English: Novels of Stephen King

Subjects vary by semester. Representative topic: Reading the American Wilderness. May be repeated for credit with different content. Topics vary by offering; periodic offering at intervals that may exceed four years.

Open to Degree and PACE students

During his fifty-five + years of writing and publishing, Stephen King has emerged as a major presence on the American and global landscape. Obviously, given this writer's prolific canon and 100 + films made from his work, we can cover only an interesting sampling of it in this seminar. King is both indebted to and has helped to shape a contemporary definition of the American Gothic tradition; moreover, his fiction has been translated into films that have now become a recognizable part of the American cinematic pantheon, and they, too, have produced an enormous impact on contemporary cinema and art. The syllabus for this seminar includes several representative texts that have helped to make Stephen King into America’s Storyteller. My hope is for us to treat this course as a critical introduction to several of his most important novels. I’d like to keep in mind some questions as we study the contributions of this writer: What is there in his fiction that speaks so persuasively to the anxieties and fears of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century America? What, for example, do these novels reveal about small town America and American history writ large? Novels like to be included: The Stand (which students should begin reading over Christmas break), The Shining, Misery, Gerald's Game, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, IT.

Students are expected to engage in daily class participation; consequently, what you say in class and the frequency of your contributions make up a portion of the course grade. Obviously, to establish this level of participation, your presence each MWF is mandatory. So, too, is your responsibility with keeping up with the readings, which will be onerous, but are deliberately arranged with sufficient time separating each novel assigned. Students are allowed three absences before final grade will be adversely affected.

Students will produce a research paper (5-7 pages in length) due midway in the semester. This paper will cover some germane aspect of the course, a close reading of one or more of the texts, a comparative study of a King and some intertextual connection with another writer, artist, filmmaker, and/or the application of some literary theory to the text(s) under discussion. Topics will need to be approved by the instructor in advance during March 3 meetings to discuss the direction of their scholarly research. Additionally, this assignment will require the student to employ a bibliography containing at least four scholarly references found in book-length studies, academic articles, podcasts, or other reputable online sources. Criteria for quality papers: Idea: How interesting is your thesis? Is it manageable in the range of the paper’s page limits? Organization: Are the ideas in each paragraph connected? Do the individual paragraphs connect to your overall argument? Support: Do you supply direct references to the novel(s)? Are these references relevant and explained? Style and Mechanics: Have you forged an academic argument with appropriate diction, citations, and a Works Cited page for secondary sources? Additionally, a final cumulative take-home exam will be distributed the last day of classes.