SPRING SEMESTER 2016
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT COURSE OFFERINGS
ENLT 109W
4 credits
Saint Mary’s Writers
Laura Haigwood
11:00-12:15 TR & 1:00-1:50 W
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia LO1: Humanities/Literature
Sophia LO2: Writing Proficiency (upon recommendation of instructor), Women’s Voices
This course introduces students to reading and writing about literature at the college level. While
reading novels, biographies, memoirs and poetry by and about Saint Mary’s women, students gain
skill in accurate and insightful interpretation of texts and develop their ability to write clearly
phrased, logically organized prose. Successful completion of this course satisfies the Sophia
Program’s literature and women’s voices requirements. Students also work toward fulfilling the
basic writing proficiency (“W”) requirement by creating a writing portfolio for assessment.
ENLT 109W
4 credits
Intro to Latina Literature
Ann Marie Short (formerly Alphonso)
9:00-9:50 MWF & 1:00-1:50 F
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia LO1: Humanities/Literature
Sophia LO2: Sophia LO2: Writing Proficiency (upon recommendation of instructor), Women’s Voices
Sophia LO3: Intercultural Competence A
This course introduces students to reading and writing about literature at the college level.
Throughout the semester we will focus on skills that will help you produce insightful
literary analysis, such as active reading, close reading, moving from observation to analysis,
constructing interpretive arguments, and using literary texts as evidence. We will also
focus on the elements of basic writing proficiency, such as thesis statements, support,
organization, style, and revision.
Our readings will include novels, short stories, nonfiction, film, graphic novels, and poetry
by Latina writers and artists. These texts provide rich and varied representations of
immigration, second-generation experiences, and the politics of Latina identity in America.
More specifically, we will examine how these texts engage with issues surrounding
ethnicity, culture, racialized discrimination, class, gender, and sexuality. Writers may
include Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Menendez, Cherri Moraga, Jessica Abel, Pat
Mora and others.
ENLT 109W
4 credits
Imagining the End
Sarah Noonan
9:30-10:45 TR & 2:00-2:50 F
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia: Sophia LO1: Humanities/Literature
Sophia LO2: (upon recommendation of Instructor) Writing Proficiency
This course introduces students to reading and writing about literature at the college level.
Students will develop facility with analysis and the art of crafting persuasive,
argumentative prose through an examination of literary works that take up death as a
central theme – be it the death of the individual, the destruction of a specific community, or
the apocalyptic annihilation of life on earth. To help us navigate the moral and
philosophical ambiguity of these narratives; we will turn to the late medieval truism that
“to know how to live well, one must know how to die well.” With this suggestion that
planning for death should inflect how we live, we will
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Consider how these imagined endings might function to spur readers to reevaluate
their ethical, social and ecological beliefs and actions,
Contemplate how “living well” might be defined by these narratives,
And ask how the death and destruction described within these works might create a
potential space for new beginnings to take shape.
Readings will range broadly and may include Gilgamesh, Boethius’ Consolation of
Philosophy, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, amongst
others.
ENLT 109W
4 credits
The Work of Literature
Aaron Moe
9:00-9:50 MWF & 8:30-9:20 R
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia LO1: Humanities/Literature
Sophia LO2: Sophia LO2: Writing Proficiency (upon recommendation of instructor)
This course introduces students to reading and writing about literature at the college level.
The following question drives our exploration: this thing called literature-what work does it
do? The course is concerned with what literature means, but is much more concerned with
what literature does. As the course unfolds, students will explore and articulate many
responses to this question including the following.
o Literature can prompt existential/spiritual growth for the individual (Kafka);
o Literature can expose the intersections between social and environmental justice
(Alexie; Kincaid);
o Literature can revel in the ways nature, culture, power, and politics interrelate
(Alexie; Kincaid; Hillman; Dickinson);
o Literature can cultivate a sense of dwelling in language and on the earth (Dickinson;
Hillman);
o Literature can explore the complexity of identity (Shakespeare; Alexie; Kincaid);
o Literature can enhance an awareness of multispecies communities (Dickinson;
Hillman);
o Literature can create and sustain community (applies generally to all literature);
o Literature can fight against a failure of imagination (applies generally to all
literature);
o Literature can explore transformative moments in individuals and in society
(applies generally to all literature).
The above list is just a start for the class to grapple with what happens when we read and
circulate stories and poems through the community of a classroom. Students write four
in-class essays and five take-home essays.
