UNDERGRADUATE COURSES
UCCS Learning Objectives for Literature and Performing Arts (LPA)Upon completing these courses, students will be able to: (1) Produce
oral and written assessments of literary and cultural texts and/or
performances using the language and concepts of the discipline of
literary studies. |
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ENGL 1301: World and the Text I (Freshman Honors Seminar) • Professor Ryan Jerving
Thematic Title: Text and Technology Description: In his History of Reading, Steven Roger Fischer describes the emergence of the written word in ancient Mesopotamia as "the human voice turned to stone" -- and literally so: wedge-shaped cuneiform symbols carved into mobile, palm-sized clay tablets that allowed for an author's texts to be carried to other places and later times. Ever since, authorship has been inseparably linked to technology -- alphabets & acrophony, literacy & libraries, papyrus & printing presses, transport & trade routes -- both co-evolving in complexity to meet an ever greater mobility of goods, ideas, and people as city-states expanded into kingdoms, then into nations, then into trans-oceanic empires. Readings: Our primary texts will most likely include the Mesopotamian "Poem of the Righteous Sufferer," Greek tragedies, the Indian fables of the Panchatantra, plays from the Peking (Chinese) opera, Shakespeare's Scottish play, the King James Bible, the Arabian Nights, and the African/British/American/West Indian abolitionist autobiography of Olaudah Equiano. There will also be significant scholarly readings from the history of writing, philosophy, economics, and mathematics. Assignments: One analytic essay, one research essay; a midterm, a final exam; individual and group presentations; collaborative development of online materials ENGL 1301: World and the Text I (Freshman Honors Seminar) • Professor John Su
Thematic Title: Models of Heroism and the Depiction of Women from Homer to Milton Description: Every culture has its heroes, figures who embody the ideals and virtues that a given society admires. Studying a culture's portrayals of heroism can provide us an inroads to understanding the aspirations and dilemmas of people at a given time and place. Toward this end, we will explore the birth and development of Western European literature. Beginning with Homer and concluding with Milton, this course will explore visions of heroism and contrast how different times and places imagine their heroes. Because both the authors and the heroes in their works are almost exclusively male, we will also focus heavily on how these literatures imagine women. Do women offer contrasting models of heroism? Or do they represent threats to heroism? Are the texts we will read sexist or do they provide positive portraits of women? Readings: Beowulf, Homer - The Odyssey, John Milton - Paradise Lost, William Shakespeare – Macbeth, Virgil - The Aeneid Assignments: Three formal written essays (5-7 pages), group oral presentation, active class participation, final exam ENGL 1301: World and the Text I (Freshman Honors Seminar) • Professor Christine Krueger
Thematic Title: Description: Readings: Assignments: ENGL 1301: World and the Text I (Freshman Honors Seminar) • Professor Leah Flack
Thematic Title: Heroism, Violence, and Power from Homer to Milton Description: For more than two millennia, storytellers from Homer to John Milton were vitally concerned with the human desires for power and glory and the violence that often arose in pursuit of both. This course will explore the ways that these writers represented and responded to ideals of heroism in relation to violence and power in the centuries that saw the rise of Western European literature. As we confront literary heroes like Homer’s Achilles and Hector and Virgil’s Aeneas, we will ask questions about the origins and costs of their desires for power and glory as we consider what these heroes reveal about the cultures from which they emerged. Our work will be attentive to both literary form and historical context. Along the way, we will also be centrally focused on developing critical writing skills so that students can leave the class empowered and aware of the strategies underlying effective, precise, and vivid writing. Active, informed presentation is expected of all members of the class. Readings: Homer - The Iliad; Virgil - The Aeneid; Beowulf; Gawain and the Green Knight; John Milton - Paradise Lost; William Shakespeare - Othello and Hamlet Assignments: Three 5-page papers, final exam, weekly D2L posts, active and informed class participation
ENGL 1301: World and the Text I (Freshman Honors Seminar) •Professor Ann Mattis
Thematic Title: Bodies and Minds Description: This course explores patterns in the ways bodies and minds have been represented in Western literature and art. Since the ancient period, bodies, at least in Western culture, have been set in opposition to both minds and souls. Associated with base material processes and unruly appetites that need to be controlled or tamed, the body is often represented as being in conflict with the more spiritual and intellectual components of human civilization. As a class, we will investigate the broad-based cultural conflicts, aesthetic effects, and thematic consequences of body/mind and body/soul dualism, including the various breakdowns of that dualism.
Through our careful explication of various texts, we will decipher how the body/mind split underwrites cultural archetypes in the West. A central feature of this analysis will pertain to how the body has often been identified with populations designated inferior (women, slaves, servants, lower castes, religious minorities, and colonized groups). However, we will also explore how those designations of inferiority get complicated or challenged in the humanistic tradition. The syllabus will contain primarily written texts, but our classroom discussions about the literature will be consistently framed with visual materials, which will often be viewable on D2L. By engaging visual art alongside the literary texts, students will develop a cross-disciplinary knowledge base and critical vocabulary that informs sophisticated writing and thinking at the college level. Probable Readings: Gilgamesh, Sappho, selected poems; Sophocles Oedipus and Antigone; Plato Phaedrus, excerpts; The Book of Genesis; The Book of Judith; Marie de France "Lanval" and "Bisclavret”; Chaucer Canterbury Tales; Shakespeare Othello; Thomas Harriot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, excerpts; numerous fairy tales from Arabian Nights to Mother Goose; Toni Morrison A Mercy. Assignments: 4 Informal responses and Discussion Leads, 1 Midterm essay (Analytical), 1 Final essay (Research), and Final Exam (Comprehensive).
