Fall 2008 Course Descriptions

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1000-Level Courses

2000-Level Courses

English 2000: Midrashim as Generative Model.  Scott Cairns
Section 2

MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
“Midrashim as Generative Model.”

We will introduce students to the rabbinic tradition of biblical commentary, and will thereafter pay particular attention to the specific tradition of midrashim. Our purposes will be 1) to appreciate the generosity and humility of such an approach to sacred text, and 2) to employ a similar generosity and humility in our own attempts at "writing with scripture," producing midrashic poems in verse and prose. Students will be encouraged to consider how this particular dynamic may serve as a model of literary influence in general.

English 2000: Studies in English.  Joanna Hearne
Section 3

TR 9:30-10:45, Screenings R 3:00-5:30 p.m.
"Introduction to Film Analysis."
Introduction to Film Analysis introduces students to the basics of film aesthetics, including units on mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound, color, narrative, documentary and experimental films, adaptations and film genres. Balancing our focus on technical elements with broader frameworks, we will also consider various critical, theoretical, ideological, and historical approaches to film studies and to the practice of writing about film. (This is a core course for the Film Studies Minor and is cross-listed with Film Studies 2810.)

English 2000: The Brontës.  Karen Laird
Section 5

MWF 10:00-10:50
This course will focus on one of the most famous families in literary history, the Brontës, who lived and wrote during England’s Victorian era. The primary texts we will read are Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), Anne Brontë’s Agnes Gray (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Villette (1853), as well as selections from Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846).
We’ll also read Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857)and Lucasta Miller’s The Brontë Myth (2001) to explore how stories of the sisters’ lives circulated as sensational fiction. Finally, we’ll consider how film adaptations have reinvented the novels by watching Wuthering Heights (director William Wyler,1939) and Jane Eyre (director Susanna White, 2007). Requirements include active class participation, two film screenings, a class presentation, four short response papers, and a final.

English 2000: The Romance of Arthur.  Emma Lipton
Section 4

TR 9:30AM - 10:45AM
The tale of King Arthur and the Round Table is one of the most beloved of Western culture. This course will study the Arthur legends in literature, visual art and film, from its medieval origins to the present. We will use the Arthur myth to investigate such topics as the meanings of chivalry and “courtly love,” the shifting constructions of masculinity and gender, and the relationship of individual and community. We will also think both about the ways our contemporary biases shape our perceptions of Arthurian Literature and how these medieval ideas have shaped modern life. We will read medieval romances of Arthur (Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Malory, Le Morte Darthur; Chretien de Troyes, Lancelot, Eric and Enid), the Arthurian literature and painting of the nineteenth century (Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court), and twentieth-century Arthuriana (including modern films).

English 2009 Tpcs in English St, 1890 to Present: "Pulp Fiction".  Elisa Glick
Section 1

MWF 2:00-2:50 Tate Hall 104
"Pulp Fiction." With their unabashed focus on sex, drugs and violence and their lurid and frankly erotic covers, "pulp" novels of the 1950s explored themes so shocking and controversial that some educators, psychologists and civic leaders considered them to be depraved and dangerous reading. In the optimistic and conformist culture of the postwar era, pulp fiction presented a more cynical vision of America, where "juvenile delinquents" reveled in violence and scandalous pleasure-seekers got their "kicks" in a twilight underworld of drugs, prostitution, booze and perversity. In this course we will investigate how the booming paperback industry of the 1950s created a space in American popular culture where marginalized voices could be heard and "deviant" identities were not only represented but—according to some cultural observers—even promoted. Why did pulp fiction emerge as a powerful symptom of widespread cultural ambivalence about the so-called social problems of the 50s? How did these sensational novels mobilize anxieties around the new domestication of the American man, the return of women to traditional roles after the war, and Cold War society’s focus on the nuclear family? What strategies did pulp writers use to lure readers into a world of unspeakable and tantalizing secrets?? Readings may include Ann Bannon, Beebo Brinker; William Burroughs, Junkie; Patricia Highsmith (as Claire Morgan), The Price of Salt; Jack Kerouac, Tristessa; Vin Packer, Whisper His Sin; Evelyn Piper, Bunny Lake Is Missing; Valerie Taylor, The Girls in 3-B; and Charles Willeford, The Woman Chaser.

English 2030: Professional and Civic Writing in a Digital Context.  Jenny Edbauer Rice
Section

MWF 11-11:50
This course will focus on writing for professional and civic contexts. We will incorporate digital forms of communication, including blogging and peer-to-peer networking.

English 2189:01: Women's Literature, 1890-present.  Trudy Lewis
Section 1

MWF 1:00-2:00
Women’s Work: Pink Under the Collar

What is “women’s work” in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? How does this work serve to define, divide, or unify female subjects and citizens? How do the circumstances of women’s intellectual labor influenceliterary form? And finally, is there still a “pink collar” designation for women’s literary work and if so, does this categorization ghettoize or empower women artists? This semester, we will discuss women’s paid and unpaid labor as represented in creative literary works from America, Japan, England, and Sudan from 1890 to 2007. Texts will include: Minaret by Leila Aboulela, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley, Out by Natsuo Kirino, The Red Letter Plays by Suzan- Lori Parks, and the anthology American Women Poets in the 21st Century (Ed. Claudia Rankine). Students will be responsible for weekly group work, two exams, two written projects, and an oral report.

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

11:00-11:50
"American Pathologies."

This course surveys the influence of ideas in medical, psychological, and other human sciences on the development of American literature from the beginning of the republic through the 1890's.
In order to gain insights into the ways new ideas and discoveries in the sciences informed the literary culture of the era, we will engage in close readings of 19th century literary texts alongside scientific writings which influenced the ways authors depicted and changed the ways their audiences understood individual and social behavior. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Louisa May Alcott, Frank Norris, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, among others, will be among the authors we will be giving attention to over the course of the semester. Class sessions will be organized around discussion of the readings and the presentation of student research leading to the writing of short essays in various formats; mid-term and final exams will also be required.

English 2400: Introduction to Anglophone Africana Literature.  Clenora Hudson-Weems
Section 1

TR 12:30-1:45
"Theorizing Africana Literature," is an undergraduate course designed to introduce students to 20th and 21st Centuries Africana Literature and Theory. The turn of the 20th century in the Africana literary world is marked by the DuBois-Washington controversy that, along with Marcus Garvey (explicated in Tony Martin¹s Literary Garveyism), ushered in the Harlem Renaissance of the 20s. Major Harlem Renaissance poets of that era include James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. Next was the DuBois-Locke Debate of the 30s, followed by such noted poets as Hayden, Randall, M. Walker and Brooks. The Harlem Renaissance/Post Renaissance was a precursor to the cultural and literary debates of the searing 60s, following the inception of the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s, which was ignited by the 1955 Brutal lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Louis Till. The searing 70s, with prominent orators, Malcolm, King and Carmichael (Kwame Ture), continued the Civil Rights, Black Power, Black Arts and Black Aesthetic Movements.

