LIT 499-01 Seminar in Research and Theory: Thornton Wilder
Professor: Lincoln Konkle
Thursdays 5:30-8:20pm
This section of 499 will study the works of the only writer to win Pulitzer Prizes in both drama (Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth) and fiction (The Bridge of San Luis Rey). There will also be supplementary readings on dramatic theory (theories of comedy and tragedy). In addition to Wilder’s major full-length plays and 2-3 novels, we will read several of his one-act plays, some of his essays on theatre and drama and American characteristics, and his screenplay for the Alfred Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt.
LIT 499-02 Seminar in Research and Theory: The Booker Prize
Professor: Mindi McMann
Tuesdays 5:30-8:20pm
The Booker Prize winners and shortlisted novels are intended to identify some of the ‘best’ literature every year produced in English. This course will focus specifically on literature produced outside of Britain and the United States, and analyze trends and developments through the Booker winners. What geographic areas and narrative forms are privileged in these awards? What does that suggest about the development of postcolonial studies? Can we identify trends within these awards that relate to larger political and social forces at work? In another way, the prize itself is only an organizing element, and we really are looking more closely at the state of comparative Anglophone literature in the last 50 or so years since the prize began. The course will emphasize postcolonial theory and theories of globalization. While the Booker Prize is a theme of the course, it’s just our starting point; most of our analysis and discussion will quickly move beyond that to talk more about postcolonial literature more broadly.
LIT 499-03 Seminar in Research and Theory: Women on the Road- Travel Writing
Professor: Michele Tarter
Tuesday/Friday 11am-12:20pm
This research-intensive seminar will explore the literary tradition of early American women who dared to break out of domestic confinement and travel, against all odds. A woman on the road “be it a dusty dirt path or a mountain trail” faced enormous challenges in the American frontier. Writing about their adventures, these authors sealed the final transgression: they shared their daring feats publicly for all the world to see. We will look at a variety of women’s memoirs to analyze the genre of women’s travel writing in early America, ranging from colonial captivity narratives to cross-dressed war thrillers, Underground Railroad escapes, and diverse accounts of westward expansion.
LIT 499-04 Seminar in Research and Theory: From Swift to Johnson
Professor: David Venturo
Tuesday/Friday 2-3:20pm
The spoofing, hoaxing, wit, irony, and satire of Jonathan Swift, who wrote from 1700 to 1740, and the keen, earnest social and psychological probing of Samuel Johnson, who wrote from 1740 to 1784, embody literary and cultural changes that took place over the course of the British eighteenth century. Close study of Swift’s and Johnson’s poetry and prose, including Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal, and Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift and Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes, Preface to Shakespeare, and History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, will give us opportunity to trace essential changes over the eighteenth century in literary and cultural values.