Course descriptions are listed in alphabetical order by code and number. If a course in which you are interested is not listed here, please contact the professor for further information.
CWR 206 Creative Writing – Students will write and revise their own fiction and poetry as well as discuss the writing of both published writers and their classmates. The course emphasizes the connection between thoughtful reading and literary writing. Required foundation course for Creative Writing minors and an elective in the English major.
CWR 304 Poetry Workshop – Prerequisite: CWR 206. Students will read contemporary published poetry, write and revise their own poetry, and provide oral and written critiques of their classmates’ poetry. The course balances workshop with lecture/discussion of published work and emphasizes the connection between thoughtful reading and literary writing.
CWR 305 Screen Writing Workshop – Students will read several short and one feature-length screenplays, analyze short films, write and revise their own film scripts, and provide oral and written critiques of their classmates’ work. This course will operate primarily as a workshop. Please note: this course does not count towards the Creative Writing minor.
EED 390 Methods of Teaching Secondary English – Prerequisites: LNG 201 or 202, SED 224, EFN 299 and junior/senior standing. Co-requisites: SED 399 and SPE 323. This course will serve as an introduction to various theoretical and methodological approaches to the teaching of middle and high school English. Specifically, the course will focus on the teaching of reading and provide information on how to assess secondary students’ reading needs, improve students’ comprehension, develop developmentally appropriate, content-rich and standards-based curricula, and foster students’ engagement in and ownership of their reading experiences.
EED 400 Teaching Writing – Recommended to be taken after EED 390 and prior to student teaching.
This course will serve as an introduction to various theoretical and methodological approaches to the teaching of middle and high school English. Specifically, EED 400 will focus on the teaching of writing and provide information on writing with and about literature, implementing writing workshops, crafting developmental and holistic writing assessments, and negotiating standardized tests.
EED 490 Student Teaching- Prerequisite: All criteria for admission for student teaching
Teaching during the senior year with approved teachers in the public schools. Supervised and observed by college and public school teachers. Observation, participation, and responsible teaching. Required for English education students.
JPW 208 Intro to Journalism – This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of news reporting and writing, the ethics of journalism, First Amendment law and the changing nature of the news industry. Students will learn professional journalism standards, basic journalistic writing skills, interview techniques and how to produce news and feature articles for online, print and electronic media, as well as what multimedia additions will help tell an amazing story.
JPW 250 Writing For Interactive Media – Introduces students to the reasoning, routines and rigors of writing for business and professional markets. Students will broaden their conceptual understanding of the relationships between journalism, public relations, and marketing while acquiring or improving proficiency in creating content for multimedia projects.
JPW 301 Computer Assisted Reporting –
JPW 309 – Media Ethics –
JPW 370 Topics in JPW:
01- Photo Journalism – John Filo is vice president of photography for CBS News and a Pulitzer-winning photographer (he shot the famous Kent State photos, http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/kent-state-shootings/). For this course, you need a digital camera that allows for shutter speeds and f:stops to be manually adjusted.
02 – Multimedia Storytelling. The “Trenton Makes” story
Years ago Trenton was a thriving industrial town with a famous bridge connecting Pennsylvania to NJ which boasted the well-lit phrase: “Trenton Makes, The World Takes”. The iconic bridge still is a reminder of what Trenton was but students and residents of the area still ask, what does Trenton still make? The idea is to re-imagine what it is that “Trenton Makes”, and to make the famous slogan relevant once more. In this digital production course we will create stories for a multimedia website highlighting what Trenton still “makes” and what it had made in the past. We will produce written, audio, photo and video content for a site that will be a lasting part of Trenton’s history. Open to JPW, ART, IMM majors.
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03 – Blogging and Social Media – Employers in a broad range of communications-related fields are looking for people who can plan, execute and evaluate social media campaigns. This course will introduce students to the technical and creative practices associated with establishing online interactive communities using social media technologies and genres. Students will plan and execute their own campaigns based on topics in their areas of interest.
