"English" is a little word for lots of things. Is it literature you want today, or creative writing? film? theater? journalism? debate? Maximum English introduces you to all these areas and to our unique resources for studying and enjoying them--the full range of "English" here at UR. So you'll learn the fundamentals of reading and viewing from the department's own creative writers, its literary and film critics and historians, and its theater directors. You'll enlarge the experience of reading literature and criticism by listening to writers read their own original work and then discussing it with them. You'll experience plays not only as written scripts but as living theatrical events by attending performances and talking to actors, directors, and designers about what they do to bring a play to the stage. You'll encounter works in different media, from the live human voice to printed books, from the stage to film and electronic hypermedia. Maximum English will launch you into real English--the new expanded version. Applicable English Clusters: Modern and Contemporary Literature; Novels; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater; Poems, Poetry, and Poetics.
This course in the classical and scriptural backgrounds to modern English and American literature demonstrates how great books such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Aeschylus' Oresteia, Sophocles' two Oedipus plays, Euripides' Trojan Women and The Bacchae, Plato's Symposium and other dialogues, Aristotle's Poetics, Virgil's Aeneid, the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and Dante's Inferno define the core of Western Civilization. All of the works we read will be familiar, whether you have read them before or not. That is, they and we are part of the same tradition. They have been rewritten again and again by every generation of writers since classical times. Applicable English Cluster: Medieval Studies.
This course immerses students in the most challenging, influential, and engaging writings from the earlier periods of English literature. Our aim will be to enjoy and understand these writings in themselves, and then to see their relation to each other and to their larger historical context. Students should leave the course with some real affection for particular writings, and some assured sense of the contours and highlights of cultural history. Our emphasis will be on the careful appreciation of language and texture in representative texts and authors (including Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Swift, Pope and their contemporaries). Class will proceed by lecture and discussion. Applicable English Cluster: Great Books, Great Authors.
This course is an overview of American literature from 1865 to the present. Ranging across historical periods and literary genres, we will examine how authors contributed to the American literary tradition by reworking ideas of literature and nationhood. Along the way, we will consider the ways in which literary texts have addressed (or failed to address) America's struggles over the extension of democratic principles across the lines of race, class, and gender. We will begin the semester with a survey of three canonical works of fiction that represent America's relationship to its racial "others." These will include works by Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, and Toni Morrison. Next, we will read the work of poets such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and Simon Ortiz, who explore key themes in American culture: nature, history, death and (often racially motivated) violence. Finally, we will consider texts that attempt to create a broader delineation of what counts as "American" literature, looking at works by writers who seek to redefine how we interpret American literature and the nation it has helped shape. These readings will include works by Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Sherman Alexie.
Fall 2008. As an introduction to the art of film, this course will present the concepts of film form, film aesthetics, and film style, while remaining attentive to the various ways in which cinema also involves an interaction with audiences and larger social structures. Throughout the course, we will closely examine the construction of a variety of film forms and styles including the classical Hollywood style, documentary, experimental films, and contemporary independent and global cinemas. We will pay particular attention to the construction of film images, systems of film editing, film sound, and the various ways in which film systems can be organized (narrative, non-narrative, genres, etc. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
This class provides an introduction to the writing of poetry and fiction. Students will experiment with different poetic and literary forms, and will engage in writing exercises to develop and refine their use of images, characters and descriptive language. We will begin by studying the basic components of poetry and the short story. The course will conclude with a workshop in which every student will present material to be reviewed by the entire class.
This is an introductory course for students who have already begun to write some poetry on their own. Every week students' poems will be discussed in a workshop format. Selected works by contemporary poets (such as Plath, Walcott, Ginsberg, Ashbery, Rich, Heaney, and others) will provide an essential background for examining various approaches and techniques. Specific or "open" assignments will be given weekly. Permission of instructor required. Please submit 3-5 poems to the instructor, preferably before the first class, since space is limited. Applicable English Clusters: Poems, Poetry, and Poetics; Creative Writing.
A course devoted to the understanding and execution of dramatic writing that is unique to the theatre. Students will analyze and discuss selected readings while writing an original one-act play to be completed by the end of the semester. Meets during one half of the semester only. Contact the Theatre Program at 275-4959 for details. Applicable English Cluster: Creative Writing.
