IN ENGLISH Occasional Newsletter of the Whittier College Department of English Language and Literature Volume 20, #1, November, 2019 Dr. Charles S. Adams, Editor Professor, English
On-Line Presence Some of you may be aware that the Whittier College English Department has a Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/WhittierCollegeEnglishDepartment And our college-based site is: http://www.whittier.edu/Academics/EnglishLanguageAndLiterature/ This Newsletter will be up on that site and will be updated as more information comes in and your editor gets around to it.
The English Department Writing Awards (Keep your work!)
Every year we offer a set of prizes for the best work submitted by students in the areas of poetry, creative prose, and scholarly writing. Be sure to stay tuned for the announcements asking for submissions for the next academic year’s awards—the deadlines are always fairly early in Spring Semester. You cannot win if you do not enter. All Whittier students are eligible to enter. The prizes are cash (well, checks actually). You could win more than some of your professors have made on their books and articles! In addition, look at the same time for notices of the deadlines for submissions to the Literary Review, which publishes work in all genres by Whittier students. Again, any student can submit. We need to thank lots of donors, alumni, faculty, friends, and students, for help funding these prizes and the Review.
What Have We Been Up to Lately? Charles S. Adams: My main occupation these days has been preparing for retirement at the end of spring semester. As most of you know, I might not have chosen to do this now had it not been for some health challenges. But I have things I want to do while I know I can do them. I have started a term on the board of the Whittier Public Library Foundation. 1
I intend to continue my work with The Institute for Baseball Studies at Whittier College and perhaps participate in some other college things along the way. You should know by now of the concert we have organized called “Stealin’ Home: A Musical Tribute to Jackie Robinson,” to be held at 4:00, Sunday, November 10th, in the College Chapel. We think this is an important event. In addition, Joe Price and I will be giving a paper at the NINE spring conference on a set of carefully put-together baseball scrapbooks given to the Institute by Peter O’Malley, former owner of the Dodgers (a reason they might be important). But they are mysterious because O’Malley himself is not sure about their history and the material in them dates back as far as the 1920s,. We will see whether we can figure them out. My father, also an English professor, told me when he retired at age 70, that his regret was that he had finally read enough to feel that he knew what he was doing (and at age 94 he is still reading!). It is a feeling I am coming to understand. But the great thing about our field is that one can keep on “doing” it indefinitely. Perhaps I can actually finish some of the things that I just did not get around to earlier! And I look forward to teaching my last two classes. One likes to finish on a good roll! Bethany Wong: This term, I have been busy teaching five days a week and trying to stay on top of my ‘to-do’ list. I am proud to say, I finally started taking the SLC stairs rather than waiting for the elevator. Recently, I applied for and was accepted to present about Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies annual meeting this spring in St. Louis. My paper argues that the musical, with its refreshing take on the past, presents students with new ways of accessing eighteenthcentury literature by raising questions about voice, representation, and the power of performance. I am also at work on an article about Sarah Siddons, Fanny Kemble, and Charlotte Cushman sharing props for the role of Queen Katherine in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. My work recovers the ways that professional and domestic women claimed a gendered virtue that was compatible with theater and performance. When I have time, I like to go to the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanic Gardens to literally and figuratively smell the roses. dAvid pAddy: I was recently invited to contribute an essay to a volume called Space(s) of the Fantastic (Routledge). This summer was spent working on that essay, “Home is Where the Dark is: A Literary Geography of Daphne du Maurier’s Disturbing Genres,” which should hopefully see the light of day some time next year. It was also a wonderful surprise to learn that I was to become the next Albert Upton Endowed Chair in English Language and Literature. This honor will help with further research in Daphne du Maurier, literary geography and other areas—something for me to figure out once I’m not entirely engulfed with being Faculty Chair. Finally, in June, Professor Elizabeth Sage (History) and I went to Berlin and Prague to help plan a course we will be teaching in the Spring and May of 2020—Spring here, May in Prague and Berlin. Stay tuned for more. Katy Simonian: I am about to serve as Chair for the upcoming PAMLA Conference, where I will also present my own work. My paper, “Queen of the Ashes: Mothers, Sons and King Solomon’s Ghost in Jean Rhys’s “The Day They Burned the Books” explores the intertextuality between Rhys, Guy de Maupassant and a series of biblical allusions which I argue reveals the damaging impact of the colonial structure on motherhood. The 2
conference will take place in San Diego and, as always, I am honored to represent Whittier College and my beloved English Department. Additionally, I am preparing for what will be a meaningful academic adventure, as one of my sections of English 120 will carry a Study Abroad component in the form of a cruise to the Mexican Riviera. My class, “English 120-06: Why Read? – Marketing the Exotic: Decolonizing Postcolonial Tourism,” will explore the ways in which the concept of “The Exotic” as portrayed in literature informs the marketing of tourism culture. Students must enroll in the semester-long course in order to participate in the cruise. This is a first for Whittier College and I am proud to serve as a part of what I hope will become a long standing tradition of travel writing, scholarship, and opportunity for our Poets. Joe Donnelly: I contributed a chapter to the forthcoming Slouching Towards Los Angeles, a collection of writers writing about Joan Didion and her writing. I discuss how she and The Beatles turned noir together, resulting in their best work which I somewhat cheekily call “The Black Albums.” Our colleague, Michelle Chihara, contributed a great chapter, "Where I Am From," which delves into her and Didion's fraught relationships with their hometowns. We will be doing a reading here together in the spring, I believe. Tony Barnstone: I have been doing a lot of journal editing in the past year. Last year I published a special issue of Manoa titled Republic of Apples, Democracy of Oranges: New Eco-Poetry from China and the United States. This December, I will publish a special issue of Pratik, an international literary journal, focusing on the poets of Los Angeles. I am happy that several Whittier faculty, staff, students and alumni are included in these volumes, such as Michelle Chihara, Scott Creley, Denise Wong Velasco, Ariel Horton, Zaria Branch, and Dennis McGonagle. I have also completed and am marketing a new book of poetry, titled What Rough Beast. It is a political book for difficult times, focusing on issues of racist immigration practices, children in cages, and the dangers of the desert crossing, environmental degradation and an EPA that tells us that a dose of radioactivity and of lead poisoning can protect our health, cyber-rights and governmental intrusion in the digital realm, the torturous practice of decades-long solitary confinement, and the degradation of our democratic norms, among other topics. My summer project was to complete and submit article titled “William Carlos Williams and the Cult of the New,” which will be published this term in the William Carlos Williams Review. Finally, I am giving a talk at the Pacific MLA Conference this fall based on that article and another at the AWP Conference this spring on “Politics and the English Language in the Age of Trump.” The books cued up on my commute are Animal Farm, 1984, and Brave New World, so you can see where my head is these days. Michelle Chihara: I was invited to speak at a workshop this summer at the University of Sydney, Australia, entitled “Temporal and Generational Imaginaries of the Asset Economy.” That was exciting, and I got to see friends in Sydney I hadn't seen in 15 years. I am working on finishing the article that will appear in a special issue from that workshop, about branding narratives and digital labor. I have an essay coming out in January in a collection about Joan Didion, which I'm excited about.
