College of Arts and Letters
Department of English English Major Courses Spring 2018 ENGL 20000-01 Introduction to Creative Writing Joseph Thomas TR 5:05-6:20 This course will examine contemporary writing of various genres, studying each form’s techniques, influences, and purpose, while also deriving meaning for them within our societal context. There will be an emphasis on the speculative, and writing that subverts genre itself. We will ask the question, why write at all? We will read, view and discuss the assigned material as writers focused primarily on craft, in order to build new writing of our own. In-class writing exercises will complement our reading, granting us opportunities to generate new and interesting material that will, in some cases, manifest in our own work. Writing workshops will be a vital component of the course. We will revise aggressively. ENGL 20000-02 Introduction to Creative Writing: Writing Women Abigail Burns MW 8:00-9:15 This course will introduce you to the skills you need to write fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. Over the course of the semester, we will explore elements of craft such as narrative, point of view, dialogue, performance, and more. As a workshop, you will get the opportunity to give and receive criticism on work produced for class. Throughout the semester, we will read contemporary fiction, essays, and poetry written by women to ground our own creative work, with an eye toward the different ways in which women are represented both in literature and the publishing industry. We will ask how politics, both feminist and otherwise, can or should inform our writing. ENGL 20001-01 Introduction to Fiction Writing Daniel Tharp MW 2:00-3:15 In this course we will write and read stories. Basic—right? In this course we will write and critique fiction in all of its various forms. We will read fiction by well known and respected authors, and by authors that remain in the shadows, by authors who experiment, and by authors who play it more straight forward. We will think like writers; we will read like writers; we will be writers. ENGL 20001-02 Introduction to Fiction Writing Daniel Uncapher MW 8:00-9:15 This course will cover some of the styles, techniques, and pleasures of creative writing to help develop a better understanding of the craft as both readers and as writers. We’ll study fiction, poetry and performance work, focusing on measured readings and generative exercises in the first half of the semester in preparation for a series of graduate-style workshops in the second half. A wide variety of modern, postmodern and contemporary writers will be discussed with a special interest in the social, political, and economic consequences of literature, and towards a conversation of what responsibilities we have, as both readers and as writers, to those consequences in the world today. ENGL 20001-03 Introduction to Fiction Writing Ingabirano Nintunze TR 5:05-6:20 This class is an exploration of what we talk about when we talk about fiction— and, of course, how to write it. Through short stories, novels, new media, and everything in between, you will work to learn what makes you tick, as both a reader and a writer. Come prepared to write, read, and develop a greater understanding of your voice and interests as a writer, through generating new work, experiencing a wide range of fictitious forms and voices, and navigating the functions of different creative works. ENGL 20002-02 Introduction to Poetry Writing Moonseok Choi MW 12:30-1:45 The right poem at the right time can be jarring to what we’ve been led to accept as good or normal. The right poet can hold the door ajar to a mirror of our realities and beckon us through. We will read poetry that resonates deeply with today and tomorrow, that gives us the tools to write our own critical poems, to perhaps become that poet that opens worlds. We will play with language and expectations, breaking legs and jars. Get grotesque and real, but stay weird and joyful- make the uncomfortable your comfort zone. By producing a body of poetry, you will learn new things about yourself and find a new voice. ENGL 20002-03 Introduction to Poetry Writing Patricia Hartland MW 9:30-10:45 With an emphasis on producing creative texts, we will explore the parallel and often overlapping impulses of poetry and image-making (photography, painting, and other visual arts). With an emphasis on seeking to understand the visual through a writerly lens and the written through a visual lens, we will investigate concepts of identity and representation while cultivating our own poetic practice, perhaps informed by this crossroads. We'll discuss visual works from Alice Neel, Mikalene Thomas, Claude Cahun, Cindy Sherman, Kehinde Wiley, Glenn Ligon, Catherine Opie, Kara Walker, Diane Arbus, Vivian Maier, and Nan Goldin. Writers will include Ocean Vuong, Danez Smith, Patricia K Smith, Sherwin Bitsui, Robert Seydel, Ari Banias, Safia Elhillo, Layli Longsoldier, Audre Lorde, Ronaldo Wilson, Shane McCrae, Adrienne Rich, David Wojnarowisz, among others. ENGL 20002-04 Introduction to Poetry Writing Johannes Goransson TR 12:30-1:45 This course will introduce you to contemporary poetry in a variety of media and formats and from an array of lively, diverse voices. Through in- and out-of-class assignments you'll learn how poets draft and revise; you'll practice techniques, genres and forms; and you'll generate a poetry portfolio of your own. Class format will include discussion, in-class activities, and opportunities for feedback on student work. Please see the English Department website for an individualized description for each section of this course. ENGL 20005-01 Fiction Writing and the Short Story Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi MW 3:30-4:45 In this introductory course we will focus on 1) reading traditional and innovative 20th-and 21st-century American short stories and 2) on workshopping original student writing. In order to examine the range of narrative strategies available to us as writers, we will read speculative, meta-fictional, hyper-real and surreal fictions, as well as essays on the art of writing. Throughout the course of the semester students will develop as story-tellers, and will learn to read as writers and critique work-in-progress. ENGL 20024-01 Creative Writing and Multiculturalism Orlando Menes TR 5:05-6:20 What does multicultural writing look like in America? Who is writing it, how are they doing so, and why? During this semester, we will engage with these questions both as readers and writers through the study of a variety of texts, as well as create our own texts to add to this tradition. We will analyze fiction (novel and short story length), poetry, graphic novel, memoir, personal essay, play, film, television and oral storytelling and mine them for both understanding and methodology. Through the study and practice of these media, we will begin to formulate our own writing projects and figure out how we fit into the multicultural literary tradition. This class will require students to turn in both academic responses and creative writing. ENGL 20106 Point of View in the Novel Noreen Deane-Moran Section 01 – MW 12:30-1:45 Section 02 – MW 5:05-6:20 This course will focus on the introduction to the novel as a form, a means to view the world of the author/artist and the reader. Literature is an art whereby one consciousness seeks to communicate with another consciousness. One of the artist's techniques for controlling this flow is the concept of point of view. We will explore various approaches and uses of this "framing" in some nineteenth and twentieth century novels. The goal is to use an understanding of point of view to more fully comprehend, enjoy, and sensitively read this popular genre. Texts: Henry James, Turn of the Screw; Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights; Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary; Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome; James Joyce, Dubliners; William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!; Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter; E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime; Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke, Ha, Ha; and Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing America. Requirements: regular class participation; two short papers, a mid-term; and a final. ENGL 20127-01 Mystery and Detection Margaret Doody MW 11:00-12:15 "Mysteries" have become a dominant genre; their proliferation is a sign of modernity. What do we find in tales of crime and detection that we don't find elsewhere? Have these stories taken over from tragedy as the genre mainly dedicated to death? Such stories exercise our minds, while evoking also fearful delight in the unknown (or the "sublime" as defined by Edmund Burke). We read to learn fear?cultivated in the "gothic" mode and central to the Romantic-era short stories of Hoffmann and Poe. Even the lightest "mystery stories" touch our anxiety about the instability of the outer world of social order; is it about to tip over? Fear of the foreign and of disorder have made some mystery stories historically vehicles of prejudice ,while others take us beyond our current boundaries towards new relationships. Stories of "detection" enforce modern scientific logic. Their hero is the mind not to be baffled by the cleverest criminal, not to be taken in by the fictions of identity that we produce even in our "normal" lives. Sherlock Holmes is the hero of the intensive intellect-- the more effective as he never entirely blends into his own culture in the first place. Stories of detection from Sophocles on point to the problematic nature of identity, which can be shaped, tweaked, hidden or faked. Spy stories emphasize this point, for the job of the "spy" is to read a culture and blend into it. The observer or narrator also becomes problematic, given the limitations of individual points of view (as we recognize in The Moonstone's multiple narrators). Mystery stories can be used to examine social structures, political realities, sexual feelings, relationships and rules. Characters always include those with and those lacking power, including servants, women and minorities; in the 20th century mystery stories are increasingly written by women and members of minority groups. Narratives may point to inbuilt injustices, or to the aberrant individual, the killer who looks "normal". We like the idea that humans are multi -layered; the interpretation of signs or clues becomes more exciting. Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams proposes that the individual is a mystery who produces clues for himself (and the analyst) in dreams. The problem of identity is a rich source of tragedy and comedy; interpretation of signs or clues becomes more exciting. Detection itself can be a form of enjoyable obsession, and our suspicions may extend to the detective, that hero of reason in a world not governed by reason. TRUE CRIME: We will examine some "true crime" documents of the 18th and 19th centuries, including trials and confessions, while also looking at the development of policing through the growth of Scotland yard. FILMS: The selection of TV shows or movies is up to the students who will divide into report teams and present the film of their choice. TEXTS include one play by Sophocles; the short story of "Susannah and the Elders" in the Biblical Apocrypha; Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy ( a Renaissance revenge play); Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful ; The Tryal of Miss Mary Blandy ;William Godwin, Caleb Williams; Ann Radcliffe, Sicilian Romance; short stories by E.T. A. Hoffmann and Edgar Allen Poe (to be selected); Sigmund Freud, Interpretation of Dreams ( excerpts); Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone; Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished novel); Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four; Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison; Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; Peril at End House; Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress. ENGL 20154-01 The Gothic Novel Noreen Deane-Moran TR 3:30-4:45 "From ghoulies and ghosties/ And long-leggedy beasties/ And things that go bump in the night,/ Good Lord, deliver us!" Why do we enjoy being scared out of our wits? Since its inception in the late eighteenth century, generations have loved the Gothic Novel with its grotesque murders and bizarre terror. The course will study a number of the most celebrated Gothic tales from horrors in castles and monasteries (Lewis's The Monk) to mysterious love stories (Brontë's Wuthering Heights) to the eerie stories of the paranormal (Shelley's Frankenstein) to contemporary horror stories. The purpose will be to study the ways in which the Gothic Novel entertains us and what it is about us that loves to be entertained by the Gothic. ENGL 20179-01/ IRLL 20116-01 Crosslist Modern Irish Classics Survey 2 Briona Nic Dhiarmada MW 11:00-12:15 This course offers an introduction to modern and contemporary Irish language literature. We will begin by tracing the influence of the Revival and cultural nationalism on the development of a modern literature in the Irish language. We will read texts in the light of the national narrative, taking note of cultural change and contested identities in considering the specificities of a literature that can trace an unbroken line to what is often described as the oldest vernacular literature in Europe. Among the texts discussed will be work by Pearse, Ó Conaire, the Blasket autobiographies, Ó Cadhain, Ó Ríordáin, Ní Dhomhnaill, Mac Lochlainn among others. All texts will be read in translation. Relevant documentaries will also be used and shown in class to further illustrate and elucidate the work of particular authors. This course fulfills the survey requirement for the IRLL major. ENGL 20184-01 Poetry, Science and Technology Jacob Schepers TR 12:30-1:45 What can poetry gain from science? What can science gain from poetry? In this course we will investigate these questions through a selection of readings from poets’ essays, works of poetry, scientific papers, and critical commentary. A primary focus for our consideration will center on the meaning of “experiment” in poetry and science. Readings will entertain concerns of “science” and “poetry” as discipline-specific approaches to knowledge, and our texts will also consider specific developments in technologies including typewriters, tape recorders, digital media, genetic sequencing, and computer code. This course will introduce students to tools and concepts of literary form, close reading, poetic vocabulary, and interpretation. By the end of the course, students will have explored the relationship between how poetry has adapted to certain scientific issues and techniques and will have developed necessary and lasting skills to interact with literature and the world in robust and engaging ways. ENGL 20190-01 Rhetoric of the American Apocalypse Caitlin Smith MW 3:30-4:45 From Michael Wigglesworth’s “Day of Doom” (1662) to the bestselling Left Behind series (1995-2007), the impending apocalypse remains a compelling focus of American fiction. Literary genres as varied as the Puritan jeremiad, the abolitionist novel, the Cold War intrigue, and the cli-fi thriller use "the End” to argue for urgent action, reform, or protest. The term “Apocalypse” implies a teleological history; the “American Apocalypse” implies one in which “being American” matters. American stories about “the End”—whether a cosmic, national, or global end—are also stories about America’s role (if any) in bringing about or forestalling that end. In this course, we analyze how and why the American apocalypse endures as a rhetorical means of constructing, challenging, reforming, and rewriting national identity. ENGL 20213-01/ MI 20001-01 Crosslist The World of the Middle Ages Thomas Burman, Romain Thurin MW 12:50-1:40 The Middle Ages have been praised and reviled, romanticized and fantasized. The spectacular popularity of Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and Narnia have brought a revival of interest in and curiosity about the Middle Ages. But what were they like, these ten centuries between Rome and the Renaissance? In this course, we will explore major themes and issues in medieval civilization in an attempt to offer some basic answers to that question. We will have in view three kinds of people: rulers, lovers, and believers. But we will also study carefully those who wrote about those kinds of people. We will constantly ask how can we know about the Middle Ages, and what kinds of things can we know? We will consider major literary texts as both works of art and historical documents. We will explore various kinds of religious literature. We will try to understand the limits, boundaries, and achievements of philosophy and theology. Some lectures will incorporate medieval art so as to add a visual dimension to our explorations. This course will constitute an extended introduction to the dynamic and fascinating world of the Middle Ages. ENGL 20237-01 Tolkien’s Mythologies and Monsters: The Medieval English Roots of Middle Earth Maj-Britt Frenze MW 9:30-10:45 Have you ever wondered where J.R.R. Tolkien found inspiration to create the monsters, races, and treasures which inhabit his Middle Earth? Did you know that Tolkien was a Professor of medieval English literature at Oxford, and he loved the Old English epic Beowulf, the Middle English romance Gawain and the Green Knight, and the Old Norse saga of Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer? This course is designed to introduce students to the multiple genres of medieval texts from England and Scandinavia which influenced The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, including tales of King Arthur, mythological texts about the Norse gods, and the adventures of shield-maidens. While the texts will be read in Modern English translation and primarily from the Norton Anthology of English Literature: the Middle Ages, students will learn about how Tolkien, as a philologist, used medieval languages in his construction of Middle Earth. The medieval primary texts readings will be supplemented by a few of Tolkien’s published literary criticism on medieval subjects. The goals of this course are to introduce students to an important period in English literary history and its persistence in the modern imaginary, but also to develop students’ analytic skill as they engage with medieval literature. We will discuss why certain medieval themes are still popular today in modern story-telling as well as determine what particular aspects of medieval culture are being reused and reimagined. Students will be assessed on their class participation, written essays, and an oral presentation. Course will be designed to fulfill the University Literature Requirement Sampling of texts on the syllabus (several will be excerpted): Beowulf The Dream of the Rood The Wanderer Marie de France’s Lanval Ancrene Riwle Gawain and the Green Knight Sir Orfeo (Tolkien’s own translation of the medieval work). Malory’s Morte D’Arthur Volsunga Saga Snorri Sturluson’s The Prose Edda or the Poetic Edda Tolkien’s essay: “The Monsters and the Critics”. ENGL 20252-01/ LIT 20252-01 Crosslist Warriors and Heroes in Renaissance Epics and Epic Movies James Cotton TR 3:30-4:45 This course is a survey of the Renaissance epic and comparison with Hollywood’s epic spectacles. We will begin in Renaissance Italy with selections from the Catholic epic of the Crusades, The Liberation of Jerusalem. Next, we will travel to Elizabethan England and read one part of the chivalric masterpiece, The Faerie Queene, where we will encounter a lady-knight on a perilous quest. We will finish the course with two shorter works featuring biblical and barbarian heroes who call heroism itself into question. Movies include Samson and Delilah, Conan the Barbarian, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Important course objectives will be to learn to read critically through close reading, to demonstrate an understanding of literary terms, genres, and conventions through epic, and to compare Renaissance and Hollywood epics and their engagement with contemporary issues and events. Peer review and revision will play a key role in the course's writing assignments. ENGL 20326-01 Runaway Brides: Selfhood and Marriage in Female Fictions of Development Jessica Kim MW 2:00-3:15 In light of contemporary inroads into gender equality, the idea that the end of a woman’s education is to prepare her solely for the role of wife and mother is now often regarded as nothing more than a bygone feminist bogeyman, a thing of the past. Yet throughout the history of the English novel, marriage as the traditionally desired end-goal of a young woman’s growth into adulthood is already and surprisingly more often than not stalled, hindered, or otherwise represented as a major source of serious interior conflict as much as it serves the necessary function of achieving narrative resolution in female fictions of development. This course asks the question of why so many ambivalent brides appear throughout classic Victorian and early twentieth-century British novels at the height of the cult of feminine domesticity, and considers how the institution of marriage was imagined, considered, and pondered from female, and increasingly feminist, perspectives within these periods of British history. Along the way, the course will also examine how female engagements with the idea of self-development contributed to the form of the modern coming-of-age novel in the West. In addition to classic Victorian and modernist readings from Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), the Brontës (Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre), George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss), Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, and others, the class will end with a study of contemporary representations of young female adulthood in film and fiction – including romantic comedies and Suzanne Collin's The Hunger Games – to consider how current meditations on selfhood and marriage connect to a longer feminist tradition of grappling with the contradictions of “becoming a woman” in the face of patriarchal conceptions of gender in society at large. ENGL 20513-01 Introduction to Irish Writers Emily Hershman TR 9:30-10:45 As the visit to campus of the most recent Irish winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature suggests, this small island has produced a disproportionate number of great writers. Designed as a general literature course, the class will introduce the