Graduate Student Course Descriptions
401 Medieval Literature
This course will provide an introduction to types of literature that were common in the Middle Ages, particularly from the twelfth century onwards. Students will be exposed to some of the most highly regarded literary works of the period, and will be encouraged to explore their own particular interests. Love and religious experience, and the ways in which they reflect medieval society’s conceptualization of the individual, will constitute one of our main concerns, as will medieval views of the ethicality of literature. The reading list will include the following texts: Joseph Bédier, The Romance of Tristan and Iseult; Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, Pearl; The Song of Roland and a number of excerpts from medieval texts, including The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, The Art of Courtly Love, and the legends of the child Jesus.
402 Chaucer
A survey of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer in Middle English, including selected Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, The Book of the Duchess and The Parliament of Fowls. Topics for discussion will include several medieval genres (e.g., romance, fabliau, dream-vision), courtly love, late medieval culture, the role and status of women, and Chaucer’s relationship to his sources (e.g., Dante, Boccaccio). No previous knowledge of Middle English is assumed.
Requirements: one 7-8 page paper, due in stages; three exams; and several translation quizzes.
403 Introduction to Middle English
This course comprises both language study and literary-historical study. In the early part of the term, we will study dialectal variations, pronunciation, vocabulary, inflections, and syntax. Readings in a variety of Middle English texts will occupy the bulk of the course, including selections from The Peterborough Chronicle, The Owl and the Nightingale, Layamon’s Brut, Sir Orfeo, Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, St. Erkenwald, John Gower’s Confessio Amantis and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale. Throughout the term, oral reports on the historical period, on literary analyses, and on the cultural context for Middle English literature will supplement our study of the period, its language and its literature. No previous knowledge of Middle English is assumed. Our primary text will be Burrow and Turville-Petre’s A Book of Middle English.
Requirements: several quizzes; mid-term and final exams; a research paper, due in several stages; and at least one oral report.
404 Shakespeare I: Early Plays
This course covers eight or nine plays and selected sonnets from the first half of Shakespeare's career: from Midsummer Night's Dream through Hamlet. It includes representatives of the three genres: comedy, history, and tragedy. Some attention is given to biography and to circumstances and practices of Elizabethan performances. Students take a ten-minute quiz (spot passages) on each of the plays covered, write two papers (thousand words apiece), and sit for two or three hourly examinations. There is an attendance policy.
405 Shakespeare II: Later Plays
Shakespeare's Late Plays is the study of the best of the best--a survey of the mature dramatic work from the problem comedies (like Measure for Measure) to the major tragedies (Othello, Lear, Macbeth) to the late tragicomedies (Winter's Tale, Tempest). Requirements: two major papers, two major exams, quizzes, and class participation.
413 Restoration and Early 18th Century Genres and Modes
In this course we will study the first English novels. We will seek to understand where the novels came from and how they developed over the hundred or so years after their first appearances. We will also examine what these novels reveal about England (which becomes Britain in 1703), especially with regard to its emergence as the first modern empire, the foundation for which is laid during this time. For example we will examine the emergence of the individual as a self-interested economic agent, the separation of the economic sphere from the home, and the rise of the nation Britain (in contrast to its colonies and rivals.) Novels might include Behn's Oroonoko, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Coetzee’s Foe, Heywood's Love in Excess, Richardson's Pamela, Fielding's Tom Jones, Smollett’s Roderick Random, Burney's Evelina, Beckford’s Vathek, and Austen's Mansfield Park. Many of these novels are long; all, without exception, demand close concentration when you read them.
422 Virginia Woolf and Modern Fiction
This course will introduce students to the literary accomplishments of Virginia Woolf, one of the twentieth century’s most influential authors. We will trace Woolf’s artistic evolution in novels such as Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando; we will examine her feminist manifesto, A Room of One’s Own; and we will read selections from her critical essays and biographical writings. The course will also include cinematic adaptations of Woolf’s work such as Kenneth Branagh’s To the Lighthouse, Marleen Gorris’s Mrs. Dalloway, Sally Potter’s Orlando, and Stephen Daldry’s The Hours. Finally, we will consider Woolf’s literary legacy in recent British fiction by Jeannette Winterson and Ian McEwan. Course requirements: regular homework responses, in-class group presentations, midterm, one short (4-6 pp.) paper, and one longer (10 pp.) paper.
432 American Romanticism and Transcendentalism
This course examines a wide range of American literature written between 1820 and 1865. We start with a short novel by Catharine Sedgwick that exemplifies several features of Romanticism, then take on the complex, challenging, exhilarating writing of the preeminent American Romantics, the Transcendentalists, a group that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau. Moving from the Romantic ideals of the Transcendentalists to pressing political and social issues (and attempting to show the link between the two), we will read writers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs, who all put reform at the center of their work. We will also spend significant time with the major literary writers of the period, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. We will seek to understand how they responded both to Transcendentalism and to the grim social realities of slavery, racial prejudice, poverty, dehumanizing labor, and the subjection of women.
