Courses Offered
PURVIS—EN 500 — 001 / 11772
(x – l with WS 530-001)
Feminist Theory: Major Texts
W / 2 – 4:30
Part I in a Women’s Studies course sequence, this course establishes a baseline of knowledge of feminist theory in order to prepare students for the study of contemporary feminist theory in WS 530. Students may enroll in either course, or both. This course does not serve as a prerequisite to Part II in the sequence. “Transfeminisms” takes as its starting point the premise that feminist theory is always-already trans- and embarks on analyses of critical debates within feminist theory concerning sex, gender, subjectivities, epistemologies, power, bodies, politics, and the field of Women’s and Gender Studies.
Much like the term, Queer, Trans- signifies plural locations and non-binary conceptions of bodies and identifications. Like Queer, it challenges the fixity of meaning and narratives of linear progression. The subject of this course, trans- and transfeminisms is not simply a trans-cognizant and trans-inclusive approach to feminist theory. This course examines key moments in the trans-ing of feminism and its constitutive categories and modes of analysis, including the category, woman, which can be traced back to Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech and other early feminist interventions that interrogate the category, “woman” and linked with contemporary transgender theorists, such as Susan Stryker, Jay Prosser, Jack Halberstam, and Gayle Salamon. Despite misguided attempts to separate feminism from transgender theory, or trans- from queer theory, this course explores the assertion that the most politically efficacious forms of feminism are always-already trans. This course investigates what we mean by Transfeminisms, examines not only Transgender Theory but the trans-ing of categories; it extends Trans- and Trans-feminist approaches to transnational, transcultural, transspecies, and transgenerational theories and politics, which generates new methodologies, new modes of gendered subjectivity, new discourses, and new lines of inquiry that promote structural transformation. (Prerequisites: None)
DAVIES—EN 523 – 001 / CRN: 14274
(x- l with 423)
History of the English Language
T R / 11 – 12:15
This course considers questions such as the following: Why does Southern English have to propose “y’all” for a plural “you”? And while we’re at it, what happened to “thou”? What’s the deal with the subjunctive? How did Scandinavian pronouns (they, their, them) creep into English? Why can’t we ask “Have you not heard?” without sounding weird? Since the momentous event in 1066 was called “the Norman Conquest,” why aren’t we speaking French instead of English? Who decided that we can’t say “Ain’t nothin’ like ‘em nowhere” in standardized English? What’s going on with, like, quotatives, “and he was like….!”? Why can’t everybody open their book? How is English being affected by globalization and the internet? The course is an introduction to the external history of the English language along with the study of the accompanying internal changes in structure. It begins by peering back through the mists of history by means of linguistic tools that allow us to reconstruct what the original language in our “family” was like. Then we will track changes in English through its close encounters with other languages (most notably the Celtic languages, Old Norse, and French), through attempts at standardization, through the effects of globalization, to its diverse contemporary forms. For English majors the course should provide a basis for understanding the evolution of English grammar, pronunciation, and spelling as a background for studying English literature. The course examines the development of English from two perspectives: its outer history (i.e., the sociohistorical, cultural, and political forces that have helped shape the language) and its inner history (the phonological, grammatical, and lexical changes that have taken place). In addition, it looks at some general principles of language change and relates them to specific developments in English. By the end of the course you should understand why the English language is the way it is and be able to predict how it may change. Prerequisite(s): EN 320 or EN 321 or ANT 210 or ANT 401 or ANT 450 or FR 361 or IT 361 or SP 361.