student to a broad range of Irish writers in English from the eighteenth century to the present. Writers will include Jonathan Swift, Maria Edgeworth, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Brian Friel, and John McGahern. We will also look at recent film versions of several of these writers' works, including Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest. Themes to be explored include representations of national character and the relationships between religion and national identity, gender and nationalism, Ireland and England, and "Irishness" and "Englishness." Students can expect a midterm, a paper (5-6 pages typed) and a final. ENGL 20650-02 “Our World”: Literature about New York City Ala Fink TR 5:05-6:20 “The collision and the intermingling of these millions of foreign-born people representing so many races, creeds, and nationalities make New York a permanent exhibit of the phenomenon of one world.” E.B. White, “Here is New York” For E. B. White, the diversity of New York City constitutes a complete universe, and in this class we will ask if this is true for other authors and how. Reading from the corpus of literature about this city, we will encounter the diverse characters that inhabit this city, ask what separates them and what brings them together, and discover different visions of New York. In this class, we will focus on close reading and careful analysis, acquire a vocabulary of terms that allow us to understand and speak more fluently about literary works, and discuss our interpretations with one another during class discussions and through written assignments. ENGL 30101 Introduction to Literary Studies Section 01 - Laura Betz, TR 12:30-1:45 Section 02 - Chris Abram, MW 2:00-3:15 Section 03 - Susan Harris, TR 11:00-12:15 This course provides beginning English majors with experience in the analysis, interpretation, and appreciation of literary works of different kinds and eras. Texts assigned will vary from one section to another, but all sections will include attention to poetry and at least one other genre (fiction, drama, non-fiction prose). Frequent writing about works studied will introduce students to the practice of critical argument and consideration of how to read criticism as well as literature critically. ENGL 30111-01 British Literary Traditions II David Thomas MW 11:00-12:15 This course focuses on major works of British literature from the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the 21st. We will examine a variety of poetry and prose genres, addressing key terms related to periodization (e.g., Romanticism, Modernism), genre (e.g., lyrical ballads, dramatic monologue), and various other aspects of literary technique. We will read texts in light of their historical and cultural contexts and work to foster skills of close literary analysis, both through class discussion and written assignments. ENGL 30116-01 American Literary Traditions II Jacqueline Brogan TR 12:30-1:45 The emphasis of this course will fall on the intersection of recurrent themes in American literature, as seen from a plurality of perspectives. For example, we will consider the position of African-Americans in the American landscape from the perspective of a white male (Mark Twain), an African-American male (James Baldwin), a white female (Kate Chopin), and an African-American female (Alice Walker). We will explore questions of contemporary spirituality as presented by a white male (Wallace Stevens), an African-American male (James Baldwin), a white female (Elizabeth Bishop), etc. Or, we may consider how various authors view the intersection of capitalism in America with ecological damage - as in selected works of Ernest Hemingway and Adrienne Rich. The course will include three novels, several short stories, and a healthy dose of very divergent poetries, while suggesting which genres proved most significant in different periods of our modern history. The course will be demanding, but rewarding, especially as it seeks to explore the apparent contradictions but important overlappings of our rich American literary heritage.Requirements: class attendance and discussion; two papers, a midterm, and a final (worth 25% each), and occasional quizzes as needed.Texts (required): Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Kate Chopin, The Awakening Alice Walker, The Color Purple Wallace Stevens, The Palm at the End of the Mind Adrienne Rich, An Atlas of the Difficult WorldTexts (optional): James Baldwin, Selected Writings Flannery O'Connor, Selected Short Stories Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems (and selected handouts, including Robert Frost, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Joy Harjo, etc.) ENGL 30851-01 Poetry Writing Orlando Menes TR 2:00-3:15 In this poetry-writing course, students will read and model their poems upon writers who, by virtue of their talent and craft, have left their mark in the English and American poetic traditions. We will also experience the performative aspects of poetry by attending a variety of readings either on or off campus. Students will circulate their own poems among all the participants, who will then discuss and critique them in a workshop setting. Throughout the semester attention will be given to those proven strategies for composing and revising one's poetry. More theoretical issues could also be investigated. Assignments will be fashioned so as to stimulate poems inspired in art, myth, the natural world, dreams, childhood, and other rich sources for the imagination. Students will write poems on a regular basis throughout the semester, keep a reading journal, attend poetry readings, give a group report on a major poet, and submit midterm and final portfolios. Regular attendance is crucial to the ongoing success of the course, and is thus mandatory. ENGL 30853-01 Fiction Writing: Walking, Writing, Thinking Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi MW 2:00-3:15 In her book Wonderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Sulnit writes, "The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts." In this course we will examine notions of journey, space and subjectivity through the lens of walking. We will look at representations of walking in a variety of genres, essay, graphic novel, fiction, prose and poetry, and use the practice of walking as a platform to write provocative texts that contemplate gender, the body, architecture, evolution, language, philosophy, music and film. Students will engage with course themes and motifs by writing fictions, poems and essays of their own. ENGL 30857-01 Fiction Writing: Fantastic Worlds Roy Scranton MW 12:30-1:45 Hogwarts, Middle Earth, Westeros, Panem: every story starts somewhere. How do you build a compelling world that’s not just backdrop, but part of the story? In this reading-intensive fiction workshop, you’ll learn to create vivid and dynamic worlds, embed those worlds in your characters’ thoughts, and bring those worlds to life through your characters’ actions. While focusing primarily on fantastic, speculative, and weird fiction, this workshop will help you develop the skills you need to make any world breathe on the page—even this one. Readings will include work from William Blake, Kelly Link, George R.R. Martin, Nnedi Okorafor, Laurie Penny, J.K. Rowling, and Jeff VanderMeer. ENGL 30858-01 Writing Short Texts Joyelle McSweeney TR 11:00-12:15 In this course, we’ll investigate the piercing and propulsive properties of short texts. While many of the texts we’ll read are by poets, we’ll encounter a range of genres from essays, short