In English Volume 13, #2

IN ENGLISH Occasional Newsletter of the Whittier College Department of English Language and Literature Volume 13, #2, April 2013 Charles S. Adams, Editor

On-Line Presence Some of you may be aware that the Whittier College English Department has a Facebook page. Professor Andrea Rehn and Mike Garabedian in the library 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. https://www.facebook.com/WhittierCollegeEnglishDepartment As part of our new outreach to alums and friends there is an informative new site managed by our colleagues in the alumni/advancement offices. It has a number of bits of information 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.

English Department Writing Awards 2012-2013 Winners Prose First Place – Jessica Miller “Allen’s Day Off” Second Place – Elizabeth Reitzell “Peaches on Adderall” Third Place – Victor Vargas “3 Fables and a Resurrection” Poetry First Place – Jessica Miller “Fragments of Now” 1

Second Place – Harriet Enenmoh “Blackholes” Third Place – Carsen West “Brother, Sister” Honorable Mention Harriet Enenmoh – “Maybe” Jessica Miller – “Inside a Bottle” Elizabeth Reitzell – “If Man Reads Braille then She is Mute and He is Blind” Scholarly Writing Prize in English First Place – Joshua DeBets “On the Lips of Whispering Men”: The Quest for Authority and Truth in Lord Jim" Second Place – Christina Gunning “'What do We Do With the Children?': Victorian Attitudes towards Childhood in Treasure Island and Peter and Wendy” Third Place – Jessica Miller “Dangerous Dualisms in H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau” Every year we offer a set of prizes for the best work submitted by students in the areas of poetry, fiction, and scholarly writing. Be sure to stay tuned for the announcements asking for submissions for next year’s awards. 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. You could win more than some of your professors have made on their books and articles!

Events Poets for Poets Week, April 8-12 We have three special events this week, coinciding with an effort to be in better touch with our alumni and perhaps build our programs down the line with some fundraising.

Some other things will be happening, much of which can be found on-line. We have three speakers:

Marjorie Perloff 7:00, Monday, April 8, Library Lecture: “The Madness of the Unexpected: Duchamps’ Readymades and the High/Low Debate” Marjorie Perloff is among the greatest literary critics of our day. She is Sadie D. Patek Professor Emerita at Stanford University and Florence Scott Professor Emerita at the University of Southern California. She is the author of fifteen books on Twentieth and Twenty-First Century poetries and poetics, Continental European and Brazilian, as well as Anglo-American, including books on W. B. Yeats, Robert Lowell, and Frank O’Hara; The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage (1981), The Futurist Moment: AvantGarde, Avant-Guerre, and the Language of Rupture (1986, new edition, 1994), Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media (1992), and Wittgenstein’s Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary (1996, 1998 paperback; translated into

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Spanish, Portuguese, Slovenian, and French). Her memoir The Vienna Paradox was published by New Directions in 2004, and will appear in German translation in 2012.

Her most recent books are Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century and The Sound of Poetry, the Poetry of Sound, co-edited with Craig Dworkin, both from the University of Chicago Press in 2010. Your editor breaks off her credentials here with the assurance that there is much more.

Willis Barnstone Poetry and Fiction Reading 7:00, Tuesday, April 8, Library In an essay written for Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Barnstone confides, "I see poetry, fiction, and scholarship as Borges did. They are the work of a writer and move into each other, separated by typography." He is an author in all these fields, and more, and has published more than 70 books. Barnstone is an American poet, memoirist, translator, Hispanist, and comparatist. He has translated the Ancient Greek poets and the complete fragments of the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus (Ἡράκλειτος). He is also a New Testament and Gnostic scholar. Professor Barnstone is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Indiana University. Among his dozens of published books are are books of poetry (more than a dozen of his own); memoirs; literary criticism; translations (from Chinese, Spanish, French, Latin, ancient and modern Greek, and biblical Hebrew); memoirs; studies of non-standard religious texts; children's books; and songs. Barnstone has been a Pulitzer Prize Nominee twice. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, and a NEA and NEH recipient.

Alex Espinoza Fiction Reading 7:00, Wednesday, April 9, Library Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico to parents from the state of Michoacán and raised in suburban Los Angeles. In high school and afterwards, he worked a series of retail jobs, selling everything from eggs and milk to used appliances, custom furniture, rock T-shirts, and body jewelry. After graduating from the University of CaliforniaRiverside, he went on to earn an MFA from UC-Irvine’s Program in Writing. His first novel, Still Water Saints, was published by Random House in 2007 and was named a Barnes and Nobel Discover Great New Writers Selection. The book was released simultaneously in Spanish, under the title Los santos de Agua Mansa, California, translated by Lilliana Valenzuela. His second novel, The Five Acts of Diego León, will be published by Random House in March 2013.

Faculty News Wendy Furman-Adams: This past January, en route to Rome and Athens, I stopped in Boston to attend my third Modern Language Association meeting as an officer of the Milton Society of America. I also co-organized an MSA-sponsored panel--"Passionate Milton: Readings and Representations of Paradise Lost"--and delivered one of the three

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papers on that panel: "Milton's Passionate Epic: Artists Reading Paradise Lost." The paper demonstrated how visual interpretations of the poem during the eighteenth century moved from a focus on narrative to a focus on drama, and specifically on such passions as love, hate, and joy. Just a week ago, I was delighted to find out that I will presenting a paper at the MLA again next year--this time in Chicago. The session this time, also sponsored by the MSA, is on "Milton's Modernities," and will deal both with the ways in which Milton is the first "modern" poet and the ways in which twentieth-century readers have expressed a variety of "modernities" in response to his endlessly evocative work.

My paper will introduce the audience to two artists working during the 1920s and '30s, both producing engravings for the Golden Cockerel Press--one of whom radically secularized Milton's vision, the other of whom embraced Milton's own radical theology to anticipate post-modernist theological feminism.

