IN ENGLISH Occasional Newsletter of the Whittier College Department of English Language and Literature Volume 17, #1, November 2016 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 below work and sometimes they do not. Most of you know how to find the stuff without them. https://www.facebook.com/WhittierCollegeEnglishDepartment A few years ago, as part of our outreach to alums and friends, we created a small, possibly temporary site managed by our colleagues in the alumni/advancement offices. It is now out of date, but still exists. It has a number of bits of amusement not found elsewhere: http://poetsforpoets.wordpress.com/ And our regular college-based site is: http://www.whittier.edu/Academics/EnglishLanguageAndLiterature/ This Newsletter will be up on that site and will be updated as more information comes in and your editor gets around to it.
The English Department Writing Awards (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 this academic 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. Again, any student can submit. We need to thanks lots of donors for 1
help funding these prizes, but the ASWC in particular. What a great statement by student government in choosing to help on this kind of project. Kudos!
Guest Column Priscilla Lam, ‘18 Because your editor is constantly confronted with what students know that he has no clue about, he asked Priscilla Lam to put together a list of some of the literary sites, places and oddities she looks at. Did she ever! She had some great graphics that space became a problem for, so your editor cut her down to two. Ask her if you want the full treatment. Literary Resources I am a fan of the website, “Letters of Note.” I’m able to find letters that some of my favorite authors have written that might have otherwise been hard to find or forgotten. This website is a great place to find things such as letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos from notable figures. Here is a letter F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his assistant giving her advice on how to write. This is especially insightful and helpful for growing writers. http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/07/youve-got-to-sell-your-heart.html The Paris Review is also another great resource to find interviews from authors that offer insight about their work and the process of writing. Here is an interview with Faulkner discussing the art of fiction: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4954/the-art-of-fiction-no-12-william-faulkner "The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move." –William Faulkner Places to Go Here is a list of literary things to do in LA (!!!!!) http://lithub.com/a-literary-long-weekend-in-los-angeles/ If anyone is traveling to Chicago in the spring, the American Writers Museum will be open! http://americanwritersmuseum.org/
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Beyond the Text Julian Peters is an illustrator who creates comic adaptations of poems. Here is his adaptation of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot: https://julianpeterscomics.com/page-1-the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock-by-t-s-eliot/
Also, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe: https://julianpeterscomics.com/annabel-lee/
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Importance of the English Degree As an English major, I’m often questioned about the usefulness and purpose of the degree. Those who study literature and craft of writing know just how practical and important it is. This article discusses the importance of the English degree. “No one has found a way to put a dollar sign on this kind of literacy, and I doubt anyone ever will. But everyone who possesses it — no matter how or when it was acquired — knows that it is a rare and precious inheritance.” Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/opinion/sunday/the-decline-and-fall-of-theenglish-major.html
What Have We Been Up to Lately? Wendy Furman-Adams: “One of the bigger events of my scholarly life took place on September 9, when I gave one of two keynote addresses at a conference hosted by the
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University of Newcastle (England) on The Afterlives of Eve. My hour-long paper, "Eve and the Artist's Gaze," opened the conference--where an intimate group of scholars represented variations on the biblical Eve, from medieval sculpture to Alex Garland's hot sci-fi movie, Ex Machina. The other keynote was by feminist icon Sandra Gilbert (on Eve imagery in the work of Anne Sexton and Adrienne Rich), and it was wonderful to meet and mingle with a wide variety of feminist scholars, among whom were several other Miltonists. Another high point was sharing a pub supper with Whittier English alumna Grace Megumi Chou, now a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Durham, just a few miles from Newcastle. Megumi also attended my talk, which made the moment all the richer. This year I'm serving as president of the Renaissance Conference of Southern California, as I did once before in the late 1980s. Our goal this year has been to boost membership, and English alumni Kellen Aguilar and Lauren Vau have been working with me as Albert Upton fellows to compile a 78-page Excel list of Renaissance scholars in Southern California. (Who knew there were that many?) They also plan to help out at our annual meeting at the Huntington Library on March 4, 2017.” dAvid pAddy: “Just when I thought I was done writing about J. G. Ballard, I ended up spending this past summer working on two commissioned articles. The first, “In Constraints: J. G. Ballard’s Adventures in Potential Literature,” which analyzes some of Ballard’s more experimental short stories in the light of the Oulipo group, is already out there in the world, in Deep Ends: The J. G. Ballard Anthology 2016. The second, “Looking Back at J. G. Ballard in the British Library,” will appear later this year in the Eaton Journal of Archival Research in Science Fiction. Lastly—on a non-Ballardian front—I will be presenting a paper at the November PAMLA conference in Pasadena, “Knowing and Unknowing in Twenty-First-Century British Literature.” Jonathan Burton: “I am awaiting the imminent publication of an article on a 1902 mashup of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet in a journal focused on Shakespeare and appropriation called Borrowers and Lenders. The article looks at a zany play called The New Hamlet, written by a family of gentleman farmers in Illinois and which uses Shakespeare’s works to engage with ideas about “the New Woman.” I developed that piece as I was teaching for the first time my “Hamlet and its Afterlives class,” a course I will reprise this spring. At the moment, however, I am working on a chapter on “Race and Empire” commissioned for the A Cultural History of Western Empires in the Renaissance. One of our majors, Regina Spadoni, is acting as my research assistant, doing a lot of the legwork in locating illustrations for the chapter. That leaves me time to do things like chaperone the middle school dance where my daughter did the whip and nae nae while dressed in a hot dog costume.” Tony Barnstone: “I have been working hard with Jake Carbine and others to put together the Alternative Spring Break trip to China, funded largely by a Luce Foundation grant. This is a great opportunity especially for literary students to go to Beijing and Kunming in China, meet contemporary Chinese poets and scholars, go to exciting places such as the Forbidden City and Great Wall, and do some of their own writing‹whether