stories, captions, letters, annotations, fragments, and epigrams. In addition to trying our hands at a variety of short forms, we’ll also examine how writers assemble short texts into sequences and longer works, ultimately using these methods to conceive of and configure final projects of our own. Coursework will include in- and out-of-class writing, collaborations, workshops, presentations, and a final project. ENGL 40147-01 Literary Theory Nan Da MW 11:00-12:15 This class will introduce students to theories that enhance our understanding of literature as well as theories that arise out of literary criticism that help us understand the world in ways that nothing else can. That is: theory for literature and literature interpretation as theory. We will begin by asking what "theory" is, and the value of abstract thought in general. Then we will survey literary theory from Aristotle to the present day, including both liberal and conservative schools of thought. Students can expect to have a good introduction to theories of form, mimesis, and mediation, bodies of work that emerged from both Kantian and Hegelian philosophy including cultural studies and the Frankfurt school, as well as new criticism, performance/gender theory, literary sociology, ecocriticism, and world/transnational approaches to literary history. Readings will be a mix of selected excerpts and primary texts. Coursework will involve three short essays and one long essay in which students either apply several theories to a piece of literary or discuss several theories in relation to one another. ENGL 40161-01/ IRLL 30310-01 Crosslist When Irish Eyes Are Smiling: The Irish Comic Tradition Sarah McKibben TR 12:30-1:45 Fantasy. Humor. Ribaldry. The Macabre. The Grotesque. Wit. Word play. Satire. Parody. This course will read diverse examples of the long and fertile comic tradition in Irish literature (in Irish and in English), from medieval to modern, in order to enjoy a good laugh, get an alternative take on the Irish literary tradition, and think about the politics of humor. Authors will include unknown acerbic medieval scribes, satiric bardic poets, Swift, Merriman, Sheridan, Wilde, and Flann O'Brien. No knowledge of Irish is assumed or necessary. ENGL 40181-01 Dante and Aristotle Michelle Karnes/ Shane Duarte TR 12:30-1:45 In this course, we will be reading Dante’s Commedia as well as works by Aristotle and various ancient and medieval philosophers. Our aim will be to understand the way an Aristotelian worldview informs the Commedia. We will look at the cosmology of the work and how it responds to ancient and medieval theories of the cosmos. We will also investigate the ethics of Dante’s famous journey to hell, purgatory, and heaven with a view to identifying its Aristotelian elements. For instance, what is the role of pleasure in the ethical life? What is the highest good of the human being? How should human beings live in such a way as to achieve their highest end? All readings will be in translation. ENGL 40272-01 The Renaissance Imagination: Reading Shakespeare and Spenser Susannah Monta TR 9:30-10:45 This course focuses intensely on William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser, two of the Renaissance period's most influential writers. Both writers reflect on the work that fiction can do in addressing our deepest desires and fears; both theorize the imagination's powers as well as its distortions and limitations. Both writers are also deeply concerned with the processes of interpretation that are at the heart of the English major; good readers of Spenser and Shakespeare promise to be good readers of much else. Probable texts: Shakespeare, Hamlet, As You Like It, Henry V, and The Tempest; Spenser, The Faerie Queene and selections from the Amoretti ENGL 40274-01/ IRLL 30227-01 Crosslist Celtic Literature: The Stories of Medieval Ireland and Wales Amy Mulligan MW 11:00-12:15 In this class we will read and analyze a range of poetry and prose composed in medieval Ireland and Wales. The readings (in English translation, but with attention to the original Latin, Irish and Welsh languages – no experience with these languages necessary!) will allow participants to gain insights into the medieval cultural contexts which produced stories as diverse as those of pious saints like Patrick, Brigit and Brendan, warriors like Finn mac Cumhaill, Cú Chulainn and some fierce Welsh giants, shapeshifting poet-prophets like Taliesin and Amairgein, otherworldly women and powerful queens such as Rhiannon and Medb, political leaders such as King Arthur, and humorous and saitirizing social poetic commentators like Dafydd ap Gwilym. At the end of the semester, we will also consider the presence of Celtic literature, myth, and tradition in contemporary pop culture. Requirements will include an exam, multiple writing exercises, oral presentations, and 1-2 longer papers. ENGL 40278-01 Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Karrie Fuller TR 11:00-12:15 Chaucer’s literary career culminated in the Canterbury Tales, the most famous work of this father of English national poetry. His vast and varied collection of tales rework the popular genres and stories of his day and offer a complex view of the later Middle Ages. The Tales’ frame narrative embeds the stories in Chaucer’s own version of a pilgrimage text, providing a specific historical context that ideologically connects the act of travelling with the goal of personal spiritual development. Because Chaucer’s pilgrims embody or reject the ideals of pilgrimage differently, we will consider how this frame narrative enables the author’s carefully constructed characterizations of figures representing every level of the medieval estates. We will also explore the relationship between the tales and their tellers as well as the ways in which genre influences how we understand each tale. With a constant eye towards historical context, this course approaches the Tales from multiple critical angles, including manuscript culture, language, gender, and class. One of the main objectives of this course is for students to learn how to read Chaucer in the original Middle English; no previous experience with the language is required. Students will be expected to develop their close reading skills with sensitivity to the Tales’ historical contexts. They will also be required to read and research medieval sources and literary criticism that will help them construct their own written literary analyses. ENGL 40295-01 Science and Imagination in the Age of Alchemy Margaret Doody MW 3:30-4:45 Connections between philosophy, religion and “science” (formerly “natural philosophy”) are explored in relation to the powerful work of imagination. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone allegorically relates “Magic” to the powers of the computer. Where does the idea of “progress” - so important to America - come from? Modern “progress” is deeply rooted in the combination of Egyptian and Greek ideas focused on the figure of “Hermes Trismegistus.” “Hermetic” lore, a strong support to the pursuit of knowledge (scientia), encouraged the reshaping of nature, as in alchemy. Newton was an alchemist. This course includes a study of science-fiction, from Lucian’s Greek satires to Renaissance works such as Thomas More’s Utopia, Rabelais’ Pantagruel, and the anonymous “Rosicrucian” Chemical Wedding. “Natural philosophers” develop a new genre exhibiting alternative worlds in Johannes Kepler’s The Dream, Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis, and Bishop Godwin’s The Man in the Moone. Paracelsus imaginatively teaches us how to see and use Natures’ own hidden powers and processes of change. The universe gets bigger, from planets to bugs. With Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) readers could see for the first time the terrifying complexity of a flea. The” new philosophy,” freshly definable with the advent of England’s Royal Society, is deployed and celebrated in major works of literature, such as Milton’s Paradise Lost, Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man and Thomson’s The Seasons. Newton’s work on light and color in his Opticks seems to be picked up immediately by Pope in his fantastic social-sexual comedy The Rape of the Lock. Science - along with man’s rule over the world - can also be satirically ridiculed, as it is by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels. Texts include works mentioned (in whole or in part) , as well as Pico della Mirandola ‘s oration “On the Dignity of Man”; Paracelsus’ essay “On Nymphs” and selections from On Metals; Kepler’s Six-Sided Snowflake; Ben Jonson’s short anti-alchemical masques Mercury Vindicated and The Fortunate Isles; Lawrence Principe ‘s The Uses of Alchemy (2013). ENGL 40326-01 Romantic Revolutions Yasmin Solomonescu TR 11:00-12:15 This course examines British literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the context of the period’s profound social and political upheavals. Our readings and discussions will focus on how writers of poetry, fiction, and argumentative prose engaged with ideas concerning the mechanisms of social and political change; the rights of men and women; the abolition of slavery; the circumstances of poverty and war; the nature of heroism; the powers of the imagination; the potential of science; and the social role of the writer. We will read selections from some of the best-known poets of the age—including Blake, Wordsworth, Burns, Byron, Hemans, and Percy Shelley—as well as works of political prose and two short novels. Instances of contemporary visual art and, where possible, theater and/or film, will help broaden our understanding of this intensely creative period in British literary history. ENGL 40350-01 Dickens and Wilde David Thomas MW 9:30-10:45 This double-author course showcases what most readers would see as an "odd couple" among Victorian authors. Charles Dickens (1812-70) was the Shakespeare of his time, a prolific creator of memorable characters and incidents, at once comic and tragic. But post-Victorian critics often see him as a prime exponent of Victorian earnestness, sentimentality and even hypocrisy. And Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was, well, the Wilde of Victorian Britain: he was so dazzling that even those who wished to hate him often had to give up and laugh with him. But his life took a classically tragic form after his public humiliation and imprisonment for homosexual offenses. Our principal texts by Dickens will probably be Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Our Mutual Friend. Our readings in Wilde will cover the gamut of his efforts but emphasize his society comedies and his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Graded coursework includes three papers and a final exam, along with reading quizzes and participation. ENGL 40360-01 Sex and Gender in the Victorian Novel Elizabeth Evans MW 12:30-1:45 The Victorians have a reputation for sexual repression. That’s not entirely unearned, but their anxiety also had a flip side: a relentless preoccupation with sex, sexuality, and gender, both “natural” and “deviant.” Simply put, the Victorians talked about sex all the time, even when they were talking about national identity, imperial policies, and the role of the novel. This course will do the same. We’ll examine the cultural obsession with proper womanhood, often known as “the angel in the house,” and with her dark double, the promiscuous “fallen woman,” and consider what notions of manliness came out of this bifurcated understanding of women. We’ll investigate how late 19th -century writers imagined new gender possibilities with the “New Woman” and the “New Man”—modern types that were made to represent everything from a utopian future to racial degeneration. We’ll discover how ideas about race, nation, and empire intertwined with Victorians’ conceptions of sex and gender, and why the novel was the perfect vehicle for their obsession. Our texts will likely include many of the following novels: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of the Four, Ella Hepworth Dixon’s The Modern Woman, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Course requirements include two essays, presentations, many discussion posts, and vigorous participation in class discussion. ENGL 40555-01/ IRLL 30106-01 Crosslist From Warrior Queens to Punk Poets: Women's Voices in Irish Literature Sarah McKibben TR 9:30-10:45 This class looks at the masterworks of Irish tradition and their twentieth-century comic (and not-so-comic) revisions, paying particular attention to how they engage with questions of gender. We ask both how women are represented by others and how they choose to answer back. Of particular interest are verbal performance by women - that is, compositions by known women poets, storytellers and singers AND works purporting to be by women or adopting the voice or perspective of women...which turn out to be some of the most significant and compelling, culturally central and enduring texts in all of Irish literary tradition. We will consider key genres of Irish verbal art in a wide range of compositions from medieval to contemporary. We will be helped along by relevant literary, anthropological and cultural criticism. How do women speak? How do “women” speak? Are these works subversive of our expectations or conservative in their relation to the status quo? How can we acknowledge and deconstruct misogyny not as inevitable but as historically and contextually conditioned and subject to demystifying critique? What vantage can we gain on Irish literary history by asking these historical, theoretical and political questions? How do tradition and the canon look when we view them through a gendered lens? What kind of impersonations might we engage in when we read - and write? Genres considered include courtly love poetry, contemporary feminist verse, oral lament, modern love poetry, bardic verse, storytelling, early modern allegorical poetry, folk song, medieval allegory, and contemporary comic verse, all read in English. Your own work for the course will include papers of literary/cultural analysis, a presentation, and a creative option (if you like). ENGL 40609-01 Dilemmas of American Transcendentalism Laura Walls TR 3:30-4:45 When European Romanticism crossed the Atlantic, it precipitated American Transcendentalism, this nation’s first great literary movement. The Transcendentalists were a loose group of rebels, dreamers, and freethinkers who, inspired by both the American Revolution and the new European philosophies, set about the immodest task of remaking America—and thence, they hoped, the world. Inspired by resistance to their radical ideas, these men and women—including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Orestes Brownson, Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May Alcott—launched a daring movement to renew American religion and philosophy and create a new and genuinely American literature—and, as if that weren’t enough, to reform a nation shot through with the contradictions of slavery, economic inequality, social injustice and environmental destruction. Did they succeed? Was their idealism