Words Worth 2009
Summer Course Offerings

ENG 205A.3
Melissa Hotchkiss
Session III: Online

CREATIVE WRITING: POETRY

In A Field Guide to Contemporary Poetry and Poetics (1980) John Haines writes "..Once heard, the voice creates the environment of thought and feeling which we come to accept and believe in as an unmistakable mark of the poet's work. The voice refined becomes the poet's style. Unfortunately, the voice is one thing that can't be taught or learned in any school or class, nor can it be counterfeited. It is discovered in the act of living and working, and nourished until it becomes as much a part of a person as an arm or a leg." The primary focus in the course will be your own writing process and how to 'nourish' your voice. You will read and write poetry, and will explore how poems are constructed through analyzing basic craft elements as well as reviewing formal strategies. We will read, write, revise, think, and revise again. Since the majority of the course is online, I will be working with you somewhat individually in terms of feedback for the first couple weeks then we will have group 'workshops' online. In addition, you are required to attend the Ocean State Summer Writing Conference June 18th – 20th as part of the course. Participating in the classes on the URI campus is a core component, and will enhance the learning process considerably for this course.

ENG 205D.3
Christopher Mensel
TTh 1:00-4:45
Session I, Feinstein Campus, Providence

CREATIVE WRITING: SCREENWRITING

ENG 205D, an introductory course, will cover the basics of screenwriting from professional formatting to the proper use of elements such as scene headings, action, parentheticals, dialogue, and transitions among others. Through a workshop atmosphere, the class will also examine narrative structure, character development, pacing, tone, and plot points, as well as the use of index cards and script notes, log-lines, treatments, copyright protection, and the evolution of the modern screenplay.

ENG 303.1
Professor John Leo
TTh 1:00-3:45 PM
Session I, Kingston Campus

CINEMATIC AUTEURS: COEN BROTHERS

Examines selected films of the Coen Brothers (Ethan and Joel) spanning their careers, from Blood Simple (1984) to No Country for Old Men (2007) and the present. "Indy" styles are critiqued in a global context.

ENG 304.1
Jerry DeShepper
TTh 6:00-9:45 PM
Session I, Feinstein Campus, Providence

FILM GENRES: THE HORROR FILM

While the cinemas of Iran, Iraq, and Palestine all began in the early 20th century, political realities, changing boundaries, war and occupation, all have changed the parameters within which filmmakers have worked. The late 20th century, and the advent of transnational cinemas and globalization, has allowed these cinemas to expand and develop in the 21st century in ways that often were not possible in the past, and in directions that differ from other regional and national cinemas. In this, the cinemas of Iran, Iraq and Palestine (and the Palestinian Territories), as well as that of Israel, in the 21st century reflect an important generic moment in film history; in fact, one of our central questions will concern whether or not national cinemas may, in themselves, in some cases and eras, be read as a specific construction of genre. We will watch films from directors such as Hany Abu-Assad, Elia Suleiman, Mona Hattoum, Maysoon Pachachi, Usama Alshaibi, Nasser Taghvaee, Ali Hatami, Eytan Fox, Amos Gitai,and Boaz Davidson.

ENG 305.1
Robert Leuci
MW 1:00-4:45
Session I, Kingston Campus

ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING: NON-FICTION

In Creative Non-fiction, English 305 you will study the main elements of nonfiction writing, such as memoir, narrative, detail, characterization, dialogue, realism and style. You will do a number of creative nonfiction writing exercises and write three major pieces. All in all we, together, will have an adventure in writing, studying together and sharing what happens on the page. 

Robert Leuci has published six novels, one memoir, a number of short stories, and a television play as well as a radio play for German radio. His work has been translated in four languages.

ENG 366.1
Barbara Silliman
TTh 1:00-4:45 PM
Session I, Kingston Campus

GREEK AND ROMAN DRAMA

Survey of Green and Roman drama withs pecial emphasis on art and achievement of major dramatists: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides Aristophanes, Plautus, Terence, and Seneca.

ENG 374.1
Alex Moffett
MW 6:00-9:45 PM
Session I, Feinstein Campus, Providence

BRITISH LITERATURE 1660-1800

ENG 375.2
Abbott Ikelar
TTh 6:00-9:45 PM
Summer II, Feinstein Campus Providence

NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE

The nineteenth century in Britain was a period of unremitting change: the rise of bourgeois democracy and industrial capitalism; the rapid growth of cities, pollution and urban poverty; watershed discoveries in biological science; and the nearly universal assault on long-standing philosophical and religious beliefs. In ENG 375 we will study a range of literary responses to these phenomena, from Wordsworth and his contemporaries writing in the wake of the French Revolution, to poets, novelists and essayists later in the century who confronted unprecedented threats and contradictions—dilemmas that parallel the upheavals of our own time.

ENG 383.200
Dr. Alex Moffett
T 4-6:45 PM
Feinstein Campus, Providence

ENG 383: Modernist Literature: 1900-45

Virginia Woolf’s famous diagnosis that “(o)n or about December, 1910, human character changed” reveals the early twentieth century anxiety that society was altering at an alarmingly fast rate.  Defined by Lawrence Gamache as “a felt sense of crisis in human existence,” this perception of crisis was amplified by the accelerating pace of technological achievement, the increasing urbanization of the Western world, and especially the severe cultural trauma inflicted by the devastation of the First World War.  Artists in many different media realized that new artistic forms were required to respond to this radical state of flux.  In literature, this realization led to dramatic experiments with both narrative structure and poetic form and meter.  Heeding Ezra Pound’s exhortation to “make it new,” authors infused with this experimental spirit produced some of the most remarkable literary works in the literary canon.

This class will examine the transnational phenomenon of literary modernism in the early part of the twentieth century.  We will consider modernism as a response to the epistemic crisis of the period, a response that can take a variety of different forms.  Doing so will allow us to examine both the most radical of the modern experimentalists, such as Joyce and Faulkner, alongside more conventional narratives by contemporaries who were responding to the same cultural conditions.  We will also be considering the geography of modernism and examining some specific scenes of literary production, such as 1920’s Paris and the Harlem Renaissance.  Amongst the authors we will read are Woolf, Pound, Eliot, Yeats, Hurston, Joyce, Faulkner and Hemingway.

ENG 447.1
Rebecca Disrud
MW 6:00-9:45 PM
Session I, Feinstein Campus, Providence

MODERN POETRY

In this course, we’ll have the chance to read the poetry of major British and American poets of the twentieth century. Our main focus will be shorter, lyric expressions of Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, W.H. Auden, Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, and Gertrude Stein, though we will also spend some time exploring the influences of their modern worlds: the jazz scene that informed Hughes, the modernist painting that captured Stein, and Auden’s collaboration with musical composer Igor Stravinsky. We will also likely survey the work of T.E. Hulme, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Mina Loy, W.B. Yeats, e.e. cummings, and others. And since modern poetry begins with Charles Baudelaire, so will we.