Department of English

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Spring 2007 Schedule

 

 

Course #

Course Name

Instructor

Time

Days

Bldg/Room

 

 

 

 

 

 

ENGL 601

 

Academic Writing for International Students

Lee, Yuna

3:00-4:15

 

MW

 

GL 302

ENGL 606

 

Rhetoric Theory & Practice

Danielewicz

3:00-5:30

M

GL 301

ENGL 660

 

War In Shakespeare

Armitage

3:30-4:45

TR

GL 221

ENGL 662.001

(UG & GR)

ENGL 662.002

 

History of Literary Criticism

Flaxman

 

6:00-8:30

 

M

GL 107

ENGL 666

 

Queer Latina/o Photography & Literature

DeGuzman

2:00-3:15

TR

GL 302

ENGL 781

 

Pro-Seminar: 1500-1660

 

Barbour

12:00-12:50

MWF

GL 526B

ENGL 782

 

Pro-Seminar:  1660-1770

Salvaggio

11:00-12:15

TR

 

WI 139

ENGL 785

 

Pro-Seminar: 20th Century

"Mixed Race America"

Ho

12:30-1:45

TR

 

GL 104

ENGL 814
Eble
2:00-2:50
MWF
GL 221

ENGL 821

 

Seminar in Middle English Literature

 

Kennedy

5:00-6:15

TR

 

GL 302

ENGL 842

 

Seminar in Victorian Literature

Life

2:00-4:30

R

HM 351

 

ENGL 844

 

Seminar in American Literature

1860-1900

Thrailkill

2:00-4:30

T

HO 100

ENGL 850

 

Studies in English/American Poetry

20th Century

Lensing

3:30-6:00

R

DE 205

ENGL 857

 

Studies in English/American Literature

20th Century

C A N C E L E D

Allen

11:00-12:15

TR

GL 107

ENGL 861

 

Seminar in Literary & Cultural Theory

Jack

11:00-12:15

TR

GL 316

ENGL 874

 

Literature of the US South: Special Topics

Gwin

3:30-6:00

T

DE 205

 

 

 

 

 

 

         

 

 


 

ENGL 601

Academic Writing for International Students (ENG 601)

Short Description
Designed to help international graduate students improve skills in academic writing. Attention to organization, style, flow, and presentation of an academic paper.

Detailed Description
This course is intended to help international graduate students improve their skills in academic writing. Students start with writing at a paragraph level and progress to writing essays, summaries, analysis, and literature review. Some attention is given to exploring the organization, flow, and presentation of a thesis and dissertation. Assignments include grammar exercises, several short papers, and online discussions.

 

 

ENGL 606

Rhetoric Theory & Practice

Prof. Jane Danielewicz

 

Rhetorical Theory and Practice, will introduce you to current theories and practices of teaching writing in preparation for teaching in the UNC Writing Program. We will survey rhetorical and critical theories and discuss strategies and practices for teaching writing that grow out of theory. Teaching writing has changed radically in the last thirty years, and even more dramatically in the last ten years with the introduction of technology. It is critical to understand traditional practices such as writing workshop and group feedback, and to learn new types of composing, such as multi-media, but it is equally important to know the history and theory behind current practices in teaching writing. Writing assignments will include position papers and a philosophy of teaching writing essay. Projects will include a teaching observation/report as well as a complete course design for teaching English 101.

 

 

 

ENGL 660

War In Shakespeare

Prof. Christopher Armitage

 

 

This course examines the causes, conduct, and results of wars as depicted in about 18 of Shakespeares plays. They include all his Roman histories, most of his English histories, all his major tragedies, even some of his comedies, e.g. Alls Well That Ends Well. My methodology will differ from the traditional one used in courses about Shakespeare, e.g. for Hamlet, my focus will not be his problems with his fathers ghost, his uncle, his mother, his girlfriend, but the pending invasion of Denmark by Fortinbras of Norway, its getting diverted to attack the Poles instead, Hamlets great soliloquy on the madness of slaughter to win a worthless bit of land--events which are the macrocosmic frame of the play. Another feature will be the relating of such aspects of the plays to their historical context. For example, Henry Vs victory at Agincourt will be looked at in the play, and in Olivers and Branaghs movies of the play, and in John Keegans account in The Face of Battle of what being in that battle meant in human terms.
Requirements: Quzzes on assigned readings, several short papers for undergrads, longer for graduate students. Midterm and final exams.