ENGL 2310: Introduction to Global Literature • Professor Marques Redd
Thematic Title: Literature and Culture of the African Diaspora Description: This course will examine prose, poetry, drama, film, and music by writers of the African diaspora, specifically from Nigeria, Colombia, the USA, and Jamaica. This reading and writing intensive course will focus on the psychospiritual dynamics of this vibrant body of literature, particularly by looking at its engagements with systems ranging from Rastafarianism to vodun and ancient Egyptian philosophy. We will touch on themes such as the envisioning of utopia, the reconstruction of fractured identity, the representation of divine possession, the “science” of augmenting consciousness, and the force of myth in the social world. These themes will be analyzed in relation to the political, economic, and cultural background of the global slave trade and ongoing colonialism. After taking this course, you will be able to: 1. Understand key texts and authors of African diasporic literature. 2. Speak in detail about how different media influence the reception of literary texts. 3. Use critical and theoretical ideas in discussing and writing about these texts. 4. Identify the contributions of individual writers to a global and diasporic understanding of the world. Readings: Readings for this course are tentatively listed: Sun Ra, Collected Works vol. 1: Immeasurable Equation; Space is the Place (film and album) Michael Thelwell, The Harder They Come (novel, film, and soundtrack) Wole Soyinka, The Swamp Dwellers; Death and the King’s Horseman Manuel Zapata Olivella, Changó, the Biggest Badass Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica; Their Eyes Were Watching God Assignments: Three five-page research assignments; 1 10-12 pg research paper; oral presentation; periodical quizzes; Final exam.
ENGL 2410: Introduction to British Literature 1 • Professor Tim Machan
Description: This course surveys a selection of literature written prior to the end of the eighteenth century. We will concentrate on a variety of authors who have come to be considered significant for a variety of reasons, whether for their artistic achievements, their commentary on society, or their contribution to notions of literary history. Although attention will be given to historical perspective, the course will emphasize close reading and classroom discussion. Readings: Beowulf, Middle English lyrics, Lanval, Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Everyman, Faerie Queene, Twelfth Night, Donne’s lyrics, Paradise Lost, poems of Dryden and Pope Assignments: Two papers, two exams
ENGL 2410: Introduction to British Literature 1 • Professor
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ENGL 2410: Introduction to British Literature 1 • Professor
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ENGL 2410: Introduction to British Literature 1 • Professor
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ENGL 2510: Introduction to American Literature 1 • Professor Amy Blair
Thematic Title: Narrating Nations Description: This course is designed to give you a general overview of the themes and issues that have concerned people writing in or about ³America² from the Colonial Period through the Civil War. We are going to be taking as our starting point a serious inquiry into what exactly "America" entails, and by the end of the course, you may be revising your initial notions of what counts as "Literature" as well. In addition to poetry and imaginative prose, we will be reading explorers' accounts of their travels, captivity narratives, slave narratives, and political treatises, and looking at how literature both shapes and reflects our ideas of what it means to be "American." Readings: Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volumes A&B, 6th edition, and Harriet Beecher Stowe¹s Uncle Tom¹s Cabin; authors studied may include Rowlandson, Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson, Payne, Hannah Webster Foster, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson. Assignments: Three brief close-reading essays; midterm; final; active class participation.
ENGL 2510: Introduction to American Literature 1 • Professor Ronald Bieganowski, SJ
Thematic Title: “The Story: Part One” Description: Beginning with some of the first writings documenting experiences of the “New World,” this course will follow the developing story line of what it means to be American as told in fiction, drama, poetry, autobiography, and essays. The diverse range of characters, setting, action, narrative perspective and sequence, irony, and imagery — all help tell this part of the story. Readings: Readings will include those from Benjamin Franklin, Rowlandson, Royall Tyler, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Rebecca Harding Davis, Frederick Douglass, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson, and others. Assignments: Two papers (4-5 pp.), several “Reflections” (1 p. each), a few quizzes, and final exam (essay) will be required; discussion format.
ENGL 2510: Introduction to American Literature 1 • Professor Angela Sorby
Description: Frederick Douglass called his autobiography "My Bondage and My Freedom" to reflect his experiences as a slave, but his title also implicitly poses a key question for students of American literature: what is freedom and why does it matter? In this survey, we'll trace the American literary tradition from its Puritan beginnings through its mid-nineteenth century American Renaissance period. We'll look at both canonical and popular texts, asking ourselves what they can tell us--about history and about ourselves. Readings: Authors studied will likely include Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, Hannah Foster, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. Assignments: There will be brief quizzes, a group presentation, a mid-term, a final, and two essays.
ENGL 2510: Introduction to American Literature 1 • Professor Sarah Wadsworth
Description: In this course, we will read, discuss, and analyze a variety of American texts dating from the sixteenth century through the Civil War. Our purpose will be to investigate the origins and early development of the many literary traditions of the American colonies and the United States. In the first segment of the course, we will study a range of colonial texts, representing the period’s most significant authors, genres, and themes. The latter portion of the course will focus on imaginative literature of the early national and antebellum periods, paying particular attention to the Transcendentalists, the American Renaissance, the role of women in the literary marketplace, and the impact of slavery, abolitionism, and the Civil War on the development of American literature. Throughout the course, we will examine the tensions between convention and innovation and explore the ways in which literary expression reflects and critiques prevailing cultural values. The format of the course is a mix of lecture and discussion, with strong emphasis placed on student participation. Readings: See Description Assignments: Students should expect to complete two papers (five pages each), a midterm exam, a final exam, and brief reading quizzes given at intervals throughout the semester.