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poetry, fiction or journalism‹for the trip for presentation at Whittier's undergraduate research conference (URSCA). I will also be doing some panels and talks at the Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics conference at Cal State LA in November, and I have just concluded a busy season of bookstore and college readings to promote my new book of illustrated poems based on pulp fiction, B movies and comic books, Pulp Sonnets. Most exciting for me is that I am launching into some new projects, including three children’s books (for which I am doing both text and art) and a screenplay for an animated children’s movie. Finally, my long-time-in-the-works project based on the Tarot and the neuroscience of creativity is being revised yet again for submission to an interested trade publisher. Wish me luck!” Joe Donnelly: “The O.Henry Prize Stories Collection 2016 finally came out with my story "Bonus Baby" as a lucky inclusion. The collection features the (supposed) best short stories of the year and there are some great reads in it for any fans of short fiction. Coming in early November is an anthology I'm happy to be a part of along with such luminaries as Luis J. Rodriguez, Deanne Stallman, Dana Johnson, and many more, including Doors' drummer John Densmore. It's called Los Angeles in the 1970s: Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine (Rarebird Lit). We're trying to put together a reading event at Whittier after the new year. Stay tuned!” Charles S. Adams: “Since the next newsletter will be well after it, I guess I should mention that I will be headed over to the Whittier Public Library to give a talk in part of their series concerning the centenary of the U.S. entry into World War I. I suspect I will be thinking about the somewhat apocalyptic mood in American literature in the first two decades of the 20th century and the way the War ironically led to the rise of American literature in importance, even as the conflict produces the “lost generation.” With Joe Price, I spoke about the Institute for Baseball Studies at the annual meeting of the Popular Culture/American Culture Associations last April.” Katy Simonian: “I am currently preparing to present my paper, “‘Women Must Be Tortured’: Jean Rhys and the Colonial Theater of Subversive Silence” at the 2016 PAMLA Conference. My research is centered on the use of silence to combat and subvert the highly gendered nature of racism and violence against women of the colonial era, specifically in the West Indies and Great Britain. I also explore the subject of trauma in the aftermath of colonization with regard to linguistic imperialism and its impact on the individual as a source of both alienation and empowerment. Andrea Rehn: “As you know, I’ve been teaching less in the department this year, as I am teaching in the Whittier Scholars Program as well as working together with Anne Cong-Huyen and Sonia Chaidez on Whittier’s ever-growing Digital Liberal Arts program. In addition, I’m excited to announce that I have joined the steering committee for the 2017 Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America. The AGM, as we call it, will bring together leading critics of Austen from the US, Canada, and Britain, as well as filmmakers, video game makers, and fans of all sorts. 2017’s AGM will be in Huntington Beach, CA in October 2017. If you are interested in working at the conference please get in touch with me! There will be many opportunities for
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students to be involved—and you might even get to meet Emma Thompson (shhhh, don’t tell)! 2016 has been a busy year for my scholarship as well. I’ve given a number of papers, on both nineteenth century literature and also on digital humanities topics—and sometimes on a combination of both. This year I’ve spoken at the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the British Women Writers Conference, the Jane Austen Association of North America, and the Digital Media and Learning Conference, and given a few invited talks at colleges around the country. In addition, I’ve just learned that a new essay on teaching Austen will be published in 2017, as will a book chapter on Rudyard Kipling in a forthcoming collection on Trauma and Nationalism in Nineteenth Century Literature. Finally, I have the great pleasure of working with two wonderful Mellon Mays Fellows this year, both of whom will be presenting papers on nineteenth century novels soon. For Spring 2017: my courses are for the WSP. Come stop by my temporary office in Wardman Hall if you’d like to talk about nineteenth century literature!” Michelle Chihara “Over the summer, I presented my work from a new book project, about behavioral economics and American culture, at the Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth College. This fall, I’m still hard at work on that project. I’m also now receiving articles from other scholars for The Routledge Companion to Literature and Economics, of which I am the co-editor. I have also started working as a section editor on Economics & Finance for the Los Angeles Review of Books. So I have plenty on my plate! My student Brianna Martinez is now acting as a research assistant for me, helping with my book and with the Routledge, and I’m hoping to make real progress on these projects this year as a result. Most of my work right now is this research and editing, but I have been keeping the creative writing part of my brain alive with some short prose pieces which I hope to bring to China with me in the spring for the Alternative Spring Break trip with Whittier College and the Luce Foundation. Also, this semester I have been teaching the College Writing Seminar for the first time. Our theme is “Hipsters & Millenials,” we have been questioning generational names and looking at how they function. I have really been enjoying this class—look out for the class of 2020!”
