USC DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GRADUATE PROGRAM

Photo by Chuttersnap at Unspalsh Spring 2019 Graduate course descriptions @usc_english

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dornsife.usc.edu/engl ENGL-510 and, rather like Chaucer himself, masterful perverting humanity through perverting storyteller who potentially receives mate- the word of God? Or, to rephrase Galahad’s rial reward for making illusion into reality. question: How do we any longer know This charismatic purveyor of productive if it is God or the Devil who speaks to us Medieval English falsehood will be analyzed alongside that through the mediating figures represent- most excruciatingly dull of all ecclesias- ing the authority of the Church? And, if we tical hacks, the Parson, who, undeniably don’t know, why don’t we all just become Literatures and Cultures: blinkered adherence to convention not- Protestants and circumvent suspect inter- withstanding, nonetheless brings The mediaries altogether? The Salutary Voices of Satan in Middle English Literature Canterbury Tales to a pious but daunting endpoint by reminding the reader of his or Finally, we shall consider a text that her duties to the teachings of Christ and to anticipates and answers these anxieties. Rollo, David those who would interpret his words. This Composed far from the urban/courtly call to Christianity ends up being all the centers of the South East, Sir Gawain and W | 5:00-7:20p.m. Section: 32778 more challenging in the light of Chaucer’s the Green Knight offers a synthesis of the own Retraction to the Tales themselves: magical and the miraculous that presents Are we really to reject the profitable and Christianity in curious co-operation with At a critical juncture in The Book of Mar- of the late fourteenth century and the eminently enjoyable fictions that have supernatural forces that seem antithet- gery Kempe, Jesus appears and delivers attendant movement toward vernacularity preceded because, implicitly following the ical to it and perhaps offers, in Morgan the following reassuring news to the pro- over Latinity and the widespread criti- Parson’s stipulations, we should be exclu- Le Fay, the master of social change later tagonist: “Daughter, yow now know it was cism of the epistemological tyranny of the sively attentive to the Divine word? Or generations of writers seem so anxious to no Devyl that spoke to yow.” Church. are we left as adherents to the Pardoner’s promote. performance of all we are told we should On more than one count, this obliging The term will be divided into three parts. not be or do? Texts will include all of those already denial of deviltry on the part of the Divine The first will be on Kempe, Julian of Nor- mentioned. We shall make brief forays can only give pause. First, it appears 210 wich and the exploration of the personal The last third of the term will be on onto the continent to consider, during our pages into the modern printed edition, dialogue with the Divine and the accompa- the Arthurian romance, with an initial study of The Man of Law’s Tale, Christine and this self-identifying non-devilish nying anxiety over devilish machination. emphasis on Malory’s late-medieval/ de Pizans’ open denunciation of a mas- Son of God has by this time, among other This will be followed by five weeks devoted early-Renaissance Le Morte D’Arthur, a culinist God from The Book of the City things, assured that Kempe will be a born- mainly to Chaucer. We shall begin with compendium of medieval lore printed of Ladies, in addition to a couple of her again virgin in heaven (despite the fact The Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale, and and published during the first year of the Saints’ Lives in which she exemplifies that she has already given birth to at least look at the way in which Constaunce, the Tudor dynasty and couched in a transi- the lack of empathy toward women she twelve children), proclaimed (with some protagonist (if such is the apposite term tional idiom between late Middle- and ascribes the traditional Godhead, and, in help from Julian of Norwich) that her for someone who never really does any- early-Modern English. Galahad, a consum- tandem with the Pardoner, the sermon tears will guarantee salvation to hundreds thing), contrives to be at one and the same mate prig who rivals even Constaunce as a Jean de Meung (according to recent stud- of thousands of souls, and, most egre- time one of the most unremittingly boring mindless pawn of Divine stricture, will be ies, Archdeacon of Orléans in the 1270s) giously, encouraged her to get in bed with characters in the literature of the Middle the focal figure of attention. After having scripts for Genius, sacerdotal assistant to his Father, the Godhead, and intimately Ages and manages to say one of the most spent three quarters of the text riding Nature, who preaches that the best way acquaint herself with His body in the incisive things ever scripted during the around the Waste Land reprimanding to get to heaven is to have as much sex as ultimate act of Divine matrimony. There period: “Wommen are born to thraldom people for their sinful ways and professing possible. Secondary sources will include: is, then, something decidedly odd about and penance,/ And to been under mannes to be so much better than everyone else, Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer: The Devil this unduly belated assurance that all that governance.” The power that subordi- this most Perfect of all Knights shock- in the Middle Ages, Robyn Malo, Relics and has so far exhaustively preceded is indeed nates women in this way is God himself, ingly ends up actually saying something Writing In Late Medieval England, John legitimate. Also, Kempe’s entire narrative who persistently saves Constaunce from sensible. After hacking a couple of dozen A. Arnold, Belief and Unbelief in Medieval of madness and redemption begins with hardship in order, with apparent sadis- woefully overmatched knights to pieces, Europe, and R.N. Swanson, Indulgences in the voice of the Devil himself explaining tic pleasure, to plunge her into a new he, Percival and Bors pause to consider Late Medieval England. Attention will also that the protagonist needs no confessor cycle of torment (invariably, if oddly, at the carnage they have just wrought and be given to more general studies of medie- because her own personal commitment to the hands of crazed, incestuously driven to countenance the possibility they have val literature by Carolyn Dinshaw, Alastair penance will be sufficient. In other words, mothers-in-law). just committed cold-blooded murder. Bors Minnis, Paul Strom and Lee Patterson. The Book of Margery Kempe begins with attempts to explain everything away by Students will do the reading, attend class, all that Jesus later professes not in fact to This tale of hyperbolically masculinist arguing that God wouldn’t have allowed give a class presentation, and write a paper have been all along attempting to persuade Divine law and true Christianity gone it to happen if He hadn’t wanted it to. of fifteen to twenty pages. Kempe that she should be a good Lollard, a underground (and the suspicion of hear- Galahad, however, begs to differ: “Yee say member of a contemporary and flourish- ing “a Lollard in the Wind” which serves nat so. First, if they mysseded ayenst God, ing proto-Protestant sect. as an epilogue to the Man of Law’s per- the vengeaunce ys nat owris, but to hym formance) will act as an introduction to that hath power thereoff.” Galahad in fact The course will consider precisely this Chaucer’s two favored ecclesiastics. The has a good point: How do we know any ambiguous Divine/devilish narratology of first is the Pardoner, self-identified charla- longer what God permits, especially when the late Medieval text, particularly in the tan, performer of all that seems unnatural the Kingdom of Logres is populated by light of the Wycliffite and Lollard writings (but ends up not being the very opposite), ecclesiastics who, it turns out, are as often as not demons in disguise committed to ENGL-530 Restoration and 18th Century British Literatures and Cultures Anderson, Emily M | 2:00-4:20p.m. Section: 32600

