ENGL 5303, Studies in Medieval British Literature

This course will cover a Middle English textual corpus selected in consultation with the current Engl 5302 students. Topic options (among others) include “Holy Romance,” “Manuscript Miscellany,” “Vernacular Arthur,” “Canterbury and Other Pilgrimages,” and “Race-Making in Medieval England.”

Assignments: research project, oral presentation, conference-length paper, annotated bibliography

Prerequisite: English 5302, Translating Middle English, Fall 2023 (or accepted evidence, evaluated by the professor, of Middle English fluency)

Requirements Fulfilled: Foreign Language/Methods (Option 3), British Literature; Period: early; Genre: poetry; Book History/Digital Humanities Certificate; Medieval and Renaissance Studies Certificate

ENGL 5307, Studies in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Many critics talk about “the novel” as if the term were both self-evident and immutably fixed. But eighteenth-century writers had no such misconceptions; the fictions they wrote varied wildly in their form, style, and content, and the term “novel” did not have a stable meaning until quite late in the century. This course will study British novels of the long eighteenth century, both canonical and not, with a particular interest in their delightful strangeness and in the ways novels defined and presented themselves both textually and materially. We'll consider questions like how and why the weird variety of early fiction gradually coalesced into something we now understand as a coherent genre; how the material forms of printed fiction helped shape the marketing of the genre and readers' responses to the texts; and what kinds of definitions of the novel genre work best.

Requirements Fulfilled: British Literature; Period: Late; Genre: Fiction; BHDH Certificate

ENGL 5317, Studies in Postcolonial Literature: Secularism and its Discontents

We are all familiar with the phrase “the separation of church and state” as a short-hand phrase to describe secularism. To elaborate, secularism guarantees that religion can be freely practiced in the private sphere, and that the state cannot encroach on the rights of religious individuals, communities, and organizations. And vice-versa, individuals and communities cannot impose their religious beliefs on people in the public sphere. However, if we scrutinize the concept, the commonsensical notion of secularism collapses because it is embedded in a range of alternate notions like rationality and bureaucracy, the rise of capitalism, and the growing diversity within Christianity (the relationship between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism). All of these have had a huge impact on the way we imagine secularism in the present moment.

This course will be divided into two sections. We will first explore the theoretical underpinnings of secularism as it arose in Europe. Second, we'll examine a range of criticism against secularism broadly described as “postsecular”: from within the European-North American framework, through contemporary postcolonial criticism of secularism in the Middle-East, to South Asian critics who seem disenchanted with secularism.

Here is a tentative list of books we'll be reading:

Critical:

• • A Secular Age by Charles Taylor (selections only)
  • The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber
  • Formations of the Secular by Talal Asad (selections only)
  • Religious Difference in a Secular Age by Saba Mahmood (selections only)
  • Others TBD.

Fiction:

• • Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
  • Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
  • In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh
  • Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
  • Short stories by Flannery O'Connor
  • Others TBD.

Requirements Fulfilled: CLGT; Late Period; Genre: Fiction.

ENGL 5323, Studies in Nineteenth-Century American Literature: Making and Un-Making the Poetic Canon

When students think about nineteenth-century poetry (if they think about it at all), they might remember Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, maybe Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In this class, we will examine canonical figures, the literary history that has made them canonical figures, and, just as important, the figures who were left out of the so-called “American Renaissance.” Nineteenth-century American poetry has experienced a resurgence of critical interest over the last twenty years, and we will attend to the varied, recent approaches to this body of work. In our exploration, we will find that canon formation's inclusionary and exclusionary practices reveal longstanding social, political, and even economic forces that got their start in the nineteenth-century and continue to exert their influence today. But we will also study the ways that poetry functioned as a dynamic force that responded to institutional powers, historical crises, and social injustice. This course will provide a solid overview of nineteenth-century poems and authors, combined with current critical discussions/debates. Each week will focus on a single poet. Requirements for the class include in-class presentations, weekly Blackboard posts, a research proposal, and a final written assignment. The syllabus is designed to introduce students to a broad range of authors, texts, and critical methodologies.

