Spring 2013
Course Descriptions
ENG 2050–101 and 103, Studies in British Literature (11:00 a.m.–11:50 a.m. MWF)
Dr. William D. Brewer
This course will focus on the evolution of British Gothic literature from 1764 to the 1890s. The
Gothic vogue in English Literature was inaugurated by Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto
(1764). But whereas Walpole sets his novel in medieval (or “Gothic”) times, many of his
successors situate their narratives in later historical periods. While the supernatural is an
important element in The Castle of Otranto, Ann Radcliffe’s romances depict occurrences that
seem supernatural but prove to have rational explanations. Other Gothic writers dispense with
the supernatural altogether. Moreover, whereas Walpole’s castle is the focal point of his book,
many later Gothic authors create ominous and psychologically-fraught atmospheres without
employing castles, abbeys, picturesque ruins, secret compartments, caverns, or subterranean
passages.
Typically, Gothic novels evoke terror and suspense and their plots involve a mystery
(e.g., the identity of a character’s parent or a concealed crime). They explore such issues as
social taboos, sexual violence, hysteria, and paranoia and thus invite psychological
interpretations. Explanations of the phenomenal popularity of Gothic literature during the
Romantic period, particularly the 1790s, vary. Some scholars regard the Gothic craze as a
reaction against Enlightenment empiricism, which discounted the supernatural and the irrational
and privileged reason over passion and the imagination. In this course we will read and discuss
Gothic novels and poems and examine their use and non-use of Gothic conventions, their
intertextual relations, and their cultural-historical contexts. We will also explore the influence of
Gothic literature on twentieth- and twenty-first-century popular culture.
Required Texts:
The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole.
The Longman Anthology of Gothic Verse, ed. Caroline Franklin.
Frankenstein (1818 ed.), by Mary Shelley.
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde.
Dracula, by Bram Stoker.
Course Assignments:
Frequent reading quizzes, midterm examination, group oral presentation, and a take-home final
examination.
ENG 2050.102: Studies in British Literature
Dr. Jill Ehnenn
ZEITGEIST!: Literature and the Spirit of the Age
In this course we will read British literature from the Romantic through the Postmodern periods.
The focus of our survey will be how literature reflects each period’s zeitgeist, or “the spirit of the
age.” In other words, our studies will highlight the ways in which the content and form of literature
both reflects and affects the changing cultural history of the English-speaking people. Subthemes
will include representations of gender and sexuality, and class, racial and national identity.
ENG 2050-104 Renaissance Literature and the Bible
Dr. David Orvis
In this section of Studies in British Literature, we will focus on Renaissance literature and the
Bible. As the supreme document of the Renaissance, the Bible influenced political, social,
cultural, economic, and scientific discourse. It also inspired some of the greatest works of the
English Renaissance, including, of course, arguably the most influential book ever produced in
English, the King James Bible. Our aim in this course will be to examine a variety of
Renaissance texts and the Biblical traditions they draw upon, revise, and reimagine. In so doing,
we will ponder the salience of particularly popular tales—Adam and Eve, Jacob and Esau, Job,
Samson and Dalilah, Sodom and Gomorrah, Christ’s ministry and Passion. Why were these tales
especially appealing to Shakespeare, Milton, and their contemporaries? How have these authors
modified Scripture, and what impact have their works had on Biblical exegesis? These and other
questions will govern our exploration of Renaissance literature and the Bible. Required
coursework will include frequent reading quizzes, several shorter papers, a midterm, and a final.
English 2050 - 107 and 108: "Making Love": Amorous Verse in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries
Paul Phelps
When it comes to the world of amorous devotion—love, sex, desire—few other literary time
periods were as exuberant as the Renaissance. The myriad depictions of emotion, bodily
engagement, aim and object in Renaissance poets’ depictions of human sexuality range widely
over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and often strain against both social contracts and
normative definitions of gendered behavior. This course will introduce students to a sampling of
this Renaissance poetry, and will pay particular attention to the intersection between sexuality
and the most important poetic and rhetorical forms that Renaissance poets associate with it.
Among the texts we will read closely are the Petrarchan sonnets of Thomas Wyatt, Philip
Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare, Book Three of Spenser’s "The Faerie
Queene," Christopher Marlow’s "Hero and Leander," and select poems from the John Donne
corpus, including the “Holy Sonnets.”
ENG 2320-410: American Literature II (Honors Section)
ENG 2350-410: American Literature II (Honors Section)
TR 12:30-1:45
Gen Ed Designation-Lit Studies and Hist & Soc-This American Life and Honors
Dr. Michael T. Wilson
In this course, we will read and write about a selection of the most interesting novels of the last
quarter-century or so, as suggested by critics and reviewers, and with an eye towards less-studied
works. For each work, we will explore a number of interpretive and analytical approaches.
