GRADUATE FLYER – SPRING 2009
QUEENS CAMPUS
E. 100: Modern Critical Theories
(11915)
T. 4:40-6:40 p.m.
Dr. Stephen Sicari
We will begin by studying what has long been called “the linguistic
turn” inaugurated by Saussure and made into a new and powerful
methodology through the critiques of Derrida and Foucault.
This part of the course will be dominated by Foucault, whose The
Archaeology of Knowledge will be read as the central methodological
text of post-structuralism. With this as a base, we will then
explore the fate of Marx and Freud at the hands of post-structural
theorists (Althusser and Lacan), and then move to a consideration
of the various developments post-structural insights made possible:
new historicism and cultural materialism, gender and queer studies,
postcolonial studies. We will end by thinking out the
relationship between post-structuralism and postmodernism,
beginning with the post-modern critiques of Lyotard,
Habermas, and Jameson.
E. 130: Theories of Literacy
(14656)
M. 6:50-8:50 p.m.
Dr. Carmen Kynard
This course will use two theoretical frameworks and research
imperatives to interrogate political, pedagogical, and
sociocultural issues in regard to literacy: New Literacies Studies
(NLS) and Crossroads Theory (CT). NLS is a movement that
articulates, studies, and teaches from the perspective that
literacy is a set of multiple interactions and social
practices. Reading and writing only make sense in the
specific contexts of the social, linguistic, and cultural practices
of which they are part. Meanwhile, CT is a framework borrowed from
the Blues. The continual movement, disruption of norms, and
change represented in the lives and music of Blues/Jazz artists has
been described as a “crossroads,” the confrontation of a
challenge and crisis with new information and strategies. CT is
used as a lens into literacy and language studies for multiracial
groups who confront discrimination and subjugation and demands that
the languages and practices of subordinated groups be seen as
(re)defining, transgressing, and transcending oppressive
circumstances. Connecting these two schools of thought allows
us to imagine and experience ourselves as interdisciplinary
scholars who can center rich and varied perspectives of
multiethnic, multiracial, and multimodal discourse
communities. Topics include: key writings in NLS and CT,
literacy narratives, out-of-school literacies, Asian American
rhetorics, Latino discourses, multimedia/multimodal/21st century
literacies, world Englishes and cross-language relations, African
American literacies. Course readings will draw from rhetoric,
composition studies, sociolinguistics, English education, and
literacy theory.
E. 230: Chaucer (14675)
R 6:50-8:50 p.m.
Note: This will be a hybrid course, with alternate weekly sessions
conducted online.
Dr. Nicole Rice
Geoffrey Chaucer, famously called “the father of English poetry,”
has long delighted and shocked readers with his major work, The
Canterbury Tales. This course considers selected tales in the
context of the poem as a whole, while introducing some important
recent critical approaches to the Tales. Chaucer lived during a
period of major social, religious, and political upheaval, and his
work engages fully with the complexities of late medieval English
culture. In our readings of the Tales, we will consider the
following topics as they relate to the poem: chivalry and its
discontents; economic changes and controversies; the great plague
and its social consequences; gender roles, sexuality, and marriage;
Christian responses to other faiths and domestic challenges to the
established Church. Students will learn to read and pronounce
Chaucer’s Middle English. No prior knowledge of Middle English is
necessary.
E. 590: Topics in Nineteenth-Century
Literature & Culture (14670)
W. 4:40-6:40 p.m.
Dr. Rachel Hollander
The Novel and the British Empire
In this course, we will explore the relationship between the
nineteenth-century British novel and colonialism, surveying some of
the extremely rich theoretical and critical work in the field over
the past thirty years. Designed in part as a “prequel” to the
study of postcolonial literature, this class will examine the many
ways in which England’s imperialist interests can be seen to
underlie, or even constitute, the themes and forms of
nineteenth-century fiction. Going back to the foundations of
this field in Foucault’s understanding of discourse and power, we
will consider the question of how “nation and narration” function
together, and of the relationships between literature, politics,
and authority. Theoretical readings may include Michel
Foucault, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Patrick Brantlinger, Gauri
Viswanathan, Frederic Jameson, and Homi Bhabha. Novelists may
include Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, Charles
Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Olive Schreiner, Joseph Conrad, and E.M.
Forster.
E. 670: Topics in Nineteenth Century
American Literature (14673)
Dr. Jennifer Travis
M: 4:40-6:40 p.m.
Gender, Women Writers, and U.S. Culture
This course will examine women’s contributions to the history of
the novel in the U.S., from seduction and sentiment to romance and
realism.
E. 800: Forms & Themes in Film:
Screening Death. (14659)
T 6:50-8:50 p.m.
Dr. Scott Combs
A mandatory 2-hour weekly screening accompanies this course.
Students should not sign up unless they can attend the weekly
screening, scheduled for Monday
1:30-3:30 p.m.