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? Wendy Furman-Adams: “If there was ever a time I was tempted to switch to a kindle, it was this summer--when I traveled a lot while reading the massive four volumes of Elena 7
Ferrante's Neopolitan Novels. A total of 1,693 pages, they recount the vexed but profound friendship of two brilliant young women who come of age in 1950s Naples--one of whom leaves school in the fifth grade and the other of whom completes graduate school and goes on to become a very successful writer. The sense of time and place is addictively immersive--a history of modern Italy read through the eyes of a woman who has been hiding her "actual" identity, but who clearly has lived most of the fascinating but often bleak experiences she recounts. Ferrante's prose (at least in the English translation) barrels along with hardly a breath--full of anger, empathy and insight. The writer has been compared to Balzac and even to "an angry Jane Austen." But I think of her more as a kind of female Carlos Fuentes, whose Years of Laura Diaz immersed me in Mexican history in a similar, addictive way a number of summers ago.” dAvid pAddy: “In the last newsletter I mentioned that for Christmas my wife had given me the marvelous gift of a subscription from Daunt Books in London. Every month I receive a surprise book in the mail, and every one of them has been a real treat. Since the last In English, I have received and read the following: Emmanuel Carrère’s biography of Russian rogue Limonov; Anna Smaill’s novel The Chimes (a post-apocalyptic future in which music has taken over speech and memory); Eugene Vodalazkin’s magical realist novel set in Medieval Russia, Laurus; Mathias Enard’s harrowing and brilliant Zone; José Eduardo Agualusa’s novel set in the wake of the war for Angolan independence, A General Theory of Oblivion; and Nobelist Svetlana Alexievich’s epic work of oral history, Second-Hand Time: The Last of the Soviets. I highly recommend all of these, but especially Carrère’s biography, Enard’s novel and Alexievich’s creative non-fiction. Recently I also got on a kick of reading Stefan Zweig, the Austrian writer who was immensely popular in the early twentieth century, but who faded from literary history until relatively recently. (Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel helped a bit in the recovery.) I have devoured and simply loved The Post-Office Girl, A Chess Story, Journey into the Past and Burning Secret. Looking forward to more. Other novels along the way have been another Nobelist, Patrick Modiano, and his work In the Café of Lost Youth, Kingsley Amis’s Take a Girl Like You, Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, John Le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, China Miéville’s This Census Taker (still thinking about what I think about this one), the amazing Satantango by the phenomenal Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai and Book Two of the continuing-tobe-ridiculously good My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Finally, in a slightly more popular culture vein, I’ve also recently enjoyed the Norwegian pop artist Pushwagner’s graphic novel, Soft City, the final book of Hannu Rajaniemi’s post-singularity trilogy, The Causal Angel, and two books about music, Complicated Game (interviews with XTC’s Andy Partridge) and John Szwed’s Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra.” Jonathan Burton: “I try not to ignore the recommendations of people I respect. So I read Nayomi Munaweera’s What Lies Between Us at my wife’s recommendation, Paul Beatty’s The Sellout at the recommendation of Michelle Chihara’s Senior Seminar
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students, Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth at José Orozco’s suggestion, and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad at Barack Obama’s recommendation. I enjoyed all three, but I think I was most impressed with Whitehead’s book. I’ve read everything that Whitehead has published and I’ve never been disappointed. Whether he is writing about Zombies, the legend of John Henry, elevator inspectors, or fugitive slaves, Whitehead is always writing about us and about our contemporary racial culture. For those interested in drama, I will recommend Christopher Shinn’s Teddy Ferrara, a play interested in campus sexual harassment, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon, a brilliantly irreverent riff on Dion Boucicault’s very dated 19th century play about illicit interracial desire. Currently, I am reading Ian McEwan’s brand new novel, Nutshell. Here, McEwan reimagines Hamlet as told from the perspective of a fetal Hamlet in a very modern and fantastic resetting of Shakespeare’s play in modern-day London. Since I’m teaching my “Hamlet and its Afterlives” class next semester, this one may appear on a syllabus very soon.” Tony Barnstone: “Some books about Zen and problem solving: The Gateless Gate: The Classic Book of Zen Koans (Yamada, Koun); Creative Problem Solving Techniques To Change Your Life (Smith, Colin G); One Hand Clapping: Zen Stories for All Ages (Martin, Rafe); Two Zen Classics: Mumonkan and Hekiganroku (A. V. Grimstone); No Barrier: Unlocking the Zen Koan - A New Translation of the Zen Classic "Wumenguan" (Mumonkan) (Cleary, Thomas); The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving (Jones, Morgan D.) The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuan (Mumonkan) (Aitken, Robert); Zen Buddhism, An Introduction to Zen with Stories, Parables and Koan Riddles of the Zen Masters, decorated with figures from old Chinese ink- paintings (anon); Book of Wild, Sexy, Desperate and Wise Literary Essays: Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life (Addonizio, Kim) Cool New Books of Poetry: The Vig of Love (Yarrow, Bill); The Day's Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech (Dobyns, Stephen); Counting Descent (Smith, Clint); Mortal Trash: Poems (Addonizio, Kim); Odes (Olds, Sharon); Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Vuong, Ocean); sad boy / detective (Sax, Sam)” Kate Durbin: “Currently I have a beautiful stack of books waiting for me to read them during the next school break, mostly related to my current projects. A few of these books include Object Oriented Feminism edited by Katherine Behar, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Bruce Wagner’s Dead Stars, and James Ellroy’s My Dark Places. I’m also watching a lot of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Charles S. Adams: “I spent most of the summer reading Poe for class. I recommend Cornelia Nixon’s Jarrettsville, based on a real-life murder in the mid 19th century. (ull disclosure: Cornelia recently married my father. I did read Martha Banta’s Henry James: An Alien’s “History” of America. Martha was my dissertation director and is one of the leading James scholars. She is in her 80s now and this book represents a kind of summation of her life’s work on James. I am looking now at a stack of unread “next in
