Faculty

by Jacqueline Ott

Dr. Orr and I sit in his office in BC on a strangely beautiful Friday afternoon, having a typical conversation for an English student and her professor: aka, why Don DeLillo is the greatest writer of modern times, the looming horror that is life after school (“That’s why I never left!” says Dr. Orr), and, more specific to this January day, the minute and grand details of the chance to teach American Literature in China.

This past Fall semester, Dr. Orr was granted by Fulbright the opportunity to teach two graduate classes in Changchun, China. “Both classes were for second year master students, looking specifically at the late 18^th century and early 19^th century American Literature. I also got the chance to guest lecture at five different universities in cities all across China. But besides that time teaching, I spent time working with a tutor on improving my Chinese, learning calligraphy, and taking walks. Until the temperature was below -5° that is.”

As any student who has had Dr. Orr in the past could tell you, there is no doubt that his students in China came out of his class with a greater understanding of, but more importantly a greater appreciation for, American Literature. The learning experience went both ways, with Dr. Orr leaving China understanding new things about both Chinese and American culture: “Teaching American Literature to non-Americans forced me to become aware of the kinds of things that I take for granted, and made me see both American culture and literature from the outside” This learning experience extended to even small details in texts, with Dr. Orr pointing out that so much of American texts feature details that one would be unable to place without a firm background in American history and culture.

Although this was Dr. Orr’s first opportunity to teach in China, this trip was certainly not his first experience with the country and its people. The first time Orr visited China was with his wife in 2005, after he “talked his way into a trip there with E-Scholars”. Before this trip, Orr knew very little about China and its people, but upon his arrival became increasingly interested: “China seems to me like a new planet to study. I got there and was instantly so interested in it. When I get interested in something, it’s all I want to learn about.” China became a way for Orr to learn about a world that was “not [his] culture in so many ways, but in some ways so similar”. Orr says he wants to get as close he can to understanding the Chinese culture completely, and with his study of the language, and his experiencing of the country through his travels, he is certainly on his way.

On this particular Friday afternoon, Orr loosely quoted his favorite travel writer, Paul Theroux: “I was a stranger before I was a traveler.” If you talk to Dr. Orr, about this trip or his many others, you can see this is exceedingly true.

by Erika Murphy

Give me the splendid silent sun

with all his beams full-dazzling

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

in Just—

spring when the world is mud—

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

e.e. cummings, Chansons Innocentes

 A little Madness in the Spring

Is wholesome even for the King.

Emily Dickinson, No. 1333

Here in the English department, spring means the arrival of flowers bright, sun warm, and classes new for the fall. Professors share what to expect from their courses:

Fr. Hannon on his section of ENG 311: Advanced Writing

 

What are some the writing skills students can expect to gain in this course?

Students will demonstrate the ability to write clear, cohesive, daring, sentences.  They will be able to write the kind of creative nonfiction that will delight the reader.  Also they will be able to use the elements of fiction to tell true stories.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

I love how students take risks in their thinking about writing and in their willingness to stretch themselves and even astonish themselves by going to dark and unfamiliar places.  And by dark I don’t mean sad or depressing or scary, but daring.  To me this class is about the adventure of writing and how to get to really great writing sometimes we have to have real guts to go where our thinking takes us. So maybe writing is supposed to be a little unnerving!

Anything else you’d like students to know?

To fall back on a (somewhat) tired cliché: the destination is the journey.  I love student/writers who are serious AND PLAYFUL, gutsy and appreciative of the tradition, and more than anything else, who love to stretch themselves.

***

Prof. McDonald on his section of ENG 311: Advanced Writing

What are some the writing skills students can expect to gain in this course?

Students will gain insight into their own writing process, become more aware of their own styles, and think about language critically.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

I get a chance to participate in the workshops with my own writing, and get writing done when we do in-class writing. I love going to class on writing days knowing I will be sitting there, thinking and writing, and possibly sharing.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

I hope it encourages them to get in a regular habit of writing.

