United
States Naval Academy
English
Department
Special Courses:
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Special
Courses for AY '08:
Fall Semester
HE285:
Professional Communication: Technical Writing for Science and Engineering
LCDR Chip Crane
The course will provide
introductory- and intermediate-level writing instruction in various forms
particular to the sciences and engineering, including lab reports, technical
articles, proposals, and progress reports. The curriculum will also offer brief
exposure to some forms of professional writing not limited to the technical
fields such as memos, applications, and evaluations. The instruction will
develop several general critical writing skills for application to these
technical-field-specific forms: considering audience, synthesizing research
sources, developing arguments, using appropriate style, and conforming to
standard American English. Students will read models of the kind of writing
they will be doing, and some assignments will allow them to tailor their writing
to their particular major or field of choice. Other assignments will ask them
to practice technical writing skills on everyday subjects such as “how to
operate a cell phone” or “how to change the oil in a car.” The course will
culminate in a large project particular to each student’s field of technical
study.
HE 360: “Our revels now are ended...”: Shakespeare's Last Plays
Professor David Allen White
The course will provide an in-depth examination of Shakespeare's last four
plays: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The
Tempest, usually described as romances or tragi-comedies. Beginning with a
historical overview of earlier romance literature, we will briefly look at
foreshadowings in earlier Shakespeare plays (The Comedy of Errors,
Much Ado about Nothing) and then move on to explorations of the last,
transitional tragedies (Antony and Cleopatra, Timon of Athens,
Coriolanus). The remainder of the semester will consist of close analysis of
the romances as a group and as unique and individual expressions of the
playwright's final vision. Mid-term exam, one short and one long essay, final
exam. Some memorization will also be required.
HE461: Americans in Paris 1860-1960: Writers, Artists, Musicians in the City
of Light
Professor Nancy Arbuthnot
For one hundred years, from
the beginnings of modernism in the 1860s through the 1960s, Paris was the
cultural center of the western world. Whether seeking to escape poverty, racism,
bigotry or censorship, or simply to live without restrain, American artists
streamed to Paris. This seminar will explore the rich results of that
interchange. We’ll establish the terms of modernism with a discussion of the
architecture of the new Paris of the 1860s, the French symbolist poets and
French Impressionist artists, and The Waste Land. Then we’ll consider
paintings by John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt; designs of Naval Academy
architect Ernest Flagg; songs by Josephine Baker and George Antheil; stories by
Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, James Baldwin and Djuna Barnes; poems by
Langston Hughes and the beat poets of the 1950s. Two field trips, along with
two shorter papers, an oral presentation, and a term paper will be required.
HE467: Eastern Literature
Professor Bruce Fleming
This
course is devoted to a handful of the masterworks of Far Eastern literature,
works that are deeply woven into the cultures of Japan, China, and India. These
include “The Tale of Genji,” sometimes held to be the world’s first novel, “The
Dream of the Red Chamber,” and various forms of the Indian Epics “The
Mahabarata” and “The Ramayana,” as well as shorter works in poetry and prose.
One of the works immediately relevant to the Naval Academy is the classic
meditation on the relation (and potential conflict) between military duty and
personal inclination in a section of “The Mahabarata” called the
“Bhagavad-Gita.”
HE503: The First World War
in British Art and Fiction (Honors Seminar)
CDR Mark Larabee
This seminar will explore the
ways British artists and authors portrayed the First World War from 1914 through
the 1930s. We will begin with how battlefield conditions challenged traditional
methods of describing landscape in word and image, moving on to depictions of
trench life, trauma, and sacrifice, and how art shaped myth and memory. We will
focus on intersections between visual art and fiction in works by front-line
soldiers (such as Ford Madox Ford, Wyndham Lewis, and David Jones), witnesses on
the home front (Rebecca West, Virginia Woolf), and official war artists (C. R.
W. Nevinson, Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer). Students will not only gain a deeper
understanding of the Great War, its art, and its literature, but they will also
learn how art and narrative reflect truth in the attempt to represent historical
events that defy representation.
vvvvvvv
Spring Semester
HE360A: Heinlein’s
Universe: The Heritage of “Hard” Science Fiction
Professor C. Herbert Gilliland
The year 2007 is the
centenary of the birth of Robert A. Heinlein, USNA ’29. Recognized worldwide as
one of the most important science fiction writers ever, Heinlein not only left a
substantial body of work, but influenced many other major writers in the genre.
The course will explore the tradition of “hard” (technology centered) science
fiction in which he was a key figure, as well as works in which the fictive
technology serves more as a tool for social hypothesis. Reading will include
works by such writers as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Joe Haldeman, Sir Arthur C.
Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Michael Flynn, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven and Connie
Willis, as well as such novels by Heinlein as Starship Troopers,
Stranger in a Strange Land, and Have Space Suit, Will Travel. Class
discussion and assigned papers will explore such issues as science fiction as
social comment; the tension between science and fiction; obsolescence of
fiction; science fiction tropes; and style in science fiction.
