Fall 2007 Course Descriptions

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1000-Level Courses

English 1060: Human Language.  Tivoli Majors
Section 1

TR 9:30-10:45; CORNELL 4
Language is a uniquely human achievement, a development that sets us apart from other animals. It is a powerful tool that we use during our every waking hour (and during much of our sleep). Still, we rarely stop to appreciate the complex role it plays in our everyday life. This course explores language from a variety of perspectives. We will consider the structure of language, looking at how sounds combine to form words and how words combine to form sentences. To gain a sense of the diversity of linguistic structures, we will consider examples from a variety of the world’s languages. We will also investigate the social and biological foundations of language. We will learn about American dialects and about differences in the speech of men and women. Along the way, we will take on a number of popular myths about “primitive” languages, grammar rules, the language of the media, etc. In this course you will learn how to make nouns plural in Swahili, how to recognize St. Louisans by their dialect and, most importantly, how to think critically about language.

English 1810: Introduction to Film: Beginning to 1945.  Joanna Hearne
Section 1

M E7:00-9:30 Tate 22; TR 12:30-1:45 Tate 123
This course surveys key developments in American cinema--as an institution and as an art form--from its beginnings to roughly 1950. Although the majority of films we will study were produced by American studios, we will also explore how these films developed in dialogue with other national cinemas. The course emphasis is on film history rather than form, but students will be introduced to elements of visual analysis including lighting, camera angles and shots, editing, mise-en-scene, soundtrack, dialogue, and narrative structure. We will view and discuss a range of film genres (including the gangster film, the musical, the western, the documentary, melodrama and film noir), and consider the way issues of race and gender were represented (and regulated) within the Hollywood studio system.

English 1810: Introduction to Film: Beginning to 1945.  
Section 3

M E7:00-9:30 Tate 22; TR 2:00-3:15 Tate 123

English 1810: Introduction to Film: Beginning to 1945.  Karen Laird
Section 4

M E7:00-9:30 Tate 22; TR 9:30-10:45 GCB 429

2000-Level Courses

English 2000: Topics in English Studies.  Sw. Anand Prahlad
Section 1

TR 12:30-1:45 GCB 117; T E7:00-9:30 GCB 204
“Black Film Makers.” This course will be a historical survey of films by black filmmakers, beginning with the early twentieth century period of race films and working our way up to the present. We will be concerned with issues such as the tradition of independent filmmaking, the role of race in the development of American film, the business of film, genre, gender, and bodies, and the question of whether there is anything that can be referred to as a black aesthetic in filmmaking. Film screenings will include Oscar Micheaux’s Body and Soul, Marlon Riggs Tongues Untied, Camille Billops and Jame Hatch’s Finding Christa, Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, Gordon Parks’s The Learning Tree, Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasss Song, Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It, John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood, Leslie Harris’s Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., Toni Cade Bambara’s The Bombing of Osage Avenue, Michelle Parkinson’s Storme: Lady of the Jewel Box, and Mario van Peebles’s Posse. Assignments will include journals and quizzes. (Same as Film Studies 2005)

English 2006: Studies in English, Beginning to 1603.  Raymond Ronci
Section 1

MWF 12:00-12:50 Tate 102
“The Hero Journey”. The Critical Praxis for this course is sometimes referred to as Archetypal Criticism, (based on Jung’s theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious) and more commonly referred to as Myth Criticism. The basic paradigm of the heroic cycle is typically as follows: the Miraculous Birth, Childhood Initiations, the Calling, the Departure, the Descent and Trials, the Death, Resurrection and Apotheosis. The study selections change periodically but almost always include David Adams Leeming’s book, The Voyage of The Hero, an anthology of Hero Journey myths from all over the world. This is supplemented by Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth. Typically we then proceed through a close analysis of each of the following: Gilgamesh, The Theban Plays, The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Tao Te Ching. Students are often asked to apply the principles of archetypal criticism and the hero paradigm to criticizing a contemporary novel or film.

English 2100: Write About Literature.  Joseph Scott
Section 1

MWF 11:00-11:50 Hill 309

English 2100: Write About Literature.  Debbie Lelekis
Section 2

MWF 2:00-2:50 Hill 201

English 2159: Introduction to World Literature, 1890 to Present.  C. Anne Mack
Section 1

MWF 11:00-11:50 Tate 124

English 2200: Topics in English Studies.  Melanie Church
Section 2

MWF 12:00-12:50 Tate 124

English 2300: Topics in American Literature.  Elizabeth Chang
Section 2

TR 9:30-10:45 GCB 221
“Asian American Literature.” This course will offer an introductory survey of Asian-American literary production—concentrating especially on the genres of fiction, poetry, and drama—in the United States from the beginning of the twentieth-century to the present. As we do so, we will ask how these works theorize a developing consciousness of Asian-American as a pan-national category of U.S. minority ethnicity. At the same time, we will also investigate how individual texts present different understandings of Asian-American gender, sexuality, and class status, as well as engage with mainstream understandings of Asian-Americans as either representatives of the “yellow peril” or members of the “model minority.” The readings will include well-known figures in the field as well as some newer additions to the Asian-Americans I other media, particularly film. Authors to be considered will probably include: Winifred Eaton, John Okada, Maxine Hong Kingston, Bharati Mukherjee, Amy Tan, Jessica Hagedorn, Theresa Hak Jyung Cha, David Henry Hwang, and Sesshu Foster.

English 2300: Topics in American Literature.  John Evelev
Section 3

TR 12:30-1:45 Tucker 18
“Travel Narratives.” The people of the United States have always been travelers: from the Puritan colonists of the 17th century to the westward bound settlers and farmers of the 18th century. Starting in the 19th century, however, travel became not just a necessity, but also a leisure activity, a form of entertainment and source of self-exploration. This course will trace the rise and development of modern American travel literature from its origins in “picturesque” tourism—visiting sites of natural beauty from the Berkshires and Adirondacks to Niagara—to the rise of European tours—where “innocent” Americans could be exposed to culture and history—to the return to America—searching for the real experience of life “on the road”—and onward to the present day when “adventure” tourism sends us to ever more exotic locales in search of self-understanding and “lifestyle” tourism brings us back to Europe as a new home with an older and “superior” mode of living. Possible texts(some complete, some through selections) to be read include: Thoreau, “Ktaadn,” Fuller, Summer on the Lakes in 1843, Twain, The Innocents Abroad, Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, Kerouac, On the Road, Kira Salak, Four Corners: One Woman’s Solo Journey into the Heart of New Guinea, Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun, Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity.