• Professor Tom Jeffers
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ENGL 2710: Introduction to Literature: Fiction • Professor Steve Hartman Keiser
Thematic Title: The Axe and the Frozen Sea: Introduction to Fiction Description: Our primary goal is to encounter and enjoy important works of fiction. Good stories touch us at our truest core, spurring us to reflect on and reassess our lives: what it means to be—and what it means to be responsible for our choices in speaking and acting. Franz Kafka said, “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” In this course we will learn to become better axe-wielders. One way we will do this is by looking at the remarkable variation in the English language around the world and how authors use this to build their stories and characters. Upon completion of this course you will be able to:
Readings: Among the authors whose works we will read are: Baldwin, Walker, Chekhov, Oates, and Alexie Assignments: Oral presentation: Reading and commentary; Critical essays; Two exams
ENGL 2710: Introduction to Literature: Fiction • Professor Tol Foster
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ENGL 2710: Introduction to Literature: Fiction • Professor Amara Graf
Description: This course examines the coming of age narratives of Latina/o authors and explores how they adapt the traditional bildüngsroman genre to reflect their specific socio-cultural contexts often blending aspects of autobiography and testimonio into their narratives. We will look at the cultural and historical forces that have both constrained and enabled the creative expression of self and communal identity among Latina/o authors. The texts will ask us to consider carefully several themes and narrative strategies; we will examine how authors address issues of nationality, migration, Diaspora, violence, loss, assimilation, language, and religion. We will also discuss how ethnicity and race along with other categories of difference, including class, gender, and sexual orientation influence identity formation. By paying proper attention to close textual readings, as well as the historical moments in which these works are occurring, we will develop a sense of the aesthetic and political stakes of Latina/o literary production. Readings: Short stories and novels by various Latina/o authors including but not limited to: Piri Thomas, Junot Díaz, Edwidge Danticat, Helena María Viramontes, and Julia Alvarez Assignments: Several short reading responses, quizzes, two medium length papers, an oral presentation and final essay exam
ENGL 2710: Introduction to Literature: Fiction • Professor Tol Foster
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ENGL 2710: Introduction to Literature: Fiction • Professor Amara Graf
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ENGL 2710: Introduction to Literature: Fiction • Professor Corinna Lee
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ENGL 2720: Introduction to Literature: Drama • Professor Ryan Jerving
Thematic Title: All Play Description: "The play's the thing": so sayeth Hamlet, and so will sayeth us. When we play, according to ludologist Roger Caillois, we want both gratuitous difficulty and no-holds-barred freedom. On the one hand, we seek out the the satisfactions of mastering the arbitrary rules and parameters of a distinct virtual world (think basketball, Greek tragedy, or Civil War re-enactment). And on the other, we seek out the pleasures of raw physical activity, near panic, and pure waste (think improv comedy, Shakespeare's swordfights, or Super Mario Bros.). In this course, we'll explore these twin pleasures of playback and playthrough as we learn to recognize and analyze the range of techniques -- narrative structure, scenic design, movement, sound, and performance space -- by which the dramatic creators and audiences play constraint against mobility, continuity against change, action against reaction.
ENGL 2720: Introduction to Literature: Drama • Professor
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ENGL 2730: Introduction to Literature: Poetry • Professor Marques Redd
Thematic Title: Poetry: Reading, Responding, Writing Description: This course is designed to help you not only sharpen your close-reading skills and deepen your appreciation for the emotional power of poetry, but also connect poetry to the larger world by providing a thorough introduction to poetry’s authorial, cultural, and critical contexts. This course is reading and writing intensive, as there will be weekly writing assignments and about five hundred pages of poetry covered during the semester. At the conclusion of this course, you will be able to: 1. Demonstrate the ability to read with understanding and perception while specifically demonstrating the skills necessary to analyze works of poetry for thematic content; 2. Recognize the relationship between the genre/formal structure of poetry and the interpreted content; 3. Write critical explications of literary works; 4. Communicate literary analyses with clarity and effectiveness. Reading: The Norton Introduction to Poetry, Ninth Edition Assignments: Weekly writing responses, one research paper, two essay-exams, quizzes, mid-term and final exams, oral presentation
ENGL 2730: Introduction to Literature: Poetry • Professor Ed Block
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Thematic Title: Young Americans Description: If you’ve ever felt confused, put-off, or even frightened by the idea of reading a poem, this is the course for you. In this introductory survey we will conquer our fear of verse by developing our strengths as critical readers of poetry while also gaining the tools necessary to become better thinkers across genres and disciplines. Through careful reading and analysis of selected poems, essays, and engaging new collections, this class will acquaint you with historical and contemporary poetic trends to promote an informed understanding and appreciation of the art. In this class we will look at work from a variety of authors in an attempt to arm you with the skills to confidently examine elements of the human condition you may not have considered before. We will focus much of our attention on a booklist comprised mainly of young American poets—I’m looking forward to sharing this work with you. Readings: Jericho Brown—Please, Kiki Petrosino—Fort Red Border, Nick Demske—Nick Demske, Emily Pettit—Goat in the Snow, Shane McCrae—Mule, Kevin González—Cultural Studies, Srikanth Reddy—Facts for Visitors, Suzanne Buffam—The Irrationalist; Additional texts will be provided by the instructor Assignments: Critical reading/writing assignments, specifically: two extensive analysis papers/creative projects, two essay exams, weekly journals/responses, a group presentation, and a final. ENGL 2740: Reading Film as Narrative • Professor Stephanie Quade
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UPPER DIVISION COURSES
ENGL 3210: Advanced Composition • Professor Beth Godbee
Thematic Title: Writing Marquette
Description: This course asks you to become an author of our campus community—through writing about your own experiences, researching university life, and submitting proposals for change that could enhance the university in some important way. This structure—what we’ll call “ethnography of the university”—is designed to give you practice in written, oral, and visual communication; in applying theory and research on writing and methodology; and in experimenting with different genres of writing for different audiences. Specifically, you’ll design and implement an in-depth research project motivated by a driving question or problem you identify through previous projects, including a narrative essay and qualitative sketch, and you’ll do a range of field research—e.g., making observations and conducting interviews—which involves writing and rhetorical awareness. The class will culminate in a research showcase in which we’ll invite other members of the campus community to see the original research you’ve conducted and to take notice of the proposals you develop. As you engage in this range of writing and research, you’ll create a portfolio and compose a carefully crafted cover letter (twice during the semester, at midterms and finals), reflecting on your agency and growth within the process. These reflective moments provide opportunities to assess your work and to set new goals for future writing and research, this semester and beyond. Readings: Although much of your work will be writing, researching, and responding to your colleagues’ texts, we’ll also read the book-length ethnography My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student by Rebekah Nathan (Penguin, 2005) and use a course reader with articles on research methodology and current theory and research on writing. Assignments: The course is centered around your original research project, culminating in a substantial and revised paper, oral-visual presentation, and research poster, which build on related assignments, including a formal proposal, annotated bibliography, narrative essay, and qualitative sketch. Additional assignments include portfolio cover letters, peer review notes, informal reading responses, and self-assessments.