DAVIES — EN 525—001 / CRN: 12603
(x- l with 425)
Dialectology (Variation in American English)
T R / 2 – 3:15
At the annual conference every year, the American Dialect Society selects a Word of the Year. For 2016, it was “dumpster fire;” for 2017, is was “fake news.” In the year 2000, the ADS declared that the Word of the Twentieth Century was jazz,” and the Word of the Millennium was “she.” Have you ever wondered where words like “okra,” or “bungalow,” or “ketchup,” or “cyberspace” come from? Who creates brand-new words in American English? How do we know the “correct” grammar to use in various forms of writing (an essay for your English literature class versus a text to a friend) and in different contexts for speaking? Do men and women communicate differently? Is it possible to place a person (within the United States or even within Alabama) by accent? Who uses “y’all” versus “you guys”? What is a foreign accent and are some accents more prestigious than others? Under what circumstances do people change the way they speak? Are Southerners more polite than other Americans? If you’ve ever contemplated questions like these, then this course will be of interest to you, especially if you are planning a career that involves language and communication (e.g., majors in English, Communication, Education, Journalism, Communicative Disorders, Marketing, Social Work…..). The course is designed for anyone who would like to understand more about linguistic diversity within what we think of as “American English.” Using films such as My Fair Lady (and American versions of this film such as Pretty Woman), My Cousin Vinny, classic clips by Key and Peele, and other resources that highlight regional, ethnic, and social distinctions, we’ll explore differences in accent, vocabulary, grammar, and patterns of language use among people from across the United States. We’ll look at how dialect differences developed and how they are changing, reflect on how language is a part of our identity, and consider the consequences of linguistic stereotyping, both positive and negative. Students will have an opportunity to contribute to a website on Language in Alabama for the citizens of our state. Ideal prerequisite(s): an introductory linguistics course (e.g., EN 320 or EN 321 or ANT 210 or ANT 401 or ANT 450 or FR 361 or IT 361 or SP 361.)
Various Instructors: EN—534
T R / 12:30 – 1:30
Teaching Practicum
Spring semester only. Required of all graduate assistants teaching EN 102 for the first time. Training in reaching EN 102 course goals and writing outcomes.
534—001 / CRN: 11615 Kidd, Jessica 534—101 / CRN:
534 –002 / CRN: 12772 Niiler, Luke 534—102 / CRN:
534—003 / CRN: 13238 Champagne, Brooke 534—103 / CRN:
534—004 / CRN: 14275 Loper, Natalie 534—104 / CRN:
534—005 / CRN: NEW Presnall, Marni 534—105 / CRN:
Must simultaneously register for Thursday session with same lecture instructor.
McNAUGHTON—EN—609-322 / CRN: 20452
(x-l with EN 539-001/CRN: 20465)
R / 9:30 – 10:40
Navigating Graduate School & Preparing for the Job Market
This one-hour course, geared towards PhDs and MAs but open to all, will run every Spring. Together we engage collaboratively some of the professional tasks of graduate school. Divided into two areas, the course begins with specific practical advice: where to find funding and how to apply, how to choose and prepare for conferences, how to find professors to work with, and so on. The second area calls on you to choose your own adventure. You will prepare for the job market, producing the elements of an application (CV to cover letter to interview); you will prepare a major application for a research grant or fellowship (with many of the same formal tasks); or you will undertake a task of a similar professional kind. Each class member is on the hiring or funding committee.
WELLS—EN 601—001 / CRN: 12644
Fiction Workshop
M / 2 – 4:30
This class is intended for students enrolled in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and will concentrate on the writing, reading, and workshopping of fiction.