Class activities will focus on daily discussions, combined with some lecture material, including
discussion of scholarly articles. Graded elements may include reading quizzes, short papers,
reading journals, and a final, larger research paper. Possible authors may include Cormac
McCarthy, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, John Updike, Marilynne Robinson, Mark Z. Danielewski,
T.C. Boyle, Annie Proulx, and Philip Caputo, among others (only five or so will ultimately be
selected and placed on your reading list before the beginning of the semester).
ENG 2350-103 STUDIES IN AMERICAN LIT
Dr. Nathan Hauke
This course will consider a bramble of issues related to the intersection of economic concerns
and spiritual imperatives that are embodied in the term “Manifest Destiny.” We will explore the
thrust of perceived cultural centers and the plight of individuals who are marginalized, alienated,
and/ or exploited by the system in texts like Herman Melville’s “Bartleby The Scrivener,” Joseph
Lease’s “Broken World,” Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans, W Faulkner’s The Sound
and The Fury, Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, William Carlos Williams’ Spring and All, Flannery
O’Conner’s “A Circle in the Fire,” Mance Lipscomb’s “Big Boss Man,” and films like Terrence
Malick’s Badlands (1973) and David Gordon Green’s George Washington (2000). Investigating
the suspensions between the individual and the collective, we will approach America as a site
that is both pastoral and shot through with terror. We will examine tensions related to class,
socioeconomic differences, claustrophobia, insider experience, outsider experience, etc. We will
also discuss the transformative potential of democratic idealism and that fact that our idealistic
striving are often undercut by egomania, ethnocentrism, greed, and the realization of violence. In
many ways, we will also be exploring Huck’s desire to strike out of parts unknown in Huck Finn
(“I reckon I got to light out for Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to
adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it.”) alongside the possibility that the net of
civilization continues to compass routes of escape. We will turn to RE Meatyard’s photos and
Gillian Welch’s “I Dreamed A Highway,” in conclusion, to consider the weight of American
experience, the cost of our collective past(s) and the histories that have been constructed, in
attempt to envision models of inclusivity and renewal.
2350, Sections 104, 106, 110, 111: Studies in American Literature
Dr. Kay Dickson
This course explores, from colonial times to the present, satire and wit in American
literature. As employed by some of America's best writers, these features provide a literature
that is at once serious, informative, and highly entertaining. Satire and wit have been used at
every phase of American history to mold the country and its culture.
ENG 2350, Sections 107 and 108: Studies in American Literature: Ethnic American
Literature
Dr. Holly E. Martin
In this course we will read works by noted ethnic American authors, including three novels, two
short story collections, and see one film (The Namesake) about characters who cross over a
boundary and how the crossing affects their lives. Textbooks include: Drown by Junot Diaz,
The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Tracks by Louise
Erdrich, and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.
ENG 2350—112 and 105: Studies in Later American Literature
Dr. Mike Shriber
This course is a survey of American writing from Walt Whitman to the present. Students will be
invited to write brief responses to every assignment and share them with the class before turning
them in for credit. Those responses will serve as a basis for class discussion and as the primary
basis for course grades though students will also make final presentations on broader topics of
their own choosing. The instructor himself will occasionally present short lectures on literary
movements such as “realism” and “naturalism” and on individual authors. Besides Whitman,
other major writers included in the course are Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, W.
D. Howells, Stephen Crane, Jack London, Robert Frost, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner,
Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck (we’ll study The Grapes of Wrath), and Tennessee Williams.
There should also be time to study less well known writers such as Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin,
Hamlin Garland, Bernard Malamud, and Flannery O’Connor.
ENG 3000.101 Approaches to Literary Studies
Dr. Jill Ehnenn
This course is designed to be a gateway to help English majors master the skills they will need
for their upper level literature courses and thus should be taken as early as possible in the
student’s program of study. This class will introduce students to the following: essential
research methods in the discipline, including library resources and databases; major trends in
literary criticism and theory; an introduction to prosody; and practice writing in the discipline,
including close reading, explication, annotated bibliography and papers incorporating a variety
of theoretical lenses and historical approaches. We will also discuss the question “What can I do
with an English major?” and talk about options for graduate study.
3160-101: Law and Justice in Film
Dr. Alex Pitofsky
A survey of American films that examine lawyers, litigation, law schools, and other aspects of
the legal profession. Through our analysis of the films on the syllabus, we will sharpen our
understanding of the law, cinema, cultural attitudes concerning lawyers and legal institutions,
and American history and literature. Each week of the semester, we will watch the assigned film
out of class on Monday or Tuesday, and then begin to discuss it on Wednesday. The films on
our syllabus are widely available via Netflix, local video shops, the university library, and other
sources. Likely titles include 12 Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Paper Chase, The
Verdict, and Kramer vs. Kramer.
3170-101: Advanced Film Studies
Dr. Leon Lewis
THE DIRECTOR:
Innovator, Organizer, Imitator??
