211 - American Pluralism
Professor Robert Newman
TTh 12:30 - 1:50
Reg. No.  090746

Every generation in America faces anew the question of how different groups--ethnic, religious, racial, class, perhaps gendered, can live with their own identity intact and yet also with one another.  This course will emphasize the issues involved in dealing with both diverse identities and a common American culture.  We will read autobiographical essays to get the feel for lives both on the margin and at the center and secondary materials to re-see those autobiographical accounts from other perspectives.  Examples would include Yezierska's Breadgivers, Malcolm X's Autobiography, Esmerald Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican, and Marianno DeMarco Torgovnick's Crossing Ocean Parkway.  (You'll be asked to write an autobiographical essay of your own, modeling it on the rhetorical practices of the autobiographical readings--i.e., confrontative, nostalgic, negotiated.)

Beyond the autobiographical, the focus will be on issues--things that reasonable people can disagree on.  Readings may include (among various possibilities) the question of what makes us "American" in the first place (and whether this is a good thing or a bad thing), racial conflict (Shelby Steele says a plague on both your houses for evading responsibility in the name of "innocence"), boys and girls (are boys more in trouble these days than girls?--as per Christina Hoff Sommers), class/the American Dream (is the American idea of mobility a put-on or for real?), even multiculturalism itself (is it in some way a "mistake" as per Anthony Appiah?  should we go "back to the Melting Pot" as per Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., or are "racial formations" alive and well even in 200l?).

Additionally, there will be some possibilities for current (really current) debate matters, a journal of your own, a final research paper.  Naturally, class attendance and participation is required. 

221 - World Literature 1
Michael Kelleher
MWF    11:00 - 11:50
Reg. No.  010568

If you would like to read some of the classics of Western Civilization, or if you just want to sound a little more well-read, then this class is for you.  This course is designed to introduce students to some of the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the European Renaissance--about 1200 B.C. to 1650 A.D.  Beginning with a look at various myths from the Ancient world, we will turn our attention to one major work from each period:  Homer's Iliad, Dante's Inferno, and Shakespeare's Hamlet, with selections from other works from these periods to give you a sense of where these books come from.  You will be required to produce weekly responses to readings, take a number of factual quizzes on the reading, make one major in-class presentation, and write three 5-7 page papers.  All majors encouraged to enroll.

221 - World Literature 1
Professor Max Wickert
MWF      2:00 - 2:50
Reg. No.  190929

Dante's Divine Comedy:  We will read, in a modern translation, all of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.  This vast, impressive, profound, moving and varied three-part poem from medieval Italy is the nearest equivalent in words to what the great Gothic cathedrals accomplish in stone.  Its subject is life after death, in the three forms envisioned by medieval Christians:  Hell, Purgatory, Heaven.  Dante invents a fabulous journey through all three.  During it he encounters and converses with the damned or blessed souls of hundreds of actual, historical people.  The result is both encyclopedic and dramatic.  To appreciate it requires effort.  Do yourself a favor.  Read the student evaluations from past semesters before committing to this course.  Regularly a few of my students catch on too late that it involves more work than they care for and then voice resentment at its demands on their time and memories.  However, those who are willing to work usually find Dante as eye-opening a "world master" as any they could wish for.

We will march right through the 100 chapters or cantos of Dante's work, at the rate of about three per class.  Two mid-semester examinations will be scheduled, the first when we finish the Inferno, and the second after the Purgatorio.  The final examination will cover all three parts of the poem.

Also required:  six short in-class quizzes (I drop the lowest quiz grade and average the other five.), mid-semester, two moderate-length (4-6 page) papers on assigned topics.  Attendance is stressed.  Required texts:  Dante's Divine Comedy (edition to be specified); R. Jacoff (ed.), The Cambridge Guide to Dante.

231 - British Writers 1
Professor F. Anne Payne
TTh     9:30 - 10:50
Reg. No.  339315

We will be reading and discussing the major works of British literature from Beowulf to Paradise Lost (8th to 17th centuries).  There will be 1) pop quizzes, one paper and two hourlies.  2) Texts available at Talking Leaves.  Attendance is required.