My most exciting news, however, is an invitation to deliver two hour-long lectures this coming November: one at Purdue University (where our own recent alumna Reme Bohlin is working on her Ph.D. with a focus on Milton) and one at Chicago's Newberry Library, where the Milton Seminar--the most elite group of Miltonists in the country-regularly meets to share their work. I have been asked to talk at Purdue about visual images of Paradise, for an audience of faculty and graduate students in both English and Religious Studies. For the Newberry Seminar, the topic is wide open, but since I'm thinking now about modernist Milton, I may well do something along those lines. Add to that our biennial Conference on John Milton in Murfreesboro, Tennessee (October 1820), and I am facing one very busy Miltonic summer. But I'm honored and excited nonetheless to be presenting my work in the company of some of the real "heavies" in my field.

Jonathan Burton: It’s been a busy time for my research. In February, I gave a talk to faculty and graduate students at Arizona State University on the history of Shakespeare in American secondary education. I also organized two panels on race for the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association, including my own talk entitled “Reinventions of Race in the Renaissance.” Finally, my chapter entitled “Bodies, Sex and Race: Western Encounters with Sex and Bodies in Non-European Cultures 1500 – 1750,” was recently published in The Routledge History of Sex and the Body, 1500 to the Present.

Tony Barnstone: This year I gave a number of talks, including "Angels Are Knocking at the Tavern Door: How the Poet Became a Golem" in a panel on Jewish mysticism in contemporary poetry at the AWP Conference in Boston; "Curiouser and Curiouser: Poetic Form in Wonderland," a talk on "nonce" (that is "invented") formal poems, also at AWP; "Shaping the Book of Poems," a talk on the tradition of the shaped book from George Herbert through William Blake, Sharon Olds, and James Wright, at the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoat MFA Program; and a talk on converting poetry to music, also at USM. I just came back from Australia, where I gave a panel on "Why Poetry Matters" with the great Australian poet Robert Adamson, moderated by the Poet Laureate of Sydney, Kate Middleton, at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney.

I'm hoping to set up a faculty exchange program between Whittier College and the University of Technology, Sydney or the University of Wollongong. I continue to give lots of readings and performances with my band, Genuine Brandish, to promote my

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music CD, Tokyo's Burning: WWII Songs (available on CD Baby, iTunes, and Amazon.com): http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/genuinebrandish. My new book of poems, Buddha in Flames, will appear in 2014 with Sheep Meadow Press. I'm hopeful that Oxford University Press USA will publish my textbook, The Pleasures of Poetry, and my book of 120 sonnets based on classic pulp fiction, comic books, and B movies, is currently being read at BKMK Press and illustrated by the Iranian artist Amin Mansouri.

Andrea Rehn: This has been a busy year for my scholarship. I have presented three conference papers so far this year, and will be giving another this summer, as well as revising a recently accepted article for publication in a forthcoming collection about Victorian travel narratives. The first conference paper was in the fall, at the annual North American Victorian Studies Association meeting in Madison, WI. At that meeting, I presented a first piece of a new project on Jane Austen's imperial readership. This spring I presented a second paper, extending and deepening my consideration of how nineteenth century readers interacted with Austen's texts while living outside of England. This project, about Austen's imperial readership, began as a single conference paper and is now blossoming in so many directions that I'm very excited. Due to the new digital availability of readership records, print advertisements, and nineteenth century periodicals, I've discovered that we can understand much more about who read Austen, and where in the world they were, and in which particular years. This new digital data makes it possible for me to ask new kinds of questions about what Austen's novels meant to Victorians both abroad and at home.

Also this spring I participated in a Digital Humanities Colloquium in Texas that focused on how liberal arts colleges like Whittier can implement digital humanities projects to encourage undergraduate research. Finally, this summer, I will be participating in the annual Digital Humanities Summer Institute. At that meeting I will be working on developing new digital pedagogies to bring back to my courses in the fall.

I am also working on a research project on student engagement with digital texts. In this project, I am grateful for the assistance of the students in my Gothic Literature course, who are gamely writing some of their work online, reading some of their novels online, and are giving me lots of feedback about the joys and pitfalls of digital technologies in the English literature classroom. This project is for an essay that will appear in the journal Persuasions in early 2014, so I've got lots of writing to do in the next few months.

Sean Morris: During my sabbatical next year I plan to translate with Tony Barnstone the medieval werewolf romance, William of Palerne (Sean Morris on language, Tony Barnstone on versification), and I will probably work on a screen adaptation of the poem at the same time. I may also turn my mind to some long-standing projects: articles on “Beowulf and Game Theory”; “The Parson’s Tale and the Meaning of The Canterbury Tales”; and “‘Will You Not Come Down?’ Beowulf and Values in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings,” along with my pet project and probably life’s work, a Socratic dialogue on The Meaning of Life. I’m also still fishing for a plot for a science fiction novel about intelligent machines living in space, The Star-Born.

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dAvid pAddy: My manuscript, The Empires of J. G. Ballard, seems to be in its final stages. My editor has gone through it and I’ve made my final corrections, so it looks nearly there. Depending on the next stage, it could be released by the end of this year.

We’ll see. With this mostly behind me, I’ve now begun thinking about my next projects.

Stay tuned.

Charles S. Adams: I just got back from the meeting of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association annual meeting in Washington D.C. This time out I gave a paper called “Baseball Quotation.” I have been interested in the various ways in which phrases emerging from or about baseball have entered the popular lexicon, starting with some things apparently said by Walt Whitman. A few weeks ago I visited El Rancho High School in Pico Rivera to give a lecture on modernism to alumna Charlene Brown’s classes. There are some really great things going on at El Rancho. I have been involved as well with an idea being spearheaded by Joe Price, with the alwaysable Mike McBride, for the college to build some kind of relationship with an organization called “The Baseball Reliquary.” Ask us if you want to know more.

Michelle Chihara: I have an essay coming out on the website Avidly.org, about Disneyland and princesses. I just agreed to do some writing for Tropmag.org. I have been working on a couple of short stories, all centered in different ways around television and girls. I’ll be giving a talk at a conference called Mixed Race Modern at UC Irvine in May. While the conference is academic, I was asked to write something a little more personal and autobiographical. And in April, I’ll be attending the Hapa conference USC. I’m enjoying teaching my first semester at Whittier College.

