Graduate Courses Spring 2010 Macomb Campus
English 400G — Topics In Literature
Section 1 — Timothy Helwig
Topic: “Rewriting the American Dream”: American Literary Realism and Naturalism
Aim: The decades following the end of the American Civil War witnessed the rise of modern cities, the explosion of industrial production and capital investment, intensifying western expansion, and staggering population growth in the north; yet such national “progress” was marked by the rise of the notorious “Robber Barons” and corporate monopolies that helped to widen class divisions and sparked the eruption of sometimes violent anti-immigrant nativism, and the disenfranchisement of African-Americans through widespread segregation and intimidation. In addition to these important historical changes, American writers of the late nineteenth century also contended with new theories of human consciousness, the economic determinism of Karl Marx, and the naturalist theories of Charles Darwin. How writers responded in fiction to these cultural developments will be the primary subject of this course as we explore the psychological realism of Henry James and Edith Wharton; the writing of local colorists Mark Twain, Kate Chopin, and Charles W. Chesnutt; and the naturalist experiments of Stephen Crane, Jack London, and Frank Norris. By the end of the course, you will have a fuller understanding of the cultural, philosophical, and ideological influences on the major literary movements of American realism and naturalism.
Assignments: Reading Quizzes, Critical Article Presentation, Essays, and Exams
Teaching Method: Guided Discussion and Lecture
Tentative Reading List: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening; Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets; Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady; Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf; Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson; and other texts to be determined.
Pre-requisite: ENG 299 with a grade of “C” or better, or consent of the instructor
ENG 483G Professional Editing
Section 1 — Neil Baird
Aim: In this course, students will learn about the field of professional editing. In doing so, students will work on developing their skills, especially in the areas of copyediting, by applying professional editing techniques to real manuscripts.
Teaching Method: Classroom Discussion; Collaborative Group Projects
Assignments: Editing Portfolio; Completion of a Collaborative Editing Project
Tentative Reading List: Amy Einsohn’s The Copyeditor’s Handbook
Prerequisite: Eng 180 and 280 and one other ENG professional writing course
ENG 536 Critical and Theoretical Movements in Literary Studies
Section 1 - David Banash
Introduction: “What will happen next?” This question expresses the desire at the heart of story, and for most readers story is literature. Story keeps the pages turning and weaves a spell, convincing us that we are in other worlds and subject to other fates. Narrative produces story. Unlike figurative tropes that largely elude translation (as they say, poetry is exactly what is lost in a translation), narrative is transmissible from form to form (think of the novel become film become graphic novel, etc.). Though all those iterations, the form and function of the narrative remains a virtual and vital constant. Indeed, narrative structures not only imaginative literature but our identity, our shared history, and our deepest experiences of meaning and time.
Aim: Over the semester, we will strive to understand narrative, name its distinct parts and functions, and survey key theories of it from the Ancients to the Postmodernists. We will see how this theory works as we read ancient drama (Sophocles Oedipus), the folk and fairy tales of The Arabian Nights, and contemporary short stories, films, graphic novels, and more.
Assignments: Will include short summary and response papers throughout the semester, and a longer final project.
Tentative Reading List: The Arabian Nights, trans. Husain Haddawy (New York: Norton, 1990) isbn 978-0-393-33166-0; The Narrative Reader, ed. Martin McQuillan (New York: Routledge, 2000) isbn 0-415-20533-6; John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse (New York: Anchor, 1988) isbn 978-0385240871; Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984).
Prerequisite: Graduate standing
ENG 549 Issues in Literature
Section 1 - Marjorie Allison
Aim: Eng 549 is a course which explores a contemporary issue in literary studies. This spring it will be about considering literature in terms of various types of canon formation, primarily centered this time on novels of the British commonwealth which have been named Booker Award Winners (currently the Man Booker Award). In reading several “Booker” novels, we will explore what makes an “award winning book,” especially in light of a post-colonial, British Commonwealth award. We will examine how these particular authors and texts support or subvert the master narratives “received” from the British Isles, how stereotypes are challenged, and how new cultural identities are formed. Finally, we will consider how the books on this list begin to “speak” to each other when read together and if they are forming a useful canon of their own.