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Kate Durbin: I've been conducting interviews with writers for Los Angeles Review of Books. The two most recent published ones are interviews with Heike Geissler, about her excellent book Seasonal Associate, which is about her time working in an Amazon warehouse in Germany. The other is with Sarah Rose Etter, whose "surrealist" novel The Book of X is about a woman born with her stomach in a knot. I have two more upcoming with poet Joseph Mosconi, who runs the Poetic Research Bureau in Los Angeles and writes conceptual poetry, and Amina Cain, whose forthcoming novel Indelicacy is really beautiful. I am also working on an article about artists making work about Amazon for Art in America. I am working, too, on a novel about the Kardashians, albeit very slowly during the semester, which is appropriate since the book is also about deep time. Recently I hosted a reading event for the LAMBDA LitFest with Christopher Soto, Myriam Gurba, Ryka Aoki, JoAnna Novack, and Sophia Le Fraga. Our theme was pop culture and feelings. Then I was in conversation with Natasha Stagg and Chris Kraus at an event at the Edendale Library for the release of Natasha's new Semiotext(e) book, Sleeveless, which is also about Internet culture and pop culture. And I have some photographs from my “Hello Selfie” project in China in a photo festival at the moment. Jonathan Burton: Following the completion of last spring’s Qualities of Mercy Project (look for it on YouTube!), I secured publication plans for “dispatches from the field” from myself and 8 of the other professors who oversaw classes participating in this nationwide project. I’ve also submitted to the journal, Renaissance Drama an article entitled “The Reinventions of Race in Thomas Heywood’s The Four Prentices of London” treating a sixteenth century play about the first crusade. Finally, I’ve been commissioned to write a piece for the MLA volume, Approaches to Teaching Romeo and Juliet where I’ll detail the erasure project that I’ll revisit this spring with students in my Rewriting Shakespeare course. Sean Morris: Beyond shuttling back and forth across the country to see my kids (I’m very familiar with seat 5A on the Buffalo red-eye after all these years), I’ve been spending a lot of my non-course time in the last year or two working on ideas for the curriculum, trying to get at the main components of education and explaining why they matter (such as “The Meaning of Life,” “Understanding the Universe—and your role in it,” and “Doing Good and Doing Well” and their components, especially how to know things well), and also trying to identify important elements of the humanities (beyond the things everyone thinks about: absorbing and interpreting large bodies of heterogeneous information, as in a novel or Beowulf; the disaggregation and reintegration of ideas, as when answering “Is a hotdog a sandwich” not with yes or no but with, “A hotdog is like a sandwich in these ways and unlike a sandwich in these ways”; and keeping multiple interpretations simultaneously alive in the mind, as with hundreds of different readings of The Wife of Bath’s Tale, all relatively valid). I am also preparing various projects for my upcoming sabbatical, on Aragorn’s debt to Cooper’s Hawkeye, Beowulf and Game Theory, The Canterbury Tales, and a secret pop-culture-ish heroic screenplay. Stay tuned… Wendy Furman-Adams: Having been on a kind of sabbatical this semester, I've had a chance to really delve into my ongoing project on Paradise Lost as an illustrated book.
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Having written every day for much of the summer and fall, I now have three brand new essays out that are set to appear within the next few months. "Delectable to Behold: Eve and the Artist's Gaze" will appear in a collection called Global Milton, edited by Angelica Duran and Mario Murgia. "Other Eyes: Women Artists Re-writing Milton" will appear in Women Rewriting Milton (mostly in words, in my case in images), edited by Mandy Green and Sharihan Al-Akhras. And "'Male and Female Light': Artists Illuminating Milton's Gendered Instant of Creation" will appear in Intersemiotic Milton, edited by Angelica Duran (again) and Islam Issa. I'm honored to have had my work solicited for these volumes, which are edited by colleagues working not just in the U.S. but in Mexico and the U.K. as well. I'm especially happy about these three essays, too, because they make up a trilogy of feminist interventions--each using a different methodology to reveal new aspects of Milton's radical vision. I've also attended two extraordinary conferences in the past few months. In July I presented and chaired at the International Milton Symposium in Strasbourg, France. And just last month, I did the same at the Conference on John Milton in Birmingham, Alabama. Between these two conferences I had occasion to mingle with most of my Miltonic colleagues--learning a tremendous amount from them all. And of course a bonus of attending these conferences is that I got to explore my surroundings. Strasbourg is a gorgeous French city, totally different from Paris, full of fascinating history and art. And, while in Birmingham, I was able to visit the heartbreaking new Heritage Museum and Peace and Justice Monument in Montgomery, Alabama. These historic memorials--funded by the Equal Justice Coalition--pack an emotional punch that I can compare only to the Holocaust Museum or Jewish Museum in Berlin. They document, with terrible clarity and power, the history of slavery, of Jim Crow, of mass incarceration, and of the terror regime of lynching over the past 450 years--a history the city of Montgomery is at last beginning to own and to mourn. One of the colleagues who visited with me was the son of a Tuskegee airman and remembered his own participation in the Montgomery Bus Boycott with his parents at the age of five; seeing the museum and monument through his eyes was especially rich. Be sure to watch for the new drama, Just Mercy, which will tell the story of lawyer Bryan Stevenson and his remarkable Equal Justice project--fighting constantly to free innocent prisoners on Alabama's (still very crowded) Death Row. After that pitch, it's hard to return to my scholarly topic. But I will be chairing a session I organized on adaptations of Milton at the Renaissance Society of America conference in Philadelphia this coming April. Many younger scholars are now exploring adaptations of Paradise Lost, ranging from comic books and graphic novels to popular film. A very special moment came at the Birmingham conference--when a younger scholar, beginning her keynote address, credited me with establishing the sub-genre of adaptation in Milton studies. I was humbled--and motivated--by her comment. Finally, it was a delight--before and after the conference--to spend time with Whittier English alumna Jennifer (Buddemeyer) Young, who now teaches American literature at the U of A, Birmingham.
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Geoffrey Long: I’ve spent the majority of my non-course time these past six months on writing projects. Playful Thinking, the game studies book series I co-edit for MIT Press, had three new releases this year – Julian Togelius’ Playing Smart, John Sharp and David Thomas’ Fun, Taste and Games, and Mia Consalvo and Christopher A. Paul’s Real Games – with Geoffrey Engelstein’s Achievement Relocked due out early next year and several more are in the hopper. I’ve just signed the contract for my first academic book, on developing transmedia-ready storyworlds and how their authors can be very much like game designers, which should release from MIT Press in the fall of 2020. I’ve also been working hard on my own transmedia project, The Winter Children, which I hope to release the first round of under my Mystery Barn label later this year. My courses here at Whittier are going very well, with one great group of students taking my Introduction to Comparative Media Studies course and a second taking my Digital Storytelling and the World Wide Web course, where they’re developing portfolios of work to accelerate their creative careers.
