Semester II, 2009

General Education 111 or its equivalent is a prerequisite for all courses in the English department except some Level I Interim courses. While a few courses have additional prerequisites, most Level I and Level II courses are open to all -- majors and non-majors alike -- after General Education 111. Level III courses (numbered 300 or higher) are primarily for English majors and ordinarily build upon prior work. All Level III courses require as a prerequisite English 185 and at least one Level II course in an area of relevant background as confirmed by the instructor or the department.

GLE Courses:
English 200A: Topic: Women Writers of African Diaspora
English 200C: Topic: South Asian Literature (Cross Cultural)
English 347: Topic: Post Colonial Literature

All English Courses:
English 150: Fundamentals of Creative Writing
English 185: Literary Studies
English 200A: Topic: Women Writers of African Diaspora (Cross Cultural)
English 200B: Topic: Cross Cultural: Passing (Cross Cultural)
English 200C: South Asian Literature (Cross Cultural)
English 220A: British Modern/Postmodern (1890-2009) (Literary History)
English 220B: Topic: Becoming American Literature (Literary History)
English 222: Literatures in English: 1650-1850 (Literary History)
English 242: Children's Literature (Elective)
English 250: Linguistics (Elective)
English 253A: Auth Eng: Lit of Amer So (Elective)
English 253B: Auth in Engl: Am Lit : 1920s-30s (Elective)
English 258: Folklore (Elective)
English 260: Visual Narrative (Cross-Disciplinary)
English 291: Intermediate Creative Nonfiction Writing (Genre)
English 293: Intermediate Fiction Writing (Genre)
English 296: Screenwriting (Genre)
English 340: Adv Study Am Lit Eras: Sexuality, Madness & Marriage in 19th-Century Am Lit
English 345: Topic: Literature of the Southwest
English 347: Topic: Post Colonial Literature (GLE)
English 371: Advanced Poetry Writing
English 373: Advanced Nonfiction Writing

English 150: Fundamentals of Creative Writing (Jennifer Kwon Dobbs)
Through reading, discussion, and writing exercises, students will develop a broad foundation of strategies in creative writing and a general understanding of craft across genres--fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Risk-taking, experimentation and play will be encouraged. The course is open to all students who have taken or are currently taking GE 111 or equivalent. After 2009-10, this course will be a prerequisite for 200- and 300-level creative writing courses. Top of page

English 185: Literary Studies (Joan Hepburn)
English 185 is the foundation of the St. Olaf English major, introducing students to the strategies of critical interpretation they will use in later courses and to enduring questions about literature and its role in a culture. Students are encouraged to ask, "Why do we read?" "What constitutes literature?" "How is meaning made, and what is possible to say about a literary work?" In addition, the course introduces students to the variety of literatures in English produced around the world. In formulating their responses to literary works and literary questions, students practice and develop skills in both writing and oral communication. (WRI, ALS-L, ORC)
Prerequisite: FYW or equivalent

185-A: Literary Studies (Colin Wells)
185-B: Literary Studies (Joan Hepburn)
185-C: Literary Studies (Jenny Dunning)

English 200A: Topics: Women Writers of African Diaspora (Cross Cultural)
(Joan Hepburn)
This course examines the life cycle of black women, laying side by side their experiences in Africa, Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States.  Romance, marriage, family, inter-racial relations, mothers and daughters, urban and rural environments, gender politics and sexual violence, relations among females, inter-generational depictions, historical experiences, public expression and private reflections, individual and communal identities, class considerations—all of these and more images and themes arise in the selection of fictional readings required for this course.  We will move from the short lyrical piece So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba through Gloria Naylor’s Women of Brewster Place.  In the end, we will have discovered the meaning for many black women of what it is “to be and to do,” as Nanny would say in Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
First year students who have met the requirement for GE111 are welcome, as are students in American Racial and Multicultural Studies, Africa and the Americas, English, History, and Women’s Studies, for this is an interdisciplinary study of texts by women.
(ALS-L)
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English 200B: Topics in Cross-cultural Studies: Passing (Cross Cultural)
(Jeff Solomon)
To “pass,” a member of one group must have the ability to be taken as a member of another.  Passing may be actively sought or an inadvertent misrecognition, and its effects may range from the amusing to the profound. Though passing in the United States is primarily associated with race, passing may also be provoked by categories such as gender, religion, sexual orientation, and social class.  Our class will investigate various experiences of passing as reflected in literature and film created since 1900 in the United States.  We will consider both texts that directly address passing as well as texts and authors who themselves pass: for instance, authors who claim a different identity to promote a false “memoir.”   Texts include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Nella Larsen’s Passing, Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, and David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly.  Films include Imitation of Life, Six Degrees of Separation, and Boys Don’t Cry. (ALS-L)
Top of page and Boys Don’t Cry.

