CoursesSenior Seminars

For various cultural reasons, sexuality is particularly sensitive political subject. Indeed, sexual representation remains one of few cultural forms guaranteed to elicit strong response. Study provides research and analytical tools to investigate causes and effects of personal and political responses. More specifically, use of contemporary gender, race, class, and sexuality theories (among others) to help examine sexual representations in terms of shaping force they have in our lives. Examination of cultural force involves defining key terms, such as power, to interrogate how details of key representations manifest their cultural and personal work (effects on people’s values and conditions of existence, for example) on social justice. Students learn to interpret and explicate representations of sexuality in terms of their manipulation of power. Students learn to define key terms and interpret cultural representation in academic dialog with their peers and with scholars in their field.

 

Reserved for American Literature & Culture majors only on first pass. Open to English majors on second pass.

This course proceeds on a counter-intuitive premise: that the greatest hindrances to our understanding of what is “real” are those elements of literature and film that confirm our sense of the “everyday.” Instead, we will read and view speculative works as a form of “weird realism,” perhaps as examples of philosophy themselves that animate an ontology (the nature of being) that the world of appearances obscures. Fiction writers include H.P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin, Thomas Ligotti among others; films include The Thing (1982), eXistenZ (1999) and Arrival (2016). Short works of philosophy by George Berkeley, David Hume, Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers and Quentin Meillassoux will also be assigned. Please be warned: some of the material is not for the faint of heart, so please do some research on the works and creators above prior to enrolling.

Reserved for American Literature & Culture majors only on first pass. Open to English majors on second pass.

This course examines key developments in contemporary African American literature, tracing lively debates about authenticity, identity, and tradition over the last four decades. We explore the links between aesthetic and political worlds, the interplay of race, gender, class, sexuality, and region, and the innovative responses of writers to the ongoing contradictions of emerging racial formations, neither reducible to what came before, nor radically in breach from it. In what ways is contemporary African American literature a coherent entity? To what extent does resistance form a central problematic in the field today? How do contemporary writers open up restrictive ideas about racial identity and community and highlight the multiplicity of African American identities, interrogating notions of authenticity and the demands of representation? How do they make sense of the contradictions of historical developments over the last four decades, where advances in racial justice have been haunted by the persistence of pernicious forms of discrimination and dispossession? The writers and artists we study not only reckon with these developments, they shape our understanding of their impact on ordinary lives by chronicling the psychic and social architecture of lived experiences of racism. They also take up the question of how and why contemporary forms of discrimination relate to previous racial regimes, probing whether the new century inaugurated a new racial order or documented the persistence of old forms of injustice and precarity. In doing so, they reshape our understanding of white supremacy, offering resources for imagining a more just world. Major topics we cover include: the literature of protest and dissent; memory, history, and the legacy of slavery; literary experimentation and speculation; satire, humor, and the search for new forms; the new African diaspora, migration, and displacement.

 

Reserved for American Literature & Culture majors only on first pass. Open to English majors on second pass.

In this class, we will learn to read short stories with a writer’s eye in order to enlarge our understanding of that difficult, capacious form and thus enrich our own fiction writing. Students will read 10 assigned stories, each at least three times: once for pleasure, once critically, and once more, to approach the deep familiarity in which we glimpse the writer at work, making decisions and solving problems. We will read about 100 pages a week, much of it re-reading. Weekly response papers, student presentations, final project. This class is designed for serious fiction writers but will also serve those who wish to acquire a deep, critical appreciation of the genre.

Shakespeare studies has witnessed a boom in race studies, especially over the past decade. Still, these critical examinations have not homed in more precisely on Critical Race Theory, that is, the theoretical conversations centered in law schools that has found some further explorations in education and to a lesser extent in literary-cultural studies. This seminar, somewhat exploratory in its nature, seeks to bring together CRT (as it’s often referred to in law) and Shakespeare. What kinds of critical readings do this twain produce? What kind of questions does CRT bring to Shakespeare and, importantly for us, what kind of questions does Shakespeare bring to CRT? Students can expect to read a Shakespeare play and at least one CRT selection each week; students can also expect to complete a presentation and submit smaller writing assignments and a final seminar paper.

This course focuses on the recently published quartet of seasonal novels by the contemporary Scottish writer Ali Smith. Begun in 2016 and completed in 2020, the novels were conceived initially as a series about the changing seasons and the present moment of their writing, which, unbeknownst to the author at the outset, spans a worst of times cycle: from the schisms of the Brexit referendum and the COVID pandemic. These works will provide the context for considering the relationship between time and the novel, art and literature, description and narration, truth and lies, and questions of form, style, structure, intertextuality, and the point of art.

