Courses – Department of English and Communication

Spring 2020

UndergraduateMAMFA

COMMUNICATION

Special Topics: Small Group Communication
50:192:229:91
M 9:35-10:50
W Hybrid
Gimbal

This course will focus on the processes of small group communication. We will analyze the attitudes, and skills for being a member and leader of a small group. The class will involve a service learning component that will allow students to work in a small group setting in the community. This course is offered as a hybrid class meeting one day per week for lecture and one day per week with a group.

Special Topics in Communication: Introduction to Web Design
50:192:329:01
MW 2:05-3:25
DuBose

This course will introduce students to the basic principles of web design. Beginning with HTML markup, students will learn best practices in creating sites that are accessible to all users on all devices. Much of the semester will focus on the use of CSS to create page layouts and style content. The course will also cover site prototyping and strategies for organizing large amounts of web content.

Special Topics in Communication: Conflict and Communication
50:192:330:90
Online
Gimbal

This course focuses on the theories and process involved with conflict. Students will understand different ways to handle conflict and effective communication strategies for navigating conflict. This class is offered
fully online through Canvas.

LITERATURE

Literature Appreciation
50:350:106:01
MW 2:05-3:25
Ledoux

This course is designed for non-majors and is not writing intensive. It is intended to give students a college-level understanding of the major literary genres and historical periods. Students will also gain a working knowledge of the basic tools of literary study, such as understanding point of view, tone, image, metaphoric language, etc. In addition to reading, students will take quizzes, a midterm, and a final exam. Fulfills the AAI General Education category.

Introduction to English Studies
50:350:201:01
MW 9:35-10:55
Martin

The course is designed as an introduction to the discipline of English studies, addressing its complex and varying approaches and methodologies. In addition to traditional literary study–focusing on fiction, drama, poetry–we will devote attention to some of the other sub-disciplines in our department, including journalism, film, and linguistics. Assignments will be variable, including not only the critical paper one may expect in a traditional English course but also annotation projects, reviews, and other exercises. The course will also introduce students to some of the new tools now available for studying English in the digital age. Ideally, in May, the field of English has emerged as vibrant and forward-looking, capable of offering marketable skills to today’s students. Required for English majors. Fulfills the AAI General Education category.

Immigrant Voices
50:350:204:01
MW 9:35-10:55
Fiske

This course examines literature written by and about immigrants in search of the American Dream. We will read a wide variety of 20th and 21st-century texts ranging from fiction to poetry to essay to memoir, dealing with the immigrant experience. In addition to working with written texts, this course contains an Engaged Civic Learning component. For this component, students will conduct a series of interviews with an individual living in Camden County who is part of an immigrant community. The interviews will focus on collecting an oral, written, and / or visual history of the individual’s experience with immigrating/ migrating to the United States. The final project will document this history in a multi-media format.

Fulfills the ECL General Education category.

Special Topics: How to Read a Newspaper
50:350:224:91
T Hybrid
Th 2:00-3:20
Barbarese

Historical documents are parts of human discourse—produced, edited, published, republished, exalted, condemned, remembered or forgotten for the same reasons and according to the same timetables–and for that reason can be considered a legitimate part of literary study. The course looks at a range of texts as works of literature; some no more than a few pages in length—political speeches from America’s foundations to the present, Supreme Court decisions, advertisements, corporate apologies and three works of contemporary fiction—and separate the garbage from the gold, noting where original meanings and intentions have either survived their contexts of production or have been swept up in subsequent events. “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality,” wrote Philip K. Dick, is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” We will decide who are the controllers and who are the controlled, the users and the used. Required texts: an inexpensive instructor-supplied anthology of public documents, the daily newspaper (the one you read), and three novels.

