700-Level Courses
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705- Cultural Studies, W 1830
Kelly Ritter
In this seminar, we will examine the field of cultural studies through one particular sub-area of its many concerns: class, culture, and education. After a general introduction to the broader field and its key questions, our readings will focus on theories of culture and literacy, and culture and schooling, utilizing some British and some American perspectives on cultural studies as a field. The core of our study, however, will focus on a historiographic look at the postwar era in America (defined for our purposes as the period 1945-1963, or the “long fifties”) through its own cultural production, specifically films and sociological studies, so as to examine the ways in which cultural expectations of youth—particularly in relation to class and social standing—affected and were affected by public secondary education strategies and pedagogical configurations. We will pair these historical items with contemporary theories of culture throughout the course, so as to understand this theory in relation to specific items of cultural production. Students should expect weekly reading assignments of substance, as well as occasional film viewings to be done outside of class time. Regular attendance and active participation is expected, fitting of a graduate seminar. Requirements are: Two critical responses of 4-5 pages to course texts, an oral presentation of 8-10 minutes, and a final seminar paper of approximately 15 pages.
Course Readings:
Adorno and Horkheimer. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.”
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. The Ethics of Identity.
Barthes, Roland, Mythologies.
Bourdieau, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste.
De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life.
Dewey, John. Democracy and Education.
During, Simon. “The Discipline;” and “Time.” In Cultural Studies: A Critical Introduction.
Graff, Harvey. “The Moral Bases of Literacy: Society, Economy, and Social Order.” In The Literacy Myth: Cultural Integration and Social Structure in the Nineteenth Century.
Habermas, Jürgen. Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
Hoberek, Andrew. The Twilight of the Middle Class: Post World War II American Fiction and White Collar Work.
Packard, Vance. The Status Seekers.
Ross, Andrew. “Uses of Camp.” In No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture.
Sorokin, Pitkin. “Vertical Mobility Within Western Societies.” In Social and Cultural Mobility.
Veblen, Thorstein. Conspicuous Consumption.
Williams, Raymond. “Culture is Ordinary" and “The Uses of Cultural Theory.”
Willis, Paul. Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs.
Course Films (most for viewing outside of class time):
A Citizen Makes a Decision. Centron Films, 1954.
Better Use of Your Leisure Time. Coronet Films, 1950.
Cheating. Centron Films, 1952.
How Honest are You? Coronet Films, 1950.
I Want to Be a Secretary. Coronet Films, 1947.
Mind Your Manners! Coronet Films, 1953.
School House in The Red. Agra Films/W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 1945.
Snap Out of It! (Emotional Balance). Coronet Films, 1951.
Social Class in America. McGraw-Hill, 1957.
The Trouble Maker. Centron Films, 1959.
Writing Better Social Letters. Coronet Films, 1950.
Blackboard Jungle. MGM, 1955.
Seven-Up. Granada Television/BBC, 1964.
Born Rich. Shout Factory Theatre, 2004.
Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. Twentieth Century Fox, 1956.
710- Studies in English Renaissance Literature, M 1830
Michelle Dowd
Early Modern Women's Writing: This seminar (cross-listed with WGS) will offer graduate students a broad overview of the writings of early modern Englishwomen, with primary emphasis on seventeenth-century texts. Our readings will include the work of Mary Wroth, Aemelia Lanyer, Katherine Philips, Margaret Cavendish, as well as lesser-known writers. We will pay particular attention to formal development and experimentation as we examine texts from a wide variety of genres, including poetry, polemic, 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- Twentieth-Century British Literature, R 1530
Ben Clarke
The Idea of England: Classes and Cultures
In this course, we will analyze the ways in which twentieth-century British literature both reflected and shaped ideas of Englishness. This will involve exploring a variety of distinct, competing images of England, and considering the extent to which the understanding of Englishness changed in response to two World Wars, the formation of the Welfare State, the collapse of the British empire, and new patterns of immigration. We will examine the impact of socialist, feminist, and postcolonial ideas on the interpretation and representation of England and the English, and the ways in which material and cultural divisions within the country complicate or even undermine the notion of a coherent national identity. In particular, we will focus on ideas of class, and the view of England as, in Benjamin Disraeli’s famous phrase, “two nations.” Beginning the semester with D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, we will consider a variety of forms and genres, reading texts including Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts, Doris Lessing’s In Pursuit of the English, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, and Tony Harrison’s v, as well as extracts from works of non-fiction such as Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy. We will analyze the ways in which these texts reproduce, interrogate, and undermine ideas of class and nation, not only through their content but their form. We will also examine the extent to which they illuminate the broader question about the relationship between literature and identity.
731- Studies in American Literature before 1900, W 1530
Karen Kilcup
American Poetry and Poetics
Early in the twentieth century, Ezra Pound referred to Robert Frost’s favorite collection of English poetry, Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, as “that stinking sugar teat.” Although Palgrave’s included virtually no female poets, Pound’s vitriol reflected gendered tensions and the critique of sentimentalism endemic at the time on both sides of the Atlantic, a time that Edmund Clarence Stedman, its premier anthologist, called a “twilight era.” This course traces the trajectory of American poetry from its beginnings through and beyond this period, exploring—and challenging—such views, which, in their most traditional incarnation, claim that Dickinson and Whitman are the only relevant poets before modernism. Our principal focus will be the rich and varied voices of the nineteenth century as they negotiate the relationship between aesthetics and politics in both their poetry and their criticism; but we will also move well past high modernism into the late twentieth century, taking as our touchstone Frost’s ideal that “a poem is best read in the light of all other poems written”—including, in this case, poems by Native Americans, African Americans, working-class writers, and Jewish Americans. Representative texts/writers: Bradstreet, Native American songs, slave spirituals, Whitman, Dickinson, Piatt, Poe, Whittier, Ridge, Lazarus, Johnson, Dunbar, Frost, Rukeyser, Hughes, Bishop, Ginsberg, Oliver.
735- Studies in African-American Literature, W 1830
Sally Ann Ferguson
The Slave Narrative
This seminar is a broad study of the African American slave narrative and focuses on its various types, including those written by such African/Atlantic slaves as Ottobah Cugoano, James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, and Olaudah Equiano; fugitive slave narrators like Frederick Douglass, Moses Roper, and Henry "Box" Brown; and such post-bellum narrators as Elizabeth Keckley and Booker T. Washington--all of which provide unique variations on the United States captivity narrative literary tradition begun by Mary Rowlandson and others. Students will discern how and why these early African American works developed into the unique African American literary tradition, repeatedly, even cyclically, undergirding its critical, theoretical, and aesthetic movements; and fleshing out its broader relationship to the larger United States literary tradition. They will also write position papers on selected writings, present an oral report, and write a final course essay addressing issues raised by specific course readings.
778 - Directed Reading
778-01. M. Dowd
778-02. M. Dowd
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. M. Dowd
780-02. M. Dowd
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.