This course aims to introduce students to famous writings considered "great" that examine the nature of war, the strategies of war and political conduct, and the strategies of surviving war. That so many of our great works, especially our "epics," address and describe wars is a concern of the course. Where does heroism end and expediency begin? What voices have been raised against war and the curtailment of freedom? What bonds are made or broken in war? The course is particularly interested in the relationships of men and women in an institution long considered a masculine domain. The course is divided into "Strategies," "Epic Heroes," and "Men and Women." In the first month we'll examine Sun Tzu's Art of War, Aristotle's Politics, Machiavelli's The Prince, Paine's Common Sense among others; in the second we will examine Gilgamesh, The Iliad, Beowulf, The Song of Roland, Shakespeare's Henry V; in the third we will look at Sophocles The Trojan Women, Aristophanes' Lysistrata, Christine of Pisan on Joan of Arc, Woolf's Three Guineas, and either or both Ozick's The Shawl and Szeman's The Kommandant's Mistress.
This course will introduce you to the full range of Shakespeare's plays, including his comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances. We will pay attention to both dramatic language and historical context in order to read and analyze the plays with as much comprehension and pleasure as possible. Requirements: Attendance (10%); two exams (20% each); two five-page papers (weighted to take your progress into account: 1st paper, 20%; 2nd, 30%).Applicable English Clusters: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater; Great Books, Great Authors.
This course introduces students to some of the most significant literature from the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern literary periods. Beginning with the outbreak of the French Revolution and ending with World War I, the years covered by this course represent a time of dramatic political, economic, and cultural change. The nineteenth century witnessed the rise of industrialism, rapid imperialist expansion, religious crisis, increasing democracy, and shifts in gender and class identity. In exploring this tumultuous time period, the course will focus on an array of novelists, poets, and essayists who will serve as touchstones for the key political, intellectual, and aesthetic problems of their times (e.g. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Dickens, G. Eliot, Browning, J.S. Mill, Arnold, Ruskin, Yeats, and Woolf). During the course, we will address the political, aesthetic, and intellectual issues that are traditionally viewed as characterizing Romantic, Victorian, or Modernist literature. Students will not only gain a greater appreciation for individual authors, but they will also be able to situate them within a larger framework of ideas and historical currents.
This course provides a basic introduction to some of the major works and themes in American literature, focusing primarily on the development of the novel and short story, with limited attention to poetry and drama. We will begin in the 19th century and work our way through such contemporary writers as Toni Morrison and Tony Kushner. Our focus will be on the creation of a national identity and how issues of race, gender, class and sexuality intersect in the formation of an American literary tradition. Students will trace a number of important themes such as the relationship between politics and art, the impact of slavery and the Civil War, immigration, the American dream and the development of a national mythology and ideology. In our study of various movements in the American literary tradition, we will also pay close attention to the intellectual debates concerning audience, language, and the purpose of art that have shaped key texts and historical time periods. Lectures will provide social and cultural background to the literary works discussed in class.
This course provides a broad overview and introduction to media. We will cover histories of different types of media (internet, radio, audio recordings, television, cable, film, journalism, magazines, advertising, public relations etc.) as well as various theories and approaches to studying media. No prior knowledge is necessary, but a real interest and willingness to explore a variety of media will come in handy. Occasional outside screenings will be required (but if you cannot attend the scheduled screenings, you may watch the films on your own time through the Multimedia Center reserves). Students will be evaluated based on assigned writing, class room discussion leading, participation, short quizzes, midterm exam and final exam. 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 Clusters: Creative Writing; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater; Theatre Production and Performance.
The study and practice of longer, more complicated newspaper and magazine stories, such as investigations and profiles. Emphasis will be on the consideration of the various techniques of non-fiction writing. 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. ENG 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.
Students will build their knowledge of debate theory and practice through varsity level intercollegiate competition and research. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
The study and analysis of a few high-impact news stories. Through readings and interviews with the reporters and editors who worked on the story, as well as interviews with the subjects of the stories, the class will gain an understanding of the issues involved in covering major news events.
