300-400 Level
Course Descriptions
Fall 2009

English majors, minors, and Secondary Education majors should see their department advisor for information and assistance; others may contact Prof. John Zuern, Undergraduate Director, in KUY 429. If you are interested in declaring English as your major, see Prof. John Zuern in Kuykendall 429; call 956-3048 or email <zuern@hawaii.edu> to schedule an appointment.

The following descriptions of individual courses and sections supplement the general catalog descriptions. Most upper-division English classes are represented here. For the complete registration listing and CRN numbers, see the official schedule. All 300 and 400 level courses have prerequisites. Please refer to page 2 of this handout or the general UHM catalog before enrolling.

Please note the following:

Qualified non-Honors students may enroll in ENG 393/394 or 491/492 on a space available basis with the permission of the instructor or of the English Department’s Honors Director. See Professor Caroline Sinavaiana in KUY 426 for further information.

English 363, 370, and 383 will be large lecture courses with an enrollment of 60. They are designed for non-majors, though majors and minors may enroll in them for major/minor credit. Majors may count up to two large enrollment courses toward their major. See your advisor for further information.

All 400-level “Studies” courses are designed to have a significant research component and are now designated as Writing Intensive (W). In compliance with the Focus Hallmarks for Writing Intensive classes, you will produce a least 16 pages or 4,000 words in these classes. Courses designated W will partially fulfill the Writing Intensive graduation requirements. You are encouraged to have had prior 300-level course work in a related field before taking a “Studies” course.

English 300-400 Level Prerequisites

Completion of English 100 and two English 270-273 courses (or two 250-257 courses at the Community Colleges) with grades of “C” or better is prerequisite to 300-level literature courses. An English major or minor may take one 300-level course and the second 270-273 course concurrently.

English 320 and one other 300-level English course are prerequisite for 400-level Studies courses.

English 306 is prerequisite for 400-level expository writing courses; English 313 is prerequisite for 400-level creative writing courses.

For 306: 100 and 200 or 100 and one 270-273.

For 311: 100 and one 270-273.

For 313: 100 and one 270-273.

For 411: 313 and 410.

For 414: 313 and 413.

Prior to enrolling in a 400-level Studies course, please try to take at least one 300-level course in a related area.

If you have not completed the prerequisite for a course but feel qualified to take it, see the instructor, who may grant you consent to enroll. Be prepared to document your readiness for the course.

See the Undergraduate Director in Kuykendall 429 for further information on prerequisites.

ENGLISH 300 (01): THE RHETORICAL TRADITION (TR 9:00-10:15) - Daphne Desser
According to Thomas Miller "the rhetorical tradition is a fiction that has just about outlasted its usefulness.” He makes this argument because it is difficult for us to decide whose work, amongst all the persuasive writers and speakers in the world, to study. We must ask ourselves whose work best exemplifies the art of persuasive writing and why. In this course, we will examine the work of a group of writers most often included in “the rhetorical tradition.” However, we will also ask ourselves how this canon of rhetoricians has evolved. Not only will we study the work of these rhetors to glean their insights on the process of writing persuasively, but we will also ask ourselves why these authors are often included in survey courses on rhetoric. Which writers have been the focus of study on persuasive writing and why? How has the rhetorical canon shifted over the years? Whose work continues to be excluded and why?

Thus throughout this course we will not only study “the rhetorical tradition,” we will also examine how this tradition has been constructed and reconstructed over time and how we think it ought to be constructed in the future. As we do so, we will reflect on the historical and cultural situations that influenced these writers’ understanding of what persuasive writing ought to look like. We will begin with the study of classical rhetoric, examining insights on the art of argumentation from the work of rhetors such as Gorgias, Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. We will continue with a historical survey that includes medieval rhetoricians (such as St. Augustine and Boethius); Renaissance rhetors (including Christine de Pisan, Erasmus, and Bacon); Enlightenment rhetoric (such as the work of Margaret Fell, Sarah Grimke, Campbell, and Blair); and finally twentieth-century rhetoric (including work by Martin Luther King, Kenneth Burke, Toulmin, Foucault, Derrida, Cixous, Henry Louis Gates and Gloria Anzuldua.).

Required Text: Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg, eds. THE RHETORICAL TRADITION: READINGS FROM CLASSICAL TIMES TO THE PRESENT. Second edition.

As a writing community, we will explore, analyze, and discuss aspects of American/Global popular culture and intersections with queer theory/studies through the careful reading of texts/films and simultaneously through the act of argumentative writing. As many composition theorists have argued, a good way for writing students to develop skills in argumentative composition is to view something familiar through a critical lens, defamiliarizing it, breaking it up into its parts through critical analysis.

So, our course content will focus on issues within popular culture since we travel and negotiate through it every day of our lives without thinking much about it. What we might watch or see on television, how we dress or look, what stories we tell about certain issues or groups of people, and how we interpret films, t.v. shows, or commercials all influence our understanding of the world and what we should value and believe. We will be taking a look at representations in multicultural America and globally and we will cover controversial subjects related to race/ethnicity and racism, gender, class, and sexual orientation or desire(s) as a means to stimulate provocative thinking that will help to generate the various genres of argumentation we will cover over the semester.

Prerequisites: grade of C or better in Eng 100 or Eng 200, or consent.
Four (4) typewritten argumentative “type” essays in both draft and
final form during the semester. A final portfolio of 3 revised essays
in place of a final exam that have been revised and edited substantially. Attendance requirement, quizzes, and in class participation, including both in and out of class small assignments and rigorous preparation before class discussion, which sometimes includes abstract “high theory” at times. All of these requirements have the implicit assumption that students are enrolled in this section because they have a commitment to ethical treatment of others in the world and that they want to become “part of the solution” to complex social issues, rather than “part of the problem.”