News From the College Writing Program Charlie Eastman, Director
Looking forward to next year, we will be considering applicants to be Writing Associates starting in fall. Here are the things to know: To be considered for the Writing Associate position, a student must: * Have taken INTD 100 (or an equivalent course at an accredited institution as accepted by our Registrar) and earned a grade of A- or better; * Be on Good Academic Standing; * Have a clear disciplinary record with Student Life; * Have successfully passed (or be concurrently enrolled in) INTD 35 (formerly “Peer Learning Associate Training,” now “Writing Associate Training"). Job Duties for Writing Associates * To model effective and appropriate student behavior; * To read course materials, attend class, and participate in discussions; * To hold office hours with freshman writers to work on developing and revising essays (as a supplement to, not a substitute for, faculty office hours); * To comment on student essays; * To meet regularly with the professor to discuss progress and needs of freshman writers; * To collaborate with the professor in developing a freshman-appropriate course (when such collaboration is possible); * To assist in the administration of surveys and evaluations; and, * To teach specific lessons, or, occasionally, entire class periods, with appropriate supervision from the faculty member teaching the writing seminar (such as reviewing a prospective lesson plan). More information about this will be sent to you in the spring, when we start the process.
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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? Bethany Wong: These days, I am mostly reading for class. In particular, it has been therapeutic to read Victorian poetry and to find there is “nothing new under the sun” in terms of our current social problems. During the summer, I enjoyed reading David Wallace’s Geoffrey Chaucer: A New Introduction, Devoney Looser’s What Matters in Jane Austen, and Ibi Zoboi’s Pride. I am always interested in how scholars make literature accessible to a wider audience outside of academia. Wallace and Looser both do it well. For anyone who loves modern adaptations of the classics, Zoboi’s Pride is a retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. To borrow from Zoboi’s website, the novel “skillfully balances cultural identity, class, and gentrification against the heady magic of first love.” I recommend it to anyone looking for a fun read for the holiday break. dAvid pAddy: In preparation for a future class on Prague and Berlin (see What I’m Up To, above), I’ve been reading a lot of Czech fiction, especially the magnificent Bohumil Hrabal (recently devouring I Served the King of England, Closely Observed Trains, The Little Town Where Time Stood Still and Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age), but also Vítezlav Nezval Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and Václav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless. An amazing novel about Berlin I’d highly recommend (and not just because it’s about Berlin but because the writing is just so good) is Chloe Aridjis Book of Clouds. I’m still on a kick reading as much of the Albanian great Ismail Kadare as I can, and I simply adored A Girl in Exile. The endless horrors of contemporary British politics had me reading James Meek’s Dreams of Leaving and Remaining, one of the best accounts of Brexit I’ve encountered. Not so Brexity is Deborah Levy’s The Cost of Living, a kind of update of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own for our age by one of contemporary Britain’s greatest writers. Even less Brexity was my venture into Robert Kirk’s seventeenth-century The Secret Commonwealth, in which the Scottish Episcopalian minister writes a very serious account of the existence and activities of fairies, fauns and elves. (Turns out that Philip Pullman has used this book’s title for his latest His Dark Materials sequel. Soon, soon, soon.) Otherwise, some science fiction (new (Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem) and old (Samuel Delany’s The Einstein Intersection)), some classic Surrealism (René Daumal’s Mount Analogue), some classic postmodernism (Robert Coover’s Pinocchio in Venice) and some New Weird (Jeff Vandermeer’s City of Saints and Madmen). Aren’t books just wonderful things? 7
Katy Simonian: Samantha Power’s The Education of an Idealist is as meaningful as it is crucial to inspire us in such a tumultuous era of global political upheaval. Her work to recognize the Armenian Genocide is an inspiration and is particularly poignant in the wake of the recent vote by the House of Representatives for America to officially recognize the atrocities of 1915 as Genocide. Reading about her life and work summons the citizen and activist in all of us. Also, Quichotte: A Novel by Salmon Rushdie. Another must-read, as is the case with all of his work. Joe Donnelly: For a longterm project I've been working on, I've recently been reading Inheritance by Dani Shapiro, which also has to do with our histories and senses of identity--in her case, what happens when you find out late in life that you were conceived from an anonymous donor's sperm. Hey, hey, hey, was it the DNA? Tony Barnstone: As noted above, I am diving back into Animal Farm, 1984, and Brave New World via books on tape, since they seem so germane to the rapid degradation of our democracy in these troubled times. I’ve also been reading books of poems by the visiting writers, Marsha de la O’sEvery Ravening Thing and Blas Falconer’s Forgive the Body This Failure. For fun, I am reading Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honour of Jack Vance, with stories by Neil Gaiman, Robert Silverberg, and George R.R. Martin, among other luminaries. Kate Durbin:The books I mentioned in the “What I've Been Up To” section, which I wrote about or was in conversation about, have been the books I've been reading. I have also been reading tiny books at the gym since my time is very limited during the fall as I am focused on teaching. These have included Adolfo Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel, Annie Ernaux's Simple Passion, and Kate Zambreno's Appendix Project. Michelle Chihara: I am very excited about two fairly recent critical books, Family Values by Melinda Cooper and The Microeconomic Mode by Jane Elliott. I read Brittney Cooper's Eloquent Rage for my senior seminar about the role of the cultural critic and enjoyed it a great deal. I also continue to read about Buddhism. The book I'm reading now by the Zen master Jack Kornfield is called After The Ecstasy, The Laundry. It's excellent. Jonathan Burton: Among the books I’ve read since our last newsletter are The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle by Francisco Goldman, Re Jane by Patricia Park (recommended by Bethany Wong!), The Mothers by Brit Bennet, Beastie Boys Book by Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club by Benjamin Saenz, Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli and How Long ‘Til Black Future Month by N.K. Jemisin. Of these, I’m most excited about Luiselli and Jemisin, authors whose work is at once urgent and delivered in gorgeous prose. Jemisin has me rethinking everything I thought I knew about science fiction, and Luiselli (along with Saenz) is one of the emerging voices articulating America’s ongoing struggle to think about borders and our sense of belonging. 8
