Fall 2022 Undergraduate Course Offerings

UNDERGRADUATE ENGLISH FLYER FALL 2022

QUEENS CAMPUS

http://stjenglish.com

PLEASE SEE THE BACK PAGES FOR THE NEW ENGLISH MAJOR REQUIREMENTS

Please note: All courses are on campus unless noted as online or hybrid.

ENG. 4994: SEMINAR IN THEMES/GENRES (75346)

Race, Colonialism, & the Environment

*SENIOR CAPSTONE*

MR 10:40 – 12:05 PM

Dr. Dohra Ahmad

Email: ahmadd@stjohns.edu

This senior seminar will use literary sources (fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and film, as well as visual art) to investigate how colonialism, plantation slavery, and racial capitalism formed the environmental crises that we know today. We will begin with the histories of enslavement, land theft, displacement, and colonial exploitation that underlie our current reality. Following this general introduction, we will carry out literary case studies of how those histories resonate and recur in the specific areas of oil, water, tourism, industrial catastrophe, and border policing. Central to the course is the premise that only intersectional environmental analysis and activism (incorporating race, gender, sexuality, indigeneity, ability, and other categories of identity and experience) can begin to mitigate environmental catastrophe.

ENG. 3820: HISTORY OF SOUND FILM TO 1975 (75340)

SOUND CINEMA

TF 12:15 – 1:40 PM

Dr. Scott Combs

Email: combss@stjohns.edu

This course covers major national schools and styles of filmmaking from the period of sound’s innovation (late 1920s) to various explorations in sound on film in recent Hollywood cinema. We will move chronologically through the following shifts and movements: the rise of sound in Europe and the United States; Hollywood style narration; Italian neo-realism; postwar Japanese cinema; the French New Wave; authorship and independent film production in the United States; New German Cinema; the New Hollywood. We will look at the history of film form as both a contribution to aesthetics and a prism through which to view more clearly the historical shifts and political climate of the postwar era.

ENG. 3790: PROFESSIONAL WRITING (75342)

What is professional writing? Who does it? Why should you learn about it?

*COUNTS FOR WRITING MINOR*

R. 12:15 – 1:40 PM

FACE TO FACE AND ONLINE ASYCHRONOUS THE REST OF THE WEEK

Dr. Anne Geller

Email: gellera@stjohns.edu

Every profession requires writing, even if that writing is not immediately visible to us, and in the 21st century writing is a more central part of professionals’ communicative lives than ever before. In the first half of the semester, students will create (or strengthen) their online professional presence. We will explore the literacies and experiences of writers across a wide range of professions, the expectations of and constraints on professional writers, the ways genre, communities, and context shape professional writing, and the embodied experiences of composing in professional settings. We will also think about how writers can (and should) critique and revise professional writing and advocate through professional communication. In the second half of the semester students will conduct research on the texts and visuals, genre systems, and communicative relationships of a professional community/context related to their interests.

ENG. 3770: WRITING A SHORT STORY (75345)

LOVE TROUBLE

*COUNTS FOR WRITING MINOR*

T 3:25 – 4:50 PM

FACE TO FACE AND ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS THE REST OF THE WEEK

Professor Gabriel Brownstein

Email: brownstg@stjohns.edu

In this class, we’ll write short stories, and we’ll focus on stories about the difficulties of love and sex and romance. Students will write a series of exercises and experiments, culminating in original works of art, and they will present their writing to class for discussion and critique. We’ll think about storytelling not so much as invention, but as combination, the process the Russian theorist Victor Shklovsky called “defamiliarization,” of bringing unlike things together, so as to see them in unexpected ways. “I believe that whatever talent I have,” writes Carmen Maria Machado, citing Shklovsky, “comes not from some sort of muse or creative spirit, but from my ability to manipulate proportions and time.” As we write, we’ll read a number of short stories by great (mostly US) writers. We’ll start with contemporary stories and move backward in time, studying works by: Carmen Maria Machado, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Junot Diaz, Raymond Carver, Anne Beattie, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, and Anton Chekhov. To help us think about the difficulties of love, we’ll read from Eros and Infinity, a book of interviews with the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas.

