Fall 2014
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FALL 2014 English Department & Courses in other Departments Course # Course Title & Cross-lists Location Days Times Instructor LAFs Engl. 100-01 Analytical Reading and Writing HOL 211 TTH 8:00-9:20 TBA Engl. 100-02 Analytical Reading and Writing HOL 217 MW 9:30-10:50 TBA Engl. 100-03 Analytical Reading and Writing HOL 211 TTH 2:30-3:50 TBA Engl. 102-01 Academic Writing Seminar HOL 217 MW 8:00-9:20 TBA WA Engl. 102-02 Academic Writing Seminar HOL 207 TTH 8:00-9:20 TBA WA Engl. 102-03 Academic Writing Seminar HOL 211 MW 9:30-10:50 TBA WA Engl. 102-04 Academic Writing Seminar HOL 319 MW 9:30-10:50 TBA WA Engl. 102-05 Academic Writing Seminar HOL 207 TTH 9:30-10:50 Claudia Ingram WA Engl. 102-06 Academic Writing Seminar HOL 319 TTH 11:30-12:50 TBA WA Engl. 102-07 Academic Writing Seminar HOL 211 TTH 11:30-12:50 TBA WA Engl. 102-08 Academic Writing Seminar HOL 207 MW 1:00-2:20 TBA WA Engl. 102-09 Academic Writing Seminar HOL 211 TTH 1:00-2:20 TBA WA Engl. 102-10 Academic Writing Seminar HOL 211 MW 2:30-3:50 TBA WA Engl. 102-11 Academic Writing Seminar HOL 207 TTH 2:30-3:50 TBA WA Engl. 119-01 World Literature HOL 207 MW 2:30-3:50 Anne Cavender HL Cross-listed with AST. Engl. 201-01 Critical Reading HOL 207 TTH 1:00-2:20 Sharon Oster Engl. 202-01 Texts and Contexts HOL 211 MW 1:00-2:20 Sheila Lloyd Engl. 216-01 Poetry East-West GRG 176 MW 8:00-9:20 Anne Cavender HOL 209 TTH 2:30-3:50 Daniel Kiefer HOL 209 MW 9:30-10:50 Sheila Lloyd HOL 209 TTH 9:30-10:50 Priya Jha HOL 209 MW 2:30-3:50 Claudia Ingram TBA HL Cross-listed with AST. Fulfills pre-1800 requirement. Engl. 221-01 Shakespeare to 1600 Fulfills pre-1800 requirement. Engl. 233-01 African American Literature DD, HL Cross-listed with REST. Engl. 250-01 Theories of Popular Culture Cross-listed with REST, VMS, WGST. Engl. 256-01 Native American Literature DD, HL Cross-listed with REST. Engl. 308-01 Mentoring College Writers HOL 103 MW 2:30-3:50 Engl. 311-01 Film and Literature HOL 209 TTH 11:30-12:50 Sheila Lloyd HOL 211 TTH 9:30-10:50 Sharon Oster HOL 213 TTH 1:00-2:20 Judith Tschann Cross-listed with VMS. Engl. 331-01 American Literature: Industry & Enterprise Engl. 402-01 History of Literary Criticism and Theory Engl. 420-01 Senior Seminar in Literature HOL 213 MW 1:00-2:20 Claudia Ingram WB AST 111-01 Introduction to Chinese Literature HOL 207 MW 11:30-12:50 Anne Cavender CC, HL Cross-listed with ENGL. JNST 000J-01 Latin Tutorials HOL 213 WF 9:30-10:50 Judith Tschann WGST 341-01 Gender and Nation HOL 209 MW 11:00-12:20 Priya Jha Cross-listed with ENGL, POLI, REST, & VMS. FALL 2014 English Department ENGLISH 102-05 Academic Writing Seminar Claudia Ingram TTH 9:30-10:50 WA Discovering new writing strategies can be a peculiarly liberating experience. This may be the most important class you’ll take in college. ENGLISH 119-01 World Literature Cross-listed with Asian Studies Anne Cavender MW 2:30-3:50 HL In this course we will study epic literature from a variety of ancient cultures and some later texts based on ancient epics that play with revising, extending and critiquing the genre. Our primary focus will be on studying these texts as works of the imagination both in terms of content (grappling with issues of the individual vs. fate, society, family; mortality and immortality, the gods, how a person creates a meaningful life) and form (structure, imagery, genre differences across cultures), but we will also explore questions about the idea of what “epic” means broadly defined: how does the “epic mode” in China differ from that of ancient Greece or the Anglo-Saxons? Can we define what “epic” fictions might be in the 20th century and beyond? ENGLISH 201-01 Critical Reading Sharon Oster TTH 1:00-2:20 Why do we study literature? Distinct from other kinds of writing, literature demands our active interpretation—both of its content and form—and makes that task at once arduous and, for all that, pleasurable. In this course, we will acquire and hone our critical interpretive skills, and deepen our experience of reading. Together we will explore some phenomenal literary works: turn them this way and that, examine them from multiple sides, over and over, to see not just what each says, but how. In other words, we will practice reading actively, critically, and deeply, with a deliberate curiosity about literary form, within a range of genres (poetry, fiction, drama, the essay, etc.) and traditions. We will develop our critical vocabularies, explore different interpretive approaches, and produce our own individual and collective