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{Home > Literature > Graduate Course Descriptions}--------------- Spring 2005 Expanded Undergraduate Course Descriptions 4Critical Inquiry and Literature: Coming Into Culture FemaleHelena Feder The bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, is the genre of coming into culture; the process of growing-up is the process of internalizing (and reflecting or rejecting) various cultural discourses. From Voltaire's Candide and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister in the eighteenth century to Dickens' David Copperfield in the Nineteenth, the genre has traditionally been a not-too-distant cousin of Thomas Carlyle's Victorian vision of history as the "story of great men" - a hybrid narrative of male socialization, travel and exploration, and philosophical speculation. However, as a hybrid genre, the bildungsroman has proved a particularly apt vehicle for conveying and examing women's multifaceted (and often conflicting) experience in patriarchal culture. "Coming into Culture Female: Women's Bildungsroman " will examine Anglophone texts written by women that explore constructions of gender as they interlace with many other cultural discourses, including that of humanism. The course will guide students through a group of diverse texts, from Bronte's Jane Eyre to Kincaid's Lucy , and introduce (and blend) various methods of literary and cultural analysis in relation to the primary texts (including feminist theory and literary criticism, Marxist literary criticism, post-colonial literary and cultural criticism, and ecological literary criticism).
30AAmerican Literature SurveyChristopher Peterson This course offers an introductory survey of American literature from the Colonial Period through the end of the Civil War. Although we will read chronologically, we will pay particular attention to the tension between the religious and the secular; the clash between freedom and slavery; and the construction of American identity. In exploring these themes, lectures and discussions will focus on the aesthetic aspects of individual works as well as on the historical contexts from which they emerge. Three hours of lecture and one hour of discussion per week.
42Approaches to ReadingJoe Wenderoth In this course, you will be introduced to reading. But wait, you have already been introduced to reading! Perhaps I should say, then, that in this course you will be prompted to consider reading in new ways. Our first task will be to investigate reading as a political act, which is to say, to understand the real context wherein texts are printed, advertised, critiqued, and thereby saturated with ideas about their function(s). Our second task will be to consider reading insofar as it might be an encounter with a work of art.
44 - AIntroduction to the Study of FictionTina Choi This course provides an introduction to fiction as a literary genre, and will help you develop strategies for critical reading and a basic vocabulary for discussing literary works. By reading a range of short stories and novels, we will consider narrative structure and other formal elements of these works, and how they reflect or engage with their historical contexts. The course will emphasize close reading and critical writing skills, as well as active engagement in class discussion.
44 - BIntroduction to the Study of FictionThomas Hothem This course will examine some of the key elements of fiction-style, plot, point of view, structure, setting, allegory, character-with reference to several short stories and novels. By treating fiction as a form of hypothesis-and measuring imagined communities (e.g., settings, plots, and their characters) against real ones in which we live (e.g., towns, schools, nations, etc.)-we will reassess formative intersections between literature and everyday life. The emphasis of the course will be on close reading, active discussion, and critical analysis of the assigned texts.
45Introduction to the Study of PoetryAlan Williamson Lyric poetry is the most universal (if, for some, the most puzzling) of the literary genres. People in almost all cultures have used it to represent and understand the complexities of their experience. We will try to understand the tools by which poetry accomplishes this representation--metrics, sound-play, the logic of metaphor, diction, and voice--using examples from all periods of English and American literature.
46CMasterpieces of English Literature, 1832 - PresentDominick Tracy We will read selections by nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors in the Norton anthology, including works by Tennyson, Browning, Christina Rossetti, Arnold, Hopkins, Wilde, Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and Joyce as well as two novels: Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness . As we explore the poetry, prose, and drama of the period, we will pay particular attention to the social and cultural contexts to which they respond, focusing on evolving concepts of class, gender, faith, and nation.