Ever since one of the actors in the early days of film began to direct the other players in a film
production, a separate task from the person who was in charge of the location and
operation of the camera, the responsibilities and opportunities of the director have been
recognized as one of the central elements in the creation of film. The somewhat misunderstood
“auteur theory” – reasonably attributed to Andrew Sarris – focused the conversation about who is
the true author (or creator) of a film by arguing that the director (while acknowledging the
collaborative essence of the art) was the equivalent of the composer of a symphonic work, the
painter of a picture, or the writer of a novel, the creative and controlling authority in the
filmmaking process. One of the ways in which this premise might be scrutinized would be an indepth examination of the work of several directors whose singular style and inventive abilities
have made their films distinctive.
The individual directors who would be considered will depend to some extent on the
choices, preferences, interests and previous experience of the members of the class,
but as a list of possible selections, I would mention Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese,
and David Cronenberg among recent (and active) filmmakers, and Francois Truffaut,
Michael Curtiz, Billy Wilder and Akira Kurosawa (among “all-time greats”) as the
filmmakers whose work will constitute the primary material for scrutiny.
Familiarity with these filmmakers is not necessarily a requirement for this course,
but a serious enthusiasm for film and a deep curiosity about the filmmaking
process in all its permutations probably should be.
3515-101: Junior/Senior Honors Seminar, “The Rogue’s Progress”
Dr. Jennifer Wilson
In Spring 2013, ENG 3515 will focus on British novels influenced by the picaresque tradition.
We will begin the semester with background on modern incarnations of this genre from Lazarillo
de Tormes (1554) onwards. Our readings will span the 18th to 20th Centuries: Daniel Defoe’s
Moll Flanders (1721), Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), W.M.
Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848), Iris Murdoch’s Under the Net (1954), and Martin Amis’s
Money (1984). Class activities will include a short close reading and a longer research paper,
discussion forum postings, two tests, and a presentation.
3535-101: Girls, Culture and Literacy
Dr. Elaine O’Quinn
The course focuses on the evolution of girls’ adolescence in America. It will include an historical
review of growing up girl in America, an examination of the struggles of girls to carve a space in
what is extremely contested territory, and a close look at the cultural and social values ascribed
to girls through text, media, and other material artifacts. We will examine the forces that have
shaped the lives of American girls from the earliest didactic records of manuals and books of
conduct to current artifacts of contemporary culture. By investigating both the scholarly
literature on girls as well as well as the primary sources of a material culture (literature for girls,
cinema perceptions of girls, etc.), we will try to understand how adolescent girls have learned
and sought to compose identities. One of our goals will be to unpack the assumptions of girlhood
and critically examine the experiences of girls trying to fit a preconceived norm and form their
own personhood.
ENG 3580-101 Teaching Composition in Middle and High School
Dr. Mark Vogel.
This course explores the teaching of writing for high school and middle school teachers.
Students will investigate teaching strategies, analyze research on the emerging writing process,
and develop probing and effective writing curriculum. The focus will be on teaching the writing
process, rather than on simply designing (and then assigning) an end product. Peer response to
student generated texts will be ongoing. Students will participate in writer’s workshop and
examine strategies for multi-genre, expository, research, and fiction writing. Students will
explore writing-to-learn strategies to link writing to reading and language study. Students will
examine and evaluate online sites for classroom writing resources. Students will research,
evaluate, and create curriculum for an English classroom. Students will create a portfolio of
class writing, newly designed curriculum, and bibliographies of resources.
ENG 3651-102: Creative Writing: Poetry
Dr. Nathan Hauke
This poetry workshop will emphasize writing and reading as simultaneities that shade, color, and
crosshatch each other as we explore compost journaling, exercises in non-intentionality, and
chapbook making. We will begin by problematizing deep-rooted cultural imagination(s) of the
poet as a “genius” authorial agent by examining Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Experience” and
Laurel and Hardy’s The Music Box (1932) in order to initiate an investigation of Jack Spicer’s
assertion that the poet is like a radio that receives transmissions that come from elsewhere (The
House That Jack Built). Course readings will included Spicer’s lectures, Hannah Weiner’s
Clairvoyant Journal, Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, Robert Creeley’s Pieces, Mike Sikkema and
Jen Tyne’s talk “Trickster Poetics: A Left Turn at Albuquerque,” and Brenda Sieczkowski’s
chapbook Wonder Girl in Monster Land (dancing girl press 2012).
English 3652-101: Creative Writing (Prose) Fiction
Susan Weinberg
Beginning Creative Writing (Prose) is a workshop class in which students read, write, and help
each other develop fiction writing skills. This course emphasizes exercises and experimentation,
using a series of short assignments designed to help writers discover their best material while
solving the technical challenges of writing fiction. Each week we will read and discuss published
stories related to these questions. In addition to numerous exercises and log cards, each student
will write two short stories, one of which will be presented to the class. Full-scale revisions of
both stories will be due at the end of the semester.
