Spring 2014
Course Descriptions
English 2050-101 & 108: Studies in British Literature
Dr. Cynthia Gaw
Course Description:
This course explores all major genres and literary periods of British literature beginning in the 16th
century, with special attention in the second half of the course to the novel and the essay. If you already enjoy
reading good stories, this class will be a pleasure. Enjoyment is a major goal of this course, and your enjoyment
of the literature will help you learn about the literature. Except for Paradise Lost, all works will be read in their
entirety, allowing you a full experience of the work.
I agree with Yeats that “Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.” So I want you to
burn with a passion for great British literature. I will attempt this by facilitating a relationship between you and
the authors we will read, some of the finest the planet has produced. I will give you background information,
and introductory ideas that will set you up to connect with these great minds, and I will give you opportunity to
summarize in your own language and respond in writing to what you read; but the education will primarily
happen as you allow great minds into your mind- that is, as you read. Because of the vast possibilities in such a
subject, think of this syllabus as a mere distillation, a careful choosing for quality and variety. This liquor that
you will digest is the merest sample of the great works available to you, intended only as a match to the kindling
of your appetite for the masterpieces of British literature.
Texts
Henry V by William Shakespeare
Much Ado about Nothing by Shakespeare
Paradise Lost by John Milton
English Romantic Poetry ed. By Appelbaum
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Essay on Man by Alexander Pope
Great English Essays ed. By Blaisdell
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
ENG 2050.102: Studies in British Literature
Dr. Jill Ehnenn
This undergraduate course fulfills a General Education requirement for:
Literary Studies Designation; “Traditions and Innovations” Theme in the Aesthetics Perspective
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 2050–103: Studies in British Literature
Dr. William D. Brewer
This course will focus on the evolution of British Gothic literature from 1764 to the late 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. 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, novellas, and
poems and examine their use and non-use of Gothic conventions, their intertextual relations, and their culturalhistorical contexts. We will also explore the influence of Gothic literature on twentieth- and twenty-firstcentury popular culture.
Required Texts:
The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole.
The Longman Anthology of Gothic Verse, ed. Caroline Franklin.
Frankenstein (1831 ed.), by Mary Shelley.
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 Woman in Black, Susan Hill.
Course Assignments: Frequent reading quizzes, midterm examination, group oral presentation, and a takehome final examination.
ENG 2350-102 & 110: Studies in American Literature
Dr. Grace McEntee
This section of ENG 2350 will focus on African American poetry, beginning with 1920s African American
blues singers and lyricists whose art would became an important influence on poets of the Harlem Renaissance
and beyond. We’ll deviate from our focus on poetry long enough to read August Wilson’s play Ma Rainey’s
Black Bottom, about a blues recording session in this era, then return to poetry with a sampling of Harlem
Renaissance works. Poet Langston Hughes will provide a bridge to later eras. Our historic survey of African
American poetry will include poets of the Black Arts Movement, poems responding to the Civil Rights
Movement and the Viet Nam War, and will end with poems by authors still writing today. Poets will include
Langston Hughes, Robert Hayden, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Natasha
Trethewey among others
ENG 2350-105 & 112: 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 Ameican history to mold the country and its
culture.
English 2350: Studies in American Literature - Imps of the Perverse: Edgar Allan Poe and Friends
Dr. Lynn Searfoss
Section 106: T/Th 11:00-12:15
Section 107: T/Th 12:30-1:45
Edgar Allan Poe continues to haunt our cultural landscape. He thrills new generations of
readers with his macabre tales and inspires film makers, artists, and writers to perpetually
create new work based on his masterpieces. Join this multi-media class, and meet the
inventor of detective fiction, this contributor to science fiction, the grand master of the
gothic!
Get to know Poe like you’ve never known him before, and meet some of his friends and
imitators. Uncover the reasons for our cultural fascination with the author and his work.
ENG 3172-101: Survey of World Cinema II
Dr. Bruce Dick
In this course we’ll examine a wide range of film artists and major movements of the sound film era. We’ll
look at the Classical Hollywood Cinema and its industrial decline in the 1950s and 1960s; the rise of the New
Hollywood; and the evolution of American Independent Cinema. Equally important, we’ll examine
international alternatives to Hollywood and American Cinema, including Italian Neo-realism, French New
Wave, New German Cinema, Latin American Cinema; Contemporary French Cinema, Dogme 95, Japanese
Cinema, Iranian New Wave Cinema, and Contemporary Australian and New Zealand Cinema. A tentative list
of films includes The Bicycle Thief (Italy); Rebel Without a Cause (United States); Small Change (France); The
Battle of Algiers (Italy, France, Algeria); Rashomon (Japan); The Celebration(Denmark) ; The Piano (New
Zealand); Men(Germany) ; Innocent Voices (Mexico); Carandiru (Brazil); Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and
Spring (South Korea); Color of Paradise (Iran); Departures (Japan); Antonia’s Line (Holland), and Do the
Right Thing (United States). The text for the course is Flashback: A Brief History of Film (rental) by Louis
Gionetti and Scott Eyman. Course requirements include viewing of all outside films; reaction papers on
selected films; two five-page papers based on selected films; and an in-class final exam. Contact Bruce Dick at
Ext 2873 or dickba@appstate.edu if you have questions.
