Spring 2009

Queens Campus

E. 2200: Intro to English Studies (13430)
TR 7:35-9:00 a.m.
Dr. Hannah Fischthal
In this essential class for English majors, we will read and interpret selected prose fiction, poetry, drama, and essays.  In addition to reading closely and critically, we will examine works in their socio-political, historical, and literary contexts.    We will read from an assortment of authors from different eras, cultures, and genres, including Shakespeare, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, William Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, Melville, Poe, Whitman, Primo Levi, Nellie Sachs, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Paul Celan, Geoffrey Hartman, Italo Calvino, Chinua Achebe, Elie Wiesel, and David H. Hwang. You additionally will practice writing clearly and thoughtfully. In a research paper, you need to demonstrate that you have learned the basics of academic research, according to MLA Guidelines. 

E. 2200: Introduction to English Studies (14620)
TR 9:10-10:35 a.m.
Dr. John Lowney
This course introduces the interpretive reading and writing practices that constitute the English major.  Through the reading, interpretation, and criticism of modern and contemporary prose fiction, poetry, drama, and literary nonfiction, it will foster an understanding of the methodologies of literary and cultural studies.  While the course will introduce important theoretical problems and terms, it will emphasize the practical experience of writing within the English major, from the composition of brief essays to the development of a final research paper.  Writing assignments will include informal creative exercises as well as formal papers.           

E. 2200: Intro to English Studies (14615)
M/W 11:15-12:10 p.m., F Online
Dr. Angela Belli
A foundation course introducing English majors and minors to the disciplinary practices of the English major. 

E. 2300: Introduction to Literary Criticism & Theory (14624)
M/W 12:20-1:15 p.m., F. Online
Dr. Granville Ganter
The principal reason to take this course is to develop an awareness that there are a variety of compelling ways to understand the relation of the “text” (art, or literature) to the “world out there.” Does art describe the actual world, or is it a complete fantasy? We honestly do not always know. A related question is, “Where does literary value come from?” The soul of the artist? The mind of the audience? The work of art itself?  Some shifting combination of the three? This course is a brief introduction to these questions, and we will survey some of the principal 20th century theories of understanding the problem of literature’s relationship to society. Readings will include Saussure and poststructuralism; the Formalist movement and New Criticism; Bakhtin’s theory of the novel;  Freudian and Marxist approaches to literature; and some basic readings in gender theory and postcolonial criticism.

E. 2300: Intro to Literary Criticism & Theory (14629)
TR 10:45-12:10 p.m.
Dr. Elda Tsou
The aim of this course is to introduce the key thinkers in literary theory. We will begin with Plato and work our way through the “classical” theorists to examine how their ideas form the foundations for contemporary schools of theory and the questions that are posed about gender, identity, sexuality, writing and literature. The goal of this course is familiarization with the work of important theorists. We will not be treating theory as a set of formulae that we will “apply” to literary texts, but examining it as a set of texts and questions in its own right. Theorists to be covered: Plato, Freud, Marx, Saussure, Butler, Derrida, Spivak, Said, Lacan, Barthes, Austin, Foucault.

E. 3100: Medieval English Literature (15169)
TR 3:05-4:30 p.m.
Dr. Nicole Rice
This course introduces some of medieval England’s major dramatic traditions, with their dynamic fusions of sacred and secular concerns. We begin with early ritual representations and proceed to the cycles—collections of short plays dramatizing history from Creation to Doomsday in a specifically urban setting. We will also consider plays dedicated to the exploits of individual saints, and selected morality plays, in which the vices and the virtues battle for domination. We will read the surviving texts as scripts for and vestiges of performance, along with critical, historical, and visual materials. Topics will include the relations among bodies on stage, the social body, and the eucharistic body of Christ; the drama’s connections to social and religious controversy; meanings of urban space and public spectacle; questions of gender, performance, and spiritual authority. Students will work with glossed Middle English texts and learn to read and pronounce the original language. No prior knowledge of Middle English is necessary.

