300-400 Level Course Descriptions
Spring Semester 2007

English majors, minors, and Secondary Education majors should see their department advisor for information and assistance; others may contact Professor John Zuern, Undergraduate Director, in KUY 429. If you are interested in declaring English as your major, see Professor Zuern in Kuykendall 429; call 956-3048 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. Honors courses, (ENG 394 and ENG 492) are described below. All 300 and 400 level courses have prerequisites. Please refer to the Prerequisites section of this web page 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, Professor Caroline Sinavaiana, in Kuy 512 for further information.

English 366, 370, and 371 will be large courses with an enrollment of 60. They are designed for non-majors, though majors and minors may enroll in them for major/minor credit. See your advisor for additional information.

All 400-level "Studies" courses are designed to have a significant research component. You are encouraged to have had prior 300-level course work in a related field before taking a "Studies" course.

Completion of English 100 and two English 250-257 courses 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 250-57 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 Eng 306: grade of C or better in Eng 100, 101, or 200.

For Eng 311: Eng 100 and one Eng 250-257.

For Eng 313: Eng 100 and one Eng 250-257.

For Eng 411: Eng 313 and 410.

For Eng 414: Eng 313 and 413.

For Eng 415: Eng 361 or Eng 410.

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.

Written arguments will include weekly one-page arguments on topics supplied by your fellow students, a movie review (using a values argument), an argument based on a topic supplied by a journal in your particular field of study, and an argument based on one trial analysis from Famous Trials website. Prerequisite: C or better in English 100 or 200; or consent.

TEXTS: FROM CRITICAL THINKING TO ARGUMENT: A PORTABLE GUIDE and writing handbook of your choice—available at Revolution Books.

ENGLISH 306 (04 & 05) (W): ARGUMENTATIVE WRITING I (03)(TR 12:00-1:15); (04)(1:30-2:45) – Daphne Desser
This is an advanced course in 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. In this section of “Argumentative Writing,” students are 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.

Likely texts include: Crowley, Sharon and Deborah Hawhee. ANCIENT RHETORICS FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDENTS. 3rd edition. Elbow, Peter. WRITING WITH POWER: TECHNIQUES FOR MASTERING THE WRITING PROCESS. 2nd edition. Hatch, Gary Layne. ARGUING IN COMMUNITIES: READING AND WRITING ARGUMENTS IN CONTEXT. 3rd edition.

ENGLISH 306 (06)(W): ARGUMENTATIVE WRITING I (TR 10:30-11:45) – Staff

TEXTS (available at Revolution Books): TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION (Lay et al.) and Diana Hacker's POCKET STYLE MANUAL.

Course readings include short auto/biographical models and essays by autobiographical and biographical authors. You’ll read, for example, essays entitled “On Hurting People’s Feelings,” “Memory and Imagination,” “Detecting a Diary,” and “Telling Secrets.”

Why and how do we read literature? This course will assume that the purpose of "literary and rhetorical study of texts" is not mere comprehension of material (whether written words, images, or performance) but is itself a creative and ethical practice, grounded in and responsive to a network of cultural, social, historical, and psychological perceptions--as, indeed, are the "primary texts" themselves. We will examine and compare a variety of approaches to literary and critical works in an effort to distinguish the imperatives and assumptions that influence each perspective. We will also consider the practice of literary study within its historical and institutional contexts (who "studies" literary texts when and for what reasons?). Also, a major focus will be on the ethics of English studies: on the ethics of literary representation, literary reception, and the profession. Finally, we will learn and, at the same time, interrogate some of the current conventions used for researching and writing about literary texts, including objectivity, originality, relevant evidence--and MLA style.

Homework, class presentations and discussion leading, a 5-page literary essay on each of the three primary works and its criticism, a mandatory revision of one essay, active participation in class discussions.

Major Texts: Catherine Belsey, CRITICAL PRACTICE. Janet E. Gardner, WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE. William Shakespeare, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (Critical Edition). Mark Twain, THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN (Critical Edition). T.S. Elliot, THE WASTELAND (Critical Edition)

(Texts will be available at Revolution Books; if you plan to order online, please email me for the correct editions we will be using in class: cward@hawaii.edu).