Fictions of Masculinity
50:350:236:01
MW 12:30-1:50
Fiske

This course will explore depictions of masculinity in literature of the West from the ancient Greeks to the present moment. How was masculinity framed and defined at specific historical moments and how have these definitions and frameworks evolved over time? What are the barriers past and present to achieving a cultural ideal of masculinity? How do these ideals differ between racial and economic groups and why? How do ideas and ideals of masculinity become destructive? What are the forces at work at any given historical moment that marginalize certain representations or embodiments of masculinity while reinforcing others and contributing to their cultural dominance? Requirements include active class participation, two short papers, a midterm, and a longer final project.

World Literature
50:350:238:01
TTh 11:10-12:30
Barbarese

Studies in great works of world literature from antiquity to the early modern era. Fulfills the HAC General Education category.

Literature and Horror
50:350:247:01
MW 9:35-10:55
Sayre

In this course we will study a range of stories and films that use horror as their central narrative device, covering madmen to monsters and everything in between. We will focus our study on the ways in which authors use the experience of horror to manage threats of difference and disorder, the way that horror attaches to threats of otherness, as well as the ways in which horror expresses an intimate, unsettling fear of the self and the potential for our own monstrous transformation.

Fulfills the AAI General Education category.

Ten Books I Should Have Read by Now
50:350:251:01
MW 12:30-1:50
Martin

This version of the course will link five works from the ancient and medieval eras in Western Europe with five modern works, showing a continuity of human concerns and literary themes over some 2500 years. Likely pairings include Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey with Margaret Atwood’s novel The Penelopiad, The Book of Genesis with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Sophocles’ play Oedipus the King with Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, and the Inferno of Dante with T. S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”–among other possibilities. Assignments will be consistent with a course intended for non-majors: quizzes, exams, and short response papers and exercises.

Fulfills the HAC General Education category.

Native American Literature
50:350:252:01
MW 2:05-3:25
Sayre

Native American Literature is a survey of creative works by Indigenous authors from territories recognized today as the United States and Canada. Covering a diverse range of works, from oral traditions to the twentieth-century “Native American Renaissance” to contemporary genre fictions, comic books, and video games, this course introduces students to a number of Native American authors and asks them to consider how these creative works complicate understandings of US history and citizenship by offering Indigenous perspectives on the question of land, heritage, and belonging. Fulfills the DIV General Education category.

Fulfills the USW General Education category.

Foundations of Literature
Worlds of Fantasy
50:350:300:01
TTh 3:35-4:55
Fitter

That world of monsters and severed heads – of enchanted castles, spells, and eerie enemies – that world of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter: where does it come from? From literature of the Middle Ages, of course! We will read masterpieces of medieval fantasy, then pass on to Renaissance chills and tingles: the occult terror of Dr Faustus, the wickedness of war in Tamburlaine, and the curious heroism of Milton’s Satan. For English majors, this course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement; and it introduces non-majors to the inspiration for some of our own cinema classics.

Fulfills the HAC General Education category.

Study Away: Reporting on the Civil Rights in America: Then and Now
With required trip to Atlanta and Birmingham March 14-22, 2020
50:350:306:01
T 6:00-8:50
Capuzzo

This Study Away journalism course will dive into the issues of America’s Civil Rights, from race, gender and societal battles waged in the mid-20th Century, to the inequity we continue to face today. To bring these issues to life, we will take a 9-day trip through the South during spring break, traveling from Atlanta to Alabama to Nashville, where we’ll retrace the trail of the Civil Rights Movement, and experience the settings where some of the most important changes in race and social justice rights in the U.S. were fought and won. We’ll also visit local media outlets, and meet with journalists, civil rights educators and those who lived through these turbulent times. Comparing the hard-fought efforts of former civil rights activists, students will report on one these on-going issues, writing a researched feature article on a subject of their choosing.

