Spring 2015
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Graduate Course Description Spring 2015 Early registration for spring semester begins October 13. Course descriptions for graduate level courses are attached. Time and day are subject to change, so please check current online timetable for accuracy. Do not assume that this document is final. CRN 25453 20766 20767 27652 30291 25468 29741 27540 25469 27536 28582 28584 20770 20771 20772 28054 20773 20774 20775 25471 29856 30309 20776 20778 29842 29847 20785 20786 20787 28732 27528 27522 26300 29164 28589 29855 29857 20789 Course 401 404 405 413 414 431 432 435 436 441 444 453 455 456 460 462 463 464 464 466 470 474 482 484 484 489 500 502 505 505 509 513 552 555 581 584 586 593 Instructor Dzon Hirschfeld Addicott Havens Billone Lofaro Coleman Griffin Jennings Haddox Hardwig Schoenbach King Elias Hirst Keene Brouwers Dean Knight Hirst Ringer Huth Dunn Kallet Knight Maland Haddox Haddox Ringer Benson Hawk Dzon Commander Haddox Smith Papke Atwill Haddox Title Medieval Literature Shakespeare I: Early Plays Shakespeare II: Later Plays Restoration and Early 18th C Genres and Modes Romantic Poetry and Prose I Early American Literature American Romanticism/Transcendentalism American Novel Before 1900 Modern American Novel Southern Literature Appalachian Literature/Culture Contemporary Drama Persuasive Writing Contemporary Fiction/Narrative Technical Editing Writing for Publication Advanced Poetry Writing Advanced Fiction Writing Advanced Fiction Writing Writing/Layout/Production Techniques Special Topics in Rhetoric Teaching English as a Second Language I Major Authors Special Topics in Writing: Dreamworks Special Topics in Writing: Special Topics in Film Thesis Hours Use of Facilities Composition Pedagogy Composition Pedagogy History of the English Language II Readings in Medieval Literature Readings in American Literature II Creative Thesis Colloquium in Poetry Writing Topics: Feminist Studies History of Rhetoric I Independent Studies 20790 20792 28609 27534 20795 27533 27545 600 631 660 670 671 680 686 Haddox Hirschfeld Coleman Seshagiri Garner King Ross Dissertation Hours Studies in Renaissance Literature Studies in American Literature Studies in 20th C Literature Studies in 20th C Literature II Advanced Studies in RWL Studies in Creative Writing 401 Medieval Literature Dzon Juxtaposes a selection of works written during the millennium usually called the “Middle Ages.” The course is not organized chronologically but rather in terms of themes and definitions—how each work positions itself in relation to its subject, its context, its audience, and its past. Topics include the invention of the ‘self’; the politics of style; the story of Arthur as a dream of empire; medieval ideas of antiquity; problems of manuscript textuality; and the truth and falsehood of dreams. Most works will be read in modern English translation, and no previous knowledge of Middle English (or Old English, Old French, Italian, Latin, etc.) is required. Our texts will include Augustine’s Confessions, Beowulf, Malory’s Morte Darthur, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Pearl, and others. Along the way selected secondary texts will be recommended or required. Your final grade will be based on class participation, a set of one-page written responses to weekly questions, a final exam and an 8-12 page research assignment. 404 Shakespeare I: Early Plays Hirschfeld This class will explore the shape of Shakespeare’s early career as a writer for the page and stage. Our texts will represent a variety of dramatic and literary forms, with a focus on Shakespearean comedy: Comedy of Errors, Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night and Merchant of Venice. We’ll finish with 1 Henry IV and Hamlet. The goals of the class are multiple: to become careful, responsive readers of Shakespeare’s dramatic language; to evaluate his stories and plots in terms of inherited literary/dramatic traditions and contemporary theatrical conventions; and to understand his recurrent themes and interests in terms of his immediate cultural and political contexts. Requirements: 2 response papers, midterm and final papers, one exam. 405 Shakespeare II: Later Plays Addicott Serves as a survey of Shakespeare’s post-1601 dramatic works. Students will read six plays, and texts may include All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest, and The Winter’s Tale. We will focus on understanding these plays in a number of contexts such as stage conditions; language, rhetoric, and style; the development of techniques and genres; and the plays’ social, political, and theological conditions. Assignments will include work for a class roundtables, microquizzes, and a longer research project, including an annotated bibliography and the creation of a critical introduction for one of the plays. 413 Restoration and Early 18th-Century Genres and Modes The Novel Havens This course will trace the birth and development of the English novel during the long eighteenth century from the amatory and picaresque modes to the domestic novel. We will read works by Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Jane Austen. We will also read selections from important critics on the rise of the novel, including Watt, McKeon, Hunter, and others. Students will be expected to participate actively, and requirements will include short writing assignments (some of which may be done in class), two essays, and seven quizzes. 