In English Volume 2 April 2018

IN ENGLISH Occasional Newsletter of the Whittier College Department of English Language and Literature Volume 18, #2, April, 2018 Charles S. Adams, Editor Professor, English

On-Line 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 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 (Keep your work!)

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 the next 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 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 all genres by Whittier students. Again, any student can submit. We need to thanks lots of donors, alumni, faculty, friends, and students, for help funding these prizes and the Review.

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And The 2017-2018 Winners Are: English Department Annual Scholary Writing Contest Rebecca Liu - "The Choices We Make" English Department Annual Contest in Poetry and Prose Poetry 1st Grace Creelman - "Americana Abstract" 2nd Ariel Horton - "ode to a Woman" 3rd Ariel Horton - "A Day in the Life of an Inpatient" Prose

1st 2nd 3rd

Lauren Swintek - "Hero and Nim" Madison White - "Requiem for Red Rock" Jehan Godrej - "Uniting Home with Our Land Ethic

Some Random Good News From Students and Alums We do not always hear about various successes by our students and alums, but we have some samples of what we know to be a larger whole to celebrate. These are all significant accomplishments!

Rosalie Atkinson, ’16, is now a public radio producer for “Good Food” at KCRW, a significant long-term dream come true!

Priscilla Lam, ’18, has had her piece “Human Race: Library” picked up from our Literary Review to be publiahed in California’s Emerging Writers. You can read about that here: https://www.zpublishinghouse.com/products/californias-emergingwriters?variant=7981959020574

Brianna Martinez, ’18 is a Fulbright Semi-Finalist and has been admitted to the M.A. in English at University College Dublin, Ireland.

Ryan Fong, ’02, has been tenured and promoted to Associate Professor of English at Kalamazoo College.

The literary magazine Manoa special issue on Chinese and American poets on the environment, to be a book issued from University of Hawaii Press, will include pieces by three current students: Natalie Fenaroli, “Kansas,” Brianna Limas, “To Burn a World,” and Trent Beauchamp-Sanchez, “A Dialectic Treatise” and “Whatever Remains of Leon Czolgosz.”

Leah Boynton, ’18, will be entering the M.A. in Higher Education Adminitration, Boston College.

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Alejandra Gaeta, ’14, graduated from UCLA masters program in library science and is now working as the Archivist for the Center for the Study of Political Graphics. She has also been doing some informal advising of Poets who are interested in library science.

Shirley Thao, ‘16 is working as Program Manager doing community outreach programming for the Los Angeles Public Library Foundation, where she is doing amazing and engaged work.

Leandro Fefer, ’15, was admitted into the highly competitive UC Irvine MFA program, where he will begin in the fall of 2018.

Réme Bohlin, ’11, is in her third year of the PhD program in the English Department at the University of Connecticut (UConn). She just passed her comprehensive exams and is working on her dissertation prospectus which will be focusing on poetic interventions and descriptions of civil war in the early modern period. She recently had an opportunity to visit sunny Los Angeles for the first time in four years for the 46th Shakespeare Association of America (SAA). She participated in a workshop titled Sites of Resistance and Early Modern Drama, submitting a paper called "Dangerous Nostalgia: Uses of History in Henry VI, Part II." Currently Réme is teaching an Honors Writing seminar focused on documentary film and the question of truth, guided by her graduate advisor.

Next semester she has the opportunity to teach two sections of "Intro to Shakespeare."

She still remembers her first class on Shakespeare with Sean Morris in Fall 2010 at Whittier and how transformative it was to begin with "bad" Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus.

What Have We Been Up to Lately?

We lead off here with a welcome to new Visiting Asistant Professor Bethany Wong.

She comes to us from U.C. Santa Barbara and is a specialist in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially the novel, among other things. Within a few days of getting her to agree to join us we gave her work to do. Welcome to Whittier!

Bethany Wong: On my way to Whittier College, I’ve lived in an 18th century house (thankfully they added modern plumbing), examined a dagger from an actress who played Romeo opposite her real-life sister (!), and read the only existing copy (in the US) of an obscure novel by an author called Anna Maria Mackenzie. This spring, I could see the Capitol Building from my window when I worked the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC to research eighteenth-century theater and performance. Not only did I love the books and theatrical paraphernalia inside the library, but I also enjoyed the cherry blossoms outside. Recently, I presented my work in Santa Barbara at the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies. My paper used Maria Edgeworth’s novel Belinda (1801) to think about how women can find a voice even when fathers and male mentors try to discourage them. Thanks to everyone for a warm welcome!

Kate Durbin: It’s been a busy year of teaching at Whittier, which takes up a lot of my energy and heart. However, I’ve also been busy working on my writing and art whenever 3

possible. Last fall I found out that my multimedia poetry project, ABRA: A Living Text, won the 2017 Turn on Literature Prize for Electronic Literature, selected by librarians in the EU. This was a huge honor! My latest book of poems, HOARDERS, which takes its inspiration from the reality TV show of the same name, was accepted for publication recently by one of my favorite experimental literature presses, Spork Press, and will be forthcoming in print Spring of 2019. Recently poems from HOARDERS have appeared in KCRW’s Zocalo Public Square, The American Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and are forthcoming in GRAMMA Poetry, WIDMA: A Journal of Polish and American Verse, and the anthology Best American Experimental Writing 2018 edited by Myung Mi Kim. I have also been busy working on a performance/multi-media project UNFRIEND ME NOW! for my Digital Studies fellowship (which I have been conducting remotely) for the University of Rutgers-Camden. It’s about the way social media rage, specifically on Facebook, contributed to the rise of Trump. Lastly, the Spanish translation of my novella, Kim’s Fairytale Wedding, was recently presented by the wonderful translator, Tive Martinez, at the LIBRERÍA ARGOT in Spain.

Wendy Furman-Adams: It’s been a busy year—most of which has been spent teaching, reading, grading, etc. while preparing for my May-term course in Southern Italy. But this past Saturday I had another rare opportunity to catch up with an English graduate who is continuing her academic career. Réme Bohlin was one of our three Outstanding Graduates in 2011--all three of whom, remarkably, are completing Ph.D.’s in English.

Réme is studying early modern (Renaissance) literature at the University of Connecticut, developing expertise in both Shakespeare and Milton. She was in L.A. for the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, where she participated in a workshop for Shakespeare scholars.

You can read more about Réme under alumni news in this newsletter, but I wanted to add what a thrill it is for us as faculty to catch up with our former students. Réme did her senior project on Milton—you can still visit her sustainable Miltonic paradise garden up next to Hartley House—and I couldn’t help delighting in another, newer Miltonic trace in her life: a tattoo quoting Milton’s courageous Eve down one arm: “How are we happy, still [always] in fear of harm?” Réme has chosen to fear neither Milton nor Shakespeare, neither graduate school nor the tough job market—and is looking forward to any of the many ways she can use her scholarly and teaching experience.