ESTES—EN 603 —320 / CRN: 10474
Poetry Workshop
W / 2 – 4:30
A Taste of Your Own Medicine: Divinatory Poetics
“What’s the most you ever saw lost on a coin toss?” When Anton Chigurh—the psychopathic agent of fate in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men—asks this of a Texas hill country filling station proprietor as a way of determining whether he should live or die, we are confronted with a vision of nature severe and inscrutable; survival of the fittest does not apply, nor does any principle of justice that trades on righting or deserving. Nature is simply that which is given—the plane of value, the plane of consequence, that is where we live, and meanings are created when our confrontations are translated to action. Thankfully, since we are not psychopaths, our encounters with this given,—whether we brush against the back of God on a mountain or yield our not-self to the Absolute beneath a tree or find the path of love eating mushrooms (or whatever!)—while we do meet an unsentimental mystery, it is nonetheless a mystery that can invite even as it resists, that is a local site of endless distances. How one finds much less crosses that threshold, though, how one pierces the veil of isis, so to speak, how one attempts to unlock and decode a nature that, according to Heraclitus, loves to hide, this is what Selah Saterstrom calls divinatory poetics, which she defines as “[The employment of] various divinatory generators (instructions, methods, and trances), [to] attempt to enter the flux and sing out loud some of the animated strands of potential [seen] inside an illuminated intricacy, by which I mean my life, a life, or the life of others.” In this course as read Saterstrom’s Ideal Suggestions in advance of her campus visit, we will also delve into her source material, not to retrace her steps, per se, but to breathe within that hovering life beneath her text, to be prompted, prodded, and inspired in a similar web of signs to uncover a vision of (a scent for, a dwelling with) what you desire, what drives and lures you, what breaks and heals you, what particular elixir is yours to carry to the world of others. Readings books on the tarot and Southern folklore/witchcraft/voodoo; poetry of CD Wright, CA Conrad, and Joan Fiset; philsophy of Blanchot, Barthes, Diderot; and other works of mystical and natural (i.e. private) history. We come to make things out of language but only, really, as an art of knowing, as a means of finding and keeping on our way; we come to see how much can be won. As Saterstrom says: “We want to see how different lights can be broadcast through reflective particles: We want to read and write.”
FELT—EN 605—001 / CRN: 10474
Nonfiction Workshop
T / 2 – 4:30
The Personal Political: Memoir as Activism
In this course we will explore how individual stories can come together to create communities, solidarity, and movements. We will look at the intersection of art and activism, discuss self-care practices, and how to get your writing to the audience that needs it. One of our main goals will be to identify holes in the narratives that most often get told about/by members of your community—and how to expand the parameters of those narratives. We will also address the following questions: What can you do with the frustration of not seeing yourself represented on the page? How can you develop confidence in the value of your story? How might expanding your ideas about the boundaries of self-allow for the amplification of voice?
RAWLINGS—EN 608—001 / CRN: 14276
A Matter of Time
W / 2 – 4:30
Flashback, flash-forward, pause, reversal, compression, dilation, simultaneity, and leap: how does time unfold in fiction? From Irving’s leap of many years in “Rip Van Winkle” T.C. Boyle’s compression of a whole life into just a few pages in “The Hit Man, “ writers have manipulated time in fiction since, well, the beginning of time (or at least since the beginning of fiction). Our goal this semester will be to read and write several creative pieces that use time in fiction in interesting ways.
MARTONE—EN 608—002 / CRN: 14277
Ephemera Forms
M / 10 – 12:30
Collage, letters, postcards, mail art, broadsides, billboards, memorials, found texts, skywriting, textual installations.
This course will have writers consider the material nature of their art and attempt to create “writing” that goes beyond the default of the 8 ½ x 11 page, the printed book, bookstores, and libraries by examining various other production methods and delivery devices of textual art. We will consider the work of mail-art artists such as Ray Johnson as well as the work of the United States Postal Service; collagists Joseph Cornell and Tom Phillips as well as “writers” such as
Cris Mazza, Mary Ruefle, Howard Junker, Claudia Rankin, Robert O. Butler, Rao Pingru, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. Writers in the class will explore and create a variety of projects always with an eye on existential, marginal, and ephemeral nature of the art they create. There will be a semester project as well as weekly assignments.
