THE WORK OF J. G. BALLARD
Graduate Seminar / Spring 2023
This seminar examines the work of J.G. Ballard (1930-2009), a writer once described as “beyond psychiatric help.” It begins with his early speculative material like The Drowned World (1962) and The Crystal World (1966), grapples with his more notorious and controversial titles like The Atrocity Exhibition (1970) and Crash (1973), then turns toward later allegorical work such as Super-Cannes (2000) and Kingdom Come (2006). By taking this course, participants will ponder the contemporary valence of what the Collins English Dictionary deems “Ballardian.”
THE WORK OF ZADIE SMITH
Graduate Seminar / Spring 2022
This graduate seminar examines the work of the contemporary British novelist, short-story writer, and essayist, Zadie Smith. Using a variety of lenses (historical, sociological, philosophical, ethnographic) students consider how her work broadens our knowledge of culture through its engagement with topics such as multiculturalism, immigration, gender, class, and national identity. They read criticism pertinent to Smith’s work and the topics under debate to place her texts into larger conversations around British subjecthood and identity formation.
BRITISH WORKING-CLASS LITERATURE
Graduate Seminar / Spring 2021
This seminar reads 20th- and 21st-century British texts to examine the contours of what might be considered “working-class literature.” To that end, the seminar adopts a paradoxical stance: that “working-class literature,” by design, resists formal definition. As critics note, class is understood as an ongoing process marked by dynamic social relations. So, how might we understand a genre of writing based on such an unstable concept? This seminar asks us to clarify what we mean when we talk about class, forms of labor, and the kinds of culture(s) that spring from labor-related issues.
BRITISH SOCIAL REALISM
Graduate Seminar / Fall 2020
This seminar examines the genre of British Social Realism in context, focusing on its origins, its goals, and the ways in which its aesthetic and ethical principles unite to enact social change. British social realism is most commonly tied to the films of the “British New Wave” (1959-1963), but the genre materialized across media formats and its strategies and motifs are still prominent in cultural production today.
LITERARY SCHOLARSHIP IN ENGLISH
Graduate Seminar / Fall 2022
This seminar familiarizes students with the concepts, critical practices, and methods central to research across the various branches of English. It surveys the development of literary and critical theory, inviting participants to consider how methodologies of the past produce critical frameworks for the present. In addition, the course will take up issues of genre and form, it will cover the kinds of terminology used within the field, and it will offer a number of practical strategies for interpreting texts, conducting research, and composing sophisticated scholarship that emphasizes the value of the arts and humanities in society.
CRITICAL PRACTICES FOR ENGLISH MAJORS
Upper-Division Undergraduate / Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2022, Spring 2023
This course familiarizes students with the concepts, critical practices, and methods central to research across the various branches of English. It surveys the development of literary and critical theory, inviting participants to consider how methodologies of the past produce critical frameworks for the present. In addition, the course will take up issues of genre and form, it will cover the kinds of terminology used in the field, and it will offer several practical strategies for interpreting texts, conducting research, and composing sophisticated interpretations that emphasizes the value of the arts and humanities in society. That is to say that the course will address the sociopolitical implications of the discipline as well as the forces that act against it.
THE (NEW) BRITISH NOVEL
Upper-Division Undergraduate / Spring 2022
In what ways does the form of the novel address the contemporary moment and our current circumstances? How are novels discussed and by whom? And—perhaps provocatively—is the form of the novel still a viable form of communication in a world that privileges the visual, the superficial, and the ephemeral? Essentially, this course requires us to not only think about the novels under discussion, but to think about how we think about them.
WORKING-CLASS LITERATURE
Upper-Division Undergraduate / Spring 2021
This course reads 20th- and 21st-century writing to examine the contours of what might be considered “working-class literature.” To that end, the course adopts a paradoxical stance: that “working-class literature,” by design, resists formal definition. As critics note, class is understood as an ongoing process marked by dynamic social relations. So, how might we understand a genre of writing based on such an unstable concept? This course asks us to clarify what we mean when we talk about class, forms of labor, and the kinds of culture(s) that spring from labor-related issues.
INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO ZADIE SMITH
Upper-Division Undergraduate / Spring 2020, Fall 2021
This upper-division course examines the work of the contemporary British novelist, short-story writer, and essayist, Zadie Smith. Using a variety of lenses (historical, sociological, philosophical, ethnographic), students consider how her work broadens our knowledge of culture through its engagement with topics such as multiculturalism, immigration, gender, class, and national identity. In addition, it tends to Smith’s formal dexterity, meditating on the critic James Wood’s characterization of Smith’s work as “hysterical realism.”
NOSTALGIA IN BRITISH LITERATURE
Upper-Division Undergraduate / Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Summer 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Summer 2023
This course survey's British literature from the early 20th century to the present, examining nostalgia’s value in relation to cultural shifts. It explores the manifold ways that authors deploy nostalgia as a technical device of narrative while simultaneously advancing critiques of retrogressive sentimentality. The course closes by surveying the present-day state of the nation through contemporary writing that challenges nostalgia by questioning the efficacy of cultural memory in a largely unstable world.
BRITISH LITERATURE SINCE 1789
Lower-Division Undergraduate / Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Summer 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Summer 2023
This lecture course offers a fast-paced, whistle-stop survey of British Literature and its associated social, cultural, and historical contexts from (roughly) 1785 to the present. It surveys the Romantic era, the Victorian era, the Modernist era, the post-WWII era, the late 20th century, closing with a selection of 21st-century texts.