Survey of Medieval British Literature, CA. 500-1485
Medieval British Multiculturalisms
50:350:315:01
TTh 3:35-4:55

Merry olde England was never just for the English — Brexit be damned. Come with me on a journey to explore the multiculturalisms of the British Isles as reflected in their literature. We’ll look at British, English, Latin, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Cornish, French, and Old Norse texts produced in and around England, and talk about the cultural and ethnic diversity always found there since earliest times. This is a course pulled right off the frontlines of medieval scholarship and desperately relevant to our world today. (Counts as one of your historical courses for the major.)

Fulfills the Department of English Literary History requirement.

Children’s Literature in Print and Film
50:350:362:90
Online
Hoffman

In this course we will examine modern British and American children’s literature and film adaptations of that literature produced in the 20th and 21st centuries. Of special interest will be the public political discourses into which these select texts intervene, as well as issues of adaptation and intertextuality. The reading list includes Alcott, Little Women; Stevenson, Treasure Island; Kipling, The Jungle Book; Barrie, Peter Pan; Burnett, A Little Princess and The Secret Garden; and books by Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, and Maurice Sendak, and Neil Gaiman. Requirements include reading quizzes, short response papers and Sakai posts, a formal critical essay (10-12 pp.), and a final exam.

Learning Abroad: Writing Revolutions
With required trip to Cuba March 13-21, 2020
50:350:389:I1
W 12:30-3:20
Green
or
50:350:389:I2
W 12:30-3:20
Singley

We pair two historic sites of revolution–Philadelphia and Havana—to explore how people, governments, and cultures move toward freedom. Experience these movements firsthand through visits to Philadelphia sites and a 9-day trip to Cuba during spring break (7 days in the capital city, Havana, including at the University of Havana, and 2 days in historic Cienfuegos). We explore theories of oppression, liberty, and resistance in two time frames: 1) the American Revolution of 1776 contrasted with the Cuban overthrow of Spanish rule, and 2) the 1960s Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, and anti-Vietnam War movements in the US contrasted with Fidel Castro’s coming to power in Cuba. A unique opportunity to learn more about US culture and to experience Cuba, a country only recently open for American visitors. Meetings by arrangement are possible, as well as the opportunity to shape your focus of study.

Fulfills the GCM General Education category. Fulfills the XPL General Education category.

Learning Abroad: Literature and Film of South Africa
With required trip to South Africa March 11-23, 2020
50:350:390:I1
Th 2:00-4:50
Hoffman

In this course we will study work by some of the most accomplished writers in the English language and important filmmakers, all of whom live (or lived) in South Africa. The history of South Africa is a violent one, but in recent years, with the end of the racist apartheid state, a new multiracial democratic society has emerged, but not without major challenges. The literature and film that we read/watch (focused on the last 30-40 years) take account of this unfolding history and reflect the diverse ethnic populations of the country. Authors include two Nobel Prize winners—Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee—as well as Alex La Guma, Njabulo Ndebele, Zakes Mda, and Zoe Wicomb, among others. Films span the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

The course lasts eight weeks and culminates in a trip during spring break to South Africa, where we will experience first-hand some of the places we have read about and go on safari in Kruger National Park.
We also will tour museums, create and go on literary walking tours, and see several plays and films.

Fulfills the GCM General Education category. Fulfills the XPL General Education category.

Learning Abroad: Haruki Murakami: Magical Japan
With required trip to Japan March 13-23, 2020
50:350:390:I2
MW 12:30-1:50
Grodstein

Japan is a country where the magical and the pedestrian seem to exist side by side, and no modern writer is better at capturing the country’s vivid personality better than Haruki Murakami. During this ten day trip, we will use Murakami’s work as a guide to his native country, visiting the university districts of Tokyo, the rural shrines of Takamatsu, and the palaces of Kyoto, where the writer was born. We’ll also visit the chic port city of Kobe, whose destruction in the great earthquake of 1995 inspired Murakami’s story collection “After the Quake.” Students should prepare to eat delicious food, listen to great live jazz, see mesmerizing landmarks, and stroll through some of the most exhilarating cities in the world.

Fulfills the GCM General Education category. Fulfills the XPL General Education category.

