Brooklyn College English Department

Courses

Fall 2008 Courses

English 700X: Introduction to Literary Research (2558)
Prof. Steel
Th. 6:05-7:45 p.m.
(Permission required: for MA English students only)

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 (due at mid term) and a thesis proposal. 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.

For permission, contact profmsp@msn.com.

English 700.1X: Literary Texts and Critical Methods (2560)
Prof. Frydman
Th. 6:05-7:45 p.m.
(Permission required: for MA English Teacher students only)

This course will treat literary criticism as an ongoing, non-linear series of dialogues and debates about literary texts. By familiarizing ourselves with a broad range of literary terms and critical methods, we will develop versatile strategies for contextualizing, appreciating, and teaching literature. We will read literary texts from many historical periods, putting them in conversation with one another and with modern interpretive approaches. Authors include Honoré de Balzac, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Geoffrey Chaucer, Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, Margery Kempe, Sylvia Plath, and Jean Rhys. Critical traditions include African American Studies, colonial discourse analysis and Postcolonial Studies, Deconstruction, Feminism and Gender Studies, Formalism, Marxism, New Criticism, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism and Poststructuralism.

For permission, contact profmsp@msn.com.

English 702X: Structure of Modern English (2561)
Prof. Roy
Th 6:05-7:45 p.m.
Area 6

An examination of the structure of English from the user's, the teacher's and learner's point of view. Those who use and teach English in our society need to understand better its nature and structure. Topics addressed include the detailed examination of the structures of sounds, words, sentences and meaning, as well as, the linguistic, psychological and pedagogical parameters of English.

Study questions will be provided prior to the final. There will be a couple of announced quizzes, and one ten page paper about a topic which is of interest to you that is related to the structure of English.

English 715X: Children's and Adolescents' Literature (2565)
Prof. Vighetti
W 6:05-7:45 p.m.
(Permission required: for MA English Teacher students only)

Children's literature runs the gamut from soft books with images to formulaic literature. And, moreover, all good children's literature relates interesting stories along with instruction about culture, growing up, facing difficulties and so much more. But it is impossible to cover all aspects in one course. Hence, this course is a combination of fairy tales, modern works, classical texts as well as formulaic and picture books. We start with "Little Red Riding Hood and end up with the wonderful Alice books by Lewis Carroll. It is hoped that not only will all gain an insight into this world of children's literature, but also gain insight on how to judge such work so as to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Two papers, one about 4 pages, one of 10 or so pages, are required in addition to a mid-term and a final. The ten page paper centers on adolescent literature focusing on both new and old texts, a list of which will be supplied.

For permission, contact profmsp@msn.com.

English 741X: Nineteenth Century Literature I (5411)
Prof. Brownstein
W 4:15-5:55 p.m.
Area 3

We will raise the first big question, about the place of nineteenth-century English literature in the twenty-first century, by reading two short novels by Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1817), and looking at some recent cinematic adaptations. We will go on to study poems and some prose by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and some other writers of the period, focusing on characteristic forms and themes. In addition to weekly "response" papers, students will be responsible for an oral report and a paper about a recent study, adaptation, biography, or version of a Romantic writer's life or work or both, or a recent work inspired by one or the other.

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English 753.1X: Twentieth Century American Fiction (5418)
Prof. Entin
T 6:05-7:45 p.m.
Area 4

Writing against the American Grain

This course will explore the work of several writers whose poems and novels challenge some of the prevailing ideologies, official slogans, and sanctioned forms of national belonging in twentieth-century U.S. culture. We will be searching for literature that is oppositional in its aims and often experimental in its form and style, and we will cut a jagged and unorthodox path through the literary landscape, perhaps taking a detour into the realm of film and/or photography. We are likely to place particular emphasis on the long mid-century era, from the 1930s to the 1960s, a period of immense tumult that ended with the consolidation of a Cold War form of national identity that was thoroughly anticommunist and rigidly patriotic. How did writers and other artists question, contest, and/or subvert the dominant meanings of what Henry Luce, the founder of Time and Life magazines, referred to in 1941 as "The American Century"? What kinds of challenges do such writers pose to hegemonic forms of national belonging? On a more general, theoretical level, we will ask: What role does literature play in the reproduction of social power? How can we theorize literary and cultural opposition? Writers may include W.E.B. DuBois, Meridel Le Sueur, Pietro di Donato, Richard Wright, Carlos Bulosan, John Okada, Ralph Ellison, John Rechy, Allen Ginsberg, Leslie Marmon Silko, and others. Students will be responsible for frequent reading responses, a short essay, a longer essay, and active participation in class discussion.