a noble dream destroyed by the violence of the Civil War? Or did their hard work bring real progress to an American society still indebted today to this band of dreamers? That’s our dilemma: both answers are correct. How are we still living the consequences of their failures, and their successes? Can their dreams still speak to us today, in our own moment—shot through as it is with so many similar contradictions? ENGL 40652-01 U.S. Labor Narratives Valerie Sayers MW 3:30-4:45 The course explores multiple forms of narrative—short stories, novels, memoirs, speeches—depicting the worker in the U.S. from the turn of the twentieth century to the present. Our reading list will include many of the usual suspects (e.g., Farrell, Steinbeck, Hurston, Olsen, Terkel) as well as writers not necessarily associated with labor (Toomer, Powers, Porter, Alexie, Danticat, Díaz, Jen). We’ll question the representation of labor, laborers, and class differences by writers whose own class backgrounds vary widely. We’ll also pose questions about aesthetics and canon formation: What narratives most provocatively explore work? What work can experimental texts perform that more conventional narratives cannot (and vice versa)? Can a worker’s speech or diary or organizing song "count" as literature? Early on, we’ll read The Communist Manifesto alongside Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, and throughout the course we’ll pay particular attention to the ways political and/or religious belief informs writing about poverty, class, and work. ENGL 40814-01/ AMST 30141-01 Crosslist Native American Literature Robert Walls TR 12:30-1:45 Native Americans have long been trapped in a betwixt and between state, caught by the forces of past and present, tradition and assimilation, romanticization and caricature. Yet through it all, Native voices have continued to speak of the Indian experience with great power and eloquence. This course will introduce Native American literature as a distinctive contribution to American and world literature. We will examine a wide range of expressive culture from the last century, including novels, poetry, graphic stories, children's literature, film, digital media, autobiographies, performances of oral literature, and music. Through the passion, creativity, and humor of Indian authors, we will learn something of the historical experience of Native men and women, and how they have reacted to massacres and mascots, racism and reservations, poverty and political oppression. Above all, we will try to understand how indigenous authors have used literature to engage crucial issues of race and culture in the United States that continue to influence their lives: identity, self-discovery, the centrality of place, cultural survival, and the healing power of language and spirituality. Class discussions will incorporate literary, historical, and ethnographic perspectives of Native expressive culture and the agency of authors as artists and activists vis-à-vis the wider American literary tradition. Authors include Sherman Alexie, Nicholas Black Elk, Louise Erdrich, D'Arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, Linda Hogan, Winona LaDuke, and Leonard Peltier. ENGL 40819-01/ ILS 30101-01 Crosslist Caribbean Diasporas Karen Richman TR 12:30-1:45 This course examines the development of Creole societies in the French, Spanish, Dutch, and British Caribbean in response to colonialism, slavery, migration, nationalism and, most recently, transnationalism. The recent exodus of as much as 20 percent of Caribbean populations to North America and Europe has afforded the rise of new transnational modes of existence. This course will explore the consciousness and experience of Caribbean diasporas through ethnography and history, religion, literature, music, and culinary arts. ENGL 40834-01 Twentieth-Century and Contemporary African-American Poetry Mark Sanders TR 9:30-10:45 This course will examine the broader sweep of twentieth and twenty-first century African American poetics through the study of approximately eleven particularly influential poets. With the Harlem Renaissance, the Indignant Generation, Black Arts, and Post-Black Arts eras as historical backdrop, we will explore the evolving poetics these poets pursue, as well as their attending politics. We will also address essential questions at the core of our critical enterprise: What constitutes African American poetry? Why do blacks write poetry in the first place, and to what end? What are the critical issues animating critical discourse on black poetry? How and where might African American poetry develop into the twenty-first century? Poets for the course will include Langston Hughes, Anne Spencer, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Lucille Clifton, Michael S. Harper, Rita Dove, Natasha Trethewey, and Jericho Brown. ENGL 40850-01 Advanced Fiction Writing Valerie Sayers MW 5:05-6:20 This course is for students who delight in writing fiction and have a good sense of how difficult it can be to write surprising, satisfying, multivalent work. Most students will have taken at least one prior creative writing course; graduate students who are not in the Creative Writing program and staff are welcome. Any undergraduate who has written independently is also welcome to submit a writing sample for consideration; please contact the professor at
[email protected]. As a workshop, we'll read each other's prose with an eye to reconceiving, rewriting, and refining. We'll also read a broad range of contemporary writers to explore the lay of the literary land, in print and online, and to challenge our own taste and expectations (writers will likely include Teju Cole, Zadie Smith, and George Saunders). Finally, we'll explore the realities of literary publication and writing possibilities beyond college, including M.F.A. programs. Readings will include a broad range of contemporary writers, including Teju Cole, Zadie Smith, and George Saunders. ENGL 40852-01 Advanced Fiction Writing II Valerie Sayers MW 5:05-6:20 This course is for students who delight in writing fiction and have a good sense of how difficult it can be to write surprising, satisfying, multivalent work. Most students will have taken at least one prior creative writing course; graduate students who are not in the Creative Writing program and staff are welcome. Any undergraduate who has written independently is also welcome to submit a writing sample for consideration; please contact the professor at
[email protected]. As a workshop, we'll read each other's prose with an eye to reconceiving, rewriting, and refining. We'll also read a broad range of contemporary writers to explore the lay of the literary land, in print and online, and to challenge our own taste and expectations (writers will likely include Teju Cole, Zadie Smith, and George Saunders). Finally, we'll explore the realities of literary publication and writing possibilities beyond college, including M.F.A. programs. Readings will include a broad range of contemporary writers, including Teju Cole, Zadie Smith, and George Saunders. ENGL 40855-01 Advanced Fiction Writing III Valerie Sayers MW 5:05-6:20 This course is for students who delight in writing fiction and have a good sense of how difficult it can be to write surprising, satisfying, multivalent work. Most students will have taken at least one prior creative writing course; graduate students who are not in the Creative Writing program and staff are welcome. Any undergraduate who has written independently is also welcome to submit a writing sample for consideration; please contact the professor at
