ENGLISH ELECTIVES
BARUCH COLLEGE
SPRING 2013
Survey of English
Literature I
English 3010
Prof. L. Silberman
Mon/Wed 9:30AM10:45PM
Find out what inspired Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. See how
Satan first became a glamorous anti-hero. In this course, we
will be reading representative works of English literature from
Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight through
selections from Milton’s Paradise Lost. Other readings will
include selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Talesthe
romantic, the bawdy, and the moral--one of the plays of
Shakespeare, a Renaissance epylliona short, erotic narrative-and selected Renaissance love lyrics. There will be two short,
critical essays, a midterm and a final exam
Survey of English
Literature I
English 3010
Prof. J. Keiser
Mon/Wed 7:30-8:45PM
This course examines English literature from its earliest
manifestation in the great epics of the eighth century to the
rise of the novel in the early eighteenth century. Along the way
we’ll encounter a dragon, a knight who happily cuts off his
own head (and then reattaches it), a talking rooster, a king and
his fool, a strangely heroic Satan, a love poem about a flea,
and a race of super-intelligent horses bent on eradicating the
human race. We’ll try to understand how magic and monsters
persist in an increasingly rational world. We’ll consider the wit
and wisdom of drunken, debaucherous, foolish, and mad
characters. We’ll pay close attention to representations of
sexuality and gender in courtly love poems, and we’ll carefully
survey debates about national identity and the necessity for
revolt. We’ll try to figure out how humans relate to the natural
world and to other kinds of animals. Readings will include
Beowulf, selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and from
Spenser’s Faerie Queene, a play by Shakespeare, parts of
Milton’s Paradise Lost, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Haywood’s
Fantomina and poems by Sidney, Donne, Marvell, Rochester,
and Pope.
Survey of English
Literature II
English 3015
Prof. G. Hentzi
Mon/Wed 11:10AM12:25PM
This course offers an overview of more than three centuries of
English, Irish, and Commonwealth literature in the major
genres of fiction and non-fiction prose, poetry, and drama.
Beginning in the Restoration, we will also read characteristic
works from the eighteenth century, the Romantic and
Victorian eras, the Modern period, and the second half of the
twentieth century. Authors to be studied include John
Dryden, William Congreve, Alexander Pope, Edward Gibbon,
Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, John Keats, John Ruskin,
Alfred Tennyson, Oscar Wilde, Ford Madox Ford, William
Butler Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, George Orwell, Philip Larkin,
V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, Alan Hollinghurst, and Zadie
Smith.
Survey of English
Literature II
English 3015
Prof. B. Gluck
Tue/Thu 2:30-3:45PM
This course surveys the development of English literature from
the eighteenth century to the present. It will focus on themes
such as the innocence – and misery – of childhood, the
formation and growth of a person’s identity, and the often
tortured relationships between men and women. Included are
authors who revel in the real world (Charles Dickens, Great
Expectations) and those who create their own realm of Gothic
science fiction (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein); the visionary and
rebellious Romantic poets (William Blake, William Wordsworth,
John Keats); and modern writers who rejected conventional
values in experimental literary forms (William Butler Yeats,
T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce and
Virginia Woolf). Films will be shown when appropriate.
Survey of American
Literature I
English 3020
Prof. S. Eversley
Mon/Wed 5:50-7:05PM
The literature produced in the decades leading up to the U.S.
Civil War represents some of the most compelling critiques,
celebrations, and debates surrounding the ethics and ideals
that many consider essential to the making of the United
States. We will begin with the first colonists and Puritanism,
manifest destiny, and then on to the American Revolution and
its founding documents up to the Civil war. We will study the
emergence of many of America’s defining myths and themes to
explore the nation’s quest for a uniquely American individual,
American ethics, and American destiny. The emphasis in this
course will be the major writers of the 19th century:
Hawthorne, Douglass, Twain, Melville, Whitman, Thoreau,
Dickenson, Emerson and Whitman.
Survey of American
Literature II
English 3025
Prof. T. Aubry
Tue/Thu 9:30AM-10:45
PM
This course surveys American Literature from the Civil War to
the present. We will examine how the literature of this period
reflects and respond to major historical and social
developments, including industrialism, urbanism, war,
economic depression, racial tension, bureaucratization, the
breakdown of traditional sex and gender norms, and
technological innovation. We will examine naturalist, realist,
and modernist literary techniques and the various artistic and
political purposes they served. Among the authors we will
study will be Twain, DuBois, Gilman, Wharton, Hughes,
Hurston, Stevens, Faulkner, O’Connor, Plath, and Morrison.
