ENGS 005 A
Crime/Story
Andrew Barnaby
It
would be hard to tell from our story-telling habits that human beings don’t
like violence. From ancient works like the Book of Genesis or Oedipus Rex
to modern films and television shows, we seem to be powerfully attracted to
forms of physical, emotional, or psychological abuse that should repel
us. No doubt one of the reasons for this paradox is that stories about
violence—especially stories about criminal acts and their aftermath—are
inherently “plotted”; that is, criminal acts are precisely structured as
stories: as events, they have beginnings, middles and ends that mimic the very
process of linear narration that shapes our most cherished stories. Just as
important, our responses both to real criminal acts and to stories encourage in
the witness, judge, or reader similar modes of ethical evaluation: what do we
take to be right or wrong, a virtuous act or a moral failing, an act done
freely or one compelled? And in our analysis of these responses, we often discover
that our professed values are at odds with what we feel deep inside. In this
course, then, we will be considering the relationship between story-telling and
crime and / or the aftermath of crime, and in our writing we will be exploring,
both creatively and critically, our own capacities—intellectually, emotionally,
and psychologically—to understand just how perverse human beings really are.
Texts for the course will include prose-fiction stories (e.g. Flannery
O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”; George Orwell’s 1984),
non-fictional accounts (e.g. Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It;
Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood), both fiction and documentary films (e.g.
Pulp Fiction; Thin Blue Line), and episodes of recent or current
television series (Law and Order, The Sopranos, The Wire).
Writing UVM: From the Personal to the Professional
Susan Marie Harrington
What makes college writing different from high
school writing? What kinds of research
go on at UVM, and how do researchers decide what to explore next? What kind of student do you want to be? Our seminar will address these questions and
more, starting with a look at your own writing history and your own curiosities,
and ending with a look at research across the disciplines here at UVM. We’ll work together to generate research
questions, we’ll explore ways of answering those questions, and we’ll construct
our own intellectual tour of UVM. We’ll start the semester by experimenting
with different ways to tell your own writing stories, and we’ll move from there
into an investigation of the questions
you raise and the academic departments that might address those questions. We’ll be reading about writing and writing
about reading, and by the end of the semester, you’ll have much clearer (and
more complicated!) ideas about what can make writing work for you.
English Language
Politics
Jennifer Sisk
Our language is almost as essential
to us as the air we breathe—and frequently just as invisible—yet there are
interesting questions to ask about the words we take for granted. Who
decides what goes in our dictionaries, and what was English like before we
had them? What makes Standard Written English "standard," and
whose voices does it leave out? How do the powerful use language to
reinforce their power, to blind or to silence the opposition? These are
some of the many questions we'll tackle this semester as we consider
English's mongrel history, its global present, and the political ramifications
of its potential future.
English 005 D
TAP: From Pucks to Parliament:
Canada's Cultural Landscape
Paul Martin
If
you ask the average American about Canada, you'll find that most know very
little about this mysterious land north of the U.S., labeled on most American
maps as nothing more than "Canada." In this course's exploration of
Canadian culture, we'll "travel" from coast to coast to coast in our
quest to learn more about the people, culture, politics, and history of Canada,
the United States' largest trading partner and one of its most important
allies. Throughout our journey, we'll be paying particular attention to
contemporary Canadian literature, music, popular culture, media, and,
naturally, hockey.
This
will also be a technology-driven, writing-intensive course that will have you writing,
blogging, and even podcasting about your new discoveries about Canada. The
course will include a mandatory class trip to Ottawa, Canada's capital, during
which we will visit Parliament, the National Gallery and Museum of
Civilisation, and, yes, even attend a hockey game. The Ottawa trip, run
annually for well over fifty years now, is frequently cited by graduating
seniors as their favorite experience at UVM. For the duration of the course,
each student will also be loaned an iPod loaded with Canadian music, audio
books, and lectures connected to the topics we will be studying.
Students participating in this course are also invited to
apply to reside in Canada House, part of Living/Learning's Global Village Residential Learning
Community. Residents include Canadian Studies majors and past and
present members of UVM's TAP classes on Canada. Canada House activities may
include field trips, movie nights, curling, and lamenting the lack of poutine
or Tim Hortons in Vermont.
Note: In
order for you to participate in this class, you must have a passport or obtain
one by no later than October 1, 2009. This is due to new regulations
coming into effect in the summer of 2009 which mandate that passports be shown
when re-entering the United States.
Requirements Satisfied: Literature
Contact: 802-656-8451 paul.martin@uvm.edu
ENGS 005 E
Detecting Detectives
Jinny Huh
This course
is an introduction to the figure of the detective in classical and contemporary
detection fiction. We will begin by exploring the emerging figures of the
genre, namely Edgar Allan Poe's Auguste Dupin and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock
Holmes. We will then delve into twentieth and twenty-first century's
detective figures representing a diversity of perspectives in detection
including gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, and nations and
cultures. Some of the questions addressed will include: Who is the
detective figure and what are the various categories of detective fiction
(classic, hard-boiled, postmodern, etc.)? How does the detective detect
and what are his/her limitations? How do the American detective figures
differ from the detective methods of other nations (including England, Japan,
Spain, and Africa)? How do these detectives comment upon and critique
social and political concerns as well as ethical and moral problems? In
addition to literary representations, we will also examine the detective figure
in film and popular culture.
