100 Doors contains brief descriptions by instructors of their class sections — objectives, course themes, material covered, assignments, texts — to assist students in planning their programs and may be used for counseling students moving on to the next level of English, or who are looking for classes to complete their Humanities requirements prior to transfer to the CSU or UC systems.
English 1A, College Composition
Ann Butler
The purpose of this course is to help you learn to write better by providing you with significant ideas to think and write about. The best way I know to help students refine their thinking and self-knowledge is to work out through writing their own understanding of issues.
You will read non-fiction selections from an anthology as well as from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New York Review of Books. I hope that the readings will be both a mirror and a window for your thinking and writing, and that not only will you find yourself reflected in them, but you will also develop new perspectives on the world and learn how to write about them. Readings focus on the environment, food, sports, the media and technology, American culture, the mind and genius, science, free/hate speech, and more. I predict that you will find the readings to be intriguing and relevant to your life. You will also read The Alchemist, described by a reviewer as “the type of book that makes you understand more about yourself and about life. It has philosophy and is spiced with personal relevance.”
During a typical class meeting (both online and face-to-face), you will engage in a variety of activities: shorter reflective writing, regular writing exercises, a journal, and discussion. Emphasis is on the exchange of ideas through discussion (large and small group). During the semester, you will also write analytical and persuasive essays as well as a research essay. My goal is for you to complete the course feeling confident about writing competent college-level essays—and having refined your perspective on important issues.
Terry Ehret
How do dreams and the unconscious influence our thinking and shape our self-concepts? How do writers understand the relationship between dreams, myths, symbols, and the creative imagination? Students will discuss and write about these topics as they practice the basic forms of expository and analytical writing. Along with class discussions, lectures, and individual conferences, students will work together as peer editors to improve their writing.
Texts: Rules for Writers, 9th ed., Diana Hacker; Dreams and Inward Journeys Course Reader, LAD Custom Publishing, current edition. This reader is sold only in the SRJC Santa Rosa Campus Bookstore; copies are available on reserve in Doyle and Mahoney libraries.
Lori Kuwabara
Happy? The spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has said, “The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” Our Declaration of Independence recognizes “the pursuit of happiness” as a fundamental right. So what does it actually mean to be happy? And how do we attain this thing called happiness? In today’s stressful, unpredictable world, these questions are harder than ever to answer. Life, however, is always full of ups and downs, highs and lows, whether the cause be a pandemic, a natural disaster, winning the lottery, or starting a new semester. Research in the past 20 years shows that what we think makes us happy doesn’t and what actually can help us achieve happiness we don’t prioritize at all. Yeah. Sounds crazy, right?
This English 1A course will explore the above questions and issues as you read from various perspectives, share your stories and opinions, do your own research, and write a series of papers. The overall aim of the course is to equip you with a variety of tools that will help you succeed academically — and be happy — whatever direction you’re headed.
Required Texts: Pursuing Happiness (Parfitt, Skorczewski), Dear America (Vargas), and Understanding Rhetoric (Losh et al.).
Section #6418 is a stand alone English 1A on the Transfer Track Schedule and will first meet on Wednesday, January 27, 1-3 p.m. All other mandatory synchronous Zoom meetings will take place on Mondays, exact dates TBA.
L. Dawn Lukas
This online English 1A focuses on practical skills that will make the writing you need to do in college and in life easier and more effective. You will be exposed to a variety of tools and strategies for reading, writing, and communicating so that you can discover what works best for you personally, leaving the course with new confidence and improved skills and abilities.
This course has four units, each of which ends with an essay: the first unit is Introduction to College Reading and Writing, which focuses on the foundational skills, such as essay structure, particularly paragraphs, the writing process, and revision techniques. Next is Advanced Topics, which include study methods, information about how we understand and remember information, tips and strategies for reading, grammar history and applications, and patterns of development. The third unit, Creating and Supporting Arguments, focuses on performing research: where to look, how to evaluate what you find, and how to use that information in your own work. The final unit, Writing About Literature, is uses the course novel the Da Vinci Code to practice analysis and different ways of writing about literature.