Contemporary
Literature from Asia,
Africa, and Latin
America
English 3030
Prof. E. Chou
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45PM
We hear a lot these days about the world being a smaller place,
but does this mean that we automatically know more about
the world? What role can literature play in understanding the
difference and richness of world cultures? Does reading world
literature provide alternative perspectives about how to
comprehend globalization at this time? This course aims to
present a variety of recent writing from the perspective of an
emerging global culture. Much of our reading will be
concerned with what a global culture might mean. Is it just
“writing from other parts of the world,” or does it refer to a
certain kind of exotic otherness (outside the United States)?
By coming to terms with the different permutations of cultural
globalization for contemporary literature from Asia, Africa, and
Latin America we will begin to fathom why world literature
provides some of the most exciting and provocative writing
available today. There will be a minimum of three writing
assignments, one of which will be in class. There will be plenty
of reading and lively class discussion in abundance.
Our main text will be Biddle et al., Global Voices (Prentice Hall,
1995). Other texts will include: Nuruddin Farah’s Maps, Zoe
Wicomb’s David’s Story, Maryse Conde’s Crossing the
Mangrove, and Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s This Earth of
Mankind. All of these books should be available at the Baruch
College Book store.
English Voices from
Afar: Post-Colonial
Literature
English 3036
Prof. P. Hitchcock
Tue/Thu 11:1012:25PM
This course examines literary works written in English in
regions other that Great Britain and the United States, namely
Africa, Australia, South Asia, Canada, and the Caribbean
Islands. The focus is on different genres produced in the postcolonial period including works by such writers as Nuruddin
Farah, Nadine Gordimer, Chris Abani, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o,
Timothy Mo, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Jean Rhys, and Paule
Marshall.
Survey of Caribbean
Literature in English:
Caribbean Classics
English 3038
Prof. K. Frank
Tue/Thu 5:50-7:05PM
A "classic" serves as a standard of excellence and recognized
value, and is considered authentic, enduring, and historically
memorable, among other things. In this course, we will focus
on some Caribbean literary classics by writers such as Peter
Kempadoo, Jamaica Kincaid, George Lamming, V. S. Naipaul,
Derek Walcott, and Sylvia Winter. Do these classics represent
authentic Caribbean people and experiences, or do they
perpetuate myths or fantasies about the Caribbean and
Caribbeanness not unlike those readily available from more
popular Caribbean cultural productions such as reggaedancehall and soca music? Do they inscribe historically
memorable and valuable characters and themes that help us
understand better today's Caribbean (place and people, the
latter both at home and abroad)? In addition to novels, we will
explore these matters by reading "classic" Caribbean essays,
listening to and/or watching videos of some "classic"
Caribbean music, and we will likely watch one "classic"
Caribbean film.
Literature for Young
Adults
English 3045
Prof. E. Dimartino
Mon/Wed 9:30-10:45
AM
Young adult literature includes books selected by readers
between the ages of 12 and 18 for intellectual stimulation,
pleasure, companionship and self-discovery. In this exciting
course we will be reading literature that addresses the
complexities and conflicts confronting adolescents during their
journey to adulthood. Students will read fiction and nonfiction
selections that deal with such themes as adapting to physical
changes, independence from parents and other adults,
acquiring a personal identity and achieving social
responsibility. There will be ample opportunity to analyze and
evaluate literary selections pertinent to the lives of young
adults.
Topics in Politics and
Literature: The
Rhetoric of War
English 3201
Prof. C. Mead
Tue/Thu 7:30-8:45PM
This course will employ a combination of literature, nonfiction,
and film to examine the language of the “war on terror,” and
the way that rhetoric has been used to justify the global
counter-terrorism offensive as a response to 9/11. We will
discuss, in particular, how language has been used to
manipulate public anxiety about terrorist threats to gain
support for military action. Along the way we will visit such
issues as: the rise of Al Qaeda; violence as a means of political
change; and American foreign policy in Afghanistan, Iraq, and
beyond. The goal is to develop a shared understanding of our
decade-long war against terrorism and its impact on American
society.
Among the authors we will read are Lawrence Wright, George
Orwell, Jane Mayer, Dexter Filkins, and George Packer.
