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1701 North State Street Jackson, MS 39210-0001 (800)352-1050 (601)974-1000
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English 2000-01: Introduction to Interpretation
MWF 10-10:50 am, Th 8-8:50 am
Dr. Greg Miller
This course focuses on developing engaged critical understandings of literary texts. We'll work to write clearly about a variety of literary texts (lyric poems, plays, stories, and a novel) and a film, with increased mindfulness of our critical assumptions and interpretive strategies. We'll develop a working literary vocabulary, both stylistic and theoretical. And we'll cultivate the surprises and pleasures of reading.
ENGL-2020-01 British and American Literary History II
MWF 9-9:50 am
Dr. Laura Franey
This class is a fast-paced exploration of key British and American stories, poems, plays and novels of the past two centuries (ca. 1789-present). We will talk about developments in these genres, the relationship between historical events and imaginative literature, and shifts in aesthetics. In-class exams will be paired with take-home essays to ensure students are getting a lot of experience in writing about literature. It is highly recommended, but not required, that you have already taken ENGL 2000 (or its older incarnation, ENGL 1000) before taking this class.
Required for the English major.
ENGL-2440-01: The Seventies and Eighties
TH 1-2:40, W 7-9 pm
Dr. Robert McElvaine
An interdisciplinary examination of American history and culture from the Nixon years through the 1980s, utilizing literature, film, music, and painting, as well as more traditional sources.
ENGL-2440-02: Philosophy and Literature
MW 1-2:40 pm
Dr. Ted Ammon
A study of various works of literature with an eye to issues such as the nature and function of language, perception and reality, self and the spoken word, theories of meaning, and texts and subtexts. Authors considered include Beckett, Borges, Pinter, Gass, O'Connor, DeLillo, Robbe-Grillet, Abish, Woolf, and others.
ENGL-3000.01: Literary and Cultural Theory
MW 2:45-4 pm
Dr. Eric Griffin
This course introduces major trends in literary and cultural theory, considering their utility for literary analysis, creative writing, and communication studies. The course is designed to deepen critical thinking skills and prepare students for advanced research and/or writing in the department's three majors. Junior standing required.
ENGL 3130: Modernism, Postmodernism, & Film - Kafka to Kundera on page & screen
TTh 1-2:40 pm
Dr. Anne MacMaster
In this course, we'll examine the interaction between the evolving techniques of the medium of film and the innovations in literature that we call modernism and post-modernism. We'll read some of the pivotal works of modernist literature - for example, Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis, T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land and Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury and/or As I Lay Dying, and we'll consider the stylistic innovations of these works alongside the cinematic techniques of films from the same decade - for example, the 1930 film All Quiet on the Western Front. We'll also consider why some works of modernism (Mann's Death in Venice, for instance, or D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love) yield excellent adaptations (such as the 1971 film Death in Venice or the 1969 film Women in Love), while many works of modernism prove un-adaptable. Are there two different kinds of modernism, represented by Mann and Lawrence, on the one hand, and Faulkner and Joyce or Woolf, on the other? Moving beyond modernism, we'll read works of post-modernism - Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being and/or Rushdie's Midnight's Children - with the goal of comparing and contrasting modernism and postmodernism as two temperaments or frames of mind. Here, too, we'll consider the relation between literature and film: Why do postmodern novels prove more adaptable than modernist ones? And why did the critics love but the author hate the 1988 film The Unbearable Lightness of Being? Depending upon the release date of DVDs and showings in theatres during the spring semester, we'll see and analyze the new film adaptations of Midnight's Children and As I Lay Dying. We'll read five or six novels or novellas and view five or six films, sampling other films and long works as we go.
ENGL-3150-01: Nineteenth-Century American Poetry,
MW 1 pm
Dr. Greg Miller
In his "Divinity School Address," Ralph Waldo Emerson calls for a new American literature to "cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation," referring in another essay to poets as our "liberating gods." Did poets of the nineteenth-century in America heed this clarion call? We'll begin by reading selections from Emerson's essays and poems, spending roughly half the semester on those two wonderfully cracked pillars of the U.S. house of poetry--Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.
ENGL-3350-01: Eudora Welty and Politics: Did the Writer Crusade?