TEXTS: Available at Revolution Books (#944-3106). Major Texts:
1. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings, Brief Edition, 7th ed. John D. Ramage, et al
2. Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers, 5th ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon
3. Allan Johnson’s Privilege, Power, & Difference, 2nd Ed.

Course Reader available at Professional Image (#973-6599).

This will be a highly collaborative class: you will learn through seminar-style discussions, through workshops in which you teach each other new software applications, and through shared processes of writing and revising. The writings you produce for this class will primarily consist of email interactions and/or blog posts, an analytic academic essay that will be web-based and will incorporate graphics, hyperlinks, and/or other media, and one substantive digital composition in which you make use of digital tools in a rhetorically effective way. Because of how collaborative and interactive this course will be, attendance will be mandatory: if this is a semester in which you cannot come almost every class session, this is not a course you should take at this time.

Your Participation is a major requirement in this class. A workshop cannot succeed without it. You are expected to be gracious and tactful in your responses to one another’s work, while remaining as honest and constructive as possible. Sand-baggers and sweet-talkers will be severely penalized. What we are doing is serious work but, at the same time, we should always consider ourselves at play.

COURSE PACKET. TEXT TO BE ADVISED.

ENGLISH 313 (01& 04): POETRY AND FICTION (01) (TR 7:30-8:45); (04) (TR 9:00-10:15) – Brandy McDougall
This course will introduce students to two genres of creative writing—poetry and fiction. Students will read exemplary poems and short stories by master writers from throughout the Pacific, and analyze how and why they work as poems/narratives. We will also watch Pacific films in terms of their narrative qualities. At the same time students will work on their own poems and stories, which during the course of the semester will be revised and critiqued in a workshop setting. The first half of the course will be devoted to poetry, while the second half will be devoted to fiction. By the end of the course, students will have produced a poetry manuscript comprised of at least five workshopped, revised poems and a fiction manuscript of at least eight workshopped, revised pages of prose.

Texts for this course include WHETU MOANA (University of Hawaii Press, 2003), NUANUA (University of Hawaii Press, 1995), and IN THE PALM OF YOUR HANDS (Tilbury House, 1998), which can be purchased at Native Books at Ward Warehouse. In addition, there will be a course reader devoted to fiction-writing.

ENGLISH 313 (02 & 03) (W): FICTION AND NARRATIVE SCREENWRITING (02) (MWF 10:30-11:20); (03) (MWF 11:30-12:20) – Anne Kennedy
In this course you will study and practice the very different disciplines of writing fiction and crafting screenplays. For the former you will produce (among other things) a short story, and for the latter you will create the blueprint for a short film.

Because writers are always readers, we will begin the semester by reading and discussing some important contemporary short fictions, many of them from Hawai`i. Technical analysis of characterization, narrative structure, pace, dialogue, setting and voice will provide points of departure for some experimental exercises. Over several weeks, you will draft (write, workshop, revise, edit) an eight-page piece of fiction.

In the latter half of the course we will watch a range of short films from the Pacific and Asia from the point of view of narrative craft. We will consider what kinds of stories tell well on screen. You will work on developing your own short screenplay through the stages of synopsis, step outline, and first and subsequent drafts. To enable this, we will cover the conventions of screenplay format. You will be encouraged to take your resources into account and write a screenplay that can be shot locally on videocam. We will finish the semester with a week-long study of the three-act feature film structure.

Some general points: Laulima will be used for weekly postings and responses. There will be individual revision conferences. Because this is an introductory writing course we will discuss and establish goals, methods and protocols for the workshop. Requirements will include punctuality and attendance, involvement in class discussion both on and off line, and attendance at a literary or film event on campus during the semester.

Required texts:

• Dan Gurskis, THE SHORT SCREENPLAY. Thomson, 2007.
• Eng 313 (02/03) Fiction/Screenplay READER (available from MaPS printing service, University Ave).

ENGLISH 313 (05 & 06)(W): FICTION AND TRAVEL WRITING (05)(TR 12:00-1:15); (06)(TR 1:30-2:45) – Robert Onopa
These sections introduce both fiction writing and travel writing, a form of creative non-fiction which shares fiction’s narrative impulse. Early in the term we focus on theory – on what makes a narrative a story and how a story’s put together – and then we put the theory into practice, first in a series of exercises, then in writing fiction and in travel writing specific work. The overall bias of the class is practical, so we often operate as a workshop course, one in which the student’s primary job is to write creative work, and to read, discuss, and edit the work of fellow students.

Over the term, class members will be asked to produce two original manuscripts totaling twenty-five to thirty pages, to read assigned material, and, of course, to contribute to the workshops. Our texts include a collection of short stories and a recent volume of THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING. The ultimate aim of the course is to develop students' skills as creative writers.

We will read Pat Barker’s World War I novels REGENERATION and THE EYE IN THE DOOR, Sassoon and Owen’s WWI poetry, Tim O’Brien’s THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, and Mike Rollin’s poem/play about the war in Iraq, “Hendrix in Fallujah.” A Reader will be available from Professional Image with selections from Althusser, Foucault, Graff, Eagleton, and others.
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Students will be responsible for four 3-5-page papers, two 2-page papers, midterm, final, and class participation.

ENGLISH 320 (03): INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH STUDIES (TR 9:00-10:15) – Paul Lyons
This course is at once an overview of the various sub-fields grouped under the umbrella heading, “English Studies,” and an introduction to ways in which practitioners within each sub-field approach their common concern with reading and writing of texts. Toward those ends, the course aims to provide resources (approaches, theoretical vocabularies, institutional history) for interpreting a variety of texts, including visual and extra-literary ones. We will consider ways in which classical formulations of critical terms in literary and cultural study—such as aesthetics, ideology, representation—inform contemporary discussions of the functions, pleasures, implications of reading and writing. We will explore as well some of the ways in which social and epistemological transformations (globalization, technology, diaspora, postcoloniality, indigeneity) and considerations of the “locations” (of texts and readers) enrich, complicate, and potentially empower our acts/arts of reading. All along, we will be concerned with the question of what constitutes a “valid” interpretation, and with the social and political implications of interpretations.