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line” books. Among them are Nancy Marie Brown’s Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and he Woman Who Made Them (a Mike McBride recommendation) and Oscar Hijuelos’ Twain and Stanley Enter Paradise. I assume all have seen the long-needed Images of America: Whittier by our own Mike Garabedian and Rebecca Ruud. Probably the best in this series I have seen. Really!” Katy Simonian: “I am currently re-reading and exploring the works of Zabel Yesayan as part of a broader research project. As a prominent voice within the Armenian community, Yesayan was the only woman on the list of intellectuals to be arrested and murdered on April 24, 1915, a date which marks the beginning of the Armenian Genocide. Forced into exile, Yesayan continued her work as a novelist, translator and Professor of Armenian and French until facing persecution yet again under the Soviet Union for her work promoting Armenian nationalism and creative freedom. She was arrested and sent to Siberia where she ultimately lost her life. Her life and work inspires writers and artists around the world who face persecution for their commitment to artistic expression and social justice. My Soul in Exile offers a clear and poignant account of the transformative power of trauma from her perspective as a Genocide survivor and advocate for freedom and human rights.” Andrea Rehn: “As is usual these days, my nightstand is piled high with books half read. I love to read so much that I can’t help beginning a new wonderful adventure before I’m finished with the current one—and the pile just keeps growing. So what are my favorite half-read books of the year so far? Here are a few. Please don’t tell me how they end! The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowell is fun stuff for any Bronte fan. The Girls by Emma Cline is too painful to read, and too fascinating to put down. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is an alternate history of Victorian England in which a magical revolution (rather than an industrial one) transforms everything. It’s so good that I dip into it regularly, and I’m on my third full rereading. Oh, and just because it’s Halloween, I’ll admit to recently reading the latest (?) Anne Rice potboiler,The Wolf Gift, a predictable but nonetheless satisfying airplane book. Finally, as always, I regularly read my weekly newspapers (mostly online these days) and zillions of blogs.” Michelle Chihara: “For my research, I read Philip Mirowski’s Never Let A Serious Crisis Go To Waste—it’s exhaustively researched and insightful (and it’s funny!). Another important nonfiction book I read and then had to bring to my students is Jennifer Silva’s Coming Up Short, about the socioeconomic realities for young adults getting out of college. I had a complicated set of reactions to Viet Than Nyugen’s The Sympathizer, a fascinating novel about Vietnam and America and a fictionalized filming of Apocalypse Now. I’m enjoying Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel American Born Chinese (Yang won a MacArthur, and Nyugen won a Pulitzer – but only after I had already taught part of the novel! I swear I’m not just following the big prizes). I always enjoy my friend Leigh Bardugo’s fantasy YA books, and her latest is no exception, Crooked Kingdom. And perhaps as a result of reading Bardugo, I read the sequel to Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, and am now almost done with book 3 of that series.”
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Joe Donnelly: “I've been reading Dreamland by Sam Quinones, Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance and Ghettoside by Jill Leovy... all great works of literary nonfiction. As one of the judges for the PEN USA Literary Journalism awards, I spent last summer reading just about everything in journalism published west of the Mississippi and thought to have literary merit. We chose "An Unbelievable Story of Rape," by former L.A. Times and current Propublica journalist T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project. Good thing, too, since it went on to win the Pulitzer. Charlie Eastman: I am reading a lot of stuff about early-20th century Greenwich Village for a class I’m team teaching with Andrea Rehn, most notably The Village by John Strausbaugh. I am grateful to Rafa Chabran for his loan of Alberto Manguel’s Curiosities, an exploration of the human propensity to question through the lens of Dante’s Divine Comedy. On dAve pAddy’s recommendation I started (then abandoned, then restarted) Mathias Enard’s Zone, and there has been the usual flurry of books on responding to genocide (including—get this—Responding to Genocide, edited by Lupel and Verdeja) and Italian cinema.”
News from the College Writing Program Charlie Eastman, Director A busy, busy fall is underway. We are offering 27 sections of INTD 100 and 2 sections of INTD 90, as well as 22 Writing Intensive courses. Spring will be tamer, with only 3 sections of INTD 100 (but a similar load of WICs). But this January term we are reviving the winter writing workshop, INTD 90/190. This class is required for students who do not succeed in INTD 90 this fall, but is also highly recommended for students who struggled in INTD 100 or just feel the need to bolster those critical writing skills. Please keep this in mind as you begin advising!
English Department Courses for January, and Spring 2016-17 academic year (All Subject to at Least Some Change) Below is supplemental information from most of the faculty about the departmental courses scheduled for the 2016-2017 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 current department chair, Tony Barnstone (dAvid pAddy, in Spring 2017, and Andrea Rehn, starting in Fall) for answers to questions these descriptions might raise. We note as well that some instructors may be teaching courses in the INTD, GCS, WSP, 11
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, 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 2017 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 workheavy--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 290, Section 1: Digital Journalism (Joe Donnelly) In this class, we will study the impacts of the digital revolution on journalism—what’s changed, what remains the same and what the future of the brave new world might look like. We will also set up a working, digital newsroom and publish stories on our medium.com digital platform. Journalism, digital or otherwise, is learned mostly through practice and you will be expected to go report, write and publish compelling, multimedia stories. ENGL 290, Section 4: Try Not to Scream: Contemporary Horror Fiction (Kate Durbin) This course will explore contemporary horror novels as windows into the human 12
condition and the state of the globe. Horror sub-genres covered will include teen girls and demon possession, ghosts and haunted houses, serial killers (including female serial killers), zombies, found footage horror, witches, and meta-horror. Books include: Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black,, William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, and Natsuo Kirino's Out. Films include The Witch, The Cabin in the Woods, and Paranormal Activity. Students will also create their own horror narratives via the gaming platform Twine based on concepts gleaned in class, in collaboration with the Digital Lib Arts Lab. This is an ideal course for students interested in contemporary horror literature, film studies, and video games.” ENGL 302, Advanced Fiction Writing (Michelle Chihara) This course will develop your prose fiction writing skills by focusing on creating new and sustainable daily habits. Every day, we will set aside time to quiet our minds, approach the blank page. There will be a short daily reading selection. We will share our work with each other online. We will not look at work generated before the class period, instead, we will use the intensive January term to open a mental space of experimentation and daily “flow.” ENGL 390, Section 1: Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy (Scott Creley) In Whittier College’s Science Fiction & Fantasy Workshop, students will learn to write and edit their own literary science fiction and fantasy stories through the study of the masters and by way of workshopping the writing of their fellow students. This class will study western science fiction and Fantasy from the late 1800s to the contemporary era, and draw writing exercises and inspiration from this deep field of work. Writers in this workshop will analyze the short fiction of authors such as E.M. Forster, Neil Gaiman, Octavia Butler, and Alice Sheldon (along with many others). Ultimately, this course will demonstrate that science fiction and fantasy represent the purest distillation of a society’s hopes and fears, and that these genres represent a unique window into the human experience that no other approach can truly match. ENGL 390, Section 3: The Canterbury Pilgrimage (Sean Morris) What better