This seminar is designed to introduce you to an ongoing critical conversation and to offer points of departure that you might pursue in your own scholarship. Its starting points, on which we will touch down briefly, are Marx, Nietzche, and—time permitting—Freud. In reading them, we will home in on critical concepts and interpretive methods that late 20th and early 21st century theorists have engaged and transformed. Among them are Balibar, Benjamin, Butler, Hartman, Foucault, Lowe, and Spivak. Short—one page—critiques of assigned texts will be required (figure on eight); the objective of this writing assignment is to hone your skills in reading, summarizing and assessing critical arguments that you might well want to put to use in your graduate study. To facilitate this critical ngagement, you’ll each be asked to identify a problem or question that animates your study and a short set of additional texts that promise to address it. We will share these contributions and build upon them as you work in peer groups to craft a final 10 page essay. The subject/text of this paper will be up to you , but it must draw on the critical archive that we’ve assembled.

William Blake and Romanticism

This seminar will focus on the poetry and prose of William Blake, with special attention to his longer poems, The Four Zoas and Jerusalem. We will read, however, earlier poems, letters, and other prose, including The Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and the earlier prophetic works, as they provide the essential foundation for the longer poems. We will pay particular attention to issues of Blake’s revisions—both apparent patterns and plans for future works, repeatedly changed or abandoned, and his extensive and superbly preserved (but very complex) revisions to The Four Zoas, as setting up critical issues for the completion of later poems, particularly Milton and Jerusalem.

Blake’s liminal position as a major writer, often neglected, between 18th century literary and intellectual concerns and arguably the first of the major Romantic writers presents a number of critical and historical problems. We will examine his career as a graphic artist, much better known than has often been assumed in studies of Romanticism, and its relation to his distinctive theories of poetry and imagination.

Primary Texts:

William Blake. The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose, ed. David Erdman (Doubleday)
William Blake. The Complete Illuminated Works (Thames)

Critical articles and other resources will be available in a course reader, and on-line reserve.

The Victorian age represents the final stage of what a number of scholars have come to call "middle modernity": the eighteenth and nineteenth century period that gives birth to mass literacy, ideas of human rights (including women's rights and children's rights), industrialization, imperialism, secularization. This course explores the fiction, poetry, and non-fiction prose of the Victorian era in conjunction with historical analysis of this emerging modernity. We will pay special attention to questions of literary value, to evolving hierarchies of literary genres, and to fields of cultural production. You can expect to read from the following authors: Matthew Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Mona Caird, Arthur Hugh Clough, Charles Dickens, Toru Dutt, George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, John Ruskin, Mary Seacole, Alfred Tennyson, and Oscar Wilde. We will also look at the nineteenth-century British reception of American literature, such as Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

This course does four things: orient the student with an overview of British modernism circa 1900-1930; provide a general background for modernity torqued toward aesthetics; engage some current critical conversations in the field of literary modernism; and allow focus on the work of particular authors.

The class is loosely organized around two rubrics, minds and matter: we will engage embodiment and materiality, with particular attention to the status of mind or mindedness on the one hand and the modernist object on the other. Along the way the student will get a grip on the historical avant-gardes of Vorticism and Imagism—that's history—and some sense of how to do research in periodical studies, arguably one of the major legacies we have from the era—that's methodology and history.

Texts include prose (Conrad's The Secret Agent; Ford's Good Soldier, West's The Return of the Soldier; a story by Woolf, poetry (Loy, Pound, Eliot), and essays and manifestos, and perhaps Wyndham Lewis's Tarr if a decent copy is available (there are several issues floating about and only one is worthy at the introductory level, by my lights).

Students will write a 1,000 word book review of a critical monograph published 2011-13 (chosen by them, approved by me); and a 20 page final research paper.

