Course Descriptions

ENGL 243/002: Speculative Fiction (Revised)

Monstrous Science

Term 2 TTh 9:30-11:00a

“It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.” – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, Chapter IV

“We make Angels. In the service of Civilization. There were bad angels once … I make good angels now.” – Niander Wallace, Blade Runner 2049

Over 40 years ago, Patrick Brantlinger argued in “The Gothic Origins of Science Fiction” that a problem in reading Science Fiction as “realistic prophecy … arises from the fact that the conventions of science fiction derive from the conventions of fantasy and romance, and especially from those of the Gothic romance. Science fiction grows out of literary forms that are antithetical to realism.” More recently, two 2019 essays by Daniel Pietersen on Sublime Horror (republished on his own site), “The universe is a haunted house – the Gothic roots of science fiction” and “Spiders and flies – the Gothic monsters of sci-fi horror,” explore the intersection of terror and horror tropes in what we can only call Gothic Science Fiction.

The landscapes of science fiction are often terrifying places and have been since Gothic and dystopian impulses intersected in Mary Shelley’s landmark novel Frankenstein. Shelley’s tale evokes dread in the implications of Victor’s generation of a humanoid Creature; this dread echoes in more recent narratives concerning clones, robots and replicants, artificial intelligences, cyborgs. Such texts raise issues concerning research ethics, gendered exploitation, the rights attached to consciousness, and the fear arising from the realization that these creatures are, ultimately, not human but posthuman, though often more sympathetic than their makers, despite being relegated to the status of commodities. This course is not about scientific research that has vastly benefitted worlds and their inhabitants (even if such claims are made by the scientists whom we will meet in our course texts): it’s about bizarre singular passion projects and their progeny, about science gone wrong, about the byways of pseudoscience, about the implications of profit-motivated technology, environmental crisis, and redefinitions of human identity.

Core texts tentatively include Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein; H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau; William Gibson, Neuromancer; Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake; Alien (dir. Ridley Scott), and Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve).

Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion in the lecture periods and on Canvas.

Keep checking this blog for updates concerning texts and requirements.

ENGL 378/001: Contemporary Literature

Vampires Among Us

Term 2 TTh 2:00-3:30 p.m.

“But the Countess herself is indifferent to her own weird authority, as if she were dreaming it. In her dream, she would like to be human; but she does not know if that is possible. The Tarot always shows the same configuration: always she turns up La Papesse, La Mort, La Tour Abolie, wisdom, death, dissolution.” – Angela Carter, “The Lady of the House of Love”

Despite their association with the Victorian Gothic and their implications of ancient lore, vampires’ longevity owes much to their enduring popularity, even among 21st century audiences. Their metaphorical possibilities remain vivid, potent, and diverse. When I decided to write a vampire novel, I set myself the limitations of its being contemporary in setting and secular in worldview, a narrative where its creatures of the night might manage to exist among mortals without being quite so obvious as in many tales of their doings. That process has inspired the basis of this course, where we will examine, in fiction and film, representations of vampires produced in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. While our texts might reference the famous vampire texts of the past (and even engage with characters from them), their worldview is arguably closer to ours, and their settings and characters more familiar to us.

The text list will involve 3-4 novels (possibly including but not limited to Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire; Kim Newman, Anno Dracula; Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, The Strain; and Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching), Angela Carter’s short story “The Lady of the House of Love” (from her collection The Bloody Chamber), and 1-2 films (again, likely chosen from though not necessarily limited to Katherine Bigelow’s Near Dark, Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, Catherine Hardwicke’s adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight; Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows; possibly even Ridley Scott’s Alien, which according to Daniel Pietersen’s “Spiders and Flies: The Gothic Monsters of Sci-Fi Horror”, is a vampire film owing much to Dracula). Our examination will be situated in critical and theoretical approaches to the Gothic as a contemporary area of representation.

Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay and a term paper (both requiring secondary academic research), a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion.

Keep checking this site for updates concerning texts and requirements.

ENGL 100/024: Reading and Writing about Language and Literatures

Haunted Houses

Term 2 TTh 3:30-5:00 p.m.

“What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.” – The Devil’s Backbone (dir. Guillermo Del Toro)

Where is the fascination, even when the deepest mysteries of the universe are being scientifically unlocked, in stories of haunted houses? What accounts for the lure, and even the enjoyment, of such tales of terror and horror, even in the 21^st century? This course examines the Gothic influence in texts where collisions of past and present, and implications of the uncanny, allow fascinating investigations of social codes and their transgression.

