OE007 – Fundamentals of Expository Writing (Seminar: 10 units)
A year-long course which combines twice-weekly seminar instruction in close-reading and expository writing with two semester-long self-directed online courses designed to teach basic principles of grammar and style. The Fall Semester uses three versions of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to examine the rhetorical ramifications of word choice and sentence structure and to introduce close reading techniques to improve comprehension of unfamiliar language and difficult texts. The Spring Semester uses Shakespeare’s Hamlet to further study of rhetorical choice, grammatical construct, and close reading, and to introduce research skills, literary analysis, and historical context for literary works. The course emphasizes paragraph structure, purpose, and placement, along with revision strategies and proofreading skills. By year’s end, students will be able to compose a succinct, organized, and clearly articulated five paragraph essay, an essential skill for academic achievement.
OE008 – History & Literature: Gilgamesh to Shakespeare (Seminar: 10 units)
History and Literature: Gilgamesh to Shakespeare is a two-semester course designed to familiarize students with the literary inheritance of the modern era. Students will lay the foundation for recognizing allusions to earlier texts—in particular allusions to classical and biblical texts—that permeate Western literature. Students will also trace the development of writing systems and literary aesthetics from the ancient world through Elizabethan England (roughly 2500 BCE to 1600 CE), and learn to recognize and analyze different genres based upon form and expected content. Much attention will be paid to close reading, identifying figurative language, diction and clarity, thesis development, argumentative structure, paragraph unity, revision, and integrating cultural contexts into literary analysis. Requirement: Must be concurrently enrolled in
OH008 – History & Literature: World Civilizations to 1600.
OE010 - Textual Analysis and Argumentation (Seminar: 10
units)
Textual Analysis and Argumentation introduces students to essay composition in the context of critical reading and discussion. The reading list stresses non-fiction texts that display both intellectual depth and a strong rhetorical stance. In TAA, students learn a wide range of strategies for analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating literary texts. Lessons on each step of the writing process (together with frequent discussions of grammar, vocabulary, style, and rhetoric) enable students to develop their skills as analytical thinkers and as careful writers of expository prose.
OE011 - Modes of Writing and Argumentation (Seminar: 10
units)
Modes of Writing and
Argumentation is a composition course in which students are
introduced to traditional and contemporary terms of literary study.
The fall semester concentrates on traditional terms of literary study
and rhetorical strategies while building students’ knowledge of
narrative theory and the basis of metaphor in language. One major
literary study (on the author Frederick Douglass) is written and
closely re-written to establish criteria for how one performs such a
study well. In the spring semester, students put their skills into
action when our attention turns to more contemporary terms of textual
study. Literary analysis includes two studies of Shakespearean plays, Julius Caesar and Hamlet, and a final essay on the
modern play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom
Stoppard. By year’s end, students attain the skills and knowledge
necessary for writing a five-page literary analysis, a common length
study in college literature courses. Prerequisite: OE010 - Textual
Analysis and Argumentation or consent of instructor
OE020 - AP English
Language and Composition: Rhetorical Analysis and Advanced
Argumentation (Seminar: 10 units)
AP English Language and Composition is a seminar course designed to explore the analysis and writing of a variety of rhetorical modes of discourse: summary, description, process analysis, extended definition, causal analysis, and especially argumentation. The reading list stresses literary nonfiction from a number of genres, including the essay, biography, autobiography, the memoir, and poetry. Other concepts covered include figurative language, tone, critical reading, intertextuality, prewriting tactics, subject refinement and thesis development, diction and clarity, paragraph unity, revision, ethos, pathos, and logos, visual rhetoric, the informed use of research materials, and structuring arguments. This course teaches students how to write extended pieces in which their ideas and their rhetorical goals guide the organization of their writing. Prerequisite: OE011 - Modes of
Writing and Argumentation or consent of instructor
OE021 - AP English
Literature and Composition: Ways and Means of Reading and Writing
Across Literature (Seminar: 10 units)
This course surveys
works of literature written in English from 1600 to the present. To
make such a survey possible, the course focuses on literature from
the “traditional axis” between England and the United States,
though a crucial link to Caribbean literature is explored to create
an understanding of contemporary Postcolonial perspectives. Works of
literature to be studied include many novels, poems, a graphic novel,
and other literary genres. Featured selections are drawn from the
works of William Shakespeare, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf,
Walter Benjamin, Alice Walker, Herman Melville, Derek Walcott, Paul
Auster, Emily Dickinson, and Laurence Sterne. At year’s end,
students collect their writings on literature into a portfolio that
narrates how they view the study of literature after many months of
exploration. This portfolio also includes an essay portion where
students formulate their general position on literary issues as it
appears across their collected work. The extra-literary objective of
the course is to enable students to enjoy reading in and writing
about a variety of literature from a diversity of critical
frameworks, e.g., historical, formal, theoretical, or biographical. Prerequisite: OE020 - AP English Language and Composition or consent
of instructor
OEG20 - Grammar and
Style (Directed study: 5 units)
Grammar and Style of
the Sentence is a one-semester, self-paced course in which students
learn to understand the grammar of the sentence and to make stylistic
choices informed by their knowledge of grammar. The course includes
no regular class meetings; the instructor holds weekly office hours
in the virtual classroom and is available by phone or email. This
course is beneficial for writers at all levels.
University Level
UE030 – Making
Moby Dick (Seminar: 5 units, fall only)
This course examines
the original context in which Herman Melville wrote his novel and
then moves on to investigate critical and literary revisions to
Melville’s text. In this sense, the challenge of the course is to
see how a novel is invented and re-invented for a variety of
purposes. Students gain perspective on theoretical and critical
trends in the 19th century and the 20th century. Prerequisite: consent of the instructor
UE031 – 20th Century Genre
Theory and Practice (Seminar: 5 units, spring only)
How is a novel poetic?
How might poetry usurp the narrative strategies of the novel? Why
does poetry do so? What do these questions, questions like them, and
the answers to them reveal about the culture and history of the 20th century? This course surveys 20th century literature with
an eye on “cosmopolitanism” or what we now tend to call
“globalism.” The primary vehicle of study will be novels and
poetry of this century and how authors adapt, utilize, and steal from
any genre to achieve their literary and social ends. Students gain
perspective on “genre” as social argument within the form of a
single work of literature and as a cultural framework for making
representative “books” in national and global settings. Prerequisite: consent of the instructor
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