interpretations, sometimes in dialogue with established literary scholarship. Authors may range from John Donne to Sylvia Plath, Sophocles to F. Scott Fitzgerald. This course is the gateway to the English major, and excellent for anyone interested in literature. Assignments will include multiple revised essays, a mini-teaching exercise and a final exam. Be prepared to immerse yourself in literature! Prerequisite: one 100-level literature class or comparable first-year seminar or by permission. ENGLISH 202-01 Texts and Contexts Sheila Lloyd MW 1:00-2:20 This course provides students who have taken English 201 with a more advanced introduction to the scholarly and critical study of literature. It is appropriate both for students who have had some course work in literary theory and criticism and for those who are relatively new to these modes of textual engagement. We will begin with an examination of key critical terms such as “writing,” “interpretation,” “representation,” and “literature” in order to fix our aim on what is at stake in the scholarly enterprise of literary studies. We will then proceed to read a number of literary texts, both canonical and counter-canonical, in relation to two ways of contextualizing literature. One way of initially establishing a context for interpreting literary texts will involve studying the composition, textual, and early reception histories of selected textspracticing, that is, some of the basics of literary scholarship. At the same time that we explore these more formalist methods of literary analysis, we will also consider the social contexts of cultural and political history, personal biography, colonial and minority discourses, and rhetorical and generic fields. Along with the literary texts assigned for this course, we will also read relevant essays representing critical and theoretical frames such as feminist and gender studies, postcolonialism, poststructuralism, and deconstruction. Prerequisite: ENGL 201. ENGLISH 216-01 Lyric Poetry East-West Cross-listed with Asian Studies Fulfills pre-1800 requirement Anne Cavender MW 8:00-9:20 HL This course will explore the nature of the lyric poem as it appears in the Chinese and Anglo-American contexts. Most of our energies will be engaged in the attentive reading of poems from all periods, ancient to modern, as we attempt to come to some conclusions about the basic similarities and differences between these two extensive poetic traditions. The course will also introduce certain key examples of poetic theory in order to consider more generally the long history of theoretical disputes about what poetry is or does in both traditions. No previous knowledge of Chinese language or literature is required. ENGLISH 221-01 Shakespeare to 1600 Fulfills pre-1800 requirement Daniel Kiefer TTH 2:30-3:50 “If you know your Bible and your Shakespeare and can shoot craps, you have a liberal education.” –Tallulah Bankhead Ah, Shakespeare! Striking characterizations, bold theatrical plots, and soaring poetry. Appealing always to our hearts as well as our minds. But it takes close textual analysis to discover what makes his plays so compelling in spectacle and melody. This semester we’ll read (and hear, in some form) a tragedy (Romeo and Juliet), two history plays (Richard II and Richard III), and three comedies (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and As You Like It). Our main focus will be on dramatic form. How is the play constructed--of what components and to what purpose? How does it make its impact upon the audience? Where does it abandon conventions and take us by surprise? Careful reading and re-reading will lead to class discussions for everyone to join. The essays you write will be analytical and argumentative, proposing a reading of the play based upon representative passages. ENGLISH 233-01 African American Literature Cross-listed with Race and Ethnic Studies Sheila Lloyd MW 9:30-10:50 DD, HL Why are autobiography and/or first-person narrative important genres for AfricanAmerican writers? What does the first-person voice allow these writers to examine? To what extent is “self-making” a feature of these narratives, and what self gets created or emerges by means of these genres? Two ways to begin to explore these questions is to become acquainted with and to study an early African-American autobiographical form: the slave narrative. At the beginning of the semester, we will examine with great care two examples of this early form of autobiography. Working historically, toward the middle of the semester, we will concentrate our efforts on