Requirements include regular homework assignments, two 6- to 7-page essays, a midterm, and a final. The exams will have in-class and take-home sections.
436 Modern American Novel
This course will focus on eight major American novels of the period from 1918-1955. We’ll read Willa Cather’s My Antonia, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Nella Larsen’s Passing, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, George Schuyler’s Black No More, Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Course requirements: two papers (one 5-7 pages, one 8-10 pages), two exams, active class participation, occasional quizzes.
441 Southern Literature
What do you think of when you hear the phrase “The South”? In an age of global and national identities, how do we understand the concept of Southern identity? Is there such a thing as a consistent definition of what the South means? By looking at past and contemporary ways in which “Southernness” has been constructed, this class will explore these questions and the larger contested definitions of what is often seen as a distinctive Southern culture. We will examine how notions of a mythic South have been recuperated and challenged throughout American history, as well as the ways in which race, class, agrarian culture, landscape, and outside perspectives have shaped our conceptions of the South.
Tentative Texts: The Literature of the American South, a Norton Anthology; Bastard Out of Carolina, by Dorothy Allison; All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren; and the Oxford American music edition.
Major Requirements:
- two out-of-class papers (6-10 pages) (45%)
- midterm and final exams (30%)
- several short, informal reading responses (10%)
- quizzes (10%)
- participation (5%)
451 Modern British & American Poetry
This course is designed to help students develop a rich and complicated sense of the poets and poetic approaches that helped constitute what we now call modern poetry. We’ll survey British and American poetry during the first half of the twentieth century, reading poets in relation to one another and in light of wider cultural and historical developments (including abstract art, industrialization, mass culture, and WWI). Among the poets we’ll consider are Yeats, Eliot, Pound, H.D., Hughes, Stein, Stevens, Williams, McKay, and Auden. Key terms orienting our discussions will include symbolism, imagism, avant-gardism, and vernacular modernism. Students will write two essays, a midterm, and a final exam.
453 Contemporary Drama
This course will explore the principal movements, playwrights, and dramatic works that characterize British, American, and world drama since 1945. In addition to studying the range of styles and techniques that this drama presents, we will consider the following issues: absurdism and the crisis of meaning; the politics of gender, race, and sexuality; metatheater; drama and popular culture; theater and performance; postmodernism and the staging of history; drama and the crossroads of culture; reimagining America; drama and the medium of film. Because plays are designed for the stage as well as the armchair, we will also consider the challenges and opportunities involved in reading dramatic texts. By seeing clips of videotape productions, attending a live performance at the university’s
Clarence Brown Theater, and by attending to the performance dimensions of individual plays, we will cultivate the art of theatrical reading. Finally, as an upper-level English offering, this course will also provide an opportunity for students to continue to develop as writers and to deepen their skills of analysis, organization, and written expression. Dramatists will include the following: Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Tom Stoppard, Ntozake Shange, Caryl Churchill, Sam Shepard, Brian Friel, Maishe Maponya, August Wilson, David Mamet, Tony Kushner, and Tomson Highway.
Requirements: three short papers, midsemester and final exams, production worksheet, regular attendance and participation.
454 20th Century International Novel
In this class, we will consider a set of diverse international locations and the authors who (re)imagine them. We will ask ourselves what it would mean to have a truly "international" literary movement. In answering this question, we will consider how and why questions of national identity, home and exile, movement and migration, exoticism and regionalism figure in the literary innovations and historical moments referred to as "modernist." We will reserve the right, as a class, to wonder what is gained and what lost when we develop a rubric, "modernism," for instance, or "international modernism," that hopes to contain all of these texts.
Readings will include Proust, Joyce, Isherwood, Barnes, Stein, and Woolf.
455 Persuasive Writing
Introduces students to major principles of persuasion and techniques for writing persuasively. We will examine persuasive appeals (logos, ethos, pathos) and will analyze persuasion as it operates in a variety of rhetorical situations and social contexts (campus communities, local or home communities, and professional or public communities). In addition to completing five persuasive writing assignments, students will assess the elements of persuasion in various published texts as well as in the texts of their classmates. Special attention will be paid to the persuasive resources of language and the stylistic choices that writers make in order to persuade their readers.
460 Technical Editing
This course offers theory, practice, and evaluation of technical editing skills, as well as orientation to careers and professional concerns in technical communication. Though it focuses on the skills necessary to edit the text of technical documents, the course embraces a broader range of technical editing considerations, such as organization, layout, and visuals.
