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UMKC Undergraduate English, Anchor, Classics, Greek and Latin Course Descriptions Fall 2015 English English 119: Myth and Literature (45989) Cross‐listed with Classics Cynthia Jones & Elpida Scott T TH 11:30am‐12:45pm A study of classical myth which includes readings from Greek and Roman mythology, the epic poetry of Homer, Hesiod. Ovid and Vergil; including analysis of selected myth and representations in literature, art and music. The course also offers a study of contemporary definitions and approaches to myth in conjunction with mythical themes and archetypes in contemporary mediums. English 214: Introduction to Fiction (43618, 47668) STAFF Online Students will be introduced to the study of fiction as a literary art form. Students will continue to develop their understanding of fiction‐writing in preparation for more advanced courses in literature and creative writing. Coursework will focus on close reading of short and long forms of fiction selected from a range of literary periods and world literature. Students are expected to interpret and analyze various forms of fiction and write critically about the role of fiction as a form of cultural discourse. English 214: Introduction to Fiction (46940) Maridella Carter MWF 10:00am‐10:50am Students will be introduced to the study of fiction as a literary art form. Students will continue to develop their understanding of fiction‐writing in preparation for more advanced courses in literature and creative writing. Coursework will focus on close reading of short and long forms of fiction selected from a range of literary periods and world literature. Students are expected to interpret and analyze various forms of fiction and write critically about the role of fiction as a form of cultural discourse. English 215: Introduction to Poetry (41310) Laurie Ellinghausen Online: First 8‐week course Have you ever wanted to know more about poetry – how to read it, how to interpret it, and how to apply it to your life? This course will help students become active, analytical readers of poetry from a variety of traditions. We will consider the following questions: how do we define poetry? What distinguishes it from other forms of writing and art? What influences have shaped your own definition of poetry? How do your own beliefs, experiences, and personal values play into your interpretation of a poem? What can poetry bring to your own life? In this introductory course, you will learn strategies for reading poetry, study the technical elements of a poem (i.e. poetic devices, forms, etc.), and read a range of poetry from different historical traditions, all over the world. Course texts will include The Norton Anthology of Poetry and two individual collections to be determined. Requirements will include daily online discussion in the Blackboard format, blog responses to audio readings and interviews, and a final paper. Students must have regular internet access and familiarity with the Blackboard environment. Focus A – Arts and Humanities English 215: Introduction to Poetry (47388) Michelle Boisseau TTH 1:00pm‐2:15pm An introduction to the study of poetry for students desiring a basic course either to develop a greater appreciation of poetry or to prepare for more advanced courses in literature or creative writing. Class discussions will focus on close readings of poems and analysis of poetic techniques. Writing assignments will complement reading and class discussion and will enable students to develop their own critical and creative skills. Focus A – Arts and Humanities English 216: The Craft of Creative Writing (46039) Michael Pritchett MWF 11:00am‐11:50pm This course introduces students to the key techniques that writers of imaginative literature use. Students will develop skills in writing and reading multiple genres. The course focuses on 1) experimentation with and the development of writing skills in poetry and fiction, and other genres (literary nonfiction, playwriting, screen‐writing) with a particular emphasis on how revision develops writers; 2) practice in reading like a writer, to discern the strategies of master writers so as to enlarge and challenge one's skill and scope; 3) energetic participation in the writing workshop to sharpen one's critical ear and eye. 4) Ways of performing the work and learning from the wider community through publications and attending local/regional readings, and practice in performance. GEN ED/Focus A – Arts and Humanities English 273: Science Fiction (47389) Anthony Shiu MW 4:00pm‐5:15pm This course is open to all majors and will focus on a range of science fiction (SF) texts from a variety of periods and traditions, including critical works. Covering the utopian tradition, dystopias, “hard” SF, cyberpunk, and SF dealing with issues of gender, race, technology, and knowledge, our focus will emphasize the historical, cultural, and social contexts of each work while pursuing an understanding of how SF connects with a wide interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Possible Required Texts: Novels/Short Stories: Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward: 2000‐1887. Butler, Octavia. Dawn. Dick, Philip K., Time out of Joint. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland. Le Guin, Ursula. The Word for World Is Forest. Gibson, William. Neuromancer. Lovecraft, H.P. “At the Mountains of Madness.” Russ, Joanna. We Who Are about to . . . . Yu, Charles. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. Films: The Day the Earth Stood Still. Dir. Robert Wise Starship Troopers. Dir. Paul Verhoeven Critical Essays by Delany, Jameson, Moylan, Sturgeon, Suvin, and others. This class satisfies the Focus A (Arts and Humanities) General Education Requirement. English 308: Rhetorics of New Media (45220) Daniel Mahala TTH 2:30pm‐3:45pm How are the uses and functions of alphabetic literacies changing under the pressure of new media today? What are the implications of the shift from alphabetic literacy to visual and networked multimodal media for persuasion, for public discourse, and for democracy? In this class, we will explore the emerging rhetorics of new media by examining both new media texts themselves (including networked media, multimedia art and performance, and films ranging from the avant garde to the popular. Our aim will be to examine the outpouring of recent theoretical and historical work on media epistemology, visual ways of knowing, text/image interaction, as well as the political economy of networks and uses of new media for social activism. Specialized knowledge of multimedia equipment and software is neither expected nor required. Likely Course Texts: Wardrip‐Fruin and Montfort, The New Media Reader. MIT UP, 2003. Selected works by important media historians and theorists such as: Lawrence Lessig, Timothy Wu, Roland Barthes, Jay Bolter, Richard Grusin, John Berger, Andrew Feenberg, Donna Haraway, Lev Manovich, WJT Mitchell, Neil Postman, Anne Wysocki, Cindy Selfe, Marshall McLuhan English 311: American Literature I (45219, 46028) Benjamin Moats Online Early North Americans recorded their experiences, defined their identities, constructed their communities, and negotiated differences of gender, race, and class through a variety of narrative forms. In this survey of the literatures of the United States from the colonial period to the mid‐nineteenth century, we will explore these agendas by reading and discussing myths, exploration accounts, autobiographies, poetry, essays, short stories, and a novel by narrators including Native Americans, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Assignments will include weekly Discussion Board postings; blogs and responses about Uncle Tom's Cabin; and team wikis that represent literary themes suggested by our readings. English 311: American Literature I (46401) John Barton TTH 11:30am‐12‐45pm This course surveys U.S. literatures from the colonial period to just before the Civil War. It begins with Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación, a narrative of Spanish contact with the “New World,” and concludes with the poetry of Whitman and Dickinson, major precursors of the modernist movement. The course will cover a wide range of important literary works from many different genres and examine them in relation to the cultural and historical contexts within which they were produced. In our exploration of American literature before the Civil War we will give special attention to questions about race and gender. English 312: Beginning Creative Writing: Fiction (43411) Michael Pritchett Online The course assumes (1) that every good story moves under its own power as the result of what happens when a particular person finds themselves in a particular situation and setting, and (2) that a good story is dramatic, allows us intimacy with the characters, includes their physical and emotional experience, invites us into a special world, is compressed, uses consciously‐crafted language to express a personal vision of reality, and is complete and satisfying. Students will be responsible for drafting, work shopping, rewriting and revising two short stories in addition to exercises and reading assignments. English 315: Creative Writing Poetry (45221) Hadara Bar‐Nadav T, TH 5:30pm‐6:45pm One writes for oneself and strangers. —Gertrude Stein Creative Writing 315 is designed to help you become active and analytical writers and readers of poetry. This writing‐ and reading‐intensive class is best suited for those who already have some knowledge of the conventions of poetry and are ready to join a literary community both within this class and beyond. Though the focus of our work will be on our own writing, we also will read various authors in the anthology Writing Poems in addition to individual poetry collections. Published within the past several years, these collections provide a sampling of some of today’s many literary conversations. Rigorous reading and discussion of poetry will help you to develop analytic skills necessary for revising your work. Whether discussing the work of published writers or writers in our workshop, we will look at how poems are made, moving beyond simply reading for meaning. Along with written responses to the assigned literature, a final portfolio will be due. The final portfolio will contain a group of original, polished, revised poems with drafts, in addition to an author’s note. The author’s note will help you reflect on your writing and reading processes and, ideally, look beyond the classroom and the semester’s end in order to define next‐steps in the development of your creative and intellectual lives. Requirements include writing and revision of original poems, rigorous reading of course texts, short response papers, a group presentation, and a final poetry portfolio, in addition to curiosity and imagination. English 316 WI: Creative Nonfiction the Literature of Social Engagement (46636) Whitney Terrell MW 5:30pm‐6:45pm There has been a long and impressive history of socially engaged nonfiction in American letters. Henry David Thoreau went to jail to protest the Mexican American war and slavery and his essay, “On Civil Disobedience,” was read by Martin Luther King, Jr., who wrote his own famed “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Washington Post reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, became cultural heroes for their exposure of President Nixon’s crimes. Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, sparked a movement to ban the use of DDT and helped start the environmental movement in America. This course is designed to introduce students to the study and crafting of creative nonfiction, with a focus on writing that addresses significant social or political issues. As we’ll discover through our reading, writers have used many different forms of nonfiction to voice their social concerns. Social critique can come in the guise of the personal essay (Ralph Ellison’s “The Little Man at Chehaw Station”), the researched magazine piece (John McPhee’s “Atchafalaya”), the first‐person expose (Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed) or autobiography (Edmund White’s City Boy). Together we will explore – and practice – the many different varieties of this diverse tradition. What constitutes “socially engaged” writing? What strategies have writers used to raise awareness of issues that they consider to be important? How have they managed to balance artistic concerns with their desire to “make a point”? Some authors approach their issues through polemic (Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas?) while others have written pieces that aren’t overtly political and yet, nevertheless, make important social and historical assertions (Joan Didion’s Where I Was From). We’ll spend the first six weeks studying the various forms of literary nonfiction. Then the rest of the class will be devoted to working on your own writing. Students will prepare two 8‐12 page essays on subjects of their own choosing. We’ll discuss each essay in class and I’ll provide line edits and individual conferences to each writer. If you’re interested, you’ll have the opportunity to publish your essay in the University News. English 317: British Literature I (41314) Virginia Blanton MW 4:00pm‐5:15pm This course provides a general survey of British Literature and culture from its beginnings to the 18th century, including works by Chaucer and Milton. This fall, the course will have a particular emphasis on book history and will investigate the means of production of British literature and its reception. Class activities will include making of manuscript & book quires, exploring medieval calligraphy, studying the advances in printing, and examining the practices of early modern “publication.” The course: ‐fulfills a survey requirement for the BA in English; ‐fulfills a literature requirement in the old College of Arts & Sciences General Education program; ‐counts as one medieval requirement in the Medieval and Early Modern Studies minor. English 320: Structure of English (41316) Thomas Stroik T, TH 1:00pm‐2:15pm In this course, you will study the grammatical structure of American English. Although our study will focus upon traditional, structuralist, and generative descriptions of the morphology and the syntax of Standard American English, we will enrich our understanding of English grammar by investigating some of the cultural issues surrounding the construction of a “grammar” and by examining ways in which linguistic study can be integrated into literary analysis. Our studies will pursue the following questions–
what sort of “thing” is the structure of a language? what is the relationship between the structure of a language and the structure of the human mind, and between the structure of a language and the cultural institutions which use and support the language? how exactly does one “learn” the structure of a language? how does one account for the grammatical differences between dialects or between languages? As we delve into some of the above questions, we will try to construct a working notion of syntactic argumentation (critical thinking within a linguistic framework). English 321: American Literature since 1865 (43679) Jane Greer MWF 11:00am‐11:50am This course will introduce students to some of the significant works by United States writers from 1865 to the present, as well as to the major literary movements these works helped to shape. Given the vastness and diversity of the literature produced during this period, no survey will cover everything. However, by the end of the semester, students will have encountered many important literary figures and discussed some central issues that have defined literature and culture in the United States over last 150 years or so. Survey courses of American literature, like English 321, first came into being on college campuses in the early decades of the twentieth century as professors, administrators, and cultural tastemakers sought to transform an increasingly diverse population into “Americans” and to stave off chaos by requiring a sort of homage to a sequence of supposedly heroic (and mostly white male) authors who reflected the values of the nation. In the twenty‐first century, survey classes, like English 321, are still expected to accomplish important cultural work as evidenced by the fact that such courses have historically been part of college requirements at UMKC and at many other colleges and universities across the country. With this in mind, we will pay special attention throughout the semester to how various writers saw themselves and their texts contributing to the creation of a democratic society. English 321: American Literature II (46125) Crystal Gorham Doss Online This course will explore American literature from 1865 to the present. We will read fiction, poetry, drama, and essays. We will read authors such as Walt Whitman, W.E.B. Du Bois, Emily Dickinson, Frank Norris, William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, Zora Neale Hurston, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Sherman Alexie. We will examine these works in multiple contexts (literary, historical, political, and cultural) and pursue the following questions throughout the semester: How do these texts work within and against their literary genre and literary movement? How do these texts respond to previous literary movements and anticipate later movements? How do these texts respond to prevailing and contested notions of what it means to be American? How do these texts