Courses
These three popular courses that I have designed and taught have been requested for use by other faculty at other universities and occasionally been links on their syllabi and websites. I have presented two of them at conferences. They are examples of how courses can be made pertinent to our time and to events and issues under vigorous discussion. They were designed for low-enrollment courses, and I have at times adapted them for graduate and undergraduate offerings. In each, there are theoretical readings from some of the most used methodologies in the discipline today.
- Approaches in Literary Theory: Intervention
- Topics in Gender and Popular Culture: Romance
- Children’s Literature and Social Change
Approaches in Literary Theory: Interventions
Course Description:
Some novelists write in a time when they are witnesses to the crises that result from the greatest changes in human history. We will study three such books in depth. All were written from an eye-witness’s point of view with observations of people caught in them. Daniel Defoe was a little child during the Great Plague of 1665 and through his life he heard many people’s stories and did research for A Journal of the Plague Year. His protagonist is caught in the moment when humankind turned from seeing the plague as a direct action and message from God to empiricism, thereby using observation and experience to seek scientific explanations for its cause, spreading, and treatment. Edward Kimber was a polished London journalist who came to America in the 1740s to observe and report. The word “kidnap” was created in his time, and his protagonist is a young boy kidnapped in London and sold in America. As a horrified witness of this and to the very beginning of the rise of plantation slave culture, Kimber wrote The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson. The third book, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless by Eliza Haywood captures the moment when courtship rituals, patriarchal control of wealth, legally sanctioned spousal abuse and captivity—all of which she experienced– were beginning to attract censure and legal reforms.
This seminar explores and tests the usefulness of two literary theories in analyzing texts written in times of crisis and major societal change. Through feminist and masculinity studies, we considered how male and female characters are employed and how both are forced outside the ordinary expectations and opinions about gender. With Performance Studies theory, we analyzed how “social drama” becomes aesthetic works and then brings about new social dramas.
Requirements: Occasional written and oral reports, a seminar paper developed throughout the semester on one of the themes.
Required Texts:
- Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, ed. Paula Backscheider, Norton 1992, ISBN: 978-0-393-96188-1
- Eliza Haywood, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, ed. Christine Blouch, Broadview 1998, ISBN: 9781551111476 / 1551111470
- Edward Kimber, The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson, ed. Matthew and Nicholas Mason, Broadview 2008, ISBN: 9781551117034 / 1551117037
Syllabus:
“Gender is a socially imposed division of the sexes. Rather than an expression of natural differences, it is the suppression of natural similarities.” Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women”
August 17: Discussion of Qualtrics survey of gender experiences and opinions. Engravings: “The Female Volunteer,” and Charlotte Walpole and the Camp*; “From Academic Masculinity Studies.” *Introduction and orientation to gender emphasis in the seminar.
24: Edward Neville, Plymouth in an Uproar (1779) + Expert opinions. George Haggerty, “Regendering the Restoration Stage” from Teaching British Women Playwrights, pp. 29-31; Edward Rugemer, Slave Law and the Politics of Resistance, 1-8; from Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Right to Look, pp. 10-13, 36, 44, 48-65.
31: Edward Kimber, History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson. Please also read the Introduction to the novel, pp. 9-34 and Example 1, pp. 183-85 of Appendix A. Expert Opinions.
Sept. 7: Continued discussion of History of Mr. Anderson with Appendix C, 212-17; William Blackstone, excerpts from “On Slavery,” “Of the Rights of Persons,” and “Of Masters and Servants:” *Introduction to the Portuguese edition of A Journal of the Plague Year. Sept. 7: Continued discussion of History of Mr. Anderson with Appendix C, 212-17; William Blackstone, excerpts from “On Slavery,” “Of the Rights of Persons,” and “Of Masters and Servants”: Introduction to the
Portuguese edition of A Journal of the Plague Year.
“No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all.” Albert Camus, The Plague
14: Analysis of Stephen Gregg’s approach in “Defoe, Manliness, and Effeminacy” from Defoe’s Writings and Manliness, 1-11 and “A Journal of the Plague Year: Godly Manliness under Stress,” 91-112. Selection of a topic for 5 October Plague Paper.
21: Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year.
