1214 Spring 2020-21 Course Descriptions
In addition, information about the undergraduate catalogue for English courses can be found in MyCourseGuide (NetID log-in required). Non-UW students can contact the Undergraduate Advisor for information about courses.
Please note Definition of Different Types of Modality, for the purposes of this document:
- In-person: has some in-person meeting times
- Remote Synchronous: Entirely remote. Students are expected to participate in online lectures, discussions, labs or activities synchronously during scheduled meeting times.
- Remote Asynchronous: Entirely remote. Students are engaging regularly every week with the instructor, course content, activities, assignments, etc. but are not required to meet with the class synchronously in a scheduled meeting-time pattern.
- Please be sure to check the class notes in the Course Search and Enroll application for additional information.
100: Intro to College Composition
TA taught courses
Times & Places Vary
Prereqs: Students required to take the MSN ESLAT cannot enroll until the ESL 118 requirement is satisfied
English 100 is an introduction to college composition that begins to prepare students for the demands of writing in the university and for a variety of contexts beyond the classroom. Students will compose several shorter and longer essays totaling 25-30 pages of revised writing, develop critical reading and thinking skills and information literacy, and practice oral communication.
120: Introduction to Theatre and Dramatic Literature
Mary Trotter
Lecture Remote Asynchronous
Discussion Section Times Vary Remote Synchronous
Cross-Listed with Theatre and Drama
English/Theatre and Drama 120 explores the rich world of dramatic writing and theatrical performance. It is offered in two formats: a 3-credit option (sections 301-316) and a 4-credit Comm-B option (sections 317-322). In both formats we read important plays, view recorded stage productions, and write and think analytically about theatre and drama. Playwrights to be discussed this spring include Sophocles, Jean-Baptiste Moliere, Zeami, Sophie Treadwell, Lorraine Hansberry, Bertolt Brecht, Wole Soyinka and Suzan-Lori Parks. Styles of theatre we will discuss include classical Greek, French neoclassicism, Noh drama, realism, expressionism, epic theatre, postcolonial theatre and postmodern theatre.
140: Comm B Topics in English Literature
Topic: The Figure of the Outsider: Writing from the Margins
Anja Jovic-Humphrey
Lecture Remote Asynchronous
Discussion Section Times Vary Remote Synchronous
Jack Kerouac and his friends go on road trips across America, crossing each other’s paths and making the continent seem small at the time when there are no cell phones to help them stay in touch. Sylvia Plath’s character Esther Greenwood wonders whether she is unwomanly because she is not sure whether she wants to get married and have a baby. Ralph Ellison’s narrator addresses us from a basement, saying: “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”
In this course, we will look at various kinds of outsiders, nonconformists, and “marginal” characters in the broad sense of the term. When does sanity turn into madness? How can race, gender, or ethnicity make us “invisible” – or too visible? To which extent is conformity a positive force, and to which extent it can stifle our sense of self?
We will examine the nature of sanity/madness, gender, race, ethnicity, and lifestyle, and try to understand what and why the society at large labels as “normal” or “abnormal.”
141: Science Fiction and Fantasy
Topic: Global Science Fiction
Sarah Wells
Lecture Remote Asynchronous
Discussion Section Times Vary Remote Synchronous
Recent years have witnessed a boom in science fiction (SF) from every corner of the world, as writers and filmmakers explore global problems through experimental approaches to the genre. This introductory course moves among literature and films to move beyond the tendency to read SF produced in the U.S. as “speaking for the globe,” identifying new ways to investigate the genre’s relationship to global issues. We will thus explore SF as global in two ways: first, by exploring multiple examples of SF around the world and across different historical contexts; second, by considering SF as a lens for investigating urgent global questions — including environmental destruction; surveillance and artificial intelligence; and the role of race and gender in the creation of utopian or dystopian worlds.
153.001: Literature and the Environment
Topic: Representing Nature
Heather Swan
MW 9:55-10:45am Remote Synchronous
Discussion Section Times Vary Remote Synchronous
Cross-Listed with Environmental Studies
Course Catalog Description: An introduction to literature in English about the natural world and humankind’s relationship with it; specific topics will vary.
153.002: Literature and the Environment
Topic: Social Justice in the Anthropocene
Ingrid Diran
TR 9:30-10:45am Remote Synchronous
Cross-Listed with Environmental Studies
Honors Optional (%)
From Birmingham Jail, where Martin Luther King, Jr. voiced his commitment to civil rights through the ecological insight that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” to Kenya, where Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement planted not only trees but “seeds of freedom,” advocacy for social justice and advocacy for environmental justice have mirrored and dovetailed with one another over the last century. Drawing on literary, historical, and sociological texts, this course will explore how this intertwining of political and environmental movements redefines activism in the age of climate change, which geologists have termed the era of Man, or Anthropocene.
156: Literature and Medicine
Colin Gillis
T 6:00-8:30pm Remote Synchronous
Honors Optional (%)
This course introduces the basic skills of literary analysis, examines literature as a source of knowledge about medicine and a catalyst for critical reflection about its organizing concepts and practices, and considers the value of art and beauty in health care. We will also explore how and why literature might serve as a social and psychological resource for patients and healthcare practitioners.
162: Shakespeare
Topic: Making Shakespeare
Joseph Bowling
MW 2:30-3:45pm Remote Synchronous
How did Shakespeare gain his reputation as the “greatest” English author? We’ll explore this question by studying five of Shakespeare’s plays from two perspectives: we will first attend to each play in its historical context and then consider each as it was received and appropriated from the eighteenth century to the present.
167: British and American Writers
Topic: “Ghosts, Monsters, and the Paranormal”
David Zimmerman
Remote Asynchronous
This is a modular section that meets January 4, 2021 thru January 24, 2021
(Session Code XCC, 3 weeks of instruction)
We will be studying fiction, poetry, and films about ghosts, vampires, monsters, and paranormal phenomena. By studying these texts, we will explore how authors use stories about the weird, the supernatural, and the horrifying to ask profound questions about our human as well as our social identities. What does it mean to be human? What distinguishes us from machines that think and feel? What are our moral obligations to other creatures, human and non-human? How do representations of monsters and the supernatural intersect with analyses of white supremacy, gender, and class? Course texts include Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Victor LaValle, Black Tom; Jeff VenderMeer, Annihilation; Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood; Stephen Crane, The Monster; Henry James, The Turn of the Screw; Let the Right One In (film); and zombie poetry.