100F - 1Creative Writing: FictionJoe Wenderoth We will practice and study the art of fiction in this seminar course. To facilitate meaningful study, we will read and discuss successful works of fiction throughout the course. We will try to develop a method for identifying, articulating, and understanding the relationship between the
100F - 2Creative Writing: FictionJodi Angel This is an advanced fiction workshop for students who wish to improve upon and refine techniques of narrative style in the short story form. In this class we will focus on character driven prose, setting as a reflection of the emotional landscape, voice, point of view, and the courage to step out onto the edge of what we write. The primary objective of this course is for each writer to produce quality short stories that ideally can be used as a foundation for a larger body of work. To accomplish this goal, we will read and discuss published fiction--how some writers go beyond convention and force the reader into unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable terrain--read and critique each other's work, and write in-class and take home exercises. Admission is by application and acceptance of instructor (application is available on-line).
100PCreative Writing: PoetrySandra McPherson We will enjoy weekly experiments emphasizing different aspects of the art of poetry, using models from two poets' collections. We will emphasize originality of language, intense rhythm, contemporary political issues, metaphorical association, recovering memory, immersion in culture, observation of natural and physical things, formal experimentation, and employment of all the senses. Admission is by application and acceptance of instructor (application is available on-line).
106(cross listed with LIN 106)English GrammarJared Haynes This course will give students a thorough grounding in present-day English grammar. Most of the time will be spent analyzing the syntactic structures of English sentences, but we will also look at how history has shaped English grammar, at how writers use grammar to achieve specific effects, and at how an understanding of grammar can lead to a clearer and more effective writing style. We will also discuss the nature of grammatical change over time, the concept of grammatical "correctness," and the limitations of grammatical analysis. This course will not only help students with their own writing but also give potential teachers much practical knowledge for analyzing student writing and teaching grammar effectively.
110AIntroduction to the Principles of CriticismEvan Watkins This course will deal with some central concepts and influential texts in the history of literary criticism from Plato and Aristotle up through the 19 th century.
110BIntroduction to the Principles of CriticismTimothy Morton Theory is a questioning attitude towards reality. It is not simply a set of answers to questions, or even a specific set of questions. Literary theory is one of the most important ways in which you can contemplate the nature and significance of language, writing, and art. We will be journeying through a rich variety of hard, refreshing, and liberating ideas in literary and cultural theory in the twentieth century, from the time of the Russian Revolution, through the Cold War and the radicalism of the sixties, and recent developments in the era of deconstruction and postmodernism. Literary theory is one of the most exciting and necessary ways of studying the very fabric of our social life.
113BChaucer: Canterbury TalesSeeta Chaganti Chaucer's famous narrative about an odd assembly of pilgrims, regaling each other with outrageous tales as they ride to Canterbury Cathedral, has profoundly influenced our understanding of storytelling, genre, character, and the development of the English language itself. The Tales offer us an exciting variety of narratives to explore; we will be reading shockingly bawdy tales, romantic tales, tales about secular magic and sacred miracles, and dark and disturbing cautionary tales. We will ask how individual tales relate to each other, and how they relate to their colorful and quirky tellers. Also, in order to understand more clearly what Chaucer himself is telling us in his work, we will spend some time looking at the social, political, literary, and religious contexts in which he was writing.
117BShakespeare: Middle WorksRaymond Waddington From Shakespeare's middle period (ca. 1600-04), the course will study five plays: the last of the romantic comedies, Twelfth Night ; two "dark" comedies, All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure ; a "problem play," Troilus and Cressida ; and one major tragedy, Hamlet. Attention will be given to the cultural, intellectual, and theatrical contexts, but the main emphasis will be on understanding the plays.
