Spring 2024 Undergraduate Courses
PDF: Spring 2024 Undergraduate Courses
Eng 199:1 Introduction to Creative Writing
Ginsburg MWF 9-9:50
mginsburg@olemiss.edu
** Reserved for BFA in Creative Writing Students Only **
This course will introduce students to writing and workshopping poetry, essays, and short stories. We will read examples of these genres and do exercises designed to inspire creativity, experimentation, and the pleasure of ushering brand new literature into the world. With an emphasis on community and process, we will create a welcoming space that will allow us to try new techniques and find new ways to write well. Students will produce one story, one personal essay, and several poems. For our final project, each student will create a chapbook containing revisions of your best work from the semester.
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Eng 199:2 Introduction to Creative Writing
Hobbs MWF 1-1:50
vhobbs@olemiss.edu
This course is an introduction to creative writing where students learn the vocabulary of poetry, narrative nonfiction, and fiction and apply it to selected readings. Writing assignments come from those readings, and their works are discussed in a workshop setting. Each discussion generates ideas for revision, and students must be willing to revise their work multiple times and learn that writing is as much about the process as it is the product. We will write metric poetry as well as lyric. Our topics will range across the arts and nature. Students will look forward to a University Museum tour and will write ekphrastic poems. Overall, my hope is that students leave this class as a better writer, observer, and participant in the world’s beauty.
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Eng 199:3 Introduction to Creative Writing
TBD T TH 9:30-10:45
engl@olemiss.edu
Students will be introduced to different writing genres, including fiction and poetry.
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Eng 199:4 Introduction to Creative Writing
Hobbs MWF 10-10:50
vhobbs@olemiss.edu
This course is an introduction to creative writing where students learn the vocabulary of poetry, narrative nonfiction, and fiction and apply it to selected readings. Writing assignments come from those readings, and their works are discussed in a workshop setting. Each discussion generates ideas for revision, and students must be willing to revise their work multiple times and learn that writing is as much about the process as it is the product. We will write metric poetry as well as lyric. Our topics will range across the arts and nature. Students will look forward to a University Museum tour and will write ekphrastic poems. Overall, my hope is that students leave this class as a better writer, observer, and participant in the world’s beauty.
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Eng 199:5 Introduction to Creative Writing
TBD T TH 2:30-3:45
engl@olemiss.edu
Students will be introduced to different writing genres.
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Eng 199:6 Introduction to Creative Writing
TBD MW 3-4:15
engl@olemiss.edu
Students will be introduced to different writing genres.
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Eng 220: 32-40 Survey in Literary History: Literary Animals
Raber MW 10-10:50
kraber@olemiss.edu
Literature is chock full of animals—animal companions, animal protagonists, animal comparisons. We’ll read a selection of works from several periods (the 18th century through the present—novels, poems, graphic novels, films) and discuss the ways that animals are used in them and with what consequences for both humans and animals in the “real” world. Students will take a midterm and final exam and write two short essays, in addition to other brief assignments during the semester.
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Eng 220: 1-6 Survey in Literary History: Literatures of the Future(s)
Raden MW 1-1:50
jraden@olemiss.edu
This course will examine different approaches in World Literature to an increasingly anxiety inducing concept: the future. We’ll ask how fiction conceives the future differently than science, even (and especially!) when the two are nominally combined as “science fiction.” Our investigation will begin with the inauguration of modernity and the Copernican revolution before moving on to explore such topics as late-19th century science fiction and early 20th century “futurisms,” as well as mid- and late-20th and 21st century genres like Afrofuturism, cli-fi (climate fiction), dystopian sci-fi, etc. Our main focus will be on fiction, but we’ll also look at some examples of future-oriented work in music, cinema, multimedia arts, and visual media (painting, sculpture, photography).
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Eng 220:7-12 Survey in Literary History: Literature for Leaders
Solinger MW 12-12:50
solinger@go.olemiss.edu
In this fast-moving and INCREDIBLY FUN multi-media survey of literature and culture, we will focus on the experiences, ethics, and challenges of leadership from ancient times to the present. We’ll study a wide range of cultural artefacts in their historical and cultural contexts and also consider their transhistorical resonances: how we can use this material not only to become better leaders and ethical actors but also to hold accountable those in positions of power. Our class has an interdisciplinary focus, but it is first and foremost a study of literature. You will develop your abilities to talk and write about different genres: poetry, drama, short stories, novels, letters, essays, and film. And you will gain an understanding of how you can use literature in a variety of life situations and professional paths.
