Department of English Graduate Course Descriptions Spring 2009 (2S2009)

Transcription

1 Department of English Graduate Course Descriptions Spring 2009 (2S2009) English 7001 Prof. Rodger Kamenetz: LITERARY NONFICTION WORKSHOP M 3:00-6:00 212C Allen English 7006 Prof. Jim Bennett FICTION WRITING MW 1:30 3:00 English 7007 Prof. Andrei Codrescu POETRY WORKSHOP W 3:00-6:00 Literary Nonfiction Workshop Creative writing of nonfiction essays. Prereq.: admission to the MFA program or consent of instructor. FICTION WRITING Intensive composition and critical evaluation of fiction; fictional techniques and forms. POETRY WORKSHOP - Channeler: Andrei Codrescu Kamenetz@gmail.com Office: 212 L Allen Hall jgbenne@lsu.edu Office: 237-D Allen Hall This Workshop has three parts, like Gaul: Adopting, Following, and Writing. 1. Adopting: each member of the Workshop will adopt two Ghost Companions, one of your own choosing and one assigned by the Channeler (Codrescu). The Ghost Companion that you are going to adopt will be an English-language poet, living or barely dead (within ten years). The assigned GC will be a poet in translation (or in the original). Your job will be to read your Ghost Companions for the entire semester, to present them in class, and to use them daily as oracles and guides. Please have your poet chosen by the first day of class. 2. Following: When you are using your Ghost Companions oracularly, by asking the questions, they will give you answers to direct your work. Follow their advice, particularly in creative areas, though you can follow their answers in existential situations as well, but your Channeler is not responsible if Judy Grahn, let s say, tells you: So I say to her,/ she is making me, / and I mean she is/ making me over,/ again. 1 and then you interpret that to mean something or other. In this class, we discourage interpretation, but we allow instant illumination. 3. Writing: You will produce a text every week, inspired by your Ghost Companions. You will this to the class two days

2 before our meeting, so you ll be able to talk about it with the expected acuity. Some performance in class or in poetry venues may be indulged. English 7009 Prof. Mari Kornhauser ADVANCED SCREENWRITING WORKSHOP M 6:00-9: Allen English 7521 Prof. Michelle Zerba TOPICS IN THE HISTORY OF RHETORIC AND POETICS: CLASSICAL RHETORIC Th 3:00-6:00 English 7522 Prof. Jenell Johnson TOPICS IN RHETORICAL AND POETIC THEORY: RHETORIC, SCIENCE, AND MEDICINE MW noon-1:30 1 American Poetry Since 1970: Up Late, ed. by Andrei Codrescu, New York: Four Walls/Eight Windows, Judy Grahn, Frigga with Hela, p. 283 acodrescu@gmail.com Office: 26 Allen Hall ADVANCED SCREENWRITING - This is an advanced workshop. Students will write and critique each other's work with the goal of writing a feature length screenplay. Emphasis is on quality not quantity of pages; therefore, it is expected that students will edit their work before turning in pages. This course is designed for students familiar with screenplay format and structure. Students will also watch films and read scripts throughout the semester. Kaynine82@hotmail.com Office: 244C Allen Hall Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student - This course provides an opportunity for students to read in depth the important texts of classical antiquity on rhetoric and to explore the uses of the ancient tradition for the study of such Renaissance writers as Shakespeare and for the analysis of modern texts. Primary readings include works by the Sophists, Plato s Gorgias and Phaedrus, Aristotle s Rhetoric, Isocrates Antidosis and Against the Sophists, Cicero s De Oratore, and Quintilian s InstitutioOratoria. Among the works to which we will apply ancient rhetorical theory are Shakespeare s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, selections from the Federalist Papers, and essays by Montaigne, Emerson, Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, and Toni Morrison. Requirements include one oral report, three short papers, and a final research paper. mzerba@lsu.edu Office: 223-E Allen Hall TOPICS IN RHETORICAL AND POETIC THEORY What is the natural world, and how might we know it? What is the human, and how might we know it? What are the ethics of that knowing? Rhetorical study of science and medicine is a relatively new endeavor; the field is animated, however, by some of the oldest questions humans have asked of themselves and the world in which they live. Although this course builds from a foundation of rhetorical theory, we also will draw from scholarship in the history, philosophy, sociology, and cultural studies of science and medicine (and will explore the tensions between these fields). The course will proceed in two acts. The first is designed to build a theoretical vocabulary with regard to the subject matter; the second will use this vocabulary to investigate the articulations between science, medicine, technology, bodies, nature, culture, and language in a series of case studies. Primary texts may include Kuhn s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Foucault s The Order of Things, Gross s Starring the Text: The Place of