“We do not die twice. In this respect, a photograph
does not have the power of film; it can only represent
someone dying or a corpse, not the elusive passage from one state
to the other.” A. Bazin, 1958
This course takes up the issue of film’s
specificity as an art by attending to instances of that “elusive
passage” between life and death. We will study screen
representations of death and dying around clusters of conceptual
questions: film’s difference from photography and the “place”
of death within the moving, as opposed to the still, image;
early film’s production of the death moment and the technological
context of that production; habitual patterns within dominant
cinema; the documentary interest in apprehending the end of
life; new horizons for the use of moving image technology in
the face of death. Throughout our viewings and readings we
will be thinking about not only how filmmakers have made use of the
moving image to visualize death, but how in turn those
representations affect our sense of what death looks like, of what
it
is.
E. 805: Reading the High School Canon
(15179)
T. 4:40-6:40 p.m.
Dr. Dohra Ahmad
This course will examine the political and aesthetic underpinnings
of contemporary American high school curricula. Which books
are most frequently assigned to U.S. high school students, and
why? In other words, what are the underlying judgments,
assumptions, and pedagogical priorities that go into the shaping of
required reading lists? In order to consider those questions
thoroughly, we will make use of scholarly sources on curricular
history as well as recent theoretical work on canonicity and
literary value. While closely reading some of the most common
high school texts (Hamlet, The Scarlet Letter, Huckleberry Finn,
Frederick Douglas’s Narrative, Things Fall Apart, Animal Farm, The
Joy Luck Club, etc.), we will also investigate how those texts
arrived at their present canonical position and what ideological
work they perform in relation to notions of Americanness,
democracy, tolerance, maturity, literacy, and associated
virtues.
E. 870: Writing Theory/Writing Practice (14665)
M. 4:40-6:40 p.m.
Dr. Derek Owens
This course explores an eclectic range of writing forms and
statements made by writers working in those forms. The emphasis is
less on a particular writing genre or arena--we'll look at work by
poets, fiction writers, essayists, and critics--and more on what
different writers are saying about their craft, practice, and
methodology. As we read statements by such writers, as well as
samplings of their own work, you too will write in a variety of
forms and along the way compose statements about your experiences
working in those forms. In a sense, this is a "composition theory"
course where we read interviews, letters, and essays by innovative
and popular 20th century writers (Gertrude Stein, Charles Olson,
Amiri Baraka, Ed Sanders, Stephen King, Gerald Vizenor, Kathy
Acker, Lyn Hejinian, DJ Spooky, etc) instead of scholars in the
field of composition theory. It's also a creative writing workshop
of sorts, without being like many conventional workshops: that is,
you'll be experimenting with poetry, fiction, and prose, but the
focus will be less on the work itself and rather your thoughts on
how these different writing processes, acts, and forms elicit
different ways of thinking about writing. In other words, don’t
worry if you don’t consider yourself a poet, or if you're a
novelist not all that interested in composition theory, or if your
academic writing seems a world apart from experimental poetics.
This course is for people willing to experiment in a range of forms
in order to see what happens.
E. 879: Autobiography & Fiction
(15416)
R. 4:40-6:40 p.m.
Prof. Gabriel Brownstein
This is a creative writing workshop that will focus on the
sometimes marshy boundaries between autobiography and
fiction. In their reading and writing, students will be
allowed both to explore this territory in practice—by writing
stories and autobiographical essays—and to comment upon it
critically. There will be weekly readings and critiques of
student writing, along with a set of assigned readings that will
help the class with its explorations. Sometimes we’ll read
straight autobiography (Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz);
sometimes autobiography and fiction in tandem (James Baldwin’s
essay “Notes of a Native Son” and his novel Go Tell It On The
Mountain; Kenzuburu Oe’s novel A Personal Matter with his essay
“Japan, The Ambiguous, and Myself”); and sometimes we’ll read
fiction that plays with autobiographical conceits (stories by Alice
Munro, Jim Shepard, and others.) Students will write several
short creative pieces, and at the end of the class will have the
opportunity to hand in a critical paper addressing problems raised
by the course.
STATEN ISLAND CAMPUS
E. 810: Literary/Visual/Texts
(13809)
T. 1:30-2:55 p.m.
Note: This is a hybrid course. The Professor will
determine online sessions.
Dr. Stephen P. Miller
This course explores aesthetic and historical paradigms shifts
displayed in the refining of the sound feature film in from the
late 1920s to the early 1940s alongside corresponding shifts
demonstrated by new media from the 1990s to the present. Both eras
represent kinds of “new deals” recharacterizing identity positions
and the power of their coalitions. Of particular interest will be
30s and 40s screwball comedies and internet videos. I will try
limiting films that students need to view to those available
through Netflix, so students should have Netflix accounts.
Creatively critical writing is encouraged. Some course sessions
will be conducted online, either through online chats writers and
critics or through asynchronic internet work. We will dialogue with
established writers through the internet and consider the writing
profession work through Critiphoria, an online poetry-criticism
journal at www.critiphoria.org .
E. 500: Colloquia (10153)
E. 900: Master’s Research (10152)
E. 901: Readings & Research (12993)
E. 925: Maintaining Matriculation (MA) (10151)
E. 930: Maintaining Matriculation (DA) (10150)
E. 975: Doctoral Research Essay (DA) (11961)