Spring 2023 Class Schedule
**Meeting days and times may be subject to change.**
Click on a course title to view the description.
Course | Title | Instructor | Day/Time | |
---|---|---|---|---|
English 202 | Introduction to Creative Writing | Milner | WF 12:30-1:50 | |
English 202 Introduction to Creative WritingCourse Description: This course will introduce students to the major elements and tools of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction writing. Through exercises and projects, you’ll practice using these tools to produce original, exciting works of literary art. Along the way, you’ll sharpen your ability to track these elements both in published texts and in the work of your classmates, and further develop how you measure aesthetic value. You’ll be encouraged to see yourself as an active member of a community of artists, and to establish a regular discipline as a working writer. Writing and reading will be due in nearly every class, and peer workshop will play an important role in learning to see your work more objectively. Teaching Methods: Discussion. Evaluation Methods: Evaluation of a final portfolio. Texts include: A course reader. | ||||
English 206 | Reading and Writing Poetry | Abraham | MW 9:30-10:50 | |
English 206 Reading and Writing Poetry[Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Prerequisites: No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor. | ||||
English 206 | Reading and Writing Poetry | Shanahan | MW 11-12:20 | |
English 206 Reading and Writing Poetry[Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Prerequisites: No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor. | ||||
English 206 | Reading and Writing Poetry | Abedeen | TTh 11-12:20 | |
English 206 Reading and Writing Poetry[Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Prerequisites: No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor. | ||||
English 207 | Reading and Writing Fiction | Richardson | MW 12:30-1:50 | |
English 207 Reading and Writing FictionCourse Description: A reading and writing course in short fiction. Students will read widely in traditional as well as experimental short stories, seeing how writers of different culture and temperament use conventions such as plot, character, and techniques of voice and distance to shape their art. Students will also receive intensive practice in the craft of the short story, writing at least one story, along with revisions, short exercises, and a critical study of at least one work of fiction, concentrating on technique. Teaching Method: Discussion of readings and principles; workshop of student drafts. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ growing understanding of fiction; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: Selected short stories, essays on craft, and the work of the other students. Prerequisites: No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors. | ||||
English 207 | Reading and Writing Fiction | Seliy | TTh 11-12:20 | |
English 207 Reading and Writing FictionCourse Description: A reading and writing course in short fiction. Students will read widely in traditional as well as experimental short stories, seeing how writers of different culture and temperament use conventions such as plot, character, and techniques of voice and distance to shape their art. Students will also receive intensive practice in the craft of the short story, writing at least one story, along with revisions, short exercises, and a critical study of at least one work of fiction, concentrating on technique. Teaching Method: Discussion of readings and principles; workshop of student drafts. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ growing understanding of fiction; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: Selected short stories, essays on craft, and the work of the other students. Prerequisites: No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors. | ||||
English 207 | Reading and Writing Fiction | Bouldrey | TTh 9:30-10:50 | |
English 207 Reading and Writing FictionCourse Description: A reading and writing course in short fiction. Students will read widely in traditional as well as experimental short stories, seeing how writers of different culture and temperament use conventions such as plot, character, and techniques of voice and distance to shape their art. Students will also receive intensive practice in the craft of the short story, writing at least one story, along with revisions, short exercises, and a critical study of at least one work of fiction, concentrating on technique. Teaching Method: Discussion of readings and principles; workshop of student drafts. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ growing understanding of fiction; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: Selected short stories, essays on craft, and the work of the other students. Prerequisites: No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors. | ||||
English 207 | Reading and Writing Fiction | Kokernot | TTh 12:30-1:50 | |
English 207 Reading and Writing FictionCourse Description: A reading and writing course in short fiction. Students will read widely in traditional as well as experimental short stories, seeing how writers of different culture and temperament use conventions such as plot, character, and techniques of voice and distance to shape their art. Students will also receive intensive practice in the craft of the short story, writing at least one story, along with revisions, short exercises, and a critical study of at least one work of fiction, concentrating on technique. Teaching Method: Discussion of readings and principles; workshop of student drafts. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ growing understanding of fiction; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: Selected short stories, essays on craft, and the work of the other students. Prerequisites: No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors. | ||||
English 208 | Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction | McGrath | WF 9:30-10:50 | |
English 208 Reading and Writing Creative NonfictionCourse Description: An introduction to some of the many possible voices, styles, and structures of the creative essay. Students will read from the full aesthetic breadth of the essay, including memoir, meditation, lyric essay, and literary journalism. Discussions will address how the essay creates an artistic space distinct from the worlds of poetry and fiction, and how truth and fact function within creative nonfiction. Students will be asked to analyze the readings closely, and to write six short essays based on imitations of the style, structure, syntax, and narrative devices found in the readings. Students can also expect to do some brief writing exercises and at least one revision. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student work. Prerequisites: No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors. | ||||
English 213 | Introduction to Fiction | Jackson | MW 12:30-1:50, plus discussion section | |
English 213 Introduction to FictionCourse Description: This course introduces students to the study of fiction. Students will learn and discuss critical elements and concepts relevant to literary analysis including form, style, character, narrative voice, tone, plot, and genre. Texts will come from various historical periods and cultural contexts, including more and less canonical works, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the short fiction of John Keene. Teaching Method: lecture and discussion section. Evaluation Method: Short essays, quizzes and final exam. | ||||
