ENG 385 Graphic Narratives & Cultural Theory (Fall 2015, 2014)
What is the difference between a story told with words and one told with pictures? How does the latter change our understanding of traditional literary conventions like genre, plot, tone, character, and audience? Gaining rapid momentum since the 1960s, graphic fiction emerged as a phenomenon which not only extended but challenged a well-established canon of newspaper cartoons and serial comic books, not only developing unique formal qualities but incorporating completely new content. Rarely did we see the traditional figures of the superhero and his archnemesis; now real, ordinary people, with their very human weaknesses and limits, took center stage. And the worlds which they inhabited were both familiar and terrifying. This shift raises a number of important disciplinary and methodological questions, each of which will be taken up in this course. How do we “read” these novel combinations of text and image – what new methods and vocabularies are needed? In exploring these new modes of inquiry, students will learn not only a new set of analytical and interpretive skills but how to apply them in a wide variety of interdisciplinary contexts. The course thus satisfies university-wide General Education requirements; the “literary theory/criticism” requirement for the English major; and also counts towards the Comics and Cartoon Studies minor. Syllabus
ENG/Ethnic Studies/Asian Studies 362 Asian American Writers (Winter 2015)
What makes a writer or text “Asian American”? Is it the ethnicity of the author? The characters? The plot? (And what exactly would an “Asian American” plot look like?) In this course, we will go beyond the traditional line-up of Asian American texts and writers to consider how the Asian American canon has been defined through and against those texts and genres who defy, reject, or fail to “count” as what is conventionally understood as “Asian America.” Readings will include graphic fiction by Gene Yang, short stories by David Wong Louie and Ted Chiang, experimental poetry by Myung Mi Kim and John Yau, and “forgotten” novels by Jade Snow Wong and Hiroshi Nakamura. Syllabus
ENG/Ethnic Studies 660 American Literature: Ethnic Impersonation (Graduate Seminar) (Winter 2015)
What is the relationship between “originality” and “authenticity” in contemporary literature (and between the implications of the terms’ respective scare-quoting)? Which comes first, authorship or authority? This course employs an unlikely pair of critical discourses — “radical artifice,” a term which Marjorie Perloff coined in 1994 as a way to talk about the relationship between poetry and media discourses, and “racial asymmetry,” which Stephen Sohn used in 2012 to describe the peculiar millennial trend of “postracial” literature — in order to frame questions of ethnic radicalism through the issue of literary impersonation. How do we read a novel that purports to be an “authentic” memoir of a Native American boy, but which later turns out to have been written by a former member of the KKK? What about a book by a renowned African American novelist that lacks even one discernibly “ethnic” character? How, too, do these issues engage with broader aesthetic notions of literary “truth” or “realism,” especially as they translate the stakes of race into simultaneously political terms (of gender, class, sexuality, and disability) as well as formal ones (of style, genre, and voice)? The course will explore literary texts such as William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, and Chang Rae Lee’s Aloft, as well as critical writings by Gadamer, Sedgwick, Bateson, Heidegger, and Love.
ENGL 80. Major American Authors (Spring 2012)
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisite: satisfaction of Entry-Level Writing requirement. Introduction to chief American authors, with emphasis on poetry, nonnarrative prose, and short fiction of such writers as Poe, Dickinson, Emerson, Whitman, Twain, Frost, and Hemingway. (Syllabus)
ENGL 4W. Critical Reading & Writing (Fall 2011)
Course Description: Lecture, four hours. Enforced requisite: English Composition 3 or 3H or English as a Second Language 36. Introduction to literary analysis, with close reading and carefully written exposition of selections from principal modes of literature: poetry, prose fiction, and drama. Minimum of four papers (three to five pages each) and two in-class essays. Satisfies Writing II requirement. (Syllabus)
ENGL 179. American Literature in the Age of Mass Media (Winter 2012)
Course Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Enforced requisites: courses 10A, 10B, 10C. Examination of literatures from or about this time period. (Syllabus included novels by Fitzgerald, West, Nabokov, Pynchon, DeLillo and Morrison.)
ENGL 173C/174B. American Fiction since 1945 (Spring 2011)
Course Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Enforced requisites: courses 10A, 10B, 10C. Study of American novels and short stories since end of World War II. (Syllabus)
ENGL M40/LING M10. History of the English Language/Structure of English Words (Winter 2011)
Course Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour. Introduction to structure of English words of classical origin, including most common base forms and rules by which alternate forms are derived. Students may expect to achieve substantial enrichment of their vocabulary while learning about etymology, semantic change, and abstract rules of English word formation.
ENGL 10B. English Literature from 1700-1850 (Fall 2008)
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisites: English Composition 3 or 3H, English 4W or 4HW, 10A. Survey of major writers and genres, with emphasis on tools for literary analysis such as close reading, argumentation, historical and social context, and critical writing. Minimum of three papers (three to five pages each) or equivalent required. (Syllabus included work by Dryden, Pope, Wycherly, Wordworth, Coleridge, Swift, Behn, Austen and others.)
ENGL 150B/142B. Shakespeare: Later Plays (Spring 2010)
Course Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisites: courses 10A, 10B. Intensive study of representative problem plays, major tragedies, Roman plays, and romance. (Syllabus included Othello, Measure for Measure, King Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Tempest.)
ENGL 10A. English Literature to 1700 (Winter 2009, Fall 2010)
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisites: English Composition 3 or 3H, English 4W or 4HW. Survey of major writers and genres, with emphasis on tools for literary analysis such as close reading, argumentation, historical and social context, and critical writing. Minimum of three papers (three to five pages each) or equivalent required. (Syllabus included Beowulf and works by Chaucer, Donne, Spenser, Milton, and others.)
