Summer School 2010
Session 1
GLE Course: English 200: Sex and Sexuality in Post-Colonial Literature
English 123: Introduction to Poetry - Stephen Longfellow
Monday-Friday 10:00-11:30
The blood jet is poetry and there is not stopping it.
--Sylvia Plath
This course will use a variety of texts as a departure point to new places. Where? Depends on what we as a class find the most relevant, the most interesting, the most urgent. Whatever our path, at the end of it, we'll have discovered a little more about the language that moves us most, that draws us back to it again and again. In the process, we'll read, we'll listen, we'll discuss, we'll write.
English 200: Sex and Sexuality in Post-Colonial Literature (Cross Cultural)
- Molly Westerman
Monday-Friday 2:30-4:00
How do sexual experiences and impulses contribute to identity? How are sex and sexuality involved in representations of national identity and cultural difference? This course explores these questions as they play out in postcolonial contexts. Our novels' authors and settings span much of the former British Empire, touching on India, South Africa, Egypt, Antigua, Sri Lanka, the United States, Canada, Oreland, and England itself. Alongside gripping novels including Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, we will also watch and discuss the films Bride and Prejudice, Monsoon Wedding, and My Beautiful Laundrette.
Session 2
English 242: Children's Literature - Molly Westerman
Monday-Friday 2:30-4:00
Would you like to revisit the pleasures of bedtime stories, your first chapter book, and the adventures of characters you've grown to love (or hate)? This course combines the fun of children's literature--focusing on twentieth-century classics from the US and England--with a different sort of fun, the intellectual gratification of critical reading. How do books from Winnie-the-Pooh to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone imagine their child readers? How do these books appeal to the dual audience of the children who enjoy them and the adults who purchase them? What relationships can we trace between the fantastic world of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or The Hobbit and the historical and cultural realities of their authors and readers? What do picture books and chapter books have to say about race, gender, socioeconomic class, education, ethics, and politics? By reading children's literature carefully and in context, we will develop a greater appreciation of this genre's range, artistic accomplishments, and cultural significance.
English 291: Creative Nonfiction - Kaethe Schwehn
Monday-Friday 12:30-2:30
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
