Fall 2022 Course Descriptions: Stamford Campus

Fall 2022

For guidance about courses, majors, and minors, contact any English faculty member or Professor Roden, Stamford English Curriculum Coordinator, at frederick.roden@uconn.edu or Inda Watrous, English Undergraduate Advisor, at inda.watrous@uconn.edu.

All forms and details about major and minor requirements can be found at http://advising.english.uconn.edu.

Helpful Information for Non-Majors

  • 1000-level courses do not count toward the English major but are terrific introductions to literary study and typically serve GenEd Category 1b or 4. 
  • If you think you might be interested in an English major, try out a course; if you know you’re set on the major, plan on taking 2600 as early as possible. 
  • Non-majors are welcome in advanced courses (including the 3000- and 4000-level); check your preparedness with an instructor before registering if you have questions.  Following completion of the first-year writing requirement, most upper-level courses are open to all students.  If you encounter difficulty in registering, contact the instructor or Prof. Roden. 
  • English courses make great “related field” classes for many other majors.  Check with your major advisor for appropriateness of choices. 
  • The English minor is highly recommended and easy to accomplish: see https://advising.english.uconn.edu/minoring-in-english/ to determine your requirements.   
  • The English major makes a terrific second major.  If you’ve not yet declared, see https://advising.english.uconn.edu/plan-of-study-catalog-year-2021-2-2/ for requirements.  If you declared on or before May 9, 2021, see  https://advising.english.uconn.edu/plan-of-study-catalog-year-2017/ 
  • Remember you can complete the English major at the Stamford Campus; there’s no need to branchfer.  Many students enroll in pre-professional grad programs (for example, in education) immediately following their degree. 
  • Reach out to an English faculty member or advisor to learn about what you can do with an English major or minor.  We and the Center for Career Development can help you brainstorm, point you toward internships, and introduce you to alumni working in a range of different fields. 

    Helpful Information for Stamford English Majors and Minors

    • Engl 2600 (Major Requirement A or “Methods for the Major”) is offered annually in the Fall semester. 
    • A single-author course (Major Requirement D, Plan of Study 2017-2020) is offered annually or every third semester.  This term Engl 3503W will be offered to meet this requirement. 
    • An “Advanced Study” course (Major Requirement E, Plan of Study 2017-2020) is typically offered every third semester.  It will next be offered at Stamford in Spring 2023.       
    • We offer at least one pre-1800 course each semester (Engl 3503W this term) All plans of study require two classes categorized either as pre-1800 or “Early Literary, Cultural, and Linguistic History.”  Check with your advisor or the coordinator if you have questions. 
    • We regularly offer courses in the “Antiracism, Globality, and Embodiment” category (2021 plan of study): this term, Engl 2301W (Group 1) and Engl 3629 (Group 2). 
    • We offer a variety of survey and methods courses each semester for Catalog Years 2017-2020.  This term Major Requirement B3=Engl 2301W; Major Requirement C= Engl 2408, Engl 2409.   
    • Catalog years 2017-2020 allow for 9 elective credits; Catalog year 2021 allows for 12.  Courses that meet a requirement you have already satisfied can count for elective credit .

      Tracks

      The Stamford Campus offers courses towards a number of different “tracks” within the 2021 English major plan of study.  Term offerings are as noted below.

      • CREATIVE WRITING: Engl 2701, Engl 2635E 
      • CULTURAL STUDIES/MEDIA STUDIES: Engl 2411 
      • ENGLISH TEACHING: Engl 2013W, Engl 2408, Engl 2409, Engl 2411, Engl 2635E  
      • LITERATURE, ANTIRACISM, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE: Engl 2301W, Engl 3629 
      • LITERARY HISTORIES AND LEGACIES: Engl 2301W, Engl 3503W 
      • LITERATURE OF PLACE AND ENVIRONMENT: Engl 2635E 
      • WRITING AND COMPOSITION STUDIES: Engl 2013W

        1000-Level Courses

        1101: Classical and Medieval Western Literature

        Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
        1101 | M 3:35-6:05 | Roden, Frederick 

        What makes a “classic”?  For the purpose of this course, it will be the stories, questions posed, and forms/styles of earliest written civilization, as we study the literature of the ancient world and the subsequent development through late antiquity and the “Middle Ages.”  “Modern” ideas, genres, and tales depend on what came before.  In western literature, this means Greek and Roman works, the texts of the Near/Middle East, indigenous European legends – and the ways medieval authors drew from all of these to create the beginnings of modern national literatures.

        We will pay particular attention to “sameness” and “difference” in premodern works: how resonances of identity show us the familiar and unfamiliar about ourselves.  We will also examine how representations of race, gender, humanness/otherness, sexuality, religion, and class emerge in western civilization by these earliest models.  Comparative studies of art and music, including a field trip to experience these, will inform our exploration of cultural history.

