ENGLISH
5000: INTRODUCTION TO GRADUATE STUDY
Spring 2014 [Sec. G01, #11127] FRANK GRADY
T 4:00-6:30 455 LUCAS
450 Lucas 516-5592
T 1-3, W 12-3 and 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/SP2014SYLL5000.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; and written responses to discussion
questions early in the semester--20%); one bibliographic project
(10%); two short (5-8pp.) essays (20% and 25% each); one take-home final exam
(25%). 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. 3rd (Anniversary) edition. [978-0816654475]
Hence LT.
·
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]
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.
Tentative SYLLABUS:
T JAN 21 Introduction:
Readings, Research, Rumors, Regrets
Culler, “What is Theory?”
[1997; MyGateway]
“Rethinking the Master’s Degree in English for a New
Century” [2011; MyGateway]
·
Library Research
Tour, 5:30
T JAN 28: Profession I: How
We Got Here
Eagleton,
“Rise of English” LT 15-46
Arnold, “The Function of
Criticism at the Present Time” [1864; MyGateway]
Baldick,
“A Civilizing Subject” [1983; MyGateway]
Ransom,
“Criticism, Inc.” [1937; MyGateway]
Graff, “The Humanist Myth”
[1987; MyGateway]
·
Discussion
questions
T FEB
4 Snow Day!!
T FEB
11: Profession II: Where “Here” Is
Eagleton,
“What Is Literature,” LT 1-14
Culler,
“What Is Literature and Does It Matter?” [1997; MyGateway]
Guillory, from Cultural Capital [1993; MyGateway]
Guillory, “Canon” [1990; MyGateway]
Nussbaum, “The Narrative
Imagination” [1997; MyGateway]
T FEB
18: Academic
Writing and Research
Curzan, “Says Who? Teaching and Questioning the Rules of Grammar” [2009; MyGateway]
Graff,
“Scholars and Sound Bites: The Myth of Academic Difficulty” [2000; MyGateway]
Fish, from How to Write a Sentence. . . [2011; MyGateway] (at least pp. 1-24)
Graff et al, from They Say / I Say [2009; MyGateway]
Tompkins, from West of Everything [1992; MyGateway]
Downs and
Wardle, “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions” [2007; MyGateway]
·
Discussion
questions
T FEB 25:
History of Theory I
Eagleton, “Phenomenology,
Hermeneutics, Reception Theory,” LT
47-78
Eagleton, “Structuralism and
Semiotics,” LT 79-109
Fish, “Interpreting the Variorum” [1976; MyGateway]
Barthes, “In the Ring” and “Saponids and Detergents” [1957; MyGateway]
T
MAR 4: History of Theory II
Eagleton, “Post-Structuralism,” LT 110-30
Graff,
"Determinacy/Indeterminacy" [1990; MyGateway]
Martinez, “Deconstructing The Matrix” [2004; MyGateway]
Eagleton, “Psychoanalysis,”
LT 131-68
Freud, “The Uncanny” [1919; MyGateway]
T MAR 11 History of Theory
III
Eagleton, “Political
Criticism” and “Afterword,” LT
168-208
Althusser, from Ideology
and Ideological State Apparatuses [1969; MyGateway]
Williams,
from Marxism and Literature, [1977, MyGateway]
White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact” [1974; MyGateway]
Montrose, “Professing the
Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture” [1989; MyGateway]
T MAR 18: Gender I
Woolf, from A
Room of One’s Own [1929; MyGateway]
Fetterly, Introduction to The Resisting Reader [1978; MyGateway]
Gilbert and Gubar, from The Madwoman in the Attic [1979; MyGateway]
Belsey, “Constructing the Reader / Deconstructing the Text”
[1985; MyGateway]
Schwieckart, “Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of
Reading” [1986; MyGateway]
Friedman, “Relinquishing Oz: Every Girl’s Anti-Adventure Story” [2000; MyGateway]
T MAR 25 No Class – Spring
Break
T APR 1: Gender II
Culler, “Reading as a Woman”
[1983; MyGateway]
Showalter, “Critical Cross-Dressing: Male Feminists
and The Woman of The Year“ [1983; MyGateway]
Sedgwick, from Between
Men [1985; MyGateway]
Wittig, “One Is not Born a Woman”
[1980; MyGateway]
Butler, from
Gender Trouble [1990; MyGateway]
Doty, “My Beautiful Wickedness: The Wizard of Oz as Lesbian Fantasy” [2000; Mygateway]
· Friday, Apr
4: Bibliographical
Project Due
T APR 8: The Romance of Theory
Lodge, Small World (1984)
T APR 15: Theories
in Practice I
· Finish Dracula
by this date!
Bentley,
“The Monster in the Bedroom: Sexual Symbolism in …Dracula” [1972; MyGateway]
Roth,
"Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker's Dracula" [1977; MyGateway]
Foster,
“’The little children can be bitten’: A Hunger for Dracula,” Dracula 466-99
Eltis, “Corruption of the Blood and Degeneration of the
Race: Dracula and Policing the
Borders of Gender,” Dracula 434-65
·
Friday,
APR 18: Essay Two Due Date—Group One
T APR 22: Theories
in Practice II
Craft, "'Kiss Me with Those Red Lips': Gender and
Inversion in Bram Stoker's Dracula"
[1984; MyGateway]
Schaffer, "'A Wilde Desire Took Me': The Homoerotic History of Dracula" [1994; MyGateway]
Moretti, "The Dialectic of Fear" [1983; MyGateway]
Wicke, “Vampiric Typewriting: Dracula and Its Media,” Dracula 573-99
Grady, "Vampire
Culture" [1996; MyGateway]
·
Friday, APR 25: Essay Two Due Date—Group A
T APR 29: Theories in
Practice III
Appiah, "Race" [1990; MyGateway]
Said, from Orientalism, [1978; MyGateway]
Arata, "The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization," [1990; MyGateway]
Valente, from Dracula’s
Crypt [2002; MyGateway]
Riquelme, "Doubling and Repetition/Realism and Closure in
Dracula," Dracula 538-72
Castle,
“Ambivalence and Ascendancy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” Dracula 500-37
T MAY 8: Some Classics You
Will Need to Have Read
Foucault, “What Is an Author?” [1969; MyGateway]
Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema” [1975; MyGateway]
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
TH MAY 15: 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.
