"Carroll, L.: Through the Looking Glass
Melville, H.: Moby-Dick
Hacker, D.: Rules for Writers
Course Reader includes (subject to change):
Borges, Jorge: ?The Garden of Forking Paths?
Carlyle, Thomas: Sartor Resartus (selections)
Dickinson, Emily (selections)
Donne, John (selections)
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (selections)
Herbert, George (selections)
Kafka, Franz: ?The Metamorphosis?
Plato (selections)
Stoppard, Tom: Dogg?s Hamlet,Cahoot?s Macbeth
Taylor, Edward (selections)
Thoreau, Henry David (selections) "
"Many works in literature have been said to have a ?metaphysical? quality; in this class we will examine some of those works, paying special attention to the claims of imaginative literature upon philosophy. During the course of the semester, our reading will be by turns fantastic, terrifying, frustrating, beautiful, sardonic and whimsical. By investigating how words are used and manipulated to press our assumptions about the physical world, we will discover the unique appeal of the literary approach to enduring questions about the nature of self and world.
As the authors we will read stress and attenuate the possibilities of language to achieve their effects, we will study the intricacies of the language not only to understand their works but also to refine our own writing. Students will learn to write clearly and succinctly about complex and difficult subjects, and they will experiment with their own expository voice. Students will write several short essays, at least three of which will be substantial revisions of previous essays. "
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"Baldwin, J.: Go Tell it on the Mountain
Okada, J.: No-No Boy
Morrison, T.: Beloved
Lee, C.: A Gesture Life
Danticat, E.: The Farming of Bones
Yamanaka, L.: Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers"
"This course will examine Asian American and African American literature and ask what might be gained in a comparative approach to ethnic literature. While texts produced by a specific ethnic group are usually read apart from both the dominant white European-American canon as well as from other minority literature, a comparative analysis allows us an integrative approach that not only fills in the gaps left by the exclusion of ethnic literature from the literary canon but also will, I hope, create new ways of interpreting texts.
We will begin with a series of short two-page essays and work up to two five-page essays. The course aims at continuing to develop the students' practical fluency with sentence, paragraph and thesis-development skills but with increasingly complex applications. "
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"Ellison, R.: Invisible Man
Ellison, R.: Juneteenth
A course reader"
"In this class we will read Ralph Ellison?s two novels, Invisible Man and the recently compiled reader?s edition of his magisterial forty-year work-in-progress, Juneteenth. We will also read sizable excerpts from his collection of essays, Shadow and Act, and from the works of cultural theorists such as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James and Frantz Fanon. One of the ultimate goals of the class will be for students to integrate the theoretical concepts elaborated in works such as these into argumentative essays on Ellison?s literary work. For example, W. E. B. Du Bois understands African Americans to be possessed of a ?double-consciousness,? a ?sense of always looking at one?s self through the eyes of others,? a condition that is simultaneously alienating and generative of a valuable kind of ?second-sight.? This concept will help orientate our approach to the models of consciousness explored in Ellison?s literary work, as well as the later Marxist and psychoanalytic models of consciousness we will explore.
Students will be expected to write numerous short essays, with increasing emphasis being placed on close reading, literary analysis and theoretical argumentation. "
"Ford, J.: ?Tis Pity She?s a Whore
Gascoigne, G.: The Adventures of Master F. J.
Lyly, J.: Gallathea
McQuade, D. and C. McQuade.: Seeing & Writing 2
Shakespeare, W.: Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Venus and Adonis"
"A story of forbidden love can compel a reader through both sympathy and repulsion. We hope the frustrated lovers can somehow overcome the unjust exigencies preventing their happy union. We fear they will not demonstrate self-control if consummating their love would prove disastrous or horrific. Early modern authors capitalize on one or both of these potential reactions by depicting all manner of proscribed romantic relationships: two girls who each believe the other is a boy, two children of feuding families, a brother and a sister. There are more, of course, and we shall examine how each author crafts his language to produce in us the effects we register as we read his work.
