Course Overview

This class will provide graduate students with opportunities to engage in advanced literary study. Students will become acquainted with advanced research methods, theoretical models for criticism, and techniques for improving the clarity of their academic writing. In addition, this class will provide a springboard to a longer-term research project.

Objectives

Over the semester, I expect students to achieve the following goals:

• Understand and interpret literary texts and use critical works about them to enhance this understanding.

• Be able to discuss the importance of these texts in terms of literary techniques, historical contexts, linguistic styles and other characteristics.

• Write convincing arguments about how we should interpret these texts in a research paper and the preparatory work that goes into writing it.

Expectations

In order to accomplish this goal, students must

• Read the required material carefully.

• Attend class—show up on time and prepared to discuss the readings assigned for that day. Students have a responsibility to plan their schedules to avoid excessive conflicts with course requirements. Excessive absences will have a negative impact on the grade that you receive in this course. Excusable absences include "subpoenas, jury duty, military duty, religious observances, illness, bereavement for immediate family and NCAA varsity college athletics." Please contact the instructor about anticipated absences in order to minimize their influence on your coursework. For more information on excused absences, see "http://www.d.umn.edu/vcaa/ExcusedAbsence.html".

• Demonstrate a clear understanding of these works in written assignments.

• Respect fellow students and refrain from behavior that might impair their learning opportunities. Any behavior that substantially and repeatedly interrupts the instructor's ability to teach or the students' ability to learn will result in appropriate penalties. Disruptive behavior includes inappropriate use of communications technology in the classroom, such as ringing cell phones, text-messaging, watching videos, playing computer games, doing email, or surfing the Internet on one's computer instead of note-taking or other instructor-sanctioned activities. For further clarification of UMD policies in this regard, consult UMD's Student Conduct Code at "http://www1.umn.edu/regents/policies/academic/Student_Conduct_Code.pdf".

• UMD instructors and students have a responsibility to maintain a learning environment that is, as stated in the Teaching and Learning Policy, "respectful of the rights and freedoms of all members, and promotes a civil and open exchange of ideas." The full policy is available at "http://www.d.umn.edu/vcaa/TeachingLearning.html".

Grade Breakdown:

Your grade will depend primarily on your written work and the understanding of the material that you convey through that work. A command of standard written English and the ability to present an argument will also contribute to the determination of your grade.

Late assignments will receive a deduction of 1/3 of a letter grade for each business day that they are late. Students who miss exams may not make them up without a valid excuse for the absence. Valid excuses include health emergencies and family crises. If students anticipate missing an exam or a paper deadline for a valid reason and consult with me in advance, I can consider exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

Academic dishonesty tarnishes the reputation of the University of Minnesota Duluth and discredits the accomplishments of its students. Because the university is committed to providing students every possible opportunity to grow in mind and spirit, it must insist on an environment of trust, honesty, and fairness. Consequently, all members of the academic community must regard any act of academic dishonesty as a serious offense. In keeping with this ideal, this course will adhere to UMD's Student Academic Integrity Policy, which is available online at "http://www.d.umn.edu/conduct/integrity/". This policy sanctions students engaging in academic dishonesty with penalties up to and including expulsion from the university for repeat offenders.

Required Texts

Adams, Hazard and Leroy Searle, eds. Critical Theory since Plato. Third Edition. New York: Wadsworth, 2004. Print.

Armstrong, Nancy. "The Affective Turn in Contemporary Fiction." Contemporary Literature 55.3 (Fall 2014): 441-465. Print.

Black, Shameem. "Ishiguro's Inhuman Aesthetics." Modern Fiction Studies 55.4 (Winter 2009): 785-807. Print.

Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. Trans. Barbara Johnson. Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 1981. Print.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, 1979. Print.

Elliott, Jane. "Suffering Agency: Imagining Neoliberal Personhood in North America and Britain." Social Text 115 31.2 (Summer 2013): 83-101. Print.

Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. New York: Random House, 2005. Print.

Jackson, Sheila. "The Lottery." Online <https://sites.middlebury.edu/individualandthesociety/files/2010/09/jackson_lottery.pdf>

LeGuin, Ursula. "The Ones Who Walk away from Omelas." Online < http://engl210-deykute.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/omelas.pdf>

MacDonald, Keith. "Days of Past Futures: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go As 'Speculative Memoir.'" Biography 30.1 (2007): 74-83. Print.

Robbins, Bruce. "Cruelty Is Bad: Banality and Proximity in Never Let Me Go." Novel 40.3 (Summer 2007): 289-302. Print.

Shaddox, Karl. "Generic Considerations in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go." Human Rights Quarterly 35.2 (May 2013): 448-469. Print.

Whitehead, Anne. "Writing with Care: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go." Contemporary Literature 52.1 (2011): 54Ð83. Print.

Supplementary Texts

Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and Critical Tradition. New York: Oxford U. P., 1971. Print.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 2006. Print.

Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. P., 2013. Print.

Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: U. of Texas P., 1982. Print.

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1969. 217-252. Print.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove, 2004. Print.

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Trans. Joyce Crick. New York: Oxford U. P., 2008. Print.

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. P., 2000. Print.

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. Second Edition. New Haven, CT: Yale U. P., 2000. Print.

Graff, Gerald. Professing Literature: An Institutional History. Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 2007. Print.

Horkheimer, Max and Theodor Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, CA: Stanford U. P., 2007. Print.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques. Trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman. New York: Penguin, 2012. Print.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music. Trans. Shaun Whiteside. New York: Penguin, 1994. Print.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979. Print.

Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860. New York: Oxford U. P., 1986. Print.