English 2308: Topics in American Literature, 1789-1890.  Charles Marvin
Section 1

MWF 11:00-11:50 Middlebush 205
“Character, Conduct, and Psyche.” This course engages in an extensive study of one of the basic elements of narrative practice–the depiction of character–in the historical context of 19th-century American culture. Its purpose is to foster an understanding of ways in which social and individual values, concepts of the natural and supernatural, insights made available by the sciences, and contending political forces help shape writers’ and readers’ ideas of what “character” means as it is represented in works of fiction, biography, and history. Character motivations, types, strengths, flaws, and development– all the senses in which character is at stake and the purposes it serves in 19th century American culture–will be studied in this course. Among the goals of this project will be

• to gain insight into “character” as a cultural construct
• to develop a more complex understanding of social and psychological forces at work in 19th-century American culture
• to expand knowledge of the uses and purposes to which character is put in narrative works
• to apply concepts learned in the course to examine the uses and purposes to which character is put in 20th and 21st-century contexts, in various cultural settings, and in other art forms

The course will begin with a study of excerpts from significant early American autobiographies, culminating in a reading of The Interesting Narrative of the former slave Olaudah Equiano. Works of fiction to follow will likely include Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s A New England Tale, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Herman Melville’s Israel Potter, and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. An extensive reading of 19th-century short stories will be undertaken as well, focusing particularly on the tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Wilkins Freeman, and Ambrose Bierce, among others. Written work for the class will include two 5-6 page papers, presented in class at the rough draft stage and completed as annotated hypertext documents with additional notes and source materials. Four in-class exams (quiz format) will also be given.

English 2510: Creative Writing: Intermediate Fiction.  Marly Swick
Section 2

TR 11:00-12:15 Arts & Science 103A
Since this is an intermediate course, I'll assume you already know the basics of short story craft. The course will be primarily a workshop. We will workshop 2 complete stories and 1 revised story. (Approximate length 15 pages). In addition to work-shopping, there will be assigned reading from the Scribner's Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction and one or two novels. We will also do a few short writing exercises at the start of the semester.

English 2560: Beginning Playwriting.  
Section 1

TR 2:00-3:15 Fine Arts Annex 116; T E7:00-10:00 A&
Description forthcoming. (Same as Theatre 2920)

English 2560: Beginning Playwriting.  
Section 2

TR 2:00-3:15 Fine Arts Annex 116; T E7:00-10:00 Ar
Description forthcoming. (Same as Theatre 2920)

English 2700: Introduction to Folklore.  Scott Mitchell
Section 1

MWF 9:00-9:50 GCB 114
Description forthcoming. (Same as Anthropology 2150)

3000-Level Courses

English 3010: Documenting Your World(s).  Jenny Edbauer Rice
Section 1

Each student will be responsible for creating a unique project that documents a specific aspect of life in Columbia, Missouri. Places are complex layers of events, bodies, stories, images, happenings, legends, and relations. As a documentary writer, you will track some of these complexities that have remained undercover for too long. Moreover, you will not just make the “strange” more familiar; you will actually make the “familiar” a bit more strange.

English 3100: Introduction to Literary Study.  Raymond Ronci
Section 1

MWF 10:00-10:50 Middlebush 207
This course covers roughly one hundred years of literary theory beginning with New Criticism and covering the major critical praxes of the 20th century such as formalism, structuralism, reader-oriented theories, Marxist theories, feminist theories, Post-structuralism, Post-colonialism and Postmodernism. We will study and discuss how these various practices influence the reading of a text; we will also examine the nature of what we mean by a “text.” From a Postmodern point of view, everything is a text – a building, a hat, a hairstyle, a shopping center, an ad, etc – and can be read, interpreted and commented upon. We will apply literary critical strategies to the various texts of contemporary American culture. Teaching methodology – informal lectures and discussion. Critical writing assignments.

English 3100: Introduction to Literary Study.  Karen Piper
Section 2

TR 11:00-12:15 GCB 217
This course will examine the politics of interpretation, i.e. How our understanding of literature is shaped by (and shapes) our political environment. Beginning with Frankenstein, we will explore various theoretical approaches to the text—such as feminist, marxist, and deconstructionist—observing how the text shifts within each of these frameworks. We will also study the biographical and historical contexts of several short stories and novels, analyzing the role that these contexts play in the production of the text. Equally important is the significance of the “canon” in understanding the place of literature within academia and contemporary culture. We will be reading Falling Into Theory, Heart of Darkness, and Frankenstein, as well as selections from A Story and Its Writer.

English 3110: Special Themes in Literature.  Richard Schwartz
Section 1

TR 11:00-12:15 Tate 102
“Popular/Highbrow Culture from the 18th Century to the Present.” We will examine the value of the popular/highbrow distinction, looking at both theoretical issues and practical examples. The writers discussed will include (but not be restricted to): Johnson, Kant, Tom Wolfe, Charles Willeford and Thomas Harris. Particular attention will be paid to the concept of genre and the degree to which assessments of its relative importance help to differentiate the popular from the putatively highbrow.

English 3117: Special Themes in Literature, 1603 to 1789.  Anne Myers
Section 1

TR 2:00-3:15 Cornell 211
“The Problem of Knowledge in Renaissance Drama.” In this course, you will have the opportunity to read some of the most bizarre and disturbing plays of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The plays on this syllabus are all loosely related to a question which informs many Renaissance texts: how do you know? What constitutes identity and what constitutes proof? Plays by Shakespeare, Chapman, Jonson, Middleton, Webster, and Ford. Short papers, presentations and exams.

English 3210: Survey of British Literature, Romanticism to the Present.  Nancy West
Section 1

TR 9:30-10:45 Middlebush 205
This course will provide a survey of British literature, dating roughly from the French Revolution to the end of World War I. As a survey course, you might be inclined to think, English 3210 will study authors and their works in very general terms, moving so quickly that you will only be able to glean the most basic facts about the subjects under study. “Survey,” however, implies much more than a broad perspective; it also means to “explore the unknown” (as in geologic surveys, for example) and, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, its primary definition refers to “the act of viewing, examining, or inspecting in detail.”

