English 1310: Introduction to American Literature: Honors-level Freshman English.Frances Dickey
Section 4
TR 9:30-10:45
This course introduces the four main literary genres (poetry, fiction,
non-fiction, and drama); the basic terms and concepts of literary analysis;
and a rough outline of American literary history, including major movements
and the social and political developments they reflect. The course is not a
comprehensive survey, but rather gives you a taste of its periods and styles
to prepare you for future reading and coursework in English. As an honors
section of this course, the emphasis will be on reading, writing, and
discussion in which we respond to the historical, technical/formal, and
imaginative dimensions of literature.(Cross-listed as GN HON 2120H/section 04.)
2000-Level Courses
English 2000: Studies in English: Writing with Scripture.Scott Cairns
Section 1
TR 8:00-9:15
Following an introduction to neo-Platonic and Hebraic theories of language (specifically,
the written word), and an introduction to notions of what constitutes poetic language, we will
study a range of rabbinic texts and will focus upon the rabbinic tradition of midrashim.
We will study examples of classical midrashim, and will thereafter study a range of modern and
contemporary examples of midrashic literary responses. The remainder of the course will focus
upon our generating a body of our own midrashic texts.
Texts: Genesis (the JPS 1985 translation)
Excerpts from Modern Poems on the Bible by David Curzon, ed.
Excerpts from Everyman's Talmud by Abraham Cohen
Other excerpts compiled in a Professor Publishing packet
English 2000: Studies in English.Martha Patton
Section 2
MWF 1:00-1:50
How do great scientists and mathematicians think? How do they use words to
refine and translate their original discoveries? We will read texts by three
biologists (Darwin, Watson, and Gould), a mathematician (Hadamard) and others
(Johanson, Peterson, Sacks) to explore what they say about scientific
discoveries (their own and others') and how they use language to develop,
justify, and translate their discoveries.
English 2006: Studies in English, Beginning to 1600.Ray Ronci
Section 1
MWF 12:00-12:50
"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 2010: Intemediate Composition.Martha Townsend
Section 1
MWF 10:00-10:50
English 2189: Introduction to Women's Literature, 1890-Present.Trudy Lewis
Section 1
MWF 1:00-1:50
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 influence literary 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, France, England, and Sudan from 1890 to 2007. Texts will include: Minaret by Leila Aboulela,
Kindred by Octavia Butler, The Vagabond by Colette, Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, Veronica by Mary Gaitskill, Clean House by Sarah Ruhl, Bellocq's Ophelia by Natasha Tretheway, and A Room of One's
Own by Virginia Woolf. Students will be responsible for weekly group work, two exams, two written projects, and an oral report.
English 2300: Studies in American Literature: Historical Survey of the American Short Story. Charles Marvin
Section 1
TR 12:30-1:45
This survey of nineteenth and twentieth-century American fiction will examine the short story from several perspectives:
As a unique literary form developing over time in response to changing cultural circumstances
As a lens through which a collective "history" of a culture might be imagined
As an artifact of places, persons, and values that have been suppressed, pushed aside, or ignored by dominant culture
As a record of the kinds of narrative occasions that give rise to storytelling, telling us something about to the kinds of experiences shared and valued in a culture
We will be reading a great number of stories over the course of the semester, with two to three related stories typically assigned
for each class session. Often several stories from the same general historical period which address a particular cultural theme of
that time will be assigned; at other times a number of stories by a single notable author will be covered during consecutive class
periods. Among the authors getting special attention will be Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Ambrose Bierce,
William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Louise Erdrich.
Students will keep a reading journal over the course of the semester, and class discussion will take direction from their written
responses to the stories. The lecture portions of the class will be devoted to setting the authors, stories, and subjects that we
encounter in cultural and historical context. We will also look the particular insights of individual authors into the creative
process of constructing memorable fictional worlds. Grades for the semester will be based upon class participation, the completion
of reading journal assignments, and three take-home essay exams.
English 2510: Intermediate Fiction.Trudy Lewis
Section 2
W 2:00-4:30
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 function of storytelling. The
group experience is particularly important in this course, as we attempt to balance individuality with co-creation and a sense of our common plot.
Texts will include: Blood Child and Other Stories by Octavia Butler, Collected Stories of John Cheever, I Sailed with Magellan
by Stuart Dybek, Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich, The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, and In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders.
English 2840: American Film in an International Context, 1950-Present.Rebecca Dingo
Section 1
MW 12:30-1:45 and T 3:00-5:30 (screening)
3000-Level Courses
English 3080: Sexuality and Gender Theory.Elisa Glick
Section 1
TR 9:30-10:45
Debates about the politics of sexuality have been at the forefront of contemporary efforts to rethink concepts of identity, desire, and the body. This course seeks to
provide a theoretical and cultural context for such debates by investigating the complex and often contradictory relationship between sexuality and society. After
tracing the historical emergence of the modern sexual self, we will survey contemporary theories of sexuality and sexual representations, particularly as they
intersect with systems of race, class, and gender. Topics include sexuality and desire under capitalism; feminist theories of sexuality and the feminist "sex
wars;" queer theory; reproductive politics; same-sex marriage; cultural and biomedical representations of HIV/AIDS; global politics of sex work; sex trafficking;
gender performance and embodiment. Readings and other course materials range from theoretical and historical essays to literary texts, films, and popular culture.
English 3100: Introduction to Literary Theory.Ray Ronci
Section 1
MWF 10-10:50
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 when discussing fiction and poetry and apply the same strategies
when discussing the various texts of contemporary American culture. Teaching methodology: informal lectures and discussion. Critical writing assignments.
English 3100: Introduction to Literary Theory.Jenny Edbauer Rice
Section 2
MW 2:00-3:15
This course will introduce students to contemporary literary theory, beginning with early 20th century New Criticism and ending with contemporary post-structuralist
theories. We will examine how literary and cultural theory adds perspective to literature. Our work will emphasize what it means to read texts through a critical
lens. Theoretical movements will include: Marxist theory, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, gender and queer theory, critical race theory, and new historicism.
English 3110: Genres: The Rise and Triumph of the Novel.Richard Schwartz
Section 1
TR 11:00-12:15
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 3110: Genres: History of Documentary Film.Joanna Hearne
Section 2
TR 9:30-10:45 and R 3:00-5:30 (screening)
John Grierson coined the term "documentary" in 1929 to describe what he called "the creative treatment of actuality" on film.