shape notions of American identity and work to define a national literature through their exploration of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and regionalism? Students will participate in weekly discussion boards, develop a blog, write an essay, and take three exams. Prerequisite: ENG 225 or DISC 200. English 323: Shakespearean Drama Joan Dean TR 8:30am‐9:45am This is a general introduction to nine representative plays by Shakespeare. There will be three examinations, each of which will contribute 15‐20% to your course grade and two out‐of‐class writing assignments. The first is a précis: a three to four page analysis of a critical work due in late September (the specific date will be announced). The second is a six to eight page analytical paper due in late November. The précis will contribute 15% to your grade; the analytical paper will contribute about 30%. Please note that class attendance is required (and taken). Tentative reading list: Histories: Richard III and Richard II. Comedies: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and Measure for Measure. Tragedies: Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth. Romance: The Tempest. English 326: Modern Irish Literature Joan Dean TR 10:00am‐11:15am The course will focus on representative twentieth‐century Irish poets, playwrights, and fiction writers and address the context in which these works appeared. In addition, the class will touch on recent Irish films such as The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Authors studied will include three of Ireland’s four Nobel laureates (Yeats, Beckett, and Heaney) as well as major writers like James Joyce, J. M. Synge, and Sean O’Casey. Readings include: Yeats and Gregory, Cathleen ni Houlihan Yeats, selected poetry Joyce, Dubliners (highly recommended: James Joyce’s Dubliners: An Illustrated Edition, ed. John Wyse Jackson and Bernard McGinley, now out of print but available from online sellers) Synge, The Playboy of the Western World and The Shadow of the Glen O’Casey, The Plough and the Stars Beckett, selected short plays, including Krapp’s Last Tape. Heaney, selected poetry Texts include: Modern Irish Short Stories, ed. Forkner (Penguin) Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama, ed. Harrington (Norton Critical Editions) Recommended: James Joyce’s Dubliners: An Illustrated Edition, ed. John Wyse Jackson and Bernard McGinley (St. Martin’s Press) Students will write two short papers, as well as an in‐class midterm and a final examination as scheduled. For the fall semester 2015, students will also have the opportunity to hear major scholars lecture on Irish literature during a conference to mark the sesquicentennial of the birth of William Butler Yeats (Mapping Yeats) held in early September just before Kansas City’s Irish Fest. English 327: British Literature II Steve Dilks TTH 10:00am‐11:15am This course covers the period between leading up to the Act of Union of 1800 (which created the “United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland”) and the period that includes the process of Devolution (which has begun to decentralize power, emphasizing regionalism over a central national identity). While many of the texts we will explore have achieved canonical status, helping define Literature and the profession of writing, most were subversive, radical, revolutionary in their own time: we will examine how, since the end of the eighteenth century, British and Irish literary artists have celebrated counter‐culture, deliberately rubbing against the grain of traditional and familiar models of understanding. Throughout the course we will use biographical, cultural, historical, political, and other contexts as frameworks for detailed text‐based analysis. Primary authors we will study in Spring 2015 include Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, Mary Prince, Charles Darwin, E. B. Browning, Alfred Tennyson, W B Yeats, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, Jeanette Winterson, and Hanif Kureishi. If you participate fully in the course, you will become familiar with a number of important authors and texts written since 1790. By the end of the semester you will be able to offer complex definitions of British Romanticism, Victorianism, Modernism, and Postmodernism: in addition to being familiar with representative texts from each of these general literary periods, you will be able to read these texts as historical and cultural artifacts. You will learn to engage in complex interpretation, active cultural critique, and the analysis of discourse conventions. English 333: African American Literature II (44860) Cross‐Listed with Black Studies 333 Anthony Shiu MWF 12:00pm‐12:50pm African American Literature II is a survey course open to all majors. We’ll examine literature, film, and music by African Americans from the 1940s until the present, and we’ll cover a wide range of styles, authors, and movements. We’ll use The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (2nd edition) as our central text and examine realism, the Black Arts Movement, and contemporary (and experimental) African American literature. We will also study a film and read one novel. Our focus will also be interdisciplinary, with an eye toward understanding how the growth of African American literary and cultural traditions contributes to and directly questions American traditions, politics, social structures, and current events. This course fulfills a general requirement for English Creative Writing majors and fulfills the “Literature and Culture” elective requirement for the Black Studies Minor English 344WI: Women & Literary Culture: Poetry 1950‐Present (47398) Hadara Bar‐Nadav T,TH 7:00pm‐8:15pm “…poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.” —Audre Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”) Women and Literary Culture: Genre Focus on Poetry is an upper‐level, discussion‐based class designed to help you become active and analytical readers of poetry by women from 1950 to the present. This exciting, dynamic, playful, and challenging period of literary production spans feminism, the Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War, the war on terror, the Great Recession (of 2009), and other movements and events that continue to shape our lives. We will study a range of poetry from various “schools”—from the Black Arts Movement and its emphasis on community to Confessional poetry and its focus on the personal, from the graphic, rock ‘n roll, in‐your‐face poetry of Kim Addonizio to the meditative poetry of the young poet Tarfia Faizullah as she navigates the tragic abuse of Bengali women. Special attention will be paid to the representation of women’s identities (gender, race, class, and sexual orientation) as well as issues regarding canonicity. Following are some questions we will consider in this course: What does it mean for a writer to be labelled a poet versus a woman poet? What influences have shaped your definition? How have poets represented gender and constructed identity? How have poets used literature to comment on and potentially revise the personal, social, political, and historical conditions from which they write? In response to these questions, we will develop strategies for reading poetry by a broad range of writers including Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath, Sharon Olds, Joy Harjo, and others. Poets studied will range from the traditional to the innovative, from global to local/personal points of view. Requirements include rigorous reading of course texts, energized class participation, short response papers, a presentation, and a final research paper. English 351: Special Readings‐ Research Writing (47821) Thomas Ferrel Time: TBA In this studio‐style course, students will develop their research writing skills by working through the process of composing a research essay and utilizing campus resources, such as research librarians, RooWriter resources, Blackboard collaboration tools, and Writing Studio consultants. This course can be paired with another course or project that requires a substantial amount of writing (e.g., a Writing Intensive course, Discourse 300, a SEARCH proposal or grant, a senior honors thesis, undergraduate capstone project); however, students also can take it as a stand‐alone class if they desire a structured environment to further develop their writing ability with the help of an instructor, campus resources, and their peers. English 351: Love and Death in Medieval Literature Cross‐listed with Foreign Language 302 Kathy Krause T, Th 1:00pm‐2:15pm This course explores the intertwined themes of love and death in medieval European literature, including several of the iconic couples of Western European Culture, such as Guinevere and King Arthur (and Lancelot!). We will read key works from the medieval French, German, Spanish and Italian traditions in English and introduce key concepts in the comparative study of medieval literature, including a basic knowledge of medieval literary techniques and book production. This course meets the breadth requirement for all emphasis areas of the Foreign Language Major. This course meets the Humanities Focus requirement of the UMKC General Education Core. This course meets the requirements for the minor in Medieval and Early Modern Studies. English 355: The Novel before 1900 (47391) Jennifer Frangos MWF 1:00pm‐1:50pm Jane Austen: Her Predecessors, Her Contemporaries, Her Successors English 355 offers an intensive concentration on novels written before 1900. This semester we will take our lead from Ian Watt’s important The Rise of the Novel (1957), in which he argues that Jane Austen is the first modern novelist. We will test his trajectory of the rise of the novel by reading a number of writers before Austen, a selection of Austen’s work and of her contemporaries, and several writers that followed her with two objectives in mind: to recontextualize Austen’s writing and to better understand the development of the English novel. As Professor Devoney Looser has noted, “there remains a tendency to write and teach about Austen in a restricted frame of reference, in single‐author studies or major author courses. Even when she is presented among a cast of literary characters, Austen appears in unsettlingly predictable ways. […] Austen is used to tell a story (one of origin or endpoint) that does little to investigate her immediate literary progenitors and successors as they had an effect on her own writings or on how her reputation was built.” We will thus work to answer Dr. Looser’s call to reinvigorate Austen studies in today’s generation of scholars and generate new knowledge about this much‐discussed and much‐beloved author. Course work will include regular attendance and active participation, three short essays (with at least one serious revision each), response papers or reading quizzes, a take‐home final exam, and possibly a presentation. This course satisfies a pre‐1900 requirement for the undergraduate major in English literature. English 376: Ancient Concepts of the Hero (47382) Cross‐listed with Classics and Communication Studies Jeff Rydberg‐Cox & Mitchell Brian M 6:00pm‐9:00pm at the Tivoli Theater This class will explore concepts of the hero in literature and film. The class will be divided into three major units: one unit on the heroes in the Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey , a second unit on representations of Samurai culture in literature and film, and a third section on the Chinese Wuxia tradition. Readings will include selections from the Iliad, the Odyssey , Herodotus’ History, the Aeneid , Heart of Darkness, the Bushido Shoshinshu of Taira Shigesuke, The Hunger Games, and The Outlaws of the Marsh. Films will include Mad Max, Troy, Helen of Troy, Ulysses, Apocalypse Now, Hidden Fortress, Hari Kiri, The Hunger Games, The Delightful Forest, and Journey to the West. English 426: The Victorian Period (47395) Jennifer Phegley TR 5:30pm‐ 6:45pm (Blended Course with Online Components) “According to Miss Braddon, Crime is not an accident, but it is the business of life. She would lead us to conclude that the chief end of man is to commit murder, and his highest merit to escape punishment; that women are born to attempt to commit murders, and to succeed in committing bigamy.” –W. Fraser Rae, North British Review, 1865 Mary Elizabeth Braddon was one of the best‐selling novelists of the nineteenth century. She wrote more than eighty novels over five decades, some aimed at working‐class readers, some geared toward middle‐