ENGLISH 320 (03): INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH STUDIES (TR 12:00-1:15) – Candace Fujikane
As the saying goes, “Everyone’s a critic,” and in this course, we will all be examining our roles as critics who read, think, and write about literary and cultural texts. As literary critics, we will begin by engaging in close textual analyses of how stories are told and the narrative strategies writers use to challenge or transform the material conditions of their lives. We will discuss basic literary terminology, concepts, methods, and practices that illustrate the connections among people who read and write texts and the larger systems of power we navigate through each day. We will be focusing in particular on definitions and discussions of ideology and the social relations of power that underpin the ideological functions of literature. To help us to think about ideology and how it works, we will be analyzing the film THE MATRIX and the Wachowsky brothers’ shooting script for the film. In order to compare different points of entry into analyzing texts, we will also examine critical frameworks that foreground class, gender, and race, and then we will examine how these critical frameworks cannot be separated from each other even as they are often made (problematically) to compete with each other. We will end the course with debates over a novel that has generated much controversy in Hawai‘i in order to examine the material effects of our interpretive practices or what we might call the processes by which we “make meaning.”

Three papers, peer-editing, five short assignments, a group presentation, a final exam, attendance and participation.

TEXTS (available at Revolution Books): Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, eds., LITERARY THEORY: AN ANTHOLOGY (1998); Larry and Andy Wachowski, THE MATRIX: THE SHOOTING SCRIPT (2002); Lois-Ann Yamanaka, BLU’S HANGING (1997). A required course reader will include works by Herman Melville, Toni Morrison, Shakespeare, Gwendolyn Brooks, Haunani-Kay Trask, Louis Althusser, Claude McKay, Puanani Burgess, Darrell Lum, John Fiske, Adrienne Rich, Judith Butler, Violet Harada, Terry Eagleton, Virgilio Felipe, Jean Baudrillard, R. Zamora Linmark and others. The reader will be available during the second week of classes.

Readings will include selections from Homer’s ODYSSEY, Aeschylus’ AGAMEMNON, Sophocles’ OEDIPUS and ANTIGONE, Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES, the THE OLD TESTAMENT, THE NEW TESTAMENT, Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY, Malory’s MORTE D’ARTHUR, and modern rewritings of well-known fairy tales.

Primarily discussion with some background lectures; two midterms, two essays, a final, regular unannounced quizzes. Attendance is required.

TEXTS: THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE vols. 1C, 2A, 2B (paper); Stephen Cushman and Paul Newlin, A Nation of Letters, Volume 1 (paper).

This semester we will meet with the mad, the bad and the rude; with rule breakers and boundary crossers. Along with our texts, we will contemplate, question, and consider the ramifications of questioning concepts of the stability of the unified-subject, received notions of “big T” truth and social and cultural norms.

Assignments: Two (2) short essays, frequent reading quizzes, presentations on critical texts, a mid-term, final exam and participation will make up the final grade.

Possible Texts: ORLANDO, Virginia Woolf; FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN, John Fowles; THE BLOODY CHAMBER, Angela Carter, THE HANDMAID’S TALE, Margaret Atwood; THE COLOR PURPLE, Alice Walker; SEXING THE CHERRY, Jeanette Winterson, and a course kit which will include short-stories and critical essays. Films, to be screened in class, may include: THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN, SAMMY AND ROSE GET LAID or MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETT and an episode of the British sit-com ABSOLUETLY FABULOUS.

Books will be available at Revolution Books and the course kit at Professional Image

Requirements: Midterm and final exams; one short paper (3-4 pp) and one long paper (6-8 pp).

Text: THE BROADVIEW ANTHOLOGY OF BRITISH LITERATURE: THE VICTORIAN ERA (VOLUME 5)

Works under discussion will include poetry by W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heany, Stevie Smith, Tony Harrison, Ted Hughs and Eavan Boland; the novels MRS. DALLOWAY by Virginia Woolf, LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER by D. H. Lawrence, WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys, THE GRASS IS SINGING by Doris Lessing, and Atonement by Ian McEwan; and plays by Tom Stoppard and Caryl Churchill.

The writing requirements are three two-part mid-terms and a final exam.

Student Evaluation. The semester grade will be determined as follows: 3 mid-length (4-5 page papers) = 30% (the average of three paper grades, with one rewrite allowed); a Midterm and Final Exam (both in-class) = respectively, 25% and 35%; class participation = 10%. Steady attendance, keeping current with the reading, and meeting deadlines for class assignments are also all essential for getting a good grade in this class.

Text: THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE (Shorter 6th Ed.), General Ed. Nina Baym, 2003.

(Course text will be available at Revolution Books)

So, we will read a lot. We will discuss a lot—looking at some writers and selections in more depth than others, but getting a broad and exciting view of this important period. Since this is a writing intensive class, we will also do a variety of writing projects:

1. A class letter: you choose a topic and write to your classmates about something you have read and/or thought.
2. A reading journal on one section of the course.
3. A analytic paper on a topic that interests you, developed as you like. This paper will go through a process: topic, drafting, feedback from colleagues.
4. Finally, we will do in-class informal writings. These are designed to motivate
your reading, and also to provide a jumping off point for class discussion.

