I regularly offer courses in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Jane Austen, Critical Theory, and Film. Here are some of my recent course offerings.
ENGLISH/HEALTH, MEDICINE, AND SOCIETY 315: Disaster, Disease, and the Promise of Health
Narratives of disaster, pandemic, and global destruction inevitably return to questions of health, including issues surrounding the frailty of human well-being, the precarity of populations, our dependence upon natural environments, and the promise of our healthy or unhealthy renewal. We will study various literary and filmic treatments of devastation from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century to evaluate the different functions of such narratives of destruction and demise with particular attention to illness and medicine, apocalyptic fears, and the efficacy of health. Topics will include zombies, global war, anxieties of invasion, genocide, pandemics, reproductive rights, urban apocalypse, eugenics, the last man trope, and the allure of Africa and other specific regions of the Global South as sites of human revival. Texts will include Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), William Delisle Hay’s The Doom of the Great City (1880), Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993), The Omega Man (Dir. Segal, 1971), Outbreak (Dir. Petersen, 1995), 28 Days Later (Dir. Boyle, 2022), and Mad Max Fury Road (Dir. Miller, 2015). We will draw specifically on discussions of the Anthropocene to theorize disaster, destruction, and the possibility of recreation.
ENGLISH/WGSS/FILM 091: Jane Austen Makeovers
Jane Austen serves as a versatile, dynamic, and perhaps most importantly, unthreatening cultural resource for various people and organizations. She is one of the very few writers who remains thoroughly canonical within the academic study of literature and enjoys a vast popular following outside of the university. And she is (still) one of the hottest writers in Hollywood as well as other global sites of film production. Many of Austen’s fans adore her treatments of love and romance, while others have adopted and adapted her narratives to advance specific—and divergent—political agendas, such as feminist campaigns, LGBTQ polices, white nationalist coalitions, and Black Power movements. We will study historical and recent literary, filmic, and cultural Austen adaptations that demonstrate her diverse popularity. Amongst numerous other questions, we will consider (1) how and why Austen’s stories continue to fulfill the needs or satisfy the appetites of explicitly different audiences, (2) how Austen’s narratives manage to remain relevant and fresh within fundamentally different historical and cultural contexts, and (3) how might we deploy Austen in the future? We will begin the semester with Austen’s own makeover text, Northanger Abbey (1817) and study Nikki Payne’s Pride and Protest (2022), Uzma Jalaluddin’s Much Ado About Nada (2023), Soniah Kamal’s Unmarriageable (2019), and Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club (2004). We will also study important filmic adaptations and treatments, including Clueless (Dir. Heckerling, 1995), Mansfield Park (Dir. Rozema, 1999), Pride and Prejudice (Dir. Wright, 2005), Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Dir. Steers. 2016), and Fire Island (Dir. Ahn, 2022).
ENGLISH 312: Theorizing Alternatives To Patriarchy (Fall 2022)
We will have the opportunity to devote time and energy to thinking about how we read and respond to literary experiences. This seminar in critical theory will invite us to ask questions about how we encounter “the literary” in various forms, including books, art, visual texts, and daily experiences, and we will, I hope, learn to ask new questions about such encounters that prompt to generate new knowledges. We will focus on how literary experiences might invite us to imagine alternative possibilities to patriarchy. Patriarchy has been deemed a dominant cultural power—the dominant cultural power by many—that identifies sovereignty, justifies oppression, and sustains dominance. But why has patriarchy remained remarkably sustainable? What resources, tools, or strategies have allowed it to succeed, recalibrate, and operate continually? And, perhaps most importantly for our purposes, how might we theorize alternatives to patriarchal systems? What would it take to operate differently? Can we imagine, implement, and sustain non-patriarchal communities and possibilities? In this seminar, we will read some of the prevailing explanations of how and why patriarchy prevails; we will also study theorists who invite us to speculate about options to think differently, about different possibilities that may still be in the process of becoming. We will also read two literary texts, and I have deliberately chosen two works that may be categorized as children’s literature or Trans literature because I believe that both kinds of writing offer examples of emergent thought about sexuality and cultural organization.
ENGLISH 369: Jane Austen Storyteller (Fall 2021)
This course is a deliberate attempt to merge three different cultural traditions, debates, or discourses: (1) the enduring cultural appeal, allure, and canonicity of Austen and her writings, (2) the popularity of storytelling as a mode of conducting business, practicing law, transmitting political messages, sharing data, and conveying meaning in various professional fields, and (3) contemporary questions about the role or function of “the literary.” To this end, we will study how the writings of Austen might serve various purposes of storytelling. This query, I hope, will allow us to evaluate the larger function of the literary experience, the study of English, and the work of literature. One method we will employ explicitly is to read public writing on Austen, her writings, and her cultural allure; this method should allow us to consider how contemporary writers are deploying Austen to tell different stories, examine how we have thought about Austen’s stories, and critique the ways in which we have adapted Austen’s novels. Our class will investigate if the novels of Austen can serve specific purposes of storytelling? Can we (or do we already?) use Austen’s stories for specific ends? Can we use, adapt, or perhaps manipulate portions of her novels for pointed storytelling purposes? Does literature offer us a different kind of tool, lens, or resource for storytelling in professional fields like law, marketing, advertising, data science, or politics? My ultimate (and rather shameless) hope is that we learn to re-value how the literary experience might improve how we tell our stories, encourage us to tell new stories, and discourage from continue telling some stories.
ENGLISH 100: Working With Texts (Spring 2023)
ENGL 100 is designed to serve as the gateway course for the discipline of English. This class will introduce students to foundational tools, methods, and theories that undergird advanced studies of literature, language, writing, and storytelling. We will read a diversity of texts and engage in a series of writing, research, and professional development assignments. Our work in class will be of utmost importance. No prior knowledge or experience is required or expected. This iteration of ENGL 100 will revolve around William Delisle Hay’s The Doom of the Great City (1800), what some scholars identify as the first urban apocalypse. In Hay’s novella, a toxic fog annihilates the population of London but apparently leaves the rest of the world unscathed, including the colonized lands of New Zealand, where the narrator relocates following this catastrophic event. We will use Hay’s narrative as the centerpiece to discuss literary terminology, central themes of modernity, and the ongoing legacy of the Anthropocene, including ecological crises, global warming, and fossil capitalism. Our methods will invite us to consider how the study of literature, language, storytelling, and writing can advance our knowledge in these areas vital to our current and future lives.