In this course we will study the history of documentary film from the beginnings of cinema to the present day, keeping questions about both the
"creative" and the "actual" elements of nonfiction film in mind. What is the nature of the "actuality" presented on
screen in documentary films? How have the expectations and definitions of documentary realism and authenticity changed over time? Can documentary
films produce social change? We will also discuss the development of subgenres (particularly ethnographic documentaries), sound and voiceover in
documentary, re-enactment, ethical issues in documentary film production, and more.
Screenings may include films by Robert Flaherty, Dziga Vertov, John Grierson, Pare Lorentz, Leni Riefenstahl, Frank Capra, Luis Buñuel, Alain
Resnais, Jean Rouch, Frederick Wiseman, D.A. Pennebaker, Alanis Obomsawin, Jenny Livingston, Errol Morris, Michael Moore, and others. Weekly
reading in the history and theory of documentary may include articles and book chapters by film critics such as Bill Nichols, Eric Barnouw,
Jane Gaines, Fatimah Tobing Rony, and online readings such as Errol Morris' New York Times blog, Zoom. Students will write weekly short response
papers and a longer paper based on a class presentation, and will attend screenings for the 2009 True/False documentary film festival as part of
their coursework.
English 3116: Special Themes in Literature, beginning to 1603: The World of Vikings.Johanna Kramer
Section 1
TR 9:30-10:45
This course introduces students to the literature, history, and culture of
medieval Scandinavia, which has not only passed down to us cryptic,
entertaining, and culturally informative poetry, but also produced the
earliest extensive corpus of non-religious prose writings in Europe. The
readings in this course will move from Norse mythology about the beginning
of the world and the deeds of the gods to texts about legendary and
sometimes supernatural semi-historical figures to the Old Norse-Icelandic
sagas set during the Viking Age. These famous texts tell of love and violent
feuding among Norse families as well as their histories and adventures,
including the voyages to North America around the year 1000. Topics of study
and discussion may include the pre-Christian heritage of the Norse peoples
and its portrayal by later Christian writers, society and the law, women in
Old Norse literature and society, the Viking expansion across Europe and the
Atlantic, and parallel narratives in other European vernaculars. While
exploring these and other issues, we will also draw on historical and
archaeological records in order to complement our understanding of the rich
literary corpus and of this perennially fascinating time period.
English 3200: Survey of British Literature, beginning to 1784.Anne Myers
Section 1
TR 9:30-10:45
This course will cover some of the smartest, funniest, strangest, most beautiful, and most interesting works of British literature written
between the tenth century and the eighteenth. Selections will be drawn from several genres including poetry, novel, and essay. Authors will
include Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and Samuel Johnson.
English 3210: Survey of British Literature, Romanticism to the Present.Elizabeth Chang
Section 2
MWF 9:00-9:50
This course is designed to introduce you to some major authors and works in the literature of the British Isles written during the 19th and 20th
centuries, otherwise known as the Romantic, Victorian, Modern, and Contemporary eras. We will look at some of the major literary, cultural,
and historical developments of each time period, and try to balance our time between big-picture considerations of large themes and close
readings of individual poems and prose passages. Our main interest will be tracing the influence of the British empire upon writers in English
both in Britain and abroad. To do so, we will read some long novels as well as some short poems and discuss these works both separately and in
dialogue with each other.
This is a writing intensive section, and so the focus will be on frequent short writing assignments. The class will be a mix of lecture,
discussion, and student presentation; much of our discussion time will be spent looking closely at poems or short prose passages. I will expect
you to have carefully read all of the day's assignments and to be prepared to discuss them in detail by the time you arrive in class.
English 3300: Survey of American Literature, beginning to 1865.Andrew Hoberek
Section 1
TR 9:30-10:45
English 3300: Survey of American Literature, beginning to 1865. Charles Marvin
Section 2
TR 9:30-10:45
This survey covers a period of three and a half centuries of American writing stretching from the first contact of European
explorers with the indigenous peoples of the Americas to end of the American Civil War. Most of the course will be devoted to
literature written during and immediately after the expansion of voting rights beyond the propertied classes in the U.S.,
beginning with the rise of the first "people's champion," Andrew Jackson, to presidential office, and ending with the
assassination of one of the nation's most enduring popular heroes, Abraham Lincoln. To better understand the cultural and
historical contexts which informed the works of both major and minor literary figures during this period, we will use the 1825-1865
period as a base to make thematic journeys into the distant past to uncover travel accounts, political tracts, sermons, and memoirs
of earlier writers. Among the themes we will focus on during the semester are the controversies surrounding the idea of an
American "empire" with and its expression through the agricultural, religious, political, and economic ambitions of its
expanding popular electorate. We will also focus on the issue of slavery and its relation to the economic and political future of
the nation, as well as the distinct role played by slave and captivity narratives in shaping some of the central themes of early
American literature. Students will be asked to participate regularly in class weblog discussions focused on particular authors and
themes over the course of the semester. Weblog postings will determine, in part, the direction and emphasis of both class
discussion and lectures. Three in-class examinations will also be required.
English 3310: Survey of American Literature, 1865-Present.John Evelev
Section
MWF 11:00-11:50
This survey seeks to help generate clear and substantial understandings of the major literary movements of the period, from Realism (with subsets
Regionalism and Naturalism) through to Modernism and Postmodernism. Texts include: The Norton Anthology of American Literature
(C,D,and E), DeLillo, White Noise, and Bechdel, Fun Home. There will be online discussion board, 2 short papers, and 3 exams.
English 3400: Survey of African American Literature, beginning to 1900.April Langley
Section 1
TR 8:00-9:15
English 3410: Survey of African American Literature, 1900 to Present.Christopher 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 African Diaspora Literature, 1890-Present: Consuming the Caribbean.Sheri-Marie Harrison
Section 1
MWF 12:00-12:50
This course introduces students to Anglophone Caribbean discourses on tourism. It explores texts from a variety of disciplines including
literature, cultural studies, political science, international relations, gender and development studies, creative arts and music. 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?