28: Maximillian Novak, “Defoe and the Disordered City,” in Norton Journal of the Plague Year textbook, 301-18; Paula McDowell, “Defoe and the Contagion of the Oral: Modeling Media Shift in A Journal of the Plague Year,” PMLA 121.1 (2006): 87-106.
October 5: Mid-semester. Journal of the Plague Year and explore 195-230; Christopher Loar, “Plague’s Ecologies: Daniel Defoe and the Epidemic Constitution,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 32.1 (2019): 31-53. Reports & discussion: Identification of similarities to the Covid pandemic.
12: Reports and discussion continued. Michael McKeon, “Historizing Patriarchy” through section IV (pp. 295-307 and section VIII, 315-16); Introduction to Betsy Thoughtless.
19: Betsy Thoughtless to Chapter XIX, p. 294.
26: Continue to end of Volume 3, p. 473. William Blackstone, “On Husbands and Wives,” pp. 433, 437-38, 440-445. Expert Opinions.
Nov. 2: Finish Betsy Thoughtless. Expert Opinions.
9: George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, Lady’s New Year’s’ Gift: or, Advice to a Daughter (ECCO, 1741 edition: search by “Savile”) +; Shea Stuart, “Subversive Didacticism in Eliza Haywood’s Betsy Thoughtless,” SEL, 42.3 (2002): 559-75.
16: Reports/ Discussion.
Thanksgiving Break
30: Reports/ Discussion
Dec. 7: Papers Due (electronically): 3:00 p.m.
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Topics in Gender and Popular Culture: Romance
Required Texts:
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Norton, 2001). ISBN 9780393976045
- Natural History of the Romance by Pamela Regis (University of Penn Press, 2007). ISBN 9780812215229
- Love Story by Erich Segal (Harper Collins, 2005). ISBN 9780060748098
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007). ISBN 9780312446475
- The MacGregors, Daniel and Ian by Nora Roberts (Harlequin, 1999). ISBN 9780373483907
- All for Love by John Dryden (University of Nebraska Press, 1972). ISBN 9780803253797
- Ways of Seeing by John Berger (Penguin, 1990). ISBN 9780140135152
Course Description:
“The heart believes in the success of wild enterprises and in impossible felicities,” George Sand once wrote. This course studies texts that describe dreams of romantic happiness, the hopes of unlikely lovers, and the idealistic or tragic ending of such stories. Surrounding the stories of such dreams are tales and studies of gender differences as complicating factors in relationships, and to counter Sand’s statement are other descriptions: “The Longest War,” “In a Different Voice,” and “He Said, She Said.” Romances have been considered dangerous since the modern form’s rapid rise to popularity in the eighteenth century. The genre has been accused of sending men to war, distracting them from important public responsibilities, and turning them into rapists. It has been described as giving women false hopes, of constructing their ideas of happiness and success, and, above all, of leading them to cause men trouble.
We will explore some of the ways romances inscribe gender differences and have contributed to our ideas of “masculine,” “feminine,” “pleasure,” and “happy marriage.” We will spend some time looking at how writers adapt the romance form in order to participate in social and domestic controversies. The course includes some theory, and literature will be both “high” and “mass,” but all of it will once have been wildly popular, and most of it continues to be so.
Syllabus:
Jan. 10: Introduction
15: “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry and *Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy, “The Isle of Happiness”
17: *”Isle of Happiness” continued. John Berger, Ways of Seeing, essays 1, 2, 3, 5.
22: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
24: Pride and Prejudice, continued. Expert Opinions
29: Pride and Prejudice, continued. Paper 1 due.
31: John Dryden, All for Love
Feb. 5: All for Love continued
7: George Haggerty, “Heroic Friendship” and*Jane Barker, “The Unaccountable Wife”
12: Teresa de Lauretis, “The Technology of Gender”
14: Eliza Haywood, “The City Jilt”; and Kristen Myers and Laura Raymond, “Elementary School Girls and Heteronormativity.”
19: Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid.
21: Susan Bordo, “The Body and the Reproduction of Feminity in The Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body and John Storey, Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture, 1-7 and 29-53* 14:
26: Mid-term exam
28: Jane Barker, “Love Intrigues.”
Mar. 5: Kate Chopin, The Awakening. Expert Opinions.