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 Morris or Angela Freeland in the department office if you have questions.)

Alumni and Study Abroad News We get notes, phone calls, bricks through windows. From some of you. We see people, when they remember to stop by. Sometimes we hunt them down, when we know where to look. We are not printing any notes this time, however, as we have found that Google does include this letter, and some folks seem not to want to be found. If you want to send us information about yourself that you would like others to hear, please send it, but tell us specifically that you do not mind our printing it.

What Have We Been Reading Lately?

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Jonathan Burton: My wife has pointed out recently that my pleasure reading has declined precipitously, but I always point out that my reading for classes and for my research is no less of a pleasure for me. Particular standouts of late are Fetih Benslama’s Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam, and a collection of plays called Beyond Bollywood and Broadway: Plays from the South Asian Diaspora. But there are some more conventional pleasures on my nightstand and which you might consider for yours: These include Karen Russell’s Saint Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and Salman Rushdie’s Luka and the Fire of Life.

Michelle Chihara: I filed my dissertation in December, so almost everything I had been reading up until that moment had to do with real estate, the 2008 bust, and contemporary American literature – as that’s my topic. The latest in that line of books, for me, was Jane Smiley’s Good Faith, a novel of love affairs and real estate deals gone south. Since December, though, I’ve been trying to read whatever seems furthest from all that. So, I just finished a wonderful nonfiction book called Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez. A number of aesthetic/political movements have sprung up in recent years around slowness: Slow Food, Slow Fashion. Lopez could be described as a kind of slow philosopher of the tundra. His book helped me remember the virtues of losing your sense of time in deliberate, intense, meditative reading. I’m a little obsessed with the arctic, and this beautiful book really delivered on descriptions of ice, muskoxen, and histories of doomed voyages in search of the Northwest Passage. In this same vein, I have started Fatal Journey, a history of a European explorer in the arctic who was turned out of his ship by his own men in a famous mutiny. I recently re-read (this is a little embarrassing) a kind of cultural history of the American cocktail called Boozehound. For some reason, I just love this book. A friend of mine has a gripping, high-fantasy and immensely successful Young Adult series, and I just read number two in her trilogy: Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo. Since I don't write or work on poetry, I have convinced myself that reading poetry is procrastination. Hence, I read Poetry Magazine religiously every month.

Jonathan Lethem came to Whittier recently, and I began reading one of the only novels of his that I haven’t read, Chronic City, which is very funny and makes me miss New York.

I loved Evgenia Citgowitz’s collection Ether, which I read when she came to the college, especially its melancholic depictions of Los Angeles. And on a recommendation, I just started Anthony Doerr’s collection of short stories The Shell Collector, which so far includes exotic locales and technical language about, well, shells -- and I’m finding that refreshing.

Charles S. Adams: Read The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predications Fail— But Some Don’t, by Nate Silver, whose work I came to know through his start in the analysis of baseball—well before he began to study politics. The best book I have read recently is Taco U.S.A: How Mexican Food Conquered America, by Gustavo Arellano (who was on campus for an event last fall). Most of it had me saying “I had no idea.”

On my book table right now, highly recommended to me by others, are Peter Ackroyd’s London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets. It is about what the title suggests, literally—things like sewers. Also. I plan to read Simon Garfield’s On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks. The book is about the history of maps as a way of seeing how we view the world. I am drowning in a sea of

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periodicals. As I have noted before, I try to keep up with The New York Review of Books, TLS (The Times Literary Supplement, as it used to be known), The London Review of Books (got a free subscription that seems now to be a curse of a kind!), The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper’s. Keeping up is impossible. My latest baseball reading (I am almost always doing this) is Baseball as a Road to God, by John Sexton, President of NYU. I note that he seems to have two collaborators, Thomas Oliphant and Peter J. Schwartz. I am not sure I recommend it—any book with this sort of title without the work of Joe Price in the index is a little suspect.

Andrea Rehn: On my bed stand at the moment is a lovely novel by first-time novelist David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I can't say much about it as I've just begun it, other than that the prose is lyrical and seductive. I expect to enjoy it. I found it, by the way, at one of my favorite used bookstores: an old, labyrinthian and somewhat musty shop, inhabited by a very friendly (and exceedingly well-fed) shop kitty, Albert. I just love exploring dusty old bookstores; they offer moments of joy and discovery that the ease of online book-buying will never fully replace for me. I've also been reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, which won all sorts of awards a few years ago. I absolutely love Robinson's earlier novel Housekeeping, which I think is one of the most beautiful and heart-breaking books I've ever read. I keep wanting to find a way to teach it.

At this time in the semester the truth about my reading is that, most of it is for classes: novels I assign, essays on those novels, student papers on those novels, etc. But this year, in addition to all that, I'm also reading a Psychology textbook for the course that I'm pairing with Gothic Literature: Psychology of Human Sexuality. It's fun to read a textbook again, and to remember how to do that kind of studying again. Feels like I'm exercising muscles I haven't used in a few years--very good, and very hard!

Finally, I have been reading lots of books and blogs and Tweets and FB posts about the multiple impacts of the digital revolution in literary studies. There's much more about this topic in the section on my scholarship, so read on! dAvid pAddy: In the last newsletter, I was making a point about the New York Review of Books Classics series. Let me just say once again that I would be perfectly content to ignore all other recommendations and spend the rest of my days going through their catalogue, discovering wrongly forgotten books of sheer brilliance. My latest discovery is Patrick Hamilton. This is the guy who wrote the plays that became the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and George Cukor’s Gaslight, and whose days were filled with tragedy. Doris Lessing, Sarah Waters and Nick Hornby are huge fans. His trilogy of novels, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, is seriously one of the most impressive set of books I’ve ever read. When I first read the description of the plot, I can’t say that it was the kind of thing I would have gone for—a love triangle that goes wrong in the seedy streets of London’s Soho in the 1930s—but this plot, which ends up being quite engaging, does not begin to get at the truly remarkable construction and development of character that makes this a real charmer (if inevitably a downer) of a book. Eagerly looking forward to reading The Slaves of Solitude, which apparently some think is his best book. Also from the NYRB series, Dwight MacDonald’s essays from the midtwentieth century on “masscult” and “midcult” are elegant, stinging works that delve into the problems of taste. I seem to be reading a lot on this subject of taste recently and

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cannot recommend highly enough Carl Wilson’s book on Celine Dion for the 33 1/3 series—an amazing book that examines the personal and social dimensions of what it means to truly detest someone’s music (hey, both JB and Jonathan Lethem have confirmed a love for this book, so what can I say?). Another great music book: Paul Du Noyer’s In the City: A Celebration of London Music. The title is self-explanatory.