ENG 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 writing skills. We will write from life, as well as writing fiction. 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 and memoir. Each week we will read and discuss textbook
chapters and published stories related to these questions. In addition to numerous exercises and log cards, each
student will write and revise at least one full-length story.
ENG 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. Attendance will
have a direct impact on grades.
Meeting once each week at night, we will workshop student stories on Wednesdays, while other reading
assignments will be due online via ASUlearn on Fridays. Story revisions will be due two weeks after the
student’s workshop.
ENG 3750-101: Studies in Drama
Dr. William D. Brewer
Course Goals/Objectives: In this course we will read, discuss, and watch performances of a wide range of
plays, beginning with ancient Greek tragedy and ending with twentieth-century drama. Students will be
expected to write analytically about drama, to participate in class discussions about plays, to familiarize
themselves with different theater designs, lighting, props, costumes, set designs, blocking, acting styles, and
directorial decisions; to explicate theatrical scenes in oral presentations, and to develop a basic understanding of
theater history. Special attention will be paid to the dramas of Samuel Beckett so students will have the
opportunity to study at least one dramatist in some depth.
Required Texts :
Types of Drama: Plays and Contexts, ed. Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, Lesley Ferris, and Gerald
Rabkin, 8th ed.
Arcadia: A Play, Tom Stoppard.
Endgame & Act Without Words, Samuel Beckett.
ENG. 4509-101 Junior/Senior Honors Seminar: Masters of the Short Tale
Dr. Howard Giskin
In this course we will read selections from three masters of the short story. We will begin with Boccaccio’s
Decameron, a fourteenth century medieval allegory consisting of a hundred stories told by ten young people
taking refuge from the Black Plague on a country estate outside of Florence. Boccaccio, along with Dante and
Petrarch, is one of the “founding fathers” of Italian literature, and influenced such diverse figures as Martin
Luther, Christine de Pisan, Moliere, Keats, Lope de Vega, Chaucer, Shelley, Lessing, Longfellow, Tennyson,
George Eliot, and Edgar Allan Poe. Our second set of readings will be from Chekhov, acknowledged Russian
master of the modern short story, and a model for the short tale in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We
will finish the semester with a reading of stories by twentieth century American Jewish writer Bernard
Malamud, known for his baseball novel The Natural (adapted for film), and The Fixer, about anti-Semitism in
Tsarist Russia. For our purposes we will draw from his many short stories, some of which first appeared in The
Magic Barrel (1958), the title story of the same name focusing on the relationship of an unmarried rabbinical
student with a colorful marriage broker. Readings will be supplemented with Internet-based material. Texts for
the course are: The Decameron, translated by Wayne A Rebhorn (Norton, 2013), Stories of Anton Chekhov,
translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Modern Library, 2000), and Bernard Malamud: The
Complete Stories (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998).
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.
ENG 4580-101: Studies in African-American Literature
Dr. Grace McEntee
This semester Studies in African American Literature will focus on “Literary Uses of Slavery in the Modern
Imagination.” Will this course be unrelentingly depressing? No—while some of our works will have
heartbreaking moments, we will also read at least one work that uses humor to probe lessons to be learned from
our slavery past. For instance, we might read Charles Johnson’s acclaimed Oxherding Tale, described by one
reviewer as “deliciously comic” as it weaves into its plot an improbable cast of characters (Karl Marx, a sex and
drug addict slave mistress, and a slave catcher more interested in capturing his prey’s essences than their
bodies) or Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada, where comedy comes in part through satire and Reed’s frequent
anachronisms: in this story of three runaway slaves, Lincoln’s assassination is televised and one slave’s flight
to Canada is aboard a jet. We’ll also see that twentieth-century writers often use slavery as a backdrop to
meditate on contemporary times, as in David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident, where the protagonist’s
history research merges with a storyteller’s imagination to suggest a route to personal and cultural healing.