E. 3140: Shakespeare: The Jacobean Plays (14621)
TR 4:40-6:05 p.m.
Prof. Joshua Pangborn
 The Jacobean period of Shakespeare’s work is often characterized by a tonal shift, with plays which are darker than many of Shakespeare’s earlier romantic comedies. This course will take an eclectic approach to several of these plays. We will consider historical context along with key issues, from gender and sexuality to race and the idea of “otherness.” We will begin our approach, however, with the challenges and the pleasures of the readings themselves. The course will culminate in an 8-10 page research paper. Some of the plays we will read include: King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Cymbeline, and All’s Well That Ends Well. 

E. 3200-Eighteenth Century British Literature (14605)
Violence in Eighteenth Century Literature 
MWF 10:10-11:05 a.m.       
Dr. Joanne Neff
This course explores violence in Eighteenth Century literature and the ways that authors invite their audiences to experience it vicariously and safely through the act of reading.  Examining diaries, biography, fiction, and drama, we will consider representations of criminal behavior, brutality, and sexual cruelty.  We will study depictions of and responses to destructive biological forces, such as sexually transmitted diseases and the bubonic plague.  We will view all these topics through the lenses of class and gender.  This course is not for the faint of heart.
The assignments include an oral report that focuses on background information, two short written projects, a midterm essay, a final paper, and a final exam.  The most likely writers will be Aphra Behn, John Cleland, Henry Fielding, Horace Walpole, Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe, and various lesser-known contributors to The Newgate Calendar.    

E. 3230: Nineteenth-Century Novel (14612)               
TR 1:30-2:55 pm
Dr. Amy King
Few cultural forms have achieved such a balance between mass popularity and aesthetic complexity as the novel of the nineteenth century.  Our goal in this course will be to examine in detail a set of novels—primarily British, but also French (in translation)— from the classic period of the novel. We will be considering the following topics, among others:  the subjects of a middle-class world, such as manners (class) and money (economics); what the bourgeoisie was and is, and why it found its best expression in the novel; society in the modern context— how the novel explained, mapped, and made sense out of the forms of a mobile, economic, and increasingly secular society; the psychologies of the novel— its interest in descriptions of mood, consciousness, gendered minds, intimacy; the individual— how the novel represents the modern individual self or subjectivity, especially its expression of moral trial as well as the everyday.  Finally, we will be learning to read novels as such— to acquire a vocabulary and set of skills for grasping the details of how novels are built and how they work, in order to become better readers of modernity’s most characteristic literary form.

E. 3240: Romantic Literature (14642)                      
TR 9:10-10:35 am
Dr. Amy King
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven” (Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1805).  This course surveys the literature of the Romantic era in Britain—roughly the 1780s to 1820s— including the major poetry, significant political prose, and novels.  Throughout the course we will seek to assess the continuing popularity of the Romantic imagination and its relevance to characteristic modes of subjective experience in the 21st century world.  We will consider such topics as: nature and the imagination in a time marked by the industrial revolution and political unrest; the urgency romantic poets and their contemporaries felt in their quest to affirm a core set of transcendent values—including freedom, personhood, immortality; the experience of history in a time of extraordinary change; the role of art and the artist in the new political world forged by the French revolution; gender and sensibility.
                               
E. 3340: American Realism and Naturalism (14627)
M/W 10:10-11:05 a.m., F. Online
Dr. Granville Ganter
This course will examine the Realist and Naturalist movements of the late nineteenth century. Historically, this period witnesses the co-optation of Victorian ideals of religion and family by economic and scientific narratives. The rhetoric of “survival of the fittest,” as Herbert Spencer put it, began to rule civic discourse. Happy endings?—not so much. The course will begin with Emile Zola, generally regarded as the father of Naturalism, and we will read from his L’Assomoir, a gruesome story of a washerwoman and her roofer husband who descend into alcoholism. We will pursue this trajectory with American texts such as Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Stephen Crane’s “Maggie: Girl of the Streets,” and “The Monster,” Frank Norris’s McTeague, and Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. In less sensational terms we will examine the drama of upward mobility in Horatio Alger’s stories, Henry James’ Washington Square and William Dean Howells’ Rise of Silas Lapham. Class discussions may include why McTeague likes to bite his girlfriend’s fingertips; what it might be like to have your face burned away; how to marry off your slightly stupid daughter; and what to do when your husband ties you to a bed for several months. Students would benefit from a basic familiarity with the 18th or 19th century European novel in preparation for this class.
  