Focus on the latter part of the 20th and early 21st centuries will highlight the Africana literary and theoretical works of several renowned Africana theorists, including Baraka and Neal, prime movers of the Black Arts Movement; Gayle, early chief proponent of Black Aesthetics; and Barksdale, Black Aesthetician. Major Black Arts poets of the 60s and 70s include Madhubuti, Sanchez, Evans and Angelou. The 80s brought forth Asante's African centered concept, Afrocenticity, and Lorde, an Africana poet and
critic on racism and lesbianism issue respectively. During that decade, Africana Womanism also emerged, a family centered, race empowerment construct for all women of African descent, rather than a Eurocentric
female-centered, female empowerment paradigm. Chief Black feminists include Barbara Smith and bell hooks; Africana womanists include Clenora Hudson-Weems, Delores Aldridge, Betty Taylor Thompson and Adele S. Newson-Horst. Literary works augmenting the authentic theoretical constructs include also two novels--Toni Morrison¹s Beloved and Gloria Naylor¹s Mama
Day.

While the main objective of the course is to introduce students to Africana literature and Africana theoretical constructs as an authentic way of interpreting those texts, I will also be addressing a critical issue both inside and outside the Academy, confronting all races, etc.--Plagiarism. To that end, students will be required to do a short research paper (approximately five to six typed pages), possibly addressing this crime, as they explore literary and/or theoretical Africana issues.

English 2490: Introduction to Native Studies.  Maureen Konkle
Section 1

TR 11:00-12:15
This course is an introduction to the field of Native Studies. It surveys the diversity of indigenous peoples and cultures in the U.S. in light of their ongoing struggles against colonialism. Topics will include cultural change and continuity, the social and political legacies of U.S. imperialism; treaty rights and sovereignty; and global indigenous relationships. This is an interdisciplinary humanities course suitable for non-majors as well as majors; readings will be drawn from history, philosophy, political science, sociology, law, and literary studies. This course can be used to fulfill the requirements for the College of Arts and Sciences Multicultural Certificate [http://multicultural.missouri.edu/].

English 2510:03 Creative Writing: Intermediate Fiction.  Trudy Lewis
Section 1

M 2:00-4:30 Arts & Science 232
Students will learn the basic short story form through encounters with folktales, classic modernist texts, contemporary literary fiction and science fiction. By the end of the semester, you should be able to read and create in the language of narrative. Through a combination of discussion, collaboration, invention, and composition, we will demystify the creative process and reconnect it to the basic human functions of storytelling. The group experience is particularly important in this course, as we attempt to balance individually with co-creation and a sense of our common plot. Texts will include: Blood Child and Other Stories by Octavia Butler, Collected Stories by John Cheever, Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich, The Summer After the Summer of Love by Marly Swick, The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter and Pastoralia by George Saunders.

3000-Level Courses

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

TR 11:00-12:15
“The Rise and Triumph of the Novel.” The novel has become the predominant literary form for several reasons. Among these are its faithfulness to classic principles and its ability to sustain those principles in a vast variety of ways. It is, simultaneously, both predictable and malleable. We will discuss the origins of the novel in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and examine multiple examples (from the eighteenth century to the present) of the ways in which it can adhere to principle in fresh and varied ways. Approximately ten novels will be read.

English 3200: Survey of British Literature, Beginning to 1784.  David Read
Section 2

MWF 11:00-11:50
This course is a chronological introduction to the important movements in British literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to the end of the eighteenth century. Because we have such a limited time to cover such a broad period, we will not be studying drama in this course, but will concentrate on poetry and short- to medium-length prose texts. We will try to combine close readings of the works on the syllabus with attention to historical and cultural developments during a millenium of literary activity in England.

English 3210.  Nancy West
Section 1

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 we wish you to somehow leave aside your own interests, background, and knowledge; what we 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. John Keats may have lived a reclusive life during his long illness, but he wrote poetry erotic enough to make even Danielle Steele blush.

The only definition of survey that will NOT inform this course is "commanding position," which suggests authority and thus implies that by semester¹s end, you will have commanded a mastery over these authors and works. Instead, we 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.

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

1:00-1:50
This survey of American writing, beginning with the accounts of early European explorers and concluding with the American Civil War, will seek to foster a deeper understanding of the early cultural history of the U.S. by engaging in an extended study of selected authors, as well as coverage of particular themes in which the perspectives of multiple authors will be compared. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volumes A-B, will be the required text for the course. Thematic emphases over the course of the semester will include the conduct of war, the ethical dilemmas of the marketplace, and the problem of race that lay at the heart of the formation of early American culture. Weekly response papers and three in-class examinations will be required .

English 3310: Survey of American Literature, 1865-Present.  Frances Dickey
Section 1

MWF 10:00-10:50
This course covers major authors and issues in American literature from the end of the Civil War to the present time. Emphasis is on the period up to 1945, with equal attention paid to fiction and poetry. Syllabus begins with poems by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson; we will then cover Realist writers Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, Henry James, and Edith Wharton, along with Naturalists Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser; African-American writers from the Harlem Renaissance (Cullen, Toomer, Hughes, blues artists); modernists including Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and Gertrude Stein; Southern writers (Faulkner, O’Connor, Welty); contemporary poets (Ginsberg, Lowell, Bishop), and some postmodernists. The course will emphasize class discussion and weekly writing assignments; work also includes four short tests, one paper and a final exam. Note: this is a 60-student section.

English 3400: Survey of African American Literature, Beginning to 1900 - WRITING INTENSIVE.  April Langley
Section 1

TR 8:00-9:15
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, one group presentation, and one final essay. (Writing Intensive) (Same as Black Studies 3400, 1)

English 3410: African American Literature, 1900-Present.  Christopher N. Okonkwo
Section 1

TR 11:00 - 12:15
African American literature offers a fascinating body of works, unique in their history, diverse in their concerns, and engaging in their sometimes "call-and-response" conversation. Since the literature’s inception centuries ago, African American writers and artists have through their works—folk/oral tradition, poetry, autobiographies, pamphlets, fiction, drama, non-fiction prose, speeches, paintings, songs and other cultural productions—contemplated the various issues integral to the complex experience of people of African descent in the United States. This course surveys important twentieth-century historical moments, writers, and works, as well as some of the intellectual debates and theories that have helped define the African American literary tradition. We will examine the tradition mainly from a historical, theoretical and critical standpoint and also supplement our readings and discussions with photographs, documentaries and audio recordings of significant, African American historical and literary figures and sociopolitical events.