Film and Literature
Hard-boiled Fiction
and Film Noir
English 3270
Prof. C. Taylor
Tue/Thu 9:30AM10:45AM
In the early 1930’s, a darker, leaner prose emerged on the
American landscape. It evoked an underbelly of corruption and
greed. Its heroes hardly seemed heroic at all. In this course, we
will examine the writing and the films of the 1930’s through
the 1950’s that created a new American idiom and a uniquely
American art form. We will be reading and discussing authors
such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Horace
McCoy, Jim Thompson and David Goodis. We will also view a
number of film noir classics and discuss their roots in German
Expressionism.
Documentary Film
English 3280
Prof. C. Rollyson
Wed/Fri 1:15-4:35PM
What is the truth-value of documentaries? This is the basic
question explored in this course through examining the genre’s
historical development and the social and political activism of
filmmakers. The filmmakers covered in this course include the
Lumiere Brothers, Robert Flaherty, Dziga Vertov, Leni
Riefenstahl, Frank Capra, Humphrey Jennings, Jill Craigie,
Michael Moore, and other contemporary directors of
documentaries.
Workshop: Playwriting
English 3630
Prof. S. Tenneriello
Mon/Wed 12:50-2:05
The class is a workshop in playwriting. At its core, we will
practice sequential exercises that help you learn the
fundamentals of playwriting and develop a one-act play. We
will practice creating characters, developing story or plot,
dramatic conflict, and writing theatrical dialogue. In a highly
participatory and collaborative setting, you will routinely
receive peer feedback and support. Our focus will engage inclass writing, readings of assignments, and examination of
well-known plays to gain understanding of the emotional and
physical components of writing for live performance.
The Craft of Poetry:
Form and Revision
English 3645H
Prof. G. Schulman
Tue/Thu 5:50-7:05PM
Although this is the second of two poetry courses offered here,
you may enroll in it without having had the other. Here you
will be learning about form in poetry -- from the line to the
stanza and beyond. You will be writing in freer forms and in
set forms such as sonnets, villanelles, haiku. You will be
learning how major poets, from William Shakespeare to
Elizabeth Bishop, and from Robert Frost to Gwendolyn Brooks,
write in such a way as to convey their thoughts and loves and
passions. If you love good books, if you enjoy reading
Shakespeare or Chaucer or Dickinson, if you have ever been
moved or disturbed or frightened by the sounds of the
language, if you have wanted to write but can’t get started, this
course is all yours.
You will be practicing revision, which is at the heart of
writing poetry. You will be sharing your poems with the class
in a workshop, and soon you will be sharing your feelings in
ways you never thought possible. You will be learning to use
language in ways that will convey your wishes, fears, and
dreams.
Your instructor, Grace Schulman, Distinguished
Professor at Baruch, is a poet whose latest book of poems is
The Broken String and whose latest prose collection is First
Loves and Other Adventures.
If you have passed English 2150 or 2800/2850, you are
eligible to enroll in this course. Poetry 3640 is not required.
Departmental permission is not required.
Advanced Essay
Writing
English 3680
Prof. C. Smith
Wed 6:05-9:05PM
This course focuses on style in writing: what it is and how to
get it. We will read the work of professional writers and discuss
what kinds of choices they make and why. Who’s the intended
audience of a piece? What’s its purpose? What kind of mood is
the author trying to create? After discussing the choices
writers make, students will have the chance to experiment
with different options to develop their own distinctive writing
style(s). Students will compose short pieces on topics of their
choice that they will share with one another and the professor
and, over time, develop into longer, more complete works. We
will mostly write creative non-fiction essays (we will study and
discuss this genre in class), but students are free to choose
their own topics and write to any intended audience. Classes
will be part lecture on issues of style, including sentence and
paragraph construction, repetition, voice and tone, showing vs.
telling, metaphor, humor, irony, vividness, and rhythm; part
discussion of passages by major American essayists such as
Thoreau, Twain, Hughes, Fitzgerald, Baldwin, Walker, Didion,
Tan, and Dillard; and part workshopping of student writing.
Literature and
Psychology
English 3730
Prof. E. Kauvar
Mon/Wed 2:30-3:45 PM
Have you ever wondered what makes someone so enraged that
someone else ends up dead? Do you speculate about the
reasons why two people are attracted to each other? Do you
question why families end up the way they do? When you read
a story, have you ever tried to figure out why you dislike it?