12318th Century British LiteratureJohn Stenzel Besides introducing students to a deeper study of some of the standard works of the canon, this version of English 123 will address themes of comment, critique and correction. This being the golden age of satire in English, we will closely study several aspects of verse satire, emphasizing Pope but including lesser lights; for comment on social and political matters we will read both Gulliver's Travels and Moll Flanders, as well as a selection of periodical literature; to illuminate the ways in which the English language itself was both a medium for correction and the subject of various correctives we will introduce students to Swift and other's opinions on English, as well as Doctor Johnson's Preface to the English Dictionary. To add a slightly unusual fourth "C" to the list (chaos) we will dive into a substantial chunk of Sterne's brilliant and innovative Tristram Shandy. Stretching the century only slightly I will finish with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
13319 th Century British LiteratureTricia Lootens From poetry (including works by Matthew Arnold, Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Alfred Tennyson); through drama, expository prose, government reports, and memoirs (including work by Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Florence Nightingale, John Henry Newman, and John Ruskin); to Charles Dickens's Bleak House , this course will explore a wide range of influential Victorian texts. Reading the Dickens in installments, we will focus especially on the intimate, shifting negotiations between Victorian literature's celebrations of private virtues and its investments in domestic, national, and imperial cultures.
137NBritish Literature, 1900-1945Gregory Dobbins This course will provide a survey of literature produced in the first half of the twentieth century and will focus on the aesthetics and politics of modernism. We will begin with works written during the apex of the British Empire at the turn of the century and complete the quarter with a
147American Literature 1945 to the PresentAndrew Strombeck Postwar American literature wrestles with a series of shifts in the meaning of "American" wrought by prosperity, the Cold War, and the evolution of imperialism into "globalization." Reading a diverse set of postwar texts, from the Beats to Jamaica Kincaid, this course charts several arcs in the postwar United States, among them identity movements (civil rights, feminism, gay rights and so on), the rise and fall of the postwar economy, and the changing status of America as superpower. We will consider how postwar literature both reflects and challenges its social and historical context, while considering what, if anything, ties these texts together as "contemporary" or "postmodern" literature.
155A18 th -Century British NovelSuzie Park This course examines the development of the novel over the course of the 18th century. The sheer versatility and experimental nature of novels in the period resist any neat accounting of its rise. Rogues exist alongside virtuous ladies, bourgeois mercantilism next to aristocratic romance. Representative novels (or selections) from Defoe, Haywood, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Walpole, Burney, and Austen will give us a picture of the multi-faceted, historical rise of the novel, its reincarnations and admixtures of older forms.
155C20 th Century British NovelPatricia Moran In this course we will read modernist prose works that take up the topic of marriage, sexuality, and gender. We will pay special attention to the portrayal of memory and psychology.
158AThe American Novel to 1900Michael Ziser This course charts the development of the American novel from its Revolutionary-era inception to the middle of the 19 th century. We will read examples from some of the many generic traditions of early national and antebellum American fiction, including the seduction tale, the gothic, the historical romance, and the wilderness adventure. Lectures will focus on the aesthetic structures as well as the biographical and social contexts of the individual novels. Some attention will be paid to theoretical and historical arguments about the novel as a form. Primary reading will be relatively heavy, but there will be few assigned secondary texts.
ENL 160Film as Narrative(Homo)sexuality in FilmDavid Van Leer This course will treat loosely the concept of "narrative" in film and focus exclusively on the representation of homosexuality in film. The course will emphasize thematic issues relating to sexuality over formal analysis of cinematic technique. For this reason, no previous study of film will be required, although such experience will be welcomed. Among the films to be studied are Sylvia Scarlett , Gentleman Prefer Blondes , Craig's Wife , Desert Hearts , Parting Glances , She Must Be Seeing Things , Scorpio Rising , Ten Cents A Dance , and Cruising . Among the issues to be treated are the changing shape and definition of same-sex relationships, the ways in which these relationships are depicted openly or covertly in cinema, and the political implications (both positive and negative) of such depictions. Through comparative readings in male and female films, the course will also discuss whether the experience of homosexuality is continuous across gender lines. Those interested in more general discussions of how film treats and represents narrative will not find what they are looking for in this course. The course will be run as a lecture-discussion. The first of the two lecture nights will be primarily lecture and screening of brief film clips on the general topic of the week, although there will be some time for class discussion, especially of the assigned reading. The three-hour lecture evening will permit screening of a feature-length film and discussion afterwards. Both classes are absolutely required, and students who cannot make both meetings should not enroll in the course. WARNING: This course is meant to be fun, and most students so experience it. It will, however, involve the discussion of sexual practices, and in some cases viewing of sexual activity on the screen. If you find such material offensive, or think it inappropriate to the classroom, this is not the course for you. While there will be opportunity to discuss a wide range of opinions, it will be assumed that sexual language, descriptions, discussions, and even demonstrations will be part of the course. (For those excited by this warning, remember that this course has no lab.)
