AML 6027 The Culture of McCarthyism (fall 2022)

In this class we will take a broad look at the history and culture of red scare political repression in the United States as it has resonated through the 20th and 21st century.  We will discuss literature, films, memoir, plays, and nonfiction essays that address the surveillance, blacklisting, and persecution of “subversives” during the postwar red scare and after.  Topics will include censorship and self-censorship, historical trauma, closeting, paranoia, conspiracism, and the moral injuries of “naming names.”  We will discuss liberal anticommunism as an ideology, and totalitarianism as a concept.  We will also address the targeting of African American artists and public figures and gays and lesbians. As much as possible, we will work to connect the context of the cold war red scare to its resonances in contemporary American life, such as in the culture wars over critical race theory and transgender athletes and the 21st century rise of populism and authoritarianism.

LIT 6855 Value and Evaluation (fall 2021)

What is value(d), and how do we make evaluative judgments, as literary or film critics, as academics, and as social actors? In this course, we will study classic positions in the theory of aesthetic judgment (including Hume and Kant). We will read works of literary history and criticism that address problems of evaluation. We will also read more recent works in aesthetics and the theory of value and evaluation, and works in the sociology of value and taste, covering such topics as the formation of literary canons and the meaning and creation of prestige. This course is widely interdisciplinary, and should be of interest to students wanting to expand their knowledge of the history and theory of criticism and aesthetics, and to explore social-scientific approaches to the study of culture.

LIT 6855 Cultural Studies after 2008 (Fall 2020)

This course will provide a grounding in the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies, which takes as its object of study the totality or whole way of life of a group of people, crossing lines of social, political, aesthetic and historical analysis. In particular, we will turn our attention to the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2008, which brought a number of issues to popular consciousness and academic reconsideration. These include financialization, debt, neoliberalism, and economic precarity. Additionally, in the wake of the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, and Black Lives Matter, we see the emergence of new attention to questions of political praxis and the formation of political subjectivities. We will study academic work that has emerged since 2008 that takes up these and other related topics. We will also consider the general problem of periodizing cultural and artistic movements using 2008 as a touchstone.  The course is divided into two parts: “Another world is possible,” focusing on how the shakeup in the financial system and other events precipitated challenges to political, economic, and cultural orthodoxies; and “We are the 99%,” focusing on the theorization of political and other kinds of subjectivity.

LIT 6856 Rationality, Irrationality, and Modernity (fall 2018)

A nearly axiomatic definition of modernity, usually associated with Max Weber, emphasizes the increasing rationality – and rationalization – of social, economic, political, intellectual and other spheres of human life, and a concomitant “disenchantment” of the world: the inevitable and progressive banishment of the “irrationalities” of religion, superstition, emotion, aesthetics, political extremism, and so forth. Yet other great theorists of modernity, including Freud, Nietzsche, and many others, exposed and explored a pervasive irrational core to modern existence. Still others, meanwhile, have upended the master narrative of modernity altogether, revealing its limitations as an explanation for both historical change and our current condition.  In this course, we will use Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism as a touchstone for exploring the multiple ways in which thinkers from the late-nineteenth century to the present have challenged conventional assumptions associated with modernity about social progress, subjectivity, belief, political agency, and much more, and developed new ways of thinking about the long narrative of historical change.  This course should be of use to any graduate student who would like a grounding in Euro-American historiography and in key debates in critical theory.

ENG 4936 Law and American Literature (upper-division for English majors)

In this course, we will study works of American literature written between 1850 and 2018 that substantially engage with some aspect of our legal system. We will discuss how these works of literature address important themes related to the law including justice, crime, punishment, and the power of the state. We will also study the formal relationships between legal and literary forms of storytelling, and compare literary interpretation and legal reasoning. Course reading will include novels (Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Richard Wright’s Native Son, Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, among others), court cases, and works of legal and literary theory and criticism.

AML 6027 Indigeneity and American Studies (graduate level) Fall 2015

In 2007, the United Nations passed the “Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People” (UNDRIP), an important document that helped to define a political phenomenon already underway: The development of a global indigenous politics and identity. Indigenous people often face similar battles for recognition and against discrimination, cultural and language loss, and loss and despoliation of key economic and cultural resources. They are often the first to feel the effects of climate change and of the industrialization of rural and wilderness areas.

This course will explore the emerging field of Indigenous Studies in relation to American Studies, a field that has long struggled with imperatives to internationalize and de-provincialize. Of course, the study of the history and culture of North American Indians has always been a part of American Studies. Through reading and seminar discussion of newer works of literature, history, and criticism, this course will centrally address one question: How does a focus on indigeneity change our understanding of American Indian studies and American studies?

The course should be useful for students interested in cultural studies, American literature and culture, and (post-)colonialism. It should also serve as an introduction to some of the themes and major works of American Indian Studies and Indigenous Studies.

AML 3285 Native American Literature (advanced undergraduate level)

This course will provide an introduction to literature created by American Indian authors of the 20th and 21st centuries. We will consider American Indian literature as a postcolonial literature and as a creative and collective interpretation of history and culture. We will also examine how contemporary literature addresses issues of concern to Indian people, including legal sovereignty, cultural survival, representations of Indians in non-native communities, and issues of environmental stewardship. Readings will consist of mostly novels, but we will also discuss some poetry, critical essays, and one film, by authors including D’Arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, Tomson Highway, Le Anne Howe, Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, Sherman Alexie, and Tommy Orange.

Resources for Students

How to Write a Prospectus: a guide for graduate students, and others

Prospectus, Abstract, Research Statement, Research Paragraph…What’s the Difference?  A Short Prezi for academic job seekers on how to present your research materials