Course Descriptions

Fall 2007

Undergraduate Courses

• ENGL 501: Literature for Children. Professor Alida Allison. Class Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:00-12:15 p.m.
  English 501 introduces students to the literary study of children’s books. Approached historically and generically, readings for the class will be read closely and discussed in terms of post-colonial, gender, aesthetic, and multi-cultural perspectives. Grading is based on four 2 pp. study question responses, the occasional quiz, a midterm, and a final exam that includes an 8 pp. research paper.
  
  READING LIST WILL BE SELECTED FROM:
  • Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
  • Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer
  • Jane Vejjagiva, The Happiness of Kati
  • I.B. Singer, Stories for Children
  • David and Meeks, Twelve Dancing Princesses (fairy tale collection)
  • L. Frank Baum, Ozma of Oz
  • F.H. Burnett, A Little Princess
  • Randall Jarrell, The Animal Family
  • Karen Hesse, Witness
  • Julius Lester, Cupid
  • Leon Garfield, Smith
  • B. Feinberg, The Big Big Big Book of Tashi
  • De Brunhoff, The Story of Babar
  • Dr. Seuss, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins
  • Anushka Ravishankar, Moin and the Monster
  • J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
  • Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
  • Lawrence Yep, Child of the Owl

• ENGL 502: Adolescence in Literature. Professor Phillip Serrato. Class Schedule: Mondays and Wednesdays, 3:30-4:45 p.m.
  This semester we will survey the ways that adolescence has been depicted in a splendid sample of texts. We will begin by accompanying Alice, Frank and Joe Hardy, and Nancy Drew on their adventures in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Tower Treasure, and The Secret of the Old Clock, contemplating on the way how the experience of adolescence is configured in these early texts. Then we will take an interesting look at the landscapes of male adolescence drawn out by James Joyce and J.D. Salinger in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and The Catcher in the Rye. After looking at some other classics like Judy Blume’s Deenie and S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, and asking, What’s with Deenie’s secret place? and, Why does Pony Boy have Paul Newman on his mind? we’ll plunge into more contemporary fare that expands the parameters of adolescent literature. We’ll consider the breakthroughs managed by Patricia McCormick in Cut, Zoe Trope in Please, Don’t Kill the Freshman, and Juan Felipe Herrera in Downtown Boy. For the last unit we will look at a futuristic vision of adolescence with Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Requirements include 2 exams, a final exam, a paper, and frequent in-class writing. For a specific reading schedule, you are welcome to email the instructor (pserrato@mail.sdsu.edu) over the summer.

Graduate Courses

• ENGL 727: Seminar: Adolescence in Chicano Literature. Professor Phillip Serrato. Class Schedule: Thursday, 7:00-9:40 p.m.
  This course examines the depiction of adolescence (and adolescents) in Chicana/o literature from the early twentieth century to the present day. We will start the term scrutinizing classic texts such as Américo Paredes’s George Washington Gomez, Antonio Villareal’s Pocho, and Victor Villaseñor’s Macho!. As these early texts are by male writers and focus on adolescent male protagonists, we will especially concern ourselves with the ways that Mexican-Americans’ socio-political subordination in the United States in the wake of the Treaty of Guadulpe-Hidalgo precipitates the authors’ preoccupation with adolescent Mexican-American masculinity. Soon enough, these conversations about masculinity and Mexican-American socio-political realities will expand into more nuanced explorations of issues of gender, sexuality, cultural identity, and the emergence of literature written for adolescent readers as we engage works such as Yxta Maya Murray’s Locas, Cherríe Moraga’s The Hungry Woman, Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, Luis Alfaro’s Down Town, Gloria Velasquez’s Maya’s Divided World, Carla Trujillo’s What Night Brings, and Benjamín Alire Saenz’s Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood. Readings of primary texts will be supplemented with a course reader of critical/theoretical essays. For a specific reading schedule, you are welcome to email the instructor (pserrato@mail.sdsu.edu) over the summer.