ENGLISH Course Descriptions for 2007-2008

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Fall Course Descriptions

Course	Title	Instructor	Description
ENGLISH 6	BRIT LIT TO RENAISS - THE QUEST IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE	KROLL, A.	This course will center on medieval quest literature. We will study the Grail/Arthurian legends, some Anglo-French and middle English romances, and a number of contemporary accounts of the Crusades. We will attempt to account for the prominence of the quest in the literature of high middle ages by considering the historical, political, and social conditions which produced our course texts. In addition, we will follow some of the after courses of quest literature in modern and contemporary art and film. Two short (4-5pp.) papers and take-home final.
ENGLISH 28A	POETIC IMAGINATION	STAFF	Reading of selected texts to explore the ways in which this mode formulates experience. Students write several short analytic papers. Prerequisite: satisfaction of the lower-division writing requirement.
ENGLISH 28C	REALISM & ROMANCE	STAFF	Reading of selected texts to explore the ways in which this mode formulates experience. Students write several short analytic papers. Prerequisite: satisfaction of the lower-division writing requirement.
ENGLISH 28D	CRAFT OF POETRY	DAVIS, S.	Craft of Poetry closely examines mechanical aspects of individual poems by poets of many descriptions. Students master at least one poem by team-teaching it to the class. Course strategies are designed to develop an independent writing discipline. The course is 1 of 4 classes required for the Creative Writing Emphasis in Poetry.
ENGLISH 100	HISTORY OF CRITICISM	KROLL, R.	This course is designed to introduce the tradition of discussing literary texts and their role in society which goes back to the Greeks. We begin with Plato and Aristotle and end with the state of criticism after World War II. On average, we read two fairly dense, abstract texts a week, so be prepared for a kind of reading and textual interpretation with which most students are not generally familiar, though a good number get the hang of it in the course of the term. We have lectures on Tuesday and Thursday, and required discussion sections on Friday. Apart from some required books, we have a course package which costs about $25. In the past, I have required two 3-5-page essays in the course of the term; a take-home final; and spot quizzes roughly every week in the summer, but we might experiment with a slightly different formula. Grades are heavily dependent on your writing; but they also reflect your attendence at lecture and your performance in the quizzes.
ENGLISH 101W	READING PARADISE LOST	LEWIS, J.	Paradise Lost is one of the west’s great epics; it is also a “great argument” designed “to justify the ways of God to men.” The power and brilliance with which John Milton’s poem of 1667/74 fulfills both of these ambitions made it a foundation and crucial point of reference for much later literature in English; any student who has read Paradise Lost will become a better reader of that literature. This writing-centered course will focus on problems of critical reading in relation to Paradise Lost. We will consider Milton as a quarrelsome reader of both the epic tradition and the Book of Genesis; we will foreground the problems of interpretation that are staged in his poem; and along the way we will look at some critical readings of that poem by figures ranging from William Blake to William Empson, from Samuel Johnson to Stanley Fish. Students will produce and revise three 5-page papers on aspects of Paradise Lost; a final paper will engage an influential literary critic’s reading of the poem. Students who took E102B in Winter 2007 may NOT enroll in this course.
ENGLISH 101W	DIGITAL RHETORIC	LOSH, E.	This course examines the rhetorical properties of blogs, wikis, social networking sites, computer games, and multi-user virtual worlds. The emphasis of the class will be on how these electronic artifacts present arguments and attempt to influence users and thereby produce social change. However, we will also be looking at how the design philosophy of electronic texts may use literary conventions about narrative, character, and intertextuality. To understand the effects of digital rhetoric, we will study theories of technology from the Cold War to the present about the verbal, visual, and procedural properties of hyperlinked, interactive, dynamic, or distributed new media. Sessions will be taught in the new experimental teaching classroom, where students will also be makers of social media designed for academic environments. Visit http://www.digitalrhetoric.org/course/ to see a YouTube video and other materials that explain the course rationale and requirements further.
