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Course Descriptions (as of 19 December 2002)
The following course descriptions have been written by individual instructors
to provide more detailed information on specific section sthan that found
in the General Catalog. When individual descriptions are not available,
the General Catalog descriptions [in brackets] are used. (Although we try
to have as accurate and complete information as possible, this schedule remains
subject to change.)
304 A (History of Literary Criticism & Theory II)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Weinbaum
Race, Nation, Gender and the Politics of Theorizing.. This
course introduces students to recent theoretical and literary works that
treat ideas of race, nation, and gender and/or examine the myriad way sin
which racism, nationalism, and sexism intersect with each other. It considers
texts written by political scientists, legal scholars, sociologists,
historians,
and cultural studies practitioners -- focusing particularly on works that
have been taken up by literary critics seeking to understand the role of culture
in contesting and/or consolidating various regimes of social subordination
and domination. Throughout the quarter we will explore competing theoretical
frameworks, and examine the political stakes involved in different
forms of
writing and theorizing. Emphasis will be on close reading, classroom discussion,
and on learning how to write about a variety of dense texts with concision.
Texts: W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; photocopied
course packet.
312 A (Jewish Literature: Biblical to Modern)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Butwin
For simplicity’s sake let’s call this 3000 years in ten weeks.
In order to reduce that already vast reduction to a few words I will list
the headings of sections of the course: Jewish Literature as Jewish History;
Biblical Narrative; Martyrdom and Suffering; Destruction and Exile; Exile
and Yearning; Messiah and the End of Days; Hasidism and Enlightenment; Zion
rejects Exile; Exile in the New World; and a section on modern apocalyptic
visions of the 1930s and 1940s. In this mammoth and, I hope, exhilarating
task, we will see how a common culture coheres over time and how writers are
obliged by the conditions of the world to depart from that coherence.
Lecture, discussion and short essays. (Meets w. SISJE 312.) Texts:
Roth, Ghost Writer; photocopied course packet.
313 A (Modern European Literature in Translation)
MWF 11:30
Jane Brown
Faust and the Devil in Literature and Music. This course
investigates how pacts with the devil appear in both comic and tragic versions
in our culture and on the special connections of this tradition with music.
We will focus on Marlowe's tragedy Dr. Faustus, Shakespeare's comedy The
Tempest, and Goethe's Faust, Parts I and II (1808 and 1832), the most comic
tragedy in world literature, and on several Faust operas of the 19th and
20th centuries. We will explore how the legend of the pact with the devil
came to represent the West's view of itself and of the dangers inherent in
our advancing scientific knowledge. Two short papers and a take-home final.
Meets w. GERM 390A; C LIT 320A.
315 A (Literary Modernism)
MW 1:30-3:20
Staten
We will read a variety of poems and fictional works from France,
Germany, England, and the U.S. in order to get a sense of the complex phenomenon
called “modernism.” There is no simple definition of what this term
means; like other period terms in literary theory (cf. “romanticism” or “realism”),
it refers not to any single quality of literary works but to a whole cluster
of characteristics, any of which might be missing from any given work referred
to as modernist. Thus the only way to get a sense of how the term
works is to read a number of things that are labeled with it and see how
they are similar and how they are different. That is what we will
do. We will also read a couple of essays that will alert you to how
literary critics write about modernism. Our approach to the reading
of the literary works will be strictly ‘formalist.’ I do not expect
you to already know what formalist reading is or how to do it; this course
will teach you. In fact, the literary works you read will teach you, because
modernist writing is what the theory of formalist reading is based on.
You will write a short warm-up paper on modernist poetry in the first week,
followed by a 4-5 page mid-term paper on the same topic; your final paper
will be a 4-5 page paper on modernist prose. We will spend the first
half of the course reading the work of three poets, the second half the work
of four prose writers, as follows: Poems: Baudelaire, poems (xerox);
Rilke, poems (xerox); Eliot, Selected Poems; Fiction:
Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”; Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Gide, The
Counterfeiters. Meets with C LIT 396C.
316 A (Literature of Developing Countries)
MW 2:30-3:20/F 2:30-4:20
Berrada
(En)gendering the Post-colonial in North African Literature and
Culture. This course aims to present an overview of the literary
and cultural scenes of the Maghreb, with a focus on how recent voices from
North African fiction and film are challenging both a fundamentally traditionalist
and patriarchal establishment and a first-generation post-colonial male tradition.