Suggested pre-class reading: A canter through Levenson's The Genealogy of Modernism for theoretical grounding—as in (a wonderfully lucid account of) the philosophy that the modernists were reading—and Ekstein's Rites of Spring for event. Too, check out The Modernist Journals Project online—try Blast under "journals."

Editions are likely to be:

1. Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (Oxford World Classics; Oxford University Press) ISBN: 0192834770

2. Ezra Pound, Selected Poems (New Directions, ISBN 0-811-201-627)

3. Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (1927) Ed. Martin Stannard. (2nd edition; Norton Critical Ed.) ISBN-10: 039392792X; ISBN-13: 978-0393927924

4. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Writings, ed. Mary Karr Modern Library Classics, ISBN: 0375759344

5. Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (1918) Penguin USA (Paper); ISBN: 014118065X

6. Mina Loy, The Lost Lunar Baedeker (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 0-374-52507-2)

Anglophone Poetry and the Problem of World Literature. Is “world literature” a
meaningful category in 2013? For whom, and why? As studied in a twenty-first-
century English department, does it amount to “comp lit light,” a monolingual
academic pursuit inherently biased in favor of American and British
neoimperialisms? This class will survey a number of arguments on behalf of (and
against) “world literature” as an object of scholarly analysis while we also
read a series of long poems written in English that have addressed themselves to
global, international, diasporic, postcolonial, transnational, and other
audiences that exceed/defy the boundaries of the nation-state (and their
national canons). The four poems that we will be discussing are Theresa Hak
Kyung Cha’s Dictee, Les Murray’s Fredy Neptune, M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, and
Derek Walcott’s Omeros, and among the literary scholars and cultural critics
that we are likely to read are Emily Apter, Pascale Casanova, David Damrosch, Wai
Chee Dimock, James English, Erick Hayot, Franco Moretti, Shu-mei Shih, and
Gayatri Spivak.

This seminar serves as an introduction to pedagogical theory (primarily through the field of rhetoric and composition) for new Teaching Assistants. The course begins with an overview of current debates within rhetoric and composition about the teaching of writing, and then turns to readings and discussions that explore some of the theories and practices that guide various aspects of the teaching of writing. In the process of examining various pedagogical theories that guide the study and teaching of writing, we will make every effort to help you understand the “why” behind the “what we do” and “how we do it” when we teach writing. To this end, we will ask you to participate in some workshops in class and to undertake a series of shorter assignments that will give you an opportunity to reflect critically and build on the work you are doing as a teacher. By the end of the course, we will ask you to submit a final teaching portfolio in which you revisit the work you have done in the course, reflecting on its cumulative effect, and begin to develop a teaching philosophy which will guide you and which you can build on over the course of your tenure as a teacher and scholar, both with us here in the English Department and in the rest of your career. Course reader available on e-reserve. (Restricted to English department Teaching Assistants.)

This seminar serves as an introduction to pedagogical theory (primarily through the field of rhetoric and composition) for new Teaching Assistants. The course begins with an overview of current debates within rhetoric and composition about the teaching of writing, and then turns to readings and discussions that explore some of the theories and practices that guide various aspects of the teaching of writing. In the process of examining various pedagogical theories that guide the study and teaching of writing, we will make every effort to help you understand the “why” behind the “what we do” and “how we do it” when we teach writing. To this end, we will ask you to participate in some workshops in class and to undertake a series of shorter assignments that will give you an opportunity to reflect critically and build on the work you are doing as a teacher. By the end of the course, we will ask you to submit a final teaching portfolio in which you revisit the work you have done in the course, reflecting on its cumulative effect, and begin to develop a teaching philosophy which will guide you and which you can build on over the course of your tenure as a teacher and scholar, both with us here in the English Department and in the rest of your career. Course reader available on e-reserve. (Restricted to English department Teaching Assistants.)