ENG. 3710: CREATIVE WRITING ACROSS GENRES (74203)

*COUNTS FOR WRITING MINOR* *COUNTS FOR WOMEN’S, GENDER AND SEXUALITY STUDIES*

MR 3:25 – 4:50 PM

Professor Lee Ann Brown

Email: brownl@stjohns.edu

This course is designed as a studio or laboratory where we explore modes and genres of creative writing: poetry, poets theater, flash fiction, memoir, and cross-genre writing. We will collaborate and play generative writing game and respond to readings to sow “seeds” for our own writing. This course can serve as an introduction to, or a continuation of, an already established writing practice. Writing time is built into the class, with direction to expand, share and revise work into finished pieces gathered in mid–semester and final portfolios. Sample texts may include excerpts from Sonnets by Bernadette Mayer, Olio by Tyehimba Jess, Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara, I Remember by Joe Brainard, rewritten fairy tales by Angela Carter and Italo Calvino, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” Short Talks by Anne Carson and plays by Suzan– Lori Parks and Kevin Killian, and essays by Solnit, Bachelard, and Barthes.

ENG. 3680/CRES 1000: CRITICAL RACE AND ETHNIC STUDIES (74206/74647)

*COUNTS FOR THE MINOR IN CRITICAL RACE AND ETHNIC STUDIES* *POST – 1900*

MR 3:25 – 4:50 PM

Dr. Raj Chetty

Email: chettyr@stjohns.edu

This class will introduce students to fundamental concepts and debates within the fields of critical race studies and critical ethnic studies. Students will learn about the emergence of critical race studies and ethnic studies as distinct academic fields of study. Students will become familiar with the particular ways in which these fields analyze the phenomena of racial formation, ethnic group formation, racism and racial discrimination, ethnic life, and ethnic stratification as central features of global modernity. The processes of racialization and ethnic group formation will be viewed as components of overlapping historical processes of social stratification that are fundamental features of the modern world-system. Large-scale forms of group-differentiated marginalization will be examined through the lens of “structural racism.” Students will explore the role that ethnic and racial stratifications play in dominant economic and political systems and institutions, and the role they have played throughout the world. This course will root itself in Indigenous Studies and Black Studies as foundations for thinking about global forms of racism, anti-racist struggle, and international solidarity movements. In addition to the course texts listed above, we will engage two major relevant journals to Critical Ethnic Studies: The Black Scholar and The Journal of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association. We will also read excerpts of works by mid-century writers, thinkers, and activists whose works are now central to these interdisciplinary fields: Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, the Combahee River Collective, June Jordan. We will read contemporary scholars who take up those earlier thinkers, and the revolutionary movements in which they participated: Gary Okihiro, Vijay Prashad, Jean Casimir, Laurent Dubois, Joseph Pierce, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, among others.

ENG. 3650: CARIBBEAN LITERATURE (75338)

*COUNTS FOR THE MINOR IN CRITICAL RACE AND ETHNIC STUDIES* *COUNTS FOR THE AFRICANA STUDIES MINOR* *POST – 1900*

THE SACRED, THE SPRIRITUAL AND THE SOCIAL IN AFRO-CARIBBEAN LITERATURE

MR 9:05 – 10:30 AM

Dr. Raj Chetty

Email: chettyr@stjohns.edu

This course examines how religion, spirituality, and the sacred emerge in 20th and 21st century Caribbean literature across prose fiction and drama, from the English-, Spanish-, and Frenchspeaking regions of the Caribbean (all works will be in English) and the Caribbean diaspora. With a specific focus on representations of Afro-Caribbean spiritual and religious life, the course explores how questions of the sacred have animated Caribbean writers’ engagement with broader social and political issues. A central question framing the course is: How have the sacred, the spiritual, the religious been mobilized in Caribbean literature to oppose oppressive systems (racism/colorism, colonialism/imperialism, class, gender, sexuality) from across the last century and into this one? Authors whose works we will read include Kei Miller (Jamaica), Yanick Lahens (Haiti), Pedro Cabiya (Dominican Republic/Puerto Rico), René Depestre (Haiti), Maryse Condé (Guadeloupe), Nalo Hopkinson (Jamaica/Canada), and Earl Lovelace (Trinidad). All works will be read in their respective Englishes; however, students who are able are welcome to read works in their original French, Kreyol, or Spanish languages.