English 3490: Survey of Native Writing and Representation.Maureen Konkle
TR 2:00-3:15
This course surveys Native writing in English from the earliest traditions to contemporary fiction and poetry, but is focused on
issues that resonate in contemporary Native literature and artistic expression: history, identity, tradition, language, land, and
sovereignty. We will be reading translated traditional stories, novels, autobiography, history, short stories, and poetry and
looking at films, painting, and photography. Representative writers/artists include Sherman Alexie, Vine Deloria Jr., Joy Harjo,
Robert Conley, Chris Eyre, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Assignments include both individual and group work and consist of in-class
writing and a number of research and writing projects throughout the semester. This course can be used for fulfill the requirements
for the College of Arts and Sciences Multicultural Certificate.
English 3700: American Folklore: Foodways in Film (also Anth 3150 and Film Studies 3005-4).LuAnne Roth
MW 2:00-3:15 and T 6:30-9:00
This course focuses on one aspect of folklore studies called "foodways"-the traditional practices, customs, and symbolism involving food.
So deceivingly mundane, food (and eating) is actually imbued with a great deal of significance beyond physical survival. "You are what you eat"
is more than a light-hearted proverb, for food is used to define self-identity, as well as familial and communal identity. This class examines
the social, psychological, and sensory dimensions of food and the aesthetic experience of eating (both positive and negative) as depicted in
cinema. Each week we will screen one feature-length film that illustrates the concepts being studied. 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 interpretations, and write thoughtfully about them. Required Texts include: Food, Film and Culture: A Genre Study
(Keller 2006), >Reel Food: Essays on Food and Film (Bower, ed. 2004), Food in the USA: A Reader (Counihan, ed. 2002), and a
Custom Publishing course packet.
4000- / 7000-Level Courses
English 4004/7004; Ling/Anthro 4870: Linguistic Field Methods.Vicki Carstens
Section 1
TR 11:00-12:15
In this course, students will learn through first-hand experience how to document and analyze a
wholly unfamiliar language. We will explore the language through weekly elicitation sessions
with a native speaker, both as a class and in smaller groups. By the end of the semester we
will have assembled a database of vocabulary, a document recording all our investigations, and
individually authored short papers on the sound system, morphology, and grammar of the language.
This is a Writing Intensive Linguistic Capstone course.
English 4040/7040: The Rhetoric of PleasureJeff Rice
Section 1
MWF 10:00-10:50
The reason to write can be elusive. When writing is not based only on obligation but on investment, interest, or some other term we might
call pleasure, it takes different forms than we normally anticipate. This course asks what the pleasure of writing might be by spending the
semester reading the theorist Roland Barthes. Barthes teaches that pleasure often motivates the ways we write and how we write. Pleasure
always shapes writing: what it looks like, where it appears, what it does. Through Barthes' work, we will ask how writers negotiate the
demands and pleasure of writing. By pleasure, however, we don't mean "happiness," "love," "satisfaction," or related synonyms.
Instead, pleasure speaks to the difficult to pin down feelings and reasons we employ when we try to express ourselves. Pleasure speaks to our
engagement with the world, our encounters with places, people, ideas, things, and concerns. The intersection of all of this--what we might
call "information"--and our desire to write about this intersection speaks to the pleasure of writing.
Because Barthes often performs the ideas he explains, and because he offers specific rhetorical models for writing pleasure, we will use
his work as models for our own writing.
Tentative reading list will include The Pleasure of the Text, Camera Lucida,
and Barthes by Barthes.
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 4040/7040: Studies in Writing.Tom Quirk
Section 3
TR 2:00-3:15
English 4050/7050: Historical Survey of Rhetoric (Ancient Theories of Greek and Roman Argument). Jenny Edbauer Rice
Section 1
MW 12:30-1:45
Although rhetoric has a somewhat dubious reputation these days, rhetorical theory was the "secret weapon" for ancient Greek and Roman political figures. A
savvy leader in the classical world wouldn't leave home without good rhetorical training. This course will examine classical Greek and Roman theories of rhetorical
argument. We will read original texts on argumentation, including how to persuade audiences and how to win debates. Students should expect to gain a fuller
understanding of what argument is, and how we can still draw upon classical rhetoric to construct solid arguments in everyday life. Readings include pieces from
Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Plato, Longinus, and the sophists. We will read one contemporary book on modern argument, Fanatical Schemes: Proslavery Rhetoric and
the Tragedy of Consensus (Patricia Roberts-Miller).
Tentative topics:
Dialectic versus Rhetoric versus Philosophy
The Enthymeme as the Heart of Argument
Stasis and Roman Legal Rhetoric
Inventing Arguments
Delivery and Style
Ethics
English 4060/7060: Studies in Critical Theory: Desire and the Interpretation of Desire.Ellie Ragland
Section 1
MW 4:00-5:15
The course is on the way desire is formed by the significations of language, by others, by society, and by the fantasies, enjoyment, and drives that structure a real
place in being that is neither made up of identifications or language, but of trauma and loss. This course will make sense of the logic of Lacanian psychoanalysis as
it applies to life and literature. We will focus on Seminar VI by Jacques Lacan. Students will need to buy that Seminar and also a paperback edition of
Shakespeare's Hamlet.
English 4100/7100: Shots in the Classroom: Film Noir and its Contexts.Nancy West
Section 1
MWF 11:00-11:50 and M 7:00-9:00
This course will examine a wide-ranging body of films designated as "film noir" (literally "black cinema"). Broadly speaking,
film noir refers to movies that typically take crime as their subject, employ a highly stylized cinematography, and express a worldview marked
by fear, mistrust, despair, and paranoia. The "classic film noir" period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to
the late 1950s, but as we will see, film noir continues to thrive even to this day.
English 4100/7100: History of Memoir.Ellen Levy
Section 2
MWF 3:00-3:50
This is an advanced topic survey course that looks at the development of the Memoir, one of the oldest forms of literary nonfiction, which developed in the 4th
century and has continued to evolve into the 21st century. Students will closely read and discuss works by historical and contemporary practitioners of memoir
(including, for example, St. Augustine, St. Teresa, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Olaudah Equiano, Henry David Thoreau, Vladimir Nabokov, Mary McCarthy, James Baldwin,
Audre Lorde, Maxine Hong Kingston, Vivian Gornick, Kathryn Harrison, Carole Maso, Frank McCourt, Lauren Slater, Dave Eggers, JM Coetzee, JoAnn Beard, James Frey,
and others.) The goal is to understand the genesis and shifts in the memoir form, as well as its defining elements (what distinguishes memoir from other creative
nonfiction accounts? Given what we know of memory's fallibility, what does it mean to speak of "truth" in memoir? How might new technologies transform
memoir?); we will also consider the contributions that memoir has made and is making to literature, how it informs our sense of ourselves, our place in the world,
the historical record, and our notions of memory and truth.