English 214 | Introduction to Film and Its Literatures | Davis, N. | MW 11-12:20, plus discussion section | |
English 214 Introduction to Film and Its LiteraturesCourse Description: This course harbors two primary objectives: 1) to acquaint students with vocabularies and frameworks of argument required to analyze film in terms specific to that medium; and 2) to familiarize students with a broad range of written texts crucial to the study of cinema, enabling them to render persuasive interpretations of those texts, as well. The first half of the course will emphasize recent case studies of literature adapted into popular movies, tracking how not just the plots and characters but the perspectives, voices, structures, prose styles, and associated politics of written work get preserved but also transformed on screen, in blatant and subtle ways. In the second half, we will reverse course to examine plays, essays, and other literary works inspired by the movies. Cultivating techniques of close analysis—whether breaking down a film sequence, parsing a scholar’s arguments, or negotiating between two versions of the “same” story—will be the paramount skill developed in the course, hopefully leading to deeper appreciations of several kinds of texts. | ||||
English 220 | The Bible as Literature | Newman | MWF 10-10:50, plus discussion section | |
English 220 The Bible as LiteratureCourse Description: This course is intended to familiarize students of literature with the most influential text in Western culture. No previous acquaintance with the Bible is presupposed. We will consider such questions as the variety of literary genres and strategies in the Bible; the historical situation of its writers; the representation of God as a literary character; recurrent images and themes; the Bible as a Hebrew national epic; the New Testament as a radical reinterpretation of the “Old Testament” (or Hebrew Bible); and the overall narrative as a plot with beginning, middle, and end. Since time will not permit a complete reading, we will concentrate on those books that display the greatest literary interest or influence. From the Torah we will read Genesis, Exodus, and parts of Deuteronomy; from the Prophets, Amos, Jonah, Second Isaiah, and Daniel; and from the Writings, the books of Judges, Ruth, Psalms, and the Song of Songs, along with the saga of King David and portions of the Wisdom literature. In the New Testament, we will read the Gospels according to Matthew, Luke, and John and the book of Revelation. | ||||
English 273 | Introduction to 20th Century American Literature: Poetry and Performance in the Americas | Feinsod & Manning | TTh 11-12:20, plus discussion section | |
English 273 Introduction to 20th Century American Literature: Poetry and Performance in the AmericasCourse Description: This course explores the linked histories of poetry and performance across the Americas (from Harlem to Havana, and from Chicago to Mexico City and Buenos Aires). We’ll focus especially on modern and avant-garde poetry and dance from their origins to the present. Along the way, we’ll consider how experimental writers and artists of color navigated racial discrimination, how poets and performers understood their relationship to national and international politics, and how their extraordinary formal experiments in language and embodiment sought to imagine new social possibilities. Students will learn to describe how the expressive capacities of poetry and dance have shaped major episodes in 20th and 21st century cultural history. Poets may include: José Martí, Rubén Darío, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Pedro Pietri, and Claudia Rankine. Performers may include Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, José Limón, Merce Cunningham, Eleo Pomare, Bill T. Jones, and Will Rawls. | ||||
English 275 | Introduction to Asian American Literature | San Diego | TTh 12:30-1:50, plus discussion section | |
English 275 Introduction to Asian American LiteratureCourse Description: TBA Note: This course is colisted with ASIAN AM ST 275. | ||||
English 277 | Introduction to Latina/o Literature | Maguire | MWF 12-12:50 | |
English 277 Introduction to Latina/o LiteratureCourse Description: TBA Note: This course is combined with LATINA/O ST 277 and SPANISH 277. | ||||
English 300 | Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Murder on the Bestseller List | Cogswell | MW 2-3:20 | |
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Murder on the Bestseller ListCourse Description: Recent bestsellers such as The Girl on the Train and My Sister, the Serial Killer are part of a long legacy of wildly popular murder mysteries. In the early nineteenth century, murder, madness, and illicit sexuality were often confined to remote Gothic castles or the wilds of the English moors. With the rise of detective stories in the United States and sensation fiction in Britain, however, these middle-class nightmares invaded the supposedly blissful domestic scene. Writers also started to use murder as an occasion to pose radical questions about which deaths are considered "grievable." Beginning with bestselling authors Edgar Allen Poe and Wilkie Collins, this seminar follows the transatlantic tradition forward through Pauline Hopkins (author of the first Black murder mystery), mid-twentieth-century thrillers by Patricia Highsmith, and cutting-edge work by Percival Everett. Paying particular attention to how gender and race shape the narration of these tales, the course will conclude with a survey of twenty-first-century chart-toppers by Paula Hawkins, Oyinkan Braithwaite, and others. Readings will be supplemented with films, including the 2016 adaptation of The Girl on the Train. Teaching Method: Seminar discussion. Evaluation method: Essays and class participation. Texts include: Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer; Hawkins, The Girl on the Train. Texts will be available at: Norris. | ||||
English 300 | Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Magic, Monsters, and Dystopias: Young Adult Speculative Fiction | Larkin | TTh 12:30-1:50 | |
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Magic, Monsters, and Dystopias: Young Adult Speculative FictionCourse Description: We live in a moment on the brink of change. From political uncertainty and looming climate catastrophe to long overdue calls for racial justice and an understanding of gender beyond the binary, our future is taking shape in ways we couldn't have imagined. Or, could we? How do the monsters, ghosts, mermaids, and rebels who fill the pages of young adult speculative fiction help us reflect on our world today? How does YA speculative fiction, with its interest in utopian and dystopian societies, think through the moral dilemmas and new possibilities that await us? Focusing particularly on speculative fiction by Queer and BIPOC authors, this class will ask how these texts respond to questions of fascism and governmental control, climate change, technology, gender and sexuality, disability, and race. We will investigate speculative YA fiction through the lenses of childhood studies, queer theory, Afrofuturism, environmentalism, and disability studies, to name only a few. In so doing, we will ask: how does speculative fiction help us imagine new possible futures? And why are young adult characters–and readers–the prime site for exploring these concerns? Teaching Method: Seminar discussion. Evaluation Method: Participation, in-class presentation, papers. Texts include: Legendborn by Tracy Deonn, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger, Legend by Marie Lu, A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow, and The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin, plus theoretical readings. Texts will be available at: Bookends and Beginnings (1712 Sherman Avenue); individual readings available through Canvas. | ||||