414 Romantic Poetry and Prose I Billone This class studies the excitement of new beginnings that followed the French Revolution in 1789. Writers will include Blake, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge together with the initiators of the Gothic tradition that culminated in our own era’s Harry Potter phenomenon. Grades are determined by weekly discussion questions, weekly quizzes, a midterm, a final exam and a final project. 431 Early American Literature Lofaro Surveys the major themes and achievements of early American literature from its pre-Christian Mediterranean influences to 1820. The course focuses upon European and indigenous strains in our literary heritage and examines early texts as a series of cultural and literary transformations. Due to the time period covered and the approach, the course is unlike most literature courses. Historical, religious, and political documents are among those investigated as literary texts. Readings will be drawn from such authors as, Columbus, Cortez, Cabeza deVaça, Smith, Bradstreet, Taylor, Rowlandson, Byrd, Edwards, Wheatley, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Freneau, Brackenridge, Brown, Foster, Rowson, and Irving. Requirements include: two Essay Exams (20% & 20%); a typewritten paper of 8 to 10 pages (30%); approved first paragraph (including title, topic, thesis statement, argument, etc.) of the paper (10%); spot quizzes (no make-ups) (20%). 432 American Romanticism/Transcendentalism Coleman This course dives deep into many of the classic texts of American literary history: the Transcendentalist writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau; the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville; the antislavery polemics of William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass; and the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. In reading this literature, we will attend to how authors address recurrent themes characteristic of this period in American history, including moral idealism, environmental consciousness, abolitionism, women’s rights, the changing role of literature in the public sphere, and questions of national identity. Students will also be encouraged to explore the ongoing relevance of these writings. Requirements: active class participation, blogs, paired presentation, critical essay worksheets, midterm, final, and a final researched essay. 435 American Novel before 1900 Griffin Although American authors faced local problems both economic and aesthetic, the rise of American literary culture from its beginnings in the early national period reveals writers trying energetically to understand and mold the shape of a new nation. Some voices were kept at a distance, others were given a lot of space, but the particular challenges and conflicts associated with being American could not be avoided or suppressed. The class will follow the growth of American fiction from the work of early practitioners such as Hannah Webster Foster and Washington Irving, through key figures of the American Renaissance such as Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, to the confident and ambitious writing of Stephen Crane and Henry James at the end of the nineteenth century. Requirements: two take-home papers of around 6 pages, an in-class mid-term, regular short Blackboard postings, a final paper incorporating the postings. 436 Modern American Novel Jennings A critical introduction to selected, prominent, twentieth-century American novels written between 1920 and 1980 and their defining socio-political themes and stylistic elements. The class will identify, compare, and contrast the driving political, historical, cultural, and aesthetic forces at work in and between these selected works. Reading List: The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald), The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway), Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston), The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck); Native Son (Richard Wright); and Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison). Requirements: Few absences, mid-term paper research (33.3%), end-of-term research paper (33.3%), and frequent quizzes and consistent participation (33.3%). 441 Southern Literature Haddox [Note: I am planning to teach a graduate course—English 551—in southern literature in Summer 2014. I would strongly recommend taking this course instead of 441 if you have an interest in the field and are able to do so.] Will be a broad survey of southern fiction, poetry, drama, and essays from the early nineteenth century to the present. The writers we will examine will include Poe, Douglass, Chesnutt, Ransom, Tate, Faulkner, Hurston, Welty, Wright, O’Connor, Tennessee Williams, Dickey, Lee Smith, and Earley. Required texts: William L. Andrews and others, eds., The Literature of the American South (A Norton Anthology), first edition; Charles W. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition (Bedford Critical Edition); William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!; Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood; Lee Smith, Oral History Requirements: two papers (one 5-7 pages, one 8-10 pages), two exams, reading quizzes, regular attendance, active class participation. 