English 3429: Periods and Genres in Anglophone African Literature 1890-Present.  Sheri-Marie Harrison
Section 1

MWF 12:00-12:50
"Consuming the Caribbean."
This course introduces students to tropes of consumption in the Caribbean region through examining narratives of national identity and popular culture. We will examine texts from a variety of other disciplines including literature, cultural studies, political science, international relations, gender and development studies, creative arts and music. They will include Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Laurie Gunst’s Born Fi Dead, Oonya Kempadoo's Tide Running, Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, Michael Thelwell’s The Harder they Come, Trevor Rhone’s “Smile Orange,” selections from Mimi Sheller’s Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies, and Krista Thomas’ An Eye for the Tropics: Tourism, Photography, and Framing the Caribbean Picturesque, in addition to the films Smile Orange, The Harder they Come and Life and Debt. Questions we will consider include: How has the region been marketed in the past, and how is it marketed in our contemporary context? How has colonial exploitation of the Caribbean affected contemporary forms of consumption of the region and its products? In what ways does the region package itself for consumption? What can patterns of consuming the Caribbean region teach us about the contemporary social, political, and economic changes taking place globally? (Also listed as Black Studies 3429)

English 3700: American Folklore: Food and Culture in Film.  LuAnne Roth
Section 1

MW 3:30-4:45; T E6:30-9:00
“Food and Culture in Film.” This course focuses on an aspect of folklore called “foodways”—the traditional practices, customs, symbolism, and meanings involving food. So deceivingly mundane, food (and eating) is actually imbued with a great deal of significance beyond physical survival, for “encoded in appetite, taste, ritual and ingestive etiquettes are unwritten rules and meanings through which people communicate and are categorized within particular cultural contexts” (Sceats 2000:1). “You are what you eat,” therefore, is more than a light-hearted proverb. Food is used to define self-identity, as well as familial and communal identity. Employing film to reflect on such lofty matters, this class examines the social, psychological, and sensory dimensions of food and the aesthetic experience of eating (both positive and negative) as depicted cinematically. Each week we will screen one feature-length film that illustrates the concepts being studied (and watch recommended films). In class, scenes from other movies will enable us to analyze the concepts more broadly. The course provides practical information and skills necessary to view films more critically and analytically, develop ideas and interpretations, and write thoughtfully about them. Required readings include: Food, Film and Culture: A Genre Study (Keller 2006), Reel Food: Essays on Food and Film (Bower 2004), Food in the USA (Counihan 2002), and a course packet. [This course is cross listed as Anthropology 3150 and Film Studies 3005]

4000- / 7000-Level Courses

English 4040/7040: Mindful Writing.  Donna Strickland
Section 1

MWF 2:00-2:50
As important as writing is to most of us who study English or any academic discipline, it is also often one of the hardest things we do. If you're like me, you may find that you procrastinate when given a writing assignment, and you may find it hard to complete longer writing projects (like research-based papers, theses, and dissertations). This course is intended to address these difficulties by working with issues of motivation and control of writing. We'll work with "mindfulness" practices, including non-sectarian meditation and breathing awareness, in order to help facilitate greater focus. All students will also need to be able to commit to writing for at least 15 minutes every day and reporting on their writing process. In short, this course is meant to address the whole process of writing rather than the final product.

English 4045/7045: Rhetorical Studies (The Rhetoric of Scientific Texts).  Martha D. Patton
Section 1

TR 11:00-12:15
“Code of Codes: The Rhetoric of Scientific Texts” is one of many courses that might be proposed under the umbrella of English 4045 / 7045 (Rhetorical Studies). In Code of Codes, students will read a sampling of rhetorical theory as well as arguments by Lucretius, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, James Watson and Francis Crick, Rachel Carson and others in order to trace the evolution of scientific arguments; to explore ways in which language mediates data collection, interpretation, and communication; to explore issues at stake when translating technical arguments for popular audiences; and to explore the design of particular arguments in socio-historic context. Writing Intensive (WI) pending approval

English 4106/7106: Medieval Romance.  Emma Lipton
Section 1

TR 12:30-1:45
For medieval readers, the term “romance” referred both to tales of love, and to historical accounts. In this class we will address the relationship between the genre of romance and chivalric ideology, between “courtly love” and aristocratic identity, and consider how “courtly love” shapes gender roles. We’ll study the appropriation of romance by middle class interests in the later Middle Ages, and consider the ways that medieval romances fashioned British national identity and contemporary ideas about law and justice. We’ll study romances of the crusades that depict the East and are part of the history of imperialism. The course will show how the East helped to develop and construct a sense of “Englishness” or nationhood, and how the constructions of Muslims as pagans and idolators helped to define medieval Christianity.

English 4109/7109: Genres: Experimental Fiction.  Samuel Cohen
Section 1

TR 2:00-3:15
In this course, we will read a number of examples of experimental or nontraditional works of fiction—novels and stories that play off of what we think of as traditional notions about the elements of fiction and its representational aims—and think about the issues such work raises concerning how fiction has been written and read and concerning how literary innovation has been described and accounted for. We will split our time between close reading of these works and engaging with theoretical statements concerning literary experimentation. Readings will include work by a few but not all or even most of the following: Auster, Acker, Barnes, Barth, Barthelme, Beckett, Borges, Coover, DeLillo, Didion, Faulkner, Gaddis, Hawkes, Hemingway, Joyce, Kafka, Marcus, Pynchon, Reed, Robbe-Grillet, Sebald, Stein, Vonnegut, Wallace, Ware.

English 4140/7140: Modern Literature.  Timothy Materer
Section 1

TR 2:00-3:15
A survey of literature in England, America and Ireland from 1890 to 1940, including such authors as Robert Frost, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, and Samuel Beckett. The course will survey the critical theories that seem to offer the most promising approaches to the interpretation of modern and post-modern literature. An emphasis will be put on developments in the visual arts that parallel those in literature. Requirements include frequent quizzes, midterm, an oral report, and final paper.

English 4166/7166: Major Authors, Beginning to 1603.  William Kerwin
Section 1

TR 8:00=9:15 Center 1210
“Shakespeare: “Comedies & Histories.” In this course we will read Shakespeare plays from two genres. Histories plays are much more about the public realm, and comedies about the private, but one of our projects will be looking at connections between those two parts of life, then and now. Some previous experience with Shakespeare’s writing or other writing from the Renaissance will definitely help, but even more important is a willingness to explore in the culture and language of a very distant time period. Attention to the history of the period, and how it appears in the plays, will be a significant part of our work.

Shakespeare’s history plays are all about power—who gets to rule, what makes for a successful ruler or soldier, who gets to be part of the sharing of power. But while the plays are set in periods long before we lived, and in fact long before Shakespeare lived, they raise issues of politics and culture that still speak to us today. We will read four plays: Henry VI part 3, Richard III, Henry IV part 1, and Henry V. We will especially consider questions of social order, character, violence, war and gender.