Teaching Method: Discussion and student-centered class
Assignments: --two to three working papers, five-pages each --longer term paper—conference to article length --discussion leader --blog
Tentative Reading List: such texts as Yann Martel’s Life of Pi; J. M. Coetzee Disgrace; Keri Hulme’s The Bone People; Ben Okri’s The Famished Road
Prerequisite: Graduate standing
ENG 574 New Media
Sections 200 — Bradley Dilger
Taught in Macomb with video link to the Quad Cities. I will travel to the Quad Cities at least twice during the semester to meet with students.
Aim: Focus TBD. We tackle the issues named in this older course description, specified as needed: What does it mean to write in an age where, as W. J. T Mitchell observes, writing is just another stream of bits flowing through a cable, projected on a screen, or even moved through the air? How can the literary and rhetorical approaches of English studies be applied to artifacts which traditionalists would consider “not part of English” because they are not books or essays? How can the methods of established disciplines such as cinema studies help us understand other kinds of moving pictures, as Lev Manovich claims? What are the implications, for “old” and “new” media, of the epistemological shift Greg Ulmer traces in contemporary culture—from orality to literacy to electracy? Why, indeed, do we use the term “new media” to describe networked writing, electronic gaming, digital cinema, and other forms—weren’t all media “new media” at one time or another? While our focus is rhetorical, poetic, and hermeneutic analysis of new media texts, and intensive study of new media theory, we will also engage the production of new media. For example, we’ll discuss our texts online, we’ll make web pages, we’ll manipulate photos with Adobe Photoshop, we’ll play computer games which allow extension and creation of virtual worlds, and, time permitting, we’ll produce short films or interactive media. However, this work will be geared towards understanding the texts and theories we read, the cultural significance of these media, and their effect on established forms and genres—not mastery of any given software application or production skill. While I will certainly encourage you to cultivate such abilities on your own, in this course production is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Teaching Method: Discussion of material, studio work, online collaboration.
Assignments: active participation, semester project (academic essay or mediawork).
Tentative Reading List: TBD, but will include a mix of media studies and new media theory, such as Hayles, Jenkins, Ulmer, Manovich, Spinuzzi, Gitelman & Pingree, and Shirky. We will also include some work with new media and writing studies, such as Rice, Sirc, Kress, and Selfe & Hawisher. Expect six books and complimentary essays.
Prerequisite: Graduate Standing. Prior proficiency in the writing of web pages from ENG 480, your own study, or courses in other departments is expected.
Quad Cities Campus
ENG 536 Critical and Theoretical Movements in Literary Studies
Section Q01 - David Banash
Introduction: “What will happen next?” This question expresses the desire at the heart of story, and for most readers story is literature. Story keeps the pages turning and weaves a spell, convincing us that we are in other worlds and subject to other fates. Narrative produces story. Unlike figurative tropes that largely elude translation (as they say, poetry is exactly what is lost in a translation), narrative is transmissible from form to form (think of the novel become film become graphic novel, etc.). Though all those iterations, the form and function of the narrative remains a virtual and vital constant. Indeed, narrative structures not only imaginative literature but our identity, our shared history, and our deepest experiences of meaning and time.
Aim: Over the semester, we will strive to understand narrative, name its distinct parts and functions, and survey key theories of it from the Ancients to the Postmodernists. We will see how this theory works as we read ancient drama (Sophocles Oedipus), the folk and fairy tales of The Arabian Nights, and contemporary short stories, films, graphic novels, and more.
Assignments: Will include short summary and response papers throughout the semester, and a longer final project.
