"Nina Baym, ed., The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Between the Wars 1914-1945, Vol. D, Sixth Ed.
Donald McQuade and Christine McQuade, eds., Seeing & Writing 2
William Strunk, Jr., E.B. White, and Maira Kalman (illustrator), The Elements of Style Illustrated
James Joyce, Dubliners
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Dave Eggers and Chris Ware, eds., McSweeney�s Quarterly Concern, Issue No. 13."
"This course will introduce students to the process and practice of critical reading and writing, through examining a selection of twentieth century literary texts, examples of visual art, and works that combine elements of both textual and visual art forms. A central theme for the course will be the interplay of visual signs and textual codes in literature and in our contemporary cultural context. Despite the wide range and types of works we will study � from the novel and short story to print advertisements, graphic novels, paintings and photographs � our critical approach will be the same: training ourselves as readers of structure, perspective, theme, content and context, whether we�re considering a short poem by H.D., a passage from Virginia Woolf�s To The Lighthouse, or still photography by Cindy Sherman.
We�ll engage with these works in a variety of ways: through class discussion, close-reading and group work, personal response papers and longer, expository essays. Our emphasis on the process of composition will entail peer-editing, in-class writing, research and revision exercises, as well as drafting assignments and office hour conferences. Our goal will be to become as comfortable with performing critical readings of these texts, as we are with supporting and conveying these ideas in writing and in group discussion."
"Caroll, Lewis. Alice �s Adventures in Wonderland
Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Murakami, Haruki. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Diana Hacker, Rules for Writers
Course Reader, including:
Dick, Philip K. �I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon�
Poe, Edgar Allen. �The Purloined Letter�
plus poems by Coleridge, and some essays of literary criticism
Film:
Scott, Ridley. Bladerunner"
"In this course, you will focus on the craft of writing college essays�a vast process that includes everything from refining grammar and style to developing theses, engaging critical thinking, and structuring your arguments in logical and dynamic ways. You are required to produce 32 pages of writing for this course, consisting of weekly response papers, several short essays (2-3 pages), drafts, and revisions. All the while, you will be introduced to techniques of literary analysis, which require you to read slowly, carefully, and many times over, in order to discover the ways in which formal and rhetorical practices (not confined to literary texts alone, but ones that you may also see in, say, a State of the Union address) convey multiple meanings.
As an extension of our simultaneous foray into analytical writing and reading, I�ve chosen a set of texts that provoke us to sort fact from fiction and, in so doing, demand that we consider our own ways of grasping the truth in what we see, hear, read and write. In various ways, these texts capitalize on questions that you (as burgeoning critical writers) will encounter in the course of your own work: how do we �know� the truth about the world that we see before us�is it a process that requires rational deduction or does it demand imagination? Are our perceptions based on assumptions and/or desires? Or do they accurately register and comprehend the signs we encounter? The theme of this course is also inspired by the most popular answer I get when, in the first week of class, I ask R&C students to name their favorite authors or genres; ninety percent of the time, the answer is �Mystery and Fantasy.� In taking my past students� interests seriously enough to construct this course, I�ve also formed an odd literary couple�for the genres of �mystery� and �fantasy� feature widely divergent plot lines, characters, and themes. The literary detective is a highly rational and perceptive creature, while the characters in a fantasy book are often forced to overcome their rationality and other accepted modes of knowledge. The pleasure of investigating this clashing literary twosome will involve seeing what happens in stories about weaving together �facts�; in stories that present an alternate universe in which �facts� and preconceived truths become questionable; and in stories that bring both �fact� and �fantasy� into productive tension. "
"Julian Barnes, The History of the World in 10� Chapters
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
David Bradley, The Chaneysville Incident
Octavia Butler, Kindred
Supplementary Texts:
Frederick Crews, The Random House Handbook, 6 th ed.
Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed.
William Strunk Jr., E.B. White, Roger Angell, The Elements of Style"
"What is history? What effect does it have on our projects in the present? And on our future projects? This course is interested in exploring what role the way in which we imagine past events has in shaping our understanding of what�s possible and impossible, now or later. We will be reading texts which self-consciously take up the issue of history in a variety of ways � some do this by returning imaginatively to moments of historic significance, and some by imagining what happened in the past from the standpoint of the �present,� while others imagine the present as the past of some future time, all challenging us to consider history as an imaginative act with consequences.
This course is reading and writing intensive, and aims to develop in students fluency with the method and discourse of the analytical essay. Special emphasis shall be placed on the refinement of sentence construction, thesis development, and research methods. Additionally, systematic reasoning through close reading will be stressed both in class discussion and in the course�s various writing opportunities. This course fulfills the first half of the University Reading and Composition requirement."
"Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Diana Hacker, Rules for Writers
* Course Reader including writings by George Orwell, Sui Sin Far, Toni Morrison, Edgar Allan Poe, and others. "
"This course is an introduction to the mechanics and pleasures of critical reading and writing. If you�re not sure how critical reading and writing differ from other kinds of reading and writing, don�t despair! That�s precisely what we�re here to figure out. We will begin by abandoning the idea that writing�creative or critical�just happens, and instead approach it as a series of careful and strategic choices. Thus, with respect to both the texts we read (see list below) and the texts you write (see writing requirement below), we will think very carefully about how little decisions such as word choice, verb tense, or the ordering of events/ideas, can influence the overall meaning and effect of a sentence, paragraph or even an entire work. By becoming more conscious of words as active creators of meaning rather than passive transmitters of information, you will become more perceptive readers and more skillful writers by the end of the semester.