Core texts tentatively include Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House; Alan Garner, The Owl Service; Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger; Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching; and The Others (dir. Alejandro Amenábar); as well as Gardner and Diaz, Reading and Writing About Literature (6th edition). Through readings in current criticism and theory, we will develop strategies for textual analysis in literary and cultural studies. We will also consider the difficulty, if not impossibility, of reaching a “fixed” or consensus reading of any text.

Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay and a term paper (both requiring secondary academic research), a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion.

Keep checking this site for updates concerning texts and requirements.

ENGL 490/001: Literature Majors Seminar

Mad Science: Gothic Echoes in Passion Projects Gone Wrong

Term 1: T 12:30-2:00 p.m.

“It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.” – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, Chapter IV.

Over 40 years ago, Patrick Brantlinger argued in “The Gothic Origins of Science Fiction” that a problem in reading Science Fiction as “realistic prophecy … arises from the fact that the conventions of science fiction derive from the conventions of fantasy and romance, and especially from those of the Gothic romance. Science fiction grows out of literary forms that are antithetical to realism.” More recently, two 2019 essays by Daniel Pietersen on Sublime Horror (republished on his own site), “The universe is a haunted house – the Gothic roots of science fiction” and “Spiders and flies – the Gothic monsters of sci-fi horror,” explore the intersection of terror and horror tropes in what we can only call Gothic Science Fiction. This course is not about slick shiny optimistic visions of the future; it’s not about bold exploration conducted aboard pristine spaceships by intrepid explorers wearing silver jumpsuits with diagonal zippers. It’s not about scientific research that has vastly benefitted worlds and their inhabitants: it’s about bizarre singular passion projects and their progeny, about science gone wrong, about the byways of pseudoscience.

We will examine the theoretical bases of contemporary approaches to the Gothic as well as to Science Fiction and apply them to various examples of fiction and film. Core texts tentatively include Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein (1818 edition); Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau; Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake; Alien (dir. Ridley Scott), plus 1-2 other short novels and 1-2 other films (I will have the text list finalized by mid-June).

Evaluation will be based on a presentation and its revised report, a presentation response and its report; a term paper; a final reflection essay to be written during the exam period, and participation in discussion.

Keep checking this site for updates concerning texts and requirements.

ENGL 243/001: Speculative Fiction

Synthetic Humans; Posthuman Dystopias

Term 1 MWF 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.

“We make Angels. In the service of Civilization. There were bad angels once … I make good angels now.” – Niander Wallace, Blade Runner 2049

“Whole generations of disposable people.” – Guinan, “The Measure of a Man”, Star Trek: The Next Generation (season 2)

The near-future and alternate-reality landscapes of science fiction are often terrifying places and have been since Gothic and dystopian impulses intersected in Mary Shelley’s landmark novel Frankenstein. Shelley’s tale evokes dread in the implications of Victor’s generation of a humanoid Creature; this dread echoes in more recent fictional products or accidents of science: clones, robots and replicants, artificial intelligences, cyborgs. Such texts raise issues concerning gendered exploitation, consciousness and rights, research ethics, and fear, in the realization that these creatures are, ultimately, not human but posthuman, yet often more sympathetic than their makers. However, despite their apparent superiority, such humanoids tend to be defined as commodities. In this course, we will consider the posthuman element of dystopian speculations reflecting on the present and recent past, especially concerning threats of mass surveillance, profit-motivated technology, environmental crisis, and redefinitions of human identity.

Core texts tentatively include William Gibson, Neuromancer; Madeline Ashby, vN or Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake; Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, The Matrix: Shooting Script; Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go; Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve) plus one other film (or shooting script) or one other novel, to be announced.

Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion.

Keep checking this site for updates concerning texts and requirements.

ENGL 100/006: Reading and Writing About Language and Literatures

Vampires on Page and Screen: Transfusions and Transmutations

Term 1 MWF 2:00-3:00 p.m.

“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.” – Bram Stoker, Dracula

This course examines adaptations in something of the way vampire transformations work, by considering how elements of appearance remain but the resulting creature is always radically different. We’ll go in prepared, not with stakes and garlic but with the critical and theoretical tools needed to move beyond popular online discussions and enable consideration of various questions arising in creating through adaptation a separate text in a different genre. Our approach will be in literary and cultural studies rather than film studies, as we consider why stories about vampires, the blood-drinking immortals of myth and legend – and more recently of fiction and film – fascinate us and whether visualizing them using an existing narrative results in a transfusion, a transformation, or both.