Each class will begin with 5-10 minutes of writing on a pre-assigned question about the reading. These writings triple as attendance, practice in critical writing, and conversations-enhancers. The class will proceed mostly through discussion, hence participation (which assumes attendance) will factor in the final grade, along with at least one oral presentation. The grade breakdown will be as follows: 3 papers (20% each), Class Participation (short writings, report, participation) (20%), Final Exam (20%).

REQUIRED TEXTS:

• A course reader (essays, stories, terms) available at Campus Center
• THE BEDFORD HANDBOOK OF LITERARY TERMS (available at Revolution Books

You will take three in-class mid terms and a final exam. Reading quizzes will be inflicted if necessary. This course fulfills a Diversification Literature requirement and the English major’s Pre-1700 requirement.

Students are expected to read regularly and participate when lectures yield to class discussions. Group work on assigned questions will encourage students to explore the literature with their peers, and then share their responses with the class. Written work will consist of two (4-5 page) essays, one of which may be rewritten for a higher grade. A midterm and a final exam will also be given. Steady attendance is essential to doing well in this class.

TEXT: LONGMAN ANTHOLOGY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, Volume tba.

As texts are in public domain, some students prefer to download texts from major university archives. Others will prefer to purchase the NORTON ANTHOLOGIES OF BRITISH AND OF AMERICAN LITERATURE which will be available in the Bookstore.

Three short papers; several reaction papers; a mid-term; and a final.

The time period for this course encompasses a wide array of excellent material, far more than can be comprehended in one semester. The course is a survey of that material, which means that we will sample everything. In practice, a survey course is a reading extravaganza. Writing requirements, therefore, have been kept to a minimum. Both lecture and discussion will occupy our time together in class.

Texts: THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, 6th ed. Vols. C & D

There will be four in-class response papers, one 10-page final paper involving secondary sources, one midterm and one final examination.

MAJOR WORKS TO BE ASSIGNED: J. D. Salinger, NINE STORIES (Bantam); ; Tennessee Williams, FOUR PLAYS (Signet); Joseph Heller, CATCH-22 (Vintage); Ken Kesey, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (Penguin); Truman Capote, IN COLD BLOOD (Modern Library); Toni Morrison, SONG OF SOLOMON (Vintage); Maxine Hong Kingston, CHINA MEN (Vintage); Tim O'Brien, GOING AFTER CACCIATO (Broadway); Tobias Wolff, ed., THE VINTAGE BOOK OF CONTEM-PORARY AMERICAN SHORT STORIES (Vintage, 1994). Poetry on handouts.

Among the plays and playwrights we will read are Shakespeare (A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM and TWELFTH NIGHT); Ben Jonson (VOLPONE); Aphra Behn (THE ROVER); William Congreve (THE WAY OF THE WORLD); R.B. Sheridan (THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL); Dion Boucicault (LONDON ASSURANCE); Oscar Wilde (THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST).

The textbooks you will buy will include other plays by these authors or from these periods. At least one written assignment will be a short research paper about a play from these texts that we aren’t going to read in class, and an oral presentation to the class of your findings. Overall, there will be 3 essays, a mid-term exam and a final exam.

By the end of the course you should understand some of the basic ideas about comic drama as a genre, its social, personal, and artistic value, and be able to write coherently and insightfully about a comic play of your choosing (from this period) that is not on the official syllabus.

ENGLISH 360 (01): PROSE FICTION (MWF 10:30-11:20) - Joan Peters

In all, there will be 14-16 required film viewings, most of them outside of class time. The films will range from the silent films of Eisenstein’s THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925) and Buster Keaton’s THE CAMERAMAN (1928) to Orson Welles’ CITIZEN KANE (1941), Elia Kazan’s ON THE WATERFRONT (1954), Francois Truffaut’s THE 400 BLOWS (1959), Francis Ford Copolla’s THE GODFATHER (1972), and Woody Allen’s ANNIE HALL (1977) to the more recent Coen Bros.’ NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007), Faith Akins’ THE EDGE OF HEAVEN (2007), and Tomas Alfredson’s LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008).

The textbook for the course is THE FILM EXPERIENCE, Second Edition, by Timothy Corrigan & Patricia White; there will also be a packet of Xeroxed articles.

Assignments include two papers, quizzes on the chapters in the textbook, and a final examination. Attendance is a requirement.

Requirements: Two short essays (3-4 pages), one research essay (5-7 with additional works cited page), ten reader response papers, final exam, attendance, and participation.

Books will be available at Revolution Books on South King. I will email the book list a few weeks before class starts.

