ENGLISH 5000: INTRODUCTION TO GRADUATE STUDY

FALL 2018 [Sec. G01, #12929] FRANK GRADY

W 7:00-9:30 461 LUCAS

450 Lucas 516-5592

T 1-3, W 3:30-5:00 fgrady@umsl.edu

& by appointment

A survey of the approaches to literary study that have flourished in the academy over the last century, including New Criticism, structuralism, semiotics, reception theory, Marxism, feminism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, gender criticism, new historicism, and other poststructuralist modes of address. This history of recent trends in literary criticism will be framed by discussions of contemporary institutional and curricular issues, academic language and writing, and proper bibliographical practice. Though much of the reading will be abstract and theoretical, we will try to remain grounded through practical criticism of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Course documents and assignments will be posted on mygateway.umsl.edu, but the main course page will be located at www.umsl.edu/~gradyf/FALL2018SYLL5000.htm, which can also be reached through my home page (www.umsl.edu/~gradyf).

Requirements: Class participation (based on perfect attendance; regular, vigorous, and open-minded contribution to discussion both in class and on-line); two sets of written responses to discussion questions, 5%; three critical essay summaries, 15%; one annotated bibliographic project (15%); two short (±1800 word) essays, 20% each; one take-home final exam, 20%; bonus on highest essay/exam grade, 5%.

Plagiarism on papers, electronic or the old-fashioned kind, will mean an instant F for the assignment, my undying disapprobation, and possible disciplinary action by the university; please refer to this site for further details, and please please please ask me if you have any questions.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

· Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction. U. of Minnesota Press, 2008. 3^rd (Anniversary) edition. [978-0816654475] Hence LT.

· David Lodge, Small World. Penguin Books, 1995. [978-0140244861]

· Bram Stoker & John Paul Riquelme, Dracula (Case Study in Contemporary Criticism). Bedford St. Martins, 2001. [978-0312241704] Hence Dracula.

· M.H. Abrams & Geoffrey Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms. Wadsworth Publishing, 2011. [978-0495898023] [recommended]

· Various essays and articles, available online or through Canvas

RECOMMENDED: Possession of or regular access to a style manual, either the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers or The Chicago Manual of Style, and a good dictionary.