This 3-week course is equivalent to a full-semester 3-credit course. Each day you will read 100-150 pages, listen to audio lectures, and participate in asynchronous online discussions. There will also be weekly informal and formal writing assignments.
172: Literatures of Native America
Susan Dominguez
TR 1:00-2:15pm Remote Synchronous
Cross-Listed with American Indian Studies
Introduction to the oral and written literatures of the peoples of native North America. Students will engage texts across historical periods, tribal groups and regions, within genres such as oratory, testimony, autobiography, poetry, short story, graphics, and novels.
173.001: Ethnic and Multicultural Literature
Topic: American Identity and the American Dream
Sarah Wood
MW 2:30-3:45pm Remote Synchronous
Reserved for FIG students
In the main seminar in this FIG, English 173, we will read authors who explore ideas of identity and the American Dream. We will consider a series of “outsider” perspectives on what the American Dream looks like in contemporary American culture. Among the pieces we will explore are Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, Linda Hogan’s Power (Native American coming of age story set at the intersection of white culture and native culture), Danez Smith’s Don’t Call us Dead poetry collection about being a black gay man in America, and Chimamanda Ngozi Aditchie’s Americanah about a Nigerian immigrant to America– plus more! The other course in this FIG will add to our exploration of these issues. This course will be taught in a remote and synchronous modality.
173.002: Ethnic and Multicultural Literature
Topic: Performing Women and Work
Jennifer Plants
Remote Asynchronous
From Lorraine Hansberry to contemporary superstars Beyoncé and Janelle Monae, this course will examine the diverse ways race frames women and the work that they perform. We will study plays and playwrights, stand-up comedians, musicians, filmmakers, and ordinary people who all use the language of theatre to tell stories about women and work. The course will also give attention to the expansiveness of how gender is defined and how to create more inclusive narratives about work, race, and gender in the United States. Besides those mentioned previously, writers and artists studied may include: Anna Deavere-Smith, Ava DuVernay, Issa Rae, Dominique Morisseau, Radha Blank, and Lena Waithe.
174.001: Literature and Social Justice
Topic: Law & Literature
Ralph Grunewald
TR 1:20-2:10pm Remote Synchronous
Discussion Section Times Vary Remote Synchronous
This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of Law and Literature. In the first part, we will address “Law in Literature,” the field that focuses on the depiction and reflection of law and legal questions in works of literature as a way to understand law in its social, philosophical, and cultural context. Literary texts often address ideas of law and justice outside technical and doctrinal paradigms.
We will then look at “Law as Literature,” the area that examines legal writings through the lens of literary analysis. We will explore the semantic, linguistic, and narrative similarities and differences between law and literature, and how, for example, the literary analysis of the “story” that underlies a criminal case contribute to a more refined understanding of the law and justice. As we will discuss, a “literary” analysis introduces a different perspective revealing insights about the law that are not immediately obvious to the eyes of a lawyer.
The main objective of this course is to develop an understanding of how much the disciplines of law and literature can benefit from each other. I hope to demonstrate that law is subject to human, social, and literary construction—not only in a theoretical sense but also in actual cases. The assigned readings are chosen from the canon of works on law and literature. They are all connected by certain themes which invite comparisons on many levels.
This class does not require any background in law or legal studies. Legal themes and ideas will be explained in class.
174.002: Literature and Social Justice
Topic: Staging Environmental Justice
Jennifer Plants
Remote Asynchronous
From toxic drinking water and floods to rising temperatures and raging wildfires, environmental risks rarely come with a choice to opt out. This course will focus on how theatre and performance are used as tools in the struggle for environmental justice. What can we learn from Shakespeare and Lin-Manuel Miranda when we examine how their work relates to the natural world? Can a play about Hurricane Katrina do anything to protect those vulnerable to flooding in the future? Can theatre help us prevent the slow violence of the Flint, Michigan water crisis from happening elsewhere? Course texts will include play texts and filmed productions, multi-media performances, and environmental criticism, supplemented by guest artists and individual explorations.
176.001: Topics in Literature and Film
Topic: Reimagining Worlds in Literature and Film
Joseph Bowling
TR 9:55-10:45am Remote Synchronous
Discussion Section Times Vary Remote Synchronous
How do works of literature and film construct representational worlds? What do these two mediums share, and how do they diverge? To answer these questions, this class will introduce students to the fundamentals of literary and film analysis and interpretive argumentation.
176.002: Topics in Literature and Film
Topic: Visual Storytelling
Amanda Shubert
TR 9:30-10:45pm Remote Synchronous
How do pictures tell stories? In this course, we ask that question of a variety of works that tell stories visually, from comic books and novels to films and video games. We will think critically about how words and images can be used in combination to create fantastical worlds, capture the nuances of powerful emotions, and document the crippling reality of war.
182.001: Introduction to Literature for Honors
Vinay Dharwadker
MW 2:30-3:45pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Declared in Honors program
This seminar is designed for declared Honors students from a wide range of majors and disciplines across campus. It introduces students to the study of literature at the college level, with a focus on poetry and short stories, and on important methods of literary analysis. We will work with texts by poets such as William Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, and Langston Hughes, and with fiction writers such as William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, who are major figures in British and American literature. For contexts and comparisons, we will also explore poems and stories from other parts of the world and other historical periods, as well as connections between fiction and film. This range of materials will familiarize students with a variety of forms, genres, styles, techniques, and themes in literature, and enhance their essential skills in independent critical thinking. The seminar will use remote instruction, and it will combine a pre-recorded lecture with a synchronous discussion session each week.