ENG. 3605/CLS. 3605: ANCIENT COMEDY IN TRANSLATION ( )

*COUNTS TOWARD AN ELECTIVE CREDIT IN THE ENGLISH MAJOR* *COUNTS FOR THE MINOR IN CLASSICS OR ANCIENT STUDIES*

TF 9:05 – 10:30 AM

Dr. Robert Forman

Email: formanr@stjohns.edu

Athenian women deny sexual favors to their husbands until they end the Peloponnesian War; Socratic philosophy produces liars and corrupts the younger generation; birds declare war on the human race—these are themes of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Clouds, and Birds. We will read all three of these plays and discuss them in contemporary and ancient historical contexts. Should one raise children strictly or liberally? To what extent can social chatter malign the reputation of an innocent woman? How do some people psychologically torture themselves after having harmed their relationship with a beloved child? These social concerns are the themes of Menander, Plautus, and Terence in The Grouch, The Brothers, and The Woman of Andros. We will read all three of these as examples of what we call today “situation comedy,” humorous narratives with social significance.

ENG. 3590: LITERATURE AND THE OTHER ARTS (74589)

W. 10:40 – 1:30 PM

ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Dr. Stephen Paul Miller

Email: millers@stjohns.edu

This course considers chains of direct influence and useful interfacing within various art forms, implying them to issues that are relevant to the students. For instance, the Korean film director Lee Chang-dong based his 2018 film, Burning, upon William Faulkner’s short story, “Barn Burning” and Japanese author’s Haruki Murakami’s fictive response to Faulkner’s story, “Burning.” The class will evaluate the three works’ treatments of work, youth, family, class, and other subjects. Similarly, Japanese director Akiru Kurosawa based his film Ikiru upon Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilych. How do the themes of the two works differ? A similar “chain of representation” occurs among Allen Tate’s poem “Ode to the Confederate Dead,” Robert Lowell’s poetic response, “For the Union Dead that also responded to sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ sculptural relief “Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The class may also consider the visual narrative techniques of Jacob Lawrence’s Migration series, compare Billie Holiday’s song “Strange Fruit” Frank O’Hara’s poem “The Day Lady Died,” and relate the film My Dinner with Andre with philosophical dialogues. The class will be explorative, and students will also select interdisciplinary objects of study.

ENG. 3410: MODERN FICTION (75354)

ARTIST AS HERO

TF 10:40 – 12:05 PM

Dr. Stephen Sicari

Email: sicaris@stjohns.edu

We will approach the study of the modernist novel through the theme of “the artist as hero.” While there are of course examples of the artist as the protagonist in earlier fiction, in the modernist era some of the greatest novelists present the artist, perhaps as versions of themselves, as rising toward heroic status. An overarching question for the course, then, is how does this thematic concern give us insight into the period? We will read Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, and The Revenge for Love by Wyndham Lewis.

ENG. 3260: WOMEN WRITERS OF THE 19TH CENTURY (75341)

*COUNTS FOR WOMEN’S, GENDER AND SEXUALITY STUDIES* *PRE-1900*

MR 10:40 – 12:05 PM

Dr. Amy King

Email: kinga@stjohns.edu

The focus of this course will be on the aesthetic, cultural, and political contributions of a select group of women writers from England and America in the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century is a particularly rich moment to study literature written by women, including novels, poetry, and various forms of non-fiction prose—such as slave narrative, memoir, housewifery manuals, and political writing. This course theorizes this body of work as a separate and gendered tradition of nineteenth-century Anglo-American literature, paying attention to the cultural phenomenon of the woman writer and the way in which specific writers gave imaginative life to the varied situation of the modern woman. Our course will pay particular attention to how race and class shapes those experiences and intersects with gendered norms for women in public and private life. We will study the “cult of domesticity,” the philosophy of “separate spheres,” and in general will pay attention to gendered roles and expectations for women as expressed in literature. We will attend as well to discourses about female friendship and incipient expressions of queer desire. The course will be divided into four units— “The Angel in the House,” “Gendered Roles & Expectations in 19th C. Literature & Culture,” “Women’s Lives: Poetic & Narrative Expressions,” and “Suffrage and the New Woman”—and will range across a large selection of texts situated within their historical context.