444 Appalachian Literature and Culture Bill Hardwig [I am scheduled to teach a graduate class on Appalachian literature in Fall 2015. I would recommend waiting for this class, unless you won’t be here next fall.] In this class, we will investigate the complex history of the Appalachian region. By tracing key traditions and events in Appalachian history, literature and arts, we will examine the various ways in which Appalachia was understood and described (from within and from without). This class is interdisciplinary in design, and we will approach our topics by looking at literature, history, photography, music, and popular culture. Along the way, we will unearth the heterogeneity (of people, ethnicities, opinions and communities) in the region commonly known as Appalachia. Tentative Texts: Affrilachia, Frank X. Walker; Child of God, Cormac McCarthy; One Foot in Eden, Ron Rash; River of Earth, James Still; Saving Grace, Lee Smith; Storming Heaven, Denise Giardina; blackboard readings Major Requirements for Undergraduate (would be revised for graduate students): two out-of-class papers (6-8 pages) (45%) three exams (30%) several short, informal micro-essays (10%) quizzes (10%) participation (5%) 454 Twentieth Century International Novel Somewhere, Everywhere, Nowhere: International Modernism and its Legacies Schoenbach In this class, we will consider a diverse group of twentieth-century authors and international locations. We will ask ourselves what it would mean to have a truly "international" literary movement. In answering this question, we will consider how and why questions of national identity, home and exile, center and periphery, movement and migration, exoticism and regionalism figure in the literary innovations and historical moments referred to as "modernist." We will also consider how contemporary novels respond to these questions, and to their modernist precursors. We will reserve the right, as a class, to wonder what is gained and what lost when we develop a rubric--"international modernism," for instance, or "transnational fiction"--that hopes to contain all of these texts. Readings will include works by Djuna Barnes, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, Christopher Isherwood, W.G. Sebald, David Mitchell, and China Miéville. 455 Persuasive Writing King Every day we are inundated with multiple streams of information in countless forms: online news channels, newspapers, social networks, blogs, political satires and cartoons, advertisements, and much more. We navigate them constantly, but to what extent are we aware of how this information affects us? Given there is no “neutral” statement, how attentive are we to the way information is shaped as it is communicated? What functions as persuasion? This class is designed to prompt critical thinking and writing about how communication and persuasion are constructed, consciously and unconsciously, in public, academic, and personal contexts. Beginning with a review of rhetorical basics from the Greco-Roman tradition and then working through contemporary theories of persuasion, in this class you will have a chance to explore how those principles of persuasion function. Student work will involve tracking what and how local, state, and national issues are debated, analyzing persuasive strategies, and critically engaging in those debates yourself for a variety of audiences. Required Texts: Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s They Say, I Say, 3rd ed. ISBN 9780393935844 Required writing: 10 short response essays, four formal writing projects, and construction of a digital or hardcopy media scrapbook. 456 Contemporary Fiction/Narrative Experimental Selves Elias In what ways is a “self” an experimental artwork? How does literature make us aware of this weird and wonderful process of never-ending self-creation that is our life project? In what ways does it alert us to forces larger than ourselves that also shape us—perhaps against our will, perhaps even without our knowledge? In this course we’ll read international fiction that explores these questions and that also experiments with fictional form as it tries to address them. Course texts will include approximately eight works of fiction, graphic novel, hypertext fiction, and novel-in-a-box by international contemporary writers of acclaim. A unique part of this course will be one of its assignments: students will take part in an public discussion board with students from other parts of the US and England as they read the galleys of Mark Z. Danielewski’s newest and as-yet-unpublished novel The Familiar (see discussion site at http://thefamiliar.wordpress.com) and to engage in a talkback session with the author. Course requirements: participation in the online discussion board; three tests; article summaries and Journal exercises. 460 Technical Editing Hirst Theory, practice, and evaluation of editing skills for the world of work, plus orientation to careers and professional concerns in technical communication. This course focuses on the skills necessary to write and edit the text of technical documents. Much of your homework will involve working through my online tutorials as well as the Discussion & Application questions in the Rude & Eaton book. The major assignment for the course is an extended editing project that you can later use as a portfolio piece. Required Texts Rude, Carolyn D. and Angela Eaton. Technical Editing, 5e. Pearson, 2011. Weiss, Edmond H. The Elements of International English Style. M.E. Sharpe, 2005. —The online 460 syllabus (scroll down to it on my blog site, http://russelhirst.wordpress.com) is linked to additional required readings. Course description at top of site shows grading scale. 