ENGLISH 365 (01) (W): MIXED GENRES: NEW YORK CULTURE (MWF 11:30-12:20) – B. Menikoff

Start spreadin’ the news, I’m leavin’ today / I want to be a part of it, New York, New York…Of course Frank Sinatra is really from a small town across the river—“Jersey” as they say in New York—but it was in Manhattan’s Paramount Theater that the “bobbysoxers” (the 1940s version of Justin Timberlake’s fans) swooned and fainted in the aisles over his singing. Well, New York is more than a song lyric, although many of the songs about the city evoke the place more evocatively than a page full of prose. But there is a bit more than a page full of prose because New York has been the literary and cultural center of the United States since the middle of the 19th century. We are not going back that far, to Whitman and Melville and Henry James and Edith Wharton. Nor even to modern New Yorkers like Scott Fitzgerald and J. D. Salinger. Rather we are going to look at fiction and journalism and memoirs and films that captured the city’s lights, and shadows, by writers who were born there (Alfred Kazin, A WALKER IN THE CITY, Betty Smith, A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN), others who moved there (Dawn Powell, TURN, MAGIC WHEEL), and many who thought there was no life west of the Hudson River (Pete Hamill, A DRINKING LIFE). Of course there would be no New York Damon Runyan’s imaginary Broadway (GUYS AND DOLLS) or without THE NEW YORKER magazine and the feature pieces by the inimitable Joseph Mitchell (UP IN THE OLD HOTEL). There is a touch of comedy (Thorne Smith, TOPPER), and a contemporary, urban, thriller (Colin Harrison, THE FINDER). The NEW YORK TIMES, a staple of any New Yorker’s life, will be ordered at a deep discount. As for celluloid, THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, ON THE WATERFRONT, perhaps BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S or another film selected by the class.

One of the pleasures of a course like this (for the instructor) is the opportunity to learn about the city through student reports on an array of subjects—the theater, the museum world, the famous night clubs (then and/or now), the publishing industry, the parks, the subway, the architecture, in short, whatever strikes the fancy of the student explorer.

One major oral report, either an individual or group project; a term essay of 12-15 pages; and a final examination. Class participation is strongly encouraged, and a “New York state of mind” is recommended.

Requirements: Two mid-term exams, a final exam, seven scheduled quizzes and attendance.

Required Texts (available at Revolution Books): Queen Lili‘uokalani, HAWAII’S STORY BY HAWAII’S QUEEN; Darrell Lum and Eric Chock, eds., THE BEST OF BAMBOO RIDGE; R. Zamora Linmark, ROLLING THE R’S; Nora Okja Keller, FOX GIRL; Candace Fujikane and Jonathan Okamura, eds., ASIAN SETTLER COLONIALISM: FROM COLONIAL GOVERNANCE TO THE HABITS OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN HAWAI‘I; Haunani-Kay Trask, LIGHT IN THE CREVICE NEVER SEEN; Lilikala Kame‘eleihiwa, A LEGENDARY TRADITION OF KAMAPUA‘A, THE HAWAIIAN PIG-GOD. A required course reader will include works by Kapulani Landgraf, Keala Kelly, Kehaulani Kauanui, Eric Yamamoto, Linda Revilla, Alice Chai, Alani Apio, Naomi Sodetani, Richard Hamasaki and others. The course reader will be available during the second week of classes.

ENGLISH 371 (01): LITERATURES OF THE PACIFIC (MWF 9:30-10:20) – C. Sinavaiana
Cross-listed as ES 371
This course is a study of the literature of the Pacific especially the literature in English by indigenous writers, and how that is related to other new literatures in English. The course will first (a) look at oral literature/traditions, then (b) move to a discussion of the written literature by the indigenous writers of Hawai’i, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, the Cook Islands, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Kiribati.

The course surveys and explores ways in which heroic motifs from oratures of Oceania, such as quest, pilgrimage, combat, descent, transformation and return will serve as thematic focal points to chart a comparative course of study across various Polynesian cultures, including Samoa, Hawai’i, Maori and Tonga, among others. The course will explore influences of colonialism, feminism, and western education on contemporary literatures by indigenous writers of Oceania.

Literary texts and filmic texts will be drawn from contemporary writing by indigenous writers of Oceania. We will consider how such writers represent emergent ‘speakers’ and writers of both individual and collective narratives of their respective peoples. We will consider developmental linkages between oratures and their
literary counterparts in the context of historical, social, and political transformations

Emphasis in class will be on discussion, shared responses to readings, collaboration and group work.

Major objectives for the course include: (1) broadening and developing literary-critical skills; (2) developing abilities to recognize and analyze themes and motifs across a range of literary genres and cultural traditions; (3) acquiring an awareness of differences and similarities in the themes and motifs characteristic of Pacific literatures; (4) developing an awareness of developmental linkages between orature and literature; and (5) broadening a knowledge of Polynesian orature and literature in the context of historical change.

Required texts: WHETU MOANA, eds. Albert Wendt, Robert Sullivan, Reina Whaitiri. University of Auckland Press. TU. Patricia Grace.
BULIBASHA: KING OF THE GYPSIES. Witi Ihimaera, QUEEN OF BEAUTY, Paula Morris

A Course Reader (available from EMA Copiers on campus) will feature selections from oratures, such as Papatuanuku and Hine nui te Po/Mahuika, Nafanua and Sina, Pele and Hi’iaka; literatures, including: poetry by Steven Winduo, Konai Thaman, Hone Tuwhare, Tusiata Avia, Joe Balaz, Haunani-Kay Trask, Robert Sullivan short fiction by: Albert Wendt, Patricia Grace, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku; essays by Ku’ualoha Ho’omanawanui, Teresia Teaiwa, Lisa Chang Hall and J. Kehaulani Kauanui.

Films – several feature and/or short films, such as Mauri by Merata Mita, O Tamaiti by Sima Urale will be provided by the instructor.

Edith Eaton (Chinese and Scottish descent), usually seen as the first Asian American author, wrote numerous fiction and journalistic narratives from the perspective of her mixed heritage and as a woman in late 19th century America. Since then, Asian American artists have flourished to include experimental poets, critically-recognized prose writers, dancers, actors, dramatists, filmmakers, architects, graphic novelists, performance artists, classical musicians, and so on. The literary output of just the past four decades has been extremely diverse: memoirs, speculative fiction, poetry of all sorts, graphic novels, as well as more ‘traditional’ genres, such as novels and drama.

The “texts” on this reading list typically consist of creative, talented artists engaged in laying claim to and profoundly questioning the socially and politically constructed identity that is supposedly both “Asian” and “American.”

