Note: Descriptions subject to change.

ENL 200: Introduction to Graduate Studies in English (4 Units)

Assistant Professor  Mark Jerng<mcjerng@ucdavis.edu>
Thur 3:10 – 6 p.m., 248 Voorhies, CRN 62396

Note: This class is required for first-year Ph.D. students and is taught only in the Fall.

This seminar introduces Ph.D. students to graduate study in English by focusing on contemporary and ongoing debates in literary study. The aim of this course is to prepare new students for advanced work in the field and to orient them in the profession. Much of what we do as scholars is familiarize ourselves with debates and problems both inside and outside our field, follow our own curiosities, and work to shape new interventions. In order to model this process and develop your own engagements as scholars, we will read selections of work that helped define and move forward some of the developments in our field. Occasional faculty visitors will supplement our readings by sharing their own thinking about these developments. Possible topics include both conceptual and methodological issues such as the problem of form (new formalism and the underlying issue of what is form); reading (the recent emphasis on the practices and processes of reading); the status of evidence; transnationalism; post-humanism; new forms of historicist criticism. A few literary texts will be paired with these topics so that we can think more concretely about what kinds of claims we make for texts, and how we back them up. In addition, this course will address a few practical issues in graduate study: the seminar paper/writing; library resources; and the practice of teaching.

Newly Scheduled Course **

ENL 233 "Aesthetics, Politics, and Modernism in the U.S."

Assistant Professor Matthew Stratton<mstratton@ucdavis.edu>
Wed. 3:10 - 6 p.m., 248 Voorhies, CRN 84209

Reading a variety of prose -- novels, short fiction, and reportage -- we will focus on the ways in which literary and visual representations were thought to have a "politics" in the first half of the twentieth century.

Readings may include: Jean Toomer, *Cane*; John Dos Passos, *The Big Money*; Mary McCarthy, *The Company She Keeps*; Nathanael West, *Day of the Locust*; James Agee and Walker Evans, *Let Us Now Praise Famous Men*; Gertrude Stein, *The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas* (as well as relevant criticism and theory).

 

Enl 236: Theory of Poetry: Poetix: AWP vs. MLA Grudge Match (4 Units)

Associate Professor Joshua Clover<jclover@ucdavis.edu>
Mon. 3:10 – 6 p.m, 248 Voorhies, CRN 83619

Note: This class is required for graduate poetry students and is offered every other year. Fiction students may also take it to fulfill one of their three courses.

This course will consider in detail a famous opposition which has haunted 20th Century poetics. This opposition has been formulated in numerous ways: "close reading" vs. "theory," New Criticism vs. Historicism, "autonomy of poetic language" vs. "symptomatic reading," aesthetics vs. politics... to name a few. While each opposition is imperfect, they have sometimes risen to heights of pitched disagreement, and the conflict continues to this day — even and especially if one follows it into the abodes of younger poets: undergraduate and graduate curricula, writing programs, the leading institutional conferences, debates in Poetry Magazine/Poetry Foundation, poetry blogs, et cetera. In this course, by reading mostly 20th Century poetry and criticism, we will seek to understand the terms of the debate as it relates to our own creative and critical practices — and perhaps to dissolve the tired antinomies and encampments, and throw our arms around the world. Yeay poetix!

Readings to be announced
There will be one presentation and one seminar paper, in addition to occasional writings.

ENL 240: Troilus, Criseyde, and the Undead Past (4 units)

Professor Claire Waters<cmwaters@ucdavis.edu>
Wed. 12:10 – 3 p.m., 248 Voorhies, CRN 62398

This class will center on Chaucer’s great poem, or as he called it, his “litel…tragedye,” the story of an ill-fated love affair entangled with the ill-fated Trojan War, a conflict that exercised a lasting fascination in medieval literary and political culture. The poem is framed not just by this cataclysmic event but also by the deaths of its main characters, imagined or actual, and we will consider the ways in which those deaths, and the living past that haunts its composition, act on the poem and on Chaucer's imagination. Thus we will dig into the text itself, but also look back toward its sources and forward to some of its offspring (literary and critical) to consider Chaucer's preoccupations in his text and those of the critical industry the poem has spawned; we will in a sense use Troilus and Criseyde as a lens through which to look at Chaucer studies (and, more broadly, medieval studies in general), as well as vice versa, with particular  attention to the difficulties and desires associated with the study of the past.           
                                                                                                                                           
The bulk of our primary reading for this course will be Troilus and Criseyde itself, although we will also read some other shorter works by Chaucer and, as noted above, some source material. Because the primary reading will consist quite extensively of re-reading, we will have a fair amount of room for critical work, and here there will be a core set of readings as well as the opportunity to follow particular threads of context and criticism that interest you. The poem’s fascination with such perennial critical issues as the relationship of public and private realms, an author’s responsibility for his work, the nature of translation in various guises, gender and sexuality, among many others, make it a natural vehicle for critical inquiry. At the same time, its investment in and intensive exploration of such deeply medieval concepts as lovesickness and the wheel of Fortune make it an excellent introduction to key aspects of late-medieval culture, while its traditional commitment to plot and character makes it a great read.