        1601W: Race, Gender, and the Culture Industry

        Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
        1601W | TuTh 2:00-3:15 | Gorkemli, Serkan

        Immigration Cinema

        In this course, we’ll study cinema as a popular rhetorical medium and its representation of race and gender in connection with the topic of immigration. Readings and discussion topics will cover major film techniques (mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound), and we’ll analyze how particular filmmakers assign specific meanings to these techniques in telling stories about immigrants and immigration. Weekly discussion of assigned films will illustrate the concepts covered in readings. In addition, you’ll engage in research about one of the assigned films. Assignments in this writing-intensive (W) course will include an annotated bibliography, a critical essay, and an in-class presentation, giving you opportunities to hone your craft of writing. 

        2000-Level Courses

        2013W: Introduction to Writing Studies

        Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
        2013W | TuTh 3:30-4:45 | Gorkemli, Serkan

        Writing into the Future

        This course will introduce you to a new field of inquiry that focuses on writing’s social and ethical implications across diverse traditions, contexts, and technologies. Readings and discussion topics will cover threshold concepts and theories of writing, and ways of researching it in social and professional contexts. Assignments in this writing-intensive (W) course will include an autobiographical literacy narrative and a couple of forward-looking projects: research focusing on a future profession that involves writing, and an internship or a job application. In this manner, we’ll use the lens of Writing Studies to resituate your experiences with reading and writing and consider how, as a future professional, you could transfer them to other contexts.

        2301W: Anglophone Literatures

        Prerequisites:  ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011..
        2301W | Sa 10:00-12:40 | Moeckel-Rieke, Hannelore
        Some of the most exciting literature published in the last decades has been produced by authors born in countries where English may is the official language as a result of their colonial past, or by authors who have a mixed cultural and linguistic heritage or belong to a diasporic minority. We will explore the idea of Anglophone literature in an increasingly globalized and "de-centered" world due to migration, a globalized economy and digital mass media. Categories like “margin” and “center”, “native” and “foreign” become problematic and notions like “literary canon” and “cultural identity” are subjected to critical scrutiny and revision. Postcolonial studies have provided a useful theoretical framework for the analysis of various aspects of literary works produced in this climate that will be introduced in this class to discuss issues like “cultural hybridity,” “performance and identity,” postmodernism and “imaginary communities”. The class will explore various works of postcolonial literature complemented by related film screenings.

        2408: Modern Drama

        Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
        2408 | MW 12:20-1:10 | Hybrid | Brown, Pamela

        2409: The Modern Novel

        Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
        2409 | Th 5:30-8:00 | Distance Learning | Cramer, P. Morgne

        Modern Novel focuses on novels published since 1900. You will view historical and biographical documentaries as well as power point lectures that provide context for each author and novel.  

        A unifying framework for this course is Modernism—its roots in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its aftereffects on contemporary authors. Modernism denotes an international movement in the arts (e.g. painting, music, literature, philosophy, architecture). In literature, modernism refers to experimental writings characterized by radical rejections of 19th century (Victorian) literary, political, and moral values. Modernists are rebels in lifestyle and art, driven by profound alienation from the status quo and a belief that the unprecedented political and intellectual upheavals of their time required a new kind of literature and truth telling.

        We start with Virginia Woolf, founder and shaper of Modernism and trace Modernism’s freeing effects on voice, content, and form among post-modern authors: James Baldwin, J. M. Coetzee, Trevor Noah, Margaret Atwood. 

        Required books 

        Virginia Woolf (1888-1941)  Between the Acts  (1941)  

        James Baldwin (1924-1987)  Go Tell It on the Mountain (1952)    

        J. M. Coetzee, (b. 1940)   Disgrace  (1999)

        Trevor Noah (b 1984)  Born a Crime  (2016)

        Margaret Atwood (b 1939), Oryx and Crake (2003)  

        Nawal el Saadawi (1931-2021) Woman at Point Zero  (1975)   

        2411: Popular Literature

        Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
        2411 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 | Pierrot, Gregory
        Hardboiled and Noir: Crime Genre in Fiction and Cinema

        Before finding its way into world culture, detective fiction first developed in the United States. Long considered a lower literary genre, detective fiction gained cachet as its qualities were recognized abroad and at home. Defining aspects of the genre and its later offshoots such as the exploration of social structures, focus on skepticism, rational thinking and questioning made it a natural literary companion to the issues that drove twentieth-century thinking. It is no surprise that film noir became the reigning genre of the golden age of cinema and remains popular to this day. The extremely malleable forms of the crime genre have allowed writers of all races, genders, creeds and beliefs to express their ideas and concerns under its label. This course will survey detective fiction from the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe to the novels of Patricia Cornwell; we will watch film classic film adaptations such as The Maltese Falcon, Devil in a Blue Dress, but also original films and television series episodes to explore the broad and mysterious world of detective fiction.

