Spring 2010 English MA Course Guide - Chicago Campus
Department of Literature and Languages

 

407  Film History

Larry Howe                                                                                           (W 6:00 – 8:30 pm)

The history of cinema is only about a century long, but in that period the art form has demonstrated remarkable development from silent to sound film,  from black and white to color, and from fairly practical staging and framing to vibrant special effects.  As film technology developed, filmmakers found new ways to tell stories.  We’ll note that as film developed new techniques, it created its own history that often commented upon or reflected the social history of the cultures in which it emerged.  In our study of the films of Griffith, Micheaux, Lang, Chaplin, Keaton, Micheaux, Welles, Hitchcock, Goddard, Altman, among others, we’ll note that, as filmmakers connect with their cultures, they simultaneously develop and exploit a self-reflexive fascination with film’s own processes.  We'll gauge these dynamics as we consider how film both reflects and influences the ideas and identities of its audiences. 

 

419  Staging Witchcraft Plays

Regina Buccola                                                                                   

(Th  2:00 – 4:29 pm)

English 419, Witchcraft Plays begins with one of the best known and most widely influential stage portrayals of witchcraft in theater history, Macbeth, which uses the figure of the witch to explode ideological assumptions about class (patriarchy, class-based social stratification, upward mobility) and gender (social, political and domestic roles).  In this course, we will examine both fantastic portrayals of the witch, including Shakespeare’s Macbeth, John Martson’s Sophonisba, and Thomas Middleton’s The Witch in conjunction with “realistic” portrayals of witchcraft in British and Scottish court depositions as well as the stage representations of those cases in Thomas Dekker, John Ford and William Rowley’s The Witch of Edmonton and Heywood and Brome’s The Witches of Lancashire.  We will consider witchcraft’s dual valence in early modern England as both a means of vilifying women and as a means by which women could exercise autonomy and empowerment.

 

427  20th Century American Women's Fiction: Gender and Mobility

Ann Brigham        

(M  2:00 – 4:29 pm)

In many ways, the American experience has been defined by the promise of mobility, that is, the freedom to go anywhere and become anyone. In fact, the two have often been linked: spatial mobility—the movement between places or across space—has often been understood as a way to achieve a range of other mobilities, from the psychological and sexual to the social and economic. In this course, we will study a range of novels that address a series of related questions: What does mobility mean, and what does gender have to do with it? How can stories of mobility tell us something about the ways gendered and sexed identities, meanings, and performances are negotiated, navigated, and transformed? How can we think of gender and sexuality as modes of mobility? In what ways has mobility been central to definitions of an American identity and experience, and why is that interesting? Focusing on the various ways mobility has been defined, we will examine representations of mobility that include: immigration and assimilation; escape; spatial, social, and sexual border crossings; time travel; racial and gender passing; western expansion and national conquest; the road trip; transnational migration; gender bending and fluidity; bodily mutability; exile and displacement. MFA students will have the option of writing a literary analysis or short fictional piece (with accompanying analysis) for their final project.

 

468  “Common Knowledge” and Cultural Capital

Priscilla Perkins                                            

(Th  6:00 - 8:30 pm)

Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club, Masterpiece Theatre, telenovelas, Gertrude Stein, Wikipedia, NASCAR, Hayao Miyazaki, Fox News, 50 Cent, T.S. Eliot, American Idol….Why do academic institutions value certain cultural references and knowledge-sharing strategies more than others? How does practice with academic ways of knowing (like “essayistic” thinking or evidence-based argumentation) allow students to share what they know in socially powerful ways—or simply reproduce the structures of “cultural capital” that exclude certain groups in the first place? Readings in sociology, composition theory, ethnography, and philosophy will help course participants explore how students’ access to privileged cultural allusions—their supply of “cultural capital”—contributes to the social and economic outcomes associated with higher education.  (This course counts toward the Graduate Certificate in the Teaching of Writing.)

 

 

College of Arts and Sciences