English 3210 will therefore aim at teaching you to look closely at these works, even as we move quickly. It will also encourage you to approach those poems, fictional pieces, or works you may know as if you are, in fact, on a geologic survey, searching for the unknown. This is not to suggest that I wish you to somehow leave aside your own interests, background, and knowledge; what I hope instead is that you leave your presuppositions behind, or better still, that you reflect on how and why you arrived at those presuppositions in the first place. William Blake, for example, may have been a visionary, but when he wasn’t seeing angels, he was busy advocating the welfare of urban children.

We will spend a great deal of time in this course examining the culture from which these works emerge. More specifically, we will focus on how writers like Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell represent urban life while writers like Thomas Hardy portray rural life. This will NOT, however, be the only subjects we focus on in this course. Far from it. But this common focus—virtually everyone we’ll study in this course was writing about either the city or the country--does provide us with a useful way to anchor the wide range of material before us.

The only definition of survey that will NOT inform this course is “commanding position,” which suggests authority and thus implies that by semester’s end, you will have commanded a mastery over these authors and works. Instead, I hope that English 3210 will leave you with the sense that you have been carefully introduced to this material, and hopefully, appreciate much of it.

Course Format

This course will combine lecture, discussion, and presentations. I hope everyone in this class will participate in class discussion; to this end, I will provide you at the close of each class with questions and topics to help guide your reading for the following day.

The course readings are divided into three major periods: the Romantic Period, the Victorian Age, and the Twentieth Century. More specifically, readings have been organized according to selected authors and topics.

This course is registered on MU’s Blackboard. All written material—including syllabi, handouts, assignments—will be posted on Blackboard. You are responsible for retrieving this information and printing it out yourself.

English 3210: Survey of British Literature, Romanticism to the Present.  Nancy West
Section 2

TR 11:00-12:15 Arts & Science 234
This course will provide a survey of British literature, dating roughly from the French Revolution to the end of World War I. As a survey course, you might be inclined to think, English 3210 will study authors and their works in very general terms, moving so quickly that you will only be able to glean the most basic facts about the subjects under study. “Survey,” however, implies much more than a broad perspective; it also means to “explore the unknown” (as in geologic surveys, for example) and, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, its primary definition refers to “the act of viewing, examining, or inspecting in detail.”

English 3210 will therefore aim at teaching you to look closely at these works, even as we move quickly. It will also encourage you to approach those poems, fictional pieces, or works you may know as if you are, in fact, on a geologic survey, searching for the unknown. This is not to suggest that I wish you to somehow leave aside your own interests, background, and knowledge; what I hope instead is that you leave your presuppositions behind, or better still, that you reflect on how and why you arrived at those presuppositions in the first place. William Blake, for example, may have been a visionary, but when he wasn’t seeing angels, he was busy advocating the welfare of urban children.

We will spend a great deal of time in this course examining the culture from which these works emerge. More specifically, we will focus on how writers like Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell represent urban life while writers like Thomas Hardy portray rural life. This will NOT, however, be the only subjects we focus on in this course. Far from it. But this common focus—virtually everyone we’ll study in this course was writing about either the city or the country--does provide us with a useful way to anchor the wide range of material before us.

The only definition of survey that will NOT inform this course is “commanding position,” which suggests authority and thus implies that by semester’s end, you will have commanded a mastery over these authors and works. Instead, I hope that English 3210 will leave you with the sense that you have been carefully introduced to this material, and hopefully, appreciate much of it.

Course Format

This course will combine lecture, discussion, and presentations. I hope everyone in this class will participate in class discussion; to this end, I will provide you at the close of each class with questions and topics to help guide your reading for the following day.

The course readings are divided into three major periods: the Romantic Period, the Victorian Age, and the Twentieth Century. More specifically, readings have been organized according to selected authors and topics.

This course is registered on MU’s Blackboard. All written material—including syllabi, handouts, assignments—will be posted on Blackboard. You are responsible for retrieving this information and printing it out yourself.

English 3300: Survey of American Literature, Beginnings to 1865.  Charles Marvin
Section 1

MWF 1:00-1:50 GCB 304
Extending from the clash of European and Carribean cultures following the first voyage of Columbus to the final battles of American Civil War, English 3300 tracks the early literary history of a part of the world undergoing profound crises while offering, in part as a result of these crises, unprecedented economic and cultural opportunities to those positioned to take advantage of them. To make sense of the literature of this period, a contextual study of the religious ideals, political philosophies, and social practices which inform it will be joined to a close reading of representative texts, with particular emphasis placed on those written in the decades immediately preceding the Civil War.

The course will be organized thematically, examining clusters of related texts from across the four-hundred year span of the survey’s period of coverage, each thematic section culminating iin a study of a major literary figure from the immediate pre-Civil War period. The format of the course will be combined lecture and discussion, emphasizing issues raised in short weekly written assignments; four in-class exams (quiz format) will also be given. The text for the course will be the Bedford Anthology of American Literature, packaged with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno.

English 3300: Survey of American Literature, Beginnings to 1865.  Alexandra Socarides
Section 3

MWF 11:00-11:50 Arts & Science 202
This course will provide a survey of American literature between the colonial period and the Civil War. We will read in a variety of genres including poetry, sermons, autobiography, essays, novels, and political tracts. In the first part of the course we will concentrate on the sorts of stories that the early colonists told about America and their lives here. In the second part of the course we will turn our focus towards the investment that nineteenth-century writers had in establishing an American literary tradition. Along the way we will discuss issues of gender, slavery, nationalism, and whatever else the class reveals to be pressing and important. Writers will include but not be limited to Smith, Bradford, Rowlandson, Franklin, Edwards, Equiano, Jefferson, Wheatley, Irving, Bryant, Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson. There will be a series of short writing assignments, regular reading quizzes, and a midterm and final paper.

