ENGL 396

Spring 2015 All Classes

All Classes

Honors Seminar I

Credit: 3 hours.

Themes, movements, and forms in British, American, and Anglophone literature.

May be repeated. Prerequisite: A 3.33 grade-point average or consent of the English Department's Director of Undergraduate Studies. Restricted to English and Rhetoric majors.

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ENGL 396 class schedule data for spring 2015
CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
32114	Lecture-Discussion	C1	10:00AM -11:50AM	W	English Building	Goodlad, L	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/20/15-05/06/15 Special Approval: Departmental Approval Required Section Title: Genre & Seriality Section Info: Topic Section C1: Genre and Seriality In this seminar we will explore the evolution of detective, crime, ?hard-boiled,? and police procedural genres in short fiction, novels, novellas, film, and television series from the nineteenth century to the present day. Since most of these works appeared serially?appearing either in parts or as works in a series?our discussions will partly concern the effects of serial temporality (both within individual narratives and in the lived experience of readers and viewers). Crime genres also tend to generate a strong sense of region or place, whether nineteenth-century Paris or London, mid-century LA, Yorkshire in the 1970s, New York?s Korean immigrant communities, or contemporary Chicago, Denmark, or Bombay. Working at the intersection of genre, time, and place, we will consult a range of scholarly writing on these topics and keep a regular blog. Assignments will also include oral reports and a final paper.
62424	Lecture-Discussion	C2	10:00AM -11:50AM	M	Foreign Languages Building	Byrd, J	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/20/15-05/06/15 Special Approval: Departmental Approval Required Section Title: Networked Visions Section Info: Topic Section C2: Video Games, Digital Texts, and Networked Visions Despite the fact that video games have been coded, shared, and played for at least 40 years, such games continue to be dismissed as mindless entertainment at best and violent time-wasters at worst. In fact, Roger Ebert went so far as to assert that video games can never be art. And yet, in 2011, the Supreme Court determined that, ?like the protected books, plays and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas?and even social messages?through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot, and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player?s interaction with the virtual world).? This class will consider the relationship between literature in its emerging new media formats by looking specifically at the shared and divergent narrative strategies that old and new mediums use to construct worlds and tell stories. Over the course of the semester, we will consider the history of material formats, read novels that inspired video games, look at how video game play transforms novels, in addition to considering some of the larger questions emerging from video game studies. What are games and where do they fit within cultural, literary, racial, social, and gender studies? How do technologies and mediums affect access to and experience of story, aesthetics, and design? What are the cultural and social ideas communicated through games and how do the means of their production function within global economies? Some of the texts for the course may include novels such as Mark Danielewski?s House of Leaves, Ernest Cline?s Ready Player One, Marisha Pessl?s Night Film, Austin Grossman?s You and video games such as BioShock Infinite, The Walking Dead, and Assassin?s Creed along with other digital texts.
32113	Lecture-Discussion	R	1:00PM -2:50PM	R	Davenport Hall	Jenkins, C	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/20/15-05/06/15 Special Approval: Departmental Approval Required Section Title: The Politics of Color Section Info: Topic Section R: Skin Theory: African American Literature and the Politics of Color In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois wrote that ?[t]he problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line.? Much of the scholarly commentary on DuBois? statement has focused on the line that exists between races, a marker of the sociocultural opposition of whites and blacks in the United States. In this course, we will consider DuBois?s statement from a different and perhaps more literal angle, examining the question of color intraracially?within the confines of African American culture. Specifically, we will examine the politics of skin color and racial identity in selected African American literary texts of the twentieth century. How do these texts address differences in color among blacks? How is skin color linked to or informed by gender, class, and sexuality in these texts? We will spend significant time addressing how the phenomenon of ?passing? for white is imagined by black writers, but we will also consider the ways in which a spectrum of skin colors are politicized, neutralized, challenged and/or eroticized in twentieth-century African American literary expression. While we will focus most closely on fictional narratives, we will also incorporate works from other genres, including critical essay, memoir, and film.