English topics classes, spring 2015
English 200 Intro to Literary Studies sections
English 200 meets the general education requirement for humanities: literature
English 200-A Labor, Migration, and Conflict MWF 9:00-9:50
Prof. George Potter
Words slide down my throat / like velvet rivers and outside / is a tiny echo calling me / as I
travel and move / from one continent to the next, / move, to be whole.”
---Nathalie Handal, Strangers Inside Me
Movement and work have long been parts of the human experience, as people attempt to
create, finance, and relocate homes and communities, by choice, force, and circumstance.
The movement of these laborers has often created conflict in the surrounding communities,
whether it be the struggles between laborers and their managers (or owners, in some
cases), or between disparate communities competing for limited resources and capital.
This course will examine literature from around the world, both originally in English and
in translation, from a variety of genres that broadly engage the theme of Labor, Migration,
and Conflict across five areas of focus: Labor and Property; Colonial Contact; Migration and
Displacement; Resources and Land; and Globalization, Resistance, and War. Within this
theme, students will examine novels, short stories, plays, poetry, film, and a graphic novel
drawn from five continents and across a number of time periods in order to expose
students to a wide range of literary styles, genres, and periods.
Given this, the primary goal of the course will be to expand students’ appreciation of
multiple literary traditions, as well as their understanding of the formal instruments used
in creating the texts under examination. Secondly, students will develop their critical
thinking and writing skills in order to more critically and coherently express their
understanding of the works under discussion. Thirdly, students will gain a basic knowledge
of different historical and cultural contexts of literary production. Finally, students will be
exposed to a range of opinions, ideas, and experiences related to the course theme.
English 200-B Going Home TR 8:30-9:45
Prof. Edward Uehling
The idea of “home”—whether as a particular place or group of people (or both)—evolves
over time, and it is always at the heart of how we understand ourselves. Our sense of
wholeness, accomplishment, and success is closely tied to our home. A frequent theme in
great literature involves characters who may
journey great distances from home but who, literally and figuratively, carry reminders of
people and place as they attempt to maintain integrity, happiness, peace until they can
return again.
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English 200-C Innocence and Experience TR 1:30-2:45
Prof. Ed Byrne
In the late-18th century at the beginning of the Romantic period, William Blake divided individuals’
existence into two categories, “Innocence” and “Experience,” contrasting the two states of the
human spirit. At the same time, the American Revolution gave birth to a new nation, and much of
the young country’s social or political history similarly can be seen as a journey from innocence to
experience. This course will help develop an understanding of how the significant transitions from
innocence to experience by individual characters or by the society of the United States and its
institutions have been evident in American literature written during the past two centuries.
Reading Assignments: Students will investigate various works (poems, short stories, a play, and a
novel) available in the class anthology and commentary found on the Internet. Authors whose
writings may be examined include the following: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Emily
Dickinson, Robert Frost, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Robert Hayden,
Flannery O’Connor, Theodore Roethke, Ralph Ellison, Arthur Miller, Elizabeth Bishop, William
Stafford, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, Rita Dove, Gary Gildner, Yusef
Komunyakaa, T.C. Boyle, Daisy Fried, and Patricia Smith.
Written Assignments: Course requirements include a brief essay, a term paper, midterm and final
exams, as well as regular participation on the class discussion board.
English 200-E Utopian and Dystopian Literature MWF 10:30-11:20
Prof. Carter Hanson
Human beings have a natural tendency to desire a better future and to daydream about living in a
more perfect society. But what would a more perfect society look like? This is a question writers
have tried to answer for hundreds of years, and this body of imaginative writing is named utopian
literature, after Sir Thomas More’s hugely popular Utopia (1516). In this course, we will explore
the nature and evolution of utopian literature, as well as the emergence of dystopian literature
(such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four), which imagines societies far worse than our
own. We will discuss many of the important artistic and political questions that utopian and
dystopian texts raise. Possible texts for the course include: More’s Utopia, Edward
Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932),
Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), M.T. Anderson’s Feed (2002), and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx
and Crake (2003).
ENGL 200-EV From Aliens to Androids: Contemporary Science Fiction TR 10:3011:45 Prof. Marci Johnson
The academic community does not often view science fiction writing as “serious literature.” While
it’s true that much science fiction writing tends toward the formulaic and is considered “genre
fiction” published by specialty presses, there are plenty of science fiction books of high literary
quality being published by presses that appeal to a more general and literary audience. This course
focuses on the high-quality science fiction writing of the late 20thand early 21st centuries, and will
primarily consider fiction writing, with some poetry and film.
