Catalog Description: An introduction to the intellectual foundations of textual studies; historical background in disciplines of philology and textual criticism, theories of textuality from formalism and New Criticism to poststructuralism and medium-specific analysis; current and emerging concerns in the history of the book, media studies, globally comparative philologies, and the digital humanities.

This seminar will address both theoretical and practical issues pertinent to efforts to expand the curricular and institutional from single language and cultural grounds to conceptions of literary study that are at once more explicitly global, and particularly addressed to the kinds of departmental and disciplinary changes necessary to avoid merely reconfiguring existing departmental models to take on broader 'content'.

The fundamental premise is that the humanities in general and literary study in particular have operated for at least a century on conceptions of the 'literary' and the humanities that are drastically too narrow.   In three particular domains, we will examine assumptions that have quite generally been accepted as axiomatic, but which are on close inspection barely plausible, in intellectual history, in conceptions of 'period' and 'culture', and in reading practices that are saturated with conceptions seriously challenged by the very works that are taken as objects of reading and scholarship.

The first section of the seminar will address the presumed distinction between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, as instead a sustained (and still continuing) intellectual, cultural, and political project, profoundly connected to conceptions of literacy and reading, civil society, and normative judgment in fields generally separated but intrinsically linked, such as jurisprudence, theology, and anthropology.   Texts will include selections from Jonathan Edwards, John Locke, David Hume, Spinoza, Rousseau, and Kant.

The second section will address conceptions of writing and authorship, including religious texts and traditions, the development of genres of composition (poetry, oratory, narrative) relative to sometimes very different conceptions of a 'good' society, the idea of freedom and constraints on its actual deployment.  Texts will include the Bible, the Qur'an, The Analects of Confucius, texts of Taoism (including Laotzu and Chuangtzu), the Book of Songs, and selected Tang and Song poems, Edwards'  The Nature of True Virtue, Rousseau's Testament of the Savoyard Priest from Emile, and Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment.

The concluding section will be addressed to the development of exemplary reading lists that explicitly cross linguistic and cultural boundaries, in the effort to consider the critical requirements of putting such otherwise heterogenous materials into a coherent pedagogical context.

The readings will be split between a course reader and online texts, to keep the costs manageable.

This course is neither a survey of something called “Feminist Theory,” nor does it focus on any one orientation or topos within feminist theory (on a feminist theory, in other words).  Rather, it seeks to lay out and explore a problematic: the articulations of theory with politics.  To be sure, every practice (political or other) entails a theory (whether explicit or not), just as every theory is irreducibly political. Yet theory and politics are not simply convertible, insofar as politics --- the capacity both to operate within and contest relations of power – depends (for example) on the self-determination of subjects, and their capacity for deliberative action, that theory calls persistently into question.  This is not to invoke the old quarrel between post-structuralism and identity knowledges (just when the historically oppressed emerge as the subjects of knowledge within the academy, the argument went, the elite purveyors of post-structuralist theory proclaim the death of the subject) – precisely because antagonists on both sides of that debate were typically interested in managing or resolving the incommensurability of theory and politics. In general, participants in that debate sought either to place theory in service to urgent political projects on the Left, or to insist that we subordinate the scope of political work (and imaginings) to the insights of theory.  In this course, I propose to explore the non-identity of theory and politics as necessarily and productively irresolvable.  Simply put, theory (in both its structuralist and post-structuralist forms) insists on the splitting of the subject and the limits of our (individual and collective) self-mastery -- on a critical orientation to agency and opposition that politics must ultimately suspend.  The course is organized around materials and debates that invite us to approach the articulation of theory with politics as a valuable and ongoing (unfinished) labor in the pursuit of an always receding horizon.