182.002: Introduction to Literature for Honors
Topic: Shakespeare on Film
Karen Britland
TR 11:00-12:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Declared in Honors program
We will read and discuss five of Shakespeare’s plays, and we will watch some of their modern film adaptations. The class is designed both for students with a serious interest in Shakespeare and for those without much prior experience with Shakespeare or literature. The Shakespeare movies for the class will be made available as streaming files on Canvas (and you can access other versions of Shakespeare’s plays on film through the Ambrose Video site, which is available from the Databases tab on the Library webpage). This class will give you the opportunity to read plays and watch movies you might not have read or seen before, at the same time as it will let you think again about plays you already know. At high school, it is quite common to study just one Shakespeare play in isolation. Here, though, we will look at a few plays together and consider how they reflect and build on each other. By also looking at movies, we will constantly remind ourselves that Shakespeare’s plays were written to be performed as popular entertainments and were not necessarily meant to be read as high literature. This class will have a particular focus on issues of gender and sexuality as they are portrayed in Shakespeare’s plays, as well as the ways in which these issues have been reproduced and/or reformulated in movies for contemporary audiences. Discussion sections for the class will take place twice weekly on Canvas and BBCollaborate.
200: Writing Studio
Emily Hall
W 5:30-7:00pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Consent of instructor required
Reserved for FIG students
Course Catalog Description: The focus is on students’ own writing in this workshop-oriented course for writers in any discipline. Theoretical and practical foundations for drafting, revising, and reviewing a range of academic genres and approaches.
201: Intermediate Composition
TA taught courses
Times Vary Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Satisfied Communications A requirement and sophomore standing; not open to special students
English 201 is a small, topic-driven writing course that fulfills part B of the University’s Communication requirement. Sections of 201 offer hands-on practice with writing and revision, building on skills developed in earlier writing courses and providing new opportunities for students to grow as writers. Though topics vary by section and semester, this class consistently provides experience writing in multiple genres and for diverse audiences.
204: Writing, Rhetoric, & Literacy
Christa Olson
Lecture Remote Asynchronous
Discussion Section Times Vary Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Satisfied Communications A requirement and sophomore standing; not open to special students
Some of the best human traits come out when we speak or write passionately for a cause. Some of the worst, too. We use words and pictures and collective action to encourage each other to do good and we use them to justify terrible acts. This class invites you to read about, discuss, and then engage with what’s good and evil about “rhetoric” (how we communicate in order to influence each other). We’ll learn about horrific acts and the individuals and communities that stood up to them. We’ll learn about great visions and the people who worked to make them possible. We’ll look at propaganda, manifestos, and activist photography. We’ll listen to speeches that aim to stir our souls, for better or for worse. Along the way, we’ll develop tools for analyzing the arguments we encounter and strategies for producing our own effective arguments (aiming, of course, for good).
207: Introduction to Creative Writing
TA taught courses
Times Vary Remote Synchronous
Prereqs: First Year, freshman or sophomore standing only
In this course, students are taught the fundamental elements of craft in both fiction (plot, point of view, dialogue, and setting, etc.) and poetry (the image, the line, sound and meter, etc.). This class is taught as a workshop, which means class discussion will focus on both craft (published stories, poems, and essays) and, perhaps more importantly, the fiction and poetry written by each student. That is, the student writing becomes the text, and the instructor leads a sympathetic, but critical, discussion of the particular work at hand. Students should expect to read and comment on two or three published works per week as well as the work of their peers. To enable a collegial and productive class setting, all sections of 207 are capped at eighteen students.
English 207 satisfies a Comm B requirement.
241: Literature and Culture 1: to the 18th Century
Jordan Zweck
TR 2:25-3:15pm Remote Synchronous
Discussion Section Times Vary Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Not open to students who took ENGL 215 prior to Fall 2014
“What is a person, a home, a nation, a world? What we now call “English literature” begins with these questions, imagining a cosmos filled with gods and heroes, liars and thieves, angels and demons, dragons and dungeons, whores and witches, drunken stupor and religious ecstasy. Authors crafted answers to these questions using technologies of writing from parchment to the printing press, and genres old and new, from epic and romance to drama and the sonnet. This course develops skills of critical reading and writing that are essential to majors and non-majors alike.
This course provides an introduction to literature in English from the Middle Ages to the early eighteenth century. Together with English 242, it provides an introduction to British literary history, and its primary goals include familiarizing students with the canon of English literature and preparing students for more specialized study in advanced courses in the major.The course spans roughly 1000 years, from the origins of English literature to the rise of the novel. Along the way, we will examine how literature engaged with topics as disparate as love, religion, and science, and we will read everything from elegant descriptions of angelic beings to six-hundred-year-old fart jokes. To focus our discussions, we will concentrate on questions of form and genre, including the epic, fabliau, romance, sonnet, lyric, and novel. Emphasis will be on close reading and literary analysis, but we will also pay close attention to the social, cultural, and political contexts from which each text emerged.”
242: Literature and Culture II: from the 18th Century to the Present
Mario Ortiz-Robles
Lecture Remote Asynchronous
Discussion Sections Remote Asynchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Not open to students who took ENGL 216 prior to Fall 2014
This course is organized around one simple but very important aspect of literature: its ability to make us see the world from different points of view. In some sense, all literature is an exercise in perspective since it is written by different people living in different places in different time periods, but the texts we will be reading in this class are self-conscious explorations of how we represent the world to ourselves in order to make sense of our place within it and to imagine how it might be otherwise. We will be reading classic works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, R. L. Stevenson, William Faulkner, Jamaica Kincaid, and J. M. Coetzee. In reading and writing about literary perspective, we will also be endeavoring to learn something about what it means to see the world through someone else’s eyes.
245.001: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Aliens! First Contact in World Literature and Film
Peter Ribic
TR 2:30-3:45pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)
This course examines representations of alien life in world literature and film. Beginning with a brief literary history of the extraterrestrial encounter, we will go on to explore the meanings of alien visitors in recent science fiction from China, Cuba, Iraq, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United States. Reading texts like Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon and Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, we will consider how strangers from outer space, whether friendly, malevolent, or simply weird, prompt a series of very terrestrial questions: about imperialism and ecology; race, gender, and sexuality; capitalism and technology. Throughout the course, we will supplement our readings with a range of critical, historical, and theoretical writing to contextualize alien narratives.
245.002: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Writing Rivers
Caroline Druschke
Remote Asynchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Community Based Learning section
Honors Optional (%)
This small, interactive seminar offers a chance for students to get to know more about the major, about each other, about Wisconsin’s waterways, and hopefully even about themselves. We’ll partner with the Driftless Writing Center’s Stories from the Flood initiative to consider how the stories that are told and not told shape our sense of who and what matters in our state. Students will practice how to engage with community partners to use writing and rhetoric for the public good.