During many class periods, we use an overhead projector or data projector while editing and discussing documents and homework. Much of your homework involves working through my online tutorials (http://web.utk.edu/~hirst). Quizzes are frequent. On one or two occasions, guest lecturers with specialties in various fields of technical communication may supplement my own lectures. The major assignment for the course is an extended editing project that you can later use as a portfolio piece.
Successfully editing technical material is a demanding task, requiring a comprehensive command of communication skills, exacting attention to detail, good interpersonal skills, and that discipline to get work done on schedule. Be prepared to work hard.
Required Text
- Weiss, Edmond H., The Elements of International English Style. M.E. Sharpe, 2005.
NOTE: The online 460 syllabus is linked to additional required readings.
Grading
Quizzes 15 100-90=A
Mid-term 15 89.9-85=B+
Homework 10 84.9-80=B
Final Project 35 79.9-75=C+
Final Exam 20 69.9-60=D
Participation 05 59.9-00=F
Final Project
Your final assignment is to create a portfolio piece showcasing your technical editing skills. It should demonstrate a good sense of document design as well as mature text editing. This final project will have three sections:
- Pre-editing document analysis
- Edited output (showing all markup on original document)
- Final output (clean, laser-written final document)
462 Writing For Publication
Writing for Publication teaches the kind of writing involved in proposals, scholarly articles, theses, and dissertations. While the course's primary focus is on the nuts and bolts of such writing, how to organize such a writing project, how to get words on paper in the first place, how to revise, how to edit, how to prepare manuscripts for submission (and deal with co-authors, deal with reviewers, etc.), it also considers the writing of abstracts, different varieties of documentation styles, proper use of visuals, guidelines and procedures for manuscript submission, the process of editorial review, and a number of other related topics.
Prerequisite: English 360 (Technical and Professional Writing) or instructor's permission. For graduate students, the chief criterion for having the prerequisite waived is that the student must be currently engaged in doing the kind of writing project described above.
Purpose for students who are English majors: English majors who take this course are usually preparing to be technical editors or professional teachers of writing. In this course, the English majors usually work as coaches, responding on a one-to-one basis to the writing of students who are not English majors. The coaches' own writing will consist of rhetorical analyses of the documents they work on as coaches. The coaches' writing will be held to the same high standard as that of the writers. Coaches' final projects should total roughly 20 double spaced pages.
Purpose for students who are not English majors: This course is designed for graduate students (and an occasional advanced undergraduate) who face substantial writing projects and seek help with their writing. Students who enter the course need to have a particular writing project in mind, and successful completion of a well-written version of that project (a version directed more toward a scientifically educated non-expert) will thus be a major goal of each student in the course.
Syllabus: 462 is a workshop class for students from a variety of fields, so its syllabus varies with the composition of each class. This course packet provides a fair description of the materials covered in a typical class.
Assignments: The assignments will be individualized, with each student working mostly on his or her own project. Writers will be expected to turn in 5-10 typed, double spaced pages of finished work each week. While few students succeed in writing every week for 15 weeks, the absolute minimum for successful completion of the course with any grade other than “F” is 10 such installments. Coaches have their weekly coaching assignments, carry an extra burden of classroom participation, and produce three or four writing assignments of their own.
Typical Weekly Schedule: Class time will be divided between one half lecture or workshops and one half one-to-one conferences. Most weeks, each writers will give the coach a new installment of his or her project on Wednesday (a lecture/discussion day), spend Friday’s class meeting reviewing that draft with the coach, and the next Monday (a lecture day) give the teacher the revised version of that installment. Then on Wednesday writers give their coaches a draft of a new installment. All of the writing for this class needs to be done on computers.
Texts: Required:
- E. 462 course packet, Writing Theses, Dissertations, Proposals, and Articles, from Graphic Creations;
- Harbrace handbook;
- Dictionary.
- Each Student will also be required to acquire a copy of the style guide appropriate for the student’s field.
Optional:
- Effective Professional and Technical Writing, D.C. Heath, 1987, 1992.
- Successful Writing, Norton, 2003.
463 Advanced Poetry Writing
Description: Poetry writing, primarily free verse, with analysis of models from the ancients to the contemporary. Emphasis will be on the line, the sentence, the stanza, the use of figurative language, and rhythmic structures.
Requirements: Approximately 10 to 12 poems, two or three short papers on poetry, revisions of previously submitted poems, a final portfolio of poems.
Probable Texts: Jack Gilbert, The Great Fires; one or two others.
464 Advanced Fiction Writing
Development of skills acquired in basic Fiction Writing course. Prerequisite: 364 or consent of instructor.