Sean Morris: Among the many, many things, here are few: Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map (on the 19th century cholera outbreak in London and its role in discovering the cause of diseases and the prevention of their spread—by a physician named John Snow: excellent and excellently written; everyone should read at least the first-chapter miniessay on planet earth’s 4-billion-year history of recycling); Charles W. Bardsley, Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature (outstanding scholarship from 1888 on English names from Anglo-Saxon through Puritan times, following the course of names like the religiously influenced Norman “Nicholas” to abbreviations like “Col” (Ni-chol-as) and diminutive versions like “Colin” through their ideological replacement by Puritan names like “If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned” and their eventual culling to modern remnants such as “Patience” and “Prudence”—fascinating, thorough, and free in the public domain); Sean Howe et al., Marvel Comics: The Untold Story (excellent and excellently written—for an example, read the brilliant analysis early on of what Steve Ditko brought to Spider-man on the first page of Amazing Fantasy 15); Charles Lane, Freedom’s Detective: The Secret Service, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Man Who Masterminded America’s First War on Terror (excellent); Dan Abrams, Lincoln’s Last Trial (very interesting); and quite a few uninspiring fantasy novels (meh). Teaching Company courses: “Understanding Complexity” (excellent and important); “Play Ball!” (great history of baseball); “The Real History of Secret Societies” (ok); “Crashes and Crises” (excellent); and “Ancient Civilizations of North America” (excellent and an eyeopener: a history of America you never heard of before). Wendy Furman-Adams: I've been reading a tremendous amount of Milton criticism and literary theory for the work I've been doing--in addition to trying to keep up on the news in a thoughtful and thorough way. But I've also read a wonderful history of Latin America suggested by José Orozco: Born in Blood and Fire, by John Charles Chasteen. I'm still working through Jill Lepore's long but brilliant history of the United States, These Truths--and a great collection of historical essays: Political Turmoil: Early Modern British Literature in Transition, 1623-1660, edited by my Milton colleague Stephen Dobranski. I do enjoy reading a lot of non-fiction. But I'm also loving Emily Wilson's stunning new translation of The Odyssey, and have just received a list of must-read contemporary fiction from dAve pAddy. So I hope to report more fictional reading next time! Charles S. Adams: I seem to do a lot more listening theses days than traditional reading. I have been interested in podcasts, especially “Why Is This Happening?” by Chris Hayes of MSNBC. And, sometimes it is hard to do more than read about books than actually read them (The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker come relentlessly). I have been thinking about the meaning of that. The best book I read recently is still The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World he Made by Jane Leavy. But I mentioned that in the last issue. I did finish the terrific Homo Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari. Just when he convinces you that one part of our history must be true, he shows you why you need to think differently. Also read Susan Butler’s The History of the Medieval World. I was looking for something about the life of regular folks, but got
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Bulgarian kings and a long and confusing line of popes. Well, at least I am up on those useful things… Charlie Eastman: Journal of a German Officer in Occupied Paris, Ernst Junger I Am God, Giacomo Sartori Zone, Matthias Ènard Sphinx, Anne Garetra Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, Angus Wilson House of 20,000 Books, Sasha Abramsky, Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead The Cooking Gene, Michael Twitty Grab A Snake by The Tail, Leonardo Padura The Unnameable Present, Roberto Calasso Geoffrey Long: In addition to plowing through a stack of new books on transmedia storytelling (including the remarkable Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies edited by Matthew Freeman and Renira Rampazzo Gambarato) for my book, I’ve been on a huge Edward Gorey kick, enjoying Mark Dery’s biography Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey; the exhibit catalog Gorey’s Worlds compiled by Erin Monroe for the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; Kevin McDermott’s photographic tour of Gorey’s home Elephant House; and Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey edited by Karen Wilkin. I’ve also been revisiting John Bellairs’ delightfully spooky YA books, including The House with a Clock in its Walls, which first made me fall in love with Gorey’s illustrations when I was a kid. Also on the nightstand are Jeffrey Alan Love’s Notes from the Shadowed City and The Thousand Demon Tree, Marlon James’ Black Leopard Red Wolf, and Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage, The Secret Commonwealth and Daemon Voices.
English Department Courses for the Remainder of the 2019-2020 Academic Year (All Still Subject to at Least Some Change) Below is supplemental information from most of the faculty about the departmental courses scheduled for the remainder of this academic year. It is in the nature of our subjects that a course description in the catalog rarely says exactly what any given offering will cover. There are always big choices faculty members have to make, and these change over time. The details are, again, always subject to change, but we hope this will help. As we acquire more information and make changes, we hope to adjust the on-line versions of this document. Please see or e-mail the instructors, Angela Olivas in the department office, or our current department chair, Jonathan Burton, for answers to questions these descriptions might raise. We note as well that some instructors may be teaching courses in the INTD, GCS, WSP, THEA, and GWS (love those acronyms!). It
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is entirely possible that there are courses taught in other departments that are good for ENGL credit that your editors and schedulers missed. Students should consult the Whittier College Catalog concerning prerequisites for all courses. In particular, most higher numbered courses require ENGL 110 or 120 or their equivalent as a pre-requisite for enrollment. Some courses requires permission from the instructor. Some courses taught as part of pairs require co-enrollment in the paired course. See the instructors if you have questions. ENGL 110 note: (only offered in Fall): This course is designed for first-semester, firstyear students with a strong background and continuing interest in the study and writing of literature. While it counts toward the requirements of the English major (as an alternative to ENGL 120), it does not fulfill the COM 2 (writing intensive) requirement as ENGL 120 does. But do not despair—we have worked to designate many of our other courses to fulfill this requirement, which should be reflected in the schedule of courses. ENGL 120 note: As with “Exploring Literature,” individual instructors will organize the course around specific themes of their own devising, though all sections have the same goals. All of them count for the COM 2 Lib Ed requirement and will enable a student to then take upper-level English courses. Where there is no extended description, the instructor is still thinking about it. It is always possible that if a particular section does not draw enough students in preregistration it could be cancelled. If this happens, students should see their advisors, the registrar’s office, or any member of the English Department and we will do our best to find an open spot in another section. ENGL 290 and 390 note: These numbers are for courses that are new ideas or perhaps not intended to be offered on a regular basis. The numbers can be repeated. There are a fair number of 290s this year, for instance. As space may be limited, you do not want to be shut out of the course you intended to take by mistakenly signing up for something else. In all cases, be sure to sign up for the correct section. At the time of this publication, section numbers were in flux and are all designated with the placeholder “x.”
