Winter 2002 Graduate Courses
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- 536: History of Criticism/Critical Theory and Practice
- 570A/770B: Medieval Language and Literature: Heroines, Heroes, and Monsters in Old English Prose and Poetry
- 570C/771B: 16th Century British:The Faerie Queene and Theories of Allegory
- 570H/772B: Earlier 18th Century British
- 570P/775B: American Literature, Civil War to WWI: Race, Class and Gender from the American Renaissance to the First World War
- 591A: Teaching College English II
- 592A: Post Modern Rhetorical Theories and the Teaching of Composition
- 691: Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction
- 691: Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry
- 777: Doctoral Colloquium
- 791: Professional Issues in Teaching College English
536: History of Criticism/Critical Theory and Practice
Instructor: George Hartley
Description:
This course will provide you with select moments in the history of criticism which play a key role in contemporary critical theory. We will be reading Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Derrida, Zizek, and Butler.
Assignments:
Two 5-page papers
Readings:
- Deconstruction in Context
- Marx-Engels Reader
- The Ego and the Id (Freud)
- Looking Awry (Zizek)
- Gender Trouble (Butler).
570A/770B: Medieval Language and Literature: Heroines, Heroes, and Monsters in Old English Prose and Poetry
Instructor: Marsha Dutton
Description:
Long long ago, as stories tell, dragons and monsters (both human and non) roamed freely, endangering but ultimately falling before women and men of virtue and iron. Their time, familiar to most people today only through works such as J. R. R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and John Gardner's Grendel, has left a rich body of literature recently made current by Seamus Heaney's 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.
- Old and Middle English: An Anthology. Ed. Elaine Treharne. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000.
- Mitchell, Bruce. An Invitation to Old English and Anglo-Saxon England. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1994.
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 of primary and secondary sources for distribution.
570C/771B: 16th Century British:The Faerie Queene and Theories of Allegory
Instructor: Andrew Escobedo
Description:
Before the Renaissance, allegory was a dominant mode of European discourse, a means of revealing spiritual truth through literal narrative. After the Renaissance, allegory becomes for many writers a sign of loss, a reminder of the gap between the natural world and the artificiality of language. What happened? I propose that we try to answer this question with a sustained study of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, sometimes referred to as the last "great" allegory of the European literary tradition. This course will thus both consider the artistry of a magnificent, complex poem and survey modern theoretical writings (Coleridge, Benjamin, Lewis, de Man, Jameson, Teskey, etc.) about allegory, especially regarding the supplementary and simulacral nature of the mode: that is, allegory adds meaning to a text or image in order to complete it, but in so doing implies an originary lack that needed filling. Such theoretical issues will hopefully help us explore difficult cruxes in Spenser's allegory; for example, why does the primary allegorical character (The Faerie Queene) never actually appear in the poem? To help us understand where Spenser is coming from, we'll also read short selections from other allegorists (Plato, Matthew, Guillaume de Lorris, Christine de Pizan).
Assignments:
A book review, several short discussion papers, a final research paper, a class presentation.
570H/772B: Earlier 18th Century British
Instructor:Linda Zionkowski
Description:
This class, "Home Economics in the Long Eighteenth Century," will analyze and discuss the way in which texts of the period examine the intersections of the household and the world of commerce—the domestic space and the marketplace—in order to investigate the very categories and constructions of masculine and feminine, public and private spheres.
Readings:
To be announced.
Assignments:
Oral and written reports; annotated bibliography and research proposal; article-length essay.
570P/775B: American Literature, Civil War to WWI: Race, Class and Gender from the American Renaissance to the First World War
Instructor: Marilyn Atlas
Description:
According to David Reynolds, the year Leaves of Grass was published, 1855, there was a gathering of the Association of New York Publishers on September 27 at the Crystal Palace. There were 650 publishers and authors invited, but not Walt Whitman. Well, we're inviting him to our party where we will be exploring the politics and aesthetics of literature from the American Renaissance to World War I. In this class we will follow David Reynolds' lead by first reading Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. We will examine some wonderful and diverse literature that will give us a taste of the popular and not so popular literature that brings us through the beginning of modernity to Modernism.
Readings:
- David Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance
- Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass (1855)
- Herman Melville The Confidence-Man (1857)
- Harriet E. Adams Wilson, Our Nig (1859)
- Judith Fetterly, editor, Provisions: A Reader from 19th-Century American Women (including Harriet Prescott Spofford, "Circumstance,") (1860)
- Harriet Jacobs, "Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl," (1861)
- Rebecca Harding Davis, "Life in the Iron Mills" (1861)
- William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)
- Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905)
Assignments:
Bibliographical essays (8-10 pages long); three short essays (3-4 pages long) and one final essay (10-12 pages long).
591A: Teaching College English II
Instructor: Sherrie Gradin
Description:
This course is for students who have had 591. It is designed to provide further theoretical exploration of rhetoric and composition, provide further training and pedagogical assistance for T.A.s teaching in our program, and to offer T.A.s one-on-one observations followed by evaluations and support in improving their teaching.
592A: Post Modern Rhetorical Theories and the Teaching of Composition
Instructor: Albert Rouzie
Description:
This course is designed to examine selected current issues in the field of rhetoric and composition, with special attention to the relationships between theory and practice. We will read works of and on major theorists who have influenced theory and practice in the rhetoric and composition field and trace movements from objectivist through subjectivist and social constructivist rhetorics, from modernist to postmodernist theories and pedagogies. Students will become familiar with basic research tools in the field and with the disciplinary contexts of the issues examined.
Readings:
A packet with selected essays and book excerpts plus:The Wealth of Reality, Margaret Syverson; Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness, Patricia Bizell; Feminine Principles and Women's Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric, ed. Louise Phelps and Janet Emig; Fragments of Rationality, Lester Faigley.
Assignments:
Response papers, annotated bibliography, major paper
691: Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction
Instructor: Joan Connor
Description:
Athens in winter is grim, grim. We will transcend that grimness with arduous labor and ardor—reading and writing and thinking profoundly about literature as we laugh in the face of Athens' wintry grimness. Ha.
Readings:
I am tentatively thinking of using the Norton Postmodern American Fiction anthology because it perplexes me. The adjective postmodern keeps cropping up in workshops, and it keeps ringing hollow. I am considering using the anthology to open up a discussion about postmodernism, its definition in terms of technique, content, style. For a critical text, I am considering David Lodge's The Art of Fiction.
Assignments:
Students will be active leaders in the class, presenting stories for discussion, critical readings. Writing will include at least: three stories, one essay.
691: Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry
Instructor: Visiting Poet
Description forthcoming.
777: Doctoral 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 College English
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.