This course introduces the basic aesthetic and technical elements of video production. Emphasis is on the creative use and understanding of the video medium while learning to use the video camera, video editing processes and the fundamental procedures of planning video project. Video techniques will be studied through screenings, group discussions, readings, practice sessions and presentations of original video projects made during the course.
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. Applicable English Cluster: Theatre Production and Performance.
Acting Techniques focuses on the student's ability to analyze texts from a performer's viewpoint; on heightening the actor's sensitivity to language; on developing the actor's 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. Applicable English Cluster: Theatre Production and Performance.
Voice and Movement for the Actor aims at helping all students (irrespective of their degree--or lack--of actor training or theatrical experience) explore the full range and expressiveness of their speaking voice, and expand their capabilities for expressive movement. The course explores the relationship between text and vocal expression, and provides the student with a descriptive system for understanding movement and meaning. Students analyze their own movement profiles as performers, creating characters through clear movement choices, and learn how to embody these characters fully through vocal technique and physicality. Applicable English Cluster: Theatre Production and Performance.
The history of the English language is a history of upheavals and invasions. Brought to the British Isles by the Angles and the Saxons in the fifth century, "English" and the people who spoke it rapidly ousted the Brythonic (or p-Celtic) people and established the Old English "heptarchy": the seven realms of Anglo-Saxon England. These nations, in turn, were beset by Viking raids and the intrusions of Scandinavians; and after King Alfred had made a treaty with the so-called Danes, and had set the stage for a flowering of English culture and learning that left us the Old English literature we study today, William of Normandy conquered English in 1066, changing forever the direction England would take, and the nature of its language. We will study texts from the Old, Middle, and Modern English periods, and chart the ways in which our language grew from a relatively simple Germanic tongue to the powerful, ductile, and eclectic language it is today, with one of the largest vocabularies in the world. Borrowings from French, Latin, and Greek greatly enriched our lexicon in the Old, Middle, and early Modern Periods, and as the English settled colonies in America, which in turn became a melting pot of different nationalities, increasing its vocabulary. We will read texts about the English language by King Alfred the Great, Aelfric (10th C.), Robert of Gloucester, Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet, Caxton, Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Mulcaster, Locke, Hume, Defoe, Swift, and Samuel Johnson; Thomas Jefferson, Noah Webster and the start of American dictionaries; and trace writings about 19th and 20th century concerns of language. We will end with discussions of Black Dialect, Ebonics, "uptalk," "Valley Speak," and language issues of concern to women. This class will fulfill the pre-1789 requirement for the major. Applicable English Cluster: Medieval Studies.
Chaucer is one of the wittiest, most congenial, and yet most intellectually alert of all British poets. He is a marvelous craftsman and social commentator who develops a rhetoric suited to philosophical discourse that has amazed his readers for centuries with its range of empirical, speculative, and observational psychology. English 204 provides intensive analysis of most of Chaucer's writings—dream visions (Book of the Duchess, Parliament of Fowls, and House of Fame), poetics (the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women), romance (Troilus and Criseyde), and all of the Canterbury Tales. The Chaucer readings are all in Middle English. As background we will study Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy in a modern English translation. The instructor makes a sustained effort to recreate the performative voicing that shapes his ideas and transcends the ravages of time. Classes will consist primarily of lecture with some discussion and occasional quizzes. Students write two papers and take a final examination. Class attendance is required. Fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major. Applicable Clusters: Medieval Studies, Great Books, Great Authors.
See IT 221 for description. It WILL NOT fulfill the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
The course focuses on the writings of John Milton, one of the most radical and challenging of English poets. Our work will center Milton's epic poem of the creation and fall of man, "Paradise Lost", along with shorter works of lyric and dramatic poetry, such as his biblical tragedy, "Samson Agonistes". Readings will also include selections from Milton's prose writings, in particular those that address questions about the freedom of writing and belief. One central theme of the course will be the quality of Milton's poetic inventiveness, his combination of tradition and revolution. We'll be thinking about Milton's extravagant poetic language; his ways of the re-appropriating stories and visions of the Bible; his complex pictures of divinity, of heaven and hell, God and Devil; his dynamic and seductive depictions of the created world; and his stark dramas of human moral choice. During the semester we'll also be considering Milton's changing relation to the political and religious crises of his time, especially the English Revolution of 1642-1660. In order to get a an idea of Milton's crucial influence on later English writers, we'll be ending the semester by reading selections from the poetry of William Blake, especially "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein". The course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major, and can be used for English clusters in "Great Books, Great Authors" and "Poems, Poetry, and Poetics."
