ENGL 600     Seminar in Verse Composition     Amadon  |  HUMCB 408  |  Tue  |  6:00 PM – 8:45 PM

In this course, students will write and revise new poems. Our goal in workshop discussions will be to discuss each poem in terms of the poet’s particular aesthetic, while also encouraging each other to push our work in new directions. Toward that aim, students will read and discuss books of contemporary poetry from poets with a variety of aesthetic leanings. The final portion of the semester will be devoted to workshopping portfolios, and our discussion will turn to larger issues in each poet’s work. Prerequisites: admission to the MFA program in poetry. CRN 10628.

ENGL 602     Fiction Workshop: Short Story     Jimenez  |  HUMCB 408  |  Thur  |  6:00 PM – 8:45 PM

Instruction in the writing of short fiction taught by a contemporary prose writer. CRN 27710.

ENGL 603     Non-Fiction Prose Workshop     Barilla  |  HUMCB 408  |  Mon  |  5:50 PM – 8:35 PM

This course is an intensive workshop in the writing of creative nonfiction. We will explore the boundaries, aesthetics and traditions of the genre, with an emphasis on memoir. As this is a workshop, the bulk of our time in class will be spent discussing student writing, but the course will also include exercises in craft and close examination of innovative work in the field. CRN 27713.

ENGL 691     Teaching of Literature in College     Rule  |  GAMBRL 103  |  M/W  |  2:20 PM – 3:35 PM

Introduction to the methods of teaching critical reading and composition, with emphasis on current pedagogical practice and theory. *This course meets during the first seven weeks of term and provides supervision of graduate students (first-time GTAs) teaching ENGL 101. This course is two credit hours. CRN 14128.

ENGL 701     Special Topics in Old English Literature and Culture     Gwara  |  HUMCB 408  |  T/Th  |  2:50 PM – 4:05 PM

Study of Old English language and literature, with an emphasis on language skills, philological analysis and close reading of poetic texts. Course outcomes include: 1. Proficiency in Old English grammar leading to competence in translating Old English prose and verse with the aid of a dictionary and other research tools. 2. Understanding Old English prose and verse genres. 3. Familiarity with, and understanding of, an Anglo-Saxon cultural identity as expressed in literary evidence. 4. General awareness of the development of the English language from its origins in the pre-Conquest period; 5. Competence using the basic tools of philological inquiry, including Old English Word Studies, Dictionary of Old English, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, Toronto Microfiche and Online Concordances of Old English and the specialist bibliographies in the discipline. CRN: 27717. Note: successful completion of this course with a grade of B or better can fulfill the foreign language requirement of the MA or PhD.

ENGL 721     Special Topics in 19^th Century American Literature and Culture     Davis  |  HUMCB 408  |  T/Th  |  10:05 AM – 11:20 AM

Dividing Lines in Postbellum U.S. Literature 

The end of the literally divisive U.S. Civil War in 1865 in no way brought an end to division and stratification. Indeed, the postbellum period saw difference constructed and reinforced in ways that both proliferated and sedimented, with lasting consequences. This course will broaden the meaning of “haves” and “have nots” beyond their strictly economic implications to consider how “having” and “not having” was configured across a range of both residual and emergent dichotomies, including:

- North/ South
- rich/poor 
- success/failure 
- elite/common 
- depth/surface
- leisure/toil
- white/black
- male/female
- straight/queer
- strength/weakness
- us/them 

Throughout the semester, we’ll explore the extent to which these and other oversimplified oppositions were not simply replicated but challenged (or at least complicated) in key literary works produced during this volatile period in U.S history and culture. In addition to excerpts from such important cultural commentators as Jacob Riis, Jane Addams, Teddy Roosevelt, Thorstein Veblen, and Ida B. Wells, writers discussed will likely include some combination of the following: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Rebecca Harding Davis, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Charles Chesnutt, W. E. B. Du Bois, Willa Cather, and Angelina Weld Grimké. CRN 21509.

ENGL 722     Special Topics in 20th & 21st Century American Literature and Culture     Whitted  |  HUMCB 412  |  Thur  |   6:00 PM – 8:45 PM

“Graphic Memoir and Nonfiction Comics”

A comics studies course that focuses on graphic memoir and nonfiction comics from the 1970s to the present. Our analysis will consider the fundamentals of comics form, narrative structure, aesthetics, and history through representative texts by Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, GB Tran, Roz Chast, John Lewis, Ebony Flowers, Darrin Bell, and others. Assignments include weekly page annotations and responses, a presentation on a critical source, and a final research project. The course does not require prior experience with comics or drawing abilities.

