SUMMER 2000
English 624: The
American Self
Professor Howard Silverstein
Professor Howard Silverstein
For this course in the
reinvention of the self in American culture, we will explore, in selected
fiction and film, the subject of the American who wants to rise above the drab
circumstances and achieve an upwardly mobile, socially glamorous lifestyle.
The course will open
with Willa Cather’s short story, “Paul’s Case” and proceed to Henry James The
Ambassadors, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and
Patricia Highsmith’s thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley. Following
the same theme in film, the class will view Hitchcock’s classic “Vertigo”, the
gender-bender “Tootsie”, the feminist “Working Girl”, and the adaptation of
Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, “A Place in the Sun.” Providing
it is available on video, we will also examine the film version of The
Talented Mr. Ripley. Students will be responsible for an oral
presentation and several short critical papers.
FALL 2000
English 524: Poetry
Writing Workshop
Professor Barbara Henning
In this workshop, we will read modern and contemporary poetry, as well as statements and essays on poetics. We will examine and practice writing poetry using different forms and approaches. The weekly workshop is meant to be a place where you can present drafts of your work for helpful response. The course requirements include writing a poem for each workshop, making a presentation, and submitting a final folder with your revised work and an essay, reflecting on your process of writing.
Professor Barbara Henning
In this workshop, we will read modern and contemporary poetry, as well as statements and essays on poetics. We will examine and practice writing poetry using different forms and approaches. The weekly workshop is meant to be a place where you can present drafts of your work for helpful response. The course requirements include writing a poem for each workshop, making a presentation, and submitting a final folder with your revised work and an essay, reflecting on your process of writing.
English 579: Woman as
Hero
Professor Harriet Malinowitz
The concept of the “heroic” traditionally contains the assumption that the hero is male. Heroism is a public act, requiring agency in the public world, while the concept of the “heroine” is a diminutive one, in that the heroine exists only by virtue of her relationship to the hero. Unlike a “heroine,” a female “hero” (or, as Maya Angelou has put it, “shero”) is often unrecognizable within the conventions of patriarchal ideology upon which heroic idealism is based. This course will suggest alternative ways of reading classic texts and will also consider more contemporary texts as we attempt to identify and explore female heroism in myth, fiction, memoir, and film. From the myth of Amor and Psyche to Thelma and Louise, we will examine archetypes of the woman hero who embarks on a journey (either literal or figurative), challenges the established order, and creates new possibilities of community, wholeness, and selfhood. An alternative to the conventional archetypes of angel in the house, witch, hag, harpy, bitch, and madwoman in the attic, the woman hero must challenge patriarchal authority and ideology and thus the terms within which her society makes sense of itself. We will begin by reading classic theories of the male heroic, including work by Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and Dorothy Norman, and theories of female identity, including work by Sigmund Freud, Erich Neumann, and Adrienne Rich. We will then go on to read fictional works and memoirs by writers such as Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Rita Mae Brown, Agnes Smedley, and Audre Lorde, and to screen several films. As a class, we will attempt to figure out what the definition(s) of the female heroic may be.
Professor Harriet Malinowitz
The concept of the “heroic” traditionally contains the assumption that the hero is male. Heroism is a public act, requiring agency in the public world, while the concept of the “heroine” is a diminutive one, in that the heroine exists only by virtue of her relationship to the hero. Unlike a “heroine,” a female “hero” (or, as Maya Angelou has put it, “shero”) is often unrecognizable within the conventions of patriarchal ideology upon which heroic idealism is based. This course will suggest alternative ways of reading classic texts and will also consider more contemporary texts as we attempt to identify and explore female heroism in myth, fiction, memoir, and film. From the myth of Amor and Psyche to Thelma and Louise, we will examine archetypes of the woman hero who embarks on a journey (either literal or figurative), challenges the established order, and creates new possibilities of community, wholeness, and selfhood. An alternative to the conventional archetypes of angel in the house, witch, hag, harpy, bitch, and madwoman in the attic, the woman hero must challenge patriarchal authority and ideology and thus the terms within which her society makes sense of itself. We will begin by reading classic theories of the male heroic, including work by Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and Dorothy Norman, and theories of female identity, including work by Sigmund Freud, Erich Neumann, and Adrienne Rich. We will then go on to read fictional works and memoirs by writers such as Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Rita Mae Brown, Agnes Smedley, and Audre Lorde, and to screen several films. As a class, we will attempt to figure out what the definition(s) of the female heroic may be.
English 624: West
Indians in the Harlem Renaissance
Professor Louis Parascandola
Anglophone Caribbean immigrants played a vital, if often neglected, role during the Harlem Renaissance, an important literary and cultural movement of the 1920s and early 1930s. There were, in fact, over 36,000 foreign born Blacks, mostly West Indians, in Harlem in 1920. These immigrants, despite often facing severe discrimination, had a significant effect on American culture and politics. We will discuss Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, particularly paying attention to the “Back to Africa” movement and Garvey’s role as a facilitator of the Harlem Renaissance. In addition to the work of Garvey, we will examine the radical political writings of W. A. Domingo, Hubert H. Harrison, and Cyril Briggs. We will also read fiction and poetry by Claude McKay, one of the seminal figures in the Harlem Renaissance, short stories by Eric Walrond, poetry by George Margetson, fiction/essays by J. A.. Rogers and Amy Jacques Garvey, and drama by Eulalie Spence. Finally, we will consider the views of leading African Americans such as W. E. B.. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes on Garvey and the West Indian Community.