The American Revolution was also a literary revolution. Friends and foes of independence used literature as a vehicle for debating ideas of liberty and nationhood. This course will consider American literature during the period of the revolution. Our readings will span numerous genres, including political tracts, novels and poetry. We will consider a range of authors, such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper, Lydia Maria Child, William Apess, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Along the way, we will explore the many diverse literary responses to revolutionary ideas, with a special emphasis on how early national ideas of liberty applied to women, slaves, and Native Americans and other people excluded from the newly emergent nation.
This is a course in four of the most beautiful and difficult long poems written during the twentieth century: T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets," H.D.'s [Hilda Doolittle's] "Trilogy," Ezra Pound's "Pisan Cantos," and Wallace Stevens's "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction." As we approach our concentrated experience of these four poems, we will read shorter poems by each poets, and we will explore the particular difficulties of writing a long poem during a time when the given forms of logic, narrative, and representation seemed inadequate or even dishonest. These challenging poems not only record but embody the discovery of alternative ways of inhabiting our cultural and our interior lives.
This is a course about how to read a poem. It look at poetry's extreme uses of metaphor, its use of a language by turns more raw and more oblique, plainer and more ambiguous than ordinary prose. We'll be thinking about the power of poetic gesture and poetic voice, about poetry's way of telling a story and its way of keeping secrets, and about poetry's attention to peculiarly charged moments of recognition, emotion, memory, and mystery. We will also look closely at the formal tools of poetry, the use of rhyme and meter, lines and stanzas, and the use of traditional genres such as riddle, ballad, hymn, ode, and elegy. Readings will include the work of poets writing from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, with some emphasis on the lyric poetry of William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Keats, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Elizabeth Bishop. Evaluation will be based on class participation and written essays. No prerequisites, no final exam. Applicable English cluster: Major Authors; Poems, Poetry, and Poetics.
See AH 306 for course description.
Blending clear-eyed social commentary with a faith in romantic love, festooning mordant satire with enchantedly happy endings, Jane Austen's novels subsist on contradiction and enjoy more popularity than ever. This course will place Austen in the context of her times while also analyzing her continued appeal. Readings include Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion, as well as novels by such authors as Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Anne Radcliffe, and the Brontes.
An isolated country parsonage. A half mad father. A wastrel brother addicted to drugs. Three uniquely gifted sisters who burned their hearts and brains out on the moors but not before leaving us some of the most passionate and revolutionary literature of the 19th century. This is the stuff of the Bronte legend. This course will explore the continuing appeal of the Brontes and the peculiar fascination that they have exercised on the literary imagination. Through intensive study of some of the best-loved novels our culture has produced the literary works of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte we will explore the roots and reaches of the Bronte myth. We will also consider the Brontes' legacy in todays popular romantic fiction and in some of the many adaptations (and continuations) of their work in print and on the screen. And we will look at our seemingly insatiable appetite for new tellings of the Brontes' life stories. The course, then, will consider not the only the Brontes' literary productions, but also our culture's production and reproduction of the Brontes over the years. Applicable Clusters: Gender and Writing; Great Books, Great Authors; Novels.
"Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created."
T. Morrison
Toni Morrison has emerged as one of the most influential writers and critics in contemporary American culture. This course will approach her work from a broad range of critical perspectives including black feminist thought, psychoanalysis, trauma theory, Biblical exegesis, postcolonial analysis, and critical race theory. Although this class will emphasize rigorous study of her literary work, we will also pay close attention to her contributions to literary criticism, her role in public life as well as her forays into political and national debates. In our study of her novels, we will explore such issues as the importance of history and myth in the creation of personal identity, constructions of race and gender, the dynamic nature of love, the role of the community in social life, and the pressures related to the development of adolescent girls. We will also examine the changing nature of Morrison's reception by critics and academics, and consider how and why she has achieved such widespread acclaim and influence in addition to generating significant controversy and attack. Concluding class discussions will focus on how Morrison has reconfigured the relationship between creative author and academic critic, her literary and popular reputation, and her broad influence on the study of American literature.
