In English by Whittier College

IN ENGLISH Occasional Newsletter of the Whittier College Department of English Language and Literature Volume 16, #1, November 2015 Charles S. Adams, Editor

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 It is now out of date, but still exists.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

The English Department Writing Awards (This Means Money and Everlasting Glory) 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 next year’s awards—the deadlines will be fairly early in Spring Semester. You cannot win if you do not enter. All Whittier students are eligible to enter. The submission dates are always in early spring semester. The prizes are cash (well, checks actually). You could win more than some of your professors have made on their books and articles! In addition, look at the same time for notices of the deadlines for submissions to the Literary Review, which publishes work in all genres by Whittier students. Any student can submit. 1

What Have We Been Up To Lately? Andrea Rehn: “I’ve given eight papers so far this year at conferences and invited venues (wow! I hadn’t added them up until now), and I currently have two articles in various stages of review and two more under contract. My talks this year have been mostly about digital humanities, digital pedagogy, and experimental forms of collaborative digital narratives. The two finished articles are both on nineteenth century literature, one on Jane Austen and another on Rudyard Kipling. The Austen article centers on a class I taught here at Whittier in 2013 (see below—I’m teaching a version of this class again in spring!). The Kipling article theorizes a relationship between trauma and nationalism in Kipling’s short stories. I’ve also been writing for my own blog (andrearehn.com) and working on setting up new Web resources for the Whittier College community. Check back in Spring 2016 for lots of new resources coming your way soon!” Jonathan Burton: “I’ve been trying to take advantage of more theater in Los Angeles and especially all the great Shakespeare. My daughter, Lola, and I saw a hilarious production of Much Ado about Nothing in Griffith Park. The productions there are free all summer, so join us next year! More recently I took a group of students to see These Paper Bullets, a reimagining of Much Ado laid over the story of the Beatles and featuring music by Green Day’s Billy Joe Armstrong. In the same week, I saw Toni Morrison’s Desdemona a musical response to Othello, directed by the great Peter Sellars and featuring the Malian singer Rokia Traore in the role of Barbary, Desdmona’s forgotten maid. In my own work, I’ve completed an article titled “The New Hamlet and the New Woman: A Shakespearean Mashup in 1902” that is scheduled for publication this winter. I’m now working on a piece called “The Reinventions of Race in Thomas Heywood’s The Four Prentices of London,” preparing for a workshop on “Teaching Race and Shakespeare,” and growing increasingly anxious about a commissioned piece on early modern race and empire that currently comprises no more than a list of books I need to read.” Tony Barnstone: "Mainly, these days, I’m enjoying being a dad. In the past two days, Blake has learned “yellow,” “red,” “blue,” “purple” and “white” and is putting together two-word sentences: “Purple truck!” Ultra cool. Professionally, I’m staying busy. My big, twenty-year project, Pulp Sonnets, based on research into classic pulp fiction, B movies, Gothic lit, and comic books has just been published, along with two anthologies of monster poetry that I co-edited, and another book of poetry, Beast in the Apartment. I’m finishing the intro to my co-translation of the ghazals of the Urdu poet Ghalib for publication with White Pine Press (a book that I co-authored with a Whittier alum, Bilal Shaw). And, finally, I’m in the process of marketing my decade-in-the-making project, The Creativity Tarot, to a major trade press. It’s an exploration of the sources of creativity via Jung, the Tarot, and neuroscience, and is both a self-help project and a creative activity resource. It’s all beautifully illustrated by the Santa Fe artist Alexandra Eldridge.”

