Spring 2009 Courses
English 150ER: Literature, Self and Society.
1.0 credit.
Instructor: Joan Kopperud, Amy Watkin
What does literature have to do with my life? What kinds of impacts can literature have on a society? How will learning to read and write about literature help me to become responsibly engaged in the world? In this class we will emphasize ways to read and respond to fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction mainly from American and European cultures. We will be creatively engaging with literature in various ways, such as forming book clubs or attending plays. Open to first-year students.
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English 160ERG: Global Literature and Human Experiences
1.0 credit.
Instructor: Dawn Duncan
This course focuses on literature from diverse cultures throughout the world. Selections are made from fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction that address important issues in our lives. Emphasis is placed on ways to read and respond to literature. The dimensions of identity as expressed in literature will focus much of our study. As we analyze and discuss the content and contexts of literary texts from around the globe, we will explore both cultural diversity and human commonality, two aspects that lead us to a respect for the individual, and lead us to greater understanding of the individual as a member of various interdependent communities. Such an understanding will better enable you to engage responsibly with others in the world, to understand and appreciate the grounds for interaction underlying various texts that originate from diverse cultures.
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English 227R: Foundations of Creative Writing
1.0 credit
Instructor: Bill Snyder
This course will provide a background in creative writing in three genres: poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction. We will begin with poetry, and by studying three established, contemporary American poets. With the use of a poetry writing manual, we will write about and discuss these poets' work. After our formal study of poetry and poetry craft, we will write three poems, each one to be workshopped and discussed. Next, a section will be devoted to nonfiction; we will read and discuss contemporary nonfiction articles and essays from anthologies, the New York Times Magazine, and other sources. To round out the course, we will study the writing of short fiction, using the same approach as in our study of poetry. We will write one short story for class workshops and discussion; that story will be taken through two workshop drafts.
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English 230: Introduction to Literary Scholarship
1.0 credit.
Instructor: Roland Finger, Jim Postema
This course will give students an introduction to major approaches to reading and writing within the discipline of English. Students will learn techniques for writing about literature and using research methods that provide theoretical and historical contexts for interpretation. Our thematic focus will be on desire, guilt, and injustice. We will pursue in-depth study of a classic literary work, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and one contemporary novel. We will pay particular attention to how our literary heritage's settings, structures, and obsessions have been haunted by gender, social, and ethnic inequalities.
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English 317: News Writing
1.0 credit
Instructor: Cathy McMullen
This is good preparation for any writing course. It is also helpful to business and pre-law students, as it is an opportunity to hone writing skills. The class is composed of some lecture, discussion, peer writing workshops, and frequent guest speakers. Assignments will include five news stories (each with two drafts), writing exercises, correspondence via email with professional journalists who serve as mentors, and student-led discussions on readings. We will be using the following texts: Reporting and Writing by Christopher Scanlan, and the AP Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law.
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English 318: Feature Writing
1.0 Credit.
Instructor: Nancy Jones
(prerequisite: Eng. 317)
In this class, we will explore the craft of feature writing through extensive reading and writing assignments designed to help you determine how and where to find good stories; to give you experience in setting up interviews, conducting background research, and developing your ideas into polished work; to hone your powers of observation and narration; to strengthen your appreciation and use of techniques borrowed from fiction such as character development, dialogue, language, rhythm, figures of speech, and sensory detail; and to develop your critical skills as a reader of your own, your peers', and published authors' work. This course will focus on both newspaper and magazine writing, and you will produce polished feature stories for both markets. In addition, we'll talk about targeting your work to specific publications, and you'll try to place at least one story in The Concordian or other newspaper or magazine. In addition, we'll periodically meet with various guest journalists and others to learn more about the craft of feature writing. At the conclusion of the semester, you'll turn in a portfolio of your work-including your writing journal, a self-evaluation, a "meditation" on the nature of the feature story, and your revised and completed stories.
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English 324: Technical Writing
1.0 credit.
Instructor: Dean Froslie
This course is designed to give students experience in writing a variety of technical documents including business reports, users' manuals, scientific reports, grant proposals, and online content. The emphasis of the assignments is on solving communication problems for an organization or business by writing concisely with careful attention to the audience and mechanical correctness. This course is useful to people in a variety of majors including English, business, the sciences, social work, communications, and computer science for careers that will require writing.
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English 346: British Literature: Empire To Independence (1830-present).
1.0 credit.
Instructor: Dawn Duncan
Offered every third semester in rotation with ENG 326 and Eng 336. A study of texts, themes, and literary developments in British Literature from the Victorian period of empire building to the present day. Emphasis on such authors as Tennyson, Yeats, Woolf, and Joyce. We will also focus on applying various critical schools of thought, such as postcolonial, biographical, and gender theory. The final work will be a contemporary novel that utilizes the Victorian style in a very postmodern way. And since Dr. Duncan is teaching, you can be sure that Ireland will be sufficiently represented in the selections.
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English 355: American Literature: Realism to Present
1.0 credit
Instructor: Jim Postema
A study of the texts, themes and literary developments in 20th- and 21st-century American literature, from the "Realism" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, through the Modernist revolutions of the 1910s and '20s, to the divergent movements following World War II that blossomed into a great variety of forms and approaches used in the last 30 years. Emphasis on the diverse perspectives of writers in all these eras, such as Crane, Wharton, DuBois, Eliot, Hughes, Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Ginsberg, Silko, Hong Kingston, Tim O'Brien and Mukherjee
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English 358U: Native American Literatures
1.0 credit
Instructor: Roland Finger
In English 358, we will study some of the key works that have made Native American Literature a major force in world literary culture. This course will include the close examination of some of the traditions, histories, and regions that have shaped Native writers and their texts. We will pay particular attention to the oral and cultural traditions of two tribal groups from this region, Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and the Dakota/Lakota (Sioux), while also exploring other rich Native literary heritages that have continued to rise throughout North America.
