Summer 1 Courses
ENGLISH:
40721 - English 313: Online Usage and Composition
Professor-Robin A. Reid
A course to help students become proficient in Standard English usage and to offer future teachers opportunities to learn how to teach usage in the context of student writing. This course will not count toward the major or minor or toward certification
This online, workshop based course, will focus on students learning ways to become more proficient in editing their writing to conform to Standard English usage through a stylistics methodology.
Assigned textbooks:
Stylistics: A Practical Coursebook by Laura Wright and Jonathan Hope
The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordon.
Assignments
[10] Homework @ 2 = 20%
[5] Editing Practices (Course Texts) @ 4 = 20%
[2] Editing Practices (Own Work) @ 10 = 20%
[2] Exams @ 10 = 20%
[5] Journal Entries @ 4 = 20%
40723 - English 504: Picture Books, Graphic Narrative, and The Art of Images
Professor-Susan Louise Stewart
During this on-line course, students will be exploring the historical, ideological, racial, and psychological nature of several picture books, illustrated novels, and graphic narratives. Students will participate in an on-line discussion board, write short response papers, identify and respond to some of the scholarly discussions surrounding these types of narratives, and write a 10-page paper at the end of the semester wherein they identify and elaborate on an idea for further research. Many of the documents students will be viewing will be image-heavy or will be in pdf format and will require patience or a high-speed internet connection.
Required texts include:
Illustrated Novels: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Alexie), The Autobiography of My Dead Brother (Myers),
Graphic Narratives: Maus (Spiegelman), American Born Chinese (Yang), The Wall: Growing up Behind the Iron Curtain (Sis), Life Sucks (Abel), Pitch Black (Landowne)
Picture Books: Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak), The Watertower (Crew), The Story of Ferdinand (Leaf), Curious George (Rey), Rose Blanche (Innocenti), The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (Van Allsburg), The Arrival (Tan),
Critical Texts: Words about Pictures (Nodelman), Understanding Comics (McCloud)
A more complete description of the course will be available at:
http://faculty.tamu-commerce.edu/slstewart/
40724 - English 509: Literary Genres
Professor-M H. Hayes
This section of ENG 509 will carry the theme of “Dirty Realisms,” focusing on contemporary American and British writers. In addition to looking at short stories in particular, we will also examine other modes of shorter narratives and the issues the respective texts depict. Some of the writers we will discuss are Frederick Barthelme, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, A. L. Kennedy, and Bruce Springsteen.
40725 - English 555-01W: Online Course - General Linguistics
Professor-Robert J. Baumgardner
In this course you will become familiar with the assumptions, goals, terminology, and methodology of modern descriptive linguistics. In the first part of the course we will cover in detail phonetics, the sound systems of language (principally U.S. American English phonology), English morphology, processes of English word-formation, and the intersection of phonology and morphology, or morphophonology. Although this part of the course emphasizes linguistic analysis, it should also motivate you to examine carefully your own beliefs and attitudes about language. Doing so should lead you to understand and appreciate the change that language constantly undergoes in personal and social use. Understanding and appreciating change are necessary steps in becoming more tolerant of the variation in language use from one individual to the next, from one group to the next, and even in your own language.
In the second part of the course (as we continue linguistic analysis and description) we shall look briefly at American English dialectology and at the influence of English as a Global Language. This study will make us aware of not only the vast influence English has world-wide, but also of the many phonological, morphological and syntactic changes English has undergone throughout the world as a global lingua franca. There will be quizzes, two examinations, homework assignments and a term paper.
Textbooks:
Relevant Linguistics by Paul Justice
Discourse in Place: Language in the Material World by R. Scallon & S. Scallon
English Words by Francis Katamba
See On-Line Bookstore for Details
40388 - English 697: Discourse and Prosody
Professor-Salvatore Attardo
This class is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion to familiarize yourself with current work being done in the interface between discourse and prosody. Prosody is the study of such verbal features as intonation, pitch, volume, speech rate, pauses, etc. as they relate to the expression of meaning. Much interesting work is being done in this area, especially as it pertains to discourse. The class will start by introducing all the required information and will include hands-on acoustic analysis, therefore, no prior experience is required. Topics will include Non-native speakers’ intonation, and exciting new research on intonation in humor.
The materials will include handouts provided by the instructors and a textbook. The course will be team taught by Dr. Lucy Pickering (visiting from Georgia State University) and Dr. Sal Attardo.
Textbook: Anne Wichmann, Intonation in Text and Discourse. Longman. 2000
40751 - English 697: Web-Enhanced - Professing English
Professor-Donna Dunbar-Odom
Professing English will focus on English as an academic profession. The first part of the course will be a history of the teaching of English on the college level. Next we’ll look at the dissertation process. And finally we’ll look talk about the move from student to professor. My goal for this class is a practical one: I want everyone who takes it to have an idea of where the profession has been, what a dissertation involves, a plan for completing his or her own dissertation, and some knowledge as to how to conduct the job search as well as what to expect once he or she is successful in that search.
Books: Gerald Graff’s Professing Literature, Sonja Foss and William Waters’s Destination Dissertation, and Professor Steven M. Cahn and Catharine R. Stimpson’s From Student to Scholar: A Candid Guide to Becoming a Professor
The course is scheduled to meet on Saturdays from 9-5. However, the course will be web enhanced, so we’ll likely meet for around 4 hours.
SPANISH:
40904 Spanish 485 / 40726 Spanish 505: Children and Adolescent Literature in Spanish
Professor-Maria Fernandez-Babineaux
This class analyzes and compares canonical children’s literature and those versions written in Spanish. It will examine the works of precursors of this genre in Spain such as Elena Fortún and Antoniorrobles, as well as Ana María Matute and Carmen Martín Gaite. These fictional works will be studied from a theoretical framework and within the socio- political and historical context in which they were produced.