Anne Cong-Huyen: “I’ve been to six conferences/talks in the past 4 months. I was a plenary at the #transformDH conference, presented on my digital humanities work at the American Studies Association, and I gave a talk on the media of temporary labor in Los Angeles at University of Illinois, Springfield. I have three articles that are currently under revision, from transformative digital humanities work to Saigon South and horror films. I’ve also been incredibly busy with DigLibArts planning a Spring Student Symposium and reorganizing our teaching resources. We’ve also piloted our Domain of One’s Own project, and that’s kept us busy as well. I’ll be teaching my first course here at Whittier in January on digital labor (description below) and I’m very excited for this new experimental course!” dAvid pAddy: “The big news on this front is that my book, The Empires of J. G. Ballard: An Imagined Geography, is finally out, and, I have to say, that feels great. The advising project on imperialism in short fiction I worked on for Gale Cengage’s ShortStory Criticism also now exists out there in the world. By the time this newsletter comes out I will have presented my paper, “‘A novel has to be set somewhere’: Nation and Setting in the Work of Kazuo Ishiguro,” at PAMLA in Portland. I’ll also be chairing a session on British modernism at the conference. After that, I’m hoping to start into my research for my next project on small nation nationalism. Dreaming of dreaming of Cornwall soon.” Sean Morris: “These days I seem to be perpetually on an airplane to and from the East Coast (18,000 miles last summer alone). But this does give me a lot of time to sit and think. Some of the things I’ve been thinking about: A textbook on the History of the English Language starting from what’s happening with the language in the United States and around the world, then working backwards through the usual material and winding up with the Goths, whose Germanic language blended with Latin in Spain in the 400s much like English and Spanish in the U.S. today. (“Rodriguez” and “Alvarez”: Gothic names!) An article tracing how Tolkien and Robert E. Howard separately invented the sword-and-sorcery genre at the same time. how “The Franklin’s Tale” contains a subtle echo of “The Miller’s Tale” (a clerk/magician who will work an illusion/trick so that a young man can bed someone else’s wife), which reinforces that the tale is about fusion (romance and fabliau, husband in charge and wife in charge), which reinforces that the Parson’s Tale is about fusion. (Ask me if you want the connective tissue for the argument, or why it matters.) A book on the structure of Beowulf (all that stuff you’ve all led me to figure out about Beowulf over the years). A book on leadership and Beowulf. And more thinking about how Beowulf, and everything else in life, reflects Game Theory, but also the limitations of Game Theory and the social sciences generally because of their habit of shedding particular detail to get at underlying structure—and how that ties in to “System 1” and “System 2” thinking, and the importance of System 2 for the humanities. (Now aren’t you glad you don’t sit next to me on airplanes?)” Wendy Furman-Adams: “I'm on sabbatical this fall, enjoying an unfamiliar, relaxed new rhythm. But alas it's been a bit too relaxed. Nearly ten weeks ago I crushed the end of my right index finger in a sash window, and very nearly lost it. My sabbatical goal is (was?) to complete my book on twenty of the 150-plus artists who have illustrated

Paradise Lost since 1688 (one of whom lives in Brooklyn and is sending me new images as I write!). But I'm still a nine-finger typist, which has greatly impacted my writing days. On the upside, I suppose, I've been able to do more reading, more running, more relaxing, more Homeboy 5-K promotion than I normally would have done. I also went along with several classes to see Luis Alfaro's stunning new version of Medea--Mojada: A Medea in Lost Angeles--at the Getty Villa. Fortunately, my summer was quite productive. I spent many intensely pleasant days in the Huntington Library's rare book room, gathering images and taking notes for my book. I also wrote two conference papers. One was on Milton's Eve in art, and I delivered it both at the Renaissance Conference of Southern California and at the International Milton Symposium in Exeter, England (a marvelous conference in a beautiful place--staying on campus with leading and budding Miltonists from all over the world). The other was on the work of a contemporary artist, Terrance Lindall, whose eye-popping, candy-colored Milton images were first published in Heavy Metal Magazine. I've had great fun corresponding with the artist, and delivered that paper just two weeks ago at the Conference on John Milton in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. While I'm unable to type many hours a day, I'm thinking to turn that essay into a much longer article--not my original plan, but one that I know I can achieve. On the fun side, Charles met me in Dublin after the July Exeter conference, and we spent ten days visiting the land of Yeats and Joyce--including a visit to the Martello tower where Joyce briefly lived and where the first scene in Ulysses takes place. It's now a museum, decorated exactly as described in the famous breakfast scene. You can climb the tower to look out over Stephen's view of Sandycove--imagining Buck Mulligan about to appear with his shaving bowl. Throw in the Book of Kells and the oldest New Testament fragments in existence; a Neolithic passage tomb at Newgrange; the sixthcentury St. Kevin's sanctuary; a tenth-century cathedral in Kilkenny--and you've got an English major’s dream vacation.” Michelle Chihara: “This semester, I published an essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books about two important books in my subfield of literature and economics called “What We Talk About When We Talk About Finance.” The books I discuss are Leigh Claire La Berge’s Scandals & Abstractions about the financial print culture of the long 1980s and Anna Kornbluh’s Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Form. I’m also working on contacting other scholars and assigning articles for The Routledge Companion to Literature and Economics, for which I’m the co-editor. This means, for now, that I’m doing a lot of emailing with interesting academics from all over the place. I also have a new longer-term project which I brought to my academic writing group recently. This project focuses more on the role of gender in financial understanding. This fall, I have really been enjoying teaching the senior seminar, on the theme “capitalist realism.” The seniors have been working hard! I haven’t had as much time to work on my fiction this fall, as my academic research has really taken precedence. But it was nice this week to learn that my story “The Bride Laid Bare,” which came out in The Santa Monica Review in 2014, was included one the Notable list in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015 collection.”