By the way, I’ll be offering Milton again in Fall 2018.

Michelle Chihara:I have finally, finally been finishing up The Routledge Companion to Literature and Economics, which is an edited volume of 37 essays by academics on this topic. We hit some unexpected snags, but the volume should, G-d willing, be out in 2018.

I attended the Association for the Arts of the Present Annual Meeting last October, and the American Studies Association Annual Meeting as well, and at both of those conferences I presented research from my current book project about behavioral economics’ influence on the culture. I’m trying hard to make progress on that book! I also published an academic article in the journal Postmodern Culture, this month, entitled

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“Extreme Hoards: Race, Reality Television & Real Estate Value during the 2008 Financial Crisis.”

Charles S. Adams: As I noted I the last edition, this is my last semester teaching full time. As reflected in the course schedule below, the next three years I will teach half time as I phase into retirement. But I am still doing other things! I recently attended the annual conference held by the journal NINE, giving a paper entitled “Seattle, the Mariners, and the Lack of an Adequate Myth.” The essay is concerned with what it means to be a fan of an historically terrible team. What narrative can be built around acceptance of failure? Another aspect of this trip was to represent the Institute for Baseball Studies at Whittier College that you can read about here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/347883628706532/ Katy Simonian: I recently had the opportunity to present my research on the work of Zabel Yessayan at this year’s PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association) Conference in Oahu, Hawaii. My paper, “Her Armenia: Zabel Yessyan and the Voice of the Feminine” focuses on Zabel Yessayan’s literary work as an Armenian woman which made her a target for persecution during and after the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The Gardens of Silihdar masterfully articulates her desire to confront and transcend the confines of the societies in which she lived and demonstrates the power of autobiographical reflection to record history and globally educate future generations on the horrors of genocide through the lens of a survivor. Firmly conveying the experience of violent female and ethnic subjugation, she pioneers a form of writing that challenges narrow perspectives and subverts genre. For many, this was the first time hearing her name and it was wonderful to see such genuine interest and appreciation for her voice as a writer. Her work is hauntingly relevant as a reminder of the need to protect artists and journalists which will hopefully encourage the pursuit of social activism within and across cultures. dAvid pAddy: During the spring of 2018, I have been on sabbatical. Throughout most of March I traveled in Devon and Cornwall to begin work on a project related, in part, to the writer Daphne du Maurier. Du Maurier had a life-long love of the county of Cornwall— and areas of Cornwall are now strongly associated with her—but her ideas of Cornishness changed over her life. I am examining the ways she moved from romanticized to more politicized visions of Cornwall. I spent a good amount of time in the Special Collections at the University of Exeter looking at copies of her manuscripts and correspondence with figures like A. L. Rowse. In addition, I was able to roam the landscapes in and around Fowey, the terrain she made her own in her fiction. I also have a review of Jad Smith’s book on the American science-fiction writer Alfred Bester forthcoming in the journal Extrapolation.

Jonathan Burton: I have been on sabbatical for the entire 2017-18 academic year.

During this year, I’ve tried to live a more balanced life. So, while I have spent a lot of time working on my book project (more on this shortly), I am also volunteering at my daughter’s school, taking regular hikes along the beach, and cooking ambitiously and

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fearlessly. (Former English major Kellen Aguilar introduced me to the New York Times cooking app, and I’ve become a disciple of their regular contributor, Melissa Clark.) In the fall I gave a talk on Paul Griffiths’ oulipian Hamlet prequel, Let Me Tell You at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association. At some point, I will expand that into an article, but I’ve focused most of my scholarly energy on my book manuscript, High School Shakespeare, a history of Shakespeare in American secondary education. I conducted 75 hours of classroom observations in the fall for a chapter on Shakespeare teaching and learning in LA County’s most segregated schools. That chapter is now sixty pages long and nearly complete. I’m also in the beginning stages of designing professional development for high school English teachers to enhance their Shakespeare units.

Tony Barnstone: I’ve spent a lot of time this year following up on last year’s China and the environment initiative that I participated in with Michelle Chihara and Scott Creley and that emerged from the LIASE/Luce Foundation grant. I am co-editing a special issue of the literary magazine Manoa that will focus on American and Chinese poets and the environment. After the journal comes out, the issue will come out as a book with the University of Hawai’i Press. Much of the editing is completed, and now I am launching into phase two, which is the writing of the introduction. Several Whittier students, including Brianna Limas, Trent Beauchamp-Sanchez, and Natalie Fenaroli will be included in the project. At the AWP Conference in Tampa this spring, I gave a poetry reading and a talk on the modern Greek poet Yannis Ritsos, and at the West Chester Poetry Conference this summer I will be giving a poetry reading, a workshop focusing on syllabics, and a special critical session on the pedagogy of teaching metrical form to undergraduates (which is to say, you!) Finally, this fall I published a book in China that also emerged from the LIASE trip: Mother is a Bird: Sonnets by a Yi Poet, poems and Illustrations by Jidi Majia, co-translated into English by Tony Barnstone and Ming Di. This is a translation of 20 sonnets from Chinese into English in which each sonnet is translated into a true sonnet in English. It is also translated into Jidi Majia’s native language (Yi) and illustrated by the poet.

Joe Donnelly: L.A Man: Profiles from a Big City and a Small World, a collection spanning some 20 years of my profile writing was released by Rarebird Books on April 17. I’m hopeful the advanced praise from the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis, the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf, Academy-Award nominated screenwrite (and novelist) Luke Davies and others will mean more than my family members find a place for it in the hallowed pile of bathroom reads. Speaking of profiles, I also have a sprawling piece coming out in The Surfer’s Journal in June on Danny Kwock, the semi-feral, punk-rockinflected Newport Beach kid who pretty much turned Quiksilver into a multibillion-dollar enterprise and got a heavy dose of PTSD in the process. I’m also plodding along on a book about the founder of the world’s largest sperm bank, whose father happened to be a pretty notorious gangster.

Andrea Rehn: I am planning a Jane Austen's England travel course! There are more details to resolve before I can tell you the term, but it will be in a Maymester soon-ish.

Want to live (for a night) in Jane Austen's house, walk the ancient pathways she walked,

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visit the locations where her novels (and her life) were set? We may even get to include a visit to Highclere Castle, filming location of "Downton Abbey". We will definitely take the waters in Bath, brave the Cobb in Lyme Regis, and much more.

Aside from that, in other news, this semester I've presented at one conference, the annual convention of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Professor Kronholm, senior Ty Lopez, and myself presented a paper titled "Open Source meets Integrative Learning." The paper was the first outcome of a collaborative faculty-student research project into student learning. The other outcome of that project is the website and app we built, which you can view athttps://scholars.domains/. This is a part of the work I'm doing with the Whittier Scholars Program.

