|
|
Course Criteria
Add courses to your favorites to save, share, and find your best transfer school.
-
3.00 Credits
Postmodern Culture Full course for one semester. This course will introduce the field of postmodern studies-in connection with cultural studies and poststructuralism-and a number of issues associated with postmodernity and postmodernism in their cultural, aesthetic, and political dimensions. While the focus is on fiction and theory, we will also examine films and television programs. Prominent among the topics this course covers are globalization, mass culture, terrorism, virtual reality, hypertext, conspiracy, hybridity, pastiche, "the death of the author/subject," intertextuality, and nostalgia. We will read fiction by authors such as Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Jean Rhys, William Gibson, Kathy Acker, and J.G. Ballard along with selected theoretical writings of Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Homi Bhabha, Fredric Jameson, Donna Haraway, Michel Foucault, Jean-Fran ois Lyotard, and Slavoj Zizek. We will also screen several films, including films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, and Ridley Scott. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-1
-
3.00 Credits
British Literature, Colonialism, and Slavery, 1680-1830 Full course for one semester. In this class we will read a series of texts that focus on the nature of national and imperial identity in an age of exploration, conquest, and colonization. Most of the works are British, along with some French, American, and Caribbean texts, and range from canonical texts by writers such as Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and Jane Austen to journals, letters, autobiographies, and poetry by less well-known authors from the social periphery or margins of empire. Through these readings we will explore two kinds of questions: First, in close readings of the varied forms of these texts (satire, fiction, the memoir and journal, and poetry) we will trace the impact of various literary genres on political arguments and vice versa. Second, we will investigate what national identity is, what it means to be an imperial power, and what the nature of the non-European "other" is in a literary culture fascinated by the possibilities of colonial domination and confronted with the fact of slavery. Associated topics such as the development of a culture of ethnographic and cultural tourism in this period will also be examined. There will also be substantial secondary reading in recent criticism and theory on the questions raised by the readings. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10. The Bloomsbury Group This course examines the works and cultural impact of the Bloomsbury set, one of the most important of all English cultural movements and one that had an enormous impact on British cultural and social thought in the first half of the 20th century. The course will stress the group's debt to the philosophies of G.E. Moore that emphasized the pleasures of human friendship and aesthetic appreciation, as well as its rejection of the restrictions of Victorian society. Primary attention will be given to the writings of Virginia Woolf, the preeminent figure of the group, but we will also look at the fiction of E.M. Forster and Leonard Woolf; the criticism of Clive Bell and John Maynard Keynes; the art of Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, and Duncan Grant; and the biographical writings of Lytton Strachey. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
-
3.00 Credits
The Borderlands as Imaginary Narrative Space Full course for one semester. This course will introduce the discourse of "the border" through a range of literary, historical, and cinematic texts situated on or near the U.S./Mexico border. Our goal is to understand not only the vibrant, violent history of the region-and how that history is rendered aesthetically-but to understand how the border is "felt" as a political truth, a geographical fiction, and a psychic tension. This class is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing from literary studies, cultural studies, film studies, and Chicano/Latino studies for its operating rubrics. Texts will include Cormac McCar thy's Blood Mer idian, Richard Rodri guez's Hunger of Memory, and Gloria Anz aldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera, in addition to works by Ana Castillo, Tomás Rivera, and Sandra Cisneros. Films m ay include LoneStar, No Country for Old Men, The Searchers, and documentaries by Lourdes Portillo and Bill Brown. Prerequisites: two 200-level English courses. Conference. Not offered
-
3.00 Credits
Love, Lyric, and Loss Full course for one semester. Focusing on Chaucer's brilliant narrative poem "'Troilus and Criseyde," in this course we will explore the invention and long cultural afterlife of medieval constructions of love and loss. In the first part of the course, we will become familiar with Middle English and the continental lyric and narrative traditions Chaucer knew and drew upon in writing his lesser-known masterpiece, "Troilus and Criseyde." We will read some of Chaucer's lyrics and early dream visions ("The Parlement of Foules," "The Book of the Duchess"). Other readings will be drawn from medieval and contemporary texts that represent and theorize love and loss (e.g., Boethius, troubadour poetry, Marie de France, Kristeva). Middle English texts will be read in the original, other medieval texts in translation. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. Conference. Chaucer Full course for one semester. The late-14th-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer is surely one of the greatest masters of irony in English literature. In this course we will study a generous selection of his masterpiece, TheCanterbury Tales. The first section of the course will focus on developing students' facility with Chaucer's language and with medieval culture through a study of The General Prologue. As we proceed through the tales, we will pay careful attention to Chaucer's representation of gender and class through his use of irony and satire, his manipulation of genre, his relationship to his source materials and to medieval Christian authorities, and his subtle exploration of a poetics of instability. Throughout the course we will also consider and reconsider the implications of Chaucer's ambiguous social status within the Ricardian court, as well the validity of thinking of the poet as a "skeptical fideist." Students will learn to read Middle English fluently by the end of the semester, though no previous experience with early forms of English is required. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
