GRADUATE COURSES IN ENGLISH
Summer Session 2010
Fall Session 2010
COURSE OFFERINGS FOR:
Master of Arts
Doctor of Philosophy
Non-Degree Study
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Room HU 336
(518) 442-4099
Bret Benjamin, Director of Graduate Studies
FACULTY TEACHING SUMMER & FALL 2010
RICHARD BARNEY, Associate Professor – Ph.D., University of Virginia
KEVIN BELL, AssociateProfessor – Ph.D., NYU
BRET BENJAMIN, Associate Professor – Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin
DONALD J. BYRD, Professor – Ph.D., University of Kansas
LANA CABLE, Associate Professor – Ph.D., Johns Hopkins
THOMAS COHEN, Professor – Ph.D., Yale University
LYDIA DAVIS, Associate Professor and Writer-in-Residence, B.A., Barnard College
HELEN ELAM, Associate Professor – Ph.D., Brown University
JENNIFER GREIMAN, Assistant Professor – Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
ERIC KEENAGHAN, Associate Professor – Ph.D., Temple University
STEPHEN NORTH, Distinguished Teaching Professor – D.A., University at Albany, SUNY
HELENE SCHECK, AssociateProfessor – Ph.D., Binghamton University, SUNY
EDWARD SCHWARZSCHILD, Associate Professor – Ph.D., Washington University
LAURA WILDER, Assistant Professor – Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin
DAVID WILLS, Professor – Ph.D., Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris
SUMMER SESSION COURSES
Four Week 2 (June 21-July 16
ENG 581— The Beats, Black Mountain, and Cold War America
2944 MTWTHF 3:20-5:40 p.m. HU 124 E. Keenaghan
Following World War II, the American mainstream between 1950 and 1975 was characterized by a socially, politically, and culturally conservative climate. As suburbia and consumerism expanded, conformity was on the rise. As a result, many were increasingly intolerant of political, racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual differences. Much American poetry challenged that Cold War culture. This class will focus on to two such groups of poets, who often were in dialogue with one another: the ―hip‖ and ―countercultural‖ Beats and the ―postmodern‖ poets associated with Black Mountain College and Black Mountain Review. We will examine how Beat and Black Mountain poets offered exciting, revolutionary visions of a new national and global future. Invoking jazz and blues, race relations, sex, drugs, death and apocalypse, unconventional gender, challenges to the State (war, censorship), experimental language, communism and anarchism, they imagined new forms of community based on love, freedom, and historical consciousness.
Probable texts:The Portable Beat Reader (ed. Charters); Allen Ginsberg, Howl on Trial (ed. Morgan); Gregory Corso, Happy Birthday of Death; Jack Kerouac, Mexican City Blues; Charles Olson, Selected Writings; Robert Creeley, Selected Poems; Robert Duncan, Selected Poems; Denise Levertov, Selected Poems. At the end of May, enrolled students will be emailed a complete syllabus and finalized book list.
Requirements: Class attendance and participation; additional critical readings about the texts and authors; discussion board posts about the reading three times a week (350-500 words); one 15-20 minute
presentation on the assigned author and her context; a researched final paper due by August 1 (20-25 pages).
Six Week 1 (May 24– July 2, 2010)
ENG 681—Authors and their critics
2982 MW 6:00-9:30 p.m. HU 123 H. Elam
FALL COURSES
ENG 500—Textual Practices I
(Open Only to English MA Students) - Permission of Department is Required
3002 M 4:15-7:05 p.m. HU 116 H. Elam
This course explores some of the debates that have shaped the context of literary study and will deal with literary texts around which such debates consistently hover. Readings will move across genres and disciplines, structured as a conversation between literary and critical texts, and will comprise writers such as Dickinson, Beckett, Wordsworth, Nietzsche, de Man, Kafka. Requirements: Two short papers leading to term paper, weekly responses to readings, and class presentations.