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Eng 220:13-18 Survey in Literary History: Literature for Leaders
Solinger MW 2-2:50
solinger@go.olemiss.edu
In this fast-moving and INCREDIBLY FUN multi-media survey of literature and culture, we will focus on the experiences, ethics, and challenges of leadership from ancient times to the present. We’ll study a wide range of cultural artefacts in their historical and cultural contexts and also consider their transhistorical resonances: how we can use this material not only to become better leaders and ethical actors but also to hold accountable those in positions of power. Our class has an interdisciplinary focus, but it is first and foremost a study of literature. You will develop your abilities to talk and write about different genres: poetry, drama, short stories, novels, letters, essays, and film. And you will gain an understanding of how you can use literature in a variety of life situations and professional paths.
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Eng 220:20-25 Survey in Literary History: Literature and Wellness
Spencer T TH 8-8:50
ecspence@olemiss.edu
What can ancient Greek drama teach us about modern day trauma and mental health struggles? How can the poetry of Sappho and Rumi help us to restore “the order of the soul?” In this course, we will explore dimensions of wellness through Eastern and Western texts that deepen our understanding of human suffering brought on by isolation, disconnection, addiction, and other mental health issues. This discussion-based and writing-intensive course will ask students to build connections within the class and seek community engagement outside the class. Some texts we will explore include Bryan Doerries’s The Theatre of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today, speeches by Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass; Thich Nhat Hanh’s Living Buddha, Living Christ, Women in Praise of the Sacred (ed. by Jane Hirschfield), Victor Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning, Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance and Bessel Van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps The Score.
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Eng 220:26-31 Survey in Literary History: Literature and Wellness
Spencer T TH 9-9:50
ecspence@olemiss.edu
What can ancient Greek drama teach us about modern day trauma and mental health struggles? How can the poetry of Sappho and Rumi help us to restore “the order of the soul?” In this course, we will explore dimensions of wellness through Eastern and Western texts that deepen our understanding of human suffering brought on by isolation, disconnection, addiction, and other mental health issues. This discussion-based and writing-intensive course will ask students to build connections within the class and seek community engagement outside the class. Some texts we will explore include Bryan Doerries’s The Theatre of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today, speeches by Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass; Thich Nhat Hanh’s Living Buddha, Living Christ, Women in Praise of the Sacred (ed. by Jane Hirschfield), Victor Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning, Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance and Bessel Van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps The Score.
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Eng 221 Survey of World Literature to 1650
Eng 222 Survey of World Literature since 1650
Eng 223 Survey of American Literature to Civil War
Eng 224 Survey of American Literature since Civil War
Eng 225 Survey of British Literature to 18th Century
Eng 226 Survey of British Literature since 18th Century
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Eng 299:1 Introduction to Literary Studies
MacKenzie MWF 9-9:50
smack@olemiss.edu
A gateway course that prepares students for upper-division coursework in English by emphasizing the methods of close reading and textual analysis and by developing students’ writing and research skills. This course is required for all English majors.
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Eng 299:2 Introduction to Literary Studies
Sundar T TH 9:30-10:45
Smsundar@olemiss.edu
This gateway course prepares students for upper-division coursework in English by emphasizing the methods of close reading and textual analysis and by developing students’ writing and research skills. Students will read and discuss a range of novels, memoirs, critical essays, and works of poetry, all engaging themes of personal transformation and social change. Writers will include James Baldwin, Javier Zamora, Jake Skeets, Barbara Kingsolver, and Alice Walker. The course is required for all English majors.
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Eng 301 Poetry Workshop
Spencer T TH 11-12:15
ecspence@olemiss.edu
In this course we will read the work of Modern and contemporary poets and, through the study of their craft, generate a body of our own creative work. Using Kim Addonizio’s A Poet’s Companion, we will become more comfortable using the language of poetry and apply that language to the workshop setting. Course requirements include weekly writing assignments, reading journals, thoughtful participation in class discussion and a commitment to attend outside readings.
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Eng 302 Fiction Workshop
Franklin MWF 10-10:50
tfrankli@olemiss.edu
A reading- and writing-intensive introduction to short story writing. We’ll read published stories and present original short fiction to the class for group critique.
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Eng 302 Fiction Workshop
Sundar T TH 1-2:15
smsundar@olemiss.edu
This generative writing workshop will focus on reading, writing, and appreciating the craft of fiction. Throughout the semester, you will submit three pieces of original work to be read and discussed by your classmates with a focus on revision. We will open the semester by reading and analyzing a range of short stories and novel excerpts, paying attention to the structure of these works, as well as the development of characters—their vulnerabilities, their backstories, and the complexities of their relationships and private lives.
