a well-regarded University of Pennsylvania course...
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY
English 88taught 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:
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." |
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.
To receive registration applications, write to advance@sas.upenn.edu.
Phone: 215-898-1684 Fax: 215-573-2053 Email: advance@sas.upenn.eduLINKS
PennAdvance Program College of General Studies 3440 Market Street, Suite 100 Philadelphia, PA 19104-3335