497/498 A

MW 8:30-10:20

Dean

gnodean@u.washington.edu

Modern Poetry and Popular “Print” Culture. What do poems have to do with photographs, photocopies, weird explosions on stage, hypertext, political manifestos, newspapers, found objects, the voices from the bar downstairs and CAPITAL LETTERS? A whole lot, it turns out, if we look at the poetry of the past hundred years. In this course, we will examine some of the interdisciplinary and international literary revolutions of the twentieth century: dada, surrealism, the Black Arts Movement and the contemporary stuff that comes to us via ‘zines, slams and digital media. The products of these poetic enterprises were often put into print – but in radical ways, wildly tweaking and torquing the printed word to accommodate their dialogues with visual art, everyday experience, music and new publication technology. We will ask how the rebellious spirit of these movements was represented in “hard copy”; how material, political and technological conditions influenced poetic form; and how, or if, our descriptions of twentieth-century literary history need to change in light of these issues. Note: Previous study of poetry, modernism and twentieth-century literature is strongly recommended. Texts: Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art; Fahamisha Patricia Brown, Performing the Word: African American Poetry as Vernacular Culture; Mark Eleveld, Marc Smith, eds., Spoken Word Revolution (w. CD).

497/498 B

MW 12:30-2:20

Blau

hblau@u.washington.edu

The Heart Is in the Mind: Metaphysical Poetry from Early Modern to the Millennium. When love, death, belief, and human frailty, often suffused with sexuality, take possession of poetry, through a brilliant derangement of language at the edge of impossibility, who can tell what’s in the mind. But if you respond to the challenge, and are willing to pursue a thought, beyond what you thought you could think, you may very well take heart from that. Whether with irony, paradox, or mind-blowing metaphor, the poems we’ll be reading are passionate, but passionate as thought—so deeply felt, indeed, that as we think about such poetry, viscerally, in the body, it appears to be thinking us.

That’s what T. S. Eliot had in mind when, writing of the metaphysical poetry of the seventeenth century, he described its perceptual power—sometimes elliptical or circuitous, but the way it saw feelingly—as “the sensuous apprehension of thought.” As he was defining what poetry should be in the twentieth century—and his own poems, surely, had a lot to do with that—he gave a retrospective status to a poetry of ambiguity. Even at this historical distance, one of the most compelling things about reading John Donne or George Herbert is that, if you’re engaged with any intimacy, you may—as Freud said we must in modernity—learn to live in doubt. Given the dubious state of the world after the millennium, no less after 9/11, there seems no alternative to that. But, if you think about it, it’s doubt that prompts questioning, which unsettles the “certain certainties” of anything from smugness to some presumably reasoned, doctrinaire, or ideological position—or even, from some uncritical reflex, your own disposition. There is, of course, a subjectivity to poetry, which can often be elusive, but it may even serve politics by confronting you with the necessity of learning to read between the lines.

The readings for the seminar (still to be worked out) will move across history from the period we once called the late Renaissance (now “early modern”), to the Eliotic modern, or that of Wallace Stevens, its witty accretions of high intelligence, to the linguistic deposits of Susan Howe, who thinks of herself today, as in her writing on Emily Dickinson (whom we may also read), as a metaphysical poet.

497/498 C

MW 1:30-3:20

LaPorte

laporte@u.washington.edu

Religion, Secularization, and Victorian Literature. Victorian literature is traditionally taught in conjunction with one version or another of the “secularization” hypothesis: the proposition that the modern world is becoming progressively less religious because urbanization, industrialization, and scientific progress (especially geology, astronomy, and Darwinian biology) militate against traditional religious experience and ideas. The nineteenth century saw no shortage of secularist prophets: Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx, Ernest Renan and Matthew Arnold (among others) all predicted the imminent demise of Christianity. In retrospect, however, the secularization thesis seems unsatisfying as a wholesale explanation for the literary world’s preoccupation with religious issues in this period -- not least of all because organized religion failed to disappear on schedule. This course explores the possibility that we can find alternative ways of understanding the religious concerns that fill the pages of Victorian literature. It is designed to inquire what happens when we discard the convenient teleology that the secularization thesis has always provided, and to ask how else we might account for religion’s profound influence on literary culture. We will study some or all of the following authors: S. T. Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle, Charlotte Smith, Felicia Hemans, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, E. Barrett Browning, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Frances Power Cobbe, A. C. Swinburne, Matthew Arnold, G. M. Hopkins, Mona Caird, Constance Naden, Amy Levy, Michael Field, and William James. Texts: Marmin & Tucker, eds., Victorian Liteature 1830-1900; Anthony Trollope, The Warden; George Eliot, Scenes from Clerical Life.

