Instructor-Provided Class Descriptions for Spring 2009

Please click on the following selections or scroll down to view descriptions.

Undergraduate Classes | Writing Programs Classes | Graduate Classes

Undergraduate Classes

 

ENG 200 Critical Reading and Writing About Literature
Instructor:  J. White
Section Line Number:  25020 and 25022
Time:  TTh 1:30—2:45 p.m. and 3:00—4:15 p.m.

This course is designed to introduce undergraduate English majors and minors to the terminology, methods and objectives of the study of literature. Over the course of 16 weeks, we will read, interpret and evaluate a wide selection of short stories, poems and plays.

The literature for this class is both British and American; it is fairly traditional, or “canonical,” as those of us in the field call it. It is arranged by genre: one-third of the class will be on short stories, one-third on poetry and one-third on drama.  You will also be exposed to the major schools of critical thought; in fact, the literature is so familiar, the main task of this class would be to see how this literature is read through the “lens” of a particular theory. While this is not a theory class, it is intended to introduce you to the major theorists’ ideas about literature and how to read literature using those ideas.

Required Texts:
Gardner, Janet E., et al. Literature: A Portable Anthology. 2nd edition. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 2009.
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 2nd ed. Manchester: U of Manchester P, 2002.

ENG 294 Sex, Death and Snow: An Introduction to Canadian Literature
Instructor: Rosalynn Voaden
Schedule Line Number: 19760
Time: MW 2—3:15 p.m.  (ED 202)

So you think Canada is boring, eh?  How can the country that legalized gay marriage and marijuana be boring? 

It’s also produced some of the most exciting literature in the world today. This course, the only course in Canadian literature ever to be offered at ASU, is going to change your mind about Canada. Yes, Canadian authors write about sex, death and snow - but also about life, love, families, making money, making out, growing up, growing  old, and surviving in the wilderness, on the prairie, in small towns, and in sophisticated cities. It’s all there, in some of the best writing you will ever read.

The course will include works from the early 19th century to the present. It will begin with a brief introduction to Canada, its geography, history and culture. We will then read novels, short stories, and poetry, and discuss these literary creations in relation to their cultural context. Much of the class time will be devoted to discussion, so come prepared to think, talk - and discover the vital, fascinating literature of that not-so-frozen land to the north.

Works to be studied include:
Frederick Philip Grove,  "Settlers of the Marsh"
Margaret Laurence, "The Diviners"
Mordecai Richler, "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz"
Margaret Atwood, "The Blind Assassin"
Jane Urquhart, "Away"
Elizabeth Hay, "Late Nights on Air"

Note: Some of these works include descriptions of explicit sexuality and/or strong language. If you are not comfortable reading and discussing such material, please do not take this course.

Assignments may include: a short paper, an oral presentation, a long paper, a mid-term and final exam.

This course fulfills the curriculum requirement for Literature and Culture post-1800 and/or for Transnational, Postcolonial and Global Literatures.

 

ENG 321 Introduction to Shakespeare
Instructor: Ayanna Thompson
Schedule Line Number: 10841
Time: MWF 10:45—11:35 a.m. (LL 002 basement)

This course will introduce students to basic strategies for reading, watching and performing Shakespeare. We will cover plays from all of Shakespeare’s genres—comedies, histories, tragedies and romances—in order to examine how Shakespeare played with early modern generic expectations often upsetting and disrupting the norms. This course will focus on close readings and analyses in order to examine how Shakespeare interrogated various aspects of early modern social, political and historical mores.

 

ENG 342 Eroding England: British Literature of the 20th Century
Instructor: Mallot
Section Line Number: 22850
Time: TR 1:30 p.m.

This course investigates various social changes witnessed by Britain in the 20th century while analyzing literary texts and films produced within the period. Our authors represent a wide range of backgrounds—sexual, ethnic, religious, political, socioeconomic and so forth—and thematic concerns. Each, in various ways, explores the idea of an "eroding England," one in which characters and communities are forced to re-examine traditional, often myopic views of what it means to be English (and, more recently and more accurately, British) and consider more modern, decentralized self-definitions. Who, to echo E.M. Forster, will inherit England? What role can/should Britain play on the world stage? How did the nation react to world wars, the collapse of empire, and sweeping changes brought by immigration? How important is British heritage, its monarchy, and its sense of tradition in contemporary life? Is there still such a thing as "Englishness"? Our texts consider the changing nation in light of these questions; potential titles include "Howards End," "The Return of the Soldier," "A Handful of Dust," "1984," "Look Back in Anger," "Cloud 9," "The Buddha of Suburbia," "The Remains of the Day" and "England England." Likely film screenings include "Passport to Pimlico," "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" and "This is England."