245.003: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Literary Architectures: Making Space in American Literature
Sarah Ensor
TR 1:00-2:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)
In this class, we will consider “literary architectures,” broadly conceived, and analyze the social configurations that these structures make space for. As we move back and forth between discussing the structures depicted in American literature and the structures (forms, genres, traditions) of that literature itself, we will ask questions like the following: How do gender, sexuality, race, and class shape our inhabitation of space, and vice versa? How does our built environment affect our relationships to each other – including, importantly, whom we care for and how? When literary characters inhabit, dismantle, or remake physical structures, what can that teach us about how we might inhabit, dismantle, or remake social structures? And how has authors’ play with literary form – including the space of the page and the dimensions of reading itself – been a way to make new relational possibilities legible, and effect social change?
Core texts will include fiction (short stories and novels) by James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Willa Cather, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Zora Neale Hurston, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Herman Melville; poetry by Cam Awkward-Rich, Gwendolyn Brooks, Franny Choi, Joy Harjo, Tommy Pico, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Solmaz Sharif, and Danez Smith; and nonfiction by Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, Alice Walker, and Elissa Washuta, among others. We also will read a range of cultural criticism by such thinkers as Sara Ahmed, Ruha Benjamin, Angela Davis, Briallen Hopper, Hil Malatino, Claudia Rankine, Rebecca Solnit, and Kim Tallbear.
245.005: Seminar in the Major
Topic: American Identity in Contemporary Literature
Sarah Wood
TR 9:30-10:45pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)
In this course, we will read novels and poetry produced by (mostly) writers of color written in the late 20th Century to the present, to consider the notion of citizenship from the lens of non-majority cultures within the United States. How do these writings articulate concerns with citizenship, identity, social justice home, nation, truth, power and spaces? We will examine the authors’ different time-spaces, narrative/poetic styles, and goals to understand how their writing is informed by the specificities of gender, race, sexuality, and nationality.
245.006: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Contemporary World Theatre in English
Aparna Dharwadker
TR 1:00-2:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)
This course has three concurrent objectives aimed specifically at undergraduate students who are majoring in English:
1. To trace the historical, political, and cultural processes by which English, the “native” language of a small island nation off the European mainland, has emerged as the world’s second most commonly spoken language (after Mandarin Chinese), and a major creative medium for writers around the globe.
2. To understand the category of global “anglophone” writing, and to position drama, theatre, and performance as distinctive creative genres within this rapidly expanding oeuvre.
3. To use the plays that are the primary texts for the course, together with their relevant contexts, as the basis of substantial critical writing over an intensive the semester which will allow students to aim for increasing clarity, cogency, critical sophistication, and rhetorical effectiveness, and to resubmit their work after significant revision.
At the beginning of the course, we will take stock of the crucial factors that have established and consolidated the “empire of English” since the seventeenth century—settler and imperial colonialism, education, print culture, migration, diaspora, and technology, among others. We will also consider why leading contemporary playwrights outside Britain and North America choose to write originally in English, although the majority of them belong to cultures possessing one or more fully-developed indigenous languages. The purpose of the course as a small writing-intensive experience designed for majors will underlie all our discussions and activities. Students will focus in an active and sustained way on the processes of critical reading, discussion, and writing, in preparation for more advanced work in the major as well as a long-term engagement with literature.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Derek Walcott, Ti-Jean and His Brothers (1958; In Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays)
Ama Ata Aidoo, Anowa (1970)
Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman (1975)
Brian Friel, Translations (1980)
Athol Fugard, “Master Harold” . . . And the Boys (1982)
Louis Nowra, The Golden Age (1985)
Mahesh Dattani, Dance Like a Man (1989)
Manjula Padmanabhan, Harvest (1997)
George F. Walker, Heaven (2000)
246: Literature by American Indian Women
Jen Rose Smith
TR 11:00-12:15pm Remote Synchronous
Cross-Listed with American Indian Studies
This course will explore the thematic, stylistic, and formal contours of literature by Native American women in relation to four distinct tribal communities and histories across what is (for now) understood as U.S. and Canada. More specifically, this course is attuned to the possibilities of Native feminism through the analysis of gendered dimensions of social power, how gender-oppression operates within colonial settler structures, and how a selection of Native American women authors navigate, narrate, and contend with such issues in their writings.
248.002: Women in Ethnic American Literature
Leslie Bow
Remote Asynchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Gender and Women Studies
This is a modular section that meets January 4, 2021 thru January 24, 2021
(Session Code XCC, 3 weeks of instruction)
Honors Optional (%)
This asynchronous online course explores the intersections among race, ethnicity, gender, class, nationality, and sexuality in fiction, poetry, memoir, and visual texts by, Asian American, American Indian, Latina, Black, and multiracial women in the U.S. The course is structured thematically around overlapping social issues within a cross-cultural framework, focusing on four themes in particular: racial authenticity and ethnic belonging; coming of age and externalizing the gender role; activism and radical consciousness; and disembodied racial meaning. One of our goals will be to understand the ways in which girls and women from diverse backgrounds negotiate competing affiliations and loyalties amid differing notions of home, place, and community. We will pay particular attention to issues of childhood, narrative voice, and sexual awareness. The course reader includes work by Pat Parker, Cherríe Moraga, Alice Walker, Janice Gould, Toni Cade Bambara, Hisaye Yamamoto, Inés Hernandez Tovar, Chrystos, and Toni Morrison among others, with secondary reading by Immanuel Wallerstein, Hazel Carby, Sunaina Maira, and bell hooks.
NOTE: This is an intensive, online course to be completed during the intersession of winter break. Students should be prepared to complete all reading and course assignments on time; twice daily posts are required in lieu of embodied class meetings or Zoom meetings. Each of the 14 days (modules) represents a week of a traditional 14-week semester. Internet access for twice daily posting; one collective Zoom meeting in Dec. during finals week.; and one individual Zoom conference are required.
Required Texts to Purchase by the close of Fall 20
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog
Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre, Lois Ann Yamanaka*
Skim, Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
Bitter in the Mouth, Monique Truong
Course Reader, media, and lecture clips and podcasts accessed on Canvas
*Canvas link TBA if Pahala is unavailable for online purchase.