497/498 D

TTh 9:30-11:20

Blake

kblake@u.washington.edu

Self-Help and Inheritance. Self-Help is the title of a best selling book from 1859 by Samuel Smiles, a prototype of “self-help” books of our own day. It serves in the title for a course exploring literature in English from the 19th-20th C, a period that has sharply promoted self-making through “self-help.” But with this has also come a complication in thinking about inheritance. “Inheritance” fills out the title of the course and sets questions about the extent to which we are “made” by what has gone before, whether by family, gender, race, class, national/imperial legacy, or cultural/literary tradition. The class is designed as an appropriate capstone for seniors completing an English major given its theme, its seminar format, and significant writing component. It provides a forum for reflection on your own educational experience as an interplay between self-help and inheritance.

Primary readings drawn from: John Stuart Mill, short selection “Of Individuality” from “On Liberty,” Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own,” V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas. Also for entertaining, up-to-the present perspectives on our heritage from the past and/or how we make it over for ourselves, we will have some discussion of current films of Pride and Prejudice and Oliver Twist, plus of a current "self-help" book. Secondary historical/critical/theoretical/film material (short selections, not read by all, covered by presentations) drawn from: Samuel Smiles, a current “self-help” book, Edmund Burke, 19th C. inheritance law (for Austen), current film of Pride and Prejudice, background on the New Poor Law (for Dickens), current film of Oliver Twist, Matthew Arnold, Barbara Herrnstein-Smith, cultural background on 20th C. colonial Trinidad, especially Hinduism (for Naipaul), critical selections on Naipaul's controversial reputation.

Requirements: on-going seminar discussion plus 2 in-class responsibilities (whether leading discussion of a primary text or reporting on secondary material); 5-6 pp. paper; 10-12 pp. paper treating more than a single text. If you choose these can be related, so that the second paper revises and expands upon the first. The above requirements count 25%, 25%, 50%. No final. I am open to adapt assignments to your purposes as you conclude your undergraduate work. Research, discussion, oral presentation, and critical writing (in tight-focus and wider-scope formats) are practical skills you can enhance and lay claim to in this course. Past senior seminars of mine have proved helpful to students for providing the basis of letters of recommendation and writing samples for purposes of graduate school or other training, or employment. 497: Senior honors ENGL majors only; add codes in English Advising office, A-2B PDL; 498: senior ENGL majors only.

497/498 E

TTh 10:30-12:20

LaGuardia

ehl@u.washington.edu

Ressentiment in Modern Literature. Ressentiment is a term used by Nietzsche in Genealogy of Morals. The traits associated with ressentiment include: Desire for revenge; hate; spite; rancor; wrath; the impulse to detract; vindictiveness; taking pleasure in another’s misfortune. Modern thought in general, and modern literature in particular can often be characterized by the concept of ressentiment. Texts: Shakespeare, Othello; Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals; Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground; Kafka, The Metamorphosis; Chekhov, Uncle Vanya; Camus, The Fall; Conrad, The Secret Agent.

497/498 F

TTh 11:30-1:20

Chrisman

lhc3@u.washington.edu

Modern Writing of the Black Diaspora. This course explores a range of twentieth-century black writing from the Americas and Europe. Modern African diasporic writing constitutes a major literature that engages with a wide variety of literary forms. Study of this literature has typically been organised along national lines: Afro-Caribbean literature, African American literature, and black British literature have been studied as self-contained units or as sub-units within national categories of Caribbean, American and British literatures. The rise of black Atlantic and diasporic studies has encouraged new ways to think about this literature, emphasizing the ways that the African diaspora has created literary patterns, themes and experiences that cut across national boundaries. This course examines black literature within both national and global/diasporic contexts, and aims to develop comparative knowledge of the Caribbean, the US and the UK as historical and cultural environments for black literary production. The literary representation of diaspora itself is a central concern. Other issues to be considered may include racial identity formation, slavery, colonialism, migration, and the “return” to Africa. To support the close reading of literary materials the course includes a range of theoretical, historical and sociological readings. Texts: Dionne Brand, Thirsty; Reginald McKnight, I Get on the Roof; Bernardine Evaristo, The Emperor’s Babe; George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin; Grace Nichols, I is a Long Memoried Woman; Langston Hughes, The Big Sea.

497/498 G

TTh 12:30-2:20

Dalley

ldalley@u.washington.edu

Reading Literary Economics. In this seminar, we will explore the relationship of literature and economics and develop an understanding of how the two help shape one another. In other words, the course will teach you how to read literature economically and economics literarily. We will concentrate on writing produced in nineteenth-century Britain – a period whose literature is characterized by its attention to the socio-economic and political questions of the age. More specifically, we will look at the ways in which gender comes to bear on nineteenth-century imaginative and poetic economics. For example, we will read the economics of marriage, motherhood, and household management alongside the more traditionally “masculine” economics of manufacturing and business. In 1832, Hariet Martineau argued that fictional narrative was the vest way to teach economic theory because it provides “pictures” where economic theory provides only “very dry arguments.” we will consider the implications of this statement as we study a wide range of texts, including economic theory, evolutionary theory, and novels, as well as secondary critical materials. The course requires a substantial amount of reading and writing, including a number of short response papers, a midterm annotated bibliography and a longer (10-15 pp.) final paper. If you have any questions about the course readings or requirements, please contact the instructor at ldalley@u.washington.edu. 497: Senior honors ENGL majors only; add codes in English Advising office, A-2B PDL; 498: senior ENGL majors only. Texts: Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations; Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population; Harriet Martineau, Illustrations of Political Economy; George Eliot, Adam Bede; Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford; Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species; Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure; M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination.

498 I

MW 7-8:50 pm (Evening Degree)

Webster

cicero@u.washington.edu

Bridging the Gap: What Did You Do When You Did English? One purpose of a senior seminar is to provide a “capstone” – a sort of culmination and summary to a major. Often such courses focus on a special topic of one sort or another – a seminar, in other words, and the capstone part is the writing or a research paper. A different idea of a capstone would be a course which asks you to look back at where you have been as you have done English, and reflect upon what it all means. What HAVE you done as you have done English? What are your own personal high spots? What made them high? What are your disappointments? What do you now think you can do with what you learned? What is still left to do? We will provide occasion for you to investigate questions like that here, while also reading as a group a series of works from the past five centuries that address the role of humanities education in one way or another. We’ll also include movies with literary education themes as well. Evening Degree students only. Texts: Thomas More, Utopia; Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own; Norman McLean, A River Runs Through It; David Richter, Falling into Theory.

497/498 B

MW 12:30-2:20

Karl

Literature and/as Economics in the Twentieth Century. This seminar will explore the manifold ways in which “economics” comes to bear upon literature, and in which literary and other creative productions articulate economic concerns. We will focus on texts from the first half of the twentieth century – a period that saw significant renovation and indeed shock in the areas of literature and economics – as well as a range of secondary and theoretical readings. Economic theory, history and criticism will serve as a framework for reading, even as we consider imaginative literary economies and the ways in which texts invoke economics in conjunction with articulations of the nation, empire, gender and sexuality – and posit economics as a site where these categories are contested. One of our objectives will be to explore how we can think about “economics” broadly, dynamically, literally and (at the same time) figuratively, as having to do with buying and selling; capital, currency and circulation; consumption and desire; politics and power; money and class. As diverse as the ways we will think about economics are the potential lines of inquiry we will take up – from the relationship of “modernism” to the strategies of capital, to the ways in which consumption comes to matter as a pervasive cultural trope, to the ways that economic policy and practice help re-define the nation and its subjects. Course requirements include consistent and engaged class participation, frequent shorter writing assignments, and a longer (10-15 page) final paper. Texts will include: Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Jean Toomer, Cane; Djuna Barnes, Nightwood; Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight; Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies; and a photocopied course packet.