Anything else you’d like students to know?

You have to share your writing with large and small groups!

 

Prof. Victoria Olivares will also be offering a section of ENG 311.

*** 

Dr. Hersh on ENG 317: Composition Theory and Practice

 

What are some the writing, and perhaps tutoring, skills that students can expect to gain in this course?

This course provides concepts, practice, and experience to assist in the improvement of others’ writing.  We not only discuss the qualities of effective writing, but explore the best ways to inspire effective writing in others.  The class melds theory with practice as we discuss debates on how to teach writing and experiment with and hone these techniques ourselves.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

I love the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of the course.  Students who take English 317 come from every nook of UP’s academic world and are really invested in good writing.  We all thus work together and share best practices for teaching writing.  I learn a ton about writing myself from the students in this class!

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

I hope that students not only benefit from the knowledge that they are teaching others how to write effectively, but are self-reflective about their own writing strategies and learn about themselves as writers from the course.

Anything else you’d like students to know? 

A majority of the students who take this course are nominated Writing Assistants, but we encourage anyone who is interested in the learning how to teach writing or edit writing to enroll in the course.

***

Newly Hired Dr. Swidzinski on ENG 325: Eighteenth Century British Literature

 

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

The 18th century invented the thing we call the novel, so we’ll spend some time studying early experiments in the form. These will include Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina, and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, which set off a firestorm of controversy about the morality of fiction when it was first released. (Pamela was greeted by many readers as something comparable to Fifty Shades of Grey.) At the same time, the 18th century was a golden age for satire (in prose and verse), so we’ll study some of the most famous satirical writings of the period, such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

One major theme has to do with experiments. Benjamin Franklin described his period as an ‘age of experiments’ and he meant this in the broadest of senses: not only were there scientific and political experiments, but literary and cultural ones too. So we’ll explore how this culture of experimentation gave rise to new literary forms; and, perhaps more importantly, we’ll ask how it made room for traditionally marginalized voices to write about gender, class, and race in exciting new ways.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

The 18th century is a beautifully messy century. No one kind of writing (novel, poetry, drama, etc.) stands apart and reigns supreme; instead, they all jostle and compete with one another, as well as with other, more ephemeral kinds of writing (essays, farces, sermons, diaries, etc. etc.). I love that the course compels us to embrace this messiness and to draw meaningful connections across vastly different genres and disciplines.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

I hope they’ll develop an appreciation for the rich diversity of 18th-century literature, and that they’ll discover new ways to think about the Enlightenment and its continuing (political, cultural, and literary) relevance.

Anything else you’d like students to know?

I have been known to bring cookies to class.

***

Dr. Brassard on ENG 338: European Literature in Translation

 

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

The authors and texts will be among my all-time favorites, and from France, Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia primarily. Must-reads include Lafayette’s The Princess of Cleves, Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Chekhov’s stories, Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, Mann’s Death in Venice, and Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. 

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

I taught a version of this course over ten years ago in graduate school, and the title was “Love, Sex, and Death in European Literature,” so you should expect gender and class to be prominent as major themes. The texts range from the 17th to the 20th Century, and involve much social and cultural change on the Continent, so we will trace such changes trans-nationally and across periods.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

I’m thrilled to offer this course at UP for the first time, in part because it allows me to share the “French” part of my culture and interest with students who may not be familiar with French classics. I also think these books and authors may not be typically taught in American high school and college but are well worth the time and attention. I read most of these books on my own (outside a traditional classroom setting) because they were recommended by friends or mentors, and they made a lasting impact on me, so I hope some of them at least may have a similar impact on students here.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

English Majors at UP have often said in the past that they wish to read literary works outside the more traditional British and American canons, so I see this new course as a direct response to past student demand and I hope students will come away with an expanded sense of what classical literature can be, beyond the Anglophone canon.

Anything else you’d like students to know?

Take this class! If you like fiction (the primary genre covered), texts with compelling and maddening characters, and authors internationally recognized as significant and timeless, you will enjoy European Literature in Translation.