Reading the American
Wilderness
LeeLee Goodson
Four
hundred years ago, colonial Americans depicted wilderness as a “howling waste”
and a “penalty impos’d.” Two hundred
years later, American romantics glorified wilderness for its association with
natural divinity. So what brought about
this incredible change of heart? And how
do we characterize our relationships with nature today? Reading the American Wilderness will explore
these questions. Over the next three and
a half months, we will read and think about how literary interpretations have
challenged and reshaped American attitudes toward nature and identity. Selected readings include Wilderness and
the American Mind, Walden, My Antonia, The Bear, A Walk in the Woods, and Into the
Wild. In addition to reading, writing
about, and discussing these texts, we will visit UVM’s Fleming Museum, and we’ll conclude the semester with an
optional afternoon hike/snowshoe in Stowe.
ENGS 005 G
Beyond the Bedtime
Story: Short Fiction from Poe to the Present
Deb Noel
Once
upon a time, for the first time, someone told you a story. Since then, you’ve
heard and read many tales, and you’ve acquired a set of narrative expectations.
Fairy tales and folk tales written for children often have predictable forms,
familiar conflicts between good and evil, plot complications that are nicely
resolved by the tales’ end, and a moral that teaches readers a lesson. Short
stories written for more sophisticated readers take more complex forms and
deliver subtler messages. In this class, we’ll be reading stories that exhibit
a range of styles and genres by authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen Crane,
Willa Cather, Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, Kelly Link, and China
Mieville, among others. As we study this form, we’ll engage in lively class discussions,
and students will write literary analyses, compose creative imitations and
produce short, web-based research projects.
TAP: Canon of Toni
Morrison
Sarah Turner
Toni
Morrison’s canon thus far spans close to 40 years and contains nine novels, six
children’s books, a short story, three works of non-fiction plus numerous
pieces of scholarly and social criticism. This TAP course will consider a
selection of her works and will explore her impact upon the American literary
canon through a variety of written responses both traditional and not.
ENGS
011 A & B
Types of Literature
Charles Houton
Types
of Literature is an in-depth study of fiction, poetry and drama. A wide variety
of short stories, novellas, poems and plays will be read, analyzed and
discussed. Readings will include short stories by Poe, Chekhov, Chopin, Crane,
London, Faulkner, Hemingway, Porter, Steinbeck, Baldwin, Updike, Raymond
Carver, Tobias Wolf, Ha Jin, Le Guin, and many others. There will also be
novellas by Tolstoy and Kafka. A great variety of poems by many authors will be
studied as well. The drama section will include plays by Sophocles,
Shakespeare, Ibsen, Williams, and Eugene O’Neill. The course will be an
exciting and rich experience in literature.
ENGS
013 A & B
Introduction
to Fiction
Angela
Patten
This
course will introduce students to the art of fiction through the study of the
modern and contemporary short story and novella. Through extensive reading and discussion, students will consider and write about the
basic elements of fiction (plot, setting,
characterization, dialogue, etc.) while also considering the historical and
cultural contexts in which the narratives were created. The course is designed
to broaden
students’ tastes and foster critical thinking while deepening appreciation of
“that most basic human activity” – storytelling.
ENGS 013 C
Introduction to Fiction:
The Short Story
Deb Noel
From
the bone-filled catacombs to a bizarre, spongy “heaven,” in this course, we’ll
read and study a wide variety of short stories by masters of the form, such as
Hawthorne, Poe, Chopin, Cather, Crane, Woolf, Faulkner, Hemingway, Ellison,
Carver, Le Guin, Link, and others. In a combination of in-class and online
assignments, we’ll discuss these works in terms of the art form and their
cultural contexts. Students will be
expected to attend class, read and respond to the stories and the assignments
in a variety of verbal and written formats including discussion board posts,
live in-class and online discussions, and in 3 formal essays/projects.
Introduction to Poetry
Angela
Patten
This
course will explore the wide range of traditions and styles evident in classic
and contemporary poetry written in English.
Through extensive reading and discussion, students will study the
variety of poetic voices and learn the principles and vocabulary required for
informed discussion and effective criticism regarding the techniques employed
by master poets present and past. Vigorous, thoughtful, and constructive participation required.
ENGS 014 C
Introduction to Poetry
Kat Kleman (Davis)
ENGS 021 A
British Literature
Christopher Vaccaro
This course examines a selection of the canonical (and non-canonical) British
works and writers from the eighth to the eighteenth century. Its focus is
the historical and mythical involvement of literature (how literature
simultaneously reflects and constructs myth, reality, and history).
Students are expected to use and strengthen analytical and critical thinking
skills to better understand the readings. They are expected to show a
high degree of commitment to a) their academic work and b) the class as a whole
through full participation and regular attendance.
British Literature
Rebecca A. McLaughlin
This
course surveys British literature from the 8th to the 18th
century. Students will examine a variety of works and consider how literature
reflects the social and cultural attitudes within which it was written while
simultaneously contributing to the construction of the period’s history as we
understand it. Works considered may
include Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Marie de France’s Lanval, Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath,”
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, various
Elizabethan poets, Lanyer’s “Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women,” Milton’s Paradise Lost, Haywood’s Fantomina, and Fielding’s Tom Jones. While the course focuses on
surviving literary traces of British society, students will move toward an
awareness of a complex, indistinct British past by looking at historical
objects, art, and architecture; by viewing select videos; and by listening to
readings, music, and songs. Course requirements may include various types of
reading responses, a term paper, a midterm exam, and a final exam.
