As the Fall 2017 semester approaches and classes begin next week, the English Department faculty would like to extend a warm welcome back. There are a number of exciting and informative classes with spaces still available if you are searching for courses to invigorate your semester or to meet some of the requirements toward your English degree. Please take some time to look at each of these options and consider signing up today:
ENGL 320: Topics in Communication and Technology
Topic: Sonic Studies
This course challenges students to think through issues of culture, ideology, race, class, and gender through the lens of sonic studies. Students will be introduced to histories of sound reproduction, emerging sound technologies, music, and the presence of sound in various forms of media. In conjunction with covering a diverse array of current scholarship, this course will explore the intersection between communication, culture, and technology. More specifically, students will have the opportunity to build competencies in sound aesthetics as a historical and political object of inquiry and, most importantly, put those competencies into practice. Students will collect, create, and analyze sound in addition to images and texts. Category B CT Track Diversity
ENGL 330: Researching Communicative Practices
Topic: Digital Writing Research
In this course we will explore research practices in Rhetoric and Composition with an emphasis on writing and communication in digital media. We will review research studies in our discipline that introduce issues of digital creation and circulation by using emergent technologies, entering hybrid or digital contexts, or studying communication across a variety of media. Our readings will also provide a foundation for understanding each part of the research process, from study design to writing for presentation. Students will pursue a topic of their choosing and decide upon appropriate methods, ethical practices, and research tools for their projects. Category C CT Track
ENGL 343: Introduction to Genre Analysis
Topic: Genre as Social Action
This course explores the role of genre in shaping society and the everyday actions of individuals. Students will explore the following questions: What constitutes genre, and what functions does it accomplish in the world? How does genre work to stabilize knowledge and particular realities in various contexts? How can use of genre promote social change? What happens when genre expectations are not met, that is, when the genre conventions accepted by a particular community are flouted either intentionally or by mistake? As students formulate answers to these questions, they will come to understand genres not as static categories but as dynamic ways of processing information that shape the world we inhabit. Category B CT Track Diversity
ENGL 391: Advanced Exposition and Argumentation
This course shows students how to locate, gather and arrange information to produce sophisticated arguments. The course will contain readings drawn from various disciplines.
ENGL 392: Tutorial in Writing
This course of individualized instruction in writing should be taken in conjunction with an upper-level course in the student's major field. Students will write on topics in ENGL 392 that are not assigned in the upper-level course. This course requires instructor permission to register.
]]>The Dresher Center is pleased to announce our Spring 2018 Residential Faculty Fellows
Irene Chan, Associate Professor, Visual Arts and Affiliate Professor, Asian Studies: “Railroad Track of Violence: Stories about the Chinese in 19th Century America”
Amy Froide, Professor, History and Affiliate Professor, Gender + Women’s Studies; Language, Literacy, and Culture: “Eighteenth-Century England’s Charitable Corporation: A Corporation Tale of Microlending, Financial Fraud, and Government Bailouts”
Congratulations to these faculty members!
Jessica Berman, Director, Dresher Center for the Humanities
Featuring British Cellist/bass-baritone/actor Matthew Sharp
With UMBC String Faculty
Christian Tremblay, Airi Yoshioka, ViolinsDeath, Love and Terror in Music of Schubert
Thursday, September 7, 2017, 8 p.m.
Earl and Darielle Linehan Concert Hall
Tickets: $15 general admission, $10 seniors, $5 students, free for UMBC students with ID, available online or at the box office one hour before performances.
In a two-day spectacular, British cellist/bass-baritone/actor Matthew Sharp will enthrall his audience with a vocal and chamber concert and 21st century cabaret concerto, Death’s Cabaret. In this concert, Mr. Sharp sings Schubert Der Erlkönig and Jacques Brel’s Chanson des Vieux Amants and will be joined by UMBC string faculty for celestial and unsurpassed chamber work, Schubert’s Cello Quintet.
“Jacques Brel found Schubert’s C major Quintet inspirational – he listened to it when he wrote. I’ve always felt that their music shared a raw, unguarded, ‘leap from the precipice’ quality. So, we’re including two of their iconic songs – one where terror and death rips through the veil between fantasy and reality, the other in which love is both chains and salvation – as both a context for this late masterpiece and as a prelude to the cabaret concerto on Friday, September 8, Death’s Cabaret – A Love Story,” comments Matthew Sharp.
Program:
Franz Schubert: Der Erlkönig and String Quintet in C Major, op 163 D. 956In a second of the program featuring British cellist/bass-baritone/actor Matthew Sharp, the audience will be treated to an unprecedented, and interactive performance of a new concerto format. The Department of Music presents a concerto for the 21st century — a cabaret concerto. A unique and thrilling marriage of the 19th century concerto form with the grime and sensuality of cabaret — both an innovation and a re-invention of an ancient tradition. Dangerous, intimate, raw and virtuosic, it promises to be an unforgettable night. As our hero discovers, Mistress Death comes to call. Your time upon this earth is up. When life is in the balance, what will save you? Love, music or waking from the nightmare? Let the performance of a lifetime begin!
“Terror and love and the blurred lines between fantasy and reality are at the heart of Death's Cabaret - A Love Story. When I was making the piece with Martin Riley and Stephen Deazley - trying to conjure and hammer out what a cabaret concerto might be - I found myself drawn to the shaman-like charisma of performer/creators like Brel and Piazzolla and also to the bardic qualities of great story-telling songs like Der Erlkönig. Death's Cabaret - A Love Story is raw, unguarded and bardic. Terror and love exist cheek by jowl. We were trying to make something new - a cabaret concerto. And found that we had made something ancient, something ritualised where music, song and story-telling come together to tell a tale of love and loss.” comments Matthew Sharp.
For a sneak preview, click here.
Matthew Sharp, an internationally recognized classical artist and a fearless pioneer brings his multi-faceted artistry to UMBC. An ‘unrivaled’ and ‘unprecedented’ artist working in music and across disciplines, Sharp blends provenance and vision in a unique and potent way. He studied cello with Boris Pergamenschikow in Cologne, voice with Ulla Blom in Stockholm and English at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was taken to Jacqueline du Pré when he was 12, Galina Vishnewskaya when he was 18, and studied chamber music with the Amadeus Quartet. Sharp has appeared as solo performer with the RPO, LPO, RLPO, CBSO, Orchestra of Opera North, SCO, EUCO, ESO, Manchester Camerata, Orchestra of the Swan, Orchestra X, Arensky Chamber Orchestra, and Ural Philharmonic. He has recorded for Sony, EMI, Decca, Naxos, Somm, NMC, Avie and Whirlwind and has appeared in recital as both cellist and singer at Wigmore Hall, SBC and Salle Gaveau
This event is made possible through sponsorship from CIRCA, the Department of Music, Department of Dance, Department of Theatre, and Department of English.