ENGLISH 101W	EARLY ROMANCE	ALLEN, E.	From earliest times, romances do more than tell love stories. They open up Otherworlds of magic and adventure, spiritual as well as physical, depicting deeds of honor and religious devotion as well as deeds of love. Yet although romances originate in epic, their fundamental social and moral emphasis is consistently upon the influence of private insight and erotic feeling. In this course we will read narratives from the Odyssey to grail quest and Arthurian romance, from Shakespeare to Harlequins, with a special focus on medieval romance tales. These narratives will raise structural questions about the relationship between eros and war; religious questions about the need for the public spiritual quest; political questions about the function of leadership and the value of loyalty; social questions about the role of queens, maidservants and the rise of the bourgeois hero. We will make use of two or three central theoretical works to help us understand the principles at work in the literature, but the course will focus mainly on reading the stories themselves. Some readings in the class will be in Middle English, but no previous knowledge of Middle English is assumed. There will be two papers, one short and one long, with an annotated bibliography and a brief oral presentation on the longer paper, as well as assorted smaller and more informal written assignments.
ENGLISH 102A	CONQUEST OF AMERICA	LAZO, J. R.	Starting with accounts that have been attributed to Christopher Columbus, we will study a variety of writing by Europeans who conceptualized, visited, and migrated to the continents that became known as America. Our focus will be on how "America" was invented and infused with meaning and how writers from England and Spain described the start and development of colonization. "Conquest" here is both a physical violent process and an imaginative term that implies power and eroticism. We will read texts written in Europe (John Donne's poetry) as well as accounts by explorers and settlers (early immigrants) paying attention to the way they describe the land and its inhabitants and idealize the so-called "new world." We will also consider how these writings tell (or don't tell) about the decimation of indigenous people and read texts from Native American groups. Readings will include a sustained study of Bernal Diaz's The Conquest of New Spain, which reports on the clash between Hernando Cortés and the Aztecs.
ENGLISH 102B	LIT OF THE ENLIGHTNMENT	LEWIS, J.	The era covered in this course (1660-1798) knew itself--and has long been known as--"the Enlightenment" and prided itself on the shining of the new "light" of reason, scientific knowledge, and toleration on the old darkness of superstition and political oppression to yield a radically new understanding of–and interest in–what it means to be human. But was "the Enlightenment" all it claimed to be? What were its limitations, contradictions, and unique possibilities? Most important for our purposes, how did English literature of the Enlightenment both reflect and challenge its values? How can that literature help us to understand our own, present-day quest for deeper understanding of our identity and future as human beings? In this course, we will be exploring a range of literary texts, some quite challenging, which worked through the problem of enlightenment and helped to bring into being our own world and present understanding of the human. To this end, we will be reading a range of major authors, including Thomas Hobbes, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Anne Finch, William Wycherley, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, William Blake and William Wordsworth. Please note that we will be moving along quite rapidly, as befits an era that invented the steam engine; if you suffer from intellectual motion sickness, you might want to take E102B a different quarter. Midterm, final, and long paper.
ENGLISH 102C	ROMANTICS&VICTORNS	HENDERSON, A.	This course will provide a survey of British literature of the nineteenth century. We will devote roughly half the term to a study of the principles of Romanticism, focusing especially on the work of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Mary Shelley. In the second half of the course, we will trace the fate of Romantic aesthetics in Victorian writing, reading work by Tennyson, Bronte, Dickens, Pater, and Rossetti. Throughout, we will pay particular attention to the status of visual representation, looking at Romantic-era painting and Victorian photography alongside our literary works. Course requirements will include short assignments, a midterm, and a final exam.
ENGLISH 102D	LIT OF CALIFORNIA	THOMAS, B.	E 102D is supposed to be devoted to a particular aspect of 20th-century literature written in English, including readings in at least two genres. This section is on "The Literature of California." We will read works about the Golden State from the beginning years of the 20th century to its end, including McTEAGUE by Norris, THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN, by Austin, OF MICE AND MEN, by Steinbeck, THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by West, AMERICA IS IN THE HEART by Bulosan, THE CRYING OF LOT 49 by Pynchon, CHINA MEN by Kingston, and poems by, among others, Jeffers and Winters. Requirements include an essay, a midterm, a final, and regular class attendance.
