This class will explore the promises and problems of democracy in the United States through some important American texts that span 200 years of national history. Readings will begin with an account of democracy as first envisioned in ancient Athens to establish an understanding of the democratic ideal. We'll then read in Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Margaret Fuller's Summer on the Lakes, Twain's Life on the Mississippi, William Carlos Williams's In the American Grain, and Ralph Ellison's Shadow and Act. Student teams will also study and report on Lincoln's speeches, Whitman's “Democratic Vistas,” the Adams-Jefferson letters, the work on American culture of Constance Rourke and John Kouwenhoven, W.E.B DuBois on racism, John Dewey on education and the arts, and the landscape writings of J.B. Jackson. Work in the course will include discussions, short essays, and a seminar paper on issues of democracy in American letters.
The literary canon has never been a particularly stable or monolithic set of texts. But in the last three decades, the vexing question of which texts should be taught in the university has been discussed—and fought over—with particular vigor. For what is at stake in the so-called “canon wars” is less a collection of texts than a set of grounding assumptions about the role of education, the nature of self, and the extent to which race, class, gender, and sexual orientation influence what and how we read, write, learn, teach, govern, and are governed. What is also at stake in the debate is the inescapable question of power: who chooses, who teaches, who governs, whose voices are heard. And whose are not.
This class will focus primarily on the late 19th-century literature of Henry James and Mark Twain. We will work to establish the historical and cultural milieu in which these men wrote and explore in some depth their very different styles.
I hope that by reading the works of these two authors side by side we can create an understanding both of the 19th century and of literary Realism that are more complex than generally taught in literature classes. Assignments will include an annotated bibliography,
two or three short analysis papers, a conference submission, and a 10-page term paper that will require both analysis and research.
Possible Texts: Selected Tales, Henry James; various Twain short stories;
Portrait of a Lady, Henry James;
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain;
The Sense of the Past, Henry James;
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain; excerpts from
English Hours and
Italian Hours, Henry James;
The Innocent’s Abroad, Mark Twain;
The American Scene, Henry James;
The Gilded Age, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
We’ll look at this mythic American icon as articulated in literature and film from historical and cultural perspectives. We’ll read Dary’s Cowboy Culture, Jordan’s Cowgirls, McDowell’s Cowboy Poetry Matters, and assorted cowboy novels and cowgirl autobiographies. We’ll also study some iconic Western films such as The Cowboys, Lonesome Dove, and Conager. We’ll supplement our study with several Thursday field trips (11:00 a.m.-1:15 p.m.) to immerse ourselves in local cowboy/girl culture and learn about horses, saddle-making, ranching, meat-packing, and so on. Assignments will include book and film reviews, oral reports, and a research project. Whatever your background, you’re welcome to saddle up with this outfit.
“On or about December 1910,” Virginia Woolf once declared, “human character changed.” The immediate referent of Woolf’s (slightly tongue-in-cheek) remark was the Post-Impressionist Exhibition which had just made its way to London, but we might also read it as commenting on the air of experimentalism permeating all the arts during this period: the years following Woolf’s pronouncement would see the rise of Cubism, stream-of-consciousness, intellectual montage, and a whole host of artistic movements and techniques. The novel, in particular, had historically been one of the more subversive genres, so it is no surprise that experiments with novelistic form and content should have become exemplary of modernist aesthetics and politics generally. In this course we will briefly survey some contemporary theories of the novel (e.g. those of Zolá, James, Forster, Conrad, and Bakhtin) against the “counter”-tradition of experimental novels themselves.
Readings: Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910); Dorothy Richardson, Pointed Roofs (1919); James Joyce, Ulysses (1922); André Breton, Nadja (1928); Henry Green, Living (1929); William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930); Virginia Woolf, The Waves (1931); Samuel Beckett, Watt (1953; written 1945); Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)
“Tolkien and Friends” features close critical reading and written analysis of The Lord of the Rings in text and in film. The course approach is two fold: Professor Jay Fox brings film expertise to the examination of Peter Jackson’s academy-award-winning movies within a context of Professor Steven Walker’s specialization in Tolkien’s controversial fiction. The seminar format invites students to explore critically Tolkien’s work, related fantasies, and the genre of fantasy itself from the perspective of the interrelationship of text and film, providing insight into not just The Lord of the Rings but into the art of adaptation as well.
This course traces the evolution of Shakespeare’s plays from stage to page to moving pictures. Student will have the opportunity to read seven of Shakespeare’s plays, learn of their original social and historical context in Renaissance England, and master basic theoretical approaches to reading and performing Shakespeare. Student will also have the opportunity to view twelve film adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, master basic knowledge of film criticism, and evaluate the interpretations and limitations of cinematic versus theatrical Shakespeare.
Only two primary texts will concern us during this entire semester: Hamlet and Paradise Lost. Rather than surveying a variety of primary texts, we will study these texts as a way of surveying both the contexts they arise from (culturally, historically, linguistically, etc.) and those within which they have been re-experienced.