ENGL 3210: Advanced Composition • Professor Daniel Khalastchi
Thematic Title: The Essay In The City Description: Whether it’s watching gradual changes to the town we’ve lived in all our life, moving somewhere new, traveling abroad, or walking the streets of Milwaukee to school every morning, one way or another we’ve all been influenced by place. While some of us may think of these locations as insignificant, as writers we must remember that our environments (present and past) serve as one of the best ways to understand the culture we live in, and must be explored in order to comment on—and engage with—society as a whole. In this advanced composition workshop, we will center our writing and reading on the idea of place (specifically the construct and community that makes a “city”) and we will refine our rhetorical decision-making skills by learning how to use language in ways that effectively engage our audiences. Through three units—“place as memory” (a personal reflection),“the heart of the city” (a cultural investigation), and “talking to your neighbors” (a hybrid research experiment)—we will not only write multiple essays that require different conventions, but we will also share these pieces with our peers in a traditional workshop setting, gaining constructive criticism and ideas for revisions from the very people we hope to have in our audience. Our readings will come from a variety of authors, and will all relate in some way to ideas of place, the environment, cities, and local communities. At the end of the term, along with a final portfolio, we will discuss the possibility of creating a class magazine/chapbook to highlight the wonderful work I know we will create. Readings: John D’Agata (ed.)—The Next American Essay, Eula Biss—Notes from No Man’s Land, Joan Didion—Slouching Towards Bethlehem; Additional texts will be provided by the instructor. Assignments: Critical reading/writing assignments, specifically: weekly writing exercises and class journaling, three major essays, a final portfolio with revisions and a reflective response, and a final class project.
ENGL 3220: Writing for the Professions • Professor Ryan Jerving
Thematic Title: Writing and Technology Description: Writing for the Professions works to build your skills for written communication in practical settings: the workplace, student groups, service organizations, and other sites in which you enact your larger role as an engaged consumer, citizen, and "man or woman for others." More broadly, this course aims to help you think critically about the technology we use to produce such communication -- everything from smartphones and Skype to pencils and Post-It notes -- and to consider how emerging technology, even as it reshapes our writing, researching, thinking, and communication practices, may also be reshaping us.
ENGL 4027/5027: Teaching English in Secondary School • Professor Sharon Chubbuck
Description: a 3 credit advanced methods class designed to introduce pre-service teachers to knowledge of pedagogy, content pedagogy, and critical pedagogy for the secondary English classroom. Theories of reading and writing will be studied, with a variety of pedagogical methods modeled for students to understand the nature of teaching. Students will engage in a variety of activities and discussions to meld theory into practice. Throughout the course, the lenses of race, class, and gender will be used to interpret both readings and field experiences. Forty hours of field placement are included in ENGL 4027. This course typically precedes the semester of student teaching.
ENGL 4110/5110: Linguistics • Professor Steve Hartman Keiser
Thematic Title: Structured Noise, Structured Motion: An Introduction to Language and English Linguistics Description: The aim of this course is to wow you with the wonder of language: its complexity, systematicity, and diversity. We will take a scientific approach to the investigation of language, that is, we will collect data, analyze it, and consider testable hypotheses to account for it. In the process you will evaluate your beliefs and attitudes about language and human beings as language speakers. Upon completion of this course you will be able to:
Critically evaluate statements and attitudes (including your own) about language and human beings as language speakers. Readings: Language Files 10 Assignments: Weekly homeworks on language data collection from natural conversations and analysis of language;Two-three exams; Major research project on language and/or language data.
ENGL 4170/5170: Studies in Language: OLD NORSE (Cross-listed with FOLA 4931) • Professor Tim Machan
Description: This course offers an introduction to the language and literature of the Vikings. Known as Old Norse or Old Icelandic, the language and its speakers flourished throughout Scandinavia from the sixth to the fifteenth centuries. Initially, written versions of the language were limited to runic inscriptions. But once the Scandinavians adopted the Roman alphabet late in the first modern millennium, they used Old Norse to record their ancient myths about Óðinn, Þórr, and the other gods, as well as oral poetry about Sigurðr, Brynhild, and the tragic stories of the Völsungs. They also wrote down histories of their brief visits to North America and historical fiction about life in medieval Iceland. The course will have two emphases. First, it will be a language course in which students learn Norse grammar and translate a variety of Norse texts. Norse is a highly inflected language and a distant cousin of English, but its grammar is regular enough and limited enough that concentrated study allows for a quick transition to the reading of texts. Second, it will be a social history course that explores (in translation) Viking mythology, history, and literature. Interested students will be able to take a second semester as an independent study. Readings: Grammar readings; selections from Old Norse poems and sagas; Viking mythology and Volsung Saga in translation Assignments: Translation and grammar quizzes, exams, one brief paper ENGL 4210: The Process of Writing • Professors Rebecca Nowacek & Beth Godbee
Description: The purpose of this course is three-fold. It is designed to help you reflect on and improve your own writing. It is designed to help you explore and understand the complex processes involved in written composition. It is also designed to prepare you to become a peer tutor at the Ott Memorial Writing Center. As a tutor you will be able to apply the knowledge you are gaining in the course to help other students improve their writing. To accomplish these goals, we will (a) examine what researchers and theorists have said about writing, (b) examine what theorists and practitioners have said about teaching in a conference setting, and (c) observe, examine, and reflect upon our own experience as writers and tutors. Readings: Texts will likely include The Longman Guide to Peer Tutoring, by Gillespie and Lerner and The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, by Murphy and Sherwood. Assignments: Will likely include three reflective papers, a longer inquiry project, a writer’s journal, an oral presentation on grammar, and 20 hours of participation in tutoring sessions (mostly as an observer but perhaps also as a tutor) in the Ott Memorial Writing Center. EENGL 4250/5250: Creative Writing: Fiction • Professor CJ Hribal
Thematic Title: Description: This course gives students an opportunity both to exercise their narrative imagination and to harness it productively. Some student work will be generated by assignment; some will be self-generated. The emphasis in both cases will be on learning craft. The class will be organized as a workshop, with lectures as necessary. Students will learn the mechanics of writing fiction through observation, analysis, and practice. By reading, discussing, and analyzing short fiction from a technical, practitioner’s perspective, students will learn, describe and interpret fiction’s various styles, techniques, and effects. Through writing exercises, and analysis of those exercises, students will understand and demonstrate a proficiency in the specifics of craft: characterization, setting, voice, narrative structure, etc. Through writing fully-developed stories, and through workshopping and revising those stories, students will both refine and integrate those techniques while furthering their understanding of the creative process. Readings: On Writing Short Stories(Oxford),Tom Bailey, ed., and student work generated during the semester.