ENLT 109W
4 credits
Ideas of Motherhood in Literature
John Higgins
2:00-3:15 TR & 2:00-2:50 F
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia LO1: Humanities/Literature
Sophia LO2: Sophia LO2: Writing Proficiency (upon recommendation of the instructor)
The concept of motherhood is a cherished one: caretaker, nurse, protector, and provider, a
font of wisdom and a dispenser of a never-ending stream of love and comfort. These ideals
are a lot to live up to, especially when the term “mother” is shared with the even greater
symbols of Mother Nature, the mother country, and the Mother of God. How could any
mother measure up to all of this? This course will look at ideas of motherhood in multiple
genres of literature, including novels, memoirs, poems, essays, and a play. Our readings for
the semester will challenge traditional ideas of motherhood, touching on themes of
responsibility and freedom, selflessness and the self, tradition and reality. We will explore
the effects of the archetypes of motherhood and touch on the darker issues of abortion,
abandonment, miscarriage, abuse, and the drudgery of domesticity as well as the rewards
of motherhood and the essential relationship of mother and child. Throughout the course
you will be encouraged to look at the mothers in your own life with a new eye and to
express your own ideas and ideals of motherhood.
ENLT 109W
4 credits
Backyard Literature: The American Myth of Suburbia
Dionne Bremyer
8:00-9:15 TR & 9:00-9:50 W
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia LO1: Humanities/Literature
Sophia LO2: Sophia LO2: Writing Proficiency (upon recommendation of the instructor)
More of us live in the suburbs now than live in rural and urban America combined. The
suburbs as a place can feel familiar due to its sometimes generic qualities and is therefore
often devalued, dismissed, or ignored. And yet, the quiet desperation of the suburbs as a
place has inspired a significant body of art in the forms of fiction, poetry, memoir, and film.
This course, which introduces students to reading and writing about literature at the
college level, will look at how the ‘50s notion of a suburban utopia has been subverted and
modified as well as the ways in which the literature of the suburbs uses this loaded space
as a way to upend the notion of the American Dream.
ENLT 202
1 credit
Jane Austen Dance
Chris Cobb
2:00-2:50 F
This course meets the following requirements:
English: Free Elective
This course is an introduction to English Country Dancing, the dancing popular in Jane
Austen’s day. These were the dances danced by Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in Pride
and Prejudice and Marianne and Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility. English Country
Dancing is a “living tradition” – learn how, and if you live in a large city or big university
town, you may be able to join a group that meets regularly!
We will learn about twelve dances from this tradition, starting with very simple ones, and
gradually adding more complex ones as you become more expert with the figures. As in
square-dancing, most dances are done with a walking step, but we will do a few Scottish
ones that require some step practice. In most classes, we will learn at least one new dance
and review several old ones. The course will finish with a Grand Ball!
ENLT 205
3 credits
Contemporary Women’s Fiction
Sarah Noonan
9:00-9:50 MWF
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia: LO1: Humanities/Literature (pending approval)
Sophia: LO2: Women’s Voices (pending approval)
English: Free Elective
This course will explore literature written by contemporary women writers since the
1960s. Readings will range broadly in the work of American, British, and Global
Anglophone authors. As we engage with some of the best literature that has been produced
in the recent past, we will place these works within their historical, social, and cultural
contexts and query how these authors encourage us to challenge boundaries of gender,
race, and class that exist within the modern world.
ENLT 303
3 credits
History of the Book
Sarah Noonan
3:00-4:15 MW
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia: LO1: Historical Perspectives
English: Free Elective
This course will examine the history of the book from the Classical period through the
modern day, in both European and global contexts. We will trace how textual media have
developed from the cuneiform tablet to the e-book, and we will interrogate how formal and
material shifts in production methods might have influenced how written works were read
by classical and pre-modern audiences. Exploration of the book as a historically-defined
technological device will further allow us to ask how it is continuing to develop within our
current digital age and how these developments might shape how future generations will
navigate textual environments.
ENLT 370
3 credits
Native American Literature
Aaron Moe
9:30-10:45 TR
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia: LO1: Humanities/Literature (pending approval)
LO2: Women’s Voices (pending approval)
LO3: Intercultural Competence A (pending approval)
English: Elective for ENLT major and minor
The stories and poems of a given culture provide an intimate engagement with the
complexity of that culture, its roots, its wounds, its oppression, its struggles, its triumphs,
its becoming. But when we read, we witness the power of stories and poems to shape and
alter intercultural interactions. This course, then, provides students of any ethnic
background the opportunity to enrich their intercultural competence through an
engagement with Native American literature.
