2018 Spring EH Courses

EH 210-A: Introduction to Fiction— Everyone’s a Storyteller Archer, MW 12:30-1:50 Storytelling was crucial to the development of human beings as a species. Early human beings used storytelling to pass on their culture, spread the news, and gather in groups for entertainment. Storytelling plays an important role in our own prehistory as individuals. Parents and other adults read us storybooks and pass on family and lore cautionary tales. We ourselves are storytellers as we recount our day to friends. In Introduction to Fiction, EH 210A, we will read fiction that does some or all of these things. Stories will include classics, contemporary fiction, and even graphic fiction. We will also read one novel. The primary intent of this course is to make reading fiction enjoyable. Of course, you will write two short papers (there is that) and take two exams. But class experience depends on student opinion and your honest response to the readings. EH 210-B: Introduction to Fiction Ullrich, TTH 9:30-10:50 This course is designed to introduce the student to the study of short fiction and the novel at the college level. The primary goals of the course are (1) to introduce the student to the pleasures and rigors of sophisticated literary analysis, (2) to develop the skills necessary to appreciate literature, (3) to participate in the class discussion by voicing thoughtful, informed opinions. Regular attendance and class participation are required. Typically, this course does not require a lot of reading, just one, or perhaps two, short stories per class. But students MUST read each short story at least twice, if not three times, before coming to class. Otherwise, the student has not spent enough time with the text—not studied it sufficiently—to (1) know the text in a meaningful way, (2) answer the assigned question thoughtfully, and (3) contribute to the class discussion. EH 260: Survey of American Literature Cowan, MWF 9:30-10:30 Students in this course march, or saunter, chronologically through American literary history, from pre-Columbian legends of indigenous peoples to early 21 st century postmodern narratives. In short, we read a sampling of writers, influential in the U.S., in an effort to discover the dominant themes, styles, and issues that have become particularly American . Our examination of texts takes the form of close-reading as well as contextualization—understanding works of literature in relation to each other and in the context of the times in which they were produced. As we examine the works of each time period, we consider whether generalizations and labels (“-isms” such as “modernism”) help or hinder our understanding of the development of