FALL 2016 Graduate Courses in Literature and Rhetoric/Composition 537-­‐‑01, Middle English Literature, Vines, Thursday 3:30-­‐‑6:20 601-­‐‑01, Content, Methods, and Bibliography, Romine, Monday 6:30-­‐‑9:20 664-­‐‑01, Topics in Post-­‐‑1800 British Literature, Clarke, Thursday 3:30-­‐‑6:20 710-­‐‑01, Studies in English Renaissance Literature, Feather, Tuesday 6:30-­‐‑9:20 730-­‐‑01, Studies in American Literature-­‐‑ Environment, Kilcup, Tuesday 3:30-­‐‑6:20 731-­‐‑01, Studies in American Literature before 1900, Sanchez, Wednesday 6:30-­‐‑9:20 735-­‐‑01, Studies in African American Literature, Morrissette, Monday 3:30-­‐‑6:20 746-­‐‑01, Studies in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory, Yarbrough, Thursday 6:30-­‐‑9:20 747-­‐‑01, Teaching College Writing, Myers, Wednesday 3:30-­‐‑6:20 FALL 2016 Graduate Course Descriptions ENG 537-­‐‑01: Studies in Middle English Literature-­‐‑ On the Margins of the Medieval Instructor: Amy Vines R 3:30-­‐‑6:20 This course surveys the literary representations of the physical, social, and religious outcasts of the Middle Ages who often existed at the margins of society. Please remember, these categories of “otherness” and even the term “outcast” itself are arbitrary concepts that were just as troubled and contested in the medieval period as they are today. During the thousand or so years that the course readings span, one thing remains constant: the definition of any outcast is primarily a matter of perception. Throughout this course, we will keep these questions in mind when we read and discuss these texts: who is defining the individual as an outsider? What criteria are being applied? Who benefits from these assumptions and in what way? How do medieval perceptions of outcasts speak to contemporary debates about race, class, and religion? Readings will include Chretien de Troyes Yvain: the Knight of the Lion, the Roman de Silence, etc. ENG 601-­‐‑01: Content, Methods, and Bibliography Instructor: Scott Romine M 6:30-­‐‑9:20 This course introduces students to the field of English studies, focusing on the variety of critical approaches to texts and to research. The course will help students practice methods of archival, literary, rhetorical and ethnographic research, develop projects of their own, and investigate avenues for publication. ENG 665: Topics in Post-­‐‑1800 British Literature-­‐‑ Reading the Devil’s Decade Instructor: Ben Clarke R 3:30-­‐‑6:20 As Valentine Cunningham argues, the nineteen-­‐‑thirties are often represented in literary histories as “a sort of unfortunate historical blip or bypass on which writing got snagged and slowed down in the good march of the twentieth century from modernism at the very beginning to postmodernism at the end.” In particular, they are seen as a time when political commitments displaced aesthetic ones, when writers were distracted from their proper artistic concerns by “crude ideological preferences which history has not sustained.” The perceived “failure” of literature in the period is used to legitimize the broader claim that art and politics are incompatible, and that explicitly engaged writing inevitably degenerates into reductive propaganda. ENG 664 challenges this idea of what Claud Cockburn called the “devil’s decade.” Students will read a wide variety of novels, plays, poetry and essays, from work by canonical authors such as George Orwell and Christopher Isherwood to that by more neglected figures such as Mulk Raj Anand and Storm Jameson. The course will emphasize the diversity of both literary production and political commitment in the period, arguing that the pressures under which authors worked led to innovations in the form as well as the subject matter of texts. The nineteen-­‐‑thirties were not characterized by collective submission to a single literary orthodoxy, such as “socialist realism,” but by debate and experimentation, as writers sought new ways to respond to their historical moment. The course will be assessed by two presentations and a term paper. ENG 710-­‐‑01: Studies in Renaissance Literature-­‐‑ The Early Modern Body Instructor: Jennifer Feather T 6:30-­‐‑9:30 The rising importance of human dissection as a medical practice, the proliferation of conduct books focused on self-­‐‑governance, and the early modern analogy between the individual body and the body politic make the body a contested site in the 16th century. In what ways do early modern writers understand the body? How do conceptions of the body influence attitudes toward gender, status, race, and sexuality? In what ways are self-­‐‑understanding and self-­‐‑representation inflected by changing experiences of the body? Through literary, medical, and philosophical texts this course will explore the nature of early modern embodiment and its relationship to shifting notions of selfhood in the period. We will read modern theories of embodiment in conversation with pre-­‐‑