In other words, even really good “reads” exist or live within larger cultural and political contexts. This course, therefore, also examines the national and global origins of Asian America, a landscape of differing value and meaning to various groups, at different periods.

GOALS: 1) an appreciation of exciting, innovative writing; 2) an appreciation of common themes as well as the diversity of Asian American texts; 3) an appreciation of the ways that “local” literature and identity intersect and don’t intersect with Asian American writing; 4) an introduction to ideas such as immigration, settler, Asian, ethnicity, race, gender, American, etc.

WRITING REQUIREMENTS include: A bi-weekly one-page response paper (minimum single-spaced); two essays (5-pages minimum, double-spaced); oral presentation written report (1-page, minimum, single-spaced, 5-10 minutes), and a final. This is a Writing Intensive class. You will receive a W designation upon your successful completion of the W requirements: the class uses writing to promote the learning of the course material; the writing you do in this class will be a significant percentage of the course grade; and roughly a minimum of 4,000 words or 16 pages.

TEXTS: CORPSE_WATCHING (poetry); OETA_EN_SAN_FRANCISCO (poetry); CHARLIE CHAN IS DEAD 2 (excerpts from anthology); THE ADVENTURES OF EDDIE FUNG (memoir); GRACE LEE PROJECT (film); NATIVE SPEAKER (novel); ASIAN AMERICAN DREAMS (history); KING (graphic novel); ATOMIC AZTEK (speculative fiction, excerpts); excerpts from films featuring I. M. Pei (architect), Margaret Cho (comedian), select websites and magazines on Asian American artists and pop culture; handouts from instructor.

ENGLISH 402 (01): HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (TR 9:00-10:15) - Richard W. Nettell
In this course, we will study the origins and evolution, in historical and linguistic terms, of what today may best be described in the plural form: the English languages. There will be detailed analysis (and translation) of a variety of historical texts, including several from what are traditionally defined as the Early and Middle English periods. To do this will inevitably require of students a willingness to engage with grammars and vocabularies that appear very different from the language most of us use in our text messages or e-mails.

From its very humble origins on a sparsely populated island off the coast of Europe, a collection of minor Germanic dialects quickly overwhelmed the indigenous languages of Britain before becoming itself subjected to outside invasion and eventual conquest. The resulting linguistic hybrid, Celtic-Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norwegian-Norman English, then began, primarily through colonial expansion and global domination, to outgrow its sister languages on the Continent, eventually establishing itself as what we gladly know it to be today: the whole world’s "lingua frança."

If, in what form, and for how long “English” will remain the primary global language are questions which no-one today can answer, which is why this course also aims to look beyond the hegemony of the current Anglo-American centre (spelled correctly according to a competing variety). To do this, we will be examining some competing English-speaking communities and cultures, “English” speakers at the centre and periphery of the “English”-speaking world, for whom the precepts of the descendants of Dr. Johnson and Noah Webster are no longer quite as binding.

There will be two midterms (40%) and a final examination (40%), 10% Research Presentation and Paper. 10% of the final grade will be based on attendance.

NB: This course is assessed using plus and minus grading: A=86-83%, B=76-73%, C=66-63%, D=56-53%, 49 or less %=F. Plus and Minus Grading is calculated as follows: 7-9 = +, 0-2 = -

Required Text: Course Reader (pick up at CRDG Marketing and Publication, Castle 101

ENGLISH 405 (01) (W): TEACHING COMPOSITION (T 2:30-5:00) - Erica Clayton
[Please note that this is a restricted enrollment class. If you would like to enroll for this course, please contact the instructor at eclayton@hawaii.edu.]

This course is intended for those students who wish to learn the fundamentals of composition pedagogy, theory, and praxis and who, furthermore, seek to work with English 101L students under the tutelage of an experienced instructor in the following semester. You will learn how to teach writing and how to tutor students one-on-one and in small groups. You will learn to help students during the invention, planning, drafting, editing, revising and polishing stages of their writing. You will also be discussing the most salient means for helping students with their writing, ways of identifying individual student’s strengths and weaknesses as writers, and the pedagogical and curricular practices commonly employed in aiding student writers. Because you will eventually be working with actual students, you will gain not only knowledge about the field of Composition and Rhetoric, but also gain practical experience that will benefit you in terms of professional development, real-world teaching experience, graduate school applications, and/or Secondary English and community college teaching after you graduate.

Course requirements will necessitate regular attendance, participation in “mock tutorials,” observations at the UH Manoa Writing Center, three essays, and group work. In addition, you will be expected to present discussion questions based on the assigned reading as it relates to your personal experiences as a student writer and to design a research project dealing with your experiences tutoring actual students in the following semester. It is my hope that you might publish the findings of your research project. Additionally, “mock tutoring sessions” with your peers may be taped in order for you and your classmates to have an opportunity for observation/examination of your evolving teaching abilities.

Required Texts:
o Gillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. THE ALLYN AND BACON GUIDE TO PEER TUTORING (2nd edition). NY: Pearson, 2003. ISBN: 0-321-18283-9 (pbk).
o McAndrew, Donald A., and Thomas J. Reigstad. TUTORING WRITING. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2005. ISBN: 0-86709-518-0 (pbk).
o Murphy, Christina, and Steve Sherwood. THE ST. MARTIN’S SOURCEBOOK FOR WRITING TUTORS (2nd edition). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003. ISBN: 0-312-18850-1 (pbk).
o Rafoth, Ben, ed. A TUTOR’S GUIDE. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2005. ISBN: 0-86709-587-3 (pbk).
o Suggested Text: An optional text for this class is Martha Maxwell’s WHEN TUTOR MEETS STUDENT, 2nd edition (1994).

Resources for Your Work with Tutors: See the UH Mentors home page for valuable resources to tap when you begin tutoring.