The eighteenth century saw the rise of the modern "tourist" (the word itself dates to 1780). At the same time, mercantile capitalism and national interest spurred unprecedented rates of colonial expansion. Explorers, diplomats and scientists engaged with many peoples and places for the first time. The period also witnessed the height of that mass involuntary travel—slavery—that gave shape to the Atlantic World. In all of the resulting narratives, an instructive juxtaposition emerges—sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit—in which the foreign is discursively "domesticated," while "home" comes to seem strange. Indeed, travel-writing's potential for societal critique was one that satirists quickly grasped, and deployed in myriad variations—from descriptions of invented lands (Gulliver's Travels), to accounts of Europe by "Peruvian Princesses" or "Chinese Philosophers." In this course we will examine all of these kinds of travel-writing, while also considering the shape and dimensions of this ill-defined genre, which often branches into historical meditation, autobiography, biography, philosophy, and aesthetics. Authors will include Bacon, Boswell, Cook, Defoe, Equiano, Goethe, Goldsmith, Graffigny, Johnson, Montagu, Montesquieu, Sterne, Swift, and Voltaire.
Spanning the history of the Americas, this course will examine a wide array of writings by and about Native people, from the literature of the oral tradition to the poetry, fiction and prose of the twentieth century. Our readings will be motivated by a concern with the many strategies Native writers have used for bringing the past to bear on the present, including reenactment, parody, and protest. We will engage texts by contemporary writers such as Sherman Alexie, Vine Deloria, and Leslie Marmon Silko alongside works by authors from the nineteenth century and earlier, such as William Apess, David Walker, and John Rollin Ridge. We will also consider texts by non-Native authors who have written about Native Americans, such as James Fenimore Cooper and Ian Frazier.
This course explores ways in which myth functions to create psychological and social identities within cultural frameworks. We will explore tales, visual art, musicals, opera, poetry, and cinema. The texts concentrate primarily on a constellation of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast adaptations, with excursions into Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Frog Prince, and Jack stories. Our concern will be with the political, didactic, and gendered implications of action/adventure plots, paradigms of exile and return, ideologies underlying the dynamics of oppression, pain fetishes, aspiration, and recovery. We will examine issues of childhood, adolescence, middle age, and old age as myth addresses the concerns of each. We will be particularly interested in historical perspectives as societies perpetually revise and revitalize their visions of themselves through the rewriting of their mythologies.
Public sex? Gruesome violence? Heroic fairies and sinister magicians? Sure: Edmund Spenser's vast epic, The Faerie Queene, contains all of that. It also contains some of the most aesthetically sophisticated and philosophically challenging poetry in the English language. This course will undertake the adventure of reading the entire Faerie Queene—and only The Faerie Queene—over the course of one semester. At the end of our journey, we will understand much about English Renaissance art, magic, politics, theology, psychology, philosophy, gender, sexuality, warcraft, and literary theory, as well as love, ambition, depression, self-control, pleasure, dishonesty, gratitude, aspiration, honor, and much, much more. Course requirements: 3 3-page papers, a midterm and a non-cumulative final of identifications of the text.
Asian American Literature is primarily a literature of the 20th and 21st centuries, with dramatic growth in the past half century or so. We will focus on the literary genres of APA works from the past century--drama, fiction, poetry, memoir—and we will also pay attention to cinematic texts. Our literature includes works by Chinese American, Filipina American, Indian American, Korean American, Japanese American, and Vietnamese American authors. Some prior knowledge of 20th century U.S. literature or Asian Pacific Islander American history will be helpful, but not necessary. (For those who have not taken history courses or who wish for a refresher see the books by Such Chan or Ronald Takaki, listed under recommended texts.) In addition to the study of genres, we will analyze Asian/Pacific Islander/American texts by interrogating myths, "foundational fictions", fantasies and the fantastical. Edward Said usefully argues in Orientalism that Europe imagined the "Orient" since it "helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience" (1978). We will read works of Asian American literature that revise and incorporate Asian myths, and contrast these with the West's popular imagination of the "Orient". Applicable English Cluster: Literature and Cultural Identity.