English 200C: Topics/South Asian Literature (Cross Cultural) (Mark Allister)
Some of the most exciting writing in the world, not in translation but in English, is coming from South Asia: India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. A geographical area shaped greatly by British colonization, South Asia is changing rapidly now as globalization introduces a new kind of colonizer. We’ll study this area – its history, culture, and religion, what unifies it and what pulls its peoples apart – by reading dramatic literature that tells compelling stories about individuals and groups that seem far different and far away from 21st century Minnesota. Writers may include Kiran Desai, Salman Rushdie, Aravind Adiga, Pradeep Jeganathan, Michael Ondaatje, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
Counts as GLE course for the “old” major; counts as a cross-cultural course for the “new” major, (ALS-L)
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English 220A: Topics in Literary History: British Modern/Postmodern Literature (1890-2009) (Literary History) (Molly Westerman)
This course explores modernism and postmodernism, two vital developments within twentieth-century British literature. Both movements are characterized by a formal and stylistic experimentalism that foregrounds language itself, rather than treating language as a transparent medium for the telling of tales. From different angles, both ask questions about the nature and meaning of the self, gender and sexuality, science and technology, literature and the other arts, memory, and historical knowledge. Because modernism, postmodernism, and the relationship between the two are notoriously difficult to define, we will approach these terms as open questions, always asking why a given text is labeled “modernist” or “postmodernist” and whether such labels are helpful in the first place. Texts include novels, plays, poems, and essays by Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Tom Stoppard, Caryl Churchill, Graham Swift, Julian Barnes, and Jeanette Winterson.
English Majors please note: (ALS-L)
Prerequisite: FYW or equivalent
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English 220B: Topic: Becoming American Literature (Literary History) (Mark Bresnan)
As the new nation came into being after the American revolution, so, too, did the American people begin to call for a literature that was distinctly their own. Throughout the 19th century, writers responded to this call by representing American experience its all its variety. They sought to capture the experience of slavery and the violence of the Civil War; to draw on the history of the Puritans and the encounters between Anglo-American settlers and native peoples; to trace the contours of the American landscape and the dimensions of the American character; to explore the limits of personal freedom and the spiritual resources of the land; to portray the experience of Americans traveling abroad or the possibilities of staying at home; to celebrate the efforts of women and other minorities to resist oppression and embrace the promise of democracy. They adapted traditional genres of poetry and the novel to their own uses, helped bring the short story into existence, and experimented with autobiographical form for purposes both personal and political. Reading both celebrated and lesser-known writers who contributed to the American literature tradition(s), this course examines American literature as it came into being in the nineteenth century. Possible authors to be considered: Irving, Poe, Cooper, Sedgwick, Stowe, Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Jacobs, Douglass, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Twain, James, Chopin, Jewett, Chesnutt, and Crane. (ALS-L)
English Majors please note: (ALS-L)
Prerequisite: FYW or equivalent
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English 222: Literatures in English 1650 to 1850 (Literary History)(Colin Wells)
Students study literary developments from the mid-17th to the mid-19th centuries. Topics examined include the influence of the Puritan Revolution on literature; satiric modes practiced by Dryden, Pope, and Swift; the rise of the novel; the Romantic movement; Transcendentalism; and the development of American identity in writers such as Franklin, Fuller, and Douglass.
Prerequisite: English 185 and 221
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English 242: Children's Literature (Elective) (Jan Hill)
In this course we begin with the rather strange history of European, British and American children's literature, from didactic courtesy books to frightening tales of death and salvation to pleasure-centered fairy tales and medieval romances; then sample classics from the Golden Age of children's literature; then turn to reading contemporary picture books, chapter books, and novels for children and young adults. Students will read a range of fantasy, science fiction, and contemporary young adult realism. (ALS-L)
Prerequisite: FYW or equivalent
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English 250: Linguistics (Elective) (Louis Janus)