3 English 7724 Prof. Michelle Massé TOPICS IN FEMINIST THEORY AND CRITICISM: FEMINIST PEDAGOGIES Tu 3:00-6: C Allen English 7942 Prof. Paul Cefalu TOPICS IN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE: RENAISSANCE NON-DRMATIC POETRY Tu 6:00-9:00 Rhetoric in Science Studies, Latour s Reassembling the Social: an Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, Canguilhem s The Normal and the Pathological, Montgomery s Doctors Stories: The Narrative Construction of Medical Knowledge, and works by Haraway, Kenneth Burke, Nietzsche, Heidegger and others. Students will be expected to write two short essays, and one book review and article-length essay directed toward publication in a journal of their choice. A technical background in science is not a prerequisite for the course (much to the chagrin of certain critics), although a healthy interest in science and medicine will serve you well. jjohn@lsu.edu Office: 237 H Allen Hall Studies in Feminist Theory: Feminist Pedagogies - In higher education teaching once seemed to be the placid step-sister of scholarship, accomplished only through the spontaneous overflow of knowledge. What, how, and why we teach, the roles of teacher and student, and the connections among courses, curricula, and institutions have become important subjects of inquiry in the last two decades, however. Feminist theory has been central to that discussion. The focus of this seminar will be looking at influential statements on gender and pedagogy, as well as critiquing them. Is a "decentered" classroom possible? Is it necessarily feminist? What combination of subject matter, explicit pedagogical assumptions, mode of presentation, instructor's stance, or students' expectations identifies a class as "feminist"? Discussion format, daily journals, several short essays, longer final essay, and class presentation. Renaissance Poetry mmasse@lsu.edu Office: 212 P Allen Hall In this course we will study Early Modern English religious poetry. Poets will include not only the metaphysicals (including Jon Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, and Thomas Traherne), but also religious poets with varying theological and stylistic leanings, including Aemelia Lanyer and John Milton. While we will undertake close readings of selected poems, we will read a substantial amount of foundational religious and philosophical material in order to place such poems in their proper Early Modern contexts. To this end, the poetry will be supplemented with classical, early Christian, and Reformation primary material, including not only Saint Paul s epistles, but also selections from Aristotle s Nichomachean Ethics, Plato s Symposium and Phaedrus, Augustine s Confessions, Calvin s Institutes, Luther s lectures and sermons, as well as a range of treatises, commentaries, and sermons by English Puritans, Anglicans, and Arminians. Some of our recurring topics will include the fundamental distinction between agape and eros, the nature of justification by faith and the ordo salutis generally, Puritan vocationalism, the twokingdoms doctrine, sermon-centered piety, and political theology. If we have time, we might also consider the ways in which Early Modern religious poetry influenced the later romantic and modern poetry of William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, and