This course allows students to experiment in different styles of writing cultural stories in one of following ways: fiction, poetry, autobiography, creative nonfiction, screenplay, traditional or creative ethnography. Bringing together creativity, innovation and anthropology, students in this course will choose a cultural experience, event, or issue and seek a way that they believe will best communicate their findings to a larger audience.
Reporting and Writing the News introduces the student to journalistic writing and reporting techniques. Through a variety of classroom exercises, seven major writing assignments and a term paper, students learn to prepare accurate, balanced, complete coverage of a news topic. Students progress from single-source interviewing to news profiles, speech coverage, meetings, more complex formats, and finally, news analysis. Additional writing experience is gained through rewriting assignments, as directed by detailed editing comment. From lecture, textbooks, reading daily and periodical newspapers, the students learn to identify newsworthy topics and to develop appropriate interview techniques to produce clear, objective reports under specific deadlines. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
Basic public speaking is the focus of this course. Emphasis is placed on researching speeches, using appropriate language and delivery, and listening critically to oral presentations. English 134 contains two quizzes, a final exam, and four speeches to be given by the student. The speeches include a tribute, persuasive, explanatory, and problem solving address. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
The purpose of this course is to give students an appreciation for and knowledge of critical thinking and reasoned decision-making through argumentation. Students will research both sides of a topic, write argument briefs, and participate in formal and informal debates. Students will also be exposed to the major paradigms used in judging debates. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
An introduction to Technical Theatre and Theatre Technology: its materials, techniques and equipment. Focuses on the principles and practice of set construction; the nature and use of electricity; lighting and sound equipment; tools; production organization and management; and the importance of safety in all areas. Course will include both lecture and significant hands-on experience. Practical laboratory work in association with the productions of the International Theatre Program is included.
An introductory/intermediate course on the materials, techniques and equipment involved in Sound and Lighting as used in theatrical applications. Focuses on the principals and practices of implementation and design. Safety practices will be taught. Course will include lecture, one-on- one tutorials, and hands-on practical laboratory work in association with a production of the International Theatre Program.
Acting Techniques focuses on the students ability to analyze texts from a performers viewpoint, on heightening the actors sensitivity to language, on developing the actors physical and vocal technique, on building awareness of character and characterization, and on engaging and actively developing creativity and imagination. This is done by constant investigation, rehearsal, and presentation of assorted texts ranging from poetry to contemporary and classical scenes and monologues. No prior acting experience or classwork is required. Students in Acting Techniques I must also register for Acting Techniques I - Lab.
Students must register for the lab when registering for the course, Acting Techniques.
An introductory course on voice and movement for the actor, concentrating on the ability of the actor to maximize the use of the body and voice to express emotion and character.
This is an introductory course focusing on directing for the theatre. The class will guide students through the directing process: from textual interpretation and production conceptualization, through staging and visualization, to working with actors. Students in Directing must also register for Directing - Lab.
Students must register for the lab when registering for the course, Directing.
Old England's Beowulf, put in the recent limelight by award-winning poet Seamus Heaney and the recent film by Robert Zemeckis, has been the domain, invisible to the public, of academia, wherein we find voluminous discussion of folklore material, teratology (study of monsters!), orality and literacy, historicity, gender, narrative, poetic technique, translation theory, and the volatile debates about dating it. This course will read this famous eleventh- (or seventh??) century epic in various modern renderings. For the poem itself and its story we will look at Howell Chickering with facing page original text and the acclaimed Seamus Heaney translation, newly presented by John Niles with illustrations of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and artifacts. We will make some excursions into Anglo-Saxon language, noted passages in the original Anglo-Saxon, related texts from Old Norse literature (notably Grettis Saga, Hrolfskraki Saga, and others). We will read prominent critical materials written of it, and view and discuss the four films made of it. I hope to explore the enigmatic quality of this one and only version (collected in the Nowell Codex, available on CD-ROM at the Robbins Library). Why does it elude us? Is its written form a late production of an earlier oral poem? What is its beauty and appeal? Why the digressions? What does it reveal about the people who produced it and why must we rewrite it, almost always giving the celibate and slightly monstrous hero some kind of love-interest that will make us able to relate to him? This course will fulfill the medieval as well as the Great Books/Authors clusters. For English majors, it fulfills the pre-1800 requirement.