ENG 516—Workshop in Fiction
Permission of Instructor required. Please submit a sample of your fiction writing to Prof. Davis
([email protected]). Any student who is an undergraduate or who is a graduate student from a department
other than English should e-mail the Director of Graduate Studies <[email protected]> with student ID# to inquire about workshop eligibility requirements.
3004 T 4:15-7:05 p.m. HU 116 L. Davis
In this course, each student will be expected to complete three pieces of fiction (short stories, short-shorts, or novel excerpts) during the semester, to be submitted for workshop discussion. Most of each class period will be devoted to this workshop discussion(for which prepared written comments will be expected), but time will also be spent studying and discussing isolated aspects of effective writing, such as description, dialogue, character depiction, openings, and endings. In support of this, there will be some short texts for assigned reading, as well as occasional in-class writing exercises and supplemental brief assignments. One book may be assigned to be read in full.
ENG 555—Old English
17204 T 7:15-10:05 p.m. HU 027 H. Scheck
The literature and language of early England (up to about 1100 C.E.) has inspired poets, novelists, and scholars, including Milton, Tolkien, and Pound, and continues to excite the modern imagination. A film adaptation of the Old English epic, Beowulf, appears every two or three years, it seems, and Benjamin Bagby performed his artful recitation of the poem to a full house at Lincoln Center and continues to attract audiences in Europe, England, and America. Indeed, poets from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Seamus Heaney seemed to view translation of Beowulf as a measure of poetic achievement. The legacy of Anglo-Saxon England has political significance as well. Henry VIII hearkened back to Anglo-Anglo-Saxon letters to prove that the Church of England had always been independent of the Church of Rome. Thomas Jefferson was an avid Anglo-Saxonist and even proposed as a design for the national seal the first Anglo-Saxon leaders, Hengist and Horsa. Old English language, literature, and culture offer much, therefore, to writers and scholars seeking greater historical and linguistic depth.
uses to which Old English and Anglo-Saxon studies has been put in later centuries, especially in England and the United States.
No experience with Old English or language learning is necessary: though it looks very different from the current form of English, Old English is merely an early form of our language and it won‘t take long to achieve reading competence. The course text will be Peter S. Baker‘s Introduction to Old English (Second Edition; ISBN: 978-1-4051-5272-3). Secondary readings will enrich our understanding of the texts and culture of the Anglo-Saxons and help us to think critically about their legacy.
ENG 580—Staging Empire
15106 TH 4:15-7:05 p.m. AS015 L. Cable
The British Empire stretched across three centuries, and at its height it governed one quarter of the world‘s population and land mass. Although the legal relationships between ruler and ruled were written up in various constitutions, the contradiction between cherished British notions of themselves as freedom-loving people and the actual practices whereby they curtailed the liberties of others led to significant ambivalence about the meaning of such power. This ambivalence is reflected in plays performed from the late
16th through 20th centuries. We will explore a selection of these plays through questions such as: How do specific plays reflect the cultural and political conditions that sustain empire? Do playwrights intervene in public debate over empire in order to influence it, or do they merely dramatize what they perceive? How does a given play indicate what its English audience feared, aspired to, gained, or lost from empire? To what extent were public perceptions about empire shaped by race, class, gender or partisan politics? How did ideas about empire affect popular notions of English identity? What evidence did plays provide for audiences to think through the moral, ethical, and social as well as economic consequences of imperial dominion? To what extent did stage plays treat empire as altering the course of human civilization? Although a substantial number of our readings come from the English Augustan era (1660-1714), which consciously drew on classical Roman models of philosophy, politics, art, and literature, we will also sample the broad historical sweep of British empire drama, from the work of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare to twentieth century playwrights Harley Granville Barker and Brian Friel. In addition to reading and discussion, there will be a sequence of short papers and oral reports on historical context, oral presentation of an annotated bibliography, and a final research paper.