462 Writing for Publication Keene Teaches the kind of writing involved in proposals, scholarly articles, theses, and dissertations. While the course’s primary focus is on the nuts and bolts of such writing—how to organize such a writing project, how to get words on paper in the first place, how to revise, how to edit, how to prepare manuscripts for submission (and deal with co-authors, deal with reviewers, etc.)—it also considers the writing of abstracts, different varieties of documentation styles, proper use of visuals, guidelines and procedures for manuscript submission, the process of editorial review, and a number of other related topics. 463 Advanced Poetry Writing Smith Poetry writing, primarily free verse, with analyses of models from the ancient Greeks to the contemporary scene. Emphasis will be on the line, the sentence, the stanza, the use of figurative language and rhythmic structures. Requirements Attendance is required at two poetry readings during the semester. A one-page analysis will be required for each. Each week a one-page response to an assigned reading will be due. Your grade will be determined by the two poetry reading analyses (20%), a mid-term portfolio of three poems (20%), a final portfolio of five poems (40%), and by your responses to the assigned readings (20%), along with class participation. Probable Texts Refusing Heaven, Jack Gilbert, Knopf 2005. Red to the Rind, Stan Rice, Knopf 2002. In the Dark, Ruth Stone, Copper Canyon, 2007. 464 Advanced Fiction Writing Dean This course is designed for students who are interested in deepening and sharpening their fiction writing skills. We will move beyond the beginners’ problems and challenge ourselves to try new techniques, increase the complexity of our work, and allow for surprise. This course is for serious writers who are planning to put significant time and effort into their own and their classmates’ fiction this semester. Our reading will largely consist of fiction produced by the class, up to 80-100 pages per week; other readings may be assigned throughout the semester and will generally be available online. Requirements: Two stories handed in for workshop, detailed written responses for every workshopped story, active participation, a craft talk (presentation to the class), and (in lieu of a final exam) a significant revision of one story. 464 Advanced Fiction Writing Knight This course is designed as a continuation of ENG 364 and will be focused on workshopping original student fiction. 466 Writing, Layout, and Production of Technical Documents Hirst Serves anyone wanting to become more familiar with principles of effective document design, but geared for those planning to work in technical/professional communication. The course assumes no prior experience with document design or electronic publishing. Topics and activities include: • Learning principles of visual design for creating technical and professional documents. • Getting familiar with design software such as MS Word and Adobe Illustrator. • Writing and editing effective prose for your documents. • Developing a portfolio that showcases your writing, editing, computing, and document design skills. Although students receive feedback on submissions throughout the semester, the final grade is based largely on the quality of the final project (portfolio). 470 Special Topics in RWL Religious Rhetorics Ringer This course explores the intersections of rhetoric and religion. It does so through investigation of vernacular religious rhetoric—the rhetoric used by ordinary people to make sense of their religious beliefs in the context of our pluralistic American democracy. The first part of the course will involve intensive reading of scholarship that offers theories and examples of vernacular religious faith. Students will then develop original research projects wherein they conduct some form of qualitative research (e.g., interviews, observations, focus groups) to understand better how religious individuals in their local community enact what one scholar calls “vernacular religious creativity.” Requirements: In addition to extensive reading, frequent writing, and active class participation, students will design and complete an original research project that culminates in a substantive research paper. Pre-reqs: ENGL 355 or permission of instructor. 474 Teaching English as a Second Language I Huth This course introduces major issues surrounding teaching ESL/EFL. This includes political implications of teaching ESL/EFL, an introduction to second language acquisition theories, discussing learner variables in language learning, traditional and innovative approaches to ESL/EFL, basic features of American English grammar necessary for teaching ESL, and issues in teaching ESL/EFL writing. Readings Suggested and required, both textbook materials and additional primary research literature (articles made available electronically). Assignments (tentative) Reaction papers Midterm exam Final exam Data analysis/presentation Participation 20% 30% 30% 15% 5% 482 Major Authors James Joyce Dunn James Joyce wrote about everything; he made epic literature out of the most common materials of everyday life. Of the letters he wrote to his wife he said,” Some if it is ugly, obscene and bestial, some of it is pure holy and spiritual: all of it is myself,” and the same is true of his fiction. His work contains the most complete view of the world in the history of literary fiction. In this class, we will read Joyce’s major works, including Dubliners, the Portrait, Ulysses, and parts of Finnegans Wake. Along the way, we will explore Joyce’s Ireland, his biography, his links with the modernist movement that nurtured him, and a brief sampling of the volumes of criticism that his work has inspired. Requirements for the course include short ungraded response papers, group reports, two graded papers and three examinations. 