Elizabeth Sage got me to read Daniel Levin Becker’s Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature, which is one of the best books (and most personal accounts) I’ve read on the ever-magnificent Oulipo group. Otherwise I’ve just begun to dip into Deborah Levy’s novel, Swimming Home, a Booker contender that’s equally gripping and innovative, as well as George Saunders’s latest collection of stories, Tenth of December.

Then it’s back to finding the next magical title from the NYRB. Tony Barnstone: Much of my reading right now is rereading of poetry books that have inspired me in the past, as well as some new ones: Long Division, the new one by Alan Michael Parker, always funny and wise and strange; the amazing Oblivio Gate by Sean Nevin, simply one of the most pristine and beautiful books I've read in years; the terrifically wild, associative, humorous All-American Poem by Matthew Dickman--sort of a next-generation Tony Hoagland; Gulf Music by our #1 public poet, Robert Pinsky; the very strong translation of the Serbian poet Radmila Lazic by Charles Simic, A Wake for the Living--"Stare into the sky pockmarked with stars, / The adolescent moon that slowly floats / Like a rowboat after a storm"; Octavio Paz, the great Mexican poet, always a pleasure, Early Poems 1935-1955, and his A Draft of Shadows, so gorgeous, long Whitmanian lines blended with a gentle surrealism; Kate Middleton, Fire Season, an Australian poet I just met who did her MFA at Michigan with our own Alex Johnson-quite good; The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, edited by Ilan Stavans, a book long needed, the best compilation of his poems with multiple wonderful translators, and just the occasional bilingual text; Harold Pinter's poetry in Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics, a nice surprise, introduced to me by the actor Julian Sands, who does a one-man show about Pinter's really very excellent poetry, which is in both loose political mode and formal metaphysical mode; The Standing Wave by Gabriel Spera, a National Poetry Series winner in the neo-Wordsworthian narrative mode with lyrical highlights (i.e. the "publishable poem") that rewards rereading; What Things Are Made Of, the new one by Charles Harper Webb--he always rewards; one of my fave new books is The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry edited by Geoffrey Brock--what gorgeous poems, so gorgeously translated!; Hoodwinked by David Hernandez, one of the most talented of the new poets; Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths by Persian poet Sholeh Wolpe, her new book, and it's really, really good; Breaking the Jaws of Silence: Sixty American Poets Speak to the World, edited by Sholeh Wolpe, a PEN International book that seeks to reach out in the name of human rights and peace after the murder of Neda, a young woman peacefully protesting in Tehran during the Green Revolution. For fiction, I'm rereading Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Other Stories translated by Joachim Neugroschel; Mann of War, by John Brantingham, a novel about revenge killing, very hard to put down; Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, edited by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel, an anthology of fiction that might be described as what happened to Magical Realism when it came to America; Ether a novella and stories by Evgenia Citkowitz, a wonderful book by the daughter of Lady Caroline Blackwood,

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novelist and former wife of Robert Lowell and Lucian Freud!; Jonathan Lethem's portrait of 1970's Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude; the quite excellent Brazilian graphic novel Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba; the chilling and funny story collection Tenth of December by George Saunders. Nonfiction I've been reading includes Private Dicks and Feisty Chicks: An Interrogation of Crime Fiction by Cathy Cole and three books about atheism for the critical book I'm writing about William Carlos Williams: Faith in Faithlessness: An Anthology of Atheism, edited by Dimitrios Roussopoulos; An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism edited by Gordon Stein; and The Portable Atheist, edited by Christopher Hitchens. I have a stack of 50 or 60 books in my bathroom, with these ones on top. Thus, my bathroom has been full of murder and despair.

Sean Morris: Some of the things I’ve been reading: Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature (another excellent book from one of the most important thinkers and best writers of our time. Thesis: Human violence has been steadily decreasing throughout history; it’s good to be alive now). Sync, Stephen Strogatz (about “emergent properties,” how random systems spontaneously self-organize. This may be the single most important idea ever for human beings to understand—equivalent to a secular version of God— though the book’s presentation is a less-than-exciting summary of the author’s academic research projects). Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand (excellent, especially for creating a window into everyday life in the 30s and 40s—a very enjoyable and informative read).

Why Nations Fail (Countries succeed because of well-structured and non-corrupt institutions—has some great case studies; just read the first section, as the rest says it all again and again). Terry Pratchett (smart social satire plus quirky fantasy; what’s not to love?), The Fifth Elephant (brilliant), Monstrous Regiment (less brilliant), Thief of Time (brilliant). Hal Clement, Cycle of Fire (solid, classic science fiction). Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud (good, science-heavy science fiction). Philip Pullman, The Ruby in the Smoke (Victorian adventure from the Golden Compass author—worth a read). Kenneth Harl’s Teaching Company lecture series on The Vikings (recordings, and excellent).

Eddy and Kreger, Splitting: Protecting Yourself while Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (Here’s hoping you all never need to read this book…) Rhys, Good Morning Midnight (nice to experience stream-ofconsciousness narration again). Le Fanu’s Carmilla (fun). Kate Summerscale, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher (Victorian true crime genre about one of the world’s first detectives—interesting and worth reading). Bill O’Reilly, Killing Lincoln (dynamic pacing, interesting details). Sex and God at Yale (not the indictment of current academia that it seemed to promise, though it does summarize some lurid behavior among Yale students—“meh”). The Only Thing Worth Dying For (Supposedly the history of the Afghanistan war from the point of view of the first soldiers there, but turns out to be a fairly dull political history of Karzai’s involvement in said war—skip it). David Weber’s Honor Harrington series: #1 On Basilisk Station and #2 The Honor of the Queen (Horatio Hornblower meets Battlestar Galactica—‘nuff said). The Gripping Hand, Niven and Pournelle (good sci-fi, but less good than its predecessor, The Mote in God’s Eye, which I recommend). DC Comics Year by Year: A Visual Chronicle. (If you like comic books, don’t miss this incredibly informative and readable encyclopedia: summarizes every year and every major storyline in DC comics history, with sidebars on concurrent events in

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history at large.)

