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English Course Descriptions

Spring 2009 CWRR II Course Descriptions

Spring 2009 CWRR II (Critical Writing, Reading and Research II) Course Descriptions
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IN 151-01 & 04 (Honors)
Horror in Film and Fiction: Daring the Nightmare
MWF 8:00 & 10:00—Professor Judi Crowe

This course explores the genre of horror in fiction and film, its historical, social, political, and cultural underpinnings, and what is at stake in the genre as a whole in terms of issues of religion, psychology, science, ethics, gender, race, and culture. We will read, examine, and discuss a variety of scholarly, historical, literary, and pop culture sources as well as view films representative of various subgenres (monster, vampire, slasher, psychological, etc.) of horror. Core texts by Noel Carroll and Stephen King offer diverse grounding of a topic that continues to disturb, sometimes disgust, yet ever intrigue us. Indeed, as King points out, we do so like to dare the nightmare……..

IN 151-02 & 03 (Honors)
Knowledge is Power: But How Can We Know?
MWF 9:00-1:00—Dr. Carmella Braniger

CWRRII is the second half of the first-year writing curriculum. The course emphasizes learning to research and write college-level research essays. This course focuses on developing the ability to ask questions, find and use source materials, and to invent and present conclusions, understandings, insights, arguments, and points of significance. As you learn how to conduct academic inquiry, and to critically read and evaluate texts, you will develop a better understanding of “how you can know.” You will also develop an understanding of “what you should do” by conducting an extended research project, which you will present to the entire campus one designated day in the Spring semester (Honors Freshman Focus Day).

This section of Honors IN151 explores major paradigms for creating relationships between self and other, for the purpose of enriching and broadening ourselves as writers, readers and researchers. In studying the questions “what is knowledge?” and “how can we know?,” we will examine various ways of gaining knowledge and consider diverse and even contradictory definitions of what the word means. In our examination, we will consider interdisciplinary research related to multiple intelligences, knowledge as information vs. knowledge as design and will focus on newly emerging scholarship on Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Spiritual Intelligence. You will have the freedom to choose your own research focus.

IN 151-05, 06 & 07
TR 8:00, 12:30, & 2:00—TBA

The course is designed to position students as successful writers, readers, and researchers. Emphasis is placed on writing and reading as the path to critical thinking. Students are asked to read and critique texts actively, deliberately, and carefully, to write polished, informed essays for personal, public, and/or specialized audiences, and to reflect on the uses of reading and writing in their pubic and personal lives to better understand themselves, their communities, and the world. Library research component is introduced and integrated into the course.

IN 151-08 & 09
MWF 1:00 & 3:00—Dr. Stephen Frech

This 151 course will continue the work of 150 and ask you to think more demandingly about the origin and purpose of text, the relationship between what a text means and how it means it, and to think about these issues in your own writing. Additionally, as a research focused course, 151 will provide opportunities for you to learn and enhance your skills of academic research and your habits of making not just gathering knowledge.

Mark Kurlansky’s bestseller Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, as our central text, will change the way we think about history, the how and why histories are written. In a prose style both beautiful and purposeful, Kurlansky tells the story of the codfish industry and the history that it prompts: wars, revolutions, national diets, cultural identities, even the discovery and settlement of America. Part classic fish tale, part food history, part ecological fable, Cod demonstrates the rich hybridization of historical research and imaginative thinking.

IN 151-10 & 11
“Come on Down to South Park…”
TR 8:00 & 9:30—Dr. Michael George

The Comedy Central television show South Park has become a cultural phenomenon, both in terms of its artistic vision and its ability to comment upon American culture. In this section of Critical Writing, Reading, and Researching II you will conduct an academic inquiry into South Park using contemporary literary theory. You will explore issues including but not limited to race relations, international relations, politics (in all of the many meanings of the word), sexuality, religion, and American culture in general. The research project for the course will be applying of one of the theories that we cover to the film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

IN 151-12 & 13
TR 11:00 & 2:00—Dr. Lisa Klotz

This section of IN-151 teaches the fundamentals of research and argumentation. Students learn to read a variety of arguments closely and critically to evaluate the effectiveness of the argument. They also learn to write persuasive arguments for academic audiences, using formal standard English. Assignments include a 10-12 page researched persuasive essay, several shorter essays, and a persuasive speech.

IN 151-14
Autoethnographies and Beyond
MWF 12:00—Dr. Anne Matthews

In this version of IN151, we will begin with questions of personal identity: the influences that shape us, the groups we belong to, the relationship between self-definition and the perception of others, and the ways that individuals and groups bridge or preserve differences. This part of the course will culminate in an autoethnography, a cultural autobiography. We will then turn to the research project, using the knowledge students generated in the first part of the course as a springboard for more in-depth exploration and articulation. Students will write a major research essay, presenting their work to the class from time to time. Other kinds of writing—journals, annotated bibliographies—will be assigned throughout the research process. At the end of the course, students will present their full research essay to the class.