English 4140/7140: Modern Literature.Frances Dickey
Section 1
TR 2-3:15
This course focuses on the explosive years 1910-1925, when all the arts underwent a radical transformation. We will examine
avant-garde movements in art and their impact on literature, the cataclysm of the First World War as it was registered by British and American writers,
and the aftermath of war as writers attempted to find new sources of meaning in a transformed world. Authors to be studied may include Yeats, Joyce,
Woolf, Edward Thomas and other war poets, Stein, Eliot, Pound, Williams, Stevens, and Hemingway. This challenging reading will be equally divided
between fiction and poetry. Coursework will include reading, discussion, papers, oral presentations, and tests.
English 4167/7167: Shakespeare on Film.William Kerwin
Section 1
TR 9:30-10:15 and M 7-9
What happens when Shakespeare's work moves from the dramatic theater to the movie theater? How does
the meaning of the text change depending on the medium of expression? What are the opportunities and
limitations of Shakespeare on film? What has film made possible for modern audiences of Shakespeare,
and how has that evolved over recent decades?
In this class we will work through those questions as we look at six plays by Shakespeare and
multiple film versions of those plays. The plays will be Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth,
Richard III, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, and Othello. We will study
films representing the paradigms of "theatrical, realist, and filmic" Shakespeare
productions, and we will engage in both close readings of the written texts and various strategies
for considering the shift to film. Early in the course we will explore formal tools of film study,
and students will learn and apply basic methods for shot analysis, using specific film terminology,
and make an argument as to how a director's choices in filming reflect her relationship to the
meaning of the text. Later in the course we will attend to culturally-based adaptations of
Shakespeare that move further from the point of origin in numerous ways; our look at "global
Shakespeare" will ask how contemporary films of Shakespeare explore issues of gender,
sexuality, religion and ethnicity. Students will write a shot analysis, two short response papers,
and a final long paper. There will be a midterm and a final exam.
Texts:
Buchanan, Judith. Shakespeare on Film. Harlow, England: Pearson, 2005.
Hindle, Maurice. Studying Shakespeare on Film. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Shakespeare texts, exact version still to be determined.
English 4168/7168: Major Authors, 1789-1890: Literary Friendships.Elizabeth Chang
Section 1
MWF 11:00-11:50
This course will examine several key nineteenth-century literary collaborations and ask what happens--to the creative process, to the
literary product, to the historical legacy of the author, to the critical reception of the work--when poems, stories, and novels and other
fictional works are written collaboratively. Authors studied will probably include William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Samuel
Coleridge; Charles and Mary Lamb; Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning; Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens; Michael Field; Andrew Lang
and H. Rider Haggard; and W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. We will also investigate collaboration in our own scholarship, working in pairs
to produce one long paper and presentation; there will also be frequent reading quizzes and several short papers.
English 4210/7210: Medieval Literature: Writing, Authority, and Religion: Women in the Early Middle Ages.Johanna Kramer
Section 1
TR 12:30-1:45
This course is dedicated to the study of women in both the literature and
the history of early medieval England, covering texts produced ca. 700 to
ca. 1150 C.E. In particular we will investigate how religious and secular
authorities shaped the lives and literary representations Anglo-Saxon and
Anglo-Norman women. Current scholarship will supplement our knowledge of
this period and provide tools for critical investigation of the literature.
Our readings (in translation) will be writings for and about women, such as
heroic poetry featuring stunningly powerful biblical and historical female
figures, saints' lives, biblical narratives, historiography, and praise
literature commissioned by a queen. Among possible topics of discussion are
the influence of social and religious interests on the representation of
women, the depiction of female saints in particularly Anglo-Saxon terms,
gendered sainthood, the impact of female patronage on the production of
texts and thus on medieval English literary culture, and the religious
education of women. The course also provides a basic historical
understanding of the period by learning about the social, political, and
legal status of both noble and ordinary women and the opportunities
available to women to act in positions of authority or to exert political power.
English 4220/7220: Renaissance and Seventeenth Century Literature.William Kerwin
Section 1
TR 8:00-9:15
Renaissance England produced a flourishing of short poetry. Something radically different from the
long-established traditions of the medieval world emerged in the writing of the period. Lyric--poetry
of intense emotion--became a suddenly valuable kind of verbal currency, spent to express individual
feeling and to make social comments. The lyric and the satire flourished both as languages of love
or personal self-definition and as languages of social involvement. Private and public worlds--
Renaissance poets considered both, often at the same time.
Urbanization, humanism, the printing press, the reformation, debates over women's roles, colonialism,
the replacement of monarchy with a parliament--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. We will read poetry with attention to these changes. The authors we will read include John
Skeleton, John Heywood, Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, George Gascoigne, Edmund Spenser, William
Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Amelia Lanyer, Philip Sidney, Mary Wroth, John Donne, George
Herbert, Ben Jonson, Katherine Philips, Robert Herrick, and Andrew Marvell. The more specific poetic
forms this class will read include the sonnet, the satire, the Ovidian narrative poem, the poem of
place, the epigram, the libel, the ballad, and the metaphysical lyric.
Students will write two short papers, perform a short speech, and produce as part of a group a
web-based research presentation. There will be both a midterm and a final exam.
Text: The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 1B: The Early Modern Period.
English 4250/7250: British Romanticism.Noah Heringman
Section 1
TR 2:00-3:15
This course reconsiders traditional definitions of Romanticism as the poetry of nature and imaginative vision by reading the six canonical poets--Blake,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats--with and against a range of women writers in prose and poetry, including Charlotte Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, and
Sydney Owenson. Although there are some obvious contrasts between male and female writers in this period, this approach also highlights the many concerns they shared:
the discourse on human rights and other concerns arising from the French revolution; the slave trade and the growth of empire; natural history and the growth of
scientific specialization; and the cultural example of ancient Greece, among others. We will also draw on the numerous travel narratives written by both men and
women to consider period attitudes toward people and places in different parts of Britain and the empire, as well as the contours of Romantic nature and its
relationship to today's discourse on the environment.