Requirements:
Twice Daily posting online (min. 250 per day)
Two Zoom meetings; others optional
Two papers
Final take home exam
Course Designation: Ethnic St – Counts toward Ethnic Studies requirement Breadth – Literature. Counts toward the Humanities requirement Level – Intermediate L&S Credit – Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit
307: Creative Writing: Fiction & Poetry Workshop
TA taught courses
Times Vary Remote Synchronous
Prereqs: Junior standing or ENGL 207. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 407, 408, 409, 410, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Satisfies a Comm B requirement
Satisfies a workshop requirement for the emphasis in creative writing
Accelerated Honors (!)
This class is similar to English 207 (see above) but with greater emphasis on craft (narrative control, poetic form) and the writing process. Like 207, this class is taught as a workshop, which means class discussion will focus on both craft (published stories, poems, and essays) and, perhaps more importantly, the fiction and poetry written by each student. That is, the student writing becomes the text, and the instructor leads a sympathetic, but critical, discussion of the particular work at hand. Students should expect to read and comment on two or three published works per week as well as the work of their peers. To enable a collegial and productive class setting, all sections of 307 are capped at 16 students.
English 307 satisfies a workshop requirement for the emphasis in creative writing.
English 307 satisfies a Comm B requirement
314: Structure of English
Juliet Huynh
MWF 9:55-10:45am Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
This course introduces students to the fundamentals of the syntactic structure of English phrasal grammar. Students will descriptively analyze the structure of words and phrases while also comparing them to actual spoken English sentences. The course grade will be assessed based on participation, homework assignments, quizzes, and a final paper.
319: Language, Race, and Identity
Tom Purnell
Remote Asynchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Contribution of anthropology, biology, psychology, sociology, linguistics in construction of racial identity; consideration of American English use in ethnically-affiliated speech communities (African Americans, Latinos/as, Native Americans, Asian Americans). Topics: brain form/function; linguistic concepts at interface of language, culture and biology; theory of groups and group affiliation; self-expression of social identity.
320: Linguistic Theory and Child Language
Jacee Cho
TR 2:30-3:45pm Remote Synchronous
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing
[English Language and Linguistics] (Mixed Grad/Undergrad)
*Students who have taken English 420 Universal Grammar and Child Language Acquisition prior to Spring 2020 may not enroll in this course.
This course provides an introduction to the linguistic study of child language within the generative theory. According to this theory, humans are born with genetically determined linguistic knowledge called Universal Grammar, which guides children in learning language. Students will learn the basic concepts of the generative theory and learn to apply them to the study of child language. Topics include universal linguistic principles that govern children’s acquisition of syntax and semantics and cross-linguistic influence in children acquiring more than one language from birth or early childhood.
There is no required textbook. All reading materials will be available electronically on the course website
336: Eighteenth Century English Novel
Mark Vareschi
Remote Asynchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)
Where did the novel in English come from? How did the novel come to be the dominant literary form in modern culture? What is so “novel” about the novel? This course will explore the central questions surrounding the rise of the English novel in the eighteenth century through authors such as: Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Horace Walpole, Frances Burney, and Jane Austen. The novel of this period was fundamentally an experimental, adventurous, and innovative form that was subject to interrogation by both readers and writers. We will seek to understand how these novels variously work to represent truth, consciousness, history, and everyday life. Further, we will attend to the novels on a formal level to examine the questions they raise about the generic conventions of narrative fiction in order to understand how the novel came to resemble its current form in contemporary culture.
350: Special Topics in Gender & Literature
Topic: Waiting Rooms: Gender, Disability, and the Politic
Jess Waagner
TR 2:30-3:45pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: GEN&WS 101, 102, 103, or GEN&WS/SOC 200
Cross-Listed with Gender & Women’s Studies
What happens to the body kept in waiting? This course pursues questions of the “in-between” through the lenses of health and disability justice. Considering the word “patient,” with connotations of compliance and medicalization, students will explore how race, gender, class, sexuality and citizenship impact how long one waits for care.
352: Modernist Poetry
Vinay Dharwadker
MW 6:00-7:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional %
This course will familiarize students with the basic history, theory, and practice of literary modernism in the genre of poetry, with a focus on the high modernist period and subsequent decades in British, Anglo-Irish, and American writing. We will study the works and careers of poets such as W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot, and compare them with William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, and Ezra Pound, among others. We will especially examine the contributions of women and African-American writers to modernist poetry, as well as responses to high modernism in the work of poets such as Langston Hughes, W. H. Auden, Philip Larkin, Robert Lowell, and Sylvia Plath. The seminar will use remote instruction, and it will combine a pre-recorded lecture with a synchronous discussion session each week.
360: The Anglo-Saxons
Jordan Zweck
TR 11:00-12:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Cross-listed with History & Religious Studies
Honors Optional %
“Who were the people who lived in what is now England over 1000 years ago? This class explores the history, literature, religion, art, and culture of the early medieval English. We explore a wide range of texts originally written in Latin and Old English that include fights with monsters, heartbreaking elegies, dirty riddles, bombastic sermons, and medical treatises. This semester, we’ll also be thinking about how to rename this course, given recent debates in the field regarding the name once given to the people of early medieval England: “The Anglo-Saxons.”
Over the semester, we will learn about how Early Medieval England came into existence, how it became Christianized, how it fought, assimilated, and fought again with Vikings, and how it all ended (or didn’t!) with the Norman Conquest. As a framework for the class, we will study the literature of the period (in modern translation), but we will also explore the period’s history, art, religion, architecture and everyday culture. We will also consider how Old English and Anglo-Latin literature has been adapted by modern writers, and why this early medieval culture continues to appeal to people today.
No previous experience with medieval literature and culture required!
375: Literatures of Migration and Diaspora
Laila Amine
Remote Asynchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
How do Africa Diaspora writers represent their mobility and that of their protagonists in the 20th and 21st centuries? What is the relationship between mobility and subjectivity? Through the examination of African-American, African, and Caribbean writing, we will explore these questions along with major conceptualizations of migration, including diaspora, exile, cosmopolitanism, return migration, and heritage tourism. Starting the journey in the slave dungeons of West Africa with Saidiya Hartman’s memoir Lose Your Mother, we will travel to the Caribbean with Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby and Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, then to Paris with James Baldwin and William Smith, and finally to Nigeria, alongside Teju Cole and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. These selected readings will introduce you to major voices in African diaspora studies as well as provide the basis for discussion and your analytical essays.