IN 151-15 & 16
Myths, Monsters, and Morality
MWF 10:00 & 12:00—Professor Sandra McKenna

This course will explore the function and importance of myth in the formation of cultures. We will examine myths around the world in terms of the way cultural myths help create and sustain social order. Myths also reflect basic human needs for expression of the individual and for defining the individual’s role in the society. The students will read materials from Freud, Jung, Campbell as well as myths from around the world. Students will continue to work on expanding their critical reading and writing skills. The reading and writing focus in the course will culminate in the students producing a well-crafted research paper.

IN 151-17
Ideology and the Modern Text
TR 3:30—Dr. Priscilla Meddaugh

This course appropriates film as a modern text worthy of academic inquiry, using critical theories of feminism, Marxism, and post colonialism to identify narratives of power in contemporary films. Understanding the boundaries of film genre, of whose interests are represented and which reality is acknowledged, has significant implications of how entertainment products are interpreted. Students learn to use critical theory to generate new ways of seeing and interpreting film texts, as well as associated methods of critical inquiry. The course culminates in an original research project investigating power discrepancies embedded in film narratives.

IN 151 18 & 19
Multiple Intelligences
MWF 11:00 & 1:00—Dr. Jim Meyer

As you learn how to conduct academic inquiry, and to read texts critically and evaluate them, you will develop a better understanding of how we can know and learn. This is true in all sections of IN151. In these sections of IN151 we explore these questions more carefully and deliberately. We'll look at topics such as Howard Gardner's idea of multiple intelligences, we'll explore the ideas of knowing and learning through two or three novels, and we'll think together about ways to learn (through reading, through experiences, through relationships with others). In our examination, we will consider interdisciplinary research related to multiple intelligences as well as some of the critiques of Gardner's ideas. You will have the freedom to choose your own research focus.

IN 151 20 & 21
Body Image, Gender, Language & Globalization
MWF 8:00 & 9:00—Dr. Peiling Zhao

As a second part of first year writing program, Critical Writing, Reading, and Research II will continue to fulfill its learning outcome goals:
• Read and critique texts actively, deliberately, and carefully;
• Write polished, informed essays for personal, public, and/or specialized audiences;
• Conduct research to participate in academic inquiry; and
• Reflect on the uses of reading and writing in their public and personal lives to better understand themselves, their communities and the world.
To achieve these goals, this course will focus on its reading, writing, and research activities on writing arguments about contemporary popular cultural issues as well as global issues. To be more specific, this course will practice various types of arguments—definitional, categorical, causal, resemblance, criteria/ evaluation, and proposal arguments—by writing about various current issues such as body image, gender, language, and globalization.

IN 151 22 & 23
Holocaust Fiction
TR 9:30 & 11:00—Professor Andy Matthews

What claim do representations of the Holocaust have on us? What do they tell us about the modern world? About ourselves? Why has the Holocaust become so central to American and Western culture and awareness?

This course will look at the Jewish Holocaust through the medium of serious (or "literary") fiction (we will watch a couple of serious movies as well). Possible readings include novels and short stories by Art Spiegelman (a graphic novelist), Cynthia Ozick, Ida Fink, Louis Begley, and Gunter Grass. The course will address various aspects of victims' experience of the Holocaust, including ghetto life, life in hiding, and passing as gentile (Auschwitz and other camps will figure in the course, but they will not dominate it). In addition to concerns like those raised above, we will address issues such as wartime and post-Holocaust Jewish identity, long-term effects on survivors and their children, trauma and memory, and contemporary German attempts to come to terms with a horrific past.

Written work will include response papers, interpretive papers, and a research paper dealing with some aspect of the Holocaust that figures prominently in our reading or in our consideration of the Holocaust as an object of representation.

IN 151 24 & 25
Representations of Place in American Culture
MWF 2:00 & 3:00—Dr. Devon Fitzgerald

This section of IN-151 examines our experience(s) with space/place. We will research how and why we become attached to locations, architectures and neighborhoods. Part of our research seeks to understand our cultural fascination with places ranging from small-town America to the bright lights of the big city. We will pay attention to how such places have been represented in film, novels, narratives, news reports, government projects, and other cultural texts. Students will explore both their personal and cultural relationships to place and space through several small projects such as observations, profiles, interviews and narrative pieces which will be part of gathering information for the larger research project grounded in the theories of space/place and culture. Throughout the semester we will investigate the deep meaning we acquire for places as we research today’s physical environments.