Winter 2001 Graduate Courses
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- 512/773: Nineteenth Century Novel
- 536: History of Criticism
- 570A/770B: Medieval Language and Literature
- 592A: Major Rhetorical Theories and the Teaching of Composition
- 591A: Teaching College English
- 592D: History of Rhetoric
- 570G/772: Studies In Restoration Literature
- 570N/774A: Twentieth Century Literature
- 570O/775: American Literature to Civil War
- 691: Creative Writing: Fiction
- 691: Poetry Seminar
- 765: Theory of Literature: Nonfiction
- 777: Colloquium
- 791: Professional Issues in Teaching
- 792: Computers and Composition Pedagogy
512/773: Nineteenth Century Novel
Instructor: Linda Hunt Beckman
Description:
This course will tackle major Victorian novels in order to discuss the narrative conventions of realism and other modes of representation that flourished in nineteenth century England. We will also examine how the fiction of the period is inflected by cultural changes having to do with the woman question, industrial capitalism and social class. anxiety over religious doubt, science, positivism, and, toward the century's end, changes in aesthetic theory and literary practice.
Readings:
Probably Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Dickens's Great Expectations, George Eliot's Mill on the Floss, Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray.
Assignments:
An annotated bibiography, a long research paper, and a take-home final exam.
536: History of Criticism
Instructor: Robert Miklitsch
Description:
The 2000-2001 course will offer a primer on everyday life in the 21st century. Seriously (folks!), this course will offer a general, "advanced" introduction to literary and cultural theory. As I will be soliciting graduate students about what they would like me to teach, the specific content of the course remains open at this point, though we will probably do at least some cultural studies and critical media studies and will no doubt touch on queer, feminist, African-American and post-colonial theory.
Readings:
There will definitely be a packet of xeroxes and/or a book or two on one or more of the above topics.
Assignments:
There will be brief, weekly responses to the reading (2-3 pp.) and a more reflective, "comprehensive" final paper (5 pp).
570A/770B: Medieval Language and Literature
Instructor: Marsha L. Dutton
Description:
Once upon a time, long long ago, dragons and monsters roamed freely—at least in literature. That period, familiar to most people today from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and John Gardner's Grendel, has left a rich but generally unread body of literature, suddenly made current by Seamus Heaney's 2000 Whitbread Literary Prize-winning translation of Beowulf. This course will explore the prose and poetry written in England between the time of Arthur and the coming of the Normans. We will use modern English translations but acquire some familiarity with the Old English texts.
Readings:
- Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney. London: Faber, 2000.
- A Choice of and Poems and Prose. Trans. Richard Hamer. London: Faber, 1970.
- Mitchell, Bruce. An Invitation to Old English and Anglo-Saxon England. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1994.
- Old and Middle English: An Anthology. Ed. Elaine Traharne. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.
Assignments:
Two 3-5 page papers, one on a piece of prose and one on a piece of poetry. A class presentation of one of those papers. A 15-20 page final paper on some aspect of Beowulf, with an annotated bibliography for distribution.
592A: Major Rhetorical Theories and the Teaching of Composition
Instructor: Barry Thatcher
Description:
This course explores key works of contemporary rhetorical and compositional theories, focusing on pedagogical applications and issues. Among the major theorists are Burke, Bakhtin, Berlin, Bizzell, Bruffee, Elbow, Faigley, Flower, Kinneavy, and Toulmin. A variety of other important contemporary theorists and theories will also be examined.
Objectives:
In this exploration of key theories, students will become familiar with the following theoretical and pedagogical issues:
- Motives: How do the reasons for teaching composition vary among the major theories and accompanying pedagogies; what are their goals or outcome expectations?
- Teachability: What do the major theories consider as teachable? What capabilities and competencies are assumed to be innate; what cannot be taught all?
- Invention/Technique: What role does invention play in the different theories and how is it taught? What roles do rules, imitation, heuristics, and randomness play in the theories?
- Audience: How is the audience defined? What is the relationship among audience, discourse community, writer, and genre? How is audience analysis taught?
- Style: How is style defined by the major theories? What logocentric, ethnocentric, postmodern, or deconstructive tenets does each definition of style assume?
- Process/Product: What is the relationship between process and product?
- Form/Genre: How is form defined? How is it related to audience, genre, context, and author?
- Agency: How is the agency of the author and audience defined?
- Computers/Technology: What role should computers and technology play in composition instruction?
- Logos/Epistemology: What epistemologies are valorized with the competing rhetorical theories? How is knowledge created/constructed.
- Pathos/Expression: How are emotions and expressiveness valorized?
- Ethos/Ethics: What counts as authorial credibility and ethics?
- Province of rhetoric/composition: What are the boundaries of composition studies, in relation to other disciplines?
- Collaboration: What kinds of collaboration are valorized? How should collaborative writing be taught according to the major theories and theorists?
Texts:
A huge coursepack, or two.