Wendy Furman-Adams: As I think about my recent (always somewhat scanty and rushed) pleasure reading, I find that I'm ranging pretty widely these days. I do have a novel going--Ann Patchett's State of Wonder--following up on her glorious Bel Canto, which I read several years ago and have given to a number of friends to mark birthdays and Christmases since. I also spent much of the fall (like Andrea Rehn!) reading three books by the incomparably evocative Marilynne Robinson: two of the three novels in her heartbreaking trilogy, Gilead and Home--and a brilliantly titled collection of essays, When I Was a Child I Read Books. Next up is The Marlowe Papers, a novel in verse that I received as a gift from recent alum Mary Helen Truglia (just off to do a Ph.D. herself).

I've also been doing an unusual amount of less literary reading of late--ranging from a book by oncologist David B. Angus called The End of Illness (which sounds to me like a very good idea!) to several texts related to my sub-field in Religious Studies. I've been reading up on St. Paul in two fascinating new books: Paul Among the People by classicist Sarah Ruden, who puts Paul's writings into the context of classical culture and literature; and now The First Paul by biblical scholar Marcus J. Borg, who places the apostle firmly within the context of the first-century Roman world. Borg argues that we need to distinguish three Pauls: the "radical" Paul, to be discovered (interestingly) in all the letters unanimously attributed to him; the "conservative" Paul, to be discovered in the letters about which the authorship is at least somewhat in doubt; and the "reactionary" Paul, to be discovered exclusively in the letters believed by most scholars to have been written by other authors a generation of so after Paul's death.

Borg's work, by the way, is an enthusiasm I share with some colleagues in Whittier's own Religious Studies department. Rosemary Carbine and I, in fact, are scheming to bring him to Whittier next year. (He teaches at Oregon State and is a marvelous speaker.)

But that fact reminds me of the final book I'm currently reading: Women, Wisdom, and Witness, edited by Rosemary and Kathleen Dolphin (Liturgical Press, 2012). The book delivers wide array of feminist approaches to contemporary Catholic theology (and yes, there is such a thing!)--including Rosemary's own marvelous essay on "The Beloved Community: Transforming Spaces for Social Change and for Cosmopolitan Citizenship."

Then, of course, there are always the daily L.A. Times, the Sunday New York Times, The New Yorker, the occasional London Review and/or TLS--and thank goodness summer (even if a busy summer) is coming!

Charlie Eastman: I've still been reading the John Le Carre "George Smiley" cold war novels, as well as two books on the "Monuments Men": the "Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives" unit of the allied US and British armed forces, who travelled around Europe hunting artworks plundered by the Nazis. One is Robert Edsel's The Monuments Men, the other Hector Feliciano's The Lost Museum. I'm also having a wonderful time teaching my "Professors Behaving Badly" seminar. We're reading Amis' Lucky Jim, DeLillo's White Noise, Francine Prose's Blue Angel, and Zadie Smith's On Beauty.

College Writing Program News Charlie Eastman, Director

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We are preparing for 27 sections of freshman writing next fall, and have just completed our first direct assessment of the “Paper in the Major” segment of the program.

Two students will be receiving awards at the honors convocation for outstanding service to the writing program. Three students will be receiving awards as winners of the freshman writing contest. To preserve the theatrical elements of the program, we will reveal the names and celebrate them at that time!

English Department Courses Fall 2013, January and Spring 2014 (All still subject to some change) Below is supplemental information from most of the faculty about the departmental courses scheduled for next 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 will adjust the on-line versions of this document. Please see or e-mail the instructors, the department office, or our department chair, Tony Barnstone, for answers to questions these descriptions might raise. Those courses without instructors yet listed (TBA) will be offered, but we are still in the process of hiring. As we hire instructors, we hope to be able to supply more information as to what they plan to do in their courses. We note as well that some instructors are teaching courses in the Interdisciplinary (INTD) category or are based in other departments, and their descriptions may not all appear here. Students should consult the Whittier College Catalog concerning prerequisites for all courses. In particular, many courses require ENGL 120 or its equivalent for enrollment.

ENGL 110 note: This new course is designed for first-semester, 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—the department is in the process of approval for most of our other courses to fulfill this requirement. To state the obvious, it can be taken in the same semester as INTD 100, College Writing Seminar.

ENGL 120 note: Seven sections of “Why Read?” will be available in the Fall. Each instructor will organize the course according to his/her own themes and theories. 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.

Fall 2013 ENGL 110: Exploring Literature ( dAvid pAddy) Reading, done properly, is every bit

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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, hard-won, 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 life-long practice that requires skill, work and practice that may help bring a written work to life in more nuanced and layered ways. In this new course, designed especially for incoming first-year students, we will explore literature and some of the many ways to go about reading and interpreting it. This course does not satisfy the COM2 requirement, but it can be taken at the same time as INTD 100. Students who have already taken INTD 100 and wish to get their COM2 credit, should look instead to ENGL 120 Why Read?

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. [Note: I’m still selecting books, but the class will most likely include: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader, Hergé’s The Crab with the Golden Claws, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There, Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange and Emma Donoghue’s Room.]

ENGL 110: Exploring Literature (Wendy Furman-Adams) dAve pAddy and I are excited to be offering the first two sections of this course designed especially for incoming first-year students. Students often arrive on campus eager to explore an English major, only to discover that they have to wait at least until spring to take English 120. Although English 110 will certainly involve a fair amount of writing, it will not meet the COM 2 requirement, which must be met after the completion of INTD 100.

