ENGLISH PAPER
FALL 2019 | Course Offerings at OSU-Marion
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please consult with the Marion Academic Advisor for English Majors, Shellie Shirk (shirk.20@osu.edu), or the Marion English Faculty Coordinator, Stuart Lishan (lishan.1@osu.edu), concerning which English major concentration and/or other requirements are met by your choice of the following courses. ✪✪✪✪✪ ENG 2201 | Selected Works of British Literature—Medieval Through 1800 Nathan Wallace MW 9:30-10:50 / 3 Credit Hours In this survey of British and Irish literature from the Middle Ages to 1800, we will study major works of fiction, drama, and poetry such as the anonymous Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, Marie de France’s Lanval, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, William Shakespeare’s Othello, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, William Hogarth’s Marriage a la Mode, and Frances Burney’s Evelina. In addition to discussing their literary qualities, we will also consider these works’ meanings in historical and cultural contexts. Major themes of discussion will be: religious and political history through literature, the development of language and national identity, women’s writing, and the central importance of theatricality in England particularly. In this class, you will be responsible for study questions, two exams, and three essays.
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✪✪✪✪✪ English 2263 | Introduction to Film Nathan Wallace MW 11-12:20 / 3 Credit Hours This course familiarizes students with the basic concepts and technical aspects of cinematic storytelling, such as: narration, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, acting, and sound. It also introduces students to film genres (Noir, Science Fiction, Comedy, Documentary), a general outline of film history, and a survey of critical approaches to thinking and writing about film, including gender, sexuality, and race. Through class discussions and critical writing assignments, students will gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of film. Among other films, we will watch Titanic (1998), Moonlight (2016), and Deadpool 2 (2018). In this course we will have weekly study questions, a midterm exam, and a final essay. ✪✪✪✪✪ English 2262 Introduction to Drama: Comedy Peter C. Dully Jr. TR 9:00-10:20/ 3 Credit Hours This lively and fast-paced course will concern itself with the fundamentals of dramatic works of art with a particular focus on what makes comedy funny. Comedy is an undervalued and understudied artistic form even though Freud pointed out that humor is the way that inhibited or suppressed truths are revealed within society. Through a study of the relationships between the components of theatrical form and the conventions of drama, students will work their way through the history of making audiences laugh, from Aristophanes to Jerry Seinfeld. Students will read works by Shakespeare, Wilde, Shaw, Pirandello and Molliere, among others. They will write two papers and take a midterm and final exam. What’s more, students will participate in far-reaching discussions that may, at times, be very funny.
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✪✪✪✪✪ English 2266/ Writing of Poetry I Stuart Lishan MW 1:30-2:50/ 3 Credit Hours Basically, in English 2266, we're going to get down dirty and messy with language. We’re going to rumble with lines; we’re going to go down into the caves of the self and of the senses, looking for those glittering words that arise out of that mysterious pull between the imagined and the real; we’ll develop an intolerance of the false, and learn to refashion the common into the uncommon once again: In short, we’re going to take up T.S. Eliot on his challenge and dare to disturb the universe with our sweet and powerful words. That is, we’re going to write poems! Though we will engage in much play in this course, our play will serve the larger purpose of helping us understand what poetry is and does. It will also provide us with invention strategies that will help us to create our own work, deepen our voices as writers, and tap into the wisdom and music inside us. During the first part of the class we’ll engage in a lot of play and writing exercises. During the second part we’ll have a writer’s workshop, in which we take a deeper and tough-loving listen to and look at some of the poems that we’ve written, so that they can become even more moving and powerful utterances. Oh, yeah, we’ll read lots of poems, too! Texts (may change): Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Edition, Ferguson, Salter, Stallworthy, eds. (Norton); Open Roads: Exercises in Writing Poetry, by Diane Thiel (Longman). ✪✪✪✪✪ English 2276 | Arts of Persuasion Ben McCorkle MW 11:00 - 12:20 / 3 Credit Hours Do you know that friend of yours who is somehow always able to convince you to do things you know that you shouldn't, like driving up to Cedar Point in the dead of winter to go ice skating on the frozen water rides when you had a test the next morning? Or what about the time he goaded you into participating in that hardboiled egg eating contest, even after your doctor warned you about your high cholesterol levels? Ever wonder how it is that you keep falling for those arguments over and over again? No, it isn't sorcery, some sort of experimental mind control technology developed by the CIA, or even some deep-seated fault in your character. The secret to your friend's success is rhetoric, and this
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course will help you understand just how it operates and how you can disarm its powerful influence over you. "Arts of Persuasion" is a course that deals with what is perhaps the oldest academic discipline in Western civilization: rhetoric. This study of the persuasive arts is also useful for us even today, especially in an age where new media forms are changing the nature of how we communicate with one another. To better understand the history and theory behind this all-powerful discourse tool, this course explains the basic concepts of rhetoric developed by the ancient Greeks and Romans. It also examines some of the more important changes to rhetorical theory over the discipline's 2500-year existence and considers how they apply to actual practice. Texts TBD. Requirements include course paper, class discussion, readings, and additional assignments. For more information, contact Ben McCorkle (mccorkle.12@osu.edu). ✪✪✪✪✪ ENG 2280 | The English Bible Nathan Wallace MW 3:15-4:35 / 3 Credit Hours The Bible is the most influential book in world history, and the King James Version has shaped the modern English language as profoundly as the works of Shakespeare have. Ironically, relatively few Americans have studied the Bible very closely, and almost never from a secular perspective. In this course we will learn how to read the Bible as a literary text or, rather, as a collection of literary texts from many genres, written over the period of roughly a thousand years. In our discussions and assignments, we will investigate the Bible’s historical contexts, analyze its literary techniques, and recover a multiplicity of voices that are often overlooked. In this course you will write two papers, a midterm, and a final exam. There will also be daily study questions. The Bible in English translation, with special attention to its literary qualities, conceptual content, and development within history. Prereq: 1110.01 (110.01) or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 2280H (280H) or 280. GE lit course.