ENGLISH 406 (1) ARGUMENTATIVE WRITING II (TR 12:00-1:15) - Daphne Desser
This is an advanced course in argumentative writing. We will concentrate on expository and argumentative prose while studying classical rhetorical devices as well as more recent conceptions the writing process and discourse communities in contemporary composition studies. Students will be engaged in “real world” writing assignments that will require them to refine their ability to collaborate with co-workers, assess their audience’s situation and needs, and write appropriately for many different contexts. Students will be required to volunteer for a local organization. They select a written document produced by that organization--such as an internal newsletter or a public relations brochure--and then analyze the particular rhetoric of that document, identifying key terms and uses of language that foster identification among members and thereby serve persuasive ends. Students then write an argument to that community on a specific topic, using the analysis they produced earlier to guide their rhetorical strategies and choices of language. Students are required to submit their argument to their community (e.g. in the form of a memo, proposal, or newsletter submission) and to include the response the community gives them, which they then use to revise their writing into a polished public document. The students’ work culminates in an additional final paper in which they reflect upon their experiences working within their chosen communities, upon the way discourse, ideology, and identity work to reinforce community identification and involvement, and upon the effectiveness of their attempts to persuade their community members.

Likely Texts: Crowley, Sharon and Deborah Hawhee. ANCIENT RHETORICS FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDENTS. 3rd edition. New York: Longman, 2004. Elbow, Peter. WRITING WITH POWER: TECHNIQUES FOR MASTERING THE WRITING PROCESS. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. o Hatch, Gary Layne. ARGUING IN COMMUNITIES: READING AND WRITING ARGUMENTS IN CONTEXT. 3rd edition. McGraw, 2005.

ENGLISH 410 (02): FORM AND THEORY OF POETRY (W 3:30-6:00) – Susan Schultz
This is a course in poetry and poetics (the philosophy of literature) that prepares students to take the 400-level workshop. We will read poems and essays about poetry. Students will also write poems and meditate on them in short essays. Background readings will include selections from Plato, Percy Byssche Shelley, Pablo Neruda, Adrienne Rich and other writers. Poems for the Millennium is an exciting anthology of world avant-garde writing, especially fruitful for the experiments we can make based on it.

Texts: Deborah Brown, Annie Finch, Maxine Kumin, eds., LOFTY DOGMAS: POETS ON Poetics, University of Arkansas Press; William Shakespeare, SONNETS, Dover Publications; Ron Padgett, HANDBOOK OF POETIC FORMS, Teachers & Writers; Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, eds. POEMS FOR THE MILLENIUM: VOLUME 1, University of California Press.

ENGLISH 433 (01)(W): 19TH CENTURY LIT: HENRY JAMES AND ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (MWF 9:30-10:20) – B. Menikoff
     
What do The Portrait of a Lady and Treasure Island have in common? One is a story set more than a hundred years earlier than its composition, of a relentless search for buried treasure, the spoils of piracy, and the other is a contemporary account of an orphaned young woman from upstate New York, and her search for happiness in the more cosmopolitan neighborhoods of England and Italy. While Stevenson was known as a master “adventure” romancer, and James as a consummate “psychological” novelist, in fact both believed in adventure in fiction and both were practitioners of psychological realism. They were also the best of friends and the most generous admirers of each other’s work. Henry James and Robert Louis Stevenson (along with Thomas Hardy) represent the high water mark of English language fiction in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This course can only cover a small number of texts by two extraordinarily prolific writers, but it will provide readers with a solid introduction to “hard core” literary classics like Kidnapped, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, “The Beast in the Jungle” and The Wings of the Dove, the latter holding one of the great final sentences in fiction. There is much more—stories of the South Seas like “The Beach of Falesá” and “The Bottle Imp” by Stevenson, and others of artists and the writing life like “The Middle Years” and “The Real Thing” by James. Finally, the careers of both writers were roller coaster rides in opposite directions. James, after early success, wound up virtually unread in his last years, only to be “recovered” by critics in the 1930s and become the staple of English departments afterwards. Stevenson, on the other hand, was known by his initials “R.L.S” throughout the English-speaking world in his lifetime, only to be dismissed as a “children’s” writer in the twentieth century and disappear from the curriculum. This course will inevitably raise questions about popular as opposed to literary fiction, the artist in relation to his art and his audience (biography will prove revealing here), and the nature of literary reputation. In short, good reading, often entertaining and occasionally challenging, but leaving the reader with a resonant aftertaste.

“James and Stevenson” is a writing intensive course and will include one or two short essays, a term essay of c. 10 pages, and a final exam. The format is lecture/discussion, with a strong focus on the latter term. The class also satisfies the single author requirement in the English department.

ENGLISH 434 (01)(W): STUDIES IN 20TH C TO PRESENT: UTOPIAN AND DYSTOPIAN LITERATURE (MWF 11:30-12:20) – Todd Sammons
This “Studies” course is a survey of utopian and dystopian literature from Plato to Margaret Atwood. It is, therefore, organized chronologically: after Plato, we will jump to the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries (just a few texts), to be followed by several texts from nineteenth-century America and Britain, early twentieth-century America and Britain, and later twentieth-century America, Britain, and Canada. The reading list is about one-third utopian texts, one-third dystopian, and one-third “hybrid” (utopian/dystopian; some of these texts are called “critical utopian”). Because this is a “Studies” course, students will be doing a great deal of individual research, culminating in a major research project due at the end of the term. Also because this is a “Studies” course, it carries a writing-intensive (“W”) designation.

