English 215-003
Introduction to English Studies
Tu/Th 9.30-10.45
Merrill Hall 315
Spring 2016
Instructor:
Email:
Mailbox:
Office:
Office Hours:
Ann-Marie Blanchard blanch35@uwm.edu
Curtin 4 th
Or by appointment
Introduction to English Studies
(see email policy)
Floor (in the mailroom, under “Teaching Assistants”)
Office CRT 294
Tuesday 11-3
Literature is a vibrant, playful, evocative, and fascinating field to study. Over the course of the semester, here in an Introduction to English Studies, I will share my knowledge and passion for literature. You, as a member of our literary community, will explore the following questions

alongside your peers: what is literature? What are some literary crafts? What do some literary theorists say? What does literature do? How does literature engage with the environment?
In order to consider these questions, we will engage with a broad range of literary genres: novels, shorts stories, memoir, poetry and film. The selected texts will represent voices from assorted countries around the world, such as the United States, Antigua, New Zealand, and
Australia.
The focus of this course is on close reading (expect to cover your pages in thoughtful comments/questions) and the critical analysis of texts. This means that over the course of the semester you will complete two literary analysis papers, along with a creative piece.
Required Texts:
• Yamashita, Karen Tei. Through the Arc of the Rain Forest. Coffee House Press: Canada
(1990)
Through the Arc of the Rain Forest is a burlesque of comic-strip adventures and apocalyptic portents that stretches familiar truths to their logical extreme in a future world that is just recognizable enough to be frightening. The stage is a vast, mysterious field of impenetrable plastic in the Brazilian rain forest set against a backdrop of rampant environmental destruction, commercialization, poverty, and religious rapture. Through the Arc of the Rainforest is narrated by a small satellite hovering permanently around the head of an innocent character named Kazumasa. Through no fault of his own, Kazumasa seems to draw strange and significant people into his orbit and to find himself at the center of cataclysmic events that involve carrier pigeons, religious pilgrims, industrial espionage, magic feathers, big money, miracles, epidemics, true love, and the virtual end of the world. This book is simultaneously entertaining and depressing, with all the rollicking pessimism you'd expect of a good soap opera or a good political satire.
• Tim Winton, Breath. Picador (2009)
On the wild, lonely coast of Western Australia, two thrillseeking and barely adolescent boys fall into the enigmatic thrall of veteran big-wave surfer Sando. Together they form an odd but elite trio. The grown man initiates the boys into a kind of Spartan ethos, a regimen of risk and challenge, where they test themselves in storm swells on remote and shark-infested reefs, pushing each other to the edges of endurance, courage, and sanity. But where is all this heading? Why is their mentor’s past such forbidden territory? And what can explain his American wife’s peculiar behavior? Venturing beyond all limits—in relationships, in physical challenge, and in sexual behavior—there is a point where oblivion is the only outcome.
• Leia Penina Wilson, I built a boat with all the towels in your closet (and will let you drown).
Red Hen Press (2014)
Leia Penina Wilson's i built a boat with all the towels in your closet (and will let you drown) is at once a love ballad and a warning. These poems are—at their simplest—about relationships, sex, love, creatures, different kinds (and degrees) of violence, and—at their most complex—about the limits of the imagination, of language, and about the power the imagination has over the body. These poems confront the shifty line between human and animal, and urge the question: at what cost the body.
• Additional readings posted on D2L that you must print and bring to class