166Love and Desire in Contemporary American PoetrySandra McPherson With lectures and discussions, we will explore what contemporary American poets are saying about the many sides of love and desire. Gay, lesbian, and heterosexual poems will be studied side by side, as will the poems of writers of diverse ethnicities. Besides delving into single authors' themes (Rich's, Loudermilk's, Lee's), we will emphasize the following topics: male self-portraiture, female self-portraiture, portraits of the desired, judging quality, poetry and pornography, "trouble," partnership, interracial love, spiritual love, poetic forms. The sexual orientation of the poets studied divides into approximately 30% homosexual and bisexual, and 70% heterosexual. A few of the poems are graphic.
181AAfrican American Literature to the Harlem RenaissaanceRiché Richardson Fulfills American literature pre-1865 requirement We will examine selections from authors in African American literary history from the 18 th century into the 1930s. Authors who will be examined include Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson, Charles Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Booker T. Washington, James Weldon Johnson, and Nella Larsen. The production of early African American literature was grounded in genres such as poetry, the novel, the short story, the slave narrative, the spiritual narrative, and autobiography, all of which will be explored. We will also consider the impact of oral forms such as spirituals and folk tales on African American writing. Finally, we will consider the development of African American literature across a range of historical contexts, including the colonial era, the Revolutionary/Enlightenment period, the antebellum period, Reconstruction, and the Harlem Renaissance/Jazz Age, along with relevant legal contexts.
182Literature of CaliforniaJack Hicks In c. 1510, Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo published a popular Spanish romance, The Adventures of Esplandiàn , in which he imagined a "fantastic island very near the Terrestrial Paradise." The streets of his realm were paved with gold, and it was ruled over by the warrior Queen Calafia, a statuesque Amazon who captured unwary men for breeding and thereafter fed them (live) to her griffins. Ordóñez called his island "California," and his romance named the state and offered the first mythic vision of the largest, most populous and most controversial political entity in the United States. This course examines literary treatments of the Golden State, ranging from Ordóñez' fantasy and early tales of the indigenous Indian peoples before Euroamerican "discovery," to 19th- and 20th-century prose and poetry by Mark Twain, Helen Hunt Jackson, John Muir, Robinson Jeffers, Raymond Chandler, Joan Didion, Octavia Butler, and Gary Snyder. Readings include tall tales from the Gold Rush; the epic poetry of the stormy Pacific; tough-guy noir detective fiction; lyric celebrations of the Great Central Valley; a non-fiction account of the "instant" formation of Lakewood in 1950, an L.A. suburb of 30,000; and a feminist science fiction narrative of the trek out of Los Angeles on freeways (and on foot), "back to the country," after the city collapses. The course includes films and class visits by contemporary California authors.
185BLiterature by Women IIJoanne Diehl Fulfills post-Civil War American literature requirement This course will consist of English language literature from Sarah Orne Jewett and Virginia Woolf to Sylvia Plath and Toni Morrison. The cultural impact of women's art, the rise of alternative responses to evolving social pressures, and new approaches to feminist literary criticism will be major topics under discussion.
188 001Special Topics in Literary StudiesTopic: The City and The Country in the Medieval ImaginationSeeta Chaganti This course will explore medieval attitudes towards the relationship between life in the city and life in the country. We will look at a wide range of literary texts from different traditions, including the lais of Marie de France, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , the Decameron , the Irish Voyage of St. Brendan , Old French fabliaux , and some of the Canterbury Tales . These texts all deal in some way with movement between city and country as well as with the development of various perceptions and prejudices about landscapes and locations. The course will investigate questions concerning the ways that humor, fantasy, love, trauma, social anxieties, and the articulation of the individual consciousness map themselves out on urban and rural locales.