Rather than a “how to” course on how to “fix” basic writers, this course will consider the various subjectivities of the to “basic writers.” Although most compositionists will look the other way, basic writing is foundational to the whole enterprise of rhetoric and composition in the country. We’ll look at some of the better representations and we will also look at advertising for basic writing materials and assess their appropriateness. Grab all the basic writing texts you can from the publisher reps. If you have not already taught any facet of the writing for less traditionally prepared students, I will expect you to attend at least two classes here or even better at a local community college. Because at least two of our texts follow particular programs, I will try to make arrangements for us to look at the archives here on the beginning of the EOP and SSS Programs as well as the Instructional Center. There is also a very useful video on the era of the start up of these programs and their main players. Vigorous discussion, reports on other works in the area, and some preliminary archival work on our own programs will be the basis for evaluation.

TEXTS:
Branch, Kirk. “’Eyes on the Ought to be’: What We Teach about When we Teach about Literacy.” Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2007.
ISBN 157273714X (pbk)
DeStigter, Todd. Reflections of a Citizen Teacher: Literacy, Democracy, and the Forgotten Students of Addison High. Urbana: NCTE: 2001.
ISBN 0-8141-2971-4

Lamos, Steve. Interests and Opportunities: Race, Racism, and University Writing Instruction in the Post-Civil Rights Era. Pittsburgh, PA: U Pitt P, 2011.
ISBN 978-0-8229-6173-7 (pbk)

Ritter, Kelly. Before Shaughnessy: Basic Writing at Yale and Harvard, 1920-1960. Carbondale, IL: SIU Press, 2009.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8093-2924-3 (pbk)

Shaughnessy. Mina. Errors and Expectations. New York: Oxford, 1977.
ISBN: 0195025075 (pbk)

Soliday, Mary. The Politics of Remediation. Pittsburgh: U Pitt P, 2002.
ISBN: 0822941864 (pbk)

Stanley, Jane. The Rhetoric of Remediation. Pittsburgh, PA: U Pitt P, 2010.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-4386-0

Sternglass, Marilyn S. Time to Know Them. Matwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1997.
ISCN 0-8058-2723-4 (pbk)

Topics in Language and Rhetoric: Writing Across Difference

Recent debates about the role of language, culture and identity in the teaching of writing—especially as these factors inform how we approach difference and diversity—have simultaneously enriched and complicated our ideas about how we can make productive use of them in our curricular and pedagogical practices. This course will review emerging literature that focuses on theoretical and pragmatic efforts to reimagine their place in the teaching of writing by reconstituting them as dynamic conceptions that Rosi Braidotti calls figurations: languages-in-motion, cultures-in-transition and identities-in-practice. Our analysis and discussion of writing across difference will be further enhanced by introducing a fourth dynamic concept, citizens-in-the-making, to the mix. These figurations will frame our conversations about ways to create conditions in the writing classroom under which disenfranchised students can empower themselves by acquiring the rhetorical orientation and the discursive tools they need to navigate the ever-changing terrain of their everyday lives in and beyond the academy. You’ll be required to keep a critical journal of your reading for the class (2-to-3 pages per week), give a group presentation on one of the three assigned scholarly books, and write a 12-to-15 page essay on a topic of your choice due at the end of the quarter.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

• Smit, David W. The End of Composition Studies. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP,
2004.

• Goldblatt, Eli. Because We Live Here: Sponsoring Literacy Beyond the College
Curriculum. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2007.

• Flower, Linda. Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois UP, 2008.

• A collection of essays on writing across communities, language, culture, identity and citizenship will be made available through the UW Library’s course reserves.

English 570 is a credit/no credit course in which students sharpen their understanding of the technical, interpersonal, and practical elements involved in effective ESOL teaching. The course involves daily language teaching, weekly observation of other language classrooms, a video teaching demonstration, and seminar discussion. There are weekly writing assignments and a final project. No required texts. Only open to MAT(ESOL) students.

One of the first courses taken by students in the MATESOL program, this class aims to familiarize you with key concepts and theories in the field of TESOL and to support you as you consider their implications for classroom teaching.