ENGL 4250/5250: Creative Writing: Fiction • Professor Larry Watson
Description: This is a course in writing fiction, and many of the class meetings will be workshops devoted to reading and discussing work produced by members of the class. In addition we will study narrative techniques, as found in both published stories and novels and in the fiction of students in the class. Readings: Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway and Elizabeth Stuckey-French Assignments: Exercises in fictional techniques, at least one complete short story, and critical responses to workshop fiction.
ENGL 4260/5260: Creative Writing: Poetry • Professor Angela Sorby
Description: In this workshop-style course, students will read and write contemporary American poetry. Our sessions will be participatory, positive and supportive, based on the premise that anyone who can read poetry (carefully and well) can write poetry. Assignments: Students will complete a series of brief writing assignments, assemble a portfolio, and participate in a final class reading. ENGL 4410/5410: British Literature, the Beginnings to 1500 • Professor MC Bodden
Description: The course offers a brief introduction to both Old English and Middle English Literature. Old English Literature will include Beowulf, AThe Wife's Lament,@and AThe Wanderer.@ Middle English literature will look at Dante's Purgatorio (portions of it), Pearl Anonymous, Tristan and Iseult, Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory's Morte Darthur and, if time, a Sundance Festival award winning film encoded with medieval themes, especially the figure of the Intruder Hero, and the crisis in the transfer of power. We=ll begin by looking at the poetic techniques of Old English poetry, the concept of kingship, the nature of the Intruder Hero, the medieval theory of knowledge, the nature of obsessive love, comedic love, and courtly love. In the second half of the course, we will examine the way that both men and women contested the inherited social and political roles which shaped their identities. We will consider the controversial depiction of gender roles, as well. Readings: Pearl Anonymous will be read in bi-lingual edition of Middle English and Modern English Assignments:
ENGL 4450/5450:The Age of Johnson, 1744-1790 • Professor Al Rivero
Description: The antithesis of reason and feeling, while a reductive formula, can nevertheless offer a context in which to study the literature produced in the second half of the British eighteenth century. In addition to works by Johnson, the most prominent man of letters of the period, our readings will include three lengthy novels—Frances Burney’s Evelina, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy—and an abridged version of James Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Readings: Boswell, Life of Johnson (Penguin); Burney, Evelina (Oxford); Fielding, Tom Jones (Wesleyan); Johnson, Rasselas and Poems and Selected Prose (Rinehart); Sterne, Tristram Shandy (Riverside) Assignments: One or two oral presentations, one researched term paper (ca. 10pp.); midterm examination; comprehensive final examination; class participation; and regular attendance.
ENGL 4460/5460: The Romantic Period: 1790-1837 • Professor John Boly
Thematic Title: Description: As English poets watched the soothing fiction of the Cartesian compromise meet its fate on the blood-spattered scaffolding of the French Revolution, they came to a new understanding of the most lethal weapon ever put at the disposal of errant human beings: language. A symbol might put a jeweled crown on a bewigged and powdered head, or send it straight to the guillotine. A myth might inure ordinary people to the tyranny grinding their lives into the dirt, or incite them to a blind rage of murderous anarchy. When the Age of Revolution proved that man the rational animal was no longer a good bet, poets began ransacking language to seek better ways to grasp the seductive wraiths of their dreams, or to harness the hideous powers of their nightmares. They knew that the venerable argument from design was poised to return, though not as Deism’s genteel watch-maker but in the sullen insolence of Blake’s tyger, the perfect killing machine. In this course we will study the main texts of the leading English romantics, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats. Our guiding questions will be the ones that drove their alternately brilliant and agonized lives. How can language break the mind-forged manacles of acculturation while keeping the sacred trust of human freedom? Should poets content themselves with demolishing old and destructive myths, or is it their right to forge new and transformative ones? Is it possible to resist social and economic injustice without committing an even greater imaginative and creative violence? Assignments: Readings will be manageably concise, but students will have daily homework, periodic quizzes, two exams, and three essays.
ENGL 4480/5480: The Modernist Period in Brit Lit • Professor Leah Flack
Thematic Title: British Modernism – Modernist Writing in a World at War Description: In a century of unprecedented global wars, artists working in a variety of media struggled against the incommensurability of art to unspeakable violence. The psychological and physical traumas of war created new representational crises for artists who discovered that traditional forms were ill-equipped to respond to or represent the realities of twentieth-century wars, which included trench warfare, shellshock, concentration camps, and mass graves. The narratives of the past were both inadequate for representing war in an industrialized world at the mercy of its technology and were implicated, as American poet Ezra Pound suggests, in nurturing a “love of slaughter” in the modern imagination. In this thematic study of modernist writing, we will ask how and why war fueled an outburst of literary creativity and experimentation in the years surrounding the two World Wars. We will explore several features of representations of war in literature in this period: the celebratory, commemorative, and protest functions of literature; representations of the body in war narratives; representations of various forms of psychological, physical, and cultural damage caused by war; the difficulty of return and recovery from war; and war’s challenges to traditional narrative forms as writers struggle to define, as Tim O’Brien writes, “how to tell a true war story.” Most of the class will be spent examining literature in relation to the World Wars and the Irish struggle for independence. We will read a constellation of later works in dialogue with modernist texts. We will also view two films, at least one of which will be outside of class; students should expect to attend at least one screening outside of class. Active, informed engagement and participation in class is a requirement of all students. Readings: Poems by W.B. Yeats, H.D., Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot; “The Fly” by Katherine Mansfield; Paths of Glory by Stanley Kubrick; Jacob’s Room and Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf; Catch-22 by Joseph Heller; Regeneration by Pat Barker; Cathleen ni Houlihan by W.B. Yeats; The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory; James Joyce, “Ivy Day in the Committee Room”; The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge; Juno and the Paycock by Sean O’Casey; Endgame by Samuel Beckett. Secondary readings by Paul Fussell, Elaine Scarry, Chris Hedges, Walter Benjamin, and others. Assignments: 2 papers (1 3-5 page paper; 1 7-10 page paper), 1 short creative paper in response to war in music and film, weekly D2L posts, one presentation, final exam, active and informed participation in class discussions.