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Authors include Margaret Atwood, Orson Scott Card, Audrey Niffenegger, and Bryan Dietrich,
among others.
Topics courses in writing, literature, and language
Topics in writing courses
ENGL 380-A Peer Tutoring in Writing TR 10:30-11:45
Prof. Edward Armstrong
This course will introduce students to writing center theories and practices and train students to
work as consultants in the Writing Center. In addition to emphasizing practical issues related to the
work of writing consultants—how to set priorities, conduct productive sessions, and work with
peers who have special writing needs—this course will also provide students with a theoretical
foundation for addressing these concerns.
ENGL 380-B #identity: Written on the Body MWF 12:30-1:20
Prof. Allison Schuette
In this course, we will work with provocative, potentially difficult, and therefore rewarding,
creative nonfiction texts that help us think about how we know ourselves and others. We will use
texts found in familiar places (anthologies, essay collections, memoirs, etc.) and unlikely places
(blogs, radio, YouTube, possibly even Twitter feeds and Facebook walls) to explore such social
categories as race, gender, class, sexuality, and dis/ability. Assignments will most likely take us
outside our comfort zones and require risk taking on our part as we begin with personal experience
and then use observation, research, and interviews to enlarge our understanding of identities. And
because identities are never completely stable and fixed, part of the purpose of this course will be
to discover or invent creative nonfiction forms that will help us capture the messiness of our lives.
Meets diversity requirement for English majors and minors in catalog beginning with 2014-15.
Topics in literature courses
ENGL 390-A Topics: The Portrait of the Lady in 19th and 20th-century Realist Literature and
Art TR 12:00 – 1:15
Prof. John Ruff
This survey of European and American masterpieces of 19th and 20th century realist literature and
art will focus on depictions of “the Lady,” and three ladies most of all: Emma Bovary, the
protagonist of French writer Gustave Flaubert’s epoch making novel, Madame Bovary (1857), Anna
Karenina, the protagonist of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece by that same name (1873),
and Isabel Archer, the protagonist of American novelist and short story writer Henry James’ great
novel, The Portrait of a Lady (1880). Short fiction by American realist writers Sarah Orne Jewett,
Kate Chopin, and Willa Cather will prevent this survey from being exclusively a “male gaze,” to
borrow a term from feminist film theorist Karen Mulvey whose work in this area will help guide our
study. Visual representations of “the Lady” will include works by French realist painter Edouard
Manet, French impressionist painter Berthe Morisot, American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt,
and a variety of works by American artists from the permanent collection of the Brauer Museum of
Art.
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Students enrolling in this class will have the opportunity to read great literature, study great art,
and explore how certain great realists treated the experience of love and marriage in their master
works. Issues of gender and class will loom large, and in James “the international theme” so often
associated with his late major works. Student will write three papers, one on each of the three
major works on the syllabus, plus a number of shorter papers to help crystallize their thinking and
experience of this great conversation of texts. This course is crosslisted with CC 300.
ENGL 390-B Lyric Passport: Contemporary World Poetry TR 8:30-9:45
Prof. David Clark
Czeslaw Milosz wrote that “The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how hard it is to remain a single
person, / for our house is open, there are no keys in the door, / and invisible guests come in and out
at will.” What he meant was, in part, that when we read poetry we allow our imagination to be
accessed by a stranger. But we might also say a lyric poem, which holds time in abeyance to
dramatize an experience in language, allow us to dip into an artist’s mind and read the world from
her perspective. This course offers students the opportunity to engage in the comparative study of
poets and poetics from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. We will consider
how poets from various cultures respond to similar problems in language, how an individual poet
speaks beyond their circumstance and language to humanity at large, how poets writing in different
tongues engage in conversation with each other’s work, and ultimately how poetic language is
crafted to carry a freight of emotion across time and space. We will also ask questions about the
function of the lyric. What explains its longevity as a genre and its continued power for
contemporary readers? This course is crosslisted with CC 300 and meets a gen ed requirement in
cultural diversity.