E. 3350:American Women Writers (15067)
M/W: 1:25-2:20 F: Online
Dr. Jennifer Travis
This course is an introduction to literature written by women in the United States.  We will begin with the 18th century seduction novel and end with writers of the Harlem Renaissance.  The course will focus on the ways gender, class, ethnicity, race, and region shaped women’s writings and their lives.

E. 3450: Modern Drama (14626)
M/W 12:20-1:15 p.m., F Online
Dr. Angela Belli
A study of the major playwrights of the modern era who revolutionized the stage for our age. Each dramatist will be studied with a view to determining each’s individual vision, relation to other works of the time, and success in influencing the dramatists of the 20th and 21st centuries to follow. Consideration will be given to the innovative works of such significant dramatists as Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Anton Chekhov, Luigi Pirandello, Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams.
 
E. 3470: Twentieth-Century African American Literature (14647)
TR 1:30-2:55 p.m.
Dr. John Lowney
In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.”  Beginning with Du Bois’s prophetic statement, this introductory course will explore how selected African American fiction, drama, poetry, and essays have responded to and influenced issues of race and racism, cultural nationalism and assimilation, and racial and gendered identity.  The course will present an overview of twentieth-century African American literary history, concentrating especially on the oral tradition (particularly music) and its impact on literary expression.  Readings will include Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones; Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon; Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin on the Sun; and August Wilson, Fences.

E. 3560: American Ethnic Literatures (14613)
TR 3:05-4:30 p.m.
Dr. Elda Tsou
 ³Asian American Literature & Society² This course serves as an introduction to the Asian American literary tradition and its historical and political context. Since one of the hallmarks of the literature is the challenge of its diversity, we will cover a range of texts from various ethnicities and genres‹poetry, drama, novels, short stories, autobiography‹to explore how these texts pose different issues and themes, all relating to ³Asian America.² To supplement our readings of the literary texts, we will also be watching films‹some documentary, some fictional‹that narrate the Asian American experience.

ENG/CLS 3600: Classical Epic in Translation (14625)
MWF 8:00-8:55 a.m.
Dr. Robert Forman
A reading of the major epic poems of Greek and Latin literature; these inspired British and American writers as different as Milton, James Joyce, and John Gardner.  We will note such parallels as appropriate. 
Our authors and texts will include Homer, Iliad and Odyssey; Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica; Vergil, Aeneid with several fragments from Ennius, Naevius, and Statius.

ENG 3620/CLS 1210: Classical Mythology (14759)
TR 9:10-10:35 a.m.
Dr. Robert Forman
 The course deals with the universality of myth in literature, art, and music.  Specifically, it notes the innumerable number of variations for expressing comparable themes and focuses on the human need to do this. With this rationale, we shall use primary texts such as Hesiod’s Theogony, the Homeric Hymns, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Vergil’s Aeneid as ground, but support them with art, music, and modern psychology as a means of establishing their timelessness in time.

E. 3630: Utopian Fiction (15253)
TR 10:45-12:10 p.m.
Dr. Dohra Ahmad
Utopian fiction is an interdisciplinary undertaking, one that engages political philosophy, economics, agriculture, religion, urban planning, and architecture as well as the literary imagination.  In this survey of utopian fiction from the early modern period to the present, we will consider a wide range of utopian novels both as literary works and as blueprints for social change.  Beginning with the influential models of Thomas More’s Utopia, an imaginary New World travelogue, and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, a technophilic dream of year-2000 socialism, we will move on to the revisions, sometimes hopeful and sometimes ominous, of the twentieth century.  Course readings will also include some selections (anti-colonial fiction, manifestos, and hybrid texts) that challenge a conventional definition of utopia.  Written work will include critical analyses as well as exercises in composing utopian fiction.