232 - British Writers 2
Susan Varney
TTh     2:00 - 3:20
Reg. No.  294413

Course description not available at this time.

241--American Writers 1
Lori Jacobson
TTh 11:00 - 12:20
Reg. No.  036717

This course begins with the literature of conquest and ends with the literature of reform.  By tracing American voices from their earliest recorded instances up to the Civil War, course participants will gain a sense of the scope of early American literature.  We will consider a range of literary genres, including poetry, fiction, essay, autobiography, and political documents.  Chief among the genres we discuss will be narrative--throughout the course, we will read captivity narratives, slave narratives, and spiritual autobiographies that speak directly to the central ethical dilemmas that continue to face Americans today.  We will seek to unearth the reasons American writers choose to write in specific genres, and we will especially consider why the narrative is so often the genre of voices from the margins of society.

We will read selections from the Heath Anthology of American Literature.  We will begin with Cabeza de Vaca and the legend of Malinche; move through Puritan voices; consider the emergence of enlightenment and revolutionary ideals in the eighteenth century; give close attention to the question of race in the national vision; read the crucial reformist texts that resulted in emancipation, Indian reform, and women's suffrage; and consider the poetic outcomes of a nation undergoing violent transformation.  Writers we will consider in particular depth include Mary Rowlandson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson.

A central goal of this course will be to guide students to an understanding of why this early literature remains important to contemporary conversations about social, cultural, and literary ideas and ideals.  In an effort to elaborate on these contemporary connections, I will screen the recently released Jim Jarmusch film Ghost Dog:  The Way of the Samurai where students will see a provocative reinterpretation of early American themes.

Requirements:  Regular attendance and active participation in class discussions.  Frequent quizzes that encourage engagement with the texts.  Two short (1-2 page) response papers with short class presentations of the ideas in those papers (dates for response papers to be assigned).  One midterm paper and one final paper, both 5-7 pages. 

242 - American Writers 2
Douglas Manson
MWF      9:00 - 9:50
Reg. No.  481681

In his lectures of 1925, the Progressive philosopher John Dewey said that, "Although imagination is often fantastic, it is also an organ of nature; for it is the appropriate phase of events that are now but possibilities."  American Writers 2 is designed as a survey of American writing, and the American imagination, from the end of the Civil War to the present.  Over this span of history, we will observe the American imagination unfolding and changing as American life changes.  Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie follows the fantastic rise of a young woman from a poor town who dreams of success in the new metropolis of Chicago.  Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition sharply examines the bigotry and fear of a small Southern town devastated by racism at the end of the 19th century.  The Washington Square novels will give us two portraits of the same landmark, and also the same situation (love and romance) from 100 years apart.  We will learn much about the writer's natural activity:  to make possibilities into events.  With imaginative brilliance, W. C. Williams writes a history of great figures In The American Grain.  The narrator in Toni Cade Bambara's Gorilla, My Love gives us a clear and uncompromised  picture of African-American life in Harlem of the 1960s.  Our readings engage with the stories of real life, and we will examine the imaginative or outright fabulous ways that writers shape and misshape their words to reflect the world artistically.  We will also discuss the historical crises and social conditions that writers encountered and which they conveyed with great skill to an American audience.

Class Requirements:  timely reading and discussion, two papers of 5-7 pages, biweekly reading responses (1-2 pages) and a midterm exam.   

Reading List:

• Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
  
• Kate Chopin, The Awakening
  
• Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition
  
• Zitkala-Ša, American Indian Stories
  
• Frank O'Hara, Lunch Poems
  
• William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain
  
• Henry James, Washington Square
  
• Raymond Federman, Smiles on Washington Square
  
• William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
  
• James Wright, The Branch Will Not Break
  
• Toni Cade Bambara, Gorilla, My Love
  

251 - Literary Types:  Short Fiction
Professor Howard Wolf
MWF      3:00 - 3:50
Reg. No.  258431