484 Special Topics in Writing: Dreamworks Kallet Dreamworks is a workshop in poetry writing from dreams. Students hand in one poem each week and keep a dream journal. At mid-term and at the end of the semester students hand in poetry manuscripts and edited passages from the dream journals. The mid-term manuscript is composed of four poems and four edited journal pages; final manuscripts 6-8 pages of poetry and dream journal combined. In-class writing exercises are used to stimulate discussion. Class participation is emphasized and students are expected to keep up with the readings. Attendance is required, with two excused absences. Students should have take 363 as a prerequisite, or must obtain the permission of the instructor. Graduate students will be asked to help lead two class discussions. Readings for the course typically include: News of the Universe, edited by Robert Bly – this anthology includes poetry by Blake, Keats, Goethe, Novalis, Baudelaire, Rilke, Yeats, Levertov and Oliver, and many others from oral tradition poetry to contemporary writings; In Mad Love and War, poetry by Joy Harjo; Rimbaud: Collected Poems, Selected Letters, translated by Wallace Fowlie. 484 Special Topics in Writing From Short Story to Feature Film: The Art of the Adapted Screenplay Knight This class will focus on the theory and practice of adaptation of short fiction to feature length films. Students will engage in close study of short stories that have been previously adapted for the screen as well as the resulting films. Attention will be paid to dramatic structure, visual storytelling, building characters and conflict and the development of theme. In addition to regular written responses to short stories and films, assignments will include an adaptation project in which students will lead a discussion of a short story for adaptation and write the first act (25-40 pages) of a feature length film based on that short story. 489 Special Topics in Film American Film Renaissance: Movies and American Culture, 1964-1978 Maland Film historians have sometimes called the period between the middle 1960s and the later 1970s the “American Film Renaissance”; during that time a number of factors coalesced to create new and exciting directions in American movies. Those factors included the influence of European Art Cinema, the breakup of the studio system as television eroded the audience for movies, the growing dominance of the auteur approach to studying movies, a new ratings system for films (introduced in 1968), an energetic and polemic film journalism, and the social and political turbulence generated by the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, and Watergate. The era is arguably one of the richest periods in American film history, rivaled only by the golden age of the late 1930s and early 1940s. This course will explore how it came about, what the best and most interesting films from the period were like, and why it gave way in the late 1970s to the era of the blockbuster. A number of important directors emerged or did some of their best work during this period, including Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Arthur Penn, and Francis Ford Coppola. The course will include screenings, readings on both film and American cultural history during the period, and lecture/discussions on the films, filmmakers, and historical context. Although the screening list is not fully set, I expect that it will include Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, M.A.S.H., Medium Cool, Little Big Man, The Conversation, and Nashville, among others. All students will take two exams and write two shorter papers or one longer paper. Graduate students taking the course will write a book review of a relevant book related to the era and a research paper on a topic developed in consultation with me. We will probably read one historical interpretation of the period—probably Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution, as well as selections from other books about the era, like Peter Lev’s American Films of the 1970s and Jay Hoberman’s The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties, as well as selected shorter readings on individual films, directors, and critical approaches to film study. 505 Teaching First Year Composition Theory and Practice Ringer English 505, Teaching First-year Composition, offers students a solid foundation in the theory and practice of teaching writing. The class will provide regular opportunities to engage with key scholarship about writing instruction and to participate in hands-on, problem-oriented learning. We will read widely about various aspects of writing pedagogy and will grapple with ways to apply our knowledge in the classroom. Students will leave 505 with a solid understanding of writing pedagogy, rhetorical theory, an understanding of UTK’s first-year composition program, a repertoire of effective classroom practices, and the ability to investigate teaching challenges. Requirements: reading responses; original teacher research project; reflective essays; portfolio of teaching materials (e.g., syllabi and assignments); and class participation. 