Through the study of selected works of fiction by writers from Morocco,
Algeria, Tunisia and Sudan, the course will foreground some of the most
current debates raging in this multi-cultural part of the world about the
assumed values of tradition, modernity, and national identity. The
readings will be supplemented with documentaries and films in order to provide
a fuller picture of this complex palimpsest of cultures and subcultures.
Offered jointly with SISME 490; NEAR E 496. Texts: Fatima
Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood; Tahar Ben
Jelloun, The Sand Child; Assia Djebar, So Vast the Prison: A Novel;
Leila Sebbar, Sherazade; Albert Memmi, Pillar of Salt;
Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North; films:
Edward Said: The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations; Franz Fanon: black
skin, white mask; The Arab World; Gnaouas; The Silences of the Palace; The
Perfumed Garden; Battle of Algiers.
317 U (Literature of the Americas)
TTh 7-8:50 pm
Kaup
Do the Americas Have a Common Literature? Organized
around the above question, this course investigates certain recurrent themes
in the literatures of the U.S., the Caribbean, and Latin America. It offers
a transnational approach to literature from the New World as sharing transamerican
kinships beyond national traditions. In our cheek-by-cheek readings
of literature from across the hemisphere, we will look at five major themes
or categories which constitute possible sites of common ground in New World
literature and culture: 1) Post-colonial Definitions of American Identities
(Emerson, Jose Martí, Northrop Frye, Margaret Atwood, Roberto Fernández
Retamar); 2) Representations of “the Indian”; “civilization and barbarism”
(Mario Vargas Llosa, Helen Hunt Jackson, José María Arguedas,
N. Scott Momaday) 3) black modernisms in Harlem and Havana (Langston Hughes,
Nicolás Guillén) 4) Modernism and the Search for a Usable Past
(William Carlos Williams, Alejo Carpentier) 5) Postmodern Connections and
American Labyrinths of Fiction (Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Pynchon). Part
of the fun of this class is to “test-drive” a “discipline-in-progress”:
Transamerican Literary and Cultural Studies is still in its infancy as a
discipline, and we can all participate in its creation and development.
Students need to be willing to handle a demanding reading schedule. Required
Texts: Alejo Carpentier, The Lost Steps; Thomas Pynchon, The
Crying of Lot 49; Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona; William Carlos Williams,
In the American Grain; Clorinda Matto de Turner, Torn from the
Nest; N. Scott Momaday, House of Dawn; Margaret Atwood, The
Journals of Susanna Moodie; photocopied course packet.
321 A (Chaucer)
MW 8:30-10:20
Remley
This course will stress critical reading and group discussion of
Chaucer's most highly regarded work (Troilus and Criseyde and the
Canterbury Tales) as well as a wide selection of his "minor" compositions
in both poetry and prose. We will explore the biography of Geoffrey
Chaucer, the historical and cultural background of his career, recent critical
work on his poetry, and the Middle English language itself. Mid-term,
final, one paper. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts:
Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer; Stone, tr., Love Visions;
Coghill, tr., Troilus and Criseyde; Hieatt, tr., Canterbury Tales.
323 A (Shakespeare to 1603)
Dy 8:30
Frey
Study of Shakespeare’s poems and plays to 1603 with emphasis upon
meter, rhythm, imagery, tone, explication, interpretation, reader-response,
critical issues, and student performance. All students are required to perform
memorized parts in a small performance group that meets for most of the quarter
(one or two days/week during class time); final performance is in last week
before whole class. Also required: discussion, written exercises, midterm,
and two-hour, cumulative, in-class final (short-answer and essay questions).
Meets five days a week (total of 49 class meetings; participation/attendance
carefully graded for both full-class and small-group meetings). A demanding
course. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts:
Shakespeare, Poems; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Romeo
and Juliet; Twelfth Night; Hamlet; Henry V.
323 B (Shakespeare to 1603)
MW 9:30-11:20
Streitberger
Shakespeare's career as dramatist before 1603 (including Hamlet).
Study of history plays, comedies, and tragedies. Majors only, Registration
Period 1. Text: Bevington, ed., The Complete Works
of Shakespeare, updated 4th ed.
324 A (Shakespeare after 1603)
MW 1:30-3:20
C. Fischer
This course will consider the Jacobean Shakespeare. We will
focus on how the language of the plays dramatizes the aesthetic, social, and
political idioms of the period. Majors only, Registration Period
1. Texts: Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Antony
and Cleopatra, Troilus and Cressida, Macbeth.
e Renaissance)
MW 9:30-11:20
C. Fischer
We will survey the late English Renaissance through its plays, poetry,
and prose, exploring how language embocies the deep intellectual, political,
aesthetic, and religious divisions of the period. Texts by Webster,
Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Cavendish, Marvell, Milton, Philips, Herrick, Bacon,
Burton, Walton, Hobbes, and others. Majors only, Registration
Period 1. Texts: Baker, ed., Later Renaissance in England;
Webster (ed. Gibbons), The Duchess of Malfi; Jonson, Three Comedies.