Students encounter principles and approaches to linguistic analysis based on phonemics, morphology, and syntax. Students explore aspects of semantics, language acquisition, variation, and change, including grammatical analysis of documents ranging from film clips and advertisements to professional memos and literary texts. The course provides an overview of the history of English, serves as introduction to the linguistics concentration, and fulfills the linguistic requirement of the Communication Arts and Literature License.
Prerequisite: FYW or equivalent
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English 253A: Authors in English: Literature of the American South (Elective)(Mary Titus)
Covering works of Southern literature from approximately 1830 to the present, this course explores the ways in which literature both creates and responds to a regional identity. Readings will be discussed in the context of their cultural and historical moment, with particular attention paid to the ways in which they are engaged in uniquely/intensely Southern conversations about gender, race, social class and sexuality. Possible texts and authors include the following: folktales, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Joel Chandler Harris, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Charles Chesnutt, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, Ernest Gaines, Alice Walker, and Dorothy Allison. (ALS-L)
Prerequisite: FYW or equivalent
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English 253B: Authors in English: Am Lit: 1920-30s (Elective) (Mark Bresnan)
In keeping with St. Olaf College’s theme for this academic year, this course examines the many migrations that shaped American literature during the 1920s and 30s. These include the continued immigration of Europeans to American cities and rural areas, the Great Migration of African-Americans from south to north, the first signs of suburbanization, and the emigration of American artists and intellectuals to continental Europe. American writers depicted these migrations with a variety of aesthetic and formal techniques, and students will read works that range from social realism to experimental modernism. Possible texts include fiction, poetry, and drama by Sinclair Lewis, Jean Toomer, Ellen Glasgow, William Faulkner, Eugene O’Neill, Marianne Moore, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes and Wallace Stevens. (ALS-L)x
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English 258: Folklore (Elective)(Joseph Mbele)
Focuses on verbal folklore: narratives, songs and shorter forms such as proverbs. Explores the intrinsic qualities of each as literary creations and also the ways in which they operate together when combined or in dialogic relationship. The folktale or the epic, for example, incorporate a variety of these forms, such as the proverb, the song, or the riddle, to form a complex whole. (ALS-L, MCS-G)
Prerequisite: FYW or equivalent
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English 260: Visual Narrative: Image, Sequence, Story (Cross Disciplinary) (Jeff Solomon)
How do two photos, two drawings, or two letters placed next to each other tell a story?  In this class, we will investigate the relationship of image, sequence, and story in graphic novels, books of photography, and film, as well as fiction and poetry that incorporate unusual visual phenomena.  Comics and graphic novels by Alison Bechdel, Neil Gaiman, Gilbert and Jamie Hernandez, William Hogarth, Alan Moore, and Marjane Satrapi; photographs by Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, and Cindy Sherman; films by Kenneth Anger, Maya Deren, David Lynch, and Chris Marker; and fiction and poetry by Mark Danielewski, Mina Loy, and Gertrude Stein.
Prerequisite: FYW or equivalent
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English 291: Intermediate Creative Nonfiction Writing (Genre) (Kaethe Schwehn)
Creative Nonfiction is a name given to the modern essay, distinguishing it from fiction but acknowledging its use of fictional techniques and its starting point in the creative imagination. In this course you will practice writing a variety of nonfiction pieces that might include a focused memoir, a reflection, a collage, cultural criticism, and literary journalism.
Prerequisite: English 150 or previous college-level creative writing course with instructor's permission. For the academic year 2009-10, the prerequisities are FYW and sophomore standing.(WRI)
Prerequisite: FYW or equivalent
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English 293: Intermediate Fiction Writing (Genre) (Jenny Dunning)
A course in the craft of contemporary fiction, this class involves intensive reading and writing of contemporary short fiction and exploration of craft issues. The writing process—that is drafting, developing, experimenting, revising—will be emphasized over product. (WRI)
Prerequisite: FYW or equivalent
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English 296: Screenwriting (Thomas Pope)