class audiences, and most published in popular periodicals. Braddon wrote in multiple genres, including ghost stories, adventure tales, sensation novels, domestic dramas, historical epics, and detective fiction. This class will focus on Braddon’s crime fiction from the 1860s, paying special attention to the magazines in which these works appeared and the readers they were intended to attract. The London Metropolitan Police Detective Division was established in1842 and in 1856 it was instituted across the country, spurring a nation‐wide interest in sleuthing. Decades before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his first Sherlock Holmes story, Braddon was exploring the complexities of crime solving in a society highly circumscribed by race, class, gender, and disability and intensely interested in the opportunities for detection provided by mid‐century developments in science and technology. Braddon’s murderers, forgerers, arsonists, and con artists were often seemingly respectable middle‐
class men and women who defied Victorian stereotypes of criminality, thus easily duping their victims. Braddon’s detectives could be bumbling and intrusive meddlers or remarkably clever interpreters of evidence and behavior. They were sometimes paid professionals, but were just as likely to be amateurs driven by personal motivations or vendettas. Among Braddon’s professional detectives are the mute policemen Joseph Peters in The Trail of the Serpent (1860) and the greedy private investigator Joseph Grimstone in Aurora Floyd (1862). Braddon’s amateur detectives include hapless barrister Robert Audley, who is obsessed with his friend George Talboys’s disappearance in Lady Audley’s Secret (1861), and the devoted daughter Margaret Wilmot, whose determination to catch her father’s murderer in Henry Dunbar (1864) eventually leads her to dupe the police. We will examine Braddon’s creation of early prototypes of the detective and her influence on the development of detective fiction as a genre. For much of the semester we will meet face‐to‐face on Tuesdays with required online participation via blogs on Thursdays‐Saturdays. However, some Thursday meetings will be required early and late in the semester. These will be clearly indicated on the syllabus, which will be posted to Blackboard one week prior to the beginning of class. In addition to the weekly blogs, course assignments will include reading quizzes and a public wiki project exploring crime and detection in Braddon’s fiction. Fulfills Requirements For: *Literature and Language Capstone *Pre‐1900 Course *Manuscript, Print Culture, and Editing Track English 431: 18th Century Literature (47392) Jennifer Frangos M W 5:30‐6:45 Postmodernism and the Enlightenment This course will explore the connections between Postmodernism and Enlightenment Britain, the period commonly cited as the beginning of the “modern era,” where concepts of “Author,” of “Literature,” of “Subject” (among others) took their modern and familiar forms. In most narratives, Postmodernism is a reaction against Modernism, which was a repudiation of Enlightenment (and Victorian) narratives of objectivity and progress. One twentieth‐century critic, Mary Klages, suggests that Postmodernism is characterized by “fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject.” We will consider the extent to which such characterizations apply to a variety of texts from the Enlightenment and the Postmodern periods (such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels [1726], Laurence Sterne’s novel Tristram Shandy [1759–67], Jorge Luis Borges’s short stories [1930s–50s], Kathy Acker’s fiction [1980s–90s], and films such as The Matrix, Fight Club, Memento, and Big Fish) in order to examine relationships between knowledge and narrative, the imagination and “reality,” “truth” and “progress,” “sense” and “nonsense.” Rather than advancing claims of origin or authorship — for example, “Enlightenment thinkers invented Postmodern thought” — our goal will be to explore the possibilities opened up by the juxtaposition of these two modes of relating to the world. If, for example, the Enlightenment is when things came together and Postmodernity is when things fall apart, what value might there be in reading one against the other as two answers to the same question? (And what would that question be?) Required work for students in 431 will include regular and active participation, thoughtful response papers, one short essay with revision, and a final project of at least 10 pages. This course fulfills the pre‐1900 requirement, and can be used as a capstone course for undergraduate majors. English 432 WI: Advanced Creative Writing, Prose (41318) Whitney Terrell M 7:00pm‐9:45pm This course will focus on writing and publishing short fiction and novels. Students interested in submitting creative non‐fiction are also welcome. Undergraduate students are required to have taken English 312 or its equivalent. The class will be arranged in the “workshop format.” Three times during the