ENG 140 Reading Literature is a required foundation course in the English major that satisfies the General Education Cultural Interpretation requirement. It emphasizes close reading of texts from different historical periods and introduces students to literary conventions and terminology as well as to library and Internet resources available for research. It is a prerequisite for ENG 245 and all other 200-level and higher courses. This course does not count as credit toward the English major.
In this class, we’ll learn the mechanics of literary analysis through familiarization with library resources and deep close reading of a range of different texts. To achieve these results, we’ll read a variety of genres from different historical periods and learn the appropriate literary conventions and terminologies necessary for being good close readers of these texts. You will also learn the useful practices that will prepare you as readers and writers for the English major, including note-taking exercises that set the foundation for three major essays.
TEXTS: In addition to shorter works posted on Brightspace, course texts will include the Penguin Classics edition of Phaedra and Other Plays (edited by R. Scott Smith), the Penguin Classics edition of Five Revenge Tragedies (edited by Emma Smith), and the Broadview edition of Shelley’s Frankenstein (edited by MacDonald and Scherf).
ASSESSMENTS: 3-4 essays of 5-8 pages and an end-of-semester multimedia presentation that combines design software with class reflection
ENG 140 introduces students to the principles, techniques, concepts, and vocabulary of literary analysis and emphasizes close reading of several literary genres in their historical context. The course will examine how meaning(s) in literary texts are related to formal devices, ideological paradigms, and historically/culturally particular uses of language.
TEXTS: All readings will be made available on e-reserves or can be found on the internet. Additionally the professor will post his own templates and models related to MLA and forms of academic writing in the course brightspace shell. Readings will include excerpts from Franklin, Wheatley, Thoreau, Shakespeare, Blake, Montaigne, Woolf, Kincaid, Hemingway, Plato, and Seneca.
ASSESSMENT: three 5-7 page essays; a critical glossary; student led discussions
This course is an introduction to the principles and practices of writing fiction and poetry; other genres may be added at the discretion of the instructor. Students will be exposed to a variety of writing modes through exercises and engagement with literary texts. Emphasis is on using imaginative and precise language, on developing critical skills through workshops, and on assembling a portfolio of revised student writing.
Fulfills Elective Requirement
Fulfills the General Education Creative Expression Requirement
NOTE: ENG 201 does not satisfy the English Major Writing Requirement.
| Professor | |||
| Bendzela | MW | 9:30 – 10:45 | Gorham |
| Bendzela | MW | 12:30 – 1:45 | Gorham |
| Cheung | TR | 11:00 – 12:15 | Gorham |
| Cheung | TR | 12:30 – 1:45 | Gorham |
| Kelly | Online | ||
| Menting | TR | 3:30-4:45 | Portland |
| Menting | R | 5:00-7:30 | Portland |
| Sruoginis | Online (2 sections) | ||
| Tussing | MW | 11:00-12:15 | Portland |
Fulfills Elective Requirement
Fulfills the General Education Engaged Learning Requirement
Foundation Course in Public and Professional Writing Minor/Certificate
NOTE: ENG 204 does not satisfy the English Major Writing Requirement.
This career-oriented writing skills course explores how professional writers accomplish business goals through text. Most often, these goals require writers to craft strategic emotional appeals that prompt a particular demographic to complete a call to action, such as buy, subscribe, schedule, or vote. Specifically, we will complete the responsibilities associated with various professional job titles – including newswriter, content writer, marketer, and job seeker – ultimately learning how to craft text that supports sales and branding objectives. Our guiding concept will be “economy,” which works on two levels. First, we will learn sentence-level composition strategies for economical writing, so that we can write streamlined and digestible prose that produces maximum effect. Second, we will deploy this economical writing to achieve results within a business economy, where organizations make pitches to their audiences to achieve a call-to-action. This class is taught by a professor who worked as a marketer in a past life and should be helpful to any students who want guidance adapting their writing skills to occupational opportunities.