[email protected]. As a workshop, we'll read each other's prose with an eye to reconceiving, rewriting, and refining. We'll also read a broad range of contemporary writers to explore the lay of the literary land, in print and online, and to challenge our own taste and expectations (writers will likely include Teju Cole, Zadie Smith, and George Saunders). Finally, we'll explore the realities of literary publication and writing possibilities beyond college, including M.F.A. programs. Readings will include a broad range of contemporary writers, including Teju Cole, Zadie Smith, and George Saunders. ENGL 40900-02/ ENGL 90900-01 Crosslist Writing Plus Steve Tomasula TR 12:30-1:45 “Writing+” is a hybrid writing and literature course centered on poetry and narratives that incorporate sound and images or space. One part critical reading, one part creative writing, this class will study literature that incorporates imagery, sound, and other non-textual materials by asking students to write fiction, poetry or criticism that incorporates imagery, sounds, and other materials as an inherent part of its message, story, experience. That is, the class will move through a range of literary art forms, from graphic novels to electronic literature. Along the way, students will be asked to respond to the works read in class by designing and writing either hybrid image-text fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, or hybrid critical narratives, using the authoring tools of this hybrid literature. Rudimentary familiarity with basic authoring tools like a pencil & paper, a camera, PowerPoint, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, iMovie, Scalar, Gimp, or html programming helps, but is not required. Collaborative work is encouraged, though not expected. ENGL 40913-01 Pícaras and Outlaws: Tales of Latina Feminisms Sarah Quesada MW 12:30-1:45 A course on transnational Latina feminism who throughout the ages have transgressed normalized and heteronormative boundaries from 17th century to contemporary times in film, narrative, and popular culture. From Lieutenant Nun: Memoire of Basque Transvestite in the New World to contemporary authors such as Emma Pérez, Sandra Cisneros, Dahlma Llanos Figueroa, Achy Obejas, Judith Ortiz Cofer, the "America Chavez" comic book author Gabby Rivera, and even the Hunger Games, we will read, watch and discuss some of the most daring accounts of women power in the Latinx tradition. ENGL 40914-01 Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures and Literary Theory Ernest Morrell MW 2:00-3:15 This class is intended to serve as a general introduction to postcolonial literature and theory. Toward that end, we will be reading a number of the most influential theorists of postcolonialism as well as some of the novels that have been of particular importance to debates and discussions in the field. This course begins with the premise that a study of postcolonial theories and a growing body of literature from subaltern perspectives can help the discipline of English to diversify its canon and add a robust theory of race, culture, imperialism, and intersectionality to its intellectual discourse. With this in mind, the goals of this course are: To explore the anti-colonial tradition that is a precursor to and a companion of the postcolonial theoretical movement To understand the roots of postcolonial theory and its development across global contexts, with a focus on South Asian, sub-Saharan African, Latin American/Caribbean, and U.S. Postcolonialism To read critically postcolonial literatures and media texts from Africa, Asia, South America, the Caribbean, and the United States To employ postcolonialism as a reading strategy, to hone the literacy skills necessary to read and critique any cultural text. Possible Course Texts Include: Ania Loomba’s Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Edward Said’s Orientalism, Gayatri Spivak’s Postcolonial Critic, Homi Bhabha’s Location of Culture, Frantz Fanon’s A Dying Colonialism, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Hundred Years of Solitude, Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Gloria Anzaldua’s La Frontera/Borderlands in addition to various shreds of contemporary media culture. ENGL 43344-01 Seminar: Ballads: Poetry and Song from the Eighteenth Century Ian Newman TR 2:00-3:15 The ballad has long been recognized as crucial to the development of British Poetry in the eighteenth century. Precisely what a ballad is, however, remains a remarkably vexed question. This is in part because ballads fall inconveniently between disciplines – literature, music, book history, folklore, cultural studies – so that the study of ballads requires a broad interdisciplinary approach. For the literary scholar in particular the ballad poses difficulties because it does not fit conveniently within our familiar frameworks for study. Often there is no known author; only occasionally do we have any idea when a ballad was written; even when we know the name of the printer we cannot be sure the print we have is the earliest printing. Moreover, the printed life of ballads represents only one part of their existence: they need also to be understood as performance texts that straddle the world of orality and print. Rather than seeing these challenges as hurdles to our understanding, this class will explore the possibilities that the ballad opens up for reconsidering our approaches to the study of literature. This research seminar will train students in the use of ballad archives and will require a substantial research paper, which considers both textual and performative aspects of ballad production. ENGL 43607-01 Seminar: Nationalism and Transnationalism Nan Da MW 2:00-3:15 Profoundly uncertain about its contours, borders and internal cohesiveness, nineteenth-century America offered up the paradoxes of literary nationalism. Why, in consolidating "national" literature, did so many writers stage their American dramas elsewhere? Most of Moby Dick, for example, takes place in the southern Pacific. In this course we will explore the trope of displacement in nineteenth-century America's literary imaginary, addressing texts through a key question: why does the story take place elsewhere? To answer this question, we will move from text (close-reading) to context (broader geopolitical history) and in so doing uncover the relationship between the private crises of reading and the public crises of nationhood that has been so crucial to American literature since its inception. The writers and works we will study include Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Lydia Maria Child, Frederick Douglass, Louisa May Alcott, and Herman Melville. Primary texts will be supplemented with appropriate secondary reading of literary historical and theoretical nature to aid our movement from text to context and address even broader questions related to reading cultures and nation-building. ENGL 53001 Honors Colloquium Barbara Green MW 2:00-3:15 The Honors Colloquium will introduce students completing the honors thesis to research methods in literary studies. Students will complete a series of assignments designed to enable them to develop her thesis topic. They will conduct research in consultation with their thesis advisor and begin work on the thesis project, which will be completed in the Spring semester. Copyright © 2018 University of Notre Dame Department of English 356 O'Shaughnessy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556 Phone 574.631.7226
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