way to study The Canterbury Tales than by tracing the footsteps of its pilgrims? In this course, we will travel to England, visit the locations of Chaucer’s pilgrimage, and talk about his tales as we do so. Finally, each student will tell a story of his or her own making or re-making. (Chaucer, after all, adapted and remade sources in his writings.) All of the Jan Term course itself will take place in England, and most of the book work will be done in the regular Chaucer class, ENGL 324 (from Fall 2015 or Fall 2016), including an intensive reading of The Canterbury Tales and an exploration of the idea of pilgrimage, comparing our philosophies of life to the outlooks offered by Chaucer’s pilgrims. For The Canterbury Tales is more than a mere collection of stories; it is a debate—about which tale is best, but by implication also about which teller is best, and which way of life. For the stories we tell in England, each story will also be more than a tale; it will reflect in some way his or her own conclusions about the best path to follow on this pilgrimage of life. As for the traveling, we will divide our time primarily between London and Canterbury, but with some appropriate stops in between, and possible side trips to Stratford-upon-Avon, Oxford, and Bath (towns with
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connections to a certain Franklin, Miller, and Wife). We’ll see where Chaucer lived, and died; see some of the non-literary work he left behind; visit medieval hotels and the Canterbury Cathedral; taste the “flavor” of relevant regions of England; and evaluate modern approximations of some of the things we will have read—from inns to taverns to roadways. Add to this grand cities, picturesque countryside, evenings and weekends for exploring England’s non-Chaucerian attractions, possible sites for our own personal pilgrimages (Beowulf manuscript and Platform 9 ¾, anyone?) and the best fish and chips in the world (I’ll show you where): Who wouldn’t come “from every shires ende” to join us? ENGL 390, Section 4: Experimental Drama, New York City (Jonathan Burton) Experimental Drama/NYC will be a partial travel course with online, on-site and classroom components. Students will explore the theory and practice of experimental drama, in a course divided into three parts: (1) Theorizing experimental drama; (2) evaluating experimental drama; and (3) practicing experimental drama. In the first week of the course, students will read twentieth and twenty-first century theories of experimental drama and contribute written responses to an online forum. In the second week, students will meet in New York City to attend performances associated with four experimental theater festivals as well as one mainstream Broadway performance that will serve as a point of comparison. During the remaining period of the term, students will workshop their own experimental works, rehearse them and finally present performances accompanied by prefatory essays of the sort you might find in a theater program. Instructor permission required.
Spring 2017 See head note at the start of the course listing section for a discussion of the ins and outs of 120 registration. Note: Section numbers have changed since the publication of the spring newsletter. ENGL 120, Sections 1, 6, and 7, Why Read?: Can the Empire Write Back? (Katy Simonian) Critic and author V. S. Naipaul sees colonization as an overwhelming cultural experience that renders the colonized permanently disabled. By contrast, Salmon Rushdie claims that “those whom [the English] once colonized are carving out large territories within the language for themselves” (“The Empire Writes Back”). The title of this course, Why Read?, challenges us to appreciate the broader concerns of literature and the impact of language on the way in which we read, perceive, and understand the world. During the course of the semester, we will engage in the debate between the perspectives of Naipaul and Rushdie and identify where some selected works of fiction fall within the spectrum of critical interpretation set up in their work. The course is not meant to be a survey of Twentieth Century British literature, but rather a detailed look into varieties of postcolonial texts from some of the different corners of the former Empire which continue to shine within the literary world. Reading works from Ireland, Africa, the Caribbean, and India, offers a stronger understanding of the complexity of language,
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which is one of the connective threads between each of these writers and their works. We will consider the development of linguistic identity in relation to English and as it has the power to both perpetuate and subvert the notion of “The Other” in reference to formerly colonized individuals. By reading a series of short fiction along with a novel, play, essays and selections of poetry, we will explore issues of cultural identity, race, gender, socioeconomic status and linguistic imperialism through the experiences of those within the postcolonial Diaspora and independent former colonies. Can voices from within the former Empire indeed write back? The answers to this and many other questions will lead us to a greater understanding of the impact of language on identity in the context of the colonial and postcolonial experience. Ultimately, we will gain perspective on the multiple lenses through which to engage with such works and recognize the power of literature as a means of conveying an understanding of these issues to readers. ENGL 120, Sections 2, 4, and 5, Why Read?: Literature Through Heroes and Monsters (Scott Creley) The archetypes of the hero and monster are alive and well in our modern world. Monsters stalk our thoughts and heroes loom large, carrying our hopes and dreams with them as they beat back the darkness. These ideas are ancient and powerful, and this course will delve into what they mean, how they are defined, and the impact they have on art, literature and culture. This course will use the Hero’s Journey as a means of exploring the deep ideas behind literature as diverse as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Grant Morrison’s take on Superman. We’ll seek to understand why these ideas are so pervasive across thousands of years and thousands of miles, and how these structures can be used as tools to analyze our lives. ENGL 120, Sections 8 and 9, Why Read?: Science Fiction (Kate Durbin) Surveillance, time travel, and dystopias—oh my! In this class we will examine race and gender dynamics, environmental issues, aliens, technological advancements and economic disparity, robot takeovers (the singularity), and more via novels such as Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, Michel Faber’s Under the Skin, Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. We will watch films and shows such as Netflix’s Black Mirror, Jennifer Phang’s Advantageous, and Ridley Scott’s Alien. We will examine each parallel world as a revealing mirror of our past, present, and possible futures. Students will also create their own characters from the future in a multi-media project, using the platform Scalar. Their characters will regularly report back to the class about the state of the globe 200 years from today. ENGL 120, Section 9, Why Read?: Home/Away from Home (Jonathan Burton) In this section of English 110, we will focus on the trope, or motif, of “Home and Away.” By doing so, we take seriously the experiences of students moving away from home, or between home and college, and also more generally the ways in which ideas of home, homelessness or alienation shape so many literary experiences. Home can support us and it can limit us. It exerts its force on how we see ourselves and the world beyond us. In this way of thinking, home is not so much a physical structure as a force that structures our thought and feelings. Literary explorations can expose those structures, help us to stretch them, or develop compassion for others in or struggling to make their own homes.