ENGS 023 A
& B
American
Literature
Sheila Boland Chira
This
course is a survey of American literature from the beginnings to the Civil War
that covers stories, narratives, letters, novels, and poetry, which explore the
“invention” of “America” as a complex ideological space, not simply a
geographic location. The relationship
between literature and the cultural and historical contexts in which it was
produced will be central to our investigation of the discipline of American
literary history. We will consider a
range of different genres over a long stretch of time including native creation
stories; accounts of early encounters between European and indigenous peoples;
literature from the periods of European settlement, colonization, and
revolution; literature of the early republic and the “American Renaissance”;
and literature from the late eighteenth into the nineteenth century that
consciously attempted to establish a national cultural tradition while also
exploring the tensions in the new republic.
For the first half of the semester, we will move quickly through three
centuries from 16th-century accounts of exploration to 19th-century
attempts to cultivate a “national” literature.
In the second half of the semester, we’ll slow down and linger in the
mid-19th century exploring the literary strategies of writers like
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Margaret
Fuller, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Emily
Dickinson, and Walt Whitman. Students
should expect to participate actively in class discussion, give a presentation,
take frequent quizzes, and write and share frequent short reading responses and
two longer interpretive essays.
Introduction to American
Literature, Pre-Civil War
LeeLee Goodson
What
makes American literature American?
English 23 surveys significant literary voices from colonial times to
the Civil War, focusing on the ways in which these writers struggle to express
their American experiences and quests for identity. We will read, among others, Native American
tales and colonial narratives, as well as selected works of Emerson, Hawthorne,
Thoreau, Melville, and Whitman. We will
make connections between and among the texts, learn about the writers’ times,
styles, themes, and concerns. We will
also examine how American literature and perceptions of identity have changed
and evolved over time. Blackboard
supported. Text: The Norton Anthology
of American Literature, shorter 7th edition, Volume 1.
ENGS 023 F, G & H
American Literature to
1865
Brian Kent
We
will examine a broad cross-section of American literature, beginning with
explorer/settlement accounts and Puritan texts, including the beginnings of
American poetry. We will then highlight
the influence of the Enlightenment as evidenced in Ben Franklin and writers of
the American Revolution. Accompanying
this, of course, will be a look at how Indian nonfiction, slave narratives, and
women’s writings expose the contradictions between American life and
Enlightenment egalitarian philosophy. As
we move into the19th century, we will address the emergence of fiction in
writers like Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, and
Catharine Maria Sedgwick, before finishing the semester with examples from the
American Renaissance of the mid to late 19th century, including works
by Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson.
The
class will be conducted in a discussion format and will include regular
notebook/journal writings, as well as weekly reading quizzes. The major assignments are a multi-draft paper
which we will work through together as a class, using instructor-student
conferences and peer workshops to facilitate revision, and two or three
in-class essay exams.
ENGS 025 A & B
World Literature
Isabella Jeso
This
course is an exploration of a broad selection of masterpieces of world
literature, beginning with texts written some 2500 years before the common era
(2500 B.C.E.) and concluding with texts produced during the first half of the
seventeenth century after the common era (1700 A.C. E.). The course traces
patterns of, and shifts in literary sensibility over a period encompassing some
four thousand years. In this engagement, the course challenges students to
address such questions as “What did people write about four thousand years ago
that they thought was the best literature to preserve?” “How did they prefer to
write such revered texts?” “What subjects did they feel that respected
literature should address?” “By whom did they prefer to have their literature
written?” “What purposes did their literature serve from epoch to epoch?” The
course’s exploration of such questions emphasizes three foci: 1) the way
different texts (drama, poetry, fiction and non-fiction) are written (technique
/ style) and how each author manipulates a genre’s conventions to produce a
unique text; 2) the content (themes and motifs) of the stories presented; and
3) historical events (national, international, each author’s biography) that
influenced the production of those literary texts. Furthermore, the course has
a primary interest in training students in how to speak and write about
literature, assisting them in this manner of sharpening their developing
critical thinking skills.
While
this introductory course is primarily presented in lecture format, from time to
time, students will be offered documentary film studies of the ancient world
that have proven useful in deepening the student’s understanding of world
literature. There will also be opportunities for peer discussion of course
material in small groups as needed. Selections of stories that will be read
throughout the semester are representative of world civilizations as recorded
in the recent scholarship understood to be the canonical foundation of the
world’s celebrated literary history. Much of the writing in this canon is made
up of literatures from Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Little is available on
Africa (excepting Egyptian literature as it is considered to be part of the
Middle Eastern cultures) and the Americas; students are encouraged to
supplement this gap in ancient literary records by doing their own research.
ENGS 025 C & D
World Literature - The 17th Century to the Present
Charles Houton
This
is a wide ranging survey of world literature from the early 1600s to the
twentieth century. The course focuses particularly on non English literary
texts in translation. There are many selections from Asia, Africa, Europe
and South America. We will be using the Norton Anthology of World
Literature, second edition vols. D, E, F. The course can serve as a continuation
of Eng 25 World Literature for students who enjoyed that course. Works by Wu
Cheng-En, Moliere, Racine, Voltaire, Saikaku, Basho, Rousseau, Blake,
Wordsworth, Shelley, Holderlin, Heine, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Verlaine,
Rimbaud, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tagore, Yeats, Dario,
Pirandello, Ichiyo, Rilke, Lu Xun, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Inuit poets, Akhmatova,
Storni, Brecht, Lorca, Neruda, Diop, Senghor, Camus, Lessing, Achebe and
others will provide a rich experience of literature. The historical
cultural and literary context of works will be provided.