JPW 391 Independent Study in JPW: SOAP (Students Organized Against Pollution). An extension of Prof. Pearson’s Health and Environmental Journalism class, continuing to work with Computer Science students to develop a “brownfield” information system. The goal is to create a software system that helps residents, developers and policymakers in Trenton easily access information about the environmental condition of a particular piece of property. This includes whether there are pollutants, whether there have been enforcement actions or remediation efforts, the potential health effects of those pollutants, and additional sources of help and information. There will be approximately six joint meetings between Prof. Pearson’s students and the Computer Science students during the semester, held Tuesdays and Fridays at 12:30. Other meeting times will be flexible. Prerequisites: JPW 208 or JPW 250, and permission of instructor.
JPW 393 Independent Research in JPW: Reinventing “unbound.” Unbound is TCNJ’s online magazine platform. This group practicum will allow students to pursue a substantial project related to the management of a campus publication, including the writing of a business plan for unbound. This will continue work being done now by students who are reconceptualizing unbound as a dynamic platform for millennials seeking knowledge and resources that will give them a leg up in pursuing media-related careers. The business plan will include a competitive analysis, market research, a review of potential business models, prototype development, and a preliminary financial statement. Prerequisites: JPW 208 or JPW 250, and permission of instructor.
JPW 498 – Beats and Deadlines
JPW 499 – Media Experience
LNG 201 Introduction to English Language – An introduction to linguistics intended to meet the needs of students planning to teach younger children or with an interest in cognitive science, this course includes topics in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, social variation, and historical linguistics.
LNG 202 Structure & History of the English Language – An introduction to both the structure and development of English as a spoken and written language intended to meet the needs of future secondary teachers and students of literature or language, this course introduces basic linguistic concepts and examines English’s linguistic history from Proto-Indo-European (c.3000 BC) to Present-Day English.
LNG 371 World Englishes -From 1945 on, English has been the language of the Post-British-Imperial world, becoming a global language of trade, governance, law, and literature. The course will discuss topics concerning varieties of English, from the standardization of English in Britain and North America to the emergence of English-based creoles in Asia and the Pacific. The course will focus primarily on English as a post-colonial language (particularly in South Asia and the Pacific), discussing the linguistic, social, political, and literary implications of its development. Students will interrogate the notion of a “Standard English” and discuss what workers in English language (teachers, literary scholars, journalists) need to know about language variation and social stereotypes, language spread, linguistic accessibility, and global literacy.
LIT 200 Introduction to Poetry This course is designed to provide students with an overview and basic comprehension of the diverse forms and devices of poetry; in particular, students will develop a fundamental understanding of poetry’s rhetorical structures and conventions.
LIT 201 Approaches to Literature An introduction to the various approaches and theories employed by professional literary critics and scholars to enhance students’ understanding, evaluation, and appreciation of literary works.
LIT 202 Cultures & Canons An exploration of how cultural values, aesthetics, and social constructions of race and ethnicity shape literary texts and literary production. Students will engage in debates involving aesthetic value, disciplinary politics, universality, and canonicity and examine the role of power, categories of difference, and intersectionality.
LIT 227/COMP 227 Global Animated Film -The focus will be on animated films from America, Europe and Asia, with a special emphasis on recent Japanese animation. We will appreciate how animation resembles and differs from live action film, and how animation has adapted techniques and themes from live action film, and vice versa, and has embraced subjects ranging from dinosaurs to cyborgs. And we will consider how the animated film—whether through computer graphic images, stop motion puppet animation, cell animation or through numerous other kinds of animation– gives us experiences similar to those provided by painting, sculpture, literature, music, theater or dance. Instructor: Hannold.
LIT 232 World Literature since 1700 – This course will introduce students to selected literary traditions since 1700. The course will put readings into literary and historical context by focusing on a pivotal literary moment or text, selected by the instructor and analogous in function to the stationary foot of a geometric compass. Around this stationary foot or pivotal moment, the course will explore literary and historical relations – the textual “ancestors” and “progeny” that influenced or rewrote the pivotal text of the course, as well as the surrounding philological, social, and political contexts of the selected literary moment. The course will also draw upon at least two distinct cultures or traditions, at least one of which must be non-English-speaking.