Jim Crow and Civil Rights autobiographies, and, by the end of the semester, we will examine the influence that these early autobiographical forms have had on more recent narratives (fiction and poetry) by AfricanAmerican writers. This course, then, will be a survey of the varied modes that AfricanAmerican autobiography and first-person narrative assume and an introduction to the criticism of literature. ENGLISH 250-01 Theories of Popular Culture Cross-listed with Race and Ethnic Studies, Visual and Media Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies Priya Jha TTH 9:30-10:50 In the 21st century, our existence is marked by constant flows of messages disseminated globally via various media forms and of the ease of travel by people all over the world. These movements have led to deep transformations in the ways we see ourselves as observers and participators of/in culture, at both the local and global levels. Moreover, these shifts have led to a compression of time and space in a way that would not have been possible even fifty years ago. Thus, our interpretive models have also had to change in accordance with these transformations. Our main goal this semester will be to develop critical frameworks which we can then apply to analyzing and (re)defining identities. Our focus will be on popular culture and mundane everyday cultural practices with which we engage, from walking to watching youtube to food to television and film. Our approach will be interdisciplinary, both in theory and in practice – spanning fields as diverse as literature, film studies, feminist studies, critical race theories, postcolonial theory, anthropology and sociology. Complementing our fieldwork will be some of the key figures who have contributed to cultural studies such as Raymond Williams, Clifford Geertz, Angela McRobbie, Stuart Hall, Antonio Gramsci, Arjun Appadurai, Walter Benjamin, Laura Mulvey, Anne McClintock, and Louis Althusser. While we will not be able to map out all of the issues and subjects that currently occupy the attention of cultural studies scholars, we will give detailed attention to some of the most important of these. Interspersed in this work will be discussions of methods and methodologies in writing about culture. In-class work includes short writing assignments, presentations, and an interdisciplinary final project, the topic of which will be collaborative. ENGLISH 256-01 Native American Literature Cross-listed with Race and Ethnic Studies Claudia Ingram MW 2:30-3:50 DD, HL Much of the Native American literature of the last fifty years has addressed issues that have been differently addressed by courts and legislatures of the United States over the course of its history: identity, child-raising, sovereignty, land tenures, resource use. We will read this rich literature in counterpoint to legal decisions that have, by and large, violated the cultures and ignored the rights of Native American people. ENGLISH 311-01 Film and Literature Cross-listed with Visual and Media Studies Sheila Lloyd TTH 11:30-12:50 In this course, we will focus on the languages and techniques specific to and shared by film and literature. Studying a variety of genres and traditions, we will spend most of our time looking at literary and film texts separately, always guided, however, by questions concerning the process of adaptation, a process that also includes important considerations of production and reception. After a review of basic terms and concepts for film analysis, we will address some of the long established prejudices against film adaptation and some of the new ways that film scholars and cultural critics have begun to think about adaptation. As the semester goes on, you will have an opportunity to advance, develop, and present your own ideas on a given film and literary pairing. Toward the end of the semester, we will shift away from conventional realist narratives and begin to consider how postmodern and avant-garde writers and filmmakers approach their art and what they bring to a discussion of the process of adaptation. Prerequisite: VMS 111 or by permission. ENGLISH 331-01 American Literature: Industry and Enterprise “The Country and the City” Sharon Oster TTH 9:30-10:50 The country or the city: where is the “real” America? Over 100 years ago, literary writers tried to figure this out by broadening the range and scope of realities literature would depict and exploring what counted as “American” experience. Was such experience found in the country, the city, at home or abroad, in “native” or immigrant locales, among the rich or poor, in