Fall 2024 Courses

(Blansett/Doran): [3 credits] Scholarship in the fields of writing studies, composition, and rhetoric often raises questions about how texts are made and the roles we play in teaching others to create texts. In response, compositionists have formulated a variety of theories for the assumptions, methods, and practices we rely on in the classroom. In ENGL 5100, we will engage with the theories, histories, research, and practices that inform our own First-Year Writing Program at UConn. Specifically, we will explore theories related to our writing program's approach to reading and writing, cognition and creativity, teaching and learning, language and meaning-making. We will build a greater understanding of the contexts that shape and are affected by our practices of teaching writing.
In addition to being introduced to the theoretical approaches to writing and teaching writing, you will also be introduced to current methodologies used by composition researchers to undertake a research project on teaching, learning, and writing (Scholarship of Teaching & Learning [SoTL]). Your classroom-based research will culminate in a project that contributes to our understanding of how undergraduate students learn to write and compose. You will share what you have learned in the classroom in a brief teaching presentation. The research will also provide the groundwork upon which you develop a course inquiry and assignment architecture in preparation for teaching your own version of UConn's FYW course. Work includes weekly written engagements with assigned readings, a teaching-focused research project, and a description of the course inquiry and assignment architecture.

(Doran): Tuesdays 9:30 am – 10:45 am, 10:45 am – 12:00 pm, or 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm, depending on your schedule [1 Credit] The Practicum in the Teaching of Writing is designed for graduate students teaching First-Year Writing at the University of Connecticut for the first time. Teaching Practicum is designed to help you implement the theories of teaching and writing introduced in ENGL 5100, serving as a bridge between your learning and your students’ experiences. We will work weekly on developing active-learning strategies, class activity plans, and other instructional materials that you will use immediately in your classes. Practicum also provides a sustained forum for reflecting on and assessing your own teaching in the context of the program. It is a deliberate teaching community where instructors regularly share experiences and learn from one another.

(Cramer): Our great stumbling-block is . . . our horror of half-measures. We can't be content with telling the truth—we must tell the whole truth; & the whole truth is the Devil.  (Lytton Strachey, letter to John Maynard Keynes, April 8, 1906)

In this course we study the Bloomsbury Group, a coterie of artists, intellectuals, and political theorists who transformed early twentieth century aesthetics, lifestyles, and sexual norms. Core members include Clive Bell (art critic), Vanessa Bell (painter), E. M. Forster (novelist), Roger Fry (art critic), Duncan Grant (painter), John Maynard Keynes (economist), Desmond MacCarthy (literary critic), Lytton Strachey (biographer), Leonard Woolf (political theorist), and the iconic feminist and modernist, Virginia Woolf.

This course is grounded in early twentieth century history and politics—especially the rise of modernism in the literary and visual arts. We study revolt by Bloomsbury, themselves descendants of Empire builders, as part of the liberation movements of their time: the Harlem and Irish Renaissances; the breakdown of the British empire; the global feminist, labor, and peace movements; the nascent men’s liberation movement; the rise of male and female homosexual subcultures. Contrary to caricatures of Bloomsbury as frivolous aesthetes, each in their own style engaged intimately with the political crises of their time. Side by side with Bloomsbury innovations in the visual and literary arts, we will consider Bloomsbury as political and social dissidents: e.g., their opposition to World War I (Lytton Strachey, Duncan Grant as conscientious objectors); pacificism (Clive Bell and Virginia Woolf); anti-Imperialism (especially Leonard Woolf); their united front against fascism at home and abroad. Virginia Woolf’s feminist resistance to male dominance—even among her beloved male friends—is forefront, together with her astute assessments of the damaging effects of their elite educations on their hearts and minds.

Bloomsbury and their circles fostered havens for homosexual men and toleration for women loving women. E.M. Foster, Lytton Strachey, Duncan Grant, and John Maynard Keynes were key figures in the developing homosexual subcultures of their generation. Virginia Woolf’s passionate love for Vita Sackville-West pervades her fiction beginning with Mrs. Dalloway. We will listen to how they and others of their generation conceived of same-sex emotion, found lovers and sympathetic friends during these fiercely homophobic times. We will also review contemporary scholar debates on how to talk about homosexuality among generations whose self-understanding and terminology may not coincide with our own.