ENGL 733   Classics of Western Literary Theory     Beecroft  |  WRDLAW 122  |  Mon  |  4:40 PM – 7:25 PM

Problems of literary theory in texts from the ancients to the 17th century, with an emphasis on the classical tradition. CRN 30063.

ENGL 747      Special Topics in Global Anglophone Literature and Culture    Gulick  |  HUMCB 412  |  T/Th  |  11:40 AM – 12:55 PM

African Literature

This course will provide a fast-paced, theoretically rigorous (in other words, “graduate-level”) introduction to the study of twentieth- and twenty-first-century African literature. We will explore what it means to take “African literature” as a unit of analysis in the first place, given the diversity of historical experience, linguistic traditions, and cultural contexts across the continent. We will consider how key periodizing terms of contemporary African history—anticolonialism, decolonization, post-independence nationhood, and the neoliberal twenty-first century—inform how African literature has been theorized, and debate whether that schematization makes sense to us. An intersectional approach to race, gender, class, and sexuality will be intrinsic to our discussions throughout the semester. Other possible topics for exploration include ecocriticism; war, imprisonment, torture, and narrative form; speculative fiction and other non-realist genres; the new African diaspora; critical debates over the meaning of “decolonization” today; and the economies within which various forms of literary expression are produced and circulated. Our readings will be in English, but some of them will be in translation, and students will have the opportunity to design a final project that focuses on literature from other linguistic traditions.  

You do not need to be a specialist in African or postcolonial literature in order to benefit from this course (though if you do have background in these areas, that’s obviously great). I am anticipating a classroom populated by modernists, postmodernists, Americanists, Brit lit aficionados, and comparativists of all stripes. As we will see, the boundaries between African literature and other canons are and always have been porous and mutually invigorating. You do need to prepare to read capaciously and curiously, and to nurture your classmates’ learning through intellectually generous discussions.

Please don’t hesitate to email me at agulick@mailbox.sc.edu with any questions about the course. Books will be available at All Good Books in Five Points as well as at Russell House. For students hoping to get a head start on reading over the summer, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions will almost certainly be on the syllabus, as will portions of Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. Familiarity with Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is not required, but many twentieth-century authors (including Achebe) do engage that novel either explicitly or implicitly, so it’s nice background to have. I also recommend exploring the Brittle Paper website to get a sense of what’s happening right now in African letters. Great journals to consult for an idea of what’s going on in the field of African literary studies include Research in African Literatures, the Journal of the African Literature Association, and the Journal of African Cultural Studies (all available through the library). CRN 27720.

ENGL 793     Rhetorical Theory and Practice, Medieval to Modern     Edwards  |  HUMCB 408  |  T/Th  |  11:40 AM – 12:55 PM

Between the classical periods of Greek and Roman rhetoric and the contemporary study of rhetorical theory and criticism lies nearly 1,500 years--from the early fifth century CE to the middle of the nineteenth. The "Medieval to Modern" period is a vast landscape of social and political upheavals, religious reinventions, colonial expansions, technological innovations, and transformative reassessments of such topics as speech, writing, audience, invention, eloquence, style, decorum, truth, evidence, and rhetoric itself.

In this course, we will follow a few of these threads and begin to explore the rich tapestry of rhetorical change and the ways in which the study, teaching, and practice of rhetoric shaped and was shaped by contingencies of power, access, status, and identity. Our study will include a selection of primary texts from figures such as Augustine, Boethius, Petrarch, Christine de Pizan, Desiderius Erasmus, Niccolò Machiavelli, Petrus Ramus, Thomas Hobbes, Giambattista Vico, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hugh Blair, George Campbell, and others. We will also explore recent secondary scholarship in medieval to modern rhetoric with particular emphasis on ways in which women, ethnic minorities, colonized peoples, and others used rhetoric within and against the political, religious, and culture conventions of their time. CRN 27722.