The literature for this course, written mostly in Middle Welsh and Old Irish of the ninth to fifteenth centuries, will be taught in translation. We shall focus on two powerful myths - that of the euhemerized "goddess" (Aranrhod, Cerridwen, Morgana, Medb, the Morrigan, Rigantona) and her encounters with the knight, the male magician/poet, and the "warrior" (Arthur, Cuchulain, Finn, Gwydion, Pwyll). We will be looking at the Welsh "Mabinogion" for its insights into male and female relationships; at "The Tain" and the legend of Cuchulain, whose martial "warp-spasm" could only be cooled by vats of water and the sight of naked women; at the "Fianna", which tells of Finn and his mannerbund of misbehaving warrior-boys; at selected poems in Old Irish and Middle Welsh. Applicable English clusters: Medieval Studies; Gender and Writing. It will fulfill the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
See IT 220 for description. It WILL NOT fulfill the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
This course will survey the non-dramatic poetry and prose of the English Renaissance. We will focus on Spenser, Donne, and Milton, but we will also pay attention to the non-dramatic writings of Marlowe and Shakespeare, as well as the work of less-familiar authors, such as Wyatt, Sidney, Lyly, Foxe, Jonson, Bacon, Herbert, and Marvell. Topics for discussion will include humanism, court politics, reformation theology, early modern gender, the new science, the English civil war, and colonialism. Course requirements: attendance, two papers, a midterm, and a non-cumulative final.
This course will focus on plays representing each of Shakespeare's major dramatic forms - comedy, history, tragedy, and romance. We learn about the literary and theatrical conventions that would have been second nature to Shakespeare and his audience 400 years ago; consider how Shakespeare's writing responded to his audience's cultural, literary, political, and religious concerns; and ask how Renaissance stage practices might help us to better understand his plays and better appreciate why Renaissance audiences found them so compelling. Classes will center around careful study of individual plays. We will discuss, among other topics, Shakespeare's method of constructing his characters' psychological interiority, his staging of funeral pageants and madness, his use of anachronism, his interest in memory, his insistent references to contemporary performance practices (including the Renaissance tradition of boy actors playing women's roles), and his depiction of proper relations between ruler and subject, husband and wife, parents and children, and European and non-European characters. We also will become familiar with 16th and 17th century theatrical spaces - their geographical location and physical properties, the composition of their audiences, the training and performance practices of their actors, and the aesthetic, economic, and political contexts of their productions. Fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major. Applicable English clusters: Great Books, Great Authors; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.
This course will survey the English Renaissance Lyric, from Wyatt to Marvell. Our authors will include Gascoigne, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Herrick, Lovelace, Herbert, Traherne, and Vaughan. Although the majority of our class time will be spent close-reading individual poems, we will also pay attention to literary convention and historical context in order to learn to read and analyze the poems with as much comprehension and pleasure as possible. Course requirements: attendance, two papers, a midterm, and a non-cumulative final.
In 1660, after an eighteen-year ban on theatre, the English playhouses reopened, and quickly proved their vitality. Women acted on stage for the first time, radically changing the dynamics of performance, as well as the way that plays were written. The period also saw the rise of the professional female playwright, as well as the emergence of the "Celebrity Actor." Comedy flourished in particular, relishing in bawdy repartee and the figure of the Rake, while exploring gender roles, the institutions of courtship and marriage, relations between children and parents, and the value of "Wit." By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the object of humor was often the theatre itself: playwrights pushed the limits of traditional genres such as the Heroic Tragedy, and introduced elements of farce, opera, and political satire, as well as reflections of "middle-class" life. This course will examine a variety of plays, while also considering issues of social context, genre and performance. Playwrights will include Behn, Centilivre, Congreve, Dryden, Etherege, Farquhar, Fielding, Gay, Goldsmith, Steele, and Sheridan.