326 A (Milton)
MW 10:30-12:20
LaGuardia
Milton’s Paradise Lost preceded by major short poems, and
prose. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Text: Orgel
& Goldberg, eds., John Milton.
327 A (English Literature: Restoration & Early 18th
C.)
MW 10:30-12:20
Lockwood
The writers and literature of England from 1660 to 1750. We will
be reading plays, prose, and poetry, chosen to illustrate the variety as
well as the creative force of the written word in this period, bringing to
life (for instance) the urban horrors of Defoe’s Journal of the Plague
Year, the aristocratic dreamworld of Pope’s Rape of the Lock,
the cheerful crooks of The Beggar’s Opera, or the big people and
little people of Gulliver’s Travels. Major authors covered include
Dryden, Congreve, Defoe, Swift, Pope, Gay, Fielding, and Thomson, with emphasis
on careful reading for understanding and enjoyment of this literature in its
social and cultural context. Two papers with revision, weekly one-page reading
responses, mid-term, final. Majors only, Registration Period 1.
Text:Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1C (Restoration
and 18th Century)
329 A (Rise of the Engish Novel)
MW 8:30-10:20
Osell
This course will trace the "rise" of the English novel with particular
attention to formal development, although we will also discuss themes and
cultural influences. Since the name of the course comes from Ian Watt's
influential 1957 book, The Rise of the Novel (ordered as part of the
course reading list), Watt will provide the critical framework against which
we will read (although we will not be taking his analysis for granted; part
of the course expectations will include a willingness to challenge Watt).
Students should therefore have read Watt's book before the first class meeting.
Mostly discussion, some lecture. Students are expected to participate
in discussion, which necessarily involves keeping up with the (heavy) reading
load. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts:
Ian Watt, Rise of the Novel; Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice;
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy; Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; Samuel
Richardson, Pamela; Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Horace
Walpole, Castle of Otranto.
333 A (English Novel: Early & Middle 19th C.)
MW 12:30-2:20
Tandy
The Monster in the Parlor: The Domestication of Monstrosity in
19th-Cenury Novels by Hogg, Austen, Brontë, and Dickens. Mary
Shelley's monstrous creation starts the 19th century, and although we iwll
not be reading it, we will be discussing the ramifications of human monstrosity
as we work our way through some of the great novels of the first half of
the 19th century looking for other manifestations of and responses to monstrosity
as it is brought in from the cold and given a place, comfortable or not,
by the hearth. Through these "monsters" we will address questions of
Victorian ideals, dreams, and anxieties about gender, race, and social progress.
Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts:
J. Austen, Emma; C. Brontë, Jane Eyre; C. Dickens, Hard
Times; Great Expectations; J. Hogg, Private Memoirs and Confessions
of a Justified Sinner.
334 A (English Novel: Later 19th C.)
MW 1:30-3:20
Alexander
This course offers a modest sampling of the rich abundance of the
Victorian novel. Attention will be given to the historical and philosophical
backgrounds against which the novels appeared, as well as to the lives of
their authors. But the major emphasis will be on the aesthetic relation between
content and form. Majors only, Registration Period 1.
Texts: A. Trollope, The Warden; C. Dickens, Great
Expectations; G. Eliot, Middlemarch; T. Hardy, Jude the Obscure;
O. Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray; J. Conrad, The Secret Agent.
335 A (English Literature: The Age of Victoria)
MW 10:30-12:20
Alexander
Among the poets and prose writers to be studied are Carlyle, Tennyson,
Mill, Newman, Arnold and Ruskin. They will be viewed in relation to what the
historian G. M. Young called "A tract of time where men and manners, science
and philosophy, the fabric of social life and its directing ideas, changed
more swiftly perhaps, and more profoundly, than they have ever changed in
an age not sundered by a political or a religious upheaval." Some of the recurrent
topics will be: the reaction against the Enlightenment; rejections and revisions
of romanticism; the nature of authority; the religion of work; the idea of
a university. Majors only, Registration Period 1.
Text: Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol
2B ("The Victorian Age").