January 2020 ENGL 290, Section 1, Try Not to Scream; Horror and the Human Condition (Kate Durbin) This course will explore contemporary horror novels as windows into the human condition and the state of the globe. Books include: John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let Me In, William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, and Natsuo Kirino's Out. Films include The Witch, The Cabin in the Woods, and Paranormal Activity. Students will also create their own horror narratives via the gaming platform Twine based on concepts gleaned in class, in collaboration with the Digital Lib Arts Lab. ENGL 290, Section 2, Arts and Culture Writing (Joe Donnelly) Reporting and writing about music, food, art, literature and interesting people doing interesting things is an integral part of the journalistic duty to write the literature of civic
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life. In this course we will learn about what makes for good arts and culture writing and do a little ourselves. ENGL 290/390, Sections 3-4, Reading and Writing Poetry I Mexico/Writing Poetry in Mexico (Tony Barnstone) Students who take this class should have four poems already written at the start of the term, which they will submit to workshops in Mexico (I will work with students during the fall term to help them prepare these poems, and thus the extra unit credit for the course, 4 not 3). This poetry writing workshop is a travel class that begins earlier than the normal Jan Term semester starts. Students will travel to Mexico on Jan 2nd, 2020 and stay there for about 10 days, after which the workshop will continue in Whittier. Students will travel with me and another faculty member to San Miguel de Allende where we will attend the San Miguel Poetry Week. which will take place from Wednesday, January 3rd(travel on the 2nd) through the 8th in San Miguel Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico, followed by several days of activities. This is one of the oldest and most important poetry fests in Mexico, and students will attend many readings and give their own participant reading at the end of the week. All students will study not only with me but also with 3 other poets, and you can expect two of them to be some of the most famous poets in America and one to be a famous poet from England. We will also be meeting important writers from Mexico and hearing them read their work. After the week of the festival, students and faculty will remain in San Miguel for several days doing local activities, such as seeing local architecture, going to the botanical gardens, going to natural hot springs, travel to a local pyramid and horseback riding in Coyote Canyon and a visit to the mummies of Guanajuato, all the while writing poems about their experiences. San Miguel has extraordinary 16th and 17th century architecture, thermal baths, colorful markets, four-star Mexican restaurants and Jazz bars and is known worldwide as one of Mexico's most charming places. This magical town has been a retreat for artists from all over the world. Great poets such as Pablo Neruda lived here. Neal Cassidy died here. Mexican muralist, David Alfaro Siqueiros painted here. Today writers and artists flock to San Miguel seeking beauty along with a rich cultural scene. The class can be taken either as a beginning writing workshop (ENGL 290) or as an advanced writing workshop (ENGL 390). Students who take it as ENGL 390 will be expected to do more work than at the ENGL 290 level. ENGL 389, Lord of the Rings: J.R.R. Tolkien (Sean Morris) “All those long years… you knew this day would come.” You’ve seen the movies. You’ve read the books. You may even have dressed up in the costumes. And now you have a chance to sit in a room with 25 people and talk about it for three weeks. In the year 2000 J.R.R. Tolkien was voted the most important author of the twentieth century, and in this course we will try to find out why, through discussion of his major works and their significance, and also through an investigation of the vast array of sources (many but not all of them medieval) on which he drew—the “leaf mold of the mind,” as he called it. We will also consider and evaluate the recent film adaptations, and take a brief look both at those languages that inspired Tolkien and at those he created
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himself. Required coursework includes readings and quizzes, an oral presentation, and two papers. The reading list for this course is very substantial, and I advise getting a head start. If you can read the main works (The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) before Jan Terms starts, the rest of the reading load will be pretty light. The Fellowship of the Ring, at least, must be finished before the first day of class, so we can launch into our explorations right away. In addition to the Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and selections from The Silmarillion, we’ll read “Farmer Giles of Ham” (in The Tolkien Reader), a little from the Unfinished Tales, and selections from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Works by other authors will include Humphrey Carpenter’s excellent biography of Tolkien, and contextualizing works (Tolkien’s inspirations) like Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale,” Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Snorri Sturluson’s Edda—even such unlikely influences as Jane Austen (!! Yep) and James Fenimore Cooper (!!! Yes.) Don’t despair! The readings are long, but many are just excerpts, and they are also fun. “All you have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given you.” See you in January. “Forth, Eorlingas!” ENGL 420, Preceptorship: Teaching Literature (Various Instructors) See Fall description.
Related Course INTD 290, Transmedia Storytelling: from Mythology to Marvel How do you tell stories across multiple media, including those that don't exist yet? As students design their own transmedia storyworlds, they will learn the art, history and business of designing vast storyworlds like Star Wars or the Marvel Universe; the literary history of vast storyworlds including ancient mythology, Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, and literary “shared worlds” including H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos or George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards; the fundamentals of writing for multiple media including comics, film, television, video games, augmented reality and virtual reality; and the art of designing experiences that connect these stories together and inspire audiences to tell stories of their own. 4 credits, M-F 10-1. Enrollment: 30.
Spring 2020 See head note at the start of this course listing section for a discussion of the ins and outs of ENGL 120, Why Read? registration. PAY ATTENTION TO CRN NUMBERS WHEN YOU REGISTER, THE ORDER HERE MAY BE DIFFERENT THAN ON THE SCHEDULE OF CLASSES. 13
ENGL 120: Why Read?, Sections 01, 04, and 05: Waking Dreams (Bethany Wong) How do writers of fiction make a case for the importance of literature in our everyday lives? What strategies do authors use to highlight the problems in society as failures of sympathy and imagination? Attending to form, style, and voice in a variety of genres (including poetry, drama, and novels), we will examine how authors from the 16th century to the present seek to persuade their readers that engaging closely with literature helps construct creative and productive individuals. For the authors on the syllabus, finding an artistic voice requires translating and adapting the past for the present so be ready to learn some new words and new ways of communicating from hundreds of years ago. Throughout the term, we will analyze how fiction justifies its existence, contending that the ability to read and write well is also the power to change hearts and minds about social issues that continue to puzzle, plague, and inspire our current times. Longer texts are likely to include Pygmalion, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Jane Eyre, Re Jane, and Phantom of the Opera. ENGL 120, Why Read?, Sections 3 and 7: Can the Empire Write Back? (Katy Simonian) What is a homeland? Critic and author V. S. Naipaul suggests home exists within the mind of any inhabitant. By contrast, Salmon Rushdie claims that in a sense, homelands and borders are imaginary, subject to both creation and destruction. Rushdie’s “The Empire Writes Back” also posits the idea that postcolonial writers carve and claim large territories within the English language through literature. Other writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Brian Friel, James Joyce, Jean Rhys, and Chinua Achebe approach this seemingly simple question from the standpoint of language, ownership and cultural subjugation. The title of this course, “Why Read?” challenges us to appreciate the broader concerns of literature and the impact of language on the way in which we perceive, understand, and ultimately read the world. During the course of the semester, we will engage with topics such as language, culture, identity, various forms of discrimination and overcoming violent physical and political subjugation through the exploration of selected works of literature from the ever-developing postcolonial era. The course is not a survey of Twentieth Century English Literature, but rather a detailed look into varieties of postcolonial fiction from some of the different corners of the former British Empire which dominated the literary world for the last century. By reading literature, with an emphasis on short fiction, from Ireland, Africa, the Caribbean, and India, we can gain a stronger understanding of the complexities of language, which is the connective thread between each of these writers and their works. By the end of the course, we will ask ourselves the question of whether or not voices of the Empire can indeed write back, and in doing so examine the impact of literature on identity and the concept of “homeland” in the context of the colonial and postcolonial experience. To read is to recognize the power of literature as a means of conveying an understanding of ourselves and others. We will endeavor to embrace our power as readers throughout this course. Why Read?, English 120, Section 6, Marketing the Exotic: Decolonizing Postcolonial Tourism (Katy Simonian)
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Mandatory Spring Break Study Abroad Included– Mexican Riviera Cruise “For every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere.” Jamaica Kincaid’s words do more than just electrify the pages of A Small Place. Her work articulates our connection to the concept of the exotic. What does it mean to be Exotic? Three syllables, seemingly hard to define despite the ease with which places, objects and yes, people, are identified and ultimately characterized as “Other” for better and for worse. The title of this course, “Why Read?,” challenges us to appreciate the broader concerns of literature and the impact of language on the way in which we perceive, read, and ultimately understand the world. During this course, we will engage with topics such as language, culture, identity, as well as overcoming violent physical and political subjugation through the exploration of selected works of literature from the everdeveloping postcolonial era. In order to enrich our understanding of “The Other” and our own connection to “The Exotic,” we will embark on a cruise to the Mexican Riviera to experience the culture of tourism for ourselves and apply our perspectives as scholars and citizens of the world. What is it like to “tour the tour” and observe the marketing, rhetoric and behavior of those who seek “The Exotic? What is the impact of social media in the marketing of tourist culture? We will complete a set of assignments before, during and after our journey to communicate the depth of our experiences. Most importantly, we will approach this unique Study Abroad opportunity with open minds and a sense of empathy for the people and places we encounter. By reading literature and contributing our voices through the act of travel writing, we can gain a stronger understanding of the complexities of language in relation to all forms of “Otherness.” To read is to recognize the power of literature as a means of conveying an understanding of ourselves and others. We will endeavor to embrace our power as readers through close analysis, writing and of course, travel. All students must first complete applications through the Study Abroad office. Applications are now open!!! Application deadline: Friday, November 16 Deposit Due: ($250) December 1 Apply Online: https://goabroad.whittier.domains/apply/ ENGL 120, Sections 8, Why Read?: Science Fiction (Kate Durbin) Surveillance, time travel, and dystopias: in this class, we will examine race and gender dynamics, environmental issues, global politics, and questions of technology, genetics, and ethics via the novels of Octavia Butler, Michel Faber, Suzanne Collins, and others, as well as the 2015 Jennifer Phang film Advantageous, the Netflix series Black Mirror, and more. We will ground each text in the political contexts from which they were written, examining each parallel world as a revealing mirror of our past, present, and possible futures.