4 English 7963 Prof. Daniel Novak TOPICS IN 19 th CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE: ENGLAND S OTHER OTHERS- IRISH, JEWS, AND GYPSIES IN 19 TH CENTURY LITERATURE AND CULTURE W 6:00-9: C Allen English 7972 Prof. Brannon Costello: TOPICS IN SOUTHERN LITERATURE: EUDORA WELTY AND SOUTHERN STUDIES Th 6:00-9:00 English 7974 Prof. Rick Moreland TOPICS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE: FAULKNER AND SOCIAL CHANGE TuTh 1:30-3:00 others. Cefalu@lsu.edu Office: 237-E Allen Hall England s Other Others: Irish, Jews, and Gypsies in Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Culture Recent work in race and post-colonial studies has paid a good deal of attention to the presence of Others within Britain and in the British Colonies during the nineteenth century. Yet, while post-colonialist critics are right to remind us of the omnipresence of Imperialism in Victorian culture, the colonial imaginary has often stood in for other theories of race, even in studies that treat forms of otherness within European whiteness. This course will ask whether and how the British represented less visibly different populations in their own borders or near them in Europe differently. Do the British extend models of Orientalism and racial hierarchy to the Irish, Gypsies, and Jews, or do they construct a different racial imaginary? We will also examine the ways in which class and gender are read through the prism of race. Eudora Welty and Southern Studies - dnovak@lsu.edu Office: 212-B Allen Hall On the occasion of her centennial, this course will survey a broad range of Eudora Welty's fiction, with a particular focus on the ways in which different eras in southern literary studies have produced different Weltys and on how fresh examination of Welty's work might suggest new approaches to southern literary studies. bcostell@lsu.edu Office: 212-A Allen Hall Topics in American Literature: Faulkner and Social Change Known for his attention to the presence of the past ("The past is never dead. It's not even past"), Faulkner also constantly wrote about social change. This seminar will explore a range of theories of social change for example, providential, natural, organicist, Marxist, functionalist, psychoanalytic, developmentalist, revolutionary, cyclical, constructivist, feminist, social-movement, ecocritical, postcolonialist and a range of ways Faulker's writing addresses social change for example, its causes, forms, directions, breaks, turns, mechanisms, agents, obstacles, ebbs, motivations, consequences, traumas, reactions, desires, slowness, speed, persistence, and urgency. We will focus on Faulkner but with frequent comparisons to excerpts or shorter works by other US writers, including Mark Twain, W. E. B. Du Bois, Gertrude Stein, Mary McCarthy, and Don DeLillo. Regular, frequent writing and discussion building toward a research paper. enmore@lsu.edu Office: 210-H Allen Hall

5 English 7981 Prof. Joseph Kronick TOPICS IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE: THE DEFENSE OF POETRY FROM ARISTOTLE TO AUDEN TuTh noon-1:30 Modernism and the Defense of Poetry - It has been said that there is nothing modern about the concept of modernity. While we still use the term to identify a literary movement of the early twentieth century, modernity names the desire to wipe out the past and be something new. As such, modernity names something essential about literature: it desires to be something more than a mere representation; it desires to be itself a generative act. Ever since Plato dismissed poetry for dealing with images or imitations and for teaching us nothing, poetry has sought to defend itself as either a mode of knowledge or as a form of action. This course will investigate the problem of modernity as it manifests itself in the defense of poetry from the neo-classical era to modernism. Our focus will be on two key representatives of modernism, W. B. Yeats, who called himself and his friend Lady Gregory the last romantics, and T. S. Eliot, who said all great poetry aspires to classicism. The problem of justifying poetry will be treated as both a critical and historical problem, particularly in major poems from Pope to Auden. To this end, we will begin with a brief look at Plato s attack on poetry and Aristotle s response and then turn to highly selective readings in neo-classicism, romanticism, and modernism. In the neo-classical era the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns was a moment when poets began to write reflectively about modernity. The romantics repeat the same dynamic that drove the defenders of the modern: in presupposing a constant experimentalism, the indefinite attainment of originality, generation after generation, the romantics paradoxically discovered their dependence upon the past. The Victorians moral earnestness should not obscure that their romantic emphasis on immediate experience, the principle that experience is primary and certain, whereas analytic reflection is secondary and problematical, repeats the romantic division between thought and sensation. This division haunts the symbolists and decadents who so influenced the modernists. Modernism presents itself as an end of or even fulfillment of history. It is the last avant garde. We wind up with a paradox: in using the term historically and naming a period modern, we declare the impossibility of literature to be modern, a spontaneous and new beginning. It is immediately folded back into the past. Our readings will explore this paradox and other problems in considering modernism and will include major statements on the function of poetry by poets, philosophers, and theorists, such as Pope, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Arnold, Tennyson, Pater, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Pound, Auden, Adorno, Benjamin, Heidegger, and de Man. jkronic@lsu.edu Office: 260-K Allen Hall