ENGLISH 103	POET IN THE CITY	BURT, E.	A study of (mainly) 19th century discussions of the poet and the city. The guiding question will be the role of poetic language and the poet in the politicized space of the city. Within the context of that question, we will consider themes like work, alienation, the commodity, the spectacle, the city as archive and space of chance. We will read texts by Plato, Rousseau, Baudelaire, Wordsworth, De Quincey, Poe, Rimbaud. Two papers, two exams.
ENGLISH 105	AFRICAN LIT	NGUGI, W.	The course, both introductory and an in-depth look at the issues animating the African imagination, examines themes in African Writing in English or English translation: drama, poetry and fiction. A running theme in the course is the politics of language, literature and aesthetics. The course also looks at post-apartheid fiction.
ENGLISH 105	TRNSNTL: RACE, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY	RADHAKRISHNAN, R.	The purpose of this seminar is to lay bare the semantics of the prefix, “trans.” How is transnationalism different from multi-nationalism and inter-nationalism? Are there elite transnationalisms and subaltern transnationalisms? Is nationalism transcended or naturalized through transnationalism? What are the relationships among transnationalism, globalization, cosmopolitanism and diasporas? Who are the peoples of transnationalism and who are its heads of state? How is cultural transnationalism related to political and economic transnationalisms? How does transnationalism rearticulate the relationship between people and place, space and place, place and location, living and telling, knowing and acting, being and thinking? How are race, gender, and sexuality re-territorialized by the discourse of transnationalism? We will be paying particular attention to the concept of “scattered hegemonies” as developed by postmodern feminists in their complex endeavors to conceptualize transnationalism in conjunction with the emancipatory performances of gender and sexuality. We will also be focusing on the powerful contributions made by ethnic and critical race theorists to our understanding of the formation of contemporary subjectivity. Theories of space-articulations of location and subject-positionality, “post-ality”: how do these discourses function conjuncturally in the production of the “transnational being?” Is transnationalism an ideology; and if so, what sorts of political practices does it enable? Who are its subjects and agents? Who are the “we” under transnationalism? These are the questions that constitute our agenda as we traverse a wide range of interdisciplinary readings drawn from feminist theories, theories of gender and sexuality, postmodernism-poststructuralism-postmarxism-and-postcoloniality, cultural studies, political theory, literature, and psychoanalysis.
ENGLISH 105	BLACK SOUTH AFR LIT	MASILELA, N.	This course attempts to understand the grave and great consequences of European modernity's forceful entrance into African history. This resulted in the historic conflict between European modernities and African traditions. This contradiction between European history and African history forced and compelled the newly forged Christanized African intellectuals to construct their own particular African modernities and perspectives in opposition to European modernities. This simultaneous process of appropriating and rejecting of European expressive literary forms and European intellectual traditions by African writers, intellectual and artists is an expression of the paradoxes and complexities that constitute Africa. The classic example of this paradox is the appropriation of the generic form of the novel which is an 'invention' of European history by African writers in an attempt to articulate and project African history against the imperatives of European history. This complicated process of re-invention was the consequence of European history having 'defeated' African history during the era of colonial and imperial domination.
ENGLISH 105	WORLD LITERATURE	KRISHNAN, S.	In this course we will read novels and short stories from all over the world in order to learn about the diverse ways in which social collectives have been imagined in different contexts. Through close readings, we will examine how literary issues also enable us to reflect in new ways on social and political questions of the day. Some of the writers we will read: Conrad, Salih, Ngugi, Kincaid, Devi, Ghosh, Pamuk, Rushdie.
ENGLISH 106	WRITING THE AMERICAS, 1776-1829	LAZO, J. R.	This course will take a hemispheric literary historical approach to the period when most nation-states in the Americas fought revolutions and declared independence from European powers (1776-1829). We will read a variety of writing (political tracts, newspaper articles, novels) about the challenges of establishing new constitutions and governments while Euro-American populations expanded into regions where indigenous people live. We will study documents from the United States and Latin America and debate the problems of interdisciplinary methodology. Readings will include the novels "Edgar Huntly" and "Jicotencal," as well as political writing by Tom Paine, Simon Bolivar, and Samson Occom. We will also read some constitutions and study the multilingual print culture of Philadelphia during the period. This is a seminar, which means attendance is mandatory. Requirements include a handful of short response papers, a short presentation, and two longer (5- and 7-page) papers.
