2020 Summer Courses

Description: This course concentrates on American fiction from the interwar period, when writers from a multitude of social, aesthetic, and political positions responded to a collective sense that the conventions of the novel had fallen behind the representational demands of “modern life”. The result of this parallel experimentation was a collection of otherwise diverse works that had one thing in common: they were novels that, in their narrative technique and mode of organization, interrogated their own status as novels. Our approach to the challenging works of Sherwood Anderson, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, William Faulkner, and Djuna Barnes will thus be to keep solid footing in both the historical and the formal, all the while maintaining the curiosity, playfulness, and even fun sustained in and elicited by these works. Through lectures, close reading workshops, special assignments, and asynchronous discussions, we will practice identifying and describing the signal innovations that characterize the American novel of this period. We will also consider the relationship between our writers’ narrative innovations and their diverse and sometimes overlapping thematic concerns, including the social experience of gender, class, race, and sexuality; the reconfiguration of “center” and “margin” in American geographies; and the cultural and material ramifications of the First World War, the Great Migration, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and other historical events. Although experiments with the novel form have important antecedents before the twentieth century – going back, indeed, to the very origins of the genre – the five novels that we will closely read, map out, and discuss will reveal the early twentieth century as a critical moment of development in the history of American literature and the history of the novel writ large.

Required Texts:

• Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg Ohio (1919)
• Jean Toomer, Cane (1923)
• Nella Larsen, Passing (1929)
• William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930)
• Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (1936)

Other Required Materials: Computer with internet access, Zoom (free account)

Evaluation:

• Special Assignment #1: Narrative Maps: 15%+5%*
• Take-Home Close Readings of Passing, Winesburg, and Cane: 25%
• Special Assignment #2: Preface to 2022 edition of Nightwood: 20%+5%*
• Take-Home Final Examination: 30%
• Participation bonus (Zoom or asynchronous alternative): +1-5%

* 5% of your grade for each special assignment comes from asynchronous participation in the form of project development and peer feedback. This will count as your base participation grade for ENGL 226, with the possibility of an additional 1-5% bonus grade applied at the end of the semester based on additional modes of engagement.  

Description: This course considers the relationship between biography, gender, and fiction, examining the ways in which the autobiographical novel has evolved in response to changing political and social climates. During our intensive month-long course, we will discuss a range of auto-fictional modes and narratological approaches, including confession, testimony, and feminist revisionist history. Some of the questions we will consider are: What are the formal and political interventions offered by women’s autobiographical fiction? How has the evolution of the autobiographical novel transformed the traditionally male genre of the bildungsroman and, in extension, women’s relationship to education, intellectual life, and public space? Examining seminal works by Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid, and Sylvia Plath, this course provides a framework for discussing the relationship between literature and feminist politics through the lens of the 20th Century Women’s Autobiographical Novel.

Besides offering a broad introduction to the genre of autobiographical fiction, and an in-depth analysis of some representative novels by early 20th century women writers, the course will provide students with the opportunity to strengthen their skills in literary analysis, close reading, and critical thinking.

Required Texts:

• Orlando: A Biography – Virginia Woolf (1928)
• The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein (1933)
• Voyage in the Dark – Jean Rhys (1934)
• The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath (1963)
• Lucy – Jamaica Kincaid (1990)

Short Readings will be provided Online or on myCourses.

Evaluation: Evaluation includes blog posts, a midterm quiz, a close reading assignment and an essay.

Description: “I, too, dislike it,” proclaims Marianne Moore in her famous (and famously revised) “Poetry.” What can we, as readers, learn from poems, and from the poets who creates them? What does the form ask of us? In this course, we will engage not only with the poetry of the mid- to late-twentieth century but the poetic theories which shape and define it. To that end, we will consider how the poets we study—primarily based out of America, Canada, Ireland, and England--conceive of their work and their craft. Examining canonical poets of the era alongside lesser known figures, this course will focus primarily on women writers. Drawing from a wide range of poetic movements and preoccupations, we will consider how poetry responds to and reflects the upheavals of the twentieth-century, and how that response teaches us how to read poetry in the twenty-first.

Throughout our intensive course, students will develop greater facility with the writing process in general, as well as specific skills in close reading and literary analysis.

Required texts: All readings will be made available via myCourses.

Other required materials: Computer with internet access, Zoom (free account).

Evaluation: Participation (which includes regular and substantive contributions to an online discussion forum on MyCourses and during peer editing), weekly writing responses, brief spoken analysis of a poem, and a final paper. 

Prerequisite: None.

Expected Student Preparation: Familiarity with concepts and terminology from cultural studies or a related discipline will be beneficial.

Description: Moving chronologically through the 20th century, this course will be structured around core queer cultural texts from different periods, communities, and moments in queer history, including novels, poetry, film, theatre, and performance. We will explore the cultural texts themselves, as well as the communities, scenes and cultures that produced, received, and formed around these texts.

The course begins with the turn of the century, examining early 20th century touchstones such as Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness. This section will draw on texts such as George Chauncey’s study of gay culture from 1890-1940 and Susan Stryker’s work on early 20th century transgender history.

The course will then develop through the area between 1940 and 1969, discussing both queer experimental films and queer connections to mainstream Hollywood films of the time. We will also study poetry and literary communities, examining the works of Audre Lorde, Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin. We will also explore publications from rising advocacy groups such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis.

The next section will focus on post-Stonewall queer culture (1969-1980), looking at performance acts such as the Cockettes and Sylvester, as well as drag performance. The course will then end on queer culture during and after the AIDS crisis (1980-1999), looking at AIDS theatre and performance.

Avoiding a reliance on a settler-colonial notion of what constitutes “North American” history, the course will also include discussions of two-spirit identities and indigenous art and theatre throughout the century, including readings by Qwo-Li Driskill, poetry by Billy-Ray Belcourt and performance by Waaawaate Fobister.

Required Texts: The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, Angels in America by Tony Kushner, Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, Two-Spirit Acts edited by Jean O’Hara.
All other readings available via myCourses.

Recommended Texts: Gay New York by George Chauncey and Transgender History by Susan Stryker.
Readings will include Poetry, letters, and short stories from: Audre Lorde, W.H. Auden, Vita Sackville-West, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Barbara Guest, Bernadette Mayer and Billy-Ray Belcourt.

Films will include works by Kenneth Anger (Fireworks), and Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman) as well as others.

Performances will include Waawaate Fobister’s Agokwe, performances by Kent Monkman and Muriel Miguel, and the Cockettes.

Evaluation: Short paper, longer paper (or creative alternative), midterm, final.

Format: Lecture and discussion.