This course will focus on literatures of the Caribbean, informed by postcolonial theory. We will begin by looking at the history and literature associated with the transatlantic diaspora that brought African slaves to the region in the 17th and 18th centuries. Texts for this unit will include selections from C. L. R. James’s historical study The Black Jacobins, Kamau Brathwaite’s poetry in The Arrivants, Andre Scharz-Bart’s A Woman Named Solitude, and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. This will be followed by a unit on transformation and hybridity, with a focus on East Indian experiences in the Caribbean. Selections for this unit will include Seepersad Naipaul’s novella The Adventures of Gurudeva, short stories from V. S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street collection, V. S. Naipaul’s The Mystic Masseur and A House for Mr. Biswas, and Sam Selvon’s A Brighter Sun. The course will conclude with a focus on the contemporary Caribbean as depicted in a wide array of poems and short stories by Olive Senior, Neil Bissoondath, and Derek Walcott, culminating in Walcott’s masterpiece, the epic-length poem Omeros. Interspersed with these primary texts we will read an array of essays and criticism from such figures as Aime Cesaire, Edouard Glissant, Jamaica Kincaid, Stuart Hall, and Derek Walcott. As a general theoretical primer we will use The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies.
With the apparent waning of the political power of the Religious Right, we have entered an exciting time to study religious rhetoric and the tension between prophetic and fundamentalist rhetoric in an American context. This course will introduce students to key texts—sermons, fiction, and film—that illustrate the way religious figures use rhetorical strategies to promote radical progressive reform (prophetic) or to combat secular or modern cultural forces (fundamentalist). Required texts include Gerard Hauser’s Introduction to Rhetorical Theory, Malise Ruthven’s Fundamentalism: A Very Short Introduction, two novels—Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins—and a packet of course readings.
We will explore and engage in conversations about Rhetoric and Identity Politics, and students will develop a rhetorical stance on issues of race, class, gender, and other modalities of difference and identity. We will read and also do our own theorizing and analyses of Rhetoric and Identity, paying close attention to how discourse, subjectivity, and power are at work. I will work with each student in a mentoring environment to develop a workable research project for the course. The overarching learning outcome of the course will be students’ ability to apply rhetorical criticism to an issue concerning Identity Politics while considering the ethics that are always-already present in such work.
Possible texts: The Rhetoric of Rhetoric, Booth; A Handlist of Rhetorical Term, Lanham; Rhetoric & Ethnicity, Gilyard; Identities: Race, Class, Gender, and Nationality, Alcoff and Mendieta; Identity Politics Reconsidered, Mohanty
This course will explore Mary Shelley’s novel in terms of how its themes, images, and ideas have been adapted as plays and films, including the complex intertextual adaptations from book to play to film, and to subsequent film adaptations ad infinitum. In addition, we will look at how Frankenstein has been adapted to popular culture as spin-off novels, graphic novels, television programs, cartoons, and the like. We will also examine the fascinating indirect expressions of the Frankenstein concept in films like The Thing from Another World (1951) and Godzilla (1954). Finally, we will explore how Frankenstein has become a term for identifying created monsters of any type, such as atomic bombs, business monopolies, and so forth.
The general topic is classical reception in English: that’s to say, the study of how English authors’ knowledge of Greek and Roman literature (and of the Greek and Latin languages) affected the English literature they then wrote. The study of classical reception is a burgeoning field in English studies for two reasons: first, scholars are increasingly noticing how much richer our appreciation of English literature is when we can see the classical dimension; and second, new literature is constantly being written by authors who have classical literature in mind. Students in this course will be given instruction regarding the field: the current state of classical reception studies, methods for research in the subject, and introduction to the work of the most prominent contributors to the field.
The specific topic will be the Roman authors Catullus, Horace, and Ovid, who, in addition to their absolute value – you’ll enjoy reading them for their own sake – have had a huge role in shaping, and continuing to shape, the course of English literature. You will see how a number of the greatest writers in English, from the medievals to the moderns, have responded creatively to these three ancient writers. For your paper, you will choose one English author and write on his (or her) reception of Catullus, Horace, or Ovid. For instance, you may wish to examine the relationship of Shaw’s Pygmalion to Ovid’s Metamorphoses (commenting, if you like, on the relationship of the musical My Fair Lady to both of them). Don’t worry if you’re unfamiliar with the three Roman writers – no prior knowledge is assumed, and you’ll learn all you need to know to get down to work.
This seminar coincides with and builds upon the Robert Burns exhibition which will run in the library from 2009 through January 2010. The exhibition will focus on Burns’ absorption into the national imagery – Scotland’s and others’. Building upon this idea, our seminar will turn from human society to different types of collectivities: worlds of creatures, spirits, and machines. Our aim will be to identify how Burns and his contemporaries help us to reimagine “humanity” amidst radically evolving notions of nature and industry. Our reading will consist of key poems by Burns and his contemporaries (e.g. Wordsworth), national tales by John Galt and Christian Isobel Johnstone, and crucial texts in cultural theory on topics ranging from technology to ecotheology. (Note: our course may also have the opportunity to entertain visits from two world-class scholars on these subjects.)
Starting with the proposition Mark Turner advances, that the mind is literary (it thinks by the blending and projection of images), we will examine the thus-far recognized cognitive strategies of the mind and see them in literature. The effect is not only to perceive literature as a form of thinking, but to notice that texts spring from minds that think in particular ways, utilizing particular strategies. Literature becomes part of our “cognitive system,” just as scientific instruments are now part of our thinking and knowing and allow us to reach knowledge we couldn’t have without them.