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Eng 309 Studies in Genre: The Sonnet
Fennelly T TH 9:30-10:45
bafennel@olemiss.edu
This class will be a deep dive into that most versatile and enduring of poetic forms, the only form that’s been continuously employed for the last 500 years—what Phillis Levin calls “a monument of praise, a field of play, a chamber of sudden change.” In this class, we’ll explore the sonnet tradition in English, starting with its earliest antecedents, followed by a deep dive into the Petrarchan and Shakespearean variations. We’ll move up to exciting sonneteers practicing today such as Terrance Hayes and Diane Seuss, seeing how they write within and against the conventions. Along the way we’ll learn about meter, rhyme, imagery, and metaphor to see how sonnets engage with our minds to transport our hearts. Students will write explications, papers, and even draft a sonnet or two to learn from the inside out.
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Eng 310 Introduction to Cinema Studies : How to Look at Cinema
Raden MWF 10-10:50
jraden@olemiss.edu
This course will cover the basic components of the study of cinema in order to help you develop critical viewing techniques. You’ll learn about things like shot types, editing, the relation of sound and image tracks, a bit about film history and the film industry, and some major critical concepts. We’ll also spend some time differentiating the features of some film movements, including Expressionist cinema, various national “New Waves,” Third Cinema, New Hollywood, and others. This is a seminar which will consist mainly of lectures, screenings, and discussion, with some supplementary readings to help you develop your technical knowledge and facilitate our conversations.
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Eng 318 Medieval Romance
Baechle T TH 11-12:15
sebaechl@olemiss.edu
As one of the best-known and most widely read traditions of medieval literature, narratives of King Arthur survive from the twelfth century through the twenty-first. Stories about Arthur and his knights were read and adapted across the globe, from early histories and courtly romances to modern feminist retellings, films, plays, comics, and postmodern novels. In this course, we will explore this rich literary heritage, tracing the legends from their earliest versions beyond their peak popularity in the later Middle Ages.
We will concentrate on reading translations of medieval Arthurian stories and examine these texts in comparison with some of their 19th and 20th-century adaptations. Along the way, we will explore the potential historical origins of King Arthur, and discuss the transformations to which these stories were subjected. Our goal will be to uncover the cultural contexts—the values, crises, and intellectual traditions—that shaped the adaptation of the stories of King Arthur. Through studying what authors changed, and which parts of these stories endured, we can better understand the significance that this vast body of stories held to the authors and readers who, time and again, turned the Arthurian legends into new forms.
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Eng 343 Studies in 19th Century Literature: Law and Literature
Donnelly MW 3-4:15
adonnel1@olemiss.edu
How did 19th-century literature understand the law and what does that reveal about legal and constitutional interpretation today? In this course, we will examine literature during a period (roughly 1787 to 1905) in which much of US legal interpretation originates. Examining how authors, such as Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Charles Chesnutt, pose problems of legal interpretation and respond to judicial decisions, we will use this nineteenth-century thinking to consider present day issues in constitutional, criminal, labor, and immigration law and procedure.
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Eng 350 Studies in Modernism: Literary Modernism of India
Bhagat-Kennedy MWF 1-1:50
mbk@olemiss.edu
Modernism, the aesthetic and cultural movement associated with Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, T.S. Elliot, Ezra Pound, and other canonical 20th century Western writers, did not remain restricted to the West. While keeping an eye on the European context, this course attends to the category of Indian literary modernism as it manifested within numerous cultural works produced by authors of South Asian origin during the British Raj (1858-1947). We will study how authors like Mulk Raj Anand (Untouchable), Premchand (Godaan), and Raja Rao (Kanthapura) experimented with form and style as they took up questions of social modernism, colonialism, and tradition in literature. Fictional and nonfictional writings by Rabindranath Tagore (The Home and the World), as well as film adaptations inspired by his work, will also be central to our study. By the end of the course, students will have expanded their understanding of modernist literature and developed a grasp of the socio-cultural forces present in early and mid-twentieth century South Asia that still influence the politics and culture of India, the world’s most populous country and a growing 21st century power.