LIT 270-01 Topics in Literature: The Utopian Tradition in Western Literature – This course provides an opportunity to investigate whether Oscar Wilde’s statement is true. We will study major utopian fictions from Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) to Ursula LeGuin’s science fiction masterpiece The Dispossessed (1974), as well as nonfiction from Plato to the nineteenth-century utopian socialists.
**This course will be held at East Jersey State Prison and include both TCNJ students and prisoners. We will travel to the prison on Thursday afternoon and return in the evening. Instructor: Robertson. **
LIT 310 Literature for Younger Readers – An introduction to Young Adult literature. In this class you will become familiar with works by a diverse set of widely-read YA authors, read across genres (fiction, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, non-fiction and graphic novels), and discuss and analyze young adult texts using various theoretical perspectives. Additionally, the course will introduce you to the growing body of critical research being written about literature for young adults.
LIT 315/WGS 320 Men and Masculinities: Literary Perspectives – This course focuses on representations of men and masculinity in literary texts, although we may also look at film, video, television, advertising, and music. Some of the issues we will be thinking about include: the construction of modern male identities, the diversity of men’s lives, the complex dynamics of men’s relationships, and questions of power and social justice within the contemporary gender order.
LIT 334/WGS 360 LIterature by Latinas and Latin American Women – A comparative study of Latina and Latin-American women’s literature in English. Open to a wide range of literary traditions, nations, time periods, and genres, including those specific to non-Western and post-Colonial cultures. The focus varies by semester.
LIT 336/CMP 336 Nomads, Warriors, and Poets Romanticism – This course will focus on the literature and literary history of the poetic and epic traditions of Iran and Central Eurasia, paying particular attention to the interrelationships between nomadic and sedentary societies and the literature that they produce. We will work with texts that span a broad geographical spectrum and encompass a substantial chronological timeline in order to examine the trajectories of literary production and movement on the Silk Road and its surrounding areas, and to think about the effects of intersecting cultural, spiritual and literary motifs and traditions in the diverse regions south, west, and east of the Caspian Sea.
LIT 340 Bible as Literature – An examination of the major elements and conventions of the literature of the ancient Hebrews and early Christians as exemplified in the Bible. Emphasis will be placed on influential motifs and images, narrative technique, poetic style, genre, and cultural and historical context.
LIT 354 Middle English Literature – People often think of the Middle Ages as a very homogeneous time period – controlled by the monolithic Catholic Church, with no social mobility, ruled by arbitrary, all-powerful monarchs. In fact, medieval English culture was very diverse. This course is your chance to meet the wild and crazy, complex, conflicted culture that is medieval England. Knights and ladies, monks and friars, peasants and merchants – they’re not really like what you expect, but they’re definitely entertaining (at least as funny and outlandish as Monty Python and the Holy Grail). We begin the semester by looking closely at one genre (romance) in order to examine the diversity of ways in which medieval English people of various stripes conceived of and used that genre, and then groups of students will choose other genres in order to select representative readings from those genres for their classmates (and explore the diversity of medieval English culture further). Readings will all be in the original Middle English (but you quickly get used to it – even start dreaming in it sometimes). Instructor: Steinberg, G.
LIT 360 British Augustanism and its Rivals – Explores tensions between rival groups of eighteenth-century British writers-most notably the Augustan satirists and their Whiggish adversaries-as they address important cultural, political, philosophical, and religious issues of the times. Special attention is given to defining the distinguishing characteristics of “Augustanism” and how this aesthetic became the norm against which all other literatures of the British eighteenth century have been defined.
LIT 363 19th Century British Novel – This course is designed to provide students with a broad-based understanding of and exposure to the texts, ideologies and aesthetics which structured and influenced the development of the British novel of the nineteenth century, including, but not limited to, the Romantic, Gothic, and Victorian periods. Instructors may choose to focus on a specific form or subgenre or on a theme relevant to a broad-based study of the nineteenth-century novel in Great Britain.