188 002Special Topics in Literary StudiesThe Female GothicPatricia Moran You've seen them in supermarkets and drugstores, in airports and malls. They are multitudinous in number, yet all astonishingly enough seem to have the same cover: a frightened young woman stands in the foreground, her long hair and flowing gown buffeted by the wind; against a dark, storm-torn sky looms a mansion, a castle, a forbidding stone structure. One lit window pierces the gloom. This is one kind of book we do judge by its cover; we assume that inside the plot runs something like this: The Heroine, a young woman, probably an orphan, certainly inexperienced but with a certain tenacity and common sense, comes to a large, isolated House with a Name (Thornfield or Manderley, for example). She forms a personal or professional connection with an older man, the Ultra-Male: dark, brooding, charismatic, with a Past. He treats the heroine with contempt. He is sardonic. He smolders. She is both attracted and repelled by him. She wonders: does he love her? hate her? The Heroine tries to answer these questions while at the same time quenching her attraction, for she knows the Ultra-Male is really attracted to the glamorous Other Woman, who is even more powerful a presence when she is Dead. Eventually the Heroine becomes aware of an Awful Secret that she must solve before she can resolve her relationship with the Ultra-Male. The Awful Secret involves illicit sexuality in the Ultra-Male's Past, and when the Awful Secret is revealed the Heroine can finally live Happily Ever After. Reader, she marries him. (with apologies to Joanna Russ) Where did this plot come from? Why is it so popular with both writers and readers? In this class, we will read a number of Gothic fictions, beginning with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre . We will trace the permutations of Bronte's plot and the avatars of her heroines. We will finish by looking at some contemporary rewrites of Jane Eyre's story.
188 003Topic: Broadway MusicalDavid Van Leer This course will focus on the Broadway musical. It will in part offer an historical survey of the musical, from the early twentieth century to the early twenty-first. Among the texts probably to be considered are Show Boat, Oklahoma, Damn Yankees, West Side Story, A Chorus Line, Sunday in the Park With George , and Caroline , or Change . We will of course discuss the works as literary creation, with respect to their plot, music, staging, and commercial value. We will also consider, however, broader questions about the place of the musical in US culture. To what extent is the musical a uniquely US creation? What is the relation of this genre to contemporary theatrical and film traditions? Who are the makers of this genre, and what is the relation of the authors to their topics and their audiences? How has the development of other forms of music influenced the musical? Is there a future for the genre, and where does it lie? The course will study musicals largely through standard literary and visual texts - libretti, records, videos, and films. Neither performance experience nor the ability to read music will be required, although students who bring such abilities will also be welcome. The course will be run as a seminar. The requirements include one or two in-class reports on supplementary texts, and a short (2-page) paper on the first report. There will be as well a final longer (8-page) paper on a topic of the student's own choosing. A final exam may be scheduled. Extramural study of selected films and video presentations may also be recommended.
189 001Seminar in a Major Writer: James JoyceGregory Dobbins This seminar will be devoted to the works of James Joyce. Though we will briefly examine Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , our primary focus throughout the quarter will be a close and detailed reading of Ulysses , Joyce's most famous book and a work widely considered to be the most influential novel of the twentieth century. Ulysses is a notoriously Note : Although this course is designed as an introduction to Ulysses , it might be helpful to be already somewhat familiar with various other works-- such as Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist, Homer's Odyssey , Shakespeare's Hamlet -- that play an important role in Ulysses. If you have never read these works, you are encouraged-- though not required-- to read them before the quarter starts. Since we will be considering it so quickly, you are particularly and especially strongly encouraged-- though once again, not required-- to have read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man before the quarter begins.
189 002Seminar in a Major Writer: John MiltonRaymond Waddington This is not intended as a substitute for the lecture course, ENL 122; rather, it is for students who already have studied Milton and wish to get into the canon of his writings in greater depth. Tentatively, the readings will include the minor poetry, some of the prose works (e.g., The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates), Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes , and the middle books of Paradise Lost .
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