Summer Session 2009: Course Descriptions

ENG 407 - Language and Style for Writers
Sirles, MW 5:45-9:00

A comprehensive examination of structural and stylistic devices that accomplished writers use in creative and literary nonfiction contexts. Topics include sentence emphasis and rhythm, coherence, point of view, authorial stance, and rhetorical aspects of sentence structure, repetition, and punctuation.

Literary Writing concentration requirement in the MAW. Language & Style requirement in the MAWP. Elective in the MAE, MAW and MAWP.

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ENG 451 - Studies in the Modern British Novel
Fairhall, TTH 5:45-9:00

Modern British and/or American period requirement in the MAE. Elective in the MAE, MAW and MAWP.

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ENG 465 - Studies in the Modern American Novel: Hard-boiled Fiction & Film Noir
Ingrasci, TTH 5:45-9:00

The course offers an immersion into the NOIR world, based upon the pulp fiction and crime novellas of the hard-boiled 1930s, 40s, and 50s. We’ll examine the labyrinth - the no-escape vortex - that dooms both the cynical L.A./San. Fran. detectives and the “Sisyphysian losers” who struggle vainly against their ineluctable urban fates in the “Asphalt Jungle” cities of the West Coast. The shortness of the fictional works of the hard-boiled school will allow us to read and discuss seven of these novellas in our ten sessions, as well as examine eight classic NOIR films (students will screen AT HOME) that derive from the hard-boiled tradition in fiction.

Students will take a PLOT QUIZ on each novella assigned to assure everyone will come prepared to discuss the works (in small groups).

Students will screen films assigned (AT HOME) and provide RECEIPTS as proof of current viewing.

Course sessions will feature prof’s contextualizing the fictions/films re 20th century culture; plus film clips - documentaries on NOIR, on femme fatale, on NOIR authors’ visions; and cuttings from feature films (not assigned) that relate to our course’s texts; and small-group discussions (via PROMPTS) of our novels and films.

Course’s texts include a PICTORIAL history of NOIR films.


SEQUENCE of Works by Dates DUE:

June 16: Format of course, of NOIR-vision (European) versus (America’s) hard-boiled outlook. IN-CLASS screening of a seminal VOICE-OVER NOIR film, Detour (1944), and of The Good, Bad, and Beautiful (on the Femme Fatale), and a screening of short documentaries (Scorcese and Lithgow) on Film NOIR.

June 18: Quiz on PLOT of Hammett’s Red Harvest (1929), 216 pp.
• Screen, bring receipt for Force of Evil (1948).

June 23: Quiz on PLOT of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity (1936), 115 pp.
• Screen, bring receipt for Body Heat (1981), which is Lawrence Kasdan’s RE-make of Double Indemnity.

June 25: Quiz on PLOT of Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely (1940), 292 pp.
• Screen, bring receipt for Chinatown (1974). (I’ll screen a 30-min. cutting of Murder, My Sweet (1944), the CLASSIC film version of Farewell.)

June 30: Quiz on PLOT of Donald Westlake’s .361 (1962), 208 pp. (Prolific mystery writer Westlake wrote several film scripts, including The Grifters from Jim Thompson’s novel (J. Cusak, A. Houston, A. Benning).
• Screen, bring receipt for Pulp Fiction (1994). [I’ll screen a cutting of Collateral (T. Cruise, J. Foxx) which will focus on the ANTI-HERO of NOIR.]

July 2: Quiz on PLOT of Jim Thompson’s Population 1280 (1964), 217 pp.
• Screen, bring receipt for Blue Velvet (1986).

July 7: Quiz on PLOT of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game (1974), 282 pp. (3 versions were filmed.)
• Screen, bring receipt for The Professional (1994) [I’ll screen a bio-docu. on the macabre life of James Ellroy.]

July 9: Quiz on PLOT of James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia (1987), 325 pp. (NOTE! A CLASSIC NOIR NOVEL, and YES, I know the film version SUCKED.)
• Screen, bring receipt for (Ellroy’s) Hollywood Confidential (1995).
***I’ll give you the (ACTUAL) Prompts for your Final Exam.

July14: Course Paper is DUE (7 to 10 pp.) per directives & model paper. [No novel due for this session = writing time.]
• Screen, bring receipt for A History of Violence (2008).

July 16: Final exam = 3 essays, each requiring you to contrast a pair of our course’s works, using the Prompts given you on July 9th. EXAM is from 6:45 to 8:00 = 45 min. per essay.

Students in the course should develop a fascination for the hard-boiled/NOIR vision, a sensibility for the 20th Century’s Dark Side, the cruelty and harshness of life on the wrong side of town.

ALL TEXTS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE DEPAUL BOOKSTORE.

Modern British and/or American period requirement in the MAE. Elective in the MAE, MAW and MAWP.

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ENG 484 - Writing Workshop Topics: Writing the Urban Essay
Harvey, MW 5:45-9:00

This workshop will focus on the city as both setting and subject of creative nonfiction. In addition to crafting their own urban essays, students will study the work of such varied writers as Virginia Woolf, Nelson Algren, Orhan Pamuk, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Joseph Mitchell and Ian Frazier.

Literary Writing concentration requirement in the MAW. Writing Workshop requirement in the MAWP. May be used as an elective in the MAE, MAW and MAWP.

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