In English Vol 17 #2 April 2017

IN ENGLISH Occasional Newsletter of the Whittier College Department of English Language and Literature Volume 17, #2, April, 2017 Charles S. Adams, Editor

On­Line Presence Some of you may be aware that the Whittier College English Department has a Facebook page. Librarian and information guru Mike Garabedian, and Professor Andrea Rehn have been managing it, and they ask that those of you who are into such things “like” it.

And we think there is a lot to like. Your editor finds that sometimes the links below work and sometimes they do not. Most of you know how to find the stuff without them. https://www.facebook.com/WhittierCollegeEnglishDepartment A few years ago, as part of our outreach to alums and friends, we created a small, possibly temporary site managed by our colleagues in the alumni/advancement offices. It is now out of date, but still exists. It has a number of bits of amusement not found elsewhere: http://poetsforpoets.wordpress.com/ And our regular college-based site is: http://www.whittier.edu/Academics/EnglishLanguageAndLiterature/ This Newsletter will be up on that site and will be updated as more information comes in and your editor gets around to it.

The English Department Writing Awards The 2017­6­2017 Winners.

Congratulations to all.

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(This Means Money and Everlasting Glory) Prose First Place – Lauren Swintek “The Girl, the God, the Man” Second Place – Briana Limas “A Lack of Material” Third Place – Briana Limas “Jessie and the Bullshefiks” Poetry First Place – Raven Tsan “Our Waltz” Second Place – Taylor Charles “Echo” Third Place – Brianna Limas “It Starts With” Scholarly Writing Prize in English First Place – Rebecca Liu Hunger for Home Second Place – Jennifer Muise To The Marriage of True Minds Third Place – Priscilla Lam “Sirens”: Rewriting Memory in Ulysses ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ Every year we offer a set of prizes for the best work submitted by students in the areas of poetry, creative prose, and scholarly writing. Be sure to stay tuned for the announcements asking for submissions for this academic year’s awards—the deadlines are always fairly early in Spring Semester. You cannot win if you do not enter. All Whittier students are eligible to enter. The submission dates are always in early spring semester. The prizes are cash (well, checks actually). You could win more than some of your professors have made on their books and articles! In addition, look at the same time for notices of the deadlines for submissions to the Literary Review, which publishes work in

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all genres by Whittier students. Again, any student can submit. We need to thanks lots of donors for help funding these prizes and the Review, but the ASWC in particular.

What a great statement by student government in choosing to help on this kind of project.

Kudos!

What Have We Been Up to Lately?

Wendy Furman­Adams: Since our last newsletter, I completed my second term as president of the Renaissance Conference of Southern California (RCSC), the local affiliate of the Renaissance Society of America, with our sixty­first annual conference on Saturday, March 4.

The conference theme was the Global Renaissance, and the seventeen speakers traversed borders of gender, race, nationality, religion, and economic status­­not to mention the porous lines between art and theology; history and literature; anthropology and philosophy. After a morning of papers on such topics as inter­religious courtship in Mudéjar literature; maps of the New World in the Netherlands; and Scottish representations of Islam, we were treated to an extraordinary keynote address by Carolyn Dean, of UC Santa Cruz, on embodiments of the indigenous sacred in sixteenth­century Peruvian and Columbian art. Then, just to make sure we didn't abandon our usual wheelhouse, we ended the day with a terrific session on Shakespeare (one, however, that took up representations of Persian dress in King Lear).

Conversation at the final reception could not have been livelier, and I look forward to many more years as a participant in the organization. But I am very happy to have finished my final stint at the helm!

I'm much more ambivalent about another pending retirement­­and therefore mightily grateful that Whittier College's new phased retirement program has made it possible for me to leave this beloved place gradually. I plan to be around for at least the next three years. But you may notice that I'm offering fewer courses next year (four, counting a first­year writing seminar). I'll be teaching just three classes for the two years after that­­ and then I'm officially "outta here," although I may still come back to teach the odd class or two (if and when I am needed).

In any case, this is my last year of teaching a six­course load, and letting go of some of my favorite courses will be difficult. Requests are welcome, as I figure out how to schedule the next precious, but slightly less full­time, years.

I'm not riding into the sunset, of course. But I'm cutting back on teaching and campus service so as to focus more of my energies on scholarship, as well as on hiking, reading, and travel. It's a future I look forward to­­but not without wistfulness, as I think how much I have loved every minute of my time at this place.

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Kate Durbin: I'm finishing the final few poems of my latest book of poetry, HOARDERS, based on the reality TV show of the same name. If all goes to plan it will come out with SPORK Press in the next year. Poems from it are forthcoming or have been published in American Poetry Review, poets.org, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.

My performance work was recently shown at the Haifa Museum in Israel as part of an exhibit on surveillance, with artists like Cindy Sherman and Helmut Newton. Last fall I traveled to Minnesota to speak as a part of the Women and Money Project at the Katherine Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, which also showed my video/performance work.

This Jan Term I loved working with my English 290 horror fiction students on their Twine projects, in partnership with the DigLibArts Lab. They came up with some truly awesome interactive stories, playing with the concept of choice in horror narratives. This Spring my Why Read?: Science Fiction students and I are working with DigLibArts again as they craft digital storytelling projects that are “Reports from the Future.” dAvid pAddy: Here’s a minor career I was not expecting: Recently I find myself reviewing for publication a lot of other people’s articles on J. G. Ballard, as well writing a blurb for another Ballardian’s new book. Life can be curious sometimes.

In 2014, I presented a paper on the Belgian comic and global phenomenon Tintin: “The Worldliness of The Adventures of Tintin.” There had been an expectation that a volume of essays stemming from that conference on Tintin would be published, but it sat dormant for a while. However, it has now sprung back to life and I am currently working on revisions with the hope that the book will emerge from Cornell University Press/Leuven University Press later this year.

I will be on sabbatical in the Spring of 2018, and this will be my opportunity to move forward on my next research project on small nation nationalism. The vision for the project at this point is vast, but I am going to start a bit smaller by working on a chapter looking at depictions of Cornwall in literature and in the discourses of Cornish independence groups. There’s an obscure novel by Daphne du Maurier that has caught my eye and that may very well be the springboard for the rest. We’ll see where it all goes.

