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ENG 7055.001 Topics: Toni Morrison
Dr. Crystal Lucky
Mon., 5:20 – 7:20
This course will focus on the fiction and non-fiction of Toni Morrison, whose
writing has affected the development of both American and African American
literature in the latter portion of the 20th century like that of no other writer.
Alongside appropriate contemporary criticism, we will read interviews with the
Nobel Prize winner, Playing in the Dark, and each of her nine novels.
ENG 8350.001 Milton
Dr. Lauren Shohet
Wed., 5:20-7:20
Milton promised "the advantage that might be had of books promiscuously
read." We shall try to exploit this advantage as the seminar focuses on
Paradise Lost, but also reads much of Milton's other poetry, a selection of
Miltonic prose, and a variety of contextualizing work in both Renaissance and
modern-day conversations that include Milton. Toward meeting the needs of both
students particularly interested in a single-author course and those who would
like a broader-based approach to Early-Modern studies--hereby also addressing
both students with and without prior coursework in Milton--we shall situate
Milton's writing in arenas including the Renaissance Epic, studying and teaching
poetic form, Reformation theology, Renaissance relationships to Classical lyric
forms, and early-modern political theory. Secondary readings will survey the
range of approaches that constitute contemporary professional discussion of
Milton. Requirements include lively participation, a brief oral presentation, a
book review, a short paper (closely reading a poem), and a final seminar paper
of 12-15 pages.
ENG 8460.001 Topics: Freaking Swift & Franklin
Dr. Hugh Ormsby-Lennon
Thurs., 7:30-9:30
Jonathan Swift, Benjamin Franklin, and a congeries of freaks will strike the
normal student as odd bedfellows. In this class, we shall consider Swift and
Franklin, two canonical authors of the eighteenth century, through the prism of
"freakery" or "monster theory" --formally, "teratology" or, increasingly,
"disability studies" --which has become one of the most active sites in the
burgeoning field of cultural studies.
Swift exhibited a life-long fascination with abnormal psychology and physiology,
organizing some of his greatest satires around deviation from the norm. As an
old man, it was rumored, he himself was exhibited as a freak by his servants in
the Deanery. Franklin always collected odd objects, facts, and phenomena, but he
was more interested in regularizing them and in harnessing the laws of nature
for social and scientific progress. As an American diplomat in a debonair
France, however, Franklin enjoyed presenting himself as a fur-hatted freak from
the New World.
Swift and Franklin represent opposite ends of the spectrum of
eighteenth-century thought. Swift was a conservative Anglican who believed in
original sin, disdained the Irish, and held modern science and progress in
contempt. Franklin as a free-thinking deist who advocated benevolence and made
innumerable improvements to Philadelphia and to the commonwealth of ideas. But
we may recognize "another" Swift: a libertarian and an Irish patriot; a
neoclassicist with an insatiable thirst for popular culture; and a churchman
whose career was derailed amidst accusations of atheism. Swift lived modestly
within the means of his church income; he accepted payment for only one of his
books, Gulliver's Travels. Franklin became a wealthy man. In Poor
Richard's Almanac--which Franklin modeled upon Swift's satires upon
astrology--he assuaged the public's desire for amusement and self-improvement.
Franklin also made large profits from the contracts he made as a printer and as
a postmaster. If we can descry "another" Franklin--Ben is less pathologically
slippery than "Presto" Swift--it's the man who preached good will and good works
while lining his own pockets. Swift described himself as a "hypocrite reversed";
Franklin has never freed himself from an odour of hypocrisy.
Freaks? From one perspective, this class comprises a traditional exploration
of the works of two canonical writers. From another perspective, we shall deploy
"freakery" in order to fathom two writers who wrote on the edge of the
English Empire. "Freaks" attract as much interest today as they did during the
eighteenth century, so they prompt more than historical exploration. What makes
"us" "normal"? Are great artists freaks? Why do so many ordinary folks present
themselves as freaks today, whether by volunteering for The Jerry Springer
Show or by modifying their bodies? This class will give students an
opportunity to study "freakery" in its many manifestations.