What it will do is give beginning collegians an opportunity to explore English as a possible major, while reading, discussing, and writing about a wide variety of exciting literary texts. Since the course is brand new, I have not yet settled on a theme for my section, but I do know that it will be something broad enough to involve almost anyone-at least anyone who loves literature. Stay tuned for details.

ENGL 120: Why Read? (Kate Durbin)

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ENGL 120: Why Read? (Katy Simonian) ENGL 120: Why Read? (Victor Kaufold) ENGL 120: Why Read? (Scott Creley) ENGL 120: Why Read (Victor Kaufold) ENGL 120: Why Read? (Scott Creley) ENGL 120: Why Read? (Michelle Chihara) ENGL 201: Introduction to Journalism (Tom Caswell) ENGL 202: Writing Short Fiction (dAvid pAddy) This course will offer students the opportunity to learn something of the art of writing short stories. We will begin with a range of methods for coming up with stories, then, over the semester, analyze a variety of the elements that make a short story what it is. Reading published contemporary stories will also provide further insight into what goes into the writing of a successful story. An emphasis on the importance of revision will guide much of the course and will be a central part of the purpose of the workshop environment. Text: Alice LaPlante’s Method and Madness: The Making of a Story.

Note: this course has an absolute cap of 15 students, no exceptions.

Enrollment will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

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-heavy--a kind of creative writing boot camp--and 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.

Prerequisite: 120 and instructor permission.

ENGL 220: Major British Writers to 1785 (Wendy Furman-Adams) The very ambitious purpose of this partially team-taught 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 1785--in 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

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of the sequence--English 221--you 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 300-level 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. Furman-Adams--or even just turn up on the first day with an add sheet--if the course is full. Sheets will be signed regardless of the size of the class.

ENGL 306: Creative Nonfiction (Michelle Chihara) Some of America’s most storied writers work in a genre called, somewhat paradoxically, creative nonfiction. Ever since Truman Capote published the first “nonfiction novel” about the murders of the Clutter family in 1965, the art of presenting facts has cut a major swath across American letters.

After Capote and Norman Mailer, a group of writers in the ‘60s and ‘70s found that writing about America’s riotous transformations demanded something other than newspapers’ conventionally dispassionate tone. Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, Gay Talese, Michael Herr and Tom Wolfe wrote about hippies, rock and roll and the Vietnam war and changed the way the culture understood journalism. A variety of contemporary writers like John McPhee, Jon Krakauer, Dave Eggers, Anne Fadiman and Katherine Boo have continued to explore the power and boundaries of nonfiction, covering everything from extremist religious cults to poverty in India to the natural history of oranges. Using the formal tools of the best literary fiction – structure, point of view – literary nonfiction brings the full force and grace of the language to bear on narratives carved from observed truth. This class will cover a discussion of journalistic standards and ethics, an introduction to the practice of literary journalism and a survey of some of the important writers in the field.

ENGL 319: Early Modern Drama (Jonathan Burton) The turn of the seventeenthcentury is often considered the golden age of English drama. Would it be so without Shakespeare? This class suggests that Shakespeare was only one contributor to an era of playwriting rich in literary experimentation and radical politics. We will explore nine plays written by Shakespeare’s contemporaries. They cover the usual early modern (and perhaps modern) preoccupations: transvestism, fanaticism, adultery, murder, incest, Jews, Islam, money and world domination.

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 monarchy, gender, and English nationhood. Finally, we will approach the plays as performance-scripts, confronting various dilemmas of theatrical production raised by Shakespeare's plays from the 16th through the 21st

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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 like if we took the poem's moral imperatives seriously--seeking, as Milton suggested, "a paradise within." About half way through the semester Milton students (and any others who are interested) will have the opportunity to join with Milton lovers around the world in a "Milton Marathon" reading of Paradise Lost.

ENGL 333: Jane Austen in Context (Andrea Rehn) It is a truth universally acknowledged that Austen's novels are a joy to read. And yet, they are getting older and older--and therefore potentially more remote from our experience. In fact, Pride and Prejudice turned 200 years old this January! Such a birthday asks us to consider Austen's relevance to modern readers. What do these six novels have to say to us today about politics, gender performativity, social networks, and family life? What new understandings, of the novels and ourselves, can be gained by reading them in light of their historical context? Be prepared: this course will come a heavy (if delicious) reading load. In addition, students will write short papers, edit a digital text by one of Austen's contemporary writers, and present a research talk.

ENGL 358: Postcolonial Novel (Andrea Rehn) When the peoples of Africa, India, Ireland, and the Caribbean finally gained independence during the 20th century, they found that their national, cultural, and individual identities had been radically altered by the experience of colonization. Such postcolonial experiences radically transform the way contemporary writers write, just as they transformed the world we all share. We will read a variety of postcolonial texts and take seriously the challenges they offer to what it means to be a human being in the world today. Authors may include Salman Rushdie, Jamaica Kincaid, Derek Walcott, Arundhati Roy, Chinua Achebe, Seamus Heaney, and Wole Soyinka. Paired with Lizardo Herrera's Latin American Voices, Spanish 270/470. Co-enrollment encouraged. No Spanish necessary.

 ENGL 373: African American 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 16

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 383: Asian Literature (Tony Barnstone) 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. Another way of putting all this is that science fiction is rooted in the world we live in, but it helps us see this world in a strange new way. In this class and pair, we will explore how science fiction has found novel ways of representing and imagining politics, power, institution building and social change. As we read the likes of Karl Marx, Max Weber, Michel Foucault and David Harvey, we will also read writers like H. G. Wells, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Ursula Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson, William Gibson, China Miéville and Paolo Bacigalupi [choices still to be finalized]. We will give special attention to science fiction’s penchant for the dystopian imagination. From the dictators out there to the fascists in our own heads, we will examine how science-fiction writers have imagined the workings of power from fears of totalitarian governments to the dread of the self-desired oppression induced by consumer capitalism. Note: this course is paired with SOC 346: Social Power and Social Control. To be in the one class you must be co-enrolled in the other.