This course examines the problem of possession, romantic and economic, in the nineteenth-century British novel. What is the connection between marriage and romance with other forms of possession such as land, money, or things, in the nineteenth-century British novel? In addressing this question, we will discuss how narrative devices and genres like the marriage- plot or national tale offer vehicles for novelists such as Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot to explore the linkages between romance, sexuality, property, and capitalism. Other key topics for the class will include (but not be limited to) nationalism, the woman question and the problem of separate spheres, changes in class structure, and British imperialism. Applicable English Cluster: Novels.
The 19th c. novel has often been associated with Victorian values: happy marriages; wholesome homes; moral propriety; moderated emotions; properly channeled ambitions. Many of the most popular 19th-century novels, however, paint a very different picture: with madwomen locked in attics and asylums; monsters, real and imagined, lurking behind the facade of propriety; genteel homes harboring opium addicts; fallen women walking the streets; and sexual transgression and degeneracy more common than it would seem. Indeed, for novels so centrally structured around marriage and society, madness and monstrosity appear with alarming regularity. This is especially the case in novels written by women, and in novels (whether written by women or men) written for the significant and rapidly growing female portion of the novel-reading public. These novels' insistent intertwining of the tropes of madness, marriage, and monstrosity suggests some of the cultural anxieties unleashed by this new body of women readers. The course will begin with Frankenstein and end with Dracula, two novels from opposite ends of the century that stand as meditations on the course’s central themes. In between, we will consider such classic marriage plot novels as Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre; we will also look at some examples of the popular sensation fiction of the 1860s (The Woman in White and Lady Audley's Secret). Applicable clusters: Gender and Writing; Novels.
What does it mean for fiction to offer a realistic portrayal of the world? This course will consider American literature from 1865 to 1914 with a special emphasis on the concept of literary realism. Focusing on prose fiction (novels and short stories), we will explore how American writers understood and represented "reality" during a time of social and cultural upheaval at home and abroad. The class will touch on formal concerns, including literary techniques for depicting interiority and urban environments, and will also examine realism in the context of changing ideas of labor, race, gender, and democracy. Several questions will motivate us: is it possible to portray reality objectively in fiction? Why did nineteenth-century American writers value objectivity over other literary possibilities? What makes realist novels such compelling reading? Our texts will include novels by Howells, James, Jewett, Wharton, Twain, Chesnutt, Crane, Dreiser, and Du Bois.
The course covers the period roughly between World War I and World War II, dealing with the rich creativity we associate with Modernism. We will read and discuss such writers as Eliot, Faulkner, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Steinbeck, etc., studying not only the works but some of the major trends in art, culture, and knowledge that make the modern period so important and exciting. The method will be a combination of close reading, lecture, and discussion with (probably) one short paper and one longish paper. Applicable English Clusters: American and African American Studies; Modern and Contemporary Literature.
Looking back over the twentieth-century, this course will concentrate on the innovative, often wildly experimental writing produced in the period we still call "modernist". We will concentrate on five writers, two of them American (T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound), two of them Irish (W.B. Yeats and James Joyce), and one of English (Virginia Woolf). We will read some of the most beautiful and ambitious works of the century (Eliot's "Waste Land", Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway"), but the centerpiece of the course will inevitably be our extended reading of Joyce's novel "Ulysses" - one of the most difficult, most rewarding books in our language. And while we will consider the individual achievements of all the writers, we will also consider their work in the context of the avant-garde aesthetic and social movements in which these writers participated. Applicable English cluster: Modern and Contemporary Literature.
This course focuses on a range of critical debates and literary practices associated with defining the "and" in Literature and Politics. We consider, among other topics, the consequences of style and form, conditions of production and reception, and shifting definitions of the literary critics' possible objects of analysis. We will read critics whose remarks about literature and politics are indebted to feminism, global studies, Marxism, post-Marxism, queer theory, studies of gender, and studies of race. We analyze the writing of both canonical and less canonical authors from Shakespeare to the present, organized into units such as "popular theater" and "life writing."
See description for SP 215. It WILL NOT fulfill the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
See RUS 222 for description. It WILL NOT fulfill the post-1800 requirement for the English major.