Jonathan Burton: Over the January break I traveled to New York with a dozen Whittier students for a course in Experimental Drama. While there we attended eleven performances, half of which actively involved us and blurred the lines between actors and audience. It was a thrilling week and I look forward to doing it again in 2019 or 2020. As a scholar, I’ve been busy working on a chapter on “Race and Empire” for Bloomsbury’s Cultural Histories of the West series. It’s been fun revisiting questions that I took up in earlier publications, but I’m also looking forward now to taking up another project that has been long­steeping, a history of Shakespeare in American secondary education. I’ll 4

be on sabbatical next year, so that will give me a chance to spend some time in high schools around Los Angeles. I’m also hoping to address a deficit in my learning that has been strikingly apparent to me since moving to California: I need to learn Spanish.

Tony Barnstone: After happily stepping down as Chair of English, I have been doing lots of administrative labor. Working with the L.I.A.S.E. group’s Luce Foundation grant and other funders, I ran a two­week writers festival in China and the USA. Over spring break, 9 creative writing students and 3 faculty went to Beijing and Kunming, China, along with Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry Gregory Pardlo, National Book Award in Poetry winner Daniel Borzutzky, and poet Rachel Galvin, to participate in readings, panels, sight­seeing, roundtables, and literary translation sessions. Then, in the week after spring break, 5 Chinese poets and two important Latino poets (Richard Blanco and David Hernandez) headlined the Whittier Writers Festival. In addition, I have been giving lots of conference talks and readings, including a reading with father Willis and sister Aliki at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, and a panel on Pacific Rim Ecopoetry at the American Association of Writers and Writing Programs, in Washington, D.C. When I have time, I try to put in a little time writing my own poems and writing and illustrating my book of children’s poetry. I am currently marketing several projects, including a project on the history, theory, science and practice of creativity as seen through the Tarot, a translation of the Urdu poet Ghalib, and an anthology of Pacific Rim Ecopoetry.

Charles S. Adams: I spoke at the Whittier Public Library as part of their series of talks and exhibits commemorating the centennial of the U.S. entering World War I (April, 1917). My talk was about the place of the war in American literary thinking and the rise of literary modernism as a consequence. I note that the National Endowment for the Humanities helped the library put this program together. The NEH is targeted for elimination in the new national budget proposals. I attended the NINE conference on baseball in Arizona, representing the Institute for Baseball Studies (with Joe Price).

Some of you attended our most recent project, a symposium on women in baseball called “Equal to the Game,” organized as our contribution to women’s history month. We also had a program earlier this year celebrating Mexican­American baseball in Los Angeles in honor of some gifts of memorabilia from the famous Carmelita Chorizeros teams. Please consider joining us on our pretty robust Facebook page (moving toward 5,000 members). https://www.facebook.com/groups/347883628706532/ Andrea Rehn: As usual, it’s been a busy semester. In January, I presented at the American Association of Colleges and Universities annual meeting in San Francisco about methods for promoting open scholarly communication via social media. In February, I finalized revisions for an article on Kipling’s story “Man who would be kings,” which will (hopefully) be published later this year or early next in a collection titled Trauma and Nationalism in the 19th Century. This semester also brought good news in the form of a $700,000 grant to support the Digital Liberal Arts program which I’ve been working on since 2012. You can read more about our “DigLibArts 2020 Initiative” on our webpage: diglibarts.whittier.edu.

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As you all may know, my office has moved to 102 Wardman Hall for the next few years, and I encourage you all to come visit up there!

Katy Simonian: I recently presented my paper “‘Women Must Be Tortured’: Jean Rhys and the Colonial Theater of Subversive Silence” at the 2016 PAMLA Conference. My research is rooted in the use of silence to combat and subvert the highly gendered nature of racism and violence against women of the colonial era, specifically in the West Indies and Great Britain. I also explore the subject of trauma in the aftermath of colonization with regard to linguistic imperialism and its impact on the individual as a source of both alienation and empowerment. I am currently working to expand this paper into a larger research project on the work of Jean Rhys.

Sigma Tau Delta Congratulations to all of you who qualified/will qualify this year to be members of the Whittier (Jessamyn West) chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the national honorary society in English! Well done! (Note: you’re not really a member until you get initiated. And the national folks say you are not really in until you have paid a membership! See Professor Furman­Adams, Professor Morris, or Angela Olivas in the department office if you have questions.)

What Have We Been Reading Lately?

Wendy Furman­Adams: Alas, as is usual during the academic year, I have much less reading to report than I do after the relative leisure of summer. I've been reading mostly Dante, a marvelous array of Renaissance women writers (for Writing Renaissance Women), and far too much political news and commentary. (I'm pretty much addicted to the New York Times, Harpers, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker­­plus my daily morning fix of the L.A. Times.) I always have a book going, though, and this semester it's Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve. This spellbinding, almost novelistic, work of scholarship tells the story of the rediscovery of Lucretius' On the Nature of Things in a German monastic library; of the Vatican scribe and scholar who discovered it; and of the role of this ancient Epicurean text in the birth of modernity (not to mention Botticelli's Birth of Venus).

Another must for lovers of the Renaissance, this book is easily the match of Greenblatt's Renaissance Self­Fashioning and Will in the World.

dAvid pAddy: A few years ago, in one of my Contemporary British courses, the class read through the latest Granta volume showcasing the best young British writers. The class reached consensus that their favorite story from this collection was by Naomi Alderman. Since then I’ve read her astonishing historical novel about the lives around Jesus, The Liar’s Gospel, and then recently I finished her brand­new work of science 6

fiction, The Power, which was written partly under the tutelage of Margaret Atwood. I’m still wrestling with this, erm, powerful book, which may very well show up in one or possibly all of my classes next semester.

I am now halfway through Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six­volume My Struggle and I am just as enamored and in awe as when I began. A monument of contemporary world literature.

Two standout works that I finished recently, Saša Stanišić’s Before the Feast and Adam Thorpe’s Ulverton, are brilliant novels in which the main character is really the town in which everything takes place. Ulverton may very well be a masterpiece, one I’ve been meaning to read for some time, and it shows us the life of this one English town across three centuries told in a vast array of styles and voices. Very much worth checking out.

Although it’s a bit overdetermined, Adam Weiner How Bad Writing Destroyed the World is a fascinating account of the chain that leads from the nineteenth­century Russian novel, What is to be Done?, by Chernyshevsky, to Lenin to Ayn Rand to Alan Greenspan and the economic collapse of 2008. A history of bad ideas put into motion.

Because I have been assigned to write a review of a critical book on science fiction writer Alfred Bester, I am going back to re­read or, in some cases, read for the first time his key works. I hadn’t read The Demolished Man before (first winner of the Hugo)—and, yeah, it’s a stunner.