497/498 C

MW 1:30-3:20

George

Deflecting “Down Under”: Reviewing Australian Literature & Culture

"Seeing comes before words. . . It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” --John Berger, Ways of Seeing

This course focuses on Australian literature in verbal and audiovisual formats. We’ll be reading and critiquing these narratives with more discerning eyes, from multiple perspectives that allow us to see beyond the popular and commercial “Extra Shrimp on the Barbie” Australian image that Paul Hogan made famous two decades ago during the “Brand Australia” commercial campaign. Geared toward increasing tourism whatever the cost, this mass advertising effort continues to reinforce stereotypical images of Australia in the popular imagination. We will undertake a more comprehensive review to recognize serious and often tragic sociopolitical themes concerning race, class, gender and their relation to developing economies and national identities. Course requirements include engaged discussion, online critical research, PowerPoint (audiovisual) discussion leading and presentations, critical essay writing, and a final exam. Written texts will include Nugi Garimara’s Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence and Robyn Davidson’s Tracks, among other longer and shorter prose works. Film texts will include Tracey Moffett’s Nice Colored Girls, Peter Weir’s Gallipoli and Picnic at Hanging Rock, Russell Mulcahy’s Swimming Upstream, and Ray Lawrence’s Lantana.

497/498 D

TTh 9:30-11:20

Walker

Forms of Flattery: Imitation and Parody as Literary Investigation. Using W. D. Snodgrass’s De/Compositions as a guide, we’ll discuss why some poems, simply put, are better than others. Snodgrass selects 101 successful poems (by Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop, etc.) and rewrites them, to disastrous effect. The results draw our attention to the more felicitous features (of tone, of music, of imagery) found in the originals. With these lessons in hand, we’ll write our own imitations (or forgeries) of time-tested poems, as we attempt (1) to better understand the poems in question, and (2) to win fame and glory in the classroom. We’ll also reserve several class sessions for a discussion of parody, about which Arthur Quiller-Couch wrote, “No neater or swifter vehicle of criticism has ever been invented. . .Required texts will include a course packet and two books: Snodgrass, De/Compositions; Seamus Heaney & Ted Hughes, eds., The Rattle Bag. The books may be purchased at Open Books: A Poem Emporium, located at 2414 N. 45th. (Hours: Tuesday to Thursday, 12 – 6, Friday & Saturday, 12 – 7). Open Books is one of only two poetry-only bookstores in the country. If you’re a student of poetry and you live in Seattle, you should feel obligated, I think, to darken its doorstep.

497/498 E

TTh 10:30-12:20

Taranath

Literature of Social Justice. This course examines recently-published feminist and social justice texts, and aims to develop a cross-disciplinary conversation. We will engage with a wide variety of texts and genres that describe personal, literary, and academic accounts of power relations and social differences. These include novels, documentaries, journalism, feature films, and memoirs. All texts share an interest in imagining a more just world. The range and heterogeneity of texts is deliberate, and through their examination we might be able to consider how an entity called social justice is articulated, negotiated, practiced, and challenged. Prior academic experience with issues and theories of social difference will serve you well in this course. 497: Senior honors majors only (add codes in A-2B PDL); 498: Senior English majors only. Texts: T. J. Cock and A. Bernstein, Melting Pots and Rainbow Nations: Conversations about Difference in the US and South Africa; Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Imagining the New Britain; Carla Trujillo, What Night Brings; Graciela Limon, Erased Faces; Croteau, Hoynes, and Ryan, eds., Rhyming Hope and History: Activists, Academics and Social Movement Scholarship.

