Graduate Course Offerings

In this course we will examine and theorize things in American Modernist writing. Literary criticism has conventionally considered only human agents and their thoughts and actions, but at the moment there is a growing group of critics who are looking to nonsentient actants in a field called “Thing Studies.” We will read some theorizations of the functioning and depiction of things and examine things in fiction and poetry of the Modern moment. Readings will include Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, H.D.’s Helen in Egypt, Jean Toomer’s Cane, Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter, and Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory.

We will read and discuss representative poetry and prose of Tudor England. Edmund Spenser will receive special emphasis, but readings will include other major and minor figures of the period. Selections will give a sense of the development of English poetic and prose styles and genres, such as allegory, pastoral, sonnet, and sermon. The literature will be considered within the context of the social, religious, and aesthetic issues that engaged these writers.

The purpose of Principles and Problems of Literary Study is to introduce students to the methods of literary research, critical analysis, and writing appropriate to advanced literary study at the graduate level. We will explore different critical methodologies, approaches to advanced research in literary study, and examine the critical and textual histories of major works such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.