E. 3700: Seminar in Teaching Writing (15051)
Online
Prof. Tom Philipose
An introduction to composition theory and pedagogy, with special emphasis on one-to-one peer tutoring. Designed especially for students interested in working in the Writing Center and other educational venues. The mentoring of writing is one of the most exhilarating and frustrating experiences a teacher, tutor, or mentor can encounter.  While most composition instruction takes place within classrooms, some of the most powerful encounters and the most lasting interventions happen in the context of one-to-one conference sessions.  During the course of the semester, we will explore the problem of mentoring writing in the context of one-to-one interaction, and we will use the space and idea of the writing center as the primary domain for exploration.  Like most colleges, St. John’s has invested considerable time, money, and energy in developing a successful writing center.  We will have the opportunity to learn from this space and its users, be they the students, staff, and faculty that use it or the staff that mentors within it.  Some of us will actually spend time within the center applying what we will talk about and struggle over within the situation of the writing center conference.

E. 3720: Intro to Creative Writing (14618)
M/W 11:15-12:10 p.m., F Online
Prof. Lee Ann Brown
This is a multi-genre writing workshop and writing lab in which we will practice poetry, flash fiction, playwrighting, performance writing, memoir, creative non-fiction.  The course employs models of contemporary work in all genres.  Students will finish the semester with a final project in one of their chosen genres, or with one which incorporates multiple genres.  Readings from primary source texts and well as theory or writing will be included.  This course is intended as an introductory course in creative writing and also as an introduction to the Creative Writing Minor.

E. 3720: Intro to Creative Writing (15049)
MW. 4:40-6:05 p.m.
Prof. Maryann Reid
This course introduces the fundamental techniques of writing in fiction, such as short stories, flash fiction, and novels. It will focus on the elements of form and structure, plot, character development, scene & setting, etc., and the work of popular fiction writers.  Students will spend the semester reading/analyzing contemporary authors, generating their own writings, and receiving peer and instructor response to their work.  Course aims to develop and strengthen student ability to use written language for creative expression and communication.
 
E. 3740:  Creative Writing: Fiction (14616)
M 3:35-6:20 p.m.
Prof. Gabriel Brownstein
This is a fiction workshop for anyone interested in writing stories.  Students will explore their language and their imaginations first in a set of storytelling exercises and then in original short stories.  They will read and critique each other’s fiction, and at the end of the course they will put together a portfolio of their best revised writing.  As we work on our own fiction, we’ll read some great writers—a varied set of readings that will help us consider basic problems and difficulties that face writers of stories and novels—and these writers’ works will help us imagine and discuss our own.

E. 3760: Writing as a Social Action (14614)
M 3:35-5:00 p.m. W. Online
Dr. Harry Denny
This course explores texts from historical movements for social justice and change in the U.S. Making connections between their own research on and pursuit of activism, students will study these precedents for social action with an eye toward rhetorical form, function, style, and ideology. Beginning with early American slave and women’s protest in juxtaposition to an emergent national rhetoric of equality, the course will trace on-going struggles over who gets to claim an American identity and to what effect (e.g., abolition, anti-lynching, suffragist, civil rights, Third Wave feminism, late 20th Century identity movements, worker’s rights, black power, AIDS, New Right, environmental activism, student’s rights, etc.).  This course will follow a mix-mode curriculum model: Face-to-face meetings will focus on seminar discussions of theory and methods of textual analysis as well as collaborative study of primary texts, and online meetings will involve workshopping drafts of weekly writing. From these drafts, students will develop mid-term and final portfolios that also include revised essays along with meta-texts that offer self-reflection on writing process and self-assessment of individual strengths and weaknesses. The final portfolio will also include a culminating social movement project that works to raise consciousness among students’ wider group of peers and that utilizes lessons learned from the theories, methods, and movements studied during the course of the semester. 

E. 3780: Advanced Poetry Writing Workshop (14641)
M/W 1:25-2:20 p.m. F. Online
Prof. Lee Ann Brown
This new course is intended for undergraduates who would like to develop and deepen their poetic practice, and who have already taken English 3730 (Poetry Writing Workshop).  Individual attention in shaping serial or extended works of poetry will be emphasized in context of a continuing exploration of contemporary world poetry and poetics.  Students will be required to write and revise a chapbook-length manuscript or long poem.  Opportunities will be had to organize and attend poetry readings and performances on and off campus, to learn about the current state of print and web publishing, and to create our own publications and performances.  The goal is to allow students to enter the literary arena both on campus and in the larger culture.  Service learning components will be developed, and the place of "poet as citizen" will be examined and enacted.
 