I strive to make this course as clear, practical and useful as possible for students. Reading, writing, and communicating are crucial skills for everyone, and I do my best to make this the course I wish I'd had as a college freshman. Come read, write, and discuss with us!
Loretta Mijares
Why do writers write and what makes effective writing? There are numerous answers to these questions, which we will explore in this course. The thread joining the readings for this course is one answer to the first question of why writers write: I write to show you what it’s like to live in this body of mine.
How we appear in the world--our body shape, size, color, and presentation (clothing, adornment, etc.)--affects how we are perceived by others, which can have very real ramifications on our lives. At the same time, the meanings that are inscribed on our bodies are determined by our location in history and geography—our when and where, or in other words, our culture. While we may take pride in the “identity” we create through how we present our bodies, how much power do we really have over how our bodies are interpreted, by people we meet, the media, science, medicine, law? The writers we read in this course explore these questions through presenting some lived and imagined bodily experiences and expressions of such things as religion, age, class, gender, and race.
As we examine these texts, we will simultaneously focus on the second question, What makes effective writing? In this course you will practice the skills necessary for successful expository writing. We will pay close attention to grammar and the mechanics of writing, clear presentation and organization of ideas, research skills, and the formulation of cogent arguments. Class time will consist of discussions of assigned reading, substantial in-class writing, instruction on the mechanics of writing, and peer review of student work.
Texts: Kindred, Octavia Butler; Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family, Amy Ellis Nutt; Goths, Gamers, & Grrrls: Deviance and Youth Subcultures, Ross Haenfler; The Little Seagull Handbook, Richard Bullock et al; various additional short readings.
Purnur Ozbirinci
In this class, as we dive deep into critical reading strategies, process-based writing skills, research, and documentation, we will explore issues that revolve around love. In units that focus on education, anti-racism, citizenship, and social justice, we will work together to dissect the systems that divide us and to come up with ways to maintain love and unity in our communities. In addition to various shorter texts, we will read these two books Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas and All About Love by bell hooks.
Katie Price
We live in a time of previously inconceivable technological and scientific advances, yet unfathomable political and social unrest. We are surrounded by incredible achievements and opportunities, but plagued by persistent inequalities and existential crises. Our course will examine these contradictions.
English 1A provides an opportunity to learn, practice, and improve the foundational skills of critical reading and effective writing that pave the way for the remainder of college and life. For this course, we will examine the world around us with the purpose of learning how to be critical observers who have the confidence to question, reason, and make a sound argument about what we see. Readings will include selections from newspapers, journals, podcasts, videos, and classical texts on a variety of topics including education, food, technology, culture, free speech, etc. We will also be reading Jose Vargas’ Dear America: Notes from an Undocumented Citizen.
Course work will include close reading, annotating, discussion board entries, low stakes writing, as well as research, description/narrative, and argument essays. My goal for this course is that you leave feeling confident in not only your ability to read critically and write clearly, but also in your ability to examine the world around you and contribute your voice to the conversation.
Jennifer Royal
This class is designed first and foremost to help you master the skills of college reading and writing so that when you are asked to read a difficult text or when you receive an essay assignment in your anthropology, art history, physics, economics, or English literature class, you will feel confident that you are up to the challenge. The second objective is to give you the skills to write eloquently outside the classroom—on social media, at work, when dealing with our social and financial institutions.
Writing: After a brief orientation to studying, reading, and writing for college, we focus on strategies for communicating ideas in writing. Most units are structured as follows: an overview emphasizing how a writing strategy is used in the real world and why it is useful to have in your toolkit; activities to spark recall of what you already know; a deep dive to learn key moves and techniques; readings by authors who use this technique creatively; and an essay assignment calling on you to experiment with the technique and make it your own. In addition, we will be working on grammar and research skills throughout the semester using a tool called InQuizitive. (BTW, many students say IQ is one of their favorite learning activities in the class. Really.)