The thematic focus of this course overlaps with the practical focus described above. We will read short stories and novels, supplemented by autobiographical sketches and essays, all of which are centrally concerned with the acts of reading and writing. In its simplest sense, this means that we will read stories that are about writers: journalists, diarists, and note-pad toting spies will all make an appearance this semester. Many of our characters are also readers, but not simply in the bookish sense, and this is where the true crux of our course lies. For the authors of the works we will read this semester, �interpretation� is not an activity reserved solely for English class, nor is it simply about making sense of texts. Rather, interpretation emerges as a strategy for making sense of the world, for organizing the raw material of experience into meaning. The characters in their fiction thus emerge as �readers� of people, events, history and culture, all of which emerge as �texts� demanding interpretation. Freed from the page, the act of reading assumes unexpected and often bizarre forms: a nasty wallpaper design, a spouse�s perfectly white teeth, and a decapitated head each emerge as ciphers which we, along with the characters, are asked to render meaningful. To read these stories and novels is to participate in their construction of meaning, whether by joining a character in his/her search for a �truth� which lies beneath the surface of things, or by reading between the lines of a character who seeks to hide something from others or from him/herself. Our project this semester will be to read our way into these linguistic worlds and then, by constructing our own understandings of the texts� meaning, to write our way back out. Students who enroll should come prepared to read constantly, write furiously, and participate earnestly in class discussion! "
"Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
Frances Burney, Evelina
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
A short course reader containing several short stories and other material related to course topic. "
"In 1913, the social philosopher George Mead declared, �It is fair to say that the modern western world has lately done much of its thinking in the form of the novel.� For Mead, it seems, novels had not only begun to test and represent developments in social theory, but also they had created a �space� of private reading in which �the social��that is, the concept of society�had begun to be evaluated and influenced by novel reading itself. Mead anticipated what in current literary studies is often referred to as the �social imaginary,� or the imagined interplay between personal identity and society that takes place when we read novels. We will begin with a focus on the term itself by asking: What does it mean to say that there is an imaginary dimension to the social? This course is designed to trace the development of the �social imaginary� in English literature during the period that has been referred to as the �rise of the English novel��beginning in the late eighteenth century and concluding with the end of the Victorian period (roughly 1778-1900). Since �the social� includes both writers and readers, our focus will be twofold: on the one hand, we will consider the development of the novel as a literary form that became capable of representing the social; on the other, we will think about the changing conceptions of novel reading itself, and or of what it meant to be a novel reader.
Each of the texts we will read is engaged by conflicts between traditional social forms (for example, class, gender, and marriage) and new forms of personal mobility, self-determination, and individuality. We will pay particular attention to the novel�s capacity to evoke both literal and figurative representations of the social. For example, we will spend time thinking about novelistic techniques such as satire, parody, irony, and imitation, all of which depend on a symbolic interaction with a reader. In addition, we will consider literary representations of social issues such as publicity and privacy, the role of gender and sexuality in society, and the relationship between the author and her or his text.
Our dual focus on writers and readers will lead us to consider how the novel not only offered escape and entertainment to those who read them, but also proved to be a flexible and expansive medium of social intervention and commentary. Along the way, we will take into account various questions that emerged in society about the concept of novel reading itself: for example, do novels educate and improve their readers, or do they distract and corrupt them? By tracing the �social imaginary� during the rise of the novel, we will see how the novel acquired new powers and provoked new debates and relations among both readers and writers.
In this course, we will be concerned with developing critical thinking and analytical writing skills. More specifically, we will practice applying our close reading skills of literary texts to the writing of solid analytical prose. Our journey through the world of �exposition and argumentation� (two of the main foci of this course) will include visits at the following destinations: grammar; sentence and paragraph construction; essay structure; thesis development; proper use of evidence; and style. The majority of class time will revolve around class discussions and in-class workshops that will allow us to practice and build upon our close reading skills, and then work to �translate� these skills into writing.
Over the course of the semester, each student will be assigned five papers and a number of short take-home assignments. Class time will frequently be spent on group work and in-class writing. Three of the papers will involve a primary draft, a peer editing phase, and then the revision and resubmission of a final draft to the instructor for a grade. Students can expect to receive a substantial amount of commentary from the instructor on all five essays.
Constant attendance, frequent in-class participation, and dedication to the reading are required for this course. "
"Faulkner, W.: As I Lay Dying
Hacker, D.: Rules for Writers
Kafka, F.: The Metamorphosis
Sexton, A.: Transformations
Stevenson, R. L.: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Woolf, V.: Orlando
Course reader, including selections from Ovid, Angela Carter, Gilles Deleuze, Sigmund Freud, and the Grimm Brothers "
"This course examines why human metamorphosis has been such an enduring motif in literature and how the meanings of literary metamorphoses have themselves changed over time. Starting with classical myth and working through more modern fairy tales, poems, novels, and psychological case studies, we will ask what metamorphosis implies about voluntarism, repression, animality, the demands of socialization, and the possibilities and limits of subjectivity. We will also pay careful attention to the kinds of language used to express changes in form, asking how literature enforces metamorphosis and how it is adequate to the task of its representation.
The theme of metamorphosis informs the primary goals of the course: becoming more critical readers and more effective writers. In class discussions and in a number of short essays, we will focus on developing critical arguments from initial observations or questions about the texts, and we will practice revision strategies that transform essays from their first incarnations. "
"Diana Hacker. Rules for Writers. Available online: http://www.dianahacker.com/rules/
Strunk and White. Elements of Style. Available online: http://www.bartleby.com/141/
Primary Texts: (chronological by date of composition and order of in-class lection)
Augustine, Confessions (5th century) Available online: www.ccel.org/a/augustine/confessions/confessions.html Excerpts.
Peter Abelard, Story of my Misfortunes (11th century) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/abelard-histcal.html
Abelard and Heloise, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. (11th century) Trans. Betty Radice. Penguin Books, 2003. Excerpts.
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, long version and short version (14 th century). Trans. Elizabeth Spearing. Intro A. C. Spearing. Penguin Classics, 1998.
Margery Kempe The Book of Margery Kempe. (14th century) Trans. Barry Windeatt. Penguin Classics, 1994.
Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists (16th century) Trans. George Bull. Penguin, 1971. Excerpts.
Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (16th century) Trans. George Bull. Penguin, 1998. Excerpts.
Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Pepys (17th century) Available online: pepysdiary.com. Excerpts.
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (19th century) Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. Excerpts.
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (early 20th) Penguin, 2003, 1992.
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (20th) Harper Collins, 1996.
Peter Balakian, Black Dog of Fate (late 20th) New York: Basic Books, 1997.
Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul (21st) New York: Knopf, 2005."
"In the fifth century, Augustine of Hippo wrote his Confessions, arguably the most significant and foundational autobiography in the Western tradition. In this work, he represents the act of making an autobiography as a quest for self and a quest for God: �Search for your true self; he who seeks shall find himself in God.� Confession, Augustine suggests, is all about the self and its relationship to God. To search oneself and make a narrative of one�s own life is a revelatory process: seek thy story, and ye shall find truth and God.
But written confession, such as Augustine�s own Confessions, evidently goes beyond this private, revelatory, sacred act of self-examination. Augustine�s text, after all, was written in part as an exemplary text, meant to inspire and instruct others in how they should make their own confessional narratives. The notion of the private, confessional, or revelatory autobiography is exposed as, in part, a rhetorical device.
So, what is autobiography�fact, fiction, truth, rhetoric, or somewhere in between? Put otherwise, are autobiographies art or history? What does it mean �to write the self?� When we read autobiographies, do we achieve the kind of intimacy with a text and its creator that the idea of �the intentional fallacy� warns us we must not hope for? Are autobiographies simply �life stories,� or are they, at the very least, recreations and reimaginations of a past era? To answer these questions, we will scrutinize the forms and themes of autobiographies, assessing not only what past they choose to represent (and what they might be omitting) but also how they choose to represent that past. Do they integrate history and politics, or exclude them?
In addition, we will assess how the genre of autobiography has changed across a dozen or so centuries and several continents. We will assess whether it is useful to think of autobiography in discrete sub-genres�confession, polemic, exemplary text, history of a place, archival record, artistic manifesto, or story�whether there is some common impulse in all autobiographies, or whether there are general trends in the genre, shifts over time.
We will gain traction in this diachronic and pan-Western wash of self-writings in part by examining autobiographies in self-forming groups. For example, to situate philosopher Peter Abelard�s autobiography, we will read not only Story of my Misfortunes, but also the letters exchanged between him and the woman he identifies as the source of his �misfortunes,� and some of the more heated correspondences he had with contemporary philosophers.
Later we will read Julian of Norwich�s earlier, shorter retelling of her mystical Visions, and then compare that with her massive revision and elaboration of them, undertaken 30 years later. We will then turn to read Margery of Kempe�s story of her own mystical experiences, including an homage to an earlier female mystic autobiographer, none other than Julian herself.
Turning toward the visual arts, we will then read two quasi-archival, quasi-autobiographical accounts of the great flourishing of art in Renaissance Italy, to examine how each author chooses to situate himself in his narrative practice, as well as in the �real-time history� that he narrates. From the Renaissance, we will move into more �modern� feeling texts, and analyze how they embody and/or problematize autobiographical conventions we have encountered in our earlier texts.
Since writing is always in part a conscious self-representation, I wanted to orient this class around texts that bring that reality to the foreground. As we practice our literary critical thinking on these texts, and transform those critical thoughts into writing, I want to keep a partial focus on how any textual production�including a critical paper written for an English class�includes an element of self-representation, conscious authorial self-positioning, or claims for personal authority. I want to use our observations about autobiographies� awareness of their audiences, historical circumstances, narrative goals, and rhetorical objectives to inform and complicate our own understanding of our writerly identities, as well as our sense of exactly what �self-writing� is about in literary history.
Writing assignments for the course will consist of weekly short papers from 2-4 pages in length, based upon close readings of the primary text we�re examining for the week. Each student must select three of those papers to revise, and must come to see me in office hours before undertaking each revision. The papers need not always (though most should) be literary critical papers; it is also acceptable to write creative responses to the pieces we read for class (we will talk more about this at the beginning of the semester.) From these writing exercises, we will learn how to respond critically to literary texts, how to formulate theses, how to develop arguments, and how to begin the process of developing writerly style. "
"Diana Hacker. Rules for Writers. Available online: http://www.dianahacker.com/rules/
Strunk and White. Elements of Style. Available online: http://www.bartleby.com/141/
Primary Texts: (chronological by date of composition and order of in-class lection)
Augustine, Confessions (5th century) Available online: www.ccel.org/a/augustine/confessions/confessions.html Excerpts.
Peter Abelard, Story of my Misfortunes (11th century) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/abelard-histcal.html
Abelard and Heloise, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. (11th century) Trans. Betty Radice. Penguin Books, 2003. Excerpts.
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, long version and short version (14 th century). Trans. Elizabeth Spearing. Intro A. C. Spearing. Penguin Classics, 1998.
Margery Kempe The Book of Margery Kempe. (14th century) Trans. Barry Windeatt. Penguin Classics, 1994.
Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists (16th century) Trans. George Bull. Penguin, 1971. Excerpts.
Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (16th century) Trans. George Bull. Penguin, 1998. Excerpts.
Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Pepys (17th century) Available online: pepysdiary.com. Excerpts.
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (19th century) Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. Excerpts.
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (early 20th) Penguin, 2003, 1992.
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (20th) Harper Collins, 1996.
Peter Balakian, Black Dog of Fate (late 20th) New York: Basic Books, 1997.
Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul (21st) New York: Knopf, 2005."
"In the fifth century, Augustine of Hippo wrote his Confessions, arguably the most significant and foundational autobiography in the Western tradition. In this work, he represents the act of making an autobiography as a quest for self and a quest for God: �Search for your true self; he who seeks shall find himself in God.� Confession, Augustine suggests, is all about the self and its relationship to God. To search oneself and make a narrative of one�s own life is a revelatory process: seek thy story, and ye shall find truth and God.