BROUWER—EN 608—003 / CRN: 11734
Uses of History
R / 2 – 4:30
THE USES OF HISTORY. Henry James, in a scathing 1904 letter to Sarah Orne Jewett, railed against the historical novel, saying that any imaginative interpretation of historical events was “condemned” to “a fatal cheapness,” because it is impossible for an author to represent in fiction “the whole CONSCIOUSNESS, the soul, the sense, the horizon, the vision” of people who lived in an age in which the author did not. This seems like a reasonable charge, and it raises the question of why a creative writer would choose in the first place to base an imaginative text on a historical event or historical characters. Isn’t it the historian’s job to research and explain the facts of history, and the creative writer’s job to invent imaginary events and people? Why would a writer want to burden herself with what James sees as the impossible task of getting “real” history right, when she has the power to simply invent an imaginary histoire of her own? Might imaginative literature have the capacity to express certain historical realities more effectively than traditional historical studies? In what ways might those traditional historical studies themselves be a species of creative writing? In this course, we will investigate the uses of history in imaginative writing (and, to a lesser extent, the uses of the imagination in historical writing), and differences between the past as it is presented in “non-fictional” histories and in imaginative works based upon historical events. We’ll read imaginative works that somehow address a historical era, person, phenomenon, or event; survey some critical essays that examine problems in historiography; and attempt a variety of history-based creative writing exercises ourselves. For a final project, each student will complete a long imaginative work (in any genre) that springs from and/or responds to a historical subject of the student’s choosing. Texts may include works by Isaac Babel, Roberto Bolano, J.M. Coetzee, Martha Collins, Don Delillo, Cornelius Eady, Carolyn Forche, Ha Jin, Herodotus, Henry James, Akira Kurosawa, Rachel Loden, Sigrid Nunez, Michael Ondaatje, Julie Otsuka, Gillo Pontecorvo, Muriel Rukeyser, W.G. Sebald, Joseph Skibell, W.D. Snodgrass, Graham Swift, D.M. Thomas, Thucydides, Natasha Tretheway, David Foster Wallace, Hayden White, C.D. Wright, Marguerite Yourcenar, or others. N.B.: MFA students specializing in any genre are welcome. Writing assignments and final projects may be written in any genre.
BEHN—EN 608—004 / CRN: 10464
Documentary Poetics
T / 2 –4:30
EN 608 Documentary Poetics We will explore a variety of poetics and practices in creative documentary writing. Many, but by not all, of our examples will be poetry, but class members are always welcome to write in any genre(s) of their choosing. How, in the face of historical and contemporary narratives, micro or macro, can the writer respond, concerned not with the solitary individual but with community, culture, history, power? What will be our point of view? Our tone, our approach? Shall we be expository, observing, archival, interactive, reflexive? We’ll see examples of these modalities, and of strategies such as collage, narration, monologue, choral speaking, framing, found texts, sampling and extending documents, intercutting, arranging, re-arranging, fictionalizing, staging, transcribing…. How shall we interact with the texts of disadvantaged voices? Multiple voices? To whom are we speaking, and how, and where shall we speak? Can we combine the epic with the lyric? How might we still record the mind-in-action as we respond to what—then, now—is? And how, through all this, might we, in the words of Philip Metres, “confront (our) epistemological limitedness and our position of privilege as text-workers”? Possible readings include Camille Dungy, Tyehimba Jess, Solmaz Sharif, Charles Reznikoff, Muriel Rukeyser, Claudia Rankine, Martha Collins, Layli Long Soldier, H. C. Hix, Public Enemy, James Agee, C.D.Wright, Mark Nowak, Craig Santos Perez, Robert Polito, Tess Taylor, Walt Whitman, Joseph Harrington, Kenneth Goldsmith, Deborah Paradez, M. NourbeSe Philip, Bhanu Kapil, Carolyn Forche, Philip Metres, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Gil Scott-Herons, Pablo Neruda, Juliana Spahr, Gayatri Spivak.
STAPLES—EN 608—005 / CRN: 18338
Y A Lit
F/ 9:30 – 11
I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It’s nice.—J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
In this course, we will get excited about the 12-18 set, reading and writing young adult fiction. We will discuss the literary possibilities for the genre, and review subgenres, including adventure, contemporary, dystopia, diaries, and historical—while also considering hybridizing strategies such the inclusion of texts, ads, lists, images, and verse. Readings may include S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, M.T. Anderson’s Feed, Julie Bauxbam’s Tell Me Three Things, Jason Reynold’s Long Way Down, and Kevin Waltman’s Slump.
ESTES—EN 609—001 / CRN: 14968
CW Pedagogy-200
M / 12:30 – 1:20
This is a course designed to support first-time teachers of EN 200, Introduction to Creative Writing, with a communal space to discuss strategies for effective teaching and creative writing pedagogy.
ESTES—EN 609—002 / CRN: 19816
CW Pedagogy-300
F / 12 – 12:50
Creative Writing Pedagogy. This course supports first-time teachers of EN 301, 303, and 305 with a communal space to share classroom strategies, focused on genre-specific writing, the workshop, and the mentoring of others.