TEXTS: Online resources will include examples from the USM Library Ebooks: Gunelius, Writing the Parts of an Email Message, 157-166 and Handley and Habeshian, Writing for Email, 219-225. Other resources will be assigned by the instructor.
ASSESSMENTS: 3-5 portfolios consisting of smaller documents that work together to complete professional writing goals, including a job application portfolio, a newswriter portfolio that includes a news roundup and various articles, and an advertising campaign portfolio that combines strategy with social media content
Fulfills Elective Requirement
Foundation Course in Public and Professional Writing Minor/Certificate
Fulfills the General Education WRI 3 Requirement
NOTE: ENG 205 does not satisfy the English Major Writing Requirement.
Knowing how to write, revise, and shape sentences will help you negotiate the varied writing contexts you will encounter as a student and as a professional. You can use this knowledge to shape your style according to audience and genre, so that your sentences contribute to clear, effective communication. Being able to identify and manipulate sentence structures and types will prepare you for new writing situations that call for particular styles of writing.
TEXTS: Bacon, Nora, The Well-Crafted Sentence: A Writer’s Guide to Style, New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013; Hacker, Diana, A Writer’s Reference, 10th Ed. New York and Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2021. [An earlier edition from College Writing or another course will serve for this class.] Other readings will be available on Brightspace.
ASSESSMENT: frequent quizzes, style imitation exercises, personal style reflection, genre exercises
ENG 220 World Masterpieces is a required course in the English major that will cover the major works of Western and non-Western literature from the classical, medieval, and early modern eras and provide an historical foundation for subsequent coursework in literature and theory.
Fulfills Elective Requirement (Requirement Term Spring 2015 or prior)
Fulfills English Major Requirement (Requirement Term Fall 2015 or later)
In this survey course, we will examine some of the most cherished and influential works of world literature, philosophy, and religion from classical antiquity to the late middle ages.
TEXTS: Texts will likely include the Epic of Gilgamesh; Homer, the Odyssey (in its entirety); Virgil, the Aeneid; Ovid, the Metamorphoses; Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe; the Hebrew Bible; the New Testament; the Qur’an; works by Laozi and Zhuangzi; Augustine, the Confessions; Boccaccio, the Decameron, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; and Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales. We will use the Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volumes A and B.
ASSESSMENT: two substantial essays, oral presentations with Q and A, quizzes, a final exam, and class participation
This course must be taken early in the major. It introduces students to the terminologies, methodologies, and writing strategies necessary to pursue a major in English. Through readings of both critical essays and literary works, we will study and compare a variety of critical and theoretical approaches to textual analysis and explore the relationships between literature and culture. There will be a strong emphasis on writing assignments that teach skills necessary both for effective critical thinking and for writing advanced literary analysis. The course also includes a research component. ENG 245 is a prerequisite or corequisite for all ENG 300- and 400-level courses except for ENG 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 306, 307, and 308. Ideally, you should take this course with other 200-level major requirements, such as ENG 220 World Masterpieces.
This course introduces students to the practical methods and procedures of literary research and interpretation and the techniques of effective critical writing. It also familiarizes them with several significant theoretical and pedagogical approaches to literary and cultural studies and demonstrates how these critical approaches can be applied in literary interpretation. We will read and discuss a number of literary works from a variety of periods, but there will also be a strong emphasis on writing.
TEXTS: M.H. Abram’s A Glossary of Literary Terms; Stevens and Stewart’s A Guide to Literary Criticism and Research; Shelley’s Frankenstein (Bedford/St. Martin’s); and DiYanni’s Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay
ASSESSMENT: four short (2-3 pages) papers and two 5-page papers
Prerequisite: ENG 201
Fulfills Writing Requirement
Fulfills the General Education Creative Expression Requirement
Using the work of recognized masters as a guide, we will apprentice ourselves to the craft of fiction writing. In small groups and as a class, we will complete writing exercises and share the results. Finally, we will use the workshopping process to evaluate our own short story drafts, to guide revisions, and to further hone our analytic abilities. Lectures will address writing process, revision, and fiction theory.