There will be a series of class trips that we shall arrange in conjunction
with students' schedules. Among them will be visits to the University of
Pennsylvania Rare Book Room, to the Library Company, to the Philosophical Society,
to Pennsylvania Hospital (with its eighteenth century operating room), to the
Franklin House (with its functional printing press)--all of which were
instituted by Franklin--to St. Peter's Church (with its pristine colonial
extension and interior) and to the Mutter Museum (one of the world's most
important collections of medical curiosa, d'oh, freaks). Century City comprises
a small area and we shall be able to do much "double dinning." The semester will
end with a freaky dinner (at a game restaurant) and with post-prandial
refreshments at our nearby house.
ENG
8640.001 Topics: Dickens
Dr. Deborah Thomas
Thurs., 5:20-7:20
An in-depth study of three of Dickens's major novels (Oliver Twist,
Bleak House, and Great Expectations) plus a sampling of his best
short fiction (including A Christmas Carol). Attention will be given to
the historical, social, and literary contexts out of which these writings arose,
as well as to recent critical (e.g., feminist, new historicist, and cultural)
approaches to these works. Topics to be discussed include the economic and
artistic aspects of serial publication, modes of narration, social and political
conditions in 1837-61, and Victorian ideas concerning childhood, family, and the
role of women, as well as issues of poverty, charity, and criminality.
Consideration will be given to Dickens as a humorist and an artist, as a social
critic with insight into the shortcomings of human experience, as a
representative of his own age, and as a precursor of the problems of our own.
Requirements include a 5 page paper (to be rewritten upon return and resubmitted
for a second grade), a serialized journal consisting of one-page responses to
the novels and assigned critical readings, an oral report, a term paper (10-12
pages), and lively class participation.
ENG:
9530.001 Topics: 19th Century American Literature
Dr. Edmund Goode
Mon., 7:30 -9:30
A New Mourning: Loss, Grief, and Melancholy in Early American Literature
In this course, we will examine the ways in which early American writers
engaged with profound loss, from William Apess' eulogy to the Wampanoag war
chief Metacomet ("Eulogy on King Phillip") to Walt Whitman's elegies to
President Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War dead, from Henry David Thoreau's
philosophical meditations on the passing of his brother (A Week on the
Concord and Merrimack Rivers) to Emily Dickinson's lyrics of grief
and mourning ("After great pain/A formal feeling comes"). Did the development of
a new national literature entail a uniquely American perception of individual
and cultural loss? What are the political implications of mourning and
melancholia? How does a culture so interested in "becoming"--American, modern,
increasingly secular--come to terms with what is destroyed or left behind? We
will organize our class discussions around close readings of primary texts from
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and we will also avail ourselves of
recent scholarship on elegy, loss, and mourning.
ENG: 9730.001 Seminar: Modernist Sexualities
Dr. Megan Quigley
Tues., 5:20 -7:20
It has been argued that if Modernity had a gender it would be feminine. This
course will interrogate the idea that literary Modernism is at its root invested
in theories of gender and sexuality. Through readings of major 20th century
British Modernists texts--including five weeks spent on Joyce's Ulysses--as
well as several theorists of sexuality (Foucault, Sedgwick, Felski), we will aim
to understand what the modernists were saying about sexuality and why it was
(and continues to be) incendiary. Authors we will examine include James, Hall,
Eliot, Woolf, Lawrence and Auden.
ENG 9800.001 Internship in the Teaching of English
Option for second-year graduate students to serve as intern for graduate
faculty member in upper-level undergraduate English course. Interns will attend
all class sessions, confer at least once with each student on written work, lead
two-three class sessions under supervision of faculty member, and complete a
final project that is either (1) a substantial critical essay concerning subject
matter of course or (2) a research project concerning trends and issues within
college-level pedagogy. Aim of program is to provide students with teaching and
classroom experience. Students may apply to serve as interns by consulting with
a faculty member who is teaching in area of interest, and, if the faculty member
is amenable, submitting a one-two page statement, outlining how this course
addresses their larger intellectual goals, and what they hope to accomplish as
an intern. (3 Cr)
ENG 8090.001 Thesis
ENG 8092.001 Field Exam
ENG 9031.001 Independent Study I
ENG 9080.001 Thesis Continuation
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