ENGL 400: Critical Procedures (Andrea Rehn) “Question Reality.” This may be the only advanced literature course best described by a bumper sticker. As you know, writing about literature begins with asking questions. But how do we come up with our questions? What tends to go without question? How are our questions related to each other? How have questions changed over time? How do questions reflect on the questioner?

In this course we will read “theory,” a body of texts from many disciplines that dispute common-sense explanations in favor of speculative analysis. Assignments will include fearless participation in course discussion, regular reading responses, and presentation to the department of your senior project, which you will develop over the course of the semester in consultation with me.

Is the course difficult? Yes. Theory is notoriously challenging to read and write about. Mind-bending? Hopefully. Productive of fascinating senior presentations?

Absolutely.

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ENGL 410: Senior Seminar: Whitman and Melville (Charles S. Adams) Whitman and Melville both produced incredibly significant works at virtually the same literary moment. These works, Leaves of Grass and Moby-Dick are epic, dense, profound, difficult, obtuse, spiritual, contradictory, offensive, erotic, glorious, insane, cosmic, and deeply rewarding (to mention just a few aspects). We will look at them closely and take our time to know all that we can about them, their writers, and the times that produced them. The course will involve substantial secondary reading as well. This is the good stuff, folks—the texts that changed everything, that try to do everything. Not for the faint of heart or those who like to think small. Instructor permission required.

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.

January 2014 ENGL 290: Japanese Ghost Stories (Mary Yukari Waters) This course introduces students to the basics of Japanese ghost lore. We will read stories, watch films, and discuss them in terms of psychology and culture. This course also has a creative writing component: each student will write an original ghost story or scary story (it doesn’t need to be Japanese), which will be shared with the class.

ENGL 390: Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy (Scott Creley)

Spring 2014 ENGL 120 note: Seven sections of “Why Read?” will be available in the Fall. Each instructor will organize the course according to his/her own themes and theories. 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.

ENGL 120: Why Read? Section 1 (Scott Creley) ENGL 120: Why Read? Section 2 (Scott Creley) ENGL 120: Why Read? Section 3 (Kate Durbin) ENGL 120: Why Read? Section 4 (Kate Durbin) ENGL 120: Why Read? Section 5 (Katy Simonian) ENGL 120: Why Read? Section 6 (Katy Simonian) ENGL 120: Why Read? Section 7 (Victor Kaufold) 18

ENGL 120: Why Read? Section 8 (Victor Kaufold) ENGL 120: Why Read? Section 9 (Charles S. Adams) Put me down as undecided! I will be thinking about this course in the fall and am open to suggestions as to what prospective students might like to study.

ENGL 120: Why Read? Section 10 (Jonathan Burton) If you ask me why I read, you may find that my response differs considerably from yours. If you ask one of my colleagues why he or she reads, you’re likely to hear a third distinct and compelling answer. If you ask someone in Baghdad . . . well, you get the point. This section of “Why Read?” will not prescribe a reason for reading so much as it will explore the range of answers people might offer to the question. Our method will be to explore a few common tropes and story types as they travel across multiple traditions, weaving in and out of other geographies, languages and cultures. How do fundamental literary devices or narratives take on new and different meanings? Why should we bother to read them again, and how do we read them anew? One pathway we will trace will feature sections of The Arabian Nights, short fiction by Edgar Allen Poe, John Barth and A.S. Byatt, as well as Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and Naghuib Mahfouz’s Arabian Nights and Days. Hang on to your magic carpet; there’s no telling where we might go next!

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-heavy--a kind of creative writing boot camp--and 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.

Prerequisite: 120 and instructor permission.

ENGL 221: Major British and American Writers From 1660 (Charles S. Adams) This course continues the survey of literature begun in ENG 220. One of the big differences from the previous course is that in addition to looking at the development of British literary history we will also consider the 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 intellectual ideas and aesthetic premises that guide each era, we will also address such issues as the rise and fall of the British Empire, the building of the American nation, the historical importance of revolution and industrialization, and the roles 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? We will read a wide range of poems, stories, essays, and excerpts, and we will read several full length works.

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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 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 accentual-syllabic 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 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 feature-length 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 like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sense and Sensibility, and The Illusionist, and your fellow students’ drafts.

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

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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! (This may end up in some combination with Damien Martin’s Number Theory class—yes, math!—as a pair or SMC.) ENGL 320: Literature of Medieval Europe (Wendy Furman-Adams) On the one hand, the period of European history running from about 500 to 1500 is one of incredible diversity--not to mention upheaval and violence. On the other hand, medieval architects, philosophers, painters, and writers managed by about 1300 to bring the entire cosmos into a hard-won but comprehensive system of thought--a system in which every creature (from spinning seraph to comical devil; from martyr-mystic to Chaucer's corrupt pardoner; from lord to retainer; from knight to churl; from unicorn to dragon; from Dante's beloved Beatrice to the Wife of Bath) and every artistic and literary form (from Romanesque to Gothic; from epic to romance; from sacred hymn to fabliau) had its clear function and necessary place.

The literature we read will trace the gradual development, then partial loss, of this synthesis, as we move (1) from early Christian lyrics to the Old English and early French epic (Beowulf and Roland), while focusing on the first classic of medieval philosophy (also a work of literature): Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy; (2) to the courtly elegance of the Troubadours and Gottfried von Strassburg, as well as to the Gothic synthesis of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321); (3) to the new trends reflected at the end of the period by Petrarch, Boccaccio and Chaucer (1340-1400). The middle and later stages in this development, in which we encounter the rise of "courtly love," also present an opportunity to explore the ways in which gender was constructed by medieval poets, both men and women. Prerequisite: English 120. English 220 or 222 recommended. This course is paired with Philosophy 312; co-registration required.

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.

ENGL 326: Topics in Shakespeare (Jonathan Burton) In this class we will spend an entire semester studying Hamlets -- but not just Shakespeare’s melancholy Dane. We will also get to know black Hamlets, female Hamlets, burlesque Hamlets, children’s Hamlets, Freudian Hamlets, Arab and Chinese Hamlets. Students will approach Shakespeare’s play—along with its literary and filmic offspring—with an array of critical tools, including textual criticism, character criticism, historicist theory, psychoanalytic theory, and theories of revision and adaptation. Finally, students will create, stage and analyze their own southern California Hamlets.