TEXT: The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners, edited by Amor Towles
ASSESSMENT:
(1) Weekly writing assignments (2-3 pages)
(2) We will workshop two significant (at least 14-page) story drafts.
(3) Students will write a 1-page letter to their peers in response to each workshopped piece.
(4) A final portfolio containing revisions of one workshopped piece as well as one shorter assignment.
(5) Class participation
Prerequisite: ENG 201
Fulfills Writing Requirement
Fulfills the General Education Creative Expression Requirement
This course is designed to acquaint students with the basic elements of poetry writing. We will function as a workshop in which each student submits poems to the class as a whole for comment and critique. Emphasis will be on the imitation of contemporary writers, exercises that stress the elements of poetry, and the development of personal approaches.
TEXTS: Behn and Twichell, eds., The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach; Ramazani, Ellman, and O’Clair, eds., The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Vol. 2; handouts on poetics
ASSESSMENT: comments/critiques of classmates’ poems, class participation, exercises, final portfolio
Fulfills ENG 305 Requirement
Fulfills the General Education WRI 3 Requirement
Writing, like playing the piano, is a skill achieved through practice, but also, like music, writing requires knowledge of fundamental units. Just as one cannot play the piano without understanding scales, chords, and phrasing, one cannot write without knowledge of words, phrases, clauses, and patterns of sentences. While it is possible to play or write by ear, most musicians and writers need to learn basics first. And in both cases, teaching the skill requires theoretical understanding of those basics. Writing is thus both a content and a practice. This course aims to conceptualize writing as form, skill, and convention as well as process, and to develop a theoretical grasp of rhetoric, syntax, and style as a basis for editing and revision as well as enhanced clarity and grace.
TEXTS: Purchase through eCampus: Virginia Tufte, Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style (Graphics Press); Aristotle, The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle (Modern Library); Plato, Gorgias (Oxford World’s Classics); Diana Hacker, A Writer’s Reference (any edition) Additional readings/background material are available in Brightspace, either as links, pdfs, or videos.
ASSESSMENT: short assignments, class participation, three essays, and an exam
Writing, like playing the piano, is a skill achieved through practice, but also like music, writing requires knowledge of fundamental units. Just as one cannot play the piano without understanding scales, chords, and phrasing, one cannot write without knowledge of words, phrases, clauses, and patterns of sentences. While it is possible to play or write by ear, most musicians and writers need to learn basics first. And in both cases, the skill requires theoretical understanding of those basics. Writing is thus both a content and a practice. This course aims to conceptualize writing as form, skill, and convention as well as process, and to develop a theoretical grasp of rhetoric, syntax, and style as a basis for editing and revision as well as enhanced clarity and grace.
In this course students will focus on sentence-level writing as a specific skill and as a basis for larger structures, developing knowledge of theory and style as well as expertise in editing. Specifically we will work on the following objectives: 1) to understand syntax as rhetoric, that is, to see grammar and sentence-level writing as central to meaning rather than as arbitrary rules, 2) to develop an understanding of grammar and syntax as a range of choices that allow complexity as well as clarity and style, 3) to develop an understanding of these choices as possibilities for meaning rather than as a way of avoiding error, and 4) to use these skills to write a full essay that is rhetorically effective, stylistically sophisticated, and intellectually distinctive.
TEXTS: Bizzell and Herzberg, The Rhetorical Tradition, 3rd ed.; The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed.
ASSESSMENT: All readings, regular assignments and exercises in sentence structure and style, assignments of specific paragraph forms and styles, and a term paper developed in sequence over the semester that demonstrates ability to use all course concepts. There may also be short tests or papers on theory, depending on the class. The course will consist primarily of discussion, joint editing, and workshops on student writing.