English 761X: Shakespeare (5412)
Prof. Belton
M 6:05-7:45 p.m.
Area 2

Problems of interpretation in relation to selected comedies, histories, and tragedies. The goal of the course is for students to read and gain a deeper understanding of Shakespeare's plays by developing and deploying a variety of interpretive strategies. Readings will include some of the more widely read plays and some that are less well known, along with literary criticism representing various critical approaches. Topics to be considered include the relationship between the play and the spectator, issues of characterization and dramatic structure, and the subtleties of Shakespeare's language. The relationship between written text and performance is emphasized, with screenings and attendance at staged productions when possible. Students will work in teams to prepare a class presentation that includes a staged reading of a scene from one of the plays and an analysis of important aspects of the play using appropriate critical sources. They will each write a reflective/analytical paper that discusses their research and the process of preparing the scene for performance. They will also do informal in-class writing, participate in small group discussions, and take a final exam. Required texts will be the Pelican editions of the plays, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare, ed. Russ McDonald (Boston: Bedford, 1996) and an anthology of critical essays. For information on the reading list or other questions please e-mail the instructor at: ebelton@brooklyn.cuny.edu.

English 775X: Introduction to Critical Theory (5413)
Prof. Vassileva
M 4:15-5:55 p.m.
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 provocative approaches to literature as formalism, new criticism, structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalytic criticism, Marxism, post-colonialism, and feminism. We will read critical works by Shklovsky, Propp, Bakhtin, Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari, Freud, Lacan, Marx, Said, and Kristeva. In addition to studying the theory itself, we will also examine its practical application in the reading of selected literary texts. Requirements include two tests, a final paper, and an oral presentation.

English 775.2X: Literature and Society (5414)
Prof. Viscusi
W 6:05-7:45 p.m.
Area 5

rviscusi@brooklyn.cuny.edu

This course explores literature's function in ideologies of class, race, gender, nation. It turns the student's attention to the nature of literary institutions -- how they arise, how they survive, what purposes they serve - and it connects the study of these institutions to the practice of research, writing, publication, and teaching. Texts will include some of the following: Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction; Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle; Slavoj Žižek, Mapping Ideology; Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class; Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction; W.E.B.DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; Jane Austen, Persuasion; Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Mario Puzo, The Godfather; Douglas Rushkoff, Exit Strategy. Course requirements: one class presentation; two papers; final examination.

English 778X: Theories of College-level Composition (5415)
Prof. Brooks
T 4:15-5:55 p.m.
(Permission required: for MA English/MFA students only)
Area 5

This is a course about theories and practices of teaching composition in college. Through reading, discussion, and writing about essays on teaching, writing, and teaching writing, we develop some basic notions of how to structure a course, manage a classroom, create assignments, and respond to as well as evaluate students' writing. We consider language issues (such as dialects and English-as-a-second-language) and the uses and problems of teaching grammar. We think about writing as a mode of learning and a way to help students become critical readers and thinkers. We reflect on writing as a process. We investigate our own instincts and goals as teachers. Readings cover topics such as the following: development of a course, collaborative learning, writing across the curriculum, rhetoric and culture, and "the teaching life." We make time for our questions, anticipated (and unanticipated) problems, and samples of student writing.

Writing requirements include responses to texts (both student and professional), a first day assignment, a syllabus for a composition course, and a short (5 to 7 pages) paper. An important goal will be to have the course be both useful and enjoyable.

For permission, contact profmsp@msn.com.

English 779X/Education 792.4X: Adv. Theories and Practice of Composition (5416)
Prof. Siegel
T 6:05-7:45 p.m.
(Permission required: for MA English Teacher students only)
Area 5

One of the biggest responsibilities of English teachers is the teaching of writing. How can a teacher help their 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, several writing assignments along with a Writing Teacher 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.

For permission, contact profmsp@msn.com.

English 780: Thesis Project (2576)
(Permission required: for MA English students only)
Pre-requisite: completion of English 700X

An extensive research project, normally based on the thesis proposal developed in English 700X, which is supervised by a member of the faculty and which leads to submission of a master's thesis. Students receive credit for this course only after approval of the completed thesis.

To obtain permission, you must submit to the Graduate Deputy the "thesis title" form signed by the faculty member who will supervise the thesis project. The form can be obtained here.