LIT 370-01 Topics in Literature: J. R. R. Tolkien in Context – Few writers in the English language are as iconic, and rarely taught, as J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In this course, we will explore the sources for Tolkien’s imagined world (Beowulf, Volsunga Saga, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and selections from the Kalevala) and study his literary and critical output. The syllabus will include the literary works published during
his lifetime, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Farmer Giles of Ham, and Smith of Wootton Major, as well as selections from posthumous works.
LIT 370-02 Topics in Literature: Recovering the 1950s – This interdisciplinary seminar will investigate the transformative decade of the 1950s. Using a combination of scholarly, cultural, and archival sources, we will examine such topics as the emergence of consumer capitalism, the rise of television and advertising, HUAC and the Hollywood blacklist, the birth control movement, the fight for Civil Rights, and U.S. policy toward Korea, Africa, and Central America. Our study of major literary, cinematic, and artistic works will consider the influence of suburbanization, psychotherapy, and the Cold War. Throughout this seminar, we will pay special attention to the discovery and use of archival sources, contemplating the value of a wide range of print and material artifacts.
LIT 375 US Literature to 1900 – A study of the 19th century classics of American literature, including The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Song of Myself, The Red Badge of Courage, The Awakening, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Essential to an understanding of these works is an understanding of the historical and cultural milieu in which they were written, especially the growth of a conception of the United States as a place where individualism and freedom could flourish amidst slavery.
LIT 378 African-American Literature since 1900 – A study of literature in the African American tradition, focusing on the realist and naturalist writings of this period, as well as the prose, poetry, essays and speeches of the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement. We will interrogate how the social matrices of competing definitions of black identity are reflected in and through writing produced by African Americans, while we trouble notions of authenticity, representation, and essentialism. The course will also explore the canon of African American Literature, its literary traditions, and the intersections with and diversions from the canon of American Letters.
LIT 388 – Contemporary Literature – Surveys post-1960 poetry and fiction. Emphasis is placed on introducing students to the aesthetic range of contemporary literature. Students will read and discuss authors and poets who represent major developments in traditional and non-traditional aesthetics.
LIT 422 Shakespeare: Tragedies and Romances – An in-depth study of selected tragedies and romances within their generic classifications and within their historical, cultural, and critical contexts.
LIT 497 Contemporary Literary Theory –
LIT 499-01 Seminar: George Bernard Shaw – A study of the wit and wisdom of the greatest British dramatist, by looking at his satirical plays and prose. His plays satirize such things as war (Arms and the Man – the hero carries chocolates instead of bullets), Christianity (Androcles and the Lion – the preface logically analyzes the four gospels), the relationship of money and religion (Major Barbara – the Salvation Army and war), and human nature (Man and Superman – the battle of the sexes, in which the devil makes some astute comments about humans). According to Shaw, “The function of comedy is nothing less than the destruction of old-established morals.” “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Instructor: Bearer
LIT 499-02 Seminar: Once Upon a Narrative Tradition – Most people are familiar with fairy tales via Disney, but there is a rich, varied tradition of the literary fairy tale genre that comprises writers from Renaissance Italy, the salon milieu of 17th century France, the folklore movement of the German Romantic period, the Victorian period, and contemporary and postmodern experimental schools. As we read tales from many time periods, we will use various theoretical lenses but will emphasize: 1) narrative, structural, and aesthetic elements and 2) historical and cultural contexts. Instructor: Carney
LIT 499-03 Seminar: Contemporary Fiction: Retellings and Appropriations Beginning with theories of intertextuality—in part, the notion that books are made of other books, of the “already-written”—we will read contemporary works of fiction by A.S Byatt, Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson, and others whose works appropriate previous foundational narratives, in particular, The Arabian Nights and Tales from the Brothers Grimm. Instructor: Carney.