modern notions of the body. Requirements include participation and careful reading, oral presentations, and a final research project. This course fulfills a theory requirement and carries a WGS marker. ENG 730-­‐‑01: Studies in American Literature-­‐‑ Literature and the Environment Instructor: Karen Kilcup T 3:30-­‐‑6:20 What do we mean when we say “the environment”? What is the traditional relationship between literature and “the environment”? What is the proper relationship? This course begins by examining some “classics” of “American nature writing” with an appreciative and critical eye, and it continues by opening our investigation toward a more generous conception of both the genre and its resonances in the world. For example, “nature writing,” often depicted as an entirely neutral discourse, seems unrelated to the more politicized mode that we might call environmental (or ecological) writing. Yet contemporary writers and critics have challenged this dichotomy; for example, the novelist and essayist Jamaica Kincaid asks, “What is the relationship between gardening and conquest?” The Nobel Prize Committee has underscored the connections between the environment and peace with the recognition of Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai as its 2004 Peace Prize Laureate. And thousands of Americans, often following Thoreau’s example and cherishing his words, have entered the voluntary simplicity movement. In the various discourses surrounding the environment, we find that social identity matters profoundly, with white women, people of color, and working people taking central roles in speaking, writing, and acting for the future. This course explores the roots and branches of some of today’s important literary texts and affiliated social movements, with particular attention to the “outsider’s eye” of women writers. ENG 731-­‐‑01: Studies in American Literature Prior to 1900-­‐‑ The Novel in the U.S. Instructor: Maria Sanchez W 6:30-­‐‑9:20 The beginnings and arrivals of the novel in the U.S., starting with Susanna Rowson and Charles Brockden Brown, moving into Child, Sedgwick, Hawthorne, Stowe, Melville, Ruiz de Burton, and Chesnut. ENG 735-­‐‑01: Studies in African American Literature-­‐‑ African American Narrative and Narrative Theory Instructor: Noelle Morrissette M 3:30-­‐‑6:20 A survey of African American literature from eighteenth-­‐‑century slave narratives to contemporary novels by Reed, Morrison, and Everett, paired with the study of critical and theoretical approaches to African American narrative. From the inception of African American literature as text, its readers and writers have raised critical issues of origin, ownership, voice, and racial/cultural authenticity. Formal literary-­‐‑critical and interdisciplinary cultural-­‐‑theoretical models have attempted to acknowledge these issues, and yet, taken together, they represent the disciplinary and discursive tensions of African American literature and its study. This course will focus on the critical problems and possibilities emerging over the course of the twentieth and twenty-­‐‑first century from different models of scholarship applied to African American texts. We will study multiple approaches to African American literature and literary practices, which may include sound and performance studies, psychoanalysis and trauma theory, literacy and reading cultures, and gender and sexuality studies. Texts will be read through major periods of African American experience and literary production. ENG 746-­‐‑01: Studies in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory Instructor: Steve Yarbrough R 6:30-­‐‑9:20 Argumentation theory is a distinctly multidisciplinary field of inquiry. It draws its data, assumptions, and methods from disciplines as disparate as formal logic, discourse analysis, linguistics, forensic science, philosophy, psychology, political science, education, sociology, law, rhetoric, and artificial intelligence. This seminar will study the discursive, social, and rhetorical principles of argumentation, and it will explore various topics such as evidence, reasoning, and the organization and presentation of arguments, from multiple perspectives, especially as these relate to contemporary social settings and modes of delivery, including digital delivery, but also as they relate to traditional theories of argumentation. ENG 747-­‐‑01: Teaching College Writing Instructor: Nancy Myers W 3:30-­‐‑6:20 This course is designed for new teaching assistants in the English Department’s College Writing Program at UNCG. To this end, our time in class is devoted to developing and improving our pedagogical strategies in the first-­‐‑year writing classroom via theory and practice. We read current and seminal past scholarship on the teaching of first-­‐‑year writing; the practices of first-­‐‑year writing as a sub-­‐‑discipline within English studies and as related to rhetorical theory; and the theoretical considerations that writing teachers bring to their classrooms when developing their pedagogies. Writing assignments include a commonplace book tied to pedagogical reflection and required readings, an analysis of two teaching observations, a teaching philosophy, and an online teaching portfolio. Speaking assignments involve short presentations on textbooks for first-­‐‑year writing and a teaching demonstration with poster page.