Whether we read to escape, to discover, or even to fulfill
requirements, we have a purpose, a motive, and more than
likely some expectations. Both psychology and literature are
windows into human behavior. English 3730 examines the
similarities and differences between literary and psychological
treatments of various major human motivations and
conditions. Which method--psychology or literature--is the
most accurate way to explain human behavior? A major
objective of this course is to analyze and interpret literature in
the light of psychological theories of personality and human
development. Our goals will to be to gain a deeper
understanding of psychological theories of personality and
development and to discover how these theories provide the
reader insight into literary works. Our reading will range from
Freud’s case histories and other more contemporary
psychologic theorists to contemporary writers like the
Japanese writer Murakami.
The Structure and
History of English
English 3750
Prof. Dalgish
Mon/Wed 12:502:05PM
What is misleading about advertising like "Campbell soup has
one-third less salt"? How about "This car is engineered like no
other car in the world"? What are characteristics of female
speech that distinguish it from those typical of men's speech?
How do we form new words in English, and where do they
come from? How does a word get in the dictionary?
Are the "p" sounds in the words "pot," "spot" and "sop" really
the same? Why can we say "whiten," "blacken," "redden," but
not "*bluen?" Why does "New Yorker" (= a person from New
York) sound correct, while "*Denverer" (= a person from
Denver) does not? How many verb tenses are there in English:
3, 12, more, fewer?
Which should we say: "between you and I" or "between you and
me"? How about: "She dated the man whom you ditched," or
"She dated the man who you ditched"? Is there a rule in
English not to end a sentence with a preposition? Or is that a
rule up with which we should not put? English spelling seems
different from Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Swahili, etc.
For instance, in those languages, "a" is almost always
pronounced the same way. Yet in English "a" is pronounced
differently in each of these words: lame, pad, father, tall,
many, above. Why are those languages so regular and English
irregular?
English once borrowed thousands of words from French. Did
English therefore become a Romance language? There are
many different dialects in English, some describable in terms
of geography, some in terms of social class, some in terms of
gender. Which dialects are "better"? Why do we say "That shelf
is five feet tall," and not "*That shelf is five feet short"? Which
linguistic features help to make poetry effective? What does it
mean when a person says "I know English"?
Contemporary Drama:
The New Theatre
English 3780
Prof. H. Brent
Mon/Wed 12:502:05PM
This course traces contemporary drama’s remarkable history
of experiments with new and powerful techniques of
dramatizing and analyzing human behavior. The emphasis is
on groundbreaking works from provocative contemporary
playwrights such as Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Edward
Albee, Eugene Ionesco, Bertolt Brecht, Tom Stoppard, Joe
Orton, and Sam Shepard.
Topics in Film:
National Film
Registry: Interrogating
Cultural, Social and
Aesthetic Value in US
Film
English 3940H
Prof. M. Gershovich
Tue/Thu 11:1012:25PM
Using the National Film Registry as a starting point, this
course will offer students an opportunity to critically engage
the role of cinema in conceptions of American cultural heritage
and to consider the processes and cultural implications of film
preservation in the Library of Congress. We will interrogate the
notions of aesthetic, historical and cultural significance, the
basic criteria for a film’s selection to the National Film
Registry. Required viewing will include a broad selection of
films on and off the registry and will range from the earliest
one-reel silents to avant-garde and experimental films and
recent Hollywood blockbusters.
Topics in Literature:
Madness, Media &
Culture
English 3950
Prof. M. Staub
Tue/Thu 11:10AM12:25PM
What is normal and what is abnormal? Where is the line
between these categories? Are the origins of mental illness to
be found in a sick society? Or is the problem a chemical
imbalance? This course examines theories of mental illness as
represented in fiction, film, drama, journalism, autobiography
and psychiatric case studies. Among the characters that make
appearances are: schizophrenic children, desperate
housewives, brainwashed veterans, sadistic asylum staff, and
antiauthoritarian rebels. Texts include: Kesey’s One Flew Over
the Cuckoo’s Nest; Morrison’s The Bluest Eye; Wray’s Lowboy;
Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Pynchon’s The Crying
of Lot 49.
Topics in Literature:
Writing New York
English 3950
Prof. J. Lang
Tue/Thu 2:30-3:45PM
“Writing New York” considers the role of New York City as a
site and subject of literary and cultural production that is both
American and global. Beginning with texts that exhibit the
influence of New York's Dutch origins, through eighteenthcentury theater, nineteenth century fiction and poetry, the
immigrant tale, memoir, essays and films, students will study
New York's rich history as a means of thinking about the
evolution of different literary forms, how they relate to one
another and what they meant and continue to mean in this
urban and culturally influential city.