Requirements Fulfilled: American Literature; Period: Early; Genre: Poetry

ENGL 5324, Studies in American Literature: Transpacific American Literature

Following the paradigm shift in American studies from the transatlantic to the transpacific, this course investigates how transpacific movements have informed and reshaped American literary imagination from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Beginning with Herman Melville's Typee and Jack London's Tales of the Pacific, we examine how the American whaling experience and the changing constructions of the South Pacific serve as an extension of the American westward movement and expansion of Anglo-American capitalism into the Pacific, which encompasses Pacific Islands, Oceania, and the Asia Pacific. We then scrutinize Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men and Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters as an alternative way of approaching American experiences, from the Asia Pacific to North America and from the west coast to the east coast, which foregrounds the process of American nation-building and empire-building. Meanwhile, we also focus on how the Cold War unfolds in the transpacific spaces, with special attention to David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, Chang-Rae Lee's A Gesture Life, Tim O'Brien's Going after Cacciato, and Viet Nguyen's The Sympathizer. We conclude by exploring two speculative fictions on our planetary and technological futures with transpacific twists—Karen Yamashita's Through the Arch of the Rain Forest and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

Required Texts:

Primary Literary Texts:

• • Jessica Hagedorn, The Dogeaters
  • David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly
  • Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men
  • Chang-Rae Lee, A Gesture Life
  • Jack London, Tales of the Pacific
  • Herman Melville, Typee
  • Viet Nguyen, The Sympathizer
  • Tim O'Brien, Going after Cacciato
  • Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
  • Karen Yamashita, Through the Arch of the Rain Forest

Secondary Critical Texts:

• • David Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism
  • Janet Hoskins and Viet Thanh Nguyen, Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field

Requirements Fulfilled: American Literature; Period: Late; Genre: Fiction or Drama

ENGL 5327, Studies in Multicultural Literature: Border Wars: From Corridos to Narcos

In this course, we take the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as a point of departure for examining its historical, political, and cultural construction. In discussing borderlands literary productions, we will examine the landscape, historical and contemporary conflicts, and nationalizing efforts at the border, as well as more abstract ideas that include the border as strategy for cultural representation and the forging of hybrid identities. Questions we will consider include: What are borders and borderlands? How do borders change over time and what impact do these changes have on border dwellers in a postnationalist America? How are border immigrants and exiles imagined, constructed, and exploited by individuals, governments, and corporations? How do citizens of the Borderlands resist injustice and violence? In exploring these questions, we will consider various cultural and literary approaches—including ecocritical and postcolonial theories, transnationalism, mestizaje, feminist critiques, social justice, and globalization. Our analysis of the borderlands will draw from various interdisciplinary sources including history, ethnography, literary productions, and film. Texts include With a Pistol in His Hand by Américo Paredes, Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa, Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos, Kingdom Cons by Yuri Herrera and Dreamland by Charles Bowden and Alice Leora Briggs.

Assignments include: Leading formal discussions; Conference-length paper; Article-length paper; Book or film review; Oral presentation of conference-length paper.

Requirements Fulfilled: American Literature, Period: Late; Genre: Fiction; LSJE

ENGL 5334, History of the English Language: Who Owns English? Authority in a Worldwide Language

This course examines the history and development of English from its origins in Early Medieval England through the high Middle Ages and the Early Modern period to Modern English, including the internal history, external history, and the development of its morphology, phonology, semantics, and syntax, in addition to examining orality and literacy and the effects of developing methods of textual production. We will also be reading short pieces written at different times through English history (e.g. Ælfric of Eynsham, Alfred the Great, Chaucer, Milton, Sidney, Johnson, Swift, Jefferson, Orwell) for a historical perspective on how authors perceived the language in which they were writing and how they claim authority to define and use the English language for their social and political ends. The earlier parts of the course will be highly technical; as the course progresses, there will be more opportunity for discussion and development of topics of interest to the student. The requirements will be a dialect project, a seminar paper on a topic of interest to the study of English as a language, a prospectus at midterm in order to give me an idea of what you wish to discuss in the essay, and an oral presentation on one of the texts to be discussed in class. Primary texts: Gramley, The History of English: An Introduction; Knowles, A Cultural History of the English Language; Orwell, 1984; McCrum, Globish; George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion; Wilton, Word Myths; plus additional reading assignments via OneDrive.