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 Furman-Adams, Professor Morris, or Angela Olivas in the department office if you have questions.)

Sigma Tau Delta is sponsoring a bus trip to the L.A. Times Festival of Books, either on April 21sst or 22nd. This is a massive event that essentially takes over the U.S.C. campus. Anybody who is anybody and has a book out is there, and you can see and hear them in person. Given the parking situation there, the best way to go is on this bus! Look for details in your e-mail.

What Have We Been Reading Lately?

Bethany Wong: Right now, I am reading The Book: A History of the Bible by Christopher de Hamel to prepare for a course I am taking this summer through the Rare Book School on the history of reading the Bible. Across all periods of print history, the Bible is the ultimate book where questions of what, how, and why we read are not only central, but also for some readers matters of life and death. In addition to thinking about how the Bible provides a template for thinking about the close relationship readers have with literary texts, I am reading Jo’s Boys by Louisa May Alcott. She has always been one of my favorite American authors and after recently visiting her home in Concord, Massachusetts, I am recovering a rich texture of theatrical allusions in her work that I missed when reading her novels as a child. Speaking of children, I am also a devoted aunt to a handful of nieces and nephews who love being read to daily. Some recent favorites are The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown, and books with few words but many pictures of vehicles (school buses, in particular, are in favor these days).

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dAvid pAddy: Recently I find myself increasingly drawn to a number of works, sitting somewhere between fiction and non-fiction, between travelogue and landscape history, that explore the hidden and lost spaces in psychogeographical ruminations on our built environments. W. G. Sebald and Iain Sinclair excel at this, but so do recent works like Rachel Lichtenstein’s Estuary and Esther Kinsky’s River.

I’ve also been on a bit of an avant-garde kick, digging into the recent publication of rare works by the great lost British writer of the 1960s and 1970s, Ann Quin (The Unmapped Country), as well as newer stuff like Kevin Davey’s comic take on T. S. Eliot in Playing Possum. In the same vein, I’m completing my reading of Tom McCarthy—his essays, Typewriters Bombs Jellyfish, and his epic novel, C.—as far as I’m concerned one of the greatest of our living writers.

Also in the mix of novels I’ve enjoyed over the past few months—the wonderful return of Philip Pullman (The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage), a classic I’d missed (L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between), the second of Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet (Winter), and volume 5 (only one more, 1,000 page book to go!) of the incomparable My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard.

Finally, two powerful works of non-fiction. I highly, highly recommend the brilliantly incisive but painful to read Kill All Normies, by Angela Nagle, which examines the rise of a new political universe in the online culture wars of 4Chan and Tumblr, and their role in the generation of the alt-right. Nagle anatomizes the central changes in our political terrain and the radical redefinition we are undergoing of left and right. A bit less painful perhaps but equally brilliant is Maya Jasanoff The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, which provides an historian’s take on four works of Conrad and a biography of the man in his time, to show him as someone contending insightfully with the forces of what we now think of as globalization. A stunning, exquisitely written book.

Katy Simonian: Dan Rather’s What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism is an excellent book. I had the chance to see him in person over the holidays when he appeared at The Novo for his book tour. The night featured a conversation between Rather and Kareem Abdul Jabbar and it was incredible to watch as they discovered their unique connection to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. along with their shared commitment to inspiring youth to pursue journalism and public service. Dan Rather’s articulate, powerful voice is as reassuring as it is rich in wisdom and dignity. If you are in the mood for a good old fashioned feel good story, check out The Story of Dikran: The Impossible True Story of a Little Armenian Gampr. This sweet book chronicles the rescue of Dikran, a Gampr (breed native to Armenia) suffering from starvation and painful physical deformities after being abandoned on the streets. He was brought to America by a group of courageous, compassionate women whose work started a movement to create a network of animal shelters in Armenia. Dikran’s miraculous recovery is currently being shared with children across Southern California, proving that love and kindness can make a beautiful difference in the world.

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Wendy Furman-Adams: I’ve almost finished working my way through Stephen Greenblatt’s fascinating Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: a history of the creation and fall narrative that begins among the ancient Babylonians even before the Genesis narrative— and moves, through early Jewish and Christian interpretations, to Augustine, Renaissance art, Milton, and on into the Enlightenment. I don’t agree with everything Greenblatt says about Augustine and Milton (and specialists in other areas might feel the same about the chapters in their wheelhouses). But only Greenblatt could pull off this sweeping and learned narrative. This is a “big picture” book—daring and brilliant and hard to put down.

Meanwhile, I’ve been preparing for my May-term travel-writing course by reading lots of travel writing: Paolo Tullio’s delightful North of Naples, South of Rome, Benjamin Taylor’s Naples Declared, and several collections of travel writing--edited by Bill Bryson (The Best American Travel Writing 2016), Don George (An Innocent Abroad), and Michael Shapiro (A Sense of Place). I’m also dipping into Charles Johnson’s great new book on writing, The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling.

Kate Durbin: Recently I discovered The Wall, by Marlen Haushofer, which is now one of my favorite books. It’s about a woman who, while vacationing in a hunting lodge in the Austrian mountains, is cut off from the outside world when a transparent wall comes down; all life outside the wall appears to have died, possibly in a nuclear event. With a dog, a cow, and a cat as her sole companions, she struggles to survive and to come to terms with the situation. Facing fear and loneliness, she writes an account of her isolation without knowing whether or not anyone will ever read it. I also read In the Miso Soup,

by Ryu Murakami, which is about a serial killer from America named Frank. More than a stereotypical serial killer novel, it explores the existential terror and loneliness at the heart of global capitalism. Last but not least, one of my favorite science fiction writers, Ursula LeGuin, recently passed away, and in her honor I’ve been reading her Earthsea books (which I had never read before). They are full of her wisdom and spectacular imagination.

Jonathan Burton: I’ve done a lot of reading recently about segregation and about the kinds of pedagogy that seeks to dismantle or at least compensate for segregation. On the history of segregation I’ve found most interesting Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, Noliwe Rooks’ Cutting School, and the reporting of Nikole Hannah-Jones for ProPublica.

On the pedagogy side I’ve found most helpful Christopher Emdin’s For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too and Django Paris and H. Samy Amin’s Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies. Another non-fiction work I loved is Paul Freedman’s history of the spice trade, Out of the East. Of course, I’m reading plenty of fiction and drama as well, including Quiara Alegria Hudes’ Elliot Trilogy, Ruth Ware, The Woman in Cabin 10, Mohsin Hamid, Exit West, Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give, Yuri Herrera, Signs Preceding the end of the world, Elif Bautuman, The Idiot and Ali Smith, How to be Both. Of all these, Smith’s novel is the one that most dazzled me. It is more accurately described as two related novellas that are published together. Interestingly, the publisher produced half with one novella first and half with the other. This produces a readership with two very different reading experiences, in keeping with the book’s title.

