Spring 2013 Graduate Course Descriptions
SPRING 2013
GRADUATE-LEVEL COURSES
Teaching College (ENGL 402)
Section: 800 #1637
Instructor: V. Anderson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC
In English 402, we will examine the practices of teaching college composition and the theories that undergird those practices. We will begin by examining the way in which writing programs are positioned within Departments of English and within the university and then move to an exploration of major pedagogical movements in the discipline. Your thoughtful encounters with the theory/practice nexus will result in your own informed teaching philosophy.
Section: 813 #6289
Instructor: M. Bradshaw
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC
(See above.)
History of the Book (ENGL 412)
Section: 805 #
Instructor: E. Wheatley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC
This course will examine the history of written and printed texts from their beginnings to 1800, including such topics as book production and distribution, early ideas about textual editing, literacy, copyright, and censorship. Students will make use of the rich collections of primary source materials in the Newberry Library as the basis for much of their research. (Students based near the Lakeshore Campus can reach the Newberry easily by taking the free shuttle bus to the Water Tower campus and walking about 10 minutes to the library at 60 W. Walton St.)
Assignments are: a project based on one of the Newberry’s medieval manuscripts with a presentation to the class which will be written up as an essay of 10-12 pages, an oral report on a historical topic relating to book history that will be written up as a paper of at least 10 pages; and a final project on a topic of the student’s choice that will be presented to the class and written up as an essay of 15-20 pages.
Postmodernism (ENGL 428)
Section: 801 #
Instructor: P. Caughie
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 4:15 – 5:30 PM LSC
The main point of the course is to come to terms with the term "postmodernism" and its various uses: as a literary period, as an aesthetic style, as an historical moment, as a cultural problematic, and as a theoretical imperative. The focus of this course is on western fiction and theory since World War II that can be discussed in terms of this powerful contemporary discourse. Taking it as a given that postmodernism is an object of contestation for various strains of theory (Marxist, feminist, poststructuralist), we will trace out some of those portrayals in the work of a handful of theorists and writers who have developed influential characterizations of postmodernism. We will investigate a complex of aesthetic, social-historical, political, and theoretical issues which inform postmodern literature and culture, and, in doing so, we will take up that vexed issue of the relation between postmodernism and modernism. We will discuss postmodernism in relation to other art forms--architecture, painting, photography, film--as well. Our goal, in short, will be to map out the discursive domain of the postmodern era, keeping in mind that "postmodern" does not mean "contemporary."
Topics Early Modern Literature Culture (ENGL 450)
Section: 802 #5381
Instructor: J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MW 4:15 – 5:30 PM LSC
This course will examine magic and the representation of magic in the literature and culture of the early modern period, or Renaissance, when ideas about magic overlapped with ideas about nature and science, religion, social and political hierarchy, gender, and crime. To explore how magic intersected with these various spheres of the culture, and how writers envisioned their art in relation to magic, we will read texts in a variety of genres, including plays, poems, ballads, witchcraft pamphlets, and selections from treatises on magical practices, and consider a variety of approaches to the study of magic. Requirements will include short and long papers, presentations in class, and possibly a take-home final exam.
Victorian Novel (ENGL 478)
Section: 803 #5382
Instructor: M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM LSC
In this course we will explore the development of secularism as a central component in the social imaginary of Victorian culture. We will employ Charles Taylor’s definition of secularism to elucidate debates regarding Catholic, Protestant and Jew; scientific discourse, positivism, reason and faith; and an expanding understanding of the holy accompanied by an increasing emphasis on what Huxley termed “the physical basis of life.”
Primary Texts: Charlotte Brontë, Villette; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone; Charles Dickens, Bleak House; George Eliot, Middlemarch; Sheridan Le Fanu, Uncle Silas.
Supplementary readings: Fitzgerald, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; Carlyle, from Sartor Resartus and Past and Present; Arnold, from Culture and Anarchy, selected poems; (brief) selections from Darwin, Huxley, Gosse, Pater, Hopkins, Newman, and Browning.
Criticism and Theory: Charles Taylor, from A Secular Age; Gauri Viswanathan, “Secularism in the Framework of Heterodoxy,” in PMLA: The Changing Profession, 2008: 466-477, and others, tba.
American Realism (ENGL 493)
Section: 804 #5383
Instructor: J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM LSC
This course examines both the theory and practice of literary Realism as it is manifested in the criticism and fiction of a variety of writers from the period of 1875-1915. Special emphasis will be placed on the manner in which literary Realists defined their work by distinction to competing modes of writing (for example sentimentalism, regionalism, and naturalism) and by association with contemporary forms of labor (including wage labor and market speculation). In addition to primary literary and theoretical sources, students will read secondary critical accounts of particular works and current critical assessments of Realism as a cultural and ideological practice.