Texts: The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, 5th edition

 

 

 

 

 

 

ENGL 662.002

History of Literary Criticism

Prof. Gregg Flaxman

 

For the Grad and mixed grad/undergrad classes:

 

Introduction to Theory: "Psychoanalysis and Schizoanalysis"

Prof. Flaxman

This course is designed to introduce students to one of the most important, and least resolved, confrontations in the history of "what is called theory.” In the 1970s, at the same time that French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan enjoyed unprecedented celebrity, a number of philosophers (chief among them, Gilles Deleuze) launched a rival discourse which came to be known as “schizoanalysis.” This course will begin by recapitulating the conflict between psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis in terms of a more general opposition between competing semiotic regimes--an opposition which come to fruition, so to speak, in the "pseudo-aphanisis" of Lacan or Deleuze. Hence, in this course we will take this forced (and false) choice as the basis with which to stake out both the historical constituents of two distinct semiotic lineages and, thence, to understand how we can fashion relations between these lineages in the name of a theory to come. Below is a preliminary list of the texts we will read in the class:

 

Descartes, Meditations

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams    (selections) and selected letters to Fliess

Freud, Essays on Metapsychology (selections)

Freud, The Psychotic Dr. Schreber

Lacan, Écrits (selections)

Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis

Jacques Alain-Miller, selected essays

Willy Apollon, Danielle Bergeron, Lucie Cantin, After Lacan

Émile Benveniste, selected essays

Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

Michel Foucault, excerpt from The Order of Things (on Psychoanalysis and Ethnography); "Discouse on Language"; The History of Sexuality (Volume 1)

Jean-Francois Lyotard, Libidinal Economy

Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus

Deleuze, “What is Structuralism?” and selections from Logic of Sense; "To Have Done with Judgment"; Foucault

Witold Gombrovich, Cosmos

Zizek, Organs Without Bodies

Badiou, The Clamor of Being

 

 

 

ENGL 666

Queen Latina/o Photography & Literature

Prof. Maria DeGuzman

This course explores novels and short stories by Latina/o writers that focus in one way or another on photographs & photography that simultaneously question (or "queer") certain cultural givens about gender, sexuality, and subjectivity. We will inquire into the connections between this double-focus. At the same time we will examine actual photo-based visual work by Latina/o artists. Textual and visual works considered include those by Sheila Ortiz-Taylor, Achy Obejas, Leo Romero, Elias Miguel Munoz, Graciela Limon, John Rechy, Frances Negron-Muntaner, Laura Aguilar, Alma Lopez, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Alex Damian Reyes, Gerardo Suter, and others.

ENGL 781

Pro-Seminar: 1500-1660

Renaissance

Prof. Reid Barbour

A study of prose, poetry, and drama representing the dynamic and complex ways in which the social, political, religious, moral, epistemological, natural, and discursive concerns of the period interacted with one another.

Key texts by More, Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Hooker, Donne, Jonson, Herbert, Marvell, Bacon, Browne, and Milton.

 

ENGL 782

Pro-Seminar, 1660-1770

18th Century

Prof. Ruth Salvaggio

The 18 th century has figured prominently in the shaping of contemporary critical theory, notably in the postmodern turn from enlightenment narratives, in feminist and postcolonial critiques of modern economies and naturalized hierarchies, in theories that locate the solidification of racial and sexual categories and modern subjectivity itself in the long eighteenth century. In this proseminar, we will turn our attention to the dynamic through which contemporary theory and historical literatures evolve. Specifically, we will ask how 18 th-century canons, both traditional and emerging, have been shaped by the late 20 th-century turn to theory, and how the changing field of contemporary theory continues to be informed by bodies of historical texts. We will read select works from a range of Restoration and 18 th-century writers including Behn, Dryden, Philips, Pope, Finch, Swift, Equiano, Leapor, and from select contemporary theorists such as Adorno, Butler, Foucault, Benhabib, Haraway. The aim of the proseminar is to familiarize students with a changing field of literary study that has provided contemporary theory with some of its most important vectors, and to foster an understanding of theory itself as constantly being reconfigured by the texts and cultures it engages.

The annual conference of the American Society for 18 th-Century Studies is devoting significant attention this year to questions of theory and the 18 th century (the Graduate Caucus panel addresses this issue specifically). Since the conference will be held in Atlanta, March 22-25, around the time when you will be preparing your own final papers, we will investigate the possibility of some of us attending the conference (schedules and funding permitting), and will at least use the detailed program description for insight into the kinds of projects now consuming scholars in this interdisciplinary field. In addition to a final paper for the proseminar, there will be frequent in-class reports on the readings to set the terms for our discussion.