Making use of a good anthology, we will look at an impressive sampling of short fiction (and commentary about it by writers and critics--an instructive contrast of perspectives) over the past two centuries, from Poe (1804) to the present.  Emphasis will be put on the American short story, but ample selections will be drawn from other countries (France, Russia, Colombia, Nigeria, Britain) and cultures.  By paying attention to the highest achievements in this genre, one naturally includes writers who are represented by more than one story and/or a cluster of commentary:  Borges, Chekhov, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty.  Students will be given the option of writing about their reading in a number of ways, including the writing of short short fiction:  essays and log-books.  The aims of the course are:  to respond to the specific achievements of some stories; to gain a sense of the genre; to generalize about the literary history of the past two centuries; to be able to say something about the relation of the writers to their craft; to identify some of the key critical and methodological issues of the present moment in America, and to enjoy ourselves through reading, writing, and conversation.  Attendance and participation are crucial.  There will be some spot quizzes.

Writers
worth raving
about

252 - Literary Types:  Poetry
Michael Rozendal
MWF       11:00 - 11:50
Reg. No.  062015

Roots and Branches: Lyric Poetry in English

What is poetry?  What does poetry do?  Who is poetry for?  Poetry is certainly more than rhyme--throughout its history, it has been one of the most innovative forms of literature, changing its focus and content, reinventing itself to speak of and to various times.  The pleasure and possibility of this art of words has drawn people to read and write poetry throughout the centuries, and continues to do so.  This course will trace the development of shorter poetry in English from the 16^th century, when the first sonnets were written in English,  through the 20^th century with its profusion of modernisms and post-modernisms.  By exploring a broad historical swath of poetry, this course will give exposure to a wide range of styles, periods, and concerns.  In investigating this genre, students will develop an historical understanding and appreciation of poetry. 

Through the writings, we will find various suggestions about the motives behind this curious project we call poetry: powerful emotions, political statements, personal experiences, exploration of the possibilities of language, etc.  For the purposes of our discussion, we will be as interested in the sheer variety of possible motivations for poetry as we are in the validity of any one of them.

Since we will be covering more than four hundred years of literature, the pace of the course will vary from close examinations of individual texts (poetry is an art of attention), to relatively quick overviews of others.

Our primary texts will be from the Norton Anthology of Poetry, Fourth Ed. though supplementary texts will be available on electronic course reserve.  Selections will include: Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Donne, George Herbert, John Milton, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, Frank O'Hara, Sylvia Plath, Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), and Ishmael Reed, among others.

Assignments:  A final eight-to-ten page essay, seven short analysis papers, a midterm, and regular attendance.

256 - Literary Types:  Video
Professor Stefan Fleischer
Tuesdays 4:00 - 6:40
[University Honors Only]

The catalog title is something of a misnomer.  This is a film course. For in-class screenings we will view films in DVD format.  It's not as rich as a screening in an actual theater, but it's close. Here we will survey some significant mainstream Hollywood films (most are multiple Oscar winners) from the era around WW II to the present. We will also study two films, Seven Samurai and High and Low, by the great Japanese master, Akira Kurosawa, for their own sake and as brilliant modulations on the Hollywood genres of the Western and the Thriller.
We will study all this rich matter from two angles: 1) How Hollywood inflects social/political/cultural forces and 2) How these films work as formal aesthetic achievements.
Requirements: attendance at all screenings. Frequent film response papers, (usually) one page or so in class (may be revised--added to, qualified at home and handed in on the following class day), two analytical papers (approx. five pp.), a mid-term exam (mostly identification questions), and an impromptu-exam analyzing visual style near the end of the semester.  Alternatively, you may do a final paper, due on the last day of class.
Attendance Policy: Because we meet only once a week one absence will be tolerated (if you make up the work, including film viewing, on your own).  More will jeopardize your grade.
Here's a tentative list of the films we'll be studying:

• Gone With the Wind, Victor Fleming - 1939 (excerpts). The grand Hollywood "Dream Machine."
  
• Casablanca, Michael Curtiz - 1942 (and Best Years of Our Lives, William Wyler - 1946). These are two significant takes on America in World War II.
  
• Notorious, Hitchcock - 1946.  Our focus will be on formal matters.
  
• On the Waterfront, Elia Kazan - 1954 (compare with Pollack's Tootsie).  Topical focus will include special emphasis on acting, especially the influence of Actor's Studio "method."
  