This course also focuses on how Native women found a way to become a powerful force in
storytelling and poetry making across the last six decades. How did these women find their
voice? How did they get an audience? How did they reinvent the enemy’s language in order
to re-write what it means to be a Native woman living in the late 20th and early 21st century
in North America? How did they undo and redo structures of power? Students will be
invited to explore these questions and more.
This course has three complementary foci: 1) we establish and trace the (re)emergences
of the trickster figure; 2) we explore how contemporary Native writers engage current
issues surrounding race, gender, social justice, environmental justice, & cultural hybridity;
and 3) we continue to develop the skills necessary for literary inquiry and exploration.
ENLT 373
3 credits
Sorcery and Damnation
Thomas Bonnell
10:00-10:50 MWF
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia: LO1: Humanities/Literature (pending approval)
English: Elective for the Literature major, minor and double major
From Homer and Dante to Anthony Burgess and Anne Rice we will examine one of the
oldest and most fascinating of literary tropes, the “Descent into the Underworld,” exploring
how the concepts of hell and sorcery have evolved from classical times through our own.
Requirements: one essay, two exams, class participation.
Texts: Dante, Inferno; Marlowe, Doctor Faustus; Shakespeare, Macbeth; Mozart, Don
Giovanni; Lewis, The Monk; Burgess, A Clockwork Orange; Rice, Memnoch the Devil and
others.
ENLT 374
3 credits
Contemporary Global Literature
Ann Marie Short (formerly Alphonso)
11:00-12:15 MW
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia LO1: Humanities/Literature
Sophia LO3: Global Learning A, Global Learning B, Intercultural Competence A
English Majors: 20th/21st Century Literature or Literature of Diversity
Minor in Lit: 20th/21st Century Literature
In this course, we will read and analyze a variety of genres of texts by contemporary
authors from around the world, including novels, short stories, poetry, graphic narrative,
and creative nonfiction. All of the texts on the syllabus can be analyzed as examples of
cultural and artistic expression and are informed by their varied and complex national,
ethnic, religious, socio-political, and gendered contexts. Throughout the semester, we will
discuss how the texts reflect the varied and intertwined histories from which these writers
emerge, and how they participate in a larger conversation about our increasingly
globalized perspectives. Moreover, we will note the multiplicity of stylistic and artistic
choices reflected in the literature we read and consider how global literature challenges
our expectations as Western readers.
ENLT 379
3 credits
16th/17th Century British Literature
Chris Cobb
2:00-3:15 TR
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia LO1: Humanities/Literature
English Majors: Pre-1700 British Literature
Minor in Lit: Pre-1700 British Literature
This course examines the development of English literature from the English Reformation
to the English Revolution. We will read the literature of the period in the context of the
religious, political, and intellectual ferment that stimulated the remarkable innovations and
achievements of English writers during this time. We will look at the translators of the
Bible who established a distinctive English prose style, the poets who invented the English
sonnet and established an astonishingly rich tradition of lyric verse in English, the
playwrights who made the public theater the heart of English culture, the poetesses who
first gave literary voices to Englishwomen, and the epic poets Spenser and Milton who
strove to bring an orderly and just national vision out of the strife through which they lived.
Requirements for the course include three essays, mid-term and final exams, and a trip to
see a production of Othello at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
ENLT 380
3 credits
18th Century British Literature
Thomas Bonnell
1:00-1:50 MWF
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia LO1: Humanities/Literature
Sophia LO3: Global Learning (B)
English Majors: 18th/19th century British Literature
Minor in Lit: 18th/19th century British Literature
Our readings will highlight the idea of an expanding Britain as experienced through travel
(whether real or imagined) and the byproducts of travel-cultural exchange, material
commerce, political dialogue, and social disruption, sometimes in dire forms like slavery or
warfare. Authors in the long eighteenth century, by bringing themselves into encounters
with a complex world, engaged in a kind of “Conversation with Otherness” that challenged
British complacency. In this creative process, under the lens of critical reflection,
customary notions of what’s valuable, wise, or even normal were subjected to scrutiny, and
readers were challenged to consider where they stood between a proud sense of national
superiority and a cosmopolitan sense of enlightened irony.