ENGS
027 A
Literature of the Western Tradition: Integrated Humanities Program
Tom Simone
Prerequisite:
admission to the Integrated Humanities Program
A survey of important texts of the early Western Traditions from Homer to
Dante. Parallel enrollment in History 13 and Religion 27.
ENGS 041 A
Crime Story
Rebecca A. McLaughlin
This
course is an introduction to crime and detection in England from the 18th
to the early 20th century, and the use of crime situations as a
central plot device in British literature. Readings will include Daniel Defoe’s
Moll Flanders; Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone; Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles; Agatha
Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express,
and P.D. James’ Unnatural Causes.
Additionally we will view select videos; explore the economic and social
context of crime; the biographical history of some famous criminals and
detectives; and the tools and tactics of the criminal’s chosen trade. Course
requirements may include reading quizzes, reading responses, a presentation on
a topic related to the course material, a term paper, and a final exam.
ENGS 042 A
Women in Literature:
Madness and Imaginary Terrain
Deb Noel
This
is a survey course with a thematic focus.
We read works by women that explore the connections among alternative
"ways of knowing," femaleness (both in terms of biology and gender),
imaginative literary terrain (alternative writing styles) and invented worlds,
such as the feminist utopia, the nightmarish dystopia, the imaginative history
and the revisioned fairy-tale. Some of
the authors on our reading list are Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Margaret Atwood,
Marge Piercy and Toni Morrison, many of whose works represent feminist
depictions of repressive cultural environments and/or imaginary alternatives to
them. The theme gives this large sampling of women's writing coherence,
allowing us to consider ways in which women writing in English have puzzled
over similar problems and concerns for over one hundred years. Students will be
expected to attend class, complete written responses in and out of class, and
participate in small and large group discussions. Online tools will figure
prominently in course work. Final grades will be based on participation, short
written responses and 3 formal essays/projects.
ENGS 050 A
Expository Writing
Jamie Williamson
Students
in English 50 will work on developing their writing voices through a number of
different types of essays. Beginning with expressive work, drawing mainly on
self-generated subject matter, we will work up to a research based essay,
exploring how to maintain the individual writing voice while simultaneously
processing external information and perspectives. All essays will move
through at least two drafts; class sessions will include informal writing
exercises, selected readings, and peer review; students will meet with the
instructor at least once in the course of each essay.
Introduction to Creative
Writing
Kat Kleman (Davis)
D1: Race & Ethnicity
in Literary Studies: American Autobiography
Sheila Boland Chira
The
American ideal of the individual as free and equal has historically been compromised
by culturally constructed categories of race, ethnicity, class, and gender. In
this course, we will explore the effect of these categories on
self-representation by focusing on the literary genre of autobiography.
American autobiography has made significant contributions to social history and
political thought, for it historically has offered individuals otherwise
excluded from spheres of political representation and publication the
opportunity to address the public in their own voices and to challenge
deep-rooted assumptions. More recently,
autobiographical non-fiction has helped Americans engage in the difficult
conversations about race and ethnicity that perhaps can help us move closer to
our ideals. We will approach
autobiographical writing academically while also making a habit of reflecting
on how we are viewed and view others through these culturally constructed
lenses. Authors will include Frederick
Douglass, Zitkala Ša, Malcolm X, Bliss Broyard, Richard Rodriguez, Barack
Obama, and Kenji Yoshino. Students
should expect to take periodic quizzes, write frequent short reading responses
and two longer essays, give a group presentation, and actively participate in
class discussion. [Fulfills University D1 Race and Ethnicity requirement]
ENGS 057 C & D
D1: Race & Ethnicity
in Literary Studies
Isabella Jeso
This
course is a study of U.S. minority voices in literature. It introduces students
to the ways in which various American ethnic groups have employed
story-telling, dramatic representation, poetry and the essay form to explore
issues relating to their place as minorities in the national social fabric. We
will examine how authors exploit literary conventions in each genre studied. At
the same time, we will consider how these writers explode and / or go beyond
those expectations, creating unconventional stylistic devices for literary
self-representation; as these new methods of speaking emerge from their
individual and collective minority experiences. We will thus have two primary
foci. One will be to examine technical devices employed by each author as an
individual and also as a voice of the particular minority group under which
society categorizes him or her. The second will be to study thematic schemes
prevalent in each of these works. The course is divided into four units, with
each unit consisting of works by selected authors “representative” of one
American ethnic group. I list them here in alphabetical order:
African-American; Asian-American; Latino/na-American and Native-American. Selected
material for each unit includes one or more of the following literary genres:
novels, short fiction, plays, poetry and essays. There will be an exam at the
conclusion of each course unit. Additionally, students will be required to
write an eight-page essay theorizing their own perception (based on a close
reading of two authors from two ethnic groups) of being categorized as a
minority in American society. [Fulfills University
D1 Race and Ethnicity requirement]
ENGS 057 E, F & G
D1: Race & Ethnicity
in Literary Studies: American Indian Literature
Jamie Williamson
We
will be reading work by American Indian writers, and coming at the issue of
race relations and ethnic identity from a variety of perspectives. The work
will include fiction, both short stories and novels, biography and
autobiography, and traditional narratives drawn from the repertoires of oral
storytellers. Much of the work will focus on the recent and contemporary
period; some will focus on the earlier period of European contact, giving a
chronological/historical context necessary to evaluate the later material; we
will also read some material reflecting oral narrative traditions pre-dating
contact (“myths” and “legends”) to provide a sense of continuity between the
period of political and social autonomy and the period of subjugation by
European powers. Writers may include Sherman Alexie, Eden Robinson, Joseph
Marshall, James Welch, and others. We will also view several films, including Skins and Incident at Oglala. [Fulfills University D1 Race and Ethnicity
requirement]
ENGS 057 H
D1: Race & Ethnicity
in Literary Studies
Sarah Turner
In
an interview several years ago, Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison stated
that racism is a scholarly affair and one that is useful for whites. In the
1998 movie American History X, Ed Norton's character claims that all problems
in this country are race-related. Poet and activist Maya Angelou envisions a
time when “ideally, race should be [only] as important as the color
coordination of one’s costume.” What do these statements mean? And what
relevance do they have for us, in 2008? This course considers a variety of
contemporary texts -- novels, short stories, movies -- written by and about
non-hegemonic groups living in the United States today that explore the
intersections of race, class, socioeconomics, racism and institutionalized
racism. Because the course expects students to engage in polemical and engaging
dialogue, students are asked to “agree to disagree’ in a respectful
environment. [Fulfills University D1 Race and Ethnicity requirement]
ENGS 085 A & B
Text and Context: The
Literal and the Figurative
Isaac Cates
English 85 is designed to prepare you for serious reading in subsequent courses
by working steadily and patiently on a handful of major interpretive
difficulties. We can group these interpretive hurdles into two categories:
problems of the literal, sentence-level sense of the text, and problems of its
more abstract, more general, more thematic meaning. Careful readers will always
base their thematic interpretations on a secure sense of the literal.
