Masters of Arts in English
Masters of Arts in English and Creative Writing
Summer 2009

Summer Session I: May 20 to June 24

English 203: Approaches to Grammar
Professor Scott Harshbarger
(A) Mon. Wed. 6 to 8:40 p.m.
(B) Tues. Thurs. 6 to 8:40 p.m.
This class will explore the theory and practice of various approaches that use grammatical terms and concepts to improve writing. We will examine the history of grammar and grammar instruction, review pertinent research, and discuss the political and professional issues associated with this topic. There will be two exams and two writing projects: a series of short papers applying theory to practice, and a 15-page research paper on an aspect of grammar of your own choosing. You will also give a 15-minute oral presentation based on your research and paper. Required Texts: Teaching Grammar in Context, by Constance Weaver, and Rhetorical Grammar. By Martha Kolln

English 291P: The Limits of Early American Literature
Professor Joseph Fichtelberg
Mon. Wed. 6 to 8:40 p.m.
The years spanned by early American literature – roughly 16001820 – are punctuated by revolution. At the beginning of the period, the Puritan revolution turned many English dissenters into colonists, as they sought refuge in the New World. Toward the end of the period, the American Revolution turned colonists into republicans, committed to building a virtuous new nation. And by the nineteenth century, the market revolution began to turn those selfless republicans into selfseeking entrepreneurs. To come to terms with these changes many of the culture’s most significant texts sought boundaries, limits that defined piety or civility, commercial morality or citizenship, even as the very conditions for those practices were changing. Americans never tired of writing about that struggle – success stories shadowed, and often overtaken by disaster. In this course, we will explore their ambiguous designs.

The course will be divided into four units. Under the topic of "selves," we will consider how the early Puritans Thomas Shepard and Anne Bradstreet sought to explore and curb the opportunities for selfexpression in the New World. With the next group of writers – the captivity narrator Mary Rowlandson and the exslaves Phillis Wheatley, James Gronniosaw, and John Marrant – we will ask how the contact with cultural "Others" changed longheld assumptions and provided opportunity for expression. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin and J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur grappled with the dangers and opportunities of economic "Exchange," as they tried to master new market behaviors. And after the American Revolution, Hannah Webster Foster and Charles Brockden Brown sought to define the "Citizen" against a background of social experiment and political strife. Throughout our discussions, we will be interested in how these writers respond to a central aspect of American culture: its vivid, but often terrifying freedoms. Course requirements include an oral presentation, a 5page response paper, and a 1520page research paper. This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the M.A. in English Literature.

English 293Z: Natives and Strangers
Professor Joseph Fichtelberg
Thurs. 6 to 8:40 p.m.
National values emerge through persistent conflict, frictions that define and refine local ideals. In this course we will examine the process through which literary artists attempt to grasp and convey this vital cultural process. By studying the ways in which their texts stage encounters between a variety of strangers – Native Americans, Africans, African Americans, Irish immigrants, and urban strangers – we will attempt to trace the shifting middle ground that defines everyday experience. Texts will include John Smith’s The Proceedings of the Colonie of Virginia, Mary Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly, Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno,”
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and poems by Walt Whitman. The course will conclude with an examination of Emily Dickinson, whose poetry explored the many strangers inhabiting the self. Written requirements include a 5-page essay and a 15-20-page research paper.

Summer Session II: June 29 to July 31

ENGL 292V The Medieval Mind
Prof. John Russell
Mon & Wed. 6-8:40PM
This course deals with medieval writing from several traditions as they treat the inner life: mind, emotion, psychology, revealing a lively, subtle and sophisticated thinking about mind in a variety of medieval writers. Class readings will include both familiar literary writers and perhaps less familiar philosophical and religious texts. Authors include Boethius, Hildegard of Bingen, Aelred of Rievaulx, Guillaume de Lorris, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Margery Kempe. Non-English readings will be in translation. Assessments will consist of several short reading responses and two papers.