*** 

Dr. Weiger on ENG 363: Environmental Literature

 

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

We’ll begin in the nineteenth century with authors including William Wordsworth and John Clare, and move from those British Romantics to some American ones including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, and Henry David Thoreau. Walden (by Thoreau), will be a centering point for us, from which many of our other texts radiate. Other major authors of study will include twentieth and twenty-first century writers Rachel Carson, Michael Pollan and Wendell Berry.

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

Like many writer-naturalists before us, we will allow ourselves to wander through the boundaries of our subject in an approach that opens up the various thematic, contextual, and theoretical possibilities within each text. We will consider questions including: What makes a text an example of “nature writing”? Is there a particularly “environmental” way of reading and writing? How do race, class, and gender inflect environmental literature? What does environmental literature offer us in thinking through and attempting to resolve environmental crises? These questions bear on many of the College of Arts and Sciences core questions, including: How do relationships and communities function? What is the role of beauty, imagination, and feeling? What is a good life? and, finally, What can we do about injustice and suffering?

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

One of my favorite things about this course is that it attracts English majors as well as students from other disciplines, notably Environmental Studies. I love what happens when we put our minds together!

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

In this course, I try to make sure that contemporary environmental writing has a strong presence, so our feature research and writing assignments incorporate current writing on the environment in major environmental publications (both print and online). My hope is that students can inhabit the roles of literary scholars, writers, and difference makers simultaneously — that they really become a part of important conversations regarding the environment. 

Anything else you’d like students to know?

Hikers, naturalists, and outdoor-enthusiasts are very welcome, but you can definitely be an indoor-type and enjoy this course!

*** 

Dr. Larson on ENG 470: City Life in American Literature

 

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

We’ll cover American writers from the past two centuries during a time when the nation went from rural to radically urban. The best writers invented a vocabulary to articulate those cultural changes: short works by Walt Whitman, Ed Poe, Nate Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Anzia Yezierska, Frank Norris, Dorothy Parker, John Cheever, and Nathanael West usually fill the first half of the semester. Then a number of larger, more contemporary works put us in dialogue with our own times. Haven’t decided on those yet, but in past years we’ve read such works as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex, Anna Deveare Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, etc. Throughout, a number of theoretical texts will provide concepts to help bridge the primary works.

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

The course uses our urban desires and fears to explore the politics of identity, the politics of growth, and the politics of power. In other words, we’ll be asking how cities shape who we are, who we can be, and what we can do. We’ll also expand the notion of the urban, to find how inextricable it is from other spaces like the rural or suburban.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

Teaching this course is one of my favorite experiences. Just as I like walking around in order to get my mind in motion, I love the spaces literature allows us to think through. Since we happen to live in a vibrant city, the course invites us to bring together our experiences with Portland(ia) — the local, the immediate, the now and here — with the worlds and words on the page. We’ll open a dialogue between our own sharp experiences/ bewilderments, and those of these gifted literary observers.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

Even though many of us come from rural backgrounds, the urban is now a part of us (given our current location) and will continue to influence us in the future, now that over half of our human species lives in cities. This is both good news and bad news; we’ll explore why. The course is a blend of American history, sociology, linguistic ferment, and wicked good storytelling.

Anything else you’d like students to know?

We’ll be looking at American authors and mostly American settings so as to work with a relatively familiar context. But having spent the past half year in India, and having read up on various international cities, I hope to connect our studies with the planetary dimension, so the course can inform the scale that matters most: our global urban future. Ultimately, I think we come away from a course like this better equipped with strategies to feel at home in the universe.

***

Dr. Hiro on ENG 473: African American Literature

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

Quite a few of the African American authors we’ll read students may never have heard of–Charles Chesnutt from the late 19th century; Nella Larsen from the 1920s; Ann Petry from the 1940s. But the familiar big names will be there too–Frederick Douglass (slave narrative), Langston Hughes (poetry), and of course Toni Morrison (Beloved).