7: The Awakening
SPRING BREAK
19: Erich Segal, Love Story
21: Love Story continued.
Novel discussions continued.
26: Nora Roberts, For Now, Forever in The MacGregors, Daniel and Ian.
21: Pamela Regis, Natural History of Romance, pp. xi-84
26: Nora Roberts, For Now, Forever
28: Group meetings
April 2: Group Presentations
4: Regis, 107-23, 204, 207, and *Robyn Donald, “Mean, Moody, and Magnificent: The Hero in Romance Literature” in Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, 81-84; Tania Modleski, “Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women”* from Loving with a Vengeance, 1-25, and “My Life as a Romance Reader,”* Paradoxa 3 (1997): 15-28.
9: Lynn Coddington, “Wavering between Worlds: Feminist Influences in the Romance Genre,” Paradoxa 3 (1997): 58-77; Catherine Proctor, “The Romance Genre Blues or Why We Don’t Get No Respect”* in Empowerment versus Oppression, 12-19.
11: Student presentations of recent essays on Popular Romance.
18: Continued presentations.
23: Discussion.
25: Paper 2 due.
26: Evaluation of Natural History of Romance.
May 1: Exam 4:00 – 6:30
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Children’s Literature and Social Change
Description
This discussion course begins with the origins of children’s literature and considers its purposes and forms as they have evolved. Among the major topics for study are commercial concepts of market segments, such as African American, pre-teen girls, yuppie parents, and sports fans.
Throughout the course, we will consider book illustrations and how major movements in America, including feminist and Civil Rights, reveal how children’s books participated through their subjects, art, and content.
Readings: Examples of children’s literature, history, and theory. Those not required purchases are on reserve in the Treasure Room of the Rare Books and Special Collections in the library or on ECCO. Please request a title, enjoy it, and immediately return it. These books are not on regular reserve so you can access them quickly and easily and, perhaps, read them with a friend.
Requirements: Short reports, major group project, 10-12 page paper, final exam and possible mid-term exam.
Required Texts
- The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd. (HarperTrophy, 1977) 1st ed. ISBN: 0064430189.
- The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton. (Houghton Mifflin, 1978) 1st ed. ISBN: 039525938X.
- The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen, ed. Diana Crone Frank and Jeffrey Frank. 1st ed. Durham: Duke UP, 2005. ISBN: 0-8223-3693-6.
- Essentials of Children’s Literature, ed. Carol Lynch-Brown and Carl M. Tomlinson. (Allyn and Bacon, 2004) 5th ed. ISBN: 0-205-495486.
- Brown Gold: Milestones of African American Children’s Picture Books by Michelle Martin. (Routledge, 2004) 1st ed. ISBN: 0415938570.
- Grandfather’s Journey by Allen Say. 1st ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. ISBN: 0395570352.
- Rotten Teeth by Laura Simms, illustrated by David Catrow. (Houghton Mifflin, 2002) 1st ed. ISBN: 0618250786.
- Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women by Catherine Thimmesh, illustrated by Melissa Sweet. (Houghton Mifflin, 2000) 1st ed. ISBN: 039593
- The Governess by Sarah Fielding. Ed. Candace Ward. 1st ed. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2005. ISBN: 1551114127.
Syllabus
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry–
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll–
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human soul.
Emily Dickinson, 1894
“Books swept me away, one after the other, this way and that; I made endless
vows according to their lights, for I believed them.”
Annie Dillard, An American Childhood, 1987
“The real lives of boys are yet to be written. The lives of pious and good boys,
which enrich the publishing societies, resemble a real boy’s life about as much
as a chicken on a spit resembles a free fowl in the fields.”
Henry Ward Beecher, said in 1862
January
10. Introduction to Children’s Literature
12: Continued; Jan Yolen, Owl Moon*
Karen Klugman, “A Bad Hair Day for G. I. Joe” from Girls, Boys, Books, Toys
Discussion of toys.
