This page has information on the following classes:
Eng 504,
ENG 517,
ENG 614,
ENG 502,
ENG 608G,
American Studies 621G
ENG 504: Advanced Creative Writing, has as its target audience the
following populations:
Creative writing courses at each level
should assume more pronounced ability on the part of the student and an
interest on the instructor’s part in making the class distinct from what has
come before. Although you may write in any genre you choose in this course,
I will be asking you to choose one genre and stay in it for the duration of
the term. I will then set goals for output (a certain number of poems for
poets, pages for prose writers). There will be common reading that will
consist of works in which writers write about why they do what they do and,
in some cases, how they do it. Call it poetics, if that’s not too grand for
you.
To get permission to register if you have the
prerequisites, e-mail
mbarron@truman.edu
and include your Banner ID number.
ENG 517: Comparative Literature
Here is the
preliminary syllabus and schedule. Enrolled students will receive the
course updates as they are changed.
ENG 517 Fall 2007
Schedule
ENG 517 Fall 2007 Syllabus
ENG
614:
Major British Writers
Here’s the line-up for
Major British Writers: I’m hearing these are ‘gap’ titles for a lot of
people, and they’re fun. Titles with an asterisk* are just really long reads
we’ll need to plan for and pace ourselves – Gatorade, chocolate, whatever it
takes. The others are around 200- 250 pages. I think we’ll have to squeeze
in bits of Arnold, Tennyson and Browning poetry as well. Themes, issues . .
.gender, gender, gender, enlightenment/Gothic, Victorian social change,
religion/science/where does morality come from, Napoleonic wars, orphans and
mysterious benefactors, fin-de-siécle decadence, modernist urban angst and
goddesses, no small amount of satire, all the usual.
I’ll look for good
editions to order and get back with you.
Mary Shelley,
Frankenstein
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
_______, Persuasion
Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
George Eliot, Middlemarch*
________, Silas Marner
William Thackery, Vanity Fair*
Charles Dickens, Great
Expectations*
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of
Dorian Gray,
Virginia Woolf, Orlando
_______, Mrs Dalloway
ENG 502: Mythology
Martha Bartter
While not specifically a
'graduate' course, I have (in the past) had graduate students enrolled.
Generally, the course deals with mythography as well as world mythology--and
the 'extra' course work for graduate students consists of evaluating
currently available scholarly mythology texts and deciding which (if any)
they would use in teaching an undergraduate myth course.
ENG 608G: Instruction—Secondary
English
Paul L Yoder
The course is a direct preparatory experience
for the responsibilities of the teaching internship and is designed to offer
you a practical approach at applying theoretical pedagogical strategies to
real world issues surrounding English education. As a group we will explore
the major components of English instruction from a perspective of current
research and your own previous knowledge base. From this point of departure
we will begin to conceptualize this work as a frame with which to devise a
toolbox of ‘real life’ approaches to addressing the multifaceted issues
facing the classroom English teacher. It is our ultimate goal to move
beyond the abstract concepts of modern educational theory and find ways to
include them as a basis for successful instruction.
In this course we will cover six foundations
of instruction: How We Learn,
Curriculum, Teaching English as Subject Matter, Multiculturalism, Forms of
Assessment, and Classroom
Management. All are concepts that you have addressed in one form
or another in previous courses; however, we want to turn toward further
developing each of these related topics to your own vision and style of
teaching—to begin to make each of these your own. As a teacher, you will
have to find your own presence in the classroom. While much of that
presence will come only by standing in front of your own students, our work
in this class will help you to further refine who you are as an educator.
You will see that while I have divided the
course into six main topics, the specific nature of those topics will be
left open for you to explore as your interest leads you. My hope is that
you will use these issues as a starting point for refining ideas for your
final research projects. Through your own studies, as well as the interests
of the other students, we will discuss related issues from a number of
styles, interpretations and perspectives (often contradicting one another).
Within these discussions you are to find your own voice, and I expect you to
use that voice to become an informed member of the profession.
American Studies 621G: “The
Jazz Age”
Alanna Preussner
Scott Fitzgerald’s
description, “The Jazz Age,” has stuck to this era for good reasons.
American culture was changing fast via appropriation, experimentation,
international influences, and collisions with older forms. The sheer number
and range of important figures, events, and artifacts is incredible. Allow
some examples to marinate a bit:
-
Prohibition and
bathtub gin
-
Flappers
-
The Harlem Renaissance
in literature, music, dance, and art
-
Cubist art and Georgia
O’Keeffe’s Southwest
-
Charles Lindbergh’s
transatlantic flight—and the kidnapping of his son
-
“Lost Generation”
expatriates
-
The Algonguin Round
Table
-
Isadora Duncan’s and
Josephine Baker’s modern dance
-
The Scopes “monkey”
trial
-
“It” Girl Clara Bow
-
The Sacco and Vanzetti
case
-
Amelia Earhart’s
flights
-
The rise of gangsters
like Al Capone
-
Jane Addams’
Hull
house
-
KKK rallies and race
riots
-
Silent films and
talkies
-
Dizzying prosperity
and the Crash of 1929
-
The Negro Baseball
Leagues
-
Feminist activists
like Jeanette Rankin
-
Writers including F.
Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Willa Cather, William Faulkner,
e.e.cummings, Marianne Moore, and many more
-
And especially, music
by Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Jelly Roll Morton, women’s bands, and
artists who followed in later eras.
This
seminar on The Jazz Age will consider a variety of texts: fiction, poetry,
music, graphic arts, dance, and film. The working list includes
Films:
The Jazz Singer, Some Like It Hot,
Ken Burns’ Jazz
documentary series
Cather, Willa.
A Lost Lady. Vintage reissue,
1990.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott.
The Great Gatsby. Scribner,
1999.
- - -.
Babylon
Revisited and Other Stories. Scribner reprint, 1996.
Hemingway, Ernest.
A Moveable Feast. Vintage New
Ed, 2000.
Hughes, Langston.
The Collected Poems. Vintage
Classics, 1995.
Larsen, Nella.
Passing. Penguin Classics,
1997.
Parker, Dorothy.
The Portable Dorothy Parker.
Penguin Classics, 2006.
