| source Northwestern (X) |
level |
department ENGLISH English-University College (X) |
Everybody has a story to tell. In this course, students examine the way people tell the stories of their lives. While reading five recent and noteworthy memoirs, students learn the art and craft of storytelling, while also learning how to tell their own stories by writing a personal narrative essay and two other informative essays. Each class is comprised of a short grammar/punctuation tip, a discussion about one of the five memoirs, and a lecture about a certain writing process and/or a writing workshop.
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A widely-read 2008 magazine article asked, "Is Google making us stupid?" It's the latest in a long tradition of questions about the ways that, as psychologist Sherry Turkle puts it, "the tools we use to think change the way we think." In this age of information, such questions have begun to spring up more and more often (recent examples: Does Sesame Street" turn kids into passive information receptacles? Can the crash of a space shuttle be blamed on engineers' over-reliance on PowerPoint?) In this course we'll dip briefly into research on the cognitive effects of our "thinking technologies" - educational TV, video games, Blackberry and the internet - and delve into the reasons behind our persistent worries about these technologies' effects. Prerequisite: ENGLISH 110 or equivalent.
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An introduction to the vocabulary, techniques, and pleasures of literature through the close study and discussion of poems, plays, and stories. Students will write and revise several papers, including a longer final paper on a topic of their choice. In addition to the regular discussion sessions, we will try to schedule a class trip to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater to see their production of Richard III.
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Most of us like to travel or would like to travel. Some of us get to travel, and some of us have even traveled in an effort to get to the US as immigrant. But all of us can travel through travel writing. In this course, we will examine the various forms (genres) that travel writing can take, and try our hand at producing three different kinds of travel writing ourselves. One paper will incorporate secondary research. We will also read some of the best travel writing availableÂfrom humorous writers, like Tim Cahill and Bill Bryson, to writers of historical importance, like Gertrude Bell and Lawrence of Arabia.
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This course covers masterpieces of American literature written from the colonial era to the decade just before the Civil War. We will read and discuss the works closely in order to explore their artistry and meaning. We will also consider the works in relation to one another, examining the qualities of thought, sensibility, and style that comprise a distinctly American literature. Authors include Bradstreet, Dickinson, Douglass, Emerson, Franklin, Hawthorne, Poe, Thoreau, and Whitman.
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English 307-A is a course in the study and practice of writing short stories. During the first three or four weeks, the class will focus on analyzing and writing rather short stories (3 to 4 pages long), which produce a strong impact without reliance on plot. Students will read a number of contemporary stories of that length, looking for the assumptions and techniques that impart strength and unity, and these ideas, in turn, will be tested out on the manuscripts. In the remaining seven weeks of the course, students will read contemporary stories in which plot and character development tend to prevail and write a longer story (10 to 15 pages), carrying it through two or three drafts. Everyone will be free to choose between expanding the first story into a longer story or starting out with new characters and situtations. Throughout the process of writing the long story, emphasis will be placed on working by trial and error, taking risks, making new discoveries, and using notions about plot as a means of guiding, rather than controlling, the process. Our main objective will be to explore the interplay between freedom and control that occurs throughout the writing of all stories.
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Why humans feel compelled to leave the known world of their tribe and travel into the unknown world of other lands and peoples is to ask the very question of what it means to be human. The journey is perhaps the very source of our need and fascination with storytelling. This survey course traces the origins of travel literature and follows its development, particularly in the West, through various periods (the age of exploration and Colonialism, the era of the Grand Tour, and the nineteenth- and twentieth-century era known as the "Hey Day"), so that the various themes and issues modern writers explore in this evolving subgenre of nonfiction may be placed into context. One key theme in the course explores how a writer's motive for travel often shapes not only how they depict lands and cultures but determines choices of style and structure of the writing itself. The course also pays particular attention to how gender, race, culture, and class provide different perspectives on not only the worlds described by writers but on the very tradition and enterprise of travel itself. Some of writers covered include: Herodotus, Christopher Columbus, Strabo, Basho, Jonathan Swift, Lady Montagu, William Wordsworth, Charles Darwin, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, Berl Markham, Freya Stark, Evelyn Waugh, Paul Bowles, Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Jan Morris, Amitav Ghosh, Peter Matthiesen, Gretel Ehrlich, V.S.Naipaul, Bruce Chatwin, Pico Iyer, Bill Bryson, Elizabeth Bishop, and James Baldwin. Students work on both a critical essay dealing with themes from the course and explore the form by working on a travel essay of their own.