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Michelle Chihara: I’m reading an excellent book by analytic philosopher Kate Manne called Down, Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, which is lucid and fascinating. I’m also very taken with Sianne Ngai’s Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting which will have you spotting zany, cute and interesting-ness everywhere and which has become highly relevant to my own research. I have also enjoyed a number of Claire Messud’s novels, including particularly The Emperor’s Children, and I’ve been re-reading books, including Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler and The Whistling Woman, a novel by A.S. Byatt, who has always been one of my favorite writers. This last one is much darker than I remember it. It’s brilliant.

Tony Barnstone: I have been reading lots and lots of Lego books, with titles like Catch That Crook! and Firetrucks to the Rescue! to my son, Blake. I am also starting in on some new books of poetry, Arthur Sze’s experimental Compass Rose, David Gewanter’s meditation on work, capitalism and the body, with poems written through the documentary method, Fort Necessity, David Mason’s New and Selected Poems, The Sound (he is a talented formal poet), the Hebrew poet Tuvia Ruebner’s Late Beauty, the Serbian poet Ana Ristovic’s Directions for Use, Natalie J. Graham’s Cave Canem Poetry Prize winning book, Begin with a Failed Body, David Mura’s The Last Incantations, Beat/San Francisco Renaissance poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Greatest Poems, Barbara Hamby’s witty and hilarious poems in Bird Odyssey, and Joshua Weiner’s The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish.

Joe Donnelly: I recently finished Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach, and I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve been thumbing through my friend Lynell George’s essay and photography collection about ever-changing Los Angeles, After/Image, Los Angeles Outside the Frame. It captures the sense of loss that comes when neighborhoods change so rapidly as to leave one feeling on the outside of places that recently felt familiar and friendly. I’m also considering taking drastic measure to try to fire my writing engine back up and by that I mean I’ve got Why I Write by Orwell sitting on my desk next to Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Smell… oops, I mean Style.

Andrea Rehn: Well, not that much, frankly. After resisting for all these years, I finally broke down and binge-watched Game of Thrones. (I've read all the books, I hasten to say, but had been waiting in vain for him to finish the series...) At the moment, I'm rerererereading Frankenstein, which is currently celebrating its 200th birthday. Also on my reading stand are Ta-Nehesi Coates's We Were Eight Years in Power (I got to see him speak last fall and am still savoring the event), Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy, and I just finished the academic gothic pageturner A Discovery of Witches. Oh, and one more thing: I read the Washington Post most days.

English Department Courses for Spring, Fall, January, and Spring 2018-2019 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 2017-2018 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 on-line versions of this document. Please see or e-mail the instructors, Angela Olivas in the department office, or our current department chair, Tony Barnstone (Jonahan Burton takes over in the fall), 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 pre-requisite for enrollment. Some courses taught as part of pairs require co-enrollment in the paired course. See the instructors if you have questions.

ENGL 110 note: (only offered in Fall): This course is designed for first-semester, firstyear 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 upper-level 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.

ENGL 290 and 390 note: These numbers are for courses that are new ideas or perhaps not intended to be offered on a regular basis. The numbers can be repeated. Be careful about signing up for the correct section. There are a fair number of 290s this year, for instance. As space may be limited, you do not want to be shut out of the course you intended to take by mistakenly signing up for something else.

Fall 2018 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,

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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. This class will be linked with a section of College Writing taught by Professor Mike McBride (though not all students will be in the link). As his class focusses on Abraham Lincoln, our readings will at least partially come from or be about Lincoln’s period as well. Lincoln himself was the type of person to whom our question is important.

ENGL 110, Section 2, Exploring Literature: Asian Literature (Tony Barnstone) This is an introductory level course in East Asian literature—specifically, the literatures of India, China, and Japan, from ancient to modern. Students will get a general introduction to Asian philosophies and religions and a rip-roaring survey of the best poems, essays, and fiction from this 3000-year old tradition. This is an ENGL 110 course, so students who take this will have done the prereq for upper division literature classes, many of which cover the COM2 (writing intensive) graduation requirement. In addition, the class involves a certain amount of creative writing, so that it will also cover the Creative Arts requirement.

ENGL 120, Sections 1,2, and 3, Why Read?: Fictions of Play (Bethany Wong) Fiction—at once both extraneous and necessary—embodies and enacts the paradoxes of play. How do writers of fiction make a case for the importance of play in our everyday lives? Key concepts in this class will be drawn from our own experiences of play and observations as well as research from cognitive scientists, evolutionary biologists, and psychoanalysts. Attending to literary form, style, and voice in a variety of genres, we will look at how authors—ranging from William Shakespeare to Jane Austen to Ian McEwan—seek to persuade their readers that literary play is valuable for the constructing the creative individual. Throughout the term, we will analyze how fiction justifies its existence by showing readers that the ability to create the conditions of play in literature is also the ability to change hearts and minds.

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 open-minded exploration and careful attention to craft.

ENGL 203, Writing Poetry (Tony Barnstone)

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This is a beginning workshop for students who wish to learn to write poetry. The class is designed to teach you the skills necessary to be a strong poet, regardless of previous experience with writing and reading poetry. We will read widely in 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 (Jonathan Burton) The very ambitious purpose of this partially team-taught course (and of the two-semester sequence to which it belongs) is to introduce you to the major themes and writers in British literature from its beginnings into the 18th century. We’ll survey nearly a millennium of terrific literature (mostly poetry, for historical reasons) in sequence and, insofar as time allows, in context. This is intended to give you a clearer sense of what came after what, and who inspired or influence whom. We will also turn periodically to contemporary works that challenge, sustain or otherwise mark the continuing influences of early British literature. Combining our work with the spring semester’s course on British and American Literature from about 1700 to the present, you’ll get a sense of the flow and ruptures of the English and American Literary traditions, or the big picture.

ENGL 290, Quaker Campus Workshop (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.

ENGL 305, Screenwriting (John Bak) This one semester class will teach students how to write a full‑ length feature screenplay.

It will treat screenwriting as the latest expression of a longstanding storytelling tradition and it will make extensive reference to the works of modern‑ day screenwriting analysts such as Blake Snyder, Michael Hauge, Viki King, David Trottier, and Linda Seger.

Students will formulate their individual story ideas and develop them through a complete story outline, treatment, and a first draft of a full‑ length feature script from 90 to 129 pages long. They will sharpen both their introspective and their research abilities as they create their stories. Students will look inward to see how they can use their own life experience to inform the lives of their characters, and they will research outward to place their stories in convincing contexts beyond the realm of what they have experienced directly. Internet, library, and personal interviewing skills will be developed further in this course. Most classes will be divided into two parts. (1) Imparting information ‑‑ covering the basics of screenwriting: story structure, plot, character development, setting, and use of images, language and dialog. (2) "Workshopping" student projects: brainstorming story ideas, researching the ideas, discussing outlines, treatments, and first drafts. Cross listed with FILM 305 (you take one or the other, not both!)