My deep love of everything put out by NYRB Classics has extended to their new series of classic, obscure, international comics (NYRC), and I have read everything they’ve put out so far—most recently Abner Dean’s What am I Doing Here? and Dominique Goblet’s Pretending is Lying.

The piles that await me seem to feature, predominately, works from the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary and Cornwall. I recently adored some wonderful new translations of Franz Kafka (Konundrum), Jack Clemo’s Selected Poems, and I am waiting to read more

by László Krasznahorkai, Antal Szerb and Stefan Zweig.

Jonathan Burton: Each spring I seem to struggle to get much reading done beyond the work I’ve assigned to my students. I’m currently reading Paul Griffith’s book, Let Me Tell You, an oulipian novella narrated by Shakespeare’s Ophelia. What makes the work so fascinating is that Griffith manages to create a work that contests inherited ideas about Ophelia while limiting himself to the words spoken by her in Hamlet. Spurred by their recent visits to campus, I am also reading works by David Hernandez and Richard Blanco. First on my list for the summer is my colleague Jose Orozco’s book, Receive Our Memories and the Indonesian novelist Eka Kurniawan’s novel, Man Tiger. I’ve also decided to get my hands on everything I can by the playwright Brandon Jacobs­Jenkins, whose play An Octoroon thrilled me last summer. Jacobs­Jenkins is winning awards faster than they can make them these days, and his works have been staged recently not only in New York but also here in Los Angeles at the Matrix Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum.

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Tony Barnstone: I’ve been reading Sholeh Wolpe’s translation of Persian mystical poet Attar’s The Conference of the Birds, William Finnegan’s surfing memoir, Barbarian Days, several textbooks on language learning (contemporary Greek and Chinese), Kim Addonizio’s wild, drunken, sexy literary memoir, Bukowski in a Sundress, and Sharon Olds’s new book of poems, Odes. Beyond that, most of my reading in the last few months has been for the classes I’m teaching. I’m looking forward to summer, when I can set sail on a sea of book jackets, with parchment whitecaps blown on a wind of thought.

Kate Durbin: I've been reading Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, the new edition of Eve Babitz's Eve's Hollywood, Jane Mayer's Dark Money, and Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby. I've also been re­reading a lot of Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson, two all­time favs, absorbing their brilliance.

Charles S. Adams: April, 1895, by Jay Winik, concerning the end of the Civil War (though I have not finished it!). The Great War in Modern Memory, by Paul Fussell, the best book I know on the cultural consequences of World War 1. I will mention the film Arrival. Not a lot of people seem to have seen this, but I thought it was really worth my time. It is actually about linguistics, in a really interesting way. As always, I try and fail to keep up with The New York Review of Books, and TLS.

Katy Simonian: I am currently re­reading and exploring the works of Zabel Yesayan as part of a broader research project. As a prominent voice within the Armenian community, Yesayan was the only woman on the list of intellectuals to be arrested and murdered on April 24, 1915, a date which marks the beginning of the Armenian Genocide. Forced into exile, Yesayan continued her work as a novelist, translator and Professor of Armenian and French until facing persecution yet again under the Soviet Union for her work promoting Armenian nationalism and creative freedom. She was arrested and sent to Siberia where she ultimately lost her life. Her life and work inspires writers and artists around the world who face persecution for their commitment to artistic expression and social justice. My Soul in Exile offers a clear and poignant account of the transformative power of trauma from her perspective as a Genocide survivor and advocate for freedom and human rights. This April marks the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and the present­day suffering of the Yazidi population in Iraq reminds us of the importance of recognition as a necessary and profound step toward the prevention of future atrocities.

Alas, literature is a crucial component in promoting truth an understanding.

English Department Courses for Fall, January, and Spring 2017­2018 Academic Year (All Subject to at Least Some Change)

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Below is supplemental information from most of the faculty about the departmental courses scheduled for the 2017­2018 academic year. It is in the nature of our subjects that a course description in the catalog rarely says exactly what any given offering will cover. There are always big choices faculty members have to make, and these change over time. The details are, again, always subject to change, but we hope this will help.

As we acquire more information and make changes, we hope to adjust the on­line versions of this document. Please see or e­mail the instructors, Angela Olivas in the department office, or our current department chair, dAvid pAddy, for answers to questions these descriptions might raise. We note as well that some instructors may be teaching courses in the INTD, GCS, WSP, THEA, and GWS (love those acronyms!). It is entirely possible that there are courses taught in other departments that good for ENGL credit that your editors and schedulers missed. Students should consult the Whittier College Catalog concerning prerequisites for all courses. In particular, most courses require ENGL 110 or 120 or their equivalent as a pre­requisite for enrollment. Some courses taught as part of pairs require co­enrollment in the paired course. See the instructors if you have questions.

As several faculty are on leaves, phase­out, or other duties next year, we are working on hiring a full time “Visiting Professor” replacement. For a number of courses then, you will see a “TBA” (to be announced). We are 90% sure the courses will be offered as listed, but until a professor is appointed, we cannot give the details as to what form the courses will take. We do recommend that students take advantage of the presence of a new faculty member and the new energies and ideas that person will bring.

ENGL 110 note (only offered in Fall): This course is designed for first­semester, first­ year students with a strong background and continuing interest in the study and writing of literature. While it counts toward the requirements of the English major (as an alternative to ENGL 120), it does not fulfill the COM 2 (writing intensive) requirement as ENGL 120 does. But do not despair—we have worked to designate many of our other courses to fulfill this requirement, which should be reflected in the schedule of courses.

ENGL 120 note: As with Exploring Literature, individual instructors will organize the course around specific themes of their own devising, though all sections have the same goals. All of them count for the COM 2 Lib Ed requirement and will enable a student to then take upper­level English courses. Where there is no extended description, the instructor is still thinking about it. It is always possible that if a particular section does not draw enough students in preregistration it could be cancelled. If this happens, students should see their advisors, the registrar’s office, or any member of the English Department and we will do our best to find an open spot in another section.

Fall 2017

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ENGL 110, Section 1, Exploring Literature: What is Reality? (Charles S. Adams) The classical attack on literature (actually on all art), going back to Plato, is that it essentially “lies.” It is a representation of reality, not the thing itself, and thus deceptive, leading us into possibly dangerous errors. I propose to take on this question by complicating it. There is a considerable literature that is about, among other things, literature itself, about the use of telling stories. What is the use of the imagination? What claims can literature make to be about reality? What can art do to actually have a positive role in the affairs of the world, in spite of what Plato says? We will look at fiction, poetry, and some film.

