Department of English
700-Level Courses
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701 - English Studies: Content, Methods & Bibliography
701-01 T 18:30-21:20 - M. Gibson
710-01 - Studies in English Renaissance Literature
710-01 T 18:30-21:20 - M. Dowd
Early Modern Women’s Writing: This seminar will offer graduate students a broad overview of the writings of early modern Englishwomen, with primary emphasis on seventeenth-century texts. We will begin with the work of court writers and aristocrats such as Lady Mary Wroth and Mary Sidney and end with texts by late seventeenth-century writers such as Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn. Along the way we will examine texts from a wide variety of genres, including poetry, public speeches, drama, and even early science fiction. Students in the course will also engage with central topics of debate in the scholarship on early modern women writers, including such issues as literacy, domesticity, religious difference, the construction of the self, and manuscript vs. print publication. Requirements include participation and careful reading, short written exercises, oral presentations, and a final research paper.
724-01 - 20th Century British Literature
724-01 MW 14:00-15:15 - B. Clarke
Political Violence in Post-War British Literature
This course explores the representation of political violence in twentieth-century British literature, and in particular in texts written after World War II. We will explore a variety of forms and genres, from Stevie Smith’s poems to Hanif Kureshi and Angela Carter’s short stories, from Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist to Tony Harrison’s long, controversial poem v, as well as critical works such as Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. We will consider how we define violence as ‘political’, how violence has shaped struggles for emancipation and self-definition, and how, if at all, literature contributes to our understanding of violence. We will also explore the notion that violence is not an aberration, occurring outside the normal workings of society, but that which defines the State, an idea encapsulated in Max Weber’s statement: ‘a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.’ In engaging these texts and subjects, we will necessarily consider broader questions, such as: How do we define ‘politics’? What is the relationship between ‘identity’ and ‘politics’? How does literature intervenes in historical debates? The course will be assessed by a researched presentation(s) and written assignments.
730-01 - Studies in American Literature
730-01 W 18:30-21:20 - A. Cuda
Visions and Visionaries in Modernist Poetry
“And indeed there will be time,” says T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock, “for a hundred visions and revisions.” This course begins with the premise that literary modernism was a time for visions, revisions, and visionaries, that is, for lyric poets whose desire to make meaning often led them towards intense, revelatory states of mind and elevations of consciousness. Focusing upon English and American poetry and poetic theories from the early twentieth century, we’ll examine the stylistic innovations that modernist poets developed to accommodate the visionary, and we’ll interrogate the spiritual, psychological, and cultural circumstances behind the modernist fascination with moments of insight and revelation. We’ll read the philosophers—like Henri Bergson and William James—who helped to spark these visions, and we’ll ask how the psychological extremities of vision helped to shape modernist thinking about the mind and its faculties.
Texts by Henri Bergson, Hilda Doolittle, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, William James, D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, W. B. Yeats, and others.
734-01 - Studies in American Women Writers
734-01 T 15:30-18:20 - K. Kilcup
Instead of focusing on a handful of well-known writers and exploring their voices in depth, this course evaluates the breadth of (primarily) nineteenth-century American women’s literary work, as we participate in ongoing discussions about aesthetics, canonicity, and literary history. Investigating genres ranging from the canonical (historical novel, lyric poetry, the slave narrative) to the popular (sci fi, children’s literature, advice writing), we will consider such questions as: Does complexity, for example, mean aesthetic complexity (as it has in the recent past), or does it mean cultural or emotional complexity? Does “timelessness” mean that a text apparently disregards the period in which it was written, or that, like Frances Harper’s “We Are All Bound Up Together,” it continues to require readers to ponder their position in American culture and their connection to others? What is the relationship between “politics” and “aesthetics”? How does a study of these women writers help us to redefine conventional periods, genres, and perspectives? What have we lost in literary studies through our overemphasis on the novel as the primary site of value? What is the relationship between women’s humor and canonicity? In addition, we will ponder the specific ways in which these writers seek to intervene in the political debates surrounding such matters as slavery, transculturation, interracial marriage and racial politics, the status of women, male control of the female body (including sexuality), Western migration and the ideology of the West, the situation of immigrants in American culture, motherhood, temperance, and the working classes. As we will see through some comparative analysis, many of the earlier debates continue to resonate in the work of contemporary women’s writing.
