ENGL
30850 – 01
Fiction
Writing for English Majors
Matthew Benedict
MW 3:00-4:15
This
is a course in writing short fiction for English majors who come to writing
with a broader literary background than non-majors. It is conducted through a
discussion format centered on fiction written by students in the class, and in
the context of readings drawn from the contemporary, literary landscape.
Students will be encouraged to explore how style and language create aesthetic
experience and convey ideas. No one type of fiction is advocated over another,
and the emphasis in the class will vary from section to section; however,
students will be expected to write fiction that demonstrates an awareness of
the difference between serious literature and formula entertainment.
ENGL
30850 – 02
Fiction
Writing for English Majors
Steve Tomasula
TR 12:30-1:45
This
is a course in writing short fiction for English majors who come to writing
with a broader literary background than non-majors. It is conducted through a
discussion format centered on fiction written by students in the class, and in
the context of readings drawn from the contemporary, literary landscape.
Students will be encouraged to explore how style and language create aesthetic
experience and convey ideas. No one type of fiction is advocated over another,
and the emphasis in the class will vary from section to section; however,
students will be expected to write fiction that demonstrates an awareness of
the difference between serious literature and formula entertainment.
ENGL
30851 – 01
Poetry
Writing for English Majors
John Wilkinson
TR 3:30-4:45
This
course invites students to learn about the practice of poetry writing with
reference to both contemporary and traditional forms, media and genres.
Though assignments and readings will vary from section to section,
typically, students will build up the range and depth of their writing through
impromptu exercises, homework poems, and the assembling of a final portfolio of
revised, polished works. Students receive feedback on their poetry from class
members as well as from the instructor and will be expected to give consistent,
constructive feedback on peersÕ poems. Other topics under consideration might
include translation, performance, hybrid genres or multimedia, depending on the
section.
ENGL 40134
Poetry and Liberal Education
John Sitter
MW 1:30-2:45
With the work of six poets and several theories of poetry
from the Renaissance to now as our guides, we will take up the large question
of how poetry figures, or might figure, in liberal education. Some of the more
specific but abiding questions we will consider are these: Does poetry offer
ways of knowing as well as ways of saying? Does learning to understand poetry
affect moral as well as intellectual development? Does it deepen our awareness
of other kinds of language? Why has poetry often been seen paradoxically as
both more sensuous and more abstract than other kinds of expression? Does
the physicality rhythm of poetry illuminate ThoreauÕs puzzling claim that we
Òthink as well through our legs and arms as our brainÓ? Is metaphor the realm
in which we find our best meanings? We will focus on poems by Andrew
Marvell, Alexander Pope, John Keats, P.B. Shelley, W.B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens,
and Adrienne Rich. Essays on poetry will range from Philip SidneyÕs ÒDefence of
PoetryÓ (1595) to reflections by several 20th-century poets and
philosophers and some recent work in cognitive psychology on the processing of
figurative and rhythmic language.
ENGL
40141
Psychoanalysis
and Literatures
Maud
Ellmann
TR
3:30-4:45
This course examines psychoanalytic approaches to
literature, with a focus on the Freudian tradition. We will begin by reading
selections from Freud's writings on dreams, sexuality, creativity, and art, in
connection with literary works, such as Poe's "The Purloined Letter,"
Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw," Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock
Holmes stories, and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which have inspired
controversial psychoanalytic readings. Drama (e.g. Hamlet), poetry (e.g. T.S. Eliot)
will also be explored. In addition we will read selections from later
psychoanalysts, such as Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, Jacques Lacan, and
Adam Phillips, and literary theorists such as Slavoj Zizek, who have brought
psychoanalysis and literature together in exciting new ways. At the end of the
course we will turn our attention to psychoanalysis and film, focusing on
Alfred Hitchcock's movies.
ENGL 40219
Chaucer
Katherine Zieman
MW 3:00-4:15
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in a time of great social, political, and religious upheaval, a time in which the stakes of English writing were uncertain. This course examines Chaucer's efforts during that period to create sustained fiction in English through his most ambitious and experimental work, The Canterbury Tales. We will learn about earlier forms of English, its sounds, and its poetry while reading stories ranging from the lascivious to the sacred. Regular quizzes will help strengthen your language and translation skills while short papers and midterm and final exams will allow you to explore and synthesize larger ideas about Chaucer, his times, and his work. Ultimately, we will find out what earned Chaucer the title "Father of English poetry."
