Spring 2011
Fully Enrolled

HUMS 620
Prose by Poets: A Comparative Approach

Hughes,Gertrude Reif

01/08/2011 - 01/29/2011
Note: Special Schedule 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM

Allbritton Center 004

Special Schedule: Saturday & Sunday, January 8-9; Saturday & Sunday, January 22-23; Saturday, January 29

A number of well-known poets have also written important prose: autobiographical fiction (Elizabeth Bishop), memoirs (Lucille Clifton, Maggie Nelson), short stories (Langston Hughes), essays, addresses, and other literary non-fiction (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Adrienne Rich, and perhaps James Baldwin, who, like Emerson, is an exception to the course's selection principle.)

Our reading list will contain items by nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers. The course focuses on the prose pieces, selecting only a few poems by each author to orient us toward comparisons and contrasts and to enhance our capacity for rich readings of prose writing.

Class discussions, presentations, and in-class writing of brief response papers will investigate how a writer's prose functions as a work of art, as an argument or narrative, and as an enactment of political, social, or cultural concerns.

The comparative approach of the course will help us notice themes, styles, and matters of craft, all of which can show how poetry works in the reading and writing of prose.

During class you will be asked to write one or more brief response papers on that day's readings. Often more than one author will be under discussion. Depending on class size and other considerations you may have a chance to present one of the prose assignments to the class. Active, serious participation in each meeting of the class is expected.

Immersion courses are worth three units of credit and are academically as rigorous as a regular term course, only the class meetings are compressed into a very short time. Students interested in immersion courses should be aware that the syllabus usually requires that students prepare for up to a month prior to the first class meeting and complete assignments in the weeks following the course. Please click here for more information about immersion courses.

This course is not open to auditors.

The deadline to withdraw and receive a tuition refund for this course is Wednesday, December 22 at 5:00 pm. Please visit our website for a complete list of registration and withdrawal dates for this session.

A syllabus for this course is available at:
HUMS 620


Gertrude Hughes (BA Mount Holyoke College; MAT Wesleyan University; PHD Yale University; MAA Wesleyan University) is Professor of English, Emerita.

ENROLLMENT INFORMATION

Consent of Instructor Required: No

Format: Seminar

Level: GLSP Credits: 3 Enrollment Limit: 8

Texts to purchase for this course:
Emerson,Selections from Emerson, ed., Stephen Whicher, Riverside Editions

Walt Whitman,Specimen Days In America

Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on reality and the Imagination, Vintage

Elizabeth Bishop, The Collected Prose, Farar, Straus,& Giroux

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, Beacon Press

Langston Hughes, Ways of White Folks, Vintage

______________, Selected Poems, Vintage 9780679764083

Lucille Clifton, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir BOA edition

Maggie Nelson, jane: [a murder], Soft Skull Press

Reading materials are available at BROAD STREET BOOKS, 45 Broad Street, Middletown 860-685-7323 Order your books online.

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