464 Advanced Fiction Writing
Open only to students who have satisfactorily completed English 364 (writing fiction) or have the instructor’s permission to take English 464.We’ll continue to develop techniques acquired in the basic Writing Fiction course (English 364), and discuss the elements of fiction, learning to read as a writer reads, doing reading and writing and re-writing exercises. I’ll frequently make copies of your work for class discussion. We will read closely (word-by-word, line-by-line) and analyze published works and works by members of the class. Individual conferences are encouraged.
Required Text: Numerous photocopied handouts and photocopied worksheets of fiction by members of the class.
Recommended Text: The Element of Style, ed. by William Strunk and E. B. White.
Other outside reading may be suggested, and I’ll encourage you to attend poetry and/or fiction readings on campus. In lieu of a final exam, a final portfolio containing an original story and a critical evaluation of the story will be due at the end of the term
472 American English
Description
Introduction to regional and social variation in American English with a focus on pronunciation patterns, vocabulary items, and sentence structures of the major varieties of American English; includes history of major dialect differences and social and political functions of the dialects. Prerequisites: English/Linguistics 371 or 372 or Linguistics 200 or
consent of instructor. Undergraduate and graduate credit,
Textbooks (Required)
- Tottie, Gunnel. An Introduction to American English. Blackwell.
- Dumas, Bethany K. Ms. Varieties of American English.
Textbooks (Recommended)
- Kovecses, Zoltan. American English: An Introduction. Broadview Press.
- Wolfram, Walt, and Natalie Schilling-Estes. American English: Dialects and Variation. Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell.
Course Requirements
- Full participation in groups and class/online activities (10%).
- Three written exercises/short papers (5% each = 15%).
- Two tests (15% each = 30%).
- One group or individual project (full participation = 10%) resulting in a paper (25%) and an oral presentation (10%).
476 Second Language Acquisition
This course covers the main issues surrounding the question of how human beings learn second languages by examining pertinent research and theoretical models. The course explores such issues as: differences between child first language acquisition and adult second language acquisition; the effect of age on ability to acquire a second language; cognitive factors influencing development of proficiency in a second language; learner variables (such as personality, motivation, aptitude, cognitive styles); socio-cultural factors which promote or impede progress in a second language; second language acquisition models; and to a small degree, implications for L2 instruction.
Requirements: Two exams, a short paper, an observation report (for graduate credit only), a reading journal, exercises analyzing linguistic data.
482 Major Authors: Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) was a prolific British writer of fiction (26 novels) and philosophy. This discussion-based class will examine her literary achievement in the light of her philosophical thinking. While Murdoch’s work largely follows traditional narrative techniques, its intellectual and spiritual content is revolutionary and exciting. Her goal, and that of this class, is to instigate a discussion of human goodness: what it means and why it is essential.
Required Texts
- Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues
- Bruno’s Dream
- A Fairly Honourable Defeat
- The Good Apprentice
- Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (sels)
- The Philosopher’s Pupil
- The Sea, the Sea
- The Sovereignty of Good
Recommended Text
- Peter Conradi, Iris: The Life of Iris Murdoch
- Several secondary sources will be on reserve in Hodges Library
Grade Determination
- In-class work (participation and reading responses/quizzes) 20%
- Take Home Essay 25%
- In-class mid-term 25%
- Final paper (including oral presentation) 30%
483 Appalachian Literature and Culture
In this class, we will investigate the complex history of the Appalachian region. By tracing key traditions and events in Appalachian history, literature and arts, we will examine the various ways in which Appalachia was understood and described (from within and from without). This class is interdisciplinary in design, and we will approach our topics by looking at literature, history, photography, music, and popular culture. Along the way, we will unearth the heterogeneity (of people, races, opinions and communities) in the region commonly known as Appalachia.
Tentative Texts: Child of God by Cormac McCarthy, Death in the Family by James Agee, River of Earth by James Still, Saving Grace by Lee Smith, Selu by Marilou Awiakta, Topsoil Road by Robert Morgan and Unquiet Earth by Denise Giardina.
Major Requirements:
- two out-of-class papers (6-10 pages) (45%)
- midterm and final exams (30%)
- several short, informal reading responses (10%)
- quizzes (10%)
- participation (5%)
483 Special Topics in Literature
Children’s Literature
This course will examine the role of the child both as a thematic focus and as an intended audience of literary texts. Beginning first with fairy tales by the Grimm brothers and by Perrault, we will go on to study Romantic constructions of the child as an idealized force before we explore later British and American revisions of this paradigm. One of our goals will be better to understand literary models of childhood and to break down generic distinctions between adult and juvenile literature.