In order to accomplish this sometimes daunting critical feat, students must develop their analytical instincts in order to articulate the intricacies of their observations in writing. To this end, students shall hone their observational skills by discussing the motivations and intentions behind some contemporary pieces suitable for critical examination?everything from an essay on shoelaces to a Coca-cola poster. Short weekly writing assignments chronicling the students? observations of these modern items will prepare them to write longer essays on the Renaissance texts. For these longer papers (4-5 pages), we will have thesis brainstorming sessions and peer editing workshops; students should expect to become very well acquainted with the writing of their peers. "
"Beaumont, F.: The Knight of the Burning Pestle
Chapman, G., B. Jonson, and J. Marston: Eastward Ho
Jonson, B.: The Alchemist, Bartholmew Fair
Marlowe, C.: Doctor Faustus
Shakespeare, W.: Hamlet, Julius Caesar
Crews, F.: The Random House Handbook
Course Reader "
Theater historians of Shakespeare?s London often observe the intense demand for innovation and novelty a diverse but sophisticated playgoing public exerted on rival theater companies vying for its interest. Confined to the frontier zone of the suburbs along with bear- and bull-baiting sports arenas, public playhouses were also regarded by authorities as dangerous and potentially subversive forms of popular entertainment. In this course, students will be exposed to some of the range and diversity of early modern London plays produced within and reflective of this theatergoing atmosphere of novelties, thrills, spectacles, and dangerous attractions. Although something of a loose collection, the plays we will read all in some manner self-referentially stage the act of looking, and thus acknowledge the beholder?s presence within a context of visual curiosity and fascination with seeing. By thus confronting the spectator with his or her own image, these plays-as-attractions pose a variety of modes of spectatorship, from the totally gullible to the ultra-sophisticated and cynical. This course is similarly designed to teach you how critically to reflect on these plays as texts. To this end, this course will teach you how to work with principal modes of academic rhetoric?description, analysis, and argument. Students will be required to write a short diagnostic essay and two formal essays, both of which they will substantially revise.
"Bronte, C.: Jane Eyre
Defoe, D.: Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, C.: A Tale of Two Cities
Gaskell, E.: Mary Barton
Shelley, M.: Frankenstein
Course Reader
Recommended:
Crews, F.: The Random House Handbook 6th edition "
"In this course we will consider the relationship between two phenomena closely associated with modernity: the novel and political revolution. How do novels represent?or fail to represent?the revolutionary event? In what ways do they seek to promulgate, redirect, and/or contain revolutionary ideas and energies? Are there meaningful connections between the revolutionary desire to renovate society and the aesthetic and economic ambitions of novelists writings during the genre?s famous ?rise? to literary predominance?
In addition to reading novels, we will take up several short pieces?historical, philosophical, and literary?designed to contextualize our discussion. Although we will focus on the British case in order to insure the cohesion of the class, students are encouraged to work on the (many) novels relevant to the course rubric from other traditions?Latin American, Western and Eastern European, Asian?for their final paper.
The authors we will read are writers of the highest merit; they are thus perfect aids to the process of learning to write sophisticated and convincing analytic and expository prose. We will focus on improving your ability to develop and defend a thesis, present and analyze evidence to support your claims, and edit your own work and the work of others through a variety of assignments and in-class exercises. Students will be responsible for writing and revising four or five essays over the course of the semester. "
"Austen, J.: Pride and Prejudice
Bronte, C.: Jane Eyre
Dickens, C.: A Christmas Carol
Required Films:
Pride and Prejudice (Leonard, 1940)
Pride and Prejudice (Langton, 1995)
Bridget Jones?s Diary (Maguire, 2001)
Bride and Prejudice (Chadha, 2004) and/or Pride and Prejudice (Wright, 2005)
Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940)
Jane Eyre (Stevenson, 1944)
Jane Eyre (Young, 1997)
A Christmas Carol (Hurst, 1951)
A Christmas Carol (C. Donner, 1984)
Scrooged (R. Donner, 1988) "
This course seeks to refine composition skills (thesis building, argumentation, processes of analysis, use of evidence, and mechanics) while also introducing students to the discipline of literary study. Students will be responsible for 32 pages of written work, consisting of short essay drafts and revisions. Coursework will culminate in a 4-5 page essay on a course-related topic of the student?s choosing. The focus of this course is twentieth- and twenty-first century adaptations of nineteenth-century texts. We will explore the ways in which ?modern? cultural dispensations coopt and recreate certain hoary classics of nineteenth-century literary canon, investigating the tangle of nostalgia, revision, longing, and repudiation that is adaptation. In addition to the required texts and films below, there will be an assigned reader including (but not limited to) excerpts from Jean Rhys? The Wide Sargasso Sea, Daphne Du Maurier?s Rebecca, Helen Fielding?s Bridget Jones?s Diary, and relevant critical articles.