semester, you’ll submit a short story, novel excerpt, or non‐fiction piece to me and that piece will be read and discussed by the entire class. I’ll also line‐edit your submissions and discuss them with you individually. This course will focus heavily on craft and revision. But craft will only get you so far and so the hope here will be to create an environment that allows us to investigate what other tools we can beg, borrow or steal to create fiction that is, as John Gardner puts it, “intellectually and emotionally significant.” Aside from doing your own writing, you must read, edit, and submit a written comment on your fellow classmates’ work. Our readings this fall will focus on writers who’ve adopted the techniques of science fiction and fantasy in order to produce literary fiction. We’ll read Margaret Atwood, Jeff VanderMeer (Author of the Southern Reach trilogy), Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, Haruki Murakami, and many others. Much is made of the difficulty and pain of fiction writing but, on the side of optimism, I’ll quote Gardner again: “Almost no one mentions that for a certain kind of person, nothing is more joyful or satisfying than the life of a novelist.” English 435 WI: Advanced Creative Writing Poetry (47383) Michelle Boisseau T 4:00pm‐5:15pm Advanced Creative Writing Poetry: this workshop course will be built around an investigation into metaphor. We will create some working definitions, look at classical categories of figures and tropes, see how contemporary poets use metaphor to create poetic structures on the macro and microlevels of their poems, and use these models to make poems rich with nuance. Texts: TBA. English 445: Histories and Principles of Rhetoric: Rhetoric and Social Change (47397) Jane Greer M 7:00pm‐10:00pm This course explores the histories and principles of rhetoric, or, to put it another way, students will have the opportunity to investigate how people get things done with words. More specifically, we will undertake case studies of three significant social movements in U.S. history—the temperance movement of the late 19th century; the labor movement of the 1920s and ‘30s; and the school desegregation movement of the 1950s and early 1960s. Students will investigate how both activists and average people marshaled arguments, presented evidence, and tapped into emotions in order to advance particular causes. We will also work to understand how the rhetorical practices of these three social movements are part of larger histories of rhetorical practice that can be traced back to ancient Greece, which is commonly viewed as the birthplace of rhetorical study. Students enrolled in this course will complete an original research project on the rhetoric of a social movement of their own choosing, e.g., Abolition; Suffrage; Black Power; Stonewall; the Vietnam War protests; Right to Life; Greenpeace; ACT UP; Third Wave Feminism; Occupy Wall Street, etc. Graduate students enrolled in this class will be expected to produce a more in‐depth research project and do a formal class presentation. For undergraduate English majors in literature, this course meets the rhetoric/linguistics requirement; this course may also be counted toward the minor in Women’s & Gender Studies. English 447: Introduction to Literary Criticism (45942) John Barton TTH 4:00pm‐5:15pm This course introduces students to literary theory and criticism from Plato and Aristotle through major twentieth‐ and twenty‐first century figures such as Freud, Saussure, Bakhtin, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Jamison, Spivak, Butler, Bhabha, Kristeva, Said, and Balibar. Special attention will be given to a range of “schools” of, or approaches toward, the interpretation of literature, including the new criticism, the new historicism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, deconstruction, feminism, queer theory, reader‐response and reception criticism, and postcolonial studies. Course requirements will likely include short, weekly quizzes, Blackboard responses, and both a midterm and final exam. Students will also produce an annotated bibliography and write a case study examining theoretical or critical approaches to a literary work of their own choosing. That work could be any literary text—a favorite poem, novel, short story, or dramatic work—so long as it has generated a range of critical approaches. English 449A: Publication Practicum (41319) Robert Stewart W 11:00am‐11:50am This course provides practical experience with New Letters magazine, New Letters on the Air, and BkMk Press in business analysis/reporting, copy‐editing, manuscript evaluation, promotion/grant development, library research, market research, and other skills. The practicum is limited to three students per semester, to be chosen on the basis of demonstrated writing and organizational skills. References are required. May be taken for no more than three credit hours over a maximum of two semesters. Permission of the instructors required. Prerequisites: ENGLISH 225 (or equivalent) or DISC 200. English 450: Special Readings (47782, 47783, 46229) Veronica Wilson‐Tagoe Contact instructor for different course options and course times. English 450: Special Readings (47784, 46367) Jacqueline Wood Contact instructor for different course options and course times. English 470: Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics (47387) Thomas Stroik T 5:30pm‐8:15pm Over fifty years ago, Roman Jakobson delivered his now famous address, "Closing Statement," in which he argues that linguistics and poetics are interfused: that it is not possible to study poetical language or the poetic function of language without venturing into the science and sociology of language, nor is it possible to study linguistics without recognizing the poetic in language. In this course, we will explore some of the consequences that integrating linguistics and poetics could have on literary analysis and on linguistic aesthetics. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which the biological and cultural interweavings of language open "poetic" language for us and in turn are woven by the poetic. Anchor Anchor 105: The Value of Beauty (47496) Steve Dilks & Kenneth Baker TTH 1:00pm‐2:15pm This class surveys changing definitions of beauty and different purposes that works of (literary) art fulfill using comparisons of British and German (literary) works from the 18th to the 20th centuries. In addition to reading seven primary texts, we will also look at several supplementary texts, images, and other artifacts that will help us investigate the context of the production and reception of the primary works. This class is reserved for students in the UMKC Honors College. Non‐honors students who have a 28+ACT and/or a 3.5 GPA or higher, may receive permission to enroll. Anchor I‐ Reasoning and Values Anchor 307: Frauds, Myths and Mysteries in Archaeology (47669) Cynthia Jones & Ann Raab Online Course investigates and analyses a collection of archaeological hoaxes, myths, and mysteries from around the world, including within the state of Missouri and in the Kansas City region. Students will use science to examine the phenomenon and advance their knowledge regarding good judgments regarding responses to various media in today’s world. By exploring a variety of wildly inaccurate claims about the past – in news reports, books, film and other media ‐ within the context of the scientific method, this course will demonstrate how science approaches questions about human antiquity and, in doing so, will show where pseudoscience falls short. By studying both global and local examples, students will be able to have a stronger connection with their own community, and a better understanding of how urbanization has a significant impact on important local cultural resources. (Lecture/on‐line asynchronous) Classics English 119: Myth and Literature (45990) Cross‐listed with English Cynthia Jones & Elpida Scott T TH 11:30am‐12:45pm A study of classical myth which includes readings from Greek and Roman mythology, the epic poetry of Homer, Hesiod. Ovid and Vergil; including analysis of selected myth and representations in literature, art and music. The course also offers a study of contemporary definitions and approaches to myth in conjunction with mythical themes and archetypes in contemporary mediums. Classics 210: Foundations of Ancient World Literature I (46518) Elpida Scott Online This course studies ancient world literature such as the epics of Homer and Virgil, histories such as Herodotus, Thucydides, and Livy, and philosophy such as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. The course also considers ancient creation epics such as the Hesiod’s Works and Days, the Metamorphosis of Ovid, and the Indian epic Mahabharata. Classics 376: Ancient Concepts of the Hero (47072) Cross‐listed with English and Communication Studies Jeff Rydberg‐Cox & Mitchell Brian M 6:00pm‐9:00pm at the Tivoli Theater This class will explore concepts of the hero in literature and film. The class will be divided into three major units: one unit on the heroes in the Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey, a second unit on representations of Samurai culture in literature and film, and a third section on the Chinese Wuxia tradition. Readings will include selections from the Iliad, the Odyssey, Herodotus’ History, the Aeneid, Heart of Darkness, the Bushido Shoshinshu of Taira Shigesuke, The Hunger Games, and The Outlaws of the Marsh. Films will include Mad Max, Troy, Helen of Troy, Ulysses, Apocalypse Now, Hidden Fortress, Hari Kiri, The Hunger Games, The Delightful Forest, and Journey to the West. Classics 470: Ancient Egypt Cross‐listed with History 470 Cynthia Jones TH 5:30pm‐8:15pm This course describes the political, social and cultural evolution of ancient Egypt from pre‐
dynastic times, with major emphasis upon the Old, Middle, and new Kingdoms (especially the 18th dynasty and the reign of Akhenaton). Greek Greek 490: Special Readings in Greek (45951) Elpida Scott This course is an independent study that requires approval from the professor to enroll. Latin Latin 110: Elementary Latin I (46971) Elpida Scott Online Latin 120: Elementary Latin II (46972) Elpida Scott Online Latin 211: Second Year Latin Readings I (41672) Elpida Scott Online Latin 110, Latin 120, Latin 211: In this course sequence, you will study the Classical Latin Language and prepare to read works in the original language by ancient authors including Livy, Ovid, Vergil, and Cicero. All three courses are taught online using Blackboard. These courses fulfill the Language/Linguistics/Rhetoric requirement for the Classical, Medieval and Early Modern Literature track. You can take Latin 110 even if you don’t plan to complete the entire three course sequence. The Elementary Latin II course is a continuation of Elementary Latin I. In this course, the first‐year Latin grammar textbook will be completed and students will read a graded, Latin reader. Completion of the first‐year Latin coursework will provide the students with the fundamentals of Latin grammar, morphology, and basic grammar in preparation for the second year reading course. Latin 490: Special Readings in Latin (46835) Elpida Scott This course is an independent study that requires approval from the professor to enroll. Miscellaneous Women’s and Gender Studies WGS 301: Introduction to Feminist Theory Crystal Doss Online This course covers a wide variety of feminist theories and theoretical perspectives, primarily since the 1960s, and is devoted to understanding and evaluating this body of work and the insights and possibilities for change that it suggests. Prerequisite: WGS 201 or permission of the instructor.