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ENGL 120, Section XX, Why Read?: Home (Away from Home) (Jonathan Burton) In this section of English 120, we will orient our explorations around the trope, or motif, of “Home and Away.” By doing so, we take seriously your current experience living away from home, or shuttling between home and college, and also more generally the ways in which ideas of home, homelessness or alienation shape so many literary experiences. The class will explore a wide range of literary genres including conventional and graphic novels, poetry, podcasts, short stories and electronic literature. English 120, Section XX, Why Read?: Heroes and Heroines (Sean Morris) In a world where our time and attention are demanded by ever-increasing commitments and distractions, is it worth bothering to read? I don’t mean “read” in the sense of gathering information—reading street signs or application instructions—but the in-depth reading required by complex texts, like a literary novel or a Shakespeare play. It won’t surprise you that I think the answer is “yes,” that reading of this kind is inspiring, mind-opening, life-changing. But if there is one lesson you should take away from college, it is never just to accept someone else’s opinion. If I really believe in literature, it’s up to me to try to show you why—and up to you to weigh the evidence and reach your own conclusion. There is a specific framework for the course: the heroic story, how it has changed (and not changed) over time, and why it might continue to fascinate people even after thousands of years. And as we go we’ll also address some practical goals: close reading skills, academic writing, thinking of literature in terms of its historical context and its genres (such as poetry, fiction, and drama). But ultimately details like these always lead to larger questions about life. We will embrace those larger ideas as well as many other details this semester, some that I suggest and some that you will think of as we go, all within an atmosphere of exploration, adventure, wonder, and fun. Readings will include Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man, Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, 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 Stone. ENGL 221, Major British and American Writers From 1660 (dAvid pAddy) This course continues the survey of literature begun in ENG 220. One of the big differences from the previous course is that in addition to looking at the development of British literary history we will also consider the trajectory of American literary history. The course will in fact begin with some of the foundations of American literature. Moving back and forth between British and American literature, we will examine Romanticism, the Victorian Age, Realism, Modernism, and conclude with some directions taken in contemporary literature. As we investigate the intellectual ideas and aesthetic premises that guide each era, we will also address such issues as the rise and fall of the British Empire, the building of the American nation, the historical importance of revolution and industrialization, and the roles of race, class and gender. As we consider shifting notions of aesthetics, we will also consistently ask: What is the relationship
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between national identity and literature? We will read a wide range of poems, stories, essays, and excerpts, and we will read several full length works. ENGL 290, Section 1, Magazine and Journal Editing (Joe Donnelly) In this course we will tackle editing, designing and publishing the Greenleaf Review, learning the critical and practical applications of publishing a professional-grade, studentled literary journal. ENGL 290, Section 2, Digital Poetry and Online Performance Art. Underground L<3vers: Digital Poetry and Online Performance Art (Kate Durbin) Digital Poetry and Online Performance Art is a course that explores digital literature and online performance art. Some questions we will consider are: how has the Internet changed our relationship to language and to art? In an era where we are frequently performing versions of ourselves online, what new venues and possibilities for performance have opened up in digital spaces? How are writers and performers using these spaces in creative ways, to reach and interact with audiences? We will look at digital spaces like social media, chatrooms, YouTube, MMORPGs and more in order to produce experimental, creative works that respond to the specificity of these terrains. We will study digital performance artists who intervene in online spaces, such as Angela Washko’s feminist conversation interventions into World of Warcraft and Joe DeLappe’s “dead-in-iraq,” where he recited the names of soldiers killed in the Iraq war in US Army’s online recruiting game “American Army.” We will also explore contemporary poetry by poets who use language from the Internet in their work, such as Sophia LeFraga's "LITERALLYDEAD," which remixes grieving Facebook posts. ENGL 302, Advanced Creative Writing Workshop: Advanced Fiction (Michelle Chihara) This course is an advanced creative writing workshop. We will focus primarily on reading and critiquing each other’s work. We will also read a wide range of short stories and excerpts of other work, in order to expose ourselves to an array of idiosyncratic voices, creative approaches and techniques. The class assumes a serious commitment to writing fiction, and some experience with both the workshop format and the short story genre. The workshop is a working writers’ group, where we assume a love of language and a drive to write in ourselves and all of our peers, and focus on pushing each other to discover the strongest expression of our individual voices. ENGL 303, Advanced Poetry Writing (Tony Barnstone) This class is an advanced workshop for those who have learned the basics of poetry writing. You are expected to enter the class with a strong understanding of what makes for a powerful free verse poem, how to craft the amazing image, how to take a poem through rhetorical and conceptual "turns," how to create exciting line breaks that create interesting tensions with the sentence rhythm, and of course how to revise a poem to make it better and better. In this class, you will learn the essentials of metrics, from accentual meter to syllabics to accentual-syllabic meter, and you will write in those meters, often in fixed forms, such as the haiku, the pantoum, the sestina, the quatrain, the
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villanelle, the sonnet, terza rima, blank verse, and such other meters as Chinese regulated verse and the Persian ghazal. This term, I am pairing it with Jake Carbine’s class REL 202, Asian Religions, and I will include more Asian forms in the class. 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 312, Environmental Journalism (Joe Donnelly) Covering the environment is a daunting task. Inconvenient truths grapple with a populist disdain for science and fact. Conservation is often at odds with economic imperatives and entrenched interests. The environment is a tough and amorphous beat to cover. The good news, though, is that amid the seeming onslaught of dark tidings, there are rays of hope and signs of redemption. During this course, we will strive to get a handle on what it means to be an environmental journalist and then put our understanding to good purpose. ENGL 319, Early Modern Drama: Sex, Murder, and Carnival (Jonathan Burton) The turn of the seventeenth-century is often considered the golden age of English drama. Would it be so without Shakespeare? This class suggests that Shakespeare was only one contributor to an era of playwriting rich in literary experimentation and radical politics. We will explore nine plays written by Shakespeare’s contemporaries. They cover the usual early modern (and perhaps modern) preoccupations: transvestism, fanaticism, adultery, murder, incest, Jews, Islam, money and world domination. ENGL 323, Dante (Wendy Furman-Adams) Even with today’s vastly expanded canon, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) remains one of the "greats" of world literature. In a still-important twentieth-century essay, T. S. Eliot exaggerated only slightly when he wrote, "Dante and Shakespeare divide the [Western] . . . 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 that all human beings, in all places and times, must eventually undertake. 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,
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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, Topics in Shakespeare: Rewriting Shakespeare (Joathan Burton) In this class we will use theories of adaptation to explore the ways in which contemporary playwrights have grappled with the legacies of Shakespeare’s plays. For each of Shakespeare’s plays that we read, we will also read one or more feminist, postcolonial, or queer adaptations. In addition to essays on adaptation, students will also complete a scholarly editing assignment and write a scene from their own adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s plays. ENGL 330, British Literature 1640-1789 (Bethany Wong) This historical survey concentrates on literature of the long-eighteenth century through the thematic lens of “the world turned upside down” (made familiar by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton). Beginning with the English Civil War and ending with the American and French Revolutions, we will be examining the new and diverse voices— crossing boundaries of class, gender and race—that emerge across genres when central authorities are questioned. What happens when we no longer make assumptions about who should be in power? Whose stories are worth telling? Framing our literary investigations with the concept of “revolution,” we will examine how eighteenth-century authors such as Aphra Behn, Anne Finch, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Richardson, Samuel Johnson and Jane Austen, imagined and wrote about the changes that they wanted to see in the world. We will read novels about royal slaves and teenage servants who rise above their circumstances. In the plays, we will reckon with rakes, fops and coquettes. Our poems will range from lofty ideas about the Great Chain of Being to scatological humor about highly-decorated chamber pots. Come prepared to make some literary friends and enemies, who will help you reflect on the parts of the current world that you want to turn upside down.
