English 5309.001: Studies in Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Romanticism and Social Justice

Dr. Marjean D. Purinton
Tuesdays 2:00-4:50 PM (ONST)
CRN: 33020

There were many reasons for people living during the Romantic period (1780-1830) to feel insecure, to crave social justice in diverse manifestations. William Blake's 1794 poem “London” from Songs of Experience expresses public despair with social injustices:

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear[.]

Corrupt leadership in the face of political unrest and regime changes dominated national and international concerns. Economic uncertainties generated increased activities in speculation, gambling, forgery. Class and gender destabilizations registered in the activities associated with consumption and commodification—prostitution, robbery, slavery, colonization. A crime-breeding environment was created by industrialization and urbanization taxed an infrastructure incapable of handling these changes. London had expanded into a metropolitan city of diverse people, living and working in unclean, crowded, urban spaces. Laborers were displaced by machinery. Maimed and unemployed soldiers flooded cities following the Napoleonic Wars. Orphans roamed the streets. Homelessness increased. Poverty prevailed. Human rights abuses abounded. Air and water pollution intensified. Food shortages occurred. Enclosure limited public spaces for shelter and food. Contagion and disease were commonplace. And in the midst of these political, economic, social pressures, individuals were concerned about how to live safely, daily, in local communities in which crime against person and property was a constant threat.

The very fabric of society was being ripped apart and rewoven with new threads, reform programs, restructurings, and justice initiatives. The literature of this turbulent and revolutionary period reflects these social concerns and contributed to the ways in which the British sought to respond to the challenges accompanying so many changes. We will explore a broad range of literary engagements with social justice, but you are invited to pursue in greater depth an issue that interests you, bringing extra-literary materials to bear upon literary analysis. Our activities will include a series of short primary-source essays, an annotated bibliography, a social justice discovery project, a brief presentation, a final critical essay, and ample provocative discussion.

Even if you do not teach or write about British Romanticism, you need to be familiar with the period's major texts and cultural shifts because they have significantly shaped modern and post-modern literary expressions. We have inherited the foundations of social justice initiated by those living in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain, and you will be amazed at the connections between Romanticism and contemporary writing, both critical and creative.

Because my scholarship and pedagogy are informed by feminist theory, you will encounter a learning environment with de-centralized authority and an invitation to participate in your own learning/discovery process.

Requirements fulfilled: British Literature; Non-fiction; LSJE

ENGL 5323 Studies in Nineteenth-Century American Literature: “Poetic Forms in the Nineteenth-Century United States”

Dr. Elissa Zellinger
Tuesdays 9:30 AM-12:20 PM (ONST)
CRN: 14963

Is it possible to understand the meaning of nineteenth-century poetic genres? Many literary critics are pessimistic about the prospect of such an endeavor. According to Cristanne Miller, “to read a genre historically in relation to a particular poet's work . . . requires knowing when we retroproject contemporary genre, or other, expectations for reading upon earlier norms and how our norms differ from those of, say, the mid-nineteenth century in the United States” (Reading in Time, 19). More optimistic critics maintain the possibility of recovering what Michael Cohen calls poems' “social life and sociality” (The Social Lives of Poems in Nineteenth-Century America, 9). By closely investigating the (sometimes hidden) social utility of nineteenth-century poetic genres, this course will help us identify the retroprojection of contemporary critical expectations onto the poetry of the past. Our readings and discussions will demonstrate the interanimation of not only social and political contexts, but, importantly, how the nineteenth-century literary marketplace—publication, circulation, and celebrity—comes to impact the social function of poetic genres.

This course will consider how current scholarship in nineteenth-century US poetry historicizes the communicative function of nineteenth-century poetic genres. Alongside such criticism, we will examine specific verse forms and contexts in order to recover the history of poetic communication as it changes over time. We will consider nineteenth-century poets such as Emily Dickinson, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Walt Whitman alongside contemporary scholarship such as the aforementioned critics as well as Jonathan Culler, Virginia Jackson, Meredith McGill, and Eliza Richards, to name a few.

Requirements fulfilled: American Literature; Poetry; LSJE.

ENGL 5342: Critical Methods

Dr. Yuan Shu
Tuesdays 2:00-4:50 PM (ONST)
CRN: 18812

This course investigates critical theories that have informed and reshaped English studies since the 1980s. We begin by raising a rhetorical question, “Who killed Shakespeare?” and examine the status quo of English studies in the context of the declining humanities and the changing environment for higher education in the twenty-first century. We then explore diachronically formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, post-structuralism, Marxism, and feminism. The focus of our course will be on (anti-) globalization theory, eco-criticism, new media studies, and new modes of reading in theory and practice. We conclude by reflecting upon another rhetorical question, “What happens after post-history and post-theory?”

Critical Texts:

• Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, Literary Theory: An Anthology
• Michael Ryan, Literary Theory: A Practical Introduction
• Paul Jay, Global Matters and the Transnational Turn in Literary Studies
• Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees
• A collection of essays will be available on Blackboard 9

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
Students are expected to write five short response papers (4-5 pages) to the required critical texts, lead discussion on essays and book chapters in class, present a portion of the final paper at the mini conference, and finish the research paper during the final exam week.

Requirements Fulfilled: Foundation course