Students who take this course will, I hope, gain (a) a nodding acquaintance with most of the important utopian and dystopian texts; (b) the realization that it is difficult to define the genres of utopian and dystopian (and critical utopian) literature; (c) concomitantly, insight into current conflicts about canonicity and “high” and “low” literature; (d) a sense of the continuities--especially in terms of the kinds of questions considered--that obtain among these texts; (e) concomitantly, again, a sense that the utopian/dystopian tradition has been punctuated at intervals with dramatic changes as social, political, and literary landscapes and ideologies have shifted; (f) the understanding that, even though usually about the future, utopian/dystopian literature frequently mirrors its own times, often in surprising ways; (g) some familiarity with utopian/dystopian poetics (how does an author represent a perfect/imperfect future?); (h) some familiarity with utopian/dystopian rhetoric--many of these texts call for dramatic changes in human behavior, frequently through warning about what will happen “if this goes on”--how, then, do utopian/dystopian authors make their fictions plausible and persuasive?; and (i) acquaintance with some of the important critical texts on utopian/dystopian literature, including those written about feminist utopias, dystopias, or critical utopias.

Besides frequent electronic letters posted to the entire class about the shared reading (and a portfolio at the end of the term based on these weekly letters) and the major research project, students in this “Studies” course will also work on a non-shared text (preparing a plot summary of, and synopses of three critical articles on, the non-shared text; delivering an oral report to the class on the text), be expected to participate frequently in class discussions, do some collaborative work (in pairs) on one of the shared readings, read (and summarize) a critical book on our topic, and critique a draft of a peer’s major research project.

Required texts: Plato’s REPUBLIC; More, UTOPIA; Swift, GULLIVER’S TRAVELS; Thoreau, WALDEN; Morris, NEWS FROM NOWHERE; Wells, THE TIME MACHINE; Gilman, HERLAND; Huxley, BRAVE NEW WORLD; Orwell, NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR; Skinner, WALDEN TWO; Bradbury, FAHRENEHIT 451; Burgess, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE; Le Guin, THE DISPOSSESSED; and Atwood, THE HANDMAID’S TALE.

“I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain,” the American remembers later. “I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear. . . . Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene.”

As of 1918, the year when World War I came to its end, many people felt that way. To them, the Gettysburg Address kind of language that had sent them off to war in 1914 seemed to be nothing but lies. But they didn’t know how language could be made truthful again. Fortunately, truth came to their rescue just four years later, in the glorious year 1922.

To see what that rescue involved, click on the three writing samples under English 440F on the web page at http://jonathanmorse.net. The first of those samples comes from Sinclair Lewis’s once famous, now forgotten novel BABBITT, which was published in 1922 but (topical references aside) might just as well have been published in 1852, the year of the second sample. But when you look at the third sample, from E. E. Cummings’s war memoir THE ENORMOUS ROOM, you’ll see something different. THE ENORMOUS ROOM was published in 1922 just like BABBITT, but unlike BABBITT it speaks of its new experiences in new language.

And of all the many language experiments that came to fruition in 1922, the most wonderful is James Joyce’s enormous novel ULYSSES, which just may turn out, one of these years, to be the greatest comedy in all the long history of western civilization. That, at any rate, will be the thesis behind this course.

We’ll spend about half the semester on ULYSSES accordingly, reading it in tandem with the tale it retells, THE ODYSSEY. Leading up to that experience, we’ll also read Joyce’s volume of short stories DUBLINERS and his short autobiographical novel A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN. To end the course, we’ll look at (but not read all the way through) the logical outcome of the language experiment that is ULYSSES: Joyce’s last work, FINNEGANS WAKE, a strange and wonderful descent into the dreamworld where the parts of speech are born.

You may not be the same after the experience, but the language you live through is guaranteed to look more interesting. Two five-page papers (one each about the two short books), one ten-page paper about ULYSSES, midterm, and final. Texts: Homer, THE ODYSSEY; Joyce, DUBLINERS, A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, and ULYSSES; Don Gifford, “ULYSSES” ANNOTATED.

ENGLISH 445 (02): SHAKESPEARE (TR 10:30-11:45) -- Valerie Wayne
In five of the plays that Shakespeare wrote, a woman is falsely accused of being unfaithful to her husband or fiance, with the result that much of the play turns on issues of fidelity and trust, gender and power. In this course we will read all of these plays plus one that provides the historical context of these narratives and conclude with HAMLET, whose central character is obsessed with the reliability or frailty of women. Since Shakespeare worked and reworked the plot of the falsely accused woman from the middle to the very end of his career, this course provides an opportunity to see how it was transformed through different genres, from the comedies and tragedies to the late romances, and how the story itself could change over time.

The books for this course will all be recent, single-volume editions of the plays, which will allow us to read some excellent introductions that situate the texts in relation to early modern social, political, and theatrical culture. The play that will help us appreciate the early modern interest in this story is KING HENRY VIII, because that king executed two of his (six) wives on the grounds of adultery. Since those executions affected the ways that Elizabethans and Jacobeans read these narratives, we will also explore the intersections between those events and the plays.

Students will be required to write two papers, take two midterms and a final, and give one oral presentation on a critical essay or part of one introduction. By the end of the course, students should have a fuller appreciation of how the same narrative can assume different generic forms, how historical events relate to literary texts, how the material requirements of theater affected the kinds of plays that one could write, and how some issues of gender and power were constructed in early modern culture. ALL BOOKS FOR THIS COURSE WILL BE AVAILABLE AT REVOLUTION BOOKS ON KING STREET. STUDENTS ARE REQUIRED TO PURCHASE AND USE THE EDITIONS LISTED BELOW.