335 B (English Literature: The Age of Victoria)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Butwin
What, apart from size, distinguishes England in the 19th century
from the United States in the 20th and 21st? (Britain, though a tiny
island, commanded a much grander imperial span.) A military and industrial
superpower is vulnerable, precisely because of its prominence, to a certain
sting at home and abroad. Afghanistan presented a particular problem
in both cases. Military power bears its own penalties; so does industrial
power. Pollution and poverty seemed to be the natural companions of
production and prosperity. I could go on and will, indeed, do so this
summer when we subject major texts written (drawn and constructed—insofar
as we will include painting and architecture) in Victorian England to critical
study. Comparisons of the kind implied by this paragraph will emerge
from short lectures and longer discussions, frequent short essays and one
term paper. Apart from the two novels listed below, all readings
will by included in a course packet. Majors only, Registration Period
1. Texts: Charles Dickens, Hard Times;
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the Durbervilles.
337 A (The Modern Novel)
MW 9:30-11:20
Raine
Portraits of the Artist in Modern Fiction. The typical
image of the modern artist is that of an isolated hero, alienated from his
community, but able to redeem the chaos of modern life by inventing new
literary forms that express his (or her) unique creative vision. In
this course, we’ll read a variety of British and American novels from the
early twentieth century, and explore how their representations of artist
figures compare with that definition. In the process, we will familiarize
ourselves with some of the defining formal characteristics and thematic concerns
of modern fiction. Questions we’ll consider include: What makes a novel
“modern”? Does a modern artist have to be alienated, and if so, why?
How do geographical location and the social relations of gender, race, and
class shape the relationships between artists and their communities?
How and why do modern writers use experimental forms to communicate their
understanding of the world? Note: These are challenging texts, and
reading them will require time and effort on your part. Students are
expected to attend class regularly, to participate actively in discussions,
and to approach the texts with lively curiosity and an open mind. Expect
lots of discussion and a substantial amount of writing. Majors only,
Registration Pd. 1. Texts: James Joyce, Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man; Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse;
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio; Willa Cather, O Pioneers!;
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man.
337 B (The Modern Novel)
MW 11:30-1:20
Imre
In this class we will read, analyze, compare, and contextualize some
classic modern European and American novels from the first four decades of
the twentieth century. We will closely read each novel in the context
of its specific local and broader transatlantic historical and artistic-intellectual
climate. One of our recurring questions will be why these novels were
experienced as shocking or innovative at the time and why they have continued
to be meaningful ever since. We will pay particular attention to the
interchange between the modern novel and feminism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism,
and to the symbiosis between the novel and the visual arts. Majors
only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Virginia Woolf,
To the Lighthouse; E. M. Forster, A Passage to India;
Franz Kafka, The Trial; Nella Larsen, Passing; James Joyce,
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
338 A (Modern Poetry)
Dy 11:30
Brenner
"Modern" art is nearly a century old now, and poems from the period
are marked by their difficulty for readers. We’ll concentrate on one Irishman
and two Americans to explore some of what has come to be called "modern."
Mainly, we’ll read hard poems hard. Majors only, Registration Period 1.
Texts: W. B. Yeats, Collected Poems; Robert Frost,
Collected Poems; Marianne Moore, Complete Poems.
Interested in the study of poetry? See the special opportunity for a C/NC micro-seminar (January 13 - 17) with visiting scholar Helen Vendler.
342 A (Contemporary Novel)
TTh 11:30-1:20
Reed
Postmodern Fiction: An Introduction. This class will provide
an introduction to British and American postmodern fiction. We begin by distinguishing
between high modernism's ambitious, self-confident artistry (Joyce, Hemingway)
and the radical skepticism of its loyal opposition (Stein, Beckett). Afterwards,
we will be reading four representative postmodern novels -- Don DeLillo's
Mao II, Gayl Jone's Corregidora, David Marson's Wittgenstein's
Mistress, and Jeanette Winterson's The Passion -- as well as selected
short fiction by such authors as Angela Carter, Robert Coover, Lydia Davis,
and Guy Davenport. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts:
Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing; DeLillo, Mao II;
Jones, Corregidora; Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress;
Winterson, The Passion.
343 A (Contemporary Poetry)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Mandaville
Packaging a Poem. In today's consumer culture, packaging and
branding hold significant sway in what achieves popularity. How has contemporary
poetry found itself ain relation to such culture? How can we understand arguments
about formalism in terms of commodity packaging? How is the high/low divide
in current poetic practice a matter of brand recognition? From contemporary
mainstream and language poetry to text-based poetry to spoken word to book
arts and the intersections of word and image (including a re-consideration
of concrete and pictorial poetics) we will explore matters of form in contemporary
poetry. Readings will include a strong complement of women and minority poets
as well as mainstream writers -- and a number who are both and/or all of
these. Students will be required to attend readings, slams and other poetic
events. A field trip to our library's outstanding book arts collection with
a focus on alternatives to text-based poetry will stretch our understanding
of what poetry is. Assignments also include regular response papers/questions,
a creative project, and a final essay. Majors only, Registration Period
1.