But written confession, such as Augustine�s own Confessions, evidently goes beyond this private, revelatory, sacred act of self-examination. Augustine�s text, after all, was written in part as an exemplary text, meant to inspire and instruct others in how they should make their own confessional narratives. The notion of the private, confessional, or revelatory autobiography is exposed as, in part, a rhetorical device.
So, what is autobiography�fact, fiction, truth, rhetoric, or somewhere in between? Put otherwise, are autobiographies art or history? What does it mean �to write the self?� When we read autobiographies, do we achieve the kind of intimacy with a text and its creator that the idea of �the intentional fallacy� warns us we must not hope for? Are autobiographies simply �life stories,� or are they, at the very least, recreations and reimaginations of a past era? To answer these questions, we will scrutinize the forms and themes of autobiographies, assessing not only what past they choose to represent (and what they might be omitting) but also how they choose to represent that past. Do they integrate history and politics, or exclude them?
In addition, we will assess how the genre of autobiography has changed across a dozen or so centuries and several continents. We will assess whether it is useful to think of autobiography in discrete sub-genres�confession, polemic, exemplary text, history of a place, archival record, artistic manifesto, or story�whether there is some common impulse in all autobiographies, or whether there are general trends in the genre, shifts over time.
We will gain traction in this diachronic and pan-Western wash of self-writings in part by examining autobiographies in self-forming groups. For example, to situate philosopher Peter Abelard�s autobiography, we will read not only Story of my Misfortunes, but also the letters exchanged between him and the woman he identifies as the source of his �misfortunes,� and some of the more heated correspondences he had with contemporary philosophers.
Later we will read Julian of Norwich�s earlier, shorter retelling of her mystical Visions, and then compare that with her massive revision and elaboration of them, undertaken 30 years later. We will then turn to read Margery of Kempe�s story of her own mystical experiences, including an homage to an earlier female mystic autobiographer, none other than Julian herself.
Turning toward the visual arts, we will then read two quasi-archival, quasi-autobiographical accounts of the great flourishing of art in Renaissance Italy, to examine how each author chooses to situate himself in his narrative practice, as well as in the �real-time history� that he narrates. From the Renaissance, we will move into more �modern� feeling texts, and analyze how they embody and/or problematize autobiographical conventions we have encountered in our earlier texts.
Since writing is always in part a conscious self-representation, I wanted to orient this class around texts that bring that reality to the foreground. As we practice our literary critical thinking on these texts, and transform those critical thoughts into writing, I want to keep a partial focus on how any textual production�including a critical paper written for an English class�includes an element of self-representation, conscious authorial self-positioning, or claims for personal authority. I want to use our observations about autobiographies� awareness of their audiences, historical circumstances, narrative goals, and rhetorical objectives to inform and complicate our own understanding of our writerly identities, as well as our sense of exactly what �self-writing� is about in literary history.
Writing assignments for the course will consist of weekly short papers from 2-4 pages in length, based upon close readings of the primary text we�re examining for the week. Each student must select three of those papers to revise, and must come to see me in office hours before undertaking each revision. The papers need not always (though most should) be literary critical papers; it is also acceptable to write creative responses to the pieces we read for class (we will talk more about this at the beginning of the semester.) From these writing exercises, we will learn how to respond critically to literary texts, how to formulate theses, how to develop arguments, and how to begin the process of developing writerly style. "
"Herman Melville, The Confidence Man
Albert Camus, The Stranger
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Philip K. Dick, Valis
Diana Hacker, Rules for Writers
Films:
2001: A Space Odyssey
Memento"
"For this course, we will consider the relationship between modern understandings of character (in film and literature) and the development of psychopathology in the 19 th and 20 th centuries. While we will borrow some terms and ideas from psychoanalysis, our primary focus is on literary and cinematic responses to that discipline and its relationship to our idea of �character.� We will begin with a few short pieces of 19 th century fiction (included in a course reader) and will then examine a handful of longer 19 th and 20 th century novels and films (see below) which variously incorporate and/or react against the pathologizing of the psyche.
This course aims to develop students' practical fluency with sentence, paragraph, and thesis-development skills with increasingly complex applications. A short essay is normally assigned at the beginning of the semester to assess the students' writing skills. Students will be assigned a minimum of 32 pages of writing, to be divided among a number of short essays (2-4 typewritten pages), and will be required to revise at least three of these essays. Since this is a writing course, be prepared to write (and revise) in abundance; however, it is my firm belief that good writing stems first from good reading, so you will also be expected to read much.
NOTE: We will be viewing two films for this course, so we will arrange screening times outside of regular class time; those of you unable to attend the arranged times will be expected to view assigned films on your own time (in Media Resources or at your own expense from a rental outlet). A course reader including additional readings and materials not listed below will also be made available."
"Olivier Assayas, Irma Vep
Pearl Buck, The Good Earth
Cecil B. DeMille, The Cheat
Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Andrew X. Pham, Catfish and Mandala
Sebastiao Salgado, Migrations: Humanity in Transition
Sara Suleri, Meatless Days
Zhang Yimou To Live"
"This class will examine representations of the Asian masses in selected works of literature and film. What historical contexts have given rise to particular ways of representing Asians as masses or hordes? How can we think about the Asian masses as both cultural content and cultural form? What social and political purchase have these representations had, both within and outside of the Asian context? From Hong Kong martial arts films to documentaries about post-war Vietnam, we will look at a range of genres produced in a variety of locations in our attempt to perform a comparative study of the selected works.
Our critical approach to the texts will interlace with our own critical approaches to writing. We will compose essays gradually, beginning with questions that emerge from our initial responses to the texts and working our way toward effective writing and argumentation. A series of in-class workshops will be held to assist students with brainstorming ideas, developing theses, and drafting and revising critical essays. Students will also exchange drafts of their essays in order to offer and receive feedback. (Please note: book list is subject to change.)"