Portfolio Seminar
50:350:400:01
W 3:35-4:35
DuBose

A one-hour seminar in which students complete a self-directed electronic portfolio that presents their experience and achievements as English majors in relation to professional life, graduate school, and/or other post-baccalaureate goals.

AMERICAN LITERATURE

Modern African-American Literature
50:352:251:01
TTh 9:35-10:55
Cross-listed with 50:014:251:01
Abdul Jabaarr

This course will examine African American fiction, poetry, memoir, and drama, published from the middle of the twentieth century to the present. Students will be introduced to the works of writers such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Ta-nehisi Coates. Along with considering content, we will also take into account the cultural, historical, and political contexts of their writings. Through course lectures, required readings, and class discussions, students will gain a fuller understanding of the literature as well as improve their critical reading and writing skills. Fulfills the AAI General Education category.Fulfills the DIV General Education category.

Funny Books
50:352:265:90
Online
Grodstein

Funny Books is an online survey of American comedic writing, both fiction and nonfiction. Readings will begin with the 18th and 19th century essays of Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain and move to more recent work by George Saunders, Tina Fey, David Sedaris, and Paul Beatty. Through these readings, we’ll explore the mechanics of humor, examining issues of pacing, dialogue, tension, and plot. We’ll also try to understand why it’s so much easier to make someone cry than to make someone laugh, and attempt to write funny essays of our own. Students will be responsible for regular quizzes on the reading and a paper.

American Women Writers
50:352:306:01
TTh 11:10-12:30
Blackford

This class begins in the Puritan period with the poetry of Anne Bradstreet and the captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson, after which we cruise to the nineteenth century with Alcott’s sensational Behind the Mask, Spoffard’s short tales that rival Hawthorne’s, and poetry of Emily Dickinson. After reading the slave narrative of Harriet Jacobs, fashioned awkwardly into a sentimental novel, we will move to the twentieth century with Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Nella Larsen, Zitkala-Sa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, Fae Myenne Ng, and Ana Castillo. Women writers have always expressed guilt at being too embedded in the material world and family for the original Puritan and later transcendental vision of virtue, and they have expressed this guilt through mourning, rage, subversive poetry, and even male narrators and masks. The tension between the personal and political is overwhelming in this genre, and this tension will ultimately teach us about how marginalized voices shape themselves in reaction to white male ideals. Course requirements include participation, a presentation, a take-home exam on close reading, and a final research project, which may be a paper but may also be an electronic or multimodal project (website, podcast, documentary, creative adaptation, film, etc.). Fulfills the AAI General Education category.

Fulfills the DIV General Education category.

American Drama
50:352:329:01
MW 3:45-5:05
Singley

The development of drama in the US, with emphasis on 20th-century and contemporary themes and forms. Possible playwrights include Glaspell, O’Neill, Stein, Williams, Hansberry, Miller, Albee, Wilson, and Wasserstein. Includes the opportunity to see plays as well as read them. Exams, critical analyses, and short responses.

FILM

History of Film III
50:354:302:40
TTh 6:00-7:20
Mokhberi

This course will cover the history of contemporary world cinema, beginning with the rise of the Hollywood blockbuster in the ‘80s through today. We will focus on how various movements and artists around the globe played a role in the evolution of film form and explore the impact of changes in technology, business, and politics. The course will naturally be video intensive. Lectures will integrate short clips from a multitude of films to clarify the ideas, movements, genres, and filmmakers discussed.

Hitchcock
50:354:313:91
M Hybrid
W 12:30-1:50
Zeidner

Alfred Hitchcock is one of the most innovative, and influential, directors in film history. We’ll look at many of his iconic films, including “North by Northwest,” “Vertigo,” and “Psycho,” with an emphasis on cinematic technique. Two short response papers, midterm, and final exam, as well as participation in online forums on Sakai. Course counts towards both the English and communication major and the interdisciplinary film minor.