376: Literature and Animal Studies
Mario Ortiz-Robles
Lecture Remote Asynchronous
Discussion Sections Remote Asynchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
How does literature help us understand animals and our relation to them? We address this question by exploring two types of representation: representation as depiction (the attempt to describe animals in literature) and representation as a legal or political act (the attempt to speak or act on behalf of animals). Organized around familiar animal categories — dogs, cats, horses, apes, birds, insects — we examine the representation of animals in modern literature as a way to give an account of the cultural history of human-animal relations and, in doing so, to make us reflect upon the social, political, and environmental consequences of this history at a time when animal species are disappearing at an alarming rate.
379: Postcolonial/World Literature
Aparna Dharwadker
TR 11:00-12:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)
This course focuses on the English-language literatures of former British colonies, primarily in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean. Grounded in an understanding of the historical, political, social, and cultural processes that create the “postcolonial world,” it takes up a selection of long and short fiction, non-fiction, plays, and poems by major authors who also belong now to the annals of “world literature.” The lasting effects of British colonialism in geographical locations quite far from Europe, the domestication of English (the imperial language) as a literary medium in non-European cultures, and the notable success of postcolonial literature in the global literary market will be among the developments underlying our discussion and analysis of literary works throughout the semester.
Tentative Reading List: Chinua Achebe, Arrow of God (1964).
V. S. Naipaul, selection of stories from A Flag on the Island (1967).
Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman (1975).
Derek Walcott, Pantomime (1978).
Salman Rushdie, selection of short stories from East, West (1994).
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (1996).
Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000).
Anita Desai, selection of short stories from Diamond Dust and Other Stories (2000).
Edward Kumau Braithwaite, selection of poems.
Ama Ata Aidoo, selection of poems.
Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement (2016).
Students should acquire the texts by Achebe, Soyinka, Walcott, Roy, Smith, and Ghosh before classes begin. The selections of poems and stories by the other authors will be posted on Canvas, along with all other course materials. Assignments: 2 critical essays, optional presentation, mid-term and final exams. If you have questions about the course, please contact Professor Dharwadker at adharwadker@wisc.edu
408.001: Creative Writing: Fiction Workshop
Porter Shreve
T 5:40-7:40pm Remote Synchronous
Prereqs: Completion of one of the following with a 3.0 or higher: English 207 or 307 taken Fall 2014 or later; or English 203 taken prior to Fall 2014
Students who do not meet the prerequisite may submit a writing sample to the program director on Monday of the last week of classes.
Accelerated Honors (!)
This class helps students apply lessons from published fiction (both classic and contemporary) to their own creative work. Class typically begins with a lecture concerning some aspect of craft and is followed by “workshop.” This entails a discussion of story shape, word choice, character development etc. using the creative work of the student as the text. Classes are small (15), and students are expected to read the work of their peers carefully and participate during class discussions.
408.002: Creative Writing: Fiction Workshop
Ron Kuka
R 5:40-7:40pm Education L185
Prereqs: Completion of one of the following with a 3.0 or higher: English 207 or 307 taken Fall 2014 or later; or English 203 taken prior to Fall 2014
Students who do not meet the prerequisite may submit a writing sample to the program director on Monday of the last week of classes.
Accelerated Honors (!)
This course focuses on the art and craft of fiction writing. It is typically run as a workshop in which discussion focuses on craft issues, assigned published work, and original student fiction.
409.001: Creative Writing: Poetry Workshop
Amaud Johnson
T 12:25-3:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: English 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, or 410 in Fall 2014 or later; or ENGL 203, 300-307 before Fall 2014
Accelerated Honors (!)
Course Catalog Description: Writing literary poetry.
409.002: Creative Writing: Poetry Workshop
Sean Bishop
R 1:20-3:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: English 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, or 410 in Fall 2014 or later; or ENGL 203, 300-307 before Fall 2014
Accelerated Honors (!)
This weekly, remote synchronous workshop focuses on the writing of poetry in a variety of 21st-century styles: poetry of witness, imagistic poetry, discursive poetry, process poetry, fabular poetry, and many others. Students will keep poetry journals, will write brief weekly exercises, will submit 3 original poems of their choosing to receive feedback from their peers, and will provide comments on one another’s work. There will be no required textbooks (all readings will be posted to Canvas), and no exams. Students will submit a final portfolio of revisions at the end of the course.
411.001: Creative Writing: Special Topics Workshop
Topic: Writing Science Fiction
Steven Howard Wright
M 5:40-7:40pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: ENGL 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, or graduate/professional standing
Accelerated Honors (!)
“This class is designed for students who love sci-fi and fantasy.
We’ll explore the traditional craft elements of fiction, but we’ll focus on the application of those elements to sci-fi and fantasy. Students will write their own short-stories, which they’ll share with the class for feedback.”
411.002: Creative Writing: Special Topics Workshop
Topic: Traditional Poetic Forms
Amy Quan Barry
M 1:20-3:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: ENGL 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, or graduate/professional standing
Accelerated Honors (!)
Course Catalog Description: Variable topics including: the informal essay, the long poem, the novel, the novella, genre fiction (detective, juvenile, humor, science fiction, etc.), experimental prose and poetry, etc. Students will read models and write their own exercise and full-length pieces.
413: Words: Grammar, Culture, Mind
Anja Wanner
TR 11:00-12:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Course Catalog Description: Words and rules of combination (grammar) are the two basic building blocks of language. Looks at English words from different linguistic perspectives: As objects of grammar, words follow certain rules of combination (you wouldn’t say “these dog), but they also have internal structure. For example, a word like “hopefulness is fine, while “hopenessful” does not exist. From a psycholinguistic perspective examine how children learn these formal properties as well as the meaning of words. Study how words are stored in the mind and what one can learn from situations in which one cannot access the mental dictionary properly (for example, when one feels a word is on “the tip of one’s tongue ). From a sociolinguistic perspective, look at historical and current influences on English vocabulary, including the role of dictionaries and spelling as a source of standardization. Does not require previous knowledge of linguistics.