English 307 | Advanced Creative Writing: Reading & Writing Travel | Bouldrey | TTh 11-12:20 | |
English 307 Advanced Creative Writing: Reading & Writing TravelCourse Description: Paul Fussel, author of Abroad: British Literary Travel between the Wars, wrote, “A travel book is like a poem in giving universal significance to a local texture.” Of all the forms of literature identified by its subject matter rather than its forms, travel writing is the most flexible in its ability to use any of the methods of mode—the ironic, the discursive, the narrative, the comic, the pastoral, the didactic. Using examples historic and contemporary, foreign and domestic, and across the genres of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, we will look at the long tradition of travel writing and its practitioners. Not designed for students merely wishing to workshop their “Study Ablog”, this course will offer a balanced approach to the growth and change in literature devoted to the subject of travel, touching briefly on ancient and medieval foundations and moving quickly to the explosion of what may be a genre of literature unto its own. We will also consider science and philosophy, art and religion, history and politics, all in the way they are encountered by the writer of travel. Students will read and discuss work in all of these genres, give short presentations, and discuss both the aesthetic and intellectual thrust of the required readings. Readings may include Marianne Moore, Michael Chabon, Mungo Park, Malcolm X, John Beckman, Goldie Goldbloom, Louisa Adams, Paul Fussell, Marta Maretich, and Grace Dane Mazur. | ||||
English 309 | Advanced Creative Cross-Genre Writing: Spoken Word and the Radiophonic Imagination | Bresland | TTh 2-3:20 | |
English 309 Advanced Creative Cross-Genre Writing: Spoken Word and the Radiophonic ImaginationCourse Description: Students will be invited to write and produce multiple prose and poetic works, layering the spoken word with evocative sonic textures, tones, music, and sometimes - shocker - even silence. This course will place equal emphasis on literary quality, vocal performance and production value. We will spend ample time on computers, learning and perfecting various audio production methods, taking cues from the best of contemporary radio practice by listening in on the rich and varied soundscapes of podcasts such as "Uncivil" and "Twenty Thousand Hertz", as well as broadcast mainstays like "This American Life" and "Radiolab". We will sample the beautifully layered soundscapes of Miranda July, Laurie Anderson, Joe Frank, Delia Derbyshire and many other sonic greats. Open to writers of all genres and all skill levels. | ||||
English 311 | Studies in Poetry | Wilson | MW 9:30-10:50 | |
English 311 Studies in PoetryCourse Description: TBA | ||||
English 324 | Studies in Medieval Literature: Medieval Women Writers (Pre 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) | Newman | MWF 2-2:50 | |
English 324 Studies in Medieval Literature: Medieval Women Writers (Pre 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)Course Description: For most of the twentieth century, scholars thought there were virtually no medieval women writers. “Everyone knew” that women couldn’t read and the Church didn’t allow them to write. But the feminist revolution changed all that, as dozens of women writers were rediscovered, edited, and translated. Yet even today, some of the most widely read medieval women still pose challenges. In this class we will read four women writers in depth, giving us time to delve into the critical literature and discuss the issues that vex their place in the canon. In the twelfth century, the popular romance poet Marie de France (who wrote in French but lived in England) proudly signed her work—because she feared, with good reason, that “some cleric” or learned man would claim credit for it. Late medieval England’s most important women writers, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (who knew each other), were long consigned to a religious ghetto. Kempe in addition was pathologized as a hysterical female. Finally, the prolific French writer Christine de Pizan became the first professional author in Europe—that is, the first of either sex to support herself and her family solely by writing. She was translated into English in the early modern period. Despite her explicit feminism, however, her signed works were often ascribed not to her, but to their male translators. This course will have a triple focus on the texts themselves, the difficulties faced by medieval women writers in their time, and their post-medieval reception. Teaching method: mostly discussion, a few lectures. Requirements: regular attendance and participation; three 5-7 page papers, at least one of which will be a creative option. Books: Available at Norris or online, but you must buy only these editions and translations. There may also be a course packet at Quartet.
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English 335 | Milton: John Milton’s Poetry in Context (Pre 1830) | Schwartz | TTh 9:30-10:50 | |
English 335 Milton: John Milton’s Poetry in Context (Pre 1830)Course Description: We will study John Milton’s poetry and prose in context, with sustained attention to the complexities of his art, the crisis of his times, the subtlety of his thought, and the extent of his influence. Milton’s defenses of political, personal, and religious liberty, his self-presentation, and his grappling with key ethical questions involving free will, gender definitions, crime, authority, rebellion, and redemption will be among the many concerns that arise as we explore his work in the context of the raging political and theological controversies of his time. Teaching Method: Discussion. Evaluation Method: based on class participation, an oral report, a short paper, and a longer paper. | ||||
English 338 | Studies in Renaissance Literature: Sex and Books in Shakespeare’s England (Pre 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) | Fall | MW 9:30-10:50 | |
English 338 Studies in Renaissance Literature: Sex and Books in Shakespeare’s England (Pre 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)Course Description: Books and sex go hand in hand. We use books and other writing technologies to express desire, enjoy our sexuality, and explore and define our gender identities. Likewise, cultural anxieties about sex and gender often center on books, as recent calls to ban texts with queer themes from schools and libraries around the U.S. demonstrate. To make sense of the fascinating, often fraught relationship between sex, gender, and written media, this course focuses on a key period in Anglophone literary and sexual history: the so-called Renaissance, when book production exploded thanks to the printing press and England was rocked by rapid cultural, racial, and religious upheaval. Examining representations of sex and gender in books, manuscripts, maps, printed images, and other textual media from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, we will ask: how did different communities share ideas about sex? What could be published in print and what had to stay private? What texts survive today, and why? What distinguishes art from obscenity? In the process of exploring these questions, students will have the opportunity to work hands-on with premodern books. Teaching Method: Discussion, occasional short lectures, group work. Evaluation Method: Presentation, participation, writing portfolio. Texts include: Selected poetry, prose, visual texts/images, and secondary readings (available online). Texts will be available at: Canvas and elsewhere online. | ||||