Topics in language
ENGL 395-A ESL Peer Tutoring TR 12:00-1:15
Prof. Salena Anderson
This course introduces effective tutoring strategies for working one-on-one with writers whose
native language is not English. We will consider the unique needs of second language writers and
how to address those needs during one-on-one meetings, such as Writing Center tutorials. Since
one-on-one conferences are part of best practice in TESOL, in teaching writing, and in many fields,
this class will also be useful for students who are interested in teaching ESL/EFL students and who
would like to develop their skills in working individually with English Language Learners. We will
explore the unique pedagogical opportunities afforded by working one-on-one with Learners. The
course will cover a range of practical issues, including how to help ESL writers analyze and
understand writing prompts, how to read ESL writers’ essays effectively, how to provide grammar
feedback, and how to discuss questions about plagiarism with ESL students. Successful completion
of this class will prepare students to apply for peer tutoring positions at the Valparaiso University
Writing Center. Meets diversity requirement for English majors and minors in catalog beginning
with 2014-15.
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Senior seminar
Jr. or sr. standing required
ENGL 493: Local Shakespeares/ Global Shakespeares MWF 9:00-9:50
Prof. Elizabeth Burow-Flak
Pictured: four variations on Shakespeare’s so-called Scottish play: Ruport Goold’s Soviet-inspired staging (2009),
Dunsinane, at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre on Navy Pier (2015); Ing Kanjanavanit’s film adaptation, Shakespeare Must
Die!, banned in Thailand (2012), Vishal Bardwaj’s Maqbool (2003), the first in his trilogy including Omkara (Othello, 2006)
and Haider (Hamlet, 2014).
As rapid transportation, digital media, and the rise of English as a world langages have resulted in
what Thomas Friedman has called the world getting flat, so, in recent years, has the performance
and study of Shakespeare become increasingly globalized. In summer 2012, for example, the UK
hosted the World Shakespeare Festival to coincide with the London Olympics. This included the
staging of all 37 Shakespeare plays at the Globe theatre in 37 different languages. Video and
performance archives such as MIT Global Shakespeares have been making world performances
available any time, any where, while projects such as two UK universies’ Shakespeare on the Road
tour of performances in the United States last summer have brought local and global together. This
summer, the Globe to Globe tour of Hamlet, which aims to visit every world country within two
years, similarly comes to the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre on Navy Pier. The rise of Shakespeare
theatres in several U.S. cities, the increase in children, worldwide, who study Shakespeare, often as
part of their study of English, and initiatives such as the Shakespeare Behind Bars movement to
bring acting into prisons similarly embody the message that Shakespeare is ours—Shakespeare is
the world’s—to adapt, publish, and perform as we see fit.
This course will examine performances, adaptations, and settings of some of Shakespeare’s bestknown plays the nuance they cast on the cultures in which they are set. Plays that we will examine
include Hamlet and the so-called Chinese Hamlet, Orphan of Zhao, some of the Arab Hamlet plays,
and the Kurosawa film The Bad Sleep Well; Macbeth in some of the performances pictured above,
The Tempest, including Aime Césaire’s A Tempest, the Julie Taymor, and other notable films and
performances, and Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice in various films and
performances. Twice in the semester, we will see live performances, including of Macbeth, when
Actors from the London stage will visit as part of the VU’s annual Shakespeare week. We will also
hear Shakespeare editor and critic Gary Taylor speak as part of the Wordfest and Christ College
symposium series, and will invite local directors, critics, and translators to our class as possible.
Assignments will include research and presentation on a notable performance or adaptation, a
review essay, and a researched paper of about 20 pages.
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Graduate topics courses
Topics in American Literature and Culture
ENGL 610-A Literature of American Empire
Prof. George Potter W 6:30-9:00
This course will examine the question of America as empire through the literature of American
interventions in East Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Specifically, we will examine writing
by Americans about U.S. involvements and perceptions of locations such as Vietnam, Iraq, and
Guatemala, including work by Tim O’Brien, Sylvia Sellers-Garcia, and Ben Fountain. These will be
held in comparison to indigenous literature by writers such as Bao Ninh, Mario Vargas Llosa, and
Abd al-Rahman Munif. Additionally, we will examine how American popular culture has and has not
responded to increased American commitments abroad and use of torture through American film,
particularly horror film, and drama. Finally, we will explore the recent scholarly literature of
American empire, including work by Ann Kaplan, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Naomi Klein,
and Neil Smith.
Questions that this class will take up will include 1) Does the United States constitute a modern
empire? 2) How have American authors responded to American involvement in different corners of
the globe? 3) How are these representations similar or different to how indigenous people write
about their interactions with American power? 4) How are the global conversations and American
conversations about American power similar or different? 5) How has popular culture and mass
culture responded to the challenge of critically representing American power? and 6) Do zombies
support capitalist expansion?
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