Professor Louis Parascandola
Anglophone Caribbean immigrants played a vital, if often neglected, role during the Harlem Renaissance, an important literary and cultural movement of the 1920s and early 1930s. There were, in fact, over 36,000 foreign born Blacks, mostly West Indians, in Harlem in 1920. These immigrants, despite often facing severe discrimination, had a significant effect on American culture and politics. We will discuss Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, particularly paying attention to the “Back to Africa” movement and Garvey’s role as a facilitator of the Harlem Renaissance. In addition to the work of Garvey, we will examine the radical political writings of W. A. Domingo, Hubert H. Harrison, and Cyril Briggs. We will also read fiction and poetry by Claude McKay, one of the seminal figures in the Harlem Renaissance, short stories by Eric Walrond, poetry by George Margetson, fiction/essays by J. A.. Rogers and Amy Jacques Garvey, and drama by Eulalie Spence. Finally, we will consider the views of leading African Americans such as W. E. B.. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes on Garvey and the West Indian Community.
English 626: Twentieth
Century American Literature
Professor Kenneth Bernard
This course is a discussion of some thematic aspects of American literature and American culture. It is continuous with the previous course, English 625. We will examine specific texts by Hemingway, Steinbeck, Pynchon, Faulkner, Ismael Reed, West, Henry Miller, and Kerouac. There might be additions. The major theme developed is the contrast/conflict between the values of the “community” and the values of the “territory” and reflections of that contrast/conflict in our cultural and political life. It is helpful but not necessary to have taken English 625 and to have some familiarity with writers like Emerson and Hawthorne.
Professor Kenneth Bernard
This course is a discussion of some thematic aspects of American literature and American culture. It is continuous with the previous course, English 625. We will examine specific texts by Hemingway, Steinbeck, Pynchon, Faulkner, Ismael Reed, West, Henry Miller, and Kerouac. There might be additions. The major theme developed is the contrast/conflict between the values of the “community” and the values of the “territory” and reflections of that contrast/conflict in our cultural and political life. It is helpful but not necessary to have taken English 625 and to have some familiarity with writers like Emerson and Hawthorne.
English 700: Practicum
in the Teaching of Composition
Professor Thomas Kerr
Professor Thomas Kerr
This course is designed
to introduce teachers to the theory and practice of writing instruction at
various levels in a multi-cultural society. Intended as both a
source of support and a forum for discussion for new teachers/tutors as well as
teachers with some experience in the classroom, the course will explore the
dynamic and frequently problematic relationship between theory and practice in
the teaching of writing. Reading assignments include treatments of various
pedagogical approaches and the theoretical assumptions about language, culture,
and writing that inform these approaches. Writing assignments and
other work for the course will allow teachers to respond directly to issues
raised and problems posed in the reading. Assignments will also create
opportunities for students to explore their own teaching/tutoring practices.
Taken together, the reading, writing, and other work in this course should help
us better understand what we are doing in today’s writing classrooms, how to do
it, and why we think we are doing it. The principal aim of this course is to
help students become rhetorically savvy, self-reflective teachers. Texts: Scenarios
for Teaching Writing: Contexts for Discussion and Reflective
Practice by Anson, Grahm, et.al; In the Middle Way: New
Understandings about Writing, Reading and Learning by Atwell; Evaluating
Writing by Cooper and Odell; The Writing Teacher’s Sourcebook (4th edition)
edited by Tate, Corbett, and Meyers; and a course reader that will excerpt work
from other major figures in composition studies.
English 707: Methods
of Research and Criticism
Professor David Toise
Professor David Toise
This course will
introduce graduate students to a range of critical approaches, literary texts,
and research tools that they can make use of as both teachers and scholars.
Within the field of British and American literature, I have chosen a small
number of literary texts that, despite being few in number, will allow us to
try out our ideas on works that represent different approaches, backgrounds,
and genres. Writings by E. M. Forster, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, and
William Shakespeare will serve as our focus. We will want to look at each text
in depth, and to this end, we’ll be dealing with a number of critical
approaches (historical, feminist, psychoanalytic, deconstruction,
post-colonial, genre theory, and queer studies). In addition, I hope to discuss
how these literary texts have shaped approaches to literature more widely,
examining how specific works may have served as touchstones for particular
literary approaches. We’ll also be looking at theoretical texts that stand on
their own and then discussing connections between the theory and literature we
read. We will engage theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Jacques
Lacan, and Frantz Fanon, for example, and seek to understand their
applicability to literary texts. Most of all, I hope that as a group we can
raise the possibilities of what literary studies can doe, helping us to
explore, develop, and articulate our position as individual readers.
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