In
other words, if you have ever been thwarted or frustrated by Shakespeare's
elaborate soliloquies or Emily Dickinson's puzzling lyrics, this course will
help you sort them out. Furthermore, if you're curious about the processes of
figurative meaning—if you're interested in the nuances of metaphor or
symbolism—this course will give you a laboratory in which to explore those
issues. You will emerge from this course more confident with reading old and
difficult texts, and more surefooted when making claims about their meaning.
Reading
for this course will be in small portions, but you will be responsible for
preparing the texts with extraordinary diligence. Writing assignments will have
a similarly tight focus.
ENGS 086 A & B
Critical Approaches to Lit
Stephen Schillinger
Your point of view
effects what you see. Rarely, if ever, can you look at something from a
purely objective position. Therefore, your perspective matters. As
an introduction to literary theory, criticism and methodology, this class is
focused on understanding the philosophical issues involved in our perspectives
when reading texts. We will critically analyze both the most current
theories and methods in the field as well as the earlier theories of literary
analysis that make up the background for contemporary scholarship. By the
conclusion of the semester you should have a basic understanding of the
dominant methodologies in literary studies as well as an appreciation for how
those methods relate to and broke from earlier forms of literary
analysis. Furthermore, this class will serve as an introduction to the
often dizzying terminology of literary criticism. Lastly, this class will
be a place of both theory and practice in that we will not only analyze models
of literary theory, we will also employ these models in the analysis of texts
both literary and non-literary.
ENGS 086 C & D
Critical Approaches to Literature
Sean Witters
When we talk about literature in an academic setting, there are certain
practices we take for granted. In the classroom, it is second nature to discuss
things like narrative structure, character psychology, or the ideological
conditions of a given text. Such theoretical approaches have not always been
natural or even available to the discipline of literary studies. Indeed, the
concept of literary studies, itself, has taken centuries to develop into the
form that is familiar to us. This course traces the evolution of literary
theory and criticism, with particular emphasis on its rapid expansion over the
past century. Through our theory readings, and through application of those
theories to various “texts,” this course will explore the practices and
terminologies that define what and how we talk about literature.
ENGS 095 A
The Popular Conscience:
Popular Fiction since the 1950s
Brian Kent
The
texts used in the class reflect the evolution of American attitudes and
behaviors since the postwar period of the 1950s. We will examine how popular fiction during
the decades between 1950 and 2009 represents, reflects, and (perhaps) helps to
reshape the social dynamics of American life, dynamics that include politics,
media, race, gender, sexuality, drugs, morality, and more. Students should be prepared to read one short
novel (200-300 pages) per week.
Representative authors include Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Toni Morrison,
Rita Mae Brown, Ann Beattie, and Tom Robbins.
The
class will be conducted in a discussion format and will include regular notebook/journal
writings, as well as weekly reading quizzes.
The major assignments are a multi-draft paper which we will work through
together as a class, using instructor-student conferences and peer workshops to
facilitate revision, and two or three in-class essay exams.