ENGL 4520/5520: American Literature from 1798-1865 • Professor Amy Blair
Thematic Title: Into and Out of the Woods Description: After the ferment of revolution had subsided somewhat, nineteenth Century American writers explored the depths and limits of American mentality and geographies. While Emerson and his circle in Concord were living deliberately in the woods and dreaming about (and critiquing) utopias, Melville was sailing into an oceanic wilderness, and Native Americans were being driven into woods, and plains, not their own. In this course we will approach the period known as the "American Renaissance" from an oblique angle, through the not-so-overgrown paths at the edges of the settled places. Readings: Authors may include Charles Brockden Brown, George Lippard, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lydia Maria Child, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, William Wells Brown, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Harriet Jacobs, and Edgar Allan Poe Assignments: There will be brief writing assignments associated with each text; three or four longer critical essays, most with an archival research/material text component; a class presentation; and a final examination.
ENGL 4560/5560: The Contemporary Period in American Literature: 1945-present • Professor Larry Watson
Thematic Title: Description: As Tolstoy famously observed in Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” In this course, using literature that takes “family” as subject and theme, we will study poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction published since 1945. We will also attempt to identify and understand the significant literary movements and trends of the era, with special attention given to postmodernism, the new realism, confessional poetry and prose, graphic fiction, and creative nonfiction. Readings: Among the authors we will read are Albee, Erdrich, Franzen, Lowell, Morrison, Oates, Roth, Sexton, and Updike. Assignments: Two papers (4-5 pages, 8-10 pages), reading quizzes, mid-term and final exams, class participation, and an oral report.
ENGL 4610/5610: Individual Authors – Denise Levertov • Professor Ed Block
Description: This course, on the British-born poet, Denise Levertov, who lived and worked for most of her life in the United States, proposes to highlight the life of a prominent twentieth-century woman writer who responded in a special way to her sense of poetic calling. Besides presenting her career as the unfolding of a multi-faceted vocation -- as poet, peace activist, ecologist, feminist, and Catholic – we shall consider her work in light of the development of lyric poetry in twentieth-century American and British literature. The course will include numerous opportunities for student reflection. Since Levertov, in her later years, became a Catholic and made an Ignatian retreat (even commenting on The Exercises’ relevance to writing poetry), this aspect of her life and work will also be highlighted. Readings: Collected Earlier Poems, Poems 1960-1967, Poems 1972-1982, Breathing the Water, Evening Train, Sands of the Well, This Great Unknowing (posthumous poems) Assignments:Levertov's poetic process involves attentive observation as well as reflection on perceptions and lived experiences. Besides having students keep a reflective journal, the course will offer them the opportunity to observe, record, and turn into poetry the fruits of their reflection. Other assignments will include oral presentations, two literary analyses, and a term paper. The final assignment will be a short reflection paper, enabling students to look back on the course, and their Marquette experience, for how they have sharpened their awareness of their own skills and/or shaped their life goals and aspirations. ENGL 4610/5610: Individual Authors 4610/5610: Individual Author • Professor Sarah Wadsworth
Thematic Title: Hawthorne and the Profession of Authorship Description: In many ways, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s career parallels the development of authorship as a profession in the United States of America. Born in 1804, Hawthorne struggled for years to make a living as a writer of tales in a developing nation whose book trade was still heavily reliant on British imports. By the time he died in 1864, Hawthorne had become one of the foremost fiction writers in a country with a flourishing literary culture of its own. This course offers an in-depth study of Hawthorne’s life, work, and cultural milieu from the publication of his anonymous early tales through the now-classic texts of the 1850s—The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun. In addition to reading these major works, we will sample Hawthorne’s travel writing, juvenile fiction, and private writing in order to explore the relationship of Hawthorne’s writing to the rapidly expanding literary marketplace. Readings: The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun, Hawthorne’s travel writing, juvenile fiction, and private writing Assignments: Along with participating regularly in class discussions, each student should expect to complete two papers (7-8 pages each), an oral report, and a cumulative final essay (4-5 pages). Reading quizzes and informal response papers may be given on an ad hoc basis. ENGL 4630/5630: Shakespeare’s Major Plays • Professor Amelia Zurcher
Description: In this course we will read plays from all four of the genres -- comedy, tragedy, history, and romance -- with an eye toward the work they performed both in their own culture and in our own in recent years. The class will include a performance component (no acting experience or skill necessary). Non-English majors as well as majors welcome!
ENGL 4630/5630: Shakespeare’s Major Plays • ProfessorAl Rivero
Description: We will read such representative plays as Hamlet, The Tempest, and King Lear, drawn from the four major genres: tragedy, history, romance, and comedy. Our class discussions will focus on the plays, their language, themes and dramatic techniques. Readings: William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, 2nd edition (Oxford) Assignments: One or two oral presentations, one researched term paper (ca. 10pp.); midterm examination; comprehensive final examination; class participation; and regular attendance ENGL 4710/5710: Studies in Genre: Gender and Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Drama • Professor MC Bodden
Description: We seem to condemn violence, yet, in many countries, it is the entertainment of choice (e.g., televised fighting, violence in films, replay of brawls, etc.). Even in medieval and early modern theatre, plays were staged depicting extraordinary torture and brutality , often over a period of days. Promptbooks from the Middle Ages have disclosed “an awful and bloody display of animal parts that realistically substituted for performers' severed limbs and organs.” Scholars acknowledge that in the mystery cycle, the stage tortures of Jesus were exaggerated far beyond the Gospels’ accounts. There is a truth in Benjamin’s remarks that “violent barbarism …underlies all of culture’s manifestation.” The underlying question may be whether all experience is a degree of violence inasmuch as all experience is “at some level a transgression of limits.” This course will read (and where possible view) plays focusing (with theories and themes in mind) on the ways these plays represent, use and critique violence. It will examine the sort of cultural discourse these plays engage in, including among others, the nature of violence, violence as spectacle, saints and violence, art as violence, language as violence, female sexuality and violence, and domestic violence. Readings: The plays to be read are (this may change depending upon availability of texts): Saints Plays (two), The Passion of Christ, Edward II, Arden of Faversham, A Woman Killed with Kindness, The Roaring Girl, Hamlet, The Duchess of Malfi, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore. Requirements: Quizzes, midterm exam, oral presentations, final research paper, final exam
ENGL 4710/5710: Studies in Genre: Reading and Writing Lives • Professor Tom Jeffers
Description: Many people like to read biographies, and some have even thought about writing one. Here’s a chance to do both. We will read some classic biographies—from Plutarch to Lytton Strachey and beyond—with attention both to content (what happens in the story) and to form (how the story’s told). And, having picked up a tip or two, each student will begin drafting a brief biography devoted to a subject of her own choosing, whether famous or obscure.