ENGL 310, Linguistics (Sean Morris) “‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

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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!

ENGL 324, Chaucer (Sean Morris} You'll get all your favorite Canterbury Tales in this class—the Miller, the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, the Nun's Priest—and many, many more. Who knew life was so much fun in 1398? But wait! If you order now, you’ll also get Troilus and Criseyde and a dream vision or two. Add your own pilgrim to the gang, learn to read Middle English, battle for the Canterbury dolls, and find out why Chaucer is to blame for all the Valentine’s Day hullabaloo. (Yes, he really is.) Need I say more? Be there, or be “wood”! (It rhymes with “load.”) All readings will be in Middle English—but don't worry! I’ll show you how. So pick up your satchel, mount your palfrey, and join the pilgrimage.

ENGL 328, Shakespeare (Jonathan Burton) Have you ever noticed that the various portraits of Shakespeare don’t really look like the same guy? There’s the fellow with the sunken eyes and bulbous forehead; there’s the dapper one with the fancy silk collar; and let’s not forget the dude with the earring. In this introduction to Shakespeare studies, we will acknowledge multiple visions of Shakespeare by approaching his works with three interanimating methodologies. We will first examine the language of the poetry, familiarizing ourselves with Shakespeare’s idiom before engaging in close readings of the plays’ rich, figurative language. Next we will consider the plays in their historical contexts, concentrating on issues of gender, power, and English nationhood. Finally, we will approach the plays as performancescripts, confronting various dilemmas of theatrical production raised by Shakespeare's plays from the 16th through the 21st centuries. Assignments will combine expository and creative writing as well as student performances and a trip to a local production ENGL 329, Milton (Wendy Furman-Adams) This course will consider the poetry and major prose of John Milton (1608-1674). Second only to Shakespeare in the scholarship he inspires each year, Milton was a major actor on the political stage of his own day--a radical whose views on religious, political, and domestic liberty still generate endless controversy. Paradise Lost has inspired more artists than any work except the Bible, and has become a part of the mental furniture even of those who have not read it. To read Milton is to enter an entire world of thought about good and evil; about the right uses of nature; about men and women; about friendship, sexuality, and marriage; about politics and freedom; and about what the world might be

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like if we took the poem's moral imperatives seriously--seeking, as Milton suggested, "a paradise within." Depending on degree of interest, Milton students (and others) may have the opportunity to join with Milton lovers around the world in a "Milton Marathon" reading of Paradise Lost. Cross listed aas Religion 354; can be taken under that designation.

ENGL 331, Rise of the Novel (Bethany Wong) What is a novel? We have lived with novels so long that we think we know what they are, but the question has a long history of debate. What a novel is depends on whom you ask, at what time, depending on their worldview. Some recurring questions that arise are: should novels be primarily educational or entertaining? Whose mind should the novel care about narrating? Is it possible to sympathize too much with a character? For whom are novels written? Who should be allowed to write novels? Throughout the term, we will be examining “novels” by key authors such as Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and Charlotte Brontë to find some answers. Our goal as a class is not only to understand what novels are (or report themselves to be) but also whether and how they should be read today.

ENGL 354, Late 20th Century British Fiction (dAvid pAddy) Imagine instead a British history in which alteration, mutation and flux, rather than continuity and bedrock solidity, are the norm.—Simon Schama

This course will examine the development of British fiction in the wake of World War Two and on through the end of the twentieth century. Undergoing numerous changes, the very identity of Britain, especially its status on the world stage, became increasingly uncertain, defined by a number of shocks to its traditional sense of itself. One of the ways we can gauge this sense of change and identity crisis is through the role children and youth play in a number of fictional works. In this period, there are a number of stories and novels that depict youth as out of control, or that show forms of “madness” as powerful new ways of knowing and responding to a “mad” world. To help us address these issues with greater nuance, the course is paired with Anne Sebanc’s CHDV 250 Developmental Psychopathology and we will learn the tools provided by another discipline to see how British fiction wrestles with such psychopathological conditions as aggression, conduct disorder, depression, suicide, schizophrenia, and communication and learning disabilities.

Throughout the course, we will examine fiction at the intersections of the social, the historical and the psychological. How does literature represent “bad behavior”? How does it think through and depict psychological theories? Why is British fiction, in this moment, thinking about these kinds of things in the first place? Beyond a collection of stories about “messed up” kids, the novels should provide an opportunity to contemplate complex questions about the nature of the self in periods of dramatic change.

In addition to a number of short works, the primary novels for the course will be: William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, Anna Kavan’s Ice, Ann Quin’s Three, Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Emma Donoghue’s Room.

Note: Students wishing to enroll in this course will be required to take the pair.

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ENGL 362, American Realism and Naturalism (Charles S. Adams) This course will examine American fiction of the period roughly between the Civil War and World War I. The title comes from two related American literary movements that many of the writers of this period are associated with (whether they knew it or not). As we might expect in a country traumatized in many ways by the horror of war and the heritage of slavery, our authors may all too often find that the optimism of the romantic “transcendentalists” is perhaps misguided, especially the optimism about the capacities and possibilities human beings. Death destruction, and suicide, and lots of it. We find writers taking a new look at social, philosophical, political, moral, and aesthetic issues in the light of the experiences of the war, the development of the frontier, industrialization, and the increasing voices of women and African Americans. Among a variety of possibilities, we will probably consider Davis, Jackson, Howells, Crane, Chesnutt, Twain, James, Gilman, Norris, Chopin, and Wharton. The reading load will be pretty substantial—these are the American “Victorians,” so (setting aside some important ideological and cultural concerns) if you know something about the traditions of fiction in the U.K. of the period concerning length, you know something about those in America.

ENGL 390, Leadership and Contemporary Literature (Michelle Chihara) (paired with Prof. Lana Nino’s Humanistic Values and Management) is an upper level literature course, but in this context, it will more reflexively engage students with literary critical methods and their rationale. We will, in other words, ask why we study literature and raise the eternal questions of the humanities — what do our lives mean?— while analyzing the role that narrative and culture play in society. Because the theme of the course focuses on leadership and ethics, by analyzing novels in their full context we will ask questions about the role that stories and empathy play in the cultivation of leaders. How do leaders need and use narrative? How do systems of authority shape, reward or punish different types of leaders? We will use examples within the texts to think through the options that people have when they live within a system that is unjust or corrupt. Who becomes a leader and why? What does it mean to lead if you are bound by unfair rules? Or if the war you are fighting turns out to be wrong?