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.)

What Have We Been Reading Lately? Andrea Rehn: “By mid-semester, most of my reading is written by students in classes, so look to your left and right to see the authors I’m currently reading. In addition to those papers, I’ve also been dipping into Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. Turkle is a prolific media scholar, and her TED talk “Alone Together” is much watched. Her arguments about how we interact with technology and with each other are thoughtful and provocative. I’m also working on Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. Nearly 900 pages, the book is taking me a while to read, since I often only get a sip at a time. But I love it, and the minute the semester finishes I doubt I’ll leave my wing back chair before I’ve finished it. For anyone who loves 19th century novels (or complex multiplot narratives like Game of Thrones, for that matter), this is a must read. What else? I’m always reading blogs. One of my current favorites is The Tattooed Professor (http://www.thetattooedprof.com/). Another great one is Kate Bowles’s Music for Deckchairs (https://musicfordeckchairs.wordpress.com/). And I always read the Profhacker blog in the Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/).” Jonathan Burton: “A few months ago I committed myself to reading things that have nothing to do with my work. But with every book I picked up I found connections to my research and teaching. Alas, that is the reading life of an English professor. Among the books I’ve read recently are Teju Cole’s Open City, Albert Camus’ The Stranger, Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investingation, Billy Collins’ Picnic, Lightning, Lolita Chakrabarty’s Red Velvet, David Grieg’s Dunsinane,, Toni Morrison’s Desdemona, Elif Shafak’s The Architect’s Apprentice, Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, Charles Yu’s Sorry Please Thank You, and Romain Puertolas’ The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir who got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe. (Yes, that is a real title.) But the book that I’ve been recommending above all others is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. Coates is a senior reporter for The Atlantic where he has written powerful long-form journalism on the African American experience. In Between the World and Me, he offers a meditation on what it means to live in a black man’s body in contemporary America. He is a brilliant stylist and a provocative thinker, the kind of writer whose work seems at

once obvious and stunning. One is stunned that this hasn’t been said before because it seems far too crucial to have ever gone unsaid.” Tony Barnstone: “Where to begin? I’ve been perusing dozens of critical and historical books with titles like Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early 20th Century America and American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas. This is in service of the rewriting of my massive 670-page tome on William Carlos Williams, technology and science. I’ve been working on the damn thing for over 20 years and am getting close to done. For pleasure, oh, I’m not reading for pleasure, I’m afraid. No, I’m lying. I did just buy Tony Hoagland’s Application for Release from the Dream and am enjoying it. He’s always a terrific poet and social critic. I’ve also bought Richard Siken’s War of the Foxes. He is a wonderful poet, to my taste, as well. When I had a little time, I did read the entire Walking Dead comic book series—so different from the TV show that it’s very pleasurable. And I’ve been reading lots of books with titles like Cars and Trucks and Things that Go! to Blake.” Anne Cong-Huyen: “I’ve just started reading How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, by Mohsin Hamid. I loved his Reluctant Fundamentalist, and this was recommended to me by Steven Pokornowski, so it’s been on my shelf for ages and I’m finally picking it up. As someone interested in Global Cities, economic inequity, and labor, this book is especially interesting. It’s a bildungrsoman written in the second person in the guise of a self-help book, which makes for an interesting read. Guilty pleasure reading: I’ve started the second book in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, since I’m a sucker for Highland romances and sci-fi, so this seemed like a perfect compromise. Otherwise, I’m reading a lot of stuff on the philosophy of technology, such as Carl Mitcham’s Thinking Through Technology.” dAvid pAddy: “This past summer I traveled in Central Europe, and as preparation dove headlong into a batch of Austrian, Czech and Hungarian novels, especially Hungarian. Though not his best work, Gargoyles did have me reading yet more of the joyfully misanthropic Austrian Thomas Bernhard, and that’s always good. Highly recommend the all-gallows treat of Too Loud a Solitude by the Czech Bohumil Hrabal. Probably the best book I read this year, though, by far, was The Door by the Hungarian Magda Szabó. Seriously one of the best novels I’ve ever read. Raw, unnerving, morally bracing. Marvelous. Charlie Eastman lent me László Krasznahorkai’s The Melancholy of Resistance, also a treat, and also a bowl of Central European laughs in that fall out of the hangman’s noose type of ha ha way. During the trip I read Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts, the first of his travel narratives written in the 1930s, in which he documents his walks from the Netherlands to Turkey. A stunning book and I eagerly look forward to completing the trilogy. On the trip I picked up Geert Mak’s In Europe, a massive journalistic account of Europe across the 20th century. For my birthday my wife got me Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, which was a real treat since I hadn’t read any Mann since I was an undergraduate, and this was one of the biggies I’d never got around to. Away from the Continent, my reading has also roamed into the land of ideas for classes. For this semester’s science-fiction course, I’d read Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum

Thief and Paolo Bacagalupi’s The Water Knife, as well as, for fun, Samuel R. Delany’s earliest novellas, The Jewels of Aptor, The Ballad of Beta-2 and They Fly at Çiron. Elizabeth Sage lent me John Wyndham’s Chocky, which was also fun little charmer. Otherwise reading books that I might use for my revamped contemporary British course, such as Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island and Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing. Back to the reading chair.” Katy Simonian: “I am currently in the process of devouring Salmon Rushdie’s newest novel, Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days, which is as engaging as it is funny and whimsical. If I have the time, I am also planning to revisit a collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales, as he is a favorite of mine and was a favorite of my Grandmother’s as well. One other book that I would highly recommend is A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power, who has been a loyal and global voice on the need for genocide recognition and prevention throughout the world.” Sean Morris: “Whenever the newsletter comes out I’ve always forgotten which books I’ve read since the last time. Here are a few I can remember: George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (useful linguistic thinking about words and associations). Andreas Wagner, Arrival of the Fittest (brilliant and important history of the evolution of enzymes and how that set up a mechanism for more successful evolution). Byron, Don Juan: poetry that reads like a day at the playground, always fun. (Inspired to pick this up because of a Final Jeopardy question, straight to my Kindle and read it in the restaurant on the spot!) Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart (an important and powerful read). Dabid Brooks, The Road to Character (an edifying and sometimes inspiring dose of morals, some chapters better than others). Two excellent “Great Courses” lecture series on Forensic History: Crimes, Frauds, Scandals, and on Espionage and Covert Operations (opens with Venetian spies in Alexandria in the 800s stealing the relics of St. Mark!). Lord Dunsany, “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacranoth” (a possible common link between Tolkien’s and Howard’s sword-and-sorcery). E.E. “Doc” Smith, Spacehounds of IPC (great fun if you’re in the mood for ‘John W. Campbell meets Robert Heinlein juveniles’—and who isn’t?). Philip Dick, Blade Runner (finally read the novel—very interesting comparison to the movie). Fritz Leiber, Swords and Deviltry, and The Swords of Lankhmar. (This series is on everyone’s “must read” fantasy list, especially as Lieber invented the term “sword-and-sorcery,” but just okay on my list). Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind (“Thanks, EC!”).” Charles S. Adams: “Oddly, this has not been a period in which I have done a lot that is new—it has been mostly a period of re-reading for classes. I did read Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. This was more or less depressing, as the failures are dramatic, to say the least, and the successes rare. I read a draft of my father’s (Hazard Adams) new novel, not yet titled. I also reread his book Thinking Through Blake. Sitting in front of me, not yet opened, is Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. As always, The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. Less often, but when I can, TLS, The London Review of Books, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Harper’s.”

Michelle Chihara: Over the summer, I committed to doing some reading “not for work” and finished Hillary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” and “Bringing Up The Bodies.” I’m looking forward to reading more of her historical fiction, maybe next summer. A friend of mine writes bestselling “young adult” fiction, and her novels are really well written page turners: her most recent is a heist adventure called Six of Crows (by Leigh Bardugo). Other than that, I’m reading “for work…” but a book I’m very interested in finishing is Sarah Brouillette’s Literature and The Creative Economy. I had also assigned TaNehisi Coate’s memoir The Beautiful Struggle before he won the MacArthur “genius” grant, and have been excited to see him getting so much attention. His work is fantastic. I’m also looking forward to reading Jedediah Purdy’s After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene. Otherwise, I’m reading student work and whatever articles people are tweeting about at The Los Angeles Review of Books and The Atlantic. I just re-subscribed to The New Yorker. This feels very “old school” to me, but something about the looming presidential election made me feel the need for some old-fashioned print journalism (even though I mostly read it online).

English Department Courses for January and Spring 2016 (All Subject to at Least Some Change) Below is supplemental information from most of the faculty about the departmental courses scheduled for the remainder of the 2014-2015 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, the department office, or our department chair, Tony Barnstone for answers to questions these descriptions might raise. We note as well that some instructors may be teaching courses in the INTD, GCS, WSP, and GWS (love those acronyms!) categories 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 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: Many sections of “Why Read?” are available. 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, 8

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.