A key question for this course revolves around the Bloomsbury liberatory aim to break from the past. How far can one break free from the worst of our inheritances? When is "revolution" merely superficial change, even revitalization of the core wrongs of the past? When “the current answers don’t do,” what criteria guides us toward “what to put in their place” (V. Woolf, D1 259)?

Reminiscing on their youth, Vanessa Bell (1879-1961) recalls, "How full of life those [early Bloomsbury] days seemed! Beauty was springing up under one’s feet. . . . A great new freedom seemed about to come" (“Bloomsbury” 111). Woolf recalls her beloved friends as “wild, odd, innocent, artless, eccentric and industrious beyond words” (L4 238). Connected by friendship more than ideology, Bloomsbury members nevertheless were united by a few core values that shaped their lives, work, and distinct contributions to modernism. Clive Bell (1881-1964), for example, writes "we did like each other; also, we shared a taste for discussion in pursuit of truth & a contempt for conventional ways of thinking & feeling" (“Bloomsbury” 119); Duncan Grant (1885-1978) recalls "Nothing was expected save complete frankness & a mutual respect for the point of view of each" (“Bloomsbury” 97). Can we align Bloomsbury frankness and contempt for dogma with what Carol Gilligan calls the “resistant voice” “speaking truth to power” (In a Human Voice 2023)? Can we accept Bloomsbury’s characteristic cultivation of reason and the “right sorts of feelings” as anti-fascist strategies of the sort advocated by Virginia Woolf (Three Guineas 1938) and Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny 2017) where “facts matter”?

If we are lucky, we may recapture glimpses of the brilliance, magic, and fun that Bloomsbury members enjoyed as "chosen family." Perhaps, in the spirit of Bloomsbury, we too can delight in lively discussion, the pursuit of "truth," mutual respect for each other's opinions, and readiness to question our own and each other’s familiar ways of thinking and feeling?

 Addendum

1) I look forward to introducing students to the welcoming and generous International Virginia Woolf community—the International Virginia Woolf Society (IVWS) and the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain (VWSGB): e.g., the Woolf list serve; publications (the Virginia Woolf Miscellany and Woolf Studies Annual); the Annual International Virginia Woolf conferences; special Woolf sessions at MLA; and the monthly online Woolf Salons. For advanced undergraduates, there is the possibility of the Angelica Garnett Essay Prize (https://v-woolf-society.com/2023/03/27/angelica-garnett-prize/)

2). Carolyn Vega, archivist librarian from the New York Public Library, has agreed to speak to us online regarding the Berg collection of Bloomsbury papers. We will also have access to the Virginia Woolf Manuscripts from the Monks House papers at the University of Sussex at the UCONN Storrs library.

 Works Cited

Rosenbaum, S. P., editor. “Bloomsbury on Bloomsbury.” The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of Memoirs and Commentary, University of Toronto Press, 1995.

Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. 5 volumes, edited by Anne Oliver Bell. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977-1984.

---. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. 6 volumes, edited by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne            Trautmann. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975-1980.

 Assignments

1) Apostle’s paper. The Cambridge Apostles was a secret intellectual society founded at Cambridge in 1820. Many of the men from Bloomsbury—John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, Lytton Strachey, Desmond MacCarthy, Leonard Woolf—were Apostles during the years when G. E. Moore predominated. This assignment is a fun way to share the Cambridge roots of Bloomsbury. The papers will follow Apostle format: short, playful, organized around a question, ending in a group vote on that or a related question. Topics—moral and philosophical in nature—are open, but we will stick to Apostle basics: that the speakers argue for what they truly (at least at that moment) believe. In keeping with Apostle traditions, I provide a hearth rug the speaker stands on, plus crackers with sardines (Apostles’ tradition) and a vegan alternative.