TEXTS: THE HEATH ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, ed. by Paul Lauter et al, 5th ed., Volumes C and D. Texts will be available at Revolution Books in Pucks Alley

ENGLISH 338 (01): AMERICAN LITERATURE SINCE MID-20TH CENTURY (MWF 10:30-11:20) – Barry Menikoff
Midcentury--a good word that promises more, perhaps, than it delivers. American writing from the middle of the twentieth century, just after the Second World War, to the present, is so various that it nearly defies categorization. The "giants" had virtually concluded their careers and were either collecting Nobels or being buried, and the "new" voices were suddenly getting attention in the magazines and publishing houses. This course will look at a highly selective, even arbitrary, number of those voices in short stories, novels, and memoirs.

We begin with that most influential collection of short fiction by one of The New Yorker's most original writers, J. D. Salinger's NINE STORIES. Distinction was brought to the field of African-American fiction in James Baldwin's stories, GOING TO MEET THE MAN, and, in what seemed an almost impossible feat, Raymond Carver managed to introduce a new way of speaking in WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE. For longer fictions, there is that standard bearer of the "Beat" generation, Jack Kerouac's ON THE ROAD, and a story set in Vietnam by one of America's finest living authors, Ward Just's A DANGEROUS FRIEND. For a change of pace, there is the shuddering pulp novella THE KILLER INSIDE ME, by the noir master, Jim Thompson, and as a complement, TRUE CONFESSIONS, the LA masterpiece by the late John Gregory Dunne. Finally, a short novel set in France by one of our underappreciated authors, James Salter's SPORT AND A PASTIME. For memoirs, we have Pete Hamill's tale of growing up in Brooklyn and Manhattan, A DRINKING LIFE, and Joan Didion's narrative of surviving devastating personal loss, THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING.

After the war there was a wild party, and nobody did parties better than Evelyn Waugh (A HANDFUL OF DUST), and Christopher Isherwood (overseas) in Berlin Stories. The 1930s were taken up with a number of things, including the Depression (Erskine Caldwell, TOBACCO ROAD), politics and sexual discovery (Mary McCarthy, THE COMPANY SHE KEEPS), and gangsters (Graham Greene's BRIGHTON ROCK, where "rock" = a popular hard candy in a seedy English seaside town). Passing over WW2 (the great novels of the period are epic works, recommended for summer reading), the Cold War emerged in the late 40s and 50s, along with one of its singular chroniclers, John Le Carre (THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD). If Carre looks at the world from a global perspective, there was always its counterpart, the hipped and jazzy narcissism of Nick Hornby's HIGH FIDELITYor the LA cool of Joan Didion's PLAY IT AS IT LAYS.

If there were a dartboard, with PAGE TURNER written in small caps in the center, how many bull's eyes would we have scored?

The most important thing you should know as a prospective student in Eng354 is that this is not a correspondence course. Rather, it presents an opportunity for a group of people who have a genuine interest in poetry—and perhaps even write a bit of their own—to meet in conversation twice a week, to read poems, take them apart and put them back together, and in the process discover how they work. The key here is the word conversation. Fully three-quarters of each student’s success in Eng354 will depend on what she or he says and does in the classroom. “Attending class” does not mean “occupying a seat,” but rather offering insights into the day’s reading, asking intelligent questions, and of course tactfully disagreeing if appropriate. There will be short writings (to be read), an oral presentation, and the mandatory final examination as well. If you have opinions about modern poetry or want to develop and refine some—in other words, if poetry matters enough to you to become engaged with it—this is your course.

This course is designed to offer the student a “gain of happiness” (can’t promise anything about “moral character”) and to convince the fearful student that even the most difficult poem is accessible. Accordingly, class members will be studying a large and varied body of poetry and will become comfortable using a critical vocabulary in discussions of both the structure and content of individual poems. One major project throughout the semester will involve a close scrutiny of several poems by one poet. In comparing that poet's critically acclaimed work with the works that have received lesser praise, we will be looking at the criteria critics use to judge a poem as "good" or "bad" (or "better" or "worse"). By the end of the semester, the confidence of the students in their ability to interpret poetic structures will have grown considerably. In addition to the selections in the Kennedy text, class members will receive handouts of poetry appearing in contemporary periodicals.

Written Requirements: Three papers, two short (3-5 pages) and one longer (8-10 pages); the occasional in-class essay; one midterm and one final examination. The final, longer paper will require research on a single poet anthologized within the Kennedy text.