        2600: Introduction to Literary Studies

        Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011 or 3800; open to English majors, others with instructor consent.
        2600 | F 11:15-1:45 | Distance Learning | Cramer, P. Morgne

        Introduces students to how literary scholars read, argue, and research. This course is required for all English majors and prepares students with skills fundamental to literary studies. These include  

                    **close textual readings

                    **basic research tools (e.g., OED, MLA)

                    **how to use journal articles while you articulate your own point of view/insights 

                    **how to incorporate research into your work with MLA quotation and citation methods 

                    **how to create an annotated bibliography 

        This course also includes “classic,” influential statements about the nature and aims of literature and literary studies. Your task is to read these essays closely, make meaningful comparisons among these position papers, and respond in writing and in class from your own point of view. You are also required to work these literary position statements into your final paper. 

        Required Textbooks (plus a packet of scholar essays) 

        Virginia Woolf, Room of One's OwnToni Morrison, Beloved 

        Symposium  (Penguin)  [transl Christopher Gill] 2003 

                  (required: Diotima’s speech to Socrates on Eros) 

        MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 9th edition 

        John Lewis, Across That Bridge (2017)   

        Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813) 

        2635E: Literature and the Environment

        Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
        2635E | W 6:20-8:50 | Lattig, Sharon

        This course surveys Western literature and culture from an environmental perspective. Throughout history, literary texts treating subjects such as deforestation, pollution, species loss, animal rights and consumerism have served both to reflect and to impact cultural attitudes toward the environment. As such, we will focus on literature, old and new, that explores the human relationship to nature. Texts will be paired with appropriate ecocritical theories.

        2701: Creative Writing I

        Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011. May not be taken out of sequence after passing ENGL 3701, 3703, or 3713.
        2701 | W 3:35-6:05 | Newell, Mary

        This course will introduce students to the basics of creative expression in nonfiction and poetry. We will read and discuss examples of skilled writing in these genres as inspiration for our own writing. The techniques of creative nonfiction will help writers connect with readers while expressing, and probably deepening, their knowledge about their chosen topics. In poetry, we will explore how traditional forms such as the sonnet find a place in contemporary writing alongside newer forms, such as the golden shovel. We will discover how poems take shape through the writer’s choice of prosody elements such as theme, diction (imagery, assonance, alliteration, etc.), meter, rhyme, and tone. After mid-semester, students may elect to focus on one or the other of these genres for their writing portfolios.  

        3000-Level Courses

        3265W: American Studies Methods

        Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher.
        3265W | TuTh 12:30-1:45 | Pierrot, Gregory

        Music in African American Literature

        "This ain't rap music, this straight literature."-Cordae, "Sinister"

        Or maybe literature is music. In his infamous 1963 essay “The Myth of Negro Literature,” Amiri Baraka provocatively declared: “Only in music, and most conspicuously in blues, jazz and spirituals-‘Negro music’-has there been a significant contribution by American Negroes.” Yet African American music and literature grew side by side: this course will focus on how the parallel and interwined histories of African American music and literature can illuminate the canon.  Following a roughly chronological pattern, we will explore musical connections between Africa and the Americas and their impact of American culture at large and literature about and by African Americans in particular. We will study the minstrel show and its long and ambivalent legacy in American entertainment and literary culture; the “blues matrix” evoked by Houston A. Baker Jr.; the long and rich history of jazz and how its many incarnations were echoed, amplified and adapted in the fiction and poetry of the likes of Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, Toni Morrison and many more.

        3503W: Shakespeare I

        Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.
        3503W | MW 1:25-2:15 | Hybrid | Brown, Pamela

        3629: Holocaust Memoir

        Also offered as: HEJS 3629
        Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to sophomores or higher. Not open to students who have passed ENGL 3623 or 3619 taught as Holocaust literature.
        3629 | Tu 5:30-8:00 | Roden, Frederick

        It has been over 75 years since the end of World War II, and literature concerning the Holocaust continues to be published.  The historical event survives as a lived experience through its ongoing cultural production.  As the events and people connected become part of the past, history unfolds through representation.  This course concerns the notion of "survival" and "survivors" broadly conceived.  Even as we contemplate the atrocity of genocide, hope and endurance serve as our recurring themes.  We will interrogate the meanings of “altruism,” “rescue,” “resistance” and "humanitarianism" – and “survival” -- at individual and collective levels.  What do studies of "survival" teach us about community and human relationships?

        What does it mean to create “art from the ashes”?  In studying literature as the work of memory, we will explore how trauma shapes identity and consider the commitment to write, to document the “unspeakable.”  We will read a variety of genres, including diary, memoir, poetry, and fiction.  All of these forms share an absolute imperative – at times even a compulsion – to tell their story.  How do we (in E. M. Forster's words) "only connect"?  How do we survive?