Topics in Literature:
Mystery & Melodrama
in Gothic Literature
English 3950
Prof. C. Jordan
Mon/Wed 4:10-5:25PM
Against a background of haunted castles, demonic predators,
and victims who unconsciously collaborate in their own ruin,
Gothic literature takes us on a journey into the dark recesses
of the human psyche that fascinated Freud, and examines its
insatiable appetite for danger and forbidden pleasure. We will
read Jean Rhys's Caribbean Gothic novel, Wide Sargasso Sea
about fatal passion, voodoo priestesses, sexual addiction, and
mad Creole heiresses, set in the lush islands of Jamaica and
Dominica. Other works will include Bram Stoker's Dracula,
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.
Topics in Literature:
Harlem Renaissance
English 3950
Prof. T. Allan
Mon/Wed 5:50-7:05
This course will explore the first major intellectual and artistic
movement in African American history known as the Harlem
Renaissance. It happened at a time when "the New Negro"
burst onto the world stage and into the pages of numerous
books, when race pride was both an effective and controversial
strategy for achieving racial unity. We will read, discuss, and
write about figures such as Zora Neale Hurston, Langston
Hughes, W.E.B DuBois, Nella Larsen, Jessie Fauset, and Jean
Toomer. We will also consider the national and international
contexts that stimulated and sustained the focus on this new
body of writing.
Approaches to Modern
Criticism
English 4020
Prof. D. Mengay
Mon 2:30-5:45PM
This course poses some big questions about not just the
meaning of literature but language and culture generally. We
will primarily survey the major schools of the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, but we will give a nod to theorist
reaching all the way back to the ancient Greeks, through the
Renaissance and up to the nineteenth century. This class is
invaluable for any student planning to pursue graduate
studies in English, History, Philosophy or any other field; it is
useful for anyone wanting to understand the many ways
words, and things generally, signify. The goal is to examine
our own historical moment and the place of literature in it--the
role of literature as a constitutive element of culture--and
where we might be heading critically and theoretically.
Medieval Literature
English 4110
Prof. C. Christoforatou
Mon/Wed 7:50AM9:05AM
Pilgrims, knights, merchants, slaves, and self-proclaimed
saints have left us fascinating tales of their travels and travails
across the globe in geographical treatises, crusader narratives,
pilgrimage handbooks, and explorer’s logs. Their works offer
unique insight into medieval people’s perception of the self and
of the world, countering assumptions that the world was flat
and static and its inhabitants unaware of the wider physical
space that surrounded them.
Medieval travelers had a keen interest in the nature
of the world, places both near and far, and were avid
consumers of tales of distant places and people. Their
literature was at the heart of the creation of western visions of
natural and human diversity. It addressed the themes of
adventure, exile, wisdom, and spirituality, and continues to
inspire discussion on philosophical, anthropological, and
cosmological matters.
Readings for the course will include pilgrimage narrative from
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Mandeville’s Book of Travels,
Pseudo-Callisthenes’ Alexander Romance, and da Pisa’s Travels
of Marco Polo. Selected literature in translation from Greek and
Latin sources will also allow us to examine the nature of the
medieval cosmos in the context of classical, political, and
philosophical thought.
Chaucer
English 4120
Prof. W. McClellan
Mon/Wed 12:50-7:05
PM
Chaucer’s masterpiece, a series of tales ranging from the
serious and pious to the unabashedly earthy and outrageously
funny, is one of the truly great works of English literature. The
tales are told by a cast of characters, including a knight, a
drunken miller, a pretentious lawyer, a superficial nun, a
cynical fat merchant, a skinny scholar, a priest, a con artist
pardoner and the infamous Wife of Bath, who leaves mostly
dead and broken husbands in her wake.
Written at the end of the fourteenth century, the tales are
about knights, ladies, merchants, students, women, peasants
and priests, even chickens and a fox, and, of course, lovers,
both young and old, sad and true, happy and tragic. The
stories recount the hopes and dreams, success and failure,
and just dumb luck of the many characters who strive to fulfill
their desire and those who help them … and those who would
deny them.
In our reading of selected tales we will focus on what the
stories show about how desire impels the characters to act.
We will also examine the difference sexual difference may or
may not make on how men and women act on their desire.
Finally, we will examine how these stories reveal the conflicting
forces that both encourage and prevent individuals from
overcoming the obstacles to their desire.
