Course title: American Literature and Culture 2: Narrating Race in American Literature and Film
Instructor: Prof. Mark Metzler Sawin, PhD (visiting scholar)
e-mail: sawinm@gmail.com
Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/7957944768
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective
Semester: 4th or 6th
Enrollment requirements: Introduction to the Study of English Literature 1 and 2

Download syllabus (.PDF)

COURSE DESCRIPTION & OBJECTIVES: This course is a study of Black American literature, film, & culture from 1900 to today based on a New Historicism methodology–the idea that understanding texts (literature and film) is dependent on understanding the historical context in which they were created. As such, each week will include a discussion of the texts as well as lectures based on the history and culture of the era.

EVALUATION: Grades will be based on a continual assessment model that includes:
Brief Written Assignments: Four (800–1000 words each) covering different writing styles. 15% each—60% total.
Exams: Midterm and End of Term Exams covering the lecture content and readings. 15% each—30% total.
Attendance & Participation: Class attendance and participation mandatory—come prepared to discuss. 10%.

Readings (all texts will be supplied online or as PDFs):
● Booker T. Washington, excerpts from Up From Slavery (1901)
● W. E. B. Du Bois, excerpts from The Souls of Black Folks (1903)
● James W. Johnson, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912, novella)
● W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Comet” (1920, short story)
● Marcus Garvey, “If You Believe the Negro Has a Soul” (1921, essay)
● Alain Locke, “Enter the New Negro” (1925, essay)
● Zora Neale Hurston, “Muttsy” (1926, short story)
● Martin Luther King Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (1963, essay)
● Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet” (1964, speech)
● Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), “What We Want” (1968, essay)
● Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (1970, novel)
● Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower (1993, novel)
● Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb” (2021, poem)

Films:
● Within Our Gates Oscar Micheaux, (1920, silent film, 1:15)
● St. Louis Blues Bessie Smith (1929, short film, 16 min)
● Black & Tan Duke Ellington (1929, short film, 18 min)
● Rhapsody in Black and Blue Lois Armstrong (1932, short film, 10 min)
● Emperor Jones, Eugene O’Neill, Paul Robeson (1933, film, 1:13)
● Native Son, Richard Wright’s 1940 novel adapted (1951, film, 1:48)
● In the Heat of the Night, staring Sidney Poitier (1967, film, 1:50)
● Uptight (1968, film, 1:44)
● BaadAsssss Cinema (2002, documentary, 55 min)
● The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973, film, 1:42)
● The Color Purple, Alice Walker’s 1982 novel adapted (1985, film, 2:34)
● Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee (1989, film, 2:00)
● Boyz N the Hood, John Singleton (1991, film, 1:52)
● Get Out, Jordan Peele (2017, film, 1:44)
● The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas’s novel, adapted (2018, film, 2:13)

Course title: Contemporary American Novel
Instructor: Dr. Sven Cvek, Dr. Hrvoje Tutek
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective
Semester: 3rd and 5th or 4th and 6th
Enrollment requirements: enrollment in the 3rd and 5th or 4th and 6th semester

Victorian Literature: Genres and Issues

Course title: Victorian Literature: Genres and Issues
Instructor: Prof. Borislav Knežević
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective
Semester: 3^rd and 5^th
Enrolment requirements: Introduction to Study of English Literature 1 and 2
Course description: This course is designed as an introduction to Victorian literature. The reading is made up by texts by representative works of some of the most important Victorian writers, and it covers the important genres of the period (fiction, poetry, nonfiction prose). The course will attempt to define the central themes of Victorian literature, that have to do with Victorian social makeup, industrialization, urbanization, imperialism, construction of gender roles, and professionalization of writing. Much of our work will be conducted through a close reading of formal and historical properties of the selected texts.
Objectives: The course places an emphasis on active student engagement with the literary text, in order for the students to master the skills of interpreting literary text. One of the important goals of this course is to allow students to improve their skills of written analysis of literature.
Course requirements: The grade is based on continuous evaluation: an essay in the second half of the term (5 pages), a mid-term quiz and a quiz at the end of term.