The Readings: I use the term readings a little loosely. Readings for this course have been selected from many kinds of texts—scholarly writing, journalism, creative works, podcasts, multimedia presentations, and video. For example, we will watch a short stop-motion film, read a multimedia essay about a tragic avalanche, examine how authors like Mark Twain and Herman Melville used annotations, read beautiful and powerful novel by Toni Morrison called The Bluest Eye, as well as texts you select yourself for a research project (though the options for topics will be limited). This variety is intended to foster your ability to construct meaning from the elements of a text, whether that text is print, image, or auditory.
Expect to interact a lot with your classmates in discussions, collaborative activities, and writing workshops. We will become a community over the semester, even though the class is online. Also, expect to hear from me often. I will be present in weekly blog posts, discussions, and conversations with each of you about your essays.
Tristan Saldana
In Civilization and its Discontents (1929), discussing what he saw as humankind’s innate tendency toward aggression, founder of psychoanalysis and developer of theories such as dream work, the unconscious mind, and the life and death instinct, Sigmund Freud claimed that human beings “are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if attacked, but that a powerful measure of desire for aggression has to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment. The result is that their neighbour is to them not only a possible helper or sexual object, but also a temptation to them to gratify their aggressiveness, to exploit their capacity for work without recompense, to use them sexually without their consent, to seize their possessions, to humiliate them, to cause them pain, to torture and kill them. Homo homini lupus (Man is to man a wolf).” This section of College Composition (English 1A) will provide you with the tools in the art of the academic essay through the lens of psychology.
Sixty years before Freud’s statement, Charles Darwin, in The Descent of Man (1871), contradictorily claimed that “those communities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring.” Fast forward 130 years into the twenty-first century, and the positive psychology movement does not uphold Freud’s claim but rather extends Darwin’s. Where the prevailing scientific paradigm once aligned with Freud and perceived the human species as selfish, ruthless creatures, the field of positive psychology continues to reveal the human potential for goodness and altruistic behavior. Not only is the biology of the human species designed for goodness, but various, mindfully-practiced skills can further activate and support humane potential in the biological hardwiring of human compassion. We will read, converse, and compose ideas about a variety of pro-social emotions including empathy, gratitude, forgiveness, apology, mindfulness, and a thing called happiness. As such, we will learn about the various skills of mental wellbeing while playing in the art of the academic essay. We will explore questions like how much of the capacity for happiness do humans inherit genetically? How much can they generate from intentional activities and how much depends on circumstance?
Text: The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness, Keltner, Dacher, et al.; Orange is the New Black: My Year in A Women’s Prison, A Memoir, Kerman 2010.
Stacie Sather
Throughout the semester, we will be working to further develop our reading and writing skills. The pieces I have selected will encourage you to think about the world around you.
This specific section of English 1A will focus on the topics of Identity, Consumerism/Materialism, Immigration, Race relationships, and Media/technological advances and how these outside forces impact our relationship with ourselves, others and the government, and all the reading and writing for the class will address these topics in some way. As a teacher of writing, I believe good writing comes from engaging in a broader community or conversation — we learn and become better writers when we engage with one another, the texts we are reading and ourselves. Hopefully, a semester devoted to discussing such immediate and pressing topics will be fascinating and significant both in your academic and personal development.
Texts: Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, Jose Antonio Vargas; various articles
Tad Wakefield
This composition course will introduce you to writing from some of the world’s most influential thinkers—people whose ideas have changed the world. We will question these writers to help you grow in your understanding and ability to respond critically to ideas and teach you how to communicate your own ideas effectively in writing. You will only take English 1A once (hopefully) – make the most of it!
