SUMMER 2019 UNDERGRADUATE FLYER
JUNE 3, 2019 – JULY 8, 2019
SUMMER SESSION I
ENG. 1100C: Literature in a Global Context (31211)
ONLINE
Dr. Gregory Maertz
Email: maertzg@stjohns.edu
Designed for majors in all disciplines this course will explore idioms, voices, subjects, and structures of poetry across historical and international boundaries. Works to be discussed and analyzed will include shorter poems by Shakespeare, Donne, Herrick, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Brontë, Dickinson, Tennyson, Hardy, Yeats, Rilke, Lawrence, Eliot, Pound, Hughes, Stevens, Bishop, Plath, Tate, Wright, Walcott, Angelou, Heaney, Atwood, and others.
ENG. 1040: Writing for Business (30195)
ONLINE
Dr. Kathleen Lubey
Email: lubeyk@stjohns.edu
This online course will familiarize students with the styles and forms for writing in professional settings. We will draft and revise documents traditionally associated with business environments, including resumes, letters, and proposals; and we also will investigate the conventions of communications in the professional world. Why is it useful to consider “business writing” as a genre distinct from expository or creative writing? What special methods and techniques does it require? Assignments will encourage students both to refine their professional writing skills and to consider the particular kinds of knowledge and communication that are required by the technological and global nature of contemporary business practices. Class discussions and assignments will be submitted online; evaluation will be based on the quality of contributions to our collective conversation as well as on the final drafts of all writing assignments.
ENG. 2060: Study of American Literature (30330)
American Literature and the Monstrous
*MAY COUNT FOR DIVISION III*
ONLINE
Dr. Jennifer Travis
Email: travisj@stjohns.edu
This online course will examine how representations of witches, vampires, cannibals, and monsters have shaped American cultural discourse and literary history. Reading texts Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edith Wharton, Henry James, H.P. Lovecraft, and the contemporary novelist Seth Grahame-Smith, we will ask why monsters play such an important role in our cultural imaginations. What is a monster? How do individuals and societies define themselves in relation to the monstrous? What can monsters tell us about humanity, community, and our deepest fears and values? For questions please email Dr. Travis: travisj@stjohns.edu.
ENG. 4994: Seminar in Themes/Genres (31212)
The Rise of the Gothic and Its Postcolonial Legacy
ONLINE
Dr. Melissa Mowry
Email: mowrym@stjohns.edu
An important subgenre of the Anglophone eighteenth century, the Gothic is known most familiarly as the genre of delightful terror. Gothic novels were enormously popular and gothic sensibilities remained central English speaking novels through the nineteenth century. During the twentieth century writers such as Jean Rhys and critics such as Gayatri Spivak recognized that the gothic novel was also an instrumental component of British imperialism. This class begins with Edmund Burke’s, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Beautiful and the Sublime. We will then read three short gothic novels from the 18thc: Horace Walpole’s, Castle of Otranto, William Beckford’s, Vathek, and Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein, We will then spend a week on Charlotte Bronte’s, Jane Eyre, and Jean Rhys’s 20th c response to Bronte, Wide Sargasso Sea, and the course will conclude with a consideration of a 21st c rendering of the gothic: Get Out, Directed by Jordan Peele. Students will complete several short assignments as well as one longer research project. This course satisfies the seminar requirement for the English major.
JULY 10, 2019 – AUGUST 13, 2019
SUMMER SESSION II
ENG. 1100C: Literature in a Global Context (30308)
ONLINE
Dr. John Lowney
Email: lowneyj@stjohns.edu
This university core course is an introduction to global literature in English. Its primary purpose is to familiarize students with the practices of critical thinking, reading, and writing that inform the study of literature and culture. While examining a variety of literary genres, especially narrative genres, this course emphasizes the power of literary texts to initiate as well as respond to debates about culture and cultural conflict. The approach of the class is comparative and exploratory, as we will examine the relationship of literature to issues of nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, and language. We will concentrate specifically on the literature of travel, especially contemporary fiction that features international travel. Readings will include recent fiction by Michael Ondaatje, Sandra Cisneros, Teju Cole, and Mohsin Hamid.
ENG. 1040: Writing for Business (31214)
ONLINE
Dr. Stephen Sicari
Email: sicaris@stjohns.edu
This course will emphasize the particular skills necessary for clear and efficient communication in business environments. Surveying the diverse forms of professional writing, from emails and cover letters to executive summaries and proposals, students will focus on the role clarity, organization, revision, and research in producing strong and purposeful writing. By the conclusion of the course, students will have collected a portfolio of various forms of business communication. This course will be taught fully online, and will require extensive work with texts and with other students’ writing through peer review exercises.
ENG. 2210: Introduction to British Literature (31213)
ONLINE
Dr. Granville Ganter
Email: ganterg@stjohns.edu
This is a completely online course where we will discuss some major elements of British literature, ranging from romances of the empire to post-colonial politics. It is an individualized project-based class where students pick a major text from the syllabus to study in the first week of class—such as Shakespeare’s Tempest, Equiano’s slave narrative, Jane Eyre, or Zadie Smith’s White Teeth—and then do several research and writing exercises over the course of the next four weeks. Each segment of weekly work will be bundled together to generate the final paper project. The course format is designed for a flexible summer work schedule, and it will minimize group “discussion” in preference for individualized work.
ENG. 3710: Intro to Creative Writing (30876)
ONLINE
Dr. Stephen Miller
Email: millers@stjohns.edu
This course asks you to use your imagination, memory, perceptions, and sensitivities to write creatively in all creative forms. We will use models in several genres, in addition to techniques such as focused and unfocused free-writing and many different prompts to unlock your creativity and ability to convey the breadth and depth of you inner and outer experiences.