January 2016 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. ENGL 204: Playwriting Workshop (Lisa Grissom) What makes writing for the stage unique--different from TV and film? This course will introduce you to the basics of playwriting emphasizing character, structure, dialogue, and action. Required coursework will include daily readings, critiquing of plays, in-class writing exercises and sharing of work. You will each write a 10-minute play which will be workshopped and shared with the class. You will also be required to write one critical paper. We will study a combination of both classic and contemporary plays including Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller), How I Learned To Drive (Paula Vogel), Good People (David Lindsay-Abaire) and All In The Timing (David Ives) among others. This class is very much a working writer's group where we will share ideas and feedback freely. (Seeing at least one play beforehand is strongly suggested!) ENGL 290, Section 1: Digital Journalism (Joe Donnelly) ENGL 290, Section 2: Try Not to Scream: Horror and the Human Condition (Kate Durbin) This course will explore contemporary horror novels as windows into the human condition, cultural fears, and the state of the globe. Books include: Max Brooks' World War Z, William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, and Natsuo Kirino's Out. Students will also create their own horror narratives or short films based on concepts gleaned in class. ENGL 380: Digital Labor: Race, Gender, and Technology in Literature and Film (Anne Cong-Huyen) This course will examine to work of “digital technologies.” We will recuperate the labor of such women as Ada Lovelace, Hedy Lamaar, Grace Hopper, the unnamed women who work in electronics manufacturing industries worldwide, or the millions of women who produce and circulate content that produces revenue for corporations. We will interrogate long-held understandings of “technology”, “the digital”, and the labor integral to these spaces and infrastructures. Students will develop a foundation in media studies,

technology studies, and feminist studies, which has a stronghistory in recognizing and problematizing intimate and domestic “women’s work.” Students will be engaging with critical scholarship as well as primary cultural texts ranging from literature, film, new media, journalism, etc. Each mode of scholarship and production will inform the others, and students must be prepared to actively contribute to and maintain an in-person and online classroom community, while also collaboratively producing their own critical digital texts. 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: Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy (Scott Creley)

Spring 2016 See head note at the start of the course listing section for a discussion of the ins and outs of 120 registration. ENGL 120, Section 1: Why Read? (Sean Morris) “Heroes and Heroines “ Let me tell you a story. It’s the story of a young man, an orphan, living with his aunt and uncle, who believes himself to be quite ordinary, until one day he learns that, not only is he not ordinary, he’s the most extraordinary person who ever lived. And with the help and guidance of a wise old man, he learns how to use his special talent to save the world. This is the “heroic archetype,” or a part of it: You’ve heard this story many times in many different forms. (I’m saving specific examples for class!) Now I’d like to ask the question, why? What about a heroic story allows it to transcend the simple formula at its root? This is the theme or our class. In some ways it’s just a standard, college, “introduction to literature” class, covering the literary things students are “supposed to know,” though these turn out also to have real value for prospective English majors, and prospective human beings. But more specifically we’ll explore the changing concepts of heroism, and some concepts that have not changed, by looking at heroic stories from the Middle Ages through to our own time. The heroic archetype is the main theme of the course, but there is also another. The general title of the class follows Mark Edmundson’s book, Why Read?, an extended essay in which he seeks to rekindle enthusiasm for the study of literature by returning to the 10

large questions about life abandoned by many academics. In a world where our time and attention are demanded by ever-increasing commitments and distractions, it is worth asking whether we should bother to read, and in particular read complex fictions from bygone days. Edmundson argues, as you might expect, that it is worth our time, and we will address his thesis by asking some larger questions about literature as well as the heroic ones: How do literature and other kinds of writing differ? Is literature better than these other creations? Why bother reading it? In the end I hope to convince you that literature ultimately enriches our lives in proportion to the time and concentration we invest in it. And hopefully these texts will inspire you to become lifelong readers of literature, continuing to explore books long years after you have tossed your caps in the air, and the echoes of “Pomp and Circumstance” have died away. [Readings will probably include: selections of short poems, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, “Lanval,” a Shakespeare play, George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man, Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone. ENGL 120, Sections 2, 4, and 5: Why Read? (Scott Creley) “Life During Wartime” “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt” – Kurt Vonnegut This class will explore why we read by studying texts that expose the surprising tenderness with which we humans behave during even our darkest hours. The texts selected for this semester are all stories people at war who are struggling to survive and craft meaning during the most difficult eras of recent human history. The texts we'll study include Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, and David Benioff's City of Thieves. These novels give vast, sweeping events in American history a ground-level, personal perspective. They help the reader become involved in the moral struggles that define human beings and create meaningful lives. The assignments for this class will focus on the big ethical questions and philosophical ideas embedded in the texts. These well-loved novels will make this class a fun but intellectually stimulating endeavor, and even those who don't think of themselves as “readers” will find a new love for literature in these novels. ENGL 120, Section 3: Why Read? (Joe Donnelly) ENGL 120, Sections 6 and 7: Why Read? (Katy Simonian) “Can the Empire Write Back?” Critic and author V. S. Naipaul sees colonization as an overwhelming cultural experience that renders the colonized permanently disabled. By contrast, Salmon Rushdie claims that “those whom [the English] once colonized are carving out large territories within the language for themselves” (“The Empire Writes Back”). The title of this course, Why Read?, challenges us to appreciate the broader concerns of literature and the impact of language on the way in which we read, perceive, and ultimately understand the world. During the course of the semester, we will engage in the debate set up between the

