LITERATURE and LITERARY THEORY
ENGL 2319 Topics in British Literature – “Landscape, Environment, and Ecology” (Fall 2020)
Beginning with the swampy fens of the earliest literature in the English corpus, Beowulf, this course will explore the various landscapes and environments that inhabit British literature, up through the Romantic and Victorian periods until present day. Our readings will include poems, ballads, plays, short stories, novels, and even one proto-novel, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano Or Gustavus Vassa, The African: Written by Himself (1745), which includes vistas of Equiano’s native Africa as well as his accounts of England after he is captured by Englishmen and taken as a slave. Throughout the semester, we will brave the greenwood hideout of Robin Hood tales, the intriguing islandscapes and forests of Shakespearean drama, and the scary gothic environments of horror stories and “weird” fiction, including Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We will conclude our journey through Great Britain’s landscapes with Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, a Victorian novel that takes place in the moorlands of northern England, a setting that seems to become a character of its own. As we visit all of these locations via literary portrayals, our class will discuss how such depictions of nature and the environment have changed through time and how they might or might not have effects on the way people think about and interact with the land.
ENGL 2350 Introduction to Interpretation and Analysis (Fall 2019 and Spring 2020)
This course teaches students the methods and vocabulary of English Studies by introducing them to various schools of interpretation, including psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, feminist, marxist, postcolonial, and ecocritical approaches, among others. The course aims to show students how to use these methods to interpret different forms of literature including poetry, fiction, drama, and film. Specifically, the course will teach students to (1) identify characteristics of genres, (2) recognize and understand critical and literary terms, (3) develop methods and strategies for analyzing and interpreting texts, and (4) demonstrate a command of these methods and strategies in written work. We will read a number of short stories in order to efficiently apply theoretical concepts to literary texts. The course will culminate with students choosing their interpretive strategy of choice to apply to Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606) and/or the modernized film adaptation of it, Scotland, PA (2001) to write a paper that argues for their own interpretation.
ENGL 2303 Topics in Environmental Literature – “Trees and Forests in Literature” (Spring 2018 and Spring 2019; Spring 2018 included community garden service learning option)
This course explores literary depictions of green spaces, ranging from Robin Hood’s greenwood to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden woodland to the vanishing forest of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax to imaginary forest worlds in Ursula Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest. The course will also engage with a number of individual literary trees such as the speaking tree of Anglo-Saxon lore in “The Dream of the Rood,” Tolkien’s mystical beings Old Man Willow and Treebeard, and Shel Silverstein’s beloved “Giving Tree” of children’s poetry. We will use this theme to think about the relationship of humans with their immediate environments as well as with the Earth itself in an age of climate change and ecological uncertainty. Students will consider the value of literature in our current era and evaluate how literary representations of trees and forest spaces change or affect the way people understand themselves, plants, and the relationship between them. Additionally, students in this course will explore the concept of plant agency and the idea of viewing the world from a “plant’s-eye view” in order to better imagine complex ecological relationships. Furthermore, students will engage with literature to trace how our understanding of trees and forests has changed over time. Genres for the course include poetry, novels, plays, short stories, essays, and films. *This course also includes a service learning component. Because we will be reading, writing, and thinking about trees and plants, this service learning opportunity will be connected to UTA’s Community Garden. At the garden, students will be able to enhance their classroom learning about environmental/green spaces in literature by physically engaging with plant-life, growing, maintaining, and harvesting edible plants, some of which will be donated to a local area food pantry.
ENGL 2319 Topics in British Literature – “Outlaws and Outcasts” (Fall 2017)
This course treads a path through the wild realm of “outlaw literature,” exploring outlaws and outcasts as they are portrayed in British literature in a variety of forms, including ballads, poems, plays, novels, short stories, and comic books. We will chart our way through British literature in a chronological way, beginning in Anglo-Saxon England with an early outcast: Beowulf’s rival, the demon-monster Grendel. From there we will move into early modern English drama to join other misfits and exiles, such as the castaways of William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. As we enter the Romantic and Victorian periods, we will come across a host of highwaymen (and women) of the “Penny Dreadfuls” like Dick Turpin and Ela the Outcast. We will finish our travels in more recent times to consider London’s modern urban outlaws and outcasts like the anonymous vigilante “V” from V for Vendetta. We will use this theme of exile and outlawry to guide our discussions in class, and students are expected to expand their own understanding of the ways that literature helps us interpret our relationship to the law, the government, authority figures, and structures of power in general, as well as our perception of those who have been cast out or cast down by society, and our opinion of those who operate “outside of the law.”