A much more familiar genre, comedy had a long tradition before Shakespeare both in Renaissance England and in the classical world. Shakespeare’s contributions to the tradition of comedy involve certain patterns and obsessions, as well as a tremendous poetic speaking style. Again we will read four plays: A Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, and Twelfth Night. All four of these plays have elements that have been called “festive” as well as others that have been described as “dark,” and we will consider that mixture, paying especial attention to 1) issues of identity and the pressures on it; and 2) the range of conflicts involved in romantic and sexual relations.

Required text: The Norton Shakespeare

English 4189.  Karen Piper
Section

If Known
“Women and War.” This class will examine women’s role in modern warfare, particularly during and after World War II. We will look at the way in which women’s experiences of war have ranged from being specifically targeted or victimized by war to feeling liberated by changing gender roles during war. We will also discuss the impact on their relationships, including dealing with returning war veterans who have PTSD. The connections between “nationalism,” “patriotism,” and masculinity will also be called into question. Finally, we will draw conclusions about the place of women in contemporary warfare in Iraq. We will we be reading contemporary fiction about wars around the world, including Africa, India, Europe, Japan, Iraq, Bosnia, and Palestine. The novels we will read are Marge Piercy’s Gone to Soldiers, Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India, Tsitsi Dangarembga’s The Book of Not, Ibtisam Barakat’s Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood, Slavenka Drakulic’s S.: A Novel about the Balkans, and Alivia C. Tagliaferri’s Still the Monkey. Finally, there will be one male novelist included in the course, Kazuo Ishiguro, who writes about women’s experiences in post-World War II Nagasaki in A Pale View of the Hills.

English 4250 - 19th-Century English Literature.  Nancy West
Section 1

MWF 1:00-1:50
This course will focus on six novels—Emma, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, The Way We Live Now, and The Forsythe Saga--and their recent adaptations by Masterpiece Theatre. In addition to studying these novels and their cultural and literary contexts closely, we will explore the development—and recent refashioning-- of what has been PBS’s most popular and long-standing television show.

Much of this course will explore recent theories of film adaptation, focusing on the central question of how to talk about a film adaptation of a novel. The most common approach to this question has always been to measure the success of the movie by how closely it comes to capturing the “essence” of the original text. Typically, viewers grumble when a director changes the ending, adds a plot twist, cuts a character. But such complaints are hardly fair, for they are based on the problematic assumption that cinema, while a different medium altogether, must nevertheless do just what a novel does. In recent years, film scholars like Robert Stam and Brian McFarlane have developed new means of approaching film adaptation, encouraging audiences to think about literature and film as “two different mediums each trying to tell a story in their own way.” We’ll examine such scholarship as we read the novels and watch how Masterpiece Theatre narrates these “stories” in its own, increasingly experimental, ways.

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

TR 9:30-10:45
English 4310 19th Century American Literature TR 9:30-10-45

“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. 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! , Frank Norris’s McTeague 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 4320/7320: 20th Century American Literature: Gilded Ages.  Andrew Hoberek
Section 1

MWF 1:00-1:50
Taken from the title of an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, the phrase “The Gilded Age” quickly passed into popular parlance as the name of the period following the Civil War: a time when immense fortunes co-existed with growing poverty and unrest; when superficial appearances of peace and prosperity belied complicated social problems. As the economist Paul Krugman and others have argued, income disparities in the United States are currently at their highest levels since the end of the 1920s, when the arrival of the Great Depression produced a consensus in favor of the more equitable distribution of wealth. As a result, some commentators have suggested that we are living in a new Gilded Age. In this class we will explore this premise by comparing and contrasting the fiction of the period 1870 through 1930—which was a primary genre for addressing the promises and problems of Gilded Age society—with contemporary fiction that deals with some of the same issues. Our primary focus will be on the relationship between fiction and social representation, and we will ask such questions as: How do extremes of wealth and poverty affect the work of novelists? How do authors go about finding a common unity within—or even representing—a radically divided society? To what extent is realism inadequate to this task, producing a need for other, non-realistic methods? In addition to Twain and Warner’s novel we will also read works by Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and contemporary authors such as Han Ong and Gary Shteyngart.

As part of this class, students will participate in a website along with students taking the same course at SUNY Albany.

English 4407/7407: Topics or Genres in Anglophone Africana Literature, 1603-1789.  April Langley
Section 1

TR 12:30-1:45
“The Dilemma of Self and Identity in 18th-Century African American Literature.”
This course offers an examination of eighteenth-century African-American identity in various forms of self-writing-conversion, captivity, and slave narrative-as well as poetry, political, elegiac, and epistolary modes of writing, to highlight the dilemma of eighteenth-century Black identity. Specifically, we will analyze; a) early African-American writers' subversion of dominant cultural and literary forms and design; b) the creation of cultural forms of self-writing which are more relevant to early African-American writers' particular experiences as revealed in culture, language, representation, and meaning; and c) significant challenges that early black writers faced in their attempt to inscribe their multiple selves onto the Master Narratives of the New World. We will accomplish this objective through secondary readings in contemporary literary criticism, writing, discussions, and oral presentations. Among authors read are Briton Hammon, John Marrant, and Olaudah Equiano. Among films to be seen are: "Middle Passage" and "Unchained Memories: Readings from Slave Narratives," and "Black Is, Black Ain't." Requirements include class discussion, three short informal essays, one oral presentation, and one final essay.

English 4409/7409: Topics or Genres in Anglophone Africana Literature, 1890-present.  Sheri-Marie Harrison
Section 1

MWF 3:00-3:50
"Caribbean Literature."
This course is a comparative study of Caribbean texts--autobiography, fiction, and poetry by men and women from different parts of the Caribbean. Though the emphasis will be on literature written in English, we will also read works that have been translated to English from Spanish and French. The aim of this course is to introduce you to the range and scope of Caribbean literature and to provide you with Pan Caribbean contexts for reading this literature. We will examine the work of Kamau Brathwaite, Maryse Conde, Edwidge Danticat, Lorna Goodison, Earl Lovelace, V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys, and Derek Walcott among others. Questions we will consider include: How does writing provide an alternative perspective on matters such as history, culture, race, and national identity in the Caribbean? How are specific historical moments of colonialism, emancipation, decolonization, and globalization marked in Caribbean literature? How have Caribbean writers constructed individual, national and, regional identities within and against institutional and discursive systems of oppression and marginalization? (Also listed as Black Studies 4409/7409)

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

TR 11:00-12:15
"Africana Womanism," is an undergraduate course specifically designed to broaden one's scope in the area of issues, recurring themes and/or trends in modern Africana women fiction. An in depth study of the lives and selected works by five (5) leading Africana women writers, Zora Neale Hurston, Mariama Bâ, Toni Morrison, Terry McMillan, and Sister Souljah will be enhanced by critical readings of scholarly articles by and about the various authors. Thus, students will be introduced to an authentic theoretical concept and methodology, Africana Womanism, and will be applying Africana Womanist theory to these Africana womanist novels.