17: Garth Williams, The Rabbit’s Wedding
William Miller, Night Golf
Essentials of Children’s Literature, pp. 1-31, 38
Excerpt from M. Daphne Kutzer, Empire’s Children
Hunt’s Criticism from Theory and Children’s Literature
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
19: Selections from John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education
James Janeway, Token for Children (1671-72)
Elizabeth Singer Rowe, from Friendship in Death, Letter 3 (1728)
Isaac Watts, Divine Songs, Attempted in Easie Language (1715)
24: Charles Perrault, Tale 1: “Little Red Riding Hood” in Histories, or Tales of Past Times. Told by Mother Goose (1729; 1772 first time without French)
The Brothers Grimm, “Little Red Cap” in The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
Elizabeth Marshall, “Stripping for the Wolf” in Reading Research Quarterly 39 (2004): 262-70.
Jack Zipes, “A Second Gaze at Little Red Riding Hood’s Trials and Tribulations” in Jack Zipes, ed., Don’t Bet on the Prince
26: John Newbery, A Little Pretty Pocket Book (1744)
Sarah Fielding, The Governess (1749)
John Aiken and Anna Laetitia Barbauld, “Difference and Agreement” (1847)
31: Continued: Maria Edgeworth, “The Purple Jar” (1808)
February
2: Reading Day
7: Goody Two-Shoes (1772) ECCO
9: Student Reports
14: Student Reports
16: Charlotte Smith, Conversations introducing Poetry (1804, 1819)
21: Essentials of Children’s Literature, pp. 43-56, 99-107
23: Hans Christian Andersen, Introduction; “Thumbelisa”; “The Little Mermaid”; “The Red Shoes”; “The Little Match Girl”; “The Gardener and the Aristocrat”
28: Continued; Mid-term Due
March
2: Jim Bradshaw, Suddenly Alligator: An Adverbial Tale *
Marc Simont, A Tree is Nice *
Marjorie Pellegrino, I Don’t Have an Uncle Phil Anymore *
Margaret Holmes, A Terrible Thing Happened *
Judith Viorst, The Tenth Good Thing About Barney *
Molly Bang, When Sophie Gets Angry– Really, Really Angry *
Allen Say, Grandfather’s Journey *
PICTURE BOOKS
7: Essentials of Children’s Literature, pp. 31-37, 75-85
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
“Art” books: Paul Zelinsky, Rapunzel *
Richard Lewis, All of You Was Singing *
9: Lois Grambling, Can I Have a Tyrannosaurus Rex, Dad?*
Margaret Brown, Runaway Bunny *
Laura Simms, Rotten Teeth *
Mick Inkpen, Kipper’s A to Z *
14: Russell Hoban, A Bargain for Frances *
Virginia Lee Burton, The Little House *
Readings in the theory of picture books.
CHILDREN’S PICTURE BOOKS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
16: Julius Lester, What a Truly Cool World * and John Henry *
Eve Bunting, Smoky Night *
Vaunda Nelson, Almost to Freedom *
Doreen Rappaport, Freedom River *
Deborah Hopkinson, Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt *
21: Introduction, Sections I and II in Michelle Martin’s Brown Gold
23: David A. Adler, Picture Book of Rosa Parks*
Adler, A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr.*
Faith Ringgold, If a Bus Could Talk *
Jacqueline Woodson, The Other Side *
Essentials of Children’s Literature, pp. 184-94
SPRING BREAK
April
4: Continued; Robert McCloskey, Make Way for Ducklings *
James Mayhew, Katie and the Mona Lisa *
Stephen T. Johnson, Alphabet City *
Evelyn Coleman, White Socks Only *
Amy Littlesugar, Freedom School, Yes! *
Doreen Rappaport, The School is Not White! *
6: Robert Munsch, We Share Everything *
Munsch, The Paper Bag Princess *
Byron Barton, I Want to Be an Astronaut *
Karen B. Winnick, Sybil’s Night Ride *
Eileen Spinelli, Sophie’s Masterpiece *
Selection from A Choice Collection of Riddles, Charades, Rebusses +
11: Continued; Girls Think of Everything
Marcia Lieberman, “Some Day My Prince Will Come” in Sharing Literature With Children, 332-43 +
Ann Trousdale and Sally McMillan, “‘Cinderella Was a Wuss’: A Young Girl’s Responses to Feminist and Patriarchal Folktales” in Children’s Literature in Education 34 (2003): 1-28.
13: Continued, and group reports
18-27: Group reports
Final Exam: Thursday
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