 

English 356 The Bible as Literature
Instructor: Sturges
Section Line Number: 22742
Time:  TTH 10:30—11:45 a.m.

In this course we study selected books of the King James translation of the Bible from a literary rather than a religious point of view. We also consider the literary influence of the Bible, primarily on English and American literature, and we will read selected short literary texts that illustrate this influence.

 

ENG 354 African American Literature: Post Harlem Renaissance
Instructor: Allison Parker
Section Line Number: 23760
Time: MW 2:00-3:15 p.m.

This class addresses African American literary works that mainly were created after the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. In the process of doing so, we will examine a variety of textual representations of African American identity, race in America, slavery, resistance to slavery, white supremacy, African American masculinity, African American femininity, biracialism, racial oppression, and racial justice. We will also investigate the relationship of these texts to epochal events in American history, such as the Civil War and the Great Migration. In addition we will explore several genres of literature, including autobiography (Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X), novella (Nella Larsen), novel (Maya Angelou, Ernest Gaines, Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison), drama (Lorraine Hansberry), and film ("Imitation of Life," 1959). We will also, more briefly, consider African American art, music and dance, especially in relation to African American literature.

 

ENG 394 Special Topics: The Politics of Desire
Instructor: Elenore Long

Desire is often associated with the individual’s pursuit of the unattainable; in sexual terms, the expectation for pleasure, exquisite and fulfilling. But what happens when desire goes public in demanding and daring critique of the status quo? In ENG 394: Special Topics: The Politics of Desire we'll explore desire as a site of embodied rhetoric where basic concepts of self and other, power and impotency, sovereignty and solidarity, freedom and constraint, known and unknown are negotiated and reconfigured. Working analytically between political philosophy and contemporary accounts of women's lived experiences, we will strengthen our own working theories to account for the complex relationships between and among binaries operating often tacitly (and sometimes insidiously) within cultural imaginaries. In particular, we'll study articulations of desire within intercultural “contact zones”—crucibles where friends, lovers, and sometimes strangers reclaim the very terms of their existence.

 

ENG 394 Death and Life in the Age of Shakespeare and Donne
Instructor: Bettie Anne Doebler
Section Line Number: 24959
Time: TTH 9—10:15 a.m.

This course will focus upon historical context and literary examples of attitudes of the late 16th and early 17th century towards death and dying in the Age of Shakespeare and Donne, a period in which the awareness of the presence of death in the midst of life gave an intensity to the extraordinary energy of the time. Such an energy resulted at least in part from tension in the culture between the continuity of medieval Christian ideas about the relationship between time and eternity and Renaissance influences that emphasized the immediacy of emerging humanistic self-fashioning.

The union of contraries embodied in these cultural ideas was unusually present in the explosion of literary forms, particularly in poetry and popular drama. Poems of Donne and plays of Shakespeare, not to mention the often poetic sermons of great preachers in the Church of England, show forth not only the familiar emphasis on love that critics notice in thousands of sonnets, but also the sense of power of life itself that is woven into the preparation for death. To live well – in classical terms to seize the day; in Christian terms to constantly examine one’s life in order to be ready for death – became the focus of the good life that enriched the perspectives of literary representation. Lear is said to have but ever “slenderly known himself” and the constant reiteration of Socrates’s dictum to “know thyself” becomes inextricably bound to the full appreciation of a life that moves ultimately towards eternity.

Adapting the art of dying well with a full embrace of the life of power and joy lies at the center of the literary richness of Shakespeare’s Age, particularly in a time of discovery on both the global level and the level of individual consciousness. The course will also contain some modern parallels (e.g., "A Death in the Family").

 

ENG 394 Special Topics: Feminist Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
Instructor: Jennifer Lowe
Section Line Number: 23761
Time: MW 3:30—4:45 p.m.

Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice. More recently, post-apocalyptic fiction has added doomsday scenarios like nuclear war, climate change, hypercanes, asteroid or comet impact, bioterrorism, viral pandemic, overpopulation, famine, peak oil, microsingularity, cybernetic revolt and/or zombies. If any humans were to survive such a catastrophic collapse of civilization, how would those straggling few survive--and if they survived, how would they rebuild? Most speculative post-apocalyptic narratives attempt to answer this question; and some feminist writers have suggested that women survivors might go about the task in a very different way. Second-wave feminism in particular saw the post-apocalyptic genre as a chance to improve on patriarchy, with near-utopian visions—though in more recent years feminists have taken a bleaker, more dystopian view. We'll read and discuss novels from writers like Octavia Butler, Monique Wittig, Suzette Haden Elgin, Russell Hoban and Margaret Atwood, to answer the question for ourselves: After the end of the world as we know it, will anyone feel fine?

 

English 411 ACW Fiction
Instructor: Melissa Pritchard
Section Line Number: 23920
Time: W 4:40-7:30 p.m.

Advanced creative writing course that will focus on death and transformation as explored in fiction, poetry and non-fiction. This will also be a short story writing workshop. See texts.

 

ENG 414 Studies in Linguistics: Native Languages of North America
Instructor: Carrie Gillon
Section Line Number: 22684
Time: MW 2—3:15 p.m.

Survey of the indigenous languages of the Americas. Study of the basis of genetic classification and areal similarities. The structure of languages will be presented and contrasted. The present status of American Indian languages will be considered. No prior knowledge of linguistics is expected.

 

ENG 422 Studies in Shakespeare: Race and Performance
Instructor: Ayanna Thompson
Schedule Line Number: 22744
Time: MW 2—3:15 p.m. (ED 216)

Studies in Shakespeare: Race and Performance will examine the complex relationship(s) between contemporary Shakespeare productions, casting practices and the politics and performances of race. Students will explore Shakespearean texts and performances (live, on film, on the Internet, etc.) through the lenses of performance theory, theatre history, critical race studies and gender studies.

 

ENG 430 Darwin's "Origin" and 19th Century Narrative
Instructor: Daniel Bivona
Section Line Number: 12389
Time: TTH 1:30-2:45 p.m.

2009 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of the most important book of the 19th century: Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection." A comprehensive synthesis of challenging ideas, some of which were already widespread within the scientific community in the 1850s, the "Origin", when it burst upon the scene, also offered its readers both a narrative of the origins of organic life and a metanarrative argument about how to construct the story of life before consciousness. In this course, we will examine the impact and influence of this important text in the late 19th century. Besides the "Origin of Species," we will be reading from a variety of influential evolutionary theorists of the time including Spencer, Huxley, Tylor, Lombroso and Freud as well as from the works of a number of novelists and writers who grappled with the challenges posed by Darwin in their work: Wilde ("The Picture of Dorian Gray"), Eliot ("Middlemarch"), Stevenson ("Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde"), Gosse ("Father and Son"), Hardy ("Jude the Obscure"), Jack London ("White Fang"), Wells ("The Time Machine"), Conrad ("Heart of Darkness"), and Butler ("The Way of All Flesh"). Requirements include regular participation in in-class and Blackboard discussions and three critical papers.

 

ENG 440 Studies in Am Lit/Culture: Power of Sympathy: Politics of Feeling in American Literature
Instructor: Holbo
Section Line Number: 23522
Time: TTH 12:00—1:15 p.m.

What place, if any, should emotions occupy in public life? Are emotions a dangerous force and a distraction from the business of creating rational policies? Or can they be guides in developing a humane public life and in orienting a national agenda?

This course examines the long history of American debates over the relation between private feelings and public life. It will explore the following topics: the discovery of emotion within philosophical and religious discourses in 18th century Europe and America; the role played by the concept of sympathy in framing Early American political theory and in articulating notions of human rights; the social, class, and gender dynamics of emotion in revolutionary and antebellum America, particularly in shaping the abolitionist movement; and the backlash against emotion in the late 19th and 20th centuries. We will ask whether 20th century philosophers and writers were right to be suspicious of emotions—and whether they actually succeeded in banishing emotions from their works. The course will conclude with a look at the emotional life of modernist texts, considering the ways they reimagine old questions of the relation between truth and feeling, public and private.

Our speculations in this course will be at once literary and historical, introspective and interdisciplinary. As we work through our own conflicted feelings about feeling, we will read across the history of philosophy, economics and religious thought; we will examine the relation between aesthetics and ethics; we will consider the ways in which Americans have invoked gender roles to pursue a variety of public agendas; and we will discuss the way the authority of the novel was shaped by the historical dialectics of public sentiment. 