• North by Northwest,  Hitchcock - 1959.
  

• Matewan, John Sayles - 1987.
  
• The Grey Fox, Phillip Borsos - 1982 (compare with Eastwood's Unforgiven).
  
• The Sweet Hereafter, Atom Egoyan - 1997.
  
• Last Picture Show, Bogdanovich - 1971.
  

I will require you to view a small list of films out of class, on your own.  ITS has a small viewing facility available in Capen 24.  You may bring your own videotape or take one from my reserve shelf in the UGL.  But you must book ahead, at least one day in advance (call 645-2803) to reserve the room.  If you can coordinate with three or four others, the booking will be more efficient.  And, (who knows?) you may get into a fruitful conversation after the screenings.
Required text: Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art (5^th or 6^th edition). Available at University Bookstore.
Resources: My web site and links.  These will be updated frequently http://cas.buffalo.edu/english/faculty/fleischer/courses.html; http://wings.buffalo.edu/courses/fa00/eng/256mar/info/index.html.  This is the index page to Prof. Carine Mardorossian's film course material.  Prof. Mardorossian's site is particularly well designed.  It also has lots of ideas for paper topics and other good things.
Links:  Professor Carine Mardorossian's Homepage/ Introduction to Film (English 256).

275 - Early Black American Literature
Roberto Lopez
Thursdays 7:00 - 9:40
Reg. No.  351311

This class will follow a historical framework, beginning with early authors like the poet Phyllis Wheatley and following a chronological progression until we reach the first Black "novelists" in the 1850s and 1860s.  The social, historical, and cultural impact of slavery will be a central concern, both in the writings that we study and in our interpretations of them.  I will stress the historical context for early Black writers, and as a class we will also examine how African Americans approached the act of writing "history"--both in personal, collective, and spiritual terms.  How did they view themselves in relation to the histories of Africa, Europe, the Americas, Christianity, pagan religions, philosophy and art?  Whom did they view as the appropriate audience, to whom were they responding and to whom did they look for influence and inspiration?

We will cover different genres, including poetry, spiritual autobiographies, slave narratives, oratory/performance texts and the early serial novels like Clotel, the Garies and their Friends and Blake.  If time permits, we will devote the last weeks of class to viewing modern films that have dealt with slavery, such as Gone with the Wind, Glory, and Amistad.  The class will involve a large number of shorter writing assignments rather than a small number of long ones.

281 - Special Topics:  "Idea of Comedy"
Professor George Lopos
TTh 5:00 - 6:20
Reg. No.  400048

The "Idea of Comedy" gives you the opportunity to read some comic literature and study expressions of comedy in film, music, cartoons, and painting.  Class discussions will concentrate upon a close reading of the texts and occasional lectures will describe historical and social contexts of the selected works.  Beyond the formal and historical approaches to comedy, the course invites you to understand comedy as a way of expressing relationships.  One such important relationship is the artist to society through the criticism of its values.

Occasional quizzes, two 5-7 page papers, a midterm, and a final examination will determine your course grade.  Course texts range from the plays of Aristophanes, Jonson, and Shakespeare to the novels of Swift, Kesey, and Heller, and the short fiction of O'Connor.  There may also be occasional excursions into the worlds of George Carlin, Whoopie Goldberg, and P. J. O'Rourke and "Two Live Crew."  The course will examine a variety of topics and treatments of comedy, some of which may include the controversial and outrageous.  To paraphrase Juvenal, "everything is fair game" in this course.
 

301-- Criticism
Professor Arabella Lyon
MWF 9:00 - 9:50
Reg. No.  498044
or
TTh 9:30 - 10:50
Reg. No.  459901

In this course, we will read criticism, perhaps a few poems or a speech or two, but mostly criticism, ancient and contemporary.  I work with the assumption that you are reading literature in your other courses and that this is the moment to stop and think about how to approach those readings.  I will try not to overwhelm you with abstraction, but rather to give you "speculative instruments" to help you see more in a reading than you would without the lens of theory, Marxist, feminism, reader response, whatever.

Students will be expected to write short papers on the criticism and to compose one longer (10-12 page) paper applying the course reading to a piece of literature.  Class attendance and participation is required.