A Century of
Renaissance Drama
English 4150
Prof. P. Berggren
Mon/Wed 12:502:05PM
With roots in church ritual and court entertainment,
Renaissance drama in England encompasses a vast range of
subjects and styles. We will chart the century's progress,
reading four Elizabethan plays—Thomas Kyd’s Spanish
Tragedy (1587?), the first great revenge tragedy; John Lyly's
Endymion (1588), a pastoral allegory; Christopher Marlowe's
Doctor Faustus (1589?), a study of a self-destructive
overreacher; and Thomas Dekker's Shoemakers' Holiday
(1598), about London’s working classes. Then we will turn to a
trio of Jacobean dramas. Ben Jonson's Volpone (1603) finds
high comedy in the predatory schemes of a brilliant con artist;
John Webster's Duchess of Malfi (1613) wrings pathos from the
corrupt Italian court where a beautiful widow is tortured to
death; and Thomas Middleton's and Thomas Rowley’s The
Changeling (1622) traces the degradation of a seemingly
innocent young woman. As the reign of Charles I began, Philip
Massinger’s A New Way To Pay Old Debts (1625) put a
spotlight on the commercial schemes that were destroying an
outmoded rural society. When the reforming Puritans closed
the English theatres in the early 1640s, they brought to an end
the most fertile period of dramatic innovation in the history of
the world.
Romanticism
English 4300
Prof. J. DiSalvo
Mon/Wed 7:30-8:45PM
In response to the twin shocks of the industrial and
democratic revolutions (America and France), there occurred
the tremendous burst of creativity we call the Romantic
Movement (1789-1830). As the original counter-culture,
Romanticism both expressed the new values of individualism
on which our society was founded and offered critiques which
anticipate modern feminist, ecological, psychoanalytic and new
age ideas. We will look at its view of childhood and personality,
imagination and nature, its utopian vision, sexual radicalism,
and its fascination with the outlaw and the rebel and with
altered states of consciousness. We will read the poetry of the
visionary, lower class, poet-painter, William Blake, and the
first superstar, Lord Byron, as well as Wordsworth, Coleridge,
and Keats and Shelley’s shocking drama, The Cenci. We will
also read Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The NineteenthCentury Novel
English 4320
Prof. S. O’Toole
Tue/Thu 7:30-8:45PM
This course will survey the novel as the dominant aesthetic
form in nineteenth-century Britain, focusing on the
development of realism in a selection of major novels by writers
such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, the Brontës, George
Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Oscar Wilde. We will examine
intersections of the aesthetic and the social, particularly in the
way nineteenth-century novels represented and affected
aspects of modernity: the contradictory demands of
“individuality,” the consolidation of a capitalist Empire, class
conflicts, the fracturing of gender roles, and polarizing
definitions of sexuality. The class will proceed by lecture,
discussion, and student presentations.
The Main Currents of
Literary Expression in
Contemporary
America
English 4500
Prof. F. Cioffi
Mon/Wed 11:1012:25PM
Classic American literature has, for the most part, been
mimetic in nature insofar as it attempts, as if photographically,
to depict a fundamentally realistic world. Yet at the same
time, a steady undercurrent of the surreal or the fantastic has
almost always been present in
American literature, from Charles Brockden Brown’s late 18th
century novels, through Hawthorne, Poe, Twain, and James, to
more modern novelists such as Barth, Pynchon, Coover,
Piercy, and Wallace.
Recently, however, this undercurrent has become a steady
flow, a rapidly emergent main current. Many serious writers
have been writing almost exclusively in a new, interstitial
genre. Pressing hard on the boundaries of realism, many of
these writers are immigrants, children of immigrants, women,
or people of color. The fantasy/science fiction/realism mix
that is their métier could, perhaps, be seen as a function of
their experience as disenfranchised 21st century Americans, an
idea that will form one of the avenues of inquiry in the course.
The course will also examine the connections between
literature and dream, the science/science fiction interface, and
the relationships among meta-fiction, science fiction,
surrealism, fantasy, and magical realism.
Readings might include works by Charles Yu, Chris Adrian,
Gary Shteyngart, Ravesh Parameswaran, Colson Whitehead,
Victor Lavalle, Ryan Boudinot, Rivka Galchen, Aimee Bender,
George Saunders, Anne Carson, Susan Slaviera, A. Van
Jordan, Salvador Plascencia, and Shanxing Wang.