| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| ENGLISH 28B | COMIC&TRAGIC VISION | STAFF | In these sections of the E28 series described above, we will focus on drama and its conventions – especially on the primary forms of tragedy and comedy. Course work will entail three papers, including one revision, and a final. |
| ENGLISH 28C | REALISM & ROMANCE | STAFF | In these sections of the E28 series described above, we will focus predominantly but not exclusively on the narrative use of “realism” and “romance,” understood in a dialectical relation to each other. Course work will entail three papers, including one revision, and a final |
| ENGLISH 28E | CRAFT OF FICTION | STAFF | |
| ENGLISH 102A | PLEASURE & DOCTRINE | ALLEN, E.G. | How can entertainment be useful? How can doctrine be amusing? Doctrine, broadly speaking, means teaching of all kinds—not just spiritual but moral, ethical, and political education. For medieval and renaissance writers and audiences, the interplay between pleasure and teaching was a constant source of concern. In the unstable political climate of later Middle Ages, the adventures of romance knights like Sir Launfal are also quests for social and personal betterment; even the most humorous stories have something serious to say about moral action and political life. By the time of Spenser, the effort to create a connection between worldly pleasure and moral growth gives rise to the ornate complexity of a lengthy allegorical poem. By studying both satire and romance, we shall explore the ways in which medieval and early modern writers bring together what we modern readers tend to separate: pleasure and seriousness, entertainment and morality. The course will include one short paper, assorted brief assignments, and a final exam. |
| ENGLISH 102B | ENCOUNTERS&EXPLOITS | STEINTRAGER, J. | During the 17th and 18th centuries, England was busy extending its trading and colonial endeavors across the globe, from the slave trade in Africa to the plantations of the Americas and beyond. At the same time, London was rapidly becoming a cosmopolitan commercial center, a booming metropolis, and—depending on who you asked—a den of vice. We will be reading literature that engages both with British encounters with the outside world and with the concomitant changes in attitudes at home. Readings will include: Behn’s Oroonoko, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the engravings of Hogarth, the illuminated poetry Blake, the slave narrative of Equiano, and more. |
| ENGLISH 102C | CLASS&TASTE 19C US | TAMARKIN, E. | Though readings of major authors and works--including those of Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Melville, Alcott, Wharton and Howells--this course investigates the ethics and epistemology of high culture in the American nineteenth century. Our readings will look at the relationship between taste and consumerism, genteel society and mass culture, class politics and public intellectualism, while exploring the way that social status in America has been historically accommodated to democratic practice. We will examine the distinctions between high and popular culture, and chart the forms and genres that become increasingly \"elite\" over the course of the century, with particular attention to the way images of taste speak to questions of political status. Our readings will take us from early nineteenth-century debates over institutions of culture through later representations of fashion, style and decorum and will be discussed alongside both contemporary paintings and visual materials from the popular press. The course ends with new articulations of a specifically African American high culture in the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and Stephen Crane. |
| ENGLISH 102D | IRISH MODERNISM | O\'CONNOR, L. | This course introduces students to some classics of twentieth-century
drama, fiction, and poetry by Irish writers. We’ll read works by Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, and others in an Irish context with special attention to questions of language as we examine how these writers, working in conjunction with those who strove to restore Irish (Gaelic) as a spoken language, undertook to create an other-than-English literature in English. Midterm, final, paper. |
| ENGLISH 103 | SHAKESPEARE | DENMAN, J.R. | Contact instructor for description: jrdenman@uci.edu. |
| ENGLISH 103 | COMING OF AGE 1960S | OSTER, S. | Although every decade has its growing pangs, there’s a strong case to be made for why growing up in the 1960s was unique. While introducing you to the culture and politics of the period, this course will explore the theme of “coming of age” in the 1960s, specifically through fiction, film, and autobiography. The autobiography is a unique literary genre in that it blurs the line between fact and fiction. Likewise, the novel has a long tradition of the subgenre of “coming of age,” known in German as the Bildungsroman: the “novel of education,” but also the “novel of culture.” The coming of age novel thus charts a single protagonist’s education and enculturation, a process of maturation into adulthood, as a member of a community, a society, and a Nation, as well as of a gender, a race or a religion. Whether for a fictional character or a real person, the development of individual desires is often shaped by external or institutional forces, be they social, familial, legal or religious. Coming of age involves negotiating among these potentially conflicting forces and both the autobiography and the novel, as extended narrative forms, allow the writer and reader to experience and engage this process.