Hybrid Forms: In this course we will explore hybridity as a literary form and, through a series of experiments, generate our own hybrid texts. What exactly is a hybrid form? The shimmering seam where two previously defined structures conjunct to cast new shadows? An unexpected union that ruptures the borderland between what we think we know and uncertainty? A space wired by seemingly dissonant inclinations that reveals new strategies for engagement? At the crossroads of hybridity, we will explore these and other questions and in so doing uncover the narratives we feel compelled to articulate through our writing.
BEHN—EN 609—004 / CRN: 16232
Getting Out There
W / 5 – 5:50
Getting Out There: A practical course in two parts. First, getting one’s writing out there: submitting to journals, book contests, and the like. Second, getting one’s self out there on the job market, taking advantage of UA’s resources for non-academic job seekers (we already have an EN 609 on the academic job search, so this is the non-academic complement to that). Give yourself the gift of deadlines and a simpatico group.
McNAUGHTON—EN—609-322 / CRN: 20452
(x-l with EN 539-001/CRN: 20465)
R / 9:30 – 10:40
Navigating Graduate School & Preparing for the Job Market
This one-hour course, geared towards PhDs and MAs but open to all, will run every Spring. Together we engage collaboratively some of the professional tasks of graduate school. Divided into two areas, the course begins with specific practical advice: where to find funding and how to apply, how to choose and prepare for conferences, how to find professors to work with, and so on. The second area calls on you to choose your own adventure. You will prepare for the job market, producing the elements of an application (CV to cover letter to interview); you will prepare a major application for a research grant or fellowship (with many of the same formal tasks); or you will undertake a task of a similar professional kind. Each class member is on the hiring or funding committee.
LIU—EN 610—001 / CRN: 12771
Methods for TESOL
T / 2 – 4:30
This course offers an overview of the theoretical bases and practical applications of approaches to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). We will cover topics such as the linguistic, psychological and social aspects of second language learning, learner motivation, integrated skills teaching, successful teaching principles and strategies, choosing materials, assessment, culture in the classroom, and technology as a classroom resource.
LIU—EN 612—001 / CRN: 12773
Topics in Applied Linguistics
M / 2 – 4:30
Vocabulary and grammar are arguably the two most important parts in language learning. Using contemporary linguistic theories and approaches, such as cognitive/corpus linguistics and construction/pattern grammar, this course explores effective and creative ways of teaching vocabulary and grammar. Via readings and discussions, the class will gain a sound understanding of the new theories and will use them to ritically examine lexico-grammatical descriptions and teaching practices in existing language textbooks and reference materials. In addition, students will, individually and collectively (in groups), develop lexico-grammatical teaching activities, exercises, assessment instruments, and lesson plans and share them in class.
POOLE—EN 617—001 / CRN: 12612
Teaching Academics Writing to Non-native English Speakers
W / 2 – 4:30
This course is a theoretical and pedagogical introduction to the teaching of English academic language skills to adult learners of English with a particular focus on teaching writing in the American university context. We will examine the theories and disciplines that have significantly informed second language writing research and pedagogy. Additionally, we will examine some of the emerging issues in the field of second language writing including such topics as trans lingual practice, identity and politics second language writing, multilingual creativity, and the increasingly multilingual student population at US universities. We will build on this theoretical foundation to develop skills in a variety of pedagogical practices including needs analysis, course design, assignment design, lesson planning, writing assessment, responding to student writing, and error correction.
BILWAKESH—EN 640—001 / CRN: 13603
Advanced Studies in American Literature: Herman Melville
T / 2 – 4:30
This course will begin with a thorough reading of Herman Melville’s sixth novel, Moby Dick, and a critical review of its long wake. 2019 marks two hundred years since Melville’s birth, and a hundred years since the critical revival of his work by American modernists, and while those numbers may not mean anything special, they may provide us with a good season to re-evaluate his work and reception while he shows up in popular discourse.