ENG. 3000: MEDIEVAL ROMANCE (75343)

*PRE-1900*

TF 1:50 – 3:15 PM

Dr. Nicole Rice

Email: ricen@stjohns.edu

In this course, we will study the romance, one of the most engaging medieval European literary forms, from twelfth-century France to fifteenth-century England. No previous knowledge of medieval literature is required, and all texts will be in translation. We will focus on Arthurian romances and trace their complex representations of adventure, race, religion, sexuality, and the supernatural. Some of our primary readings will include Tristan’s absurdly tragic Romance of Lancelot (paired with the wacky Art of Courtly Love and the pious Book of the Order of Chivalry); Béroul’s over-the-top Romance of Tristan; Marie de France’s mysterious short romances; and the eerie classic Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. We will enhance our readings by studying medieval manuscript images and incorporating recent critical interpretations of the romances.

ENG. 2300: INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEORY (73991)

MR 12:15 – 1:40 PM

Dr. Elda Tsou

Email: tsoue@stjohns.edu

This course is an undergraduate introduction to the key concepts, thinkers, and intellectual movements called literary theory (sometimes just “theory”). What we term “theory” is drawn from diverse disciplines like philosophy, psychoanalysis, linguistics, economics, anthropology and sociology. The methods and objects of inquiry will differ from thinker to thinker and school to school, but what is shared in common is an effort to reflect on how we think and what that means: “theory” in other words is “thinking” about our thinking. Another shared tendency is the attempt to expose, analyze and understand how “normative” ideas, practices, beliefs and values (notions that we tend to accept as “just the way things are” or “natural”) come to be; that is, how they have been constructed. In demonstrating how the “norm” or “natural” gets to be made that way—how it is not inevitable or natural—one effect of theory is to expose alternative ways of thinking, being, and meaning that have been foreclosed, viewed as deviant or devalued in light of the “norm.” We will try to view theory as a series of questions about the activities of thinking, interpreting, and meaning-making as they apply to different objects of study: the human subject, literature, language, sex, gender, race, culture. In our readings, we will learn to think critically and carefully about the object of our scrutiny, and to examine our ways of knowing that object, and what that knowledge entails for us as knowing subjects. The goal of this course is less about mastery than familiarity with a key set of thinkers and their major concepts with a special emphasis on race. Theoretical schools we will cover: structuralism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, theories of race, queer theory, postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis, Marxism.

ENG. 2210: STUDY OF BRITISH LITERATURE (73994)

SONGS & SONNETS

*PRE-1900*

ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS

Dr. Nicole Rice

Email: ricen@stjohns.edu

This course offers a selective study of British poetry written from the fifteenth to the late twentieth century. We will mainly be reading short lyric poems, working closely with the texts at a formal level. The major goal of the course is to become conversant with the terms of formal analysis and proficient in the close reading and analysis of poetry. We will be focusing on the links between poetry and song, and we will become experts in the lyric form known as the sonnet.

ENG. 2200: READING/WRITING FOR ENGLISH MAJORS (73992)

MR 10:40 – 12:05 PM

Dr. Granville Ganter

Email: ganterg@stjohns.edu

This class is intended as a first course for English majors, giving them exposure to the increasingly diverse ways scholars “make meaning” within English studies—from composition and rhetoric, to educational pedagogy, to social media communication, and to the appreciation of fiction, poetry, and drama. These practices include learning general research techniques using our library’s advanced databases; techniques of “close reading” a text; and some practice with the unique interpretive demands made by different literary forms and genres, from non-fiction to poetry. This will be an activity-based class where students choose topics according to the kind of work they’d like to pursue as an undergraduate (and beyond college, too). Students will learn how to write proposals; present their research to others; and develop writing and media expertise according to their future goals.

ENG. 2200: READING AND WRITING FOR ENGLISH MAJORS (73417)

TF 12:15 – 1:40 PM

Dr. Nicole Rice

Email: ricen@stjohns.edu

This course introduces analytical, writing, and research methods critical for the English major. Making poetry our focus, we will scrutinize poetic language, learning key terms for analysis and working to connect close readings to larger arguments. We will pay particular attention to the sonnet as a traditional poetic form that invites innovation. Students will write three papers of increasing lengths, each incorporating different skills and methods. These will include a close reading essay, a comparative essay, and a final essay on Gwendolyn Brooks’s poetry and career. We will make a sustained effort to link careful reading with effective writing, using homework exercises, in-class workshops, and individual conferences.