Readings: Plutarch’s Lives (selected), Vasari’s Lives of the Painters (selected), Freud’s Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets (selected), portions of Boswell’s Life of Johnson and Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë, Henry James’s fictive ruminations about biography ("The Aspern Papers" and "The Private Life"), chapters in Strachey’s Eminent Victorians and Paul Johnson’s Heroes, and Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. Assignments:Besides writing their brief biographies (see above), students will offer oral reports, contribute to discussion, and generally rededicate themselves to the spoken and written word. ENGL 4780/5780: Literature in Film • Professor Heather Hathaway
Thematic Title: Lost in Translation?: Turning African American Literature into Box Office Hit Description: Using methodological tools of literary criticism, film studies, and cultural history, we will closely analyze what factors come into play when a literary work by or about African Americans is turned into a box office hit. Beginning with Fannie Hurst’s controversial novel about racial passing, Imitation of Life (1933) and its film adaptations (1934 and 1959), and ending with Sapphire’s equally controversial Push (1997) and its film adaptation, Precious (2009), we’ll compare the genres to understand aesthetic, cultural, and political issues that have surrounded these page-to-screen adaptations. We’ll examine, for example, whether a screen-writer remained true to the literary work or deviated from it--and more importantly, why? What role did the author play in the production of the film, and at what aesthetic cost does a fiction writer release rights to his or her work, if any? Do the racial identifications of author and/or director, set against the cultural contexts of their productions, affect marketing, reception, and/or monetary success of a novel or film? Why, within the historical context of the 1970s, did Roots become such a definitive moment in shaping the U.S. public’s understanding of African American history? What happens to the public’s understanding of “race” when just a few media-moguls such as Oprah, Spike Lee, or Stephen Spielberg become the dominant conveyer of “race” through film, as was the case in the 1980s? Finally, since race relations are ultimately negotiations of power, how does popular film influence our understanding of social hierarchies and our positions within them? Though comparisons between fiction or drama and their film adaptations often stop at the question of fidelity—how is the movie different from the book or play?—we’ll move well beyond this to consider how the narrative strategies and reception of both genres mediate our understanding of our world and one another. Readings and Films (may include): Imitation of Life, Fannie Hurst (author) and John Stahl (director, 1934) A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry (author) and Daniel Petrie (director, 1961) The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Ernest Gaines (author) and John Korty (director, 1974) Roots, Alex Haley (author) and David Greene, John Erman, Gilbert Moses, Marvin J. Chumsky (directors, 1977) A Soldier’s Play and A Soldier’s Story, Charles Fuller (author) and Norman Jewison (director, 1984) The Color Purple, Alice Walker (author) and Stephen Spielberg (director, 1985) The Women of Brewster Place, Gloria Naylor (author) and Donna Deitch (director, 1989) Beloved, Toni Morrison (author) and Jonathan Demme (director, 1998) A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines (author) and Joseph Sargent (director, 1999) Push & Precious, Sapphire (author) and Lee Daniels (director, 2009) Requirements: Interest, commitment, active participation and willingness to confront and discuss difficult issues, an open mind. Also several papers, an imaginative final project, and viewing of all films (either on your own or during the lab on Monday evenings).
ENGL 4800/5800: Studies in Literature/Culture: Civil War • Professor Angela Sorby
Description: The American Civil War was both an historical event and an enduring (and mutating) metaphor for deep tensions within American society. In this course, we'll look at some key texts representing aspects of the Civil War, including political speeches, abolitionist narratives, journalistic accounts, poetry, and fiction. Readings: Authors studied will likely include Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Frances E. W. Harper, Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Ambrose Bierce, and Stephen Crane, as well as several lesser-known magazine writers. Assignments: There will be a mid-term, a final, two essays, and a group presentation. ENGL 4810/5810: Race, Ethnicity, Identity
• Professor Jodi Melamed
Thematic Title: Race, Ethnicity and Identity in Modern American Literature and Culture Description: The course examines the construction and deployment of race and ethnicity in U.S. culture and society over the course of the last 100 years up until our present moment, post-9/11 and in the era of globalization and neoliberalism. In particular, it examines the centrality of literature for understanding cultural and political negotiations around race and ethnicity. We will consider the role of literature in maintaining “common-sense” ideas about race and ethnicity and as an instrument for trying to over-turn conventional notions. We will work comparatively within and between sequences focused on a key word or concept from race and ethnic studies and featuring literary texts from authors identified with European American, African American, Asian American, Latino/a, Native American and Arab American literary traditions. Throughout, our challenge will be to understand racialization – a process that stigmatizes some forms of humanity for the profit, pleasure, comfort and privilege of others – as a complex factor that has deeply shaped the social fabric of our own location (Marquette and Milwaukee), the U.S. and the modern world. We will also try to understand the politics of our social locations – our identities - at particular intersections of culture/history/gender/race/class/ethnicity/sexuality and (trans)nation. Especially toward the end of class, we will use the case of Milwaukee to think about the history and present of racial and ethnic differences at work on the level of both macro-institutions (such as law, economy, and government) and microstructures (such as everyday living and individual experience). Readings: Course Reader; Richard Wright - Native Son; Sandra Cisneros - House on Mango Street; Fae Mye Ng - Bone; Sherman Alexie - Flight Assignments: Descriptive Auto-bio-graphy, 2 critical reflections, 1 oral report, final research essay, final exam.