505 Teaching First Year Composition Theory and Practice Benson English 505, Teaching First-year Composition, offers students a solid foundation in the theory and practice of teaching writing. The class will provide regular opportunities to engage with key scholarship about writing instruction and to participate in hands-on, problem-oriented learning. We will read widely about various aspects of writing pedagogy and will grapple with ways to apply our knowledge in the classroom. Students will leave 505 with a solid understanding of writing pedagogy, rhetorical theory, an understanding of UTK’s first-year composition program, a repertoire of effective classroom practices, and the ability to investigate teaching challenges. Requirements: reading responses; original teacher research project; reflective essays; portfolio of teaching materials (e.g., syllabi and assignments); and class participation. 509 History of the English Language II Hawk This course serves as a part two of an introduction to the study of languages (linguistics) as well as the history and development of the English language from c.1500 to the present. We will explore this subject from a variety of perspectives, including descriptive and historical linguistics, as well as literary and social history. In addition to language textbooks—focused on the general development of modern English—we will read various supplemental materials from essays and books selected for their detailed examinations of particular aspects or periods of language development. Toward the end of the course, we will also look at how digital culture has made an impact on our language over the past few decades by reading Crystal’s Internet Linguistics (ILSG) and other resources. Throughout the course, we will take a descriptive (rather than prescriptive) approach, focusing on English both diachronically (concerned with change over time) and synchronically (concerned with particular moments in time), in order to understand how English became the language that we know in the twenty-first century. 513 Readings in Medieval Literature The Body and Middle English Literature Dzon No description available at this time. 552 Readings in Black American Literature What is/was Black American Literature Commander This course is structured as an examination of Kenneth Warren’s provocative claim that “what we know to be African American literature or black literature is of rather recent vintage” (What Was African American Literature? 1). We will engage in a semester-long, interdisciplinary inquiry that considers the social, political, and economic issues that informed literatures of protest as well as investigate whether the intersectional conditions to which early to mid-twentieth century Black American authors responded indeed ceased to be of pressing concern after the legal defeat of de jure Jim Crow. We will consider the legitimacy of Warren’s temporal bracketing of African American literature and ponder whether and how the motivations that guide Black American writers in the post-civil rights era differ significantly from that of their predecessors. Should African American literature be understood as that which appeared during a particular period in the past that extended from Reconstruction to the mid-1960s? Or, does the fact that several contemporary Black American authors have positioned their sights on representing and critiquing a society that has transformed into something differently oppressive in a moment of purported post-raciality essentially demonstrate that they are responding to a changing same? In addition to Kenneth Warren’s What Was African American Literature?, the required texts may include James Baldwin’s Go Tell it on the Mountain and Notes of a Native Son, W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, Percival Everett’s Erasure; selections from Alain Locke’s The New Negro, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Ann Petry’s The Street, Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones, Colson Whitehead’s John Henry Days, Sherley Anne Williams’ Dessa Rose, and Richard Wright’s Black Boy. Select critical articles will be required as well. Requirements: active participation, presentation/leading discussion, short weekly response papers, and a 15-20 page final paper 581 Colloquium in Poetry Writing Smith In this graduate colloquium we’ll be studying the different modes and measures of a handful of contemporary poets who have established impressive bodies of work during the course of their careers, along with a couple of young poets who are just now making their marks. Requirements Attendance is required at two poetry readings during the semester. A one-page analysis will be required for each. Each week a one-page response to an assigned reading will be due. Your grade will be determined by the two poetry reading analyses (20%), a mid-term portfolio of three poems (20%), a final portfolio of five poems (40%), and by your responses to the assigned readings (20%), along with class participation. Probable Texts Tony Hoagland, Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty, Copper Canyon, 2011. Julia Levine, Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight, LSU 2014. Brian Simoneau, River Bound, C & R Press, 2014. Patricia Waters, Fallen Attitudes, Anhinga 2014. Adam Zagajewski, Eternal Enemies, FSG 2008. 