English 344 | 18th Century Fiction: Dangerous Liaisons: Passion, Betrayal, and Intrigue in 18th Century Literature (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) | Botz | MW 12:30-1:50 | |
English 344 18th Century Fiction: Dangerous Liaisons: Passion, Betrayal, and Intrigue in 18th Century Literature (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)Course Description: The recent surge in popularity of the 18th-century period drama evinced by series like Bridgerton and The Great, and films like The Favourite and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, speak to our modern moment’s fascination with the era when, arguably, modernity was born. This course will approach a number of key 18th-century writings and their contemporary adaptations to reflect on the timeless appeal of the historical costume drama. In what ways does the eighteenth-century novel—a category only just beginning to define itself during the period—particularly lend itself to modern adaptation? And what do contemporary films and television series reveal about our relationship with the cultural sensibilities and complex politics of the past? Reading Enlightenment-era and Regency fictions like Aphra Behn’s rakish romp, The Rover, Jane Austen’s satirical novella Lady Susan, and Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s novel of the French Revolution, Dangerous Liaisons alongside films like Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, and Amma Asante’s Belle, we will investigate the ways in which visual and written mediums attempt to offer us a glimpse into the past, as well as how we use might use them to historicize and critique questions of class, race, gender, and sexuality—then and now. Texts may include: Aphra Behn, The Rover; Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey; Jane Austen, Lady Susan; Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman; Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liasons dangereuses (in translation); Mary Hays, Memoirs of Emma Courtney Films may include: Marie Antoinette, The Favourite, Belle, Portrait of a Lady on Fire. | ||||
English 350 | 19th Century British Literature: Travels in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice) | Bredar | MW 9:30-10:50 | |
English 350 19th Century British Literature: Travels in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice)Course Description: In nineteenth-century Britain, a transportation revolution forever altered how people move through the world. Although spurred in large part by technological innovations such as the advent of railway travel, this revolution also unfolded in the pages of newspapers, novels, and other literary texts. This course will explore how literature shaped meanings and experiences of travel across the nineteenth century. How did Romantic poetry help transform the mundane act of walking into a respected leisure activity (aka “hiking”)? How did Victorian novels help process the shock of railway travel? How did Black transatlantic writers give voice to diasporic experience within a predominantly white British literary marketplace? These questions will take us through the English countryside, along dark Victorian streets, and across the Atlantic, guided by authors including William and Dorothy Wordsworth, William Hazlitt, Mary Prince, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mary Seacole, and Bram Stoker. While exploring how nineteenth-century authors used representations of travel to grapple with pressing issues of their day, we will also consider the ongoing legacies of these issues in contemporary culture and lived experience. To that end, the course will include several short excursions in the Chicago/Evanston area. Teaching Method: Mini-lectures, class discussion, group work, field trips. Evaluation Method: Students will be graded based on class participation, short papers, a presentation, and a final project. Texts include: The only required text for purchase will be Mary Seacole’s Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (Penguin, 2005, ISBN: 978-0140439021). All other materials will be provided as PDFs or are available free online. These include short works by William and Dorothy Wordsworth, William Hazlitt, Charles Dickens, and Virginia Woolf and excerpts from longer works, including Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mary Prince’s History of Mary Prince, the anonymously authored The Woman of Colour, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Course materials may also include selected films, short videos, and visual works. | ||||
English 357 | 19th Century British Fiction: Sex, Madness, and Marriage: 19th Century British Fiction (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) | Botz | MW 3:30-4:50 | |
English 357 19th Century British Fiction: Sex, Madness, and Marriage: 19th Century British Fiction (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)Course Description: The word “Victorian” exudes a certain stuffiness, a corseted and stiff-lipped repression characteristic of, and confined to, a distinct historical moment. Comparing modern sexual mores to those of the past, however, Michel Foucault notoriously deems us “other Victorians” in our erotic predilections and preoccupations, suggesting far less has changed since the nineteenth century than we might like to believe. By examining a number of nineteenth-century novels that particularly grapple with issues of desire, eroticism, and consent alongside queer and feminist scholarship, this course will investigate questions of sexual identity, desire, gender conformity, and fluidity, that remain provocative today. Melodramatic, sensational, sensual, and challenging, texts like Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, and Vernon Lee’s A Phantom Lover give us the opportunity to reconsider what the Victorians often referred to as “the Woman Question”: a growing social conservatism in response to changing gender conventions in no way confined to a single sex. How do these narratives negotiate questions of consent and kinship in response to growing calls during the period for gender equality? And what does the Victorian novel have to tell us—“we other Victorians”—about ways of thinking about sexual difference, deviance, and desire? Texts Include: Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights; Mary Seacole, The Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole in Many Lands; George Eliot, The Lifted Veil; Vernon Lee, A Phantom Lover; Rokeya Hossain, Sultana’s Dream; Marghanita Lasky, The Victorian Chaise-Longue. | ||||
English 365 | Studies in Postcolonial Literature: Magical Realisms (Post 1830/Transnationalism and Textual Circulation/Postcolonial and Comparative Literatures) | Nadiminti | MW 11-12:20 | |