ENGLISH 106	NARRATIVES OF PROGRESS	KRISHNAN, S.	Our point of departure will be two key postcolonial writers of fiction, V. S. Naipaul and Pramoedya Ananta Toer. We will consider how Naipaul's and Pramoedya's fictional explorations of individual and collective betterment in specific non-European contexts reflect or challenge important European and North American assumptions about moral and material progress. How do these different perspectives complement and displace each other? We are also likely to read essays or selections from the work of thinkers such as Kant, Marx, Macaulay, Watt, Benjamin, Polanyi, Shiva, Amin, Fukuyama.
ENGLISH 106	E106 HARDY: THE WESSEX NOVELS AND EARLY POETRY	KROLL, A.	In this course, we will read several of Hardy's major novels, with a focus on those he termed of "Character and Environment," also known as the Wessex novels. Through these novels, we will trace the development of Hardy's notion of Wessex, his mythological model for reading the English countryside as a site of national identity. As we do so, we will also read some of his relevant prose on the English countryside, English history, and the art of fiction. We'll then turn to his collections of early poetry, Wessex Poems and Poems of Past and Present, following many of the themes and concerns raised in the fiction, and considering the ways in which poetry offered Hardy a different forum for them. Option of two short (5pp.) papers or one longer (10pp.) paper, plus brief (5-10 min.) in-class presentation.
ENGLISH 106	RHETORIC OF RELIGION	MAILLOUX, S.	We will begin with a brief introduction to classical rhetoric in ancient Greece and discuss the relation of rhetoric as persuasion to the Christian notion of faith. We will then examine rhetoric in scriptural narratives, beginning with the story of Abraham within the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Special emphasis will be placed on discussing the text and context of St. Paul’s Epistles as we look at some literary, philosophical, and political receptions of Pauline Christianity and its variants. Among the texts to be read are Augustine’s Confessions, Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Alain Badiou’s St. Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Requirements include quizzes, midterm, final, and term paper.
ENGLISH 106	F. SCOTT FITZGERALD: MANNERS AND CAPITAL	GODDEN, R.	In his study, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), the American sociologist, Thorstein Veblen argues that “taste is coercion”: manners, as networks of implied rules and systematically organized tastes, exist for Veblen to coerce…but on behalf of whom? Given that rules in part function to mark those who break them, we should perhaps assume that the rules of leisure operate as guardians of admission to the leisured class. In which case, manners may be understood as a displaced form of those accumulations of wealth which they exist to protect. Consequently, the course will explore how money makes manners, and will argue that as the pattern of money- making changes, over the first third of the twentieth century, so the nature of manners and of the narratives they imply shifts. The work of F. Scott Fitzgerald will be taken as an index of crucial changes within the leisured and owning classes as the economy associated with Fordism establishes itself after the First World War, only to falter with the onset of the Depression. Fordism, or the organization not simply of production, but of distribution and consumption (in order to maximize output and avoid over production), ensures that commodities are available to an expanded American middle class. An understanding of the novel of manners necessarily, therefore, involves an engagement with the nature of commodities and consumerism, as those entities and activities are deployed by the leisured as a measure of their class authority. Since, again in Veblen’s words, the leisured live “by [means of] but not in” the laboring class; and since the saleability of commodities depends on the purchasers’ capacity to “forget” the conditions under which those commodities were produced, an exploration of mannered interiors (whether in Fitzgerald, Wharton or Cather), must engage with the ways in which those interiors and their representations disregard the facts of labor. The course will be based around key works by Fitzgerald (“The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” [1922], The Great Gatsby [1925], Tender Is the Night [1934], “The Crack- Up” [1936], and The Last Tycoon [1941]). Since the course is premised on ideas concerning the changeable nature of manners themselves, it is comparative in purpose. Fitzgerald’s work will therefore be read in relation to the history of advertising, of Taylorism and of Fordist flow production. At the literary level comparisons will be made with works drawn from among the following: Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906), Jack London, Martin Eden (1908), Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920), Willa Cather, The Professor’s House (1925), Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz (1932), and Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust (1939).