"Ccourse reader: Genesis, the story of Abraham and Isaac (in KJV translation)
Lucy Hutchinson, Order and Disorder, Canto 15
selected essays
John Milton, Samson Agonistes
Sophocles, Antigone
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (selections)
Cesare Pavese, The House on the Hill
Dai Sijie, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Tony Kushner, Angels in America
Diana Hacker, Rules for Writers (5e) "
"John Milton, arguing against the governmental oversight of book printing in Areopagitica, tells us that �reason is but choosing.� He also tells us, famously, of another choice: that �from out the rind of one apple tasted, . . . the knowledge of good and evill as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World.� The wonderful duality of that word �cleaving� � to come together, to rend asunder � shows us that even choices we consider absolute carry the specter of the unchosen option with them. In this course, we will consider ethical dilemmas in two forms: firstly the choice to act, often violently, and its consequences; secondly the legal stipulation that �not doing is no trespass� and whether inaction frees us from blame.
Writing is one of the best ways of coming to terms with the ideas and forms of literary texts; consequently, the course will require frequent writing, in a variety of styles, designed both to help you develop your ideas about the texts and to convey those ideas in writing. As a seminar on the consequences of persuasion and choice, many of these assignments will take the form of short position papers asking you to argue on one side or the other of a question. These assignments aim to develop your argumentative writing skills by suiting different forms of persuasive speech to different occasions, preparing you to write in a wide variety of situations, though focusing primarily on the academic essay. You will be writing and rewriting every week, both in class and out. To that end, a portion of each class period will focus on grammar, using Diana Hacker�s Rules for Writers, with additional online exercises. "
"Anton Chekhov,�Uncle Vanya.�
Frederick Crews, The Random House Handbook
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Herman Melville, �Bartleby the Scrivener.�
Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy, eds. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. (e.g., at least one sonnet from Shakespeare, a couple songs from Ben Jonson�s plays, Blake�s �The Tyger,� something by Keats, Frost�s �Spring Pools,� Yeats�s �The Wild Swans at Coole,� Roethke�s �My Papa�s Waltz,� something by Philip Larkin, something by Robert Hass, etc.) "
"In this course we will read closely and write about markedly different kinds of literature � a novel, verse, a couple short stories, and one play in two different translations � with the aim of coming to some conclusions about what makes great literature great. The reading list is made up some of the war-horses of this culture�s literature. We will start with the presumption that these works are great and worth studying.
I�ve chosen not to organize this class around a single theme or what-have-you because I want students to resist the urge to compartmentalize experience. It�s common for people to like all different sorts of literature, but uncommon for students and teachers to think about what, for example, the experience of little poems and big novels have in common. In this class we will try to make such connections, not only between the works on the reading list, but also between the works on the reading list and contemporary popular art forms like country song lyrics, television sitcoms (and so on). The history of English literature is largely the history of popular English literature�a fact that will help us speculate about what kinds of things from the present are likely be taught in courses like this one years from now.
This course is designed to help students write clearly and honestly about the experience of reading. Students will write weekly 1 page papers and three longer essays of 4-6 pages. "
"Brett Easton Ellis, American Psycho (1991)
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, The Office (2001-03)
Henry James, The Awkward Age (1899)
Andrea Lunsford, Easy Writer (2005)
Herman Melville, The Confidence Man (1857)
Vladimir Nabokov, Despair (1966)
Nicholas Ray, Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Gertrude Stein, Three Lives (1909)"
"""I enjoy seeing the lengths to which bad managements go to preserve what they call their independence�which really just means their jobs."" Donald Trump, The Art of the Deal (1987)
""To cast in my lot with Jekyll was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and for ever, despised and friendless."" Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
One of the most striking absences in this Stevenson epigraph is the identity of its �I,� for as even a casual familiarity with the story tells us, Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. In order to cast in my lot with one or the other I�d have to transcend them both, making the decision as pointless as the novel would be without its drama. This course will begin with the assumption that stories about self-management (including the stories we tell to and about ourselves) are driven by this kind of foreclosure, a friction that develops after we already know what we are. Donald Trump, no stranger to the kinds of management-speak that means �jobs� when it says �independence,� wouldn�t be wrong to think of Jekyll and Hyde as a kind of corporation, a body with bodies inside. For just as euphemisms do two kinds of work�syntactically using words like �independence� to stand in for a group of correlated interests while pragmatically clueing us into the vulnerable �jobs� beneath them�the logic of incorporation puts its bodies to work in unequal and often unrewarding roles. If the choice of becoming-Jekyll or becoming-Hyde requires incompatible costs, we know they aren�t equivalent, and that it�s only after one incorporates the other that it becomes impossible to be both.
Each of the novels we�ll be reading this semester dramatizes the negotiation that takes place once its roles have been assigned, and looks for new ways to talk about maintaining them: Ellis�s psycho leads a double life, Nabokov�s Hermann plots his own murder, the confidence man could be anyone, and Dean�s rebel is everyone. Theirs is a perspective with real costs: the ethics of personal and social relationships, identities, and obligations are clearly at stake, so while we will never see the successful transgression that the illusion of �I� (or its �independence�) promises, we will always feel its corporate weight. A closer look at these �bad managements� will reveal all the friction there is in a done deal, giving us cause to review the knotty organization of our own self-expression, and the energy to be found in a foreclosed place.
I will assign five short (2-4 page) papers in this course (at least three of which will require revision), two in-class essays, four rounds of peer editing, and weekly blog responses to required reading. The 1A course is intended to develop your practical fluency with sentence, paragraph, and thesis-development skills; we�ll work on your ability to analyze difficult work, and to use that analysis to produce credible arguments. My hope is that a topic like �Bad Managements,� with its stress on the forms that we use to contain and express ourselves, will bring us close to the compromises of and in our own writing. "
"Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
Sigmund Freud, Dora: Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
Diana Hacker, A Writer�s Reference (5 th ed.)