Structured as a broad overview to individual, and trajectories in fem- the eighteenth-century novel and its inism, in light of the recent #metoo associated criticism, this seminar also movement). notes and interrogates the autobi- ographical and biographical elements Assignments will include assem- that exist within these works. How do bling an annotated bibliography of we identify these elements, and what current criticism on a given primary are the implications of their inclu- text and presenting to the class one sion? What historical factors might article selected from this bibliog- account for the interplay between fic- raphy; a written book review of a tion and personal reference, and how recent (last ten years) monograph has this interplay been noted and on the eighteenth-century novel; a accounted for in contemporary crit- mini-conference presentation; and icism? The course will be structured a final, article-length seminar paper in four units to address these ques- with appropriate bibliography. Stu- tions, each anchored by a specific text dents will also take turns leading from the long eighteenth century: part of selected class discussions, as Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Laurence inspired by an individual passage Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Mary Shel- chosen from that day’s primary text. ley’s Frankenstein, and Jane Austen’s The seminar will provide students Emma. Within these units, students with a thorough grounding in eigh- will be exposed to both older and teenth-century studies on the novel, more recent criticism on these works; and it should also appeal to students they will also have a chance to link interested in theories of fiction and these critical topics to contemporary its development, fiction-as-craft, debates (about cultural appropria- and strategies of self-fashioning and tion, approaches to celebrity culture, self-representation. the impact of the environment on the ENGL-550 20th Century British Literatures and Cultures Flint, Kate T | 5:00-7:20p.m. Section: 32780

This course offers the opportunity in the cinema (she was an early critic to read closely a range of Virginia of the medium). Furthermore, we Woolf’s writings: novels, short will consider how Woolf and her stories, essays, autobiographical writings have been visualized by materials, letters, and journals. It others, whether via translation to starts from the premise that she film (Colin Gregg, To the Lighthouse, was surrounded by artists and writ- 1983; Sally Potter, Orlando, 1992) or ers on art – notably her sister, the in other media, including painting painter and designer Vanessa Bell, and ballet. together with Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, and Roger Fry – and that Assessment will be based on class the proximity to visual creativity participation (including weekly had a profound effect on her own contributions to a class blog,) and experiments with form and repre- – above all – a final research paper sentation. We will consider the part or piece of creative work combined played by visual effects in her work, with a critical commentary. including her interest in light and color; her engagement with mate- This course will be eligible to count rial culture, museums and galleries, towards the VSGC. design, and décor; her treatment of Texts: (all by Virginia Woolf): The point of view, angles of vision, and Voyage Out; Night and Day; Jacob’s multiple perspectives; her responses Room; Mrs Dalloway; To the Light- to Victorian and modernist aes- house; Flush; Orlando; The Waves; thetics; and her understanding The Years; Between the Acts; Com- of the role played by the visual in plete Shorter Fiction; selected letters memory. Necessarily, the senses do and journals; Roger Fry: A Biography. not work independently of each Secondary reading will be made other, and the course will further available on Blackboard. explore the relationship of sight to touch, smell, sound, and taste – and to the harder-to-localize power of affect. Additionally, we will consider Woolf’s interest in photography and ENGL-591 Books: Films: Baldwin, James. Go Tell It on the Atomic Cafe (1982). th Mountain. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). 20 Century American ---. “The Black Boy Looks at the Kiss Me, Deadly (1955). White Boy” (Blackboard). The Thing (1951). Bentley, Eric, ed.: Thirty Years of Literatures and Cultures On the Waterfront (1954). Treason (Selections from testimony Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Braudy, Leo before the House UnAmerican Activ- Th | 2:00-4:20p.m. Section: 32788 ities Committee) (Blackboard). No Way Out (1950). Brooks, Gwendolyn. Selected Poems The Girl Can’t Help It (1957). (Blackboard) Bend of the River (1952), This course explores the cultural and political threat of the Soviet Burroughs, William. Naked Lunch. Some Like It Hot (1959). shape of a crucial period in Amer- Union, the efforts to define American Written on the Wind (1956). ican life through the mediation of and “unAmerican” values, the rising Camus, Albert. The Stranger. film, “popular” fiction, and “seri- political consciousness of African Cheever, John. Short Stories [Selec- Viva Zapata! (1952). ous” fiction from the end of World Americans, the supposed threat of tions to be announced]. Beaver Valley (1954). War Two to the election of John F. juvenile delinquency, the changing Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Kennedy in 1963. We will be read- social and sexual relations between Ginsberg, Allen. Howl. ing essays, poems, plays, and novels men and women, and the expanding Heinlein, Robert. The Puppet by writers such as James Baldwin, consumer economy that promised so Masters. Gwendolyn Brooks, William Bur- much to so many, while often deliv- Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man roughs, Albert Camus, John Cheever, ering only to a few. Throughout the and the Sea. Ralph Ellison, Allen Ginsberg, course we will also discuss more gen- Robert Heinlein, Ernest Heming- eral theoretical issues-- the nature Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. way, Jack Kerouac, Robert Lowell, of a cultural period (and “culture” Lowell, Robert. Selected Poems Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, John as a concept), as well as the various (Blackboard) O’Hara, Sylvia Plath, Theodore interpretations that have been made Mailer, Norman. The Naked and the Roethke, J. D. Salinger, Mickey Spill- of the period along with their ideo- Dead. ane, Lionel Trilling, and Tennessee logical bases and biases. ---. “The White Negro” in Advertise- Williams. Filmmakers represented ments for Myself (Blackboard). will include Robert Aldrich, Walt Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Disney, Howard Hawks, Elia Kazan, Requirements are two medi- Joseph Mankiewicz, Anthony Mann, um-length papers (12-15 pages) O’Hara, John. Ten North Frederick. Christian Nyby, Nicholas Ray, Frank and an oral presentation on a back- Plath, Sylvia. The Bell-Jar. Tashlin, Billy Wilder, and William ground topic of general interest. ---. Selected Poems (Blackboard) Wyler. Roethke, Theodore. Selected Poems (Blackboard) We will also consider some of the Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. political and social problems of Spillane, Mickey. I, the Jury. America in the 1950s, to which many Trilling, Lionel. The Liberal of these works responded and out of Imagination. which they emerged. These include Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar the paranoia induced by the military Named Desire. ENGL-593 Practicum in Teaching English and Narrative Studies Freeman, Chris T | 5:00-6:20p.m. Section: 32794