LIT 499-04 Seminar: Shakespeare and Empire – Shakespeare and Empire will examine Shakespeare’s works while taking advantage of scholars who are re-evaluating his plays in light of Post-colonial Studies and Marxist Studies. The class will alternate between theoretical and critical readings, and Shakespeare’s literary texts, and will include a “lab” component in which filmed versions of some of the plays can be watched and critiqued. I have NOT finalized the list of Shakespeare texts, but am considering among Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, Tempest, Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and The Rape of Lucrece. Instructor: Steinberg, D.
LIT 499-05 Seminar: Greening the Cannon – Ecocriticism is grounded in the belief that both current ecological crises and western civilization’s long history of environmental degradation are connected to tacit cultural assumptions about the place of the human species in the natural world. Thus the ecocritical project is to examine cultural representations of the idea of “nature” and of the relationship between humans and their environment. This seminar will ecocritically examine a specific cultural site–the high school literature curriculum. We will apply “green-reading” practice to commonly taught canonical texts with the intention of ecocritically analyzing not only the texts themselves, but the ways in which they are commonly taught as well. Instructor: McCauley.
LIT 499-06 Seminar: Prizing Postcolonial and Commonwealth Literature – The Booker Prize and now discontinued Commonwealth Writer Prize are intended to identify some of the best literature every year produced in Britain or the British Commonwealth. This course will focus specifically on literature produced outside of Britain, and analyze trends and developments through the Booker and Commonwealth Writer winners and shortlisted novels. What geographic areas and narrative forms are privileged in these awards? What does that suggest about the development of postcolonial studies? Can we identify trends within these awards that relate to larger political and social forces at work? The course will emphasize postcolonial theory and theories of globalization. The tentative reading list includes Ben Okri, V.S. Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer, and Arundhati Roy. Instructor: McMann.
LIT 499-07 Seminar: Realism – We frequently say that a work of art is “realistic.” But what exactly do we mean? Can fiction mirror reality? Or is “realism” purely a matter of form? What is the connection between literary realism and economic, political, and social forces? This course will examine these questions through a study of fictional masterpieces and literary theory. We will read two nineteenth-century realist classics (Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary), plus an example of modernist realism (Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway) and the foundational text of magical realism (Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude), in addition to short stories by Stephen Crane and Bobbie Ann Mason. Instructor: Robertson.
LIT 499-08 Seminar: Race and Immigrant Identity in Asian American Literature – This course offers a critical study on the social and cultural formation of Asian American ethnic identity in Asian American literature. By selecting texts produced from various Asian ethnic communities (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Indian, and Vietnamese), we will explore a variety of complex issues of racialized identity, gender, sexuality, class, autobiography, history, and ethnic narrative in a volatile context of transnational immigration, multiculturalism, and diasporic citizenship. We will focus on these critical issues: 1. What does it mean to be Asian American and at what point does an immigrant become an American? 2. How do Asian Americans represent themselves in ethnic minority literature and what are the narrative strategies that are deployed to articulate their responses to the cultural and racial debates and contradictions? 3. How is the cultural articulation of their immigrant experiences crucial to the shaping of Asian American ethnic identities? 4. How is the representation of Asian American immigrant experiences linked to the issues of social formation, race, gender, and diasporic identities in a broader context of American history? It is hoped that the study of Asian American literature and culture will help students gain better and deeper knowledge of the critical issues of race, ethnicity, and gender in minority literature in particular and American literature in general. Through the technique of close reading and engaged discussions, students are expected to acquire a more sophisticated point of view in reading and analyzing literary texts. Instructor: Mi.
USA 301/HON 301 Seminar in Global America: Recovering the 1950s – This interdisciplinary seminar will investigate the transformative decade of the 1950s. Using a combination of scholarly, cultural, and archival sources, we will examine such topics as the emergence of consumer capitalism, the rise of television and advertising, HUAC and the Hollywood blacklist, the birth control movement, the fight for Civil Rights, and U.S. policy toward Korea, Africa, and Central America. Our study of major literary, cinematic, and artistic works will consider the influence of suburbanization, psychotherapy, and the Cold War. Throughout this seminar, we will pay special attention to the discovery and use of archival sources, contemplating the value of a wide range of print and material artifacts. Instructor: Blake