Fulfills ENG Elective Requirement
Fulfills Public and Professional Writing Minor/Certificate Elective
Fulfills the General Education WRI 3 Requirement
This course offers students hands-on publishing experience through the Honors Literary Journal Island Ink. Students will engage in all steps of the publication process, including reading and responding to submissions, corresponding with contributors, editing work, pairing visual art with writing, and publishing work and bios on our website. Students will explore modern literary journals for ideas about how to best share creative work with an audience and think critically about the importance of creative work in a time when STEM is often prioritized. By the end of the semester, students will share the final product with our USM community.
TEXTS: All reading assignments will be shared in class and/or on Brightspace.
ASSESSMENT: reflective writing, analysis, and student-led discussion; attendance, participation, and engagement; our primary goal: to publish an excellent literary journal. Engaging with contributors and your editorial team are integral parts of your learning for this course.
Fulfills Historical Period Courses After 1800 Requirement
The concept of the self has undergone critical changes in the history of autobiography. Many modern autobiographical writers have completely dispensed with traditional notions of the self, expanding the genre and giving it a strong literary focus. By comparing a selection of autobiographical texts by modern authors such as Rilke, Stein, Barthes, and H. D. with more traditional forms of autobiography, the course investigates the historical vicissitudes in the conceptualization of a “self.”
TEXTS: Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge; Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Confessions; N. Scott Momaday’s The Names; Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior; Marjorie Perloff’s The Vienna Paradox
ASSESSMENT: four critical essays; one in-class report
Fulfills Criticism and Theory Requirement
Fulfills General Education Culture, Power, & Equity/Diversity Requirement
This course introduces you to major schools of literary criticism and theory spanning the 20th and 21st centuries. They include structuralism, psychoanalytic theory, deconstruction, feminist theory, Marxist criticism, cultural criticism, posthumanism, and the digital humanities. By studying the differences between criticism and theory, we can develop theory-informed criticism and theoretical analyses of socio-cultural formations that influence ideas and attitudes towards taste, aesthetic judgement, and cultural critique.
Learning outcomes:
a) Develop strong familiarity with various schools of criticism and theory
b) Study literature as a work of art in itself and a cultural product using a range of methods and approaches
c) Understanding the core assumptions about art and experience within each theory and the limitations and advantages vis-à-vis other theories
d) Analyze literary works and genres according to principles established in the theories studied
e) Demonstrate (in writing and class discussions) clarity, complexity, interpretive insight, and the ability to work with conflicting ideas to develop your own ideas
TEXTS: Julie Rivkin’s Literary Theory: An Anthology (Blackwell Anthologies) 3rd edition; Lois Tyson’s Critical Theory Today, 3rd edition; Other selections will be available via Electronic Reserves or on Brightspace. ASSESSMENT: two 5-page essays, final 7-8 page paper, weekly written responses to prompts, regular class discussion
Fulfills Interdisciplinary and Cultural Studies Requirement (Requirement Term Fall 2021 or later)
Fulfills General Education Ethical Inquiry, Social Responsibility, and Citizenship Requirement
This course is designed to do three things:
a) provide an opportunity to frame, analyze, and evaluate ethical issues, dilemmas, and actions as they relate to America as an empire and to contemporary globalization;
b) help develop historical perspectives to think about the present and the relationships between culture and empire, consumerism and postmodern economies; and
c) enable you to understand and reflect on your role as citizen, family member, consumer, and producer, while examining the ethical dimensions of living as both citizens of a nation and members of a world community facing common challenges and problems.
TEXTS: Essays by Thomas Jefferson, Niall Ferguson, Francis Fukuyama, Jan Aart Scholte, and Garrett Hardin; Simon Blackburn, Ethics: A Short Introduction; Shahid Amin, Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World; Niall Ferguson, The Rise and Fall of the American Empire; Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran; Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat; Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide; Medea Benjamin, Drone Warfare
ASSESSMENT: several response papers, quizzes, class discussion, and three or more research-driven term papers
Fulfills Historical Period Courses Before 1800 Requirement
In this course we will discuss the language, dramatic forms, themes, and characters in plays and poems from different periods of Shakespeare’s career. We will attend to the historical context of his work and make use of a variety of critical theories that address issues of class, gender, sexuality, and race. Students will also perform a scene from one of the plays covered after rigorous preparation.