English 4300/7300: Early American Literature (The New England Experience).David Read
Section 1
MWF 9:00-9:50
In this course we will study the range of literary and intellectual expression associated with New England between 1616 and 1798,
from the earliest period of migration from Europe to the initial years of the Republic. We will consider the works of important
figures from the history of American Puritanism such as William Bradford, John Winthrop, Anne Bradstreet, Roger Williams, and
Jonathan Edwards, as well as those of eighteenth-century writers such as Benjamin Franklin, John and Abigail Adams, Phyllis
Wheatley, and Hannah Webster Foster. Throughout the course we will try to reach a better understanding of the basic paradox of New
England culture--that it has been both a highly influential and highly unusual part of the broader American experience. Our
textbook will be The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume A.
English 4310/7310: 19th-Century American Literature.Maureen Konkle
Section 1
TR 12:30-1:45
The West in the 19th Century. This course surveys the mythology of the American West in light of the history of U.S. continental expansion and relations with
indigenous people, from Lewis and Clark through the first "westerns" (in film and fiction) of the early twentieth century. We'll be reading fiction and
nonfiction by travelers, explorers, activists, military men and their wives, performers, outlaws, settlers, indigenous people, and one ex-dentist from Ohio, as
well as looking at paintings and photographs from across the period. Particular attention will be paid to the invention of the authenticity of the Westerner, of
the Indian, and of the wilderness; consideration will be given to questions of what purpose that invented authenticity served and how it continues to circulate in
the U.S. Assignments include both individual and group work and consist of in-class writing and a number of research and writing projects throughout the semester.
English 4310/7310: 19th-Century American Literature.Aliki Barnstone
Section 2
TR 3:30-4:45
"Dickinson and Whitman, in the Context of Emerson and Selected Short Writings of Thoreau, Douglass, and Others."
The main objectives of this course are two-fold: to closely read Dickinson and Whitman in their cultural contexts (philosophical, theological,
political) and to discover the ways in which the writers we read in this course can generate our own writing, both
"critical" and "creative" (though I'd like to expand the boundaries of those categories). I'd like us to try
to embody the idealism of the writers we are studying, which in every case attributes transformative, liberating power to the
word. Coursework will include an oral presentation, short response papers, an essay based on Thoreau's "Walking,"
writing games, quotation collages, and a final project. I will consult with each student about the final project and we will
come up with work that best suits the individual student in her or his development as a writer. Graduate students in particular
will be encouraged to write pieces that will help them along in their careers.
English 4320: 20th-Century American LiteratureRay Ronci
Section 1
MWF 2:00-2:50
"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.
TR 2:00-3:15
Leasing its caption "Mythic Black Fiction" from Jane Campbell's book of the same title, this course will
meditate on John B. Vickery's observation that "The history of literature everywhere attests to the closeness and
complexity of the relation between literature and myth," an affinity evident in "their shared traits of
narrative, character, image and theme." Following an overview of contextual myth scholarship, we will,
specifically, engage with the mythopoesis, the mythmaking imperative, in African American literature and culture.
Antebellum and postbellum African American literature discloses earlier black writers' mythic consciousness, an
awareness subsisted partly on the conventions of romance. It is twentieth-century African American authors, however,
who have taken their inventions and reinventions of the (im)probable to new heights.
So why are black writers drawn so strongly to myth? Are they simply interested in its thematic, aesthetic, and
affective value? Not so, says Jacqueline de Weever: "The experiences of black people in the New World, into which
they have been forcibly thrust against their will, cannot be [fully] told or treated in realistic or naturalistic
traditions in which much of American literature has been cast--the pain of the results of three centuries of oppression
is too great to be faced and confronted in a realistic mode. Such an experience demands another mode for which mythic
narrative is more appropriate." Thus, when black writers invert history, disintegrate time, re-live an aborted
slave insurrection, supplicate a trickster god, pit an infernal, Eugenicist spirit against an ageless shape-shifter/
Earth mother, hyperbolize their hero, borrow the schematic of Dante's hell, or star an unnaveled pilot/Pilate and some
flying Africans--all that helps them tell a political good story, affirm African diaspora ways of knowing, confront
their oppression and, most important, imagine a more livable life and future in a still hostile nation. Readings will
include: Octavia E. Butler, Wild Seed; Arna Bontemps, Black Thunder; David Bradley, The
Chaneysville Incident; William Melvin Kelly, A Different Drummer; Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon;
Gloria Naylor, Linden Hills; Paule Marshall, Praisesong for the Widow; Jane Campbell, Mythic
Black Fiction: The Transformation of History (criticism); and Jacqueline de Weever, Mythmaking and Metaphor in
Black Women's Fiction (criticism).
English 4488/7488: Major African Diaspora Women Writers, 1789-1890April Langley
Section 1
TR 12:30-1:45
English 4510/7510: Advanced Fiction WritingRichard 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: Advanced Fiction Writing.Speer Morgan
Section 2
W 3:00-5:30
English 4510/7510: Advanced Fiction Writing.Marly Swick
Section 3
T 2:00-4:30
English 4520/7520: Advanced Nonfiction Prose.Ellen Levy
Section 1
W 4:00-6:30
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 mostly contemporary samples of creative
nonfiction by established writers, practice craft through short exercises and assignments, produce two essays for workshop response, 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: Advanced Poetry.Aliki Barnstone
Section 1
R 2:00-4:30
English 4600/7600: Structure of American English.Vicki Carstens
Section 1
TR 9:30-10:45
The primary focus of this course is the syntax of American English, that is, the formation of its sentences and phrases. The course also surveys other
aspects of linguistic structure: phonetics (speech sounds), phonology (the grammar of sounds), and morphology (word structure). The approach is that of
generative grammar as developed in the work of Noam Chomsky and others. Graded work: 4 in-class tests and 8-9 homeworks. Required texts: An ERes
packet, and Pinker, S. 1994. The Language Instinct. New York: Harper Collins.
English 4620/7620: Regional and Social Dialects of American English.Matthew Gordon
Section 1
MWF 11:00-11:50
This course examines how the English language varies in the U.S. along regional and social
lines. We will study differences in pronunciation, word choice, and grammar. You will learn
how American dialects differ and also how linguists investigate these differences. We will
also explore attitudes toward dialects in U.S. society as we consider the political and
educational dimensions of linguistic variation. In addition to exams and regular homework
assignments, students will conduct research projects involving the collection and analysis of
linguistic data. Prerequisite: Engl/Ling 4600, 4610, or equivalent.