the common or the exceptional? Late 19th-c. American literature reveals an era of dramatic change and extreme conditions. Mark Twain dubbed it the “Gilded Age,” marked by great prosperity and awful poverty, the rise of corporate capitalism and scandal, urban growth, racial, social, and religious crises, and, above all, a rapidly expanding literary market to accommodate these new realities. In this course we will explore, on one hand, how regional movements of migration, immigration and cosmopolitan travel, of the loss of “home” and nostalgia for it, shaped American literature of this era. On the other, we will look at how literature itself created imaginative space for inward movements of consciousness, for social critique, and novel ideas of national, gender, class, and racial identities. Authors may include L. Frank Baum, Abraham Cahan, Willa Cather, Charles Chesnutt, Stephen Crane, Hamlin Garland, Henry James, Sarah Orne Jewett, Jacob Riis, Sui Sin-Far, Mark Twain and Edith Wharton. Assignments will include some short papers, two longer papers, and a final project, possibly involving a field trip to “the city,” downtown Los Angeles. Prerequisite: ENGL 202 or by permission. ENGLISH 402-01 History of Literary Criticism and Theory Judith Tschann TTH 1:00-2:20 What is literary criticism? What does it mean to analyze a text or interpret a poem? We will read some Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Dr. Johnson, Percy Shelley, T.S. Eliot, and others, to help us understand the various forms that literary criticism has taken from the ancient world to the early twentieth century. We will then use these famous old responses to literature in our study of works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Woolf, Wilde, and other writers. Prerequisite: junior standing or by permission. ENGLISH 420-01 Senior Seminar in Literature Claudia Ingram MW 1:00-2:20 WB Capstone course designed to allow students to reflect upon and synthesize their work in the major. Requirements include: a portfolio of representative work, including a reflective narrative; a teaching component; and a research-supported essay demonstrating substantial new work, whether a revision of a previous essay or a new undertaking. Prerequisite: senior status or by permission. FALL 2014 Courses by Literature Faculty in other departments ASIAN STUDIES 111-01 Introduction to Chinese Literature Cross-listed with English Anne Cavender MW 11:30-12:50 CC, HL This course will introduce you to a wide range of Chinese literature written over a three thousand year span, from ancient folk songs to Zen poetry to a play about transgressive lovers. We will be investigating two interlocking topics: the nature of writing, and the writing of nature. In other words, how does the Chinese tradition define the nature of writing? In different contexts, Chinese writers have emphasized literature’s ability to express emotions, to provide role models for moral development, to offer political critique, or to work through philosophical truths. At the same time, the theme of nature, and the human being’s communion with or separation from nature, is one of the most important themes in the Chinese literary tradition. How do Chinese writers write about the natural world and their relationship with it? Does literature reserve a special place for the unnatural, the ghostly and the weird? All works will be read in English; no previous knowledge of Chinese language or culture is required. JOHNSTON SEMINAR, JNST 000J-01 Latin Tutorials Judith Tschann WF 9:30-10:50 This is an intensive beginning class, focusing on learning to read Latin. Our goals include acquiring confidence in parsing and analyzing grammatical structure (in Latin and in English), a developing sense of the joys and challenges (and perhaps some theory) of translating, a bigger vocabulary, and at least a budding interest in Roman literature and culture. No previous work in Latin is required. If you have already studied Latin, please join us, and we’ll negotiate a contract for more advanced work. WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES 341-01 Gender and Nation Cross-listed with English, Political Science, Race and Ethnic Studies, and Visual and Media Studies Priya Jha MW 11:00-12:20 The configuration of the nation-state as a space that concerns itself with sovereignty and citizenship, whether locally, transnationally or geopolitically, is often at odds with its supposed "others" in terms of national historiography. This course will introduce you to the linkages between nation-states, gender, and sexualities. An