584 Topics: Feminist Studies Alterity, Liminality, and Abjection in Women’s Fiction Papke The topic this spring will be “Alterity, Liminality, and Abjection in Women’s Fiction.” What does it mean to be the Other, whether that position be considered implicit in woman’s nature, forced upon women by cultural directives, and/or experienced by women at the command of others and of themselves? In the quest for self-flourishing, what barriers do women experience that push them into in-between spaces of liminality, their refusal to be simply an object but not quite achieving subject status either? What leads a girl or woman to consider herself as abjected or to treat herself as the abject? Besides offering a basic introduction to feminist considerations of self-alienation and self-becoming, this will be an intensive reading course in contemporary fiction by women writers who foreground the centrality of gender issues in their work and the consequences of women living in states of alterity. We will read the equivalent of a (short) novel a week, works by writers from various nation states such as England, Brazil, Japan, Austria, and Egypt, with a heavier concentration on American writers. Requirements will include active participation in all class discussion, at least one course presentation, a prospectus and annotated bibliography for a research paper, and an analytical paper of about 15-20 pages. 586 History of Rhetoric Atwill This version of English 586 surveys diverse rhetorical traditions, beginning in the 6th century BCE up to the 15th century CE, after the fall of the Byzantine Empire and at the beginning of the Western Renaissance. Though we will study such traditional figures as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Augustine, we will read their contributions in broader global and gender contexts. We will examine women’s education and speeches—indeed, the very role of rhetoric in defining and transgressing gender boundaries. We will also explore Chinese, Arabic, and Judaic rhetorical traditions. Course Readings: Most readings will be available online or via Bb; books below are easy to find used Pernot, Laurent. Rhetoric in Antiquity. trans. W. E. Higgins. Catholic University of America P, 2005. Kennedy, George. Aristotle’s On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. 2nd ed., Oxford UP, 2006. Course Requirements: Brief summary papers; in-class reports Secondary source book reviews, presentations Final paper or extensive annotated bibliography Class participation 631 Studies in Renaissance Shakespeare and the Comic Hirschfeld Since 1598, when Frances Meres proclaimed him “the most excellent” among English writers for comedy, playgoers and scholars alike have tangled with Shakespeare’s comic enterprises and their place in the genre’s history. This class will explore Shakespeare’s comic achievements from a variety of perspectives, emphasizing their literary and material contexts as well as current critical and theoretical approaches to them. We will start with early modern models of comic forms and values: Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, John Lyly’s Endymion, Thomas Nashe’s Pierce Penniless His Supplication to the Devil, and Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour. We’ll then turn to a wide swath of Shakespeare’s comedies, including Taming of the Shrew, Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Merchant of Venice, Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and All’s Well that Ends Well. Requirements will include 2-3 short writing assignments, a bibliography and bibliographical presentation, and a final research paper. 660 Studies in American Literature: Religion and Secularity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature Coleman Designed for all graduate students interested in religion and modern literature, this course sets nineteenth-century American literature in dialogue with the emerging field of secular studies, examining how American fiction and non-fiction prose began to mediate philosophical and social questions without deference to established religious beliefs. Together we will analyze the work of leading theorists of secularization such as Charles Taylor, Michael Warner, José Casanova, and Jacques Berlinerblau as well as that of scholars who are bringing this field together with nineteenth-century American literary studies, such as Tracy Fessenden and John Modern. Also on the critical agenda will be classic theorists of American religion and literature, including Sacvan Bercovitch, Ann Douglas, and David Reynolds. Primary texts come from Emerson, Fuller, Hawthorne, Melville, Stoddard, Phelps, Twain, Crane, Fredric, and Du Bois. Students will have significant latitude in pursuing final projects and may address writers of any period and national literature provided the topic is relevant to this course. Course requirements: active class participation, informal homework assignments, a fivepage paper, a final seminar paper of at least fifteen pages, and several assignments leading up to the final paper, including an abstract with annotated bibliography, a three-page draft, and a final presentation. 