ENGL 2329 Topics in American Literature – “Celebrating Identity Formations” (Spring 2017 – GTA)
This course introduces students to a chronological selection of significant American works that contributed to an on-going dialogue about defining American identities (i.e., the characteristics by/with which a person or group defines him/her/them self(ves) and or is recognized). This dialogue is often a fascinating index to important American cultural and aesthetic values. Despite the selectivity of the readings, the course examines a broad range of time periods, genres (oral literature, exploration accounts, letters, essays, autobiographies, poetry, and fiction), geographical areas, and perspectives shaped by different life stage, gender, class, and ethnic backgrounds. Major readings include Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima.
WRITING and RHETORIC
ENGL 2338 Technical Writing (Spring 2020; upcoming 2021)
In this course, you will explore the basics of technical writing and communication, helping to create a foundation for your future professional writing endeavors and occupational interactions. This advanced writing class prepares students for writing about technical, scientific, and professional subject matters. During the semester, students will study the concepts and techniques of technical communication and learn to create a variety of documents, such as technical descriptions, job application material, instructions, reports, and professional correspondences. No matter what profession you decide to enter, communication will be a part of your job, so these writing skills are essential for today’s working environment.
ENGL 1301 Rhetoric and Composition I – Fall 2020 Theme: “The Rhetoric of Environmentalism: Urban Sprawl, Climate Change, Plastic Troubles“
This course will require students to read rhetorically and analyze scholarly texts on a variety of subjects. The course emphasizes writing to specific audiences and understanding how information is context dependent and audience specific. Students will engage with a variety of ideas and learn how to synthesize those in college level essays. Major assignments include a discourse community analysis, rhetorical analysis, and synthesis essay. The theme of environmentalism will include readings of opinion pieces and editorials as well as scientific approaches to urban sprawl, climate change, plastic pollution, and related issues.
*In previous semesters, other themes I have taught for ENGL 1301 include “Living in the Anthropocene,” “Jurassic Play: The Case for De-extinction,” “P.E.D.s in Professional Sports,” “Photoshopping the Body,” “Ruin Porn,” and “Fat Taxes.”
ENGL 1302 Rhetoric and Composition II – Course theme: “Building Sustainable Communities” (Fall 2015, Spring 2016, and Summer 2016; upcoming Spring 2021)
This course focuses on critical engagement with ethical and social issues and the development of academic arguments that communicate a specific point of view. The course includes issue identification, independent library research, analysis, and the evaluation and synthesis of sources with students’ own claims, reasons, and evidence. Major assignments include an issue/research proposal, a mapping of the issue paper, an annotated bibliography, and a researched position paper. The assignments in English 1302 are set up to build upon one another throughout the course of the semester. Because of this, you will need to pick a topic for the Issue Proposal and then you will stay with that topic for the entire semester. Additionally, I require that your topic relates in some way to the concepts of sustainability and/or community. Increasingly, sustainability initiatives have been emphasized not only on university campuses like UTA across many disciplines but also in many other areas of contemporary public life and discourse. Christian Weisser defines sustainability broadly as “the ability of something to maintain itself,” whether related to the environment, the economy, politics, or even personal behaviors and choices. You have the freedom to choose any topic so long as you indicate how you see it as connected to larger issues of sustainability and the building of sustainable communities. *There will be a component of experiential learning connected to this aspect of the course that will require students to participate in the ongoing project of UTA’s community garden in some capacity.
ENGL 0301: Integrated Reading and Writing Fundamentals (Fall 2020)
A three credit hour class that supports ENGL 1301. By the end of ENGL 0301, students should be able to develop long-term reading and writing strategies for college level courses; summarize, analyze, and respond to texts; produce texts with a focus, thesis, and controlling idea, and identify these elements in others’ texts; and demonstrate knowledge of and ability to use the writing process—including prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing—to write persuasively in multiple genres.
ENGL 0100 – Integrated Reading/Writing (Summer 2016)
One credit hour class that supports ENGL 1301. By the end of ENGL 0100, students should be able to develop long-term reading and writing strategies for college level courses; summarize, analyze, and respond to texts; produce texts with a focus, thesis, and controlling idea, and identify these elements in others’ texts; and demonstrate knowledge of and ability to use the writing process—including prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing—to write persuasively in multiple genres. The reading topics for this course include “Photoshopping the Body” and “What is Success?”
Jason C. Hogue, Ph.D. 