735 - Studies in African American Literature
735-01 M 15:30-18:20 - S. Ferguson
The Spring 2009 graduate seminar, "Black Women's Literaray Emergence: Evolutionary Spirituality, Sexuality and Identity," will examine spiritual and slave narratives, poetry, and fiction written before 1900 by such African American women as Lucy Terry, Zilpha Elaw Shum, "Old Elizabeth," Maria Stewart. Jarena Lee, Harriet Jacobs, and Elizabeth Keckley, who belonged to the only group of United States females to be historically targeted for sexual abuse by their own government. Because this fact is rarely acknowledged within the "mainstream" literary profession (indeed, some scholars deny its importance altogether) but virtually informs and defines her work, several critics have recently become alarmed at the limited scholarship adequately addressing her uniquely American literary tradition, defined by an intersection of both racism and sexism and basic to understanding works by contemporary African American authors, particularly the black female's. These women's writings speak directly to their experiences of being biologically black and female then and now, and this seminar primarily focuses on that, while suggesting--among other things--critical and theoretical approaches to her specific works. Students will also write position papers for selected course readings, give an oral report, and write a course essay.
737 - Multiethnic Literature of the U.S.
737-01 T 18:30-21:20 - M. Rifkin
Queerness, Race, and Empire in the U.S. Context
What are the conventions for conceptualizing sexuality within what has come to be known as “queer theory”? How has recent scholarship sought to rethink earlier frameworks by foregrounding the intersection of sexuality with racial and imperial formations? To what extent is “queer theory” a useful rubric for these new kinds of analysis? To what degree are these scholarly formulations useful in considering other kinds of writings by people of color? These questions will guide our discussion of contemporary scholarship and literature. We will begin by reading some of the iconic figures in “queer theory,” such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Eve Sedgwick, and we will move to work in the last decade that seeks to foreground the relations among sexuality, race, and empire – possibly including, among others, Roderick Ferguson, Cathy Cohen, M. Jacqui Alexander, Martin Manalansan, José Muñoz, Gayatri Gopinath, Ann Laura Stoler, Will Roscoe, and Jasbir K. Puar. The second half of the class will address novels, short stories, and poetry by writers of color, largely Native American but also African American, Chicano/a, and Asian American. Authors may include Craig Womack, Beth Brant, Qwo-Li Driskill, Deborah Miranda, Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, Cherríe Moraga, Carla Trujillo, Arturo Islas, and R. Zamora Linmark.
740 - Studies in Contemporary and Postmodern American Literature
740-01 R 18:30-21:20 - C. Moraru
This is a “Studies in Contemporary and Postmodern Literature” graduate seminar that focuses on the literature of postmodernism from earlier metafiction to Avant-Pop. In particular, we will look at postmodern fiction as cultural mythography, that is, as both representation and critique of the cultural mythology that begins to take hold of the U.S. private and public imaginary in the early 1960s. Following an introductory discussion of notions such as culture industry, myth, representation, ideology, and critique, we will address the controversial issue of postmodernism’s “cultural realism,” namely, the postmodern sensitivity to the all-pervasiveness of culture (to culture as landscape) in general and especially of certain cultural myths in American everyday life at the dawn of the new millennium. If myth, according to Roland Barthes, speaks to our inability—tactically exploited by various interests—to represent things “otherwise” and more generally to our incapacity of imagine the “other,” then the case can be made that at least a certain strain of postmodernism has been doing culturally and critically imaginative work. Along these lines, the postmodern can be defined as an attempt to uncover as myth aspects of life that present themselves as natural, normal, and self-evident. There is, to this postmodernism (or to postmodernism viewed along these lines), a historical and critical dimension that cannot be ignored despite the otherwise no less conspicuous ambiguities and complicities of postmodern discourse.