HE360B: The Graphic Novel
Maj Kevin Brooks
This course will examine the rise in popularity of the graphic novel over the
past 30 years. We will explore the steadily increasing use of graphic novels to
address serious literary, political, and cultural issues. We will survey various
styles of the graphic novel form, focusing on the visual and textual impact of
this form on the subject matter and the influence of particular styles. A major
concern will be to study the effectiveness of the graphic novel form in
presenting and explaining its subject. Sample texts may include Maus, A Contract
With God, 300, Persepolis, Palestine I, Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth,
Lone Wolf and Cub: The Assassin's Road, Watchmen, Pride of Baghdad, and others.
HE462: Ovid and his Influence
Professor Nancy Mace
The works of Publius Ovidius Naso have had a profound influence on English and
American literature and art; in fact, one might argue that his poetry is more
important to the study of literature than the work of other great writers of his
period like Vergil, Horace, and Livy, for most of what we know about mythology
comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and other writings. In this course, then, we
will read and discuss such major works of this important Augustan author as the
Amores, the Art of Love, the Heroides, and the Metamorphoses. Then we will
consider his influence on later literature by reading some of the many
translations and adaptations of Ovid’s stories in poetry, plays, novels, art,
and music. Each student will complete a major seminar paper examining the
influence of Ovid on a later work of English or American literature.
HE463: Hemingway in the 21st Century
Professor Charles Nolan
The course will examine
Hemingway's major works and themes, his considerable literary talent with
special focus on his style‑‑its roots and impact), and his position in modern
American literature. Readings will, of course, include the famous novels—The
Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the
Sea—but students will also study the short stories, including newly
discovered ones, nonfiction prose, and other works that comprise the Hemingway
canon. In exploring the diversity of Hemingway's art, students will move
chronologically, tracing Hemingway's development, his changing themes, and his
artistic response to social events. In addition, because it is important to
understand Hemingway the man and the milieu in which he lived, students will
also read around in the plethora of biographies (a few of them multi-volume) and
will explore some cultural history. Selected criticism will, of course, provide
a background for further literary analysis.
HE504: Whitman’s Many
Leaves of Grass (Honors Seminar)
Asst. Professor Temple Cone
“I am large, I contain
multitudes,” wrote Walt Whitman, and this course takes him at his word. We will
study the first (1855) and the “deathbed” (1892) editions of Whitman’s Leaves
of Grass, as well as the many changes Whitman made to the book through the
five intervening editions. By tracing the composition and revision of Leaves
of Grass, we witness the creation of a radically original American poetic
style and Whitman’s treatment of such themes as the American genius, the
morality and healthfulness of sexuality, mysticism, democracy and its moral
implications, the upheaval of the Civil War, grief and mourning, the American
genius, the nature of the self, and the nature of Nature. Students will examine
and discuss the impact of changes Whitman made to several major poems and to the
organization of Leaves of Grass, and will also read select works by such
authors as Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Alcott, Lincoln, Tennyson, and Dickinson,
among others, to get a fuller sense of Whitman’s milieu.
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GET PROGRAM
(Graduate Education + Teaching)
GET is the most viable option for
Navy supported graduate education in English. GET is
designed to give junior officers a chance to gain a master’s degree
and then teach at USNA during their first shore duty rotation. As a
participant you study at a civilian university in the Annapolis/DC
area for one year in order to obtain a Master’s Degree in English,
and then join the USNA English Department faculty for two years as
an instructor. Applications for the program are due to PERS 440F by
February of the year for which you apply. You will be notified of
the results in March. For complete
information, see the official descriptions of the program identified
under "More Information" below.
DETAILS IN BRIEF
1) Requirements.
a) You must be an
unrestricted line officer.
b) You must currently
be on active duty.
c) You must be an O-3
or O-3 (sel).
d) You must be warfare
qualified (waivers are possible for this requirement).
e) You must be accepted
to an approved institution where you can earn a master's degree in
one year.
2)
Obligations.
a)
During your teaching tour, you are expected to participate in the
Naval War College fleet seminar to complete JPME Phase I.
b)
Following your tour at USNA, you must remain in your current
community and accept follow-on orders to your next career
progression tour (e.g. department head).
c)
You must agree to serve on active duty for three years following the
conclusion of your one year M.A.
3) Approved Civilian
Institutions.
University of Maryland,
College Park
Georgetown University
George Washington
University
American University
George Mason University
Catholic University
4) Current
Shore Tour Lengths
(Click
to go to MILPERSMAN 1301-110).
5) Questions.
Navy/career/administrative matters--Department Associate Chair (salinas@usna.edu)
Graduate Education
concerns--Department Graduate Education Director (mcwillia@usna.edu)
6) More Information.
Academic Dean Page
on GET (click)
OPNAVINST 1524.2
on GET Program (click)
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