Required Text: X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, AN INTRODUCTION TO POETRY, 12th EDITION.

MAJOR Works: ORESTEIA, EVERYMAN, THE SECOND SHEPHERDS PLAY, DR. FAUSTUS, MACBETH, THE CHANGELING, TWELFTH NIGHT, THE RIVALS, HEDDA GABLER.

Assignments: Quizzes, mid-term, final, class presentation.

TEXTS: HAMLET, THE TEMPEST, MACBETH, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, ROMEO AND JULIET, RICHARD III, HENRY V, TWELFTH NIGHT, HENRY IV, PART ONE

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; Lum and Chock, eds., THE BEST OF BAMBOO RIDGE; Linmark, ROLLING THE R’S; Yamanaka, BLU’S HANGING; Cataluna, THE FOLKS YOU MEET AT LONGS; Trask, LIGHT IN THE CREVICE NEVER SEEN; Kame‘eleihiwa, A LEGENDARY TRADITION OF KAMAPUA‘A, THE HAWAIIAN PIG-GOD. A required course reader will include works by Momiala Kamahele, ku‘ualoha ho‘omanawanui, Eiko Kosasa, Rodney Morales, Darlene Rodrigues, Noenoe Silva, Alice Chai, Peggy Choy, Dean Saranillio, and Richard Hamasaki. The course reader will be available during the second week of classes.

Using a multi-disciplinary approach, this course focuses on the intersection of Pacific Island cultures with Native Hawaiian culture as the crossroad for exploring cultural perspectives, values, and world views rooted in the experience of peoples indigenous to Hawai`i and the rest of the Pacific.

This course also introduces students to the contemporary literature of the Pacific written by indigenous Pacific islanders. Writers whose works will be studied are primarily from Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and Hawai`i.

This course will introduce post-World War II Filipino literary writings in English in the Philippines and in the United States. The various socio-cultural contexts, the political conditions and the emotional dilemmas of fictional characters in different times and space will be analyzed and critically studied. One important aspect of the course is the subject of diaspora or migration. It will focus on some writings that touch on the causes, problems and the concomitant effects of this phenomenon as viewed by various Filipino writers.

The course will begin with the development of Philippine Literature in English and then proceed to the discussion of literary works by well-known fictionists like Nick Joaquin, F. Sionil Jose, Estrella Alfon, Ninotchka Rosca, Jessica Hagedorn, Marianne Villanueva, Manuel Arguilla, Wilfredo Nolledo, Carlos Bulosan; poets like Marjorie Evasco, Edith Tiempo, Eric Gamalinda, Merlinda Bobis and Luis Francia, playwrights like Severino Montano and Amelia Lapena Bonifacio; as well as essayists like Nicholas Pichay, Gilda Cordero Fernando and Luis Teodoro.

Requirements: Class participation (attendance), three 7-paged papers; two group presentations; one individual presentation of a novel read; listening to guest speakers.

REQUIRED TEXT (available at Professional Image): READINGS IN IP 363 (A compilation of short stories, poems, plays and essays by Filipino writers). The instructor will provide a list of novels for the individual presentation.

Assignments will include two class presentations, a midterm, a final exam, and two short essays.

You’ll be reading books selected from the following: Iain Pears, DEATH AND RESTORATION; Martin Page, THE MAN WHO STOLE MONA LISA; Eva Figes, LIGHT (follows Monet painting one day from
sunrise to sunset); Tracy Chevalier, GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING (about Vermeer); Harriet Scott Chessman, LYDIA CASSATT READING THE MORNING PAPER (Mary Cassett painting her sister in multiple portraits); Dan Brown, THE DA VINCI CODE; Debra Dean, THE MADONNAS OF LENINGRAD; Will Davenport, THE PAINTER (mystery involving Rembrandt discovery); Susan Vreeland, THE PASSION
OF ARTEMISIA (on the Renaissance artist Artemisia Gentileschi).

Students will be asked to write poems relevant to the study of their city, including a walk poem, a catalogue poem, a poem made of found language, a poem composed entirely of directions, a poem in celebration and a poem in despair, as well as character portraits of people who live in the city. The final project will consist of a chapbook of poems. Students will also be required to contribute once a week to a class blog, and to write a statement of their poetics midway through the course. If students do not want to write poems, they may write essays, short fiction, or mixed genre pieces.

Among the questions addressed by the course will include the following: why do poets write about cities? How can poets intervene in the city’s life in meaningful ways? How can we construct poems out of disparate materials such as the languages that come together in cities, the inundation of images and sounds, and the relative formlessness of much life there?

