Spring 2019

ENGL 5109-003: The Early American Novel (Spring 2019)

Anonymous — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 15:18:21 +0000

ENGL 5109-003: The Early American Novel (Spring 2019) Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/31/2018 - 09:18

Professor Maria Windell

Incest. Seduction. Suicide. Abandonment. Immolation. Cross-dressing. Revolution. For fun, toss in ventriloquism and hauntings. Welcome to the early American novel. Even such a simple welcome raises all sorts of questions: at what point does America become “America”? what role does literature play in that transformation? at what point does America actually begin to develop a literary tradition? and, what makes that tradition recognizably American?

We will set the stage to approach these questions with a series of critical readings and two vital nonfictional early American sources. We will then spend the rest of the semester immersed (reveling, really) in works central to the foundation of America’s novelistic tradition. Our texts offer all of the scandals, spectacles, and tragedies noted above. In many ways, the anxieties of the early American novel parallel the anxious birth of the United States—thus tracing the origins of the American novel will allow us to trace how ideas of the new nation took shape.

MA-Lit Course Designation: Literature Before 1800, A (Formalisms)/ D (Cultures/Politics/Histories

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ENGL 1420-002: Poetry (Spring 2019)

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 15:04:56 +0000

ENGL 1420-002: Poetry (Spring 2019) Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/15/2018 - 09:04

Professor Marty Bickman

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

—Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry”

This course will try to be a joyful introduction to poetry, particularly aimed at two groups: those who like and enjoy poetry and those who don’t. For the former, you will have more an immersion in poetry and learn in the words of one critic, how does a poem mean, through resources such as rhythm, metaphor, and forms. For the latter, there will various windows of access not often used in more academic approaches—poetry readings both inside and outside classes, videos such as those used in the PBS series, Poetry in America, 2018 [available now on Amazon Streaming], and structured creative exercises to develop your own poetic capabilities. There will be few formal papers but there will be writing for every class period on D2L—writing on which we will form the basis for our class discussions. Although I am open and experimental in most aspects of teaching, you should know that I try to create along with you a democratic community of learners, so a firm requirement is that you all come to class and do the writing assignments on time. If you’re conscientious about this participation and are sincerely engaged in the course, you will receive a high grade even if you still don’t know what iambic pentameter is at the end of semester. There will also be a short final project at the end in lieu of a final exam; the only parameters are that it be fun for you and be something you feel you can learn from. One of the many things you know better than I is how you learn. The reading of poetry has enhanced and deepened my own life and one of my main aspiration as a teacher is to share that richness and expansion of consciousness with my students. Please feel free to get in touch with me at bickman@colorado.edu with your questions and concerns.

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ENGL 5299-001: Studies in Fiction, Women and Representation in Modernism (Spring 2019)

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 20:20:12 +0000

ENGL 5299-001: Studies in Fiction, Women and Representation in Modernism (Spring 2019) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/04/2018 - 14:20

Professor Jeffrey DeShell

This will be an experiment in reading and studying a strain of modernist art created by women that questions the stability and efficacy of the terms ''Modernist," "art," "create" and "woman." We will pay attention to artifacts, objects and texts from Paula Modersohn-Becker, Claude Cahun, Djuna Barnes, Jean Rhys, Simone Weil, and Maya Deren. Class participation, a class presentation and seminar paper required.

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ENGL 5239-001: Fiction Workshop (Spring 2019)

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 20:18:11 +0000

ENGL 5239-001: Fiction Workshop (Spring 2019) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/04/2018 - 14:18

Professor Jeffrey DeShell

Writing is never done in a vacuum; it occurs always in context. Often fiction writing is provoked by contact with other art forms like painting, music and film. If composition is a series of decisions about what goes where, shouldn’t the translating of decisions from painting, music and film into narrative language be possible? And if it is possible, how can we go about it? Or, to start from the other direction: how can we weave our obsessions with music, painting and film into our fiction writing? The Greek word for this translating is ekphrasis (which usually refers to poetry), and in the contemporary world we often speak of allegory and mimesis. We’ll try to bracket the theoretical discussions and center our discussion on practical larcenous techniques. One way to think about this course will be a research methodologies course for fiction writing. It will attempt to address the problems of how we can go about incorporating other art forms into our fiction. The hope here is to focus on formal questions, although the separation of formal concerns from content is, of course, tentative and uncertain.

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ENGL 5229-001: Poetry Workshop (Spring 2019)

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 20:14:59 +0000

ENGL 5229-001: Poetry Workshop (Spring 2019) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/04/2018 - 14:14

Designed to give students time and impetus to generate poetry and discussion of it in an atmosphere at once supportive and critically serious. Enrollment requires admission to the Creative Writing Graduate Program or the instructor's approval of an application manuscript.