ENGLISH 106	HAWTHORNE	THOMAS, B.	E 106 is a seminar for senior English majors. This section is devoted to a close reading of the major novels and short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Each student will write a research paper. The course is not open to those who took Professor Tamarkin's E 106 on Poe and Hawthorne.
ENGLISH 210	FAULKNER	GODDEN, R.	The course derives from three linked assumptions, that economic relations are a guise worn by social relations; that social relations are finally a cause of what stories can and cannot be told (and of the manner of their telling), and that therefore economic structures may be read as a generative source of fictional forms. In pursuit of those structures and their formal consequences, even as we read Faulkner’s major fiction, we shall necessarily read in the history of the South’s racialized labor relations, from chattel slavery, through debt peonage to the deferred agricultural revolution triggered by the New Deal. Since contradiction and shock inform such historical transitions, elements of theory (drawn from historical materialist, psychoanalytic and narrativist traditions), will be integrated into course reading. The several and parallel reading strands seek to enable a continuing discussion of the extent to which the occlusive stylistics of Faulkner’s writing can or ought to be traced to generative economic circumstances associated with labor trauma, and centred on the debilitating discovery, by the white southern owning class, of its own production by those it subordinates. By way of close textual analysis and careful historical contextualization, the course seeks to explore the connection between sign and material referent, between poetics and social practice and between story and world. On these grounds, it hopes to prompt a practical and theoretical debate over a widely assumed separation (effected by prevalent historical and linguistic models), between language and its object, and between narrative and the historically real. The force of Raymond Williams’ observation, that no model comprehends the entirety of its object, would suggest that the awkward pleasures of Faulkner’s fiction will extend and displace the course’s aims.
ENGLISH 210	EMERGENT SUBJECTIVITIES	SCHWAB, G.	(same as Comp Lit 210, course code 22820, Sem A and Anthro 289, course code 60556, Sem C) This course looks at the formation of new types and boundaries of subjectivity under the forces of global cultures. It is divided into three sections, each of which chooses a different emphasis. The first section focuses on the mass displacements of peoples across the globe and on the formation of new trans- or bi-cultural subjectivities and forms of subjection. The second section focuses on legacies of colonialism and new modes of colonization, including the colonization of psychic space. The third section explores the recasting of the boundaries of the human in discourses of biogenetics and the new reproductive technologies, exploring the powerful effects such a recasting has on the cultural imaginary. This section also looks at new forms of biocolonialism and ecological destruction as well as new modes of ecopolitics. While the course has a strong emphasis on critical and cultural theories, we will anchor our discussions in materials from literature, film, ethnography and photography. Note that the theoretical texts listed below are meant to provide a basic bibliography from which we will select relevant selections for discussion in class. I. Global Wars, Zones of Abandonment and Emergent Forms of Life Theory: Michael Fischer, Emergent Forms of Life (selections); Veena Das, Life and Words (Selections); Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities; Chalmers Johnson, Blowback; Michael Wessels, Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection; Literature/Film/Ethnographic Narrative: Greg Bear, Blood Music; Joao Biehl, Vita; Film: Estamira II. Colonial Legacies and Indigenous Alliances Theory: Robert Young, Colonial Desire (selections); Das/Kleinman, Remaking a World (selections); Ronald Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism Literature: Silko, Almanac of the Dead (selections); Zainab Amadahy, The Moons of Palmares (science fiction) III. Biotechnologies, Biocolonialism and Ecopolitics Theory: Donna Haraway, Modest Witness (selections); Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life (selections); Marilyn Strathern, Reproducing the Future: Essays on Anthropology, Kinship and the New Reproductive Technologies (selections); Donald More, Suffering for Territory (selections) Literature/Film/Photography: Zainab Amadahy, The Moons of Palmares; Octavia Butler, Dawn (Vol. One of Xenogenesis-Trilogy); Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio, Robo Sapiens: Evolution of a New Species; The Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (DVD)
ENGLISH 210	JOYCE'S ULYSSES AS NARRATIVE AND FICTION	NORRIS, M.	Joyce's Ulysses has long been explored for its narrative challenges, and this course will follow in that critical tradition by bringing the perspectives of contemporary narratology to the novel. I will begin this exploration with Possible Worlds theory whose focus is less on the strategies and characteristics of story-telling than on what theorist Ruth Ronan calls the fictionality of fiction. We will therefore pay particular attention to the fictional domains that intersect in the imaginary world of Ulysses, as well as on the relationship between its textual actual world and the historical world of 1904 Dublin to which the novel is believed to bear an almost documentary relationship. One of my hopes is to show that although Possible Worlds theory comes from a philosophical tradition that has been relatively uncongenial to literary criticism (analytic philosophy and philosophy of logic), its concepts and formulations may actually enrich our understanding of the texts social and ideological contexts and conflicts. Students will also be encouraged to pursue other avenues of recent narratological theory, including such topics as tellability, paralipsis, and implicature. The course may be taken for Seminar credit through completion of a formal research paper. Proseminar credit will require the completion of two take-home examinations.