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Readings will include Jennine Capó Crucet’s Make Your Home Among Strangers, Billy Collins’ Sailing Alone Around the Room, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, William Shakespeare’s Othello and Toni Morrison’s Desdemona, among others. ENGL 120, Section 10, Why Read?: What is Reality? (Charles S. Adams) The classical attack on literature (actually on all art), going back to Plato, is that it essentially “lies.” It is a representation of reality, not the thing itself, and thus deceptive, leading us into possibly dangerous errors. I propose to take on this question by complicating it. There is a considerable literature that is about, among other things, literature itself, about the use of telling stories. What is the use of the imagination? What claims can literature make to be about reality? What can art do to actually have a positive role in the affairs of the world, in spite of what Plato says? We will look at fiction, poetry, and some film. I know we will read The Life of Pi, and Atonement (both of which have become interesting films). I think we will consider poetry by Walt Whitman given that he thoroughly believed that poetry could and should be about real people doing real things and that his poetry would change the world in a positive direction. I am thinking about the rest. ENGL 120, Section 11, Why Read?: Imprinting L.A. (Joe Donnelly) Or, “How Los Angeles Became Literature.” We'll read Fante, Didion, Beatty, Rodriguez and maybe a surprise guest star. ENGL 221, Major British and American Writers from 1785 (Michelle Chihara) This course continues the survey of literature in English begun in ENG 220 (Which is a pre-requisite). One of the big differences in this course from ENGL 220 is that in addition to continuing our review of the developments in and of British literary history we will have to consider the somewhat parallel trajectory of American literary history. The course will in fact begin with some of the foundations of American literature. Moving back and forth between British and American literature, we will examine Romanticism, the Victorian Age, Realism, Modernism, and conclude with some directions taken in contemporary literature. As we investigate the predominant ideas and aesthetic premises in each era, we will also consider literature’s relationship to matters such as the rise and fall of the British Empire, the building of the American nation, the historical importance of revolution and industrialization, and matters of race, class, and gender. As we consider shifting notions of aesthetics, we will also consistently ask: “What is the relationship between national identity and literature, if any? What was/is the literary canon, and how should we think about it?” Out of some necessity, we will focus on representative works rather than trying to do it all. This course is foundational for the English major and will include guest appearances by departmental faculty, who will introduce their particular literary interests. ENGL 290, Section 1, Environmental Journalism: New Ways of Writing About the Environment (Joe Donnelly) The environment is the biggest story in the world. The question of sustainability is the one narrative none of us can escape. So, why do we struggle to make environmental journalism feel urgent and resonant? Maybe, it’s because we’re not going about the job
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the right way. This course will look at new ways of writing about the environment with the impact the urgency of the issue demands. ENGL 290, Section 2, Ecopoetry: Workshop in Writing Poetry and the Environment (Tony Barnstone) This class is a hybrid class, both creative writing and critical study, focusing on ecopoetry. Ecopoetry is poetry written about the complex interrelations of humans and the environment. It includes such subjects such as environmental degradation, apocalypse, nuclear war, pollution, spirituality in nature, environmental ethics and responsibilities, and celebration of nature. In this class, students will read a wide range of eco-poems from around the world, with a special focus on the poetry of China. During the spring break, those students who wish to can accompany the professor and other Whittier faculty and students on a field trip to China, which will be largely subsidized by the college. The primary work students will do for the course is the writing of original poetry. This class does fulfill one of the workshop requirements for the Creative Writing Track in the English major. Contact Professor Barnstone for more information. ENGL 290, Section 3, Quaker Campus Work Credit (Joe Donnelly) Students who work on the production and writing of the Quaker Campus can claim credit for their work through this course, so long as they are also enrolled in a journalism course. The course is to be taken only as Pass/No Pass. ENGL 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 308, Screenwriting: The Television Pilot (Michelle Chihara) This class will introduce students to writing for television, with a focus on creating the first episode of an original television series. From HBO’s Game of Thrones to Amazon’s Transparent, the range of what’s possible in this format is wide. We will work on pitches, loglines, outlines, breaking story and finally writing the entire pilot. We will cover acts, structure and other conventions of the industry. Students will be expected to write and polish either a half-hour comedy or a one-hour drama script, with a focus on creating pilots that are, in fact, first episodes in longer narrative arcs (story engine). ENGL 311, History of the English Language (Sean Morris) This is your language 1000 years ago: “Hwæt! We gardena in geardagum þeodcyninga
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þrym gefrunon, hu þa æþelingas ellen fremmedon.” What happened?!?! How did we get here from there? And while we’re at it, we still want to know why “police” and “ice” don’t rhyme, but “knight” and “bite” do. And why can you have two dogs, but not two sheeps or oxes? And why do they talk funny in other states, calling a “soda” a “pop” and other crazy things? Why? I will tell you why, if first you sojourn with me through… the History of the English Language. Welcome to H-E-L ENGL 323, Dante (Wendy Furman-Adams) Even in our era of a vastly expanding canon, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is one of a handful of writers who make up the virtually undisputed "greats" of European literature. In a still-important twentieth-century essay, T. S. Eliot exaggerated only slightly when he wrote, "Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third. . . . The majority of poems one outgrows and outlives, as one outgrows and outlives the majority of human passions. Dante is one of those which one can only just hope to grow up to at the end of life" ("Dante," in Selected Essays [Faber and Faber, 1932]). Dante's epic journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise is most profoundly a journey inward, a journey in which all human beings are in some sense engaged. But if