 

Eng 440 Studies in American Literature/Culture: Contemporary American Women's Fiction
Instructor: Clarke
Section Line Number: 22855
Time: TTH 9-10:15 a.m.

This course will survey recent 20th century American women’s fiction with an eye to exploring the issue of political/national identity: what does it mean to be American and female? We’ll look at immigration, citizenship, ethnicity, race, region and class. To what extent is national identity shaped by gender? How do other forms of identity intersect and/or compete? What options of citizenship and participation are open to women from a wide range of backgrounds? The reading list is likely to include Allison’s "Bastard out of Carolina," Cao’s "Monkey Bridge," Feinberg’s "Stone Butch Blues," Garcia’s "Dreaming in Cuban," Morrison’s "Paradise," Senna’s "Caucasia," Silko’s "Ceremony" and Viramontes’ "Under the Feet of Jesus." It’s a lot of reading but the books are wonderful. Two papers and a final exam will be required. Spirited participation is a must.

 

ENG465/561 South Asian Film
Instructor: Julie Codell                                      

This course is designed to explore South Asian cinema in three areas:

1. “Classic” cinema with a focus on Satyajit Ray’s "Apu Trilogy."
2. Bollywood and popular cinema by Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Yash Chopra, and Mehboob Khan.
3. Diasporic South Asian films by Mira Nair, Gurinder Chadha, Deepa Mehta and Hanif Kureishi. 

Films will be studied in chronological order to map a history of South Asian cinema from 1950 to the present. Students will explore selected Web sites, watch one film each week and read assigned texts on topics, such as:

• Cultural and geographical diversity of South Asian film industry.
• Function of music and dance.
• Role of religious deities, myths and classic epics.
• Role of popular movie stars in film production and consumption.
• Transnational or global changes in these films’ audiences and intended reception.
• Interconnections between South Asian films, Hollywood and avant-garde world cinema.
• Changes over time in “identity politics,” the representation of gender, caste and ethnicity.
• Issues and differences among diasporic Indian and Pakistani filmic identities.
• Relevant theories of popular culture, postcolonialism, nationalism and modernity.
• Knowledge of South Asian film industry methods, production, publicity and funding.

 

ENG 479 Studies in Postmodernism: Fiction
Instructor: Boyer
Section Line Number: 12149
Time: TTH 10:40—11:55

This course will survey what has come to be called “the postmodern American novel,” meaning by that something simple on the one hand, namely novels written by Americans and published in this country since World War II, and on the other hand? Something not so simple at all. We will be examining both in form and content how the novels of this period distinguish themselves from more standard American fare, as well as how they draw up and extend the American literary tradition.

Novels to be read include: "The Naked And The Dead" by Norman Mailer; "One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest" by Ken Kesey; "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller; "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison; "Love Medicine" by Louise Erdrich; "First Light" by Charles Baxter; "Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerney; "Gravity’s Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon; "House Of Leaves" by Mark Danielewski; "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain.

Final grade to be determined from two comparison and contrast literary papers, in addition to unannounced quizzes.

Telephone: 480-965-7644/3168
E-mail: J.Boyer@asu.edu
Web site: http://www.asu.edu/clas/english/who/boyer
Office: LL 307
Office Hours: W 12-4, and by appointment

 

English 494 Review Writing
Instructor: Sarah Duerden
Schedule Line Number: 10860
Time: MWF 11:50 a.m.—12:40 p.m. 

Eat a meal
Read a book
Watch a movie
Write a review

This course is designed to introduce students to professional review writing, a genre which approaches creative writing more closely than other professional writing genres but one that also relies on journalistic techniques. The course is based on a firm foundation of rhetorical concerns including purpose, audience, situation, style, arrangement, delivery and content as well as ethical, logical and emotional appeals. Students will read general theory of review writing as well as sample reviews from various venues. The most common reviews are film, restaurant and book reviews. However, reviews also address the areas of art, architecture, resorts and hotels, television, theater, dance, music, videogames, radio, television, photography and sculpture. Students will focus on the primary areas but will be encouraged to explore additional areas and to specialize in one particular area by the end of the semester.

ENG 498 Capstone: The Poetics of Bearing Witness
Instructor: Cynthia Hogue and Melissa Pritchard
Section Line Number: 10861
Time: T 4:40—7:30 p.m.