perspectives of Naipaul and Rushdie and identify where some selected works of fiction fall within the spectrum of critical interpretation within their work and the work of various authors who engage with cultivating, understanding and embracing a postcolonial identity. What role does language play in education and how does the experience of reading and writing shape us as individuals both within our families and as global citizens of the world? Is it possible (in the words of Ngugi wa Thiong’o) to decolonize the mind and if so, would we truly want to, or is it possible to embrace the colonial experience of being deemed “Other” in a world dominated by the idea of empire? The course is not meant to be 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 Empire (namely British and Europe more broadly) which dominated the literary world for the last century. By reading works of 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. ENGL 120: Why Read? Sections 8 and 9 (Kate Durbin) Cyborgs, aliens, and mutants—oh my! What can we learn by studying the parallel worlds and bodies of science fiction’s greatest literary works? A lot! In this class we will examine race and gender dynamics, environmental issues, and questions of technology, genetics, and ethics via the novels The Hunger Games, Kindred, Under the Skin, A Wrinkle in Time, and The Forever War as well as the film Flawless and the TV show Black Mirror. We will ground each text in the social and political contexts from which they were birthed, examining each dystopian world as a telling mirror of our own fears and hopes for the future of humanity. ENGL 120, Sections 10 and 11: Why Read? (Logan Esdale) ENGL 221: Major British and American Writers From 1660 (Charles S. Adams) 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 221 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.

ENGL 270: Transcultural Literature (Jonathan Burton) Under what heading would you place a book by a Nigerian woman who lives in the United States and writes about Africans who live in America, Britain and Nigeria? Is this American literature? British Literature? African Literature? Is her protagonist an African American, an American-African, or something else entirely? Our conventional categories simply do not do justice to transcultural complexities of contemporary literature. Designed in response to student interest in works by non-Anglo-American authors, this class examines literature in an increasingly interconnected world where geographic and national boundaries have become inadequate to categorize literary works. Topics will include globalization, mobility, cosmopolitanism and flexible citizenship in the works of award-winning contemporary authors including Salman Rushdie, Andrea Levy, Orhan Pamuk, Joseph O’Neill and Chimamanda Adichie. This course fulfills the CUL 6 (Crosscultural) requirement of the LIBED program. ENGL 290: Narrative Journalism (Joe Donnelly) ENGL 302: Advanced Fiction Writing (Michelle Chihara) “Digital Writing” This course is an advanced creative writing workshop, with a twist. Students in this course will be asked to create creative written projects, but this time, we will be working with digital technology as a means of exploring creative boundaries. We will read short stories in print, as well as a wide range of digital creative work. We will expose ourselves to an array of idiosyncratic voices, creative approaches and techniques. However, the final project for the class will be both creative and digital. Inspired by Jennifer Egan’s Power Point chapter in A Visit From The Goon Squad. The class will also be broken into small groups, and each group will learn one new (to them) technical means of creating digital work. Each student will create a creative final project in that medium. Students may use software like Scalar, Canva, Twine, or PowerPoint, Prezi or Tumblr. The class assumes a serious commitment to creative writing, some experience with the workshop format and a willingness to be open-minded about trying new things. We will be using the digital technology to explore the relationship between our own creative work and form. This is not a film or video class: The work created will have to be meaningfully written. But given how much reading we now do online, this class will explore the relationship between new forms of digital writing and creativity. 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, lots of film clips, and your fellow students’ drafts. ENGL 319: Early Modern Drama (Jonathan Burton) We will explore nine plays written by Shakespeare’s contemporaries. They cover the usual early modern (and perhaps modern) preoccupations and scandals: transvestism, fanaticism, adultery, murder, incest, Islam, money, roasted pig and world domination. In considering plays by Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Kyd, Francis Beaumont and others, we will also see the limits of focusing exclusively on Shakespeare. 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. This course is paired with Philosophy 312; co-registration required.