Requirements Fulfilled: Foreign Language/Methods (Option 2 or 3); Linguistics Certificate; Medieval and Renaissance Studies Certificate

ENGL 5357, Teaching Film and Media Studies: Within and Beyond the Image

In this course, students will learn practical strategies for teaching film and other audio/visual media (like video games, comics, and TikToks). They will become versed in the history of film instruction and in the ethical, legal, and technical concerns facing educators. While the course will be appropriate for students focusing on film and media studies, it will also provide valuable expertise to students in other fields who wish to nimbly integrate the study of media texts and/or the use of media-based assignments into their classes.

Topics covered include: defining film and media studies, teaching active viewing and listening skills, global cinema, interdisciplinarity, the logistics of teaching media that demands additional purchases/hardware, critical theory as a lens on to media, the accessibility of media classes for students with disabilities, ethics of representation in the classroom (including violence and obscenity), multicultural/queer/decolonized course design, incorporating the community into the classroom, and publicly engaged scholarship and programming as pedagogy.

Students will design syllabi, lesson plans, assignments, and assessment strategies that are relevant to their interests. They will also have the opportunity to visit classrooms. Classes will often be supplemented with perspectives of film and media studies professors from in and outside of TTU. Such guest speakers will underline the breadth of approaches as well as the challenges for teaching such materials. Invited artists will discuss their work and how it has been effectively positioned within pedagogical settings. Ultimately, the course will explore how best to teach students to see within and beyond the image.

Requirements Fulfilled: Foundation Course (With the DGS approval); Genre: Film

ENGL 5380, Advanced Problems in Literature: We Too Write Black Freedom: Gender, Consciousness, Power

In two distinct but mutually influential black freedom struggles in the last half of the twentieth century – against social and political inequality in the United States and apartheid in South Africa – there is sometimes an inordinate emphasis on male black leaders and their ideas. Important as the revolutionary philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, Barney Pityana, and others were, women and queer activists played an equal and sometimes more than equal part in conceptualizing and actualizing black freedom. Some of this forgotten history has been uncovered in recent years by black feminist scholars. Much of it remains unacknowledged and unknown.

The political writings, speeches, life narratives, and first-person accounts emerging out of these important freedom struggles is the focus of this course. Beginning with narratives of women's leadership in desegregation efforts in the American South including sit-ins, freedom rides, and black electoral mobilization, moving on to the emergence of black power rhetoric by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) after the assassination of Martin Luther King, we will chart these influences on the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) rhetoric of community development popularized by the South African Student Organization (SASO). The final section of the course will focus on the writerly and activist legacies of SNCC and SASO in contemporary mobilization around #BlackLivesMatter and #RhodesMustFall. We will also address the formal elements of ‘autobiography,' and how these narratives imitate, subvert, or remediate that form to arrive at an expansive and inherently political definition of ‘life writing'.

Texts may include:

• • Select Web Resources: TORCH: The Oxford Center for Life Writing; SNCC Digital; The Steve Biko Foundation; Digital Innovation South Africa BCM Materials; #BLM Resources; #RMF Statement
  • Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and Charles Hamilton. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. Vintage, 1967.
  • Steve Biko. 1977. I Write What I Like: Selected Writings. University of Chicago Press, 2002
  • Ruth First, 117 Days: An Account of Confinement and Interrogation Under the South African 90-Day Detention Law. Penguin, 2009 
  • Joyce Sikakane. A Window on Soweto. International Defence Aid Fund, 1977.
  • Maegan Parker Brooks and Davis W. Houck, eds. The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: To Tell it Like it is. University Press of Mississippi, 2013. 978-1617038365
  • Anne Moody. Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South. Dell, 1992.
  • Faith S. Holsaert, Martha Prescod, Norman Noonan, Judy Richardson, Betty Garman Robinson, Jean Smith Young, and Dorothy M. Zellner, eds. Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts of Women in the SNCC. University of Illinois Press, 2012.

Requirements Fulfilled: CLGT; Genre: Non-Fiction; LSJE; Women's and Gender Studies Certificate