Current Course Offerings

ENG 610, Topics in Literary and Cultural Studies

Old English New: The Past and Future of Early Medieval Literature

T 4:25-7:15

Patrick Murphy

Medievalists study the medieval period: its histories, its cultures, its languages, its literatures. Scholars aim to uncover an unobscured view of the past, cleared of mere “medievalisms” layered on by later ages. Contemporary creators, on the other hand, have found endless inspiration in that sandbox, building anachronistic castles in the sky. Yet what if the liquid line between creative and scholarly engagements were more in flux? Recent studies in medievalism have eroded the boundary between foundational academic study and creative production, calling for a more expansive and self-aware approach to professional engagement with the medieval past. As Carolyn Dinshaw puts it, “Our business ... is to think analytically and creatively about the past and our relations to it." This course will accordingly take a binocular approach to early medieval literature, attending to both traditional philological approaches (including some introductory work on the Old English language) as well as to contemporary authors (such as Maria Dahvana Headley, Caroline Bergvall, and Miller Oberman) whose medievalizing work engages with urgent contemporary concerns of temporality, crisis, and inclusion. Although the course is centered around two tenth-century manuscripts of Old English poetry (the Nowell Codex and the Exeter Book), each student will be encouraged to develop a final research or creative project that connects productively with their own professional goals.

ENG 690: Studies in Modern American Literature, 1919 to Present

Modernist Materialities

W 4:25-7:15

Erin E. Edwards

This seminar organizes its study of modern literature around key forms of materiality—such as dust, air, oil, corpse, and light—that are critical to understanding new configurations of bodies, technologies, and environments in the early twentieth century. How, for example, does the seemingly insignificant term “dust” evoke a network of material exchanges that are both far-reaching and fatal in Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead, as mountains of “pure” silica dust are inhaled by the Hawks Nest Tunnel workers? How are unfamiliar forms of matter involved in redefinitions of gender, sexuality, and domestic spaces in Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons (what even are “tender buttons”)? While each week of the course focuses on a different material form, such focus provides a way to pursue larger questions about the material-cultural entanglements that define modernity. Placing new materialism, new media studies, and the environmental humanities in conversation with discourses on modernism and modernity, the course pays particular attention both to how early-twentieth-century technologies allow new access to matter and to how modernist authors understand the materiality of writing.

ENG 750: Histories and Methodologies in Literary and Cultural Studies

Flipping The Script: 20th and 21st-Century American Drama

R 1:15-4:05

Katie N. Johnson

Throughout US history, theatre has functioned as a discursive site for negotiating times of crisis. This course explores how theatre intersects with formative moments in US culture to flip the script.  What kinds of reflective lenses and sites of resistance can theatre offer?  How can theatre enact models of change or what Jill Dolan calls a utopian performative? Possible topics include theatre portraying urban conflicts (Fires in the Mirror by Anna Deavere Smith; Pipeline by Dominique Morisseau); radical casting and adaptation strategies (Yellowface by David Henry Hwang, Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins); the #BlackLivesMatter movement and rapid response theatre (Every 28 Hours); class struggles (Sweat by Lynn Nottage, The Hairy Ape by Eugene O’Neill); the AIDS epidemic (Angels in America by Tony Kushner and The Inheritance by Matthew Lopez); obscenity debates seen in the first lesbian kiss on Broadway (Indecent by Paula Vogel); battles over reproductive rights (The Red Letter Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks; islamophobia Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar); effects of technology on our lives (Machinal by Sophie Treadwell, Dead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl); and utilizing theatre to heal war trauma (Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Theatre of War’s community-based productions like The Oedipus Project).

This seminar moreover analyzes performances such as these--whether on the stage, page, screen, or street—by way of performance theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and theatre historiography.  Students will also scrutinize how performance is articulated across various disciplines and apply these theoretical tools to their own areas of research and artistic practices.  Students will learn how to write performance reviews, dramaturgical materials, rapid response plays, and longer critical papers.