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Graduate Course Descriptions, Summer I and Fall 2008
SUMMER I 2008
509-001
Topics in Literature: Renaissance Drama
Lewis Walker
MTWR 10:15-12:20
MO 202
In this course, we will study 10-12 outstanding plays chosen from the rich outpouring of English drama during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Plays covered include Marlowe's Edward II; Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, and Jonson's Volpone. Informal response papers, oral presentation, annotated bibliography of 8-10 items, critical paper of 10-12 pages. Text: Bevington, ed., English Renaissance Drama.
FALL 2008
501-001
Introduction to Research Methods in English
Colleen Reilly
R 6:30-9:15
MO 204
Students in this course learn the research and writing skills necessary to participate in the current scholarly conversations taking place in various areas of English studies, including literature, rhetoric and composition, and professional writing. Students will use print and electronic resources, research tools, and methodologies to locate scholarly texts and generate data in support of their own contributions to the discourse communities that comprise English studies. Course projects will likely include a book review, conference presentation proposal, and papers of various lengths.
502-001
Introduction to Literary Theory
Janet Ellerby
W 6:30-9:15
MO 202
John Keats once wrote, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye need to know." We'll use this statement as a starting point as we read and discuss what great thinkers have had to say about beauty, truth, meaning, and meaninglessness. Our reading will range from classical philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, to revolutionary thinkers such as Marx, Freud, and Woolf, to contemporary theorists such as Derrida and Cixous. Has truth remained eternal or do truths change depending on historical, social, and literary contexts? Is the beautiful necessarily delightful or can it move us in profound but unsettling ways? What is the ethical role of literature in the world today? One oral presentation and two seminar papers. Attendance is crucial. Texts include: The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends; Stone, The Trial of Socrates Hawthorne; The Scarlet Letter and Course Packet.
508-001
Studies in Nonfiction: "Lingual" Memoirs: Language, Food & Culture
Barbara Waxman
M 3:30-6:15
MO 202
Memoirs of culture-crossings abound. We study those “lingual” memoirs that describe cross-cultural experience primarily through translingualism and foods. We look at the tropes memoirists fashion to describe one culture in terms of another and observe the translingual imagination when memoirists switch from English to another language or merge characteristics of two languages (e.g., “Spanglish”). We discuss memoirs by Polish, Mexican, and Vietnamese immigrants to America as well as memoirs by an American in Vietnam and an Australian in France. We witness life on the hyphen in texts by a Mexican-American, a Jordanian-American and a Chinese-American. Ideas from autobiography theory add to our discussions. Students write one analytical essay (1,000 words) and a research paper containing some autobiographical elements (4,000 words). Texts include: Rodriguez, The Hunger of Memory; Li, Daughter of Heaven; Hoffman, Lost in Translation; Nguyen, Stealing Buddha's Dinner; Sachs, The House on Dream Street; Abu-Jaber, The Language of Baklava.
551-001
Topics in Professional Writing: Writing and the Environment
Diana Ashe
W 3:30-6:15
MO 204
Grappling with our relationship to nature and natural phenomena took an interesting turn in the twentieth century, a turn that is reflected in the works of the twenty-first century as well. Beyond recording and rhapsodizing about the Earth and its phenomena, environmental writing now encompasses advocacy and asks us to consider not just writing about the environment, but also the environments in which we write. Students in this course will gain an understanding of this shift in environmental writing through, in part, reading and discussion of some foundational and some funky non-fiction books. Texts include: Leopold, A Sand County Almanac; Carson, Silent Spring; Bass, Caribou Rising; Dobrin and Weisser, Natural Discourse: Toward Ecocomposition.
561-001
Postmodern American Fiction and Culture
John Clifford
W 3:30-6:15
MO 202
An exploration of innovative and experimental American fiction from Vonnegut and Pynchon to DeLillo, Auster, and Spiegleman. Attention also to wider cultural contexts, including postmodern theory, film, architecture, and philosophy. Primarily an interactive discussion seminar. Two papers, reports, and presentations. Texts include: Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five; Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49; DeLillo, White Noise; Spiegleman, Maus; Auster, The Book of Illusion.
561-002
Topics in American Literature: The American New Woman
Keith Newlin
M 6:30-9:15
MO 102
“When the world began to change, the restlessness of women was the main cause,” wrote Hutchins Hapgood in his memoir of his years in Greenwich Village, A Victorian in the Modern World. This “restlessness,” attributed to the advent of what was popularly called “the New Woman,” fascinated both female and male writers, for different reasons. Women writers saw in the New Woman the opportunity to re-imagine society and women’s roles and to raise such questions as How are women’s identities created and defined? What is woman’s place in the new society? How should women view success? Is it possible to nurture the self, raise a family, and participate equally in the community? Male writers, on the other hand, did not always react as unfavorably as one might assume. There was the expected ridicule at what some perceived as the spectacle of “masculinized females,” but others were more supportive in their portrayal of women as social equals. This course will explore the construction of the “New Woman” in fiction and drama written by both men and women. Topics include the influence of the suffrage movement, the introspection occasioned by new conceptions of sexuality, the aesthetics of protest literature, the effects of increased social freedom for women, the impact of women entering the workforce, the debate over property rights, and especially new conceptions of “male” and “female.” Texts include: Honey, Breaking the Ties That Bind: Popular Stories of the New Woman; Newlin, American Plays of the New Woman; Patterson, The American New Woman Revisited; Phelps, Doctor Zay; Chopin, The Awakening; Austin, A Woman of Genius; Gilman, Herland; Wharton, Summer; Yezierska, Bread Givers;
564-001
Studies in Children’s and Adolescent Literature: Literature for Adolescents
Meghan Sweeney
R 3:30-6:15
MO 102
Throughout the semester, we will examine a broad range of literature, including novels, memoirs, and graphic novels, about and for adolescents. We will read these texts sympathetically and critically, paying particular attention to the influence of youth culture and popular culture more broadly. What does it mean to be an adolescent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? How (and why) are adolescents idealized/villainized/ portrayed “authentically” in YA texts and adult crossover texts? Come prepared to write insightful responses and engage in vigorous class discussion. Texts include: Satrapi, Persepolis; Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time; Gantos, Hole in My Life; Thompson, Blankets.
580- 001
Critical Introduction to Science Fiction
Nicholas Laudadio
T 6:30-9:15
MO 102
In this class, we will be working to make sense of one of the more is understood/maligned/misrecognized genres in literature and film studies: science fiction. In order to accomplish this rather ambitious goal, we will be confronting SF as a historical, critical, and political force that attempts to better understand the here that might just end up there (or beyond). For the most part, the class will be organized thematically and the range of primary and secondary texts will be extensive--including (but not limited to) films, novels, short stories, critical essay, philosophical speculation, and new media. Text: Freedman, Critical Theory and Science Fiction, TBA.
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