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Upper Division Courses - Fall 2007
Please note: the following list is subject to change and may not be comprehensive. Please check the online course listing for the full roster along with information on class days/times. The course location is at UHD Main Campus unless otherwise noted.
Course Titles
ENG 3302 - Business and Technical Report Writing
ENG 3302 - Business and Technical Report Writing
ENG 3306 - Introduction to Literary Theory
ENG 3310 - Disabilities Studies in Non-Fiction Writing
ENG 3312 - Studies in Fiction: The Outsider
ENG 3313 - Studies in Dramatic Literature
ENG 3316 - History of Rhetoric (Online)
ENG 3320 - History of the English Language
ENG 3328 - Documentation and Manuals
ENG 3329 - Environmental Writing
ENG 3333 - Writing for the Media
ENG 3353 - Social Class and Literature
ENG 3377 - Studies in 20th-Century British Literature and Culture: Authority, Obedience, and Power
ENG 4311 - Contemporary Literature
ENG 4314 - Major Authors: Edith Wharton
ENG 4314 - Major Authors: E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf
ENG 4330 / HUM 4350 - Seminar in the Humanities: Identity -- Individual, Family, and Group
ENG 4390 - Modern Poetry and Art
Course Descriptions
English 3302 - Business and Technical Report Writing
Wayne Schmadeka
MW 7:00 am - 8:15 am (CRN 10471)
TR 7:00 am - 8:15 am (CRN 10473)
TR 8:30 am - 9:45 am (CRN 10477)
Prerequisite
Three credit hours of English literature.
Description
Study and practice writing the types of documents frequently used in the workplace, including over letters and resumes, proposals, progress reports, formal reports, and PowerPoint presentations.
Objectives
Learn to develop documentation to identify, study, and document real worldsolutions for the real world challenges students face in their work and personal lives.
Probable Major Assignments
- Propose a formal report
- Write a progress report
- Write a formal report
Recent examples of formal reports include:
- Recommending construction of a pedestrian walkway froman off-campusparking lot to the UHD campus
- Evaluating whether it is better for the student to remodel her existing home or build a new home
- Soliciting funds from the Gates Foundation for an HIV prevention program in provincial China
- Recommending upgrading HISD Police vehicles with state-of-the-art communications equipment
Textbook
Jones, D., and Lane, K. Technical Communication . 7th ed. New York : Pearson Education, 002.
English 3302 - Business and Technical Report Writing
Dr. Karina Stokes
MW 4:00 - 5:15 pm (CRN 10499)
MW 5:30 - 6:45 pm (CRN 10502)
This course has specific deadlines for each assignment (listed below); you may submit assignments as early as you want, but late work will not be accepted. Read the textbook and assignment guidelines carefully and think of how to apply the ideas of clear and effective technical communication. Write clear and persuasive documents that effectively provide hypothetical readers with what they would need to know, and you will be able to earn good grades in this class.
Required Text and Materials
• Paul Anderson, Technical Communication: A
Reader-Centered Approach, 6th edition. 2006.
• Internet connection, understanding of how to use Vista, access
to Microsoft Word program.
Course Objectives
By the end of the course, you should be able to:
• Research, design, create, and prepare informal
and formal documents suitable for the workplace.
• Balance visual and verbal elements of communication in documents
and oral presentations.
• Use current technology to search for and report information.
• Edit documents for correctness; identify and correct problems
with sentence length and style, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics in
your professional writing.
• Respond usefully to others' writing.
Additional Objectives
• Work collaboratively on various aspects of the writing production
and review process, including generating ideas, providing critical feedback,
and acknowledging multiple viewpoints.
• Appreciate the ethical and legal dimension of professional writing.
Assignments and Grade Breakdown Points
1 |
Grammar and concepts quiz |
50 |
2 |
Formatting in Word |
50 |
3 |
Audience Analysis Essay for job |
50 |
4 |
Resume |
50 |
5 |
Cover Letter |
50 |
6 |
Document Preparation Checklist |
50 |
7 |
Instructions |
150 |
8 |
Proposal Preparation Checklist |
50 |
9 |
Proposal (group project) |
100 |
9b |
Teammate Evaluation on Proposal |
10 |
10 |
Progress Report - Memo |
100 |
11 |
Feasibility Final Report (group project) |
250 |
11b |
Teammate Evaluation on Final Report |
10 |
A |
Attendance / Participation |
30 |
|
Total |
1000 |
A = 1000-900, B = 899-800, C = 799-700, D = 699-600, F = below 600
English 3306 - Introduction to Literary Theory
Giuliana Lund
TR 11:30 - 12:45
CRN 11768
This course introduces students to the major theoretical approaches employed in contemporary literary studies. Students not only learn how to recognize and critically evaluate distinct theoretical approaches, but also how to utilize these approaches in their own original analyses of texts. The course includes formalist, structuralist, poststructuralist, psychoanalytic, feminist, queer, new historicist, Marxist, and postcolonial theories. It provides students with a broad range of sophisticated analytical tools and a heightened critical acumen that prepares them for advanced literary and cultural studies.