TTh 10, W 12
Dr. Suzanne Marrs
In her essay "Must the Novelist Crusade?" Eudora Welty distinguishes between the editorial writer and the writer of fiction, contending that the editorial writer must deal in generalities whereas generalities in works of fiction "make too much noise for us to hear what people might be trying to say." And she adds, "there is everything in great fiction but a clear answer." Nevertheless, she asserts that fiction can "show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean." She offers E. M. Forster's depiction of race prejudice in A Passage to India as a case in point, writing that "The points are good forty years after their day because of the splendor of the novel. What a lesser novelist's harangues would have buried by now, his imagination still reveals." In short, Welty contends that fiction must not crusade, but that it is inherently and powerfully political.
In our spring course, we will read about the political beliefs and acts that typified Eudora Welty's life, and we'll investigate the political import of her fiction. We'll examine stories from A Curtain of Green and ask what they tell us about the Great Depression. We'll discuss A Robber Bridegroom and Delta Wedding and ask whether these novels confront or seek to escape the moral issues raised by World War II. We'll look closely at "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" and "The Demonstrators," two stories written during the Civil Rights Movement. And we'll conclude the course by reading Losing Battles, a novel published in 1970, but offering a retrospective view of the forces of tradition and modernism that characterized the 1930s. Throughout the course, we'll ask ourselves what Welty's fiction reveals about the crucial political issues of the twentieth century. Grading will be based on reading quizzes, a mid-term, a term paper, and a final examination.
ENGL- 3500-01: The Romance
TTh 2:45-4 pm
Dr. Eric Griffin
Some of the writers you grew to love most - such as J.K. Rowling, J.R.R.Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis - are practitioners of the Romance, one of the most enduring genres in world literature. After glimpsing its birth in Medieval France, we will watch the Romance genre grow, develop, mature, and cast its spell over some of the most important works of the Renaissance.
As we identify intertextual relationships between key Romance works, we will chart the ways the genre infuses modern drama, the novel, and film with its spirit of wonder. By learning to identify - via some of the seminal literary criticism of the 20th century - the special mimetic languages (or discourses) of the Romance, we will see how imitators of Romance art have often breathed new life into the genre by dressing new characters in its old clothes, and by playing against inherited Romance fashion. And, by placing our own Romances in dialogue with those of earlier ages, re-casting and reinvigorating the tradition's conventions for a new millennium, we will converse across the boundaries of time and space with classics of the genre.
Our texts will include works by J.R.R. Tolkien, Chretien de Troyes, Thomas Malory, Geoffrey Chaucer, Ludovico Ariosto, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and Miguel de Cervantes, criticism by C. S. Lewis, Erich Auerbach, and M. M. Bakhtin, and films such as Excalibur, The Natural, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, among others. The Romance will fulfill a Genre or Literary History requirement for the English major, and will also be applicable to the concentration in Film Studies. Prerequisite: English 2010, British and American Literary History (or consent of instructor).
ENGL-3750-01 Romanticism and the Gothic
MWF 11-11:50, Th 9 am
Dr. Laura Franey
When William Wordsworth and his friend Samuel Coleridge decided to publish a collection of poems in 1798, they had some problems fitting their very different stylistic and thematic approaches into a shared volume. Put into simplest terms, Wordsworth tended to write about the "real" and Coleridge tended to focus on the "fantastic." In this course, we will focus on that more fantastical side of Romanticism - the side interested in hauntings (both metaphorical and literal), irrational thought and behavior, and sexual passions. We'll read two novels, Matthew Lewis's The Monk and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, as well as a wide range of poetry by Coleridge, Lord Byron, Charlotte Smith, John Keats, and Percy Shelley.
Elective.
CRWT-2000-01: Introduction Reading & Writing Fiction
TTh 1-2:45 pm
Dr. Steve Kistulentz
An introductory course in the reading and writing of fiction. Class will be based on the workshop model, and time will be divided between discussing fiction by writers outside the class and by students in it. ENGL 2000 is recommended.