E. 3890: Topics in Film Genre:  The Horror Film. (14733)
TR 10:45-12:10 p.m.
Dr. Scott Combs
 A mandatory 2-hour weekly screening accompanies this course.  Students should not sign up unless they can attend the weekly screening, scheduled for Tuesday 1:30-3:30.  This course studies the horror film genre, starting with early silent films and ending with contemporary examples.  We will identify formal and thematic consistencies over time and across national schools.  Horror is usually a highly aesthetic genre, and we will appreciate its frequent formal beauty.  But we also will consider the psychological effects these films elicit in spectators, as well as the social and political work the films do.  We will find answers to the question of why fear is such a pleasurable and enduring form of spectatorship.   Films will include works by Murnau, Dreyer, Whale, Browning, Hitchcock, Argento, Franju, Romero, Polanski, Cronenberg, and others.

E. 4991: Seminar in British Literature (14644)
M/W 2:30-3:25 p.m., F Online
Dr. Angela Belli
The object of this seminar is to explore the nature of comedy and its presence in selected works of fiction from Shakespeare to the present.  We will consider the classical roots and global connections of the comic tradition in England.  Selected plays, novels, and poems will be studied as we focus on form and function.  Central to our explorations will be the social ends of comedy.  We will view customary depictions of human behavior which allowed for rewards for the "good" and punishment for the "evil." We will also identify the most popular model, the celebration of human love. Also examined will be those types of comedy that differ from the traditional, including farce and satire. Last, the current view of "black" humor in the works of the Absurd will be examined. Authors selected for inclusion will include Shakespeare, Pope, Austen, G.B. Shaw, J.M. Synge, and Samuel Beckett among others.

E. 4994: Seminar in Themes/Genres (14617)             
TR 4:40-6:05 pm
Dr. Anne Geller
The World Would Split Open: Contemporary Women Essayists
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?” Muriel Rukeyser asks.  “The world would split open.”   This seminar will consider how contemporary women essayists have taken up Rukeyser’s challenge in their writing, utilizing non-fiction narrative and truth-telling as well as research and analysis, to consider women’s relationships with one another (and with men), the facts of living in a woman’s body, the bridges between the domestic and the political, and the weight and inheritance of feminism. Where is it that women today – and current female essayists -- see themselves in connection to the generations of women and women writers who have preceded them?  Close readings of texts by women essayists and related critical essays (women’s autobiography, feminist theory and gender studies, narrative, new journalism and creative non-fiction) will ground our exploration and discussion of such themes and issues as race, gender, language and culture, immigration, love, the body, the family, war and violent conflict, and nature.  As an offshoot we will be addressing racism, sexism, relations between the empowered and the disempowered, the separation of public and private, and the power and limitation of the written word. We will also take into account how women essayists reflect on their own composing and revising processes, the ethics of non-fiction, and the way women’s work as essayists, artists, activists and academics is shaped by gender. Essayists read will include: Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich, Joan Didion, Maxine Hong Kingston, Alice Walker, Arundahati Roy, Terry Tempest Williams, and others.

Staten Island Courses

ENG 2100 (College Core class)
LITERATURE AND CULTURE:
The Graphic Novel
Instructor: Prof. Regina Corallo
TR 1:30-2:55
The graphic novel is one of the most influential and dominant media forms in popular culture. Known for its mastery in visual storytelling and entertainment value, the graphic novel has also interpreted some of the most profound historical, social, and cultural events of our time. Frank Miller (The Dark Knight), Neil Gaiman (The Sandman) and Marjorie Satrapi (Persepolis) are just a few of the authors we will be reading.

ENG 2100 (College Core class)
LITERATURE AND CULTURE
The Supernatural
Instructor: Prof. Stephen Greeley
MWF 10:10-11:05
In this course we will be exploring the supernatural in British and American literature, considering how such works reflect fears about the self and society, express issues related
to gender, and demonstrate the human need for realities that exist beyond the senses.