English 3662-101: Advanced Fiction
Susan Weinberg
Advanced Fiction offers a workshop setting in which students may continue to experiment with
and enrich their fiction writing. The majority of class time will be spent discussing students'
stories, but we will also read some short fiction and a writing text to expand our understanding of
how writers discover and craft their material. A dialogue journal and occasional exercises will be
incorporated as time permits. Specifically, this course will emphasize intensive workshopping of
student stories. Each class member will workshop two stories over the course of the semester;
final revisions of each story will be due two weeks after the workshop date. Effort shown in
developing and revising stories will be the major determinant of semester grades; oral and
written critiques of other class members’ stories will also factor significantly.
Meeting in the once-weekly format, student stories will be workshopped on Wednesdays, while
other reading assignments will be due online via ASUlearn on either Mondays or Fridays, TBA.
ENG 3750-101: Studies in Drama
TR 3:30-4:45
Core Speaking Designator and Core Writing Designator
Dr. Michael T. Wilson
In this course, we will study a wide range of drama, from a variety of time periods and cultures.
Whenever possible, we will incorporate film and other audio-visual material into our readings.
Class activities will focus on daily discussion, combined with some lecture material, including
discussion of scholarly articles, and individual and group presentations. Our rental textbook will
be Types of Drama: Plays and Contexts (Barnet, Burton, Ferris and Rabkin). Graded elements
may include reading quizzes, short papers, reading journals, and a final, larger research paper.
ENG 4300-101: Sem. in Professional Writing
Dr. Pam Brewer
ENG 4300 is the senior capstone course for professional writing concentrators. You will apply
the skills you have learned in your previous professional writing courses to projects designed to
give you both team and individual work experience. This will require that you synthesize the
knowledge, approaches, and results in professional writing projects with the foundation
established in previous courses.
You will engage in a semester-long, client-based team project, making presentations to the class
and to your client.
You will develop and perfect your job-seeking skills and tools, including your search strategy,
résumé, and professional e-portfolio. As part of this e-portfolio, you will be required to
articulate how you have met general education goals during your college experience.
You will research a professional writing topic of interest and write an article suitable for
publication in the STC Technical Communication Body of Knowledge.
Finally, you will continue to develop, improve, and expand your computer skills.
English 4550-101: Senior Seminar in Creative Writing: Creative Writing Club for Kids
Susan Weinberg
NOTE: Students who took this course in Spring 2012 MAY take it again as content will vary. It
would be most helpful to have a combination of experienced and new course members.
This course is open to all who have a creative writing pre-requisite, but non-seniors may need to
obtain a permission memo from Dr. Wahpeconiah. It is registered as an ASU Service Learning
course and it is a Senior Capstone course for those in the Creative Writing Concentration.
However, please do not take it simply because you need to take a Capstone as there are other
options; please only sign up if you are sincerely interested in the project.
A hands-on, service-oriented course, in which students and instructor will teach a weekly
creative writing club for local children, grades 2-6, at the Watauga County Public Library
(located on Queen Street, a block behind Mast Store). In January and each Tuesday, the class
will meet in Sanford Hall to plan and prepare the week’s activity. The children’s Creative
Writing Club will take place during the Thursday class meeting, beginning in late January and
running through the end of classes in April. The series of writing activities will follow a predetermined sequence and structure, however they will be led in turn by different class students;
all students will work in small groups or one-on-one with the child club members and will help
one or two individual children build an ongoing story.
In addition to leading activities and working with the children, students will build and be graded
on a portfolio of writing activities, reflections on and adaptation of activities, reading responses,
website reviews, and creation of original writing prompts and exercises. It is hoped that the
portfolio will serve as a resource for students who wish to offer their own similar groups in
community settings in the future.
Instead of a single course textbook, students will each read and report on one of several books
about teaching writing to children. These books may be borrowed from the library or purchased
by the student.
Two things are essential:
1) Your Spring schedule must allow you to arrive at the Watauga County Public Library
in downtown Boone on Thursdays in time to begin the Club session at 3:30. Please
also consider your schedule following the conclusion of Thursday class meetings at
4:45.
2) You must be committed to attending all sessions, barring sickness. This is essential
both for your work with fellow class members and because it is very disappointing for
children not to be able to work with their designated mentors.
Please feel free to contact the instructor, Susan Weinberg (weinbergsc@appstate.edu) with any
questions.
ENG 4560-101: Adolescent literature
Dr. Mark Vogel.
Explores the exciting field of literature for and about adolescents. The course will trace the
historical development, noting pivotal books and authors, and investigating themes and issues
surrounding adolescent literature. The student will read at least 14 adolescent novels, and then
link the texts to response-based teaching. Students will explore theories of adolescent
development, read widely in adolescent literature, participate in web-based discussion, develop
curriculum for teaching adolescent literature, and link adolescent literature with classic texts. If
attempts to register online produce a Restriction, please contact me (vogelmw@appstate.edu)
and I will let you in.