350 A (Traditions in American Fiction)
MW 9:30-11:20
Reddy
Migration and the Novel. Like Brazil, South Africa,
or Australia, the U.S. is a European settler-colonial nation-state.
As such, migration was (and continues to be) a key modality by which the
nation-state is invented, reproduced, and sustained. This class will
engage literary representations of migration, focusing particularly on the
novel genre, in order to better understand in what ways literature functioned
as an "apparatus" of the migration process. We will study migration/immigration
as a racialized, gendered, and sexualized process and as the site of much
instability and trouble for nationalist writers and readers. While the course
will focus on nineteenth century representations of migration/migrants, it
will also pose key twentieth century historical novels by writers of colors
as important texts that excavate the enduring power of the nineteenth-century
literary imagination in contemporary accounts of the racialized migration
process under advanced capitalist conditions. Majors only, Registration
Period 1. Texts: Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives; Henry
James, American Scene; Herman Melville, Typee; W.E.B.
DuBois, Souls of Black Folk; Antin, The Promised Land;
Richardson, The Captive; Harriet Wilson, Our Nig.
351 A (American Literature: The Colonial Period)
Dy 10:30
Griffith
We'll read and discuss an assortment of novels, memoirs, sermons,
journals, treatises and other writings by American authors of the Colonial
and early national periods. Students will be expected to attend class regularly,
keep up with reading assignments, and take part in open discussion. Written
work will consist entirely of between five and ten brief in-class essays,
done in response to study questions handed out in advance. Majors only,
Registration Period 1. Texts: John Tanner, The Falcon:
A Narrative of the Captivity & Adventures of John Tanner; Benjamin
Franklin, The Autobiography and Other Writings; Michael Kammen,
ed., The Origins of the American Constitution; Charles Brockden Brown,
Wieland; Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple;
Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and
Sketches of 18th-Century American Life; Hannah Foster,
The Coquette; Washington Irving, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey
Crayon.
352 A (American Literature: The Early Nation)
Dy 8:30
Griffith
We'll read and discuss an assortment of novels, stories, poems and
memoirs by American authors in the period preceding the Civil War. Students
will be expected to attend class regularly, keep up with reading assignments,
and take part in open discussion. Written work will consist entirely of a
series of brief in-class essays written in response to study questions handed
out in advance. Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts:
Baym, et al., eds., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 5th
ed., Vol. 1; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin; Herman Melville,
Moby-Dick; James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans.
352 TS/U (American Literature: The Early Nation)
MW 7-8:50 pm
Abrams
Conflicting visions of the national destiny and the individual identity
in the early years of America's nationhood (ENGL 352 TS is available
only to Evening Degree and non-matriculated students; for information contact
UW Educational Outreach, (206) 543-2320. ENGL 352 U represents spaces
in this class that may be available for regularly-enrolled UW day students
during Registration Period 3, the first week of classes; add codes will be
required for 352U, available from the instructor.) Texts:
Margaret Fuller, Summer on the Lakes; Frederick Douglass, The Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Henry Thoreau, The Portable Thoreau;
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Portable Hawthorne; Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson; Herman Melville,
Mody-Dick.
354 A (American Literature: The Early Modern Period)
MW 1:30-3:20
Raine
Reinventing Roots: Modernity and the Primitive in American Modernist
Culture. In both Europe and the United States, a significant feature
of modernist culture is its ambivalent fascination with "the primitive," and
with cultures and people believed to be primitive. Defining other cultures
as primitive was central to Western culture's definition of itself as modern
and "civilized"; for Freud and other influential thinkers, the primitive
represented those aspects of the self that had to be repressed in order to
ascend to a more civilized state. On the other hand, modern art and
literature were often viewed, by both artists and their audiences, as a deliberate
and revitalizing return to the primitive. European post-impressionist
painters were called "wild beasts" for their shocking use of bright, "crude"
color; American poets were called "skyscraper primitives" for poems that
shattered poetic conventions to celebrate the vitality of modern life; artists
and writers converged on the rural South and the indigenous Southwest, seeking
the inspiration of African-American and American Indian cultures that they
saw as representing a more "natural," "raw," or "primal" mode of existence
than was possible elsewhere in urbanized, industrialized America. In
this course, we will explore how and why this return to "the primitive" was
so important to the modernist project of "making it new." We will also
consider how these cultural ideas about modernity and the "primitive" might
limit, shape, or enable the forms of expression available to African-American
and Native American artists and performers. This is a discussion-based
course, so your active participation is essential. Expect lots of
reading and a substantial amount of writing. Note: Students are expected
to have read Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt before the first class meeting.