ENGL 326: Topics in Shakespeare – Rewriting Shakespeare (Jonathan Burton) The Yale scholar (and notorious blowhard) Harold Bloom has attempted to make a case for Shakespeare’s originality. But Shakespeare’s work almost always draws on classical and continental sources – and in a few cases non-European sources. In other words, part of Shakespeare’s talent was rewriting. In this class we’ll study Shakespeare’s rewriting of others’ stories as well as the rewriting of Shakespeare by contemporary British and American authors. To wit, we will read five of Shakespeare’s plays and set them against later adaptations, responses and revisions. Among the works we will read are a revision of The Merchant of Venice set among Bollywood actors in Los Angeles, two revisions Othello focused on the female lead as reimagined by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel and by the Nobel Prize winner, Toni Morrison, and a sequel to Macbeth by the Scottish playwright David Grieg. 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 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. 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!). English 333: Jane Austen in Context (Andrea Rehn)

Figure 1: from Hark a Vagrant by Kate Beaton It is a truth universally acknowledged that English majors, in possession of a spare moment, must be in want of a Jane Austen novel. In this course we will read—a lot. With serious scholarly intent we will also dance like Jane Austen (maybe even throw a ball), drink tea and play cards like her characters, and also write a lot—mostly online. We may have a class field trip to see Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which opens in February 2016. We will definitely visit the Whittier College Library special collections to explore books from the period, including a very valuable edition of Johnson’s Dictionary. Other texts may include the Youtube series Lizzie Bennet Diaries and some of the many film adaptations. We will focus on material culture in the novels and in our own work in order to notice both what makes Austen’s historical period unique, and whether there might be some similarities to our own era. For extra credit points on the first day of class, name the Whittier College faculty member who has a pet named after an Austen character. ENGL 354: Contemporary British Literature (dAvid pAddy) We are now fifteen years into the 21st century. What does Britain and British literature look like today? What are the issues that define the place and time and that concern

writers now? Who are the major voices that are sticking around and who are the emerging talents for us to keep our eyes open for? Because the “contemporary” is an ever-evolving phenomenon, I will be doing a major reworking of this course. Consider this space “under construction.” What I can tell you is that the class will take the last fifteen years or so as a distinct block of time, and we will take this opportunity to see what aesthetic and social concerns are shaping the literature coming out of Britain today. I foresee such prominent issues as the evolving shape of national identity, the concern with history and historical narrative, the omnipresence of trauma and the effects of technology. But we’ll really have to wait and see. I am still at work in deciding readings, so nothing is set in stone, but I am considering (however tentatively) some of the following: Ian McEwan’s Saturday, Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing, Jenni Fagan’s Panopticon, David Peace’s GB84, Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home, Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island, Kate Tempest’s Hold Your Own and David Mitchell’s Slade House. 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 366: Whitman and Melville (Charles S. Adams) New Catalog Course. Whitman and Melville lived at almost exactly the same time, and both produced incredibly significant works at virtually the same literary moment. Their two most important works, Leaves of Grass and Moby-Dick are huge, epic, dense, profound, difficult, obtuse, spiritual, funny, contradictory, offensive, erotic, glorious, insane, cosmic, and deeply rewarding (to mention just a few aspects). Moby-Dick is so important that I see some new reference to it every week. There is a new board game based on it, L.A. Opera is performing the operatic version this month, and the new

blockbuster film, In the Heart of the Sea (based on the same true story Moby-Dick is based on), opens in December. On the Whitman side, you have been hearing his poetry in ads for Apple products, and virtually all poetry since operates under his influence. We will look at the two works closely and take our time to know all that we can about them, their writers, and the times that produced them. Yes, one book from each writer, and half the semester on each. (O.K., I admit it, Leaves of Grass contains almost all of Whitman’s poetry.) We are going to follow these whales to the deepest level we can, looking at all the blades of grass we can see (now there is a mixed metaphor!). This is the good stuff, folks—the texts that changed everything, that try to do everything, that head us to the modern and the post-modern. These guys were doing it all before anyone knew what the all was. Not for the faint of heart or those who like to think small. But you will be the few who have actually read the works. For the English major, this course counts in the American category. For English minors, the course will count in the “major figure” category. For the Liberal Education Program it counts as “North American” in the “Culture” category. ENGL 370: Contemporary American Fiction (Michelle Chihara) We live, in contemporary America, with an increasingly urgent cultural narrative about the “death of the book” and the rise of the machine. In this narrative, books are imagined as archaic relics, fusty and nontechnical. But of course, they are no such thing. Books are created on and read with computers, and contemporary authors have new and evolving relationships not only with their readers through social media, but with other technologies. Many of today’s most prominent contemporary American authors also write for television, which is moving online. As artists working on shifting technological ground, today’s authors use new forms to telegraph new realities. They wrestle with and embody contemporary America’s pressing cultural questions. In a period that roughly begins with 9/11, we use novels and short stories to think through the end of the “American century,” the end of the age of man, dissolving borders among nations and the line between man and machine. We will also think about what happens when generic forms change—how and why does it matter that Jennifer Egan works for HBO? Authors will include Jonathan Franzen, Jennifer Egan, Dana Spiotta, Peter Ho Davies, Paul Beatty and others. ENGL 375: Chicano/Chicana Literature: “Border/Home: Identity, Culture and Class in Chicano Literature” (Michelle Chihara) Here in Los Angeles county, we live very close to the Mexican border, in a state that will soon be majority Latino/a. In this class, we will use Chicano/a literature as a means of exploring the role of borders, both political and imaginary, in art and culture. We will ask: What role do the arts play in the very real political struggles surrounding the border? In this course, students will gain an appreciation and understanding of the growing body of critically-acclaimed and trailblazing Chicano literature, and an awareness of the significance of Chicano cultural production to the field of American literature. We will approach the literature from an interdisciplinary perspective and will examine assigned texts within their larger historical, social, and political contexts. We will also ask, what