This course will be a study, more broadly, of the gray zone between short story and novel, containing many ambiguous labels (long short story, novella, short novel). The course will interrogate various boundaries — when does a short story become a novella? When does a novella become a novel? — and locate answers not merely in word count, but in reader experience and expectation. Because of the (relative) brevity of these in-between texts, the course will cover much stylistic and geographic ground. Author List may include: Franz Kafka, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Carson McCullers, Nathanael West, Saul Bellow, Gabriel García Márquez, Henry James, George Saunders, Ethan Canin, Aleksandar Hemon, William Gass, Flannery O'Connor, Cynthia Ozick, Peter Taylor, Jane Smiley.
As contemporary readers continue to search for new and exciting types of writing, and as "cyberculture" rapidly becomes more mainstream, science fiction becomes increasingly important to scholars of American literature and culture as context in which to address genre and responses to changes in technology. This course covers a range of science fiction texts and issues, including the genre's European literary antecedents, its "roots" in American periodical fiction, the emergence of the science fiction novel, the genre's treatment of issues of difference, cyberpunk, and beyond. Reading include Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, Octavia Butler's Kindred, Samuel R. Delany's Nova, William Gibson's Neuromancer, Maureen McHugh's China Mountain Zhang, and more. Requirements include weekly one-page response papers and two 5-7-page papers.
Starting with an introduction to critical race theory, this course will examine representations of race in 19th and 20 century American literature. We will focus on the relationship between racial constructions and the development of a national identity through a broad collection of works including novels, memoirs, scientific and legal documents and films. Students will explore the nature of racialized identity, the possibilities of passing and hybridity, definitions of citizenship, the relationship between class and race, and opposing constructions of whiteness and blackness. Authors to be studied include Herman Melville, Kate Chopin, James Weldon Johnson, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Richard Rodriguez and Junot Diaz among others.
Fall 2008. Theater in England will be conducted in London from Saturday, December 29, 2008, through Saturday, January 10, 2009. Students should arrive in London no later than the evening of December 28. They may return on Sunday, January 11. We will see and have classes on approximately 20 plays. At the end of the course, students will submit a journal that discusses all the plays seen. The journal is due at the beginning of the third week of classes after we get back. I do not yet know what plays we will be seeing, but you can be certain that we will see the best of what is available in the world's theater Mecca. Last year we saw such productions as Ian McKellen in Shakespeare's King Lear, Simon Russell Beale and Zoe Wanemaker in a legendary production of Much Ado About Nothing, and Chiwetel Ejiofor's definitive performance in the title role of Othello. As an out of town break, we went to Stratford-upon-Avon to do homage to Shakespeare, and see David Warner's Falstaff in Henry IV, Parts I and II. The range of the offerings was terrific, from Nick Stafford's War Horse (with its amazing larger than life puppetry) and a fascinating adaptation of Euripides' Women of Troy to a brilliant example of in-yer-face theater in Anthony Nielson's God in Ruins. We saw big musicals like Billy Elliot and Mary Poppins and fringe productions like Fletcher's Custom of the Country and Neil Labute's Bash. For information about the course over the past sixteen years go to www.courses.rochester.edu/peck/theatre/
The course is restricted to 23 students and carries 4 credits. The fee is $2550.00, which includes tickets to all plays and housing. Students must obtain passports and make their own travel arrangements. You may obtain the application from the English Department or Professor Peck. You need permission of the instructor to register. Contact Professor Russell Peck (russell.peck@rochester.edu, phone 275-0110 or 585-473-7354).