ENGS 095 B
Digital Composing
Richard Parent
Introduction to Old English
Christopher Vaccaro
African American Women’s
Literature – 20th and 21st Century
Sarah Turner
Tutoring Writing
Sue Dinitz
This course is for students who have been selected to be tutors for the UVM
Writing Center. We consider theories and practices of tutoring writing,
role-play tutoring situations, hear guest speakers on such subjects as working with
students with disabilities, and, most importantly, discuss and learn from our
tutoring sessions. Throughout the semester, students keep a journal,
synthesizing their experiences reading, writing, and tutoring. In order
to try out the strategies discussed in class, students write and revise two
papers. Part of the coursework includes tutoring for three hours each
week in the Writing Center. PERMISSION OF THE INSTRUCTOR IS
REQUIRED--this class is only for students who were recommended for and accepted
into the program in the spring of 2009. For more information, contact Sue
Dinitz. Susan.Dinitz@uvm.edu,
656-7963. [Category A]
ENGS 107 A
Writing Bodies:
Rhetorics of the Flesh
Richard Parent
ENGS 111 A
Reading Race, Seeing
Race
Jinny Huh
How do we narrate and visualize race? How do narrative and visual depictions
alter across different racial groups? This course will examine how twentieth
century American literature and popular culture construct certain “racial
knowledges” in the formation of American identity. Through a comparative race
approach (Whiteness Studies, African American Studies, Asian American Studies,
and Afro-Asian Studies), we will focus on a wide range of literary texts
(novels, short stories, plays, and personal essays as well as interdisciplinary
theoretical essays) and visual “texts” (feature films, music videos, and
television). Furthermore, we will also examine how various genres (including
the passing narrative, the gothic, and comedy/satire) offer unique approaches
to the narrative and visual constructions of race and difference. Some themes
and theoretical concerns we will explore include: history and memory, whiteness
and multicultural angst, racial hauntings, identity passing, and ethnic humor
and satire. [Fulfills University D1 Race and Ethnicity requirement] [Category
A]
ENGS 113 A
Irish Film and
Literature
Anthony Bradley
Topics in Shakespeare
Stephen Schillinger
As an advanced
introduction to Shakespeare's drama, this course will focus on adaptation and
appropriation in Shakespeare and in the period of Shakespeare's drama. One of
the great ironies of Shakespeare's role in cultural history is that his work is
considered nearly iconic as a manifestation of originality and genius. And yet
not only is this originality harvested throughout literary and cultural history
for the sake of revision, rewriting and representation (seemingly
"unoriginal" acts of cultural production), but it is an originality
that was itself often the consequence of Shakespeare's rewriting, revising,
rethinking and reconstructing the ideas, narratives and relationships seemingly
developed by other writers. And so the project of thinking through
Shakespeare's originality is, ironically, always a project of thinking through
adaptation and appropriation. Therefore, in this calls we will consider how
Shakespeare uses, adapts and revises sources, as well as how Shakespeare's
plays were and are adapted, used and revised. We will read not only plays from
Shakespeare but plays from his contemporary playwrights as well as later
writers and artists who appropriate his texts. We will develop an ongoing
discussion about artistic, cultural appropriation and what these appropriations
suggest about their contexts of articulation. [Category B]
Milton’s
Paradise Lost
Andrew Barnaby
The
focus of this course will be a slow, in-depth reading of Milton’s great epic, Paradise
Lost. We will give special attention to the poem’s unique way of making its
religious and philosophical arguments concerning such matters as the nature of
God, the presence of evil, the problem of suffering, and the possibilities of
free will. Other readings for the course will be drawn from the Bible, Stanley
Fish’s Surprised by Sin, Elaine Pagels’ The Origin of Satan, and
Karen Armstrong’s A History of God. [Category B]
Survey of British Literature to 1700
Christopher Vaccaro
The Long Eighteenth
Century: Spectacle and Story
Philip Baruth
The period known as the “long eighteenth century” — the years 1660-1798 — marks
the relatively quick deterioration of certain long-standing power relations,
this deterioration fueled by a bloody civil war and an ensuing religious
Interregnum. During this period, the Monarch (invited by Parliament to rule in
1660, then again in 1688) ceases to represent absolute hereditary authority,
and the government of England becomes a product of shifting oligarchical
alliances. The power of print — and the corresponding power of literacy —
becomes more widely diffused with the advent of moveable type, and cheap print
forms like the chapbook and the broadside; the Church of England, in spite of
its aggressive reassertion following the Interregnum, never manages completely
to repress the influence of Dissenters and Roman Catholics in the nation, which
is to say that the notion of a single national religious narrative proves
politically impossible.
In many ways, then, being a “subject” of England had never meant so much in the
way of individual possibility, and this alteration is marked in the etymology
of the word “subject” and its offshoots, “subjective” and “subjectivity.” The
word “subject,” from the Latin, has in English earliest denotations (14th
century) of political “subjection” — the sense in which one is “subject to a
conquering or sovereign power.” But in the eighteenth century, the word
“subjective” develops along different, even countervailing, denotational lines.
As early as 1707, it is used to refer to a “thinking subject,” or a person’s
inner mental life. By 1767, the adjective has taken on the further meaning of
“idiosyncratic” or “highly individual.” In this way, the eighteenth-century shifts
in meaning create a space in language for what will finally be called
“subjectivity” by Robert Southey in 1812 — a conscious entity free from
control, censorship, or inspection by any other entity.
Thus Southey, and later Coleridge, give name to a phenomenon which forms and is
itself formed by the eighteenth century’s new performance and print genres: the
propaganda pamphlet, the Restoration dramatic “spectacle,” the novel, the
“progress,” and the secular journal or autobiography. I will argue that these
various genres model political independence for readers, even as they attempt
in various ways to “subject” those same readers to genteel social norms.
More than anything else, though, we will be concerned with the ways in which
various cultural participants — as large as the State and as small as the
individual — sought to change political reality by controlling the stories told
about it.
ENGS 144 A
Romanticism Writing the
Self
Eric Lindstrom
British and European Romantic writers in large part created the very notion of
a “self” we now take for granted.
Rousseau scandalously confessed all about his heretofore “private” self—and so
invented both a new kind of subjectivity and the art of confession. The
philosopher Kant praised “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within
me.” Thomas Paine vindicated the Rights of Man and Mary Wollstonecraft
those of Women. And William Wordsworth earned adoration and mockery by
turns, when he placed his own inner life at the center of his “experiment” with
poetry.