497/498 F

TTh 11:30-1:20

Dunn

Memoir and Fiction. Two first-hand narratives of the holocaust and two fictional reconstructions provide cross-readings for us to consider literature as documentation and continuing response to the unthinkable. 497: Senior honors majors only (add codes in A-2B PDL); 498: Senior English majors only. Texts: Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning; William Golding, Free Fall; Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank; Bernard Schlink, The Reader; Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.

497/498 G

TTh 12:30-2:20

GIllis-Bridges

Adaptation: Theory and Practice. The term “adaptation” describes the translation of a text from one genre to another. For some readers, texts lose much in the transition, with adaptations failing to equal their sources’ quality. However, in a Darwinian sense, adaptation allows organisms to endure environmental shifts. This alternate view suggests that, in the words of Robert Stam, adaptations “help their source[s] . . . ‘survive’ . . . changing environments and changing tastes. . . .” This class examines the theory and practice of adaptation. Our investigation will move beyond limited comparisons of “good” originals and “bad adaptations.” Instead, we will focus on the dialogue between multiple versions of the same story, asking how and why adaptations modify their sources in a particular manner. We will devote the first two-thirds of the quarter to case studies of Ghost World, Hamlet, Frankenstein, and Star Wars to consider how stories adapt to the aesthetic and commercial demands of multiple genres—novels, films, comic books, games and music. In the process, we will read adaptation theory and study the cultural contexts surrounding the source text and its various adaptations. During the last third of the term, students will develop their own web-based adaptations of selected works. Course assignments involve short analytical essays, a group project/presentation, frequent postings to the class discussion site, a Web-based adaptation, and a reflective portfolio. As a senior seminar, the course demands extensive student participation. Your questions and interpretations will guide our discussions. Expect to work collaboratively with other students and to confer with me as you determine the scholarly and technical demands of your adaptation. This section is computer-integrated, with students moving between a wired seminar room and a computer lab during most class meetings. The lab setting allows students to view and offer feedback on their peers' writing, work together on group activities, and conduct research. However, computer savvy is not a course prerequisite; students will receive instruction in all technical tools used in the classroom. Please note that there will be several film screenings outside of class. 497: Senior honors majors only (add codes in A-2B PDL); 498: Senior English majors only. Texts: Daniel Clowes, Ghost World; William Shakespeare, Hamlet; Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein; Terry Zwigoff, dir., Ghost World; students will also purchase one Star Wars novelization and one Star Wars comic of their choice.

497/498 H

TTh 1:30-3:20

Popov

Comedy. This seminar will explore the genre of comedy. Its main objectives are (1) to read closely eight representative comedies, from ancient to modern times; (2) to grasp the esthetics of major writers such as Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Molière, and Beckett; (3) to examine some major theories of the comic, and develop an overall sense of the tradition and cultural contexts of comedy, how comedy has changed over time and which features have remained constant. Specific topics include: the origins of comedy; the forms and features of “high” and “low” comedy; the conventions and techniques of romantic and satirical comedy; types and functions of laughter; tragicomedy, travesty, and farce. Requirements and Grading: there will be a number of brief assignments on individual authors, all leading up to one longer (15 pages) or two shorter research papers (7-8 pages) on a major author, period, genre or problem. Your final grade will reflect the quality of your paper (80%) and your performance in class (20%). Please note: in order to come up with a good research project and have enough time for its execution it is essential that you read at least three or four of the works on the reading list before the first meeting. 497: Senior honors majors only (add codes in A-2B PDL); 498: Senior English majors only. Reading List: Aristophanes, The Frogs; Plautus, The Braggart Soldier; Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Moliere, Tartuffe; Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest; Synge, The Playboy of the Western World; Beckett, Waiting for Godot; Stoppard, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; photocopied course packet.

498L

MW 10:30-12:20

Dornbush

Modern Revisions of Classic Texts. In this seminar we'll explore modern revisions of four classic texts of the Western canon--Shakespeare's The Tempest, Bronte's Jane Eyre, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In addition to the four works, we'll read revisions produced by advocates for colonial and postcolonial cultures in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the cultures of the African diaspora. Readings from postcolonial and feminist criticism will accompany our discussion of the social, political, and interpretive controversies these works have generated.

UW English Undergraduate Programs
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