Week by week schedule:

1. week: Victorian poetry: Tennyson.1. week: Introduction to the Victorian age. Periodization, historical context; main genres of Victorian literature.
2. week: Victorian poetry: Tennyson.
3. week: Victorian poetry: Browning.
4. week: Victorian poetry: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
5. week: Victorian novel: professionalization of novel writing. The structure of the literary field and the literary market. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre.
6. week: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre. Gaskell, “Our Society at Cranford”.
7. week: Gaskell, North and South. Industrial novel as a Victorian genre.
8. week: First quiz. Gaskell, North and South. Social geography in the novel.
9. week: Gaskell. Victorian class system: Cannadine.
10. week: Social ethnography: Frances Trollope, Thackeray, Mayhew. Social criticism: Carlyle, J.S. Mill.
11. week: Social criticism: Ruskin, art and political economy.
12. week: Criticism: Arnold. Essay due.
13. week: Victorian poetry: Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Arnold
14. week: Victorian poetry: Arnold.
15. week: Second quiz. Course evaluation.

Reading:

Poetry:
Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters,” “Ulyssess,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade”
Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess,” “Love Among the Ruins”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese (selected poems)
Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach,” “The Buried Life”
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “The Blessed Damozel,” “The Burden of Nineveh”

Non-fiction prose:
Thomas Carlyle,“Condition of England,” from Past and Present
W.M. Thackeray, The Book of Snobs (selection)
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice (selection)
Matthew Arnold, “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”
Walter Pater, The Renaissance (Preface)

Fiction:
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Elizabeth Gaskell, “Our Society at Cranford,” North and South

Historical context:
David Cannadine, “A Viable Hierarchical Society,” from The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Course title: War, Reconstruction and Transformation: American Literature 1860-1914 (A, 19/20)
Instructor: Dr Jelena Šesnić
Times: Mon, 8:45-9:30 (A-123), Wed, 9:30-11:00 (D 5)

Office: B-018
E-mail: jsesnic@ffzg.hr
Phone: 4092-060
Office hours: Mon, 12:30-13:30 p.m.; Thur, 10:00-11:00 a.m., and by appointment
ECTS credits: 6
Language of instruction: English
Semester: Spring 2022
Status: elective
Form of instruction: lecture (1 hour) + seminar (2 hours)
Enrollment requirements: Introduction into the Study of English Literature

Syllabus

Course description: We shall be covering a period of American literature variously designated as the Age of Realism and Naturalism or the Gilded Age leading up to WWI. Many scholars argue that it is during this period that the United States turned into a modern nation due primarily to their unprecedented industrial and economic growth. We shall be looking at the implications of these huge transformations and their reverberations in some of the exemplary literary and non-literary texts of the period. The four sections we shall be examining in greater detail are the echoes of the Civil War; the perils and pitfalls of post-war Reconstruction effort, and the question of race; economic relations and their impact on social relations; and, finally, the emergence of new identities, both in the public and the private spheres.

Course requirements: Regular attendance; participation in class discussions; in-class and home assignments; continuous evaluation (a mid-term and a final test, mandatory for all students); seminar paper (6-7 pp, 2000-2500 words, MLA style). Grade breakdown: tests—50%; seminar paper—35 %; the rest (see above)—15 %.