Want to write a script for that short film that's living in your head? Do you dream of becoming a screenwriter and want to see where the rubber meets the road? Or do you just want to learn the fundamentals of screenwriting? This class will provide powerful tools to let the genie out of the bottle and help you understand why a movie works or doesn't work. Organized in a workshop structure, each week each student will write an assignment, starting with short exercises, progressing to a series of short movie scripts, and culminating in ten and then fifteen minute scripts. In learning through doing, students will come to understand the basics of structure, dialogue, character and dramatic situations. Each week each assignment will be read aloud in class and critiqued in an atmosphere which will be supportive, encouraging, and a lot of fun.
Prerequisite: FYW or equivalent.
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English 340: Adv Study Am Lit Eras: Sexuality, Madness & Marriage in 19th-Century Am. Lit. (Carol Holly)
This course focuses on American fiction that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries reflects changing attitudes towards gender roles, sexual identity and behavior, and marriage, motherhood, and divorce. Many of the writers we will study are realists, many of them interested in recording the everyday lives of ordinary people and exploring the realities of their private lives. They portray the reality for men and women of making a bad marriage, for example, and the emotional and psychological derangements that result. They record the madness experienced by women in the hands of the medical experts who treat them for nervous disorders. They tell the stories of men who dare to reveal their attraction to other men and enter into same-sex relationships. They consider the courage of and consequences for women of trying to live a life of sexual freedom or the experiences of women, seduced and abandoned, who are forced into prostitution. Charting changes that are social, sexual and literary, we will examine the work of (among others) Henry James, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Stephen Crane, Edith Wharton, and Edward Prime Stevenson, often described as the first openly gay American writer.
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English 345: Topic: Literature of the Southwest (Mark Allister)
Race and place merge wonderfully in the American southwest, where in a stunning landscape three cultures -- Native-American, Latino, and Anglo -- flow together into a great literary river. The metaphor reminds us that the waters in upstream tributaries are not separable from the river that results when they merge, and in the southwest, these cultures intermingle freely to provide events, ideas, and cultural values that are unique to the region and challenge our notions of "America" and the American Experience. But rivers are not people, of course, and the intermingling of the Native-American, Latino, and Anglo cultures is just as likely to create cultural conflicts among individuals, families, and social groups. The merging and clashing -- which often takes place in the same texts -- makes for a dynamic literature and a useful site for cultural studies. In this seminar, we will read and write about the literature of the American Southwest. Authors may include Dagoberto Gilb, Edward Abbey, Luci Tapahanso, Simon Ortiz, Barbara Kingsolver, Leslie Silko, Gloria Anzaldua, Cormac McCarthy, and Albert Alvaro Rios. ALS-L
Prerequisite: FYW or equivalent
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English 347: Topic: Post Colonial Literature (Joseph Mbele)
Students study individuals or groups of authors or themes such as the individual as cultural hybrid, he place of politics in literature, ethnocentrism and imperialism, the formation of literature from the clashes of culture or the relationship between non-traditional literary forms and traditional European aesthetics.
English Majors please note: GLE Course
Prerequisites: English 185 plus one additional course of relevant background. (ALS-L)
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English 371: Advanced Poetry Writing (Jennifer Kwon Dobbs)
This course offers an advanced consideration of the craft of poetry writing. Students will deepen their understanding of the form and complete a substantial portfolio of polished work. Class sessions include discussion of models in contemporary poetry, exploration of
various options within the form, and workshopping of student writing. (WRI)
Prerequisite: English 257 or English 292 or permission of instructor.
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English 373: Advanced Nonfiction Writing (Diane LeBlanc)
This class offers advanced practice in creative nonfiction, including but not limited to literary journalism, personal essay, lyric essay, collage, and short-short. Texts range from classic to cutting edge nonfiction that presents fact in compelling form. Daily practice invites writers to sharpen skills for presenting factual information. Creativity exercises encourage experimentation with craft, language, and the boundaries of form. Reading, class discussion, and writing workshops will culminate in a portfolio of work that best represents revision and development. (WRI)
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