The course is organized around a case study, using vampire tales as the central object of analysis, particularly as represented in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a novel that has produced a large body of criticism drawing on different theoretical schools. Studying psychoanalytic, feminist, Marxist and other approaches to Dracula illustrates the way in which various methodologies produce distinct readings of the same story. The course thus follows a tripartite structure: first, students analyze an influential theoretical text; second, they examine a work of criticism on Dracula inspired by this theoretical text; third, they apply a chosen methodology to their own interpretation of a vampire narrative. Requirements include attentive reading, four short interpretive essays, and two quizzes. No previous exposure to literary theory or special interest in vampires is expected. This course is highly recommended for English majors and students interested in graduate study in literature or humanities.
ENG 3310 - Disabilities Studies in Non-Fiction Writing
Paul Fortunato
TR 7:00 am - 8:15 am
We will be looking at disabled and autistic persons in literature. Specifically, we will read memoirs and other non-fiction genres. Why would someone want to read about disabled and autistic persons? There are two main reasons I offer: 1) We understand a lot more about what it means to be human, and who our society—a consumerist, effectiveness-oriented society—values, by studying people with “imperfect” situations. 2) We will use disabilities as a lens through which we can examine what defines a “modern” person in a “modern” culture. In particular, we will problematize the term “modern” and seek to think in terms of various modernities, not one single concept of the “modern man or woman.” Authors may include: Oliver Sacks, Cathy Crimmins, Bob Woodward, and Lori Andrews. Requirements: two short essays, a term paper, and occasional quizzes.
English 3311 - Studies in Poetry
Cross listed as: ENG 4390
Course linked with: ART 3302 / HUM 3324
Robin Davidson
MW 10:00 - 11:15 am
CRN 10402
This course is one
of two in a course linkage between ENG 3311 (also cross listed as ENG
4390, CRN 11798) and ART 3302, CRN 11797 (also cross listed as HUM 3324,
CRN 11799). Dr. Susan Baker, Associate Professor of Art History and Chair
of the Department of Arts & Humanities, will teach the visual arts
component. The linkage counts as six upper division credit hours and will
be a comparative study of modern poetry and modern art from the French
Revolution (Neoclassicism) to contemporary times. Literary and artistic
formal styles will be compared and examined. Common themes, theories,
criticisms and cultural contexts will be identified and considered. We
will also explore the similarities and differences between the creative
processes of writers and visual artists. Concepts introduced in ENG 3311
will be contextualized and expanded through side-by-side comparison with
artworks of the same period, based on the premise that the twentieth century
is an Ekphrastic age in poetry. Classes will meet face-to-face on MW from
10:00 to 11:15 a.m. for three hours per week and asynchronously online
for three hours per week. We will also visit local Houston museums as
part of Wednesday class meetings. This course linkage is an artistic and
pedagogical experiment meant to stretch each of our understandings of
the literary and visual arts.
(To register, contact Dr. Baker at bakers@uhd.edu or 713-226-5298.)
Textbooks:
H.H. Arnason, History
of Modern Art, 5th edition, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003.
J. Paul Hunter, Alison Booth, and Kelly J. Mays. Eds. The Norton Anthology
of Poetry. Ninth Edition. New York: Norton, 2006.
English 3312 - Studies in Fiction: The Outsider
Antonio Garcia
TR 10:00 am - 11:15 am
In Song of Myself, Walt Whitman wrote, “I
celebrate myself, and sing myself.” America today values individualism
of the sort championed here. The strong, lone voice is viewed as the animating
force behind many different kinds of successes. America is enthralled
by the story of the college dropout who became the world’s richest
man, Bill Gates. Though Americans value the power of the lone voice to
buck the establishment and innovate, the misfit has other, less prized
faces than that of the innovator and entrepreneurial success story. Literature
provides us a glimpse of the misfit’s other faces. In his poem “In
Memory of W.B. Yeats,” W.H. Auden wrote the following lines about
the greatest modern Irish poet, a figure who remained on the fringes of
society even after his death:
Mad Ireland
hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland
has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry
makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley
of its making where executives
Would never
want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches
of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns
that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of
happening, a mouth.