This creative writing capstone course is organized loosely around the focus of Carolyn Forché’s ground-breaking anthology of poetry, "Against Forgetting." This semester, we will explore the idea of “bearing witness” in relation to (but not limited to) social action writing, our own experiences in community and/or community more broadly defined (national, international, armed services, community service). Some of the questions we might ask are: Is “social action writing” different from “bearing witness”? What role does or should a witness play in that to which he or she bears witness (i.e. must she be active or can he be passive)? Are some witnesses more appropriate (or believable?) than others? There will be room to explore, expand, experiment, but all students in this course will be doing a final "capstone" project (may be collaborative).     

Writing Programs Classes

Please click on the following Writing Programs courses to view their description page:

Stretch Program Courses:
WAC 101, WAC 107 (first-year writing)
 

100-level courses:
ENG 101, 102, 105 (first-year writing)
ENG 107, 108 (first-year writing for international students)
 

200-level courses:
ENG 215 (strategies of academic writing)
ENG 216 (persuasive writing on public issues)
ENG 217 (writing reflective essays)
ENG 218 (writing about literature)
 

300-level courses:
ENG 301 (writing for the professions)
ENG 3XX (writing in cyberspace)
ENG 372 (document production)
ENG 374 (technical editing)
 

400-level courses:
ENG 494 (rhetorical theory and criticism)

Graduate Classes

 

ENG 500 Research Methods: Literary and Cultural Studies
Instructor: Tobin
Section Line Number: 84489
Time: TH 4:40-7:30 p.m.

This course is designed to introduce graduate students to research and writing within the fields of literary and cultural studies. This course will focus on how to formulate research questions and how to pursue meaningful inquires within the broadly defined discipline of English studies. We will study techniques for conducting research in archives, libraries and digitized databases. We will address the writing process, paying attention to mastering academic discourse and field-appropriate methodology, language and style. To help establish a sense of academic community, this course emphasizes collaboration, peer evaluation and group work. Students will also learn to present their research in a variety of written and verbal formats, including the abstract, the proposal, the conference presentation and the seminar paper. In addition to completing a range of exercises designed to make students familiar with libraries, databases and documentation, students will write a research paper and present a conference-length version of the paper to the class. Guest speakers will include ASU faculty, doctoral students and librarians.

 

English 531 Beowulf
Instructor Bjork
Section Line Number: 22685
Time: TTH 12:00-1:15 p.m.

An intensive examination of the most important example of early Germanic literature in existence. We will read the entire poem in the original Old English, so you must know that language before you register for the class, and we will discuss all aspects--linguistic, cultural, historical, and literary--of this masterpiece as we make our way through it. You will be required to write either one 25-page paper or two 12-page papers.

 

English 533-1001 Studies in Medieval Literature: Chaucer and His Contemporaries: Imagining Love in Middle English
Instructor: Richard Newhauser
Section Line Number: 22689
Time: TTh 6:00 - 7:15 p.m.
Crosslisted: REL 591

The late Middle Ages in England has been characterized by Richard Firth Green as a period of a crisis of truth in the area of law. One might say, as well, that the same period experienced a crisis of love. Love was understood as the ideal bond of affection uniting men and women in amorous relationships, connecting relatives in the same family, holding together the members of society in a social union and regulating the ties between humanity and God. And in the view of late-medieval English authors, the bonds of love in all of these categories were anything but ideal. To document this critical perspective of love, we will read Middle English texts of romantic love (Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" and other love poems, and Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid"), of the love that should hold together the political union (Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and selections from Usk's "Testament of Love"), and of the love of God ("Pearl and Julian" of Norwich's "Revelation of Love"). All texts will be in Middle English in accessible, annotated editions.