ENGL 4840/5840: Postcolonial Literature
• Professor John Su
Description: In this course, we will explore the wealth of literature in English produced since the 1960s in the so-called postcolonial world. The term "postcolonial" refers to the former colonies of Great Britain, whose empire once spanned a quarter of the globe. Readings will come from Africa, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Great Britain itself. We will be discussing issues that will be important to students of literature, history, philosophy, political science, and those interested in interdisciplinary questions of international affairs and peace studies. This course fulfills the "Diverse Cultures" requirement for the core of common studies. Readings: Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart; J. M. Coetzee - Age of Iron; Tsitsi Dangarembga - Nervous Conditions; Jamaica Kincaid - A Small Place; Ngugi - Devil on the Cross; Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea Assignments: Two formal written essays (5-7 pages), group oral presentation, active class participation, midterm and final examinations ENGL 4870/5870: Studies in Women’s Literature - African American Women’s Literature • Professor Heather Hathaway
Thematic Title: The Art and Politics of Black Women Writers in the US Description: Though contemporary writers such as Toni Morrison and Edwidge Danticat have become household names in the United States, these women are indebted to a whole host of women writers who, like they, have waged cultural and political battles through literature since the founding of the United States. This course will provide an historical survey of some of the most prominent female writers of African ancestry in the US who used “words as weapons” (to borrow, ironically enough, from Richard Wright) both to comment on gender, class, and racial inequities, and to suggest means of social transformation. Beginning with Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved woman brought to the United States from Africa in 1761, and ending with several contemporary writers who locate themselves transnationally within the larger African diaspora despite living primarily in the United States, this course will provide an overview of the changes and continuities in writing by women of African ancestry in the US during the past 250 years. Readings (will likely include): Phillis Wheatley, selected poems Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases Pauline Hopkins, Contending Forces Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God Ann Petry, The Street or The Narrows Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, selected poems Alice Walker, Meridian Toni Morrison, Beloved Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy and The Autobiography of My Mother Paule Marshall, Daughters Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I’m Dying Requirements: Several analytical essays, midterm and final exams.
GRADUATE COURSES
ENGL 6210: British Literature to 1500 - Kingship & Nation • Professor Tim Machan
Description: Nationhood was a fraught enterprise in the Middle Ages. Long before the technologies and institutions that make possible the imagined communities of the modern era, late-medieval English people and their kings explored ways to define their nation and themselves in relation to one another. Strategies could vary from despotic approaches in which kings simply asserted their powers and prerogatives, to structural approaches that utilized the French and the Scots to define England, to communal approaches emphasizing shared values and histories, to a benign neglect that took for granted a posited unity among a people whose definition was equally taken for granted. And all the while what would become Great Britain contained multitudes of people (clerics and plowmen as well as kings and knights), ethnicities (Cornish, Scots, Welsh, and French), and socially perilous moments (the Lollard reforms, the deposition of Richard II, the Hundred Years’ War). This seminar surveys such issues by considering how a variety of works written between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries engage and represent the issues of nationhood and kingship. Readings: Will include poems such as Sir Orfeo, Havelok the Dane, King Horn, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Regiment of Princes, as well as selections from works by Chaucer, Gower, Henryson, Langland, Lydgate, Malory, and Wycliff Assignments: One brief paper, one seminar paper, one class presentation, one seminar report
ENGL 6220: Studies in Shakespeare • Professor Amelia Zurcher
Description: In this course we will read a few of Shakespeare's most canonical plays, a few of his less canonical plays, and three or four plays by such writers as Marlowe, Kyd, and Jonson, with the goal of understanding the work they performed in their culture. We will also review the field of Shakespeare Studies over the last half century or so in order to become familiar with the complex and often pivotal role Shakespeare's plays have played in early modern and in literary studies more broadly.
ENGL 6400: Studies in 19th Century British Literature – Victorian Realism • Professor Christine Krueger
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ENGL 6700: Studies in 20th Century American Literature • Professor Jodi Melamed
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ENGL 6840: Studies in Rhetoric and Composition Theory • Professor Jenn Fishman
Thematic Title: Teaching Writers in the Twenty-First Century Description: ENGL 6840 is designed to help new teachers as well as teachers new to college-level writing instruction develop historically informed, theory-based, data-driven approaches to FYE and other writing-focused courses. Our twice-weekly meetings will emphasize discussion of readings, writing assignments, and teaching-related research. Everyone will have opportunities to complete scholarly projects that include (if desired) creative and/or digital components, and the class will host an end-semester pedagogy conference in collaboration with UWM graduate students and faculty.
ENGL 8282: Studies in Critical Theory and Practice • Professor John Boly
Thematic Title: Description: Over the course of the twentieth century, the discipline of criticism continuously reconstructed itself through a series of complex self-transformations. What exactly does a literary text tell us? The nearest we can come to an answer nowadays is, It depends on the questions you ask. In this seminar we will focus on the leading theoretical figures and movements which have informed, beguiled, or mystified critical practice for the last hundred years. Our objectives are twofold. First, we will study the leading schools of criticism, from Marxism, psychoanalysis, and American formalism to structuralism, feminism, reader-response, deconstruction, cultural criticism, and postcolonialism. But mastering the tenets of these theories is just the beginning. Our further objective will be to turn each theory into a productive program for close reading. Which specific moves does each approach make, and in what order? Which of these moves is essential, and which ones optional? What kinds of texts are best suited for each method? Which theories are better suited for criticism and scholarship, and which ones for classroom teaching? Which approaches are most likely to win you a broader readership, and which a smaller one? Which are historically restricted and which can be applied right across the entire literary canon? This seminar neither assumes nor requires any prior knowledge of modern theory, yet it does invite you to a more advanced and ambitious inquiry. Readings: Assignments: Relatively brief readings, but frequent class presentations, two exams, and two essays. |
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English Department