Dante's Commedia is (at least from an "essentialist" perspective) in some sense perpetually "relevant" to our lives, it is also the supreme literary reflection of a particular time and place: Florence, Italy, ca. 1300. Its huge cast of characters includes the popes, emperors, and nobles both of the past and of the poet's own day; and all three canticles are full of allusions to parties and debates, quarrels, schisms and battles that were of immediate importance to Dante himself. In the midst of nearly perpetual turmoil, Europe was undergoing a great cultural renaissance. And Dante was immersed not only in its politics, but also in its welter of secular and religious ideas. The Commedia is a fourteenth-century poetic Summa Theologica, a love poem, and a political manifesto. It is also a poetic cathedral with a place for both gargoyles and rose windows; deep darkness and unfathomable light. All aspects of European civilization illuminate Dante's thought and work, and the Commedia demonstrates vividly what a brilliant fourteenth-century mind made of the political, intellectual and aesthetic data of his time and place. But we will also explore the poem's canticles as Dante explored Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise: as places on a journey into the remarkably familiar human mind and heart. ENGL 326: Hamlet and its Afterlives (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 female Hamlets, burlesque Hamlets, children’s Hamlets, Freudian Hamlets, Arab and Chinese Hamlets. Students will approach Shakespeare’s play, and 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 produce and present their own Southern California Hamlets. ENGL 336: The European Novel (dAvid pAddy)
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This course is paired with Elizabeth Sage’s HIST 363, “Socialism and Revolution in Modern Europe,” and together we will explore some of the literature, art and history from the end of the 18th century through the end of the twentieth century, a period rife with revolutionary sentiments in Europe. Think of this as a set of classes in the relationship between art and revolution. My readings will have us think about the changing ways that literature in the modern period has attempted to represent or wrestle with ideas of social and cultural change. We will look at works that attempt to address revolutionary moments directly through content, as well as avant-garde works that make claims to the revolutionary nature of artistic forms in and of themselves. Readings will be heavy and exciting. [I do not know yet what I will use, but some of these are possibilities: Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, Kate Roberts’s Feet in Chains, Stefan Zweig’s The Post-Office Girl, Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude and Georges Perec’s Things, as well as avantgarde manifestoes and political essays by Theodor Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Gyorgy Lukacs and Guy Debord.] Note: to be in this class you will also have to be enrolled in HIST 363. ENGL 354, Late 20th Century British Fiction (dAvid pAddy) “Imagine instead a British history in which alteration, mutation and flux, rather than continuity and bedrock solidity, are the norm.”—Simon Schama 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 post-imperial age. Readings have yet to be finalized but could very well include works by such writers as: Graham Greene, Alan Sillitoe, Daphne Du Maurier, Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Sam Selvon, J. G. Farrell, J. G. Ballard, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hanif Kureishi, Jeanette Winterson, Angela Carter and Graham Swift. ENGL 363, Modern American Novel (Charles S. Adams) This course is designed to give some focus on what is happening in the American novel from about World War I into the 1950's, and the relation of those literary developments to cultural issues. It is a prolific period, filled with important work by many writers, many part of the group Gertrude Stein calls the “lost generation. The relationship of literature to ideas of nation, race, gender, aesthetics, morality and everything else are rethought once again. We will take a particular look at the movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. I am still considering the exact direction it will take this year as far as specific texts are concerned, though, as usual, my interests are pretty historical. Here is my thinking so far (and I will have to cut a couple): Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein,
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Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos, Zora Hurston, Jean Toomer, Ralph Ellison, Vladimir Nabokov, and Jack Kerouac. So, we will be looking at perhaps nine or ten books. Yes, it is true. ENGL 371, Contemporary American Poetry (Tony Barnstone) This is a course in poetry of the postmodern tradition from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. Students will read such authors as Robert Lowell, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg, James Wright, Theodore Roethke, and Yusef Komunyakaa. Some international poets might be covered as well. In addition, students will read the work of living poets who will be visiting the college. Though this is a survey class, it is one in which students will become extensively familiar with a small, representative group of poets through whose work a portrait of the larger movements of postmodern poetry will be sketched. ENGL 375, Chicano(a) Literature (Michelle Chihara) This class in Mexican American or ChicanX literature will be paired this semester with Prof. José Orozco’s history class on the U.S./ Mexico border. At the end of the semester, the class will take a trip down to San Diego to visit a major non-profit group working at the border and to see the border machinery in action. Immigration and race are more than contentious political topics of today, they influence aspects of many Americans’ daily lived experience. Most young people know what it means to struggle with one's individual identity in a fractious, multicultural landscape. The nature of identity, authenticity, culture and belonging are relevant and pressing for people of all races, but they have a long history of narrative importance to Mexican American authors. This is a class, in other words, for anyone interested in these important themes who has a racial identity (which means everyone). 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? Here in Los Angeles County, we live very close to the Mexican border, in a state that will soon be majority LatinX. In this class, we will use ChicanX 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? ENGL 390, GEN 390, Writing Renaissance Women (Wendy Furman-Adams) The title of this course refers to two things at once. Most obviously, this is a course about women writers working in Italy and England between about 1500 and 1700. But a number of important male writers are represented as well because of their role in the way literature both reflected and, in turn, influenced--even re-invented--early modern life.