 

English 536 Studies in American Literature before 1900: Early American Literature and Human Rights
Instructor: Joe Lockard
Schedule Line Number: 22737
Time: MW 5—6:15 p.m.  (LL 270)

This course will examine U.S. human rights issues through novels and prose non-fiction published from late 18th until the early years of the 20th century. Significant supplementary historical and legal readings will accompany the course texts. Requirements: attendance, reading & discussion competence, and one 20-30 page seminar paper.
American Revolts: Declaration of Independence (1776); Thomas Paine, "Rights of Man," "Common Sense" and Other Political Writings; Henry David Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849)
Closing the Commons: James Fenimore Cooper, "The Last of the Mohicans" (1826); William Apess, "A Son of the Forest" (1829)
Slavery and Color Lines: David Walker, "Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World" (1829); William Wells Brown, "From Fugitive to Free Man: the Autobiographies of William Wells Brown" (University of Missouri Press); Charles Chesnutt, "The Marrow of Tradition" (1901)
Women’s Rights: Margaret Fuller, "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" (1845); Susan Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1890)
Labor Rights and Anti-Capitalism: Frank Norris, "The Octopus" (1901); Upton Sinclair, "The Jungle" (1906); Jack London, "The Iron Heel" (1906)

 

Eng 538 Studies in Mod/Cont Am. Lit: 20th Century American Women's Fiction
Instructor: Clarke
Section Line Number: 22853
Time: W 4:40—7:30 p.m. 

In this course, we’re going to try to figure out whether there is, in fact, a “tradition” for 20th century American women’s fiction and if so, what it looks like. What does it mean to sketch out a canon? What kinds of assumptions go into such an enterprise? To what extent do women writers respond to each other and focus on common concerns? How useful is gender as a determining factor in analyzing the literature? Given the vast diversity of race, background and experience of these writers, what may be the price of setting up a women’s canon? We’ll begin with Edith Wharton and Gertrude Stein, and continue throughout the century. In addition to the obvious issues of race, ethnicity and class, we’ll also look at the role feminist theory has played in establishing the field. To what extent do “feminist” concerns shape our responses to women writers? In what other contexts might we also consider these writers? The reading load will be heavy but wonderful. At least two papers and possibly one oral presentation or one group presentation will be required. Spirited participation is a must.

 

Eng 542 Studies in North American Ethnic Literature: Indigenous Fiction--Novels and Short Stories
Instructor: Simon J. Ortiz
Section Line Number: 17387
Time: T 4:40 - 7:30 p.m. 
Crosslisted:  American Indian Studies

This is a study of indigenous (native, first nations) American fiction, consisting of intensive (and enjoyable) reading, much discussion, and engaged writing about fiction by novelists and short fiction writers Leslie Marmon Silko, Sherman Alexie, Gerald Vizenor, David Treuer, Susan Power and Eden Robinson. The course will consist of lectures, active seminar-style discussion and critically thoughtful writing projects.

 

ENG 543 Postcolonial Literature and Theory
Instructor: J. Edward Mallot
Section Line Number: 22799
Time: T 4:40—7:30 p.m.

This class is designed to introduce graduate students to postcolonial literature and theory. This highly charged, highly contested discourse has gained enormous attention—along with frequent controversy—within the past quarter century, and continues to rise in popularity amongst English students and scholars. Students will read literary texts from Africa, India, Ireland and the Caribbean, potentially including Rudyard Kipling's "Kim," Patrick McCabe's "The Butcher Boy," Wole Soyinka's "Death and the King's Horseman," Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children," Tsitsi Dangarembga's "Nervous Conditions," Shani Mootoo's "Cereus Blooms at Night" and Zadie Smith's "White Teeth." Theorists covered may include Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Ashis Nandy, Benedict Anderson, Partha Chatterjee, Anne MccClikntock, Homi Bhabha, Gauri Viswanathan, Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall.

 

ENG 545 Studies in Women's Poetry: The Poetry and Theory of Witness
Instructor: Hogue
Section Line Number: 17390
Time: W 4:40—-7:30 p.m.
Crosslisted: Women's Studies

Carolyn Forché’s ground-breaking anthology of poetry written by those who experienced first-hand the wars and genocides of the 20th century, "Against Forgetting," as well as her own early poetry collection about El Salvador’s death squads, "The Country Between Us," generated renewed interest in a dynamic that has come to be called “bearing witness.” What is the difference between “witnessing” and “bearing witness,” or is there a difference? What role does or should a witness play in the violence and tragedy to which she bears witness (i.e., must she be active or can she be passive)? Are some witnesses more appropriate (or believable?) than others? Often, to “bear witness” is not simply to be there, to see for oneself, but also to record events that time, history or media and cultural censorship may erase. We will explore these questions and others as they arise from our readings and discussions, starting with the women of the Harlem Renaissance, moving into the 1930s poetry of social activism, and from there to a range of postmodern women’s poetry that arguably “bears witness” to our times. Our readings will include some texts which theorize the philosophy of "witness."