English 365 Studies in Postcolonial Literature: Magical Realisms (Post 1830/Transnationalism and Textual Circulation/Postcolonial and Comparative Literatures)Course Description:Novels often describe real and complete worlds that is proximate to our own, with entirely imaginary people going about their daily lives as if in a continuous hut parallel universe. This process is called worldling and is now an established concept. But what happens when the contract with the “real world” is broken and instead writing reanimates myths, folktales, legends, and more within the real? What kinds of new worlds does this open up and how might it interfere with the conception of literature?Around 1950, Latin American writers began to break away from “realist” writing to explore a realm between the real and the magical, giving rise to what is now the established style of “magical realism.” To understand this overall movement from realism to magical realism, this course will begin with a consideration of realist writing and its reliance on the simulation of reality, aka verisimilitude, in the first few weeks. After understanding some basic tenets of realism, we will turn to Latin American, South Asian, and American sites of magical realism that stage a revolt against the dictates of the real. We will consider how paying close attention to the deployment of this style can yield significant political interventions, particularly around anti-imperial and anti-racist discourses. Fiction will include texts like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s The Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, and Toni Morrison’s The Song of Solomon. The course will also foray into theoretical work that helps to situate the importance of magical realism and its variations. Assignments will be modest, with two short close-reading papers, a presentation, and a final comparative paper. | ||||
English 366 | Studies in African American Literature: TBA (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race and Ethnicity) | Spigner | MW 2-3:20 | |
English 366 Studies in African American Literature: TBA (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race and Ethnicity)Course Description: This course introduces students to a variety of works by Black writers of the long nineteenth century. In this class, we will concentrate on the poetry and fiction of this period and explore the central themes, styles, commonalities, and differences within these works. For instance, we will consider how dialect and geography change our understanding of the subject matter. We will confront our preconceived expectations of what "Black literature" means in the nineteenth century and consider the implications of this process throughout the semester. Evaluation Method: This class depends on discussion and participation of every member of the class. Come to class prepared to enthusiastically tackle, through discussion and our own literary criticism, issues of gender, class, sexuality, and race as they figure in our readings and other materials. Texts will include: works by Henry Box Brown, Mary Prince, Charles Chesnutt, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and others, in addition to companion critical and theoretical articles. | ||||
English 368 | Studies in 20th Century Literature: Stories of the World: Short Fiction and the Making of National Identity (Post 1830/Transnationalism and Textual Circulation/Postcolonial and Comparative Literatures) | Cogswell | MW 11-12:20 | |
English 368 Studies in 20th Century Literature: Stories of the World: Short Fiction and the Making of National Identity (Post 1830/Transnationalism and Textual Circulation/Postcolonial and Comparative Literatures)Course Description: Students in this course will take a global tour of canonical and recent short fiction. Ranging over masters of the short story from Gogol to Kafka, Gordimer to Ngũgĩ, and Melville to Baldwin, we will conclude by turning to contemporary American authors Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, and Dantiel Moniz. The class will analyze the widely varying techniques by which stories from different cultures and perspectives achieve “unity of effect.” We will pay particular attention to how these stories reflect, and construct, a national imaginary. Tales of alienation in the Russian caste system, intricate thought experiments from Argentina, and distillations of early American experience beguile us with their elegance even as they rewrite the narratives and myths of nationhood. Through theoretical accounts of national identity and close readings of the dialogues, details, and symbols that give a story its resonance, students will gain broad familiarity with the global history and current state of short fiction. Readings will be supplemented with seminal film adaptations such as All About Eve and Brokeback Mountain. Teaching Method: Seminar discussion. Evaluation method: Essays and class participation. Texts include: Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others; Poe, Philosophy of Composition; Anderson, Imagined Communities. Texts will be available at: Norris. | ||||
English 378 | Studies in American Literature: Racial Sensations (Post 1830/Race & Ethnicity) | Jackson | MW 3:30-4:50 | |
English 378 Studies in American Literature: Racial Sensations (Post 1830/Race & Ethnicity)Course Description: This course examines the relation between race and feeling. In what way do certain emotions stick to some bodies and not others, and how can this help us account for structures of privilege and power in the U.S.? How have writers and artists thought of race on emotional terms—how does it, indeed, feel to be a problem? Teaching Method: Lecture-discussion. Evaluation Method: Reading responses, midterm, final paper. | ||||
English 378 | Studies in American Literature: "The Chicago Way": Urban Spaces and American Literature (Post 1830) | Savage | TTh 3:30-4:50 | |
English 378 Studies in American Literature: "The Chicago Way": Urban Spaces and American Literature (Post 1830)Course Description: Urbanologist Yi Fu Tuan writes, "What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place when we get to know it better and endow it with values." In The Untouchables, Sean Connery tells Kevin Costner, "You want to get Capone? Here's how you get Capone. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He puts one of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue. That's the Chicago way." In this class, we will examine "the Chicago way" from many different angles in order to interrogate the values with which various artists have endowed Chicago. We will read in a broad range of media: journalism, poetry, song, fiction, film, and sequential art to see how a sense of Chicago as a place works over time. We will pay close attention to depictions of the construction of American identity, and to the role of the artist and intellectual in the city. Teaching Method: Discussion and brief lectures. Evaluation Method: Class participation; brief written responses to each text; several options for papers of various lengths. Texts Include: Nelson Algren's Chicago: City on the Make and The Neon Wilderness; Richard Wright's Native Son; Stuart Dybek's The Coast of Chicago; journalism by Mike Royko; short fiction by Sandra Cisneros, James T. Farrell and others; poetry by Carl Sandburg, Eve Ewing, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tony Fitzpatrick and others; the films The Untouchables, The Blues Brothers, and Barbershop; the graphic novel 100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call. Note: Texts will be available at Norris. | ||||
English 378 | Studies in American Literature: American Women Auteurs, 1890-1960, Novels and Film (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) | Stern | TTh 11-12:20 | |