TEXTS: Russ McDonald, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare; William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, Othello, Coriolanus (all Oxford World’s Classics Editions)
ASSESSMENT: two essays, presentations (including a group performance), quizzes, final exam, and class participation
Fulfills Historical Period Courses Before 1800 Requirement
This course investigates the emergence of new forms of self-determinative writing in the 18th century—autobiography, the travel journal, and the Bildungsroman (novel of self-development). Many of these discourses of self-determination were used by people who also influenced the social history of the period—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Thomas Jefferson. Their self-expressions will be read in conjunction with important social discourses of self-determination these writers produced: Rousseau’s “Social Contract,” Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” and Thomas Jefferson’s “Declaration of Independence.” We will also explore how early narratives of self-determination like The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African open up the possibility for later emancipatory writing reflected in autobiographies like that of Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X. Ultimately, the course will explore how discourses of self-determination draw on one another and pave the way not only for the possibility of the democratic individualism we value but also the evolution toward what our constitutional founders called a “more perfect union” in American socio/political life.
TEXTS: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, ed. Werner Sollors, Norton Critical Edition, 2001; Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, Princeton U.P. Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Travel, Book 1, Chapts. 1-5; Wollstonecraft, Mary, Letters on Sweden, Denmark and Norway; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, (excerpts); “Review of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano” (in Norton Critical Edition); “Letters to Gilbert Imlay” (selections); Wordsworth, William, The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind; short texts and excerpts available online or on Brightspace
ASSESSMENT: four five-page essays
Fulfills Historical Period Courses After 1800 Requirement
This course explores the Victorian fascination with the monstrous, unreal, and uncanny. We begin with the emergence of classical gothic in the Romantic period and then explore the different ways Victorian literature revises their precursors and continually expands the domain of gothic writing. Our Victorian monsters and uncanny beings include fairies (not the nice kind), ghosts, vampires, child-haunting demons, terrible ancient gods, doubles, uncanny curses, and a few unnameable things. Theoretical and historical concepts to be explored include the abject, the uncanny, the fantastic, the monstrous, degeneration, trauma, and imperial gothic. One particular focus will be on the different ways in which Victorian gothic undermines the period’s dominant ideas of gender.
TEXTS: Key writers will include Le Fanu, Stevenson, Hardy, Stoker, James, Kipling, and some women writers (Clifford, Nesbit, Braddon) who are not as well known today as they were in their time.
ASSESSMENT: a combination of quizzes, short and long papers, and exams
Fulfills Historical Period Courses After 1800 Requirement
Samuel Beckett’s provocative and diverse work is claimed by modernists and postmodernists alike. One of the most prolific authors of the 20th century, he bends conventions and experiments with style while retaining a thematic focus on the existential dread of being human. Our class will explore Beckett’s work across the impressive span of his career, situating his work within the Irish Literary Revival, European Modernism, post-war dramaturgy and postmodernism. We will also discuss Beckett’s relationships to both the Theater of the Absurd and to his friend and sometimes rival, James Joyce. We will move chronologically through Beckett’s work, starting with his essays on Proust and Joyce to his Trilogy (Malloy, MaloneDies, and The Unnamable) to his most beloved plays (Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Krapp’s Last Tape, and Happy Days). We will end the course with Beckett’s only screenplay for Film.
TEXTS: Beckett, Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Krapp’s Last Tape, and Happy Days
ASSESSMENT: two papers (midterm and final), one oral presentation (20 minutes), and one multimodal project
Prerequisite: ENG 302, 303, 304, or 306
Requires: Permission of Creative Writing Advisor
Students work one-on-one with an advisor to complete a thesis comparable to an MFA application portfolio. Typically, students revise ten to fifteen poems or twenty-five to fifty pages of fiction. May be completed concurrently with second workshop course.