2) Class presentations, based on academic conference panel models. Students will turn in 250-word abstracts, followed by 15-minute paper presentations on panels of 2-3 presenters and a monitor. These presentations will be based on and preliminary to their final projects.

 3) Presentation and response to one selected essay by Woolf scholars. I will adjust a list of prominent scholar essays on Bloomsbury based on students’ research interests. Each student will present/respond to one of the scholar essays on the list.

4)  Final project (possibilities)

1)  Pedagogical project

2)  Scholar research paper / article

3)  Public facing / personal essay

(Menrisky): This seminar provides an introduction—chiefly though not exclusively through the lens of literary studies—to the major histories, methodologies, theories, and contemporary preoccupations of the interdisciplinary environmental humanities, as well as to common practices in environmental humanities projects. During the first several weeks of the course, we will survey the intellectual antecedents and development of the environmental humanities—and ecocriticism specifically—as a broad field. Following that, we will explore recent inquiries and debates in the field. We will pay particular attention to how critics and other scholars approach such issues as environmental representation (including matters of scale and how we define “environment” to begin with), environmental history (including changing conventions amid shifts in ecological conditions, energy politics, and climate stability), the politics of nature (and its relationship with race, gender, sexuality, indigeneity, class, disability, and other social vectors), canonization and its disruption (e.g., what has qualified as environmental art, rhetoric, or policy for different writers and why), periodization (e.g., what we call our current epoch, whether Holocene, Anthropocene, or something else), and method (including but not limited to approaches and lenses such as historicism, affect studies, materialism, political theory, and scholar-activism). While we will read some short primary texts here and there, our chief attention will be on works of humanities scholarship concerning human interactions with environment. This seminar is, in this respect, not intended to provide coverage in a particular national literature or historical period (e.g., US literature of the twentieth century). It is intended for students with an interest in environmental matters across research interests and aims to provide tools for scholars working in a variety of periods, traditions, and fields to write critically about humans’ historical engagement with the worlds they inhabit, alter, represent, and live with.

Requirements include weekly responses, a presentation, a midterm project of the student's choice (e.g., a conference-length paper, short piece of public-facing scholarship, annotated syllabus, review essay, or portfolio of assignments), and a standard seminar paper.

(Tribble): Shakespeare is often taught in isolation from the other playwrights of the period, but this practice distorts our sense of his place within the wider context of playing in early modern England. This class  will examine the theatre of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, placing Shakespeare’s work alongside that of his contemporaries. We will examine the repertory both of Shakespeare’s companies and of his rivals and will study the ways that Shakespeare participates in larger thematic, commercial, and cultural trends in the early modern theatre.

I will organize the class around sets of ‘triplets’: three plays that are in dialogue with one another in some way, normally with a Shakespeare play as the middle term. We will spend two weeks on each triplet; I will ask you to read the first two plays for class one, and then review the second play and read the third for class two. For instance, one first ‘triplet’ begins with the relatively early Queen’s Men version of the history of King Henry V (Famous Victories),  then moves to Shakespeare’s version of the first part of that narrative (1 Henry IV) and concludes with another Shakespeare play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which Shakespeare rewrites his own character of Falstaff in a comic register. Most of the other triplets contain only one Shakespeare play. Thus the course will be recursively chronological, with the aim of helping us see the network of sources, influences, dramaturgy, theatrical conventions and innovations that characterize the early modern theatrical world.

      In addition to the plays themselves, we will explore methodological questions in the field, including performance-as-research, print culture and material texts, race and gender on the early modern stage, repertory studies, and authorship and attribution.

Readings may include:

Famous Victories of Henry V; Henry IV, Part 1; Merry Wives of Windsor

               Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, Knight of the Burning Pestle

  Mucedorus, Romeo and Juliet; Tis Pity She's a Whore

  Galatea, Twelfth Night, Roaring Girl

  Battle of Alcazar, Othello, Duchess of Malfi

Doctor Faustus, The Tempest, The Alchemist

 Texts:

Renaissance Drama: An Anthology of Plays and Entertainments, 3rd Edition, ed, Arthur Kinney          

Complete Pelican Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Orgel

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre, ed. Richard Dutton.

