English

Scroll down to see Fall 2008 Seminars.

The English curriculum at Drew is designed to encourage students to become active readers, critical thinkers, and confident writers. In addition to assigned works from a variety of genres, freshmen and sophomores also engage in a free reading program to further develop their literacy skills while instilling a passion for reading. At Drew, we view writing as a collaborative process and students write daily in response to course readings and class discussions. Through multiple drafts, regular conferences with their instructors, and review with peers, the department works to provide students with the skills to craft critical and coherent pieces of writing as well as respond thoughtfully to the work of others.

The Program

Freshmen and sophomores take required full year English courses at Drew. We enhance our curriculum with joint reading assignments and projects with our history department, when appropriate. All juniors are required to take Writing for College in their fall semester but can place out of this course by passing a writing exam in their sophomore year. We offer a wide array of one semester seminars for combined classes of juniors and seniors. Students take one seminar per semester, but may take a second with department approval. All Drew graduates are required to have completed one American literature seminar (Writing for College is considered an American literature course). The Drew English department offers different seminars each semester that change annually based on faculty expertise and student interest.

English I: Literature of China and Literature of the Islamic World
This two-semester course is part of the freshman Interdisciplinary Curriculum (IDC).In both English and history, freshmen study China during the fall semester and then the Islamic World in the spring. Students in the English course read and analyze novels, poetry, philosophy, short stories and film from the Chinese and Islamic traditions. Teachers in the English and history departments work collaboratively to reinforce themes and content; students engage in at least one major joint project or essay each semester in addition to ongoing subject specific reading and writing assignments. This format teaches strong analytical skills and encourages a complex understanding of the relationship between philosophy, religion, historical development, literature, and the arts in China and the Islamic World.

English II: Renaissance and Revolution
Continuing the interdisciplinary approach of freshmen year, sophomore English intertwines thematically with history throughout the two semesters. In the fall, focus is on the role of the hero both as an individual and member of a community in medieval, Renaissance, and modern times; in the spring, attention in both English and history turns to the theme of revolution. Analytical reading and writing is reinforced through reading response journals, close reading passage analyses, and formal essays for each unit. Time is also devoted throughout the year to creative writing assignments through which students demonstrate their understanding of literature while shaping a personal response to it.

English Seminars, Fall 2008

TOPICS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Survey of American Literature and Thought, Part I
Survey of American Literature Part I will trace the history of American Literature from the early Puritan settlements to the end of the nineteenth century by exploring a series of artistic movements that changed the way Americans think about themselves and their country. Along the way, we will read essays by Emerson and Thoreau, poetry by Whitman and Dickinson, memoirs by Franklin, Douglas and Jacobs, and novels by Hawthorne and Twain.

Writing for College
Writing for College is a one semester intensive writing course for juniors that prepares students for the critical reading and analytical writing they will encounter in the upper class seminars, college, and the workplace. Students read and discuss professional models in a variety of genres as exemplars for their own writing. Writing skills, grammar, and vocabulary development are addressed within the context of their reading and writing assignments. Small class sizes allow each instructor to work one-on-one with students to address their individual writing needs. As is the department’s guiding philosophy, we believe students become better writers by reading and writing daily and that writing is a process. At the conclusion of the course, students submit a final portfolio of their writing for review.


WORLD LITERATURE

Literature and Ethics
When given the choice between good and evil, what would you choose? We will be looking at literature’s greatest antagonists (or are they protagonists?) to discuss questions of right and wrong, of goodness and virtue. We will consider the decisions made by characters across a variety of genres. Why do they choose the unethical route? Can it be justified or excused? Our discussions will focus on the moral choices made by the characters and our response to them as readers, while also being attentive to the author’s writing style. At the end of the day, the question of ethics will be turned inward: Are we any better than these characters? And, as readers of these texts, are we being invited by the author to judge?

Fact or Fiction
The reality of a place is dictated, by in large, by its politics. A well-timed coup can flip fact into fiction overnight, a successful revolution can obscure the way an entire population sees and identifies with itself. The novels that arise out of this sort of political insanity sometimes serve as the only counter-narrative to the unreality of dictatorship and totalitarianism. In this course, we will be reading several of these counter-narratives and exploring the way each one sets up a world that runs counter to the received idea of reality. All the texts will come from Latin America and will include works by Roberto Bolano, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cortazar, Lorca and Francisco Goldman.

Love Poetry
"All you need is love, love / Love is all you really need"
This course is simple. Just like love. This course is complicated. Just like love. This course is all about the essential human element of love and the essential human expression that has existed as long as culture has: poetry. Through this course students will learn to critically read and interpret poetry from throughout time and the globe. There will be creative writing assignments, critical writing assignments, and long meditations on love. Ah, love.