ENGLISH 210	THE RHETORIC OF SCIENCE	KROLL, R.	This course will attempt two things. First, we will get to know the texts associated with classic accounts of "The Rise of Modern Science," or "The Triumph of Mechanical Philosophy," which (for England) usually fits neatly into the seventeenth century as a whole, extending from Bacon to Newton. Second, we will consider what it means to read these texts rhetorically. Seventeenth-century writers were first and foremost educated in classical literature, being successors to the Renaissance humanists. They approached what we have come to call "scientific" texts with a range of assumptions and strategies that modern scientists consider inimical to their activity. From their classical training, in accord with the literate assumptions of their time, seventeenth-century natural philosophers inherited the view that cosmology, method, epistemology, and ethics were intimately bound together. To "do science" was to engage in debates that concerned all politically and socially responsible individuals. And to write natural philosophy was to write with a highly developed sense of what was rhetorically appropriate to the task, rhetoric itself being an art that combines epistemology, method, lingusitics, and ethics. The way seventeenth-century texts on any topic work is to use a range of analogy which reminds the reader of those other realms to which the inquiry could also apply. For example, neo-Epicurean theories about the movements of atoms in void were also theories about the importance of individual volition and of a freedom from political authoritarianism. They also involved highly sophisticated theories of representation. We will therefore read some Cicero, the most influential theorist of rhetoric in the Western tradition, and the basis of education in Europe until the end of the eighteenth century. And we will read some modern philosophers of science who emphasize that what is involved in scientific models is a whole range of concerns we no longer think of as "scientific," especially the idea that the formation of scientific communities involves ideas about how humans do and should bond (e.g. Foucault, Kuhn, Latour, Shapin). If we have time, it would be useful to consider the major continental figures in conjunction with the English, especially Galileo, Descartes, and Gassendi (also maybe Leibniz, in his competition with Newton). Students interested in comparative approaches might think about including one of these figures in their reports. Seminar/proseminar. Frankly, I prefer students to take a course like this as a seminar, so that they can make a stab at something like a proper research paper by the end of term (20 pages). Students wanting the proseminar option should consult me, but I envisage something like two short (7-10 page-) papers in the course of the term.
ENGLISH 210	ROMANTIC IRONY	ROBERTS, H.	Romantic Irony is one of the more controversial terms in literary theory and history. Critics disagree about where it is found, how it should be defined, and what its significance is. Friedrich Schlegel defined it, most famously, as "the clear consciousness of eternal agility, of an infinitely teeming chaos" but, perhaps unsurprisingly, that hasn't settled the matter. Some critics see it as no more significant than common-or-garden rhetorical irony, while others have argued that it calls into question the very possibility of language as a signifying practice and marks a watershed in literary and intellectual history. In this class we will read a number of texts which can be suspected of perpetrating Romantic Irony, including, but not limited to, Diderot's _Jacques le Fataliste et son Maitre_, Stern's _Tristram Shandy_, Schlegel's _Lucinde_, and major works by the English Romantic poets. We will also explore some of the philosophical writings (e.g. by Kant and the German post-Kantians, Kierkegaard etc.) that provided the theoretical underpinnings of Romantic Irony, examine competing critical accounts of the significance of Romantic Irony as a practice, and consider some of the social and historical conditions to which it may have been a response. All students will make one or two class presentations. Students who take the course as a pro-seminar will write a take-home examination; seminar students will write an article-length final paper. Texts: Sterne, _Tristram Shandy_. Diderot, _Jacques the Fatalist and his Master_. Other readings will be made available for copying.