ENG 581— Modernism (Reading Course)
9090 T 4:15-7:05 p.m. HU 032 K. Bell
This course was recently added to our fall offerings, and a specific course description will be published shortly. The course will survey a range of modernist literature with attention to questions of race. As a "reading course" a breadth of coverage will be prioritized over a specific topic of inquiry.
ENG 582 —Faulkner’s Post Literature—―I don’t hate the south‖
17207 W 4:15-7:05 p.m. HU 027 T. Cohen
This seminar involves a selective reading of Faulkner in light of 21st century horizons that require us to reassess the canonical interpretations linked to regionalism (―the South‖), racial trauma, and modernist premises. In doing so, we examine where these referential investments give way to post-humanist premises that, all along, had been turned against these forms of reception. Beginning with selections from Sanctuary
ENG 615—Organicism Reconsidered: Whitehead and Olson
17210 TH 7:15-10:05 p.m. HU 032 D. Byrd
Beginning with Plato the philosophy of organism has been the recurrent form of theoretical retrenchment. With the publication of Isabelle Stengers‘ Thinking with Whitehead, it is time to reassess the tradition of organicism again.
This course will focus on a close reading of Alfred North Whitehead‘s Process and Reality, Charles Olson‘s Maximus Poems, and related texts. Following Whitehead and Olson, the reading will be undertaken against the background of nineteenth-century organicist theory and romantic literature, most importantly Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Melville. Some attention will be given to contemporary organicist theorists. It should be a useful course for writers who are interested in the practical uses of theory in the production of literary form and for anyone preparing to do further research in nineteenth and
twentieth century literature and culture. With the recurrence of Whitehead, it may now be possible to make the turn the culture failed in the 1930s.
Although it will be possible to complete the course successfully reading only the required texts, students might find the course more rewarding with prior knowledge of Plato‘s Timaeus, Whitehead‘s Science and the Modern World, Melville‘s Moby Dick, and Olson‘s Call Me Ishmael and other essays on Melville(in
Additional Prose). These might be read over the summer. Students with a special interest in American literature should perhaps also review Emerson‘s ―Nature,‖ Whitman‘s poetry and prefaces. Whitehead and Olson offer a powerful alternative context for the understanding of the past two centuries of literature, and the course will allow some adjustment for a variety of interests for students who are planning major research projects on relevant topics.
ENG 642.1—Keyworks of Transnational Cultural Studies (Reading Course)
12356 T 7:15-10:05 p.m. HS 204 B. Benjamin
ENG 642.2—Animal and Technological Forms of Life
17211 W 7:15-10:05 p.m. SS 133 D. Wills
Study of recent theoretical work that questions the status of the human in relation to the animal and to technology. We will read works by Serres, Agamben and Derrida, as well as by Haraway and others, which problematize distinctions between the human and the animal, as well as between the human and the machine, both from humanist and non-humanist perspectives. Students will be encouraged to analyze literary examples (e.g. Coetzee) in the context of philosophical and theoretical readings and to examine the stakes of such work for the discipline.
Taught in English
ENG 681.1—Popular Fictions
10442 TH 4:15-7:05 p.m. HU 116 S. North
This course will consider the relationship between a selected set of authors working in mystery and detective fiction and those critics who, especially over the past 30 years, have tried to make cultural and/or literary sense of this impressively durable and prolific form. Authors will likely include Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Anna Katherine Green, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Roberts Rinehart, Walter Mosley and Sara Paretsky. Critical texts will include both broader background readings (e.g., Walter Benjamin, Tsvetan Todorov); and more recent, specialized work such as Maureen Reddy‘s
Traces, Codes and Clues: Reading Race in Crime Fiction; Catherine Ross Nickerson‘s The Web of Iniquity: Early Detective Fiction by American Women; John Irwin‘s Unless the Threat of Death is Behind Them; and Sean McCann‘s Gumshoe America. Assignments will include regular short writings, a class presentation, and an extended final project.
