Prerequisites:  None.

ENGL 1616 applies toward GenEd Content Area 1, CLAS Group B

1616 | TU 6:20 - 8:50 p.m. OS | Cramer, P. Morgne

The 18th century to the present

"I who long for marble columns and pools on the other side of the world where the swallow dips her wings. . . . An immense pressure is on me. I cannot move without dislodging the weight of centuries."                   Rhoda in Virginia Woolf's The Waves

Our course readings focus on the theme of “entrapment and escape." In each novel, essay, short story, or autobiography, characters’ quest for safety, for a fuller life, for truth, requires some form of irrevocable rift from their present or past circumstances. In some cases, figures are trapped by unjust government (Coetzee, Lewis, Noah, Thoreau); others are stuck in compulsive repetitions of outdated roles or harmful family relations (Walker, Winterson, Woolf). We will study, among other themes, strategies of resistance while remaining “in place,” as well as the quest narrative of no return.

Readings:

Jeanette Winterson, Weight (2005)

David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1849)

John Lewis, Across that Bridge (2017) (together with selections from Gandhi)

Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts (1941)

1. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (2019)

Trevor Noah, Born a Crime

Prerequisites:  ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

ENGL 2013 satisfies the following

• One of the required courses for the Writing minor
• General Education Requirement:
  • Satisfies a Writing Competency requirement
• English Major Requirements:
  • 2008-2020 Plans: Section F (Elective courses)
  • 2021-2023 Plans: One of Four Additional Courses
    • Meets the Advanced Composition requirement for the English Teaching Track
    • Meets one requirement for the Writing and Composition Studies Track

• Applies toward the English Minor

2013W | TuTh 2:00 - 3:15 | Gorkemli, Serkan

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, an essay based on interviews with people who write at work, and an internship or a job application. In this manner, we will 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.

Prerequisites:  ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

• General Education Requirement:
  • Content Area One (Arts & Humanities - Literature)
• English Major Requirements:
  • 2017-2020 Plans: Section B.2 (American Literature) or F (Elective courses) and Distribution Requirement
  • 2021-2023 Plans: Core Category: Early Literary, Cultural, and Linguistic History or one of Four Additional Courses
    • Meets one requirement for the Literary Histories and Legacies Track
• Applies toward the English Minor

2200| TuTh 12:30 - 1:45 | Lattig, Sharon

English 2200 examines writings from the earliest European contact with the New World through the birth of the United States and its aftermath, texts that have been left to us by saints, sinners, founders, explorers, criminals, captives, indigenes and slaves. We will read from a variety of genres including histories, captivity narratives, autobiographies, sermons, poems and tales, entertaining questions of national identity, and the roles of spirituality, nature and language in creating what De Crevecoeur called “this new man”—the American.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

• General Education Requirements:
  • Content Area One (Arts & Humanities - Literature)
• English Major Requirements:
  • 2017-2020 Plans: Section C (Genre) or F (Elective courses)
  • 2021-2023 Plans: One of Four Additional Courses
    • Meets the Literary Genres or Methods requirement for the Creative Writing Track
    • Meets the Cultural, Genre, and Media Studies requirement for the English Teaching Track
• Meets one of NEAG’s Secondary Education Genre requirements for IB/M or TCPCG

• Applies toward the English Minor

2408| W 6:20-8:50 p.m. | El Kalfi, Hamid

This course will focus on the study of the development of drama from the late19th century to the present. Students will begin the study with intensive consideration of the beginnings of Modern Drama with roots in mid-19th century Naturalism and Social Realism and will study important early dramatists such as Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, and Shaw. The course will then focus on further developments such as European and American Realism, Expressionism, Anti-realism/Surrealism, and Absurdist drama. We will also explore a number of contemporary plays that are hybrids of the earlier forms. Students will develop critical skills in the conventions of the genre as we consider literary and performance elements of the drama form.

Requirements: Quizzes, two papers, midterm, final, and class participation.

Textbook:

The Norton Anthology of Drama (Shorter Third Edition), by J. Ellen Gainor (Editor, Cornell University), Stanton B Garner Jr. (Editor, University of Tennessee), Martin Puchner (Editor, Harvard University).

ISBN: 978-0-393-28350-1 

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

• General Education Requirements:
  • Content Area One (Arts & Humanities - Literature)
  • The W version of this course satisfies a Writing Competency requirement
• English Major Requirements:
  • 2021-2023 Plans: One of Four Additional Courses
    • Meets the Literary Genres or Methods requirement for the Creative Writing Track
    • Meets one requirement for the Cultural Studies/Media Studies Track
    • Meets the Cultural, Genre, and Media Studies requirement for the English Teaching Track
• Applies toward the English Minor 

2411W| M 6:20 - 8:50 | El-Khalfi, Hamid 

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011.

• General Education Requirements:
  • Content Area One (Arts & Humanities -Literature)
  • The W version of this course satisfies a Writing Competency requirement
• English Major Requirements:
  • 2008-2020Plans: Section F (Elective Courses); Optional Concentration
    • Elective for the Concentration in Creative Writing
  • 2021-2023 Plans: One of Four Additional Courses
    • Meets the Literary Genres or Methods requirement for the Creative Writing Track
    • Meets one requirement for the Cultural Studies/Media Studies Track
    • Meets the Cultural, Genre, and Media Studies requirement for the English Teaching Track
• Applies toward the English Minor 

2413W| Sa 10:00-12:30 | Moeckel-Rieke, Hannelore

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011 or 3800; open to English majors, others with instructor consent.

