Spring 2018 Courses - Graduate

English 208: Comparative Literature

M 7:00-9:45 PM (Professors Soldofsky and Krishnaswamy)

America has cultivated a popular narrative about being a "land of immigrants," and American immigrant literature is widely acknowledged as a significant expression of American culture. Yet, the very category of "American immigrant literature" is not clearly defined. In addition to fundamental questions about whether or not slave and refugee writings belong in the category, some writers/scholars contend the category is too broad to be useful when applied universally to all immigrant groups, while others claim it is too narrow and pertains only to particular ethnic or refugee/diaspora group it represents. In ENGL 208, we will engage this debate creatively and critically by reading a wide range of works by immigrants or their next-generation descendants (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic literature). In doing so, we will trace the authors' literary histories and aesthetic conventions. We will also engage in curriculum design by seeking to determine which immigrant works would be best suited for teaching Silicon Valley undergraduates.

English 215: Myth and Symbolism

T 7:00-9:45 PM (Professor Stork)

Comparative study of mythic and symbolic forms in literature, focusing on theory and a variety of texts. With prior permission of graduate advisor may be repeatable once for credit. Prerequisite: Classified standing or instructor consent. Note: This course satisfies graduate-level GWAR in this master's program.

English 228: Genre Studies

W 7:00-9:45 PM (Professor Eastwood)

Genre Play: The Uses of Form in Early Modern English Literature

Genre, or form, is not a static, as one might think. Rather, forms are dynamic, shifting categories that are historically determined. Meanings are shaped through genre “play,” complex intersections among author, culture, form and genre, and therefore, studying genre can reveal important nuances about literary texts and the cultures that produce them. In this course, we will explore current genre theory, and interrogate the various ways in which early modern authors deploy form and genre, and we will analyze the ways in which they function in literary texts. We will look specifically at dramatic modes (comedy, tragedy, history, and romance), the pastoral (both in poetry and prose), the epic, the epithalamion, and the sonnet. Authors we will cover will include Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Philip Sidney, and John Donne.

English 240: Poetry Writing Workshop

M 4:00-6:45 (Professor Maio)

Poetics and poetry writing as preparation for thesis. Includes theory and practice of major trends in contemporary poetry. Intensive workshop experience. With prior permission of graduate advisor may be repeatable twice for credit. Prerequisite: Graduate standing and admission via portfolio acceptance to the Writing Focus.

English 241: Fiction Writing Workshop

R 4:00-6:45 PM (Professor Taylor)

This is the most advanced fiction workshop offered at SJSU. Experimentation, risk-taking, and stretching of all kinds will be encouraged. Students submit two original pieces of fiction plus a significant revision in lieu of a final exam.

The texts for the semester are Best American Short Stories 2017 (eds. Meg Wolitzer & Heidi Pitlor) and an anthology of published short stories chosen by the class. Registration priority goes to MFAs with a primary concentration in fiction, followed by those with a secondary concentration in fiction, and finally graduate students in other programs. If you are not in the MFA program, you must submit a writing sample to the instructor before you may register. English 241 is repeatable twice for credit.

English 242: Nonfiction Writing Workshop

W 4:00-6:45 PM (Lurie Chair Don George)

For me, nonfiction writing is a way to create a three-way connection between yourself, your experience in the world, and your reader. I have been a travel writer and editor for almost four decades, and my goal in this workshop is to pass on the lessons I have learned – from both sides of the writer-editor relationship -- about how to make this connection as compelling and complete as possible. The workshop will focus on craft, with special attention devoted to structure, development, takeaway, and the writing process. I will also cover how to prepare for a trip, take notes in the field, and determine your story after you return. In addition, the class will include discussion of outlets/markets for travel and other nonfiction writing, and advice on how to work with editors. Class assignments and activities will include reading and discussing exemplary travel stories, writing exercises, and critiquing each other’s submitted work. While the class will focus on travel writing, all nonfiction writers are welcome. My goal is to inform, entertain, and inspire – and as a writer, that should be your goal too. I will do my best to teach you what I’ve learned in four decades, and I expect you to do your best to pour your heart, passion, and intelligence into your work and into your critiques of your classmates’ work. Writing requirements: In addition to writing exercises, students will be required to create at least two substantive articles.

English 255 Thematic Studies in American Literature

T 4:00-6:45 PM (Professor Douglass)

Road Trip!:  Dreams and Nightmares of American Culture

The Open Road symbolizes Americans’ longing to recreate themselves, to leave the past behind: “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me,” as Kerouac put it. Perhaps it began with Lewis and Clark’s expedition. More likely it came packed in the trunks and cases that crossed the ocean with pilgrims and convicts in America’s first wave of colonizers. Immigrant experience plants the seeds of the Road Trip in American Culture, which has always had a dark and light character—a journey of loss mingled with hope, as in The Grapes of Wrath. This seminar will explore the Road Trip

as image, theme, motif, and method in American Fiction, Poetry, and Song. If the Road Trip symbolizes an American Dream of mobility and freedom, it also reflects an American Nightmare of ceaseless wandering, a (usually) male-centric vision of perpetual youth and escape. The course will deal with core novels and poems in the American Road Trip Canon by writers like Whitman, Twain, Frost, Kerouac, and Steinbeck; and also more recent works by writers like Hunter Thompson, Cynthia Kadohata, Mona Simpson, Bill Bryson, William Least Heat-Moon, and Cormac McCarthy; as well as popular songs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will touch on film and TV’s contributions to the Road Trip mystique.  Class members will make presentations of their research as they write seminar papers and help to put together online resources for students, teachers, and independent researchers wanting to know more about the topic.