Marc Bousquet, an English Professor at Emory University, lit a powder keg with his 2014 Chronicle of Higher Education jeremiad, 鈥淭he Moral Panic in Literary Studies.鈥� Bousquet warned: 鈥淐ombined with evidence of lowered public interest in reading traditional literature and plummeting enrollment in traditional English majors, many faculty members in traditional literary studies have engaged in a backlash discourse against the new or renascent fields, a 鈥榤oral panic鈥� in defense of traditional literary studies.鈥� Traditional coverage, he found, was threatened by such arrivistes as digital humanities, cultural studies, and media studies. 鈥淕et off my lawn鈥� types lamented that the only British literature sought out by 鈥渢he youth鈥� is Harry Potter. In the midst of this perceived crisis, how can that old standby, the British literature survey course, be adapted to meet the needs of twenty-first century American students who need to find a job someday? Perhaps neutral at first glance, the term 鈥渟urvey鈥� is fraught with pernicious connotations. Inthe view of some scholars, survey courses lack the lapidary focus of a theme course. Others defend the survey course as inclusive. Still others find the 鈥渟urvey鈥� signifies inordinate loyalty to the canon and traditional pedagogical models. Further afield, a 鈥渟urvey鈥� brings to mind the technologies used by eighteenth-century government officials and colonists taking the measure of the fields over which they were planning to declare authority, fields from which they would debar others鈥� access. Paradoxically, then, the term is redolent both of openness and exclusion. What if some of misgivings cited above could be viewed not as 鈥渂ugs,鈥� but instead as 鈥渇eatures鈥濃�攕igns of the vitality of literary studies in the twenty-first century? Focusing on the history of British literature from 1660 through the twenty-first century, this course encompasses both close reading of primary sources and thematic explorations. 麻豆淫院 in this class will gain several benefits. You will: hone the type of analytical skills and breadth of knowledge needed for law school and graduate school; build a collection of tools that will be of use for interpretation in later courses in the major; acquire a diachronic understanding of the development of literature across time; and develop your own perspective on how debates in literature of the past shape not only art, but also the biggest conflicts and problems in our world today.
Reading List:听Immanuel Kant, "What Is Enlightenment?"; John Milton, Paradise Lost; Jonathan Swift, "A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed"; Eliza Haywood, Fantomina; George Eliot, The Lifted Veil; T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land; John Osbourne, Look Back in Anger; Ng农g末 wa Thiong鈥檕, Decolonising the Mind; Lucy Prebble, The Sugar Syndrome; and more!
Taught by Dr. Nicole Wright.
Additional Information:听Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: British Literature after 1660