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Geoffrey Chaucer was a Ârenaissance man before the concept was conceived. In the second half of the 14th century, Chaucer served as courtier, diplomat, civil servant, husband, father and spy under three successive English kingsÂEdward III, Richard II, and Henry IV. However, it is for his poetry that Chaucer is remembered. His Canterbury Tales ranks as one of the greatest poetic works in English. These tales, told in order to win a bet among fictional pilgrims traveling to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket in Canterbury, represent a summa of medieval literary genres and themes. This course is essentially a Âsurvey of these tales in which we will discover the richness of ChaucerÂs literary creation offering various medieval genresÂepic, chivalric narrative, fabliaux, allegories, and homiliesÂand medieval themesÂfate and providence; marriage; the role of women in society; sexuality and sin; patientia; and love. The tales will be read in ChaucerÂs dialect of Middle English, that of the City of London, from which the forms of Modern English are derived. Participants will have the opportunity of discussing the tales as a class and of researching independently the literature, history and culture of Ricardian England.
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In this course, students gain experience with fundamental rhetorical structures such as comparison/contrast, cause and effect, and classification, while addressing questions of metamorphosis and transformation. We look at the modern self-help/transformation phenomenon and its historical roots in the late 19th century. For instance, we might compare and contrast one school of thought that views the task of self-development as similar to the task of a small business (e.g., Tom Peters) with the views of others who take a romantic view the self as a work of art in progress. To fuel our explorations, we read analysts and scholars who have commented on the phenomenon, as well as draw on sources in popular culture such as self-help books, advice columns, and reality- and talk-TV shows.
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We will consider both the tactics and strategy of writing arguments on controversial subjects. Students will write and revise several essays, including a medium-length research-based argument on an issue of their choice that draws on both popular and scholarly sources. Topics for discussion will include such contemporary controversies as gun control, stem cell research, drug legalization, smoking bans, university alcohol policies, foie gras--almost any topic where bitter yet intelligent disagreement is possible. This goal of this course is to help students develop their confidence and abilities as writers, especially when writing research-based, argument-driven papers.
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In this course, students learn to write effective business documents, ranging from letters, memos and e-mail messages to reports, proposals and press releases. In addition to completing eight cases, students also create a business-writing portfolio consisting of six items. Rather than a Âtraditional lecture format, the course is conducted as a writing workshop. The course is meant to be interactive; much of the class time will be spent discussing and analyzing students' own work.
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This course is designed for those who have experience with college-level writing but who want to sharpen their writing and communication skills. Students learn to apply measures of excellence in business writing and communication. Assignments relate to business environments, including audience analysis, persuasive writing, verbal and interpersonal communication, and document design and graphics. Writers gain experience writing in collaborative environments. Students produce multiple drafts and receive feedback from their peers and the instructor. Carries business credit
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For those with little or no formal training in the elements of writing fiction, this course emphasizes the processes and assumptions unique to fiction writing and the development of a personal voice. Students write two drafts of a short story. They also write several exercises to practice such techniques as building conflict, manipulating point of view, and conveying emotions through specific details. These drafts and exercises are read and commented on by the rest of the class. Students also discuss fiction techniques used in stories by classic and contemporary authors.
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An introduction to the reading and writing of creative nonfiction. Close study and discussion of published creative nonfiction  including personal essay, literary journalism, and biography Âwill provide a set of criteria with which to evaluate student work in a workshop setting. Elements of creative nonfiction such as characterization, narrative voice, structure, and use of language will be addressed in class discussion and in workshop evaluation. Students will experiment with voice and form through a series of short written exercises and will hand in at the end of the quarter one longer, completed essay, the drafts of which will be submitted to workshop. May not be audited or taken P/N.
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For students who have taken courses in poetry writing or who have been writing poetry on their own, further practice and study in the development of poems. Students create and refine poems and present three of these in a final portfolio. Student writing is discussed in a workshop format and individual conferences. Assigned readings of published poems, generative writing exercises, and an oral presentation on a contemporary book of poems are also part of the class. May not be audited or taken P/N.
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This course will focus on the study and writing of fiction for students who are familiar with the components and shape of the short story. Class will consist of discussion of published works, review of the architecture of a story and workshop of student stories. Each student will write one complete story, the drafts of which will be submitted to workshop. Individual conferences with instructor will be scheduled.