415: Introduction to TESOL Methods
Joseph Nosek
TR 1:00-2:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Course Guide Description: An introduction to the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. Exploration of the contexts in which English is taught, and methods and materials used to teach it.
416: English in Society
Jonathan Jibson
TR 9:30-10:45am Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Course Catalog Description: Social and public uses of English; relationships of English structure, lexicon, and discourse to race, gender, class, education, ethnicity, age, and identity; the role of English in public policy.
420: Topics in English Language & Linguistics
Topic: TBA
Juliet Huynh
Remote Asynchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
This course introduces students to topics related to bilingual speakers and bilingualism. The areas that will be covered include different types of bilinguals/bilingualism, heritage language speakers, bilingual education, heritage language education, cognitive benefits (or disadvantages) of being a bilingual, and language processing in bilinguals.
430: Topic in Early Modern Literature
Topic: Women and War, 1642-1660
Karen Britland
R 2:30-5:00pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
In this class, we will explore women’s experiences during the wars that broke out when the English king, Charles I, raised his military standard against his parliamentarian opponents in August 1642. With John Milton taking precedence in many literary discussions of this conflict, the writing of his female contemporaries is frequently subordinated. Women, though, wrote widely about their experiences and the period is therefore a particularly rich and fertile one for the study of their writing. Among other things, we will read Margaret Cavendish’s nature writing and some of her prose fiction; Katherine Philips’s poetry of love and friendship; and Hester Pulter’s poetry of royalist isolation. The class will involve some discussion of violence (particularly sexual violence against women), as we investigate the ways in which this period of intense conflict paradoxically accorded some women a powerful literary voice. Since this material is not reliably available in modern editions, you will be asked to read some of it in its original old spelling. Please be aware that some students find this difficult. Because of problems concerning the modern availability of some of this material, during class we will also consider the politics of editing early modern women’s writing. One discussion section a week will take place on Canvas and BBCollaborate. The class will also have an asynchronous component.
431: Early Works of Shakespeare
Topic: Commoners, Kings, and Rebellion in Early Shakespeare
Joseph Bowling
TR 1:00-2:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
How did Shakespeare represent those of the lowest social order in his early plays? We will explore this question by studying Shakespeare’s Henriad and his two early Roman plays, Titus Andronicus and Julius Caesar, with an eye toward his treatment of rebellion and popular violence.
454: James Joyce
Richard Begam
TR 11:00-12:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)
Course Catalog Description: Study of the works of James Joyce.
457.002: Topic in American Literature and Culture since 1900
Topic: American Identity in Contemporary Literature
Sarah Wood
TR 11:00-12:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
In this course, we will read novels produced by (mostly) women writers of color from the 1940s-present to consider the notion of citizenship from the lens of non-majority cultures within the United States. How do these writings articulate concerns with citizenship, identity, home, nation, truth, power and spaces? We will examine the authors’ different time-spaces, different goals to understand how they are informed by the specificities of gender, race, sexuality, and nationality. We will consider the form of the novel itself, and how that form is constantly being reimagined. We will look at “traditional novels as well as graphic and experimental novels. How does the aesthetic work of the novel engage the politics of these varied and haunting stories? While no attempt to understand national identity can be complete, these novels will provide excellent grounding for wider discussions.
461: Topic in Ethnic & Multicultural Literature
Topic: Black and Latinx in Literature and Visual Cultures
Theresa Delgadillo
MW 2:30-3:45am Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Meets with Chican@ and Latin@ Studies 330
Honors Optional (%)
Chicanx and Latinx are frequently imagined as descendants of European and Native American peoples, erasing the history, presence, and influence of African diaspora peoples. However, this anti-blackness does not go unanswered in Chicanx and Latinx cultural production. In this course we will study literature and visual cultures that address the intersection of Black and Latinx, considering how these texts re-define both terms. In this interdisciplinary course we will consider racial paradigms and African diaspora in the Americas, study literature and visual texts that address the intersection of Black and Latinx and explore texts about African American and Latinx networks and relations. Readings will include novels, short stories, poetry, and research articles or chapters.
Requirements: active class participation, weekly critical responses, group presentations, annotated bibliography and twelve-page page research paper.
462: Topic in Asian American Literature
Topic: Asian American Graphic Novels/Comics
Timothy Yu
TR 1:00-2:15pm Humanities 2650 In-person
Cross-listed with Asian American Studies
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Comics have often been dismissed as a simplistic medium meant for children, but in the past few decades they have gained increasing respect as serious literature, often under the label “graphic novels.” And the past two decades have seen an explosion of comics, graphic novels, and graphic memoirs from Asian American creators. We’ll survey this growing body of work, beginning with the question of what comics and graphic novels are and how they differ from other forms of art and literature. We’ll then examine the distinctive contributions Asian Americans are making to the form, considering how Asian Americans use the medium of comics to narrate history, respond to stereotypes, and tell new stories.
473: Postcolonial or World Literature
Topic: Global Science Fiction
Sarah Wells
MW 2:30-3:45pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)
Recent years have witnessed a boom in science fiction (SF) from every corner of the world, as writers and filmmakers explore global problems through experimental approaches to the genre. This upper-division course moves among literature, films, and theoretical essays to critique the tendency to read SF produced in the U.S. as “speaking for the globe,” identifying new ways to investigate the genre’s relationship to global issues. We will thus explore SF as global in two ways: first, by exploring multiple examples of SF around the world and across different historical contexts; second, by considering SF as a lens for investigating urgent global questions — including environmental destruction; surveillance and artificial intelligence; and the role of race and gender in the creation of utopian or dystopian worlds. Students will gain an understanding of key terms and arguments in SF studies by reading and presenting on scholarly works and writing essays focused on novels, films, short stories, music, and critical theory.
515: TTechniques & Materials for TESOL
Andrea Poulos
TR 9:30-10:45am Remote Synchronous
Prereq: English 415
Supervised practice in the use of current techniques and materials in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages, including peer and community teaching with recorded sessions. All student teaching to be done in an online remote format.
525: Health and the Humanities
Nicole Nelson
TR 11:00-12:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Declared in the Health and the Humanities certificate
Cross-Listed with Medical History and Bioethics & History of Science
This capstone course for the Health and the Humanities certificate explores how perspectives from the humanities can broaden our understanding of health, illness, and healthcare. The course integrates a variety of humanistic and artistic approaches such as history, philosophy, literary studies, disability studies, religious studies, creative writing, and graphic medicine.