Tentative Reading List: The Arabian Nights, trans. Husain Haddawy (New York: Norton, 1990) isbn 978-0-393-33166-0; The Narrative Reader, ed. Martin McQuillan (New York: Routledge, 2000) isbn 0-415-20533-6; John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse (New York: Anchor, 1988) isbn 978-0385240871; Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984).
Prerequisite: Graduate standing
ENG 549: Issues in Literary Studies
Section Q01 — Daniel Malachuk
Topic: Post-Wilderness Environmentalism and Antebellum U.S. Literature
Aim: In-depth examination of a current issue or topic relevant to literary studies, such as canon formation trends in textual research, etc.
Teaching Method: Seminar discussion
Assignments: A series of papers, one developed into a research paper
Tentative Reading List: Since its beginnings a century ago, the American environmental movement has been organized around wilderness preservation; most of the causes that matter most to American environmental organizations can be traced back to the notion that wilderness is salvific. In the last twenty years especially, many in literary studies have eagerly joined this movement, and, in the process, compiled a valuable cultural history of wilderness. Recently, though, a rival green politics has developed, one organized more around “the farm” than “the wild.” Well-known examples of this “post-wilderness environmentalism” include the work of Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan. This course examines related theoretical trends within green literary studies, but it focuses especially on a diverse group of literary texts from the period just before “the wild” itself was theorized as salvific. An antebellum “pre-wilderness environmentalist” literature might include some of the works we will read, including Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes (1844) and other writings by proto-feminist authors like Caroline Kirkland and Susan Cooper; Frederick Douglass’ “The Heroic Slave” (1853), Martin Delany’s Blake or The Huts of America (1859), and other black abolitionists; and an early work (A Week...) by one of the supposed authors of the salvific wild, Henry “Woodsburner” Thoreau. The required texts are: Fuller, Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 ISBN: 1604500220; Delany, Blake or The Huts of America (1859) ISBN: 080706419X; Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) ISBN: 0691118787
Prerequisite: Graduate standing
ENG 574 New Media
Section TQ1 — Bradley Dilger
Taught in Macomb with video link to the Quad Cities. I will travel to the Quad Cities at least twice during the semester to meet with students.
Aim: Focus TBD. We tackle the issues named in this older course description, specified as needed: What does it mean to write in an age where, as W. J. T Mitchell observes, writing is just another stream of bits flowing through a cable, projected on a screen, or even moved through the air? How can the literary and rhetorical approaches of English studies be applied to artifacts which traditionalists would consider “not part of English” because they are not books or essays? How can the methods of established disciplines such as cinema studies help us understand other kinds of moving pictures, as Lev Manovich claims? What are the implications, for “old” and “new” media, of the epistemological shift Greg Ulmer traces in contemporary culture—from orality to literacy to electracy? Why, indeed, do we use the term “new media” to describe networked writing, electronic gaming, digital cinema, and other forms—weren’t all media “new media” at one time or another? While our focus is rhetorical, poetic, and hermeneutic analysis of new media texts, and intensive study of new media theory, we will also engage the production of new media. For example, we’ll discuss our texts online, we’ll make web pages, we’ll manipulate photos with Adobe Photoshop, we’ll play computer games which allow extension and creation of virtual worlds, and, time permitting, we’ll produce short films or interactive media. However, this work will be geared towards understanding the texts and theories we read, the cultural significance of these media, and their effect on established forms and genres—not mastery of any given software application or production skill. While I will certainly encourage you to cultivate such abilities on your own, in this course production is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Teaching Method: Discussion of material, studio work, online collaboration.
Assignments: active participation, semester project (academic essay or mediawork).
Tentative Reading List: TBD, but will include a mix of media studies and new media theory, such as Hayles, Jenkins, Ulmer, Manovich, Spinuzzi, Gitelman & Pingree, and Shirky. We will also include some work with new media and writing studies, such as Rice, Sirc, Kress, and Selfe & Hawisher. Expect six books and complimentary essays.
Prerequisite: Graduate Standing. Prior proficiency in the writing of web pages from ENG 480, your own study, or courses in other departments is expected.
