Enrollment and waitlist data for current and upcoming courses refresh every 10 minutes; all other information as of 6:00 AM.
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Subject: English (Grad) (GENG)
CRN: 21949
Lecture
St Paul: O'Shaughnessy Education Center 212
Requirements Met:
Pre-1900 American Lit.
This course will explore the history of women’s writing about miscegenation and its consequences for women’s lives in the United States. Before the Civil War, “tragic mulatta” tales like Lydia Maria Child’s “The Quadroons” and Dion Boucicault’s popular play The Octoroon invoked sympathy for female characters born in mixed-race unions who are raised as affluent white women only to discover, on their father’s death, that they are legally black by the “one drop” rule and will be sold as slaves. Like the parading of near-white slaves at rallies, these narratives were used in the service of enlisting white support for abolition. Yet more sophisticated texts, like Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Child’s Romance of the Republic worked changes on the “tragic mulatta” tale that allowed these writers to grapple with complex questions of racial identity raised by the highly charged subject positions of mixed-race persons in antebellum society. Obviously, the racial rift in America did not disappear with the ending of slavery; twentieth century writers continued to interrogate issues of identity formation, civil rights, women’s rights, and relational and familial dynamics using the liminal position of the mixed-race woman to define both problems and triumphs. We’ll explore the no-win situations created by Nella Larsen in Quicksand and Passing and the somewhat more hopeful explorations of race offered by current authors like Gloria Naylor (Mama Day) and Natasha Trethewey (Bellotcq’s Ophelia), along with a selection from the compelling body of historical and literary criticism on miscegenation.
3 Credits
| 02/04 - 05/24 | ||||||
| M | T | W | Th | F | Sa | Su |
6:00 pm |
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Subject: English (Grad) (GENG)
CRN: 21950
Lecture
St Paul: O'Shaughnessy Education Center 210
A workshop experience involving the ongoing exploration of subject matter and technique. Readings will include theoretical and creative texts. This course will also discuss fiction writing in publishing contexts – how literary works are written, revised, submitted, acquired, edited, and marketed by presses. The course will also give students insight into broader issues in the publishing world such as the rise of small and independent presses, university presses, traditional major presses, as well as online publishing, self publishing, and issues of access and diversity in the literary marketplace. The course will include guest lectures or other engagements with agents and/or editors from the publishing community.
3 Credits
| 02/04 - 05/24 | ||||||
| M | T | W | Th | F | Sa | Su |
6:00 pm |
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Subject: English (Grad) (GENG)
CRN: 21951
Lecture
St Paul: O'Shaughnessy Education Center 212
Requirements Met:
Global Literature
Pre-1830 British Lit.
In what forms do Chaucer and the Middle Ages persist in the modern cultural landscape? This question will guide this seminar, which explores the global reception history of Geoffrey Chaucer from his earliest English and French contemporaries to modern-day popular culture and digital media. Focusing on Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the seminar will “code-switch” between medieval and postmedieval frames of reference. First, we will read The Canterbury tales by Chaucer; second, we will consider how Chaucerian works are repurposed in modern media (such as spoken word poetry, visual art, film, dialect literature, YouTube videos, and comic books). As this course toggles between modes of reading, it tests the boundaries between literary criticism and popular reception history. It also asks how present-day translation theory confronts a perceived chasm separating static text-based models of “translation” from embodied culture-based models of “adaptation.” Thus, beyond studying Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the seminar will (1) examine the online Global Chaucers project that logs and links translations and adaptations across the world; (2) explore the work of British-Nigerian poet, performer and rapper, Patience Agbabi, who revisits The Canterbury Tales and mines the Middle-English text to offer a 21st-century take on the characters, its poetry and its performance elements; and (3) wrestle with the six-part BBC Canterbury Tales adaptations of specific Canterbury Tales which are transferred to a modern, 21st-century setting, but still set along the traditional Pilgrims' route to Canterbury. This course satisfies the 600-level requirement and the pre-1900 British Literature requirement. This course also satisfies the Literature in a Global, Transatlantic, or Transnational Perspective for the new curriculum. GENG 513 or permission of the instructor is required.
3 Credits
| 02/04 - 05/24 | ||||||
| M | T | W | Th | F | Sa | Su |
6:00 pm |
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Subject: English (Grad) (GENG)
CRN: 21952
Lecture
St Paul: John Roach Center 481
Requirements Met:
Global Literature
Identity & Power
In a recent piece, "The Location of Literature: The Transnational Book and the Migrant Writer," Rebecca Wolkowitz suggests that "contemporary literature in the age of globalization is, in many ways, a COMPARATIVE literature: works circulate in many literary systems at once, and can-- some would say, need [to]--be read within severe national traditions" (my emphasis). In this course, we will examine the premise of this claim, examining a range of texts within the context of some of the vast changes that have taken place in the global economy in the last twenty years. We will focus on just a few distinctive feature of the present conjuncture: the political economy of transnationalism--how the acceleration in transnational capital accumulation and the accompanying dispossession of the poor and rise in migrant and refugee populations (especially in/from the Global South), have been highlighted or displaced in the transnational text; the emergence of a transnational citizen --how questions about citizenship have evolved at a time when national borders have become both more rigid and more fluid; gender in a transnational world--how gender has been used to demarcate and negotiate political and economic conflicts; and finally, the idea of transnational ethics-- how the events of 9/11 and the subsequent "war on terror" have realigned our notions of human rights. The texts we will read do not merely serve as "vessels" for economic or social positions, nor are they simply allied or resistant to dominant neoliberal paradigms; instead, like most texts, they yield contradictory "meanings," and we will consider ways in which these texts succeed or fail within the conditions of their own production. The course will explore a range of voices, including Arvind Adiga, Anthony Appiah, Giovanni Arrighi, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Rey Chow, Teju Cole, Amma Darko, David Harvey, Eduardo Galeano, Muhammed Hanif, Caren Kaplan, Arundhati Roy, Amartya Sen, Gayatri Spivak, and Slavoj Zizek. Each student will write blog entries, a mid-term paper, and a final essay, and s/he will also be responsible for an extended presentation. A list of books and films will be available at the end of the fall semester. This course satisfies the Multicultural Literature distribution requirement and counts as one 600-level course. This course also satisfies the Literature in a Global, Transatlantic, or Transnational Perspective for new curriculum. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
3 Credits
| 02/04 - 05/24 | ||||||
| M | T | W | Th | F | Sa | Su |
Subject: English (Grad) (GENG)
CRN: 23076
Independent Study
St Paul: No Room
Students will work closely with a faculty mentor on independent research. This research will involve substantial individualized reading, writing, and research.
3 Credits