539: Jewish Literatures in Diaspora
Sunny Yudkoff
M 1:20-3:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Cross-listed with Jewish Studies
What does it mean to be at home in a culture? What does it mean to live in exile? Where, in turn, is the diaspora? This course addresses these questions by looking at texts that examine Jewish American, German, Israeli, Palestinian, and Bosnian-American writing. Readings will include poetry, prose, and essays by Philip Roth, W.G. Sebald, Edward Said, Aleksandar Hemon, and Molly Antopol.
543: Discourses of Disability, Antiquity to 1800
Elizabeth Bearden
TR 2:30-3:45pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Course Catalog Description: Concepts of physical disability from antiquity to the Renaissance. Literary theory, philosophy, and history will help frame thinking about how disability is produced. Along with considering how canonical texts represent disabled figures, class will investigate the generic, social, and spatial contexts from which these representations arise.
548: Topic in Literature and Politics
Topic: Racial Capitalism
Ingrid Diran
TR 1:00-2:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)
It has become a truism in recent years that “all capitalism is racial capitalism.” However, the meaning of this phrase, like the conditions under which it obtains, is hardly self-evident. Does it mean that race is more of an economic factor rather than a cultural one? Does it suggest, as Ibram X. Kendi has maintained, that to be anti-racist one must also be anti-capitalist (and vice versa)? Does it imply that capitalism invented race or requires it or merely exploits it as ideology? This course seeks to address these questions and to serve as a broad introduction to racial capitalism as both theoretical paradigm and historical formation. Together we will unpack how racial capitalism challenges the account of capitalist development found in classic Marxism, and explore how this challenge alters the way in which we imagine the relation among various forms of liberation struggle.
559.001: Topic in Theory
Topic: Comedy as Genre
Richard Begam
TR 2:30-3:45pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)
Course Catalog Description: An exploration of the methods and principles of criticism; generally an experiment in the application of a particular critical method or a group of related critical presuppositions to an appropriate body of English and American literature. Content varies.
559.002: Topic in Theory
Topic: On Groundlessness
Ramzi Fawaz
M 2:30-5:00pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: Sophomore standing
When democracies implode; when identities, ideologies, and alliances we once thought permanent unravel; when the values we hold about ethics, the social good, and collective life crumble at a touch; when everything we thought we knew is turned upside down and the ground beneath our feet falls out from under us, what do we do?
This advanced theory seminar will explore critical, cultural, and political theories of groundlessness in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. While concepts like contingency, indeterminacy, and anti-essentialism are now so common in critical discourse as to be cliché, most of us still hold fast to our most cherished concepts, identities, ideologies, or frameworks, each providing the illusion of a ground upon which we might base all our actions. Questioning such tendencies, we will ask: what kinds of theories refuse to hold fast to seemingly stable, essential or fixed assumptions about their objects and methods of analysis? How can groundless thinking provide a more flexible, and methodologically open relationship to the world’s unpredictability? In other words, when we lose our ground, rather than grasp at air, how can we learn to fly?
We will begin by reading political theorist Hannah Arendt’s magnum opus, The Human Condition, arguably the most sustained study of political contingency in the history of democratic theory; we will then explore a range of groundless worldviews including postmodern theories of contingency and fragmentation; deconstruction’s commitment to indeterminacy and différence; anti-identitarian projects in feminist, queer, and critical race theories; eco-criticism’s decentering of the “human”; and popular Buddhism’s description of the existential groundlessness of life. Our goal will be to reimagine the role of theory in our current moment of crisis, not as a set of universal standards or stable concepts that give us false comfort in the face of chaos, but as equipment for living that facilitates an intellectual orientation to surprise, unpredictability, and change necessary for acting in concert.
Alongside a variety of theoretical writing, throughout the semester we will engage with an eclectic archive of literature and popular culture that includes: Joanna Russ’s lesbian feminist speculative novel The Female Man (1974); Yoko Ono’s book of imaginary instructions Grapefruit (1964); the HBO fantasy television series Lovecraft Country (2020); Pema Chodron’s bestselling Buddhist self-help book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (1996); The Invisible Committee’s radical anarchist manifesto NOW (2017); and Jeff Vandermeer’s epic science fantasy series The Southern Reach Trilogy (2014).
575: British Drama, 1914 to Present
Mike Vanden Heuvel
MW 9:55-10:45am Noland 132 In-person
Prereq: Junior standing
Cross-Listed with Theatre and Drama
Rather than a standard survey featuring all the playwrights mentioned in the course description, the course in Spring 2021 will address certain traditions in British drama that grew up between World War 1 and 1960, and then use these to study intensively more contemporary plays and theatre practices that question and subvert traditional forms of dramatic writing. Among these are examples of new writing by playwrights like Caryl Churchill, debbie tucker green, Martin Crimp, and Jez Butterworth; so-called “in-yer-face” theatre (Sarah Kane); the advent and development of devised theatre by companies like Complicite and Frantic Assembly; new multi-media and digital-based forms of performance by Blast Theory and others; and the use of immersive theatre techniques by Punchdrunk (“Sleep No More”), Dreamthinkspeak, and Secret Cinema.
616: TESOL: Teaching of Reading
Angela Alexander
TR 1:00-2:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: English 415
This is a modular section that meets January 25, 2021 thru February 21, 2021
(Session Code ADD, 4 weeks of instruction)
Course catalog Description: An overview of reading and vocabulary skills and how to teach them.
617: TESOL: Teaching of Writing
Angela Alexander
TR 1:00-2:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: English 415
This is a modular section that meets February 22, 2021 thru March 28, 2021
(Session Code EEE, 5 weeks of instruction)
Course catalog Description: Practical modular workshop on key aspects of language teaching, stressing the application of techniques and theory to classroom needs.
618: TESOL: Teaching Pronunciation
Mary Wang
TR 1:00-2:15pm Remote Synchronous
Prereq: English 415
This is a modular section that meets March 29, 2021 thru April 30, 2021
(Session Code JEE, 5 weeks of instruction)
Course catalog Description: An overview of the features of English pronunciation and how to teach them.