We’ll probably read either Toni Morrison’s Beloved, a ghostly and beautifully poetic psychological study of the
toll that memory exacts on slavery survivors, or Jazz, her story set against Harlem’s 1920s heyday that explores
how the legacies of slavery still cast shadows on those reveling in the optimism of this golden time. And we’ll
likely read a work by Octavia Butler, one of our country’s premiere science fiction writers, perhaps Kindred, in
which a 20th-c. black woman is somehow transported back and forth in time between her California home and
the pre-Civil War South, or Butler’s even more reality-bending Wild Seed, where immortality becomes possible
only through enslavement of others. We might also read poems by Natasha Trethewey inspired by real life
black Union soldiers deployed to hold a captured Southern fort on an island off the coast of Mississippi.
Secondary readings will include essays on the significance of these widely differing approaches to employing
our slavery past in imaginative literature.
English 4590/92 – Postcolonial 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 legacies of colonialism remained; indeed, those
legacies continue to shape our world today. 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 – beginning in the 1960s and ending with some of the rich variety of
postcolonial (or maybe post-postcolonial) literature being written today. 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 more
generally: what role does politics play in literature, or literature 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 get heard,
which get silenced, and why?
Readings will include work by Salman Rushdie, Assia Djebar, V.S. Naipaul, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Maryse
Condé, Arundhati Roy, Derek Walcott, and others.
ENG 4591-101: Theory and Practice in the Teaching of HS English
Dr. Mark Vogel
This course explores pedagogy and curriculum for teaching high school English through reading, discussion,
and presentations. Students will leave the course better prepared for their upcoming student teaching
experience, with a portfolio of activities and ideas. They will learn about future students, state mandated goals,
and classroom procedures. They will articulate their philosophy for teaching writing, language, and literature,
and explore resources available for English teachers. They will investigate essential professional organizations,
develop and present mini-lessons, create a unit, collect resource bibliographies, and connect technology to the
teaching of English.
ENG 4730: The Novel
Dr. Kristina K. Groover
The Modern Novel: The first decades of the twentieth century represent the period of "high modernism," a
time when artists on both sides of the Atlantic struggled to interpret a rapidly changing world. Sweeping
changes in science and technology, the devastation of World War I, the advent of modern psychology, and
other events of the late 19th- and early 20th- centuries are reflected in the paintings of Pablo Picasso, the
musical compositions of Igor Stravinsky, the dances of Martha Graham, and the plays of Eugene O'Neill. In
this course, we will focus on the modern novel in Great Britain and the United States; texts will include William
Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury; Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises; Nella Larsen, Passing; Virginia
Woolf, To the Lighthouse; D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover; and others. Students will conduct research
on authors and texts, lead class discussion, and write frequent short essays as well as a final seminar paper. The
course format is discussion, and students are expected to contribute to the discussion during each class period.
Please contact the instructor at grooverkk@appstate.edu if you have questions about the course.
English 4780-101: Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Dr. Lynn Searfoss
Some of the most iconic texts in American Literature were written during the first half of the nineteenth
century, including The Last of the Mohicans, “The American Scholar,” Nature, “The Raven,” The Scarlet
Letter, Walden, Moby Dick, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass. Indeed,
authors writing during the period between 1830 and 1850 have often been credited with the creation of a
distinctively American literature.
We will begin this course by asking whether or not this assertion is true: could Americans develop a distinctive
literature, and, if so, how? We will also look into the relationship between social and political features of the
early nineteenth-century and the dramatic outburst of literary creativity in this era. We will examine the
influence of westward expansion, industrialization, slavery, abolitionism, women’s movements, the popularity
of magazines, and the development of science on the imagination of writers of the period; and we will ask how
social and political conditions were encoded into the texts these authors produced. We seek to understand the
different versions of America they portray and the reasons these texts continue to enthrall us today.
Probable texts will include Emerson’s Nature, selections from Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes and
Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales, a compendium of Poe’s poetry and short
fiction, excerpts from Thoreau’s Walden, Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Melville’s
Benito Cereno and other short works.
ENG 4795: 20th Century American Literature 1945 to 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 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 that the poets included in the volume have (among other central elements)
expressed in their work
the primal energies of a tribal communal spirit, side by side with the most
stubborn sort of American individualism. Their influence on Englishspeaking poetry at large has reversed the longstanding obeisance to
academically sanctioned formalism….Whether imagistic or surrealistic,
mythic or populist in approach, they all reflect America at a great turning
point. There is reason enough to say that a great flowering has occurred
and that these have been among the most vigorous participants in it, some
even its major shapers.
This course will attempt to explore and explain the “great flowering” that has taken place 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.