English 791X: Seminar: Sweaty Business: Labor, Bodies, and Transformation in Medieval Literature (5419)
Prof. Masciandaro
T 6:05-7:45 p.m.
Area 1

CHANGE OF TOPIC AND INSTRUCTOR

But cursed was the tyme, I dare wel seye,

That men first dide hir swety bysinesse—Chaucer, The Former Age

Sustain and love them also that labour in the great alchemy, that is to say, the laborers of the earth—The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers

The ambiguity of the body, by which the I is engaged in the other but comes always from the hither side, is produced in labor—Emmanuel Levinas

Medieval representations of labor are fundamentally related to the meaning of bodies, human bodies, animal bodies, social bodies, cosmic bodies. Through these relationships the figure of the laborer embodies the human as an ambivalent and contingent category, a site, not of stable identity, but of transition and transformation. On the one hand, the laborer figures true or full or essential humanity. He is homo faber, man the maker, the living product of the divine Artifex, something made by God to work and so endowed with reason and hands that set him above the animals. On the other hand, the laborer figures fallen and sub-humanity. He is a mere animal laborans, a debased, sinful, and rebellious creature whose most necessary and self-defining activity only enacts its alienation from itself and its maker. The laborer is, in short, a conjunction of bodies that are and are not his own, a human body being animal, a divine hand being the foot of society. This seminar will study medieval representations of labor from several genres, giving special attention to questions of the body and embodiment. Topics to be covered include: the gendering of labor, the mechanical arts, peasant bodies, vocation, suffering, alchemy, rebellion, intellectual labor, and theories of production. Works to be read, in whole or part, include: Augustine, On the Work of Monks; Romance of the Rose; The Smyth and His Dame; Sir Isumbras; Bonaventure, On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology; Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon; Chaucer, Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale and The Former Age; William Langland, Piers Plowman; The Cloud of Unknowing; John Gower, Confessio Amantis; Caxton’s Aesop; plus critical and theoretical readings on labor and the body. Requirements: Weekly responses/close readings, final research project, final exam.

English 792X: Seminar: Writing For Life: Early Modern Writers (5420)
Prof. Elsky
T 6:05-7:45 p.m.
Area 2

What is the relationship between writer and her/his work in a period of technological change, social turmoil, political upheaval, and religious discontent? This course will look at some of the differing motives that drove early modern men and women to write. We will look at writing as a negotiation of private feeling, social status, and authorial aspiration. We will begin with writers who refused to avail themselves of the new print technologies. Topics will include intensely private, readerless lyrics of inner religious conflict, as well as love lyrics circulated privately to close personal friends and family as expressions of social bonding and frustrated social aspirations. We will move to the new brashly public poetry by writers who exploited printed publication to raise their social status as artists by creating the modern persona of the Author, the professional who claimed literary and moral authority through writing. We will conclude with the Civil War period by considering how poetry became a vehicle of both engagement with, and disappointment in, the new democratic republic established by the English Revolution. If time permits we will end with a consideration of John Milton as the prototype of the author as the modern intellectual. Writers will include Thomas Wyatt, John Donne, Mary Wroth, George Herbert, Ben Jonson, Amelia Lanyer Andrew Marvell. The course will use a variety approaches, including close reading, personal and social history. Course requirements include a short paper, final paper, and final exam.

English 793X: Seminar: Nineteenth Century African-American Literature (2583)
Prof. Nadell.
Th 6:05-7:45 p.m
Area 3

COURSE CANCELLED

English 794X: Seminar: Woolf and Forster (2588)
Prof. Tremper
W 4:15-5:55 p.m.
Area 4

Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster were friends. Each called him or herself a Socialist. We call them both Modernists. And yet to read their fiction, published roughly in the same envelope of time - 1910-1940 - is to step into very different worlds - from the perspective of craft but also of abiding interests. The purpose of this course is to consider the experiments in narrative technique that characterize Woolf's "Modernist" fiction and the thematic concerns that characterize Forster's "Modernist" themes. Woolf, in a letter to a friend in 1917, after publishing "The Mark on the Wall" - different from anything she had done before - wrote: "Its [sic] an absorbing thing (I mean writing is) and its [sic] high time we found some new shapes, don't you think so?" We will examine, from the perspective of recent theorists of narrative, the variety of her efforts to convey life - "a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end." Forster, on the other hand, was absorbed by the stresses and strains, for the man of conscience, that new class relations and imperialism created in the modern age. He was, on the whole, content to render these relations in the way the Victorians did. We will read four novels by Woolf (Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves) and three by Forster- (A Room with a View, Howards End, A Passage to India).

English 795X: Seminar: Queer Studies (5421)
Prof. Minter
T 6:05-7:45 p.m.
Area 5

Our contemporary notions of sexual difference have their roots in the late 19th Century. The division of homosexuality and heterosexuality into separate categories of being occurred at a transitional moment in literary history, a period that witnessed the maturity of existing literary modes like realism and aestheticism, and creative experiments that anticipated the later innovations of modernism. This course will examine how authors of the period gave voice to changing perceptions of sexuality by using the literary tools available to them as one century lapsed into the other. Some key questions we will consider: How did changes in literary form influence the perception of sexual difference, and vice versa? And is it just coincidence that obscure literary values like 'complexity' and 'ambiguity' were favored by authors who felt the need to hide (yet somehow represent) their innermost desires?