For various cultural reasons, sexuality is particularly sensitive political subject. Indeed, sexual representation remains one of few cultural forms guaranteed to elicit strong response. Study provides research and analytical tools to investigate causes and effects of personal and political responses. More specifically, use of contemporary gender, race, class, and sexuality theories (among others) to help examine sexual representations in terms of shaping force they have in our lives. Examination of cultural force involves defining key terms, such as power, to interrogate how details of key representations manifest their cultural and personal work (effects on people’s values and conditions of existence, for example) on social justice. Students learn to interpret and explicate representations of sexuality in terms of their manipulation of power. Students learn to define key terms and interpret cultural representation in academic dialog with their peers and with scholars in their field.

 

Reserved for American Literature & Culture majors only on first pass. Open to English majors on second pass.

This course proceeds on a counter-intuitive premise: that the greatest hindrances to our understanding of what is “real” are those elements of literature and film that confirm our sense of the “everyday.” Instead, we will read and view speculative works as a form of “weird realism,” perhaps as examples of philosophy themselves that animate an ontology (the nature of being) that the world of appearances obscures. Fiction writers include H.P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin, Thomas Ligotti among others; films include The Thing (1982), eXistenZ (1999) and Arrival (2016). Short works of philosophy by George Berkeley, David Hume, Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers and Quentin Meillassoux will also be assigned. Please be warned: some of the material is not for the faint of heart, so please do some research on the works and creators above prior to enrolling.

Reserved for American Literature & Culture majors only on first pass. Open to English majors on second pass.

This seminar will focus mainly on major 17th-century English lyric poets–Donne, Herbert, Jonson, and Marvell–with frequent reference to less famous contemporaries such as Carew, Lanyer, and Traherne. Through careful reading and open discussion, we’ll attempt to understand what these poems say—often no small task—but also their place in the traditions and revolutions of their society. What tensions and changes in that culture, as well as in the lives of the poets, might these works have helped to negotiate? Why did the Metaphysical and Cavalier modes emerge in a period of intense theological and political struggle? What do they suggest about sex and nature? Although the word-count of the readings won’t be high, the course will be strenuous, and no one will be allowed to coast. Students will write five brief response-papers and a substantial final paper. Most importantly, students must come to each class prepared to raise questions of all sizes and to participate in an honest, energetic, courteous, and informed discussion of the assigned poems and their contexts.

 

NOT OPEN FOR CREDIT TO STUDENTS WHO COMPLETED ENGLISH 184 WITH THE SAME TITLE WITH PROF. WATSON IN 17S or 19W.

This course examines writing about cognitive impairment from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Our primary focus will be on how mental illness was understood and treated hundreds of years before the advent of the asylum and the development of psychoanalysis. As we will see, medieval thinking about eccentric minds often reflects a tension between theories about individual cognition and beliefs in divine or diabolical influences from angels, demons, fairies, and ghosts. At the same time, visions, voices, and other devotional experiences trouble the distinction between reason and insanity. Readings include medieval medical treatises, chronicles, and restorative charms as well as saints’ lives, first-hand accounts, and poems, supplemented by selections from contemporary theorists.

This course examines key developments in contemporary African American literature, tracing lively debates about authenticity, identity, and tradition over the last four decades. We explore the links between aesthetic and political worlds, the interplay of race, gender, class, sexuality, and region, and the innovative responses of writers to the ongoing contradictions of emerging racial formations, neither reducible to what came before, nor radically in breach from it. In what ways is contemporary African American literature a coherent entity? To what extent does resistance form a central problematic in the field today? How do contemporary writers open up restrictive ideas about racial identity and community and highlight the multiplicity of African American identities, interrogating notions of authenticity and the demands of representation? How do they make sense of the contradictions of historical developments over the last four decades, where advances in racial justice have been haunted by the persistence of pernicious forms of discrimination and dispossession? The writers and artists we study not only reckon with these developments, they shape our understanding of their impact on ordinary lives by chronicling the psychic and social architecture of lived experiences of racism. They also take up the question of how and why contemporary forms of discrimination relate to previous racial regimes, probing whether the new century inaugurated a new racial order or documented the persistence of old forms of injustice and precarity. In doing so, they reshape our understanding of white supremacy, offering resources for imagining a more just world. Major topics we cover include: the literature of protest and dissent; memory, history, and the legacy of slavery; literary experimentation and speculation; satire, humor, and the search for new forms; the new African diaspora, migration, and displacement.

 

Reserved for American Literature & Culture majors only on first pass. Open to English majors on second pass.