More than any other legends, apart from those of the Bible, the stories of King Arthur have provided Western Europe and North America with a vehicle for cultural propaganda, reassessment, and pleasure. From the 12th to the 21st centuries, artists in all genres and modes have recast Arthurian narratives and images to explore and redefine the moral and social concerns of their day. After a brief introduction to Arthurian backgrounds, the course focuses on Geoffrey of Monmouth and Arthurian literature of the High Middle Ages (Chretien de Troyes and Marie de France) and England in the 14th century, then examines the culmination and decline of that ideology toward the end of the 15th century (Malory), the reinvigoration of the myth in new directions in the Renaissance (Spenser), and then concludes with readings and art of the nineteenth century (Tennyson, the PreRaphaelites, Twain) and the twentieth century (T.S. Eliot, E.A. Robinson, T.H. White, and Marion Zimmer Bradley). We will study six movies: Lerner and Loewe's "Camelot," Disney's "Sword in the Stone," "The Fisher King," "The Mighty," "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," and Borman's "Excalibur." The readings for the course are extensive and richly rewarding, as are the viewings. Texts from the medieval English period will be studied in the original Middle English dialects. Readings from Latin and French will be in modern English translation. Applicable English Cluster: Medieval Studies; Literature and Cultural Identity.
An introduction to the history, technology,and cultural significance of motion pictures of the pre-sound era, with screenings of 35mm prints accompanied by live music in the Dryden Theatre. Special attention will be paid to the major pioneers, Dickson, Porter, Lumiere, Melies, and Griffith, but the course will include a variety of internationally produced films selected from the world famous archival film collection of the George Eastman House. Discussion sessions will cover the origins and development of the motion picture industry and its leading genres up to the general introduction of movies with pre-recorded music, sound and dialog, beginning in 1927. Broad issues relating to the transformation of American and world popular entertainment forms and traditions, in relation to the established performing arts of the period, will also be covered. Relevant connections to preserving the worlds film heritage will be highlighted and the film restoration facilities of the Motion Picture Department will be visited in the course of the semester. Students will be expected to take a mid-term exam and write one paper. Meets at George Eastman House. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
This course provides a transnational survey of film history, examining the technical and formal aspects of the medium in its production and exhibition. As we explore the development of cinema during this period, we will address a number of aesthetic and technological issues. For example, how did the development of sound technology affect film form? How did it effect cross-cultural cinematic exchange? What is the significance of genre across various film traditions? What did the studio system contribute to Hollywood's success in the international market? How did immigrant and exiled film personnel shape the industries they joined? Weekly screenings and film journals required.
The course examines diasporic Chinese cinemas from the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC), Hong Kong (HK), and perhaps even the U.S. and Canada, from the 1960s to the present. We will pay special attention to the migrations of individuals (actors, actresses, directors, cinematographers, and others) and to texts (the films and in some cases television programs). We will cover a wide variety of genres, including epic, martial arts, action, thriller, comedy, and drama. The majority of our films are in Mandarin Chinese and all are subtitled in English. Some experience with film studies, especially world cinema, and Chinese history will be helpful but not required. Outside screenings of films are required. Applicable English cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication. Not open to students who took Eng 267, Topics in Media Studies: Chinese Cinemas, in fall 2004.
An examination of the career of Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), emphasizing the close analysis of his most significant and influential works, from the 1926 British silent thriller The Lodger to such late-period American films as Vertigo, Psycho, and Frenzy. As we discuss the films, we will also consider questions of cinematic authorship, the development of a recognizable visual and narrative style, and the significance of genre (thriller, romantic melodrama, horror film, et al.). We will approach the films from a variety of critical perspectives including auteur theory and genre theory.
Readings will include one critical study of the entire body of the director's work and a biography; other readings may also be required. Applicable English cluster: Great Books, Great Authors.
The course aims to understand the social psychology of modern and contemporary Western/American family experience, and especially its means of abetting the concealment, repression, and suppression of people's emotional lives. Study of the films combines with the readings seek to develop critical understanding of the nuclear family (and versions of it) and the conditions it may create for child-rape, racism, homophobia, murder and self-destructive behavior such as substance abuse, self- mutilation, and suicide. Sometimes the violence is arbitrary, sometimes it is inevitable, sometimes it is incomprehensible. In each case the course's attention is on the personal and collective machineries of repression, the resulting rage in many individals, and the frequent (and now often familiar) violent results. Readings in the course include those by Erik Erikson, Nancy Chodorow, Alice Miller, and Stephanie Coontz. Films are to be taken from the following list: A Price Above Rubies (1998), A Thousand Acres (1994), All My Sons (1948), American Beauty (1999), American History X (1999), Bastard out of Carolina (1996), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Dolores Claiborne (1995), Falling Down (1933), Fargo (1996), Fried Green Tomatoes (1992), Heavenly Creatures (1994), In the Bedroom 2001), Ju Dou (1991), Mildred Pierce (1945), Monster (2002), Monster's Ball (2001), Ordinary People (1980), Piano Teacher (2003), Unfaithful (2002).
