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Course Description for Fall 2008
ENGLISH English 378-0: Studies in American Literature
Please scroll down to see all descriptions for this course.
English
378-0-20: Studies in American Literature : Coming of Age
Instructor: Shauna Seliy
Office address:
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E-mail:
Office Hours:
Expected Enrollment: 30
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Novels and stories sometimes
seem to function as “transformation machines.” A
character steps into a situation in the opening and
comes out, voila, changed! He or she moves from
inaction to action, from lost to found, the varieties are
as endless as the number of stories there are.
Nowhere, perhaps, is the transformation so marked
as in the coming of age story, where a character starts
out a child or adolescent (physically and/or
Emotionally) and makes the mind-bending change into
adulthood. The drama and tumult of this change is the
subject of some of this country’s most read and most
celebrated literature (Mark Twain’s Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn; J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in
the Rye, etc.). Is it America’s fascination with youth,
its notion of itself as a young
nation, or perhaps a kind of collective dragging of the
heels in terms of facing the responsibilities and
expectations of “growing up” that seems to direct our
attention to these kinds of stories? What does this
literature tell us about what it means to “grow up” in
America? And what are the ways in which individual
circumstances (ethnic background, gender, etc) impact
the process? These are some of the central questions
the class will explore.
TEACHING METHOD: Discussion
EVALUATION METHOD: Class participation,
presentation, mid-term paper, final paper
READING: Mark Twain, Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn; Marilyn Robinson,
Housekeeping; Michael Chabon, The Mysteries of
Pittsburgh; Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar; Tobias Wolff,
Old School; Selections from Junot Diaz’s Drown; and
others.
NOTE: Texts will be available at Beck’s bookstore.
English
378-0-21: Studies in American Literature : Chicanos and Chicanas at War
Instructor: John Alba Cutler
Office address:
Phone:
E-mail:
Office Hours:
Expected Enrollment: 30
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Chicanos died in larger numbers
proportionately than any other racial or ethnic group
during the American war in Viet Nam, a fact often
referred to by leaders of the Chicano nationalist
movement. This course will examine the significant
body of literature thematizing the experiences of
Mexican Americans caught up in what Fredric
Jameson has called our first “postmodernist war.” How
do Chicano experiences in Viet Nam compare and
contrast with those of previous generations of Mexican
Americans, especially World War II veterans? Does
warfare destroy any hope of authenticity rooted either
in identity or experience? How does Chicana literature
respond to aggressive forms of masculinity cultivated
during warfare?
TEACHING METHOD: Discussion.
EVALUATION METHOD: Active participation, occasional
quizzes, one short essay (4-5 pp) and one long essay
(9-10 pp).
READING: Texts Will Include: Rolando Hinojosa, Korean Love
Songs; Joe Rodriguez, Oddsplayer; Alfredo Véa,
Gods Go Begging, Patricia Santana, Motorcycle Ride
on the Sea of Tranquility; Helena Maria Viramontes,
Their Dogs Came With Them; selections from
Richard Hooker, Tim O’Brien, John A. Williams, and
Michael Herr.
NOTE: John Alba Cutler (Ph.D. UCLA ‘08) specializes in Latina/o and American literary studies. His dissertation is titled Pochos, Vatos, and Other Types of Assimilation: Masculinities in Chicano Literature, 1940-2004. In it Cutler explores “how misplaced anxieties about assimilation lead to conflicted representations of Mexican masculinities struggling to achieve public recognition in spaces oriented to the primacy of white masculinity.” He has an article entitled “Disappeared Men: Chicana/o Authenticity: Gender and the American War in Viet Nam” forthcoming in American Literature, and another article, “Prothesis, Surrogation, and Relation in Arturo Islas’s The Rain God,” appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. Cutler has given talks at conferences of the Modern Language Association, the American Comparative Literature Association, the Western American Literature Association, and the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies.
English
378-0-22: Studies in American Literature : Memoir as Art and Argument
Instructor: Eula Ruth Biss
Office address:
Phone:
E-mail:
Office Hours:
Expected Enrollment: 25
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Memoir, arguably the oldest
genre in American literature, a genre pioneered in this
country by a woman writer, is now often misunderstood
and maligned, dismissed by critics as self-indulgent or
self-obsessed. This course will examine how these
prejudices against the genre might be related to sexism,
classism, racism and antiquated concepts of “high” and
“low” art. We will read creative works that put the
devices of memoir in service to both art and argument,
works that use the genre as a vehicle for history,
philosophy, ethnography, and theory. In our
investigation of these works and of critical literature
about the genre, we will explore how the very elements
that marginalize memoir ¾ its subjective quality, its use
of the first person, its supposed truthfulness and lack
of artifice ¾ can function as aesthetic and argumentative
tools.
TEACHING METHOD: Discussion.
EVALUATION METHOD: Class participation, a mid-term
paper and a final paper.
READING: Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable
Feast; Hilton Als, The Women; Alison Bechdel, Fun
Home; Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping; Theresa Hak
Kyung Cha, Dictee; DJ Waldie, Holy Land; Lauren
Slater, Lying.
NOTE: Textbooks available at Beck’s Books.
[Course Descriptions for Fall 2008] [Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences] [ENGLISH English]