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Graduate Studies
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ENGL 752 Literary Theory for the Teacher and Scholarly Writer
SUMMER 2004 SESSION II Course Details and Description
ENGL 752 Literary Theory for the Teacher and Scholarly Writer The everyday life of the teacher and critic involves the practices of reading, writing, interpretation, and commentary. In that they constitute a routine, such practices may come to seem so natural that they become invisible to us. Critics of everyday life aim to alter the relationship to the everyday by rendering the familiar strange or defamiliarizing it. This course presumes one virtue of theory to be its capacity to invite a similar process of defamiliarization in readers, leading to renewed self-consciousness and new practices. Through close reading of critical texts associated with some of the main schools of critical theory (structuralism, marxism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, reception, identity), seminar participants engage in a very selective survey of essay-length critical texts. We gain familiarity with the fundamental practices of particular schools and, at the same time, seek to establish connections through the lenses of such recurring concepts as the unconscious, structure, culture, ideology, gender, and ethnicity. Students may expect to develop a facility at "trying on" and practicing within a handful of paradigms, rather than acquiring mastery of a single "method" or achieving an encyclopedic coverage. A few literary texts and perhaps a film will also be folded into the discussion. A list of assigned texts will be available in advance; please consult the webpage: www.chss.iup.edu/sherwood/courses.htm. Requirements will likely include active participation, preparation of discussion questions, two experiments (pedagogical micro-lesson, performative text), and one 10-15 page final research paper. If you have questions, please email sherwood@iup.edu.
ENGL 761 Topics in American Literature before 1870: Subversion, Sensation and Scandal: The “Other” American Renaissance M-F 10:15-12:15 Dr. Susan Gatti When we think of “the American Renaissance”—a label usually designating the antebellum years of the nineteenth century—we typically think of an era of optimism, romantic idealism, and formation of an American cultural identity. Such literary icons as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, and Whitman readily come to mind. While these superstars unquestionably challenged the artistic, political, and social status quo, they seem to be securely locked into the canon by virtue of certain “monumental” works. But do canonical works adequately reflect the energy, anxiety, radicalism, and experimentation of nineteenth-century American literature? What, for instance, did the masses read? How did contemporary readers of this period respond to texts now enshrined in the canon? The reading list might suggest a rather different perspective on antebellum America. Clearly, the focus of this course is what might be called the “other” side of the American Renaissance. That is, it will explore the more subversive or sensational elements at work in an era grappling with such concerns as utopianism, urbanism, national expansion, psychology, eroticism, orientalism, feminism, abolition, politics, science, class struggle, labor strife, gender roles, crime, and corruption. While idealism, intellectual liberalism, and expansive spirituality tend to be associated with this important period of American writing, the works listed will offer a glimpse into the intensely fascinating “dark” side of the nineteenth century. Tentative List of Texts: (Please check with me before purchasing books.)
Wieland—Charles Brockden Brown Course requirements include a paper, roughly 10-12 pages, on a topic related to the course theme. This paper should be suitable for presentation at a professional conference. Four brief papers of around 4-5 pages will also be assigned. There will be one oral presentation summarizing and evaluating a critical, theory-based essay from a recent journal or book.
ENGL 764 Topics in British Literature since 1660: The English Romantic Poets M-F 3:15-5:15 Dr. Ron Shafer This course will center on the major British Romantic poets—Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. While a number of the major poems of each of these poets will be considered, somewhat greater emphasis will be given to Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. The objectives of the course are simple: gaining a heightened understanding of and appreciation for these poets, comparing and contrasting their particular themes and styles, noting the nature and extent of their departure from eighteenth century sensibilities, tracing the evolution of their corpus across the early decades of the nineteenth century, and examining their poetry in light of historical and cultural phenomena of their day. Requirements for the course will feature (1) a paper (in the form of a chapter) that will comprise a study guide/manual on the Romantic Poets—that is, the chapters will be edited and compiled into a collection of essays that will serve as a handbook. While these chapters will be individually composed, the students working on the same poet will comprise a panel and will offer a (2) group presentation of their work and findings. Finally, there will be occasional (3) mini-statements (even shorter than brief papers)—some composed in class, some outside of class—on the poets and/or specific poems. These will be generated by assigned readings or, on occasion, class discussion.