Lorraine Wasowicz
“I don’t know what’s going on,” said Boaz in his thoughts, “and I’m probably not smart enough to understand if somebody was to explain it to me. All I know is we’re being tested somehow, by somebody or some thing a whole lot smarter than us, and all I can do is be friendly and keep calm and try and have a nice time till it’s over.” —Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan, IX
Words to live by. This is the philosophy of a dynamic character in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel The Sirens of Titan, which we are going to read. But before we do, we’ll read several short essays from a collection titled The Best American Essays 2015, by Ariel Levy. To write an essay means to try to make sense of something. A woman tries to justify her choice not to have children; a cartoonist tries to explain his relationship with his cat; a novelist tries to find meaning in a billboard that faces her window; another writer tries to rationalize a miracle.
Our focus will be on cultivating more sophisticated techniques for reading and writing. The third part of the course will involve a research assignment related to the author Kurt Vonnegut and the historical context of his novel. Along the way, using the classic handbook, Rules for Writers, by Diana Hacker, we’ll study and practice the kind of writing that is expected of college students.
English 1A with English 50, College Composition and English 1A Support
Anne Marie Insull
What is the purpose of education, and how might it help us to become more empathetic human beings and positive change-bringers in our troubled world? The writers we’ll be studying this semester — among them, bell hooks, the Dali Lama, Plato, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Mary Oliver, Jose Antonio Vargas — will challenge and inspire us to articulate who we are and what kind of scholars and citizens we’d like to become.
Because spoken conversation is so important to learning, this class will be a combination of real-time Zoom discussions and asynchronous online writing assignments.
. . . and last, but certainly not least, our 1A/50 combination offers a built-in two extra hours a week of directed learning support with myself and our Peer Assisted Learning Specialist (a former student who knows the ins and outs of this course and is here to help you strategize your own success).
Lori Kuwabara
Happy? The spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has said, “The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” Our Declaration of Independence recognizes “the pursuit of happiness” as a fundamental right. So what does it actually mean to be happy? And how do we attain this thing called happiness? In today’s stressful, unpredictable world, these questions are harder than ever to answer. Life, however, is always full of ups and downs, highs and lows, whether the cause be a pandemic, a natural disaster, winning the lottery, or starting a new semester. Research in the past 20 years shows that what we think makes us happy doesn’t and what actually can help us achieve happiness we don’t prioritize at all. Yeah. Sounds crazy, right?
This English 1A course will explore the above questions and issues as you read from various perspectives, share your stories and opinions, do your own research, and write a series of papers. The overall aim of the course is to equip you with a variety of tools that will help you succeed academically — and be happy — whatever direction you’re headed.
Required Texts: Pursuing Happiness (Parfitt, Skorczewski), Dear America (Vargas), and Understanding Rhetoric (Losh et al.).
English 1A (#8696) is linked with English 50 (#4545). Both sections will be taught by the same instructor. Readings, activities, and assignments in English 50 will complement the work in English 1A. Class starts on Thursday, January 21.
These courses (English 1A and 50) will have weekly mandatory synchronous Zoom meetings on Tuesdays, 1-3 p.m. and Thursdays 1-2 p.m.
Raquel Montoya-Dane
Welcome to English 1A/50! The purpose of this course, like all English 1As, is to help you grow as a writer, reader, and thinker, providing you with plenty of tools and practice to hone your skills in both the academic world and beyond. With the addition of English 50, we have the gift of time—more time each week to work with our ideas and more opportunities for one-on-one support. We’ll work on developing your individual writing process to find out what works best for you, from generating ideas to planning, drafting, and proofreading.
This student-centered class focuses on building a supportive community of readers and writers; it also involves a lot of input and choice on your part! Our theme will be, loosely, “layers.” We rarely have the time or energy to dig down beneath the surface layer of the information and images that are thrown at us; this is an opportunity to slow down and really question, investigate, and analyze. Generally, our assignments will build our knowledge about a topic from multiple points of view and then each of you will craft your own perspective, but within that framework is plenty of room for you to choose the specific topics that interest and challenge you the most. Maybe you want to investigate the deeper meaning in the lyrics of that one song that everyone thinks is just a dance song. Maybe you want to look at how the media portrays protesters of different races in different ways. You’ll have a lot of opportunities to choose your focus.