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

Well, the class is quite deeply connected to American history of the period: we need to learn something about slavery while reading slave narratives; about the failures of Reconstruction when reading late 19th-century literature; about contemporary ways of framing race by the end of the class. So thinking about race relations and what it’s meant to be African American through all of these moments is a key part of the class.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

First, I’ll say that this is probably my favorite of all the upper-division courses I teach. There are a couple of reasons for that (beyond the simple fact that I love African American literature): one, I like the self-reflexive nature of this body of literature; African American authors are always thinking about what it means to write African American literature–what should this literature be, look like, do? Second, because it’s a 400-level class, we work on the skills involved in conceiving, drafting, and revising a research paper, and I love supporting students as they refine these skills.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

An admiration, even passion, for African American literature, and a more nuanced, complex, historical way of thinking about race, racial identity, and racism.

Anything else you’d like students to know?

If you’ve never taken a 400-level class before, this is a great one to begin with. I first conceived of it as a research course for first-year students, so it definitely does not presume you already know everything you need to know about doing research in English.

***

by Erika Murphy

Dr. Molly Hiro is a favorite English professor at UP, married to fellow English professor Dr. Lars Larson. The two, both on sabbatical this year, won Fulbright awards to travel and teach in India. They decided to temporarily uproot their family to a country of festival-loving, vibrant-color-wearing people.

Can you share why you traveled to India?

Honestly, the choice to go to India was secondary to the choice to try to leave the U.S. The academic sabbatical offers a rare opportunity to change your perspective radically by occupying unfamiliar geographic space (if you can make the finances and housing and all work out). I really wanted a break from my familiar, taken-for-granted surroundings, especially because I never studied abroad as a college student (apart from a brief summer program in France). When it came time to specify where to go, India stood out as a nice combination of accessible (because English is so broadly spoken and the people are famously welcoming) and remote (in terms of mere distance, as well as culture and religion).

What are some of the most surprising things you experienced?

One of the most surprising parts of my family’s experience (I went to India with my husband, also an academic, and our two school-aged daughters) was how much we enjoyed ourselves. We imagined that relocating to a developing country would involve so much deprivation and discomfort (power outages, heat, bugs, bureaucratic nightmares, traffic, pollution, in-your-face-poverty) that it would be the sort of experience that we’d look back on fondly but would find less than pleasant in the moment. But none of those discomforts–though they were there at times–compared to the excitement and rewards of getting to know a new place, of absorbing its strangeness, and of growing closer as a family as a result.

Another surprise, and a somewhat more disheartening one, was the nature of higher education in India, or at least in the institutions we got to know.  Everything was so top-down: professors lectured, students rarely did anything but listen (albeit with great attention and respect), grades come almost entirely from tests involving recall of the professors’ lectures, rather than from papers that would demonstrate students engagement with and ownership of the material. Any attempts to reform this system (and “student centered learning” has grown as a catchphrase in India) are stymied by the fact that most university teaching is done in English, and most students are fluent only in their native languages (Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, etc.).  So, asking students to speak up in class or write extensively in a language they can’t even speak fluently isn’t easy.

It’d be especially interesting to know about more about the female life in India.

Well, I don’t really feel too well equipped, after only five months in India, to speak to this too authoritatively. On the whole, though, I’d say that gender norms and dynamics were much more conservative in the city where I lived (Mysore, about the same size as Portland, but a medium-sized city–even a comfortable “town”– by Indian standards).  In bigger “Tier One” cities, you’ll see much more diversity in terms of women’s lives (housewives in saris to CEOs of companies), but in Mysore, the norm seemed to be for women to stay home with children, do the cooking and laundry, etc. (yet of course there is a much greater reliance on “servants” in India so sometimes you’re paying another women to do these household chores). The English M.A. students at University of Mysore included maybe half women, and some of the best students were surely female. But our colleagues told us that most of the female students, after they complete their M.A.’s, don’t pursue a career in university or teaching but go home to their villages and become mainly wives and mothers.