ENG 4810. Advanced Folklore
Dr. Cece Conway
Folklore, Its Public Presentation (e.g. Foodways & Musical
Performances with national traditional performers), &
Transformation into Literature (MC, CD) Spring, 2014. An
in-depth and multi-cultural study of one or more folklore
genres in cultural context with interdisciplinary approaches
from the humanities and social sciences. (Dual-listed with
ENG 5710.) An In-depth study of folklore (including
fieldwork) and its application in literature and for the public
with special attention to Appalachian (as well as Southern
African American & Native American) cultural communities.
Professor Conway, 224 Sanford; conwayec@email.unc.edu
ENG 4860-101: Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature
Dr. Jennifer Wilson
This course explores the writing and cultural history of Great Britain from 1660-1789, an era the critic Donald
Greene has dubbed “The Age of Exuberance.” Best known for its satire, travel narratives, and experimental
novels, this time period featured major changes – a shift in power from monarch to prime minister, a debate
over the role of reason and faith in religion, upswings in literacy and class mobility, and increasing insistence
upon the inherent rights of all peoples. For the Spring 2014 section of this class, we will read a wide range of
poetry, drama, travels, periodical essays, and fiction, including Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of
Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Class activities most likely will consist of discussion forum postings, a
presentation, midterm and final examinations, and a research paper.
ENG 4895/96 20th Century British Literature 1945 - Present
Dr. James Ivory
Literature written after 1945 might be contextualized by an analysis of its interesting tripartite structure, loosely
defined by poststructuralism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism. While other terms or concepts swirl around
my broader paradigm, like specific forms of theory, realignment of classical art forms, and globalization or
neocolonialism, we will continue to contest many of my definitions as well as others’. Poststructuralism
interrogates much of what we think we know or thought we knew, starting as early as Plato and the foundations of
Western thought. Postmodernism looks at classical taxonomy, practices and categories of art as well as aesthetics
and wonders about what and how something “becomes” Art, literary art or otherwise. Postcolonialism investigates
the cultural aftermath of the British Empire’s hegemony on a world stage. We will read and examine complex
works written by diverse writers from England, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, India, and the West Indies, in the
hope that we will better understand not only Britain but also our and our neighbor’s global connections to what is
“British.” “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
English 5100: Composition Theory, Practice, and Pedagogy
Dr. Beth Carroll
This course is designed to give students a theoretical background and practical strategies for teaching
composition. We will read, discuss, and write about professional conversations in composition studies and we
will use these readings, discussions, and writings to think through current debates in the field. This course will
explore the following topics: a history of composition and the ideologies driving that history, the role of rhetoric
in the teaching of writing, the relationship between composition theory and classroom practice, and other topics
of interest to students in the class.
ENG 5124-101: Teaching ENG 2001 Introduction to Writing Across the Curriculum
Dr. Georgia Rhoades
This course is intended as a support in WAC theory and practice for TAs teaching ENG 2001, but others who
are interested in WAC may also take the course. We will read online resources available from the WAC
Clearinghouse, including work by Young, Fulwiler, Russell, and Carter, and I will provide copies of Zawacki
and Rogers' Writing Across the Curriculum: A Critical Sourcebook. We will begin in late fall 2013 with
orientation to the course and at some times during the semester course visits will take the place of 5124 class
meetings. Students will keep a double log and the bulk of the course grade will be based on a portfolio. This
course will meet every other week for 2 hours.
ENG 5510-101: Grad Writing Workshop
Dr. Georgia Rhoades
This course is intended as a support for graduate writing projects, including thesis, capstone, comprehensive
exams, and conference proposals. We will use a workshop format and investigate invention, drafting, revision,
and editing strategies. This course will meet every other week for 2 hours.
ENG 5650 Gender Studies
Dr. Jill Ehnenn
This graduate course counts toward the ENG MA and the WS Grad certificate.
Gender Studies: Queer Theories and Feminisms
This class offers an introduction to and invites interrogation of the area of study that has come to be known as
Queer Theory, with special emphasis on queer theories’ relationships with and against feminist theories. We
will read several of the texts that are considered foundational to queer and feminist studies, as well as some of
the most recent work in the field(s). Our study and critique may address the following topics, as well as the
connections we make between them: historicizing queerness, along with notions of sex, gender and sexuality;
the emergence of queer movements from gay/lesbian and feminist liberation; intersections of feminism with
gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans identity; queer embodiment, especially intersections with gender, race, ethnicity, and
disability; overlap and disconnects between queer and feminist discourses; and queer and feminist readings of
various cultural practices and artifacts. Throughout the semester, we will revisit a series of key questions: Who
or what is (or can be) queer? How does (or should) queerness intersect with current theorizing about critical
and political practice? Identity? Praxis? What have been the effects of various historical and cultural
assumptions about the relationship between gender expression, sexed bodies and sexuality? When, and in what
sense, is it useful to think about connections between these categories? When is it not?