Assessments:

1) Pitch 20%

Each of you will pitch one play (not assigned to the class as a whole).  Your task is to convince your company (played by the rest of the class)  to acquire your assigned play, on the basis of the following criteria (note that the sub-questions are meant to be indicative only; you should shape your pitch to your materials).

Narrative/Plot: briefly, what happens? Is this a familiar story or something new?

Characterization

Aesthetics, Language (Poetics); Structure

Cultural Ripples/ Why this play now? How does it subject matter fit with current concerns or rival material? Will there be any difficulties licensing it with the Master of the Revels?

Theatricality: What resources of stagecraft will be required?  Does it have ‘wow’ factor?

Suitability to company make-up: Are there showcase roles, especially for leading actors & clowns?

IN SHORT: Why acquire this play?

The pitch should be made orally and you should speak from notes rather than reading a script. The pitch should be annotated with footnotes citing sources, evidence, and any other supporting material. Including notes, aim for about 1000 words.

The objectives for this assignment are:

To expose the entire class to a wider range of plays than would be otherwise possible (and each of you will read one additional play in depth).

To  gain experience researching the scholarship and theatrical history of one play.

To practice speaking in a more informal and engaging register than a typical academic talk, which will give you experience with the skills needed for the ‘public humanities’

2) Mini-conference 20%

 The last day of class we will hold a mini-conference in which each of you will present your research in a 12-15-minute slot. You should not simply read sections from your research essay draft; rather, you should present a coherent, brief, and interesting finding from your research, along with evidence to support that finding. You may read from a script (although you should be able to lift the words off the page); you may also use Powerpoint or handouts if appropriate.

The objectives for this assignment are:

To gain experience presenting research, including how to choose aspects of your research that will be on interest to others.

To practice professional skills such as abstract writing, organising and  moderating panels, and asking and fielding questions

 Research Essay: 60%

 The research essay will allow you to explore a topic in depth, engaging in the scholarship in the field. I am open to a wide range of formats and topics, so long as the essay is research based.

(Duane): It’s a critical commonplace that children are deployed as symbols of something else. Beginning with the premise that metaphors are a reciprocal process in which abstraction shapes reality (and vice versa), this course will explore the theoretical, archival, and ethical problems posed by confronting the cultural work of childhood in history and literature. Beginning with 18th century sources, and moving to the present day, this course will discuss the ways in which children occupy an epistemological linchpin between the citizen and the outsider. In each case, we will examine both the meanings that are imposed on particular children, and how children have inhabited, resisted, and changed those meanings from within.

 Assignments will include an in-class conference presentation, and participation in a paper revision workshop that will contribute to the final requirement of a seminar paper.

(Dennigan): If I have a religion, it is literature, a category as endless and varied as the gods, and on its heels, literary criticism too is nearly as holy and varied. I'd like this course to be one that explores the possibilities of writing literary criticism. How much of your personal life can you purposefully bring to your interpretations? Conversely, how can you free yourself from your personal experience in your literary criticism? How can you practice being alert to a text in multiple ways? What are the possibilities for collaboration in literary criticism? Who in this world are you trying to convert to your ways of reading and seeing? This is not a course that will explicitly teach schools and theories, though you are welcome to work in those modes. We will continuously ask, What does or could it mean to read? What is getting read, and by whom? Because this is a writing course, we will write abundantly, through and amid, about, on, after-- all the prepositions!--books and poems and plays (and other media) from all points in literary history (the subject matters are up to you-- please bring your particular reading/viewing life to this course). Possible assignments: reviews, meditations, aesthetic interrogations, appreciations, epistles, and more. Readings will likely include criticism by Theodor Adorno, Fred Moten, Virginia Woolf, Parul Sehgal, Michiko Kakutani, Zadie Smith, Hilton Als, Dubravka Ugresic, and more, plus a few recent issues of the New York Review of Books.