ENGL 796   Special Topics in the Teaching of English     Brock  |  HUMCB 412  |  Wed  |  5:50PM – 8:35 PM

Multimodal Composition

This course provides students with extensive critical examination of multimodality—the employment of multiple and diverse modes for communicative purposes, e.g. language, image/graphic, sound, gesture, space—as it relates to composition pedagogy and its praxis. Students will engage conversations in composition scholarship, responding to, experimenting with, and developing proposals for the incorporation of multimodal activity and expression into a variety of composition courses. CRN 27723.

ENGL 803-001      Special Topics Seminar in Literary & Cultural Studies       Woertendyke  |  HUMCB 408  |  T/Th  |  1:15PM – 2:30 PM

19^th century U.S. literature: key terms and methods

This course will survey nineteenth-century American literature in fiction and nonfiction prose through key terms that shape critical conversations in the field. These may include historicisms, presentism, archives, print culture, realism and romance, popular and rare, secrecy and race, publicity and privacy, domesticity and gender, to name a few. Through critical questions we pose - about and through these terms – we’ll chart the transformations of this momentous century. We will also practice identifying methodologies in secondary material – how/where do scholars locate problems, pose questions, use evidence, and argue the stakes of their work? What critical/theoretical traditions are they drawing from?

Authors may include Charles Brockden Brown, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Leonora Sansay, George Lippard, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, David Walker, Harriet Jacobs, Fanny Fern, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Charles Chesnutt, Hannah Bond (Crafts), Pauline Hopkins, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, and Nella Larson (but not all of these). Finally, we will spend at least one class session at The Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections to look through nineteenth-century periodical fiction, popular pamphlets, ephemera, and manifestos. CRN 16508.

ENGL 803-002      Special Topics Seminar in Literary & Cultural Studies     Schoeman  |  FLINN 102  |  Wed  |  5:50 PM – 8:35 PM

REPRESENTING THE HOLOCAUST: TEXTS, FILMS, AND ART FROM THE ASHES

This course focuses on the way in which writers, filmmakers, artists and cultural institutions (museums, schools, etc.) have contributed to the construction of an indelible “Holocaust memory” in America and elsewhere since the end of WWII. We will study the representations of the Holocaust through a variety of media and genres: documentaries, feature films, museum exhibits, oral histories and some of the classics of Holocaust literature (in memoirs, fiction, and sequential art).

A selection of secondary sources will illustrate the historical context of the Holocaust and enrich our discussions with interesting and discomforting questions from the perspective of literary theory, gender studies, philosophy, and more.

The main concern of our exploration is not “how” (or “why”) atrocious genocides happen, but in what way such untellable experiences can be told through the arts. And if they can be told at all. CRN 23321.

ENGL 804   Special Topics: Seminar in Theory and Critical Methods     Crocker  |  HUMCB 412  |  Mon  |  5:50PM – 8:35PM

Reconsidering the Subject in Premodern English Literature

This course considers the multiple and overlapping stories of subjectivity circulating in Chaucer’s day. We will challenge Max Weber’s “enchantment” characterization of premodernity, not by denying the existence of what Charles Taylor calls a “porous” model of the subject, but by exploring the complexity of subjectivities that are open, pervious, or unbounded. Building on Barbara Newman’s exploration of “coinherence” between permeable selves, as well as Sebastian Sobecki’s consideration of an “indexical self” in documentary poetics, along with my own investigation of a “feminist subjectivity” as a new model of poetic invention, readings in this course contest the “one size fits all” formulation of modern selfhood. If earlier medievalists including Bob Hanning, David Aers, and Lee Patterson worked to include the late Middle Ages in a historical arc tracking the development of the individual, agential subject, readings in this class measure what was lost or left behind by that historical consolidation. In confessional cultures and discourses of space, through ornament and vibrant making, we will investigate how whiteness, alchemical manuals, and practices of biography shape different conceptions of subjectivity in late medieval England. Readings by Julian of Norwich, Geoffrey Chaucer, Margery Kempe, John Lydgate, the Pearl-poet, and Thomas Hoccleve, among others, will allow us to consider agency, will, intention, and autonomy; in studying these and other writings, our conversations will attend to description, measurement, affect, and piety. Taken together, readings in this course open subjectivity to further conversation and investigation, and challenge the idea that the bounded, individual, or agential subject is the inevitable marker of modernity. CRN 27724.