does it mean to define a body of literature by a set of hallmark socioeconomic experiences? Is this how we want to define literary canons? Within contemporary U.S. culture, most young people know what it means to struggle with one’s individual identity within a fractious, multicultural landscape. In this course, we assume that the questions asked within critical race studies―about the nature of identity, authenticity, culture and belonging―are relevant and pressing for people of all races. This is a class, in other words, for anyone who has a racial identity (which means everyone). 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 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 (Tony Barnstone) This is a class in the graphic novel and the graphic poem, from ancient pattern poems through William Blake's illuminated manuscripts and the Calligrammes of Guillame Apollinaire, and from the great proletarian wordless book artists of the 30s and 40s (Lynd Ward, Franz Masareel, Giacomo Patri and Laurence Hyde) along with some of the more humorous and surreal ones (Milt Gross and Max Ernst) through Watchmen, The Dark Knight, Maus and Maus II, and The Contract with God. Time permitting, I might add in movies like American Splendor, Crumb, and Ghost World.” Note this: you will be reading a lot of theory and literary criticism for this class and will be writing a scary large research paper. Expect the primary reading to be fun and amazing and the critical reading to really stretch your limits. I've designed the class to be extremely hard, but also extremely rewarding. Come prepared to work.

ENGL 420: Preceptorships (Various Faculty) This course is for advanced students who will act as assistants to faculty in some of the courses above. See individual faculty members concerning what might be involved. Instructor permission required. Non-Departmental Courses Taught by English Faculty GCS 100: Introduction to Globalization (pAddy and Wallis) What is the nature of the world we live in today? What does it mean to be a global citizen? How are our models of nature, society and the self being transformed in a supposedly global age? This team-taught class will provide, as the title says, an introduction to the debates and controversies, ideas and practices of globalization. After examining a general sense of what globalization is and how it might be defined and characterized, we will study this complex phenomenon from a variety of disciplinary angles. We will especially give time to globalization’s effect on the environment, economics, identity and culture. Our primary texts will be Manfred Stegner’s Globalization: A Very Short Introduction, François Bourguignon’s The Globalization of Inequality, Mark LeVine’s Heavy Metal Islam and Alain Touraine’s A New Paradigm for Understanding Today’s World, but we will also read a wide array of shorter works as well, again, from a wide span of disciplines. This class will be challenging, but we also hope it will give you the tools to better understand the world we live in and are moving toward. 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 will support 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 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 Associate Professor (Shakespeare, Early Modern Studies, Music Writing, Comparative Literature) Michelle Chihara: mchihara@whittier.edu Assistant Professor (Creative Writing—Fiction and Non-Fiction, Chicano/a Literature, American Literature, American Studies) Wendy Furman-Adams: wfurman@whittier.edu (Department Chair) 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 (19th Century British, Postcolonial Studies, Women’s Studies, Travel, Literary Theory) Visiting, Lecturer, Adjunct, 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) Anne Cong-Huyen: aconghuy@whittier.edu Scott Creley: screley@whittier.edu Joe Donnelly: jdonnel1@whittier.edu Kate Durbin: kdurbin@whittier.edu Logan Esdale: lesdale@whittier.edu Mike Garabedian: mgarabed@whittier.edu 21

Lisa Grissom: lgrissom@whittier.edu Katy Simonian: ksimonia@whittier.edu Director, College Writing Programs: Charlie Eastman ceastman@whittier.edu English/History/Writing Program Departments Administrative Assistant: Angela Olivas: afreelan@whittier.edu