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Eng 352 Studies in Contemporary Literature: Religion, Cults, and the Power of Credulity
Bondurant T TH 1-2:15
mrbondur@olemiss.edu
“Nobody joins a cult.” This quote from one of the survivors of the Jonestown Massacre in 1978 speaks to the prevalent paradox in human history: the desire for domination is only eclipsed by the desire to be dominated. This course will use a variety of contemporary texts that offer depictions of cult situations from a variety of perspectives, and we will discuss some contextual media, such as documentary films about cults, cult leaders, and the people who end up in cults. Why do we seek out powerful figures and submit ourselves to them, in matters personal and public? What is the attraction of authoritarian figures? How do certain individuals inspire others to worship and obey their person, as well as submit to systematic indoctrinations? Why are people so willing, so desperate to believe? Nobody “joins” a cult – so how do you end up in one?
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Eng 359 Studies in Native American Literature
Trefzer T TH 11-12:15
atrefzer@olemiss.edu
Today, there are approximately seven million Native American people in the United States and 574 federally recognized Indian nations. In addition to the great diversity of Native American life experiences and writing, much of the literature is hundreds of years old. Some of these ancient oral materials have survived in the writing of contemporary writers and storytellers. Instead of accessing these materials in chronological fashion and through settler-colonial texts that sometimes misrepresent or mistranslate these materials, we will study some of these historical materials though contemporary Native American writing. This course introduces students to writers in a geographical and topical survey that offers insights into different tribal cultures from the Spokane of the American northwest to the Choctaw of the southeast. Students read short stories, essays, novels, autobiographies, and poems by some of the best-known Native American writers and study the literary, historical, biographical, and cultural contexts relevant for understanding both tribal differences and common concerns. In addition to 2 seminar papers, there will be some reading response assignments.
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Eng 361 African American Literature Survey to 1920
Alexander T TH 9:30-10:45
pealexan@olemiss.edu
** Cross Listed with AAS 341 **
This course surveys the African American literary tradition from its beginnings to the Harlem Renaissance. After examining the vernacular tradition as expressed in the spirituals, we will turn our attention to the expansion of African American literary production in narrative forms such as the poem, the slave narrative, the public address, the essay, and the novel. While we will situate our readings of all assigned works in specific historical and political contexts (i.e., the Fugitive Slave Act, the Civil War), we will be particularly attentive to themes that unify these works, such as the search for voice, the pursuit of liberation, and the quest for literacy and identity. Representative authors include Phillis Wheatley Peters, Jupiter Hammon, Venture Smith, Frederick Douglass, William and Ellen Craft, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper, Harriet Wilson, and Sutton Griggs.
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Eng 366 African American Science Fiction Literature
Harriell MWF 11-11:50
harriell@olemiss.edu
** Cross Listed with AAS 366 **
English/ African American Studies 366 is a course designed for students of literature. Its goal is to nurture and develop your knowledge and understanding of the basic discourses of African American literature framed by a specific topic. In considering African American Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction literature, we will familiarize ourselves with recurring themes, tropes, perspectives and narrative styles. We will also explore the historical tradition and accompanying perspectives (e.g. Afrofuturism). Although our primary emphasis will be the short story and novel, we will additionally consider criticism, poems, and visual representations. Through classroom and small group discussions, we will attempt to complicate our readings while also interrupting our expectations of the African American literary text. We will consider questions such as: What qualifies a piece of writing as African American literature? What are our expectations of the African American literary text? What are the responsibilities of the African American author? How does the African American experience play out in these narratives? What’s the role of both science and history, and how are they connected? In what new ways are race, gender, and the human condition explored? With your full engagement, by the end of this course you will have a greater appreciation for literature as a whole, while also commanding a greater understanding of the African American Sci-fi/ Speculative-fi literary text.
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Eng 367 Blues Tradition in American Literature
Gussow MWF 9-9:50
agussow@olemiss.edu
** Cross Listed with AAS 367 **
This course will explore the way in which African American (and selected white American) writers have translated the oral culture and social milieu of blues musicians into a range of literary forms: poems, stories, novels, plays, interviews, autobiographies, and theoretical/prophetic writings. A principal theme will be the way in which the blues emerges from a Deep South world in which Jim Crow holds sway, but we’ll explore a range of other themes, including the tragicomic dialectic that underlies blues expressiveness, “signifying” as a textual strategy, womanist self-assertion in a blues context, the emergence of a mass white blues audience in the 1960s, and the globalization of blues music over the following decades. At least one local blues musician will be invited to class to share stories and insights.
