ENGL 380 - Advanced Seminar

FDR: HL
Credits: 3 in fall or winter, 4 in spring
Planned Offering: Fall, Winter, Spring

Prerequisite: ENGL 299. Enrollment limited. A seminar course on a topic, genre, figure, or school (e.g. African-American women’s literature, epic film, Leslie Marmon Silko, feminist literary theory) with special emphasis on research and discussion. The topic will be limited in scope to permit study in depth. Student suggestions for topics are welcome. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Spring 2014 topic:

ENGL 380B-01: Advanced Seminar: The 1960’s in American Literature and Film: Toward “Edge City” (4). “Edge City” is the term Ken Kesey coined to describe his quest to “go beyond” conventional boundaries, to arrive at a new consciousness through spontaneous and communal art, drugs, sex, and criminality. The term serves to describe the “progress” and, for a radical few, the desired destination of an increasingly apocalyptic era, the 1960s. It was a decade of crises and cataclysms, of ecstatic celebrations and violent conflicts. The tenor of the period is reflected in the titles of prominent histories about the time: Years of Hope, Days of Rage; The Unraveling of America; Fire in the Streets; Smiling through the Apocalypse; and others. Mention of the Sixties can still provoke strong reactions, even among those who were not alive then or were very young. Politically, culturally, and artistically, the decade continues to be a lightning rod. This course explores why, through reading and viewing a few of the influential artistic works of the time. (HL) Oliver.

Winter 2014 topics:

ENGL 380-01: Advanced Seminar: Filming Jane (3). This seminar uses film adaptations of Pride and Prejudice as a lens to study aspects of the film industry in Hollywood, Britain, and India, with a focus on constructions of British and Indian national identity. Readings include Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones’ Diary, along with Andrew Higson’s work on heritage film, Rajindar Kumar’s Dudrah’s essays on Bollywood, and H. Mark Glancy’s new book, When Hollywood Loved Britain. Films range from Robert Z. Leonard’s 1940 P&P with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson, to Bollywood’s Bride and Prejudice, with Colin Firth, Keira Knightley, and Renee Zellweger also featured along the way. (HL) Brodie.

ENGL 380-02: Advanced Seminar: Stuck on the Dixie Express: William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor (3). In this seminar, we study two of the South’s greatest writers, talking about the picture of the South they have conveyed to the world and the problems it has caused. Is the South a Gothic land of dilapidated old mansions, freaks, murder, incest, rape, and mental torture destroyed by moral evils, or a glorious land of mint juleps, learning, culture, civility, and honor we prefer to reenact at Washington and Lee? Why did Faulkner and O’Connor tell their gruesome stories? What have we who live in the South gained and lost because of their literary power? And how do Southern readers and writers get rid of these stereotypes now and move on, so everyone is not stuck forever on this version of the Dixie Express, but can tell other stories that paint the South in a more positive light? (HL) Smout.