Readings will include a packet of writings by Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, and Garcia Lorca (New York City), Charles Olson (Gloucester, MA), Linton Kwesi Johnson and Allen Fisher (London), Derek Walcott (Boston), Barrett Watten (Detroit), Douglas Oliver and Alice Notley (Paris), Eric Chock, Haunani-Kay Trask, Juliana Spahr and Gaye Chan, webmaster (Honolulu). The packet will also include historical and touristic writing about Honolulu.

And the following full-length volumes:

PRIME TIME APPARITIONS, R. Zamora Linmark (Manila, Honolulu, San Francisco) LUNCH POEMS, Frank O’Hara (NYC) POETA EN SAN FRANCISCO, Barbara Jane Reyes (San Francisco) DESCENT OF ALETTE, Alice Notley (mythical city)

Required text: Richard Veit, DISCOVERING ENGLISH GRAMMAR, 2nd ed. Grade based on short written exercises, quizzes, and exams.

Our aim in this class is not only to grasp this complexity, but also to use better this understanding of English in Hawaii in a multiple of contexts in the future, among them education, business, the literary arts, and public service.

Below is a tentative reading list, which will be supplemented by additional texts, and by classroom guests whose insight will enrich our study. Students will be expected to write two short papers, a long paper, and a final examination, and to report singly and in groups on topics of the day and the week.

Readings to include: excerpts from John Reinecke’s LANGUAGE AND DIALECT IN HAWAII; A SOCIOLINGUISTIC HISTORY TO 1935, Elizabeth Ball Carr’s DA KINE TALK: FROM PIDGIN TO STANDARD ENGLISH IN HAWAII; essays and articles by Derek Bickerton and William Wilson, Richard Day, Kevin Kawamoto, Suzanne Romaine, and Charlene Sato; and literary texts by Lisa Kanae, Lee Tonouchi, and Lois-Ann Yamanaka.

This course introduces you to the exciting field of composition instruction through a unique approach: you will be working alongside an experienced instructor as her or his tutor in English 101. At the same time, you will be reading a range of scholarship on the topic of tutoring, from very practical and hands-on support for your work in these one-on-one sessions to more theoretical treatises that help you situate this work in the larger field of rhetoric and composition, the fastest-growing subfield of English studies. Issues to be addressed include how to teach grammar, organization, style, and creativity, how to respond effectively, how to teach in small groups, and how to teach one-on-one. We will meet each week in a seminar format to share ideas, reflections, and challenges, and we will make use of an online writing forum to complement these face-to-face sessions. You will keep a log of your tutoring sessions, to be used during class discussions and as a basis for a reflective analysis paper at the end of the term. Other writing assignments include an analysis of your own writing processes, completed early in the semester and a description of a peer's tutoring session. By the end of the semester you will have a strong portfolio of your work, which might be used when applying for jobs or to graduate school, along with this valuable work experience to be added to your résumé.

TEXTS: Gillespie and Lerner’s THE ALLYN AND BACON GUIDE TO PEER TUTORING, 2nd edition (2004), Ben Rafoth's A TUTOR'S GUIDE (2005), and Murphy and Sherwood’s THE NEW ST. MARTIN’S SOURCEBOOK FOR WRITING TUTORS, 2nd edition (2003).

The course is intended to follow English 307 (Rhetoric, Composition, and Computers) and differs from it in two basic ways: 307 is grounded in theories and practices of classical rhetoric and asks students to explore online discourse communities; 407 is grounded in theories and practices of contemporary rhetoric and asks students to explore a range of technological applications that mediate the production of writing and its impact on how and what we think.

Despite that link and intention, English 307 is not a prerequisite for 407. This course is designed for technophobes as well as technophiles, newbies as well as seasoned experts. So long as you know what the World Wide Web is, how to use email, and how to compose in a word-processing program, you will be able to succeed. In the past, this course has been very popular among majors in English, education, CIS, journalism, and business.

Required Texts: one packet of course readings to purchase.

Near the end of the semester, students will give presentations based on interviews with professional editors. Learning outcomes include the following: recognizing errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, and diction; correcting these errors using standard editing principles and marks; and using such editing manuals as THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE.

Required text: course packet of relevant readings

Texts: Ed Bok Lee, KARAOKE PEOPLE; Jacinta Galea`i, ACHING FOR MANGO FRIENDS; Kamau Brathwaite, MIDDLE PASSAGES; Joe Brainard, I REMEMBER, and a couple others.