Reading list: THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, ed. Giogrio Melchiori (Arden). MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, ed. Claire McEachern (Arden). OTHELLO, ed. Michael Neill (Oxford). CYMBELINE, ed. Martin Butler (Cambridge). THE WINTER’S TALE, ed. Susan Snyder and Deborah T. Curren-Aquino (Cambridge). KING HENRY VIII, ed. Gordon McMullen (Arden). HAMLET, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (Arden)

This course will explore the Miltonic universe, which means the world of early modern middle-class and revolutionary England as well as the classical, Christian, and Renaissance inheritance of Western culture that Milton, as the first great dead white male liberal and the most important Puritan in British literature, transformed into his own self-expression. We will study Milton's works in relation to his life—and his wives—as well as to the historical and ideological crises of the seventeenth century, following the tripartite sequence that history determined would be his extraordinary career: early quasi-Renaissance poetry, mature ideological treatises and sonnets, late epics and drama. Students will be responsible for two critical papers--one an analysis of early poetry, the other a paper on Paradise Lost, as well as participating in a written and oral group report on a prose work not read by other students; and there will be a mid-term and final examination.

Books required: John Milton, OXFORD AUTHORS: COMPLETE POEMS AND SELECTED PROSE. Oxford Authors (complete poems and selected prose). Lois Potter, A PREFACE TO MILTON

List of Books (available at Revolution Books on King Street): Carlos Bulosan, AMERICA IS IN THE HEART. Anzia Yezierska, THE BREAD-GIVERS. Monica Sone, NISEI DAUGHTER. Jamaica Kincaid, LUCY . Richard Rodriguez, HUNGER OF MEMORY. Tim Prchal and Tony Trigilio, editors, VISIONS AND DIVISIONS: AMERICAN IMMIGRATION LITERATURE, 1870-1930. Louis Mendoza and S. Shankar, editors, CROSSING INTO AMERICA: THE NEW LITERATURE OF IMMIGRATION. Course Packet of Readings.

This is a writing-intensive class. Assignments include two analytical essays, several short reaction papers, an individual oral presentation and a group one, and a final exam.

The course reader will include scholarly essays about the fairy tale and selections from Neil Gaiman’s FRAGILE THINGS, Nalo Hopkinson’s SKIN FOLK, Kelly Link’s MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS, and Sandra L. Beckett, RED RIDING HOOD FOR ALL AGES: A FAIRY-TALE ICON IN CROSS-CULTURAL CONTEXTS. Knowledge of the genre of the fairy tale and its history is not required, but would certainly help as background.

TEXTS: Murray Bail, EUCALYPTUS; Robert Coover, STEPMOTHER; Emma Donoghue, KISSING THE WITCH; Louise Murphy, THE TRUE STORY OF HANSEL AND GRETEL; Salman Rushdie, THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE; Bill Willingham, FABLES: 1001 NIGHTS OF SNOWFALL; Jeanette Winterson, LIGHT HOUSEKEEPING. Books will be available at Revolution Books.

ASSIGNMENTS: A short essay (5-6 pages) and a term paper (10-12 pages). Short writing assignments and frequent quizzes. A presentation. Group journals. Attendance is mandatory; missed classes will negatively impact your grade.

TEXTS (to be ordered through Revolution Bookstore): Dorothy Allison, BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA (novel); Margaret Atwood, THE HANDMAID'S TALE (novel); Tony Kushner, ANGELS IN AMERICA (play); R. Zamora Linmark, ROLLING THE Rs (novel); Lois-Ann Yamanaka, SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE PAHALA THEATRE (poetic novellas)

FILMS (to be placed on reserve in Sinclair Library): Stephen Daldry, director, THE READER; Deepa Mehta, director, FIRE (film); Kimberly Peirce, director, BOYS DON'T CRY (film); Susan Muska and Gréta Olafsdóttir, directors, THE BRANDON TEENA STORY (documentary)

A COURSE READER will include the following authors: Gloria Anzaldua, Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Freeman, Judith Butler, Ann Cvetkovitch, Michel Foucault, Gayatri Gopinath, Judith Halberstam, Guy Hocquenghem, Jonathan Katz, Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, David Mura, Jaspir Puar, Adrienne Rich, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Most of the classes will be in discussion mode. Each of the small groups will present two reports with prepared presentations that will include background information for their topics, such as reading guides, annotated bibliographies and writers’ profiles.

Another unit will center on creative writing techniques including the use of Pidgin English, whether in poetry, dialogue or in prose, its context and its various orthographies.

Students will take part in the in-class critical and creative writing experiences that will be shared by email, small group presentations, weekly reading responses, and blog entries on their research. They will regularly write analytically on literary elements discussed in lectures and readings. They will prepare a substantial portfolio containing an analytical paper (12 to 15 pages) which uses some of the discussion ideas in both creative and critical form as well as a creative writing assignment (10 to 15 pages) They may develop a credo and literary mission for their own writers’ communities. We will have several visits by guest speakers who are authors, editors, linguists, and literary scholar-critics.

Texts: A course packet that includes sections of Hiura and Sumida’s 1979 ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE OF HAWAII, AN ANOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY and Sumida’s AND THE VIEW FROM THE SHORE. Alani Apio, HE LEO HOU (a collection of four plays, inc. KAMAU). Bamboo Ridge Press, GROWING UP LOCAL. O.A. Bushnell, KA’A’AWA. Lee Cataluna, FOLKS YOU MEET IN LONG’S. Lisa Kanae, SISTA TONGUE and ISLANDS LINKED BY OCEAN (2009). Milton Murayama, ALL I ASKING FOR IS MY BODY and DYING IN A STRANGE LAND. Kent Sakoda, PIDGIN GRAMMAR. Susan Schultz (ed), TINFISH 18.5. Kathleen Tyau, A LITTLE TOO MUCH.

Reading packet also contains articles on issues of local literary writing, material from journals such as SEAWEEDS AND CONSTRUCTIONS, HAPA, ‘OIWI, HAWAI’I REVIEW, HLAC JOURNAL, MELUS, KAHUA O MANOA, material from a recently published anthology, tentatively HONOLULU STORIES, and further samples from Pidgin English writers.