Summer 2012

Summer Sessions Class Schedules & Descriptions


Summer Session I


ENG 407 – Language & Style for Writers
Sirles, T/TH 6:00-9:15pm  LPC

A comprehensive examination of structural and stylistic devices that accomplished writers use in creative and literary nonfiction contexts. Topics include sentence emphasis and rhythm, coherence, point of view, authorial stance, and rhetorical aspects of sentence structure, repetition, and punctuation.

Language and style core requirement in the MAE and MAWP. Elective in the MAE and MAWP.


ENG 469 — Topics in American Literature:  Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir
Ingrasci, M/W 6:00-9:15pm  LPC

The course offers an immersion into the NOIR world, based upon the pulp fiction and crime novellas of the hard-boiled 1930s, 40s, and 50s.  We’ll examine the labyrinth─the no-escape vortex─that dooms both the cynical L.A./San Fran. detectives and the “Sisyphysian losers” who struggle vainly against their ineluctable urban fates in the “Asphalt Jungle” cities of the West Coast.  The shortness of the fictional works of the hard-boiled school will allow us to read and discuss seven of these novellas in our nine sessions, as well as examine eight classic NOIR films that derive from the hard-boiled tradition in fiction.  Students will screen these at home and provide RECEIPTS or an on-line viewing website as proof of current viewing.  They will also take a PLOT QUIZ on each of the novellas to assure everyone will come prepared to discuss the works (in small groups).

Course sessions will feature prof’s contextualizing the fictions/films re 20th century culture; plus film clips─documentaries on NOIR authors’ visions; and cuttings from feature films (not assigned) that relate to our course’s texts; and small-group discussions (via PROMPTS) of our novels and films.

Course’s texts include a PICTORIAL history of NOIR films, and critical Readings on novelists.

*If you are interested in taking this course, please click on the following link to DOWNLOAD AND READ THE ENTIRE SYLLABUS before enrolling: ENG 469 Syllabus

20th/21st Century period requirement in the MAE. Elective in the MAE and MAWP.


ENG 484 — Writing Workshop Topics: Narrative Clarity: Scenes and Vignettes
Jones, M/W 6:00-9:15pm  LPC

Narrative Clarity is a course in reading and writing poetry and short prose scenes and vignettes. Vignettes and scenes are economical: brief narratives and sketches characterized by great precision and accuracy of composition. Our primary genre will be poetry and prose poems. We will study the craft of writing by closely examining selected poems and model prose paragraphs, and through intensive, daily in-class writing and the critical analysis of student writing.

Writing Workshop requirement in the MAWP. Elective in the MAE and MAWP.


Summer Session II


ENG 442  — English Romantic Poets
Gross, T/TH 6:00-9:15pm  LPC

English 442 will be concerned with poetic genre, specifically  the influence of Milton’s Paradise Lost on Wordsworth’s Prelude, Byron’s Don Juan, Barbauld’s English in 1811, and Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. We will be concerned with the genre of the long poem, issues of prosody as discussed by Saintsbury and Paul Fussell, and the specific challenge of writing an epic autobiography.

19th Century period requirement in the MAE. Elective in the MAE and MAWP.


ENG 484 — Writing Workshop Topics: Writing and Marketing the Literary Arts
Green, M/W 6-9:15pm LPC

Students will workshop existing and new poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction with the aim of submitting work to multiple literary magazines at the end of the term. Students will also be introduced to the local and national literary publishing scene and to the process of publishing work in multiple genres in magazines as well as in book form. In addition, the class will learn how to create, edit and find publication for literary projects such as anthologies and other collaborative literary works.

Writing Workshop requirement in the MAWP. Elective in the MAE and MAWP.

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