4560-102: Adolescent Literature
Dr. Elaine O’Quinn
This course is designed to give prospective and practicing English teachers, as well as those
involved with the selection of adolescent texts, a familiarity with the literature adolescents relate
to, enjoy and choose. It also presents the reasons why teenage readers make the choices that they
do. In addition, the course reviews the sources of materials that teenagers will read with pleasure.
Most important, it is planned to help the teacher develop a positive attitude toward this kind of
literature and understand the consequences of various aspects of Adolescent Literature in
curricular choices.
English 4590/92-101: World Literature
Dr. Valerie Hickman
By the opening years of the 20th century, much of the globe – 85%, by some estimates – was
controlled by a handful of western imperial powers. In the decades that followed, those empires
began to crumble, as colonized populations sought independence, sometimes peacefully and
sometimes through violent uprising.
Yet even after they gained (or, in some cases, failed to gain) independence, the lingering effects
of colonialism remained. In this course, we’ll read some of the tremendous variety of literature
that has been produced in the decades since struggles for independence began in British and
European colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia. The questions that we’ll ask about this
reading are central not just to the study of postcolonial literature, but to the study of (world)
literature much more generally: what role does politics have to play in literature?
What role does literature have to play in politics? To what extent are we shaped by, or able to
free ourselves from, the historical circumstances in which we find ourselves? When different
aspects of our identities collide, how do we choose between them? And when many voices are
present, which voices get heard, which get silenced, and why? Readings will likely include work
by Aimé Césaire, Salman Rushdie, Michelle Cliff, Assia Djebar, J.M. Coetzee, Alejo Carpentier,
Ahmadou Kourouma, Mahasweta Devi, and Maryse Condé, as well as selected theoretical and
critical texts.
ENG 4710-101: Advanced Studies in Women & Literature
Dr. Georgia Rhoades
In English 4710 we'll read a variety of texts by Irish and Irish American women writers, focusing
on the roles of religion and politics in their lives, interpreted through the lenses of feminist
literary and rhetorical criticism. Authors will include Anne Enright, Edna O'Brien, Patricia
Brogan, Emma Donoghue, Kate Horsley, and Anne Devine. Students will present critical
readings of texts and the course evaluation will be based on writing (using portfolio evaluation)
and participation.
ENG 4730–101: The Novel
Dr. William D. Brewer
Our primary objective in this course will be to gain an understanding of the evolution and
development of the Gothic novel. We will begin with Matthew Lewis’s The Monk and end with
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. We will pay special attention to Gothic
structures, Frankenstein’s monster, doppelgängers, and vampirism and consider historical,
psychological, and cultural approaches to Gothic literature.
Required Texts:
The Monk, by Matthew Lewis.
Frankenstein (1818 ed.), by Mary Shelley.
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë.
Carmilla, by Sheridan Le Fanu.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde.
Dracula, by Bram Stoker.
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson.
Course Assignments:
Two papers, frequent reading quizzes, group oral presentation, final examination.
4760/61-101: Literary Criticism
Dr. James Ivory
Literary criticism investigates tools and approaches to thinking and writing about literature. We will
begin with some elastic definitions. What do we mean by “Literature”? Can we ever agree? What is
“critical theory”? Is it different from “literary theory”? We will focus on and develop what and how we
think about the thinking of literary narrative. We will emphasize a manner of strategy that should help
us read texts more carefully, critically, and even aggressively. We will look at the history, starting with
Plato. We will move towards “modern” theory, structuralism and post-structuralism. I find labels
confining labels and narrow categories problematic and burdensome. We will attempt to move beyond
narrow labels or suffocating paradigms. What do those worrisome prefixes (post-, meta-, neo-) mean
anyway? Is there only one method to deploy these ideas? And what about those suffixes, like those
“isms”? Our primary goal is to become comfortable with the playfulness in the language of theory and
its ideas (jouissance) in critical theory. While travelling somewhat historically, this course is not
organized around a specific literary period or theme, but along side several diverse literary and nonliterary texts where we might investigate and apply the ideas and approaches in practice or praxis.
Literary criticism is like the mythic Hydra, a multi-headed beast.
We will explore interdisciplinary theoretical approaches such as deconstruction, Marxism, feminism,
psychoanalysis, new Historicism, cultural studies, queer theory, and post-colonialism. Opportunity,
spontaneity, and serendipity will permit us to realize the diversity of what we might classify as “texts.”
Students too will contribute to the kinds of “created” texts in our discourse. This course will challenge
you; conclusions will prove illusive. I hope the rewards from our work will prove valuable to your
continued intellectual growth and development.
ENGLISH 4795 -101: American Literature 1945 – Present
Dr. Leon Lewis
From the dawn of the Nuclear Age to the era of the New Millenium
During the latter decades of the twentieth century, the full range and richness of
American literature became apparent even to those critics and commentators who
tried to maintain a traditional perspective that stressed the British backgrounds of
their favorite American authors. Rather than a narrow river with main currents - as
academic observers had described it - Ishmael Reed’s contention (in 1992) that:
American literature in the last decade of this century
is more than a mainstream.