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS: Each student will produce 2 or more submissions for the workshop. These may be short stories (of any style, mode, or topic), or novel chapters, or a combination. The 2 or more submissions must total at least 20 pages. Students will also be required to write critiques of fellow workshop members' fiction submissions. These are an important part of learning what works or not, and why, in fiction writing. Similarly, students may also be asked to write one or more short papers on the books assigned for the course.

READING ASSIGNMENTS: Reading as a writer is important to any writer’s development, but few of us are trained to do it. We are fortunate to have Ph.D. candidate and well-published fiction writer Tammy Pavich assisting in the course, especially with close readings of the assigned books by Chaon and Carver. There may be a few other readings as well.

INSTRUCTOR: Robert Shapard’s fiction won a national Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and most recently a national chapbook competition. He has been editor of several literary magazines and half a dozen fiction anthologies. Tammy Pavich’s fiction has appeared in various outstanding literary magazines; she is finishing her Ph.D. at UH-M this spring.

REQUIRED TEXTS: AMONG THE MISSING, by Dan Chaon. Paperback. Ballantine Books, Reprint Edition, 2002. WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE, by Raymond Carver. Paperback. Vintage, Reissue Edition, 1989.

And Mallarmé replied: “Poems aren’t made of ideas; they’re made of words.”

From the outside, that idea about poetry as technique sounds both grim and smug. From the inside, though – that is, from the point of view of someone trying to write a poem – it’s both liberating and fun. Learn how a traditional form like the sonnet or the rondeau works, learn how to count the syllables in a line of traditional verse, learn how to make a line of modern verse sound like more than just a chopped-off length of prose, and your own writing, from the loftiest poetry to the most casual IM, is sure to get more interesting.

That’s a promise. It’s also what this prosody course will cover.

Midterm, final, two five-page papers, many verse exercises. Depending on group dynamics, we may also do something that was a regular feature of this course when it was taught by the now retired Prof. Nell Altizer: a final reading party, open to the public.

TEXTS: THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY; Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes, AN EXALTATION OF FORMS.

As this is a Studies course, your work will focus on coordinating your reading of primary literary texts and secondary critical, theoretical, philosophical, and historical materials. Class discussion will emphasize the techniques of close critical reading within particular theoretical frameworks. 70% of your grade for this class will be based on your written work, including brief weekly blog postings (total equivalent to 4-5 pages); 3 precis on secondary materials (1 page); 2 critical response papers in which you develop your skills in the integration of primary and secondary materials (3 pages); 1 abstract of your research paper (1 page); 1 formal research paper (10-12 pages) The remaining 30% of your grade will be made up of a mid-term and a final exam, each counting 15%.

TEXTS: (texts will be available from Revolution Books): Dorothy E. Allison, BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA; Lee Edelman, NO FUTURE: QUEER THEORY AND THE DEATH DRIVE; Judith Halberstam, IN A QUEER PLACE AND TIME; R. Zamora Linmark, ROLLING THE R'S; E. Annie Proulx, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (story and screenplay); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE CLOSET; Virginia Woolf, ORLANDO; a course packet of selected readings from Aristotle, Bakhtin, Barthes, Benveniste, Butler, Cvetkovitch, Freud, Genette, Hocquenhem, Lacan, Nietzsche, and Skhlovsky.

We begin with a complete reading of Vergil's AENEID, the most influential work of Western literature, and proceed to look at significant excerpts from subsequent works that deliberately supplement, transcend, or quarrel with the national Roman epic of historical tragedy and historical triumph: Ariosto's ORLANDO FURIOSO (1532), Camoens's THE LUSIADS (1572), Tasso's JERUSALEM DELIVERED (1575), Spenser's the FAERIE QUEENE (1596), and Milton's PARADISE LOST (1667). We will come to intimately understand and appreciate epic literary conventions, but we will also come to learn much about war, violent religious controversy, ethics, politics, and gender roles: women are enormously important in each of these works, usually as threats to the imperial mission but also as its catalyst, participant, or inspiration.

You will be writing a brief comparison paper on some feature of the AENEID that is rewritten in a later epic; keeping a notebook of responses to the works; and producing a final comparative paper on two of the Renaissance epics.

