| ENGLISH 102C | ANXIETY OF INHERITANCE: VICTORIAN CONSTRUCTIONS OF TIME | CASTILLO, L. | This course examines the way in which theories of time and history shaped Victorian literature and authorship. By exploring a broad selection of visual media, poetry, fiction, drama, prose, and film, we will uncover how and why the Victorian period is simultaneously defined by the doctrine of progress and the competing tendency toward personal reflection on the past. We will trace the historical and cultural intersections between these genres and the effects of scientific discovery, the rise of empire, the development of publishing and authorship, and the radical conceptual and topographic shifts triggered by the Industrial Revolution. By jointly tracing these intersections and examining literary treatments of "the real," we will focus on how nineteenth-century writers responded to historical change in order to constitute and preserve the conception of "the author." The authors and artists discussed will include, among others: Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, Henry Mayhew, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, and Oscar Wilde. Prerequisites: three courses from the English 28 series, or Literary Journalism 20, 21, and an English 28 course; English majors only. |
| ENGLISH 103 | THE RHETORIC OF REVOLUTION | CASTILLO, L. | This course examines literary and cultural works that deal with themes of revolution. By exploring a broad selection of fiction, poetry, political philosophy, declarations of right, film, and other visual media; we will pay special attention to the performative relationship between revolutionary acts and texts, and between the philosophy and the rhetoric of individual right. We will analyze the literary works by asking: What justifies civil disobedience? What kinds of boundaries must me drawn for revolutionary acts to succeed, and to what extent are such boundaries rhetorically formulated? How do performative acts constitute and legitimize revolutionary activity? The authors discussed will include John Locke, Edmund Burke, Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, George Orwell, Franz Kafka, Mohandas Gandhi, Salman Rushdie. |