English 795.6X: Seminar: Semiology and Structuralism (2589)
Prof. Patkowski
M 6:05-7:45 p.m.
Area 6

In the preface to his Prison-House of Language, Fredric Jameson exclaims, “Language as a model! To rethink everything… in terms of linguistics!” This course will survey the linguistic model presented by Ferdinand de Saussure in the early twentieth century and its structuralist (and, eventually, post- structuralist) projection. First, we will examine Saussure’s writings and the way in which his theory of the sign was later extended and re-interpreted by such authors as Roland Barthes (particularly in
Mythologies and Elements of Semiology) and Jacques Derrida (with a focus on the second chapter of his Of Grammatology). Next, we will consider the relation between reader, writer, and text, and the ways in which structuralism promotes analysis of the reader’s role in producing meaning, leading to the eventual proclamation of “the death of the author,” a proclamation which has been seen as signaling the transition to post-structuralism. Finally, we will read three novels which have all been subjected (rightfully or not) to extensive semiological and (post-)structuralist interpretations: Beckett’s Watt, Nabokov’s Pale Fire, and Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.

Class requirements: two short essays (“write your own myth” and "structural analysis of a short text"); class presentation on one of the above novels in light of our semiological investigations (the last several sessions of the course will be devoted to this) and term paper (on same topic); regular attendance and active participation.

English 795.7X: Seminar: Race and Ethnicity in Caribbean Literature (6082)
Prof. King
M 4:15-5:55 p.m.
Area 7

ADDED COURSE

Hybridity. Metissage. Creole. Mestizaje. These words refer to the complex contact of, conflict between, and mixture of peoples and cultures in the Caribbean. This course explores issues of race and ethnicity in the Caribbean through a variety of literary texts. Students will examine how the concepts of race and ethnicity function in Caribbean societies, in both intra- and inter-ethnic situations, as well as how these concepts relate to gender, sexuality, color, class, and other topics. We will analyze each text's form, content, and perspective, as well as its historical, political, and social context. Presentations encourage students to describe their own ideas and help lead class discussions. Together we will delve into the complexities of race and ethnicity in the Caribbean. Course requirements include several short response papers, an in-class presentation, an annotated bibliography, and a final essay.

English 795.7X: Seminar: The Shape of Twenty First Century Literature (2590)
Prof. Fairey
Th 4:15-5:55 p.m.
Area 7

Many excellent literary works have been published since millennial anxiety issued in the twenty-first century. But is there yet a shape and definition to twenty-first century literature? A century ago Virginia Woolf famously proclaimed, “On or about December 1910 human nature changed.” Might a similar pronouncement be made in relation to 9/11, from which it would follow that post-9/11 literature is distinct from what went before? More broadly, what are the currents of global twenty-first century literature, especially fiction? These are questions this course aims to explore. A tentative syllabus includes post 9/11 essays by Barbara Kingsolver, Arundhati Roy, Peter Carey, and Thomas Friedman, fiction by Ian McEwen, Monica Ali, Susan Choi, J.M. Coetzee, Hari Kunzru, Junot Diaz, Orhan Pamuk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Rick Moody, and memoir by Marjane Santrapi and Edwige Dandicaat. Themes include the force in our psyches and our lives of war and terrorism, immigration and transnational experience, the internet explosion, a global economy, apocalyptic fantasies, and shifts in literary genre, including the blurring of genres of fiction, history, and essay and the new popularity of the graphic novel. Students will write weekly responses to the readings, make one class presentation, write a term paper, and take a final exam.

Comparative Literature 707.1X: Literary Genres: Science Writing (5835)
Prof. Kahn
W 6:05-7:45 p.m.
Area 7

Long gone are the times when writing about science meant either conventional newspaper and magazine articles or highly technical reports for a few experts. This course surveys the enormously diverse landscape of science writings that serve many different audiences today - including Oliver Sacks' best-selling books and essays on the brain's mysteries; the New York Times' Dot Earth blog about the state of our planet; websites from non-profit groups that advocate for specific actions, or provide medical information on a particular disease and support for patients and their families; and in-depth scientific reports and analyses geared to decision-makers in politics, business, law or health.

Students will explore these genres both as readers and writers, through a combination of critical reading exercises, class discussions, and writing assignments in which they draft different types of pieces (on self-chosen subjects). Some of these assignments require students to seek out interesting new angles and first-hand information on their topic-for example, by interviewing experts with conflicting views, or visiting a local laboratory to learn the story behind an important discovery. For their final project, students use instructor- and peer feedback on their works-in-progress, plus their own editing skills, to produce a set of polished articles representing several different genres and targeting different audiences.