English 3400: Survey of African American Litertaure, Beginning to 1900.  April Langley
Section 1

TR 8:00-9:15 GCB 313
This writing intensive course introduces students to the major developments, themes, and works of African American literature-from its eighteenth-century beginnings to 1900, the post-Civil War and Reconstruction Era. The course has three objectives: a) to explore African American literature’s continuing response to the call of African, American, and Afro-British American oral and written traditions-in the form of folktales, songs, sermons, prose, and poetry; b) to examine the social, political, and cultural influences of early African-American literature; and, c) to analyze the implications of this literature through class discussions and the following assignments: meaningful reading responses, one short essay, one oral presentation, on group presentation, and one final essay. (Writing Intensive, Same as Black Studies 3400, 1)

4000- / 7000-Level Courses

English 4050/7050: Historical Survey of Rhetoric.  Martha D. Patton
Section 1

TR 9:30-10:45 GCB 119
For two thousand years, rhetoricians have offered widely varying answers to basic questions about practice (especially about the effects of language practices, including persuasion) and theory (especially about the relationship between language and knowledge). What was a vibrant discipline in pre-modern centuries become moribund with the rise of modernism and then enjoyed a renaissance in the last forty years. Why have we witnessed these shifts? How might the electronic medium contribute to new theories of rhetoric? This survey course will interrogate the Western rhetorical tradition, and ways in which it continues to change.

English 4060/7060: Studies in Critical Theory.  Ellie Ragland
Section 1

TR 2:00-3:15 Hill 309
I will be teaching a critical theory course using the Norton Critical Anthology, studying Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant and Hegel, and then will jump forward to contemporary criticism and debate. I will also be using the book by David Richter called Falling Into Theory. This book is historically oriented, telling the story of how English came to be a discipline and detailing its critical debates by juxtaposing opposing views of any one theory.

English 4109/7109: Genres, 1890-Present.  Albert Devlin
Section 2

TR 11:00-12:15 Arts & Science 303
“20th Century Drama from O’Neill to Tennessee Williams.” Description not available. (Same as Theatre 4820/7820)

English 4169/7169: Major Authors, 1890 to Present.  Frances Dickey
Section 1

MW 2:00-3:15 GCB 223
“Lowell/Bishop/Plath.” This course examines three major poets from the mid-twentieth century: Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), Robert Lowell (1917-1977), and Sylvia Plath (1932-1963). Among a group of poets reacting to modernism in the 1940’s and 50’s, these three stand out for the lasting quality of their work. Despite the connections among them (Bishop and Lowell were friends; Plath studied with Lowell), they took their material in very different directions. Our main task will be to survey the poems of each writer, with as much context as possible. Additionally, we will consider their relationship to modernism, their response to the Cold War and the repressive political and social atmosphere of the McCarthy Era, their approach to gender issues, their contemporary reception, and other issues. Expect to read a lot of poetry, as well as some literary criticism. Written work includes short weekly assignments, one or two short papers, and a research paper; there will also be tests.

English 4170/7170: Comparative Approaches to Literature.  Karen Piper
Section 1

TR 2:00-3:15 Center 1220
“Postcolonial Literature.” This course will look critically at British imperialism and its legacy, discussing the way in which postcolonial authors attempt to recreate their past and build a new future after Independence. Postcolonial literature comes out of countries whose histories have been irreparably altered by the presence of the colonizer. Because of this, the themes that postcolonial authors address often have to do with retelling history, shaping a new identity, or charting a future after Independence. We will discuss the process of decolonization, as well as the on-going struggles of dealing with neocolonialism. Finally, we will look at the new “global citizen” of diaspora cultures, and the way in which writing is often used to construct a new “imaginary homeland” for those who are displaced or in exile. The books we will be reading are The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, Indiana Killer by Sherman Alexie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, and The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, Abeng by Michelle Cliff, and An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire by Arundhati Roy.

English 4200/7200: Introduction to Old English.  Johanna Kramer
Section 1

TR 9:30-10:45 Responsibility 128
This course is an intensive introduction to Old English, the language spoken in Anglo-Saxon England from the 5th to the later 11th century and the earliest form of English recorded in writing. While the focus of this class is the acquisition and practice of the Old English language, the course also introduces students to the fascinating literature and culture of Anglo-Saxon England (including its art, archaeology, manuscript culture, and religious practices). As we acquire knowledge of the language, we will first read prose texts (travelogues and such) and then move on to more complex verse texts, among them such famous and brilliant poems like “The Wanderer,” “The Battle of Maldon,” and “The Dream of the Rood.” This course is intended to give students a solid grounding in Old English grammar, enabling them to read a wide range of Old English texts in the original with the help of a dictionary and to proceed to more advanced studies in early English language and literature. Another purpose of this course is to become acquainted with the rich culture of Anglo-Saxon England, which combines an oral, pagan past with written, Christian-Latin traditions. For those students not typically too intrigued by things medieval, this course may hold some interest nonetheless in that studying Old English teaches us much about modern English and about the influences of Old English literature on subsequent literary periods and writers (Milton, Auden, Pound, Borges, etc.). Requirements: daily translations, quizzes, oral presentation, recitation, a mid-term and a final. No prior knowledge of Old English or other languages is required. (Same as Linguistics 4200/7200)

English 4220/7220: Renaissance and Seventeenth Century Literature.  William Kerwin
Section 1

TR 12:30-1:45 GCB 119
“Lyric Poetry.” Renaissance England produced a flourishing of short poetry, and in this course we will read a number of great poets’ work. Urbanization, humanism, the printing press, the reformation, debates over women's roles, colonialism, parliamentary politics—all of these historical movements and controversies created enormous tension and debate, and poetry was one way intellectuals tried to make sense of the world. Lyric—poetry of intense emotion—became a suddenly valuable kind of verbal currency, spent to express individual feeling, both as a language of love or personal self-definition and as a language of social involvement. Satiric poetry also grew in prominence as writers engaged in debates about how the community should be organized. Renaissance poets considered both private and public worlds, and strikingly, these poets quite often considered the private and public together, in terms of how they shaped each other.

The authors we will read include John Skeleton, Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Amelia Lanyer, Philip Sidney, Mary Wroth, John Donne, George Herbert, Ben Jonson, Katherine Philips, and Andrew Marvell. The more specific poetic forms this class will read include the sonnet, the complaint poem, the satire, the Ovidian narrative poem, the poetry of place, the epigram, the ballad, and the metaphysical lyric.

Required text: The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 1B—The Early Modern Period.