Gender stratification seems to be strengthened or supported by religion and culture. There are all these various festivals that require women to do x while men do y, and then of course there are Indian weddings–for most young people, still arranged marriages, and the weddings are almost always paid for entirely by the bride’s family, and involve a dowry from bride’s family to groom’s, etc.  This is why there is still an alarmingly high incidence of female infanticide and/or aborting of female fetuses in India.

Then of course there is the “rape culture” which you hear about a lot now, after a few high-profiled gang rapes in the last few years. No doubt, I felt the male gaze a LOT more in India than I do here, and there’s much more permissiveness it seems around male looking at and touching women without permission (groping…I didn’t experience this but know people who did). A bright spot here, though, is that there seems to be a major backlash against this permissiveness and e.g., the Times of India reported daily about women’s groups, protests, and legislation being created to protect women. So I think things are changing.

On the whole, I think women probably have less freedom overall in India than here, but they’re much less constrained than in some Middle Eastern or other more strongly patriarchal cultures. As I reminded people whom I talked to there, India has had many charismatic female leaders, including a female head of state (Indira Gandhi)…all we have is the hope of Hillary in 2016, right?

What is the dress like?

For women, much more conservative than here.  Again, this is not true for the big cities, but in most smaller-sized communities, few women wear jeans; the older women wear saris and the younger generation some version of a loose flowy top over leggings or pajama style pants. (Salwar Kameez) I wore my usual clothes but slipped leggings beneath skirts or dresses, rarely showing much more leg than ankles.  Indian women may be discouraged from showing skin, but WOW, they are so much better at embracing color than we are. I could pass time just watching the gorgeous, brilliant fabrics passing by on the streets.

Any personal lessons you carry with you in your life today?

I learned a lot about what privileges we have as Americans, and how incredibly insular we are as a country, so clueless about what happens around the world. Supported by their religious beliefs, many Indians are amazingly open to letting things happen as they will.  I’ve always been a bit of a control freak, so after observing Indians’ attitudes, I’m working on ceding some control and trusting what will come.

Any words for college women who are travelers themselves?

Mainly I’d say: don’t be afraid to go to places like India. I think the news about violence against women has been blown out of proportion. Europe’s great, but India will provide you an intensity of experience you couldn’t have imagined.  Not to mention that it is so affordable to travel there!

To read more about Dr. Hiro’s experiences abroad, check out her blog! Here’s a post on being a woman in India:https://pdxtomysore.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/being-female-in-india/

 

by Erika Murphy

Hundreds of applicants have whittled down to three candidates who pursue a single position, that of English professor in 18th Century British literature. Not only are the numbers daunting, but the man whose position they’ll replace has left high expectations. Dr. Herman Asarnow is beloved for his vivacity and wisdom, and his presence is still tangibly missed. Yet, students are excited for who is to come; especially those who’ve considered becoming a professor themselves have a rare opportunity to witness and take part in the hiring process.

Each candidate takes part in three official interviews, with the Provost, Dr. Thomas G. Greene, with the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Michael F. Andrews, and with the English professors. The candidates are asked about their scholarship, teaching, and service. The selected candidate will be expected to perform well in these three duties, particularly in accordance with the university mission. Students and professors of all disciplines then gather again for a teaching presentation. Amassed around a single table, our professors form an impressive, if not intimidating, group. They become eager pupils, whose banter before the presentation gives way to thoughtful and earnest comments during. The aim is to mimic the classroom environment to evaluate the candidate’s efficacy. For the exceptional candidates, humor and gentle promptings of students indicate an ease that ripples to all in the room, a room that could easily turn tense if not for the lighthearted approach of our own professors.