Meshed together, the primary and secondary reading materials will aid students in refining their own individual concepts about not only the writings of the individual authors, but about critical current issues, particularly as they relate to Africana women and their families and
communities. The ultimate objective of the course is to enhance one's knowledge and appreciation of Africana women in particular and Africana life and culture in general. A final research paper is required using Africana Womanism as a viable tool of analysis.

English 4490/7490: Native Studies.  Maureen Konkle
Section 1

TR 2:00-3:15
Contemporary Native American Fiction. This course examines several novels by Native authors published since 2000 in light of tribal histories, the history of Native writing in North America, and current Native critical discourse on aesthetics and politics. We’ll read authors connected by tribe and geographic region, including Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene) and James Welch (Blackfeet/Gros Ventre) (eastern Washington and western Montana); Thomas King (Cherokee), Robert Conley (Cherokee), and LeAnne Howe (Choctaw) (Indian Territory/Oklahoma), and David Treuer (Leech Lake Ojibwe) and Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) (Minnesota and North Dakota). The kinds of novels range from “postmodern” [Alexie, Flight (2007) and Treuer, Translation of Dr. Appelles (2006)] to (broadly speaking) realistic [Welch, Heartsong of Charging Elk (2003); Howe, Shell Shaker (2001); and Erdrich, Four Souls (2005)] to popular [Conley, Cherokee Dragon (2001) and King (writing as Hartley Goodweather), DreadfulWater Shows Up (2002)]. Also included will be readings in current Native criticism and commentary on writing by King, Treuer, Erdrich, and others.

Some questions we‘ll discuss:

What’s the relation of a writer’s tribal history and that tribe’s traditional knowledge to his or her fiction? To be a Native writer, do you have to write about your tribe?
What’s the relation of fiction writing to Native communities and their current political struggles?
What is “Native American literature” really? Should Native people strive to write in their tribal languages? Isn’t English just the language of colonizers?
How can (and why would) you fictionalize a history that is often profoundly traumatizing?
Is only “literary” fiction art? Can a western or a mystery be profound?
What’s literary criticism, academic or otherwise, good for? If hardly anybody reads it, why bother?
Considering all the other things you could be doing, why write or read novels in the first place? What are they good for?

This course is applicable toward the unit 2/area D (literature from 1890 to the present) requirement for English majors and can be used to fulfill the requirements for the College of Arts and Science multicultural certificate.

English 4510/7510: Advanced Fiction Writing.  Marly Swick
Section 1

M 2:00-4:30
This is an advanced workshop. We will read and discuss a novel or two and stories from an anthology as yet to be determined. The focus of the workshop will be on students' writing--a few short exercises, 2 complete short stories and a substantial revision. Since this is an advanced workshop, the standards will be higher in terms of the quality of the work you write than in a lower level course. The focus of this workshop is on literary fiction.

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

R 2:00-4:30
“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.  Speer Morgan
Section 2

W 3:00-5:30
An intensive writing workshop in which student stories and related literary texts receive close reading and analysis. Prerequisite: English 2510 or equivalent.

English 4520/7520: Creative Writing: Advanced Nonfiction Prose.  Maureen Stanton
Section 1

M 3:00 - 5:30 p.m.
This is an advanced creative writing workshop in nonfiction (personal essay, memoir, literary journalism, etc.) for upper level undergraduates and graduate students. Students enrolling in this class should have taken at least one lower level creative writing workshop, preferably in creative nonfiction, though fiction, poetry, drama, or journalism workshop/writing experience is acceptable. Students will read and discuss samples of creative nonfiction by established writers, review the history and tradition of subforms of creative nonfiction, practice craft through short exercises and assignments, and produce two or three essays for workshop response (depending on number of students), write constructive and considered critiques of peer work, and actively participate in workshop discussions. The goals are to study varieties of creative nonfiction forms, and to hone creative writing skills in this genre.

English 4530/7530: Advance Poetry: The Poetics of Breath.  Sw. Anand Prahlad
Section 1

Tu 8:00-10:30
This workshop is concerned with the relationships between poetry writing, criticism, reading, listening, and breath. One can view the poem as a living organism, with a heart, mind, and soul; an organism whose fragile existence, like our own, is regulated and held together by the sometimes imperceptible coming and going of breaths, by the silent gaps between them. One can further assert that the activity of creating poetry is, as much as anything, a dance, a torture, an endless night of holding on to the angel of breath who is determined to get free and return to heaven. Finally, one can say that criticism is like the hunting of butterflies, an art that begins commonly with bursts of rapid exhalations, peaks with an extended sigh of frustration, and eventually comes to some sense of rest, trust, patience, and relaxed breathing. This workshop will explore the arts of poetry through a meditation on breath. We will use breath, for example, as a means by which to focus on meter, syntax, imagery, and mood in poetry writing and criticism. We will consider a number of different forms and styles, including jazz poetry, the couplet, the villanelle, prose poems, and will read a variety of poets from different historical periods.

English 4600/7600: Structure of American English.  Matthew Gordon
Section 1

TR 9:30-10:45
This course examines various aspects of the English language from the sound system to the grammatical structure in order to better understand how English works. While our focus is on English, this course is also about language in general and the ways in which language is studied in the field of linguistics. You will gain not only knowledge about the English language but also an appreciation of the approach linguists take in analyzing their subject matter. The overarching goal is to promote greater linguistic awareness and to provide students with the tools needed to think about language from new perspectives. Course requirements include two exams and daily homework and quizzes. Also useful will be critical thinking skills and a willingness to recognize the relative insignificance of commas.

English 4610/7610: History of the English Language.  Matthew Gordon
Section 1

TR 11-12:15
This course examines the history of English from the prehistoric roots that bind it to other languages of Europe and Asia, through the period of its earliest attestation, and into the modern era. We will see that English has undergone dramatic alterations throughout its life, and we will look at changes in sounds, grammar, meaning, and vocabulary. To understand these changes and why they occur, we will look for explanations in both the structure of the language and in the social history of its speakers. We will approach the subject from the perspective of modern linguistics and will, therefore, also develop familiarity with the theory and analytical methods of this field. (Same as Linguistics 4610/7610)

English 4640/7640: Syntax.  Vicki Carstens
Section 1

MWF 1:00-1:50
The course provides an in-depth study of the universal properties of phrase- and sentence-level grammar, based on comparison of English and other languages. Prerequisite: English/Ling 4600 or another comparable linguistics course. The approach will be that of Noam Chomsky's Minimalist program. Required text: Adger, David. 2003. Core Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