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English 365U: Writing of Women
1.0 credit
Instructor: Nancy Jones
In Writing of Women we will read, discuss, and write about texts written by women, about women. Questions we will consider include: What does the designation, "women," mean as a political and social (as well as biological) construct? How does the construct, "women," vary by class, race and ethnicity, region and nationality, religion, generation and age, sexual orientation, access to education and the means to earn a living, different abilities? In addition, we will examine how each author's choice of various formal (structural) elements of fiction-point(s) of view, psychic distance, narrative tense, chronology (or lack thereof), repetition, imagery, symbol, language, etc.-influence our reading of the texts and understanding of the characters.
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English 377: Nonfiction Writing Seminar
1.0 credit.
Instructor: Scott Olsen
(377 meets with 477; the 477 students mentor 377 students.)
English 377 is the first part of the nonfiction writing seminar. We will look at a wide range of contemporary nonfiction, everything from memoir to journalism to writing about science, and students will generate and revise a collection of their own nonfiction.
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English 401XH: Shakespeare and the English Renaissance
1.0 credit
Instructor: Gordon Lell
This Integration course includes one play each week along with one chapter of the history text each week. We study plays from all four dramatic genres: comedy, history, tragedy, and romance. Film/video labs (optional) feature full-length productions of the plays every Wednesday and Thursday night. Texts are Shakespeare, Works, ed. Bevington, and Smith, This Realm of England.
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English 403: Advanced Reporting
1.0 credit
Instructor: Patrick Springer
(prerequisite: English 317)
We call this class advanced reporting, but could just as well call it facts with flair. We take the skills developed in basic reporting and build upon them. This class calls for students to delve into their subjects, writing and revising at least four news stories. Students have considerable latitude in choosing their subjects, with a few requirements: at least one story must be a news feature, a hybrid that blends elements of "hard" news and features, and at least one story must focus on some social issue or aspect of public affairs. At the end of the course, students will have produced a polished portfolio of journalistic writing samples. Students' work is published in an online class publication.
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English 410X: George Bernard Shaw
1.0 credit
Instructor: Dawn Duncan
(Note that Eng 410 is a variable topic class; you may count the class multiple times as long as the topic has changed.)
One of the most prolific writers in the English language, George Bernard Shaw won the Noble prize for his extraordinary plays full of wit and wisdom. Of his so-called "15 reputations," we will concentrate on Shaw the Artist, Shaw the Socialist, Shaw the Feminist, Shaw the Linguist, and Shaw the Philosopher. We will examine how social concerns with economics and class structure make themselves evident in his work. We will explore how Shaw creates new female roles that challenge the Victorian ideals from which he was emerging into the Modern world. We will analyze why and how language becomes a central issue in his life's work and in his writing. And, finally, we will try to arrive at some understanding of the complexity of Shaw's life philosophy. Our sources will include five of his greatest plays and film versions of each.
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English 419/420: Mass Communication Law/Mass Communication Ethics
0.5/0.5 Credit
Instructor: Catherine McMullen
(Print journalism majors need to take both courses, but they are open to all students. Please note that these courses will not be offered again until spring of 2011; juniors especially need to take these this spring.)
Both courses rely on case studies. In Mass Communications Law, students will learn the basic of the legal issues in mass media, journalism and public relations, including prior restraint, defamation, privacy and access to information. In Mass Communication Ethics we will explore ethical issues in the fields of mass media, journalism and public relations including truth in communication, privacy, confidentiality, conflicts of interests and social responsibility
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English 477: Advanced Nonfiction Writing Seminar
1.0 credit.
Instructor: Scott Olsen
(377 meets with 477; the 477 students mentor 377 students.)
English 477 is the second part of the nonfiction writing seminar. As with English 377, we will look at a wide range of contemporary nonfiction, everything from memoir to journalism to writing about science, and students will generate and revise a collection of their own nonfiction. In addition, 477 students will engage with substantial research projects to support their own creative work, and mentor students in 377.
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English 488: Senior Capstone in Literature - The Historical Novel
1.0 credit
Instructor: David Sprunger
A seminar in which senior English majors integrate their learning and skills through a series of common readings and significant individual research and writing. We will spend the first half of the semester reading a series of classic and contemporary historical novels and critical essays to establish a theoretical framework for approaching the genre; during the rest of the semester, each student will conduct a research project on an additional historical novel of your choice. Along the way, we will also reflect on your experiences in the English program, and prepare for your transition to life beyond Concordia.
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English 489: Senior Capstone in Writing
1.0 credit.
Instructor: Bill Snyder
(The English Writing Capstone course is required for students under catalogs beginning with 2006; it is an elective course for students under catalogs prior to 2006. It is also required for all students wishing to receive Honors status in the English Writing major.)
The English Writing Capstone course is designed to increase awareness of the intersections between scholarly writing and creative writing. Students will research, analyze, and write about literary texts and use this analysis to inform subsequent creative work: fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. Work includes 1) a research project in which students research and write a 3000 word (minimum) paper in which they explore and analyze one aspect of writing craft and/or theory and 2) a creative project in which students will use conclusions gained from the research to inform creative projects. These creative projects will be six finished poems, one short story, or one non-fiction essay. With both projects, student work will go through the workshop process: peer and professor critiques together with conferences with the professor. In this course, product will be privileged; the research essays as well as the creative projects will be submitted to suitable journals for publication.
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