This course investigates technical theater beyond the realms of Eng 170 (Technical Theatre). It focuses on work related to the scenic design and technical production of the two Fall Theatre Program productions. Working in small seminars and one-on-one tutorials, the instructor will assist students in learning more in the chosen technical areas and about problem-solving scenic and technical questions raised by the set/s being built. Course work will consist of supervisory responsibilities, one major and several smaller research projects.
This workshop is for advanced fiction writers who have completed ENG 121 or have permission from the instructor. The course emphasizes the development of each student's individual style and imagination, as well as the practical and technical concerns of a fiction writer's craft. Readings will be drawn from a wide variety of modern and contemporary writers. Students will be expected to write three original short stories as well as to revise extensively in order to explore the full range of the story's potential. Applicable English Cluster: Creative Writing.
This course prepares selected undergraduates for work as writing advisors. The course design reflects the kind of growth that is necessary for a strong, intuitive writer and speaker to become a successful reader, listener and responder in peer-advising situations. Through a great deal of writing and rewriting, criticalreading of published essays and student work, and informal and formal speaking, students will develop a conscious understanding of themselves as communicators and become aware of the choices they make to reach their audience. The course work includes four formal essays in draft and revised forms, group and individual presentations, informal writing and speaking, and regular critiques of peers' written and spoken work. Through a mentor program coordinated by the current writing fellows, students will also observe writing tutors conducting writing conferences and then begin conducting their own sessions. By the semester's end, students should be ready to take on their own hours as writing advisors.
"Presidential Rhetoric", taught by former Presidential speechwriter Curt Smith, helps students critically examine the public rhetoric and themes of the modern American presidency. Particular attention will be given to the symbolic nature of the office, focusing on the ability of 20th-century presidents to communicate via a variety of forums, including the press conference, inaugural and acceptance speeches, political speech, and prime-time television address. Mr. Smith will draw on many of his experiences in Washington and with ESPN/ABC Television to link the most powerful office in the world and today's dominant medium. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
This course will introduce students to the theoretical backgrounds, practical challenges, and creative activity of literary translation. We will survey appropriate theories of language and communication including semiotics, post-structuralism, pragmatics, discourse analysis, and cognitive linguistics. We will consider varied and conflicting descriptions by translators of what it is they believe they are doing and what they hope to accomplish by doing it; and we will study specific translations into English from a variety of sources in order to investigate the strategies and choices translators make and the implication of those choices for our developing sense of what kinds of texts translations actually are. Finally, students will, in consultation with the instructor or with another qualified faculty member, undertake exercises in translation of their own. By the end of this class each student should have a working knowledge of both the critical backgrounds and the artistic potentials of translation.
Each student in Plays in Production participates fully in the exciting behind-the-scenes world of theatrical production. Students build sets, create and make props and costumes, hang and rig lighting and sound equipment, and create and distribute publicity materials for the plays currently in production in Todd Theatre. The class comprises a once-weekly lecture and a series of practical labs. This 4.0-credit course meets for the entire semester. Applicable English Cluster: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.
Plays in Performance is a class made up of actors, assistant directors and stage managers working on the current production in Todd Theatre. Actors are cast after auditioning at the beginning of each semester. Students wishing to stage manage should approach the director of the production either at the time of auditions or before the beginning of the play's rehearsal process. Although there is no written component for this course (the performance of the play constitutes a final "exam"), a significant time commitment is required of actors and stage managers, both on weekday nights and over weekends. This class meets during the first half of the semester. Permission of instructor required. Applicable English Cluster: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.
Plays in Performance is a class made up of actors, assistant directors and stage managers working on the current production in Todd Theatre. Actors are cast after auditioning at the beginning of each semester. Students wishing to stage manage should approach the director of the production either at the time of auditions or before the beginning of the play's rehearsal process. Although there is no written component for this course (the performance of the play constitutes a final "exam"), a significant time commitment is required of actors and stage managers, both on weekday nights and over weekends. This class meets during the first half of the semester. Permission of instructor required. Applicable English Cluster: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.
