ENG 320: Introduction to English Studies
What does it mean to study “English”? This class introduces you to the wide and vibrant field of English studies, which ranges from books to films, from creative writing to literary criticism, from rhetorical study to cultural studies. The purpose of the class is to prepare incoming majors and minors with the tools for a successful career as a student in the English Department at UHM. As typical of the field, the discussions will touch on many controversial and significant topics of past and contemporary interest.
You will read classic authors like William Shakespeare and Kate Chopin. You will explore the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times, the Pink Floyd music video The Wall, and Bollywood song-dance sequences. You will read contemporary poetry by Hawaiian authors, Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, which is a long essay on tourism, and the fantasy novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie.
You will engage critical methods and theories such as formalism, rhetorical analysis, cultural studies, feminism, queer theory, postcolonial theory, indigenous studies, and Marxist criticism through writers like Wimsatt & Beardsley, Hawhee & Crowley, Stuart Hall, Audre Lorde, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Ferdinand de Saussure, Edward Said, and Raymond Williams. You will explore in depth keywords for English Studies as constituted today. You will also review common practices of English Studies such as close reading, research, workshopping, and rhetorical analysis.
Most of the texts, literary/video as well as critical, will be available to you as PDFs on Laulima or as links to free online content.
You will complete quizzes, short reflections, and longer critical and creative writing. You will have opportunities to write in several modes representative of English Studies: critical review, rhetorical analysis, creative writing, argumentative essay, and more. You will have opportunity to work collaboratively with your fellow students within the classroom community.
This class has a Writing Intensive (WI) focus.