CRWT-4900-01: Creative Writing Senior Seminar
W 6:30-9 pm
Dr. Steve Kistulentz
COMM 2000-01: Introduction to Communication
MW 2:45-4 pm
Dr. Curtis Coats
We see up to 5,000 advertisements a day. Do they influence us? A handful of companies own 90% of the media in the world. Should we care? Media messages dominate our identities, our culture, and our political system. Can we cut through the clutter?
This course is designed to engage these questions through an exploration of communication and media theories that think about the production of media texts, the meanings embedded in texts, and the consumption of media texts. Most of us live media-saturated lives. This course will help us better understand our media-saturated lives and equip us to be critical media producers and consumers.
COMM 2100-01: History of the Media
MW 1-2:40 pm
Dr. Curtis Coats
Why do three f-bombs earn an "R" rating? Why does explicit violence get a PG-13 rating but explicit sex get a R rating? How have filmmakers marketed films to tout their salacious content to sell tickets? How have journalists, film critics and American culture responded to these films?
In this class, we will consider historical theories and methods through an exploration of the "Production Code," a censoring policy that dictated moral norms in films from 1930-1967. In this focused exploration, we will consider how culture influenced the development of American cinema and how American cinema influenced culture. To do this, we will explore film -- its production, its content, its politics of censorship, its marketing, and its place in American culture.
COMM-2200-01: Public Rhetoric
TTh 10-11:15 am, W 12-12:50 pm
Dr. Anita DeRouen
Our increasingly connected communication sphere calls for a heightened awareness of and attention to our rhetorical communication choices; whether you'll have fifteen minutes of internet fame or infamy is largely due to how well you attend to all aspects of your rhetorical situation. In this course you'll learn about basic principles and theories of rhetoric, while practicing methods for researching, organizing, and delivering various forms of publicly-focused rhetorical addresses. While these will mainly take the form of individual and group oral presentations delivered in face-to-face environments, you will also have the opportunity to explore the possibilities for public address afforded by digital technology.
COMM-3000-01: Modernism, Postmodernism, & Film - Kafka to Kundera on page & screen
TTh 1-2:40 pm
Dr. Anne MacMaster
In this course, we'll examine the interaction between the evolving techniques of the medium of film and the innovations in literature that we call modernism and post-modernism. We'll read some of the pivotal works of modernist literature - for example, Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis, T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land and Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury and/or As I Lay Dying, and we'll consider the stylistic innovations of these works alongside the cinematic techniques of films from the same decade - for example, the 1930 film All Quiet on the Western Front. We'll also consider why some works of modernism (Mann's Death in Venice, for instance, or D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love) yield excellent adaptations (such as the 1971 film Death in Venice or the 1969 film Women in Love), while many works of modernism prove un-adaptable. Are there two different kinds of modernism, represented by Mann and Lawrence, on the one hand, and Faulkner and Joyce or Woolf, on the other?
Moving beyond modernism, we'll read works of post-modernism - Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being and/or Rushdie's Midnight's Children - with the goal of comparing and contrasting modernism and postmodernism as two temperaments or frames of mind. Here, too, we'll consider the relation between literature and film: Why do postmodern novels prove more adaptable than modernist ones? And why did the critics love but the author hate the 1988 film The Unbearable Lightness of Being? Depending upon the release date of DVDs and showings in theatres during the spring semester, we'll see and analyze the new film adaptations of Midnight's Children and As I Lay Dying. We'll read five or six novels or novellas and view five or six films, sampling other films and long works as we go.
COMM 3100-01: American Pop Culture
TTh 1-2:40 pm
Dr. Curtis Coats
A billion people are now on Facebook. If we're all "friends," then why can't we get along? Social institutions (e.g. Presidential campaigns) pay close attention to tweets, hashtags and memes. What does that mean? Ours is a culture of sport, of religion, of entertainment and consumption. How do all of these work together to influence who we are and how we understand each other?
Contemporary America is a society whose cultural identity is heavily impacted by popular culture. Popular culture to one extent or another influences the way we think of ourselves, our values and norms, our goals in life, what we eat, our material culture, our technology, and our ideas of pleasure and desire. It is also one of the major ways that our society interacts with the rest of the world and how the rest of the world defines us. This course gives us a unique opportunity to examine the nature of popular culture and its relationship to American society as well the methods and theories of social science used to interpret it.
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