Majors only, Registration Period 1. Texts:
Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt; Gertrude Stein, Three Lives; Jean
Toomer, Cane; Nella Larsen, Quicksand; William Carlos
Williams, Spring and All; Hart Crane, The Bridge; Willa Cather,
Death Comes for the Archbishop; photocopied course packet.
354 B (American Literature: The Early Modern Period)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Keeling
Threatened with Suffering: Achievements and Regulations in Modern
America. As the "natural laws" exposed by science in the Age of Enlightenment
inspired humans to seek and demand "natural rights," and as the prosperity
promised by Industrialization inspired humans to find new ways to prosper,
the coming together of human beings into larger and more complex communities
paradoxically served to sever communal bonds. In 1930 Sigmund Freud wrote,
"Man has, as it were become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all
his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown
on to him and they still give him much trouble at times. . . . [P]resent-day
man does not feel happy in his Godlike character." In this course, we will
consider some of Freud's notions about the civilizing processes in the context
of U.S. authors writing during the early decades of the twentieth century.
Authors include H.D., John Steinbeck, Charles W. Chesnutt, Willa Cather,
Henry James, Edith Wharton, Nella Larsen, and Nathanial West. Majors only,
Registration Period 1. Texts: Chesnutt, The House Behind
the Cedars; Larsen, Quicksand; Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men;
Cather, The Professor's House; Wharton, The Age of Innocence;
James, Washington Square; H.D., The Gift; West, Miss Lonelyhearts
and The Day of the Locust; Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents.
355 A (American Literature: Contemporary America)
MW 10:30-12:20
Shulman
"Society is inside the man," Arthur Miller emphasizes, "and man is
inside society, and you cannot even create a truthfully drwan psychological
entity on the stage until you understand his social relations and their power
to make him what he is and to prevent him from being what he is not.
The fish is in the water and the water is in the fish." We will read
plays, short stories, novels, and essays that show the possibilities of Miller's
insight. We'll begin with Gore Vidal's polemical essay, "The Last
Empire" (1992). Vidal focuses on the start of the Cold War (1945-1950)
and the institutionalizing of the American civic religion of anti-communism.
In The Crucible (1953), Miller dramatizes some of the consequences
of the Cold War at home and in the process brings together his persistent
concern with the sexual and the political. For another variation on
these themes, well read E. L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel (1971).
Tony Kushner taps into the formative period of the early Cold War from his
own perspective and in his own vital language in Angels in America: A
Gay Fantasia on National Themes (Part I) (1992). We'll also read
Kushner's Homebody/Kabul (2002). In The Fire Next Time
(1963), James Baldwin brings into the open powerful racial strains in
American culture. For their part, Don DeLillo in White Noise
(1984) and Jennifer Egan in Look at Me (2001) deploy the resources
of postmodern fiction and exceptional eloquence to bring to imaginative
life America as a society of images characterized by the white noise of
consumerism. This key feature of contemporary America takes us back
to "The Last Empire" by way of William Appleman Williams's view that "empire
as a way of life is predicated upon having more than one needs." Empire,
political and sexual repression and resistance, race, and consumer capitalism
give us reinforcing ways of looking at contemporary America. Our writers
use a range of languages and styles to make these abstractions immediate
and alive. To bring the course to a close though not to a conclusion
we'll read three works remarkably sensitive to different American regions,
classes, and languages: Raymond Carver's Will You Please Be Quiet,
Please? (1975), Philip Roth's American Pastoral (1997), and Barbara
Kingsolver's The Bean Trees (1988). Majors only, Registration
Period 1.
358 A (Literature of Black Americans)
MW 12:30-2:20
Moody
This course focuses on African American literary representations
of the slave trade, arguably the single most catastrophic phenomenon in US
history. We will study literary texts of several different genres—slave narratives
both dictated and written by former slaves, fictionalized accounts of antebellum
slavery, and postbellum short fiction—to understand as fully as possible
the range of ways that enslaved people and their descendants reconstructed
their experiences as people involuntarily bound by chattel slavery and later
as people still suffering the oppressive conditions that had made chattel
slavery not merely possible but legal and common as well. Critical questions
driving the course include: What was chattel slavery as it was represented
by those who experienced it in the US? What complexities of race, gender,
power, and rhetoric emerge in the study of slave narratives, whether dictated
or self-authored? What interconnections existed, and which persist, between
race/color, wealth, rhetoric, dominance, and literacy? What factors apparently
influenced an author’s choice of genre in the representation of slavery?