ENGL 330: British Literature 1640-1789 (Wendy Furman-Adams) Compared to some courses, the period covered in this course is not a long one: just under 150 years.

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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. Politically--during this age of Locke, Rousseau, and the American founding fathers--the 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 force--giving 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 changed--giving 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 empiricism--a new and urgent interest in discovering the foundations of knowledge itself, not so much in "reason" as in "experience."

And in literature--under the stress of these revolutionary changes--writers 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 genres--most importantly the newspaper, the magazine, the traveler's tale, and the novel (the name of which means, simply, new!). Pre-requisite: English 120. English 220 strongly recommended.

ENGL 331: Rise of the Novel (dAvid pAddy) In this course we will look at the development of the novel as a form in the British Isles, especially as it came into shape in the eighteenth century. The approach to the course will be as historical as it is aesthetic.

So, in addition to seeing how the rough and tumble beast of a thing called the novel twists and turns through epistolary, picaresque, satirical and even anti-novelistic patterns, we will look to the broader historical conditions to try to make some sense of why these things called novels would be rising at all. Readings have yet to be decided but could include such likely candidates as Aphra Behn’s Oronooko, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent.

ENGL 354: Contemporary British Literature (dAvid pAddy) Imagine instead a British history in which alteration, mutation and flux, rather than continuity and bedrock solidity, are the norm—Simon Schama

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Since World War Two, Britain has undergone numerous changes that have called into question what it means to be British. Recovering from the war through an extended period of austerity, Britain also witnessed the rapid loss of many of its primary colonies.

As the future of the British Empire was challenged, so was the future of Britain itself.

Economic decline, and a necessity to join the European Union, coincided with increasing demands for independence from Scotland and Wales, as well as a major influx of immigrants from Britain’s former colonies. In this course we will examine how contemporary British literature reflects, constructs, and responds to questions of Britain’s national identity in a postimperial age. Readings have yet to be decided but could include works by such writers as: Patrick Hamilton, Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Angela Carter, Ian McEwan, J. G. Ballard, Gwyn Thomas, Jackie Kay, V. S. Naipaul, Zadie Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro.

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 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 375: Chicano/Chicana Literature (Michelle Chihara) ENGL 390: Rhetoric for Liars (Jonathan Burton) In the tenth book of The Republic Plato famously describes poets—by which he means all writers of fiction—as liars. By this logic, if you are interested in becoming a writer, you need to learn how to lie, and if you want to understand great literature, you need to be able to recognize a liar. This is specious logic, of course, but it points toward an important idea: Fictions are kinds of lies that captivate and persuade. In order to understand how they work, we will begin this course with an intensive study of classical rhetoric designed to equip you to analyze the “lies” of contemporary fiction. We will then go on to explore a handful of contemporary novels featuring such unreliable narrators as forgers, frauds, plagiarists.

ENGL 400: Critical Procedures (dAvid pAddy) Reading a novel, poem or play may

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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 theorists who have raised difficult questions and offered compelling ideas about how to approach a literary text. Reading literary theory can feel 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 Paper in the Major and delivery of the senior presentation for this course will enable you to put some of the theories into practice. By 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.

Our main text will be David Lodge and Nigel Wood’s Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Be ready for a difficult class, but one, as a senior capstone course, that should dramatically influence how you think about literature.

ENGL 410: Senior Seminar (Wendy Furman-Adams): Writing Renaissance Women. The title of this course is ambiguous--even slightly "punny"--in that it refers to two things at once. Most obviously, this will be a course about women writers working in England between about 1550 and 1700. But a number of important male writers from Petrarch to Milton will be represented as well because they are central to the story of writing women in the Renaissance.

Why? They are central because of the way literature both reflects and, in turn, influences--even re-invents--life. Due in part to social factors, in part to the power of their vision, male poets like Petrarch and Sidney, Spenser and Milton indelibly shaped the way men have imagined and represented women (at least until the last generation or so), as well as the way countless female readers have imagined and represented themselves. Thus, even when writing for others of their own sex, early modern women had to write in response to male voices, male pens, male images of female identity.

Less free than men to develop an identity from "scratch," these women engaged in the writing process under the jealous eye of a patriarchal society which saw them, essentially, as passive members. 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 in this course we will pay a lot of attention to the context of the literature we read: the social conditions under which it was produced. But we also will read a number of texts by women and men--in 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 "re-write" themselves and one another. We will see men and women engaged in an uneasy dialogue (sometimes a verbal war!), as different writers reveal a different mix of freedom and constraint, originality and conventionality,

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patriarchal bias and impulse toward gender equality. While we're at it, we'll also read some pretty great poetry and prose--some of which has been published only over the past decade, after four hundred years of invisibility and exclusion from the "canon."

Instructor permission required.

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 Secretary, Angela Olivas (x4253 or see e-mail list below), in the department office know.

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 Albert Upton Professor of English Language and Literature (Creative Writing--Poetry, Modern and Postmodern American Literature, Asian Literature, Translation) Jonathan Burton: jburton@whittier.edu Assistant Professor (Shakespeare, Early Modern Studies, Music Writing, Comparative Literature) Wendy Furman-Adams: wfurman@whittier.edu Professor (Milton, Early Modern Literature, 18th Century Literature, Women’s Studies, Literature and Visual Culture, The Bible, Classics) Sean Morris: (Department Chair): 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 Assistant Professor (19th Century British, Postcolonial Studies, Women’s Studies, Travel, Literary Theory) Mellon Fellow (Through 2013-2014): 25

Michelle Chihara: mchihara@whittier.edu Adjunct and Visiting Faculty for 2013-2014: Scott Creley: screley@whittier.edu Kate Durbin: kdurbin@whittier.edu Victor Kaufold: vkaufold@whittier.edu Mary Yukari Waters: mwaters@whittier.edu Director, College Writing Programs: Charlie Eastman ceastman@whittier.edu English/History/Writing Program Departments Secretary: Angela Olivas: afreelan@whittier.edu

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