English 7010: Children's & Adolescents' Literature (3339)
Prof. Rutkoski, Wed 4:30-6:10
Description tba.
English 7011: Literary Texts & Critical Methods (3340)
Prof. Frydman, Tue 6:30-8:10
Open to students in MA English Teacher program. Obtain permission to register from Graduate Deputy.
Literature is an institution, in both senses of the word: it is a conservative edifice built by successive generations of artists, critics, and material forces; it is also a refuge for the mad, the outcast, and their assault on tradition, often in the name of saving literature from itself. Reading poetry, drama, and prose fiction, we will explore the dialectic of appropriation and innovation, denunciation and revision, at work in both art and theory. Visiting periods of literary history and schools of literary criticism, we will set them in relation to one another. Students will be asked to write numerous response papers in addition to one midterm close reading essay and a final research essay. Authors may include: Jorge Luis Borges, Pierre Bourdieu, Kamau Brathwaite, Emily Brontë, Ed Dorn, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert, Langston Hughes, Henry James, John Keats, Paule Marshall, Alice Notley, William Shakespeare, Victor Shklovsky, Virginia Woolf.
English 7101: The Canterbury Tales (3335)
Prof. Steel, Wed 6:30-8:10, Area 1
In this course, we will read Chaucer's last, unfinished masterpiece,
The Canterbury Tales. You will learn to read and translate Chaucer's late fourteenth-century London dialect of Middle English, and, through
The Canterbury Tales, be introduced to a number of major medieval genres and intellectual concerns. I will concentrate on a number of critical themes: Chaucer's treatment of nature, animals, automata, and
the nonhuman world in general; Chaucer's representation of gender and of
women in particular; and his attempts to imagine race, non-Christians,
and the world outside England. You will think about these topics with
me, but you will also be expected to develop your own observations and
arguments as your interests develop.
You will be evaluated on the basis of a paper (or two), a presentation,
regular translation assignments, a final research paper, and a final exam. Required texts:
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales ISBN 014042234X (ed. Jill Mann); Ellis, Chaucer: An Oxford Guide ISBN 0199259127.
English 7202: Milton (3336)
Prof. Haley, Mon 4:30-6:10, Area 2
Classicist, poet, playwright, historian, theologian, statesman—a man who wore many hats, Milton is best known for his culminating work, the epic Paradise Lost. But to understand this great poem we need to trace the various threads that lead into it: Milton's reading of the Bible, his marital experiences, his evolving political worldview, his intellectual debt to literary precursors. This course pays close attention to the text as well as to the historical context for Milton's work, while focusing especially on the range of rhetorical stances adopted by the author. Course requirements will include paraphrases, short quizzes, close-reading papers, and a brief presentation.
English 7320: Seminar: Dead Girls in 19th Century American Literature (3337)
Prof. Nadell, Thu 4:30-6:10, Area 3
Description tba.
English 7320: Seminar: Nineteenth Century American Poetry (3417)
Prof. Viscusi, Mon 6:30-8:10, Area 3
A genuinely popular art, American poetry in the nineteenth century belonged to conversations in the dining room and confabulations by the light of the moon on the porch, as well as to oratory on Sundays and holidays. Our talk is still filled with tags from this poetry, and our notions of national purpose still depend upon forgotten lines our poets wrote in honor of the Fourth of July, the Statue of Liberty, and the Erie Canal. The classes will be held at the Wolfe Institute (Boylan 2231) and – possibly, on one occasion – in Greenwood Cemetery. Among the poets: Philip Freneau, Bayard Taylor, Jones Very, Fitz-Green Halleck, John Greenleaf Whittier, Emma Lazarus, Joel Barlow, Clement Moore, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Sarah Orne Jewett, William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadworth Longfellow, Paul Laurance Dunbar. Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Edgar Allan Poe will occasionally visit. There will be two papers.
English 7404: Twentieth Century Fiction (3691)
Prof. Harrison, Mon 6:30-8:10, Area 4
Participants will be asked to scale some of the more demanding peaks of 20th century fiction-writing, by such masters as Gass, Gaddis, Bolaño, Murakami, Sebald and Coover. Participants will write considered responses to the authors in question. Please expect a great deal of reading, wonderful but arduous and, in all likelihood, suitable only for those with an already tested taste for ambitious fiction.
English 7420: Seminar: The Short Story (3692)
Prof. Fairey, Tue 4:30-6:10, Area 4
Note: not open to students who took Comp Lit 7702 in Fall 2012
This course focuses on the genre of the short story in comparative literature of the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. Stories are drawn from English, North and South American, Anglophone, European, and Asian traditions, including (as a sample) works by Tolstoy, Chekov, Kafka, Joyce, Marquez, Chopin, O'Connor, Carver, Beattie, Hempel, Wallace, Englander, Diaz, and Lahiri. Stories range from very short to long ones, stories that stand alone to ones that are linked in collections, and classics to contemporary pieces Since the short story is a form essentially without rules, attention will be paid to the ways that a great variety of stories take shape and help to define the genre. Course requirements include weekly response papers, one class presentation and a term paper.
English 7501: Introduction to Critical Theory (1054)
Prof. Vassileva, Wed 4:30-6:10, Area 5
The course is designed to introduce students to the major developments in the study of literary texts since 1960. It seeks to explore the ways in which theory reconnects literature with other areas of knowledge by investigating the cross-currents between psychoanalysis and literary texts, history and fiction, capitalism and realism, sexuality and writing, and language and other sign systems. We will focus on such approaches to literature as formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, postmodernism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, gender studies, and post-colonialism. The critics we will read include Shklovsky, Propp, Saussure, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Baudrillard, Freud, Lacan, Marx, Said, Irigaray, and others. In addition to studying theory itself, we will also examine its practical application in the reading of selected literary texts. Requirements include a research paper, final exam, and an oral presentation.