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Eng 391 Environmental Genres and Forms: Advanced Humanities and the Environment
Ellis T TH 1-2:15
ceellis2@olemiss.edu
This advanced interdisciplinary course is designed to introduce students to thinking about the influence of the environment on human culture and how the power of writing- and of the human imagination more generally- can be harnessed to shape our environmental future. Course content may include key concepts in environmental history, classics of environmental literature, theories of environmental philosophy and ethics, and ideas about the environment embedded in culture, religion, and the arts. Personal reflection as well as analysis of environmental questions will be encouraged. ENG 391 and ENVS 301 will complete more advanced assignments on the course topics than students enrolled in ENVS 101.
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Eng 393 Studies in Popular Culture – Speculative Worldbuilding
Wang W 3-5:30
mxwang@olemiss.edu
** Reserved for Students of the Honors College **
This honors section is a combined literature and creative writing class, focusing exclusively on speculative fiction. We will read different works, both literary and genre novels along with story collections, and discuss the history and range of fiction that can be classified as “speculative.” In addition, in small groups, you will build your own speculative worlds, laying out the foundation and populating it with a diverse range of places, peoples, and things. Assignments for the course will include close-reading essays and reading responses along with creative exercises situated in the worlds your group has built together.
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Eng 400 Advanced Poetry Workshop
Skeets MW 3-4:45
mjskeets@olemiss.edu
What does it mean to be an ecopoet? What does it mean to write about the intricate connections between our personal experiences and the concepts of place and home? In this advanced workshop, students will explore the concept of poetry as compositions or collages that blend elements of natural and manufactured forces in our lives. We will attempt to define our own ecopoetic, posing open-ended inquiries about habitat, borders, frontiers, nature, and the potential end of the world.
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Eng 401 Advanced Fiction Workshop
Wang T TH 11-12:15
mxwang@olemiss.edu
In this workshop, students will submit at least two fiction pieces for critique and revision. Participating as engaged, helpful readers of each other’s work, students will write detailed feedback that aims to aid the writer to better achieve their own vision of the work. In addition, we will discuss published stories with a breadth of different effects and join in generative exercises that help a writer find their own voice.
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Eng 402 Advanced Creative Nonfiction Workshop
Fennelly T 3-5:30
bafennel@olemiss.edu
In this class, we’ll discuss and practice the art of the essay. We’ll seek to become acquainted with some of the contemporary masters of the genre. Through readings and assignments, we’ll explore the range of the genre, including memoir, personal essays, and flash nonfiction. During workshop, we’ll develop critical skills through the close reading of the work by others and have our own work criticized. This is a writing-intensive course designed for students who have a passion for writing; we’ll work to take that passion to the next level. Pre-req: ENG 303 or instructor permission.
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Eng 405 Nature Writing
Hobbs MWF 11-11:50
vhobbs@olemiss.edu
In this writing seminar, we will write about the natural world around us. We will read several authors, including Janisse Ray, Michael Branch, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ada Limon, Margaret Renkl, Camille Dungy, and others. Our reading discussion will serve as prompts for our own writing, which will include narrative nonfiction and poetry. We will consider our histories with nature. We will also discover new ways to perceive and interact with nature through language.
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Eng 412 Special Topics in Cinema/Media Studies Theory, History: Experimental Film
Elliis T TH 9:30-10:45
Ceellis2@olemiss.edu
When film was first invented, no one knew what it should be used for. Pretty quickly, three different types of filmmaking got established: narrative film (aka what we think of as “the movies,” the child of theater), documentary film (the child of journalism), and experimental film (the child of the visual arts). Chances are, you’ve seen some narrative and documentary films—but have you ever seen an experimental film? In this course we’ll watch some of the classics—Salvador Dalí and Louis Buñuel’s surrealist masterpiece Un Chien Andalou, Maya Deren’s dream-like Meshes of the Afternoon, and others by artist-filmmakers including Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Laura Mulvey, and more.
Many of these films are deliberately surreal, abstract, or otherwise resistant to narrative coherence, and one of the main aims of this course is to help you to develop techniques for responding thoughtfully to artifacts that at first baffle you (a five minute film that’s just peas and carrots??). Our focus will be on close critical observation and formal analysis, with the aim of developing a working vocabulary for the technical, stylistic, and conceptual registers of these films. Among the questions we’ll ask ourselves are: How can we talk about the “meaning” of a non-narrative film? How do experimental films invite us to think about the medium of film differently? And finally, how have experimental techniques and aesthetics influenced mainstream Hollywood filmmaking? Assessments in this course will include a mix of analytical essays and creative projects.