Auden’s description is a point of departure for our analysis of several prose works that portray the different faces of the outcast and the society that produced him. Our careful attention to the figure of the outsider will also shape our discussion of such formal considerations as narrative structure, point of view, imagery, and characterization. Readings may include such authors as Melville, Gogol, Conrad, Joyce, Beckett, Woolf, O'Connor, Sontag, Alexie, Munro and others.
ENG 3313 - Studies in Dramatic Literature
Dr. Bailey McDaniel
TR 7:00 pm - 8:15 pm
This course provides an overview of Western drama from the Greek Classical Theatre to the contemporary stage, including various aesthetic movements and forms. Playwrights covered begin with Sophocles and end with Kushner and Moraga. Our principal emphases will be on the continued development of (1) critical, (2) historical, and (3) theoretical skills necessary to the study of drama, performance, and literature in general. For this reason, in addition to our main text that provides an overview of Western drama, we'll also consult outside readings that address theory and performance. As we examine plays, performance histories, and the scholarly discourses surrounding them, we'll consistently investigate how constructs of race, class, sexuality, nation, and gender locate themselves within what we understand as drama and performance.
Class format combines discussion, some group work, and lecture. Assignments will include several brief essays, a longer paper, and a mid-term and final exam.
English 3316 - History of Rhetoric
Dr. Karina Stokes
Online Course
Ever wonder why essays follow a specific style of introduction, body paragraphs, and concluding paragraph? Ever wonder why letters follow a specific formal style? Ever wonder why communication follows certain standard forms in Western countries and why other forms are used in Eastern countries? This course will answer these questions and more. Learn how to persuade others that your ideas are worthwhile by understanding the most effective strategies for communicating which have been developed over the centuries and are still employed today.
This online course has specific deadlines for each assignment; you may submit assignments as early as you want, but late work will not be accepted. Read the textbook and posted guides carefully and think of how to apply the theories. Write clear essays that claim interesting points and prove them with evidence, and you will be able to earn good grades in this class.
The book for this course is: The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. Edited by Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s, c2001. ISBN: 0312148399.
You will also need to know how to log on to Vista where all course materials will be posted. For technical questions about Vista, call 713-221-8540 and see the instructions on the UHD website.
Before you can begin this online course:
You must check your browser settings to make sure that the Vista pages can be viewed properly. This is very important. The Vista web pages will not display properly or you may encounter other problems if your browser settings are not correct.
ENG 3320 - History of the English Language
Dr. Michael Dressman
TR 11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
CRN 10430
One major benefit from the course is that you can learn to analyze language as a systematic human process, not just a jumble of words and rules with mysterious reasons for being “right” or “wrong.”
The course is a study of the English language, as it has developed from a variety of German, spoken in northwest Europe in the fifth century, into the major world language it is today. It begins with a brief overview of human language and the method of studying it. This course serves for many students as an introduction to the formal study of language, which is called “linguistics.” The major components of this field include the sounds of language (phonology), the development of vocabulary (lexis) and meaning (semantics), and the grammatical forms of words (morphology) and their systematic arrangement and interaction (syntax). Next, there is a progressive study of the various stages of English from its Germanic beginnings to its modern varieties as spoken in the United States, Great Britain, and other countries. We will pay attention to changes in the sound systems, development of vocabulary and word forms, and dialect differences based on social and regional differences. The discussion of dialects includes a review of regional and ethnic varieties of American English.
In addition, there will be discussion of semantic change, which covers such topics as sexism in language, the adaptation of English to modern communication needs, and the history and uses of the dictionary.
The purpose of the course, then, is to (1) familiarize you with linguistics and its various areas of study and (2) familiarize you with the historical development of the English language.
Requirements: 3 exams and 2 reports (one oral; one written).
ENG 3328 - Documentation and Manuals
Wayne Schmadeka
MW 8:30 am - 9:45 am
CRN 10783
Prerequisite
Three credit hours of English literature.
Description
Application of general rhetorical principles and current theory in document design to the development of procedures manuals and other documentation.
Objectives
Learn to prepare and evaluate documents that guide people in using products and tools, carrying out procedures, making organizational decisions, establishing and maintaining order in organizations, and more.
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Distinguish between policies and procedures and explain their relationship
- Identify the needs of specific audience(s) in writing, designing, and organizing policy and procedure documents
- Develop research strategies needed to write and policies and procedures
- Apply usability testing concepts and methods to evaluate user documentation
- Create and apply style guides that govern text, graphics, and design features
- Use software authoring tools to satisfy documentation needs
- Write user-friendly policies and procedures
Textbook
Wieringa, Moore, and Barnes. Procedure Writing: Principles and Practices. 2nd edition. ISBN: 1574770527.