ENGL 400, Critical Procedures (dAvid pAddy) Reading a novel, poem or play may seem a fairly basic skill to you by now. But how do you go about making an interpretation of a literary text? What kind of questions should you be asking? How do you find meaning? How do you know if your interpretation has any validity? Throughout this course we will encounter an array of critical essays by literary and critical theorists who have raised difficult questions and offered compelling ideas about how to approach a literary text. Reading literary theory can feel a bit like reading philosophy, sociology, psychology, or something from a number of other fields, and it is indeed a multidisciplinary means of thinking about what we do when we read, talk and write about literature. In this way, literary theory informs the practical work of literary criticism. Many of these theories are difficult if not mind-boggling, but they can help you become a more thoughtful reader, careful critic, and, perhaps, sophisticated teacher of literature. In addition to reading primary documents of major literary theory, we will also discuss practical aspects of research and argumentation. The writing of the

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Paper in the Major and delivery of the senior presentation for this course will enable you to put some of the theories into practice. Practicing such theories in your own writing and responding to what other critics have said can help you learn what literary scholars do and may help show you what it means to be part of that wider community of literary scholars.

ENGL 410, Senior Seminar: Race in the Renaissance (Jonathan Burton) The Renaissance is often considered as the crucible of modern Western culture. It might also be identified as the crucible for contemporary forms of racism. In this course we will trace notions of difference from classical and medieval materials through the Renaissance. We will discuss how concerns over gender and class, the enslavement of Africans and Native Americans, and the larger Renaissance drive for empire added dark skin and lasciviousness to degeneracy, religious error, monstrosity and other terms in Europe’s growing racial lexicon. Keeping in mind the fact that Shakespeare and his contemporaries wrote at a time when Europe was working to establish imperial networks that would eventually involve 90% of the world, our readings will be divided between traditional literary works (plays, sonnets and an epic), and archival materials related to race. These will include travelers’ narratives, histories, medical texts, biblical commentaries, and royal proclamations, as well as pamphlets on cosmetics, conversion, monstrous births, witchcraft, and zoology. In addition, we will consider the long legacies of literary texts crucial to the development of racial vocabularies and the ways in which they can be re-engaged as liberatory texts by authors, scholars and theater practitioners n our own time.

ENGL 420, Preceptorship: Teaching Literature (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.

January 2019 ENGL 290, Profile Writing (Joe Donnelly) This course focuses on the profile—the art of writing about people. Profile writing is a staple of newspaper and magazine writing. It marries the journalist’s core skills— interviewing, researching, reporting, analyzing, synthesizing—to literary techniques such as voice, structure, character development and plotting. It does this in order to paint indelible portraits of people we care about… whether we knew we cared about them or not. At least, that’s what it does when it’s done well. The best profiles illuminate the current culture, convey larger social issues, and place us firmly in the thick of the human condition. We will learn how to do them right. In the process, you will become better writers, thinkers and journalists.

ENGL 290, Try Not to Scream: Contemporary Horror Fiction (Kate Durbin) This course will explore contemporary horror novels as windows into the human condition and the state of the globe. Books include: John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let Me In, William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, and Natsuo 17

Kirino's Out. Films include The Witch, The Cabin in the Woods, and Paranormal Activity. Students will also create their own horror narratives via the gaming platform Twine based on concepts gleaned in class, in collaboration with the Digital Lib Arts Lab. ENGL 384, Robin Hood Through the Ages (Sean Morris) How have successive generations adapted Robin Hood to address their own concerns, and why do these stories continue to fascinate us after more than 600 years? We'll read the original medieval ballads, plays, and chronicles; Renaissance versions such as Ben Jonson's The Sad Shepherd and Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona and As You Like It; Walter Scott's Ivanhoe; Tennyson's The Foresters; and works by Keats and Dryden, among others. Along the way we'll dip into tales of other outlaws medieval and modern, including films like The Adventures of Robin Hood and perhaps Zorro. Some of the readings are in Middle English, but don’t worry: You’ll learn everything you need to know about that in class. ‘Welcome to Sherwood!’

ENGL 390, Experimental Drama in New York City (Jonathan Burton) Experimental Drama/NYC will be a partial travel course with online, on-site and classroom components. Students will explore the theory and practice of experimental drama, in a course divided into three parts: (1) Immersion in experimental drama; (2) Theorizing experimental drama; and (3) Practicing experimental drama. In the first week of the course, students will meet in New York City to attend performances associated with four experimental theater festivals as well as one mainstream Broadway performance that will serve as a point of comparison. Upon returning to campus, we will read twentieth and twenty-first century theories of experimental drama and edit and expand journal entries written in New York. During the remaining period of the term, students will workshop their own experimental work, rehearse it and finally present it in performance accompanied by prefatory essays of the sort you might find in a theater program.

ENGL 290/390, Writing Poetry in Mexico (Tony Barnstone) Students who take this class should have four poems already written at the start of the term, which they will submit to workshops in Mexico. This poetry writing workshop is a travel class that begins earlier than the normal Jan Term semester start. Students will travel to Mexico on Jan 1st or 2nd, 2019 and stay there for about 10 days, after which the workshop will continue in Whittier. Students will travel with me and another faculty member to San Miguel de Allende where we will attend the San Miguel Poetry Week. which will take place from Wednesday, January 2nd (travel on the 1st or 2nd) through the 7th in San Miguel Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. This is one of the oldest and most important poetry fests in Mexico, and students will attend many readings and give their own participant reading at the end of the week. All students will study not only with me but also with 3 other poets, and you can expect two of them to be some of the most famous poets in America and one to be a famous poet from England. We will also be meeting important writers from Mexico and hearing them read their work. After the week of the festival, students and faculty will remain in San Miguel for several days doing local activities, seeing local architecture, going to the botanical gardens, perhaps horseback riding, going to natural hot springs, and other fun stuff, all the while writing

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poems about their experiences. San Miguel has extraordinary 16th and 17th century architecture, thermal baths, colorful markets, four-star Mexican restaurants and Jazz bars and is known worldwide as one of Mexico's most charming places. This magical town has been a retreat for artists from all over the world. Great poets such as Pablo Neruda lived here. Neal Cassidy died here. Mexican muralist, David Alfaro Siqueiros painted here. Today writers and artists flock to San Miguel seeking beauty along with a rich cultural scene.

You will note that I plan on making it a course that can be taken either at the 290 or the 390 level so that it can count as an advanced workshop and/or a 300 level class for English majors and Creative Writing Track majors.

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

ENGL 120, Sections 1, 4 and 5: Why Read?: Fictions of Play (Bethany Wong) Fiction—at once both extraneous and necessary—embodies and enacts the paradoxes of play. How do writers of fiction make a case for the importance of play in our everyday lives? Key concepts in this class will be drawn from our own experiences of play and observations as well as research from cognitive scientists, evolutionary biologists, and psychoanalysts. Attending to literary form, style, and voice in a variety of genres, we will look at how authors—ranging from William Shakespeare to Jane Austen to Ian McEwan—seek to persuade their readers that literary play is valuable for the constructing the creative individual. Throughout the term, we will analyze how fiction justifies its existence by showing readers that the ability to create the conditions of play in literature is also the ability to change hearts and minds.