ENGL 40235
ShakespeareÕs
Major Tragedies
Jesse Lander
MW 11:45-1:00
This course will examine the four tragedies upon which ShakespeareÕs reputation most securely rests: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Our objectives will be to acquire an in-depth knowledge of ShakespeareÕs four major tragedies; to become familiar with early modern English and develop an appreciation of the importance of linguistic history; to examine tragedy as a dramatic genre, as an experience, and as a cultural preoccupation; and to learn about ShakespeareÕs age and his afterlife. Along with our modern editions of Shakespeare, we will read Christopher HaighÕs Elizabeth I and a number of recent scholarly essays. Work will include several short written assignments, a midterm, a final, and a paper of 7-10 pages.
ENGL 40261
Money in the Eighteenth
Century: Wealth, Poverty, Debt Gambling, Bubbles, Consumers
Margaret Doody
TR 9:30-10:45
The instruments of modern capitalism (including the Bank of England and a stock market) were invented at the end of the seventeenth century. The eighteenth century experiences the complexities and shocks of that system. The South Sea Bubble in England with the remarkable crash of the South Sea Company in 1720 gave the world its first lesson in a stock market crash. The feudal class system is pressed and reshaped to follow the nature of money. Theories about liberty cannot rightly ignore financial pressure, and personal freedom is deeply affected by relationships to money. Novelists, dramatists and poets of the late 17th and the 18th century examine a variety of forms of wealth and loss, and observe the startling effects of gains and losses of those at the bottom or the top of the social pyramid. Male and female authors observe the price and significance of luxury goods (silk, mohair, diamonds, and coaches) and of new pleasures (coffee and tea-drinking, card parties); they also follow the cost of bare necessities (a loaf of bread). Slavery is part of the economic dynamic, and the new system amplifies slavery in bringing to the fore such new staples as sugar, tobacco and cotton. Gambling assumes a central role; public projects are funded by lotteries. Marriage is deeply involved in speculation. (ÒSpeculationÓ is the name of a real game introduced to her family by Jane Austen.)
We will examine the work of theorists such as Adam Smith and Malthus, as well as a variety of poems plays and novels from Bunyan to Austen dealing with social patterns and individual experiences of prosperity or loss.
ENGL 40336
Seduction and the
Novel in the Era of the French Revolution
Essaka Joshua
TR 2:00-3:15
When Lionel reflects, in Charlotte Smith's Desmond (1792), "I found that if I would really satisfy myself with a certain view of Geraldine, I must seek some spot, where, from its elevation, I could, by means of a small pocket telescope, have an uninterrupted view of these windows," and the eponymous heroine of Mary Hays's Memoirs of Emma Courtney (1796) observes "I shall, I suspect, be impelled by an irresistible impulse to seek you. Though you have condemned my affection, my friendship will still follow you," they represent an extreme unrequited devotion that is part of the period's preoccupation with passion. The novel of the 1790s teems with rapists, stalkers, abusive employers, weeping men and fighting women who confront prison, madness, murder, jealousy and suicidal melancholy. This course aims to explore the significance of passion for understanding developments in the representation of femininity, masculinity, social virtue and humanitarian reform at the end of the eighteenth century.
ENGL 40350
Dickens and Wilde
David Thomas
TR 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 offences.
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 40513
Culture &
Politics in Northern Ireland
Mary Burgess
TR 11:00-12:15
This course explores the politics of culture, and the cultures of
politics, in the North of Ireland during the twentieth century. Using a
multiplicity of genres — drama, fiction, poetry, film, painting, and
documentary material — we will unravel the history behind partition, the
causes of the Troubles, and the nature of the conflict. Among the key moments
or events upon which we will concentrate are the Somme, the sinking of the
Titanic, Bloody Sunday, the hunger strikes, Drumcree, the Anglo-Irish
Agreement, and the Shankill Butchers. Certain key themes will stretch through
our semesterÕs work. Among these are sectarianism, the relationship between
violence and culture, the role of religion in the state, borders, hatred,
identity, and issues of social and political justice. Some of the writers whose
work we will read are Seamus Heaney, Frank McGuinness, Sam Thompson, John
Montague, Seamus Deane, Eoin MacNamee, Robert MacLiam Wilson, Colin McCann, and
Thomas Kinsella.
ENGL 40608
Novels of American
Naturalism
Kate Marshall
MW 1:30-2:45
In this course we will undertake a comparative survey of the materialisms of twentieth-century American naturalist novels, tracing a trajectory from turn-of-the-century texts by Norris and Dreiser, to the neo-naturalist fiction of a few decades later that operated alongside developments in modernist literary form (Stein, Petry, Steinbeck), and concluding with a look at its postwar resurgence in the novels of authors such as Don DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy. We will also discuss the return to these novels in recent films including There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men. Students will be asked to write one short formal analysis and two mid-length papers, in addition to regular discussion assignments.
