Eng Grad: E. 20th &/or 21st C
In this course, we will study African American novels and short stories of the past forty years in their historical, political, and... (read more)
This seminar participates in the current reassessment of relations between aesthetic modernism and popular culture. The rise of "New... (read more)
This course explores issues of power, representation, and cultural memory through a focus on ephemeral food television, which we will... (read more)
This course is an introduction to historical materialist methods of cultural studies, with an emphasis on Cedric Robinson’s rendering of the Black Radical Tradition. We will examine language and aesthetics as “constitutive human processes” in the modern world, with particular attention to... (read more)
This course takes an intersectional approach to contemporary young adult and children’s literature, primarily but not exclusively from the United States. We... (read more)
This seminar will explore the work of W.B. Yeats and consider how he contributed to the development of a distinctly Irish modernism within the contexts of a... (read more)
This course examines a variety of texts and issues within American modernist culture from 1910 to 1935. U.S. Modernism developed in dialogue with... (read more)
We often think of genre in terms of generic traditions, industrial conventions or audience expectations, but what can we gain by considering genre films in relation to national contexts and transnational influences? Though perceived as the most typical “American” film genre, for instance, if we... (read more)
In this course, we will study contemporary African American fiction in its historical, political, and literary contexts. As we read these works and relevant scholarly texts, we will consider questions of periodization, genre, and literary tradition. We will study the function of genres such as... (read more)
This seminar participates in the current reassessment of relations between aesthetic modernism and popular culture. The rise of “New Modernist studies” over the past twenty years, with its expansive historical orientation and interest in modernism’s original cultural contexts, has led to a... (read more)
Bildungsroman. Arguably one of the most widely recognized and hotly contested critical terms in literary studies, it has been read as everything from an organic, mimetic allegory of national community to an insidious instrument of social discipline. Its coincidence with the emergence of... (read more)
TV Aesthetics focuses on the formal analysis of mainstream U.S. television and the production practices that support these aesthetics. While we will take an “introductory” look at television form, this course will use specific case studies—such as commercials, sitcoms, and music videos—to... (read more)
The Energy Humanities is an interdisciplinary field drawing from the humanities, arts, and social sciences and focused on energy systems (e.g. fossil fuel, solar, hydro) as fundamental aspects of culture. The seminar will read historians, geographers, anthropologists, and literary and cultural... (read more)