ENG 2200 (Required for Major)
INTRO TO ENGLISH STUDIES
Literature and the Apocalypse
Instructor: Dr .Brian Lockey
MWF 1:25-2:20
The past half-century has seen the emergence of a great deal of literature and film that expresses a heightened anxiety over the fear of world destruction. Some fear human-caused events such as nuclear holocaust or environmental catastrophe. Others experience a mixture of fear and hope for Biblical end-times that result in the return of a messiah. But in reality, people have feared the end of the world for centuries, and it will be the point of this course to explore the history of this fear in a number of artistic works from the Renaissance to the contemporary period. In general, this course serves as part of the English department’s requirements for current and future work in literary studies. As sophomores, juniors, and seniors (English majors and not), your professors will expect you to know how to read a text and compose a reasonably coherent written argument—in the workplace, employers will expect similar skills.

ENG 2210 (College Core class)
STUDY OF BRITISH LITERATURE
Instructor:  Prof. Deborah Taranto
MWF 12:20-1:15
This course surveys the literature of various periods while looking specifically at social manners and the treatment of women. Possible readings include Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, Dickens’ Hard Times, Oscar Wilde’s
The Importance of Being Ernest, and Rebecca West’s The Thinking Reed.

ENG 2300 (Required for Major)
INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEORY
Instructor: Dr. Lisa Outar
TR 10:45-12:10
This course will provide you with a working knowledge of some of the main schools of thought that influence the way we read and interpret literature. The study of literature has been shaped by fields as diverse as psychology, economics, politics, philosophy, anthropology, gender studies and history among others. What do these subjects have to do with a novel or a poem or a short story or a play?  You will find out in this class through active reading of works by figures like Karl Marx, Plato, Aristotle, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon and Sigmund Freud.

ENG 3190
SPECIAL TOPICS IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
The English Abroad and the Foreign
Encounters
Instructor: Dr. Brian Lockey
MWF 12:20-1:15
How did Shakespeare and other Renaissance English dramatists and poets depict encounters between English subjects and foreign men and women? How were such encounters depicted in foreign contexts as well as in the context of England itself? This course will consider the Renaissance stage as a cosmopolitan context in which playwrights and spectators could imagine travel to foreign lands, encounters with foreigners, and ultimately the transformation of the English subject into the other. We will focus especially on the influence of Spain, Portugal, and the Mediterranean world on the English stage, influences that have traditionally been downplayed in the study of Renaissance drama. In addition, we will consider the figure of the Catholic exile as he was allegorically and literally portrayed in the drama of this period.

ENG 3260
WOMEN WRITERS OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
Instructor: Dr. Rachel Hollander
MWF 9:05-10:-00
In this course, we will read novels, poetry, and non-fiction prose by a range of nineteenth-century woman writers from England.  The class will be organized historically, in order to provide a solid grounding in the development of literary forms over the course of the century: we will cover the distinction between the Romantic and Victorian periods, the evolution of the realist novel, and the major cultural shifts taking place in Britain, including industrialization, imperialism, and urbanization.  We will also, however, view these larger trends through the particular perspective of the woman writer, exploring how ideas about marriage, family, education, gender roles, class, and race are reflected in the fiction, poetry, and prose of our literary women.  Finally, we will look at how feminist criticism of the twentieth century has played a role in our understanding of what it means to be a woman writer.  Readings will include Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Virginia Woolf.

ENG 3310
ANTEBELLUM AMERICAN LITERATURE
This is a Mixed Mode course that meets on Staten Island Campus on Monday and Wednesday and on-line on Friday
Instructor: Dr. Robert Fanuzzi
MWF 11:15-12:10
Before the Civil War, the United States was beset by any number of problems--racial inequality; economic depression; gender imbalances at home and at work--that might have demanded today an army of policy experts to solve.  But starting in the 1830s, writers took those problems upon themselves, and made themselves the experts in designing a course for change.  The plans of these writers--Emerson, Thoreau, Child, Douglass, Stowe--were so diverse and ambitious that they really did demand the transformation of the United States.  And yet that new country has remarkable resemblance to the United States we know today.  Texts include familiar works like Uncle Tom's Cabin and "Civil Disobedience" as well as less familiar works like Child's Romance of the Republic and Emerson's self-help essays.   