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ENGL 5549-001: Studies in Special Topics 2, Spacetime in the US Millennial Novel (Spring 2019)

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 20:10:57 +0000

ENGL 5549-001: Studies in Special Topics 2, Spacetime in the US Millennial Novel (Spring 2019) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/04/2018 - 14:10

Professor Karen Jacobs

Positioning itself at the crossroads of contemporary literature, geography, and new materialist philosophies, this course will explore how American millennial fictions map and navigate, construct and alter, inhabit and evacuate spacetime; and in tandem it will consider how theoretical texts on space and time (re)conceptualize these categories. In the wake of the new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene (in which the divisions between nature and culture, human and extra-human scales have been destabilized) we will grapple with the emergent spacetime of “postnature”—a category that considers the escalating contamination, homogenization, and mediation of the natural, often through posthumanist and post-anthropocentric lenses. Beginning with the premise that posthumanist theory sees itself as a philosophical corrective to poststructuralism’s overemphasis on language (to the exclusion of pressing political, environmental, and ethical considerations), we will consider the degree to which American millennial fictions are responsive to such concerns as we investigate literal and imaginative spacetimes and the ways they inevitably overlap. We will ask how millennial novels approach these representational challenges, from the largest planetary scales to the tiniest (contradictory) scales of living bodies, from the attenuated gradualism of slow violence to the instantaneity of events. We will also take account of the “spacetime of the text” and the ways it shapes, echoes, and contradicts its internal depictions of spacetime. We will read a selection of the following: Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985); Robert Coover, Pinocchio in Venice (1991); William T. Vollmann, The Atlas (1996); Karen Tei Yamashita, Tropic of Orange (1997); Linda Hogan, Solar Storms (1997); Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (2000); Joy Williams, The Quick and the Dead (2002); Percival Everett, Watershed (2003); and Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005).

MA-Lit Course Designation: Literature After 1800, A (Formalisms), B (Technologies/Epistemologies)

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ENGL 5529-002: Studies in Special Topics, The Geopolitical Renaissance (Spring 2019)

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 20:07:01 +0000

ENGL 5529-002: Studies in Special Topics, The Geopolitical Renaissance (Spring 2019) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/04/2018 - 14:07

This course tests the usefulness of assemblage theory, actor network theory, and similar approaches, for our understanding of international relations in the English Renaissance. Our primary focus will be on the work of a number of Renaissance literary authors who depict a variety of forms international interaction--dynastic conquest, colonial or imperial expansion, exploration, commerce, intellectual exchange, and so forth. We will approach such questions in relation to texts by authors such as Thomas More, Thomas Nashe, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Cary, and John Milton. The syllabus will place these authors in dialogue with a number of early modern political theorists and the work of a range of contemporary scholars contributing to, impacted by, or adjacent to assemblage theory—including works by Saskia Sassen, Michael DeLanda, Michel Foucault, Bruno Latour, Anna Haupt Tsing, Elizabeth Povinelli, and others. A primary goal of the course will be to develop resources both for nuancing our understanding of the constitution of geopolitical life, and for gauging the difference such a frame of reference makes for understanding Renaissance literature.

MA-Lit Course Designation: Literature Before 1800, B (Technologies/Epistemologies), D (Cultures/Politics/Histories)

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ENGL 5529-001: Studies in Special Topics, Teaching English (Spring 2019)

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 20:02:21 +0000

ENGL 5529-001: Studies in Special Topics, Teaching English (Spring 2019) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/04/2018 - 14:02

Studies special topics that focus on a theme, genre, or theoretical issue not limited to a specific period or national tradition. Topics vary each semester.

MA-Lit Course Designation: Elective, B (Technologies/Epistemologies)

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ENGL 5459-001, 002: Introduction to the Profession (Spring 2019)

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 19:59:34 +0000

ENGL 5459-001, 002: Introduction to the Profession (Spring 2019) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/04/2018 - 13:59

Introduces purposes, methods and techniques of professional scholarship in English. Provides an overview of the discipline, including traditional areas of research and recent developments. Teaches students how to use research, bibliographic, and reference tools to prepare papers for conferences and publication. Required of all MA students in English.

MA-Lit Course Designation: Required

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ENGL 5169-001: Multicultural/Postcolonial Studies, Ralph Ellison (Spring 2019)

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 19:53:23 +0000

ENGL 5169-001: Multicultural/Postcolonial Studies, Ralph Ellison (Spring 2019) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/04/2018 - 13:53

Professor Adam Bradley

Ralph Ellison may be the preeminent black American author of the twentieth century, though he published only one novel, 1952’s Invisible Man. Over a career that spanned more than half a century, Ellison published two essay collections, wrote dozens of articles, and delivered numerous speeches, but he never published the second novel he had been composing for more than forty years.

This seminar provides an opportunity for close and comprehensive study of the oeuvre of a single writer. We’ll read all of Ellison’s major works and consider the relationships among his fiction, essays, interviews, and letters. At the same time, we shall engage the numerous strains of critical and theoretical discourse that surround Ellison. Finally, the course will provide unparalleled access to Ellison’s literary archive—the unpublished notes, drafts, and other materials housed in the Library of Congress.

MA-Lit Course Designation: Multicultural/Postcolonial Literature, A (Formalisms), C (Bodies/Identities/Collectivities), D (Cultures/Politics/Histories)

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