Students in Stage Management I and/or II (Fall/Spring) will get an in-depth introduction to and immersion in stage managing a theatrical production. In addition to class work covering all areas of management skills, safety procedures, technical knowledge and paperwork, students will be expected to serve as an assistant stage manager or production stage manager on one (or both) Theatre Program productions in their registered semester.
1.0 credit/Pass-Fail. This class is a lab tutorial for actors cast in productions in Todd Theatre. Working one-on-one with an acting and voice coach, students tackle specific technical challenges raised by their involvement in the specific theatrical work in production.
This is an independently designed course, focusing on specific theatre or theatre-related projects, and demanding significant skill application or acquisition, independent and self-motivated research, including advanced written work, if appropriate. Topics may include elements of theatre related to production, management and/or design.
This course, part of the Kauffman Entrepreneurial Program, will address the popularity of the outlaw hero Robin Hood across six centuries and through a variety of media, including oral stories; popular and art songs; manuscripts, broadsheets and ballads; chapbooks and tabloid "lives"; comics, serials, and children's literature; woodcuts, engravings, chromolithographs, and high-end illustrations; silent and sound film, animation, TV series, and video. The course will require shared readings (including writings on media theory and history), but much of the work will entail individual research that will be available to other class members through live discussion and through the computer and website that will constitute the "research lab." Students will be asked to investigate the ways in which Robin Hood reached various in different time periods audiences by examining and/or preparing facsimiles (hard copy, microfilm, digital) of early printed material, tracing out the print and reading history of texts and authors popular in their own time, or by uncovering the production and reception history of commercial films and TV movies and series. These projects will grow partly from students individual interests, and aim to lead to genuine expertise. Each member of the class will be expected to produce several finished projects over the course of the semester. The research, editing, and technological work of the course will proceed in a hands-on and cooperative way; besides the continuing opportunities to share ones specialized knowledge in class, students will ultimately have the chance to make their discoveries available to a wider audience through Robin Hood: A Digital Archive. The development of this website will potentially engage students in website design, market research (ie, who will come if we build this website? with what constituencies in mind should we design it?), and issues of property rights in the private and public domains. This process of research and investigation, of assembling and editing materials, of preparing texts and images for non-academic audiences will form part of the entrepreneurial focus of the course. Ultimately, the course, like the site, will attempt to enable mixed audiences to have digital access to those material objects and practices that provide the basis for reconstructing our understanding of popular culture over the last 500 years, insofar as Robin Hood and outlawry provide a focus. Note: Students in English 380 may elect to enroll for an additional two credits of directed research work in a Humanities Research Lab course (English 381).
Students in English 380 may elect to enroll for an additional two credits of directed research work in a Humanities Research Lab course (English 381).
What can prominent English and American writers of the 20th century tell us about a subject that, by definition, resists our understanding? What can we learn from literature about confusion and the intricacies of contradictory thought? How do we make sense of senselessness? These are the main questions we will address as we examine important modern and contemporary works of fiction, poetry, and drama that represent encounters with confusion and enact the struggle to communicate meaning. We'll look at important precedents in the stories of Gogol, Poe and Melville. We'll read novels by Conrad, Woolf, Mann, and Sebald, short fiction by a variety of modern and contemporary writers (including Stein, Baldwin, and Barthelme), the poetry of T.S. Eliot, and plays by ONeill and Beckett. This class is limited to senior English majors who have been accepted into the Honors Program.
The University of Rochester International Theatre Programs PR Internship provides interested students with an introduction to all aspects of Marketing and Public Relations, from writing press releases, to scheduling photo shoots, to creating advertising banners, to developing marketing campaigns for those theatrical events in Todd Theatre. Additionally, PR interns work Front-of-House/Box Office and are responsible for the public face of the Program with regard to other university events (Alumni and Homecoming weekends/Meliora Weekend, etc.) PR Interns report weekly to the Artistic Director of the Theatre Program.