ENG 3420
CONTEMPORARY FICTION
Instructor: Dr. Lisa Outar
TR 1:30-2:55
What are some of the forms that fiction takes in our twenty-first-century moment?
In this course, we will look across the globe to explore the ways in which the novel, the poem, the short story and the play are all being transformed by their encounters with new ideas about the pleasures and aims of literature. Among the contemporary writers we will be looking at will be Patrick Chamoiseau, Junot Díaz, Bharati Mukherjee, Yvonne Vera, Colson Whitehead, Nicole Krauss, Mutabaruka, José Saramago, Kazuo Ishiguro, Marjane Satrapi and Mark Haddon.

ENG 3730
POETRY WORKSHOP
This is a Mixed Mode course that meets on Staten Island Campus on Tuesday and on-line Thursday
Instructor: Dr. Stephen Miller
TR 10:45-12:10
Poetry Workshop strudels model work upon several modern and contemporary workers and develop our own poetry and individual poetry projects with an eye toward publication. In addition, we will dialogue with established writers through the internet and consider the writing profession work through Critiphoria, an online poetry-criticism journal at www.critiphoria.org . Thursdays will be reserved for online chats and asynchronic internet work.

ENG 3750
ADVANCED WRITING WORKSHOP
Subtitle: Writing in Networked Environments
Instructor: Dr. Robert Leston
TR 1:30-2:55
This class is designed to explore our relationship with digital writing technologies and learn how to use them effectively. Together we’ll study and incorporate the various Web 2.0 technologies to assist in our individual and collaborative inquiries. We’ll keep web logs, make YouTube videos, create Wikis, use social networking platforms, and dabble in electronic literature. We’ll share a set of common readings that will help guide us as a class, but we’ll also allow room for us to pursue our own interests within our chosen domain. Requirements will include keeping a web log, participating in the networked assignments, and making a digital narrative video presentation. 

ENG 4992
SEMINAR IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
This is a Mixed Mode course that meets on
Staten Island Campus on Monday and Wednesday
and on-line on Friday
Instructor: Dr. Robert Fanuzzi
MWF 10:10-11:05
If there is a book that helped to define American democracy for generations of readers, then it is Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville.  From this book came many principles of our understanding of the distinct society in which we live--its love of equality; its hatred of elite opinion, and even its tendency toward what Tocqueville called "the tyranny of the majority."  We will spend the whole semester unraveling this epic book, finding the threads of argument that we have come to embrace as explanatory of American democracy but also looking for the evidence that this is also foreign literature, written by a traveling Frenchman who came to the United States with a distinct agenda of his own.  At what point does our understanding of democracy force us to consider the foreign policies that Tocqueville supported?  Among other things, the seminar proposes that the study of America is always already the study of foreign places.   

GRADUATE COURSE IN ENGLISH
(Open to BA/MA and qualified BA students)
See Dr. Fanuzzi. for more information

ENG 810
LITERARY/VISUAL/TEXTS
This is a Mixed-Mode course – Professor will
inform students on on-line dates
Instructor:  Dr. Stephen Miller
T 1:30-3:30
 This course explores aesthetic and historical paradigms shifts displayed in the refining of the sound feature film in from the late 1920s to the early 1940s alongside corresponding shifts demonstrated by new media from the 1990s to the present. Both eras represent kinds of “new deals” recharacterizing identity positions and the power of their coalitions. Of particular interest will be 30s and 40s screwball comedies and internet videos. I will try limiting films that students need to view to those available through Netflix, so students should have Netflix accounts.  Creatively critical writing is encouraged. Some course sessions will be conducted online, either through online chats writers and critics or through asynchronic internet work. We will dialogue with established writers through the internet and consider the writing profession work through Critiphoria, an online poetry-criticism journal at www.critiphoria.org .

EVENING COURSES on Staten Island

ENG 3450
MODERN DRAMA
Instructor: Prof. Giovan DiDonna
T 6:50-9:50 
 Readings and criticism of several important Playwrights (Ibsen, Chekhow, Strindberg, Shaw, O’Neill and others.)

ENG 3690
SPECIAL TOPICS IN CULTURAL STUDIES: CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Instructor: Prof. Leah Anderst
T 6:50-9:50
What makes children’s literature different from other literatures?  This course examines the role of literature in forming our understanding of childhood.  Often that literature addresses childhood as timeless, as in Once Upon a Time fairy tales; other times, literature.