English 378 Studies in American Literature: American Women Auteurs, 1890-1960, Novels and Film (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)Course Description: This course challenges students to engage in the intense close reading of fictional and cinematic texts created or brought to expressive life by American women artists (writers and actresses) working between the nineteenth-century fin de siècle and the beginning of World War II. Our Canvas archive features eight films starring Bette Davis, arguably the greatest film actress of Hollywood's classic period. We will talk during the quarter about terminology for the analysis of cinema, particularly the four so-called central principles through which to read and interpret filmic texts: cinematography; mise en scene; sound; and editing. We will read films through the methods of psychoanalysis, historicism, feminism, critical analysis of sexuality, gender, and race and in consideration of the studio system, star culture, and modes of spectatorship. This syllabus marks an early experiment toward thinking about Davis's films as literary works. Teaching Method: Discussion. Evaluation Method: Participation, Close Reading Exams, Final paper. Texts include: Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs, (1896); Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1900); Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905); Willa Cather, Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940); Nella Larsen, Quicksand (1928); Nella Larsen, Passing (1929). | ||||
English 381 | Literature and Medicine: Medicine, Race, and Gender (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Race and Ethnicity) | Larkin | TTh 3:30-4:50 | |
English 381 Literature and Medicine: Medicine, Race, and Gender (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Race and Ethnicity)Course Description: We often think of the humanities and sciences as opposite pursuits. While the humanities seem to focus on subjectivity and feeling, we see the sciences as objective and fact-based. Yet attending to the history of medicine demands a troubled acknowledgement that medical inquiry both shapes and is itself shaped by cultural assumptions about race and gender. Indeed, critics have pointed time and again to how the seeming impartiality of medical fact reveals biases about which kinds of bodies feel pain and who is prone to certain diseases, distinctions that have been assigned moral and social meaning. In this class, we will read literature about medical encounters in order to investigate how ideas about race and gender shape medical experiences. How do these individual accounts reflect larger structural injustices? What kinds of barriers and assumptions do women and people of color face when they receive treatment? What about people seeking gender affirming care? Beginning with the nineteenth century and moving towards the present day, we will examine the surprising history of how medical knowledge often depended on the exploitation of racialized bodies, grapple with the tangled enmeshment of femininity and illness, and explore how claims about medicalized bodies became a metric for citizenship. Teaching Method: Seminar discussion Evaluation Method: Participation, in-class presentation, papers/final project Texts include: “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Bell Jar (1963) by Sylvia Plath, The Cancer Journals (1980) by Audre Lorde, Some Assembly Required: The Not-So-Secret Life of a Transgender Teen (2014) by Arin Andrews, and Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflection on Race and Medicine (2015) by Damon Tweedy. Texts will be available at: Norris; individual readings available through Canvas | ||||
English 381 | Studies in Literature & Medicine: Intro to Disability Studies in Literature (Post-1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) | Chaskin | TTh 11-12:20 | |
English 381 Studies in Literature & Medicine: Intro to Disability Studies in Literature (Post-1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)Course Description: The field of disability studies grew out of the rights-based activism that led, in the United States, to the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Yet, as disability theorists have observed, "western" literature has long been obsessed with disability as metaphor, character trait, and plot device. This course will serve as an introduction to the application of disability studies in literature. We will explore a range of questions: how do we approach the representation of disability in texts by non-disabled authors? How do we differentiate (or should we?) between disability and chronic illness, or between physical and mental disabilities? Can literary representation operate as activism? How do we parse the gap between disability as metaphor and lived experience? What does literature offer disability studies, and why should disability studies be a core method for studying literature? Readings will be divided between theoretical texts and primary sources. Students will learn to grapple with complex sociocultural and literary analysis, as well as to make space for their own primary source readings. Required Texts: All texts will be uploaded to Canvas as screen-reader-compatible PDFs. | ||||
English 383 | Studies in Theory & Criticism: Black Feminist Theory (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Race and Ethnicity) | Bey | MW 3:30-4:50 | |
English 383 Studies in Theory & Criticism: Black Feminist Theory (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Race and Ethnicity)Course Description: This course begins not from the premise, necessarily, of an intellectual and political genealogy of black women. Rather, this course is one that thinks black feminist theory and theorizing; this course chronicles the ways that the political, intellectual, ethical, and social resound radically and progressively and names that resonance—and all its vibrations and textures—black feminist theory. Thus, we will, of course, be reading a variety of black women along the jagged gendered spectrum between and beyond “cis” and “trans,” but more specifically we will, in this course, be tracing the ways radical politics and ethics arise in such a way as to interrogate the established parameters of race and gender normativity. To do this, we will be reading the work of people like bell hooks and Patricia Hill Collins, Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston, Jennifer Nash and Hortense Spillers, and more. | ||||
English 385 | Topics in Combined Studies: Cute, Zany, #oddlysatisfying: Contemporary Aesthetics (Post 1830) | Hodge | TTh 9:30-10:50 | |
English 385 Topics in Combined Studies: Cute, Zany, #oddlysatisfying: Contemporary Aesthetics (Post 1830)Course Description: This course is about how we talk about art and why that matters. What does it mean to call something "cute"? How about "interesting," "zany," "#oddlysatisfying," or -- reaching back into the past -- "beautiful" or even "sublime"? This course explores questions of aesthetic judgment through a sustained and in-depth reading of literary theorist Sianne Ngai's 2012 book Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting. Along the way we will read selections from authors writing in earlier periods (Kant, Lyotard) and major influences on Ngai (Marx, Cavell). We will also consider more recent and primarily internet-based categories of aesthetic judgment as well as possible alternatives to "judgment" (such as when art serves as a prop for self care; or when the term "aesthetic" signals a lifestyle, e.g. "cottage core," "dark academia," etc). This course is designed to appeal to students interested in reading and writing at the intersections of literature, art, philosophy, and mass culture in 20th- and 21st-century western cultures. It is also designed as one possible introduction to the broad field of writings often called "literary theory." To ground our discussion we will analyze a variety of works across genres and media, including videogames, literature, and experimental film and video. Required Text: Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories 978-0674088122 | ||||
