Courses

Literature

LITR 303 World Writers
Studies in World literature. Authors, themes, periods,and/or cultures vary from semester to semester. No knowledge of a foreign language is necessary. The literature under investigation is written in or translated into English.

LITR 476 Postmodernism
Reading of novels and short fiction written by writers between World War II and the end of the 20th Century. We will be specifically concerned with "postmodernism" as literary movement(s) as well as a cultural phenomenon. Postmodernism has many faces, including irony, parody, self-consciousness, a changing relationship between art and society, and a challenge of what comes before.

LITR 380 Literary Criticism
History and methods of literary and aesthetic theory and practices from the ancient Greeks to the present.

Linguistics

LNGS 301 Language and Structure
Explores the structures of sounds, words, and phrases. Analyzes the evolution of structural differences among Old, Middle, and Modern Englishes. Examines behaviorism and universal grammar and their implications for the acquisition of language.

LNGS 302 Language and Meaning
Explores the meanings of words, sentences, symbolic systems, and how people use language. Includes discussions about linguistic reference (literal meaning, metaphor, implication), speech acts and conversation analysis, and semiotics.

LNGS 320 Theories of Language
Surveys major issues in Western approaches to language, as they are developed in the work of Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Saussure, Skinner, Sapir, Austin, Chomsky, and others with particular attention to how these theories contribute to contemporary discussions about language and its relation to symbolic systems, linguistic structures and change, the mind/brain, human behavior and interaction, rhetoric, first and second language acquisition, and aesthetics.

Writing

COMP 305 Editing and Revising
This is a pre-professional course in the theory and practice of editing and will be of use to students interested in all aspects of writing and publication (scholarly, literary, business, etc). We will examine the mechanics and functions of editing, the theoretical issues relevant to the editorial process, and the basics of book/pamphlet production with an eye toward developments in electronic publication and the special problems it poses and/or resolves.

COMP 307 Creative Nonfiction
Training in the writing of creative nonfiction, with attention as well to the history and current state of the genre.

COMP 318 Writing for the Arts
Practice in the kinds of writing found in the professional art worlds, with careful attention to the ways in which we describe and analyze works of art, dance, theater, fiction, poetry, and music, and how those works are part of an ongoing dialogue with other works, with their viewers, and with society at large.

COMP 490 Writing Supervision
Culminating course in the Creative Writing major. Under the supervision of the course instructor, students will produce a manuscript in a genre of the student's choosing suitable for publication. Ordinarily, this will be original work that was begun in one of the writing workshops. While publication per se is not a requirement, the student will be expected to research market needs and prepare the manuscript accordingly. In addition, the student will be expected to give a public performance of the edited work.