Must be completed for student to receive Creative Writing Minor.
Fulfills Elective Requirement
Fulfills the General Education Engaged Learning Requirement
Fulfills Public and Professional Writing Minor Elective
This internship is an opportunity for qualified English majors to gain experience in professional writing outside the classroom. Duties may include researching, drafting, and editing articles or press releases while learning other technical aspects of professional writing. Students have held internships with businesses, non-profits, and a wide variety of publishers, including Alice James Books, The Bangor Daily News, The Gorham Times, and many others.
PREREQUISITES: Serious interest in professional writing and an application filed with the Coordinator of Internships are required. Guidelines for the application are on the Department’s website or in hard copy in the English Department’s office. The application should be submitted to the Coordinator during priority registration, or, at the latest, before the end of the current semester.
ASSESSMENT: Completion of the semester’s work at internship site. An internship report supported by published work of the semester is required for a Pass/Fail grade. Guidelines for the final report are available from the Coordinator.
Fulfills Capstone Seminar or Interdisciplinary and Cultural Studies Requirement
Postmodern architecture—with its return to ornamentality, historical quotation, and low-culture kitsch—has long been seen as a critical and popular anodyne to the worst aspects of modernist architecture: glass boxes built in urban locales as so many interchangeable, generic anti-architectural cubes and slabs. In this course, we will extend this debate beyond the modernist/postmodernist rivalry to situate postmodernism as an already superseded concept that has been upended by deconstructionist and virtual architecture as well as the continued turn toward the use of theming (i.e., Disneyfication) in much new public and corporate space. We will investigate architecture on the margins of postmodernism—those places where both architecture and postmodernism begin to break down and to reveal new forms and new relationships. We will examine in detail not only a wide range of architectural phenomena—theme parks, casinos, specific modernist and postmodernist buildings—but also interrogate architecture in relation to identity—specifically Native American and gay male identities—as they are reflected in new notions of the built environment.
TEXTS: Essays and chapters by architects and critics, including Le Corbusier, Fredric Jameson, Michel De Certeau, Umberto Eco, Louis Marin, Anna Klingmann, Mark C. Taylor, Robert Venturi, Jean M. O’Brien, Philip Johnson, Rem Koolhaas, Yi-Fu Tuan, Sigfried Giedion, Marc Auge, Beatriz Colomina, Manfredo Tafuri, and Michel Foucault, among others.
ASSESSMENT: a major research project that will incorporate an abstract and an annotated bibliography; two presentations; one long research paper; a short writing exercise; in-class exercises.
Fulfills Capstone Seminar or Historical Period after 1800 Requirement
This senior seminar is focused on the work of William Faulkner (1897-1962), arguably one of the most influential American writers of the 20th Century. Faulkner’s work has long encouraged an uncommonly rich variety of interpretive methods, and we will use a range of scholarly approaches (including biographical, historical, theoretical, and textual) to make sense of his work. Throughout the semester, we will consider how race, gender, sexuality, region, religion, class, and the legacies of colonization and enslavement manifest in our primary texts. And since this is a Capstone course, we will devote significant time to creating a 4,000-5,000 word research essay. Throughout the semester, I expect your writing—including short essays and an article-length research essay—to put fresh perspectives on Faulkner’s work into play with important earlier scholarship.
NOTE: Faulkner’s work is dense, so be forewarned that while our reading list may look short, on the face of it, my expectation is that you will devote several hours per week to close and careful reading of the primary and secondary literature.
Short stories: “Red Leaves”; “A Rose for Emily”; “That Evening Sun”; “Barn Burning”; Spotted Horses”
Novels: As I Lay Dying (1931); Light in August (1932); Absalom, Absalom (1936); The Unvanquished (1939); Go down, Moses (1942); Intruder in the Dust (1948)
ASSESSMENT: academic autobiography (5%); weekly response writing (25%); meaningful participation (20%); 15-20 page research paper (50%)