English 4240/7240: Restoration and 18th-Century English Literature.  Devoney Looser
Section 1

TR 9:30 a.m.-10:45 a.m., place TBA
In this course, we will consider British literature of "the long eighteenth century" (1660-1830). The period is often discussed in terms of "rises" (of the middle class, women writers, print culture, and novels) and revolutions (French, American, and Industrial). It is the era that saw struggles for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. We will read and discuss texts from this dynamic time, looking at literature in its historical, national, aesthetic, and gendered contexts. Works by authors such as Aphra Behn, Samuel Johnson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Alexander Pope will be assigned. Requirements: research proposal and project (draft and final), presentation, mid-term exam, final exam, and online & in-class participation.

English 4250/7250: 19th-Century English Literature.  Elizabeth Chang
Section 1

TR 12:30-1:45 William Stringer 245
“Victorian Poetry.” This course will offer a survey of poetic production in Britain during the Victorian period with attention to a variety of contemporary concerns, including conditions of literary production, social and political controversies, national and imperial negotiations, as well as evolving formulations of aesthetic and poetic theory. We will proceed roughly chronologically through the century in our reading, pausing to consider Victorian poetry’s concern with particular forms, most notably the sonnet-sequence, as well as the connections and dialogues between Victorian poetry and other genres of Victorian literature and culture, most notably the serial periodical and the painting. Poets considered will probably include Barrett Browning, Tennyson, Browning, Bronte, Arnold, Meredith, D.G. Rossetti, C. Rossetti, Swinburne, Hardy, Hopkins, Field, and Levy.

English 4310/7310: 19th-Century American Literature.  Tom Quirk
Section 1

TR 12:30-1:45 Tate 104
“American Realism and Naturalism.” This is a period course devoted to the study of the American literature produced between the Civil War and World War I. The perspective will largely be historical and the emphasis will be upon prose fiction, though we will look at a few poets as well. David R. Shi's Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920 ought to supply clarifying cultural and historical contexts. Among other texts, we will be reading Henry James's The American, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Willa Cather's O Pioneers! , and several short stories from the The Portable American Realism Reader. Course work: reading quizzes, a mid-term, and a take home final exam.

English 4310/7310: 19th-Century American Literature.  John Evelev
Section 2

TR 2:00-3:15 Arts & Science 303
“American Novel to 1900.” The history of the American novel is largely tied to our history as a nation, with the first American-written novels shortly appearing after the Revolution. This is no mere coincidence, as many literary critics assure us that the novel is the dominant narrative genre of the modern nation-state. In this course, we will generate a history of the notable shifts within the American novel from its origins to 1900 as something like a ‘secret’ history of the American nation and its obsessions and anxieties. This will take us from through the works of many of the most important novelists in American literature and their most important works. Possible texts include: Foster, The Coquette; Sedgwick, Hope Leslie; Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables; Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Melville, Benito Cereno; Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham; James, The Bostonians; Dreiser, Sister Carrie.

English 4320/7320: 20th Century American Literature.  Raymond Ronci
Section 1

MWF 2:00-2:50 Tate 102
“Postmodern American Poetry”. The semester begins with an in-depth study of the term Postmodernism as it applies to philosophy, politics, feminism, religion, popular culture, music and literature. After establishing a basic understanding of what Postmodernism means, we will direct our focus towards Postmodern Poetics by carefully examining the poetry and selected writings of such poets as Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Kenneth Koch, Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’ Hara, Susan Howe and so on. There are at least two formal papers required for this class, one on Postmodernism(s), the other on Postmodern Poetics.

English 4320/7320: 20th Century American Literature: The Graphic Novel and/as Contemporary Fiction.  Andrew Hoberek
Section 4

MWF 1:00-1:50 Center 1210
“The Graphic Novel and/as Contemporary Fiction.” In this course we will read recent graphic novels and graphic novel-influenced works of fiction with an eye to how the new seriousness accorded to graphic fiction is changing—or reflects prior changes in—contemporary fiction more generally. What sorts of stylistic innovations in traditional writing does graphic fiction make possible? How is it related to the parallel rise of non-fiction in contemporary publishing? Does the new prominence of the graphic novel portend a decline in the institutional power of creative writing programs? Does it signal the advent of a new era in literary history more generally? The course will be roughly divided into three thematic units—the superhero, memoir and fictionalized memoir, and history and reportage—that in practice bleed into each other in various ways. In addition to graphic novels by Alan Moore, Alison Bechdel, Joe Sacco, and others we will also read some picture-free books and stories by Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Jodi Picoult, and Charles Yu, as well as a few short critical essays.

English 4320/7320: 20th Century American Literature: The Reality Effect.  Samuel Cohen
Section 3

TR 9:30-10:45 GCB 124B
“The Reality Effect.” The standard account of twentieth century literary fiction, following the model of most histories of modern art, holds that the realism characterizing the fiction of the latter part of the 19th century was succeeded by modernism early in the twentieth and that m modernism was itself succeeded by postmodernism sometime after mid-century. One implication of this account is that the history of innovation in modern fiction is often understood as the increasing movement away from realism. This seminar’s goal is to look at a sampling of fiction from across the century in order to see how the standard account holds up and how it doesn’t. To help us do so, we will read around in theory of the novel and investigate competing models of realism—of what it is, how it works, how it should be valued. Reading may include fiction by Hemingway, Stein, Toomer, Dos Passos, West, Faulknerk, Nabokov, Burroughs, Hawkes, Vonnegut, Coover, Roth, Didion, Carver, Morrison; secondary reading may include selections from Bakhtin, Lukacs, Adorno, Jameson, Hutcheon, and Kundera.

English 4420/7420: Africana Womanism.  Clenora Hudson-Weems
Section 1

TR 11:00-12:15 Middlebush 212
Description forthcoming. (Same as Black Studies 4420/7420)

English 4488/7488: Major Anglophone Africana Women Writers, 1789 to 1890.  April Langley
Section 1

TR 12:30-1:45 Tate 123
Beginning with Phillis Wheatley black women writers have produced some of the earliest creative, political, scholarly, religious, and personal/public works. As a result, their collective and particular voices have marked some of richest cultural and intellectual contexts of our time. Clearly, their engagement with the most critical issues of their generations--sexuality, oppression, exploitation, violence, slavery, freedom, social progress, racism, aesthetics, and economics, to name a few--remains an important part of our contemporary and ongoing dialogue with the racialized politics of class and gender. This course explores the contributions of black women in early African American literature with a focus on the major texts in the canon of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century African American women’s writing--to include readings in poetry, drama, essays, speeches, novel, political tracts, spiritual autobiography as well as videos and other secondary readings and sources. Assignments include class discussion, short informal responses, one oral presentation, and one final essay. (Same as Black Studies 4488/7488; Same as Women's and Gender Studies 4488/7488)

English 4510/7510: Creative Writing: Advanced Fiction.  Richard Schwartz
Section 1

R 2:00-4:30 Middlebush 205
“Crime Fiction.” We will block out plans for a novel, writing a short treatment, the first and last chapters and an outline of the major plot arcs. Particular attention will be paid to the complexities of the planning process and the writing techniques employed by noteworthy practitioners. We will look at exemplary works by Carl Hiaasen, James Ellroy, James Lee Burke, Thomas Harris and Raymond Chandler, paying attention to the elasticity of the genre as well as its central elements.