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ENGL 334, British Romantic Poetry (Charles S. Adams) “Charles Adams teaching something non-American?” you query? Yes, it is true. One closely guarded secret is that I really like all the romantic stuff, even the Brits. My main interests are, as usual, historical (see next paragraph), philosophical, and ideological. The core trio of early romantics, Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, are inspired by the French Revolution to rethink English poetry, and they take a pretty good shot at it. They inspire the most significant of the second generation of English romantics, Byron, Shelley, and Keats (who all fulfill the famous movie line “live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse”), and they all were read carefully by a bunch of other writers, especially all my favorite American romantics. Indeed, with this period we see the beginning of what poetry looks like today—it is arguably the birth of the “Modern.” These folks get into all sorts of stuff—visionary mysticism, social and political agitation, sexual, social, and political satire (Byron is a riot), mind-altering experiences, autobiography, and much else. Yet they are also very conservative at times, using many traditional poetic strategies to get at their idea of “the new.” The goals are always ambitious and the personalities outsized: Shelley felt that the poets of all times (but his especially), were, “The unacknowledged legislators of mankind.” And it was famously said of Byron that he was, “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” Aspirations for us all. I think. This time out the class is paired with History 390, The Romantic Revolutions, taught by Professor Elizabeth Sage. The history course takes up the question of how and why what we call the romantic period in British literature was also a period of extraordinary revolutionary activity of all sorts in Europe. The French Revolution is an obvious starting point, but most European countries experienced something like revolution, with the outstanding exception of England. We hope to fully integrate the courses in the sense that everything we are doing in each class is related to the other. Students are required to sign up for both courses. Instructor Permission Required. ENGL 356, Twenty-First-Century British Fiction (dAvid pAddy) We are now twenty years into the 21st century. What does Britain and British literature look like today? What are the issues that define the place and time and that concern writers now? Who are the major voices that are sticking around and who are the emerging talents to keep our eyes open for? The “contemporary” is an ever-evolving phenomenon, which means this is a class that will undergo constant change. The class will take the last twenty 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, and Brexit. But we’ll really have to wait and see. The books for the course should be the following: Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home, Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing, Zadie Smith’s Swing Time, China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun, David Mitchell’s Slade House, Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall and John Lanchester’s The Wall.
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ENGL 366, Whitman and Melville (Charles S. Adams) Whitman and Melville lived at pretty much the same time (it is Whitman’s 200th birthday this year), and both produced incredibly significant works at virtually the same literary moment, thinking about similar issues, but taking quite different views. Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Melville’s Moby-Dick are huge, epic, dense, profound, difficult, obtuse, spiritual, 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 (I have lost count of the number of references in the various Star Trek iterations). Apple and Volvo have been using Whitman in their ads, assuming we all rcognize his words, I guess. We will look at the writers closely and take our time to know all that we can about the books and the times that produced them. Yes, one book each, and half the semester on each. We are going to follow the whales to the deepest level we can. This is the good stuff, folks—the texts that changed everything, that try to do everything, that head us to the modern. Not for the faint of heart or those who like to think small. But you will be a member of the few who have actually read the works. And we will try to do at least one field trip to go whale watching! NOTE: For ENGL minors, the course will count in the “major figure” category. 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, ChicanX Literature (Michelle Chihara) Who draws the boundaries between countries? Who gets to decide what they mean? What could it mean to have a "border identity"? In recent decades, scholars in various academic disciplines have recognized the contributions made to the United States and American culture by Chicano/a and Latino/a authors, artists and performers. People who self-identify as Latinos in general and Chicanos in particular make up an increasingly large section of the North Americanpopulation. In this course, students will gain an appreciation and understanding of the growing body of 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. The course will concentrate on concepts that have played a significant role in the focus and development of Chicana literary studies: race and racialization, gender and sexuality, labor and social class. The biographies of most Chicano writers reveal an experience
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within the United States in large part shaped by migration, economic necessity, racial and gendered forms of marginalization, and working-class struggles. While the course presupposes a connection between history and literature, part of the objective for the class will be to assess and interrogate such connections. How does literature engage with the greater democratic dialogue? What are literature’s responsibilities? How do questions of personal identity interact and intersect with groups and social movements? In Southern California, we live very close to the Mexican border. We will use Chicano literature as a means of exploring the artistic, social, and political ramifications of this border—because borders affect everyone who lives within them. ENGL 400, Critical Procedures (Michelle Chihara) This is the course in which senior English majors complete their “paper in the major” requirement, so a good deal of our time will be spent working on that, culminating in the “Senior Presentation,” where you go public. In addition, the agenda of this class is theoretical. Reading a novel, poem, or play may seem a fairly fundamental skill for you by the time you’re a senior English major. But most of us have not really encountered the reality that there are serious people who have serious disagreements about how to go about these fundamental tasks. We know it at heart, but most of us have not thought it through. So, what are the ways that contemporary literary theorists take on the job? What are people doing right now, arguing about? Many of these theories are difficult if not mind-boggling, but they will all help you become a more thoughtful reader, careful critic, and, perhaps, sophisticated teacher of literature. Indeed, a common response from students after learning this material is something like, “I will never be able to read the same way again.” And, “Why didn’t I know this stuff far earlier in my career?” But maybe you did, and now can put a name to it—that is the point. Each of us has an approach to literature, but is there a name for what you do? The answer is yes. Maybe not exactly what you do, but probably close. Instructor Permission Required. ENGL 410, Senior Seminar: Writing Renaissance Women (Wendy Furman-Adams) The title of this senior seminar refers to two things at once. Most obviously, this is a course about women writers working in Italy and England between about 1500 and 1700. But a number of important male writers are represented as well because of their role in the way literature both reflected and, in turn, influenced--even re-invented--early modern life. Due in part to social factors, in part to the power of their vision, these male poets indelibly shaped the ways men imagined and represented women, as well as the ways female readers imagined and represented themselves. Thus, even when writing for others of their own sex, women wrote 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. Our lives, then, are 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
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the male perspective. The Renaissance was a period of enormous change and upheaval, in which a relatively unified 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 consider 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. Students will produce a portfolio of writing, including several short papers and reviews and a much longer piece of original research, which may be written in combination with the Critical Procedures paper in the major. ENGL 420, Preceptorship: Teaching Literature (Various Faculty) See description in Fall listing.