American literature is an ocean
was supported by the emergence of writers from African-American, American Indian, Hispanic
American and Asian/American communities - among others - whose work
was arguably at least the equal by many analytic indices of that produced by those
writers previously regarded as the standard for literary achievement. The selection of
Rita Dove as Poet Laureate of the United States and of Toni Morrison as the recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Literature underscored this development, as did the proliferation of anthologies
and collections which included writers who had been relegated to “subterranean” (in Jack
Kerouac’s term) publications until this time. A sense of the transformation taking place might be
drawn from the preface to The Postmoderns: The New American Poetry Revised (1982), which
states
There is reason enough to say that a great flowering has occurred….
However, this “great flowering” has, in a sense, fractured the traditional consensus
among scholar and competent critics concerning which authors are central to the
American literary experience. This course will attempt to explore and explain the “great
flowering” so that students will have some sense of the ways in which the traditions and styles of
American literature prior to World War II have been enhanced, extended, encircled, exploded
and re-invented in the last half of the twentieth century and beyond.
Writers like Dove and Morrison, as well as Junot Diaz, Gish Jen, Don Delillo, John Irving, Lee
Smith, Philip Roth (among many other supportable suggestions) could be
considered. All of the genres of literary expression will be examined as a focus of
discussion in class, with appropriate essays prepared by class members as a more
specific means of responding to the literature of the era.
English 4840.101: “Jewels, Statues and Corpses”: Erotic Power in Shakespeare’s Later
Plays
Dr. Susan C. Staub
Although we know that woman in Shakespeare’s day had very limited social authority, the plays
often offer a different picture, presenting female characters who threaten the social order both
sexually and politically. As lovers, mothers, rulers, or others, Shakespeare’s women challenge
masculine power and create enormous anxiety, intentionally or not. In this course we will
examine the ways a selection of Shakespeare’s later works interrogate various aspects of power,
masculine and feminine. Most likely, we will read Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale,
Antony and Cleopatra, Troilus and Cressida, and Measure for Measure.
In our discussions, we will focus on the structure and language of the plays, their dramatic form
and genre, and their relation to the social and political tensions of Shakespeare’s time. The
course will require close readings of the texts and is designed to develop skills in reading
Shakespeare’s language and in dealing critically with the issues raised by the plays. Our readings
will also be supplemented by historical texts and contexts, and modern performances, as we
attempt to place the plays in early modern historical context. Throughout the semester we will
also consider Shakespeare’s relevance to our own culture.
ENG 4840-102 Shakespeare After Shakespeare: Later Plays and their Afterlives
Dr. David Orvis
“He was not of an age, but for all time!” So says Shakespeare’s contemporary and rival
playwright Ben Jonson. But what does it mean that Shakespeare is “for all time?” That his plays
continue to be staged regularly not only in England and the US but around the world suggests
that Shakespeare’s works have withstood the test of time. But what’s so Shakespearean about
Shakespeare now? Is a Shakespeare play set in a different time and place still Shakespeare?
What about a Shakespeare play translated into another language? What about productions that
alter the title character’s gender, race, class, or creed? Are literary works loosely based on
Shakespeare still Shakespeare? What about a poem? a novel? a painting? a cartoon? a graphic
novel? a YouTube parody? Are any of these works Shakespearean? Are they all in some sense
Shakespeare (or “Shakespeare”)? In this course, we will focus on four or five later plays and
their literary and cultural afterlives. We will begin with playtexts in the Shakespeare canon and
then work forward to contemporary adaptations of Shakespeare. Our aim will be to interrogate
the Shakespeare brand, to see how it has changed and/or remained the same over several
centuries. Students are not expected to have any prior knowledge of Shakespeare, but they
should be prepared to encounter him through a variety of media. Required coursework will
include a presentation, several shorter papers, and a longer paper.
ENG 4850-101 Renaissance Drama (Excluding Shakespeare)
Dr. David Orvis
Though his name has become synonymous with the Renaissance, and with Renaissance drama in
particular, Shakespeare emerged from a bustling theatrical world that boasted numerous gifted
dramatists writing for talented acting troupes. In this course, we will focus on the drama of
Shakespeare’s contemporaries—playwrights who influenced and were influenced by him; who
collaborated with him on scenes as well as entire plays; who competed with him for patrons,
audiences, and cultural prestige; who derided his works even as they enlisted him to play major
or minor roles in their productions. Situating these dramatists and their works in their cultural
and historical contexts, we will trace the development of Renaissance drama from the
establishment of first permanent playhouses in London in the 1570s and 1580s, through the
construction and rise to prominence of the legendary Rose and Globe Theatres in 1587 and 1599
respectively, to the closing of the playhouses in 1642 by Puritans. We will read stage-plays by
Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, John Webster, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, Thomas
Dekker, and Francis Beaumont as well as a closet drama by Elizabeth Cary. We will examine
these plays as both cultural artifacts inextricable from their immediate contexts and scripts
designed to be adapted to different places and times. This two-pronged approach will enable
students to see why the Renaissance is often heralded as the Golden Age of Drama, and why this
Golden Age lives on in the countless revivals and adaptations performed not just in London but
in theaters around the world. Required coursework will include a midterm, a presentation,
several shorter papers, and a longer paper.