Reading List (subject to change)

Section 1: The Civil War and its aftermath

1. Herman Melville: from Battle Pieces (poetry; 1866)
2. Walt Whitman: form Drum-Taps and Memories of President Lincoln (poetry; 1865)
3. Rebecca Harding Davis: Waiting for the Verdict (novel; selection; 1868)

Section 2: The question of race and Reconstruction

4. Mark Twain: Pudd’nhead Wilson (novel; 1893)
5. Luisa May Alcott: “My Contraband” (1869); Charles Chesnutt: “The Doll” (1912) (short stories)

Section 3: Matters of the economy

6. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps: The Silent Partner (novel; 1871)
7. Upton Sinclair: The Jungle (novel; 1906)

Section 4: Emergence of new subjects

8. Abraham Cahan: “Yekl” (novella; 1896)
9. T.S. Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (poetry; 1915)

Additional readings will be provided in a course pack on Omega.

Secondary readings:

Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought. 1944. Beacon P, 1992. (selection)
Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature, Harvard UP, 1993. (selection)
Trachtenberg, Alan. The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age, Hill and Wang, 1982. (selection)

_____
from spring 2020

Course title: British Romanticism: poetry
Course coordinator: Martina Domines Veliki, PhD
Instructor: Martina Domines Veliki, PhD
2019/20
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 1 semester (3rd or 5th, 4th or 6th semester)
Status: elective
Course type: 1 hour of lecture, 2 hours of seminar
Prerequisites: Introduction to English Literature or Introduction into English Lit 1 and 2, 3/5 or 4/6 semester enrollment
Course requirements: continuous assessment (midterm and final exam, final paper, class attendance and participation)

Objective: The students will be introduced to the major poets of English Romanticism, as well as their relevant historical, cultural, political and aesthetic milieu. The aim of this course is to encourage students to create their own view of the suggested array of poems through close reading. They will be asked to think about and analyze these poems with the help of a number of critical texts (from new historicist to post-structuralist ones).

Course title: African American Literature: 1800-Present
Instructor: Prof. Mark Metzler Sawin, PhD (visiting scholar)
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: Semester 4, 6 summer – CONDENSED COURSE, April-June 2019
Status: elective
Enrolment requirements: completed Introduction to English Lit/Introduction to English Lit 1 and 2

____________________________________________________________________________________

download syllabus (.PDF)

COURSE DESCRIPTION & OBJECTIVES:
In the first chapter of his monumental work The Souls of Black Folk (1903) W.E.B. Du Bois wrote:
…the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, —a world which yields him no true selfconsciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, —an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, —this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face. This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.