Film Genre: The Western
50:354:397:90
Online
Sorrento

Few genres have captured the imagination of the 20th-century viewer as did the Western. By 1959, the end of the “golden age” of television, 14 of the top 28 programs were Westerns; on the three major networks, a total of 31 series ran in that year alone. In this course, we will look at how the genre has triumphed and evolved in the movies throughout American film history. We will begin by reviewing the influence of 19th century western art and popular fiction on the silent westerns. The course will then focus on the classical era of the genre (covering 1939 through the 1950s), its archetypal characters and narratives, and how trademark films played on ideals of heroism, colonial expansion, and “manifest destiny.” We will also study the Western of the New American cinema, which reassessed the classical myths during the age of Vietnam and Watergate. The course will conclude with contemporary renditions of the genre, such as No Country for Old Men, and the Western’s “genre expansion”: how it inspired films as varied as Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and George Lucas’ Star Wars.

JOURNALISM

Food Writing
50:570:310:01
TTh 3:45-5:05
Capuzzo

Whether it’s debating food-related health policies, posting a meal on Instagram, or tweeting about celebrity chefs, our culture has become obsessed with what and how we eat, creating an exploding field for journalists, critics and essayists. This course will explore our growing fascination with food, looking at historical and contemporary attitudes about consumption, food politics, food in literature and the modern foodie culture. Readings will include works by scientists, analysts, chefs, bloggers and journalists who write about food. We’ll examine and practice various forms of food writing, from the personal memoir to restaurant critiquing to weighing in on policy issues, giving students the opportunity to not only hone their creative and critical writing skills, but also develop more discerning palates while tasting some good food along the way.

Special Topics in Journalism: Community Reporting
50:570:395:01
TTh 2:00-3:20
Capuzzo

Starting with our campus, then expanding into the City of Camden, students will dive into the community around them in this guerilla-style journalism course designed to uncover stories that get little attention but that really matter. As a class, we will tour development areas of downtown Camden, visit a soup kitchen, and explore surrounding neighborhoods, meeting with and reporting upon the people who work, learn and live in the places where spend a good portion of our time. Students will learn what it means to cover a local beat, and the skills involved in rooting out stories that paint a picture of a community, through words, images and multi-media presentations.

LINGUISTICS

Linguistics and Literature
50:615:331:01
MW 3:45-5:05
Epstein

In this course, we will take some of the classic tools of linguistics, sociolinguistics and the philosophy of language and use them in the analysis of passages from literary texts. The bulk of the course will be an introduction to the discipline of stylistics, the linguistic study of literature. We will cover topics such as: the foreground/background distinction, conversational structure, speech acts, politeness, inference, point of view and speech/thought presentation. We will also devote a significant amount of time to the study of metaphor and metonymy. In addition to studying the basic concepts, strong emphasis will be placed on learning how to apply each of these notions to the analysis of sample texts. Course requirements: Midterm, final exam and several short (2 page) papers.

WRITING

Art of Revision
50:989:301:90
Online
Earner

Practice in the art of constructing clear, concise prose, with emphasis on developing a personal style.

Fulfills the WRI General Education category.

Technical Communication
50:989:302:90
Online
DuBose

Practice in producing usable, informative, reader-based documents in a range of media (written, oral, electronic) with an emphasis on collaboration and on communicating specialized knowledge to nontechnical audiences. Fulfills the WRI General Education category.

Introduction to Creative Writing
50:989:305:90
Online
Helck

Introduction to the writer’s craft that surveys available genres of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Poetry Writing Workshop
50:989:306:90
Online
Barbarese

Study of the creative process involved in the writing of poetry, the techniques and discipline required, and trends in contemporary poetry. Fulfills the AAI General Education category. Fulfills the WRI General Education category.