ENGL 766: Topics in Comparative Literature: Film and Literature M-F 10:15-12:15 Dr. Tom Slater In this class, we will use David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s Film Art: An Introduction, vol. 7 and Timothy Corrigan’s Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader to examine how film communicates through the relationship of narrative and stylistic elements and to explore the various relationships of film and literature. This means that we will not only consider adaptations of novels, short stories, and plays, but also of poetry (John Trevellini’s Dwelling Among Junkmen) and as poetry (the films of Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage). We will also consider film as essays (documentaries). Beyond the films mentioned, students will choose the films to study in class and present through group work. Assignments will include two or three short essays and a major research paper. This course will not only help students define film studies topics but also provide teachers with new ideas about how to use film in their classes. Students who took ENGL 766 with me last summer will be able to retake it this year. I will give the course a focus that fits the needs and interests of students and will ensure that we use a group of works different from those used last year. Choices could be a focus on melodrama or war.
ENGL 771 Topics in Postmodern Literature: The Feminist Subject in Postmodernist Literature M-F 8:00-10:00 Dr. Michael Vella Students will be asked to read a limited number of texts in order to more deeply engage in defining problems in the subject of the feminine in postmodernist narrative, as well as the postmodernist feminine subject. Students will be expected to discuss the postmodernist narrative, with special attention to the bearing of feminisms upon understanding the subject in select postmodernist texts. The class will be run as a seminar; each student will do two presentations in the session, one of which will ask that the participant direct a discussion of the single most influential article or book chapter the student believes pertinent to the course’s character, after reproducing this material for the seminar and having it read by us all. The second presentation will focus on applied theory to particular postmodernist narrative. In addition, as I have done in the past, students will write reflective in-class essays each Friday of the session; I will respond to these individually; and then devise one or two individual final essay prompts for each student on the basis of these weekly reflective writings. This individualized final in-class essay will constitute a final. There will be no research paper, and students who have previously taken other versions of ENGL771 are invited to revisit this course in this particular avatar. The texts identified below are my tentative selection. If any given text is out of print or otherwise unavailable, I may have to make changes prior to the session. Texts: Jones, Corregidora (Beacon 0807063150); Best, Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations (Guilford 0898624185); Acker, Portrait of an Eye: Three Novels (Grove 0802135439); Kristeva, The Portable Kristeva (Col Univ Pr 0231105049).
ENGL 772 Topics in Women’s Literature: American Fiction, 1840-1920 M-R 6:00-8:30 p.m. Dr. Karen Dandurand We will read novels and short stories written by American women between 1840 and 1920, tracing the development of certain themes and patterns as well as noting divergences from them. While we will have in mind the relationship of these works to the canons of American fiction, our emphasis will be on how the works of women relate to each other to form counter-traditions. Given the demands of the intensive summer schedule, we will emphasize short stories, but we will also read four novels (most of them relatively short). In addition, each individual class member will read and report on a novel that the rest of the class will not be reading. This should allow us to gain familiarity with a broad range of women’s fiction while not forcing us to become madwomen in the attic. In addition, everyone will be asked to give a brief summary and analysis of secondary material on an author we are all reading. Each student will write a 15-20 page critical paper (due at the end of the session) and will prepare and deliver a presentation on the same subject (during the final week). And, of course, everyone will be expected to take an active part in our discussions throughout the session. The following is a tentative list of readings, in roughly chronological order. Some short stories will be available as handouts; most will be in packets that will be available at Copies Now.
Lydia Maria Child, Alice Cary, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, short stories (1840s and 1850s)
ENGL 784 Seminar in British Literature: The World’s Olio: The Works of Margaret “Mad Madge” Cavendish and Other Writers in Seventeenth-Century Britain M-F 1:00-3:00 Dr. Chris Orchard (Ph.D. students only) Margaret Cavendish has emerged in recent years as one of the most prolific writers of the mid-seventeenth century. Her voluminous output includes prefaces, 19 plays, verse, philosophy, scientific treatises, and an utopia. As the wife of an aristocratic and Royalist commander during the British civil wars, her writings express gender, political, and class tensions as her desire for fame attained through writing was offset by her wish to play second fiddle to her husband’s political and literary ambitions. In this course, we shall place her within her political, cultural, and social context by exploring seventeenth-century women writers’ theories about writing (self-image and situating the self within the larger cultural/writing space inhabited by male writers), the political nature of autobiographies and biographies (contrasting her work with that of a rival Parliamentarian writer, Lucy Hutchinson), and gender differences involved in the construction of Utopian fantasies. Among the texts discussed will be:
Cavendish:
Other writers will include:
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