ENGL 120, Sections 2 and 8: 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, Sections, 3, 6, and 7: Why Read?: Can the Empire Write Back? (Katy Simonian) What is a homeland? Critic and author V. S. Naipaul suggests home exists within the mind of any inhabitant. By contrast, Salmon Rushdie claims that in a sense, homelands and borders are imaginary, subject to both creation and destruction. Rushdie’s “The Empire Writes Back” also posits the idea that postcolonial writers carve and claim large territories within the English language through literature. Other writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Brian Friel, James Joyce, Jean Rhys, and Chinua Achebe approach this seemingly simple question from the standpoint of language, ownership and cultural 19

subjugation. 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 perceive, understand, and ultimately read the world. During the course of the semester, we will engage with topics such as language, culture, identity, various forms of discrimination and overcoming violent physical and political subjugation through the exploration of selected works of literature from the ever-developing postcolonial era. The course is not a survey of Twentieth Century English Literature, but rather a detailed look into varieties of postcolonial fiction from some of the different corners of the former British Empire which dominated the literary world for the last century. By reading literature, with an emphasis on short fiction, from Ireland, Africa, the Caribbean, and India, we can gain a stronger understanding of the complexities of language, which is the connective thread between each of these writers and their works. By the end of the course, we will ask ourselves the question of whether or not voices of the Empire can indeed write back, and in doing so examine the impact of literature on identity and the concept of “homeland” in the context of the colonial and postcolonial experience. To read is to recognize the power of literature as a means of conveying an understanding of ourselves and others and we will endeavor to embrace our power as readers throughout this course.

ENGL 120, Section 11: Why Read?: Imprinting L.A. How Los Angeles Became Literature (Joe Donnelly) This class dips into some of the currents in the remarkable rive of literature that runs like blood through the City of Angels. Angeleno literature carries explorers from old worlds to new, from the past to the future and from despair to redemption. Thanks to its great literary tradition, Los Angeles exists as much in our imaginations as it does under our feet and, like the city itself, presents itself as one of the world’s great experiments in multiculturalism. Learn how our most dymamic city writes itself into the public consciousness.

ENGL 221, Major British and American Writers from 1785 (Michelle Chihara) This course continues the survey of literature in English begun in ENG 220 (Which is a pre-requisite). 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 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.

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ENGL 290, Quaker Campus Workshop (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.

ENGL 290, Section 2: Narrative Journalism (Joe Donnelly) This class takes the basic tenets of solid journalism—industrious and accurate reporting, the search for the best obtainable truth, engaging writing—and applies them to a richer and deeper level of storytelling with a purpose. Narrative journalism applies literary techniques to factual reporting in order to amplify the reader experience and improve the understanding of complex issues.

ENGL 290, Section 5: Ecopeotry (Tony Barnstone) This is a version of the Beginning Poetry Workshop, but it is focused on reading and writing poetry about the environment—ecopoetry. Students will learn how to write poetry from the beginning to the sonnet, and no experience is required. The class is for absolute novices just as much as for advanced beginners with deep backgrounds in creative writing. In addition to writing our own poems, we will read a wide range of world poetry about topics ranging from ecology to apocalypse, with a special focus on the literature of China.

ENGL 311, History of the English Language (Sean Morris) This is your language 1000 years ago: “Hwæt! We gardena in geardagum þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon, hu þa æþelingas ellen fremmedon.” What happened?!?! How did we get here from there? And while we’re at it, we still want to know why “police” and “ice” don’t rhyme, but “knight” and “bite” do. And why can you have two dogs, but not two sheeps or oxes? And why do they talk funny in other states, calling a “soda” a “pop” and other crazy things? Why? I will tell you why, if first you sojourn with me through… the History of the English Language. Welcome to H-E-L. ENGL 321, British Literature 700-1500 (Sean Morris) Monsters and heroes and saints, oh my! This course is part “Greatest Hits of Medieval England” and part “Secret, Shocking, Fun Texts of Medieval England.” We’ll read such classics as Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Morte d-Arthur, possibly some Canterbury Tales alongside lesser-known works like The Owl and the Nightingale, Havelok the Dane, William and the Werewolf, and even Anglo-Saxon handbooks on punishment. These texts will give you the usual modern understanding of the Middle Ages, and will also show you where this paradigm falls short. Some texts will be read in Middle English—don’t worry, we’ll get you through it! (Who thought “getting medieval” could be so fun?)

ENGL 326, Topics in Shakespeare Studies: Shakespeare in American Life (Jonathan Burton) In this class we will focus on the methods of historicism and reception studies to examine Shakespearean drama in a range of geographic, temporal and political contexts.

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Following an intensive reading of several of Shakespeare’s plays, we will consider how those same texts have taken on new forms and meanings in American culture from the 18th century up to the present. Our exploration of the American afterlives of Shakespearean drama will feature a range of contexts, including literary and political life, education, performance, and business, and especially a consideration of Shakespeare and American Immigration. In other words, we will consider how Shakespeare has been harnessed to various projects in American life, such as defining an independent nation, incorporating (or ostracizing) new citizens, making a profit, and educating leaders.

ENGL 336. The European Novel (dAvid pAddy) This course is paired with Elizabeth Sage’s HIST 363 Socialism and Revolution in Modern Europe, and together we will explore some of the literature, art and history from the end of the 18th century through the end of the twentieth century, a period rife with revolutionary sentiments in Europe. Think of this as a set of classes in the relationship between art and revolution. My readings will have us think about the changing ways that literature in the modern period has attempted to represent or wrestle with ideas of social and cultural change. We will look at works that attempt to address revolutionary moments directly through content, as well as avant-garde works that make claims to the revolutionary nature of artistic forms in and of themselves. Readings will be heavy and exciting. [I do not know yet what I will use, but some of these are possibilities: Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, Kate Roberts’s Feet in Chains, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude and Georges Perec’s Things, as well as avant-garde manifestoes and political essays by Theodor Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Gyorgy Lukacs and Guy Debord.]

Note: Students wishing to enroll in this course will be required to take the pair.

ENGL 337, Gothic Fiction (Bethany Wong) This course will explore how authors of “Gothic” fiction use fear and terror to complicate the relationship between what is seen and what is unseen. Pushing the bounds of rationality, Gothic Fiction contends that what we fear about the supernatural and violence can challenge prevalent views of gender, race, class, and sexuality. In Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, the hero, Henry Tilney, chastises the heroine, Catherine Morland, for looking at the world as if it were Gothic Fiction, saying, “consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained…Does our education prepare us for such atrocities?

