Instructor: John David Zuern
Time: T 3:15-5:45
Crn: 79623
Focus: CR/CSAP/CW/LSE
Catalog Description
Enables students to think about, and practice, the types of reading, writing, and speaking typical in the study of English and to reflect critically on the university and its role in society.
Objectives
This class is designed to introduce you to fundamental concepts in composition and rhetoric, creative writing, cultural studies in Asia and the Pacific, and literary studies in English, and it will give you opportunities to conduct research in these fields and to practice key genres of scholarly writing. With its broad representation of current approaches and their historical antecedents, the course will help you identify your own orientation within English studies and to develop the research methods, interpretive procedures, and conceptual frameworks that are most conducive to the critical and creative projects you will be undertaking. The course will also reinforce your knowledge of literary and rhetorical strategies, including figures of speech, narrative structures, and poetic forms. In addition to developing your expertise as a researcher and writer, the course encourages you to read academic publications critically, to participate in face-t0-face scholarly exchanges with confidence, and to reflect on the responsibilities and challenges a commitment to higher education entails.
The reading schedule will juxtapose earlier and primarily American and European theory and criticism with selections from more current and more global conversations, including those located in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific, to show how critics and theorists of today continue to respond to (and in some cases resist) particular critical and philosophical traditions. The assigned readings will offer examples of a range literary, rhetorical, and performance forms, and our engagement with them will illustrate the strengths and limitations of the various critical frameworks we will be exploring.
Class visits from colleagues representing each of the four concentrations will allow you get to know some of the department’s faculty and to ask them questions about their work.
Required Texts to Purchase
Aguon, Julian. No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies: A Lyric Essay. Astra House, 2022.
A course packet containing all other assigned readings.
Student Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this class you should be able to
- Demonstrate your familiarity with foundational theories and methods in English studies
- Mobilize key concepts in English studies in your own scholarly writing
- Engage in critical dialogue with scholarship in English studies in your own scholarly writing
- Articulate and support a critical argument in an oral presentation format and respond productively to commentary from peers
- Articulate a critical argument in a proposal for an article or conference presentation
- Articulate and support a critical argument in an article-length paper or in a conference presentation and a book review
- Document your sources accurately and consistently using a standard academic citation style
Assignments
Two In-class Lightning-Round Presentations (25 points each)
Project Proposal (25 points)
Option One: Scholarly Essay (50 points) OR
Option Two: Conference Paper (25 points) and Book Review (25 points)