English 4510/7510: Creative Writing: Advanced Fiction.  Trudy Lewis
Section 2

M 2:00-4:30 A&S 232
“Love Stories.” The main objective of the advanced fiction course is to familiarize students with the production and critique of narrative form. Our focus this semester will be the love story in its various guises: romance, satire, gritty realism. Platonic myth, political allegory, and chick it. By investigating the romance plot, I hope to: a) give us a canon for discussion and imitation; b) indicate that fiction, like love, is based on a common body of techniques but can take many forms; and c) emphasize the imaginative and transformative elements of the craft. However, the generic emphasis should not prevent students from producing work on any subject or in any style. We will move from a series of exercises based on the readings to a full-length story on a topic of the student’s choice, and from small-group workshops to a more traditional full class critique. Students will also produce a number of collaborative scenes and stories, in order to balance peer review with co-creation. Texts will include: Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, Sweet Land Stories by E.L. Doctorow, Heartbreak Soup by Gilbert Hernandez, The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers, Close Range by Anne Proulx, God’s Gym by John Edgar Wideman, and Her by Laura Zigman.

English 4510/7510: Creative Writing: Advanced Fiction.  Marly Swick
Section 3

W 2:00-4:30 Geological Sciences 104
This course is primarily a workshop. We will be workshopping 2 complete stories and 1 revised story. (Approximate length 15 pages). In addition to workshopping, there will be assigned reading from one or two short story anthologies and one or two novels. My expectation is that since this is an advanced class, everyone will be serious about his or her writing and the stories will reflect this dedication to and enthusiasm for the art of writing fiction.

English 4530/7530: Creative Writing: Advanced Poetry.  
Section 1

R 2:00-4:30 Gwynn 106
We’ll begin with a study, in sequence, of a series of recently published poetry collections by contemporary poets. These readings will be supplemented with a series of individual poems by an array of modern poets who have written in English and of other modern poets in translation. In each, case, we’ll attend to these works as models for emulation and as provocations of new production. Students will be expected to 1) memorize three poems during the course of the semester, 2) produce several drafts of no less than six original lyric poems, and 3) make a presentation on the work of one contemporary poet of particular interest.

English 4560/7560: Advanced Playwriting: Problems.  
Section 1

MW 11:00-12:15 FAA 116; T E7:00-10:00 A&S 101
Description forthcoming. (Same as Theatre 4920/7920)

English 4600/7600: Structure of American English.  Tivoli Majors
Section 2

TR 12:30-1:45 Tate 109
Speakers of English already know the grammar of their language intimately. This knowledge, however, is buried in our subconscious minds. This course is designed as an introduction to the methods linguists use to uncover these subconscious rules of language so that we may better understand the systematic nature of language in general and English in particular. Although the course will primarily examine the structure of English sentences, we will also take a look at the sounds of English as well as the internal structure of English words. The overarching goal of the course is to promote greater linguistic awareness and to provide students with the tools needed to think about language from new perspectives.

English 4600/7600: Structure of American English.  Tivoli Majors
Section 3

TR 2:00-3:15 Middlebush 8
Speakers of English already know the grammar of their language intimately. This knowledge, however, is buried in our subconscious minds. This course is designed as an introduction to the methods linguists use to uncover these subconscious rules of language so that we may better understand the systematic nature of language in general and English in particular. Although the course will primarily examine the structure of English sentences, we will also take a look at the sounds of English as well as the internal structure of English words. The overarching goal of the course is to promote greater linguistic awareness and to provide students with the tools needed to think about language from new perspectives.

English 4970: Capstone Experience.  Albert Devlin
Section 1

TR 2:00-3:15 GCB 314

English 4996: Honors Seminar in English.  Emma Lipton
Section 1

TR 9:30-10:45 GCB 209
This course is the first part of the two-semester Honors sequence in the English Department, and is intended to lead into the second part, the writing of the Honors senior thesis. The course will include an inquiry into research and writing techniques within the discipline (working with primary and secondary sources, using the library and its reference materials efficiently, applying literary theory in interpretation); an investigation of major critical, theoretical, and practical questions in the field of English studies; and a workshop-oriented unit in which each student will prepare a longer (12-20 page) research paper.

8000-Level Courses

English 8001: Topics in English.  Joanna Hearne
Section 1

TR 9:30-10:45 GCB 119
“Professional Studies: The Job Workshop.” This course meets twice weekly and is intended to provide preparation and support for graduate students beginning the academic job search process and who plan to go on the job market in 2007 or 2008. Ideally, students will take the course the year before their first season on the job market and will continue to work with the placement seminar faculty in the following year. We will discuss each phase of the academic job search, including letters of application, curriculum vitae, dissertation abstracts, writing samples, teaching statements and portfolios, fellowship and grant applications, etc. Our primary activities will be generating and revising these materials in a workshop format, and we will also spend time discussing institutional profiles, possibilities for publication and presentation of your work, preparation of syllabi, and interview and campus visit strategies.

English 8005: Introduction to Graduate Studies.  
Section 1

Arranged
Introduces entering MA and PhD students to the profession of English and the intellectual resources needed to complete their degrees successfully.