This course is a study of African American literature and culture through the 19th and 20th centuries and up to today, however, if it succeeds, it will go far deeper than this, becoming an insightful investigation of the “double consciousness” that Du Bois alluded to 115 years ago. Themes for this course will include the Construction of Race, Slavery, Emancipation, Jim Crow, Lynching, Jazz, Urbanization, the Harlem Renaissance, Desegregation, Civil Rights, R&B & Rock n’ Roll, the Sports and Entertainment Industries, Victimization, White-guilt, Political Correctness, Affirmative Action, and Hip-Hop Culture.
Because of its combined literary and cultural foci, the methodology of this course will be somewhat unconventional, using not only literary texts and documents, but also many cultural creations (film, music, etc.) to examine the story of Black America. This is necessary because this subject is complex and culturally loaded—the construction, enforcement, reconstruction, and slow transformation of “Black” and “White” America is at the center of the dynamic tension that has driven much of American history, from the ravages of Slavery and the Civil War to the creation of the amazing and distinctive African American culture that heavily impacts the global
culture of the 21st century. Each week will include a lecture on the context & culture of Black America for the given era, and then a discussion of the assigned texts. Learning to examine, explain, and understand the vibrant literary and cultural creations of Black America is the goal of this course.
EVALUATION:
Reading Responses: Each week during this seven-week class there will be both required and supplemental texts—I will provide access to all materials. Students are responsible for four Response Essays (500 to 1,000 words) based on the texts and the material from lectures. I will expect these essays to be an insightful analysis of our texts, written in clean, crisp, concise prose. Your grade will be based on your top three responses.
Class Participation: You will all be expected to attend each lecture, to thoroughly read each required text, and to actively participate in class discussions. For the first few weeks of class, this will be done in a “cyber” format because I’ll still be in the U.S.A. From that point forward, we will meet regularly at the university.
                                         ASSIGNMENTS & SCORING
Reading Responses (3 x 25%) = 75%
Class Participation = 25%
Grades will be based on a ten-point scale:
5 = 100-90% 4 = 89-80% 3 = 79-70% 2 = 69-60% 1 = 59-0%
Assignments turned in late will be penalized 10%
COURSE SCHEDULE: (*denotes required text)
Week 1. Slavery & the American Civil War (starting Monday, April 22)
– *Folktales & Spirituals (early 1800s)
– Martin Delany. The Condition, Elevation, Emigration & Destiny of the
Colored People of the United States (selections) (1852)
– Frederick Douglass. My Bondage and My Freedom (selections) (1855)
– Harriet Jacobs. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (selections) (1861)
– *Sojourner Truth. “Ar’n’t I a Woman?” (1864)
Week 2. Reconstruction & the Rise & Fall of Black Rights (starting Monday, April 29)
– *Charles Chesnutt. “The Wife of His Youth” (1898)
– Booker T. Washington. “The Atlanta Exposition Address” (1895)
– W.E.B. Du Bois. The Souls of Black Folk (selections) (1903)
Week 3. Segregated America (starting Monday, May 6)
– *James Weldon Johnson. Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)
Week 4. The Harlem Renaissance (starting Monday, May 13)
– *Langston Hughes. Poetry & Essays (1910-20s)
– *W.E.B. DuBois. “The Comet” (1920)
– Marcus Garvey. “The Negro’s Greatest Enemy” (1923)
– Paul Robeson in the Eugene O’Neill film. The Emperor Jones (1933)
– Ken Burns documentary. JAZZ vol. 2 (2001)
Week 5. The Civil Rights Era (starting Monday, May20)
– *Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man (selections) (1952)
– TV Episode. Amos ‘n’ Andy (1952)
– *Martin Luther King Jr. & Malcolm X. (selections) (1960s)
– James Baldwin documentary. I Am Not Your Negro (2016)
Week 6. All Funked Up: Hip Hop America (starting Monday, May 27)
– *Documentary on Blaxploitation. BaadAsssss Cinema (2002)
– Blaxploitation film. Shaft (1971)
– Early Hip Hop film. Wild Style (1983)
– *Spike Lee film. Do the Right Thing (1989)
– John Singleton film. Boyz n the Hood (1991)
– Spike Lee film. Bamboozled (2000)
Week 7. Black Lives Matter?!: Race in America Today (starting Monday, June 3)
– *Ta-Nehisi Coates. (selection of essays) (2010s)
– Malcolm Gladwell (selection of essay) (2010s)
– Ryan Coogler film. Fruitdale Station (2013)
– Barry Jenkins film. Moonlight (2016)

Course title: American Short Story
Instructor: Asst. Prof. Sven Cvek
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective
Semester: 4th or 6th
Enrollment requirements: Introduction to the Study of English Literature 1 and 2

Course description:
The short story in the US is said to be the “national art form”. Taking up this assumption critically, this course we will offer a historical overview of the presence of the short story in American culture. We will consider the formal, institutional and political-economic aspects of the short story’s production, distribution, and reception. We will be especially interested in: the assumption about the national belonging of this form; the problems of cultural form or genre; the material conditions for the form’s continuity and change. Therefore, we will approach the short story in the context of wider social relations, paying particular attention to the relationship between social transformation and formal change. Since the short story spans the entire history of the United States, the course will vary and shift its focus, both in terms of historical period (from 1800 until today), and in terms of specific problems (the question of genre; of literary infrastructure, such as magazines and creative writing workshops; the question of the short story as a cultural document; the question of transformations and possibilities of short forms today; etc).