interdisciplinary approach will enable us to examine the following questions: ● How are nation-state formations consolidated by and through gender and sexual configurations? ● What are the temporalities of gender and sex within the time of nation-state development or becoming? ● Through what textual and material processes can we trace the relations between sex, gender, nation-states, and their intertwined histories? We will read fictional and non-fictional texts, watch films (documentary, narrative, and experimental), study posters and other forms of material culture because the analysis of this topic does not belong purely in the realm of academic enquiry; rather, these themes are articulated largely in and through popular culture. Prerequisite: WGST 150 recommended. BIOGRAPHIES ANNE CAVENDER Anne Cavender studies and teaches classical Chinese poetry, British and American modernism, and cross-cultural poetics, particularly the relationship between literature and ethics in the Chinese and Western traditions. Many of her classes will be cross-listed with Asian Studies and can be taken for credit under either major. CLAUDIA INGRAM Years ago I was a lawyer, and I’m still interested in that discourse. Now I’m drawn to the ways poems and novels complicate things. PRIYA JHA I am a nomad in many senses of the word, from being someone who has traveled many parts of the world to someone whose intellectual training has traversed just as many critical and linguistic spaces. A friend once described me as “a delectable mélange of East Indian, New York, and valley girl dialects” and, to a large extent that reflects who I am – someone who straddles and (hopefully) challenges many cultural and national boundaries. Because I feel more comfortable belonging in a world that extends beyond India (my place of birth) or the United States (where I have spent most of my life), I have found myself continuously drawn to writers and critics who examine various aspects of cross-cultural identities, historically, culturally, and politically and their various negotiations. In any of my classes, whether it be World Literature, Post-colonial literatures, Film, or Cultural Studies, students find themselves encountering these issues in our analyses of a multitude of cultural and literary forms. DANIEL KIEFER It took only a few years for Redlands to change my dreary existence to a life of glamour. I used to be so drab, teaching only the household poets of the nineteenth century. Now I go dancing under the stars with disreputable poets and theorists of every kind. After decades of earnest propriety--seminary high school in Cincinnati, college in Boston, graduate work at Yale, teaching in the coal fields of Southern Illinois--I have become dissolute in Tinseltown. If Johnston is the cause of my ruin, that's all right; somebody had to take over. SHEILA LLOYD Sheila Lloyd teaches courses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century African-diasporic literatures and on American literature from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; specific courses include “War in Literature and Film,” “James Baldwin,” “The Dark Side of Innocence,” “American Industry and Enterprise,” “Film and Literature,” and “Introduction to Film.” Her most recent research projects include a study on neoliberalism, desire, and fantasy in African-American literature and film. SHARON OSTER My scholarship focuses on late-nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature, with particular interests in literary realism and the novel, Jewish literature, and literature of the Holocaust. While my current book project is about how sacred time figures in American literary realism, I am also interested in literary space, geography, and mapping. In my classes, we explore the complexities and pleasures of literary aesthetics—of reading literature for its own sake, as well as for the sake self-expression, social critique or ethical injunction (and often several of these combined). I teach a range of courses in nineteenthand twentieth-century American literature featuring authors like Henry James, Edith Wharton and Mark Twain; as well as immigrant and ethnic literatures; studies of the novel (including the graphic novel); literary criticism and theory; satire; the 1960s; and Holocaust memoirs. JUDITH TSCHANN Judy Tschann teaches a variety of courses in literature and language, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, History of English Linguistics, and History of Literary Criticism. She’s working up a course on Laughter. Send suggestions (or a good joke).