Course reader containing additional primary and secondary sources"
"How have mad women been represented in literature? This course will explore a variety of overlapping approaches (including Gothic, medical, psychoanalytic, and autobiographical) appearing in literary representations of female insanity. Through several texts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we will examine the changing ways in which madness and its treatments intersect with cultural notions about the female mind and the female body. We will pay particular attention to portrayals of the act of writing and of female authorship in these texts, and their relationship to an often male-identified medical and psychological discourse. The representation of female madness and mad females in these texts will also provide a critical perspective from which to question the ideas of female health, sanity, and normality against which insanity is defined.
This course is aimed at developing reading, writing, and research skills that are applicable beyond the specific field of literature. The primary focus will be on how to find, evaluate, and make effective use of research tools and resources. Writing assignments will include three progressively longer papers (2-3 pages, 5-6 pages, 10-12 pages), combining analysis of primary texts with research from secondary sources. Strategies for revision will form another major focus of the course, and the second and third papers will include substantial work (and feedback) at the prewriting and draft stages of composition. This course fulfills the second half of the university�s Reading and Composition requirement."
"Desiderius Erasmus, On Copia of Words and Ideas
Harryette Mullen, Sleeping with the Dictionary
Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky, and more nonsense
William Shakespeare, Sonnets
Juliana Spahr, Fuck You-Aloha-I Love You
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
William Struck Jr. and E.B. White, The Elements of Style
Sundry short items including Martin Luther King Jr.�s �I Have a Dream,� The Rhyming Poem, Ezra Pound�s translations of Arnaut Daniel, an essay on the color blue from Alexander Thoreaux�s Primary Colours, Gertrude Stein�s Portraits and Repetition and excerpts from How to Write and Stephen Pinker�s The Language Instinct, rhetorical manuals, and new media."
"Roman Jakobson argues that babies first begin to make meaning when they begin to repeat phonemes: ba-ba, da-da, etc. Like Chomsky�s notion of Universal Grammar, repetition is embedded in the structure of language and has aesthetic, rhetorical, performative and political purposes. Rhymes occur in 5 th century Celtic inscriptions and presidential speeches, repetitive gestures occur in ceremonial dance, repetition is seen to have a kind of power in chants, incantations, prayers and songs. In this class, we will be examining the persuasive power of rhetoric as manifested in a variety of texts that use syntactic parallelism, refrain, alliteration, assonance, rhyme (phonetic and ideational). Why is the repetition of like sounds such a powerful and �convincing� device, from selling cars to seducing a lover? We will be looking at various rhetorical and poetical arguments (Shakespeare�s attempt to get a young man to marry, Stein�s claim that she never repeats she only �insists,� Erasmus�s plea for stylistic �copia�) in order to refine our own abilities to
Use persuasive strategies that frame an argument around a central thesis
Become fluent writers of progressively longer, more elaborate arguments
Become proficient researchers by utilizing our vast resources
Utilize certain conventions for citing sources
Imitate and innovate
Draft and re-draft
Respond critically to a wide variety of texts
Develop editing skills
Use writing as a tool to teach and to delight "
"James Hogg, Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Diana Hacker, Rules for Writers
Strunk and White, Elements of Style.
A Course Reader will include shorter works and excerpts. Some films will also be shown."
"The topic of this course examines literary portrayals of faith and doubt. By looking at texts which explore both the human need for belief without proof and the tendency of reason toward skepticism, we will chart a literary history of personal religious doubt. Our �faiths� will be varied: given the nature of English literature, many of the works will concern Christian faith, but other faiths, such as in self-reliance, in democracy, in jihad, in atheism, and in science will also be discussed. In the ambiguous space of religious faith, where truth cannot be verified by experience, we find a topical analog for the strangeness of literature, where fiction is neither truth nor falsity. Religious crisis has a habit of veering from the extremely personal to the outwardly social, and we will look at how different writers depict the origins of personal religious crises as well as their consequences in the social and global spheres.
The materials for the course are arranged to provide many avenues for honing students� research and writing skills. In keeping with the R&C requirements, students will write two research papers totaling 16 pages, with at least an equal number of pages and preliminary drafting and revising."
"Course reader
Rise Axelrod, Reading Critically, Writing Well: A Reader and Guide
James Monaco, How to Read a Film
George Orwell, 1984
Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Arthur Miller, The Crucible
Gwendolyn Brooks, Blacks
A.R. Ammons, Tape for the Turn of the Year,
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Theresa Hak Kyun Cha, Dict�e
The Atomic Caf� (1982)
The Fog of War (2003)
Munich (2005)"
"This course looks at what was happening in culture at large from the mid- twentieth century until the end of the Cold War. We will immerse ourselves in the popular and political culture of the time�literature, poetry, film, television, advertising, and so on�in order to frame our readings and to see what response artists were making to that milieu. The �tranquilized fifties,� as Robert Lowell called the period, were in fact a period of world-wide instability, fear, and crisis�a situation that ironically accounts for the domestic traditionalism we associate with American society of the time.
The approaches we learn through critical writing can be applied to cultural products of all levels, not only the �high� culture of the sonnet or the literary novel, but also, as numerous books and articles have demonstrated, the �pulp� fiction of popular romance and detective stories; popular music of all varieties; and the most popular art form of the twentieth century, the fiction film. In this course we will read a variety of American cultural artifacts of the last half of the twentieth-century to understand their themes, their style, their techniques and perhaps particularly their social and political content, often expressed in allegory and representing the anxieties, hopes, and values of the period.
This will be a writing process oriented course with a research component. We will improve upon their current university level writing skill by developing an awareness of English grammar and rhetoric through exercises and demonstrated during journal free writing. Analytic reading skills will be practiced and executed through constructed response assignments, culminating with extensive peer and instructor drafting of three 5-7 pages critical papers, and a final research-based critical analysis.