ENGL 110, Section 2: Exploring Literature: Being Human (dAvid pAddy) Reading, done properly, is every bit as tough as writing—I really believe that. As for those people who align reading with the essentially passive experience of watching television, they only wish to debase reading and readers. The more accurate analogy is that of the amateur musician placing her sheet music on the stand and preparing to play.

She must use her own, hard­won, skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift she gives the composer and the composer gives her—Zadie Smith “Fail Better” In the essay quoted above, novelist Zadie Smith speaks of the “talented reader.” What might she mean by such a thing? Surely, once one has learned to read, one is a reader. So, what might it mean to be a talented reader? We must assume that rather than being a skill one has or does not have, reading is a life­long practice that requires skill, work and practice that may help bring a written work to life in more nuanced and layered ways. In this course, designed especially for incoming first­year students, we will explore literature and some of the many ways to go about reading and interpreting it.

In the first few weeks of this course, we will talk about why books and literature may still matter in this day and age, and we will examine some of the critical skills and methodologies that can help us be better readers of texts and better writers about texts.

Think of this as an introduction to how literary authors, theorists and critics see the world. After these introductory matters, we will read a number of works that focus on the central thematic question of the course: “What does it mean to be human?” By the end of the course, you will have hopefully garnered new skills or intensified old ones to help you appreciate the joy and complexity of literature. Readings may include such works as Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk, Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange and Naomi Alderman’s The Power.

ENGL 110, Section 3: Exploring Literature: Conspiracy Theories (Michelle Chihara) ENGL 120: Why Read? (TBA) ENGL 120: Why Read? (TBA) 10

As we have not hired our new Visiting Professor, we are not able to provide information as to the section themes as of yet.

ENGL 201: Introduction to Journalism (Joe Donnelly) A survey of the core principles and tenets of good journalism that applies across the multitude of platforms currently available. Students will learn about the fundamentals in class and apply them to reporting and writing stories outside of class. (Students can earn a credit for contributing to the Quaker Campus, see ENGL 290) ENGL 202: Writing Short Fiction (Michelle Chihara) This course is an introduction to writing prose fiction. We will cover a range of literary techniques and writing styles, with a focus on open­minded exploration and careful attention to craft.

ENGL 203: Writing Poetry (Tony Barnstone) This will be an introduction to poetry writing, focusing on form and technique.

Workshops, outside readings, visits by established poets. The format of the class is the workshop, in which students critique each others' work. The class is fun, but work­ heavy­­a kind of creative writing boot camp­­and thus not for students looking for an easy ride. We will explore American and international poetry and poetics, seeking to expand our range of modes and techniques. Students will be introduced to a wide variety of poetic forms, esthetic approaches, and creative techniques to help them develop their own potentialities and personal styles.

ENGL 220: Major British Writers to 1785 (Wendy Furman­Adams) The very ambitious purpose of this partially team­taught course (required for all English majors) is to introduce you to the major themes and writers in British literature from its beginnings, in the seventh century, until about 1785­­in sequence and, insofar as time allows, in context. We'll begin with Beowulf and selections from The Canterbury Tales, the two most important (and utterly contrasting) works of the English Middle Ages, moving on to selected texts from the Renaissance, Restoration, and Eighteenth Century­­ ending with Samuel Johnson on the threshold of the Romantic Age. We will attempt to define some of the continuities and discontinuities in British literature, as well as to develop a clear sense of the movements and ideas that shaped its first 1000 years. In the second semester of the sequence­­English 221­­you will become acquainted with the second half of the story: British and American literature from about 1789 to the present.

By the time you have completed the sequence, you will be ready for the study in depth provided by our 300­level courses, and should have some idea of the areas you will want to explore most fully. All majors or prospective majors should take the sequence during their sophomore year. All English majors sophomore and above who need the class should go to see Dr. Furman­Adams­­or even just turn up on the first day with 11

an add sheet­­if the course is full. Sheets will be signed regardless of the size of the class. Prerequisite: ENGL 110 or 120.

ENGL 290: Quaker Campus (Joe Donnelly) Students who work on the production and writing of the Quaker Campus can claim credit for their work through this course, so long as they are also enrolled in a journalism course. The course is to be taken only as Pass/No Pass.

Additional Information: Co­enrollment with ENGL 201: Introduction to Journalism required.

ENGL 310: Linguistics (Sean Morris) “‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.”

Lewis Carroll invented half the words in “Jabberwocky” himself, yet you still know how to say, correctly, “That mimsy rath loves to see a gimbling tove,” even if you don’t know what you mean. How is this possible? And how can we understand people who say, “This man is a tiger,” or “That course is a bear”? While we’re at it, where do different languages come from in the first place? And why is it so hard to learn a new one when you didn’t have any trouble learning the first? Does someone who speaks another language think differently? And what’s with English spelling? How come “knight” and “bite” rhyme, but “police” and “ice” don’t? Want to know? Tune in to English 310 and find out!

Paired with PSYC 352, Social Psychology! (And no, you don’t have to be in the pair to take Linguistics.)

ENGL 328: Shakespeare (Sean Morris) No quips or sales pitches on this one. Another professor once described this class with these words only: "If you do not know who and what this class is about, you need to do some personal reflection." I might describe it this way (with apologies to Stan Lee): "Shakespeare: 'nuff said."

I haven't yet worked out all the details, but I know that I want the course to cover part famous works, part obscure works, to give you a full understanding of, arguably, the greatest writer ever to pen the English language. Some works I'm thinking of include standards like A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, but also some less commonly read plays like Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Winter's Tale, and Titus Andronicus, plus a brief look at the sonnets. I’d say it will be great, but you knew that already.

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ENGL 332: Nineteenth Century British Novel (TBA) ENGL 335: Victorian Poetry (TBA) These two courses will be taught by our new Visiting Professor. We hesitate to give any real details beyond the obvious elements in the titles, as your prospective instructor has not yet been hired. Our search is active at the time of this writing.

ENGL 356: Twenty­First­Century British Literature (pAddy) We are now seventeen years into the 21st century. What does Britain and British literature look like today? What are the issues that define the place and time and that concern writers now? Who are the major voices that are sticking around and who are the emerging talents to keep our eyes open for?

The “contemporary” is an ever­evolving phenomenon, which means this is a class that will undergo constant change. The class will take the last seventeen years or so as a distinct block of time, and we will take this opportunity to see what aesthetic and social concerns are shaping the literature coming out of Britain today. I foresee such prominent issues as the evolving shape of national identity, the concern with history and historical narrative, the omnipresence of trauma and the effects of technology. But we’ll really have to wait and see. Some possible contenders are: Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, Ian McEwan’s Saturday, Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing, David Peace’s GB84, Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English, Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home, Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island, Kate Tempest’s Let Them Eat Chaos, Naomi Alderman’s The Power and David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks.