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"Hwang, D. H.: M. Butterfly
Wilde, O.: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Marlowe, C.: Doctor Faustus
Kyd, T.: The Spanish Tragedy
Shakespeare, W.: The Winter's Tale
Strunk Jr., W. and E. B. White: Elements of Style
A course reader
Recommended Text:
Hacker, D.: A Writer's Reference "
"In Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Leontes, astonished by the seemingly lifelike rendering of his wife, exclaims, ?The fixure of her eye has motion in 't, / As we are mocked with art? (V.iii.67). Leontes's words provide the thematic prompt for our course. He expresses our enduring fascination with the ways in which art challenges our powers of perception, uncannily mirrors our lives, and vivifies static forms. This course is an introduction to critical reading and writing as a kind of art?an art of interpretation which at times seems to taunt us, provoke or perhaps frustrate even as it entrances and delights. Through our readings of texts which depict characters in uncomfortable confrontations with art, we will approach writing with a corresponding awareness that essays are not spontaneous nor entirely natural forms but are carefully wrought revisions of our own engagement with these works.
The aim of this course is to develop critical readers who are able to present rigorous argumentation in lively, clear prose. We will begin with shorter exercises and writing assignments to focus on close reading, smooth incorporation of evidence, sentence construction, and paragraph development. We will also work on developing a thesis, structuring your argument, drafting, and revising of your work. Over the course of the semester, you will produce about 30 pages of writing in the form of a three-page diagnostic essay, informal reading responses, and about five formal essays of increasing length. At least three of the formal essays will undergo revision. "
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"Shakespeare, W.: Hamlet, Macbeth
The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 4th edition
MLA Handbook "
"Literature as art and, more specifically, poetry and poetic drama as art will be our main concern in this class. We will be reading some of the most famous plays and poems in the language and talking about the ways they give their readers the experiences of poetic richness. Poetic richness is a very broad term I am using to describe the multiple harmonies of sound and meaning that constitute the aesthetics of poetry. Apart from savoring the works on the reading list, we will consider them critically: we will ponder the ways such things as irony, ambiguity, paradox, to name a few, create layers of coherence and complexity that often escape conscious attention of casual readers. Ultimately, we will be concerned with what it is that makes these works beautiful, and what impact they make upon the minds of their readers. In many ways this course is meant to be an accessible college-level introduction to poetry and poetic drama and to provide you with the tools for critical observation that will come in handy in a variety of majors.
Since this is an R1B course, my main objective is to make you able to construct complex academic arguments based on sound research. The reading load of primary texts for this course is light. Therefore you will spend a good deal of time exploring secondary sources, first under my guidance and then on your own. You will undertake several small research projects. For instance, when dealing with Hamlet, you may be asked to ground your account of this work in the responses of professional scholars or casual spectators of a given historical period.
Or, I may ask you to consider a film or a TV adaptation of Macbeth in the light of your own understanding of that play. You can expect some work with electronic resources: for instance, with online journal databases and the Oxford English Dictionary. By the end of the semester you will know what a solid academic essay looks like and will be able to produce one of your own. In fact, for this class you will produce two: a medium-length paper in lieu of the mid-term and a longer one (10-12 pages). These will be, to a large extent, thoughtful revisions and compilations of your small research projects, as well as culminations of your written work in this class. You can also expect some peer editing and group work. "
"Course Reader
The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume I
Outkast: The Love Below [If students cannot purchase this CD individually, I will make arrangements so that it will be available to all.] "
"What relationships can we discover between the Elizabethan sonnet sequence and the contemporary hip-hop record? How have debates about marriage and the domestic scene been transformed and re-shaped into debates about homosexuality and the ?sanctity? of marriage? How does the language of the sexual become influenced, constrained, and directed through social and political pressures? These are just some of the questions that we will address in our examination of Early Modern (defined as sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British) literature and contemporary texts.
We will broaden our conception of ?text? by analyzing, among other things, contemporary newspaper and magazine articles, music, film, and the Internet. Just as the printed text became the medium par excellence of the Early Modern period, a number of entrenched and emergent media forms have radically transformed our sense of the literary, as well as of cultural transmission itself. To focus our examination and to render it all the more relevant to our society, we will specifically scrutinize these texts through the lens of the ?erotic? or ?sexual.? We might understand sexuality as a human universal, but we will work to discover and interpret how eroticism and sexuality have undergone (and continue to undergo) encoding or transformation through forms of ?textual? expression.