English Seminars Spring 2008

TOPICS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Environmental Literature
Environmental Literature is a non-fiction course designed to introduce students to the paradox of our dependence on the planet (as we extract it’s wealth for our needs) and our desire to keep nature wild. The texts involved are classics of the mid to late 20th century. The literature varies in scope – ranging from emotional and spiritual connections we have with the land to environmental catastrophes across the globe. This course will expose students to a variety of writing styles. There are no easy solutions, and part of our purpose is to explore and gain clarity into the many issues involved. In the end, any discussion on the environment will eventually draw the students into self-analysis about their own values and those of society as well.

Modern American Drama
In this course, we will learn to read drama for its maximum impact and study how drama offers revelations that are achievable in no other art form. First and foremost, we will be looking at the texts of these plays, studying them as we would study a novel and short story in any other English class. Playwrights, of course, are writers; they make use of symbolism, foreshadowing, character development, dialogue, all those conventions that a novelist or short story writer uses. What distinguishes playwrights from novelists, however, is that they intend for their work to be seen, not simply read. We would not be doing justice to their work if we did not also watch the characters come alive onstage. Therefore, we will be watching film adaptations of the plays that we read. There should also be opportunities to see live performances of these plays in San Francisco and the Bay Area. At other times, our classroom will become a stage where we bring these amazing scripts to life by reading and performing scenes together.

The Short Story
Short stories: they’re short, quick, condensed, focused, and intense. While the length of the stories we study will not vary much, the content will. So, this American short story course can also be considered a literary sampler. This semester, we will sample from following types of stories. First, we will read “coming of age” stories of childhood and adolescent mishaps, adventures, and epiphanies. Second, we will study stories that revolve around the theme of relationships – relationships between parents and children, spouses, and siblings. We will then travel to Latin America and read the works of Quiroga, Borges, Cortazar, and Allende, all who challenge us, the readers, to question our realities. We will end the semester with a Drew favorite: Science Fiction. Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury offer searing social criticism through tales of 14-year old superheroes and mechanized houses. Assessments will include creative projects such as crafting your own coming of age and science fiction stories as well as regular reading response journals and multi-draft essays.

Survey of American Literature II
Survey of American Literature II picks up at the start of the twentieth century and closely examines the work of the century’s most influential authors. As in Survey I, we will proceed with the class in a conceptual order, starting with the literature that arose out of the aftermath of the Civil War. From there, we will examine the establishment of a new American identity and the literature of dissent that arose out of the middle of the twentieth century. We will end the semester with a section on the postmodern novel, its influences and its critics. Authors will include William Faulkner, James Baldwin, Ernest Hemmingway, J.D. Salinger, Raymond Carver, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, Jack Kerouac, Denis Johnson, John Berryman and John Cheever.

THE WESTERN TRADITION

The Comic Spirit
What is it that humors and amuses us – makes us laugh? What particular insights does the comic yield about our humanity and the human condition? In what ways does the comic spirit both bring us together and isolate us? These are some of the questions that this course intends to address. We will begin the course by looking at some examples of contemporary popular comedy and ask the questions what and why do they make us laugh. We'll then study the development of the basic conventions of comedy in Greek and Shakespearean drama. We'll go on to consider how satire highlights the follies of people and attempts to correct such folly. Finally, we'll examine the absurdist tradition, tragicomedy, and the anarchic power of the comic spirit.

Literature and Ethics: Bad to the Bone
How should we judge and understand the intentions, actions, motivations of others and ourselves? Or, are we in the position to judge at all? This course will look at literature’s greatest antagonists (or are they protagonists?) to discuss questions of right and wrong, of goodness and virtue. We will analyze the actions and motivations of questionable characters from novels around the world. Our discussions will focus on the moral choices made by the characters and our response to them as readers, while also being attentive to the author’s writing style. At the end of the day, the question of ethics will be turned inward: Are we any better than these characters? And, as readers of these texts, are we being invited by the author to judge?

Murder, Monarchy, Mayhem
Spend a semester with Shakespeare as we (metaphorically) travel to Renaissance Europe and hang out with the Bard! This course approaches Shakespeare from three different lenses: the text, film, and performance. We will read four plays – a tragedy, a history, a comedy, and a romance – to gain an introductory understanding of Shakespeare’s works and how they fit into his life and times. The selected plays will span Shakespeare’s writing career and will include Taming of the Shrew, Henry IV Part I, King Lear or Othello, and The Tempest. Since Shakespeare intended for his works to be performed, not read in isolation, this course emphasizes “on your feet” drama activities and costumed group scene performances in addition to seminar-style discussions. Students will also read critical essays about the plays in preparation for college level literature classes and learn how to both write about Shakespeare as well as how to incorporate these essays into their own analysis.

WRITING

Creative Writing
This course will give students an introduction to the craft of writing. We will congregate in a workshop-styled classroom, where each student will write short stories, chapters of novels and poems. In addition to their own work, each student will be responsible for critiquing the work of his or her classmates. We will also work our way through a comprehensive reading list which will include novel excerpts and short stories from the following authors: Vladimir Nabokov, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Roberto Bolano, Yukio Mishima, Haruki Murakami and Anne Carson.