English 4780/7780: Women’s Folklore & Feminist Theory.  Elaine Lawless
Section 1

FALL 2008 TR 12:30-1:45
This course examines a wide range of women's oral, traditional, and material "arts," from a feminist perspective. Students will read scholarly articles and books devoted to the study of women's folklore and culture; students will also do class presentations on the theories that help us address and define women's culture, both historically and in the contemporary moment. Students will write a series of short papers and one end of semester long paper. [Cross-listed with Women’s and Gender Studies] Open to both UG (Jr./Sr) and Grad students]

English 4950/7950: Internship in Publishing.  Speer Morgan
Section 2

T 2:30-5:00 357 McReynolds
The internship at The Missouri Review is open by consent only to undergraduate and graduate students from all disciplines and is especially recommended for students in English who anticipate careers in creative writing or publishing. Interns should have a solid background in literature, be strong readers and self-motivated students. Interns at TMR attend weekly staff meetings, assist in screening manuscript submissions and work on a variety of projects in areas such as marketing, manuscript editing, research and website maintenance. There is also a classroom component, with brief reading and writing assignments. Summer interns must be available to work in the TMR office three hours a week, in addition to Tuesday class meetings (2:30-4:30 p.m.)

English 4970: Capstone.  Karen Piper
Section 1

TBA
Capstone: Modernist Geographies: Chaos and the Grid


This course will look at the spatial formations of modernism as evidenced in literature, architecture, and city planning. Specifically, we will be read books dealing with the urbanization and industrialization in Europe, America, and Canada. We will discuss the impact of industrialization, the expanding metropolis, and globalization on modern notions of identity. We will also contrast the increasing fragmentation of social life to a corresponding increase in planning, order, formalism, and corporate/government controls. Finally, we will look at the impact of this new order on race, class, and gender. The primary texts we will focus on are Franz Kafka’s The Trial, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Oil! by Upton Sinclair, George Orwell’s 1984, J. G. Ballard’s High Rise, Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion, and Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo. We will also be reading theoretical works by Marshall Berman, Frederic Jameson, and David Harvey, and view the films, “The Fountainhead,” “Metropolis,” and “Brazil.”

English 4970: The Capstone Experience.  John Evelev
Section 2

TR 8-9:15
9/11 in Literature and Culture

Without question, the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 has been the most significant event in contemporary American life. It has had consequences in almost every element of American life, not the least of which includes the arts, especially literature. Initially, there were some cultural observers who felt that 9/11 was unrepresentable, a traumatic experience that would be trivialized by any depiction other than the documentary. But what began as a trickle of fiction, poetry, film and art has become a flood in recent years. This course will focus on a range of works that take up 9/11 not as a documentary subject, but as a symbolic event through which not only to try to understand the meaning of terrorism, violence, culture clash and/or geopolitical conflicts but also the nature of subjectivity, national identity, and the possibility of meaning at all in postmodern culture. As a result of this perspective, some of the texts will deal with 9/11 obliquely or as a subtheme. Although we will focus primarily on fiction, we will also examine non-fiction, theoretical intertexts, poetry and film.

Possible authors may include: Don DeLillo, William Gibson, Art Spiegelman, Jonathan Safran Foer, Michael Cunningham, Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison, Ian McEwan, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Ken Kalfus, Jess Walter, Slavoj Zizek and others yet to be discovered.

Required Work: This is a capstone course and thus Writing Intensive. Students will be encouraged to do research by writing 3 research prospectuses (including annotated bibliography and proposal) in the first 2/3rds of the term and spending the final portion of class following up on one for an extended independent research project. Given the topic matter, much of the scholarship will be very recent and students will have do a fair bit of outside and/or extra reading to develop their topics.

English 4970: The Capstone Experience.  Tom Quirk
Section 3

TBA
English Capstone Course—Willa Cather
Tom Quirk Tate 232
882-0662 QuirkT@missouri.edu

The guidelines for capstone course in the English department reads, in part, as follows:
“Faculty members are encouraged to emphasize student designed research in the writing project. This research might have the students working with a text not extensively discussed in class, but chosen by mutual agreement between the teacher and the students. Or this student-designed research might include collaborative projects or fieldwork. Whatever the method, the goal is to shift the intellectual initiative to the students, who should have an opportunity to apply insights and techniques drawn from all their undergraduate coursework.”

To conform to that description I have prepared a syllabus that emphasizes research in the sources for, influences upon, and contexts of certain Cather texts. Willa Cather is suited to this approach because she was well traveled and well read and was inclined to draw upon her experiences and her readings in her fictions. The sort of research initiatives I am encouraging may have to do with a variety of subjects (art, geography, politics, anthropology, etc.) but will not have to do with literary criticism, though your own papers may become works of criticism.

The principal assignment is a twenty page paper, but I have also asked for some shorter writings that, I hope, will both encourage and prepare for the longer essay.

English 4996: Honors Seminar in English.  Alexandra Socarides
Section 1

TR 9:30-10:45
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, doing historical and interdisciplinary research, and applying theory appropriately in interpretive writing); 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 research paper.

Our reading in this course will focus on the issue of literary transformations, re-envisionings, and echoings. We will read three instances of this problematic: Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours; a selection of Romantic poetry and Arcadia; and Jane Eyre and Wide Sargaso Sea. In each case, a contemporary writer turns to an earlier text and attempts to make it new. By reading a wide array of literary criticism, will ask how this kind of project is undertaken and what it reveals about the process of making literature.

8000-Level Courses

English 8001: Topics: Job Placement Workshop.  Samuel Cohen
Section 1

TR 9:30-10:45
This course is designed for graduate students going on the job market this year or next. While we will focus mainly on the academic job market, students interested in pursuing nonacademic jobs will find much of use to them too. We will cover all aspects of the job search, from the art of the dissertation abstract to the campus interview, including: the crafting of arcane documents such as the job letter, the statement of teaching philosophy, and the follow-up email; the reading of the Job Information List; the managing of work and time during job season; the managing of relationships with recommenders, loved ones, and pets during same; the conduct of MLA interviews; and much more. We will workshop documents, read about and discuss philosophies of the job search, and set up mock interviews and job talks.

English 8010: Theory and Practice of Composition.  Jeff Rice
Section 1

TR 11:00-12:15
8010 prepares students in the theories and practices of writing instruction. In this course, we will examine some of the major theories produced by composition studies in order to develop our own methods for teaching writing. Our purpose will be to place these theories in conversation with one another so that we may:

• Understand the different methods and ideas which circulate in composition studies.
• Understand how conflicting theoretical positions can produce pedagogical practice.
• Construct our own pedagogies for the classroom.

Our model will be inquiry, not expertise; invention, not instrumentality. In other words, we will use the course as means towards questioning as well as discovering theories which can inform our future teaching – whether in composition or in literature. The goal is not that you master any one position regarding writing instruction, but that you acquire a number of tools you can apply to any given assignment in your future as teachers. Thus, the “how-to” aspect of this course is not as much instrumental (steps to take) but theoretical (why take those steps/what is it meant to transfer ideas to practice).

