Spring 2004 Course Descriptions

ENGL 601 Seminar in Verse Composition     Dings      TTH 11-12:15      Hu 308
This course is open only to students who are officially enrolled in the MFA program (any genre) and those who are not enrolled but who have prior permission from the instructor.  A writing sample will have to be approved before such permission will be granted. The primary activity will be the intensive discussion of peer work; however, several books of poetry will be required reading, and several technique-oriented poems will be required in response to the readings. Other poems will be entirely the project of the individual artist.  Professional quality work and the individuation of artistic style are the top priorities of this course. Please see the instructor if you have any questions.

ENGL 611   Publishing the Novel    Brinson/S. Johnson     W 5:30-8    Hu 308
Continuation of ENGL 610, with a shift in focus to exploration of the relationship of novels, stories, and literary non-fiction. Texts: Sena Jeter Naslund's Four Spirits, Diane McWhorter's Carry Me Home, and a collection of essays. Expectations: full participation in writing workshops, advancement in projects begun in 610, and completion of 30 polished pages of non-fiction.  

ENGL 701B    Teaching Composition     Rivers            TTH 8-9:30am    Hu 316
Introduction to the methods and critical principles of teaching literature at the college level. Required of and limited to Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics teaching assistants in their first year of teaching at USC and currently teaching English 102. Spring Semester only.

ENGL 705      Chaucer                            Aviram          M 5:30-8    Hu 312
A thorough reading of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. We shall devote special attention to Chaucer's ingenious games -- with narrative structures, devices, and genres; with language, dialect, and style; and with characters and types -- all in the context of the long background of literary history before Chaucer. Final projects will consist of oral presentations in a mock conference, in which each student will discuss a chosen tale against the background of its literary source or sources in order to reveal Chaucer's surprising and original design. Text: Larry Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer.  

ENGL 711  Shakespeare I: The Comedies and Histories    Levine  MW 12:50-2:05  Hu 308
This course will examine Shakespeare's comedies and English history plays within their cultural, political, and dramatic contexts. Classes will take up individual plays in conjunction with selected readings in Tudor cultural texts and recent critical practices (new historicism, cultural materialism, feminism and gender studies, psychoanalysis). Our concern will be to generate methods and materials for investigating the relationship between these plays and Elizabethan culture. Assignments: one seminar paper (15-20 pp.); one report on primary research (5-10 pp.); midterm and final; texts:  The Norton Shakespeare (or comparable edition), two or three critical texts, and a packet of photocopied materials.

ENGL 716         Milton                         Richey          TTH 9:30-10:45   Hu 312
We will be studying Milton as a seventeenth-century poet, prophet, and political revolutionary by thinking about how his poetry responds to the artistic, political, and spiritual issues of his time. Starting with his earliest lyrics and finishing with his brief epic, Paradise Regained, we will follow the entire course of Milton's career. We will, of course, spend the most time on his epic masterpiece Paradise Lost as we consider Milton's changing attitudes toward the English Church, women, prophecy, and spiritual transformation. Required Text: The Riverside Milton, ed. Roy Flannagan (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998). Required Critical Readings: photocopies and book list provided by Dr. Richey; you will be required to summarize and respond to critics.  Required Work: one short paper (4-5 pages), one long paper (15-20 pages), midterm and final exam.  Research will be required for both papers.

ENGL 717   English Lit. of the Restoration and Earlier 18th c.  Shifflett     TTH 12:30-1:45   Hu 312
A survey of English poetry, prose, and drama of the Restoration and earlier 18th century.

ENGL 723  British Poetry of the Romantic Period              Feldman       TTH 2-3:15pm   Hu 308
By examining the major statements by and about major canonical and noncanonical poets of the Romantic era, this course will provide the framework for a fuller understanding of all British and American 19th - and 20th -century literature. We will explore the transformation of aesthetic values from the mid eighteenth century to the present day by concentrating on those writers who made the most significant innovations during the Romantic era. We will read poetry by William Blake, Charlotte Smith, Joanna Baillie, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Anna Letitia Barbauld, John Clare, Robert Burns, Jane Taylor, Felicia Hemans, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Mary Tighe, and others. Assignments: two papers, 10-12 pages each; one oral report; final exam.  