Course objective:
The objective of the course is to introduce students to the corpus of the American short story, the theoretical and critical literature about this form, as well as encourage them to think critically about the emergence, development and changes of cultural forms in the context of wider social processes.

Course requirements:
regular attendance and reading, written continual assessment, final essay paper.

Literature:
Selection of American short stories.
Online material (Omega).
Bendixen Alfred & James Nagel (eds), A Companion to the American Short Story. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Gelfant Blanche H. & Lawrence Graver (eds), The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-century American Short Story. Columbia UP, 2000.
Levy, Andrew. The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story, Cambridge UP, 1993.
Scofield, Martin. The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story. Cambridge UP, 2006.
Shapiro, Stephen. Culture and Commerce of the Early American Novel:
Reading the Atlantic World-System. The Pennsylvania State UP, 2008.

Title of the course: Twentieth Century American Poetry
Lecturer: prof.dr. Stipe Grgas
ECTS: 6
Language: English
Duration: 4th or 6th semester
Status: elective course
Teaching mode: 1 hour lecturing, 2 hours of seminar work weekly
Preconditions for enrollment: „Introduction to the Study of English Literature “ I and II

Contents of the course: The course offers a description, a reading and an interpretation of American poetry published from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. The departure point for the course is the assumption that during the last couple of decades poetry has been marginalized in philological studies. The course will argue for the relevance of this archive. The focus will be on the specificity of the art of poetry, on the transformations undergone by poetry within the system of literature but also in the broader cultural environment. The diachronic reading of American poets will seek out their differentiating features but will also point to what these poets share with poetry writing in other literary and cultural contexts. The basic methodological premise of the course is that poetry develops according to its own immanent laws but that it also mirrors the challenges of of the world outside of literature. Because of the immense quantity of primary material the course will make a selection from the extant material and choose not only representative poets but representative texts by the chosen writers. The course proposes to continually rely on the accessibility on the Internet of not only texts but of recorded readings of poems.

Aim of the course: The students will acquaint themselves with a very important segment of twentieth century poetry. The aim of the course is to make the students aware of a marginalized literary genre, train them how to approach it and convince them of the multifaceted function and importance of the poetic word.

Student obligation: Fulfill the obligations stipulated by the model of continuous evaluation. During the semester the students must write a number of short papers on assigned texts while they have to hand in a longer seminar paper in the next to last session. The last session is reserved for the written exam.

Division of the course by weeks:
1. On poetry in general
2. Predecessors (Dickinson/Whitman)
3. Modernists abroad: Ezra Pound i T.S. Eliot
4. Modernists at home: Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams
5. Modernists at home: Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, Louis Zukofsky
6. Gendered Voices: Marianne Moore, H.D., Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath
7. Confessional Poetry: John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Theodore Roethke
8. Beat poets: Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bukowski
9. Black Mountain Poets: Charles Olson, Robert Creeley
10. Deep Image Poetry: Robert Bly, Mark Strand
11. New York School: John Ashberry, Frank O’Hara
12. 1970s: Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni
13. Language Poetry: Bob Perelman, Charles Bernstein
14. Final discussion, written exam

Obligatory texts: A selection of a poem or a number of poems from the opus of the poets listed above.

Secondary literature: Studies dealing with poetry in general, particularly those dealing with modern poetry. Manifestos written by some of the poets. Finally, the many books dealing with American poetry as well as the case book studies of individual works and writers.

Course title: The Nineteenth-Century English Novel
Instructor: prof.dr.sc. Borislav Knežević
ECTS credits: 6
Form of instruction: three hours a week
Semester: 4^th or 6^th
Enrolment requirements: Introduction to the Study of English Literature 1 and 2

Course description: The course presents a survey of the English novel in the 19^th century, the period of a great expansion of the genre of the novel in the context of a fast-growing literary market for the middle class. During that period the genre of the novel was strongly marked by the attempt of the novelists to take part in the shaping of social debates on important issues of British society in the context of fast changes. The selection of novels in this course is designed to illustrate some of the central social issues in the 19^th century English novel, such as themes related to marriage, class ideologies, industrialization, the British Empire, and writing as a profession.