WEEK	DATE	TOPIC / READING	ASSIGNMENTS
1	AUG 22	Introduction: Readings, Research, Rumors, Regrets
		Culler, “What is Theory?” [1997; Canvas] “Rethinking the Master’s Degree in English for a New Century” [2011; Canvas]
2	AUG 29	Profession I: How We Got Here
		Eagleton, “Rise of English” LT 15-46 Arnold, “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time” [1864; Canvas] Baldick, “A Civilizing Subject” [1983; Canvas] Ransom, “Criticism, Inc.” [1937; Canvas] Graff, “The Humanist Myth” [1987; Canvas]	Discussion questions
3	SEP 5	Profession II: Where “Here” Is
		Eagleton, “What Is Literature,” LT 1-14 Culler, “What Is Literature and Does It Matter?” [1997; Canvas] Guillory, from Cultural Capital [1993; Canvas] Nussbaum, “The Narrative Imagination” [1997; Canvas] MLA research [online]	Discussion questions
4	SEP 12	Academic Writing and Research
		Curzan, “Says Who? Teaching and Questioning the Rules of Grammar” [2009; Canvas] Graff, “ Scholars and Sound Bites: The Myth of Academic Difficulty” [2000; Canvas] Fish, from How to Write a Sentence. . . [2011; Canvas] Graff et al, from They Say / I Say [2009; Canvas] Tompkins, from West of Everything [1992; Canvas]	Discussion questions
5	SEP 19	History of Theory I
		Eagleton, “Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory,” LT 47-78 Eagleton, “Structuralism and Semiotics,” LT 79-109 Fish, “Interpreting the Variorum” [1976; Canvas] Barthes, “In the Ring” and “Saponids and Detergents” [1957; Canvas]
6	SEP 26	History of Theory II
		Note: Class begins at TJL 315 for research resource overview Eagleton, “Post-Structuralism,” LT 110-30 Graff, "Determinacy/Indeterminacy" [1990; Canvas] Martinez, “Deconstructing The Matrix” [2004; Canvas]
7	OCT 3	History of Theory III
		Eagleton, “Psychoanalysis,” LT 131-68 Freud, “The Uncanny” [1919; Canvas] Žižek, "Two Ways to Avoid the Real of Desire" [Canvas]	First Essay Due Date MON 10/8
8	OCT 10	History of Theory IIII
		Eagleton, “Political Criticism” and “Afterword,” LT 168-208 Althusser, from Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses [1969; Canvas] White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact” [1974; Canvas] Pollan, “Nutritionism Defined” [2008; Canvas] ***** Williams, from Marxism and Literature, [1977, Canvas] OR Montrose, “Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture” [1989; Canvas]	Critical essay summaries
9	OCT 17	Gender I
		Woolf, from A Room of One’s Own [1929; Canvas] Fetterly, Introduction to The Resisting Reader [1978; Canvas] Gilbert and Gubar, from The Madwoman in the Attic [1979; Canvas] Friedman, “Relinquishing Oz: Every Girl’s Anti-Adventure Story” [2000; Canvas] ***** Belsey, “Constructing the Reader / Deconstructing the Text” [1985; Canvas] OR Schwieckart, “Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Reading” [1986; Canvas]	Critical essay summaries
10	OCT 24	Gender II
		Culler, “Reading as a Woman” [1983; Canvas] Showalter, “Critical Cross-Dressing: Male Feminists and The Woman of The Year“ [1983; Canvas] Butler, from Gender Trouble [1990; Canvas] Doty, “My Beautiful Wickedness: The Wizard of Oz as Lesbian Fantasy” [2000; Canvas] ***** Sedgwick, from Between Men [1985; Canvas] OR Wittig, “One Is not Born a Woman” [1980; Canvas]	Critical essay summaries
11	OCT 31	Some Classics You Will Need to Have Read
		Wimsatt and Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy" [1954; Canvas] Foucault, “What Is an Author?” [1969; Canvas] Said, from Orientalism, [1978; Canvas] Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” [1988; Canvas] ***** Barthes, “The Death of the Author” [1967; Canvas] OR Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” [1975; Canvas]	Critical essay summaries Annotated Bibliography Due Fri 11/2
12	NOV 7	The Romance of Theory
		Lodge, Small World (1984)
13	NOV 14	Theories in Practice I	Finish Dracula by this date!
		Bentley, “The Monster in the Bedroom: Sexual Symbolism in …Dracula” [1972; Canvas] Roth, "Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker's Dracula" [1977; Dracula, Canvas] Foster, “’The little children can be bitten’: A Hunger for Dracula,” [Canvas] Eltis, “Corruption of the Blood and Degeneration of the Race: Dracula and Policing the Borders of Gender,” [Canvas]	Second Essay Due Date Fri 11/16
FALL BREAK – NO CLASS
14	NOV 28	Theories in Practice II	Critical essay summaries
		Craft, "'Kiss Me with Those Red Lips': Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker's Dracula" [1984; Dracula, Canvas] Schaffer, "'A Wilde Desire Took Me': The Homoerotic History of Dracula" [1994; Dracula, Canvas] Moretti, "The Dialectic of Fear" [1983; Dracula, Canvas] ***** Wicke, “Vampiric Typewriting: Dracula and Its Media,” [Canvas] OR Grady, "Vampire Culture" [1996; Canvas]
15	DEC 5	Theories in Practice III
		Appiah, "Race" [1990; Canvas] Arata, "The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization," [1990; Dracula, Canvas] Riquelme, "Doubling and Repetition/Realism and Closure in Dracula," [Canvas] ***** Castle, “Ambivalence and Ascendancy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” [Canvas] OR Valente, from Dracula’s Crypt [2002; Canvas] One last link	Critical essay summaries
	T DEC 11: Take-Home Final Exam due

Students with disabilities who believe that they may need accommodations in this class are encouraged to speak to me as soon as possible and to contact the Disability Access Services Office in 144 Millennium Student Center at 516-6554 as soon as possible to ensure that such accommodations are arranged in a timely fashion.