Why did slavery continue to form the subject of black literature after Reconstruction?
How did the representation of slavery and negrophobia in fiction after Reconstruction
differ from the portrayals of the same in antebellum autobiography? Majors
only, Registration Period 1.(Offered jointly with AFRAM 358A)
Texts: Charles Chesnutt, Conjure Tales and Stories of the
Color Line; William Andrews & H. L. Gates, Jr., eds., Slave Narratives;
Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Laughing to Stop Myself Crying; William Wells
Brown, Clotel or the President's Daughter; Hannah Crafts, The
Bondwoman's Narrative Educational Companion Package.
359A (Contemporary American Indian Literature)
MW 3:30-5:20
Million
"Speaking for the sake of the land and the people means speaking for the inextricable relationship and interconnection between them" --Simon Ortiz from Speaking for the Generations: Native Writers on Writing
Native peoples in the Pacific Northwest bring to the table a millennia long tradition of expressive celebration integrally interwoven to life as it is known in this place. Memory and land, and the life practiced here have now informed a literature written by at least two generations of American Indian writers in this region. In this class participants will explore the work in short fiction and poetry of several Northwest Native American writers who exemplify the meaning of such an "inextricable relationship" as it illuminates both lives and texts. Offered jointly with AIS 377A.
361 A (American Political Culture: After 1865)
MW 1:30-3:20
Melamed
The Iron Curtain and the Color Curtain. For two decades
after World War II, the politics of American literature and culture were
defined not only by the cultural Cold War between the United States and the
Soviet Union but also by the struggles of writers and intellectuals like W.E.B.
Du Bois, Richard Wright, Frantz Fanon and C.L.R. James, to replace the Cold
War paradigm with one that viewed emerging global conflict in terms of North/South
rather than East/West and defined “freedom” as the goal of struggle against
racism, capitalism, colonialism, and ‘internal colonization’ rather than
the Sovet Union. For both of these culture battles, “race” was a central
term of conflict. We will investigate the “double” literary history of the
early Cold War period and consider how it continues to inform tensions in
the study of American literature and culture between “postmodern” and “postcolonial”
theoretical paradigms, between the traditional white European American canon
and the study of minority or ethnic literatures, and between a nation-centered
American Studies and a Post-National American Studies. Majors only,
Registration Period 1. Texts: Richard Wright, White
Man, Listen!; The Outsider; Black Power; The Color Curtain; Baraka, The
LeRoi Jones - Amiri Baraka Reader; Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans;
James Baldwin, Blues for Mister Charlie; The Fire Next Time; Chester
Himes, End of a Primitive; Mary Dudziak, Cold
War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy; Penny Von
Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism.
367 A (Women & the Literary Imgination)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Weinbaum
The Modern Girl Around the World. "The Modern Girl" is a figure
who appeared around the world in cities from Tokyo to Berlin, Beijing to
Bombay, Johannesburg to New York City in the early to mid twentieth century.
Modern Girls were known by a variety of names including flappers, garconnes,
moga, modeng xiojie, schoolgirls, vamps, and neue Frauen. What
identified Modern Girls was their use of specific commodities, their sartorial
style, and their explicit eroticism. They put on lipstick and whitened their
teeth, smoked packaged cigarettes, bobbed their hair, paraded provocative
fashions, pursued romantic love, and used birth control. In general they appeared
to disregard the roles of dutiful daughter, wife, and mother. Contemporary
social scientists and members of the press and the public debated whether
Modern Girls were looking for sexual, economic, and/or political emancipation.
They also raised the poFor WINTERssibility that Modern Girls were a product
of clever advertising campaigns and the new commodity culture. This course
explores literary representations of the Modern Girl and the various female
figures by whom she was prefigured in texts produced in the United States,
China, Japan, Britain, and colonial Rhodesia. It explores how such representations
participated in defining modern femininity, female sexuality, and ideas
about racial and national belonging. It considers how representation of
the Modern Girl created innovations in literary form, and how aesthetic
codes for representing Modern Girls moved across national borders, following
the circuitous paths created by capitalist globalization processes. Readings
will include literary, social scientific, and historical texts. Some background
in feminist theory, women's studies, or globalization studies a plus. Texts:
Henry James, Daisy Miller; Anzia Yezierska, The Bread Givers;
Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing; Junichiro Tanizaki, Naomi;
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions; Radcliffe Hall, Well of
Loneliness; Meridel le Seuer, The Girl; photocopied course packet.
