a well-regarded University of Pennsylvania course...

MODERN & CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY

English 88

taught by Professor Alan ("Al") Filreis, award-winning teacher and Carnegie/CASE Pennsylvania Professor of the Year for 1999,

is now available to anyone, anywhere.


Al Filreis is The Class of 1942 Professor of English and Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania.

The next offering of English 88 on-line will run
from Monday, June 26, 2000 to Thursday, August 10, 2000.


This is an "on line" or electronic course--exciting and innovative--but it is not especially "high tech" or in any way limited to those who are sophisticated users of computers. You need only regular access to e-mail to participate.

Participants in this receive regular University of Pennsylvania/Ivy League course credit, transferrable to other colleges and universities, through Penn's College of General Studies.

Students who have taken English 88 on line include:

Formats for teaching and discussion will include:

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course offers a various, fast-paced "tour" of modern American poetry, from the first inklings of modernist experiment in Dickinson and Whitman through the "postmodern" poems of this very day. (Toward the end of the course we will be reading poetry so recent that it will actually have been
poet Robert Creeley on why, in part, he likes the poetic form of writing
"Oh yes, the sentence," Robert Creeley once told the critic Burton Hatlen, "that's what we call it when we put someone in jail."
written since the day the course itself began!) Students will learn, in a great variety of ways, how to define "modernism" and how to navigate a course from modernism to postmodernism. Through the marvels of the new media, we will meet some of the poets and critics whose work we are studying. We will also "affiliate" with the hot poetry "scene" of the Kelly Writers House (www.english.upenn.edu/~wh).

No prior knowledge of poetry is required. There will be few if any "lectures" through the semester; this is a course built upon discussions about the readings. Students will interact with the teachers and the materials in as many ways as the technology permits (which is to say, many ways). They will write frequent very short papers, submitted by email. They will be expected to be lively participants in the course listserv (electronic mailing list).

COST

The cost per student is the regular College of General Studies rate of $1,753, plus a $60 internet fee (for PennAdvance courses)--for a total of $1,813.

Penn alumni may receive a significant discount (please write Al Filreis at afilreis@english.upenn.edu for information about this).


To receive registration applications, write to advance@sas.upenn.edu.

                    Phone: 215-898-1684
                    Fax: 215-573-2053
                    Email: advance@sas.upenn.edu 
PennAdvance Program College of General Studies 3440 Market Street, Suite 100 Philadelphia, PA 19104-3335
LINKS