ENGL 785

Pro-Seminar, 20 th Century

“Mixed Race America”

Prof. Jennifer Ho

The subject of race continues to be one of the most enduringly divisive and controversial subjects in the United States. And even at the turn into the 21 st century, as a nation we have not developed an adequate and comfortable common ground or common language to discuss, honestly and openly, our concerns, mis-conceptions, questions, interests, anxieties, and hopes in terms of race. This proseminar will focus on the issue of race in U.S. literature, especially the topic of a “mixed race” America. Mixing canonical works of U.S. literature from the 20 th Century (The Great Gatsby, The Crying of Lot 49, The Bluest Eye) with lesser known works (Black No More, Almanac of the Dead, Aloft) as well as works that deal explicitly with theories of race and identity, this course will explore the trope of race in American literature of the 20 th Century. Intended as an introduction to both the field of 20 th Century American literature as well as race & ethnic studies, we will think about how the primary texts (and other modes of cultural production like film, drama, photography) reflect the way that Americans represent race in the U.S., especially the concept of racial hybridity and multiracial identities.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

wRacial Formation in the United States, from the 1960s to the 1990s (Second Edition)

Michael Omi & Howard Winant

wIdentity Studies Reader – Ed. Linda Martin Alcoff

wThe Great Gatsby– F. Scott Fitzgerald

wBlack No More– George Schulyer

wThe Crying of Lot 49

wThe Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison

wAlmanac of the Dead – Leslie Marmon Silko

wAloft – Chang-rae Lee

 

ENGL 814

History of the English Language

Prof. Connie Eble

SUBJECT MATTER: An overview of the major changes in the English language from Proto-Indo-European through the eighteenth century, with particular attention to the historic and social factors that affected the community of English speakers and their language. Early weeks of the course will be devoted to learning a simplified system of phonetic transcription and in mastering the use of the Appendix of Indo-European roots in the third or fourth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary.

 TEXTS: The main textbook will be Thomas Pyles and John Algeo, The Origins and Development of the English Language, 4th ed., which should be available used. Reading assignments will also include portions of David Crystal's The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 1995, and some of the essays in the American Heritage Dictionary. Crystal and AHD are available in the library.

TESTS AND EXAM: Two tests and an open-book final examination.

RESEARCH PROJECT: Students are urged to develop a research project that focuses on the English language and that pertains to their major or minor area of graduate study. The research project has four parts: a one-page prospectus due before Spring Break; a ten-minute oral presentation in mid-April; a 15-20 page written paper, due the last day of class; a one-page abstract of the research project to be submitted with the final version of the paper.

MISCELLANEOUS: Class attendance is expected. The grade Incomplete is not given.

 

 

ENGL 821

Seminar in Middle English Literature

Medieval Drama

Prof. Don Kennedy

 

A seminar in medieval liturgical and other church dramas and vernacular mystery and morality plays of the Middle Ages. The course will consider the plays both aesthetically and in relation to the culture that produced them. Also considered will be methods of staging and major research tools in the field.  In the textbook, the Latin, Anglo-Norman, and German plays are edited in the original languages along with translations; the English plays are in Middle English with marginal glosses. Thus some familiarity with Middle English will be useful. Students will be expected to give reports on assigned readings, work up a lecture/discussion on at least one play, and write a major term paper and give a preliminary report on it. The papers will be due at the end of the semester during the exam period. No final exam.

 

Text: Medieval Drama, ed. David Bevington

 

 

ENGL 842

Seminar in Victorian Literature

Prof. Allen Life

 

Our topic in this seminar will be Pre-Raphaelitism; our focus will be on poetry by Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti, William Morris, and A. C. Swinburne. We will concentrate on the close reading of specific literary works, and we will explore affinities between these works and visual art, including the pictures of the Pre-Raphaelites themselves. Another central concern will be the influence on the Pre-Raphaelites of such predecessors as Keats, and of such older contemporaries as Tennyson and Robert Browning. These investigations will deepen our understanding of what one scholar has called “one of the most dynamic movements of the nineteenth century and perhaps the most aesthetically fecund progenitor of the twentieth.”

Exams and papers: four papers (1,000 to 1,250 words) for oral presentation to the seminar and for submission on the days they are presented.

Teaching methods: discussion focused largely on the papers presented to the seminar.

Texts: Cecil Y. Lang, ed., The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Circle.

 

 

 

ENGL 844

Seminar in American Literature 1860-1900

American Nervousness

Prof. Jane Thrailkill

This course draws its title from the nineteenth-century neurologist George Beard, who in 1869 warned that a novel malady, neurasthenia, was affecting American men and women. Following Beard, we’ll take the nervous body as metaphor, index, casualty and construct of the United States’s uneven journey into modernity following the Civil War. In particular, we’ll examine the ideas about agency, identity, and representation that are raised – or avoided – through appeal to the nervous body. We will supplement the literature of this period with critical essays, historical documents (drawn from such fields as medicine, philosophy, evolutionary biology, and psychology), and recent work theorizing the intersection of the sciences and the humanities. Students will present case studies of pertinent nineteenth-century cultural innovations and events, such as the rise of the railroad and telegraph, the time management studies of Frederick Taylor, the trial of President Garfield’s assassin, and the medical theories of Victorian “sexologists.” By recovering pre-Freudian controversies about the nervous body we’ll aim to theorize for ourselves the possibilities and limits of disciplinary cross fertilization.