English 8010: Theory and Practice of Composition.  Donna Strickland
Section 1

R 3:00-5:30 GCB 107
English 8010 is designed to support you in teaching English 1000 here at Mizzou. One of the excellent professional development opportunities available to you as a graduate teaching assistant is the chance to actively design, reflect upon, and lead a variety of courses, including English 1000. Our work together this semester will provide you with practice in general course planning, which will transfer to any course that you teach, as well as opportunities for specific inquiry into and practice of writing. Our texts will likely include the following:

• Curzan, Anne, and Lisa Damour. First Day to Final Grade: A Graduate Student’s Guide to Teaching. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. (For course planning and execution at the most general level.)
• Bean, John. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. (For developing writing assignments and active learning strategies; distributed to all professors who teach writing intensive courses in departments across the university.)
• Barnett, Timothy, ed. Teaching Argument in the Composition Course: Background Readings. (For considering the possibilities of what argument might mean and how one might approach teaching argument, which is the current focus of English 1000.)
• Wysocki, Anne Frances, et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. (For further expanding what “writing” itself might mean, as well as how one might teach it.)
• English 1000 Instructor’s Guide <http://english.missouri.edu/english1000/instructor_guide1.php> (For understanding the philosophy behind English 1000 at Mizzou as well as the course expectations and requirements. A sample syllabus and sample assignments are available there.)

English 8050: Contemporary Critical Approaches.  Carsten Strathausen
Section 1

TR 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m., Tate 109
This course focuses on current trends in literary theory. Our overall goal is to explore both the philosophical as well as the socio-political dimension of theoretical paradigms such as structuralism, postmodernism, deconstruction, post-colonialism, psychoanalysis, feminism, Marxism, reader response, etc. Two critical premises will guide our discussion: first, the belief that there is no “meta-theory” able to account for all the insights fashioned by the different approaches to literary and cultural production. The second premise holds that theories do not just emerge out of a socio-historical vacuum, but always carry within themselves traces of the particular context in which they are “born.” Examining that context, then, is an essential part for “understanding” literary and aesthetic theory in general. Rather than dismissing a particular critical approach as “unrealistic” or “outdated,” it is far more productive to assess its strength and weaknesses within and beyond the historical context during which it emerged. This approach should also help students to become more familiar with whatever theory they might find most useful for their own work. The course begins with a brief discussion of the “linguistic turn” in 20th century theory and the fundamental importance of Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics from 1916. Thereafter, we shall read different sections of the central text for this course.

English 8060, Seminar in Criticism and Theory: Theory of the Novel.  Samuel Cohen
Section 1

W 3:00-5:30 Tate 124
“Theory of the Novel.” The study of the novel as a genre, rather than as a subset of narrative, offers a number of advantages to the student of the novel. Unlike narrative theory, theory of the novel does not rule out of bounds discussions of aesthetic value, the writer’s subjectivity, or the act of writing. It views literary creativity as inextricably part of the historical world, rather than isolating its products. Our survey of the field of novel theory will focus on three areas: considerations of voice (point-of-view, narration, perspective, mood), of reference (representations of reality, the relationship of works to world), and of innovation (models of conceptualizing invention in the forms of the modern novel, such as realism/modernism/postmodernism, and others). Theoretical readings may include M. M. Bakhtin’s The Dialogic Imagination, Georg Lukacs’ Theory of the Novel, Walter Benjamin’s “The Storyteller,” Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis, Roland Barthes’ S/Z, Fredric Jameson’s The Poltical Unconscious, Nancy Armstrong’s Desire and Domestic Fiction, Milan Kundera’s The Art of the Novel, and Franco Moretti’s The Way of the World and/or Modern Epic. Novels may include The Golden Ass, Lazarillo de Tormes, Jacques the Fatalist, Emma, Sentimental Education, To the Lighthouse, Things Fall Apart, and Jazz.

English 8090: Masters Thesis Research.  
Section 1

Arranged
Leads to preparation of thesis. Graded on S/U basis only.

English 8095: Problems.  
Section 1

Arranged
Individual work not leading to preparation of dissertation. Departmental approval required.

English 8110: Forms.  Nancy West
Section 1

Arranged
Introduction to Film Research and Pedagogy is designed to expose graduate students to the basics of teaching and writing about film. Students will watch thirteen films through the course of the semester, beginning with short films by Melies, Porter, and Griffith and proceeding right up to the present. In class, we will discuss various critical and pedagogical approaches to each of these films. Although this course is intended primarily as a broad introduction to the field of film studies, it does have a practical purpose as well: namely, to train graduate students to teach our department's lower-level "Introduction to Film" course (English 1810). Students who wish to teach this undergraduate course MUST complete this seminar.

English 8210: Justice and Social Order in Medieval Literature.  Emma Lipton
Section 1

T 12:30-3:00 GCB 113
“Justice and Social Order in Medieval Literature.” The Middle Ages has long been associated with spectacles of corporeal punishment, a version of justice that Foucault’s Discipline and Punishment made the defining element of a pre-modern social order. This course seeks to complicate this understanding by investigating a wide range of discourses of justice in medieval literature. We will explore the role of knights as dictated by chivalric treatises as instigators of justice in society and study the “outlaw” Robin Hood. We will learn about the Divine Right of kings that made monarchs living emblems of higher justice, investigate the role of spectacle in kingly power, and consider the role of the poet in advising the monarch. On the other end of the social spectrum, we will read the literature of social protest associated with the rebellion of 1381, which opposed restrictive labor laws. We’ll look at the relationship between legal and literary practices by considering dramatic versions of the trials of Christ and the Virgin (for adultery) and analyze the relationship between earthly and theological notions of justice in depictions of the Last Judgment. Primary readings will cover a range of literary genres (romance, gest, “mirror for princes,” pageants of royal entry, religious drama, confessional poetry), supplemented by secondary readings drawing on medieval political theory, theology, legal, political and social history and by selections from recent literary criticism and theory (such as Foucault, Austin, Bourdieu). Readings may include selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, “The Gest of Robin Hood,” Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes, “Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede,” “The Trial of Mary and Joseph” from the N-Town Plays, Christ’s trials and “The Last Judgment” from the York Cycle.