Typical assignments include responding to readings, participating in online discussions, and working on various “steps” of an essay (such as an outline or rough draft). Essay assignments will be analytical, persuasive, and/or research-based. Our readings will come from a variety of sources, in a variety of formats, to give you flexibility and skill in understanding and analyzing several kinds of texts, from short stories to nonfiction articles to videos to songs. In addition, we will read one full-length book together as a class (Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates), and then you will each choose a second book to read either in a small group or individually.
This course is entirely asynchronous, meaning our class will NOT have any required synchronous meetings when we all have to be online at the same time. I will, however, offer optional meetings (either video or online chat) for students who find them helpful!
Purnur Ozbirinci
In this ENGL 1A class, as we dive deep into critical reading strategies, process-based writing skills, research, and documentation, we will explore issues that revolve around love. In units that focus on education, anti-racism, citizenship, and social justice, we will work together to dissect the systems that divide us and to come up with ways to maintain love and unity in our communities. In addition to various shorter texts, we will read these two books Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas and All About Love by bell hooks.
This class is linked to a two-unit co-requisite class, ENGL 50, which will focus on strategies and habits to support you in the ENGL 1A and other college courses. Together with our Peer Assisted Learning Specialist, we will work together in optional Zoom meetings to achieve the requirements of college composition.
Linda Ross
Welcome to English 1A / 50, “A Bestiary Path.” Through the semester—working from the foundation of traditional bestiaries, like the Aberdeen Bestiary, as well as Lyanda Haupt’s Urban Bestiary—we will be working on the skills and objectives that are standard to English 1A. See the course description in the Schedule of Classes to get a sense of those skills. Note, however, that the Schedule description is drawn from institutional language. Such language is important, because it reminds us of our identity, of our vision—of how we see ourselves and of how we envision our task. However, the vision for this class goes beyond the institutional. In short, the course asks us to observe. Haupt explains: “The word evolved from the Medieval Latin observare, which means not just ‘to watch’ (ob-), but also ‘to attend’ (servare). And to attend to something is an uncommon thing. It implies a kind of service, a graced allowing, a room for the movement of the observed in its own sphere—a sphere that, as attendants, we are invited to enter” (19).
As you choose your bestiary beast at the beginning of the semester; as you write about that beast from different contexts, using different rhetorical modes; as you examine texts for the ways that they create meaning and move their audience; as you examine your own writing for the way that you create meaning and move your audience—traveling down these different paths, you will be observing, attending, reading texts, reading writing, reading the world. And that seems an uncommon thing.
English 50 works as a supplement to English 1A, designed to reinforce and expand upon the material presented in 1A. Practices and materials include videos, exercises, revision work, peer collaboration, and individual and group conferences--all geared toward strengthening reading, writing, thinking, and research skills. English 50 is a P/NP class.
Lorraine Wasowicz
“I don’t know what’s going on,” said Boaz in his thoughts, “and I’m probably not smart enough to understand if somebody was to explain it to me. All I know is we’re being tested somehow, by somebody or some thing a whole lot smarter than us, and all I can do is be friendly and keep calm and try and have a nice time till it’s over.” —Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan, IX
Words to live by. This is the philosophy of a dynamic character in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel The Sirens of Titan, which we are going to read. But before we do, we’ll read several short essays from a collection titled The Best American Essays 2015, by Ariel Levy. To write an essay means to try to make sense of something. A woman tries to justify her choice not to have children; a cartoonist tries to explain his relationship with his cat; a novelist tries to find meaning in a billboard that faces her window; another writer tries to rationalize a miracle.
Our focus will be on cultivating more sophisticated techniques for reading and writing. The third part of the course will involve a research assignment related to the author Kurt Vonnegut and the historical context of his novel. Along the way, using the classic handbook, Rules for Writers, by Diana Hacker, we’ll study and practice the kind of writing that is expected of college students.
English 50: Writing isn’t one thing. You already excel in all sorts of everyday communication. English 50 will help you to define and practice the art of academic writing. To that end, we’ll go deeper into Hacker’s Rules for Writers, unlocking the mysteries of college composition, diction, research, and point of view. The lessons will support your work in English 1A.