Literary texts will likely include :

• Kate Chopin , A Night in Acadie (selections) and “The Storm”

• Charles Chesnutt , Conjure Tales and Stories of the Color Line

• Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage and “The Monster”

• Emily Dickinson , selected “brain” poetry

• Mary Wilkins Freeman , A New England Nun and Other Stories (selections)

• Charlotte Perkins Gilman , “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Women and Economics (selections)

• Oliver Wendell Holmes , Elsie Venner: A Romance of Destiny and “Mechanism in Thought and Morals”

• Pauline Hopkins , Of One Blood: or, The Hidden Self

• Alice James , The Diary of Alice James

• Henry James , The Beast in the Jungle, The Turn of the Screw, “In the Cage,” and “The Jolly Corner”

• Frank Norris , Vandover and the Brute and “Why Women Should Write the Best Novels: And Why They Don’t.”

Critical, scholarly, and theoretical texts will include work by, among others, Bill Brown, Cynthia Davis, Leon Edel, Jennifer Fleissner, Michel Foucault, Randall Knoper, Peter Logan, Janet Oppenheim, Thomas Otten, Augusta Rohrbach, Charles Rosenberg, Dianne Sadoff, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Elaine Showalter, Carol Smith-Rosenberg, Pamela Thurschwell, Ken Warren, Elizabeth A. Wilson

Requirements : a twenty-minute historical presentation, a close reading of a literary work, a critical précis of a scholarly article, and a seminar paper (approx. 20-25 pages). There will also be a web-based discussion forum.

 

 

 

ENGL 850

Studies in English/American Poetry in the 20th Century

The Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney

Prof. George Lensing

 

The course will examine in depth the poetry of the American Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), the British Philip Larkin (1922-1985), and the Irish Seamus Heaney (b. 1939).

The first half of each class meeting will be given over to individual student reports; in the second half we will examine the poems themselves in close readings. Students will be asked to keep a reading notebook and to write a longer term-paper on one of the three poets.

 

 

ENGL 861

Seminar in Literary & Cultural Theory

Feminist Theories of Language

Prof. Jordynn Jack

 

 

This course will introduce students to feminist theories of language and rhetoric. Topics will include silence/silencing, language and identity, critiques of sexist language and debates on nonsexist language usage, gender and genre, feminist rhetorical analysis, and feminist criticism. We will read and analyze texts by a range of historical and contemporary writers, including Margaret Fell, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Anna Julia Cooper, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells, Emma Goldman, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich, Helene Cixous, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, bell hooks, Judith Butler, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Assignments will include regular response papers, one short writing assignment, and a major research project.

 

 

 

 

 

ENGL 874

Special Topc: Literature of the US South

Memory, Trauma, History, and Literature of the U.S. South

Prof. Minrose Gwin

 

In what multiple senses, in Faulkner’s words, is the past “never past”? What are literature’s ethical and aesthetic responsibilities to actual lived lives, to cultural memory, to massive historical interventions? What kinds of forms and structures does an aesthetic attentiveness to history, especially a violent history, require of a writer? Is there an aesthetics of historical memory that is distinct from historiography? When and through what means does literature about history become a vehicle for cultural mourning and memorialization? How do mourning and memorialization both solidify and destabilize the idea of nation? Exploring these and other questions around history, memory, trauma, testimony, and voice, we will be reading twentieth-century American literature from and about the U.S. South that directly addresses and evokes specific historical events. We also will think about how certain sites of cultural trauma may become obscured or forgotten as history but re-emerge, phantom-like, in art. To engage and enlarge these questions about how texts re-member, our readings will also include selections from Michel de Certeau, Hortense Spillers, Paul Ricoeur, C. Vann Woodward, Patricia Williams, Dominick LaCapra, Hayden White, Joan Scott, Gerda Lerner, Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub, Linda Hutcheon, Hannah Arendt, Laura Vickroy, Toni Morrison, Renee Romano, Fitzhugh Brundage, and perhaps one or two others.

The Center for the Study of the American South has a full schedule of speakers during part of our class time, so we also will attend lectures of special interest to us as a group.

Requirements include: a series of short reading responses to be shared in class; an article-length paper; a group historical report that backgrounds a particular literary text or group of texts; and facilitation of discussion of one theoretical essay.

Readings:

William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

Toni Morrison, Beloved

Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men

Lewis Nordan, Wolf Whistle

Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi

Eudora Welty, “Where Is the Voice Coming From?”

Bobbie Ann Mason, “ Shiloh”

Denise Giardina, Storming Heaven (John Sayles film Matewan)

Tayari Jones, Leaving Atlanta

Selected poems of Allen Tate, Brenda Marie Osbey, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Yusef Kumunyakaa, Margaret Walker, Nikki Giovanni, Alice Walker, Dave Smith, R. T. Smith, and Andrew Hudgins.