Graduate Courses Fall 2020
ENG 510: Introduction to Professional Study I
Th – 4:00 – 6:45pm – Martha Elena Rojas
(1.5 crs.) Orientation to the critical frameworks and professional skills important to graduate work in literary and cultural studies, including digital and public humanities. (Seminar 1.5) Pre: graduate standing or permission of instructor. S/U grades only.
ENG 514: History of Critical Theories
W – 4:00 – 6:45pm – Professor Ryan Trimm
(3 crs.) Historical survey of critical theory from antiquity to the present. (Lec. 3) Pre: graduate standing or permission of instructor. May be repeated once if emphasis changes.
ENG 610: Victorian Media in the Age of the Novel
M – 4:00 – 6:45pm – Professor Carolyn Betensky
(3 crs.) Many of the most admired and most widely read British novels of the nineteenth century were published serially in periodicals and newspapers. In this course, we will consider “classic” and popular novels of the Victorian period in their original habitats. Along with novels by a range of Victorian authors writing in metropolitan and colonial settings, we will read essays and book chapters on media history and theory, narrative, and popular culture. Among other questions we will ask: what difference does serial publication make to the form and readerly experience of a novel? How do novels work in tandem with and/or push against other texts (including advertisements) appearing alongside their installments? (How) does the readership (actual or imagined) of a periodical or newspaper contribute to the unfolding of a novel’s trajectory? Do we misread Victorian novels today when we read them as “books”?
ENG 625: Seminar in Media (The History of the Book in America)
T – 4:00 – 6:45pm – Professor David Faflik
(3 crs.) Critical and theoretical conceptions of one or more media across any historical formation or period. (Seminar) Pre: graduate standing and permission of instructor. May be repeated once if emphasis changes.
This course examines the history of the book in America in at least two respects. On the one hand, we will study the place of print and print technologies in American culture from colonial times to our own (post)postmodern moment. On the other hand, we will consider the history of book history as an interdisciplinary field of scholarly inquiry, attending both to when and where and how it originated as well as how it continues to evolve to this present day.
Readings for the semester will consist in part of works of fiction and nonfiction published between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, complemented by at least one novel from the twentieth century. Among others, our selections will highlight such authors as Roger Williams, Benjamin Franklin, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Thomas Pynchon. We will combine these primary works with readings from recent academic criticism in the field. Throughout, our aim will be to think about not only how America has impacted the form, function, and meaning of books in the modern West, but also how the book (as text, object, artifact, and communications technology) has impacted American society, politics, and culture.