670 Studies in 20th Century Literature Modernism and Feminism Seshagiri The first decades of the twentieth century ushered in dramatic changes in the lives of women. We will study these changes in relation to the rise of literary modernism in England and the United States. Primary authors include Djuna Barnes, H. D., Ford Madox Ford, E. M. Forster, Nella Larsen, D. H. Lawrence, Mina Loy, Katherine Mansfield, Jean Rhys, and Virginia Woolf. We will study shifting conceptions of gender and sexuality in relation to the campaign for women’s suffrage, the First World War, the faltering British Empire, and burgeoning metropolitan avant-gardes. Secondary readings by Susan Stanford Friedman, Rita Felski, Bonnie Kime Scott, Janet Lyon, Gayatri Spivak, Lucy DeLap, and Ewa Ziarek. Requirements: weekly responses, one in-class presentation, one short (8 pp.) paper and one long (12-15 pp.) paper. 671 Studies in 20th Century Literature II Modernism and Drama Garner During the period 1880-1945 modernism emerged as an international aesthetic that transformed the representational underpinnings of literature, music, dance, and the visual and plastic arts. During the same years, the international movement that we call “modern drama” emerged in the rejection of nineteenth-century dramatic conventions and the demand that theater become a medium capable of reflecting modern life. The relationship between these two movements, though, remains poorly understood. This seminar will consider the ways in which modernism manifested itself in the theater and the unique perspective that drama provides on modernism’s central issues. Among the topics we’ll consider are the following: High Modernism and the avant-garde; modernism and the stage; conceptions of the body; urbanism and modern ecologies; nationalism versus cosmopolitanism; reading versus spectatorship; modernist antitheatricalism; realism and rupture. What does it mean to view theater through a modernist lens, and what happens if we try to theatricalize modernism? In addition to the texts we read, we will work closely with modernist scene design as a way of demonstrating the artistic collaborations that modern drama frequently entailed. Writers will include the following: Ibsen, Strindberg, Jarry, Synge, Yeats, Shaw, Marinetti, Tzara, Cocteau, Treadwell, Pirandello, Stein, Hughes, Eliot, Brecht, and Wilder. Requirements include the following: 1. 15-page course paper with bibliography [45% of final grade] 2. Two in-class presentations on class and outside readings [30% of final grade] 3. Regular class participation [25% of final grade] 680 Advanced Studies in Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics Cultural Rhetorics: Theory and Practice King As a rigorously interdisciplinary/cross-disciplinary field of research, cultural rhetorics has become a site for discussion of rhetorics – all rhetorics – as culturally situated practice and action. This class will examine rhetorics of history, race, ethnicity, cultures, gender, sexuality, class, abilities, etc. as they have been theorized by multiple thinkers in order to understand rhetoric’s relationship to these constructions and how they intersect and relate to one another. We will explore categories of writing, texts, digital rhetorics, performance, popular culture, material rhetorics, visual rhetorics, and more. Primarily situated in rhetorics in North America (though not limited to that), the readings will cast a broad net, providing opportunities to expand rhetorical and cultural knowledge, and the flexibility to tailor research into areas of student interest. Required work for the course will include readings, participation in class discussion, weekly response papers, a short informal “found cultural rhetorics” presentation, a seminar paper, and a research presentation based on the student’s final project. Required texts: Brooks, Lisa. The Common Pot. University of Minnesota Press, 2008. ISBN 9780816647842 de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0520271456 During, Simon, ed. The Cultural Studies Reader. 3rd edition. Routledge, 2007. ISBN 978-0415374132 King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. University of Minnesota Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0816646272 686 Studies in Creative Writing Stealing Plots: The Problem of “and then” in the Novel and Short Story Ross Between “once upon a time” and “the end” lies a vast expanse that Joseph Conrad called “the swelling middle.” How to fill it? You begin a narrative with or without a sense of an ending but either way you’re dogged by the following question as you proceed: What happens next? We’ll arrive at our own answers by looking at how a host of authors steal plots from previous works or genres and then appropriate them in order to give their narratives structure. Readings may include novels, essays, and short story collections by the following writers: Alice Munro, Donald Barthelme, Don DeLillo, Joseph Conrad, Junot Diaz, Zadie Smith, E. M. Forster, Edward St. Aubyn, Stanley Elkin, John Hawkes, Evan S. Connell, William Gass, Italo Calvino, and Jane Smiley. Bio: Adam Ross is the author of the novel, Mr. Peanut, named a 2010 New York Times Notable Book, as well as one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New Republic, and The Economist. He is also the author of story collection, Ladies and Gentlemen, which was included in Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2011. He has a MA from Hollins University, an MFA from Washington University Saint Louis and has taught at both of those fine schools. He was recently a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University and is currently a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.