Course requirements: one assessment essay, two 5-6 page critical papers, one 7-10 page research paper, drafting assignments, class presentation, constructed response assignments, grammar and writing exercises, group journals."
"Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Art Spiegelman, In the Shadow of No Towers
Diana Hacker, Rules for Writers 5th edition
25th Hour (film directed by Spike Lee; to be screened in class)
And a required course reader containing Joyce Carol Oates� �The Mutant�, David Foster Wallace�s �The Suffering Channel�, speeches by President Bush and former New York Mayor Rudolph Guilliani, newspaper clippings, and selections from some of the following texts: An Eye for an Eye: Poets on 9/11 (Parenti); After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era (Brill); As the Towers Fell: Stories of Unshakeable Faith on 9/11 (Chilson-Rose); Moral Philosophy After 9/11 (Margolis); After 9/11: A Korean Girl�s Sexual Journey (Cha); 9/11: Artists Respond (Eisner); Portraits 9/11/01: The Collected New York Times �Portraits of Grief� (Raines, ed.); The 9/11 Commission Report (9/11 Commission); 9/11 Ashes to Ashes Dust to DNA (Flowers); Film and Television After 9/11 (Dixon); Lamentation 9/11 (Doctorow); Above Hallowed Ground: A Photographic Record of September 11, 2001."
"Individual responses to the events of September 11th, 2001 made surprisingly frequent reference to film and narrative: unable to describe the attacks any other way, we either noted their similarity to particular films, or we described our shock by saying, as the title of this course puts it, �If it had been a movie, I wouldn�t have believed it.� We�ll begin this class by looking at a few pre-9/11 films that seem to weirdly �predict� the attacks, and then look at the immediate responses to 9/11, especially the way the attacks were mobilized in political rhetoric. We�ll then be prepared to consider representations of and in the aftermath of September 11 th in fiction, poetry, essays, photography and film, as well as in public discourse (such as the controversy surrounding the WTC memorials). What are the available literary, narrative, or cultural forms for describing events we couldn�t imagine? What comes in the aftermath of national or personal trauma? Do we seek something different in literature after experiencing a �nightmarish� reality? How do we properly memorialize national tragedies, and what political questions do these memorials raise?
And of course we�ll also be thinking about, talking about, and doing a lot of writing! The goal of R1B is to equip you with the skills needed to read, analyze, and write about literature and culture effectively, and to refine your skills in using research and evidence to construct persuasive expository essays. We�ll begin with a series of short, informal or creative in-class writing exercises designed to develop close-reading and critical thinking skills. After getting our muscles stretched with these shorter papers, we�ll shift to the long-distance running of longer and more argumentative expository papers, essays for which you�ll be free to develop both a topic and a set of research sources/primary texts according to your own interests and/or academic discipline. (Sample topics could include controversies over memorialization; 9/11 and the Iraq war in political discourse; WTC insurance battles; historic responses to other national crises in the U.S. ; international reaction; 9/11 and the internet; conspiracy theories and much, much more!) These essays will go through an extensive drafting process, both in peer workshop groups and in one-on-one meetings with me. "
"I. Allende, The House of the Spirits
A. Roy, The God of Small Things
B.Okri, The Famished Road
A course reader"
"The term �magic realism� can be used to describe any work of fiction that combines fantastic or otherworldly forms of narrative with those that belong to more traditional realist methods. But the aesthetic and social significance of magic realist devices varies greatly in works that originate from different socio-political contexts. In this class, we will read novels by authors from Chile, India, and Nigeria in order to explore the various artistic and political functions that magic realism serves in these cultural contexts. At the same time, we will examine criticism that asks whether and to what extent the idea of �national allegory� is an adequate critical frame for works of so-called third-world literature. Do magic realist techniques have a greater tendency to be enlisted in the service of narratives of emergent national identity? If so, how do we account for the socially symbolic character of these stylistic devices? If not, what is it about magic realism that causes it to exceed the critical frameworks devised by proponents of �national allegory�?
Students will be expected to write two essays. The first should exibit the students� ability to employ close reading, literary analysis and theoretical argumentation. The second should integrate these interpretive techniques with more formal critical analysis, based on individual research."
"a course reader
George Orwell, 1984
Don DeLillo, White Noise
Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers"
"George Orwell�s 1984 envisions a world where language, thought, and information are controlled by the ruling Party. Reading 1984 as a primer of media and information control, this class will examine the new challenges that mass media and the internet present in the so-called �information age.� Although we will engage the issues of access, the democratization of information, and the credibility of sources, we will primarily focus on the problems that arise when journalists, researchers, and students limit their information to that which is �googleable.�
To examine the limits of search engines such as google, and promote the research orientation of this class, students will design and undertake individual research projects that will span the course of the semester. Students will begin by proposing a set of related topics, compiling bibliographies, and composing a research prospectus. Student research will culminate in a final expository essay of 7-10 pages. These essays will undergo at least two revisions; in the revision process, a strong emphasis will be placed on feedback and self-evaluation. We will dedicate a number of class periods to visiting the numerous campus libraries, and exploring the various campus collections and research material-- including scholarly journals, digital libraries, microfiche, etc. "
"A Course Reader
English Renaissance Drama
A Companion to Shakespeare
The Elements of Style"
We will hone the skills of composition, argumentation, and research as we journey through the glory days of the early English stage. The �stage� here not only refers to the plays that we have come to accept as masterpieces of the English literary cannon�Dr. Faustus, Hamlet, King Lear, etc.�but it also directly implicates the material realities of dramatic performance, the social trends, economics, technologies, laws, and people enabled the English drama to thrive and endure. We will read a selection of plays within the available contexts of actual dramatic performance in the period; while the readings will certainly include Shakespeare, they will also embrace an array of lesser known dramatists. Readings will also include a selection of critical and historical essays. We will learn to appreciate the unstable essence of dramatic texts, working to mediate the distance between the play-as-book and the play-as-performance. We will visit the Bancroft library to examine authentic early printed versions of plays�such as the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio�but we will also study film and stage performances to earn richer understanding of these works. Students will attend regular writing sessions, working with the instructor to develop a number of short essays based on class readings. The semester will culminate in a research-intensive project (approx. 8 pages) that will challenge students to imagine how they would stage a scene from a Renaissance play; research will include a primary text (the play itself), critical essays, light historical research, film, and perhaps an interview (these are just a few examples). At least one of the research lessons will involve an amusing experiment in hands-on learning. There may also be opportunities for one or more optional fieldtrips outside of class hours.