MWF 10:00-10:50
How do you know that "deg" and "ged" are possible, though not real,
English words while "gde" could not possibly be a word in English? Since "gde"
is a word in Russian, it's not because the human mouth is incapable of pronouncing "gde."
Rather it is related to a property of the English sound system. In this course, we will
explore such sound patterns in English and in other languages. We will investigate the rules
that languages use to organize their sounds, and we'll see that such rules can actually
affect how people hear around the world. We will also study some of the theories and methods
that linguists use for studying sound patterns. Prerequisite: At least one introductory
course in linguistics (e.g. English 1060, 4600).
English 4700/7700: Women's Folklore and Feminist Theory.Elaine Lawless
Section 1
TR 11:00-12:15
In this course students will read a wide variety of articles on women's
traditional verbal art, material artistic creations, ritual, personal
experience stories, dance, music, life histories, and other arenas of
women's folklore (both historical and contemporary), most of which will take
a feminist view of the traditions being studied. Students will be expected
to do a major fieldwork project on some aspect of women's contemporary
folklore during the course of the semester. Graduate students are
encouraged to take this class; Undergraduates should be Junior or Senior
level unless they have taken other folklore courses or have identified
Folklore as their major emphasis area.
English 4950/7950: Internship in Publishing.Speer Morgan
Section 1
TBA The Missouri Review is a leader in teaching students about literary publishing through our unique internship.
Our goal is to train young literary editors in an intense, systematic program. The course is offered to undergraduate
and graduate students in all disciplines, but the core group consists of students majoring in English who want to
pursue careers in the publishing industry. Interns who take the course credit for their degree must be enrolled for at
least two semesters.
An internship at The Missouri Review provides opportunities for students to gain valuable hands-on experience in
publishing. From their first day, interns were an integral part of the general operations of magazine. The editors
encourage individual initiative and teamwork, while offering interns the resource off their 33 years of publishing
experience. Students learn practical editing skills and generate publishing credit by writing reviews or conducting
author interviews. Interested students write blogs and are otherwise involved in web content development, as well as
assisting in producing digital audio versions of the print magazine. Students also learn the basics, such as manuscript
acquisition, magazine distribution and other business practices. They may help run an audio\video contest, and learn
grant writing. As they learn industry skills, interns are encouraged to consider careers in publishing.
An ongoing challenge in higher education is providing students with real-world experience to complement solid
traditional scholarship. Potential employers want to know what students have actually accomplished, as well as what
academic courses and taken. Our interns are able to say that they have contributed to one of our finest literary
magazines, helping shape American literature.
One demonstration of the effectiveness of our intensive internship program is that many of our interns enter into
commercial republishing fields, editing other magazines or working at presses. Many others are employed as teachers and
professors. Previous and current interns have published more than 80 books and contributed to most of the top
American literary magazines. They have won major literary prizes including the National Book Award, the Delmore
Schwartz Prize, the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Guggenheim fellowships, and National Endowment for the Arts individual
writing fellowships.
English 4970: Capstone Experience: Contemporary American Fiction and History.Sam Cohen
Section 1
TR 9:30-10:45
This course will focus on the ways in which contemporary American fiction has engaged with history. In it we will read a number of novels as examples of the
different approaches to representing the past used by American authors in the last three decades. We will also read some work by scholars reflecting on these
approaches and on the effects contemporary history has had on the way writers think about and write about the past. Writers whose work we may read: Michael Chabon,
Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz, Rivka Galchen, Edward P. Jones, Heidi Julavits, Chang-Rae Lee, Jonathan Lethem, Art Spiegeman, Dana Spiotta.
English 4970: Capstone Experience: Language, Literacy, and the Liberal Arts.Martha Townsend
Section 2
MWF 12:00-12:50
This course is the final requirement for English majors. As a "capstone" course, it intends to offer you an opportunity to "cap off" your
undergraduate educational career by reflecting on what you have studied and learned, to make sense of that time, and to prepare for the immediate future. All
sections of 4970 are taught as writing-intensive (WI), meaning that each instructor has submitted his or her syllabus, assignments, and other information to the
Campus Writing Board for review and approval.
Of all students graduating with a college degree, English majors are--one would hope and the world would expect--in the top tier of language preparedness.
Theoretically, you will have experienced four years of critical reading, writing, and thinking in multiple genres and myriad forms of argument. Your educational
career has offered you unprecedented opportunity for knowing and addressing the world.
This capstone course invites you to examine whether those statements are true for you and, further, gives you the opportunity to consider the degree to which
other citizens have access to literacy development and to the power and privilege that accrue with language skill.
Language, literacy, and the liberal arts are broad categories. We will focus on one aspect within each of them and you will write three short papers
(one-page, single-spaced) on them. These papers may be revised for end-of-course evaluation. You will also write a researched paper on a related subject of your
choice, a paper that demonstrates your ability as an English major to read critically, define a research question for a particular audience, identify and engage
with sources to answer that question, and write and revise a 9-10 page single-spaced report based on that work. A sample of such research questions might be:
Language and Politics: What might be the implications of President Obama's comparatively "elevated" language use for U.S. domestic
and foreign policy, or international relations? What are the history, use, and value of poet laureates in the United States? Can a poet laureate "help bring
the country together"?
Literacy: We often hear claims that the U.S. is in the midst of a literacy crisis. Some researchers claim that reading skills in this country
have declined. To what degree might these be true? Would a community literacy program be useful in your hometown? For whom and why?
Liberal Arts: How well does a liberal arts education prepare undergraduate students for societal change? Should the classical ideals that
undergird liberal arts education be expanded, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues, to include new categories and canons, like non-Western cultures and human
sexuality?
English 4970: Capstone Experience.Tom Quirk
Section 3
TR 11:00-12:15
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 Twain texts. Mark
Twain is particularly suited to this approach because he was well traveled and well read and was inclined to draw upon his experiences and his readings in creating
his fictions. What is more, he drew upon his memories of Missouri (particularly Hannibal) and the Mississippi River Valley. 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 4970: Capstone Experience: Fiction and Film AdaptationNancy West
Section 4
MWF 1:00-1:50
This course will focus on eight literary works--Sense and Sensibility, Great Expectations, The Hound of the Baskervilles,
A Room with a View, The Maltese Falcon, Lolita, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Brokeback Mountain--and
their film adaptations.