English 8040: Rhetorics and Poetics.  Jenny Edbauer Rice
Section 1

Monday 2:00PM - 4:30PM
Style and substance. Form and content. Stuff and fluff.

This is how the divisions between rhetorics and poetics has long been imagined, beginning with Plato's complaints against the sophists. Yet the division between style and substance is never as clear as Plato might have imagined. Some might argue that style and substance have a necessarily dependent relationship upon one another. Others might even go further to argue that the two are essentially collapsed: style is substance.

The relationship between rhetorics and poetics is no idle question. Culturally, we are experiencing an explosion of new poetic forms through multimedia communication, as well as an increasingly "sense based" approach to advertisement and consumption. Buying a cup of coffee is now an aesthetic experience, complete with carefully designed sounds, sights, and language. Similarly, the candidacy of Barack Obama has renewed public discussions of the power (and the fears) of poetic language, stylistics, and aesthetic delivery.

This course will examine the historical relationship between rhetoric and poetic, as well as current theories of where the divisions between rhetorics and poetics (should) lie. Conversational threads of this course include the following questions:

- What is the affective nature of language?
- How is epideictic rhetoric (praise and blame) used in public discourse?
- Are the senses—especially visuality and aurality—becoming more important in everyday life?
- What is the power of poetics? What would a poetics of power look like?
- Does the body serve as a bridge between rhetoric and poetic?
- How is cultural memory created through material means?

Assignments include weekly responses, one conference proposal/abstract, and one conference-length paper.


Readings include:

Phaedrus, Plato

Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity, Jeffrey Walker

A Ciceronian Sunburn: A Tudor Dialogue on Humanistic Rhetoric And Civic Poetics, E. Armstrong

Impersonal Passions: Language as Affect, Denise Riley

The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed

Rhetoric of Machine Aesthetics, Barry Brummett

How Societies Remember, Paul Connerton

A Space on the Side of the Road, Kathleen Stewart

English 8060: History of Poetics.  Alexandra Socarides
Section 1

R 3:00-5:30
While most courses on the history of poetics might begin with Aristotle, this course will begin with Kant and will make its way, often circuitously, to the contemporary poetics of Susan Stewart, Angus Fletcher, and Virginia Jackson. To begin with Kant is to place emphasis on the poetic theory that developed during Romanticism and that still largely informs the way we read, teach, and write about poetry today. Emphasizing this Romantic strain in nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetic theory will allow us to explore how the still-dominant schools of poetic theory—formalism and new criticism in particular—came to define themselves and their goals. After an initial unit on “Foundations in Romanticism,” this course will take up extended readings and discussion in three units: “Defining the Lyric,” “Form: What is it? Where is it?” and “Poetics in the 21st Century.” For the most part, texts will work across historical periods and continents, providing students with various, and often competing, ways into these topics. Such possible discussion issues might include: poetry and the social sphere; the definition of lyric voice; the uses and functions of poetry; time and the lyric; theories of prosody; the relationship of poetic and anti-poetic discourses; poets on poetry; poetry and history; the role of the poet; and the poem/reader dialectic. A prior knowledge of poetics is not required. This course is meant to be helpful to both readers and writers of poetry, not only because it will make visible where poetry’s themes, forms, structures, and attitudes come from, but because of the fissures in this history that will present themselves under the pressure of our analysis.

Tentative Reading List:

Immanuel Kant, “Analytic of the Beautiful” (1790)
William Wordsworth, “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads (1802)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, selections from Biographia Literaria (1817)
John Keats, selections from Letters (1814-1820)
Percey Byshee Shelley, A Defense of Poesy (1821; publ. 1840)
John Stuart Mill, “What is Poetry?” (1833) and “The Two Kinds of Poetry” (1833)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Poet” (1844)
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846) and "The Poetic Principle" (1850)
Walt Whitman, “Preface” to Leaves of Grass (1855)
T. S. Eliot, “The Music of Poetry” (1942) and “The Three Voices of Poetry” (1953)
Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (1947)
Victor Erlich, Russian Formalism: History – Doctrine (1955)
Theodor W. Adorno, “On Lyric Poetry and Society” (1957)
Northrop Frye, selections from The Anatomy of Criticism (1957)
Paul de Man, “The Rhetoric of Temporality” (1969), “The Dead-End of Formalist Criticism” (1969), and "Lyric and Modernity" (1983)
Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (1973)
Jonathan Culler, "Poetics of the Lyric" (1975)
Andrew Welsh, Roots of Lyric: Primitive Poetry and Modern Poetics (1978)
Sharon Cameron, Lyric Time (1979)
John Hollander, Melodious Guile: Fictive Pattern in Poetic Language (1988)
Annie Finch, selections from The Ghost of Meter: Culture and Prosody in American Free Verse (1993)
Selections from MLQ (March 2000) on "Reading for Form"
Susan Stewart, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses (2002)
Angus Fletcher, A New Theory for American Poetry: Democracy, the Environment, and the Future of the Imagination (2004)
Virginia Jackson, Dickinson’s Misery: A Theory of Lyric Reading (2005)
"The New Lyric Studies" in PMLA (Jan. 2008)

Course Requirements:

Three conference-length papers (8-10 pages) to be written during and in response to three of the four units of the course. (Students will not write on the “Foundations in Romanticism” unit.)

Note: Please come to the first class having read "The New Lyric Studies" in PMLA (Jan. 2008), pp. 181-234. (Copies available on request.)

English 8110: Forms.  Joanna Hearne
Section 1

TR 12:30-1:45, Screenings R 3:00-5:30
"Introduction to Film Research and Pedagogy."
Introduction to Film Research and Pedagogy offers graduate students a foundation in teaching and writing about film, including readings in film theory, American film history and genres, and elements of film form and style. Students will watch fifteen films through the course of the semester, beginning with short films by the Lumière brothers, Méliès, and Porter. Screenings may also include, among others, The Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915), Within Our Gates (Micheaux, 1920), The Jazz Singer (Crosland, 1927), King Kong (Cooper and Schoedsack, 1933), Stagecoach (Ford, 1939), The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946), Singin’ in the Rain (Donen and Kelly, 1952), Chinatown (Polanski, 1974) and Do the Right Thing (Lee, 1989). In class, we will discuss 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-division American film history course (English 1810 and 1820, “Introduction to Film”). Students who wish to teach this undergraduate course are strongly encouraged complete this seminar. (Cross-listed with Film Studies 8005.)