Time with students is an especially valued element of the day. During a fireside chat, students share in coffee and open dialogue. Candidates are passionate about the work they’ll do with undergraduates, and as such, students are essential in determining whether our university is the right university. After all, an uprooting of home and self is a decision that ultimately can’t be made in a boardroom. Candidates are interested in the presence of faith on our religious campus, the camaraderie among students and with faculty, and Portland itself. Their questions are not unlike those of prospective students. In this way, candidates and students share in the common experience of finding one’s footing in new territory. Through spontaneous interaction, unscripted and true, the selection becomes less an answer to the brutal, “Are you good enough?” and more a reciprocated choice. Fit is a mutual sensation. The day is designed to find whether such a feeling exists. Our professors make the decision, in some sense, conjointly with the candidate, comfort being crucial to success.

In a field that constantly reminds itself of its shrinking scope, it’s refreshing to find articulate doctorates who make us laugh and give us pause to think, who have placed confidence in current passions over future prospects. They’ve followed a love of English literature through what can be an arduous process; the department looks forward to offering a long-awaited and well-deserved resting perch to one fortunate individual.

If you’d like to learn more, share in the hiring process! Two candidate visits remain:

• Monday, February 23
  • Teaching presentation: 10:10-11:05 a.m, Murphy Room (4th floor of Franz Hall)
  • Fireside chat: 3:00-3:45 p.m, Bauccio Commons
• Friday, February 27
  • Teaching presentation: 10:10-11:05 a.m, Murphy Room (4th floor of Franz Hall)
  • Fireside chat: 2:00-2:50 p.m, Bauccio Commons

 

by Ana Fonseca 

In advance of registration, here’s the inside scoop from professors on what we can expect from their courses next semester:

 

Professor Crawford on English 309- Writing Workshop: Fiction

What are some the writing skills students can expect to learn in this course? 

Students can expect to explore short story elements such as character, conflict, voice, setting, and action.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

I love watching students hone their writing voices as their confidence increases over the course of the semester.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

I hope students will use their personal interests to craft engaging fiction, and develop a lifelong love of short stories.

Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?

Being part of a workshop community of fiction writers is an invaluable experience.

 

Fr, Pat on English 311- Advanced Writing

What are some the writing skills students can expect to learn in this course? 

I hope my students learn how to write daring, fearless sentences; I hope my students learn how to go to surprising places in their thinking and demonstrate that on the page. I hope my students can more fully appreciate the role of the imagination in writing—not as an exercise in “making things up”—but as a way to shape and form a work in creative, thoughtful, and astonishing ways, much as a sculptor works with clay.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course? 

I love the interactions I have with students as we explore their writing together. I love how my students throw themselves into the workshop experience and how rewarding the revision process becomes for them.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

Beyond my hope that my students will see that they have grown as writers, I hope they come away with the realization that writing can be a wild, gratifying experience of being human.

Anything else you’d like students to know about this course? 

As much writing as we do in the class, we do a fair amount of reading as well, not just our essays, but the work of remarkable essayists.

 

Professor McDonald on English 311- Advanced Writing

What are some the writing skills students can expect to learn in this course? 

Students will leave 311 with a better understanding of their own writing processes. They will learn to engage an audience, and write from their own unique perspectives. Also, they will see the value revision has on improving the quality of a piece of writing.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

I love getting students to break the rules–it’s so contrary to their previous classroom writing experiences. Students have great stories. If they are brave enough to write honestly, some of the essays are really startling and entertaining. I really like it when a student receives a reaction from class when reading aloud. It is also gratifying to see students think of themselves as writers. I enjoy writing along with students in class and sharing my writing.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

I want students to realize that there is no writing “gene.” Sure, some students have better skills than others, but writing is essentially thinking; it’s mental fitness. It takes effort. It takes time. It takes acuity. You don’t just sit down and have something magical fly out of your keyboard. Well, sometimes you do, but that’s rare. I want to de-mystify the act of writing

Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?

You have to share your work frequently. Students get to choose essay topics/approaches based upon broad prompts. Please no zombie essays.