368 A (Women Writers)
TTh 9:30-11:20
Burstein
Wandering Women. What are the semantics of a sidewalk?
What does it mean to walk--to be free to choose one's own way? This course
will explore the relationship between mobility, urbanity, and female subjectivity.
We will explore the relationship between depictions of female sexuality and
activities such as shopping, prostitution, tourism, and flâneurie. Texts
and authors will include Gertrude Stein's "Melanctha," Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes's
Nightwood; Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway; Jane Bowles's
Two Serious Ladies; and Dorothy Parker. We will read as well a few
critical texts to orient ourselves, including Michel de Certeau and Georg
Simmel. The course stresses close reading, as well as comparative analysis.
Students are expected to wander into class on an entirely regular basis.
Texts: Parker, The Complete Stories; Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway;
Stein, Three Lives; Bowles, My Sister's Hand in Mine: The Collected
Works of Jane Bowles; Cunningham, The Hours; Brookner, Hotel
Du Lac.
370 A (English Language Study)
MW 8:30-10:20
S. Browning
English 370 is an introduction to the study of the English language.
Our focus will be on language as both systematic and social. We will examine
the structures of English - from sounds to syntax, from words to texts - in
order to accurately describe and analyze the language we all use. We will
also question these structures and their social implications. This course
will require you to think about language in new ways, and to explore the social,
political, and personal power that language encodes. Majors
only, Registration Period 1. Texts: Cipillone, ed., Language
Files (7th ed.); photocopied course packet.
370 TS/U (English Language Study)
TTh 7-8:50 pm
Dillon
This course is an introduction to the scientific study of language.
Drawing most of the examples from English, it surveys the major concepts of
phonetics/phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics as
they have been developed during the twentieth century. Written work will include
exercises from the text, quizzes, a mid-term and a final. (ENGL 370 TS
is available only to Evening Degree and non-matriculated students; for information
contact UW Educational Outreach, (206) 543-2320. ENGL 370 U represents
spaces in this class that may be available for regularly-enrolled UW day
students during Registration Period 3, the first week of classes; add codes
will be required for 370U, available from the instructor.) Texts: Pinker,
The Language Instinct; Cipillone, et al., Language Files.
371 A (English Syntax)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Wennerstrom
This course covers the basics of standard English grammar. We will
take a descriptive approach to understanding the main structures of sentence-level
grammar as used in the U.S. today. Assuming that class members are likely
to be teaching English in the future, we will also focus on grammar in writing,
analyzing native speaker and second language speaker writing and developing
activities for those whose goal it is to learn Standard American English.
The course assumes no previous study of grammar. Prerequisite: ENGL 370.
Majors only, Registration Period 1. Text: Barry,
English Grammar: Language as Human Behavior.
381 A (Avanced Expository Writing)
MW 1:30-2:50
S. Browning
[Concentration on the development of prose style for experienced
writers.] Majors only, Registration Per. 1
381 B (Advanced Expository Writing)
TTh 9:30-10:50
Lundgren
Concentration on the development of prose style for experienced writers.
Majors only, Registration Per. 1. Texts: photocopied
course packet.
383 A (Intermediate Verse Writing)
MW 1:30-2:50
McNamara
[Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem. Further
development of fundamental skills. Emphasis on revision.] Prerequisite:
ENGL 283.
383 B (Intermediate Verse Writing)
TTh 2:30-3:50
Kenney
[Intensive study of the ways and means of making a poem. Further
development of fundamental skills. Emphasis on revision.] Prerequisite:
ENGL 283.
Interested in the study of poetry? See
the special opportunity for a C/NC micro-seminar
(January 13 - 17) with visiting scholar
Helen Vendler.
384 A (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
MW 9:30-10:50
Nestor
[Exploring and developing continuity in the elements of fiction writing.
Methods of extending and sustaining plot, setting, character, point of view,
and tone.] Prerequisite: ENGL 284.
384 B (Intermediate Short Story Writing)
TTh 3:30-4:50
Slean
This class continues the introduction to fiction writing series through
the study and practice of the short story. Various elements of story
writing such as character, narrative, style of voice, structure and theme
will be explored through reading, discussion, and writing exercises.
Besides exercises, students will be responsible for writing a minimum of one
short story plus a substantial story revision. The course will also
include in-class workshops of student work-in-progress. Prerequisite: ENGL
284. No texts.