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✪✪✪✪✪ English 2290 I Colonial and U. S. Literature to 1865: Aliens in America Sara Crosby TR 11:00 - 12:20 / 3 Credit Hours “And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks back at you.” – Nietzsche This class will ask you to look (just a bit) into that abyss, as we investigate the alien encounters that made “America.” When Old and New Worlds met, the clash shook identities and truths that had seemed eternal. The unthinkable became reality, and ideas that previous generations would have judged insane—democracy, for instance—became “American.” In this class, we will meet some of the criminals, captives, rebels, so-called lunatics, and outcasts who emerged as “American” authors, and we will examine the strange new literature they wove out of their experiences on the edge of the unknown. In short, we’ll try to map the development of an American psychology and understand the aliens in our own minds. ✪✪✪✪✪ English 3379 | Methods for the Study of Writing, Rhetoric and Literacy Ben McCorkle MW 9:30 - 11:50 / 3 Credit Hours Have you ever wondered how we communicate? What makes language tick? Why we feel the need to reach out to people, be it with a spoken or written word, a silent gesture, or a love song? English 3379 will help you begin to answer those ages-old questions. Methods for the Study of Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy introduces students to these interrelated fields and how we do our work within them. Together, this discipline studies the ways people use language and other symbols to convey messages, persuade audiences, and create meaning. Those who study writing, rhetoric, and literacy are also very concerned with how these practices are learned and taught. In one semester, we can only dip into the wide variety of work in these fields; this course is designed to introduce students to the key concepts in the studies of writing, rhetoric, and literacy and to allow students opportunities to pursue their own interests in relation to those concepts. ✪✪✪✪✪ English 4150 | Cultures of Professional Writing Katie Braun TR 11:00 - 12:20 / 3 Credit Hours This course examines writing in various workplaces and the types of written discourse that shape professional organizations. Students will learn to write a variety of professional documents, communicate and present themselves professionally, explore ongoing technological and cultural shifts required of workplace writers, and examine the role of digital media in professional organizations.
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This course fulfills a core requirement of the Professional Writing Minor and is a required prerequisite for an Internship in Professional Writing. It also meets the Writing and Writing Studies Course req. for WRL concentration, and 3000 + level CW and Lit elective for course outside the concentration requirement. ✪✪✪✪✪ English 4321 I Environmental Literatures, Cultures, and Media: Ecohorror! Sara Crosby TR 9:30 - 10:50 / 3 Credit Hours Flying killer sharks, flesh-eating vines, epic monster storms, hungry haunted houses, and Godzilla! Why do humans insist on seeing nature as monstrous? Why are we so afraid? Could this fear be a reason we find ourselves in ecological crisis? Could understanding it be a way out? This class will explore these questions, among others, as we investigate “ecohorror.” Be prepared to follow this investigation through both main roads and strange corners of world literature, film, etc.—from Egyptian myths to gothic horrors like Frankenstein to Jaws knock-offs like Frogs to bestsellers by Stephen King to Youtube series like Llamas with Hats. And, of course, Godzilla. ✪✪✪✪✪ English 4592 I Special Topics in Women, Literature, and Culture: Bad Women Sara Crosby TR 1:30 - 2:50 / 3 Credit Hours Alexandre Dumas once wrote that when you want to find the source of some trouble “cherchez la femme”—look for the woman. Writers seem to have taken this maxim to heart and quietly constructed western literature around “the bad woman.” In this class, we too will look for her. Starting with Adam’s demonic first wife, Lilith, we’ll bring this shadowy but central figure back into the light. We’ll move through key texts in western literature and across continents and centuries to track the various forms she takes—from witches, bitches, serial killers, and sluts to black widows, animal women, femme fatales, and feminists.
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PALS | Pride And Life Skills Mentoring Program
The Pride And Life Skills mentoring program (PALS) is a cooperative venture between The Ohio State University at Marion, the Boys & Girls Club of Marion County, and Marion Public Schools to develop a mentoring program that is a win-win situation for both elementary, middle school students, and college students. PALS, connects college students from the Marion campus with grade school children in the Marion area to provide one-on-one mentoring opportunities for kids. The Boys & Girls Club matches program volunteers with school age children and provides each a useful handbook to direct them through the mentoring process. Students earn 1-credit per term of independent study by attending mentoring sessions regularly, coming to a few meetings, and writing a two-page report about their mentoring activities at the end of each term. OSUMARION.OSU.EDU/ACADEMICS/PALS.HTML For further information contact: Ben McCorkle • mccorkle.12@osu.edu Nikole Patson • patson.3@osu.edu
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