ENGL 370: Contemporary American Fiction (Michelle Chihara) What is American literature? This sounds like a big question. Is it? Is American Literature something Serious, Important and full of cultural capital and power?

Or is American literature (small ‘l’) just the print version of Hollywood— entertaining, sparkly, beautiful even, but nothing too serious… What do we mean by “serious” literature, and has anything changed in our definition since the rise in power of social media and “alternative facts”? Is “seriousness” in literature something that can be measured or quantified?

Or is literature something more elusive, more qualitative? Does the dividing line between literature and entertainment run along literature’s ability to carry meaning? How is asking what American literature is different from asking what books are most popular today?

This course will engage with big questions about the kind of knowledge and truth that literature contains and conveys. We will engage in rigorous analysis of very recent American novels and of some other forms of cultural products: short stories, television 13

series and films. From Sellout by Paul Beatty, The Sympathizer by Viet Than Nguyen to The Gate At The Stairs The Gate At The Stairs, by Lorrie Moore and others, we will explore a wide range of subjects and lenses to understand the fabric of American literature and culture today.

ENGL 373: The African­American Literary Tradition (Charles S. Adams) We are all familiar with the ways in which race has been a fundamental source of difficulty in American culture. On the other hand, it has also been the source of some of our richest traditions, especially in the arts. African Americans can claim a special place in terms of their importance and influence in American literature, with a long and complex history, marked by the nearly unique experiences of slavery. This course proposes, then, to start at the beginning of what has become a strong tradition of literary production and influence. It is a tradition that begins with writers for whom the very act of writing could bring the penalty of death, yet who did it anyway (Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass). It continues with writers who use words to create freedom for themselves and others, and indeed use literature to create “being” itself, when that had been denied at the most fundamental levels (Paul Lawrence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Charles Chesnutt, W.E.B. DuBois). And, as we look at the 20th century and beyond, we see African Americans creating forms of literary expression that are arguably the only forms that are truly American, having their origin here and using materials and experiences that only happen here (Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison). The influence of such writing on our contemporary literature is profound, and African American writers are some of our most important (Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, August Wilson).

ENGL 387: Science Fiction (dAvid pAddy) Science fiction (SF) has been described as a literature that conveys a “sense of wonder,” a literature of extrapolation and a literature of “cognitive estrangement.” Even as some have deemed it the quintessential literary and cultural form of the twentieth century, others have derided it as trash for social misfits and simple­minded children. In this course, we will immerse ourselves in the world of SF to examine what makes the genre so contentious. Our approach will be historical, thematic, stylistic, and socio­political.

We will first discuss some questions concerning the aesthetics of science fiction: what distinguishes it as a kind of writing and does it require a different manner of reading strategy from other kinds of writing? After that we will read a good variety of classic and contemporary texts through a set of three primary themes: Aliens and others; technology and technological effects; utopias and dystopias. These themes will provide the means for us to think about humanity, identity, difference, time, space, the stuff we live with and the stuff that changes us, and our dreams and anxieties about ourselves, our societies and our future. I am still tinkering with my reading selections, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see work by the likes of H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Paolo

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Bacigalupi, Hannu Rajaniemi, Naomi Alderman and China Miéville.

ENGL 400: Critical Procedures (Charles S. Adams) This is the course in which senior English majors complete their “paper in the major” requirement, so a good deal of our time will be spent working on that, culminating in the “Senior Presentation,” where you go public. In addition, the agenda of this class is theoretical. Reading a novel, poem, or play may seem a fairly fundamental skill for you by the time you’re a senior English major. But most of us have not really encountered the reality that there are serious people who have serious disagreements about how to go about these fundamental tasks. We know it at heart, but most of us have not thought it through. So, what are the ways that contemporary literary theorists take on the job?

What are people doing right now, arguing about? Many of these theories are difficult if not mind­boggling, but they will all help you become a more thoughtful reader, careful critic, and, perhaps, sophisticated teacher of literature. Indeed, a common response from students after learning this material is something like, “I will never be able to read the same way again.” And, “Why didn’t I know this stuff far earlier in my career?” But maybe you did, and now can put a name to it—that is the point. Each of us has an approach to literature, but is there a name for what you do? The answer is yes. Maybe not exactly what you do, but probably close. Instructor Permission Required.

ENGL 410: Senior Seminar (Tony Barnstone) This is a class in the graphic novel and the graphic poem, from ancient pattern poems through William Blake's illuminated manuscripts and the Calligrammes of Guillame Apollinaire, and from the great proletarian wordless book artists of the 30s and 40s (Lynd Ward, Franz Masareel, Giacomo Patri and Laurence Hyde) along with some of the more humorous and surreal ones (Milt Gross and Max Ernst) through Watchmen, The Dark Knight, Maus and Maus II, and The Contract with God. Time permitting, I might add in movies like American Splendor, Crumb, and Ghost World.” Note this: you will be reading a lot of theory and literary criticism for this class and will be writing a scary large research paper. Expect the primary reading to be fun and amazing and the critical reading to really stretch your limits. I've designed the class to be extremely hard, but also extremely rewarding. Come prepared to work.

ENGL 420: Preceptorships (Various Faculty) This course is for advanced students who will act as assistants to faculty in some of the courses above. See individual faculty members concerning what might be involved.

Instructor permission required.

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ENGL 290: Profile Writing (Joe Donnelly) Writing about people is art form just like painting a portrait is. We'll learn how to write great profiles of interesting people.

ENGL 303: Advanced Poetry Writing (Tony Barnstone) This class is an advanced workshop for those who have learned the basics of poetry writing. You are expected to enter the class with a strong understanding of what makes for a powerful free verse poem, how to craft the amazing image, how to take a poem through rhetorical and conceptual "turns," how to create exciting line breaks that create interesting tensions with the sentence rhythm, and of course how to revise a poem to make it better and better. In this class, you will learn the essentials of metrics, from accentual meter to syllabics to accentual­syllabic meter, and you will write in those meters, often in fixed forms, such as the haiku, the pantoum, the sestina, the quatrain, the villanelle, the sonnet, terza rima, blank verse, and such other meters as Chinese regulated verse and the Persian ghazal.

ENGL 389: The Lord of the Rings: J.R.R. Tolkien and his Sources (Sean Morris) “All those long years… you knew this day would come.”