English 7506: Practicum in Teaching College-Level Composition (1055)
Prof. Moser, Wed 4:30-6:10, Area 5
Open to students in MA English and MFA Creative Writing Programs. Obtain permission to register from Graduate Deputy.
This course will introduce students to scholarship in the field of composition studies and allow them to use knowledge of historical and contemporary movements in composition in preparing to teach the first-year composition course. Students will read scholarly journals in the field containing articles that represent major theoretical concepts in composition studies over the last forty years, including but not limited to conversations from such fields as rhetoric, approaches to grammar, cultural studies, women's studies, psychology (social, cognitive, educational), critical theory, assessment, new technologies. Students will become familiar with some of the textbooks and materials available for teaching freshman composition and draft sample syllabi for a first-year composition course. At each meeting, there will be a discussion of the assigned readings (with students taking turns leading the discussion) and an exercise in practical applications of the theories presented in the readings.
English 7507: Advanced Theories & Practice of Composition (1056)
Prof. Siegel, Thu 6:30-8:10, Area 5
Open to students in MA English Teacher program. Obtain permission to register from Graduate Deputy. This course is the same as SEED 7548.
One of the biggest responsibilities of English teachers is the teaching of writing. How can a teacher help his/her students develop their own writing process, enable them to see their own weaknesses and work on them? How can a teacher both prepare students for the high stakes tests they have to take and at the same time, aim higher, to the level of expertise required in college? How can students learn to use writing to think and learn? How is work on grammar and conventions integrated into work on content and thinking? These are some of the questions that will be dealt with in this class. Requirements for the class include: a journal, a literacy autobiography, several other writing assignments and a Writing Teacher/Tutor Portfolio, where students will examine their own (or others') teaching, follow several of their own students throughout the term, and critique their own teaching of writing.
English 7620: Seminar: Chomsky: Linguistics, Mind, Politics (2466)
Prof. Nissenbaum, Wed 6:30-8:10, Area 6
Description tba.
Comp Lit 7702: Studies in Literary Genres: Manifestos (3415)
Prof. Welish, Mon 4:30-6:10, Area 7
The manifesto seeks to change the current state of affairs by summoning the conditions for a world that ought to be but that does not yet exist. We shall read several manifestos to understand the worlds they would bring about. Some speak through aphorism, others harangue; still others enlist reasoning arguments. By examining the rhetoric of these peculiar documents for their modes of discontent, utopic pronouncements, and ulterior motives, we shall engage the manifesto's political and aesthetic intentions. We concentrate on the question: what do manifestos and ars poetica have in common; how do they differ? We also address the question: why do cultural movements need performative stances in manifestos? Selected from a range of the polemical genre will be: Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism," William Wordsworth's " Preface to Lyrical Ballads"; Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al, "Declaration of Rights and Sentiments," W.E.B. Dubois et al, "The Niagara Declaration of Principles," "Alain Locke," The New Negro"; Filippo Marinetti, "The Futurist Manifesto" Ezra Pound, "Vortex"; Andre Breton, "The First Manifesto on Surrealism," Aimé Césaire, "Memorial for Louis Degrès"; Walter Gropius, "Manifesto of the Bauhaus, April 1919," El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehrenberg, editorial in "Objet," LEF Manifesto, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexandr Rodchenko, advert-prop. Grades will depend on student lecture notes, commentaries, short research paper and final exam.
Eng 7720: Seminar: Memory & Narrative: Between Nostalgia and Catastrophe (3693)
Prof. Elsky, Tue 6:30-8:10, Area 7
Starting with the way monuments have been used to memorialize 9/11, we will explore the role of personal and collective memory in a variety of literary and critical genres. We will look at the various ways in which the study of memory and commemoration since 9/11 has exercised a powerful influence on literary studies. Themes to be examined will include the recovery of suppressed memory; the invocation of an idealized past to achieve personal or collective identity; the reintegration of self through memory after traumatic loss and persecution; the politics and practice of war memory; the impact of Holocaust memory. Readings will include novels, diary, screenplay, personal letter, personal essay, critical essay. Readings will be drawn mostly, but not entirely, from twentieth-century America and Europe. Assignments will include a midterm short paper and a longer end of semester paper. Readings will include W. G. Sebald, Margaret Duras, Sigmund Freud, Giorgio Agamben, and major contributors to literary memory studies.
English 7800: Intro to Literary Research (0834)
Prof. Masciandaro, Thu 6:30-8:10
Open to students in MA English preparing to write the Thesis. Obtain permission to register from Graduate Deputy.
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the theory and practice of scholarly work in literary studies. More specifically, it prepares students for writing the Master's Thesis by offering instruction and guidance through a series of essential tasks: conceiving of a thesis topic, conducting preliminary research and writing, building a bibliography, developing an argument, working with an advisor, and writing the thesis proposal. In addition to several smaller assignments, two longer writing projects are required, a 10-page paper on some aspect of the thesis project and a thesis proposal or prospectus. Class time will be spent discussing a variety of readings in literary criticism and critical theory, analyzing the methods and aims of literary study, and evaluating one another's ideas and progress. Students will be required to give presentations on their projects and topics of interest. Course readings will be collectively determined at the beginning of the semester in relation to students' project ideas.
English 7810: Thesis (0835)
Open to MA English students who have completed English 7800. Obtain permission to register from Graduate Deputy.
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