After a brief study of classic fairy tales, we will look at Romantic texts such as Blakes Songs of Innocence/Songs of Experience and excerpts from Wordsworth and Coleridge. We will go on to consider later works for children for example, Frances Hodgson Burnetts The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, George MacDonalds The Light Princess and The Golden Key, Lewis Carrolls various editions of the Alice in text, together with Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, and selections from the Harry Potter series. Grades will be based on two papers, weekly writing assignments and class participation.
484 Special Topics in Writing
Dreamworks
Dreamworks is a workshop in poetry writing from dreams. Students hand in one poem each week and keep a dream journal. At mid-term and at the end of the semester students hand in poetry manuscripts and edited passages from the dream journals. The mid-term manuscript is composed of four poems and four edited journal pages; final manuscripts 6-8 pages of poetry and dream journal combined. In-class writing exercises are used to stimulate discussion. Class participation is emphasized and students are expected to keep up with the readings. Attendance is required, with two excused absences. Students should have take 363 as a prerequisite, or must obtain the permission of the instructor. Graduate students will be asked to help lead two class discussions.
Readings for the course typically include: News of the Universe, edited by Robert Bly – this anthology includes poetry by Blake, Keats, Goethe, Novalis, Baudelaire, Rilke, Yeats, Levertov and Oliver, and many others from oral tradition poetry to contemporary writings; In Mad Love and War, poetry by Joy Harjo; Rimbaud: Collected Poems, Selected Letters, translated by Wallace Fowlie.
492/592 Drama in New York
English 492/592 (Drama in New York) is a three-credit hour course offered during Spring Semester. The off-campus portion of this year’s course will take place 13-21 December 2007.
English 492/592 calls for a week spent in New York seeing plays. Students will attend eight performances representing the best of New York theater – dramas, comedies, musicals – at a variety of venues, on and off Broadway.
The group will stay at the Vanderbilt Y, an “upscale” dormitory-style facility located on 47th Avenue on the East Side of Manhattan. The Y offers safe, clean, and convenient accommodations, with easy access to the Broadway theater district and within several blocks of major subway stations. Rooms are double-occupancy, with bathroom facilities down the hall. Guests at the Y have access to a ground-floor restaurant and a health facility (with swimming pool). If you do not wish to stay at the YMCA, then you should not sign up for the class. In addition to three group meetings and the plays themselves, students will have considerable free time to spend sightseeing in New York City.
The course fee for English 492/592 is $950.00. This includes all theater tickets and accommodations. The course fee does NOT include airfare to New York, meals, or transportation to or from the airport and within the city. Because students traditionally fly at different times and to and from different cities, it is not possible to arrange group airfare. Round-trip airfare to New York usually runs $220-$350. Students should plan to arrive on December 12th by 6:00PM and to depart on the morning of December 22nd.
To receive course credit for English 492 or 592, students will be asked to keep a journal with three pages or so about each of the plays we see. Journals will be due at the end of the first full week of classes in Spring semester. Students will also write a research paper (10 pages) dealing with the plays we have seen in New York or with New York theater as an institution. This paper will be due later in Spring semester at a time scheduled by the instructor. Students will also be expected to attend and participate in the group discussions in New York.
Students must be enrolled in 492 or 592 in order to go on the trip to New York. English 492 counts as an upper-level English literature class. There is no prerequisite for 492. Only graduate students may enroll in 592.
Enrollment is strictly limited to 20 students, and the course fills quickly. Interested students should contact Dr. Robert Stillman (rstillma@utk.edu; 974-6971).
495 Introduction to Rhetoric and Composition
English 495 is not really an introduction to rhetoric and composition; instead, it is an upper-level reintroduction to the rhetorical tradition and composition studies as seen through the lenses of history, theory, and practice. Divided into two parts, the first half of this course offers a historical perspective on rhetoric, examining ancient, medieval, and early modern explanations of what rhetoric is and what its practitioners do. The second half of the course connects past and present concepts of rhetoric and composition, focusing on twentieth- and twenty-first-century rhetorical education. Readings include both primary texts and secondary critical sources. Course grades are based on attendance and participation, one exam, and regular writing assignments, including both research and work with multimedia. Required texts include James A. Herrick's The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An Introduction (3rd edition) plus materials on electronic course reserve.
505 Teaching First-Year Composition
Course Description: English 505 is an introduction to the field of rhetoric and composition, with the goal of helping participants develop well-theorized practices for teaching writing. In English 505 we will examine and critique major theoretical issues and problems that concern contemporary scholars and teachers of writing. Through readings ranging from classical rhetoric to current composition theory, we will explore the evolution of composition as a formal area of study, review some of the major perspectives that have shaped or reshaped thinking in the field, and evaluate various theoretical and pedagogical trends. These discussions will be tied to discussions of how we, as teachers of writing, engage and challenge students, develop effective writing courses and assignments, and fulfill ever-changing institutional and personal goals of the composition classroom.