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Eng 426 Seminar on Shakespeare
Lechler Online Hybrid
kalechle@olemiss.edu
This course is a study of Shakespeare’s plays in their cultural and historical context. Prerequisite requirements for this course may also be satisfied by consent of instructor. Prerequisite: Eng 324.
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Eng 435 Transatlantic Literature to 1900: Literature and the Body
Wigginton MWF 11-11:50
cwiggint@olemiss.edu
** Fulfills Capstone Requirement **
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed many revolutions: in politics, in religion, in education, in science and technology, and in beliefs about human rights, gender, and race. Both British and American literatures from this time highlight that revolutions transformed not only national borders and knowledge about the natural world, but also how people understood their embodied selves. The body, though spoken of as self- contained, is also defined by its inter-connections. Bodies reside with their pleasures and pains at the nexus of the natural world and human communities, freedom and bondedness, mind and soul. In this class, we will read fiction, memoir, poetry, and other genres to explore how embodiment in literature expresses and shapes these revolutions in thought, personhood, and society. How are race and nation influenced by weather and food consumption? What is free will if the devil can possess one’s limbs? Does a wedding merge bodies as well as hearts and lives? When does bodily punishment discipline the internal self? Do clothes make the man? Our ultimate aim will be to have lively conversations about literature, bodies, and the centuries’ many changes. Possible texts include Mary Rowlandson’s Sovereignty and Goodness of God; Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette; Eliza Haywood’s “Fantomina”; Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno”; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Iola Leroy; and the poetry of Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, Emily Dickinson, and Christina Rossetti. This is a capstone course, and students will be required to create a substantial research project.
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Eng 450 Special Topics in 20th and 21st Century American Literature: Literature and Photography
Trefzer TH 2:30-3:45
atrefzer@olemiss.edu
** Fulfills Capstone Requirement **
Examining the interrelations between literature and photography, this capstone course engages two forms of representation. Focusing on the twentieth century south, the course will include fiction by southern writers including Eudora Welty and Natasha Trethewey; influential writing on photography by Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag, and iconographic photographs. The course covers short stories, memoirs, essays, and poetry as well as photographic genres including artistic, documentary, and experimental styles. Students will analyze and interpret individual photographs, including photographs that appear in literary texts. They will study relevant cultural contexts for photography and contemplate artistic and ethical questions. This course will include photo-documentary projects as well as collaborations between writers and photographers. The seminar work includes writing assignments that lead into a final capstone essay.
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Eng 473 Prison and the Literary Imagination
Alexander 2:30-3:45
pealexan@olemiss.edu
With well over 2 million people behind bars in the United States, imprisonment is quickly becoming an ordinary experience “in the land of the free.” In this course, participants explore how writers of twentieth century African American literature depict prison life, and more broadly, how they confront ethical issues related to the U.S. criminal justice system. We will focus on narratives produced about and from peon camps, county jails, state penitentiaries, high-security facilities, plantation prisons, and death row cells from a wide range of narrative forms—including the novel, the poem, the letter, the essay, and the (political) autobiography.
We will juxtapose our literary engagement with prison life with photographic and cinematic prison narratives, paying careful attention to how authors of African American literature complicate debates and expand studies on policing, racial profiling, state violence,gendered social control, discriminatory sentencing, indefinite solitary confinement, racialized prisoner abuse, and the increasingly punitive and privatized U.S. prison system. Literary texts that we will likely study include novels like Richard Wright’s Native Son, Octavia Butler’s Kindred, and Ernest Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying; epistolary writing, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and the prison letters of George Jackson; the poetry of Etheridge Knight and Ericka Huggins; and autobiographical writings by Malcolm X, Angela Y. Davis, Assata Shakur, and Robert Hillary King; and essays by Mumia Abu-Jamal. As we read, we will take up the following questions: How do African American literary works challenge and/or reinforce traditional (hi)stories of imprisonment? Juxtaposed with photographic, televisual, and cinematic prison narratives, do African American literary portrayals of prison/prisoner life glamorize, demonize, or humanize the imprisoned? How might African American literature contribute to cross-disciplinary discussions about mass incarceration, radical prison reform, and prison abolition?
University Writing Center Services
When planning to write your papers for English classes, don’t forget the benefit of consulting with an experienced writer in the University Writing Center. In a typical 20- to 30-minute writing consultation, you may receive suggestions for development of ideas, audience consideration, organization, style, grammar, and document presentation. Undergraduate students can schedule appointments through our online appointment calendar at www.olemiss.edu/depts/writing_center or call 915-7689.