 

Dr. Hersh on English 320- Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Literature

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

Most of our readings will come from a very well-known medieval author named Anonymous.  Authorship played a different role in the Middle Ages than it does now, so a lot of texts lack a known author.  That said, we will read Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Beowulf, and many others to get a sense of the literature produced during this period.

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

I frame the entire course around the theme of difference.  The Middle Ages, with its sometimes radical difference from our own, forces us to realize that many of the ideas that we take for granted, or which we believe are the natural way of thinking about things, are not so natural after all.  So, for example, the Middle Ages believed that instead of two genders there was just one gender—the masculine gender—and that women were just inverted versions of males.  Exploring ideas like this make us rethink our own modern beliefs and ideas.  We will also see how the literature of this period contains ideas, hopes, fears, and humor that resonate even in the twenty-first century.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

Academic disciplines as we know them did not exist in the Middle Ages. This class reflects the academic reality of the Middle Ages by employing an interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature. I love that this course begs us to analyze literature alongside art, theology, history, political science, and music (yes, listening to Eminem can shed light on Beowulf!).

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

An appreciation for the diversity of the Middle Ages.  People often assume that this was a period populated by just peasants, kings, and plagues. The Middle Ages actually produced literature that is just as complicated, funny, sad, and beautiful as texts written today.

Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?

There will not be a field trip to Medieval Times.

 

Fr. Pat on English 343- Studies in Nonfiction

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

We will be reading works from: Frank Conroy, Alison Bechdel, Lytton Strachey, Susan Orlean, Tracy Kidder, Ted Conover and Marion Winik. We will also read essays from some of the greats: Woolf, Baldwin, Didion, Kincaid, etc., as well as up-and-coming essayists.

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking? 

We will be exploring many of the forms of literary nonfiction, paying particular attention to memoir, profile-writing, literary journalism, biography, and the personal essay, all the while seeing how literary nonfiction utilizes the tools of fiction (plot, character, setting, conflict, etc.) to shape true stories.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course? 

It’s always a bit of a thrill to see how my students come to see that in the world of literature, literary nonfiction is enjoying a kind of renaissance. I also rather enjoy the ongoing conversation of the course, the one that circles time and again around a huge question: what does it mean to tell a true story?

What’s something you hope students will get from this course? 

I hope my students will walk away with a careful, discerning eye when it comes to reading any work of nonfiction: a newspaper article, a blog post, a Tweet, a political profile, an expose, etc.  I hope my students will be able to marvel at the sheer artistry at work in a piece of literary nonfiction.

Anything else you’d like students to know about this course? 

This course is, as they say, in my wheelhouse! I always look forward to teaching this class because it gets my creative juices flowing. It makes me want to write stuff that will make me stop in my tracks. And I hope my students catch that bug!

 

Dr. Brassard on English 347- British Literature since 1945

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

So many great authors and texts to choose from! It’s very difficult to narrow it down, but for this version of the course I’ve selected Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, Levy’s Small Island, Kureishi’s The Black Album, Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Smith’s NW, and a couple more to be determined.

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

The focus of the class will be “Britain’s Others,” or “The Empire Writes Back” (Rushdie’s phrase), because England became increasingly multi-cultural after the Second World War, and especially with the influx of immigrants from former colonies in the fifties and sixties. Class, gender, race, and sexuality will be major concepts developed throughout the texts and the course.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

I’m an unabashed Anglophile, and I’m fascinated by the way recent history finds its way into the literature. The ‘tagline’ I came up with for the course is: “What happens when a country wins a war but loses an empire?” The best British authors (many more could be included) all grapple with the social and cultural after-effects of war and empire on the English psyche.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

I hope students will discover different ways of thinking about Britain and British literary culture beyond the assumptions and clichés we all carry within us (tea, rain, Harry Potter, you name it).

Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?

Assignments for the class will include a movie report: there are many wonderful films about postwar British culture that perfectly complement the literary texts we will be studying.