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What makes popular fiction  the stuff of bestseller lists  popular? What makes literary fiction  the stuff of the college classroom  literary? Is there a tie that binds the two? Though we tend to perceive popular texts as entirely separate from the literary classic  one a guilty pleasure, the other serious, sometimes ponderous ÂartÂ, a closer examination shows this notion to be somewhat reductive, both historically and contemporaneously. In the early days of American entertainment, ShakespeareÂs plays were a staple among the urban working class before the aristocracy claimed them as their own; in todayÂs classrooms, Shakespeare is an area of serious literary study while in Hollywood, his plays win Academy awards. Similar examples of this sort of Âcrossing over or a bridging of the perceived gap will be a source of discussion in this course as we consider questions of literary tradition and mainstream appeal. Our primary focus will involve pairing novels  popular and literary  from different periods of American history with the intention of exploring their respective representations of history, society, politics  the basic Âmaterial of the outside world, as well as the manner in which each executes a story. In addition to reading works of fiction, we will consider the responses of a variety of theorists to this topic with Roland Barthes Mythologies at the top of the list.
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This course explores the culture of literature and literary publishing and the place of serious writing in contemporary society. "Situation" in this context means both the condition of writing itself and how it is positioned in the greater social and cultural world; students consider their roles as readers and writers. The course has a particular focus on the role of publishing in shaping and reflecting literary culture and examines topics in the history and current state of book and journal publishing. Topics discussed include the establishment of literary publishers, the evolution of the paperback and other publishing models, the development and diffusion of publishing programs, the changing profiles of university presses, the effects of the Internet and online publishing on conventional structures, the roles of review publications and reviewers, and related matters.
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Together, we will explore Chicagos neighborhoods and the stories that emanate from them, writing our own Chicago stories in the form of academic essays. We will read Chicago writers like Dybek, Sandra Cisneros, Alex Kotlowitz, Nelson Algren and Sudhir Venkatesh. Students will write a personal essay, an informative essay, and an academic argument, in addition to some writing exercises. Our purpose will be to sharpen and improve our writing while we gain a deeper understanding of Chicago and the stories she breeds.
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Despite the worries of past generations that television was an "idiot box" or "plug-in drug," TV is still going strong after several generations at the center of American life. In fact, we still devote more time to TV than to any other medium, over four hours a day for the average adult. But where is old-fashioned television's place in the new-media world of the iPod, YouTube, and video on demand? After a brief look at the history of TV, we investigate television's role in our culture today and how it--and our relation to it--is likely to change in the future. Reading and writing assignments may consider television's economic, political, social, aesthetic, or historical contexts.
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Introduction to the vocabulary, techniques, and pleasures of literature through close study and discussion of poems, plays, short stories, and novels. Short critical papers develop ability to analyze and interpret literature.
Score: 12.508603 Details | Listing | Web page
This course is designed for those who have experience with college-level writing but who want to sharpen their writing and communication skills. Students learn to apply measures of excellence in business writing and communication. Assignments relate to business environments, including audience analysis, persuasive writing, verbal and interpersonal communication, and document design and graphics. Writers gain experience writing in collaborative environments. Students produce multiple drafts and receive feedback from their peers and the instructor
Score: 12.508603 Details | Listing | Web page
This course is designed to develop the skills of the serious writer in learning how to shape and polish essays for possible publication. Students try their hand at various nonfiction forms: satire/humor, documentary, travel narrative, reportage, personal narrative, social/political commentary. Students are expected to use one piece of writing from their own portfolio. Through workshopping, readings, documentary film, we will work on craft, narrative structure, using the self as character, developing conflict, and polishing an essay for publication. Students will research a publisher for an essay and submit it by the end of the quarter. Readings will reflect writers who tackle contemporary issues and themes related to politics and social justice, the environment and nature, gender, health and wellness, travel and global/transcultural trends.
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The last thirty years have seen an explosion of writings by women, especially women of color. Latina, African American, Native American, and Asian American female authors have enjoyed unparalleled success, have found a wide readership, and are included in school and university curricula. In this course, we will read and discuss the earliest and most salient examples of this literature by such writers as Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Marmon Silko, Cristina Garcia, and Alice Walker. We investigate their differences as well as their commonalities as they write about a world of oppression, repression, and overcoming odds.
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This course explores how American writers have responded to changing environments, from the rapid growth of both urban and suburban spaces (and the shrinking of rural ones) to various kinds of ecothreats (such as toxic landfills and the risk of nuclear annihilation). Students examine competing ideas of nature and look at the different ways these writers use place--rural, urban, etc.as a source of value and identity, but also as a source of critique, a means of challenging existing practices.
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