Summer 2009 SCHEDULE OF CLASSES
Subject to change, consult access.smu.edu for the latest information

SUMMER I (June 3 - July 2)

SUMMER II (July 6 - August 4)

SMU-in-Oxford

July 4^th – August 8^th

ENGL 3329/CF 3302.  King Arthur: Reality and Romance.  Prof. Bonnie Wheeler.

King Arthur is the most popular and most frequently revived Western hero from the Middle Ages to the current day.  This course examines the elements and the aesthetics of the Arthurian story-Camelot, the knights of the Round Table, chivalry, and the Holy Grail-from its medieval origins to its flourishing today.

ENGL 3389.  The Gothic Novel.  Prof. Michael Nicholson.

This tutorial will examine the influence of Gothic novelists such as Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto) and Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) on Charles Dickens (Bleak House) and Feodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment). It explores how the melodramatic excesses of the genre were shaped to span socio-economic protest, existential experiment and religious rebellion.

ENGL 4333.  Shakespeare.  Prof. Michael Holahan.

This course studies certain key themes in relation to a central question of identity in Shakespearean drama. The themes are politics and history, sexuality and love, and language and action. Five plays will be read, and discussion will consider the various traits of comedies, tragedies, and histories.  The class will visit the Globe Theatre in London as well as performances in Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon.

SMU-in-Taos

 May Term (13^th – 31^st)

ENGL 3362.  African American Literature and Culture of the Southwest (Angela Ards)

Quiet as it is kept, African Americans went westward in their journey from slavery to freedom. From those who walked the Trail of Tears with Native Americans, to the Buffalo Soldiers who patrolled the Santa Fe Trail, to the pioneers who headed to Kansas in search of the American Dream on the frontier, black Americans left a rich cultural legacy in the Southwest. To uncover, for example, the primary role blacks played in settling the Western United States, this interdisciplinary course engages a wide range of texts, novels and film, oral histories and letters, historical essays and cultural criticism.  Texts: Black Indian Slave Nattatives, by Patrick Minges; Cathay Williams: From Slave to Buffalo Soldier, by Phillip Thomas Tucker; Gabriel's Story, by David Anthony Durham; God's Country, by Percival Everett; Course packet of 7-8 supplementary articles

June Term (3^rd – 30^th)
 

ENGL 2391, 3391, 4391, 4393.  Poetry Writing in Taos: Borderlands.  Prof. Jennifer Key. 
This course will introduce students to the varied voices and life experiences of the American Southwest. Reading assignments, student poetry and directed craft and creative exercises form the content of the course. Native American, Chicano, and Western poets will be explored. Field trips may include visits to the D.H. Lawrence Ranch, the Martinez Hacienda, the Mabel Dodge Luhan House as well as other sites of historical and literary importance. Poems will be completed over the course of the class and will be formally submitted in portfolio form.  Texts: Jimmy Santiago Baca, Martin an Meditations on the South Valley; "Poetry Writing in Taos: Borderlands" Course Packet available at Alpha Graphics

August Term (3^rd – 21^st)

CF3370/ENGL3370.  Art and Women and the Southwest.  Prof. Martha Satz.
Women artists, thinkers, and writers as they came to the area around Taos expressed the vision that they had come to a peculiarly feminine space, an area richly hospitable to women and their view of the world.  This course will investigate those claims analytically and experientially. We will read these women's works, view their pictures, evaluate their political vision as we live in and wander the landscape that inspired them. Fulfills General Education co-requirement in Human Diversity. Possible field trips include the O'Keeffe Museum, Millicent Rogers Museum, Bandelier National Monument, Pueblo Art Festival, Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe and Luhan House.  Texts: Alvord, Lori Arviso, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear; Austin, Mary, Cactus Thorn; Castillo, Ana, So Far From God; Cather, Willa, Song of the Lark; Luhan, Mabel Dodge, Edge of the Taos Desert; Mora, Pat, Communion. There will also be a Course Reading Book (CRB) Alphagraphics, available from the instructor.