Our reading will be organized into three sections.  An initial section on “Economy” will consider some of the key feminist explorations of the material and symbolic economies in which subjects, objects, and abject embodiment are (re)produced.  This section will include work by Gayle Rubin, Laura Mulvey, Julia Kristeva, Sylvia Federici, Judith Butler, Hortense Spillers, and Donna Haraway, as well as Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.  In a second section on “Epistemology,” we will engage a few important meditations on the subjects of feminism and its objects of study, including Nancy Hartsock and Chela Sandoval’s differing visions of feminist standpoint, Kimberle Crenshaw and Robyn Wiegman on intersectionality, Gayatri Spivak on the subaltern, and related work by Rey Chow, Wendy Brown, and Saba Mahmood, as well as Ama Ata Aidoo’s short novel, Our Sister Killjoy.  A third section, “Pleasure, Danger, Complicity”   will explore the implications of the theoretical prospects, practices, and aporias opened in the first two sections with specific reference to the politics of identification and desire in and in the wake of the (so-called) “sex wars.”  Materials for this section may include Laura Kipnis’s experimental video Ecstasy Unlimited, alongside essays by Liz Grosz, Kobena Mercer, Carla Freccero, Darieck Scott, Gayle Rubin, and Octavia Butler’s final novel, Fledgling.

This course explores dystopian texts--literary and filmic--produced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  It examines how visual and discursive representations of dystopia function as forms critique of social and political formations, national cultures, economic processes, and hegemonic ideas about the gendered, raced and sexualized order of things.  The course focuses in on the relationship between dystopian cultural production and what I have shorthanded “the question of history”—which is really a series of interrelated questions about how the past is invoked in and through dystopian representations, how dystopian representations compass (and perhaps theorize?) the unfolding of historical events, and how actual dystopian pasts (those already lived) are recirculated in and through dystopian representations of near and far futures.  Of special concern will be dystopian engagements with the histories of chattel slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean and the holocaust of World War II.  How are these histories invoked and to what end?  How are they brought together and how are they disaggregated and to what effect?  Throughout the quarter, we will treat a range of theoretical texts that explore issues of genre, literary form, and the narration of historical conflicts and contradictions. While dystopian representations can feel depressing, Marxist critics of the genre argue that they are also enlightening in that they oft times constitute critical thinking tools that might ideally contribute to consciousness of the need for far reaching social transformation. We will attempt to stay afloat in our current bleak moment by recognizing and building on the utopian aspiration that is part and parcel of dystopian representation.  You should expect to produce a substantial paper over the course of the quarter as well as several shorter writing assignments.  You should come prepared to work with literary, theoretical, and visual texts and to engage in collaborative knowledge production about our shared archive.  

This course is an introduction to some of the major approaches to studying oral and written texts. We will examine and practice various analytic perspectives, including conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, narrative, pragmatics/speech act theory, sociocultural theory, and interactional sociolinguistics. We will apply these approaches to a variety of (con)texts; possibilities include the mass media and popular culture, "naturally occurring" conversation, institutional settings, classroom interaction, legal and policy documents, and other texts of special interest to seminar members. We will not be able to avoid the texts produced by and in the wake of the Trump presidency. We expect students from a range of disciplinary perspectives. What unites us will not be the questions we ask (although we will systematically engage issues of power) so much as where and how we look to answer them: in discourse and its analysis. Our goals are threefold:

1. to acquaint students with approaches to and research in discourse analysis;
2. to provide a forum for evaluating this work;
3. to provide students opportunities to engage discourse analytic methods in relation to those texts/sites/questions of consequence to them.

Each of us will bring different strengths and backgrounds to this introductory seminar; your participation will be crucial to its success.

This seminar examines some crucial yet underexplored intersections between burgeoning scholarship in Postcolonial Studies, Applied Linguistics, Rhetoric and Composition, and Translation Studies on language contact and the politics and problematics of translation across language and cultural difference.

Building on various theories and approaches to language and translation introduced in course readings, the primary goal of this seminar is to address current theoretical and practical issues pertaining to both literary and nonliterary translation and introduce basic concepts, techniques, and strategies in translation. Our conversations will be also focused on exploring the potential role and place of translation practice in our current and future teaching of literature, writing, or language.

To be able to successfully participate in this seminar, you are required to have some kind of working knowledge (not necessarily advanced or perfect competence) of one or more written languages other than English.

Among the texts we'll be discussing in this class are the following:

Bassnett, Susan, and Harish Trivedi, eds. Postcolonial Translation: Theory and Practice. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.

Bermann, Sandra, and Catherine Porter. 2014. A Companion to Translation Studies. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. Print. 