Course Assignments: Assignments will include two oral reports, an annotated bibliography and short paper on an issue related to teaching composition, and a final portfolio that includes materials (such as a teaching philosophy statement and syllabus) that will provide opportunities to draw connections between theories of writing and the teaching of writing and will help locate you as a teacher-scholar within the conversations and controversies that shape writing instruction today.
Course Texts: In addition to online course reserves, texts for the course include Crosstalk in Comp Theory (Victor Villanueva) and Writing Teacher’s Sourcebook (Corbett, Myers and Tate).
507 Applied Criticism: The Rhetoric of Literary Forms
“Narrative Rhetoric”
With the growth of the World Wide Web, theories of narrative cognition, and reinvigorated interest in the relation between narrative and politics, the study of narrative has assumed a new urgency. This course will concern narrative fiction and nonfiction, defined within older and new forms of narrative theory (e.g., structuralist narratology, narrative ethics, feminist narratology, and interdisciplinary narrative studies). Central questions addressed by the course will be “What is narrative and how does it operate as text?” and “What are the rhetorical circumstances and effects of narrative, and how does it engage readers outside the text?” The course will introduce students to an array of answers to this question, from formalist to historicist perspectives. While all theories of narrative can’t be covered in such a short time frame, the goals of the course are to learn some of the major ways that audiences and purposes of narrative have been defined and to examine how narrative fiction and nonfiction actually work as prose forms. The course readings should be able to be used on numerous Ph.D. exam secondary readings lists. Course texts will include Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology; Chatman, Story and Discourse; Ryan, Avatars of Story; Kellog et al, The Nature of Narrative; and numerous selected readings (articles and book chapters) by various authors from numerous historical periods. Course assignments will include at least active class participation, a short fieldwork paper, and a final scholarly project with a significant writing component. A supplemental “fieldtrip” to, or panel for, NARRATIVE: An International Conference (http://narrative.georgetown.edu/conference2008/index.html) will be considered.
540 Readings in 19th Century British Literature
This course offers a survey of the Romantic period, focusing on a comprehensive range of poets from Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth to their female counterparts, such as Charlotte Smith, Helen Maria Williams, Mary Robinson, and Anna Seward. We will also study novels by Walpole, Lewis, Radcliffe, Austen, and the Bronte sisters. Overall, we will explore the intersections between opposing genres, gender ideologies, and newly revived poetic forms.
551 Reading in American Literature
This is, unabashedly, a “coverage” course in major American fiction from the 1920s to the early 1960s. We’ll read Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Nella Larsen’s Passing, George Schuyler’s Black No More, Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, Richard Wright’s Native Son, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. We’ll also read selected short stories by Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor, as well as some significant works of criticism on all the authors considered. Course requirements: one bibliographic essay (12-15 pages), one conference paper (8-10 pages), one presentation, active class participation.
560 Readings in Twentieth-Century Literature
American Drama
This course will survey American drama from its beginnings through the early twenty-first century. In addition to exploring major movements, playwrights, and texts, we will consider the following issues: realism and its discontents; representing race; myths of America; staging memory/the family play; drama and industrialism; text and performance; theater and multiculturalism; drama, gender, and sexuality; American theater as cultural institution. More broadly, we will investigate the ways that American drama has reflected the cultural aspirations and anxieties of a United States coming to terms with the changing landscapes of industrialization, modernity, and postmodernity. Playwrights will include the following: Royall Tyler, Anna Cora Mowatt, Dion Boucicault, Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, Sophie Treadwell, Clifford Odets, Langston Hughes, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Adrienne Kennedy, Amiri Baraka, Ntozake Shange, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, David Henry Hwang, August Wilson, Tony Kushner Suzan-Lori Parks, and Tomson Highway.
Requirements: reading journal (nine entries, 50% of final grade); midsemester and final exam (30%); class participation (20%).
582 Special Topics in Writing
Rhetoric, Writing, and the Emergence of Public Culture in Long Eighteenth-Century Britain
Designed for graduate students from all concentrations (CW, LCTS, and RWL), this course takes a cultural approach to understanding rhetoric and writing in the British long eighteenth century. Through inquiry into topics such as teaching, learning, reading, writing, and spectating, we will explore the emergence and early development of modern
public print-literate culture. Course materials, class discussions, and regular writing assignments will serve as preparation for final projects: researched papers and presentations that explore the relationship between cultural practices and canonical literary and/or rhetorical texts produced during years between the English Civil War and the turn of the nineteenth century.