ENGL 726    Victorian Poetry      Thesing   MW 2:10 - 3:25 Hu 308
Survey of major and selected minor Victorian poets; emphasizes the development of Victorian poetic theory and the contemporary critical response. Some poets that we are likely to study will include Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold, G.M. Hopkins, Thomas Hardy, as well as E. B. Browning, Christina Rossetti, Amy Levy, Charlotte Mew, Michael Field, and several others. Some general themes to be considered will include Victorian poetry and the city, religion, science, social and historical issues, gender relationships, and art. Supplementary photocopied packets and materials will be available at Universal Copies. Students should not purchase any textbooks until the final, definitive list is distributed at the first class meeting. Feel free to contact the instructor if you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns.  Assignments: oral reports on critical books and articles (one 5-page paper version); final essay exam; a 10-12 page term paper suitable for delivery at a conference or for publication (assistance from instructor will be offered to all students).  

ENGL 734     Modern Literary Theory           Steele          T 5:30-8    Hu 308
This course looks at the major problematics for the study of critical theory from the Enlightenment to the present.  Students will be introduced to the theoretical approaches to history, subjectivity, aesthetics, ethics, and politics that define the modern and postmodern eras.  The course will treat these theories as an historical dialogue, so that the conversation continually circles back to the questions and concerns of the earlier thinkers as it moves forward. Students will be asked to write a 20-page term paper that connects the material from the class to their area of expertise, to make an oral presentation (15 minutes maximum), and to write a take-home final exam.  

ENGL 738   American Women Writers      Davis      TH 5-7:30       Hu 308
Are They Any Good? American Women Writers and the Question of Literary Value: For as long as women have been writing, they've had to face questions about aesthetics. It isn't just that men have bemoaned their "scribbling"; many a literary foremother prefaced her work with a humble apologia. In this course, we'll examine a series of controversial works by authors from Wheatley to Walker. Our aim will be to elucidate–with the help of close readings, historical context, contemporary reviews, and critical articles–the vexing, contested issues of literary merit and lasting literary value. Authors will include the aforementioned plus Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, Gertrude Stein, and Sylvia Plath. Two reports, three short position papers, one final 20-page paper, and a one-hour mock comprehensive exam.  

ENGL 742  Early American Literature          Shields    TTH 12:30-1:45   Hu 308
The encounter with America shattered European categories of knowledge and belief. In the western hemisphere experiments in new sorts of community, personal identity, and perception fought with attempts to transport old political and economic schemes across the Atlantic. Imperial power fought with imperial power trying to establish dominion over a territory whose riches would transform nations into global powers. Confrontation with indigenous peoples forced settlers to confront their understanding of what humanity entailed. The writing inspired by America from 1492 to 1800 registered the wonder, greed, faith, hope, imagination, fear, and practical reason of generations of people who regarded the New World as an arena of self-creation and self-expression. We will examine several moments in the transformation of America from a zone of colonization to an array of sovereign nations. We will begin by studying the difference between the Catholic territorial empire instituted by Spain and the Protestant commercial empire erected by England. We shall explore the problems arising in England's “myriad-mindedness” about America—its contradictory impulses to treat it as a haven for religious purity, source of material wealth, dumping ground for indigents and criminals, and place of moral regeneration. We will examine the ecological crisis prompted by the imposition of Old World agriculture on a wild landscape and the human tragedy of resorting to bound labor and African chattel slavery to work the land. We will see the painful process of creating civil society from a disparate population and explore the formation of a political identity that could risk independence from Great Britain. Finally we shall explore the post-colonial condition of the early republic, reading its prophecies of national futurity and exploring the creation of popular as well as polite modes of expression.  