Cronin, Michael. 2012. Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge. Print. 

Pennycook, Alastair. "English As a Language Always in Translation." European Journal of English Studies. 12.1 (2008): 33-47. Print.

Venuti, Lawrence. "Translation and the Pedagogy of Literature." College English. 58.3 (1996): 327-344. Print.

Catalog Description: Discussion and practice of second-language teaching techniques. Three hours per week teaching required in addition to regular class meetings. Credit/no credit only.

This course is designed as an inquiry into the notion of “method” as it relates to English language pedagogy. It begins with an overview of the historical development of ‘ESOL teaching methods’ and is intended to support an understanding of the theoretical tensions that underpin methods in use. This is a practical course that will include workshops and other hands-on activities to familiarize you with a variety of approaches, philosophies, techniques, and materials. The course will briefly consider the historical terrain of English language teaching methods, then will explore in depth recent developments in the field. You will be supported as you analyze learning situations, extend your professional skills, and increase your ability to promote learning. In this class, we will approach teaching as situated, intellectual practice, aiming to develop pedagogies that are capable of taking into account diverse institutional environments, the various resources that might be at your disposal, and students’ backgrounds, desires, needs, and learning processes.

Catalog Description: Evaluation and testing of English language proficiency, including testing theory, types of tests, and teacher-prepared classroom tests.

WE WILL READ MANY GREAT WORKS OF LITERARY ART THAT PRETEND TO BE DIARIES OR JOURNALS. WE’LL DISCUSS THESE WORKS. AT THE END OF THE QUARTER, WE’LL DISCUSS YOUR OWN ATTEMPTS AT THE FORM.

Not a great person’s diaries, and not a writer’s casual diaries.

Beginning of writing was a kind of listing, bills, manuals, instruction manuals, accounts.

Heraclitus, Fragments; Epictetus, Discourses; Lucretius, On the Nature of Things.

Very close to the beginning of writing.

Contemporary social media: Compression, concision, velocity of contemporary.

Diaries are a way to go back in time, future to new writing.

Elif Batuman: I prefer my writer-friends’ emails to the books they write.

Walter Benjamin: All great works of literature invent a genre or dissolve one.

Coetzee: A great writer alters the face of an art form to say what only he/she could say.

Naipaul: If you want to write seriously, you have to be willing to break the forms.

Kafka:A book should be an axe to break the frozen sea within us.

Samuel Johnson a book can either allow readers to escape existence or teach them how to endure existence.

These books do the latter: solve the problem of being alive.

Wallace: literature builds a bridge across the abyss of human loneliness. These books foreground that very question. They are about nothing else.

Pretends to be unfinished, improvisational/Artifice is hidden/postmodern with a human face/Meta/so meta it pretends to be real SIMON GRAY, THE SMOKING DIARIES

The real story. RICHARD BURTON, DIARIES; ALEXSANDER WAT, MY CENTURY

Nietzsche: I want to say in 10 sentences what others say in a whole book, what others don’t say in a whole book. The aphorists:  PASCAL, PENSÉES, MONTAIGNE, ESSAIS; ROCHEFOUCAULD, MAXIMS; EMERSON, ESSAYS; NIETZSCHE, ECCE HOMO; PESSOA, THE BOOK OF DISQUIET; JAMES RICHARDSON, VECTORS; DONALD PATTERSON, BEST THOUGHT, WORST THOUGHT; SARAH MANGUSO, ONGOINGNESS, THE GUARDIANS, 300 ARGUMENTS

Crisis/crux/cataclysm. Sallie Tisdale: What are you afraid of writing about? That’s your real subject. ALPHONSE DAUDET, IN THE LAND OF PAIN; FITZGERALD, THE CRACK-UP; CLAUDIA RANKINE, CITIZEN

Eliot/These fragments I have shored against  my ruins. Emerson/the way to write is to throw your body at the target when all your arrows are spent. MAYA GONZALEZ/TAO LIN, SELECTED TWEETS; MARGO JEFFERSON, NEGROLAND