 

Dr. McDaneld on English 357- American Literature 1945-Present

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

We’ll be working with major texts by Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar), Toni Morrison (Beloved), and Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking). There will also be lots of short stories, a bit of poetry, and some non-fiction selections like Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King.

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

We’ll be thinking lots about what it means to try to survey this time period (notice that the “Post-45 to Present” designation keeps getting longer and longer!) And, as in all of my courses, we’ll be focusing on gender and race as important categories of analysis for literary study.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

I teach literature of both the 19th and 20th centuries, and what I love about the more contemporary stuff is how it helps to historicize the recent past, the past we think we know so well because it’s closer to us.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

The course is going to feature a lot of texts that students will have definitely heard of, but maybe won’t have read—so it’s always fun to see how your interpretations of a text or author match up (or don’t) with their cultural reputations. And of course I always hope that students will get practice in refining their writing and research skills. There will be a mix of assignments, from informal responses, to a close reading essay, to a final research project on a text of students’ choosing.

Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?

Take it! We’ll have fun.

 

Dr. Brassard on English 440- Telling/Retelling: Literary Adaptations and Transformations

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

The reading list is short, because the books are mostly door-stoppers, so be prepared for an intense reading experience! The texts are arranged in pairs (classic and update): Austen’s Emma with the movie Clueless; Bronte’s Jane Eyre with Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, and Forster’s Howards End with Smith’s On Beauty.

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

The question at the heart of this course is: What makes a classic both of its time and timeless? In other words, why are some classics ‘ripe’ for reinvention in a modern setting and still popular in their original and updated forms? We will explore not only the universality and canonical importance of the original texts but also what it means to update, adapt, re-imagine, and/or transform these texts for a contemporary audience. Expect an emphasis on feminism as a major critical lens, and issues of class, gender, and sexuality as central thematic concerns throughout the term.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

Students typically respond very well to the material, and are often surprised to like classics they had avoided in the past. I get to revisit my favorite classics through the fresh eyes of my students, who are sometimes more familiar with the contemporary updates than the original texts.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

I want students to explore issues of canonicity (why some authors and not others; who decides and how) and challenge received opinions about literary value, while also reading and writing smart papers about complex and compelling books.

Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?

Assignments for the class will include reports on film adaptations of certain texts, and also a Creative Reinterpretation project, which involves reimagining a text into a different medium, or literary genre, or writing style (usually a favorite among students).

 

Dr. Weiger on English 491- Posthumanism: Humans, Animals, and the End of Nature

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?
Our primary theoretical text will be Donna Haraway’s When Species Meet. That text will launch our investigation of an emerging field in the humanities: animal studies. Major primary texts will likely include Humanimal (by poet Bhanu Kapul), King: A Street Story (by art critic and novelist John Berger), and Oryx and Crake (by famed Canadian author Margaret Atwood). I’m also excited about the possibility of including On Such a Full Sea (by Chang-rae Lee).

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?
Our course will be split into two primary sections: one that investigates the question of what it is to be an animal, and another that investigates the question of what it is to be human. “Posthumanism” is a capacious category; I’m looking forward to stretching its boundaries with students to address questions including: Who — or what– counts as a subject in literature, philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics? What rights and responsibilities do subjects have? Can humans speak for nonhuman things? What do we mean when we call something an “object,” “thing,” or “animal” and how do those category-designations change our relationship to it?

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?
One of the pleasures of this course, for me, is the opportunity to move the questions that preoccupy my study of 19th-century literature into the 21st century. During the Romantic period, fascination with nonhuman forms of life (as well as nonliving things) swelled. Since then, recognition of species extinction, climate change, and the Anthropocene have turned the screw on that interest.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?
I hope, most of all, that students will appreciate the extent to which literature can reconfigure humans’ relationship to the nonhuman.

Anything else you’d like students to know about this course?
This course will include film! In addition to our reading, we’ll be considering films including Sweetgrass (a documentary on sheepherders in Montana), Winged Migration (a film without words), Grizzly Man (by Werner Herzog), and Dreams (by Akira Kurosawa).