582 Special Topics in Writing
Risk Fiction
This course will examine works of contemporary fiction that employ at their heart some fundamental risk: an unsympathetic or polemical narrator; a premise that on the surface seems to embrace racial or cultural stereotypes; an unnamed POV character who becomes secondary to the landscape that eventually swallows him. Discussion and critical writing will center on what we as writers can take away from the success or failure of the execution of these risks, and whether each one is an essential aspect of its text or merely a distraction from some more worthwhile expression. In addition to critical writing, students will each write and workshop a story inspired by the style of one or more texts on the syllabus.
Reading List:
- Michael Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles
- J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello
- Nicholson Baker, The Fermata
- Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker
- Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
- W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn
- Joy Williams, Taking Care
- William Gass, The Heart of the Heart of the Country & Other Stories
- Cesar Aira, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter
585 Issues in Invention, Style, & Audience
This course looks at issues in invention, style, and audience from multiple disciplinary perspectives. These perspectives come from theories of rhetoric, composition, readability, literature, linguistics, cognitive science, and visual design. My current research focuses on efficient and ethical style as informed by these perspectives.
This course offers also offers orientation to research directions in Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics as represented by RWL faculty in the UT Department of English. Through lectures and a few assigned readings, RWL faculty will guide us in mapping out current issues and research in areas such as civic & political rhetoric, linguistics, history & theory of classical rhetoric, discourse analysis, judicial language, composition studies, scientific & technical communication, genre studies, writing across the curriculum, and Second Language studies.
You are not expected to demonstrate mastery of each topic discussed. But you will emerge with an excellent sense of research going on in the rich, broad fields of Rhetoric, Writing, & Linguistics.
Work Required
Readings
- Articles and selections from books as assigned by Dr. Hirst and by visiting scholars (TBA).
Response papers
- Two brief (2-page) responses to readings: 20% of grade.
Quizzes
- Two quizzes: 20% of grade.
Participation
- Class attendance and discussion of readings and issues/questions/insights with Dr. Hirst and with visiting scholars: 10% of grade.
Final Paper
- A final paper (15 pages or so) on a topic related to style, audience, or invention: 50% of grade.
Texts Required
- Analyzing Prose, 2nd ed., Richard Lanham.
- Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase, Arthur Quinn.
- Aristotle on Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. and notes by George Kennedy.
- Additional readings, assigned by visiting scholars, will not be burdensome or numerous. Usually, photocopies will be made for you in anticipation of the scholar’s visit, or you’ll be given a link to free online copies of the material.
611 Studies in Old English Language & Literature
Beowulf
English 611 is the second semester of 610 and those who enroll in it should have taken English 610 or otherwise be capable of reading Old English. We shall concentrate on the great corpus of Old English poetry. In particular we shall read "The Dream of the Rood," the "Seafarer," the "Wanderer," and of course the great epic "Beowulf." The classes will principally consist of translation and close discussion of the day's translations. There will be a midterm, final, and a single paper. We shall use J. Pope's "8 Old English Poems", and for Beowulf we shall use this electronic site http://www.library.unr.edu/subjects/guides/beowulf.html. We shall begin class with a brief review of Old English grammar. Students who have taken 610 are strongly urged to take 620 as the full year's work will ensure a mastery of the language and provide a solid foundation for understanding the English language and undergird all further study in English
651 Studies in Victorian Literature
In this course we will explore gender as relation and as construct within the poetry of the later nineteenth century. After analyzing a few of Tennyson’s female characters, we will read the early lyrics of Robert Browning in conjunction with the letters documenting his courtship with Elizabeth Barrett. We will then set the various roles in his mature dramatic monologues against those in her verse novel Aurora Leigh. The course will next trace the growth of aestheticism as a means of constructing and gendering a persona in the works of Arnold, Hopkins, Housman, and Wilde. We will conclude by exploring the new strategies for negotiating gender developed by a group of recently rediscovered women poets, among them Webster, Coleridge, Field, and Levy. Assignments will include a midterm, a final, a brief presentation, a conference abstract, a 12-15 page research paper, and two or more sets of study questions.
661 Studies in American Literature
Race, Gender, and Power: Intertextuality and the Origins of American Autobiography
In this seminar we will explore the interrelationships of three thematic but diverse groups of ground-breaking autobiographical texts to examine the American personal narrative as an emergent genre. We will deal with classic colonial captivity narratives, best-selling 19th-century frontier narratives, and canonical texts that highlight what would come to be called the American Dream, but will do so from the perspectives of race, gender, and power, to allow us to analyze the development of autobiographical modes suited to or resistant to the ideals of a pluralistic nation.
The captivity narratives are:
- The Narrative of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (1542);
- The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises
Displayed; Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary
Rowlandson . . . (1682); - The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The
African. Written by Himself (1789).
The frontier best-sellers are:
- The Life and Adventures of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee (1833);
- Life of MA-KA-TAI-ME-SHE-KIA-KIAK or Black Hawk (1833);
- Caroline Kirkland, A New Home--Who’ll Follow? (1839).