ENG 681.2—Contemporary Authors
17212 W 4:15-7:05 p.m. HU 113 E. Schwarzschild
This is a course that examines contemporary writers and it will be structured in conjunction with the NewYork State Writers Institute Fall 2009 Visiting Writers Series. We will study at least eight major writers, whose works range from fiction and nonfiction to poetry, playwriting and screenwriting. One principal work for each writer will be taken up in the context of the writer's complete work, the writer's biography, and the contemporary literary situation. Students will be expected to reflect both critically and creatively on each writer's work. Since the Visiting Writers Series often has sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays, students will be encouraged whenever possible to be available for the relevant 4:15 p.m. craft talks and 8:00 p.m. readings by the Visiting Writers themselves. The course will also stand in parallel to the undergraduate English 350 course, a course that takes up some of the same material in survey fashion. That parallel will provide an opportunity to examine pedagogy as a part of the critical exploration of the writers studied.
The actual list of authors will be announced as the Visiting Writers Series schedule is confirmed, sometime over the summer. Updates can be found on the New York State Writers Institute website (
www.albany.edu/writers-inst). Recent Visiting Writers have included such authors as Francine Prose, Russell Banks, Don DeLillo, Lorrie Moore, Richard Russo, Walter Mosley, and Jayne Anne Phillips.
ENG 710—Textual Studies I
11542 M 7:15-10:05 p.m. HU 019 J. Greiman
This course will broadly survey key theoretical concepts and critical problems in 20th- and 21st- century literary and critical theory, which have helped to shape the field of English Studies. While surveying the work of thinkers from a wide range of movements and perspectives, we will focus on the various ways in which these writers think the literary and the political together. We will read against chronology, to a large extent, instead tracing a path through clusters of concepts, such as ideology and aesthetics; différance and citationality; subjection and alterity; plurality and exception. The list of authors will likely include: Althusser, Eagleton, Jameson, Zizek, Derrida, DeMan, Kamuf, Arendt, Fanon, Foucault, Butler, and Agamben. To open our conversation about the theories and practices of English Studies in the 21st century, at our first meeting we will discuss a recent special issue of the journal, Representations
(issue 108, Winter 2009), ―The Way We Read Now,‖ edited by Sharon Marcus and Stephen Best. (You can order this issue directly from the UC Press website http://caliber.ucpress.net/toc/rep/108/1).
ENG 720—Biopolitics and Mediation, Early and Late
12358 TH 7:15-10:05 p.m. HU 027 R. Barney
This course will study the relatively recent field called biopolitics by focusing particularly on how the work by Michel Foucault, Giorgo Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida, and others has been crucially based on particular interpretations of early modern political and philosophical authors such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Adam Smith. Since many recent analysts like Foucault consider the birth of biopolitics during the 17th and 18th centuries to have been a central part of the emergence of western modernity, we will read several early works they rely on with a careful eye toward how those works support or complicate specific constructions of concepts such as the Enlightenment, the modern, subjectivity, or political sovereignty. Along the way, we will consider how during the 18th century, new scientific discoveries about human physiology, as well as innovative formulations of human perception or socialization, produced new understandings of ―life‖ and its potential for political control, revolution, or reform.
Because the convergence of ―life‖ and politics was by no means ready-made during the early modern period, we will also explore the prospects of critically intervening in the current discussion of biopolitics by tracking the usefulness of another theoretical concept that has received considerable attention of late— mediation. As considered by analysts including Jay Bolder, Richard Grusin, Lisa Gitelman, and Mary Poovey, mediation constitutes a broad spectrum of activity that can include conceptually bridging abstract differences, pragmatically allying otherwise disparate socio-political entities, or technologically linking— as ―the media‖—distinct parties in the act of communication. Drawing on a new book by William Warner and Clifford Siskin that argues that mediation is the Enlightenment concept par excellence, we will consider various ways that the combination of biology and politics often required—and may still require today—a third term, such as statistical calculation, anthropological speculation, and aesthetic formulation.