You’ve seen the movies. You’ve read the books. You may even have dressed up in the costumes. And now you have a chance to sit in a room with 25 people and talk about it for three weeks.

In the year 2000 J.R.R. Tolkien was voted the most important author of the twentieth century, and in this course we will try to find out why, through discussion of his major works and their significance, and also through an investigation of the vast array of sources (many but not all of them medieval) on which he drew—the “leaf mold of the mind,” as he called it. We will also consider and evaluate the recent film adaptations, and take a brief look both at those languages that inspired Tolkien and at those he created himself.

Required coursework includes readings and quizzes, an oral presentation, and two papers.

The reading list for this course is very substantial, and I advise getting a head start. If you can read the main works (The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) before Jan Terms starts, the rest of the reading load will be pretty light. The Fellowship of the Ring

, at least, must be finished before the first day of class, so we can launch into our explorations right away.

In addition to the Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and selections from The Silmarillion, we’ll read “Farmer Giles of Ham” (in The Tolkien Reader), a little from the Unfinished Tales, and selections from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Works by other authors will include Humphrey Carpenter’s excellent biography of Tolkien, and contextualizing 16

works (Tolkien’s inspirations) like Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale,” Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Snorri Sturluson’s Edda—even such unlikely influences as Jane Austen (!! Yep) and James Fenimore Cooper (!!! Yes.)

Don’t despair! The readings are long, but many are just excerpts, and they are also fun.

“All you have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given you.”

See you in January. “Forth, Eorlingas!”

Spring 2018 See head note at the start of the Fall course listing section for a discussion of the ins and outs of ENGL 120, Why Read? registration.

Note: Section numbers not assigned as of this printing..

ENGL 120: Why Read?: What is Reality? (Charles S. Adams) The classical attack on literature (actually on all art), going back to Plato, is that it essentially “lies.” It is a representation of reality, not the thing itself, and thus deceptive, leading us into possibly dangerous errors. I propose to take on this question by complicating it. There is a considerable literature that is about, among other things, literature itself, about the use of telling stories. What is the use of the imagination? What claims can literature make to be about reality? What can art do to actually have a positive role in the affairs of the world, in spite of what Plato says? We will look at fiction, poetry, and some film.

ENGL 120: Why Read?: Imprinting L.A. How Los Angeles Became Literature (Joe Donnelly) Literary Journalism: How fact­based storytelling became literature.

ENGL 120 (Three Sections): Why Read?,: Can the Empire Write Back? (Katy Simonian) Critic and author V. S. Naipaul sees colonization as an overwhelming cultural experience that renders the colonized permanently disabled. By contrast, Salmon Rushdie claims that “those whom [the English] once colonized are carving out large territories within the language for themselves” (“The Empire Writes Back”). The title of this course, Why Read?, challenges us to appreciate the broader concerns of literature and the impact of language on the way in which we read, perceive, and understand the world. During the course of the semester, we will engage in the debate between the perspectives of Naipaul and Rushdie and identify where some selected works of fiction fall within the spectrum of critical interpretation set up in their work. The course is not meant to be a survey of Twentieth Century British Literature, but rather a detailed look into varieties of 17

postcolonial texts from some of the different corners of the former Empire which continue to shine within the literary world. Reading works from Ireland, Africa, the Caribbean, and India, offers us a stronger understanding of the complexity of language, which is one of the connective threads between each of these writers and their works. We will consider the development of linguistic identity in relation to English, as it has the power to both perpetuate and subvert the notion of “The Other” in reference to formerly colonized individuals. By reading a series of short fiction along with a novel, play, essays and selections of poetry, we will explore issues of cultural identity, race, gender, socioeconomic status and linguistic imperialism through the experiences of those within the postcolonial Diaspora and independent former colonies. Can voices from within the former Empire indeed write back? The answers to this and many other questions will lead us to a greater understanding of the impact of language on identity in the context of the colonial and postcolonial experience. Ultimately, we will gain perspective on the multiple lenses through which to engage with such works and recognize the power of literature as a means of conveying an understanding of these issues to readers ENGL 120 (Three sections): Why Read?, Science Fiction (Kate Durbin) Surveillance, time travel, and dystopias: in this class, we will examine race and gender dynamics, environmental issues, global politics, and questions of technology, genetics, and ethics via the novels of Octavia Butler, Michel Faber, Suzanne Collins, and others, as well as the 2015 Jennifer Phang film Advantageous, the Netflix series Black Mirror, and more. We will ground each text in the political contexts from which they were written, examining each parallel world as a revealing mirror of our past, present, and possible futures.

ENGL 120 (Two Sections): Why Read? (TBA) Once again, these sections will be taught by our new Visiting Professor. We will have more information once the hiring is complete.

ENGL 221: Major British and American Writers from 1785 (Tony Barnstone) This course continues the survey of literature in English begun in ENG 220 (Which is a pre­requisite). One of the big differences in this course from ENGL 220 is that in addition to continuing our review of the developments in and of British literary history we will have to consider the somewhat parallel trajectory of American literary history.

The course will in fact begin with some of the foundations of American literature.

Moving back and forth between British and American literature, we will examine Romanticism, the Victorian Age, Realism, Modernism, and conclude with some directions taken in contemporary literature. As we investigate the predominant ideas and aesthetic premises in each era, we will also consider literature’s relationship to matters such as the rise and fall of the British Empire, the building of the American nation, the historical importance of revolution and industrialization, and matters of race, class, and gender. As we consider shifting notions of aesthetics, we will also consistently ask: “What is the relationship between national identity and literature, if any? What was/is 18

the literary canon, and how should we think about it?” Out of some necessity, we will focus on representative works rather than trying to do it all. This course is foundational for the English major and will include guest appearances by departmental faculty, who will introduce their particular literary interests.

ENGL 290: Writing Workshop: Flesh and Bones of Poetry (Tony Barnstone) This course is one I will be designing over the summer, but the concept is that it will serve as an intro to poetry workshop that focuses on questions of incarnation, bodying forth, dance, breath, motion on the page, containing and spilling forms, and other carnal and sensory aspects of poetry and poetics. It will be paired with a course in Theater taught by Jennifer Holmes, THEA 220

­ Voice & Movement for the Actor.

ENGL 302: Advanced Fiction Writing (Michelle Chihara) This course is an advanced creative writing workshop. We will focus primarily on reading and critiquing each other’s work. We will also read a wide range of short stories and excerpts of other work, in order to expose ourselves to an array of idiosyncratic voices, creative approaches and techniques. The class assumes a serious commitment to writing fiction, and some experience with both the workshop format and the short story genre. I hope to approach the workshop as a working writers’ group, where we assume a love of language and a drive to write in our peers, and focus on pushing each other to discover the strongest expression of our individual voices.