This course pursues a series of creative tensions in how Romanticism writes the
self anew, proclaims individual rights, and tries to keep a perilous sense of
balance. Other authors we’ll study in addition to selections from those
above include novelists Jane Austen and Mary Shelley, along with the Black
Paintings of Goya and the philosopher Stanley Cavell’s essay on Edgar Allen
Poe, “Being Odd, Getting Even.” [Category C]
ENGS 160
D1:African American Literature before the Twentieth Century
Mary Lou Kete
This course attempts to answer the question of how to call---to remember and to
account for---the tradition of African American literature. Beginning
under the conditions of slavery and colonization, this tradition continues to
develop through the periods of Emancipation and Reconstruction to explode with
the works of the 20th-century?s Harlem Renaissance. Our goal is to survey
the key works of this tradition while considering the relationship between
literature and history. This course is reading and writing intensive. [Fulfills
University D1 Race and Ethnicity requirement] [Category C]
Italian American
Literature and Culture: Blood of My Blood: Imagining the Italian-American
Family
John Gennari
Italian-American ethnicity is hardly ever imagined outside of deeply
sentimentalized, stereotyped notions of the family (“"la famiglia"”).
There are indeed deep, even primal, forces within Italian and Italian-American
culture that invest the family with sacramental significance (e.g. the Sunday
dinner as religious and artistic ritual; the Italian mother as Madonna figure;
the fraternal, homosocial intimacies central to Italian masculinity). But very
often the Italian family is a cultural figure shaped by myth, desire, and lack
–--- perhaps never more so than in the U.S., where tropes of Italian ethnic
soulfulness, warmth, and loyalty serve as antidotes to the individualism, cold
materialism, and soulless capitalist instrumentality that saturate the dominant
culture. Further, very often the mythological Italian family hides or obscures
how fascinating and messy the Italian family can actually be. This course will
try to reckon with the Italian-American family in all its complex conjurings in
the U.S. cultural imagination, including literature, film, television, music,
folklore, social science, and political discourse. We’ will search for
historical roots of the Italian-American family as a real tradition and as an
invented tradition, and we’ will consider how those traditions have been
challenged and complicated by interracial, feminist, and queer energies within
Italian-American culture. [Category D]
ENGS 163 B
Jazz and the Cultural Imagination
John Gennari
20th Century African
American Fiction
Emily Bernard
[Category D]
Harlem Renaissance and
Negritude
Loka Losambe
Canadian Fiction since
1967
Paul Martin
1967 was a key moment in Canadian history for several reasons. Canada
marked the centennial of its Confederation that year and also invited the world
to come visit Expo 1967 in Montreal. The pride and excitement created in Canada
by both of these events and the rise to power of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot
Trudeau in 1968 helped bring about a transformation in the country's politics,
self-confidence, and its international reputation. The excitement of this era
also sowed the seeds for an unparalleled growth in the interest of Canadians in
the telling and reading of their own stories.
In this course we will look at the development of the literatures of Canada
over the last four decades. We will read work from both the best-known writers
of this period such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, and Margaret
Laurence, but also works from some of the lesser-known and equally fascinating
writers who emerged over this time period. We will pay particular attention to
the rise in importance of minority writers who today are unequivocally part of
the mainstream of literary work in Canada.
Students in this course will also have the opportunity to participate in the
Canadian Studies Program's annual field trip to Ottawa. The cost for this trip
is usually about $250 and includes transportation, two nights accommodation at
one of Ottawa's nicest hotels, and admission fees to the National Gallery, the
Canadian Museum of Civilization, and, of course, tickets to the Ottawa 67s
hockey game. If interested, students should make sure to have a passport
in time for the October trip due to new US regulations with respect to crossing
the border into the United States. [Category D]
Introduction to
Colonial/Postcolonial Literature
Helen Scott
African American Women
Writers
Emily Bernard
The Dawn of Modernism,
1857-1922
Tom Simone
In Western culture the period of the end of the 19th century and the beginning
of the 20th offers a remarkably rich period of artistic, cultural, and
historical change. This course will explore aspects of later 19th culture and
the major shifts that come from the emergence of media and technological impact
that reshape the forms and themes of art and human expression. While the course
will center on the shift of literature from realism and naturalism to
modernism, the parallel developments of music, the visual arts, and popular
culture will be of interest also. And developments in science as well as a
recognition of the massive events of history, especially World War I and the
growing crisis of colonialism.
Literary readings will include Dostoevsky, Ibsen, Baudelaire, Rilke, Proust,
Joyce, and Woolf.
Samplings:
Science and philosophy: Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Einstein, and Bergson.
From early film: Lumière Brothers, Meliès, Griffith, Chaplin, Eisenstein
From music: Wagner, Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartok
From recorded music: operatic excerpts, early jazz, and anthropological
recordings.