In addition to the goal of reading, analyzing, and reflecting upon texts that bestride a four-hundred year period marking the emergence of our modern, post-modern, ?globalized? civilization, we will pursue this examination for the sake of developing the compositional tools necessary for dealing with complex thoughts about complex relationships among rather complex texts. While students will be asked to perform some comparative work, drawing from contemporary, non-canonical materials, they will also be required to discuss Early Modern (16th and 17th C.) texts in each of the essays. We will develop these skills through occasional writing sessions, written assignments, and office hours. This course will also be geared toward refining research skills, and students will complete a longer research-based paper. "
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"Cather, W.: My Antonia
Marquez, G.: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Burroughs, W. S.: Cities of the Red Night
Films:
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The House of Flying Daggers "
"In this course, we will examine the works of a handful of authors and filmmakers who utilize myth in the 20th century. ?Myth? is difficult to define convincingly, but the assumption for this course will be that myths tell us how to think about ourselves historically?that is, how we understand ourselves in relation to the past, present, and future. Often, it is the history of something we define as a ?nation,? a ?culture,? a ?people,? etc. This course will look closely at a few examples of this process at work. As an alternative to or extension of this concept of myth, we will also look at 20th century examples of fable writing. Because these two narrative types transcend literature, we will expand our material to include film and other visual media.
The primary focus of this course is a rigorous development of your writing and research skills. Expect highly focused written assignments, research projects, extensive revision, and informed engagement with the course texts. In addition to the novels and films listed below, I will also make available a course reader including short selections from Franz Kafka, W.B. Yeats, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, and William Carlos Williams. "
"Frayn: Copenhagen
Friel: Translations
Patchett: Bel Canto
Woolf: To the Lighthouse
Course Reader "
"This course brings together a series of literary texts which focus around acts of translation or interpretation in some fashion. We will begin the course thinking about linguistic translation and will use that as a foundation for discussion of other varieties of mediation: cultural, generational, personal, disciplinary. Throughout the semester we will consider the figure of the go-between, that individual who is responsible for negotiating between two people or groups. We will consider the problematics of this role (what are the moral obligations of such a liminal position? what are the duties and loyalties one has to each group? how does intention and bias affect one?s ability to interpret?) in the hopes of determining what is lost?and gained?in the act of translation.
It is my hope that thinking about the act of interpretation will make us more critical writers and readers. The primary focus of this course is the development of your writing and research skills. Expect frequent writing assignments, short essays, and a longer research essay. You will also be required to revise everything you write, and to peer-edit the work of your classmates. "
"Defoe, D.: Robinson Crusoe
Shakespeare, W.: The Tempest
Walcott, D.: Pantomine
Lamming, G.: The Pleasures of Exile
Coetzee, J.M.: Foe
Strunk and White: Elements of Style
Course Reader "
"Two of the most famous survival stories are Shakespeare?s The Tempest and Daniel Defoe?s Robinson Crusoe. However, these are not just simply grand adventure stories. These narratives, which celebrate the self-made (English) man, demonstrate that his survival critically depends on the suppression of the ?native savage?: the savages encountered on the island must be brought under English authority. Such narratives conceal the violence of such takeovers and naturalize the process by portraying the native as uncivilized and barbaric, one which must be subdued and controlled for his/her own benefit. Thus, the English subject is vindicated of any immorality and is celebrated for bringing civilization and morality to these backward societies.
As colonies began to declare independence in the twentieth century, such representations of the colonial as moral and the native as barbaric have come to be questioned and criticized. Writers from these former colonies have rewritten these survival stories in order to expose the true violence of colonialism. We will begin the course with these two canonical texts and then move to these ?new? stories. By reading these texts in conjunction with each other, we will explore how identities become constructed and circulated and how they can be contested. In analyzing how literature reflects the larger socio-political world, we can become critical of the various assumptions that such works make and the wider implications they have in representing the world.
This course will focus on developing argumentative and expository skills as well as refining analytic and research skills. There will be a short essay (3 pages) assigned at the beginning as well as one short essay (5 pages) and one long essay (10 pages). This last essay will involve a substantive research component and will help you synthesize secondary sources and research into your analysis of a primary work. "
"Mather, C.: ?Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions?