ENGL 759  Southern Revivals: Southern Literature after 1900        Whitted    TTH 3:30-4:45    Hu 308
Our investigation of southern fiction will be framed around the concept of “revival” - a term that evokes more than just the region's evangelical roots by calling attention to the wide-ranging themes of renewal and revision in twentieth-century southern literature. Central to our class discussions and assignments are works that wrestle with the ghosts of history, tradition, and ritual in order to awaken new literary forms and perspectives. How do southern writers generate fresh answers to age-old questions of regional identity, racial myth and representation, class consciousness, gender and sexuality, and religion and spirituality? In our readings, we will touch briefly upon the post-bellum plantation fiction of Joel Chandler Harris and Charles Chesnutt before delving into the Southern Renascence and the modern and contemporary literature of the New South by writers such as Hurston, Faulkner, the Agrarian Poets, Wright, O'Connor, Welty, Walker, Gaines, and others. Course requirements to include weekly response papers, a class presentation, and two research papers (12-15 pages each).

ENGL 761  Survey of 20th-C. British and American Poetry    Vanderborg  MW 10-11:15   Hu 308
A study of modern poetry from Whitman, Dickinson, and Hardy to Richard Wilbur and Philip Larkin.   

ENGL 776   Intro. to Descriptive Bibliography & Textual Criticism    Scott  W 9:05-11:35   TCL
(Cross-listed with CLIS 716)  
This course draws on the resources of Thomas Cooper Library's Special Collections to study the changing physical or material forms in which literature (and other texts) have been disseminated and preserved.  Over the past two hundred years, the library has acquired materials ranging from fifteenth-century incunabula and Renaissance maps to world-class collections of Burns, Darwin, Emerson, Whitman, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and others. For CLIS students, this cross-listed course provides an introduction to older materials and to the special issues they raise for librarians, both in general and specialist rare book settings. For students in English, it provides a broad overview of book history and an understanding of the methods and approaches through which scholars research the material text. The course provides an introduction to: the ways that books have been manufactured over the past 500 years; the methods that scholars (and librarians) have developed for describing the distinctive features of a printed book, and for analyzing its bibliographical make-up; the reference resources, both in print and electronic form, that are available to help in researching rare books; and the procedures, and theories about text, that editors commonly use to construct new editions of established works. A sub-theme of the course will be the interrelation between formal bibliographical scholarship and the apparently different aims and methods of, e.g., the book dealer's sale catalogue, on-line vendor cataloging, auction catalogues, exhibition catalogues, or the library cataloguer contributing to one of the major established electronic bibliographical utilities such as OCLC or RLIN.  Written Work: In addition to regular attendance, the course requires (1) a series of short practical exercises (some in class) involving bibliographical description, textual comparison, or the interpretation of bibliographical descriptions from standard sources; (2) two short exams based directly on material covered in class; and (3) a case-study, either bibliographical or editorial, on a book or short text chosen by the student after discussion with the instructor. Texts: to be announced. Meets in the Rare Books Room at Thomas Cooper Library .

ENGL 782   Varieties of American English   Weldon   TTH 12:30-1:45    Hu 315
(Cross-listed with LING 745)
This course will examine variation in American English. Social, regional, ethnic, and stylistic variation will be covered, along with models for collecting, describing, and applying knowledge about language variation. Special emphasis will be placed on vernacular varieties of American English, particularly in South Carolina and the American South. In addition, the course will survey current issues in the field of language variation and ongoing changes in American English.

ENGL 791  Intro. to Research on Composition     Friend     MW 12:50-2:05  Hu 312 
The past 30 years have brought an explosion of research in rhetoric and composition, with scholars investigating questions like these: How do people write? Why do some people experience difficulties with writing? How do texts work to persuade readers? How do cultural and social factors shape literacy? What are the most effective methods to teach writing? In this course, we'll examine a range of this research, looking at examples of qualitative and quantitative empirical studies, rhetorical criticism, and discourse analysis. We'll explore, among other things, the methods, underlying assumptions, strengths, and limitations of these different approaches. We'll also devote considerable time to learning the “nuts and bolts” of composition and rhetoric research—that is, to developing a research idea through the proposal stage, data collection, analysis and presentation. Major assignments will include several short reading response papers; a book or article review; several short, informal research exercises; an oral presentation; and a full-length research proposal. This course will be useful for anyone who wants to learn more about research on writing—those who are planning to conduct research themselves, those who want to learn to critically read the research published in composition and rhetoric journals, and those who simply want to know more about writing and teaching. Course Texts: Ralph Cintron, Angels Town; Sonja Foss, Rhetorical Criticism; Shirley Brice Heath, Ways with Words (optional); Ellen MacNealy, Empirical Research in Writing; Stephen North, The Making of Knowledge in Composition.  