Painting and photography: Nadar, Steichen, Weston; Delacroix, Monet, Van Gogh,
Cezanne, Matisse. Kandinsky
Format: some lecture, discussion. Student work groups and reports. Weekly
postings, short essays, term paper project. [Category C]
Senior Seminars open to only Senior English Majors and Concentrators
Instructor permission required for ALL seminars
Seminar: Dante
Tom Simone
Seminar: Postcoloniality
in African Literature and Society
Loka Losambe
This
seminar examines the origin and politics of the postcolonial discourse in
African literature and society. We will particularly consider African writers’
responses to the European, colonial ordering of the African otherness. Authors
will include Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary, Olaudah Equiano, Frantz Fanon, Leopold
Senghor, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Mariama Ba, Tsitsi Dangarembga and Zakes
Mda. Fulfills A& S Non-European Culture requirement; Eligible for African
Studies Credit. Prerequisite: ENGS 86 Instructor
permission required. [Category D]
Seminar:
Colonial/Postcolonial Literature
Helen Scott
ENGS 281 A
Seminar: The Gothic
Tony Magistrale
Graduate Courses open only to English Masters Students
The Canterbury Tales
Jennifer Sisk
Re-thinking American Romanticism: Problems in American Literary History: The
Case of American Romanticism
Mary Lou Kete
While never absent from
American literary history, the nature of what is conventionally called
American romanticism has been variously shaped and re-shaped as
scholars and teachers have sought to tell a meaningful story about
American culture. Over the course of this semester we will use
the case of American Romanticism to wrestle with the following
questions: How do the questions we ask of the past shape the histories
we tell in the present? What are the consequences of the
different kinds of critical assumptions and methodologies that we bring
to writing literary history? The 19th century authors we will
read may include R.W.Emerson, Margaret Fuller, H.W.Longfellow, Lydia
Sigourney, H.D.Thoreau and E. Oakes-Smith. Instructor permission required. [Category C]
Survey
of Literary Theory and Criticism
Todd
McGowan
This
course will investigate some of the major critical theories informing our
approach to literary and cultural texts.
We will read the primary work of important theorists working in
different traditions (including figures such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud,
Ferdinand de Saussure, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Giorgio
Agamben, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, and Jacques Derrida). The course aims at acquainting you with some
of the foundational texts that inform current movements within contemporary
theory, as well certain key texts from theorists still working today. Instructor permission required. [Category A]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Film and Television Studies Courses
FTS
007 A
Development
of Motion Picture I: Origin to 1930
Sarah
Nilsen
This
course is an introduction to the history of film prior to the arrival of sound.
In the course of study, we will consider extra-cinematic factors (major
historical events, economic situation in America, societal issues, other
leisure activities, etc.), and cinematic factors (business practices of the
industry, censorship, genres, styles, the star and the star system, and so on)
in the development of film. The primary objective of the course is to
provide students with an introductory understanding of silent cinema as well as
to sharpen skills in critical film analysis.
Introduction to Television
David Jenemann
While the history of television programming is well-known and documented, the
history of the institution of television itself is less widely considered. FTS9
attempts to examine the development of television both as an aesthetic medium
and as an industry, and in so doing, to understand how television transforms
modern culture. Using primary sources, contemporary criticism, and analyses of
certain programs, we learn how television works, who it works on, and who
benefits.
Film Theory
Todd McGowan
FTS 122 A
The Politics of Genre
David Jenemann
Genre
is one of the fundamental categories through which we understand literary and
cinematic texts. From characters to costumes to story lines, the conventions of
genre dictate the form and content of narratives. It is a central premise of
this class that genres also map a political and theoretical terrain that has
profound implications for our understanding of the world. Using a number of
films as well as novels, historical documents, and theoretical analyses, we
will attempt to understand how two central genres, Westerns and Film Noir,
alter our understanding of political and social life. Prereq: FTS 7, 8, or 9.
FTS 131 A
Advanced Film/TV Theory: Psychoanalysis & Film/TV
Hilary Neroni
Films Beget Film
Deb Ellis
This
course will examine films created from already existing films. We will
look at films that repurpose archival footage in documentary films, and
investigate the historicity of such work. And, we will examine films that
use archival and/or "found footage" as the basis of an experimental
approach to filmmaking. We will consider the difference between film
outtakes (found film) and archival film cataloged in film libraries. Particular
attention will be focused on an examination of the appropriation of meaning as
the footage is woven into new contexts. Prereq: FTS 7, 8, or 9.
FTS 141 A
Film & Video
Production I
Deb Ellis
Why are the images we see in movies so powerful? In this class
you’ll learn how to shoot and edit video through hands-on experience.
You’ll learn how to shoot images that have impact. And, you’ll learn how
to juxtapose images through editing to serve a narrative or rhythmic or
structural purpose. This class is for anyone who wants to develop skills
that harness the power of film and video through shooting, editing, screening,
making mistakes and revising. We will view a number of films that will probably
be outside your experience, and you will be viewing and responding to other
films that will be more familiar. The goal is to familiarize you with new
work, and to encourage you to be more critical about work you tend to view on a
regular basis. The combination of experiences will fuel your production
work. Pre-req: FTS 121
FTS 144 A
Screenwriting
I
Sarah
Nilsen
Screenwriting
is an art and also a craft. Unlike other forms of writing, screenwriting
is foremost telling stories cinematically. This class will provide an
intensive introduction to both the craft and artistry of screenwriting through
the study of successful films, and also intensive writing workshops.
Learning how to write screenplays entails first understanding how narratives
are structured. As an aspiring screenwriter, you should be an avid film
viewer who reads and analyzes screenplays. We will therefore spend a good
portion of the class studying produced film narratives to begin to understand
how successful stories are structured. We will also apply some of these
principles of effective storytelling to our own stories. Through a
writing workshop structure, you will get the chance to have your own screenplay
ideas critiqued and also the opportunity to explore the craft of
screenwriting. The purpose of the class is to make you a critical viewer
of film writing and also to get you started in telling your own stories through
moving images. Prereq:
FTS 121
FTS 271 A
Senior Seminar: Violence
in Film and Television
Hilary Neroni
Last modified July 06 2009 01:05 PM