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 $2500.00, 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).
The course will deal with a selection of American films from the richest and possibly most important decade in the history of Hollywood. We will screen and discuss a variety of genres, from horror to documentary, concentrating on the films themselves, their place in the history of cinema, their relevance to social, political, and cultural issues. Supplementary reading will include texts on the period and on films of the time. Two or three papers will be required, along with a final examination. Possible films include "King Kong," "Frankenstein," "Our Daily Bread," "Public Enemy," "Golddiggers of 1933," "Dinner at Eight," etc. Applicable English Clusters: Media, Culture, and Communication; Modern and Contemporary Literature.
This course combines a survey of major historical movements and styles in documentary film with an examination of more recent trends and challenges to the tradition. So, in addition to studying the expository political documentary, ethnographic film, and the direct cinema and cinema verite movements, we will explore forms including reality TV, mock documentary, and autobiographical film and video.
Major museums around the world are now collecting motion pictures and other types of moving image and audio-visual art with a level of commitment equal to their traditional interests in paintings, sculptures and other established art forms. These creative works exist in unique formats that bring special challenges to curators and archivists responsible for their conservation and proper exhibition. Taking full advantage of the George Eastman House's rich archival film collection and screening facilities, this course offers instruction in curatorial and preservation standards for motion picture, video, digital and audio materials with a contextual focus on museum, library and archive institutions. Class instruction emphasizes basic concepts of preservation, research, programming, cataloging, digital technologies and preservation; management and interpretation of collections; museum and institutional collections development policies; museum architecture relating to audio-visual media; fund raising and education. Students will be assisted in selecting a topical area of interest in film and media studies, relating to their broader academic pursuits, from which they will develop a special research project. 35mm archival film and other media screenings presented on class night in the Dryden Theatre at 8:00 pm are considered part of the class. Enrollment is limited to 20 students.
This course investigates technical theater beyond the realms of Eng 170/171 (Technical Theatre). It focuses on work related to the scenic design and technical production of the semester's 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. Applicable English Cluster: Theatre Production and Performance.
This new workshop will offer students a chance to write creatively in the genres of fiction and creative nonfiction. As we explore the murky border that separates the two, we'll be looking for qualities that are shared by both genres, and we'll examine the ways their defining differences are reshaped in inventive prose. In particular, we'll focus on the imaginative representation of real places in fiction, travel literature, and autobiography. The reading list will include a diverse group of writers, including Thoreau, Barry Lopez, Bruce Chatwin, James Joyce, Isak Dinesen, Italo Calvino, and Annie Dillard. This course will fulfill the 200-level requirement for the Creative Writing major and minor and can be used for the Creative Writing cluster.
This course, essentially, will attempt to deal with the subject of creative nonfiction, the writing of publishable prose, the sort of writing about literature, film, the arts, culture, etc. that appears in newspapers and magazines. It will also include some work in practical criticism. We will read and discuss numerous examples of various excellent, lively, innovative essays and articles by some of the best writers of the 20th century, in general circulation publications. Students will try their hand at book, film, drama, and art reviewing of the sort that distinguishes some of the best periodicals in the country. We will discuss matters of style, individual voice, and ways to publish one's work.