Much of this course will examine 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/short stories and study the adaptations that have garnered
tremendous praise from critics and the public alike.
English 4970: Capstone Experience: The "World" of a Book.David Read
Section 5
MWF 10:00-10:50
The reading for this capstone course will center on an important twentieth-century American novel, Vladimir Nabokov's
Pale Fire, but will also include a range of other texts to which Nabokov alludes in the novel. The intent here
is to establish the "world" of Pale Fire, the network of literary relationships that forms a crucial part of
the curious tale of John Shade, Charles Kinbote, and Jakob Gradus. We will be able to investigate (and write about) this
literary network in many different ways during the course. Assignments will include a 10-12 page research paper, an oral
presentation on the research project, and several short research exercises. The texts will include Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Hound of the Baskervilles; T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets; Anthony Hope,The Prisoner of Zenda;
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire and Pnin; Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man; and William Shakespeare,
Timon of Athens.
English 4996: The Honors Seminar: Postmodern American BildungsromanJohn Evelev
Section 1
MW 2:00-3:15
In its classic form, the bildungsroman, or the novel of education, tells the story of the development of a boy or young man into
adulthood. Since its first appearance in the romantic era, the bildungsroman has undergone many revisions, not the least of which has
been the addition of women's experience. This course will examine contemporary American adaptations of the bildungsroman that challenge generic
expectations, whether in new literary forms (i.e., graphic memoir) or in light of American historical crises (i.e., the L.A. Riots, 9/11) or
identities that trouble conventional trajectories of development into American adulthood (African-American, queer, and post-colonial).
That said, this course is also the first of the two-semester Honors Sequence and designed to prepare students for their independent Honors
Essay. To do so, students will be introduced to a range of literary critical and theoretical modes, including genre criticism, historicism,
postmodernism, psychoanalysis/trauma, critical race, postcolonial/diaspora, and queer theory.
For students eligible to take the Honors Sequence, this course qualifies as their Capstone and is designated WI. Students will produce 3
proposals for research papers over the course of the term, selecting one to develop into a final research paper with revision.
Primary Texts: Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005)
Paul Beatty, White Boy Shuffle (2001)
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007)
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006)
There will also be a number of theoretical readings, available as pdf files on blackboard.
8000-Level Courses
English 8010: Theory and Practice of College Composition.Martha Patton
Section 1
M 2:00-4:30
We explore ways to teach writing as both an act of creative discovery and an act of
communication. We also explore intersections among a number of English disciplines (including
Literature, Creative Writing, Rhetoric, Linguistics, and Folklore) and reflect on intersections
among our identities as writers, teachers, and scholars. Each student not only designs a
syllabus for the teaching of English 1000, but also thinks about the implications for
designing other courses.
English 8040: Rhetoric, Composition, and the Body.Donna Strickland
Section 1
R 12:30-3:00
Writing requires a mediation between the mind and body, between thoughts and action. And yet, research on writing and rhetoric has focused much more on critical
thinking and other cognitive acts than on the body. In this seminar, we'll read widely in body-focused research from gender studies, disability studies, affect
studies, and cognitive studies in order to consider how studies of the body can inform the study and practice of writing and rhetoric. We'll also read in the
(very small) scholarship on rhetoric and/or composition and bodies. Readings will likely draw from these (and other) texts:
Butler, Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter
Cheville, Minding the Body: What Student Athletes Know About Learning
David, Enforcing Normalcy
Mark Hansen, Bodies in Code
Hawhee, Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece and Moving Bodies: Kenneth Burke at the Edges of Languages
Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh : The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
Lewiecki-Wilson and Brueggemann, Disability and the Teaching of Writing
Massumi, Parables for the Virtual
Varela, et al., The Embodied Mind
English 8070: History of Criticism and Theory.Noah Heringman
Section 1
W 3:00-5:30
This course surveys the history of criticism and theory with special attention to the relationship between aesthetics and politics and the distinction between popular
and high culture. How have theorists over time distinguished literature from its "others"--counterparts or supplements such as history, technology, visual art, or
popular spectacle? We will begin the historical survey with Plato, Aristotle, and Longinus and continue with a few brief medieval and early modern texts on allegory
and on theater, concluding this portion with Sidney's Apology for Poetry. Drawing primarily on the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, we will
then briefly examine early modern and eighteenth-century debates between humanist and neoclassical theorists and their critics. In conjunction with Romantic
anti-classicism, we will look at the development both of philosophical aesthetics (with Lessing and Kant) and of the interest in "popular antiquities," including
folklore and folk song as treated by Robert Burns, the Brothers Grimm, and colonial ethnography. As a counterpart to this chronological trip through the anthology,
we will read a short sequence of book-length theoretical texts, beginning with Roland Barthes' Mythologies, which in many ways put popular culture on the map
as a field of critical study. Other possibilities for this two- or three-book list include Reassembling the Social by Bruno Latour; Gender Trouble by
Judith Butler; or Things that Talk, edited by Lorraine Daston. (I would welcome student input on this list over the coming months.) We will also continue the
historical sequence with modern and contemporary texts from the anthology. This portion begins with foundational texts including Mikhail Bakhtin's populist account
of the novel and Walter Benjamin's assessment of the potential of mass culture and then concludes with a unit on feminist and postcolonial revisions of the
problem of culture.
English 8110: Introduction to Film Research and Pedagogy.Joanna Hearne
Section 1
R 3:00-5:30 and R 6:00-8:30 (screening)
"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), Do the Right Thing (Lee, 1989) and Smoke Signals (Eyre, 1998). 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 courses.
Students who wish to teach these undergraduate courses are strongly urged to complete this seminar. (Cross-listed with Film Studies 8001.)