4860-101: Restoration and 18th-Century Literature
Dr. Alex Pitofsky
A survey of British literature from the 1660s to the late eighteenth century. Our first priority will
be to read and discuss a wide range of texts that are intriguing in and of themselves and
representative of the era’s most significant cultural developments. We will pay close attention to
some of the genres (Restoration Comedy, the novel, satirical poetry in heroic couplets) and
themes (marriage and the legal status of women, urban life and the growing influence of the
middle class, shifting views of law and criminal justice) that were especially prominent during
the era. The concept of “periodization” will also play a recurring role in our discussions. More
specifically, we will examine some of the labels--“The Augustan Age,” “The Age of Johnson,”
etc.--critics and cultural historians use to identify this period and ask whether those labels
provide useful or misleading characterizations of Restoration and eighteenth-century literature
and culture. Because this is a 4000-level course, I will assume that you have a solid background
in close-reading literature and writing analytical essays, as well as some experience reading
literary criticism and theory.
4895/96-101: 20th Century British Literature 1945 – Present
Dr. James Ivory
In our thinking about events following the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st, we
must start to think critically about historical “posts”: post-imperial, postmodern, and
postcolonial. This class will investigate a number of those “posts.” Post-imperial: We will
think about English cultural hegemony through a number of writers who are responding to the
diminishing powers of the British Empire. We will investigate how writers view their
relationship to empire as contentious and complex. While some although not all of these
national writers embrace some forms of Englishness, their writings often reveal that to write in
English does not mean to prop up Britain’s cultural arrogance or collaborating in its global or
local hegemonic practices. Postmodern: While discussing and defining postmodernism, we will
explore some writers whose biographies are culturally British but whose narrative strategies and
subject matter interrogate the taxonomy of classical or canonical texts. Postcolonial: We will
also examine some postcolonial writers who investigate and interrogate Britain’s imposed
language, educational, and cultural standards and systems, and cultural; these writers of English
emerge from a number of national sites, like Nigerian, South African, Indian, and West Indian,
among others. By engaged in the complexities found in these writers’ fictions, we should begin
to understand the importance of global communities, economies, diversity. Now more than ever
an understanding of multiculturalism in higher education is essential to the liberal arts/education
and beyond.
ENG 5121-101: Teaching Developmental Writing (1 credit hour, offered spring 2013)
Dr. Beth Carroll
“[A] fundamental belief in the students is more important than anything else…. This belief is not
a sentimental matter: it is a very demanding matter of realistically conceiving the student where
he or she is, and at the same time never losing sight of where he or she can be.”
--Adrienne Rich, “Teaching Language in Open Admissions”
Many students arrive in college underprepared for the demands of college-level writing.
Developmental writing programs and courses are essential for access and success for many
college students. Teachers with a background in developmental writing pedagogy are well
positioned to assist these underprepared students:
English 5121 offers current and future writing teachers this background and support for working
with developmental writers. Through reading, discussion, and writing about current issues in the
field, this course introduces students to the pedagogy, theory, and practice of teaching
developmental writing. English 5121 is required for TAs teaching ENG 0900 for the first time,
and it is open to any graduate student interested in developmental writing.
ENG 5124-101: Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum (1 credit hour, spring 2013)
Dr. Beth Carroll
“WAC ultimately asks: in what ways will graduates of our institutions use language, and how
shall we teach them to use it in those ways? And behind this two-part question lies a deeper one:
what discourse communities – and ultimately, what social class – will our students be equipped
to enter?”
-- David Russell, “The Writing-Across-the-Curriculum Movement”
This course introduces students to the history and pedagogy of writing across the curriculum
(WAC) and provides support for new and future teachers of WAC courses. We will begin with
an introduction to WAC as a scholarly field and a pedagogical program, and then move toward
examining WAC methods for assisting students in understanding how rhetorical knowledge
transfers and shifts across academic contexts, genres, and disciplines. Through reading,
discussion, and writing projects, students in English 5124 will explore current issues in WAC
scholarship, learn the history and principles of WAC, and create teaching materials for WAC
courses. This course is required for all TAs teaching ENG 2001 (Introduction to Writing Across
the Curriculum) for the first time, and it is open to any graduate student interested writing across
the curriculum.