Texts: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Turkish Embassy Letters;
Defoe, Roxana; Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Johnson, Rasselas; Boswell, London Journal; Burney,
Evelina; Equiano, Interesting Narrative; and poetry. Requirements: One essay (draft and
revision), two exams, class participation.
ENLT 382
3 credits
Victorian Literature: Victorian Secrets
Laura Haigwood
3:30-4:45 TR
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia LO1: Humanities/Literature
English Majors: 18th/19th British Literature
Minor in Lit: 18th/19th century British Literature
We will survey English literature from 1837 to 1900 (in other words, the reign of Queen
Victoria), investigating the secret lives that Victorian authors exposed-both consciously and
unconsciously-in some of their most popular stories. Our discussions will explore why
such fascinating (and fascinated) open secrecy about such sensitive areas of Victorian
cultural transformation as women, sexuality and social class? Our guides will include
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Oscar Wilde, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, among others.
Required work will include five short (2- to 4-page) papers, one six- to eight-page
literary analysis essay written in stages and revised, occasional quizzes and a take-home
final exam.
ENLT 384
3 credits
Romantic Era Feminism
Laura Haigwood
3:30-4:45 TR
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia LO1: Humanities/Literature
Sophia LO2: Women’s Voices
English Majors: 18th/19th Century British Literature
Minor in Lit: 18th/19th Century British Literature
Women writers of the romantic era did not call themselves “feminists,” but their
vindication of the rights of woman inspired all subsequent waves. Responding to parallel
political demands for democratic government and the abolition of slavery, Romantic
women authors began a movement that – despite obstacles and backlashes – has blazed a
steady trail into the present day. We will begin by reading Jane Austen’s Sense and
Sensibility to situate educated, middle-class Englishwomen who led this movement in their
time and place. Our central focus will be the life and work of Mary Wollstonecraft, whose
career exemplifies persistent tensions between “sense” and “sensibility” in feminist
discourse and feminine experience. We will also read her contemporaries for a wide range
of perspectives on women’s issues. The heartening fact that good men side with feminists
against sexist oppression will be demonstrated by William Godwin and John Stuart Mill,
among others.
ENLT 415
3 credits
Shakespeare the World
Chris Cobb
9:00-9:50MWF
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia LO1: Humanities/Literature
English Majors: Shakespeare
Minor in Lit: Shakespeare
In this course, we will read a representative selection of Shakespeare’s comedies, histories,
tragedies, and romances with particular attention to historical analysis of the plays.
Shakespeare’s plays possess a timeless artistry, but a major purpose of that artistry was
directed toward enabling Shakespeare’s original audiences to see their world in a new
ways. This class will focus on Shakespeare’s engagement with the social, political, and
religious issues of his contemporary world, and how investigate that engagement.
Questions we’ll consider include how Shakespeare used an all-male acting company to
address issues of gender, how he used an all-white acting company to address issues of
race, and how he used dramatic art and skillful engagement with sources to raise questions
on topics about which questions were officially forbidden, like monarchy and orthodox
religious teaching. We will give some attention also to the question of how these issues in
Renaissance England resonate in twenty-first century performances. Requirements for the
course include regular short assignments, two formal essays, three short exams, and
attendance at two live performances: the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by the
Actors from the London State at Notre Dame and the production of Othello at the Chicago
Shakespeare Theater.
ENLT 419 Major American Literary Figures: Emily Dickinson
3 credits
Aaron Moe
11:00-12:15 TR
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia: Women’s Voices (pending approval)
English Majors: American Literature
Minor in Lit: American Literature
Emily Dickinson’s voice is quieter than Whitman’s, but in that stillness is, perhaps, a more
powerful and longer-lasting force. Contemporary ecopoets such as Brenda Hillman, Jody
Gladding, and Evelyn Reilly trace their innovative breakthroughs back to Dickinson’s
radical poetics. In “Tell it Slant: How to Write a Wise Poem,” Camille Dungly demonstrates
how Dickinson’s understanding of how a poem “works” illuminates the dynamics of a wide
range of poems a well as other art forms such as Picasso’s “Guernica.” Her “quieter” voice
has become an illuminating and shaping force that extends well beyond the poetic tradition
in American literature.
This course explores Dickinson’s poems and letters in the context of current scholarship
including monographs, journal articles, online archives, and more. As such, students learn
how to manage research through Zotero, and they continue excelling in the foundational
reading & writing skills needed in the field of literary studies.