Required primary texts include novels by Don DeLillo, Bret Easton Ellis, William Gibson, Mark Leyner, Donald Barthelme, and Jonathan Foer. We will also read literary criticism and cultural theory by Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Jim Collins, John Docker, and Jean-Luc Nancy, among others. The emphasis will be on the primary sources, but we will also discuss and use a fair amount of scholarship, usually matching up a novelist and a theorist. In this class, students learn and apply the research methodology needed for the professional study of literature and culture as well as for the presentation of this study’s outcomes in venues such as peer-reviewed journals and academic conferences. The emphasis will be placed on identifying the dynamic and features of core concepts and models of current critical and cultural analysis including modernism, postmodernism, globalism, identity, community, and critique. We will situate these notions in their appropriate contexts; we will study their origins in modern theory as well as their forms in cultural history. Classroom work and individual projects—to be presented orally or in writing—are geared toward this goal. Requirements: oral participation, individual presentations, and (OPTION A) a midterm (10 pp.) and a final paper (20-25 pp.) or (OPTION B) a midterm and final paper (10 pp. each) plus a final exam.
744 - Seminar in Composition Studies: Scholarship and Publishing in Composition Studies
744-01 R 15:30-18:20 - K. Ritter
In this seminar, we will read and discuss the most current scholarship in the field of composition studies. After situating our work via book-length studies of the field’s publishing history, we will read articles from the latter half of the 2008 issues of College Composition and Communication and College English. We will read these journal issues in their entirety, so as to focus not just on the individual articles and their arguments, but also the holistic theme/intent of each issue as a collection of scholarship.
The unusual (and exciting) element of this seminar will be the element of scholarly surprise. With rare exception, neither I nor the class will know what is to be published in issues of the above journals until we receive them a few months, or mere weeks, in advance of the semester. Thus, our discussion will be guided by our reactions as in-the-field journal readers/consumers; fellow scholars; and developing composition professionals. Though we will begin the semester with two book-length studies, and occasionally supplement our discussions with other texts, the focus of our seminar will be on the most current scholarship in the field, and how it intersects with and informs our own research, scholarship, and publication aspirations within composition studies. In addition to our regular class discussions and presentations, we will also have visits and presentations by two current or past journal editors regarding their publishing practices and their views on composition studies scholarship today.
The first eight weeks of the semester will be spent reading and writing responses to current scholarship, both inside and outside of class. The last seven weeks will be spent on the study of publishing/scholarship issues in composition studies. By the end of the term, students will have revised a current piece of scholarly writing from another UNCG seminar or from a major piece of work (i.e. a conference paper, a dissertation chapter) to submit to one of several journals in the field.
Required Texts:
*College Composition and Communication (June, September, and December 2008 issues)
*College English (July, September, and November 2008 issues)
*Goggin, Maureen. Authoring a Discipline: Scholarly Journals and the Post-World War II Emergence of Rhetoric and Composition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000.
*Olson, Gary and Todd Taylor. Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition. Albany: SUNY Press,1997.
778- Directed Reading
778-01. Myers.
778-02. Myers.
Pr. admission to the Ph.D. program, 24 hours of course
work beyond the M.A., and the permission of Director of Graduate Studies.
Individual conferences. Program of reading formulated to meet the varying needs of each student.
780 - Independent Doctoral Study
780-01. Myers.
780-02. Myers.
Pr. 36 hours of Ph.D. course work and the permission of Director
of Graduate Studies.
Intensive review of literature and criticism in a given field in preparation for preliminary examination or dissertation. May be repeated for up to six hours credit.