And the “American Dream” texts are:
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1791);
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas (1845);
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years and More (1898).
The average length of these texts is under 200 pages.
Seminar Format: Discussion with some lecturing.
Requirements:
- 2 oral reports/presentations (10 minutes max.) on assigned outside reading with a one-page “fact” sheet/outline/summary to be distributed to the members of the seminar.
- A seminar paper of approximately 15 pages with copies to be distributed to all seminar members 2 days before the discussion date (not graded). Revised papers are due on a staggered schedule a few days after their in-class critique (graded).
- Serving as a primary and secondary critic for the papers of two different colleagues. Typewritten versions of your oral evaluations will be given to the author of the paper and the instructor.
- Each member of the seminar will also provide the author of the paper and the instructor with a typewritten critique of the papers for which they are not a primary or secondary critic.
Grading: a—10%; b—50%; c—20%; d—10% and 10% for seminar participation.
680 Topics in English Language
Description
Early lectures will cover approaches to discourse (speech act theory, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, pragmatics, conversational analysis, and variation), then focus primarily on conversational analysis, which will provide the primary focus for course reading and discussion. We shall also explore the structure and function of conversational narrative. Designed for graduate students majoring in English/Education/a foreign language/a social science. Other graduate students are also welcome. No prerequisite.
Course topics include but are not limited to theory and method of transcription, coding of conversational data, ethnomethodology, conversational inference, communicative style, politeness phenomena, male-female differences, conversational style, conversation in institutional settings, frames theory, interactional synchrony and rhythm, discourse markers, back-channel response, figures of speech, repetition, communication as a double bind, cross-cultural differences, the aesthetics of conversation, the formulaic nature of language, the relationship between ordinary language and literary discourse, interpretation and accountability in discourse analysis, the place of discourse analysis in linguistics, judicial constraints on conversation, involvement strategies, constructed dialogue, the nature and role of narrative, variation in narrative, and gender differences in language use and expectations about language use. Appropriate research data may be collected from broadcast and print media, the workplace, and the classroom, everyday conversation, and medical, political, legal, religious, and other institutional contexts.
Course Requirements
Student will tape record and transcribe a short segment of naturally occurring conversation, then apply various analytic methods to their taped data. Additional requirements include 3 short observational studies (15%), 2 short papers (5 pp.), critiquing the methodologies and conclusions of articles by other researchers (30%), a research paper (12-15 pp.) (30%), and an oral presentation on the topic of the research paper (10%). Each student will be required to submit an abstract to a professional conference (10%) and to critique another student's abstract and oral presentation (5%).
Textbooks:
- Baumann, Richard. Story, performance, and event: Contextual studies of oral narrative. Cambridge University Press. (Required)
- Gee, J. P. An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. NY: Routledge. (Recommended)
- Sacks, Harvey. Lectures on conversation. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. (Required chapters on reserve, additional chapters recommended).
- Schiffrin, Deborah. Approaches to discourse. Blackwell, (Required)
- Schiffren, D., Tannen, D., & Hamilton, H.E. The handbook of discourse analysis. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. (Recommended)
- Tannen, Deborah. Conversational style. Ablex. (Required)
- Packet. (Required)
686 Studies in Creative Writing
The topic is Poetry Writing and Poetics
This course is tailored to writers who are composing manuscripts of poetry, and is limited to those students who have taken 581 or who have obtained permission of the instructor prior to the first class meeting. Our emphasis is not only on creating and editing poetry--with attention to individual poems and to composing a manuscript--but on poetics as well.
In 686 we engage in dialogues about theory and practice of poetics. We read essays by poets on poetry; for example, we consider Robert Hass' ideas in Twentieth Century Pleasures alongside our reading of his poetry. In general, the poets we read continue to have a major impact on contemporary poetry. Readings have included authors such as Robert Hass, C.K. Williams, Sharon Olds, Brenda Hillman, Galway Kinnell, and Yusef Komunyakaa.
In 686 we also shape our own theories about poetics. Articulateness about our own work will be especially useful to those preparing to take oral examinations for the graduate Creative Writing Concentration, and will help in the arranging of poems and in preparing an introduction to the poetry manuscript.
Students hand in at least one poem a week, take turns leading class discussions, produce a mid-term critical paper (six pages), and a final poetry manuscript of ten poems, with a brief critical introduction. Poems are not graded until they appear in the final manuscript of poems, though each poem will receive timely written comments by the instructor. The final manuscript of poems, 10 pages, will carry 60% of the course grade, critical paper 20%, class participation 20%.
Dr. Kallet will offer a publication workshop at the end of the semester, and will look for opportunities to showcase the work of graduate students.