English 1B, Literature and Composition
Mark Heydon
Revolutionary Lit: The reading, study, and writing of literatures that challenged the world. Revolutionary literatures from around the world: readings from post-colonial Africa (Ngugi, Tutuola, Laye, others), revolutionary Asia (Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Ding Ling, others), and volatile Latin America (Borges, Marquez, Fuentes, others), as well as such contemporary writers as Adichie, Lahiri, Nguyen, and Menéndez. Moving from Euro-American criticism, we will explore familiar and unfamiliar literatures of the modern world and, to the best of our ability, appreciate how it experiences the world. The class is seminar-based with occasional lectures. Multiple writing assignments.
English 2, Introduction to the Novel
English 4ABC, Creative Writing
Murleen Ray
This course will help set your creative writing spirit on fire! Everyone has a story to tell. Storytelling has been the way peoples and cultures have passed down knowledge and history. Personal stories are vivid and meaningful. They not only capture who we are in the present, they also keep us "alive" across time. English 4 is a LOW STRESS creative writing course designed to build confidence and skills in all genres. English 4 is a repeatable course that joins beginners, intermediate, and more advanced students into a writing community. If you plan to transfer to a university, English majors will find this course a wonderful addition to your literary studies. It will give you a deeper appreciation for all things in the arts.
Mrs Ray is a published poet whose passion is creative writing and visual arts.
English 5, Advanced Composition and Critical Thinking
Anne Marie Insull
This class will focus on the powerful ways that writers from America and other parts of the globe use letters to inspire, persuade, and ultimately change the world. Our foundational authors will be Mexican scholar, Sor Juana de la Cruz; Bohemian-Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke; and American journalists Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jose Antonio Vargas. We’ll also study shorter forms of the genre, as written by Abigail Adams, Emily Dickinson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Garrison Keeler, Ocean Vuong, and more.
Because I believe spoken conversation is essential to meaningful learning, asynchronous writing assignments will be supported with required, real-time Zoom classes.
Almost all of your writing assignments and essays will be written in the epistolary (letter-genre) form.
Loretta Mijares
What exactly is “Critical Thinking” anyway? Is the critical thinking needed by a business manager or a nursing assistant the same critical thinking taught in English classes? Why do English instructors think that reading books and writing about them is an important part of critical thinking, especially in this technological age? Increasingly, the Internet (especially Google and social media like Facebook and Twitter), eBooks, tablets, and smartphones are changing the way we read (and think?). Is this something to celebrate or be concerned about? In this class we will seek to think critically about critical thinking as applied to the act of reading in an increasingly technological age. Our goal in the course is to sharpen our abilities to ask important questions and find effective and meaningful ways to engage with those questions, both in our individual thinking and writing processes and in our communications with others.
Texts: The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr; The Circle, Dave Eggers; From Critical Thinking to Argument, Sylvan Barnet and Hugo Bedau; various additional readings.
Raquel Montoya Dane
It's easy to assume everyone knows what we mean when we say "critical thinking", but in this course we're going to dig in and define it for ourselves. How would you define critical thinking? Why is it important? What is your definition of a strong argument? Or a weak one? These questions will guide our work together this semester, and your own interests and concerns will help us choose which specific topics to investigate. We will brainstorm possible topics and then work together to build our knowledge on them, tailoring our readings accordingly, all while creating our own definitions of what it means to be a critical thinker, reader, and writer. "Customizing" our class this way helps us be flexible thinkers and apply our skills to both traditional and non-traditional topics for inquiry. Most of our readings will come from online sources, and we will also nominate and vote on a book to read together this semester. We will meet synchronously on Zoom weekly.
If you have any questions about the course, please feel free to email me at rmontoya-dane@santarosa.edu.