English 3329 -Environmental Writing
Robert Jarrett
TR 2:30-3:45
The course aims at developing student skills in researching and communicating information about environmental issues. This section of the course focuses on the topic of decreasing our individual energy footprint. Readings will include background information on fossil fuels, greenhouse gases, and warming; recently proposed theories of world “peak oil”; renewable energies and proposals for a new national energy policy; and practical means to minimize individual & national energy use. Writing assignments include three shorter writing assignments and one longer recommendation or proposal report.
English 3333 - Writing for the Media
Professor Anthony Chiaviello
MW 8:30 p.m. - 9:45 p.m.
This course provides an introduction to the varieties of writing forms currently in use across the media, with a foundation in newswriting, the basis for all writing applications in newspapers, magazines, on the Web, in advertising and public relations, and in broadcast media. Legal and ethical issues involved in the media will be addressed as well. After an introduction to the field and the basic tools of writing (grammar, usage, mechanics, clarity), the course will consist of daily writing assignments in the various media, with opportunities to revise and edit your work.
English 3353 - Social Class and Literature
Dr. Sandra Dahlberg
Tuesday only 11:30 a.m. - 2:15 p.m. (The University Center)
CRN 10468
This course will examine the construction of social class in literary texts, in particular the portrayal of poverty and the lower-working class in American society. We will look at the hybrid intersections of class as it informs issues of race and gender, and the development of class-based tropes from the nineteenth-century to the present. We will be reading such texts as Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Sapphire’s Push, Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, and Ernesto Quiñonez’ Chango’s Fire. Poetry and short fiction will also be examined and we will employ the work of class theory (Marx, Foucault, Zweig, etc.) to enhance understanding of the material.
English 3377 - Studies in 20th-Century British Literature and Culture: Authority, Obedience, and Power
Paul Kintzele
TR 1:00 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.
"Take him away and give him the works until he
confesses."
"What must he confess?"
"That he said it to him."
"Is that all?"
"And what."
"Is that all?"
"Yes."
"Then stop?"
"Yes."
Have you ever sat at a traffic light, in the middle of the night, all alone, with not a car in sight, and marvelled at your unconditional adherence to a red light bulb? Every social order shapes and constrains behavior in certain ways, and the debate over authority (who should have it, how it should be used, and under what circumstances it should be defied) is as old as authority itself. In the twentieth century, developments in technology and culture enabled challenges to traditional authority, but also multiplied and strengthened mechanisms of social control. In this course, we will read a series of texts that address various aspects of authority with particular regard to their British context. Writers may include Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Huxley, Kafka, Orwell, Ishiguro, and Beckett (whose enigmatic play What Where is quoted above). We will also read some theoretical selections by Freud, Adorno, and Milgram. Requirements: three essays and occasional quizzes.
English 4311 - Contemporary Literature
Dr. Jane Creighton
TR 8:30 am - 9:45 am
In this course we will study recent novels from several national literatures that explore the legacies of traumatic history, ranging in these texts from American slavery through the Holocaust to apartheid in South Africa. Among other things, we will query how witness, transgression, victimization, and complicity function in the lives of the characters who represent these histories. We will also explore why and in what ways these subjects remain so compelling for contemporary writers.
Readings will be selected from the following: Toni Morrison, Beloved; Edward P. Jones, The Known World; Chang-Rae Lee, A Gesture Life; Caryl Phillips, Higher Ground and The Nature of Blood; J. M. Coetzee, The Life and Times of Michael K. and Disgrace; plus selected criticism.
English 4314 - Major Authors: Edith Wharton
John Hudson
TR 2:30 p.m. - 3:45 p.m.
As an author, Edith Wharton wears many hats: social novelist; feminist writer; novelist of manners; realist; naturalist; novelist of “Old New York.” Above all, Wharton was a tremendously gifted and prolific American writer of the early twentieth century. In this course we will explore five of Wharton’s novels: The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, and Summer. As time allows, we will also read several of Wharton’s short stories (including a Wharton ghost story) and view one or two film adaptations of her novels. In addition, we will incorporate numerous secondary materials—historical, biographical, critical, and theoretical—in order to enrich and inform our discussions, research, and writing. Through our reading of Wharton’s works, we will enter a social world alien to us, yet familiar in unexpected ways. We will glimpse a society of incredible wealth and great privilege that is nevertheless bound by byzantine social rules and restrictions, a code of behavior that is policed with cold—sometimes cruel—efficiency. Throughout the course, we will be considering a number of questions, including but certainly not limited to the following: Through Wharton’s pen, how does the novel of manners become a powerful social critique?; To what extent can Wharton be described as a feminist writer?; How does the naturalist turn in Wharton’s writing enhance her credentials as a feminist writer?