Related Spring Courses INTD 290, Creating Storyworlds: Worldbuilding the Real World (Geoffrey Long) The art of worldbuilding is key to designing fictional worlds like Star Wars or the Marvel Universe, but it’s also an incredibly powerful tool for individuals, governments and corporations to influence real-world change. Students will learn the art of “non-fiction worldbuilding” or futurecasting – how to draw from current technological, cultural and political trends to collaboratively envision new futures for the real world, how to write design fictions with a human lens at the center, and craft plans for collaboratively making those visions into reality. (No prerequisite is required, but students who took INTD.246, Introduction to Game Design, or INTD.290, Creating Storyworlds: Transmedia Storytelling from Mythology to Marvel course will find this to be a rewarding sequel.) INTD 246, Introduction to Game Design (Geoffrey Long) Almost everyone enjoys playing games, but what do terms like "play" and "game" actually mean, and how do games really work? As they make multiple games of their own, students will learn the history, theory and fundamentals of game design, how to
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think critically about games, how games are used for simulation and education, and the art and business of fun and games. No prerequisite is required,
MAY 2020
English 333, Jane Austenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s England (Andrea Rehn) We will visit landmarks of Jane Austen's life and work in order to better understand the novels and the "heritage industry" that they have brought to life in southern England and in film, TV, and the web. Winchester, a cathedral city and ancient capital of England (and home of a historic knockoff of King Arthur's Round Table) will be our first base as we visit Chawton House (still owned by Austen's family) as well as the smaller house (now a museum) where she lived during her most productive writing period. We will follow ancient footpaths walked by Austen herself as well as contemporary writers including John Keats and William Wordsworth in order to experience life as they would have lived it. We will also visit the University of Southampton, home of the MA in Jane Austen as well as the historic Royal Navy Dockyard in Portsmouth to learn about how war and imperialism shaped Austenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s family and culture. Our next destination will be Lyme-Regis, a coastal town and site of a pivotal scene in Persuasion, and then stop by Stonehenge on our way to Bath, a city about which Austen wrote often and probably loved to hate. There we will visit ballrooms, the Austen Centre (where we will dance like its 1812), the Roman baths, and examples of the famous neoclassical architecture of the period. We will finish our class in London with visits to various museums and an evening at the Globe, the Shakespearean theater. Before we depart, students will read two of Austen's novels, so that while we are traveling we will spend our time together doing and seeing. The main assignment will be to create a "Common-place book," a kind of 18th century scrapbook, of your reading, experiences, and reflections. Click here for a slideshow of the locations we will visit, or visit this URL: https://bit.ly/AustenMay2020
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.
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Ways to Help While we all live for art alone, other things do matter. There are lots of ways to help us, and we welcome conversations with anyone who wants one. We are all interested in collaborations with alums in various ways, just as a starting point. But money is always useful too. We have two funds that support English Department activities in particular— one for “Student Prizes in Literature” and the other called “Poets for Poets.” The first supports writing prize contests all students at Whittier can enter. We have been giving prizes for fiction, poetry, and prose. Most of the winning work has been published in our Literary Review, edited by our students. The “Poets for Poets” fund supports general activities of interest and importance to the department (we need it to grow a bit more to start using it in the best ways possible). If you are interested in making even very small gifts, “it is all good.” Just tell the office of Advancement (on line or in person) what you want to do.
The Whittier College Department of English Language and Literature and Affiliates Charles S. Adams: cadams@whittier.edu Professor (American Literature, American Studies, Autobiography, Romanticism, Popular Culture, Literary Theory) Tony Barnstone: tbarnstone@whittier.edu Professor (Creative Writing--Poetry, Modern and Postmodern American Literature, Asian Literature, Translation) Jonathan Burton: jburton@whittier.edu Department Chair. Professor (Shakespeare, Drama, Early Modern Studies, Music Writing, Comparative Literature, Literary Theory) Michelle Chihara: mchihara@whittier.edu Assistant Professor (Creative Writing—Fiction and Non-Fiction, Latinex Literature, American Literature, American Studies, Literary Theory) Wendy Furman-Adams: wfurman@whittier.edu Professor (Milton, Early Modern Literature, 18th Century Literature, Women’s Studies, Literature and Visual Culture, The Bible, Classics) Sean Morris: smorris@whittier.edu Associate Professor (Linguistics and English Language, Medieval Literature, Creative Writing, Fun) dAvid pAddy: dpaddy@whittier.edu Albert Upton Professor of English Language and Literature (20th Century British, Modernism, Postmodernism, Welsh and other Celtic Literatures, Literary Theory, Creative Writing) Andrea Rehn: arehn@whittier.edu Professor; Associate Dean for and Director of the Whittier Scholars Program; Director, Digital Liberal Arts (19th Century British, Postcolonial Studies, Women’s Studies, Travel, Literary Theory)
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Visiting Assistant Professors: Joseph Donnelly: jdonnel1@whittier.edu Geoffrey Long: glong@whittier.edu Bethany Wong: bwong2@whittier.edu Visiting Instructors: Kate Durbin: kdurbin@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
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