Shakespeare, W.: Macbeth
Wertham, F.: excerpts from The Seduction of the Innocent
Watson, L.: excerpts from Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil
Milton , J.: Paradise Lost (Books I, IV, IX)
Dostoevsky, F.: Brothers Karamozov, ?The Grand Inquisitor?
Singer, I. B.: Satan and Goray
Sartre, J.: ?Flies?
Required Films:
Fire Walk with Me, (Lynch)
Mulholland Drive, (Lynch)"
"Evil is a shifting, nebulous notion. The conception of it has differed between time periods, cultures and nationalities. And, of course, its conception can differ between contemporaneous social and political groups ? that the phrase ?Axis of Evil? can be a moral directive for one political party and an object of mockery for another makes this evident. In this course we will study the ways in which Evil is conceived and represented. Our sources will combine traditional literary genres ? poetry, novel, film ? with a few historically situated essays that significantly influenced how Evil has come to be understood and depicted.
As with R1A, the highest priority of this class is to improve students? reading and writing, so weekly writing assignments will be required, as will projects involving student revision and peer editing. However, R1B has the added goal of developing students? research skills as well. To that end, an extensive directed research project will be assigned in the later half of the semester. As per course requirement, completed student papers will total to at least 16 pages, with at least an equal number of pages of devoted to draft and revision. "
"Texts Austen, J.: Northanger Abbey
Bront?, C.: Jane Eyre
Harris, T.: The Silence of the Lambs
Radcliffe, A.: The Mysteries of Udolpho (selections only, in the Reader)
Carter, A.: The Bloody Chamber (selections only, in the Reader)
Course Reader
Required Films:
Rosemary?s Baby (Polanski)
The Silence of the Lambs (Demme)
Hannibal (Scott)
Rebecca(Hitchcock)"
"This class is designed to help you develop your essay writing skills as we read and view our way through some classics of the Female Gothic genre. The most famous canonical text in this genre is Charlotte Bront?s Jane Eyre, while non-canonical examples would be all those women-in-peril thrillers found in supermarkets. The Female Gothic can be said to begin with Ann Radcliffe and to continue into present day horror novels and films. We will look at a variety of texts, including novels, short stories, films, paintings, and criticism, and we will explore the way this genre portrays female psychology, especially female fantasies and female fears. What makes a work a Female Gothic text? What is it about these texts that make them so popular with women? We start out with a well-known modern work, The Silence of the Lambs, so as to establish what we mean by the Female Gothic. We then go back to the beginnings of the genre (in the 1790s) with Ann Radcliffe, and try to figure out how it works and how it evolves.
This is a writing intensive course: you will be writing several essays of various lengths (from 3 to 8 pages) and revising these essays. The focus will be on developing ease in writing longer argumentative essays, on improving your research skills, and on learning how to incorporate research into your writing. We will discuss writing and research strategies throughout the semester, and we will use peer review extensively.
Note: There will be film screenings outside of class. Attending these screenings is not mandatory, but seeing the films is, so they will also be available at the Media Center for you to view on your own. "
"Stein, G.: Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
James, H.: Daisy Miller
Melville, H.: Benito Cereno
Mura, D.: Turning Japanese
Pham, A.: Catfish and Mandala
Trask, H.: Light in the Crevice Never Seen
Hemingway, E.: The Sun Also Rises
Hacker, D.: Rules for Writers
Course Reader
Required Film:
Lost in Translation "
"Ralph Waldo Emerson described traveling as ?a fool?s paradise.? In this course, we will work on refining critical reading and writing skills by examining and discussing the role of travel in literature, particularly in what Gertrude Stein called ?the making of Americans.? How does travel challenge or heighten American identity? What is the impact of travel and mobility on the social and psychic construction of American belonging and citizenship? Why would Emerson characterize travel in this way? Who gets to travel and then write about it? What, for example, happens to literary form and content when the American abroad shifts from Henry James to W.E.B. DuBois, Herman Melville to David Mura? These questions constitute starting points; your expected participation in discussion will raise new or overlapping concerns. Since travel does not happen in a vacuum, we will also examine the encounters among Americans, settlers, locals, and the indigenous in a framework that considers the relationships between historical events and the routes of travel, allowing us to interrogate the nature and condition of travel with and against such terms as the global and the local, the rural and the urban.