In this course we will examine individual experiences within the context of the massive social, political, and cultural upheavals in the United States, from the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 to the resignation of President Nixon in 1974: for example, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, the Vietnam War, the explosion of mass media and the “counterculture,” and the watershed presidential elections of 1964 and 1968. We will look at how individual and collective confrontations with institutional forces in the 1960s have shaped American culture as we know it, as well as what it means to be American: What are American values? Who are the “true” Americans? What does growing up American look like in the 60s? How is it to grow up poor in the “age of affluence”? Or to grow up black in a society only recently racially integrated? Or as a suburban woman during the “sexual revolution”? Or facing being drafted out of high school and sent to war? Or confronting the pressures of drug culture? How is mental illness defined and treated in this era? What does it mean to grow up Jewish, or Puerto Rican, in the age of Civil Rights struggle? What does it mean to be an artist in an era of conformity? How does literature open up the space in which these issues can be negotiated? And finally, how do forms of literary and artistic representation themselves, in turn, become transformed by such issues? By examining some of the major novels, autobiographies, and films of this decade, we will try to answer these questions. Authors will include William Burroughs, Ken Kesey, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Malcolm X, and Piri Thomas. There will be two papers, a midterm, and a final exam. |
| ENGLISH 103 | ARTHURIAN LIT | GEORGIANNA, L.M. | In this course, we will study a range of narratives that take up and
develop the story of King Arthur from the twelfth to the nineteenth
century. Texts include the earliest extended narrative of King Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth\'s History of the Kings of Britain , Lancelot by Chretien De Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach\'s Parzival (on which Wagner based his opera), Malory\'s Morte D\'Arthur (only the final two books), and finally, Mark Twain\'s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur\'s Court. In reading each version of the King Arthur story, we will pay particular attention to the question of what cultural work that version performs; that is, not just what does the text say and how, but what contemporary cultural values does each text reflect, promote, or call into question. |
| ENGLISH 105 | AFRCAN AMER AUTOBIO | BARRETT, L.W. | This course examines general theories of autobiography in order to assess their applicability to the circumstances and particulars of African American autobiography, from the postbellum slave narrative to late twentieth-century.Readings include Lucy Delaney, W. E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, George Jackson,and Angela Davis. Course work includes a mid-term exam, final exam, and a five to six page paper. |
| ENGLISH 105 | LIT OF THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA | SHROFF, B. | Contact instructor for description: bshroff@uci.edu. |
| ENGLISH 106 | LIT OF RESISTANCE | ETTER, W.M. | Contact instructor for description: wmetter@uci.edu. |
| ENGLISH 106 | PASTORAL POETRY | DENMAN, J.R. | Contact instructor for description: jrdenman@uci.edu. |
| ENGLISH 106 | CIVIL WAR | TAMARKIN, E. | writers-including Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain. We will consider these years in close detail, and focus, in particular, on the way texts of this period register a sense of historical crisis and national mourning, while imagining a deeper \"American\" tradition that preserves the continuity between antebellum and post-bellum literary production. The course centers on the representations and iconography of war in poetry, literary journalism, popular song, narrative fiction, private correspondence, and photography. At the same time, it takes into account the impact of the Civil War on domestic and female experience, on the cultural geography of \"regions,\" on fascinations with the West, and on discourses of race and citizenship. Authors include Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Mary Chesnut, and others. |
| ENGLISH 106 | POETIC RHYTHM | ROBERTS, H.J. | This course will provide students with a comprehensive introduction to the study of prosody--the critical analysis of poetic meter and poetic rhythm. The course will be taught principally via web-based modules that students will work through each week at their own pace. There will be weekly one-hour class meetings at which students can raise questions and be tested on their progress. The final grade will be based upon a final examination and a variety of shorter written assignments.
Texts:
Derek Attridge, Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction and Herbert Rosengarten and Amanda Goldrick-Jones (ed.), The Broadview Anthology of Poetry.
Coursework:
Four two-page prosodic analyses, a variety of shorter excersies, and a final examination (there will also be an option to write a longer paper). In addition, each student will be required to post certain exercises to the class\'s email discussion list. |
| ENGLISH 184 | HISTORY OF ENGLISH | ALLEN, E.G. | How did English become English? The language has undergone drastic and far-reaching changes over the past fifteen hundred years. It used to be a little-known West Germanic dialect spoken on a small island off the coast of Western Europe. Now it has become international language spoken as a native tongue by 400 million people.
Language changes constantly regardless of how individual speakers feel about such mutability. This course provides the opportunity for us to explore the dramatic changes English has undergone in the past 1500 years—so dramatic that modern speakers can barely understand those who first called their language “English.” Word meanings have changed over time: “nice” used to mean “silly”, and “silly” used to mean “happy.” Even the rules of grammar are ever-changing: it used to be pronounced almost alike. “Garlic” comes from two words, “spear” and “onion.” This course will explore the history of the English language from about 450 A.D. to the present by examining the four traditional “stages” of its life: Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Present Day English. We will get to know the general sound, word, grammar, and spelling changes within the language, and examine how language change is a part of other literary, social and cultural changes. The more we learn about the language’s past, the more we will also know about its present- and perhaps, its future as well.
There is no prerequisite for this course. There will be short daily assignments, a short paper, and an exam. |
| ENGLISH 210 | HOLLYWOOD CORP ART | CHRISTENSEN, J.C. | |
| ENGLISH 210 | ULYSSES/NARRATIVE | MCMICHAEL, J.L. | |
| ENGLISH 210 | CITIZENSHP/AMER LIT | THOMAS, B. | |
| ENGLISH 210 | ROMANTIC CONSUMPTN | HENDERSON, A.K. | |
| ENGLISH 210 | MODERNIST NOVEL | MILLER, J.H. | |
| ENGLISH 230 | SHAKESPEARE | LUPTON, J.R. | |
| ENGLISH 230 | HENRY JAMES | GOBLE, M.A. | |
| ENGLISH 299 | DISSERTATN RESEARCH | CHRISTENSEN, J.C. | |