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Due in part to social factors, in part to the power of their vision, these male poets indelibly shaped the ways men imagined and represented women, as well as the ways female readers imagined and represented themselves. Thus, even when writing for others of their own sex, women had to write in response to male voices, male pens, male images of female identity. Some recent critics have argued that if people write history, they are also "written" by it. Each of our lives, then, is a kind of fiction, written in collaboration with the social forces that shape them. And, especially in the early modern period, those forces tended to privilege the male perspective. The Renaissance was a period of enormous change and upheaval, in which a relatively unified and stable medieval world-view gave way to what would become the Enlightenment. It was a period in which men--at least an elite of outstanding and privileged men--were involved actively in a reconstruction of identity, a reconstruction Stephen Greenblatt famously called "Renaissance self-fashioning." Women, too, were engaged in this "self-fashioning" enterprise--but with a difference. Less free to begin the inquiry "from scratch," they engaged in the process under the jealous eye of a patriarchal society that saw them, essentially, as passive members-valued above all, as Suzanne Hull has noted, for three traditional virtues: chastity, obedience, and silence. Even as they wrote, then (and many did write), they were also "being written"--by male writers, and yet more profoundly by the social conventions that shaped both male and female roles. Thus we will constantly considering the context of the literature we read, the social conditions under which it was produced. But we also read each text--closely and with open minds--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," or "refashion" themselves and one another. Note: This course fulfills the 700-1700 period requirement for the English major. It also counts toward the minor in Gender Studies. ENGL 400, Critical Procedures (Charles S. Adams) This is the course in which senior English majors complete their “paper in the major” requirement, so a good deal of our time will be spent working on that, culminating in the “Senior Presentation,” where you go public. In addition, the agenda of this class is theoretical. Reading a novel, poem, or play may seem a fairly fundamental skill for you by the time you’re a senior English major. But most of us have not really encountered the reality that there are serious people who have serious disagreements about how to go about these fundamental tasks. We know it at heart, but most of us have not thought it through. So, what are the ways that contemporary literary theorists take on the job? What are people doing right now, arguing about? Many of these theories are difficult if not mind-boggling, but they will all help you become a more thoughtful reader, careful critic, and, perhaps, sophisticated teacher of literature. Indeed, a common response from students after learning this material is something like, “I will never be able to read the same way again.” And, “Why didn’t I know this stuff far earlier in my career?” But
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maybe you did, and now can put a name to it—that is the point. Each of us has an approach to literature, but is there a name for what you do? The answer is yes. Maybe not exactly what you do, but probably close. Instructor Permission Required. ENGL 410: Senior Seminar: “East Meets West: Imagining Asia in Medieval England” (Sean Morris) Ripley’s Believe It or Not®: There is a “Life of Buddha” in Middle English. Discovering this on a library shelf in graduate school exploded the box I had always put around medieval Europe. And now I will encourage you to play with fire, too, as we explore together the ways in which the East, near and far, influenced medieval literature (especially Middle English literature) both in the imagination and in fact. Alongside Barlam and Iosaphat (the Middle English Life of Buddha) we find heroic stories drawn from Buddhist parables, Kyng Alisaunder’s descriptions of India, travelogues, Chaucer’s tale of Genghis Khan, analogues of English stories in Sanskrit, and of course the literature touched by the cultures met on crusade. Even the controlling framework of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales—a story about telling stories—owes ultimately to Asian models. Given England’s future obsession with eastern colonies, especially the “Jewel in the Crown” of India, these early experiments in imagining Asia are provocative. But they are valuable for their own sake as well. Film critic Roger Ebert once praised the respect that The Piano offered its rural characters: it didn’t assume they were stupid just because they didn’t have telephones. What if medieval Europeans were likewise more cosmopolitan than their technology implies? Let’s wipe the dust from these overlooked tales and remind ourselves of the astonishing complexity of human beings in every age’ ENGL 420: Preceptorships (Various Faculty) This course is for advanced students who will act as assistants to faculty in some of the courses above. See individual faculty members concerning what might be involved. Instructor permission required. Why Did You Get This? The purpose of this newsletter is to keep students, faculty, and friends informed about the wide variety of activities the Whittier College English Department is engaged in. If there are events of a literary nature that could use a bit of publicity through this vehicle, send information about them to the English Department office. We cannot guarantee when or if they will appear, but it never hurts to try! If you get this and do not want it, or if you did not get it but see a copy and want future issues, please let our Department Administrative Assistant, Angela Olivas (x4253 or see 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
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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 (Fall 2016 Department Chair) (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 Albert Upton Professor of English Language and Literature (Milton, Early Modern Literature, 18th Century Literature, Women’s Studies, Literature and Visual Culture, The Bible, Classics) Sean Morris: smorris@whittier.edu Associate Professor (Linguistics and English Language, Medieval Literature, Creative Writing, Fun) dAvid pAddy: dpaddy@whittier.edu (Spring 2017 Department Chair) Professor (20th Century British, Modernism, Postmodernism, Welsh and other Celtic Literatures, Literary Theory, Creative Writing) Andrea Rehn: arehn@whittier.edu (2017-2018 Department Chair) Associate Professor (19th Century British, Postcolonial Studies, Women’s Studies, Travel, Literary Theory) Visiting, Lecturer, Adjunct, Staff, and Affiliated Faculty (These links may or may not be ones our adjunct and affiliated faculty use most of the time. Please contact the department office if you cannot make contact using these) Anne Cong-Huyen: aconghuy@whittier.edu 23
Scott Creley: screley@whittier.edu Joe Donnelly: jdonnel1@whittier.edu Kate Durbin: kdurbin@whittier.edu Mike Garabedian: mgarabed@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: aolivas@whittier.edu
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