 

ENG 554 Rhetorics of Race, Class and Gender—Public Spheres Studies
Instructor: Elenore Long
Section Line Number: 25223
Time: W 4:40—7:30 p.m.

This course examines how rhetorics of race, class and gender have expanded and enlivened theories and possibilities of “the” public sphere, a decidedly public domain—distinct from the commerce and the state—born on the tide of capitalism in 18th century Europe. Here, conversations in coffee houses and salons allowed people to deliberate in order to understand and respond to shared problems for the common good. As Jürgen Habermas observes, the medium of this debate was “peculiar and without historical precedent: people’s public use of their reason.” As self evident as it may seem to celebrate this discursive accomplishment, any celebration is quickly tempered by the claim’s very terms: people turned out to be propertied men, deliberation was confined to critical-rational argument, and the common good protected participants’ collective self interest. As we’ll study, the most promising implications for the public sphere follow not from generalized, philosophical accounts or idealized—if skewed—historical renditions of it, but from contemporary, highly conditionalized manifestations of public discourse, for instance, in the Middle East, among second wave feminists, in queer counterpublics. The effect is not clearly bounded subalterns, but a conceptual framework attentive to the nuances of what Gloria Anzaldúa calls mestiza publics.

 

ENG465/561 South Asian Film
Instructor: Julie Codell                                      

This course is designed to explore South Asian cinema in three areas:

1. “Classic” cinema with a focus on Satyajit Ray’s "Apu Trilogy."
2. Bollywood and popular cinema by Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Yash Chopra and Mehboob Khan.
3. Diasporic South Asian films by Mira Nair, Gurinder Chadha, Deepa Mehta and Hanif Kureishi. 

Films will be studied in chronological order to map a history of South Asian cinema from 1950 to the present. Students will explore selected websites, watch one film each week, and read assigned texts on topics, such as:

• Cultural and geographical diversity of South Asian film industry.
• Function of music and dance.
• Role of religious deities, myths and classic epics.
• Role of popular movie stars in film production and consumption.
• Transnational or global changes in these films’ audiences and intended reception.
• Interconnections between South Asian films, Hollywood and avant-garde world cinema.
• Changes over time in “identity politics,” the representation of gender, caste and ethnicity.
• Issues and differences among diasporic Indian and Pakistani filmic identities.
• Relevant theories of popular culture, postcolonialism, nationalism and modernity.
• Knowledge of South Asian film industry methods, production, publicity and funding.

 

English 602 Medieval Literary Theory
Instructor: Sturges
Section Line Number: 22743
Time: TTH 1:30—2:45 p.m.

This seminar will focus on medieval literary theory and criticism of various sorts: handbooks of rhetoric, commentaries on a wide variety of religious and secular writings, vernacular prologues to a similarly wide variety of texts, theoretical assumptions implicit in literary works, etc. Topics we will be studying include authorship, readership, textuality, translation, the ethics of reading and writing, literary structure, allegory, sign theory, critical genres, etc. In addition to the theoretical and critical readings, we will use Chaucer’s "Canterbury Tales" to test how well these theories work in medieval literary practice. Students will be responsible for regular research presentations on the topics covered in class in addition to a final seminar paper.

Texts:
Chaucer, "The Canterbury Tales," ed. Mann
Minnis and Scott, eds. "Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism" (rev. ed.)
Murphy, ed., "Three Medieval Rhetorical Arts"

ENG 604 Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies: Material Culture
Instructors: Beth Tobin & Maureen Daly Goggin
Time: M 4:40-7:30 p.m.

Material culture encompasses a wide range of objects, from pottery shards to iPods®, and to study it requires a multi-disciplinary approach. Thus this course will engage a transdisciplinary approach to explore the diverse roles material objects play in the lives of individuals who design, create, circulate, consume and collect them. We will read a range of sociological and anthropological theories of production, exchange and consumption, including works by Appadurai, Baudrillard, Benjaimin, Bourdieu, Freud, Douglas, Marx, Mauss and Veblen. These will be accompanied by grounded, historically-specific case studies of particular objects. The course will be organized around the life-cycle of objects as they move through various social and economic contexts: design, production, commodification, circulation, consumption, valuation, identification, collection and representation.