Students should be aware that although Queer and Feminist theories are interdisciplinary areas of study, much
focus of this class will be to learn to use these theories and their related methodologies in the interpretation of
literary and other cultural texts. Students’ research projects, however, can/should reflect the methodologies of
their home departments.
ENG 5710. Advanced Folklore
Dr. Cece Conway
Folklore, Its Public Presentation (e.g. Foodways & Musical Performances), &
Transformation into Literature (MC, CD) Spring, 2014. An in-depth and multicultural study of one or more folklore genres in cultural context with
interdisciplinary approaches from the humanities and social sciences. (Duallisted with ENG 4810.) An In-depth study of folklore (including fieldwork)
and its application in literature and for the public with special attention to
Appalachian (as well as Southern African American & Native American)
cultural communities. Professor Conway, 224 Sanford;
conwayec@email.unc.edu
ENG 5760: Studies in American Literature
Dr. Bruce Dick
In this course we’ll examine the twentieth-century African American novel as well as the numerous changes in
African American critical thought over the last 100 years. We’ll start with Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of
Tradition (1903) and finish with Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle (1996), but we’ll also discuss important
nineteenth-century African American novels as well as the most recent fiction by African Americans. Other
novels for the course include Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Johnson, 1912, 1927); Passing (Larsen,
1929); Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston, 1936); Native Son (Wright, 1940); Invisible Man (Ellison,
1952); Mumbo Jumbo (Reed, 1972); and Beloved (Morrison, 1988). In addition, we’ll discuss a variety of
critical essays from Angelyn Mitchell’s Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary
Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present (1994). Course requirements include class participation,
reaction papers on outside readings, team-teaching, and a 20-page, end-of-the-semester paper.
ENG 5870–101: Romantic Period
Dr. William D. Brewer
In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Edmund Burke provides the reader with a riveting, if
inaccurate, description of an attempt on Marie Antoinette’s life: “A band of cruel ruffians and assassins,
reeking with ... blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with an hundred strokes of bayonets
and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and through
ways unknown to the murderers had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his
own life for a moment.” Inspired by one of the most popular literary genres of the Revolutionary period, Gothic
novels, Burke casts Marie Antoinette as a terrorized heroine and the revolutionaries as bloodthirsty villains. In
this class we will study British Gothic literature, which was at the height of its popularity during the 1790s. We
will consider the following questions: how do Gothic tales reflect anxieties about revolutionary violence, social
chaos, and moral license? How do these texts comment on the reign of terror, the injustices of the old regime,
the plight of Marie Antoinette, and riots by the sans-culottes? To what extent are Gothic novels and poems
reactions against the empiricism of the Enlightenment and the so-called “Age of Reason”? How can
Frankenstein be read allegorically as a meditation on the French Revolution’s cycle of violence? Required texts
will include Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, Ann Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance, Matthew Lewis’s The
Monk, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner,
Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, and Gothic poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord
Byron, and George Crabbe.
Course requirements will include two medium-length papers, oral presentations, and a final examination.
ENG 5930-101: Transnational Literature
Focus: Transnational Asian American Literature
Dr. Holly E. Martin
For over 150 years, Asian people have immigrated to the United States; their reasons for immigrating range
from the desire to escape war and political turmoil in their home country to the desire for better economic and
intellectual opportunities. For whatever reasons they have come, Asian immigrants have been an integral part
of U.S. culture since the mid-nineteenth century. Most importantly for this class, however, are the contributions
Asian American authors have made to the body of American literature. As we will see, their writings do not
only appeal to Asian Americans, nor do they merely cater to an appetite for the “exotic” on the part of
American audiences. These authors focus on characters, situations and themes with a universal appeal, making
Asian American literature some of the best literature America has to offer. Truly transnational, the literature we
will be reading is grounded in America, but traces of the authors’ heritage cultures (Chinese, Indian, and
Korean) shine through. Texts include a theoretical text, Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and
Transits, ed. by Lim, Gamber, Sohn and Valentino, and a range of literary works: Songs of Gold Mountain
edited by Marlon K. Hom, The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, Monkey King by Patricia Chao, M.
Butterfly by David Henry Hwang, A Good Fall by Ha Jin, Mulberry and Peach by Nieh Hualing, Interpreter of
Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, and Native Speaker and A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee.