Undergraduate Literature Courses Spring 2008
ENGL 1923. 001-004 Great Works of Literature / Fitz MWF 10:30-11:20. CID 12685-88 A tour of some of Western Literature's most enduring dramatic, epic and lyric works, ancient, medieval and modern: Oedipus Rex (the first whodunit?), The Song of Roland (an 11th c. AD account of the 1st war on terror), The Last Days of Marie de France (12th c. AD ethnic tales of courtly love and violence), The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett's classic tough guy detective novel), The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brian's stories of war in Vietnam), Arcadia (Tom Stoppard's briliant contemporary drama that mixes chaos theory, an unknown escapade of Lord Byron and an early solution to Fermat's Last Theorem). In addition there will be occasional sallies into some great poems of the English language.
ENGL 2413.001/.002 - Introduction to Literature / Eldevik MWF 9:30-10:20 / 12:30-1:20, 12691 / 12692 An introduction to poetry, drama, fiction, and film. Students will develop their abilities to think critically and write analytically about literature. Both papers and examinations.
ENGL 2543. 001 Survey Brit Lit I / Price, M. MWF 10:30-11:20. CID 12709 This course will acquaint students with literary texts and cultural documents from the earliest beginnings of Anglo-Saxon literature to the eighteenth century. We will begin with the anonymous Beowulf, the oldest epic poem in what would become the English language, and end with Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. Assessment will be by three tests, a bibliography, and a research paper. Potential English majors will benefit a great deal from this class.
ENGL 2543. 002 Survey of British Literature I / Jones MWF 1:30-2:20. CID 12710 From Beowulf through Boswell, about a thousand years of literary practice. The course will be selective and comprehensive. Students will read and discuss various genres, including epic, romance, drama, and prose fiction. Essays, quizzes, and exams.
ENGL 2653. 001 Survey of British Literature II / Austin TR 12:30-1:45. CID 12712 England ’s literary tradition after 1798. Read works by Wordsworth, Keats, Browning, Yeats, Lawrence, and others.
ENGL 2773. 001/.002 Survey American Lit I / Staff MWF 9:30-10:20. CID 12713 / TR 3:30-4:45. CID 18084 An interdisciplinary tour through early American culture and history, 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 Survey of American Lit II / Smith MWF 11:30-12:20. CID 12714 This course introduces the range of American literatures following 1855 by providing a sampling of the works of several authors who express, confront, and encompass particularly American identities. By learning more about the works of authors from a variety of regional, racial, sexual, and historical backgrounds, we will discover overarching themes that distinguish American literature and thereby suggest defining characteristics of American identity. Class preparation and participation are mandatory. Course text: Baym, Nina, Ed. Norton Anthology of American Literature, Package 2.
ENGL 2883. 002 Survey American Lit II / Staff TR 9:00-10:15. CID 12715 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 3123. 701 Mythology (Honors) / Wallen TR 12:30-1:45. CID 18086 Sex, jealousy, murder -- and on a divine scale! The stories the Greeks told about their gods and heroes are even better than the rumors in a small town. Classical Mythology will teach you that when it concerns the Olympians there's no detail too extreme, too sordid, or too salacious. Research projects, class reports, two exams.
ENGL 3123. 001 Mythology / Eldevik MWF 2:30-3:20. CID 12716 Greek and Roman mythology as encountered in the great literature of Classical antiquity. Authors include Homer, Hesiod, Ovid, and Virgil. Follow the Roman calendar and the myths associated with each month. What roman deity is January named after, and what’s so bizarre about him? Who gave his name to month of March and why?
ENGL 3163. 001 World Lit I / Price, M. MWF 9:30-10:20. CID 18087 This course reviews literature in the western tradition from ancient to modern, focusing on literature as a cultural artifact. We will read a selection of plays, novels, short stories, and epic poems that reflect the often strange social mores of their time. Assessment will be by three tests, a bibliography, and a research paper.
ENGL 3173. 701 World Lit II (Honors) / Fitz MWF 12:30-1:20. CID 12718 Readings will include 20th century texts from Hawaii, Japan, China, India, Eqypt, Israel, South Africa, Nigeria, and Botswana. Students will be expected to acquire a knowledge of critical vocabulary and of concepts necessary for discussion of cultural and philosophical problems that arise in reading literature from Non-Western cultures.
ENGL 3173. 001 World Lit II / Aubeeluck TR 9:00-10:15. CID 12717 Explore novels, short stories, and movies that are in-between worlds and cultures – contact zones between colonizing and colonized nations that have resulted in modern, explosive literature from the Caribbean (Antigua), Africa (Kenya), Asia (Afghanistan, India), Central America (Mexico), and that implicate the U.K., U.S., and Canada. Acquire critical concepts necessary to discuss cultural implications about postcolonialism and globalization.
ENGL 3193. 001 African-American Lit / Smith MWF 10:30-11:20. CID 12721 This course is a survey of major movements in African American creative, intellectual, and vernacular traditions. By learning about the myriad forms in hich African American cultures are expressed, we will discover ways in which these cultures are integral parts of the broader American culture. Class preparation and participation are mandatory. Course text: McKay, Nellie and Gates, Henry Louis, Eds. Norton Anthology of African American Literature.
ENGL 3243. 001 Lit Theory & Criticism / Smith MWF 1:30-2:20. CID 18083 This course introduces the most influential theoretical approaches to literature. In addition to developing a better understanding of literary theory, students will begin the process of applying those various theories to texts through independent projects. Class preparation and participation are mandatory. Course texts: Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory plus additional reserve readings.