Assignments: Attendance and participation (10%), Aeneid comparison paper (20%), Course journal (20%), Renaissance comparative paper (30%), Final exam (20%)

TEXTS: AENEID, ORLANDO FURIOSO, LUSIADS, JERUSALEM DELIVERED, FAERIE QUEENE, PARADISE LOST (Supplemental: ILIAD, ODYSSEY, SONG OF ROLAND, QUEST OF THE HOLY GRAIL)

What happens to him after his ship docks takes form as a ghost story. And, as we’ll see in this course, there was nothing unique in that respect about “The Jolly Corner.” Artists and writers throughout the modernist period (the glorious first third of the twentieth century) have found themselves haunted by the urban world they lived in. What we’ll do in this course, therefore, will be to take a tour of some modernist and post-modernist haunts. Some of these will be architectural (the prophetically totalitarian landscape created out of the “real” world by Hugh Ferriss), some will be literary (Virginia Woolf’s London, a matrix where feelings are born; Andrei Bely’s St. Petersburg, a map morphing into a strangling political nightmare; William Carlos Williams’ cheerfully grimy Rutherford, New Jersey, where the power plant remarks, “Ummmm” to Dr. Williams’ car), and some will be cinematic. The technologies of representation were full of nervous energy during the modernist period, and if we do the reading and the seeing right we may re-experience some of its shiverings and joys for ourselves. Two five-page papers, one ten-page paper, midterm and final.

TEXTS & VIDEOS: Henry James, THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE AND OTHER STORIES; Andrei Bely, PETERSBURG; Virginia Woolf, MRS. DALLOWAY; William Carlos Williams, IMAGINATIONS; E.L. Doctorow, RAGTIME; Hugh Ferriss, THE METROPOLIS OF TOMORROW; Marshall Berman, ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR; DVD, MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA; DVD, METROPOLIS

So our task in this class is to confront this astonishing character via reading about his life and reading much of what he wrote: most of the poems; many of his plays (including his masterpieces, VOLPONE [1606], EPICENE [1609], THE ALCHEMIST [1610], and BARTHOLOMEW FAIR [1614]); his literary criticism; and a few of his court masques. I will lecture where needed, but we will have plenty of time for in-class discussions (and many reports; see below).

ASSIGNMENTS will mimic the kind of writing and other activities that Jonson himself did, insofar as this is possible in the modern academic environment. So, just as Jonson gathered the “sons of Ben” about him of an evening in various London taverns, you will be producing throughout the semester a series of E-LETTERS (these will be distributed to the class via our WebCT site) on the various Jonsonian texts we will be reading; you will be participating avidly in CLASS DISCUSSIONS; and in lieu of a midterm, you will give in class an ORAL REPORT ON ONE OF JONSON’S LYRIC POEMS. Jonson kept a commonplace book, a record of memorable quotations from his reading, so you too will keep a COMMONPLACE BOOK, in which you will record striking generalizations you have come across about Jonson and his work. The conversation that Jonson had with William Drummond of Hawthornden in the middle of Jonson’s prodigious walking tour from London to Scotland (and back) in 1618 is recorded in the CONVERSATIONS; you will pick an entry from this book and explicate it in a WRITTEN REPORT. Jonson was in the habit of writing prefaces to his plays, so you will read and write a SUMMARY OF THE PREFATORY MATERIAL in an important edition of one the plays that we will be reading. He also had a long battle with Inigo Jones about who was more important in the production of court masques--the lyricist (i.e., Jonson) or the set designer (i.e., Jones). You will REPORT ON A MASQUE WE WON’T BE READING AS A CLASS. Finally, even after his stroke Jonson kept on writing almost until the day he died; at the end of our course, you will write a FINAL EXAMINATION and a LONG ESSAY ON ANY ASPECT OF JONSON’S ACHIEVEMENT. To stave off fatality, only the higher of those last two grades will count toward your course grade.

TEXTS: James Loxley, THE COMPLETE CRITICAL GUIDE TO BEN JONSON (2002); George Parfitt, ed., BEN JONSON: THE COMPLETE POEMS (1996); Gordon Campbell, ed., BEN JONSON: The Alchemist AND OTHER PLAYS (1995) [the other plays are VOLPONE, OR THE FOX; EPICENE, OR THE SILENT WOMAN; and BARTHOLOMEW FAIR]; and Margaret Jane Kidnie, ed., BEN JONSON: The Devil is an Ass AND OTHER PLAYS (2000) [the other plays are POETASTER, OR THE ARRAIGNMENT; SEJANUS HIS FALL; and THE NEW INN, OR THE LIGHT HEART]. I’ll give you handouts with the texts of the court masques that we will all read.

It may be a good idea to consider two issues at the start: First, Shakespeare wrote his plays as fast-paced, novel, customer-oriented entertainment for an immediately responding (and paying!) audience. It therefore should be appropriate to relate them to popular entertainment as much as to the customary “classics.” And second, there has been greater consensus about Shakespeare as an artist of extraordinary range and power than about anyone else, and this does not appear to be a reactionary plot.

Our course will have a lecture-discussion format. There will be a midterm, a final (one of them probably take-home), short class reports, and an essay project.