English 8310: Studies in 19th-Century American Literature.  Tom Quirk
Section 1

R 3:00-5:30 GCB 309
“Intellectual & Culture Context in American Literature, 1865 – 1950.” This seminar will seek to describe in general, but still definite and, I hope, lively terms, the intellectual ethos of America between 1865 and 1914. One way to think of this era is to recall that it is a post-Darwinian but pre-Freudian period. That statement is a commonplace. Nevertheless, in order to fully comprehend the cultural atmosphere of the time (particularly as it bears upon imaginative creation), the student will have to try to hold in abeyance contemporary frames of reference (the modern or post-modern point of view for example) and to take seriously concerns about questions that no longer seem vital or urgent to us. This is another way of saying that the seminar will not be about ideas but the history of ideas. The central text for the class will be George Herbert Mead's Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century (out of print but available on line). David R. Shi's Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920 will provide us with the historical context for the class. Literary texts will include Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, Willa Cather, O Pioneers, as well a photocopied poems or excerpts from selected writers, including W.E.B. Dubois, E. A. Robinson, Robert Frost, Jack London, Wallace Stevens, William James, C. S. Peirce, Sherwood Anderson, and others. The principal work for the class will be to write a 20-25 seminar paper that both examines some significant portion of the intellectual disposition of the period and traces the effects on a particular writer and a specific text.

English 8400: Seminar in Anglophone Africana Literature.  Christopher N. Okonkwo
Section 1

TR 1:30-2:45 Geology 112
This seminar sets out to test, particularly, Henry Louis Gates’s theorized proposition that the formal praxis of signifyin(g), in which he subsumes the rhetorical antiphony call-and-response, tropological repetition, revision and extension, and other discursive modes such as M.M. Bakhtin’s “dialogism” and Julia Kristeva’s “intertextuality,” characterizes African American literary tradition. In historicizing twentieth-century African American cultural production, scholars generally identify these periods: the Harlem Renaissance, Realism/Naturalism, Modernism, the Black Arts Movement (BAM), and Contemporary voices.

We will interrogate in-depth some of the key conversations, contestations and continuities among these eras and how the exchanges shaped and were shaped by the works that representative practitioners of black letters ultimately produced. We will emphasize three intergenerational discourses: (1) the Wright-Baldwin-Ellison ideological “quarrel” on influence and literary paternalism; (2) the Black Arts Movement’s disputations with Harlem Renaissance’s assimilationism and double consciousness and BAM’s evocations of Richard Wright’s protest tradition; and (3) contemporary black women novelists’ engagement with the 1960s nationalist aesthetic’s prescriptiveness, its postulations of unitary blackness and delimiting constructions of the black female self. In addition to the theories that will ground the discussions, our primary readings will include novels, short fiction, and polemics. Among the various discoveries that we will make ultimately is that while black women writers generally see literary production in terms of sisterly cooperation, acknowledgment and affirmation, some canonical black male writers position themselves rather competitively. They distance and disavow their male literary forebears in what critic Harold Bloom, in another context, calls the “anxiety of influence.”

English 8600: Seminar in the English Language.  Matthew Gordon
Section 1

R 3:00-5:30 Arts & Science 300
“Sociolinguistic Methods”. This course explores theories and methods for analyzing language as it is used in various social contexts. We will examine the process of linguistic research from study design to data collection and analysis. Students will gain experience working with various kinds of linguistic material typically studied in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and folklore. The course will explore broad theoretical issues of how social meaning is constructed linguistically, but it is also designed to provide practical skills for students conducting language-based research. The course will follow a seminar format with the topics and readings determined largely by student interest. Participants will conduct research projects involving the collection and analysis of linguistic data, and, thus, some background in linguistics is expected (but not required). (Same as Anthropology 8487)

English 8700: Seminar in Folklore.  Sw. Anand Prahlad
Section 1

R 3:00-5:30 Tate 109
“Folklore and Fetish.” This course will focus on the fetish as an analytical trope for critiquing the materials and academic discourses of folklore. In particular we will meditate on the fetish as a useful metaphor for scrutinizing the historical development of the field as well as for gaining insights into specific folklore texts. The seminar will begin by surveying the development of the term “fetish,” from its earliest application by explorers in the colonial contact zone, through it uses in psychoanalysis, Marxist, and Cultural theories. We will then focus on specific texts using theories of the fetish as a lens through which to read them in relationship to social issues such as genderism, ageism, classism, and racism. Folklore texts will include the Arabian Nights, The Grimm Brothers’ Kinder und Mausmarchen (Grimm’s Household Tales), Roger Abraham’s Deep Dow In the Jungle, Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men, and Patricia Turner’ I Heard it Through the Grapevine. Additional readings will include Freud’s “Fetishism,” Mary Louis Pratt’s Imperial Eyes, Ann McClintock’s Imperial Leather, Valerie Steel’s Fetish Fashion, Sex and Power, Emily Apter and William Pietz’s Fetishism as Cultural Discourse, and E.L. McCallum’s How to Do Things with the Fetish. Students will be responsible for two assignments. One will be an oral report on a text found through independent research. The second assignment will be to imagine a hypothetical dissertation or thesis, and write one of the chapters using the readings and perspectives from the seminar as the theoretical basis for analysis. (Same as Anthropology 8157 & Religious Studies 8700)

English 8770: Seminar in Oral Tradition.  John Foley
Section 1

MW 1:00-2:15 Lafferre E3505
"Oral Tradition and Information Technology." This seminar will examine the correspondences between humankind's oldest and newest thought-technologies, oral tradition and digital internet media. Among other aspects, we will examine how both word-technologies depend upon navigating pathways, engaging the potential of a network, manipulating highly coded languages, variation within limits, and emergent performance. The first half of the semester will cover a selection of approaches to oral tradition, the goal being to provide everyone with a kit of useful tools rather than settling on any single approach. During this initial period each seminar member will choose an oral tradition (or oral-derived text) that he or she wishes to study further, and will compile a working bibliography as background. During the second half of the semester members will construct an online wiki -- a kind of software that promotes multiple interconnections among topics in a network -- to analyze and represent their chosen oral traditions. We will have three measures of success: (1) an online journal, in the form of a blog, registering reactions to readings on oral tradition, (2) the wiki, which will be "submitted" at the end of the term in lieu of the conventional seminar paper, and (3) regular participation in group discussion throughout the semester. The open-source blog and wiki software will be available free of charge from MU's Center for eResearch (http://e-researchcenter.org), and the Center's IT manager will consult as necessary.

English 9090: Doctoral Dissertation Research.  Martha Townsend
Section 1

Leads to preparation of dissertation. Graded on S/U basis only.

Preparing Future Faculty.  George Justice
Section 1

Arranged
http://gradschool.missouri.edu/pff