591A: Teaching College English
Instructor: Sherrie Gradin
Description:
This course is designed to provide continuing support for first-year teachers in teaching 151, to continue the theoretical/pedagogical conversations begun in 591, to introduce TAs to teaching courses other than 151, and to provide opportunities for observations and discussions of TA's teaching.
592D: History of Rhetoric
Instructor: Sherrie Gradin
Description:
In this course we will study (in a rather whirlwind manner) the major theorists and practitioners of rhetoric from classical times through the present. Throughout our investigation we will consider social, cultural, and political activities that have shaped rhetoric's history. We will ask questions such as: What is rhetoric? Who has defined it and how has it been defined? How have rhetoricians constructed rhetoric as theory and as practical action? Does it matters if rhetoric is thought of as primarily oral or written? What is the relationship between rhetoric and epistemology? Why was the study of rhetoric at or near the center of liberal education for 2300 years, only to fall out of favor suddenly during the 19th Century? And finally, of what use is the study of rhetoric to the writer? To the writing teacher?
Course requirements:
At the heart of this course will be dialogue and discussion and informal writing; your active participation is expected. You will also be required to give an oral presentation and to submit an article length paper.
Texts:
The text selection is still in process; however, we will start with The Mask of Apollo (Renault), and The Rhetorical Tradition (Bizzell and Herzberg).
570G/772: Studies In Restoration Literature Historicizing Gender and Sexuality in British Literature, 1660-1750
Instructor: Jeremy Webster
Description:
Historians of gender and sexuality often point to the early eighteenth century as the period in which modern notions of gender and sexuality first came to dominate the English cultural landscape. According to these scholars, changes in class identity, in the construction of the family, in the division of labor between the sexes, in the rhetoric of sexual difference between male and female bodies, and in the "rise" of the 'heterosexual'/'homosexual' dialectic led to a new system of gender and sexual difference. In this seminar, we will investigate whether, how, and why this transformation occurred by studying these proposed changes in England's literature from 1660 to 1750. While we will proceed along a roughly historical trajectory, our readings will be organized around the following themes: Libertines, romantic female friends, fops, sodomites, prostitutes, and other sexual 'criminals' and virtuous 'heterosexuals.' Our aims in this course are to familiarize ourselves with major authors and works of the Restoration and eighteenth century, to place these authors and works within a historical context, and to review contemporary scholarship on constructions of gender and sexuality in the period. Check my homepage for a complete syllabus in mid-October.
Readings:
- British Literature 1640-1789 edited by Robert DeMaria (Blackwell)
- Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Comedy (Norton Critical Edition)
- Pamela by Samuel Richardson (Penguin)
- Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland (Penguin)
- The History of Sexuality Vol. 1 by Michel Foucault (Vintage)
- course packet.
Assignments:
in-class presentations, abstract of one scholarly article, and participation-25 percent; a short critical review essay of a work of contemporary literary and/or cultural criticism-25 percent; and a 15- to 20-page seminar paper (with proposal and annotated bibliography as preliminary steps)-50 percent.
570N/774A: Twentieth Century Literature
Instructor: Marilyn Atlas
Description:
Modern American writers after the Genteel Tradition were confronting questions not only concerning form but also concerning male and female identity. In this class we will investigate the relationship between politics and poetics during a period of notable cultural conflict.
Readings:
- Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert, No Man's Land, Volume I: The War of the Words
- Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
- Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
- Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Harp Weaver
- William Carlos Williams, Paterson
- H.D. Helen In Egypt
- Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
570O/775: American Literature to Civil War: Reconstructing the Protestant Body: England's Colonialism
Instructor: Thomas Scanlan
Description:
In this course, we will explore the dilemma that early Protestants faced as they attempted to articulate the distinctions between their faith and Roman Catholicism. It is my contention that this struggle was characterized most notably by the need for a tangible body of evidence that would justify the Protestant rejection of Roman Catholicism. The Protestant need for a body, as it turns out, was more than just figurative. With its repudiation of the Catholic doctrine of works, Protestantism effectively removed the possiblility of treating the body as an instrument of salvation. The body in Protestantism became, on the one hand, a screen onto which was projected the will of God and, on the other, a tangible symbol of the elect status of its occupant. In short, the body became a text. And in this course, we will undertake to explore the effects of Protestantism's de-emphasis of corporeality on England's attempts to construct a colonial empire.
Readings:
- Cabeza de Vaca, Voyage into the Unknown Interior of America
- Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
- Eliot, Indian Dialogues
- Hall (ed.), The Antinomian Controversy
- Hensley (ed), The Works of Anne Bradstreet
- Lery, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil
- Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration
Assignments:
One long seminar paper, weekly discussion-board postings, and two class presentations.
691: Creative Writing: Fiction
Instructor: Joan Connor
Description:
Students in this graduate workshop will play active roles in the workshop leadership, presenting papers, leading critical discussions, selecting reading material and developing as self-editors. We will focus on some of the larger challenges in fiction writing—adjusting the vision and controlling that eeliest of aspects, point-of-view.
Reading:
We will draw material from:The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction; Essentials of the Theory of Fiction and The Eleventh Draft (Texts are tentative and may change).