English 385 | Topics in Combined Studies: LGBTQ Art & Activism in the United States (Post-1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) | Chaskin | TTh 2-3:20 | |
English 385 Topics in Combined Studies: LGBTQ Art & Activism in the United States (Post-1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)Course Description: From the Civil Rights Movement to the AIDS crisis to the legalization of gay marriage, LGBT art and activism have been deeply intertwined. Queer writers in the U.S. have negotiated ever-shifting priorities and stigmas to represent queer life in literature and media. Yet stories have always been a way to have a voice, to account for oneself and one’s community, and to connect to others who share one’s experience. LGBTQ literature might be outward facing—representing queerness to a straight audience—or it might face inwards, speaking to a queer community of readers. This class will consider the relationship between sociopolitical movements and the art and literature that were produced from or around them. Focusing on flashpoints in the history of LGBTQ rights and culture in the United States, students will leave this course with a concrete sense of recent history, artistic diversity, and intersectional queer studies. In addition to a core set of literary and historical texts, students will give queer culture presentations on each of the primary periods this class covers. These presentations will provide the opportunity to bring in objects from outside of the class, which will supplement our understanding of queer art and activism. Teaching Methods: Discussion of assigned texts, as well as supplementary material presented in class. Evaluation Methods: Participation, short presentation, reflections, final paper or creative project. Texts Include: Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt (1952); James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1956); Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle (1973); Tony Kushner, Angels in America (1991); Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (2006). In addition, we will read a series of activist documents, short stories, and essays, and watch the documentary How to Survive a Plague (2012). Texts Will Be Available At: Novels will be at Beck’s Bookstore; all other essays and films will be on Canvas. | ||||
English 386 | Studies in Literature & Film: Rebels and Rule Breakers: Subversive Coming-of-Age Stories in Literature and Film (Post 1830) | Hansen | MW 2-3:20 | |
English 386 Studies in Literature & Film: Rebels and Rule Breakers: Subversive Coming-of-Age Stories in Literature and Film (Post 1830)Course Description: Breaking the rules is a fundamental aspect of growing up, but some transgressions have more serious consequences than others, particularly for those who do not have the option of second and third chances. How do we push against the life stories that have been chosen for us? In this seminar, we will look at a variety of coming-of-age texts dealing with the development of identity, the loss of innocence, and the subversion of narratives. We’ll consider the questions: How do friendships help to shape us, and how is betrayal a part of growing up? How do we navigate parental expectations that do not match with our own dreams or desires? How are the stakes different and higher for those who are not a part of the dominant culture? We will look at three novels that complicate the coming-of-age story in distinct ways: Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan tale My Brilliant Friend; Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian elegy Never Let Me Go; and Cameroonian writer Ferdinand Oyono’s epistolary anti-colonial work Houseboy. In addition to these texts, we will consider Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis and a variety of films: Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird, Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, and Jordan Peele’s Us. Standing on the brink of adulthood, with one foot still partially in childhood, it can feel as though small decisions can have outsized consequences, and the people who should be the most supportive can create the biggest obstacles. We will use these novels and films to interrogate the conventional coming-of-age narrative and to raise questions about the hard work of defining ourselves against strong and sometimes dangerous forces–and the loss that may happen along the way. | ||||
English 393-3 | Theory and Practice of Poetry | Shanahan | MW 3:30-4:50 | |
English 393-3 Theory and Practice of PoetryCourse Description: This selective-enrollment, yearlong "Sequence" is designed to make students 64 Return to Calendar increasingly informed readers and self-sustaining apprentices of poetry. The Fall portion of the course begins with summer reading and intensive study in which poets learn to identify operative modes in poetry -- including description, rhetoric, story and song -- and begin connecting contemporary participants with root systems in the tradition. We support our studies with reading exercises and "imitation" assignments, in which students convert close reading into fodder for original writing. Students will write at least four papers and will write, workshop and revise four poems during the Fall term. They also will lead presentations on one chosen poet and one classmate during workshop. In the Winter term, students will continue to read and complete close reading assignments and will stretch their skills as they complete a week of "Daily Poems," thereby drawing on original energy and stamina to bring their work to the next level of accomplishment. Finally, in the Spring term, students will focus entirely on their own work, drafting, revising, workshopping and completing one long poem of at least 120 lines that combines autobiographical material with writing from research. Throughout the year, our close reading assignments hone skills in sensitive and critical thinking; our imitation poems challenge existing habits as they introduce new strategies; our Daily Poems exercise agility and confidence; and our workshops cultivate the openness and humility necessary to serious writing and lifelong learning. Through this intensive and nurturing Sequence, students become careful readers of each others -- work and complete a polished portfolio of original writing. Note: No P/N registration. Attendance at first class mandatory. Admission by application only. | ||||
English 394-3 | Theory and Practice of Fiction | Donohue | MW 3:30-4:50 | |
English 394-3 Theory and Practice of FictionTeaching Method: Lectures, discussion, small- and large-peer workshops. Evaluation Method: This is a portfolio- and participation-based course. Grade based on timely delivery of all assigned work, with equal weight placed on your own stories and revisions and on your peer feedback. Texts Include: TBA Note: No P/N registration. Attendance at first class mandatory. Admission by application only. | ||||
English 395-3 | Theory and Practice of Creative Nonfiction | Webster | MW 3:30-4:50 | |
English 395-3 Theory and Practice of Creative NonfictionTeaching Method: Discussion. Evaluation Method: Based on creative and critical work; class presentations and participation. Texts Include: Varies each quarter. Texts will be available at Norris Center Bookstore and Quartet Copies. Note: No P/N registration. Attendance at first class mandatory. Admission by application only. | ||||