Media ABC is an introduction to the very idea of medium and media—as in "the medium of photography" and "digital media." The goal is to come to a basic understanding of that concept. The perspective of the course is broadly historical and critical. The guiding assumptions are two: that media are not peculiar to the modern world, and that all media—the human voice, books, paint, electronic files—shape their "content"—words, pictures, sounds, etc.— and their authors and their audiences. There have always been media, and there must be media, because life cannot be lived without them. This year's topic is the printed word—the dominant medium of communication for the past five centuries. Only very recently has print begun to lose some of its power and influence as we experience a "digital revolution." This remarkable media shift puts us among the first explorers to arrive on the scene of what later generations will surely see as epoch-making change that we can't yet fully grasp. But we should take advantage of our own unique intellectual opportunity to look back on the history of print and forward to the future of reading. This is a special year for Media ABC. We are participating in a series of experiments with Humanities Labs, where we will be able to extend our exploration of print by putting facts and theories into practice. Note that students in Media ABC must also register for the 1-credit Humanities Research Lab (ENG 385). Work in the Humanities Lab will replace all formal exams. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
"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.
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 Clusters: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater; Theatre Production and Performance.
"Plays in Performance" is a class made up of actors 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 Artistic Director or Production Manager of the UR International Theatre Program, 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. Applicable English Clusters: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater; Theatre Production and Performance.
"Plays in Performance" is a class made up of actors 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 Artistic Director or Production Manager of the UR International Theatre Program, 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. Applicable English Clusters: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater; Theatre Production and Performance.
Students in Stage Management: Spring 2009 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. Applicable English Clusters: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater; Theatre Production and Performance.
Mandatory acting lab for actors in Eng 293. 1.0 credit.
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. Applicable English Cluster: Theatre Production and Performance.
This is a workshop for students who have completed ENG 121 or have some experience writing fiction on their own and are ready to concentrate on more ambitious projects. We'll read short stories by contemporary writers along with fiction by the students in the workshop, and we'll discuss ways writers can sharpen the conversation between text and reader. We'll also consider editing and reviewing techniques. Students will be expected to write and revise three original stories. Applicable English Cluster: Creative Writing.
Advanced creative writing workshop in poetry. Work by various contemporary poets will provide the framework for explorations into technique and poetic narrative. Students' poems will be discussed weekly. Students will be expected to do extensive reading and research on their own and to keep a poetic journal. Assignments will be given, but there is a lot of latitude for students who wish to design a poetic project or work on a series. Prerequisites: ENG 122 or equivalent work. Permission of instructor required. Applicable English Cluster: Creative Writing.
The black cultural explosion of the 1920s known as the Harlem Renaissance produced some of the most important works of the African-American literary tradition. This course will provide a survey of texts that reflect the spirit of the era, from writers such as Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Alain Locke, and Jean Toomer. A variety of genres will be covered, including the poetry of writers such as Countee Cullen and Claude McKay, essays by figures such as George Schuyler and W.E.B. DuBois, and dramatic works by Mary Burrill and Georgia Douglass Johnson. Autobiography, music, and film will also be included. In addition, the course will consider more recent works of fiction that are set in this milieu to ascertain what the Harlem Renaissance has meant for later African-American writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Toni Morrison, and August Wilson. Special attention will be paid to the topic of migration, constructions of black identity, and the ways in which both sets of texts address difference within the African-American community. May be used to fulfill the upper-level writing requirement for the major. Applicable English Clusters: Literature and Cultural Identity; American and African American Studies.
This course will provide an opportunity to sample an exciting body of contemporary literature, some written by authors already widely acclaimed at the time they received the Nobel Prize and some by writers suddenly catapulted into fame and international recognition. While a central focus of the course will be the reading and discussion of the literature itself, we will also consider how receipt of the prize changed the writers' lives and literary reputations. Since its inception, moreover, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been a site of controversy and debate over aesthetics and politics, and over how literature speaks to both local and global audiences. In the U.S., where less than 5% of the literature published each year is literature in translation, Nobel prize-winning literature (when not originally written in English) is often the only modern literature Americans read in translation. In reading this literature, then, we will consider the question of translation, and the role of the Nobel Prize in creating and promoting an international literature. We will also consider the special challenges this literature poses for us as readers. While the awarding of the prize has often been a source of national pride for the writer's home country, some winners have been censured at home and the criteria for the prize heatedly questioned. Finally, then, we will consider how the prize is awarded, and we will look at some of the particular controversies and debates it has generated.
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.