English 2600 is a major Methods requirement and an English minor elective.

2600|M 3:35 - 6:05 |Roden, Frederick

What makes an English major?  What can you “do” with that degree?  What does it mean to become a literary critic or a literary historian?

This course will tackle these questions through practical and theoretical examples.  What is the pleasure of the text -- why do we read?  How might we write “critically” – and how can we while maintaining our own voices, given the abundance of sources and media available?  Is there anything new to “say,” and how do we speak in our own words?

English 2600 is intended for the student interested in reading and writing about literature.  Creative writers will find that all criticism is also creative: that the work of literary analysis is a work of art.  We start here, as we explore what it means to define ourselves by the written word.

We will consider the history of reading and writing, as well as the development of the formal study of literature in the university.  How did specialization in literary studies begin; what does it mean to define that in the English language tradition (whether “Anglophone” literature or works in translation); and what is the range of interests possible for earning an undergraduate degree in this field?

We will pay particular attention to the tension between reading and writing for “pleasure,” training that puts our voices in conversation with other specialists, and what it means to become a “professional” in this field.  We will work closely with the Center for Career Development to understand the variety of positions English majors pursue.  We will emphasize the importance of growing portable skills not solely to apply them, but to live out our passions through a vocation, not just a job.  You will meet UConn English alumni who are pursuing many different paths.

In English 2600 you’ll answer for yourself the question “what are you going to do with an English major?”  We will practice that art and science of literary criticism as we read classic works of literature, learn how they became classics, and what the profession of literary studies is.  We will work closely with the UConn Libraries not only to strengthen our research skills and citation formats, develop digital proficiency and theoretical breadth, but also to recognize, learn to read and to produce the professional writing of our discipline.

English 2600 will teach you what it means to be an English major, minor, or professional in this field; to share who you are with peers, colleagues, employers, family, and friends.

Course requirements: Expect weekly reading and writing assignments from primary and secondary sources.  You will develop an annotated bibliography of scholarly works in your field(s) of interest.  You will write critically about texts of your choice in a term paper.  You will also write job descriptions and letters of application for careers you wish to pursue. 

English 2600 is a major Methods requirement and an English minor elective.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher.

• General Education Requirement:
  • Content Area Four (Diversity & Multiculturalism - International) 
• English Major Requirements:
  • 2017-2020 Plans: Section B.3 (Anglophone & Postcolonial Literature)
  • 2021-2023 Plans: Core Category: Antiracism, Globality, and Embodiment (Group 1) or one of Four Additional Courses
    • Meets one requirement for the Literature, Antiracism, and Social Justice Track
• Meets NEAG’s Secondary Education International Literature Requirement for IB/M & TCPCG

3318 | Th 5:30-8:00 | Roden, Frederick

Topic: Global Jewish Literatures

Jewish writings from prehistory have been preoccupied with the idea of “home,” a sense of place.  The earliest Jewish story in the Bible begins with a quest for a new land.  Throughout antiquity, in both expulsions and determined dispersions (the first diasporas, “scatterings across”), Jewish literature has simultaneously looked back and forward: to where one came from and where one was going.  To “be” Jewish is an active verb.  This narrative is not a simple precursor of some temporal and geographical European relationship to ancient Israel as a foundational culture.  Rather, Jewish life has been global beyond the Judean Middle East for more than two millennia, including Africa and Asia as well as the Mediterranean world.

In this course, we will study what it means to create an identity and self whose single constant is complex location.  Global Jewish literature (beyond “western” culture, Europe and North America) encompasses not only ancient Africa and Asia but also Early Modern Latin America and modern Australia.  The journeys of diaspora are not limited in origin to the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century of the Common Era, but rather are inherent to Jewish literature, often leading to mixed and conflicted “belongings” across space.

As we study this literature and culture, we will pay particular attention to the tensions of home.  Who are my neighbors and how do I relate to them?  What is my nation; how must I belong (across time and place) to more than one simultaneously?  Where is my home, and where might I feel at home, even if in literary imagination rather than geography?  We will compare Jews with other “foreigners” in lands.  We will also consider Jewish identity (however it is defined) through an intersectional repertoire, focusing not only on time and place (premodern to postmodern), but also gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, class, language, social change, and especially questions of diversity both within and beyond “peoplehood.”

Course requirements: students will write weekly journal entries in response to the assigned reading.  There will be a term paper, a final exam, and a field trip. 

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007 or 1010 or 1011 or 2011

Also offered as WGSS 3613

• General Education Requirement:
  • Content Area Four (Diversity & Multiculturalism – USA)
• English Major Requirements:
  • 2008-2020 Plans: Section F (Elective courses); Optional Concentration
  • 2021-2023 Plans: Core Category: Antiracism, Globality, and Embodiment (Group 2) or one of Four Additional Courses
    • Meets one requirement for the Literature, Antiracism, and Social Justice Track
• Meets one of NEAG’s Multicultural Literature Requirements for IB/M or TCPCG 

3613| TuTh 3:30 - 4:45 |Gorkemli, Serkan

In this course, we will read books about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) experiences. Class discussions and assignments will focus on the elements of fiction and pre-Stonewall and contemporary representations in coming-of-age and coming-out texts. In addition, we will learn about LGBTQ+ history and the theories of gender and sexuality. This knowledge will help us locate literary texts in their cultural and historical contexts. In this manner, we will view literary works as authors’ creative intervention in society and politics concerning LGBTQ+ identities. This approach to texts will also highlight other identity categories, such as race, ethnicity, class, and religious affiliation.