ENG 771—Practicum in Teaching Writing & Literature
Prerequisite: ENG 770. Open only to English Ph.D. students)
16360 M 4:15-7:05 p.m. PC 355 L. Wilder
Building on ENG 770 Teaching Writing and Literature, this course is intended to supplement and support participants‘ experience of concurrently teaching an undergraduate English course at the University at Albany for the first time. To promote the development of reflective teaching practices open to inquiry and experimentation, course activities will include: discussion of problems posed by classroom dynamics, investigation of available campus resources and disciplinary publications related to teaching, regular reflective contributions to a teaching log, classroom observations, comparison of methods for evaluating and commenting on student work, exploration of computer-assisted classroom tools, and development of a statement of teaching philosophy.
ENG 815—Poetry Workshop Offered by Writer-in-Residence Rebecca Wolff Specific details about times, dates and application procedures forthcoming
Course Concentration Distribution
Literature, Modernity, and the Contemporary
ENG 555—Old English Scheck ENG 580—Staging Empire Cable ENG 581—Modernism (Reading Course) Bell ENG 582—Faulkner‘s Post Literature Cohen ENG 615—Organicism Reconsidered Byrd
ENG 681.2—Contemporary Authors Schwarzschild ENG 720—Biopolitics and Mediation, Early and Late Barney
Writing Practices
ENG 516—Workshop in Fiction Davis ENG 615—Organicism Reconsidered Byrd
ENG 681.2—Contemporary Authors Schwarzschild
Cultural, Transcultural, and Global Studies
ENG 642.1—Keyworks in Transnational Cultural Studies Benjamin ENG 681.1—Popular Fictions North
Theoretical Constructs
Projected Two-Year Graduate Course Schedule, Fall 2010-Spring 2012
(Note: this two-year schedule of grad offerings is subject to change. We hope, however, that it will be of some help in planning a sequence of courses that accounts for likely offerings in future semesters)
Fall 2010
500 Textual Practices Elam 516 Fiction Workshop Davis 555 Old English Scheck 581.1 Late 19th C American (Reading) Chu 581.2 Allegory Murakami 582 Faulkner‘s Post-Literature Cohen 615 Contemporary US Poetry Byrd 681.1 Popular Fictions North
681.2 Contemporary Authors Schwarzschild 642.1 Keyworks of Transnational Cultural Studies (Reading) Benjamin 642.2 Animal and Technological Forms of Life Wills 710 Textual Practices I Greiman 720 Biopolitics and Mediation Barney
771 Practicum Wilder
Spring 2011
516 Fiction Workshop Tillman 517 Dramatic Writing Workshop Yalkut 581.1 Romanticism (Reading) Kuiken 581.2 Race and Modernism (Reading) Bell
582 Milton Cable
615 Heidegger‘s Poetics Joris 641.1 Literary Theories of the Americas Arsic 641.2 Performance Noel 642.1 Post Humanism Ebert 642.2 Survey of Psychoanalytic Theory Shepherdson 685 Anglophone Caribbean Griffith
720 War Hill
770 Teaching Writing and Literature Bosco
Fall 2011
500 Textual Practices Murakami 516 Fiction Workshop Davis 580 The Sublime (18th C) Barney 581.1 Victorian Novel Craig 581.2 American Modernism (Reading) Keenaghan 582.1 Shakespeare (Reading) Rozett
582.2 Joyce Stasi
Spring 2012
515 Poetry Workshop Joris
516 Fiction Workshop Schwarzschild 522 Survey of Rhetorical Theory (Reading) Wilder 580 American Culture 1945-75 Byrd 581.1 Wigwams of Waverly: TransAtlantic Frontier Lilley 581.2 History of English Novel (Reading) Hill 582.1 Frederick Douglass Arsic 642 Aesthetics and Emotion Shepherdson 651 Poetry and Language Elam 681 Politics of Literary Reputation Bosco 720 Politics of the Novel: Race and Ethnicity Chu 770 Teaching Writing and Literature Scheck