ENGL 305: Screenwriting (Sean Morris) You know you’ve always wanted to write your own movie, and here’s your chance! This course will give you the tools you need to write for the silver screen—including plot structure, character development, scene building, dialogue, and screenplay format. Our methods and assignments will include short writing exercises, outlining, discussions, workshops, readings, and a weekly film lab (time and day to be fixed when the course begins). For your major project, you will submit a detailed outline for a feature­length film, and a complete first act (30 pages in screenplay format). Readings will include Robert McKee’s Story, Denny Martin Flinn’s How Not To Write a Screenplay, Syd Field’s, Screenplay, a few professional scripts, lots of film clips, and your fellow students’ drafts.

ENGL 326: Topics in Shakespeare: “The Other Shakespeares” (Sean Morris) Shakespeare’s greatness often overshadows the greatness of the other writers of the Elizabethan and Jacobian stage. But they were great; that time would have been the Golden Age of English theater even without Shakespeare. So in this course I want to look at Shakespeare in the context of these “other Shakespeares,” playwrights like Marlow, Webster, and Jonson, as well as some less often read contemporaries like Thomas Heywood (lady pirate plays, anyone?). I’ll match these up against Shakespeare plays that deal with similar plots or themes so that we’ll also be learning about the bard, perhaps things we would not otherwise see in a typical Shakespeare class.

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ENGL 330: British Literature 1640­1789 (Wendy Furman­Adams) Compared to some courses, the period covered in this course is not a long one: just under 150 years. Yet the period is a fascinating one because it leads directly to our own civilization (or the one just ending)­­from the Renaissance to the "modern world." The later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have been called many things: the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, the "Age of Exuberance" (by my late great former teacher Donald Greene), and, perhaps most aptly of all, the Age of Revolution.

Our period literally began with one revolution (the English Puritan Revolution) and ended with another (the French Revolution). But the period was revolutionary in every way imaginable. Politically­­during this age of Locke, Rousseau, and the American founding fathers­­the Divine Right of Kings gave way to the radical idea (so obvious, at least in hindsight, to Americans!) of the "social compact." Socially, the middle class (i.e. most of us) came into being as an active social force­­giving rise, with their new mobility, to reform movements such as temperance and the abolition of slavery.

Economically, an agrarian society gave way to unprecedented urbanization and to the rise of capitalism, with all its new opportunities and dangers. Educationally, opportunity both expanded and changed­­giving rise to a "reading public" that for the first time included people of all classes, and women as well as men.

Religiously, the relative unity and stability of the middle ages continued to fragment, giving rise to a relatively secular society, in which "the pursuit of happiness" came to mean not the search for ultimate reality (God), but personal happiness on this earth, in our lifetimes. Philosophically, the emphasis on authority that had been the hallmark of learning over more than a millennium gave way to a new empiricism­­a new and urgent interest in discovering the foundations of knowledge itself, not so much in "reason" as in "experience."

And in literature­­under the stress of these revolutionary changes­­writers used classical forms (like epic, ode, epistle, and satire) to express revolutionary new subjects and ideas.

Women gained an unprecedented power as both readers and writers (a power not to be matched until the twentieth century). And the age gave rise, as well, to whole new genres­­most importantly the newspaper, the magazine, the traveler's tale, and the novel (the name of which means, simply, new!). Prerequisite: English 110 or 120.

ENGL 334: British Romantic Poetry (Charles S. Adams) “Charles Adams teaching something non­American?” you query? Yes, it is true. One closely guarded secret is that I really like all the romantic stuff, even the Brits. My main interests are, as usual, historical (see next paragraph), philosophical, and ideological. The core trio of early romantics, Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, are inspired by the French Revolution to rethink English poetry, and they take a pretty good shot at it. They inspire the most significant of the second generation of English romantics, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, (who all fulfill the famous movie line “live fast, die young, and leave a good­looking corpse”), and they all were read carefully by a bunch of other writers, 20

especially all my favorite American romantics. Indeed, with this period we see the beginning of what poetry looks like today—it is arguably the birth of the “Modern.”

These folks get into all sorts of stuff—visionary mysticism, social and political agitation, sexual, social, and political satire (Byron is a riot), mind­altering experiences, autobiography, and much else. Yet they are also very conservative at times, using many traditional poetic strategies to get at their idea of “the new.” The goals are always ambitious and the personalities outsized: Shelley felt that the poets of all times (but his especially), were, “The unacknowledged legislators of mankind.” And it was famously said of Byron that he was, “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” Aspirations for us all. I think.

This time out the class is paired with History 390, The Romantic Revolutions, taught by Professor Elizabeth Sage. The history course takes up the question of how and why what we call the romantic period in British literature was also a period of extraordinary revolutionary activity of all sorts in Europe. The French Revolution is an obvious starting point, but most European countries experienced something like revolution, with the outstanding exception of England. We hope to fully integrate the courses in the sense that everything we are doing in each class is related to the other. Students are required to sign up for both courses. Instructor Permission Required.

ENGL 352: Modern British Novel (TBA) ENGL 358: Postcolonial Novel (TBA) These two courses will be taught by our new Visiting Professor. We hesitate to give any real details beyond the obvious elements in the titles, as your prospective instructor has not yet been hired. Our search is active at the time of this writing.

ENGL 361: American Romanticism (Charles S. Adams) American romanticism actually has its own name, “Transcendentalism.” Not all of the American writers who are classified as “romantics” would subscribe to this philosophy, but I am willing to say that even if they were extremely suspicious, they were still stuck with responding to the power of the movement’s ideas thus they too are “romantics,” at least for our purposes in this class. This is the movement that claims to make American writing really American, and it launches the 19th Century explosion of all sorts of new ideas and literary forms in this country. So, for example, we have Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, and Whitman laying down some new ground rules, and Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Dickinson thinking hard about why they are not necessarily comfortable with either the new ideas or forms, or are using them to go in directions the transcendentalists had not contemplated (actually, what fascinated Poe was the idea of no rules at all—at least moral ones—and what that might let you consider). But all are caught up in a powerful groundswell of idealism and intellectual ferment of the times, a great deal of which is brought about by social, economic, and political change. That idealism is both political and philosophical and produces some of the greatest American literary work. The course is not supposed to 21

survey everything, and will not. But we will try to get at crucial historical questions in this critical American literary period. Those interested in any of the forms of American literary modernism later on will find here materials they will need to know.

