Courses I Teach
F2F Course | Hybrid Course | Online Course
English 3702 | Introduction to Literary History II |
Description
This fully online course is an introduction to the cultural and aesthetic shifts since the end of the eighteenth century (1800-present). Together we will examine a generous and yet frustratingly limited selection of particular works by the British (and Irish) and American authors most commonly associated with the two major literary movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Romanticism and Modernism. We will read or sample works by Charlotte Smith, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and T.S. Eliot.
Summer 2019
Fall 2018
Summer 2018
Reflection
Under revision . .
English 5010 | Studies in Fiction |
The “Fiction” of Orwell and HuxleyDescription
In this course we will explore the chilling and thrilling dystopian novels Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, and 1984, by George Orwell. Although we will likely discover together many interesting and productive ways to approach these texts, our governing theme will be the expression and suppression of desire and the relationship between desire and control. Traditional readings of these two works situate Huxley’s world as being controlled through uninhibited free-will and pleasure, and Orwell’s through forced ignorance and fear. But neither novel is so simple. We will put pressure on these traditional readings, and with the help of some critical and theoretical sources, examine the complex institutional and social structures that both novels present. And, perhaps, in the process, we will learn a little something about ourselves as well.
Summer 2016
Summer 2015
Reflection
Under revision . .
Writing 2010 | Intermediate Writing |
Rhetoric and WritingDescription
2010 focuses on developing college-level writing skills. But it is also a course on rhetoric―a tradition of using language and other symbol systems for persuasive purposes. Even if all of the writing you do in college from now on seems to be objective reporting, it is still intended to have effects on readers. You may need your readers to agree with you or follow through with a course of action, or you may need to upset their expectations or present “bad news.”
Even though people write in and out of universities for a wide variety of reasons, many compositional and rhetorical strategies remain consistent across genres. This course will help you learn and practice a collection of those strategies, ranging from topic selection and issue focus to whole-discourse organization to sentence rhythm and word choice.
Spring 2013
Fall 2012
Reflection
Under revision . .
**This is a PDF of the syllabus made available to students through the LMS (Canvas).
*This syllabus is revised from the WRTG 2010 syllabus distributed by the Writing Department, author Jay Jordan.