, mysterious visitations, and strange awakenings. An interpretive free-for-all is promised. Two papers, exam, miscellaneous small assignments. Keeping up with the reading and a willingness to venture out on a creaky limb are essential.
English Department
College of Arts & Sciences
Oklahoma State University
205 Morrill Hall
Stillwater, OK 74078
Phone: 405-744-9474
For Information about English Programs: english.information@okstate.edu
Webmaster: engweb@okstate.edu