ENGL 40702
American Film
William Krier
TR 3:30-4:45
A look at
what makes a film American. The course will be structured by pairing films from
the ÒclassicÓ period with films from the more recent past in order to highlight
essential features, particularly genre characteristics, the work of directors,
and the performance of Òstars.Ó
Possible films: It Happened One
Night, French Kiss, The Lady Eve, Double Indemnity, Body Heat, Basic Instinct,
Zero Effect, Shane, Unforgiven, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Die Hard, The
Godfather, Bound, Silence of the Lambs, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Don Juan de
Marco, Moulin Rouge, Crash, The Hours, The Maltese Falcon and others.
There will
be a final exam and a long paper (fifteen pages or so) about a film chosen by
each student.
ENGL 40704
Modern American
Poetry
Johannes Goransson
MW 3:00-4:15
In his masterpiece, A Season in Hell, French visionary and boy-genius Arthur Rimbaud proclaimed: ÒOne must be absolutely modern.Ó This remained at the core of the varied, radical artistic explorations that form the category ÒModern Poetry.Ó In the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, to be modern meant to keep up with and try to respond to vertigo-inducing, often brilliant and often shocking changes in technology and politics, including the invention of trains and planes, films and cars, and the horrific violence of two world wars. We will study how the intense and greatly varied impulse of modern poetry took shape in the US, from Walt Whitman through Modernism, to the upheavals of the 1960s. In the process, we will discuss such still pervasive questions as what is the value of "the new"? Must the new always be shocking? Can art be political? Should it be? We will also problematize our own positions as historians of this movement. What thinkers, writers and administrators have determined our views of these poets? Is poetry still ÒmodernÓ? What does ÒmodernÓ mean today?
ENGL 40759:
First
Books/First Looks: Contemporary American Poetry
Cornelius
Eady
MW
11:45-1:00
This course
will be an exploration of African American Poetry as seen through the lens of
the first books of some of the best known and read writers in the African
American cannon. Some of the poets we may be reading include Phyllis Wheatley,
Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, and Natasha
Trethewey, among others.
Students
should expect to read at least 7 books, write a short report on each poet we
read and the era they represent, and a long final paper on some aspect of
African American poetry touched upon in our reading.
ENGL 40816 –
01
Caribbean Voices
Cyraina
Johnson-Roullier/Karen Richman
TR 2:00-3:15
While
the domination of capital and the displacement of people have long structured
Caribbean life, intensified ÒdevelopmentÓ during recent decades has spurred an
unexpected human exodus toward North America and Europe. Yet, dispersal
of up to 20% of some island populations has resulted neither in assimilation
into host locations nor severed ties to the home. Caribbean migrants have
rather created forms of social relation that link together their societies of
origin and settlement. Their communities span multiple sites across
nation-states, linked by constant comings and goings of messages, people,
politicians, spirits, gifts, and money.
This
course explores the histories, transnationalist orientations and practices of
people from Barbados, Belize, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica,
Martinique and Puerto Rico. We study the unfolding of domestic, economic,
ritual, and political relations across transnational social fields. Our
sources include ethnography, fiction, history, music, art, food, and film.
ILSÕ special lecture series, two feature films and a Caribbean
dinner will round out our exploration of Caribbean diasporas.
ENGL 40850
Advanced Fiction
Writing
William OÕRourke
TR 2:00-3:15
This
course is intended for students who have already taken a Fiction Writing course
(or the equivalent) and who are seriously interested in writing fiction, and
graduate students who are not in the Creative Writing program. The
expectation is that the student is beyond the point of requiring assignments to
generate stories. Over the semester, in a workshop setting, student
stories will be taken through various stages: due attention will be paid to
revision, rewriting, polishing, editing, with a goal that the stories be
brought as close as possible to the point of submission as finished work.
Practical as well as theoretical issues will be investigated; there will
be assigned readings from a variety of fiction authors.
ENGL 40851
Advanced Poetry
Writing
Cornelius Eady
MW 4:30-5:45
This
workshop hopefully will strengthen and stretch the poetic muscles of the
student. My philosophy of writing is to get the student deeply into the writing
process as quickly as possible. The texts IÕm using these days are chapbooks,
which students will read and study over the course of the semester (at least
five rounds). There are two writing prompts a week, one usually dealing with
some aspect of form. Students will be responsible for the making of a chapbook
of what they feel represents their best work over the semester (8-12 pages),
keeping a journal, presenting a portfolio containing all of the writing
assignments in order (including one poem that has been totally re-written), and
making a video poetry magazine with the group they are assigned to. The course
is demanding but a good 14-week adventure with your poetic voice.