-
3.00 Credits
The Black Radical Tradition Full course for one semester. Throughout the history of Black people as a colonized people in the West, there has been an ongoing debate about the proper relationship or stance the colonized should have toward the colonizer. In the 19th century, Martin Delany's radicalism was opposed by Frederick Douglass's more accommodationist stance. Later, the conflict was manifested by the contrast between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, and then between Marcus Garvey and Du Bois. Later still, there were Malcolm X and Dr. King, and then Amiri Baraka and Ralph Ellison. With the possible exception of the DuBois-Washington conflict, the less radical position is the one that has received the most attention, both public and scholarly. This course will examine the work of three representative figures of the Black radical tradition in the 20th century: W.E.B. Du Bois (U.S.A), C.L.R. James (Trinidad), and Richard Wright (U.S.A.). In particular, we will examine their relationship to Marxism as a means to the solution of the problem of the colonized. This course will be both interdisciplinary-we will read works of literature, history, and sociocultural criticism-and cross-cultural. Texts will includ e Black Reconstruction, The Souls of Black Folk (DuBois) , The Black Jacobins, Beyond a Boundary (James) , Native Son , an d 12 Million Black Voices (Wright). Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level, or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.The Black Radical Tradition II Full course for one semester. This course continues an examination of the radical solution to the problem of the colonized. This semester we will concentrate on the decades of the 1950s and 1960s. We will do an in-depth study of three writers rather than a more broad-based survey. The three writers are Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, and LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, although for the latter we will study him in the larger context of the Black Arts Movement. This will necessitate some attention to other writers such as Larry Neal, Sonia Sanchez, and Harold Cruse. Prerequisite: two English courses or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10. The Art of the African American Short Story Full course for one semester. This course will survey African American short fiction from the late 19th century into the 20th century. We will look at the work in its historical and political context. We will begin in the 1890s with the work of Charles Chesnutt that interrogates the time immediately after slavery and signals the beginning of African American modernism. We will also cover the periods of the Harlem Renaissance, African American Naturalism, The Civil Rights Movement, The Black Arts Movement, and beyond. In addition to Chesnutt, authors will include Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Paule Marshall, Ernest J. Gains, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, Jamaica Kincaid, Amiri Baraka, Toni Cade Bambara, and Edward P. Jones. Prerequisites: two English courses at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. Conference.
-
3.00 Credits
Shakespearean Skepticism Full course for one semester. A study of the way in which Shakespearean theatre engages what Stanley Cavell calls the "catastrophe of the modern advent of skepticism." Among the questions to be addressed are epistemological problems as they relate to tragedy, crises of belief and authority, and the gendering of skepticism. Plays to be read includ e King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Much Ado about Nothing, All's Well that En ds Wel l, a nd The Winter's Ta le. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level, or consent of the instructor. ConferencShakespeare and the Disciplines of Culture Full course for one semester. In early modern England a vigorous debate occurred about the effects of theatre on character, a debate that finds its echo in modern discussions of the political and ethical effects of Shakespeare and his place in the canon. This course will examine several of Shakespeare's plays with particular attention to the way in which they implicitly shape a political subject and a moral self. Among the plays addressed will be Richard II, Henry V, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear , an d The Tempest . Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
-
3.00 Credits
The Lyric, 1789 to the Present Full course for one semester. A study in the theory, practice, and history of the lyric from Romanticism to the present time. The lyric, as one of, if not the most characteristic poetic form, has historically been a fertile ground for both poets and critics to define and contest the constitutive elements of poetry. We will examine one of the most crucial periods in the construction of lyric, romanticism, and the critical and poetic legacy of romanticism for modernism and postmodernism through a reading of major lyric poets from all three periods. Readings and discussion will include a wide range of critical approaches to lyric, focusing on such questions as the constitution of the speaker; the relationship between the speaker and the fictional or real world he inhabits; organic form; the figure of "voice"; the role of intertextuality; the understanding of symbol and allegory within the lyric; the attack on lyric by aesthetic-ideology critics; and aesthetic form as experiment. Prerequisites: two English courses at the 200 level or above, preferably including English 211, or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.Image, Body, Text Full course for one semester. This course examines poetry, painting, and criticism from the Victorian and Modern periods, investigating how the notion of the image was conceptualized and, in particular, how it is connected to the representation of the body. We will investigate such issues as the relationship between vision and textuality, the nature of spectatorship and beholding, the politics of the aestheticized image, and the image as the locus for the performance of gender and sexuality. Readings may include works of Tennyson, the Brownings, D.G. Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Pater, Ruskin, Pound, H.D., Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, Frank O'Hara, and Mark Doty as well as theory and criticism drawn from literature and art history. Prerequisites: two English courses at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. Not offered 2009-10. The Poetics of Translation Full course for one semester. This course will explore the theory and practice of literary translation, with particular attention to how texts cross cultural borders. In the process, we will also consider the role of translation in twentieth-century poetic innovation, with attention to major theorist-innovators such as Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, and Haroldo de Campos. We will read selectively in translation theory, and relate this theory to our own translation practice. Students will complete a portfolio of translated poems, short stories, or short dramatic works suitable for submission to a literary journal. Prerequisites: two literature courses at the 200 level or above, preferably including English 211, or consent of the instructor. Students should have a competency in a foreign language equivalent to at least one year of study at Reed, or be concurrently enrolled in the second year of a Reed language course. Conference.
-
3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. This course will consider the history, practice, and theory of free verse in America from Whitman to the present. We will examine the debates about what constitutes free verse, the role it plays in defining avant-garde movements and forms, its relation to metrical poetry, and some of the most fruitful critical approaches for understanding it, including the poets' own writings on the poetics of verse form. Among the poets we may read are Whitman, Pound, Eliot, H.D., Williams, Winters, Olson, Creeley, Duncan, Levertov, Ginsberg, Zukovsky, Bishop, Rich, and Lee, as well as selections from neoformalist and language poets. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above, preferably including English 211, or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
-
3.00 Credits
Contemporary American Poetry Full course for one semester. This course is devoted to the works of American poets writing after 1945, beginning with poets ranging from Richard Wilbur to Charles Olson and ending with those writing now. While the class will focus on specific texts, we will also consider questions about the relationships between poetry, poetics, and American culture, trying to map the broad features of various poetic traditions and practices in the United States in the last half of the 20th century, with an emphasis on the heterogeneous nature of poetic practices. Prerequisite: English 211 or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10. American Modernism Full course for one semester. Virginia Woolf wrote that on "or about December, 1910, human character changed," voicing a widely shared excitement over an anticipated revolution in the arts. The American poets who stayed in the U.S. shared this excitement, but also faced unique cultural circumstances. We will do close readings of poetry by Williams, Moore, and Stevens; look at how they were responding to and helping shape American attitudes about the arts; and evaluate the poets' ideas about poetry's place and function. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level, or English 211 and an American history course, or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-1Politics and the Self in English Romanticism Full course for semester. A course on the relationship between the arguments and discourse arising from the American and French Revolutions (in what is called the revolution controversy) and the project and style of lyric poetry, especially in England. We will explore late 18th- and early 19th-century claims about poetic and political revolution, along with shifting ideas of personal identity. Writers may include the Wordsworths (William and Dorothy), the Shelleys (Mary and Percy Bysshe), Burke, Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Robinson, Mary Hays, Helen Maria Williams, and Anna Barbauld. Prerequisites: English 211 or a history course in the period. Conference.
-
3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. This course will examine the relationship between poetry and the sister arts, especially painting and music, from the later 18th through the 20th centuries. While we examine particular paintings, poems, and music, our emphasis will be on the literary understanding of these other arts. The approach to this problem will be both historical and critical, including contemporary theory on representation, gender, and ekphrasis. Topics include the expanding reading, viewing, and listening audiences in the late 18th century; the development of literary and art criticism as genres; the ideas of the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque; and the nature of the image. Some of the figures we may read are Lessing, Burke, Wordsworth, Blake, Tennyson, Ruskin, Pater, Rossetti, Williams, H.D., Loy, Pound, O'Hara, and Doty. Prerequisite: two English classes at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|