Although our use of these categories to organize the course may imply that objects fall neatly into these categories and that objects march through this life cycle as if a natural progression, we will examine the ways in which objects are polysemic and multifunctional and can never be reduced to one simple category. We therefore will problematize the use of these categories and the notion of an object having a life-cycle. The goal of this course is to call attention to the way in which we talk about things, and we hope to stimulate lively debate about the conceptual categories we bring to bear on the social significance and meaning of objects. In this course, students will study a material object or class of objects or material practice to theorize some aspect of their significance. Students in past classes have theorized passports, autograph albums, Barbie®, cosmetics, heirloom china, family recipes, bumper stickers and so on. The field of possible artifacts is wide open.

This course fulfills master's and doctorate 600-level rhetoric/composition and literature program's theory requirement.

 

ENG 632 Advanced Studies in Med. and Ren. Lit. and Culture: Spenser's "Faerie Queene" and its Intertexts
Instructor: Cora Fox
Section Line Number: 20360
Time: TTH 2:00—3:15 p.m.

Through reading all of Spenser's "Faerie Queene" and some theories of intertextuality, this course will involve students in the pleasures and challenges of intertextual and allegorical reading. Spenser's encyclopedic poem is so richly intertextual that it offers unparalleled access to Renaissance culture. With the class organized as a seminar, each student will work on a particular cultural or literary intertext and will produce a research paper on some aspect of that intertextual relationship as his or her final project for the class. A list of some of the poem's major intertexts might include: Virgil's "Aeneid," sections of the Bible, Renaissance writings on Ireland, writings on humoral psychology, Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," colonialist writings on the encounter with the New World, Petrarch's works, medieval romances, Tasso's "Gerusalemme Liberata," Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Chaucer's works, alchemical writings, Dante's "Divina Commedia," entertainments or plays from the court of Elizabeth I, treatises on neoplatonism, to name just a few! The course will be of special interest to students working on earlier literature, but it will also offer an introduction to theories of intertextuality and research experience that will be exciting for students working in any field.

 

ENG 636 American Regionalism: Local Knowledge and National Culture
Instructor: Holbo
Section Line Number: 17540
Time: TH 4:40—7:30 p.m.

This course explores the tension between regionalism and nationalism in the making of American literary traditions. It explores the way “American” writing has been defined by an attention to locality, and it considers the way in which the persistently local character of American writing challenges the very idea of a national literature. We will take a historically and theoretically expansive approach to the topic, reading works from the late-eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, and exploring a range of theories on place and space, culture and nationalism, historical memory and the novel. Primary texts for the course will include works by Thomas Jefferson, James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, and W.E.B. Du Bois; theoretical readings for the class include work by Benedict Anderson, Georg Lukacs, Gaston Bachelard and Gunnar Olsson.

 

ENG 654 Advanced Studies in Rhetoric, Writing, Technology and Culture: Digital Cultures and Social Media
Instructor: Alice Robison
Line Number: 17430
Time: T 4:40—7:30 p.m.

How does meaning-making happen in and around the contexts of contemporary social media? In what ways are affinities for these media enabling us to think differently about what it means to read, write and participate? While much has been made about both media consumption and production, we have yet to understand what it means to truly participate in particular digital cultures in which they are situated.

This course is a fair split between both thinking about and using social and digital media. Students will be expected to keep up with a theory-rich reading schedule as well as rapidly-moving immersion in several media tools. So while this is a theory-based seminar, students must be prepared to work toward fluency in, for example, microblogging, commenting, tagging and remixing. The goal is not just production but participation within a variety of contexts. In other words, it is not enough to know how to edit an entry on Wikipedia; we need to learn about and understand the Wikipedia community and what our edits mean within that context.

Although most readings will be freely available online, there are four print texts required for the course: Stephen Johnson's "Everything Bad is Good for You," Henry Jenkins' "Convergence Culture," Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel's "Digital Literacies," and Annette Markham and Nancy Baym's "Internet Inquiry." We will also engage with theoretical texts and empirical studies from scholars in communications, journalism, media studies, engineering, law, psychology, sociology and the learning sciences. Please e-mail the instructor for a link to the full list of authors.

Keywords for this course: wiki; blog; twitter; flickr; file-sharing; creative commons; free culture; fans; participatory culture; SMS; tagging; virtual worlds; videogames; grassroots media; play; identity; networks; smart mobs; LOLcats; xkcd; 4chan; Facebook; MySpace; del.icio.us; memes; YouTube.