ENGL 793   Rhetorical Theory,  Medieval to Modern      Holcomb     TTH 3:30-4:45   Hu 312
A survey of the major theories of rhetoric and composition from medieval to modern times focusing on 1500 to 1800.  

ENGL 794    Modern Rhetorical Theory   Muckelbauer  MW 2:10-3:25   Hu 312
This class begins from the premise that theory is a practice, and so our efforts will be directed toward procuring and developing some of the tools for this practice--with special attention to those discourses known as "post-" (post-structuralism, post-feminism, post-Marxism, etc.). In order to do so, we will focus on a series of concepts that have been circulating through recent theoretical discourse--including "power," "writing," "ethics," "subjectivity," and "culture." Texts will include work by writers such as Althusser, Blanchot, Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, Foucault, Fredric Jameson, and Nietzsche.  

ENGL 825A    James Joyce's Ulysses             Rice     TTH 11-12:15   Hu 312
An intensive reading/study of James Joyce's work through, and with chief concentration on, Ulysses.  This course will also survey the applications of various critical methodologies for analysis of Ulysses.  

ENGL 843B  Trailing Clouds:Recent American Immigrant Writing   Cowart    TTH 9:30-10:45   Hu 308
We've heard a good deal from first-generation writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Oscar Hijuelos, Richard Rodriguez, Paule Marshall, Susan Choi, et al.  They frequently chronicle the travail of their own and their parents' generations--battling discrimination, learning English, being split between old world and new world customs and expectations. But what about the literary talents of immigrants who naturalize? Quite a number are making a name for themselves. Like Nabokov, Bellow, and Auden a few decades back, many of these new literary immigrants arrive on these shores already educated or already speaking English. Those who come as children--one thinks of Julia Alvarez--sometimes even remember positive experiences in the American classroom.  Starting with some distinctions between the immigrant and the exile or expatriate, we will take up some of these writers to see if they invite fresh theoretical models of ethnicity and identity (or revisions of old ones). The novels covered will be by contemporary American writers not born in this country or to Americans abroad. There will be some emphasis on books that focus on the American scene, as opposed to the old country. We'll start with a couple of paradigmatic immigrant writers--Nabokov, Bellow, perhaps Kosinsky--before moving on to more contemporary figures. Among the writers/works who might be included:  Nabokov, Pnin; Bellow, Mr. Sammler's Planet; Jerzy Kosinski, Being There; Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee; Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker, A Gesture Life; Nora Okja Kim, Comfort Woman; Mylène Dressler, The Deadwood Beetle; Bharati Mukherjee, Jasmine; Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory; Ursula Hegi, The Vision of Emma Blau; Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents; Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy; Cristina Garcia, Dreaming in Cuban; Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart; Junot Díaz, Drown; Lan Cao, Monkey Bridge; Dao Strom, Grass Roof, Tin Roof; Wendy Law-Yone, The Coffin Tree; Suki Kim, The Interpreter; Bapsi Sidhwa, American Brat; Achy Obejas, Days of Awe (2001), Memory Mambo (1996).  Students will be asked to read at least one book a week. They will take turns making class presentations on the novels assigned. One of these presentations will be the basis of a paper to be handed in, revised, handed in again, and eventually submitted to a scholarly journal or proposed collection.  

ENGL 846C   Faulkner & His Successors      Butterworth   TTH 2-3:15   Hu 312
An intensive study of five major Southern fiction writers. We will read and examine four of Faulkner's most important novels, O'Connor's two novels and two collections of short stories, Ellison's Invisible Man, Styron's four novels, and Percy's The Moviegoer.  Through collateral reading and class reports we will also examine some of the most important scholarship on these authors. 

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