The course will build upon your current writing and research skills through frequent revisions and stage-based writing exercises to fulfill the course requirements of producing at least 32 pages (one short essay early in the semester and at least two longer essays) and to provide methodological and evaluative tools for using research results here and elsewhere. Through our object of inquiry, travel, we will, in a sense, take on the role of the traveler and become familiar with what may be unfamiliar, the academic library, in order to absorb and appraise the numerous sources that will inform and supplement the writings that you will be exploring and producing this semester and beyond. "
"Bulosan, C.: America Is In the Heart
Eaton, E. [Sui Sin Far]: Mrs. Spring Fragance, ""Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian?
Hagedorn, J.: Dogeaters
Kingston, M. H.: The Woman Warrior
Okada, J.: No-No Boy
Course Reader "
"In recent years, Asian American studies has been influenced by postcolonial critiques of nationalism and the New American Studies? focus on American imperialism. This course is, in part, a comparative study of the framings of nation and transnation in Asian American literature before and after the Civil Rights Era. We will consider the following lines of inquiry: In what ways have early and post-1965 Asian American literature negotiated between the national and international protests of American capitalism and imperialism? How does the literature challenge and reflect the legal, cultural, economic, and social exclusion of Asian American groups? Can Robert Blauner?s concept of internal colonialism be used to describe the historical dynamics between white America and Asian America? We will also read these texts alongside their contemporary literary movements of realism, modernism and postmodernism. In doing so, we will attempt to determine the ways in which the interplay between the experimental and realist elements in each work delineates ideas about the Asian American self.
Writing Requirements: Regular attendance and participation are mandatory. This course will acquaint you with the practice of close reading, expository writing, and research. You will be expected write and revise two longer, research-based essays (each 8 pages), write in-class essays, and participate in peer-editing. "
"Pope, A.: Rape of the Lock
Shakespeare, W.: Hamlet
Coleridge, S. T.: Rime of the Ancient Mariner
James, H.: The Beast in the Jungle, The Turn of the Screw
Nabokov, V.: Lolita
Course Reade includes:
Chaucer, G.: ""The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and Tale,"" from The Canterbury Tales
The Pearl-Poet
Greenblatt, S.: ?Remember Me?
Milton, J.: Lycidas
Jonson, S.: ?Lycidas?
Freud, S.: ?Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis?
Sedgwick, E. K.: ?The Beast in the Closet?
Required Films:
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, (Morris and Hoover)
Trekkies, (Nygard)
Recommended:
Strunk and White: Strunk and White?s Manual of Style
Hacker, D.: A Writer?s Reference "
"This course will focus on literature and the craft of critical writing through an exploration of obsession as a principle of narration. We will begin in the late Middle Ages with selections from Chaucer and will finish off over 600 years later with Nabokov's Lolita and the documentaries Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control and Trekkies.
We will think through the problem of genre in obsessive texts?are they generally tragic? Can they be comic? What happens to the audience's emotions in reading an obsessive text? What about the emotions of the narrator? We will also explore the various thematics of obsession in these works, asking what kinds of obsessions (self, work, past, love object, etc.) tend to become the object of literary inquiry. And, finally, we will pay special attention to the forms and devices that authors use to express obsession, asking how (lists, repetitions, exclamations, exaggerations, etc.) these texts represent obsession.
In addition to our focus on literary analysis in class, each week we will approach a problem or strategy of writing: thesis construction, amassing proof in an argument, grammatical structures, rhetorical strategies, close readings, etc.
The writing you will produce in this class will require close reading of individual texts, as well as synthetic analysis across works. Your first essay will be a short diagnostic essay, and there will be two further essays assigned during term (one 6-8 pages and one 10-12 pages in length). These papers will be designed to emphasize outlining, drafting, writing, revising, and rewriting. The third paper will include a research component, oriented around the topic of the course. You will develop a more specific area of inquiry in consultation with me, and you will be required to bring in secondary material in your analysis. We will tour the library and explore its research resources prior to your undertaking your research project.
Grades will also be determined by active participation in class, peer reviewing of papers, and one brief oral presentation.
Toward the end of term, we will screen two films in the evening, at a time when most students can attend. Those who cannot attend will be responsible for renting the movies and screening them independently. "