English 8210: Medieval Bodies.Emma Lipton
Section 1
T 12:30-3:00
This course will introduce you to a wide range of discourses on the body in medieval texts and culture. We will explore medieval attitudes to
gender, sexuality and the regulation of desire; we will learn about the close connection between medieval textuality and sexuality, and consider
the relationship between the body and the construction of subjectivity and identity. For medieval culture, the body could take on many important
meanings, as the site of violence, the embodiment of chivalric or other class identities, and as a symbolic place for the meeting of human and
divine. While the focus of the course will be on late medieval materials, we will also read classical and earlier medieval texts crucial to the
development of later traditions. The primary readings will cover a range of literary genres (drama, fabliaux, romance, mystical autobiography),
supplemented with relevant contemporary cultural materials (excerpts from medieval physiology, theology, clerical antimatrimonialism, sermons,
confessors' handbooks, saint's lives and conduct books or books of manners). Secondary materials will include social and theological history, and
selections from the burgeoning field of medieval literary criticism and theory on the body. Readings may include: Ovid's Art of Love,
Augustine's Confessions, Alliterative Morte D'Arthur, Ancrene Wisse, Julian of Norwich's Shewings, The Book of Margery Kempe, selected
plays from the York Cycle, and selected tales from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
English 8230: 17th Century British Poetry.Anne Myers
Section 1
Th 12:30-3:00
In this seminar, we will study the greatest hits of English seventeenth-century poetry. The central text for the course will be the Norton
Seventeenth-Century British Poetry, 1603-1660. In addition to enjoying some of the best poetry ever written English, we will supplement study and
discussion with readings in seventeenth-century political history, religious controversy, and devotional tradition. Poets covered will include
John Donne, Ben Jonson, Amelia Lanyer, George Herbert, Thomas Carew, Richard Crashaw, Robert Herrick, Henry Vaughan, Katherine Philips,
Margaret Cavendish, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton. The course should be of interest to all readers and writers of poetry, in addition to those
interested in seventeenth-century English history, religious history, or the history of English verse.
English 8240: Studies in 18th-Century British Literature: The Historical Novel.Devoney Looser
Section 1
M 4:30-7:00
In this course, we will read novels with significant historical content (arguably "historical
novels") up to and including those of the supposed first historical novelist, Sir Walter
Scott. Whether Scott is credited with establishing the form or simply seen as its most successful
imitator/innovator, his career and the genre as a whole are only partially grasped until studied
alongside writers who published historical fiction before (and in some cases, long before) 1814.
In this course, we will entertain questions about what makes a novel historical and how and why
historical materials were used in earlier prose fiction. We will pay close attention to the
changes in the meanings of "history" and "novel" across the long eighteenth
century, particularly as they can be ascertained through reading primary prefatory materials and
recent scholarship. We will enter into debates about the extent to which fiction and history
shared political and/or moral aims and techniques across this era. Beginning with Scott's Waverley
(1814), we will then read texts by historians and by fiction writers who worked with historical
materials, including Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Maria Edgeworth, Henry Fielding, Sophia Lee,
Delarivier Manley, and Jane Porter. We will examine the reception of these writers, both before
and after the spectacular rise of the "Great Unknown," Scott. Requirements will include
online and in-class discussion, prospectus and revised prospectus, presentation, and rough draft
and revised seminar paper.
English 8320: Philip Roth and the History of the Novel.Sam Cohen
Section 1
W 12:30-3:00
This course is something of a hybrid. In it we will read a number of novels by postwar American novelist Philip Roth who, over the course of a
long and varied (and very productive) career, has engaged with the novel's long history and tested the bounds of the novel form. At the same
time, we will be reading a number of works in the history and theory of the novel (possibly including works by Erich Auerbach, M. M. Bakhtin,
John Barth, Roland Barthes, John Brenkman, William Gass, Milan Kundera, Georg Lukacs, Franco Moretti, Patricia Waugh). It is my hope that these
two courses of reading will illuminate each other equally, the reading in the works in history and theory of the novel allowing us to understand
Roth's novels in new ways and the novels in turn providing opportunities to understand and evaluate these works.
English 8400: Gender and Sexuality in Caribbean Literature and Literary Theory.Sheri-Marie Harrison
Section 1
M 2:00-4:30
Prior to the 1990's queer subjectivies in Caribbean literature were relegated to peripheral positions in the subtext. Within the last two decades
however, women writers especially, have written queerness out of the subtext to challenge patriarchal and heteronormative ideologies in the
literary and cultural landscape. These writers, often from positions of North American or European exile, lay claim to their respective national
spaces in the Caribbean, and offer a critique of heteronormative ideologies as an integral component of what we might call a decolonized
Caribbean discourse. In this course we will focus on the cultural complexities of gender and sexuality in the differing contexts of colonialism,
postcolonialism or neocolonialism, and independence. It explores issues of displacement, diaspora, and geographies of identity in relation to
slavery and indenture, colonialism, nationalism, transnationalism, migration, race and ethnicity in the literature and literary theory of the
Caribbean and the Caribbean Diaspora.
Requirements: Oral presentations on assigned texts complete with bibliography and literature review for distribution to the class, and a research
paper (20 pages) due at the end of term.
English 8510: Advanced Writing of Fiction.Marly Swick
Section 1
M 2:00-4:30
English 8520: Advanced Writing of Nonfiction Prose.Ellen Levy
Section 1
R 3:00-5:30
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 genres (poetry, fiction, theatre, journalism) and scholarly fields are welcome. Students will read and discuss samples of the form by established writers.
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 assigned reading and 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.Gabriel Fried
Section 1
T 1:00-3:30
In this workshop, we will tirelessly and generously consider the ambitions of the work of each participating poet--their pitfalls and rewards,
as well as their execution. In doing so, we will develop essential editorial vocabularies for each poet's work, in order to facilitate the
poet's writing of extraordinary poems and to help the poet envision and articulate a sense of connectedness across her/his body of work.
An important sidebar and backdrop of the course will the reading of Samuel T. Coleridge's poetry and prose. We'll particularly explore the
ways in which the landscape of the imagination is theorized and manifested in Coleridge's writing, and how we might benefit as writers from
Coleridge's engagement with that landscape. To that end, we'll also look at some books by four contemporary poets whose work can be posited as
Coleridgean: Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Sina Queyras, Ron Slate, and Susan Stewart.
English 8700: Ethnographic Writing.Elaine Lawless
Section 1
W 12:30-3:00
This graduate seminar will begin with some historically notable ethnographic
works, including Malinowski, Boas, and Mead and will progress through
several decades of ethnographic research, practice, and writing. Students
will read ethnographic theory as well as several examples of ethnographic
writing, including standard academic folklore and anthropological writing,
experimental writing, autoethnographic writing, and performative writing.
Students will be expected to conduct a semester-long ethnographic study of
their own and will incorporate what they have learned about ethnographic
writing in the final project for the course. Students from Folklore,
English, Anthropology, Commnication, Sociology, Theatre, Journalism and
other closely allied fields are encouraged to take this course as a
qualitative ethnographic methods course.
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