ENGL 3373. 001 Readings in Non Fiction: Autobiography / Grubgeld TR 10:30-11:45. CID 18089 Is autobiography just narcissistic navel-gazing? Not necessarily: five book-length autobiographies and a series of shorter memoir pieces will demonstrate how autobiography can explore the self through travel, work, ethnic and family history, relationships with others, and even what anthropologists call "foodways." In addition to a traditional analytical paper and a mid-term, students will experiment with their own autobiographical writings. Authors include Langston Hughes, Nancy Mairs, Art Spiegelman, Diana Abu-Jabar, and others.
ENGL 3383. 001 Readings in Narrative: Journeys Imaginary and Real / Decker MWF 11:30-12:20. CID 18090 We will begin by sampling short selections of narrative theory and then read the following eclectic sequence of literary narrative: Gulliver’s Travels, 4 short early American women’s travel narratives, Jane Eyre, Arabian Sands, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Pattern Recognition. Three 4-6 page papers, final exam.
ENGL 4130. 001 Studies in 18th-C British Lit: London Life in the 18th-Century / Mayer TR 9:00-10:15. CID 18092 This class will use plays, novels, memoirs, essays, poems, paintings, and music to explore life in London in the century in which it became (arguably) the greatest city in Europe. We will discuss theater, prostitution, urban space, economic theory, garbage, manners, pleasure gardens, crime, and the literary scene, among other matters. Work will include reading and discussion, papers, and student reports.
ENGL 4170. 001 Studies in 20th-C British Lit: England's Others / Grubgeld TR 2:00-3:15. CID 12766 The readings will focus on close encounters between the English and some of those defined as "other": the people and topography of the Pacific Islands, India, Sicily, Italy, Mexico, Ireland, and Egypt. Almost all our poems, novels, stories, and plays were written before 1930, but we'll finish with contemporary Sri Lankan-Dutch-English-Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje's gorgeous novel of nationality, history, and identity. Authors also include Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, D.H. Lawrence, John Synge, George Bernard Shaw, and Elizabeth Bowen.
ENGL 4210. 001 Studies in 19th-C Amer Lit: Time, Travel & the Amer Narrative / Walker MWF 10:30-11:20. CID 12767 Escape into time and discover if it is possible to repeat the past and “fix everything just the way it was before.” In a series of “pastoral travel romances,” see how Americans retreat into time, seek an alternative to a repressive culture, and then return to a world shaken by change, but not always stirred to lasting alternatives. Climb aboard and see how we reveal our national obsession with having it both ways. Lots of thinking, talking, and writing.
ENGL 4220. 001 Studies in 20th-C Amer Lit: The Modern Novel / Flota MWF 1:30-2:20. CID 12768 What is "American-ness"? What are the defining aspects of the American character and experience? In this course, we will survey 20th Century novels and examine their construction of a variety of "American-nesses." From exiles and immigrants to businessmen and artistically-inclined intellectuals, these novels will cover a wide array of literary styles (naturalism, modernism, postmodernism), subject matter (capitalist ingenuity, the racial politics of science, secret societies, marginalized sexualities) and cultural traditions (Euro American, African American, Asian American).
ENGL 4300. 001 Romanticism: Romantic Villains, Heroes, & Scalawags / Wallen TR 2:00-3:15. CID 12770 The nineteenth century produced some of the greatest heroes -- Admiral Nelson and Florence Nightingale, for instance -- and some of the vilest villains -- the Duke of Wellington and Jack Mytton to name a few. In this course we shall examine portraits of the most scurrilous, dashing, bold, suspect, and scandalous figures of the age. We shall find them in novels, poems, essays, and paintings, and discover how people can be very good and very, very bad.
ENGL 4400. 001 Regional Lit: American West in Fiction and Film / Batteiger TR 12:30-1:45. CID 12772 The American West in Fiction and Film. The reading list includes Cooper's The Deerslayer, A. B. Guthrie's The Big Sky, Jack Shaefer's Shane, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, and James Welch's Fools Crow. We'll also look at classic western films, such as Fort Apache, Shane, Little Big Man, and Unforgiven. Two short papers, two hour exams, and a final.
ENGL 4520. 701 Seminar Jews and Muslims in Early English Lit (Honors)/ Price, M. MWF 1:30-2:20. CID 12779 In this course, we will explore the ways in which Jews and Muslims were represented as the mysterious, threatening, and sometimes grotesque ‘Other’ on the borders of Christendom, especially in the later Middle Ages and early modern period. The expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 did not prevent English literature from using both minority religions to forge an English national identity. We will treat the representation of Jews and Muslims as paradigmatic, using them to examine the concept of ‘otherness’ across a number of disciplines: history, philosophy, theology, canon law, literature, theater, and art history. The course is open to students in the Honors program only. Assessment will be by research paper, presentation, and seminar involvement.
ENGL 4700. 001 Single Au/Wk pre-1800: Benjamin Franklin's Writing & Reading / Frohock MWF 9:30-10:20. CID 12787 Franklin and His Reading: In this class we will read a wide sampling of Benjamin Franklin’s humorous, satirical, and political essays along with his Autobiography and consider how Franklin’s writing and thinking was influenced by British authors whom he studied. The class will examine the rise of the satirical essay in the new British and American periodicals of the time period as well as consider how European notions of Enlightenment were translated and transported to the American colonies.
ENGL 4723. 001 Studies in Shakespeare / Jones MWF 12:30-1:20. CID 12788 An educated European assumes an undergraduate will at least know the names of the world's leading artists--writers, composers, painters, and architects. This course is for those who want to know more than Shakespeare's name. 2 papers, 2 exams, one tutorial session.
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