WITH PERMISSION OF CHAIR ONLY* ENG. 4903: Internship In English (73513) 3 CREDITS

ENG. 4906: Internship In English (73514) 6 CREDITS

ENG. 4953: Independent Study (74513) 3 CREDITS BUSINESS WRITING ONLINE COURSES

ENG. 1040: WRITING FOR BUSINESS (73462)

ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS

Dr. Stephen Sicari

Email: sicaris@stjohns.edu

ENG. 1040: WRITING FOR BUSINESS ( )

ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS

Dr. Stephen Sicari

Email: sicaris@stjohns.edu

STUDY ABROAD COURSES

ENG. 2300: TOPICS IN THEORY; THEME: BLACK FEMINISMS

Location: SJU Paris Campus

Time: To Be Determined

Dr. LaToya L. Sawyer

Email: sawyerl@stjohns.edu

*COUNTS FOR THE ENGLISH MAJOR* *COUNTS FOR THE MINOR IN CRITICAL RACE AND ETHNIC STUDIES* *COUNTS FOR WOMEN’S, GENDER AND SEXUALITY STUDIES* *A DISCOVER FRANCE: LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES COURSE*

This course is an introduction to the key figures, concepts, and expressions of Black feminist theory. We will be attentive to global contexts and explore homegrown and academic approaches to theory. This course will highlight the plurality of past and present thinking about Black feminisms, their various expressions, and their significance for social movements today. Readings will include In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Hood Feminism, and Misogynoir Transformed. This course will also include local trips and guest presentations. ENG 2300 can be taken more than once as an elective. This section of ENG 2300 will be taught in Paris, France as a part of the Discover France: Literary and Cultural Studies program. For more information on this program, visit www.stjohns.edu/FranceLit.

ENG. 3690/CRES. : SPECIAL TOPICS IN CULTURAL STUDIES THEME: BLACK PARIS, BLACK FRANCE

Location: SJU Paris Campus

Time: To Be Determined

Dr. LaToya L. Sawyer

Email: sawyerl@stjohns.edu

*COUNTS FOR THE ENGLISH MAJOR* *COUNTS FOR THE MINOR IN CRITICAL RACE AND ETHNIC STUDIES* *A DISCOVER FRANCE: LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES COURSE*

This course is designed to think about the ways in which blackness, as object, as value, as skin tone, as culture, as nation(s), and as abstract concept is rendered in Paris, France, and the francophone world. We will do this by engaging literature from Black/African-descended authors from across the francophone world, as well as Black artists, intellectuals, and politicians who spent time in Paris and France. We will do this through art and aesthetic work, through examples from popular culture and literature, and through our own ongoing human experiences and engagement with the City of Light. Texts will include Frantz Fanon’s Black Skins, White Masks, Patrick Chamoisseau’s Solibo Magnificent, Tyler Stovall’s Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light, and more. ENG 3690 fulfills major credit requirements for the English major and CRES. ENG 3690 will be taught in Paris, France as a part of the Discover France: Literary and Cultural Studies program. For more information on this program, visit www.stjohns.edu/FranceLit.

The English Major and Minors in English and Writing The major in English is a 36-credit program.

Core Courses (9 credits)

English 1100C: Literature in a Global Context

English 2200: Reading/Writing for English majors English 2300: Introduction to Literary Criticism and Theory Courses

Prior to 1900: Select any 3 courses.

Courses that qualify are indicated on the course description flier as (9 credits)

Pre-1900 Additional Electives to be drawn from any SJC English courses (15 credits)

Senior Capstone (3 credits)

Total credits in the English major: (36 credits)

Please note: the credit requirements for the English and Writing Minors has changed from 18 credits to 15 credits for all students:

Minor in English: 15 credits Students wishing to minor in English must 15 credits in English. 1100c may count toward the total number of credits.

Minor in Writing: 15 credits Students who minor in writing must take the following courses:

* Four writing courses *

Any additional course in the SJC English Department. 1100c may count toward the total number of credits.

Note: English majors who minor in writing must take four writing courses plus one additional English course (fifteen credits in all) in addition to their major coursework.

About Steve Mentz 1292 Articles
I teach Shakespeare and the blue humanities at St. John's in New York City.

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