In addition to The Whale (1851), we will read his land-based monster, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852), his stories from the mid 1850s, including “Benito Cereno” and “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” his April Fool’s Day trick on the Mississippi, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857), his volume of poetry following the Civil War, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), and his posthumously published novella Billy Budd, Sailor (1924).
In the context of Melville, we will also read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and consider critical and creative work launched in various ways from Melville. Among these other texts that we will read in excerpt: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet; Elizabeth Hardwick, Herman Melville; Charles Olson, Call Me Ishmael; and Edward Said, On Late Style. We will also watch two movies: Querelle (Rainer Fassbinder, 1982) and Beau Travail (Claire Denis 1999).
A research project (20-25 pages), with annotated bibliography and oral presentation are required for the course.
DEUTSCH—EN 643—001 / CRN: 15536
Seminar – 20TH Century American Literature
T / 9:30 – 12
Queer Outlaws in 20th Century American Literature: Drag queens, transvestites, hustlers, drug dealers, and lesbian ex-pats, such figures fill the imaginations of queer writers for much of the 20th century. Of course, simply to be queer or to be gender nonconforming was to be marked both legally and metaphorically as an outlaw figure, as someone who lived and often thrived outside the religious, social, medical, and legal conventions of American culture, really up until this day. This course will explore plays, poetry, and novels that depict the lives of such non-homonormative figures, often via works that obtained cult followings and thus managed to influence a wider swathe of American literary narratives. Participants in this seminar, which is not for the faint of heart, must be willing to consider critically points of view with which they might not necessarily agree and settings that they might occasionally find offensive regardless of their own socio-political situation, but which nonetheless engage with vital strands in American literature and history. Together, we’ll examine the art, culture, and contexts of works such as Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood, John Rechy’s City of Night, Amiri Baraka’s Toilet and The Baptism, Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues, Essex Hemphill’s Conditions, as well as numerous other works.
BUCK—EN 652—001 / CRN: 18339
Theories of Teaching Composition
T / 9:45 – 12:15
This course will provide an overview of the major theories and philosophical underpinnings informing the fields of rhetoric/composition studies. We will discuss major assumptions in the field, current pressing debates and more recent theoretical developments as they pertain to the composition classroom and specific pedagogical activities. Required texts may include work by James Berlin, Ann Berthoff, Stephen North, Patricia Bizzell, Lester Faigley, Victor Villanueva, Mary Louise Pratt, Asao Inoue, among others. Oral reports, weekly responses, and a seminar-length research paper will be required.
TEKOBBE—EN 654—001 / CRN: 18340
Digital Rhetoric
R / 2 – 4:30
This seminar focuses on understanding rhetoric in visual and digital texts. This course explores contemporary rhetorical theory connected to visual and digital communication and considers the traditional rhetorical canon (invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery) for the digital age. The course readings will explore approaches for analyzing visual and digital texts as well as employing visual and digital methods in rhetoric and composition scholarship. This semester, the course will be engaged with the planning and organizing of the English symposium: Digital Rhetoric/Digital Media in the Post-Truth Age. We will be reading the work of the speakers and facilitating the symposium.
McGEE—EN 658—001 / CRN: 18341
History of Rhetoric (II): Renaissance to the Postmodern
W / 9:15 – 11:45
This seminar will investigate rhetorical texts from the Renaissance to the Postmodern era, particularly texts having influence on today’s field of composition. Additionally, this seminar will unpack and consider the impact of “difference” as a factor guiding change in the field of rhetoric and composition. We will continue conversations and readings from Eng 638, specifically with the concept of Rhetoric as “a set of traditions” in mind. You should, in this course, develop an understanding of various techniques used within Rhetoric and Composition and recognize various ways these traditions, frameworks, and/or methods evolve or become manipulated to serve particular purposes over time. We will consider how Rhetoric and Composition came to its current (and contentious) forms.