ENGL 390: Podcasts (Michelle Chihara) ENGL 400: Critical Procedures (Michelle Chihara) This is the course in which senior English majors complete their “paper in the major” requirement, so a good deal of our time will be spent working on that, culminating in the “Senior Presentation,” where you go public. In addition, the agenda of this class is theoretical. Reading a novel, poem, or play may seem a fairly fundamental skill for you by the time you’re a senior English major. But most of us have not really encountered the reality that there are serious people who have serious disagreements about how to go about these fundamental tasks. We know it at heart, but most of us have not thought it through. So, what are the ways that contemporary literary theorists take on the job?

What are people doing right now, arguing about? Many of these theories are difficult if not mind­boggling, but they will all help you become a more thoughtful reader, careful critic, and, perhaps, sophisticated teacher of literature. Indeed, a common response from students after learning this material is something like, “I will never be able to read the same way again.” And, “Why didn’t I know this stuff far earlier in my career?” But maybe you did, and now can put a name to it—that is the point. Each of us has an approach to literature, but is there a name for what you do? The answer is yes. Maybe not exactly what you do, but probably close. Instructor Permission Required.

ENGL 410: Writing Renaissance Women (Wendy Furman­Adams) The title of this senior seminar refers to two things at once. Most obviously, this is a course about women writers working in Italy and England between about 1500 and 1700.

But a number of important male writers are represented as well because of their role in the way literature both reflected and, in turn, influenced­­even re­invented­­early modern life. Due in part to social factors, in part to the power of their vision, these male poets indelibly shaped the ways men imagined and represented women, as well as the ways female readers imagined and represented themselves. Thus, even when writing for others of their own sex, women had to write in response to male voices, male pens, male images of female identity.

Some recent critics have argued that if people write history, they are also "written" by it.

Each of our lives, then, is a kind of fiction, written in collaboration with the social forces that shape them. And, especially in the early modern period, those forces tended to privilege the male perspective. The Renaissance was a period of enormous change and upheaval, in which a relatively unified and stable medieval world­view gave way to what would become the Enlightenment. It was a period in which men­­at least an elite of outstanding and privileged men­­were involved actively in a reconstruction of identity, a reconstruction Stephen Greenblatt famously called "Renaissance self­fashioning."

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Women, too, were engaged in this "self­fashioning" enterprise­­but with a difference.

Less free to begin the inquiry "from scratch," they engaged in the process under the jealous eye of a patriarchal society that saw them, essentially, as passive members­­ valued above all, as Suzanne Hull has noted, for three traditional virtues: chastity, obedience, and silence. Even as they wrote, then (and many did write), they were also "being written"­­by male writers, and yet more profoundly by the social conventions that shaped both male and female roles.

Thus we will constantly considering the context of the literature we read, the social conditions under which it was produced. But we also read each text­­closely and with open minds­­in order to see the extent to which Renaissance writers, male and female, were "written" by the context in which they wrote; and to see, conversely, the extent to which they managed to "re­write," or "refashion" themselves and one another.

Students will produce a portfolio of writing, including several short papers and reviews and a much longer piece of original research, which may be written in combination with the Critical Procedures paper in the major.

ENGL 420: Preceptorships (Various Faculty) This course is for advanced students who will act as assistants to faculty in some of the courses above. See individual faculty members concerning what might be involved.

Instructor permission required.

Why Did You Get This?

The purpose of this newsletter is to keep students, faculty, and friends informed about the wide variety of activities the Whittier College English Department is engaged in. If there are events of a literary nature that could use a bit of publicity through this vehicle, send information about them to the English Department office. We cannot guarantee when or if they will appear, but it never hurts to try! If you get this and do not want it, or if you did not get it but see a copy and want future issues, please let our Department Administrative Assistant, Angela Olivas (x4253 or see e­mail list below), in the department office, know.

Ways to Help While we all live for art alone, other things do matter. There are lots of ways to help us, and we welcome conversations with anyone who wants one. We are all interested in collaborations with alums in various ways, just as a starting point. But money is always useful too. We have two funds that support English Department activities in particular— one for Student Prizes in Literature and the other called Poets for Poets. The first supports writing prize contests all students at Whittier can enter. We have been giving prizes for fiction, poetry, and prose. Most of the winning work has been published in our Literary Review, edited by our students. The Poets for Poets fund will support general 23

activities of interest and importance to the department (we need it to grow a bit more to start using it in the best ways possible). If you are interested in making even very small gifts, “it is all good.” Just tell the office of Advancement (on line or in person) what you want to do.

The Whittier College Department of English Language and Literature and Affiliates Charles S. Adams: cadams@whittier.edu Professor (American Literature, American Studies, Autobiography, Romanticism, Popular Culture, Literary Theory) Tony Barnstone: tbarnstone@whittier.edu (Creative Writing­­Poetry, Modern and Postmodern American Literature, Asian Literature, Translation) Jonathan Burton: jburton@whittier.edu Associate Professor (Shakespeare, Drama, Early Modern Studies, Music Writing, Comparative Literature) Michelle Chihara: mchihara@whittier.edu Assistant Professor (Creative Writing—Fiction and Non­Fiction, Chicano/a Literature, American Literature, American Studies, Literary Theory) Wendy Furman­Adams: wfurman@whittier.edu Albert Upton Professor of English Language and Literature (Milton, Early Modern Literature, 18th Century Literature, Women’s Studies, Literature and Visual Culture, The Bible, Classics) Sean Morris: smorris@whittier.edu Associate Professor (Linguistics and English Language, Medieval Literature, Creative Writing, Fun) dAvid pAddy: dpaddy@whittier.edu (Spring 2017 Department Chair) Professor (20th Century British, Modernism, Postmodernism, Welsh and other Celtic Literatures, Literary Theory, Creative Writing) Andrea Rehn: arehn@whittier.edu Associate Professor (19th Century British, Postcolonial Studies, Women’s Studies, Travel, Literary Theory) Visiting, Lecturer, Adjunct, Staff, and Affiliated Faculty (These links may or may not be ones our adjunct and affiliated faculty use most of the time. Please contact the department office if you cannot make contact using these) Joe Donnelly: jdonnel1@whittier.edu Kate Durbin: kdurbin@whittier.edu Katy Simonian: ksimonia@whittier.edu

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Acting Head Librarian and Library Liaison to the English Department: Mike Garabedian: mgarabed@whittier.edu Director, College Writing Programs: Charlie Eastman ceastman@whittier.edu English/History/Writing Program Departments Administrative Assistant: Angela Olivas: afreelan@whittier.edu

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