ENGLISH WRITING COURSES
ENWR 222 Tourist or Traveler: Travel Writing in the new Millennium
3 credits
Dionne Bremyer
10:00-10:50 MWF
This course meets the following requirements:
Sophia: LO1: Creative and Performing Arts (pending approval)
Sophia: LO3: Intercultural Competence A
Travel writing celebrates discovery and the surprising as it attempts to uncover the story that lurks in
the odd little corners of our planet. In our writing, we will investigate everything around us while we
share with the reader something we’ve learned. By focusing on the techniques of description,
narration, mood, and precision, we will turn our experiences into creative works as we employ
traditional narrative techniques as well as more experimental forms in our writing about our travels.
We will work to arrive at a strategy that avoids stereotyping and essentializing, aiming instead for a
transcultural discourse written from a perspective of self-awareness and critique.
ENWR 252
1 credit
Theory and Practice of Tutoring II
Aaron Bremyer
3:00 -3:50 F
Free Elective Credit only (course open only to Writing Tutors)
ENWR 311
3 credits
Introduction to Creative Writing
Joseph Cardinale
3:00-4:15 MW
This course meets the following requirements:
English: ENWR major and minor requirement
In this course we’re going to study and practice the art of imaginative writing. The course
will focus on three distinct and linked genres: short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.
In addition to reading and discussing the work of a selection of published writers, we will
also read, review, and constructively critique one another’s work. In the process, we’ll
practice approaching fiction and poetry from a craft-based perspective, focusing on the
specific decisions that each writer makes and the effects that these decisions create in the
theater of the reader’s imagination. Each student will write and revise one short story, one
creative nonfiction essay, a selection of poems, and five informal writing exercises. Course
Texts: Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft (fourth edition).
ENWR 321
3 credits
Fiction Writing
Dionne Bremyer
11:00-12:15 MW
This course meets the following requirements:
ENWR & ENLW: Advanced Writing Elective
ENLT: English Elective
Minor in Professional Writing: Advanced Writing Elective
In this course we explore some of the basic elements of successful, engaging fiction by
discussing craft issues such as plot, character, point of view, scene, setting, dialogue, and
voice. We investigate all of these in an effort to uncover what makes a good story.
Throughout the semester, you will participate in numerous writing exercises and the
reading of your classmates’ work and of other pieces of contemporary fiction. The
emphasis of the course is on your literary development as both a reader and a writer.
ENWR 323
3 credits
Poetry Writing
Sr. Eva Mary Hooker
2:00-3:15 TR
This course meets the following requirements:
ENWR & ENLW: Advanced Writing Elective
ENLT: English Elective
Minor in Professional Writing: Advanced Writing Elective
Workshop in writing lyric poetry and prose-poems: exercises in sparking the muses of
imitation, invention, and framing. Exploration of ways in which poems are shaped and of
the relationships of words and sentences to the white space of the page. Study of the
making and shaping of the English sentence in contemporary lyric. Particular attention will
be given to writing about nature and the landscape of the city.
ENWR 333
3.0 credits
Magazine Writing
Brendan O’Shaughnessy
6:00-8:30 T
This course meets the following requirements:
ENWR & ENLW: Advanced Writing Elective
ENLT: English Elective
Minor in Professional Writing: Advanced Writing Elective
Students in the course will learn to write, research, and edit magazine articles, with specific
focus on developing ideas, planning research and interviews, writing a variety of stories,
and working with editors. The class will follow a workshop format with students
performing in-class writing exercises, completing a selection of written assignments and
engaging in a substantial amount of in-class analysis and critiquing of peer-written and
professionally written articles and essays. On occasion there will be guest writers invited
for discussion.
ENWR 390
3 credits
SpTps: Experimental Writing (pending approval)
Joseph Cardinale
3:30-4:45 TR
In this course, we will explore a variety of innovative approaches to the process of creating
and composing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Our underlying goal is to practice
approaching writing from a fresh child-like perspective. To this end, we will seek to
critically examine and creatively re-imagine our received assumptions about conventional
storytelling and language. In and out of class, students will do various writing exercises
that are designed to not only spark experimentation, but also to cultivate an innovative
perspective toward the art of literary expression. The class will be structured more like a
studio art course than a traditional writing workshop, and the primary goal of each class
session will be to generate new creative work. At the end of the class, students will
individually create a portfolio of experimental writings, and collaboratively produce and
publish a class anthology. Course texts will include Lance Olsen’s Architectures of
Possibility (a textbook on innovative writing).