Students will be required to write a number of short (1-2 pg.) reaction papers, three medium-length (5-8 pg.) essays, and a major paper (10-15 pgs.) on a research topic to be negotiated between instructor and student.
ENG 4314 - Major Authors: E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf
Dan Shea
At One Main: MW 7:00 a.m. - 8:15 a.m. (CRN 10373)
At The University Center: Thurs. 8:30 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. (CRN 11748)
This course focuses on two of the most important British writers of the twentieth century, E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf, both of whom were associated with the progressive circle of intellectuals and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group. In the novels and essays of Forster and Woolf are concentrated many of the concerns, debates, and objectives that would come to define the literature of the first half of the twentieth century. Both Forster and Woolf used their novels to capture the modern political and cultural condition and to explore modernist alternatives to what they considered the stifling aesthetic traditions of the Victorians. Accordingly, in class we will analyze these authors’ experiments with literary form as we study the historical contexts and problems to which they were responding, with particular attention paid to the twentieth-century rise of mass culture and technology; the wars and the decline of the British empire; new understandings of gender and sexuality; and contemporary theories of art and literature.
Students will also study the major critical responses to Forster and Woolf. Assignments will include several essays, at least one of which will require substantial independent research; exams and quizzes; and class presentations.
Readings:
Forster: A Room with a View; Howard’s
End; A Passage to India; Aspects of the Novel; selected
short stories and nonfiction; time permitting, a Merchant Ivory film adaptation.
Woolf: Monday or Tuesday; Mrs Dalloway; To the Lighthouse;
A Room of
One’s Own; Between the Acts; selected short stories and
nonfiction.
Selected critical and historical texts, including art, essays, and literature by other members of the Bloomsbury Group.
English 4330 / HUM 4350 - Seminar in the Humanities: Identity -- Individual, Family, and Group
Dr. Michael R. Dressman
MW 11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
CRN 11765 (ENG 4330) / CRN 10610 (HUM 4350)
This course in the study of the humanities serves as the
capstone for the Humanities degree program, but other students interested
in esthetics and the study of literature are welcome. The intent of the
course is to allow you to review and apply what you have learned during
your academic career, to add to your store of knowledge, and to exercise
your skills as critics. The theme for the course is identity -- individual,
family, and group. The method we will follow is reading stories and novels
and viewing dramatic films. Class discussion and analysis of these works
will employ the ideas of Eric Hobsbawm (The Invention of Tradition)
and other critics.
The readings include works by Charles Dickens, James Baldwin, Kate Chopin,
Herman Melville, James Joyce, and Flannery O’Connor. The films are
Crash, The Commitments, Secrets and Lies, and Lone
Star.
English 4390 - Modern Poetry and Art
Cross listed as: ENG 3311
Course linked with: ART 3302 / HUM 3324
Robin Davidson
MW 10:00 - 11:15 am
CRN 11798
This course is one
of two in a course linkage between ENG 4390 (also cross listed as ENG
3311, CRN 10402) and ART 3302, CRN 11797 (also cross listed as HUM 3324,
CRN 11799). Dr. Susan Baker, Associate Professor of Art History and Chair
of the Department of Arts & Humanities, will teach the visual arts
component. The linkage counts as six upper division credit hours and will
be a comparative study of modern poetry and modern art from the French
Revolution (Neoclassicism) to contemporary times. Literary and artistic
formal styles will be compared and examined. Common themes, theories,
criticisms and cultural contexts will be identified and considered. We
will also explore the similarities and differences between the creative
processes of writers and visual artists. Concepts introduced in ENG 4390
will be contextualized and expanded through side-by-side comparison with
artworks of the same period, based on the premise that the twentieth century
is an Ekphrastic age in poetry. Classes will meet face-to-face on MW from
10:00 to 11:15 a.m. for three hours per week and asynchronously online
for three hours per week. We will also visit local Houston museums as
part of Wednesday class meetings. This course linkage is an artistic and
pedagogical experiment meant to stretch each of our understandings of
the literary and visual arts.
(To register, contact Dr. Baker at bakers@uhd.edu or 713-226-5298.)
Textbooks:
H.H. Arnason, History
of Modern Art, 5th edition, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003.
J. Paul Hunter, Alison Booth, and Kelly J. Mays. Eds. The Norton Anthology
of Poetry. Ninth Edition. New York: Norton, 2006.
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