English 8220: Seminar in Renaissance British Literature.  David Read
Section 1

W 12:30-3:00
"Encountering the New World." In this course we will study a number of the key texts written in response to a momentous and deeply problematic phase in Western history: the opening of the New World to European conquest and colonization during the early modern period. The reading will include a range of English and Anglo-American works but also several of the important Spanish-language texts in translation. Our goal will be to understand these texts not only as historical documents but as literary expressions of a massive upheaval in the ways that both Europeans and native Americans made sense of the worlds they inhabited—an upheaval the effects of which are still felt to this day. The authors on the syllabus will include, among others, Columbus, Cabeza de Vaca, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Captain John Smith, William Bradford, and Mary Rowlandson.

English 8310: Nineteenth-Century American Novel.  Patricia Okker
Section 1

Th 3:00-5:30
“Politics and the Nineteenth-Century American Novel.”

In this seminar we will consider the politics of nine novelists, some of whom were fiercely committed to political action, while others preferred more oblique engagement. One central issue is how these novelists defined politics in terms of local, national, and global communities. In doing so, we’ll also give some attention to the politics of publication, specifically in regard to periodical publication and reception. The following novels are likely to be included in the course: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig, Martin Delany’s Blake, William Dean Howells’s Hazard of New Fortunes, Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona, Henry Adams’s Democracy, Henry James’s The Princess Casamassima, and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. This seminar includes a significant focus on the process of writing a seminar paper, and all members of the seminar will be expected to participate in a fairly intense peer-review process. If you have any questions about the course, please contact me directly at OkkerP@missouri.edu.

English 8320: Collaboration in Modern American Poetry.  Frances Dickey
Section 1

W 3:00-5:00
This graduate seminar focuses on two collaborative relationships that profoundly shaped the course of twentieth-century American poetry: between T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound (“il miglior fabbro”), and between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. The first relationship is central to Anglo-American modernism; the second, to the confessional movement following World War II. The idea of individual genius and the self as “origin” (that is, the source of originality) continues to inform our understanding of both of these movements—whether the convention-defying experimentation of modernism or the autobiographical revelations of confessionalism. Nonetheless, a study of these poets’ work shows their profound mutual influence and interdependence, as well as, more broadly, their interest in other kinds of poetic source besides the self: literary history, contemporary culture, world history, economics, scientific observation, and so on. Our primary goal will be a rigorous reading of selected major works of each poet, with particular attention to collaborative texts, including: Eliot’s The Waste Land and Poems of 1920; Pound’s “Moeurs Contemporaines,” Hugh Selwyn Mauberly, and the early Cantos; Lowell’s Life Studies and For the Union Dead; Bishop’s Questions of Travel and Geography III; along with drafts, letters, and essays. Additionally, we will study each author’s theory of poetic source, and recent criticism on this subject. This course is designed for both creative writers and critics/scholars; the emphasis is on primary texts, but there will be weekly secondary readings as well. The assignments may include short papers to be discussed in class, critical annotations, and a final research paper.

English 8320: The Neo-Slave Narrative: Its Contexts, Politics, Aesthetics.  Christopher N. Okonkwo
Section 2

TR 2:00-3:15
If the antebellum slave narrative is a unique American creation, the modern neo-slave text similarly represents a notable chapter in twentieth-century American, African American, and indeed African Diaspora cultural and literary history. Since Margaret Walker’s publication of Jubilee (1966)—although for a more accurate periodization we must acknowledge Walker’s post-Reconstruction and early twentieth-century antecedents—contemporary novels about slavery have proliferated, thus raising the central question that organizes this course: Why these imaginative and sometimes racially charged and contested returns by both black and white American novelists to a still determinative, “living dead” past?

Aiming to address that question, this seminar focuses on representative, canonical African American neo-slave narratives and others sometimes neglected in criticisms of the mode. We will examine the socio-historical, cultural, political, and intellectual backdrops of the genre, delineate its subcategories, investigate the focal novels’ individual and collective concerns, and situate their formal structures against various aesthetic registers. We will therefore underscore the neo-slave narrative’s ties to the African American autobiographical tradition; its interfaces with the picaresque and sentimental novels, as well as with conversion, spiritual, confessional, abolitionist, slave, and historical narratives; its intertextual dialogue with William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, for instance; and its postmodern and speculative narratology. In addition to secondary readings, primary works considered include: Arna Bontemps, Black Thunder; Margaret Walker, Jubilee; Ernest J. Gaines, Of Love and Dust and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman; Octavia E. Butler, Wild Seed; Sherley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Charles R. Johnson, Middle Passage; John Edgar Wideman, The Cattle Killing; and Phillis Alesia Perry, Stigmata. Requirements will include short, written reactions to the novels, presentation, and a seminar paper.

English 8510: Graduate Fiction Workshop.  Marly Swick
Section 1

W 3:00-5:30
This will be primarily a workshop. Depending upon the size of the class, everyone will put up 2-3 pieces of fiction. There will also be some outside reading, but I haven't decided which books to choose yet.

English 8520: Advanced Writing of Nonfiction Prose.  Maureen Stanton
Section 1

W 6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
This is a graduate-level creative writing workshop in creative nonfiction. While this course is intended for advanced writers, students working at an advanced level in other other genres (poetry, fiction, theatre, journalism) are welcome. Students will read and discuss book-length samples of the form by established writers, with a student leading the discussion for each book. Students will be expected to produce two (or three, depending on enrollment) complete essays for workshop response (if three, one may be a revision toward a publishable piece). Students are expected to write constructive and considered critiques of peer work, and actively participate in workshop discussions. The goals are to study and practice varieties of creative nonfiction forms, with an understanding of the traditions of and innovations to these forms, and to hone creative writing skills in this genre.

English 8530: Advanced Writing Of Poetry.  Aliki Barnstone
Section

If Known
In this graduate level workshop, I’d like to focus the reading on the individual vision and interests of the students, with a focus on the end goal of the degree, which is to put together a book of poetry. I will choose a few very recently published, well-structured books for the workshop as a whole. I will also confer with each student and we will come up with the rest of his or her reading list, which need not be comprised of slim volumes of contemporary American poetry. The premise here is that we write poetry in dialogue with the poets of the past, present, and the imagined future. Each of us will bring to the table a vocabulary enriched both by what we read in common and on our own.

English 8700: The Politics of Folk Humor.  Sw. Anand Prahlad
Section 1

Th 3-5:30
English 8700: Seminar in The Politics of Folk Humor

This course will explore the dynamics of humor and issues in the study of humor. We will consider humor in a diverse range of cultural and ethnic contexts, time periods, and performance genres, as well as from multiple theoretical perspectives. Of central concern will be relationships between social and political forces, the forms and functions of humor, and the ways in which performances of humor are coded with layers of meaning. Texts for the seminar will include analytical works as well as collections of jokes and other humorous narratives; for example, Keith Basso’s Portraits of the Whiteman: Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols Among the Western Apache; Gershon Legman’s Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor; Victoria Bricker’s Ritual Humor in Highland Chiapas; and Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men.