ENGLISH 210	LITERATURE OF PARTITION	O'CONNOR, L.	(same as Comp Lit 210, course code 22826, Sem D) Partition along sectarian lines has been a recurrent feature of British withdrawal from the colonies. This seminar explores the literary treatment of the partition of Ireland (1922); the Indian sub-continent (1947); and the British mandate of Palestine (1948) in the comparative framework of postcolonial theory and with due regard to local historical context. Regarded at the time as a political solution to intractable internal difference and/or as the price of independence, more than fifty years later one might contend, with Urvashi Butalia, that the “’solution’ [partition] actually became the beginning of the problem.” The partition of countries ramifies into other “partitions”--of ethnic groups, local communities, cities, families, psyches, etc. We’ll examine various literary plots and tropes (e.g. the romance-across-the-divide) that elaborate such ramifying partitions. Despite the violent upheaval and repercussions produced by it, partition is paradoxically often surrounded by silence, disavowal, and discursive invisibility. How do writers at a generational (and perhaps geographical) remove from the event of partition come to terms with a history that has shaped them but that they did not experience themselves? How is “the religious divide” rationale for partition informed by a divide-and-rule colonial legacy and/or entrenched sectarian conflict? Is the experience and narration of partition gendered? What effect(s) has partition on the regulation of sexuality? How do post-partition maps and related political symbols alter the political, geographical, and spatial imaginary of the newly reconstituted peoples? What do euphemisms like “the iron curtain” reveal about the (im)permeability of partition? (Cold-War partitions will feature in passing in our discussion.) The reading list isn’t finalized but will probably include works by Urvashi Butalia, Seamus Deane, Amitav Ghosh, David Grossman, Ghassan Kanafani, Saadat Hasan Manto, Khushwant Singh, A.B. Yehoshua and a selection of contemporary Irish poetry. Seminar requirements: weekly response papers; presentation of research topic; 20-25p research paper Pro-seminar requirements: weekly response papers; short class presentations; and take-home final.
ENGLISH 215	PROSPECTUS WORKSHOP	HENDERSON, A.	Prospectus Workshop is the two-unit seminar designed for graduate students in English and Comparative Literature who have completed their qualifying examinations and are working on their dissertations. Participants in the seminar will present work-in-progress during the quarter. The goal of the seminar is for each participant to complete his/her prospectus (or an equivalent, such as a chapter) for the Ph.D. dissertation. Graduate students from other Ph.D. programs are welcome to take this seminar, but they should contact the instructor in advance of registration .
ENGLISH 299	DISSERTATION RESEARCH	CHRISTENSEN, J.	Variable Units (4-12) For students who have completed coursework, are preparing for their qualifying exams, or who are ABD.
ENGLISH 398	RHETORIC/TEACHING OF COMPOSITION	GROSS, D.	This course helps instructors new to the Program integrate rhetoric and composition teaching with a range of practical, professional, and intellectual goals. To this end, instructors work in at least two sections that focus on particular areas of interest. The range of sections depends on the interests of instructors but likely includes some of the following: -history of rhetoric -history of composition -literature and rhetorical theory -writing across the curriculum -critical literacy -spoken word, written word -performative writing -poetics -digital rhetorics -issues in ESL -writing as craft -argumentation -mechanics and stylistics -designing a research project in composition studies -designing a cluster course Specific readings and projects for each section are developed cooperatively by Program faculty, graduate student instructors, and outside faculty where appropriate. After initial orientation, class time evolves from section meetings to practically oriented presentations. At the end of the quarter, each section will present to the entire group, using the experience of teaching rhetoric and composition at Irvine to introduce others to the section topic. Presentations might include a scholarly engagement with some component of the curriculum, curriculum development, outline of a composition research project, rationale and material for a cluster course, and so on.