COOK—EN 661—001 / CRN: 18673
CHAUCER
W / 2 – 4:30
Memory and Making in Chaucerian Poetry In this course, you will acquire an easy familiarity with some of Chaucer’s most important poems. You will also gain a historical understanding of memory as it was understood from classical antiquity to the fourteenth century. First, we will study the memory theories of Roman rhetoricians, high medieval schoolmasters and Middle English “makeres” (poem-makers). Next, we will read key works in the Chaucerian canon, discovering the unexpected ways that the idea of memory inflects his representations of everything from the rhetoric of violence to the gender dynamics of mourning. In Middle English, we will read Chaucer’s The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, and selections from The Canterbury Tales. We will supplement our study of primary texts with criticism by Mary Carruthers, Marjorie Woods, Frances Yates, A. J. Minnis, Rita Copeland, Jody Enders, and Aranye Fradenburg.
DOWD—EN 667—001 / CRN: 18343
Shakespeare in Performance Practicum
M / 2 – 4:30
This course asks students to think about how scholars, directors, and actors interact with, transform, and reimagine early modern playtexts when they bring them to the stage or screen. Toward that end, we will work with Professor Steve Burch of the Theater department to develop our skill at reading a playtext as a performance script. Texts and performances to be discussed will likely include Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and The Comedy of Errors, and Middleton’s The Changeling, among others. We will also read several works of scholarship by early modern theater historians.
WEISS—EN 674—001 / CRN: 18344
Seminar in 18TH Century Literature
T R / 11 – 12:15
Women and the Rise of the Novel The most important theorists of the origins of the English novel pay scant attention to the role of women, either as characters or authors, in the genre’s development. The English novel began, however, with late seventeenth-century amatory fictions, which were largely written by women and had as their focus issues of gender and sexuality. Even Daniel Defoe, famous now for that quintessentially male novel Robinson Crusoe (in which the most significant female characters are goats) impersonated a woman in the first-person confessional Moll Flanders. And while mid-century authors such as Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne were certainly interested in stories about men, the blockbuster novels of Samuel Richardson featured heroines whose experiences captivated the reading public. Like Defoe, Richardson explored female experience through impersonating his heroines, writing as Pamela and Clarissa. At the end of the eighteenth century, women so dominated the novel as readers and writers that it came to be seen as a female genre. And despite the inevitable disdain for such a gendered genre (see Jane Austen’s defense of the novel in Northanger Abbey), late-century authors such as Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, and Maria Edgeworth garnered such respect from critics that they helped transform the novel into the preeminent vehicle for moral, social, and psychological exploration in the nineteenth century. In this course, we will read theories of origins of the novel against the emphasis on the female experience in fictions of the long eighteenth century, thereby bringing gender and genre history into fruitful communication. Historians and theorists of the novel will include Ian Watt, Michael McKeon, Paul Hunter, Franco Moretti, and Nancy Armstrong. Novelists will include some (but certainly not all) of the following: Aphra Behn, Eliza Heywood, Samuel Richardson, Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Smith, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, and Ann Radcliffe.
IHEKA—EN 693—001 / CRN: 18345
Seminar in Postcolonial Literature & Theory
R / 2 – 4:30
The course is interested in areas of the Global South where histories of colonialism, conquest, and globalization have fundamentally altered the local environments. Our explorations will be particularly concerned with the representations of non-western ecologies in literary narratives. Some of the environmental questions that these texts examine include pollution caused by extractive industries such as in the Niger Delta. Others are the questions of the nonhumans in these spaces and the environmental change brought about by development. Through close readings informed by specific contexts of emanation, we will examine texts by Zakes Mda, Bessie Head, Amitav Ghosh, Jamaica Kincaid, among others. In addition to an interest in these environmental problems, the course will be concerned with the narrative strategies employed by these authors to illuminate their thematic concerns. We will begin by engaging with the question of postcolonial literature and its parameters, and return to these throughout the semester as we read the primary texts
Non-Thesis Research—EN 598
CRN: 14003 – McNaughton: DGS
CRN: 14004 – Wells: CW
CRN: NEW – Liu: TESOL
CRN: NEW – Dayton: CRES/STRODE
Thesis Research—EN 599
CRN: 10907 – McNaughton: DGS
CRN: 12032 – Wells: CW
CRN: 15534 – Liu: TESOL
CRN: NEW — Dayton: CRES/STRODE