Purnur Ozbirinci
In this course, we will dissect cultural myths that govern our individual and collective actions. This course is a critical reasoning and advanced composition course designed to develop critical reading, thinking, and writing skills beyond the level achieved in English 1A. The course will focus on development of logical reasoning and analytical and argumentative writing skills. In addition to various shorter texts, we will read these two books Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.
Stacie Sather
English 5 is a critical reasoning and advanced composition course designed to develop critical reading, thinking, and writing skills by focusing on development of logical reasoning and analytical and argumentative writing skills.
This section of English 5 will focus on the topic of civil disobedience, and all the reading and writing for the class will address these topics in some way. The relevance of the topics as addressed by both members of the academy and those on the periphery illustrate the transgressive nature of the topics themselves and will find points of application and engagement with all of us. As a teacher of writing, I believe good writing comes from engaging in a broader community or conversation — we learn and become better writers when we engage with one another, the texts we are reading and ourselves. Hopefully, a semester devoted to discussing such immediate and pressing topics will be fascinating and significant both in your academic and personal development.
Texts: Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, Jose Antonio Vargas; The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan, The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood; various articles
English 7, Introduction to the Short Story
English 14, Dystopian Literature
English 25, Introduction to Language Study
Inge Stockburger
English 25 is an introduction to the field of linguistics, which is the scientific study of language. We begin the semester by critically examining beliefs about language, especially Standard English. Next, we turn to the structures of human language: phonetics and phonology, morphology, and the grammar of phrases and sentences. Building on this knowledge, we then study sociocultural topics in language, including dialects and variation, language acquisition and bilingualism, internet language, and issues of linguistic discrimination and sociolinguistic justice. Throughout the semester, we study all of these topics with a descriptive lens. As language scientists, linguists observe and study language as it occurs naturally, without prescriptive value judgments about correctness.
Coursework includes weekly reading, homework, quizzes, and discussion assignments. Three major fieldwork assignments invite you to gather data on everyday language through observations or elicitation, analyze your data, and reflect on your results and methodology. For the first fieldwork, you are invited to analyze the sounds of a language other than English; for the second, you study children’s language development; for the third, you carry out a mini-project on California dialects and slang. There is no final exam; instead, you choose your own topic in linguistics to research for a final paper.
Our texts for English 25 include an up-to-date textbook for an overview of linguistics (An Introduction to Language, published in 2019). We also read articles that report recent research from the field; searing essays on language by writers like James Baldwin, Gloria Anzaldúa, and June Jordan; and chapters from a fresh, new book about linguistics: Because Internet: Understanding the new rules of language.
English 30.1, American Literature, Precolonial Period to the Civil War
English 31, African-American Literature
Black Lives Matter! This survey course of African-American literature will cover nonfiction, fiction, poetry and drama that will give you a deeper insight into the richness of African-American literature and culture. The study of African-American literature will provide you the ability to understand American society as it is, not as it pretends to be. It should not surprise you that most privileged white Americans lack a deep appreciation for African-American literature, since America and racism are synonymous. Join us this semester as we take a rare, closer look at American society through the powerful lens of African-American literature.
English 36, LGBT Arts and Literature
English 46.1, Survey of English Literature, Part 1
English 100, College Reading and Writing
Katie Price
We live in a time of previously inconceivable technological and scientific advances, yet unfathomable political and social unrest. We are surrounded by incredible achievements and opportunities, but plagued by persistent inequalities and existential crises. Our course will examine these contradictions.
English 100 provides an opportunity to learn, practice, and improve the foundational skills of critical reading and effective writing skills you will need for English 1A. Readings will include selections from newspapers, journals, podcasts, videos, and classical texts on a variety of topics including education, food, technology, culture, free speech, etc. We will also read Jose Vargas’ Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen. Course work will include close reading, low stakes writing, discussion board posts, and research, description/narration, and argument essays with opportunities for revision.
Absolutely everyone is welcome, regardless of English experience or skill, and this course will be a safe place to question, take risks, learn, and grow. I will work hard to make sure you feel both supported and challenged, and my goal is that you leave feeling confident to enter English 1A and rock their socks off!