691: Poetry Seminar
Instructor: Mark Halliday
Description:
Our effort is to cause each other to write alarmingly good poems. We want to write poems that are flammable but not flagitious, transubstantiative but not mendacious. We hope for poems that are ribald in a gelid way, or gelid in a ribald way; and for poems that adumbrate the noumenal without being suffocatingly liminal. Our poems will be proleptic and palimpsestic while also opalescent and fecund, meanwhile also, of course, oneiric and recuperative. We won't say "site" very often but we might well speak of "truth."
Readings:
We will read together quite a few poems by one dead poet and two live poets. Top candidates among the departed include Keats and Rilke. Top live candidates include Kenneth Koch, Claire Bateman, Dean Young, Louise Gluck, Robert Pinsky. Students can influence the choices by talking to me before the course. Expect to buy three books.
Assignments:
The most important thing is to write original poems during the quarter; we hope for eight poems from each student—one per week if possible. Written comments on the three books will be expected; this may be done via email. I will propose some "ideas for poems" or exercises—these will be encouraged but not required.
765: Theory of Literature: Nonfiction
Instructor: David Lazar
Description:
This course will focus on forms and theories of nonfiction, paying special notice to works slightly out of the mainstream, or more significantly fringed.Among possible works:
- Marcel Benabou's Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books (and other works of Oulipo, Calvino, Perec, Matthews, Queneau. . .)
- Andre Lourde's Zami
- Kafka's Diaries
- Jackson Mac Low's Pieces O'Six
- Art Spiegelman's Maus
- Mary Daly's Outercourse
- Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
- Susan Griffin's What Her Body Thought
- video pieces by Bill Viola
- essayist Seymour Krim
- Jane Gallop's Feminist Accused of Sexual Harrassment
- Phillip Roth's Operation Shylock
- Helene Cixous' Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing
- Erroll Morris's film Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control
- Genet's Thief's Journal
- Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography
- Monique Wittig's The Straight Mind, etc...
If most of these names are unfamiliar, you have a charmingly ready rationalization for taking the course; if they are not: come and talk to me immediately!
Readings:
A book a week.
Assignments:
Students will be required to write a couple of really interesting papers/essays.
777: Colloquium
Instructor: Josephine Bloomfield
Description:
This colloquium prepares doctoral students in English for the profession of college teaching and research. It discusses professional matters which are not usually addressed in more traditional, subject-matter centered courses. These concerns may be practical or theoretical. Specific topics will be suggested by contemporary conditions within the profession and they will vary from year to year.
791: Professional Issues in Teaching
Instructor: Betty Pytlik
Description:
Colloquium for apprentice teachers designed to explore alternative approaches to classroom planning and presentation and to discuss professional issues in the discipline.
792E: Computers and Composition Pedagogy
Instructor: Albert Rouzie
Description:
This course investigates the impact of computers on written communication, reading, and the teaching of college English courses, primarily rhetoric and composition and secondarily, literature pedagogy. Topics include the use of new forms of composition and communication in hypertext, e-mail listservs, Web discussion forums, Usenet newsgroups, MOOs, and Web sites with particular focus on the impact of these venues on composition pedagogy.
Readings:
We will read a variety of scholarship in the field of computers and composition and discuss issues such as student and instructor authority, computer-mediated communication genres, gender and identity politics, multiple literacies, play, virtual communities, and other topics that have arisen with the use of networked computer classrooms. We will situate current practices within the movements of composition, critical, and literary theories, and the history of computers and writing. As a class we will discuss readings face-to-face, in email, and in a MOO (online text-based virtual reality). Our listserv messages and MOO transcripts will be posted to our course Web site, so that we can read and reflect upon the texts of our discussions. Students will post weekly responses to the readings (with different students leading the discussion each week), write a 10 page paper, compose and post a personal Web page, and collaborate in small groups on a major project either composed for the Web to be posted on the course web site or in MOOspace.
Readings will be mostly articles and book excerpts collected into a course packet, plus some on-line articles linked from the course site.
Assignments:
Assigned readings for the first six weeks to be followed by group work on final projects.
- Weekly on-line postings keyed to discussion of that week's readings.
- A portfolio of a selection of listserv and MOO discourse demonstrating your contribution to the class's understanding of the texts and issues. The portfolio will include a 2-3 page analysis and discussion of the selected discourse (20% of grade).
- Students will take turns facilitating the e-mail listserv discussion for one week.
- A simple, personal home page to learn how to compose for the WWW .
- A syllabus of a composition course for use in a computer classroom, an annotation of the syllabus, and justification for computer-based activities OR a researched essay (10 pages) on an issue in the field (40% of grade).
- A group proposal for the final project. Topics must be approved by the instructor and shown to contribute to critical perspectives on computers and writing.
- A substantial final project (in groups of 2-3) researching, analyzing, and critiquing a significant issue germane to the field, to be composed for the WWW and posted to a course web site, OR create a site (Web or MOO) that serves a pedagogical purpose specific to a computer-based course to be taught in the department (40% of grade).