Course requirements will include a presentation to the class, an annotated bibliography, a short translation exercise, and a final paper of approximately 15 pages, written in two stages.

Required text: Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, ed. Stephen A. Barney. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 2006.

There will also be a course reader.

 

ENL 244: Research Approaches to Shakespeare (4 units) ** UP-DATED**

Assistant Professor Gina Bloom<gbloom@ucdavis.edu>
Mon. 12:10 – 3 p.m., 308 Voorhies, CRN 83621

It can be daunting to find something original to write about an author as canonical as Shakespeare. Nevertheless, the field of Shakespeare studies continues to grow, and the demand for scholars who can write on and teach the plays remains high. This course provides an introduction to research methods in and approaches to Shakespeare so as to help students engage productively in and make original contributions to the field. We will focus our reading on less canonical plays and on scholarship dealing with topics of continued and emerging importance in Shakespeare studies (including criticism on physiology, religion, economics, sexuality, and performance). Students will also become familiar with journals, databases, and other resources in the field.

A central goal of the course is to help students learn to position their work in relation to the range of scholarship on Shakespeare’s plays. To that end, each seminar participant will be responsible for becoming familiar with past and current work on one particular play, compiling a bibliography to be shared with the class. On the day the play is read, the student will present an overview of critical approaches and lead part of our discussion of the play, focusing on the student’s area of interest.

Other course requirements include a short paper and a final 10-12 page paper with abstract.

Required text: The Norton Shakespeare. (You may use any edition of the Norton, but, especially if you plan to remain in the field, you might find it helpful to purchase a set of the genre-divided paperbacks, which are more portable)

Possible plays include:

• Pericles
• Cymbeline
• Titus Andronicus
• Coriolanus
• King John
• All’s Well That Ends Well
• Love’s Labours Lost

CANCELED!

ENL 262: The American Lyric Poem (4 units)

 Professor Joanne Diehl<jfdiehl@ucdavis.edu>                                                              

ENL 264: DANTE AND MODERN POETRY (4 units)

Professor Alan Williamson<abwilliamson@ucdavis.edu>
Tue. 3:10- 6 p.m., 248 Voorhies, CRN 62401

Dante is, with the possible exception of Homer, the only pre-Renaissance poet to have exerted a strong influence on Anglo-American poetry throughout the Twentieth Century.  The course will have two goals:  first, to acquaint students with the _Commedia_, and with the problems of translating it, through late Twentieth Century translations by the poets Pinsky, Heaney, and Merwin; and second, to examine Twentieth Century poems heavily influenced by Dante, focusing on Eliot, Heaney, and Merrill.

Required Texts::

•  Robert Pinsky, The Inferno of Dante
•  Dante Alighieri, trans. W.S. Merwin, Purgatorio
•  T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems
•  T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
•  Seamus Heaney, Station Island
•  James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover

ENL 290F: Seminar in Creative Writing of Fiction (4 Units)

Assistant Professor  Yiyun Li<yiyli@ucdavis.edu>
Thur. 12:10 – 3 p.m., 248 Voorhies, CRN: TBA

This is an advanced fiction workshop. Students are expected to present two to three submissions (stories or novel chapters) for workshop and read closely of their peers’ work as well as assigned books. There will be discussion on revisions but the course will focus more on producing new material, and students are expected to write 40-50 pages of new work for the class. My approach to workshop is to use each story as a springboard for discussions about the arts and crafts of fiction writing.

Readings:

• The Ballad of Sad Café: and Other Stories by Carson McCullers
• The Law of White Spaces by Giorgio Pressburger
• Any Human Heart by William Boyd
• Out Stealing Horses: A Novel by Per Petterson

ENL 290P: Seminar in Creative Writing of Poetry (4 Units)

Associate Professor Joe Wenderoth<jlwenderoth@ucdavis.edu>
T 12:10 – 3 p.m., 248 Voorhies, CRN: TBA

Scope and Purpose: We will use a workshop format to foment the writing of poetry.  At the same time, we will work to develop a productive way of discussing the poetry-writing process—its potentials and its inherent difficulties.  In order to facilitate our discussion, we will read, both secretly and publicly, poems from different contexts.
 
Grading: Fifteen new poems will be expected from each student over the course of the quarter, and critical analyses of the poems of peers will occasionally be required.    
 
Texts:

• The Sighted Singer by Allen Grossman (The Johns Hopkins University Press; revised and augmented edition (December 1, 1991)
• Poems of Paul Celan by Paul Celan and Michael Hamburger (Persea Books; Revised edition (November 2002)