English 5640: Cultural Studies: Representing Animals in Irish Literature and Culture
Dr. Kathryn Kirkpatrick
From the shape-shifters of the sagas and the simian Paddies of the nineteenth century to the
Celtic Tiger of recent years, non-human animals have figured powerfully in portrayals of
Irishness. These portrayals tell us a great deal about the ways discourses of animality construct
the human, and often, the sub-human. Indeed, Maureen O’Connor has argued that the
constructed proximity of the Irish to animals justified the colonial use of force to subdue and
contain them. Conversely, making the ideological connections between the oppression of
women, the Irish, and animals, prominent nineteenth-century animal advocates from Ireland like
Richard Martin of Galway, worked for both human and animal liberatory practices. In this class
we will work at the intersections of Cultural Studies, Irish studies, and Critical Animal Studies,
examining the relationship between humans and animals within Irish writing and cultural
production. Texts will include Raymond Williams’ The Country and the City, Steve Baker’s
Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity, and Representation, Lisa Kemmerer’s Sister Species:
Women, Animals, and Social Justice, and selected Irish poems, stories, plays, and films.
Requirements include short essays, a presentation, and a final paper.
English 5840.101: Embodying Shakespeare
Dr. Susan C. Staub
“O that this too, too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew . . . ” (Hamlet, 1.2.129-30).
Course Description: In recent years, Early Modern scholars have investigated a wide range of
issues involved in the changing notions of the body that occurred during the Renaissance and the
concomitant emergence of a modern idea of selfhood that those changes brought about. (Books
such as Mary Thomas Crane’s Shakespeare’s Brain, David Hillman’s Shakespeare’s Entrails,
Gail Kern Paster’s Humoring the Body offer just a few examples of this trend.) The body came
under constant scrutiny during the Renaissance—from the boy actresses on the stage (whose
controversial presence evoked fears about a completely mutable sexuality) to Queen Elizabeth’s
justification of her rule in a patriarchal society (“I may have the body of a woman, but I have the
heart and stomach of a king.”), to King Lear’s “Is man no more than this?” And various
scientific innovations, such as the first public anatomies and the invention of the microscope,
also caused a reevaluation of the body in both physiological and philosophical terms. In this
course we will examine the ways a selection of Shakespeare’s works interrogate various aspects
of the bodies they depict, exploring in particular the ways in which embodiment was represented
through ideologies and practices of gender, race, religion, nationality, and politics. We will also
consider other aspects of embodiment such as the disciplined body, the monstrous body, the
sexual body and the incorporeal body.
ENG 5880-101: Victorian Literature
Dr. Jill Ehnenn
The Bildungsroman
Let us start with a child. An extraordinary child, a lonely child. What happens when he--or she—
moves from innocence to experience?
Love and loss, hardship and wild success, dreams and disappointment, and trying to negotiate the
iron grip of society—these are events that shape perhaps the most archetypal of all novel forms:
the Bildungsroman, or, novel of education, apprenticeship, initiation, or development. In this
seminar we will study this subgenre of the novel, which became the primary novel form in the
nineteenth century, and still shapes the novel and its inheritors in cultural mythology, film and
TV, today.
As is fitting to the topic of the Bildungsroman, our discussion will focus on questions of the
individual and society, notions of childhood, adolescence and adulthood, ideals of education and
morality, and social norms and social deviance. We will also examine Victorian discourses on
progress. Along the way we will pay close attention to both historical context and aesthetic
form, and consider the relationship between the Bildungsroman and various literary movements,
including the gothic, realism, and naturalism. Possible texts include: Charles Dickens' David
Copperfield; Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre; George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss; Elizabeth
Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh; Vernon Lee's Miss Brown; and Thomas Hardy's Jude the
Obscure. We will also engage Victorian essays and other cultural texts, and pair our literary texts
with weekly secondary readings in literary theory, criticism, and history.
ENG 5910-101: Modernism and the Great War, 1914-1918
Dr. Howard Giskin
This course will study European Modernism through the lens of WWI, arguably the greatest
communal catastrophe in the twentieth century. While the literary movement called Modernism
has its roots in the four decades preceding the First World War, its full-blown expression cannot
be understood without taking into account the collective trauma of European societies during the
war and its aftermath. To this effect we will read Ernst Junger’s controversial chronicle of his
time in the German army during the war, Storm of Steel, first published in 1920 (Penguin, 2007),
the 1916 autobiographical novel by French journalist-soldier Henri Barbusse, whose Under Fire
(Penguin, 2004) earned him widespread recognition, though also harsh criticism for its vivid
depictions of trench warfare, and the Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (Revised Edition),
George Walter, Ed. (Penguin, 2007), featuring verse by Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon,
Wilfred Owen and a number of other poets from the era, some of whom did not survive the war.
We will also draw heavily from Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory (Sterling,
2012) and Peter Englund’s The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World
War (Vintage, 2012) for crucial historical context. Finally, Pericles Lewis’ The Cambridge
Companion to European Modernism (Cambridge UP, 2011) will provide us the broad contextual
background to understand Modernism as a pan-European movement, and also the profound if at
times subtle effect of the societal trauma caused by the events of 1914-1918. Additional readings
from European and American Modernist poets will be provided via AsULearn. Requirements for
the course will include readings, weekly online postings, rotating class participation, a final
written project paper, and in-class end-of-semester project reports.