Introduction to Web Design
50:989:319:01
MW 2:05-3:25
Cross-listed with 50:192:329:01
DuBose

Learning Abroad: Writing Revolutions
With required trip to Cuba March 13-21, 2020
56:350:505:I1
W 12:30-3:20
Greenz
or
56:350:505:I2
W 12:30-3:20
Singley

Learning Abroad: Literature and Film of South Africa
With required trip to South Africa March 11-23, 2020
56:350:506:I1
Th 2:00-4:50
Hoffman

Learning Abroad: Haruki Murakami: Magical Japan
With required trip to Japan March 13-23, 2020
56:350:506:I2
MW 12:30-1:50
Grodstein

Introduction to Theory and Criticism
56:350:514:01
W 6:00-8:50
Ledoux

This course is required for the MA in English and Media Studies and should ideally be taken in the first year. Students will learn a variety of theoretical models, including Marxist, deconstructionist, feminist, and queer theory. We will also think critically about how theory is fundamental to advancing scholarship and informs all of our academic arguments and creative projects.

Professional Development Lab Spring
56:352:518:01
S 11:30-2:20
Gimbal

In this course, students will have the opportunity to put theory into practice. This course will focus on the necessary skills for teaching, classroom management and curriculum development. Students will then have the opportunity to develop and create materials they can use within a classroom setting. This course will meet in person February 9, March 9, April 13 and May 11. The rest of the meeting times are online.

Special Topics: Medieval Women – Reading Women, Writing Women
56:350:530:01
Th 6:00-8:50
Hostetter

It is all too common for students to look at misogynies of the past and excuse them with “Well that’s just what they thought back then…” This medieval literature seminar pushes back against that excuse, and shows that misogyny has always been understood as a problem. We will look at medieval texts, in English and beyond, that represent women or were written by women, supplementing this reading with feminist theory to come to a more nuanced understanding of this fundamental human difference. Yes, misogyny existed, but so did resistance to this discrimination. You will need to read Middle English for some of our texts, but I will teach you how to do so. Other texts will be in translation. (This course counts as a Diversity course within the MA program.)

Study Away: Reporting on the Civil Rights in America: Then and Now
With required trip to Atlanta and Birmingham March 14-22, 2020
56:350:540:01
T 6:00-8:50
Capuzzo

Immigrant Voices
56:350:548:01
MW 9:35-10:55
Fiske

Special Topics: Rich Man, Poor Folk: Meditating Social Inequality
56:350:593:01
T 6:00-8:50
Fitter

We address one of the great problems of our time: the polarization of wealth. Moving historically from the middle ages to the present day, we shall study both the emerging philosophic arguments of conservatives to justify inequality (Tudor sermons, Edmund Burke, Nietzsche, Roger Scruton) and indictments of inequality by progressives (Thomas More, the Levellers, Rousseau, Paine, Engels). Students will also screen movie classics, at weekends, on the historically varied lifestyles of the rich and poor, drawn from French, Italian, German, English, and U.S. cinema. Classes will thus discuss a different period each week as represented both in film, and in its philosophic ideas on polarization.

Special Topics: The Internet of Garbage
56:350:594:01
M 6:00-8:50
Brown

“The Internet is garbage.” This is how Sarah Jeong begins her short book, The Internet of Garbage. She shows us that so much content on the Internet must be sifted and sorted, moderated and trashed. Spam, harassment, racism, and misogyny. All of this is commonplace on the Internet, which is no longer even a space separate from “offline” life. But the problem goes beyond this, since the Internet also produces other kinds of garbage too, from the mobile devices tossed into landfills to the carbon spewed into the environment by Google’s servers. This course addresses these issues by examining theoretical texts, literary artifacts, digital art, and games that take seriously what we normally dismiss as the waste of our digital interactions. This course will cover a broad range of theoretical approaches, including but not limited to critical race theory, intersectional feminism, game studies, and media archaeology. Course assignments will be flexible and will allow students to pursue both critical and creative projects. No digital skills are required.

COURSE LIST COMING SOON!