Additional Spring '08 Course Descriptions
English 106: Nineteenth Century U.S. Women Writers - Dangerous Domesticities.
Professor Guzaitis
This course examines the theme of domesticity in nineteenth century U.S. women's literature. We will analyze the relationship of domesticity to the construction and maintenance of the U.S. nation-state and how domesticity has aided in the defining and disciplining of gendered, racialized, sexualized, and classed bodies throughout U.S. history. We will focus specifically on national anxieties about domestic practices that have been classified as "non-normative" and the perceived threat such practices pose to the stability of a white, middle-class, heterosexual national order. Looking at a wide variety of domestic arrangements such as polygamy, extended families, interracial relationships, marital practices during slavery, and immigrant family formations, this course considers how women writers in the nineteenth century constructed domesticity in their writing.
Texts will include: Harriet Wilson's Our Nig, Catherine Beecher Stowe's Treatise on Domestic Economy, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton's Squatter and the Don, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, Onto Watanna's Miss Nume of Japan: A Japanese American Romance, Fanny Stenhouse's Tell It All: A Woman's Life in Polygamy and Pauline Hopkins's Contending Forces.
English 150: Queer Theory and Literature.
Professor Guzaitis
In this course, students will be introduced to foundational texts within the field of Queer Theory. Students will learn how to apply queer theory as a theoretical framework in their examination of cultural texts (i.e. literature, film, television) and use queer theory as a mode of analysis across disciplines. Prior knowledge of queer theory is not required, however, this course will be dealing with complex theoretical concepts that will require substantial reading and analysis.
English 157: Nature & Gender: Reading Environmental Literature.
Professor Clark
Environmental literature is broadly defined to include science writing as well as fiction, poetry, and literary non-fiction. The theoretical framework will be provided by Carolyn Merchant's most recent book, Reinventing Eden, and will be supplemented by various critical and theoretical essays, many of which deal with ecofeminism and environmental justice. After Merchant we will read Carson's Silent Spring, then move through Lopez's Arctic Dreams, Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Silko's Ceremony, Hogan's Solar Storms, and Williams' Refuge. The poets include Harjo, Ortiz, Plath, Rich, Snyder and Young Bear. Terry Tempest Williams (author of Refuge) will visit the class on April 29th and give a public lecture in Rose Hills Theatre later that day.
The classes will be discussion-based, focused upon close reading of the texts, and will include presentations on assigned material by class members. There will be three 6-8 page papers. This is a Writing Fellow course, so each paper will be submitted in draft form, discussed with a Writing Fellow, and then submitted two weeks later in final form for grading. This provides an excellent opportunity to improve your writing, no matter what year you are.
The class is cross-listed with Environmental Analysis and Gender/Women's Studies.
English 165: Modern/Postmodern Fiction.
Professor Clark
I'm interested in the hinge between modernism and postmodernism, and in the postmodern texts that constitute what Linda Hutcheon calls "historiographic metafiction," novels that critically revisit the past from the perspective of those originally excluded.
We will begin with two icons of high modernism: Woolf's To the Lighthouse and Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, then move to Barnes' Nightwood, and Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea. The postmodern texts include Wolf's Cassandra, Kingston's Woman Warrior, Silko's Ceremony, Morrison's Beloved, and possibly Djebar's Fantasia. The reading will include various critical and theoretical essays.
The classes will be discussion-based, focused upon close reading of the texts, and will include presentations on assigned material by class members. There will be three 6-8 page papers.
The class is cross-listed with Gender/Women's Studies.