As an attempt to understand its phenomenal development and growth, this course will look at the historical, political, social and cultural issues that have governed the content and form of contemporary Korean film.

The requirements for the course will include:
• Short reviews of the films shown for class.
• Three essays, each approximately 1,000 words in length.
• Essay midterm and final exams.
• Excellent attendance and full participation in class discussions.

We will be viewing at least ten films outside of our regular class, to be shown every Tuesday, 3:00-5:00 pm at the Center for Korean Studies, UHM campus. Attendance is required. The films shown may include WHITE BADGE, SH’IRI, JSA, OASIS, PAKHA SATANG [PEPPERMINT CANDY], SOPYONJE, MY SASSY GIRL, SAMARIA, OLD BOY and KWI-MUL. The texts may include the following, which will be made available at Revolution Books:

• Ahn, WHITE BADGE
• McHugh and Abelman, SOUTH KOREAN GOLDEN AGE MELODRAMA
• Monaco, HOW TO READ A FILM
• Shin and Stringer, NEW KOREAN CINEMA

A packet of readings will also be available for purchase at the copying service in the Campus Center.

Tentative reading list (subject to change): AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FACE by Lucy Grealy; SING-SONG by Anne Kennedy; WHERE THE BODY MEETS MEMORY: AN ODYSSEY OF RACE, SEXUALITY AND IDENTITY by David Mura; ON RUE TATIN: LIVING AND COOKING IN A FRENCH TOWN by Susan Herrmann Loomis; HOW OUR LIVES BECOME STORIES by Paul John Eakin; READING AUTOBIOGRAPHY: A GUIDE FOR INTERPRETING LIFE NARRATIVES by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson; A MILLION LITTLE PIECES by James Frey; and A MOVEABLE FEAST by Ernest Hemingway. Additional materials will be available on UH Web CT.

The purpose of this course is to survey and explore ways in which women function as heroic figures in traditional Polynesian oral narrative, including mythology, legend and folktale, as well as in contemporary literatures in translation. Heroic motifs 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, Aotearoa, and Tonga, among others. The course will explore cross-cutting influences of colonialism, the sexual revolution, and western education on contemporary literatures by Polynesian women writers.

Literary texts will be drawn from contemporary writing by indigenous women of Polynesia as emergent ‘speakers’ and writers of both individual and collective narratives of their respective peoples. With a focus on the female hero in narrative, poetry, drama, film and essay, we will consider developmental linkages between oratures and their literary counterparts in the context of historical, social, and political transformations.

TEXTS: WOMEN WRITING OCEANS: special issue of PACIFIC STUDIES, Ed. Caroline Sinavaiana and J. Kehaulani Kauanui; WAHINE TOA, Patricia Grace &Robin Kahukiwa; HAWAI’I NEI, Victoria Kneubuhl
COUSINS, Patricia Grace; COURSE READER (available from Marketing and Publications)

Short Films (students are not expected to purchase these): PATU, directed by Merata Mita, a O TAMAITI, directed by Sima Urale

Students will be expected to: Write reaction/response papers & online postings. Give panel presentation(s) based on weekly readings. Write a report on independent project-in-process. Produce an Independent Project which may be either a critical essay (12-15 pages), or a mixed media presentation which includes a substantial written component in essay form articulating the conceptual framework and trajectory of the work.

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

Extra credit: Reviews or reports on approved plays and/or films.

Literary texts will be drawn from contemporary writing by indigenous women of Polynesia as emergent ‘speakers’ and writers of both individual and collective narratives of their respective peoples. With a focus on the female hero in narrative, poetry, drama, film and essay, we will consider developmental linkages between oratures and their literary counterparts in the context of historical, social, and political transformations.

TEXTS: WOMEN WRITING OCEANS: special issue of Pacific Studies, Ed. Caroline Sinavaiana and J. Kehaulani Kauanui; WAHINE TOA, Patricia Grace &Robin Kahukiwa; HAWAI’I NEI, Victoria Kneubuhl
COUSINS, Patricia Grace; COURSE READER (available from Marketing and Publications)

Short Films (students are not expected to purchase these): PATU, directed by Merata Mita, a O TAMAITI, directed by Sima Urale.

Students will be expected to: Write reaction/response papers & online postings. Give panel presentation(s) based on weekly readings. Write a report on independent project-in-process. Produce an Independent Project which may be either a critical essay (12-15 pages), or a mixed media presentation which includes a substantial written component in essay form articulating the conceptual framework and trajectory of the work.

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

Extra credit: Reviews or reports on approved plays and/or films