Core texts tentatively include two novels, J. Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and three film adaptations: one of Carmilla and two of Dracula (to be determined by class vote), as well as Gardner and Diaz, Reading and Writing About Literature (6th edition). Through readings in current criticism and theory, we will develop strategies for textual analysis in literary and cultural studies. We will also consider the difficulty, if not impossibility, of reaching a “fixed” or consensus reading of any text.

Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay and a term paper (both requiring secondary academic research), a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion.

Keep checking this site for updates concerning texts and requirements.

ENGL 110/JL2: Approaches to Literature and Culture

Term 2 | TTh 12:00-3:00 p.m.

Literary Monsters and Monstrous Literature

Rey: “You are a monster.”
Kylo Ren: “Yes, I am.”
– Star Wars: The Last Jedi

“Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world” – Richard III 1.i

What is a monster? We know monsters from myths and legends, folktales, horror fiction and film. We know their variety: the grotesque, the beautiful, the terrifying, the pitiable, the sports of nature and the forces of evil. Dragons, werewolves, vampires, zombies, Frankenstein’s Creature, Dorian Gray, the Joker, Hannibal Lecter, Marisa Coulter, many of the characters in The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones: they’re everywhere, from under the bed to the house next door to the battlefield, and right into a great deal of literature. Which leaves us here: in this section of 110 we’ll focus on how literary texts use representations of monstrosity in ways that inspire both terror and horror, as well as (let’s be honest) fascination and even enjoyment.

We’ll start with William Shakespeare’s Richard III (a play that meditates on villainy and ambition in demonizing its subject for Tudor audiences, yet still fascinates contemporary ones) and Ian McKellen’s 1995 film adaptation, which shifts the setting to an alternate-reality 1930s England where fascism takes hold. We will also consider various stage and screen adaptations as approaches to the play, including recent ones using race and gender-diverse casting, and sometimes featuring as Richard actors who are themselves physically disabled or disfigured. Other core texts include Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. There may be a couple of additional texts (perhaps a narrative poem or a short story).

Your writing assignments in this course (two essays and a final exam) will develop skills in both critical thinking and university-level literary textual analysis, and both are much more generally useful and applicable than you might think. I hope there will also be a lot of lively discussion, both in class and on our Canvas site.

ENGL 362/921 Victorian Period Literature

Term 1 | TTh 2:00-5:00 p.m.

Ghosts are Real (So are Vampires): Victorian Gothic Terror, Horror, and the Supernatural

“Ghosts are real, this much I know” – Edith Cushing, Crimson Peak

“There are such beings as vampires; some of us have evidence that they exist” – Abraham Van Helsing, Dracula

Whether we take Edith Cushing or Abraham Van Helsing at their word, the 19th-century Gothic revival certainly emphasized possibilities for terror and horror in tales of the supernatural. However, these interventions of spectral and un-dead beings often take place in the recognizable present; they speak to its anxieties. Perhaps they speak to ours as well, given our recent fascination with Neo-Victorian representations of the 19th century, such as Crimson Peak, as well as Penny Dreadful, From Hell, Sarah Waters’s Victorian trilogy, the numerous adaptations of Dracula (such as the recent third Nosferatu), plus many others.

We will examine fiction addressing issues of gender and sexuality; class, race, and culture; realism and the supernatural; urban and rural settings, all in a century known for developments in science and technology (especially photography), social upheaval, and a veneer of respectability, yet with monsters lurking in closets and under beds. Our focus will also permit consideration of the boom in publication of popular literature in a variety of formats, as well as the rise of the professional writer during the 19th century.

Core texts include Margaret Oliphant’s The Library Window, Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, and selected short fiction possibly including M.R. James, “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”; Elizabeth Gaskell, “The Old Nurse’s Story”; Sheridan LeFanu, “An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street”; Mary Braddon’s “Good Lady Ducayne,” R.L. Stevenson, “The Body Snatcher”; E. Nesbit, “John Charrington’s Wedding” and maybe a couple of Victorian werewolf stories (since werewolf stories feature prominently in the research done for both Carmilla and Bram Stoker’s infamous Dracula).

Evaluation will be based on a midterm essay, a term paper, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion both in class and on the course’s Canvas site.