English 397 | Research Seminar: Age of Imperialism: Theory, History, Literature | Gottlieb | MW 2-3:20 | |
English 397 Research Seminar: Age of Imperialism: Theory, History, LiteratureCourse Description: Nothing marks the modern world so much as the devastating and disruptive effects of imperialism. An understanding of this complex phenomenon is vital not only for an understanding of modern history and geography, but also for modern literature. Lenin and Arendt draw diametrically opposed interpretations of Hobson’s original theory of imperialism: while Lenin understands imperialism as the last stage of capitalism, Arendt believes it is the first stage of rule by the bourgeoisie. At stake in this debate, at least for Arendt, is the ability of an interpretation of imperialism to explicate works of literature written under imperialist conditions. With a focus on the “Age of Imperialism” (especially the “scramble for Africa” and “the Great Game”), we will begin the class with an examination of some of the central theories and interpretations of European imperialism (those of Marx, Hobson, Lenin, and Arendt); continue with an exploration of the historical conditions of certain imperialized regions (India, Congo Free State, and Nigeria); and make use of both inquiries as we confront some of the most lucid and powerful literary encounters with imperialism in this century, including works by Kipling, Conrad, Achebe, and Desai. Teaching Method: Brief lectures and discussion. Evaluation Method: Two in-class presentations (one collaborative, one independent); research dossier developed over the course of the quarter; final research paper. Required Texts: Texts will likely include theoretical writings and novels by Hobson, Lenin, Arendt, Kipling, Conrad, Achebe, and Desai. | ||||
English 403 | Writers' Studies in Literature | Martinez | M 2-4:50 | |
English 403 Writers' Studies in LiteratureCourse Description: TBA | ||||
English 422 | Studies in Medieval Literature: Building Character | Breen | Th 2-4:50 | |
English 422 Studies in Medieval Literature: Building CharacterCourse Description: TBA | ||||
English 461 | Studies in Contemporary Literature: The Blue Humanities | Feinsod | W 2-4:50 | |
English 461 Studies in Contemporary Literature: The Blue HumanitiesCourse Description: This course focuses on a recent profusion of criticism in the “blue humanities,” which we will define as the cultural study of marine and aqueous environments, especially as these spaces shape discourses of environmentalism and political geography. Although we may give some attention to urban hydroscapes, lakes, and rivers, we will mostly focus on the world’s oceans. In constructing our object of inquiry, the course takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on literary theory, art history, Black studies, postcolonial studies, environmental and labor history, legal studies, and media theory. Scholars may include Sekula, Rediker, Hofmeyr, Khalili, Sharpe, Blumenberg, Blum, Bolster, and a few novels and films such as Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, Claude McKay’s Banjo, Nadifa Mohamed’s The Fortune Men, or Francisco Goldman’s The Ordinary Seaman (to be finalized with student input). | ||||
English 471 | Studies in American Literature: American Women Auteurs, Novels, and Films: 1895-1960 | Stern | T 2-4:50 | |
English 471 Studies in American Literature: American Women Auteurs, Novels, and Films: 1895-1960Course Description: American Women Auteurs centers around five novelists – Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Nella Larsen. That is, we move from the exquisite local color realism of Jewett’s spinster-filled Maine to Chopin’s “creole Bovary” set in fin de siècle New Orleans to Wharton’s anthropological vision of Old New York’s tribal mores for women, to Cather’s enabling Nebraska prairies and historical ante-bellum Virginia to Larsen’s Renaissance Harlem, Tuskegee, and rural black belt South. The seminar pairs both Jane Campion’s The Piano and an all-star set of Bette Davis’s greatest classical Hollywood films with these novels: The Country of the Pointed Firs and Deephaven with The Piano; Jezebel with The Awakening; Dark Victory and Now, Voyager with The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence; Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? with Sapphira and the Slave Girl and My Antonia; and In This Our Life with Quicksand and Passing. Augmenting this reading list will be theoretical essays on authorship by Foucault and Barthes; star theory; essays on spectatorship; and genre criticism on melodramatic, gothic, and sentimental forms. | ||||
English 520 | Writing for Publication | Schwartz | Th 11a-12:50p | |
English 520 Writing for PublicationCourse Description: Our collective goal in this workshop is to help each member prepare a scholarly article for submission by the end of the quarter. Each member will work to develop and revise a promising seminar project or a dissertation chapter for publication in article form. We'll discuss how to think about and select a suitable journal, scholarly conversation, and audience; how to fit an article's frame, argument, and rhetoric to the journal and its audience; how to identify and address any weaknesses in research, argument, structure, and style; how to decide where and how to cut and compress the argument, where and how to develop or expand it; how best to organize the article; how to write a strong, attention-catching lead; how to follow a journal's style sheet; how to check references with meticulous care; how to submit the article for publication; and how to respond to readers’ reports. We'll also consider broader issues of scholarly publication, such as pros and cons of publishing in edited volumes, special journal issues, and online venues; whether and how to publish work that forms part of a future monograph; and how scholarly publication relates to publication for a wider, non-specialist audience. Workshop members will be analyzing and critiquing their own and each other’s submissions. Each will also receive feedback from the instructor and, where possible, from a specialist colleague in the field. Each will work closely with the instructor and workshop members on successive drafts. "Writing for Publication" is offered P/N and open to all students in candidacy with their advisers' consent. Should demand be high, Ph D candidates in English who are nearing the job market will have enrollment priority. Teaching method: Seminar discussion and workshop. | ||||
English 571 | Teaching Creative Writing | Seliy | M 10a-12:50p | |
English 571 Teaching Creative WritingCourse Description: In this course, we will engage with a wide range of possible approaches to the instruction of creative writing. To begin, we will look at the history of Creative Writing programs and the models of teaching that have traditionally guided MFA programs. We will then move on to discuss theories of learning as they apply to fine-arts courses. We will take into consideration intersectional challenges (race, gender, class, disability, etc). And we will think about the differences between teaching undergraduates and graduate students. In the second half of the course we will move into the practical work of designing creative writing courses that have a beginning, middle, and end, and also a clear set of achievable learning objectives. You will do the practical work of drafting syllabi, generating exercises, and selecting reading material for introductory courses in poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. |