The first few weeks provide a basic foundation in second language acquisition (SLA) the canon of theories you will be expected to understand as an effective language educator, such as critical period hypotheses, universal grammar, the monitor model, and input-output hypotheses. We will then move on to explore some of the central disciplinary tensions of the profession, devoting the rest of the quarter to topics that have become increasingly important in TESOL in recent years, such as language and identity, bi- and multilingualism, bilingual education, nonnative professionals, race, empire, and critical applied linguistics.

TESOL is becoming a richly interdisciplinary field, incorporating ideas not only from linguistics and psychology, but also from education, sociology, and anthropology. In all topics we discuss, I will encourage you to reflect critically on how these ideas inform your beliefs about language teaching and the image of the teacher you want to be.

This course covers the basic syntactic structures of English. Students develop a working knowledge of those grammatical structures most crucial in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. They also practice relating and applying the structures studied to classroom situations (i.e., student errors, student questions, lesson planning, adapting textbooks, etc.). There is a strong focus on grammar in use as students analyze authentic discourse and design teaching materials that emphasize form, meaning, and use of grammar. Coursework includes grammar quizzes, analysis projects, class presentations, materials development, and daily homework.

This class will concern itself with various methods and pedagogic frameworks that govern the teaching of creative writing, both in fiction and in poetry. We’ll engage in discussions of both nuts-and-bolts practice (designing syllabi, crafting exercises, choosing texts, the leading of class discussion, etc) as well as broader pedagogic and theoretical articulations by poets and teachers in the field.
ENGL 587
Topics in the Teaching of Creative Writing
Pimone Triplett
3 credits

As in previous incarnations of this class, written work will include a list of learning outcomes; a grading system; an annotated bibliography of anthologies, text books, or how-to books; a group of exercises focusing on a particular issue of technique; and an annotated list of readings to serve as examples for ways of handling that technique. By the end of the quarter, each student will have a refined syllabus that reflects his or her thinking on all these issues and will write a brief paper relating the syllabus to his or her teaching philosophy.

This course is required of MFA students teaching either 283 or 284 at any point during the 2013-2014 academic year. It is also open to other MFA students, priority give to second year students. Students entering the MFA program should contact the Director of Creative Writing about the advisability of taking the course. Other interested graduate students admitted at the instructor’s discretion.

This course surveys the most important recent thinking about “the text,” construed broadly to mean the object of literary and cultural study from physical bibliography to critical theory. Beginning with late-career calls for a “return to philology” from Paul de Man and Edward Said – the founders of American deconstruction and postcolonial theory respectively – we will look closely at the history of textual criticism and literary interpretation as they diverged in midcentury notions of “copy text” editing and the New Critical “well wrought urn.” We will then move to the epoch-making critiques of this consensus in the “socialized texts” of Jerome McGann and the “material texts” of Roger Chartier, D.F. McKenzie, and Peter Stallybrass. The second half of the course will be given over to perspectives on textual production, reception, and interpretation both canonical (reader-response theory, poststructuralist critiques of authorship, the history of the book) and newly emergent (surface reading, the descriptive turn, queer philology). Readings will include key works by Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau, Stanley Fish, Michel Foucault, Wolfgang Iser, Julia Kristeva, and Pierre Macherey. This course is appropriate for anyone who wishes to gain a focused introduction to literary theory and a working vocabulary in literary studies (intertextuality, paratext, author function, implied reader, etc.), as well as for those in other disciplines who wish to gain a theoretical foundation for work in media studies, information science, editing and publishing, or textual studies (see below).

Note: This is one of four core seminars in UW’s Textual Studies Program, a campus-wide course of graduate study emphasizing the comparative, interdisciplinary, cross-historical investigation of material texts in manuscript, print, and digital environments. Course credit will count toward the Textual Studies Ph. D. track in all participating departments.