Motifs/leitmotifs/braids/tracks/fictional/hybrid/nonfictional/boundary-jumping JEAN TOOMER, CANE; AMY FUSSELMAN, THE PHARMACIST’S MATE

Process/experiment/adventure ANNE CARSON, JUST FOR THE THRILL; JOE WENDEROTH, LETTERS TO WENDY’S; MELANIE THERNSTROM, THE DEAD GIRL; JEAN STAFFORD, A MOTHER IN HISTORY

Workbook CHEEVER, JOURNALS

Juxtapositional art/notational art/neural/pseudo-disjointed art/gaps/shooting the gaps MAGGIE NELSON, BLUETS

Reading and writing CYRIL CONNOLLY, THE UNQUIET GRAVE; VONNEGUT, FIRST CHAPTER OF SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE; DAVID MARKSON, THIS IS NOT A NOVEL, READER’S BLOCK, VANISHING POINT, THE LAST NOVEL; JULIAN BARNES, FLAUBERT’S PARROT; ROLAND BARTHES, S/Z

Undergirding trope HILTON ALS, WHITE GIRLS

Rotates out toward a larger metaphor BARRY HANNAH, BOOMERANG; HEIDI JULAVITS, THE FOLDED CLOCK

Parts/whole WENDY WALTERS, MULTIPLY/DIVIDE

Ship hoves into view (omfg) ANNIE ERNAUX, THINGS SEEN

Retrospective redefinition MARY GAITSKILL, LOST CAT

Required Texts:

SARAH MANGUSO, ONGOINGNESS

ALPHONSE DAUDET, IN THE LAND OF PAIN

MAYA GONZALEZ/TAO LIN, SELECTED TWEETS

AMY FUSSELMAN, THE PHARMACIST’S MATE/8

JOE WENDEROTH, LETTERS TO WENDY’S

MAGGIE NELSON, BLUETS 

CYRIL CONNOLLY, THE UNQUIET GRAVE

DAVID MARKSON, THIS IS NOT A NOVEL 

HEIDI JULAVITS, THE FOLDED CLOCK

WENDY WALTERS, MULTIPLY/DIVIDE

ANNIE ERNAUX, THINGS SEEN

The goal of this course is to provide students with an advanced education in the history and evolution of lyric poetry in English, from its Old English origins up to the extraordinary variety of contemporary poetic practices. We will study the formal principles which have traditionally distinguished poetry from prose (meter, rhyme, stanza and form), poetic conventions such as courtly love, anti-Petrachanism, and Romantic nature worship, and poetic genres such as the epic, the pastoral elegy and the greater Romantic lyric, and we will study how these forms, conventions and genres have changed from one historical period to another. In order to fully understand these changes we will study several of the important texts, written by poets, philosophers and critics, which have provided the theoretical foundations for each period’s dominant poetics, and we will examine how aesthetic judgments have been and are made about individual poets and poetic schools and styles.

Catalog Description: Research and writing project under the close supervision of a faculty member expert and with the consultation of a second faculty reader. The field of study is chosen by the student. Work is independent and varies. The model is an article in a scholarly journal.

Catalog Description: Research and writing project under the close supervision of a faculty member expert in the field of study chosen by the student within the MAT degree orientation toward the teaching of English, and with the consultation of a second faculty reader. The model is an article in a scholarly journal.

Catalog Description: Intensive reading in literature or criticism, directed by members of doctoral supervisory committee.

The academic imperative to "publish or perish" can sometimes seem to pose a choice between two equally difficult options.  But understanding how academic publishing in the humanities differs from other forms of publication can make the process less daunting.  This course is intended to help you develop two potential publications: one for an academic journal and one for a venue with a non-academic readership. You are most likely to succeed in completing these if you already have a substantial piece of academic writing--a seminar paper or conference paper, for instance--that you would like to develop further.

Some of our class meetings will be run workshop-style--that is, you'll be reading and responding to others' writing--while other sessions will be devoted to exploring the distinctions between writing for scholarly and general audiences. We will address the following questions: what are the pros and cons of publishing in scholarly versus non-academic venues? How are different kinds of publications weighted in the academy? How does academic peer-review work and why is it so highly valued by colleges and universities?  How can you improve the chances that your work will be accepted for publication?