Spring 22 Courses Announced!
Dr. Evan Radcliffe
Monday 5:20-7:20 pm
The 1790s was the decade of the French Revolution in Britain as well as France, with each new moment of turmoil in France—what an alarmed Alexander Hamilton referred to as “a rapid succession of dreadful revolutions”—generating its own vehement response across the Channel. The fall of the Bastille and the publication of The Declaration of the Rights of Man, the flight and arrest of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the royal trials and executions, the outbreak of war between Great Britain and France, the Terror—each year seemed to witness more of these “great national events,” as William Wordsworth called them.
Wordsworth (who, like Mary Wollstonecraft, experienced some of the Revolution first-hand) and other British writers addressed these events and their possible implications in varied ways, often through developing their own original approaches and forms. Indeed, many of their works—William Blake’s illuminated books and hybrid satire, Wollstonecraft’s feminist writings (her two Vindications and her unfinished novel Maria), William Godwin’s combination of political philosophy and fiction (Political Justice and Caleb Williams), Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads and related poems—were themselves highly innovative or even revolutionary. To keep the shifting world to which these writers responded in focus, we will move through the decade largely year by year, taking note of each historical moment and exploring particular issues and forms as we examine individual texts. Along with Blake, Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, we will also read parts of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, Elizabeth Inchbald’s novel A Simple Story and Mary Hays’ novel Emma Courtney, and writings by John Thelwall.
Among our topics will be representations of masculinity and femininity, together with how different social and political visions involve questions of gender; class and social hierarchy; the portrayals and uses of passion and emotion, from romantic desire to versions of sympathy and guilt; the relations between private and public morality; imprisonment, both mental and physical; the purposes to which “nature” or representations of the natural world are put; and genre and style, especially the roles of narrative and narrative perspectives, in relation to politics. I will contact members of the class before the term begins to get input about some of our policies, such as what sorts of presentations and other in-term written work the class will involve.
*This course will fulfill the pre-1800 British/Irish literature requirement
ENG 9730: Writing Indigeneity & Indigenous Writing
Dr. Kimberly Takahata
Wednesday 5:20-7:20 pm
This course examines how literature of the Anglophone colonies sought to clarify what it means to be Indigenous, especially in relationship to colonization. Troubling the divide between Indigenous stories and colonial writing, we will explore the bounds of authorship and textual legibility. Reading reports, natural histories, speeches, autobiographies, and poems, we will pay attention to two primary threads: one, how settlers used writing to codify the category of indigeneity as a tool of colonial power; and two, how Indigenous persons’ acts of sovereignty continue to mark colonial texts or use writing to refuse limited definitions of indigeneity. As a result, this class will also explore the progression of natural history and scientific racism as well as citizenship and belonging. Our secondary readings will introduce students to the field of Indigenous Studies and address on-going debates about methodological approaches to colonial texts of the long eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Possible readings include colonial texts by Thomas Harriot, Mary Rowlandson, William Young, and Richard Ligon, as well as writings by Indigenous authors like Mittark, Oweneco, Samson Occom, William Apess, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, and formal petitions and meeting records.
*This course would fulfill the pre-1800 American literature requirement (requirement currently suspended)
ENG 9731: Chinua Achebe & The African Novel
Dr. Chiji Akoma
Wednesday 7:30-9:30 pm
This course will explore the writings of Chinua Achebe, one of the prominent and provocative writers to emerge from Africa in the twentieth century. Beginning with his bestselling first novel Things Fall Apart, Achebe paints complex and provocative portraits of African societies as they wrestle with internal contradictions and the impositions wrought by the colonial encounter with Europe. More significantly, literary scholars regard Achebe as perhaps the most influential voice in the emergence of the African novel. Although he primarily wrote in English, Achebe’s novels are important in the ways they expand the boundaries of English by “domesticating” the language to carry the idioms of speech and socio-political realities of Africa. His novels reveal the formation of an African written narrative aesthetic that draws its strength both from the oral performance tradition and a pragmatic association with the Western novel.
In addition to his novels and short stories, Achebe wrote and spoke extensively on the African novel, making him a formidable voice in the formulation of contemporary African literary criticism and theory that inform the African novel. His collections of essays on African literature and society are insightful in their simplicity and profundity.
The course will thus approach Achebe as both theorist and novelist, placing his works in the context of African modernity, literature, and postcolonial studies. We will pay attention to Achebe’s response to the English language, Igbo speech acts, and storytelling.
Dr. Lisa Sewell
Tuesday 5:20-7:20 pm
Critical Perspectives on Gender
This course surveys ideas about gender from a variety of perspectives. It will equip you with terminology and analytic tools that will allow you to better understand how ideas about gender and sexuality have shaped human perceptions and possibilities. It will introduce you to some foundational texts of feminist and gender theory, such as Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1953) and Michael Foucault's History of Sexuality, as well as signal essays by Judith Butler, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Audre Lorde and Gloria Anzaldúa. We will also try to think globally, learning about feminist, queer and trans perspectives from the middle east, Africa and Asia, and covering some of the current developments in the field. Our readings will also include works by writers and scholars who will be visiting Villanova in the Spring. You should also be aware that feminist and queer theories often raise sensitive and politically controversial topics; they challenge many conventional ideas about social institutions, sexuality, racial identity, class divisions, and so on. I will strive to foster a safe environment in which we can all talk calmly and directly about these issues, with open minds, so we can learn as much as possible from each other.
ENG 8090: Thesis Direction
CRN
Direction of writing of the thesis, focused research on a narrowly
defined question, under supervision of an individual instructor.
ENG 8092: Field Examination
A broader exploration of a theme or area of literature than a thesis.
The examination comprises a comprehensive statement essay and an oral exam
component.
ENG 9031: Independent Study
A special project pursued under the direction of an individual
professor.
ENG 9080: Thesis Continuation
ENG : Field Exam Continuation
ENG 9035
Dr. Evan Radcliffe
CRN
Professional Research Option
(PRO)
This option for second-year graduate students is a three-credit
independent study in which students identify one or a cluster of jobs or
professions in which an advanced degree in literature is of benefit. In the course of the semester, students will
research the career options of interest, identifying one or two fields as the
focus of their work. They must generate
a research paper that explores the history and future prospects of the field of
interest, as well as current information about the requirements of the work,
geographical information about centers of activity for the profession, and
desirable employers. This research
should include at least two meetings with professionals who work in the field. The paper must also analyze how advanced
study of literature serves to enhance the students' desirability in the
profession in question. As part of their
final project, students must develop a cover letter outlining the ways their
particular training makes them suitable to work in this field. Students will make their research available
to other students in the program by uploading their final project onto a
special section of the Graduate English Program blog. Potential fields of research include the
following:
E-Book Industry Teaching
Public relations Rare book broker
Advertising Web
design
College admissions Journalism
University administration Testing
industry
Arts administration Tutoring
industry
Library science Technical writing
Entertainment industry work
ENG 9800
CRN
Internship in Teaching
English
Second-year graduate students have the option to serve as an intern for
a graduate faculty member in an undergraduate English course. Interns will attend all class sessions,
confer at least once with each student on their written work, lead two or three
class sessions under the supervision of the faculty member, and complete a
final project that is either (1) a substantial critical essay concerning the
subject matter of the course or (2) a research project concerning trends and
issues within college-level pedagogy.
The aim of the program is to provide students with teaching and
classroom experience. Students may apply
to serve as interns by consulting with a faculty member who is teaching in an
area of interest, and, if the faculty member is amenable, submitting a one-two
page statement, outlining how this course addresses their larger intellectual
goals, and what they hope to accomplish as an intern.
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