Do our laws connive at them?” He implies that the world of the Gothic is far removed from our everyday lives. In this course, we will test out Tilney’s binaries of home/aboard, past/present, fiction/reality, self/other. Examining works of authors such as Horace Walpole and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, we will examine the extent to which fantastical stories and states of mind help us reflect on who we are here and now.

ENGL 353, James Joyce (dAvid pAddy) In the year 1999, millennial fever seemed to make people go list crazy. Everywhere we were being asked about the greatest songs of all time, the best TV show, and even the best novel of the twentieth century. In poll after poll, two books rose to the top of that last list: Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and James Joyce’s Ulysses. Given that far fewer people 22

have probably read Joyce’s book than Tolkien’s trilogy, what does this say about the significance attributed to Ulysses? This class will give you a chance to see what all the fuss is about. The course provides an intensive study of the writings of Irish author James Joyce, one of the leading figures of European modernism. In addition to reading about Joyce’s life, his relationship to Ireland and his historical era, we will read three of his four major works: Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the aforementioned Ulysses. We will also take a look at samples of Joyce’s final work, Finnegans Wake.

Given the length and difficulty of Ulysses, most of the semester will be devoted to the careful reading of that text. Come and join us if you are ready to delve into some of the most incredibly challenging, but rewarding literature, and learn the importance of the word “Yes!” ENGL 355, Contemporary Drama (Jonathan Burton) Drama and theater have always been anxious forms; writings from Aristotle, Plato, and Horace make claims about the impact of drama on the life, mind and morality of actors, writers and spectators. Theater, many argue, is dangerous. As a result, one of the areas of greatest interest in contemporary drama has been metadrama, plays interested in the possibilities and responsibilities of playwright, actor, and audience. Many of the plays that we will read are interested in the performance of race and gender. In addition, we will encounter find actors breaking through the fourth wall, plotlines that zig-zag wildly or poke through narrative frames, playwrights staging themselves and their audiences in powerful and compromised positions, and performers performing performance. If that last phrase seems dizzying, hang on to your hats, these are plays designed to unsettle you.

This course is paired with Theater 340.

ENGL 363, Moden American Novel (Charles S. Adams) This course is designed to give some focus to what is happening in the American novel from about World War I into the 1950's, and the relation of those literary developments to cultural issues. It is a prolific period, filled with important work by many writers. The relationship of literature to ideas of nation, race, gender, aesthetics, morality and everything else are rethought once again. I am still considering the exact direction it will take this year as far as specific texts are concerned, though, as usual, my interests are pretty historical. Here is my thinking so far: in the past we have started with some Willa Cather and Gertrude Stein. We then should move on to some Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and John Dos Passos. I feel an obligation to F. Scott Fitzgerald, but time begins to be an issue. We should look at Zora Hurston and Jean Toomer and end up with people like Ralph Ellison, Vladimir Nabokov, and Jack Kerouac. So, we will be looking at perhaps ten books. Yes, it is true.

ENGL 364: Modern American Poetry (Tony Barntone) This course is a survey of major poets and poetry movements from the end of the 19th Century to the mid-20th Century (the course will focus primarily on American writers, but will dip into the work of a few poets from Great Britain). The course will be something of a hybrid between traditional literary study and creative writing. All students in the class will write a small chapbook of their own poems, along with essays about the great poets we’ll be studying in the class.

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ENGL 374, Asian-American Literature (Michelle Chihara) This class in Asian American Literature will include poetry, short fiction, drama, and novels. The group of people who refer to themselves as “Asian American” is incredibly broad, it includes at least people who trace their roots to the Pacific rim countries including Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, the Pacific Islands, as well as Korea, Burma (or Myanmar), Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and more. A single racial categorization groups myriad histories and traditions in these home countries, as well as diverse waves of immigration and attempts at assimilation, labor practices, and experiences in the United States. While Asian Americans often suffer under similar prejudices, those too have shifted over the years, as “Asians” become and struggle to become “Asian Americans.” While American culture sometimes becomes focused on a black/white dichotomy in race relations, the rich and varied tapestry of Asian American literature will help us consider questions not only about how Asian American writers understand their nations of origin and the traditions that shaped their ancestors, but also, questions about America. How do Asian American writers help us to understand the United States? How do they understand the construct of race? How does this understanding help or hinder them? How do these writers understand the individual and the collective? How do questions of race intersect with questions of gender and class?

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 mind-boggling, 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: Daphne du Maurier (dAvid pAddy) Daphne du Maurier was one of the most popular novelists of the twentieth century, famous especially for Rebecca (1938) and its subsequent film by Alfred Hitchcock. This popularity proved to be at best a mixed blessing for her. Often unfairly pegged and dismissed as a mere writer of romances, du Maurier and her work is more complex and interesting than many critics have allowed for. Not only did she explore a wide span of

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genres, from Gothic horror and historical fiction to biography and weird fiction, her stories and novels also open up a diverse set of topics of interest including the uncertainties of gendered and sexual identities, the power of perverse psychopathologies and unconscious forces on our daily lives, the nature of home, the problems of narrating history, the pull of landscape and the politics of Cornwall as English county/Celtic nation. We will read a healthy sampling of du Maurier’s work, as well as a variety of critical materials to enrich our understanding and approach to her unique oeuvre. While it is too early to say for certain which works we will read, some strong contenders include: Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, The King’s General, My Cousin Rachel, The House on the Strand, Rule Britannia and a healthy selection of short stories (including “The Birds” and “Don’t Look Now”).

ENGL 420, Preceptorship: Teaching Literature (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 e-mail 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 supports general 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

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Charles S. Adams: cadams@whittier.edu Professor (American Literature, American Studies, Autobiography, Romanticism, Popular Culture, Literary Theory) Tony Barnstone: tbarnstone@whittier.edu (Spring 2018 Department Chair) Professor (Creative Writing--Poetry, Modern and Postmodern American Literature, Asian Literature, Translation) Jonathan Burton: jburton@whittier.edu Associate Professor (Shakespeare, Drama, Early Modern Studies, Music Writing, Comparative Literature, Literary Theory) Michelle Chihara: mchihara@whittier.edu Assistant Professor (Creative Writing—Fiction and Non-Fiction, Chicano/a Literature, American Literature, American Studies, Literary Theory) Wendy Furman-Adams: 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 Professor (20th Century British, Modernism, Postmodernism, Welsh and other Celtic Literatures, Literary Theory, Creative Writing) Andrea Rehn: arehn@whittier.edu Associate Professor; Associate Dean for and Director of the Whittier Scholars Program; Director, Digital Liberal Arts (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) Kate Durbin: kdurbin@whittier.edu Katy Simonian: ksimonia@whittier.edu Director, College Writing Programs Charlie Eastman: ceastman@whittier.edu Acting Head Librarian and Library Liaison to the English Department: Mike Garabedian: mgarabed@whittier.edu English/History/Writing Program Departments Administrative Assistant: Angela Olivas: aolivas@whittier.edu

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