English 593 is a course designed to help advanced PhD candidates with their teaching and with their shift from graduate school to first job. We will do some read- ing and discussions around those issues, but we will spend more time talking about your teach- ing and your work as a scholar. You’ll observe members of the English department, watching them teach from your point of view as a TEACHER, rather than as a student. The course will be a workshop on the profession; we will have guest speakers who will also share their wisdom. The class will meet approximately a dozen times during the semester.

Photo by Wokandapix at Pixabay ENGL-630 the early 1990s, while taking a closer Michel Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures look at the transmogrifications to at the College de France the concept of “normalcy” in recent José Esteban Muñoz, Studies in Gender: cultural and political discourse. Disidentifications Queer and feminist scholars such Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts as Robyn Wiegman and Elizabeth A. Dean Spade, Normal Life Queer/Normativity Wilson, have called for a sustained attention to norms. In the process Michael Warner, The Trouble with Tongson, Karen they eschewed the “anti normative” Normal Th | 4:30-6:50p.m. Section: 32797 stances they claim nearly everyone Robin Wiegman and Elizabeth else in queer studies has adopted. A A. Wilson, special issue of differ- lot of ink has been spilled about this ences on “Queer Theory without In the penultimate season of 30 Rock and “creative class” regions across inside baseball debate between some Antinormativity” (2012), the sitcom’s resident kink- the country came painfully at odds of the contemporary players in queer meisters and genderqueer lovers, with reality (as a genre, and as lived studies, including tag-team responses Media: Jenna and Paul, are faced with a experience) in the rustbelt environs from Bully Bloggers Jack Halberstam thirtysomething (1987-1991) profound sexual crisis: after chatting that propelled Trump to his electoral and Lisa Duggan, among others. This about their day, they pass out fully college victory. As scholars of gender, set of conversations that has ani- Parenthood (2010-2015) clothed, nestled beneath an afghan. sexuality, race, and culture entering mated the field of queer studies—one This is Us (2016-present) Unable to accept this egregious lapse the second decade of this millen- that has resurfaced perpetually since The Slap (U.S. version, 2015) into normalcy as a simple result nium, we assumed our problem Foucault, and in the more recent past, Transparent (2014-present) of long-term companionship, they would be to remain trapped between since Michael Warner’s The Trouble True Blood (2008-2014) conclude that “normaling” must the “posts”—the post-racial, post-gay, with Normal (1999)—is but another be a “whole new fetish,” a hereto- post-identitarian, post-everything. iteration of the national attention to Gilmore Girls (2000-2007) and Gilm- fore-undiscovered playground of We thus increasingly, if sometimes norming, normaling and normcore ore Girls: A Year in the Life (2016) genuine perversity. As cultural texts secretly, reinvested in the “normal” aesthetics, which this seminar will The Fosters (2013-2018) like 30 Rock make apparent, all the in strange ways, ogling at it with an also explore in depth. In addition, we hoopla in the last decade about pur- intensity and a perverse sort of pru- will consider the possibility of queer Course Requirements: portedly “new” varieties of normalcy rience. Even now, the sector of the ambivalence, in order to re-enliven • Rotating bi-weekly responses are bound up with the sense that electorate and general public have the reparative, and disidentificatory • One individual presentation queer lives have been absorbed into harnessed the anti-Trump rallying practices of queer spectatorship we the matrimonial and reproductive cry, “THIS IS NOT NORMAL,” as if to tend to lose amidst firmer agendas • One individual writing workshop matrix. insist the “new normal” we became that require we pick teams, and draw presentation accustomed to at the height of neo- hard lines. • A final project that may take one By 2016, however, the politically liberalism across the double-Bushes, of the following forms: a conference unthinkable happened. Reality TV Clinton and Obama from 1989-2017, presentation, a review essay, a piece star and failed real-estate mogul, successfully obliterated the racist, Required texts include, but are not of public scholarship, or a book Donald J. Trump defeated Hillary homophobic, white supremacist, limited to: review for submission to an academic Rodham Clinton in the national laissez faire capitalist, anti-“liberal” journal. election, thus ascending to the pres- forms of normalcy Ronald Reagan Lauren Berlant, Desire/Love (PDF) idency of the United States with reanimated in the early 1980s. Hanne Blank, Straight a minority of the popular vote. In short, the carefully crafted narratives This graduate seminar revisits the Joshua Chambers-Letson, After the that soared with drama, sentiment relationship between queer texts Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color and acceptance on TV networks and and norms since the academic insti- Life streaming platforms favored by blue, tutionalization of queer studies in David Eng, The Feeling of Kinship ENGL-694 ENGL-695 Graduate Non-Fiction Writing Graduate Fiction Form and Workshop Theory Treuer, David Everett, Percival TBD | TBD Section: TBD M | 4:30-6:50p.m. Section: 32834

Course description not available. We will examine notions of form in fiction. What are the neces- sary and sufficient conditions that must be satisfied before we call a work of prose a work of fiction? Are there any? Is there such a thing as conventional fiction? Is experimental fiction possible and what does that mean? We will take stories apart and rebuild them, retell them by doing “violence” to the stories’ constituent elements. ENGL-696 Graduate Poetry Writing Workshop St. John, David T | 2:00-4:20p.m. Section: 32835

This workshop will focus on your exquisite recent book of poems manuscript and/or chapbook col- (The Ruined Elegance); and lastly lections of poetry. We will discuss Brandon Shimoda’s latest collec- the architecture and construc- tion (The Desert). This is a wildly tion of poetry collections while eclectic group of texts. Aesthetic reading and considering a stylis- assumptions will be confiscated tic range of recent contemporary upon entry. books of poetry, including: the sensational sonnet sequences by both Terrance Hayes (American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin) and Katie Ford (If You Have To Go); the new eco-poet- ical lichen notebooks of Brenda Hillman (Extra Hidden Life, among the Days); the most recent Francophile-inflected work of Angie Estes (Parole), our Magill Visiting Poet this spring; USC grad Jennifer Kwon Dobb’s often harrowing new book (Interroga- tion Room); Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s (she also writes in French and Chinese as well as English)

Photo by Julsssy at Unsplash ENGL-698 ENGL-700 Graduate Poetry Form and Theories and Practices of Theory Professional Development I Muske-Dukes, Carol Anderson, Emily W | 2:00-4:20p.m. Section: 32805 MWF | 8:00-8:50a.m. Section: 32606

“The Ekphrastic Poem”, graduate of the Imagination” student This 2-unit class is designed for We will have seven group meet- poetry seminar with workshop poems, designed by the museum graduate students in the litera- ings in total during the semester, aspects. The focus will continue staff. ture and creative writing tracks at a time mutually agreed upon as a dialogue between Art & of the English Ph.D. program by those who register for the Poetry, but students will write The USC Office of Communica- who have completed coursework class. original poems in the workshop, tions featured a former student and are preparing to take their as well as “in the field”. reading at the Broad on its site – qualifying exam. The majority here is a link to the article: of our meetings are focused on The “field” for this course is the familiarizing ourselves with new Broad museum, which http://dornsife.usc.edu/news/ and executing the different again invites students into its stories/2354/a-tour-of-the-imagi- components of the dissertation spectacular galleries of post-war nation-art-inspires-graduate-po- prospectus. Students will be paintings, photographs, sculpture etry-at-the-br/ given a chance to study com- and video installations. In work- From Homer’s poetic hymn to pleted prospectus documents in shop, we will seek inspiration Achilles’ shield to Keats’ Ode a variety of subfields (both crit- in our study of the ekphrastic on a Grecian Urn to Terrance ical and creative), to meet with poem, its history and aesthetic Hayes’, “How to Be Drawn” - we students who have successfully influence re literary realism - will investigate the sources of navigated the qualifying exam then compose poems in response visual representation in art and process, and to workshop their to the prompts of individual the ekphrastic connection to the own exam materials as they imagination. In the field, at the poet-psyche. prepare them. This course also museum, students will write contains various professionaliza- poems inspired by particular Books: tion exercises that students will works of art – culminating in David Salle, How to See: Looking, need as they advance to candi- an invited audience reading (& Talking, Thinking About Art, dacy: grant writing and academic perhaps a more “public” reading) Comparative Perspectives, Schulz C.V. preparation among them. hosted by the Broad at semes- Susan Sontag - On Photography ter’s end. The Broad has now TBA established a tradition of also publishing a chapbook of “Tour