"Octavia E. Butler, Kindred
Raymond Chandler, The High Window
Lucia Corpi, Eulogy for a Brown Angel
Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go
Cynthia Kadohata, In the Heart of the Valley of Love
Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust
Karen Tei Yamashita, Tropic of Orange
Recommended Texts:
Mike Davis, The Ecology of Fear
Diana Hacker, Rules for Writers (5th ed.)
Additional reading materials will be collected in a course reader that will be made available during the first week of class. We will also be referring to the website LEO: Literacy Education Online/The Write Place for writing and research guidance. Films may be shown, depending on the technological capabilities of our classroom. "
"The inspiration for this course came first from the sprawling geography of Los Angeles and the popularly accepted notion that L.A. has no center. Often viewed as a contemporary wasteland, the idea that L.A. has no center has also led people to consider the city as an evil prototype for the mass suburbanization of contemporary America. At the same time, L.A. has been further seen, perhaps contradictorily, as a center for racial strife. Fictional works and their various depictions of L.A. have been used as almost historical proof to establish these overriding and, at times, conflicting cultural perceptions of L.A.
Rather than accept these views of L.A. as givens, my hope is that the books we read will lead us to review our assumptions about, not just L.A. and the makeup of geographical spaces, but also our methods of interpreting fictional works. How might these works be shaping our imagination of the contemporary city? Or, to be more specific, how do certain genres (for example, the detective novel/noir fiction, science-fiction) rework our understanding of L.A.? In order to approach these questions, the books in this course have been chosen to give both a sense of the literary history of L.A. up until the contemporary period as well as its changing geographical scope.
Like English R1A, this course is structured to enhance your skills in critical analysis and argumentation through the mode of writing. Unlike English R1A, this course will be research-oriented. Thus, you will be exposed to research materials and methods while writing your papers, which will range from 4-6 pages in length to 8-10 pages in length. There will also be a number of drafts and revisions of your papers in order to help you understand that the process of writing is a process of rewriting. Ultimately, you should be prepared to write a minimum of 32 pages in addition to completing the required reading for this course."
"Selections from Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain. Ca. 1134. Ed., trans. Lewis Thorpe. London: Penguin Books, 1966. Repr. 1977.
Malory, Thomas. Le Morte D�Arthur: The Winchester Manuscript. Ed., abridged by Helen Cooper. Oxford World�s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Idylls of the King. 1859-1885. Ed. J. M. Gray. Penguin Classics, 1989.
Mark Twain. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur�s Court. 1889. Ed. Bernard L. Stein. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1979.
T. H. White. The Sword in the Stone. In The Once and Future King. 1958. Ace, 1987.
Mary Stewart. The Crystal Cave. 1970. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
Selections from Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon. 1982. Del Rey. Repr. 2001.
Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Sixth edition. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2003."
"Certain narratives, endlessly told and retold, altered and reshaped, have kept audiences fascinated for a very long time. The story of the sixth-century British warrior-king Arthur has been enormously popular for at least eight hundred years, if not longer. In every successive version of the Arthurian narrative, Arthur has changed in accordance with the society that wrote and read about him. As a class, we will be investigating how and why these changes progressed.
This class will begin with two of the most influential medieval and early modern Arthurian texts, Geoffrey of Monmouth�s twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain and Thomas Malory�s fifteenth-century Le Morte D�Arthur, and then move to nineteenth- and twentieth-century portrayals of Arthur and his kingdom. We will consider the following questions, among others: How are individual treatments of the Arthurian narrative in dialogue with each other? How does each variant respond to cultural stresses from the time and place in which it was produced? What is it that makes Arthur and his kingdom so compelling?
This is a reading and composition course, and as such will involve a substantial amount of writing work. Along with weekly short writing assignments and writing exercises, there will be two longer research papers (5-6 pages and 8-10 pages) which students will write and revise over the course of the class. The first paper will focus mainly on primary texts, while the second paper will involve at least three secondary sources. Students, in consultation with me, will choose their own paper topics. "
"Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Edgar Allan Poe,�The Fall of the House of Usher,� and other tales
William Faulkner, Light in August
Dorothy Allison, Bastard out of Carolina
Oscar Zeta Acosta, The Revolt of the Cockroach People
Diana Hacker, A Writer�s Reference
A course reader
Required viewing:
Carrie (dir. Brian De Palma, 1977) "
"In this course we will be exploring the converse of the American dream of �life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.� In texts spanning from the antebellum period to the 1980s, we�ll follow stories of death, captivity, and pursuit by misery. Julia Kristeva�s essay on abjection and Judith Butler�s work on subjection and subjectivity will provide a theoretical framework for our literary studies. Further readings from leaders in American movements for civil rights will provide a pragmatic orientation.
The primary goal of this course is to teach you how to conduct and present research in a clear and compelling way. With this in mind, the readings are designed to guide students in their own research about American experiences of captivity, shame, starvation, sexual violation, and racial hatred. Your final project will be a literary research paper on a topic of your own design. We will devote a considerable amount of class time to learning about the basic tools and techniques for writing a college research paper. "