Objectives: In terms of content, the goal of the course is to familiarize the students with several novels from one of the most productive periods in the history of the English novel. The course places an emphasis on active student engagement with the literary text, in order for the students to master the skills of interpreting literary texts.

Course requirements: The grade is based on a written essay at the end of term (5 pages), a mid-term quiz, and a quiz at the end of term.

Week by week schedule:
week 1: Introduction
week 2: Persuasion
week 3: Persuasion
week 4: Hard Times
week 5: Hard Times
week 6: Hard Times, Aurora Leigh
week 7: First Quiz. Aurora Leigh
week 8: Aurora Leigh
week 9: Aurora Leigh, The Moonstone
week 10: The Moonstone
week 11: Essay due.
week 12: The Moonstone, The War of the Worlds
week 13: The War of the Worlds
week 14: The War of the Worlds
week 15: Second quiz.

Reading:
Primary literature
Jane Austen, Persuasion
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

Primary literature may also include the following novels:
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton
W.M. Thackeray, Barry Lyndon
Anthony Trollope, The Warden
H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines
George Gissing, The Odd Women

Secondary literature (optional):
Catherine Gallagher, The Industrial Reformation of English Fiction, 1832—1867 (excerpts)
Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (excerpts)
Mary Poovey, Genres of the Credit Economy (excerpts)
Tony Tanner, Jane Austen (excerpts)
Raymond Williams, Culture and Society1780—1950 (excerpts)

Course title: Anthropocene in British and Australian Fiction and Film
Instructor: Dr. Iva Polak, Assoc. Prof.
ECTS credit: 6
Language: English
Duration: Semester 4 or 6
Status: Elective
Enrolment requirements: Introduction to English Literature 1 and 2
Course description: We will discuss cultural implications of the Anthropocene, a new geological era in which humans have become a geological force on a planetary scale to be reckoned with. Starting with Timothy Morton’s claim that man is “the detective and the criminal” (Dark Ecology, 2016), we will consider a selection of British and Australian novels which fictionalise and project into the future a series of issues affecting the present climate and our planet: fossil fuel burning, global warming, decreased biological diversity, global population increase, climate refugees. The selected works use satire and irony, and since they are voiced from different cultural, ethnic and gender positions, they offer different recipes for avoiding/surviving the end of the world.
Objectives : Students will get to know the implication of the new geological era and how it has influenced cultural production from the UK and Australia.

Course requirements: The final grade is based on continuous assessment which includes regular attendance (max. 4 unattended classes), preparation for and participation in class discussions, and writing and timely submission of short written assignments (6 assignments, c. 1500 words per assignment). Assignments are written after the end of each topical unit. Students must receive a minimum passing grade for reach written assignment to successfully pass the course.

Week by week schedule
WEEK 1
– Wire Cutters, 2015 (animated short); The OceanMaker, 2018 (animated short); Brolga, 2019. (short sci-fi feature film)
Introduction into the Anthropocene (anthropos vs homo, Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene, anthropocentrism, post/trans/humanism, hyperobject, ecological thought…)
– Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Climate of History: Four Theses”
– Usher, Phillip John, “ Untranslating the Anthropocene”
WEEK 2
Anthropocene fiction (ecology, climate, dystopia, genre hybridity)
– Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement
– Goodbody, Axel and Adeline Johns-Putra. “Introduction”
– Trexler, Adam. Anthropocene Fictions
WEEK 3
J. G. Ballard. High-Rise (1975)
WEEK 4
High-Rise (2015), dir. Ben Wheatley
WEEK 5
Discussion about documentaries: The Age of Stupid (2009), dir. Franny Armstrong, documentary; An Inconvenient Truth (2006), dir. Davis Guggenheim, The End of Oil (Netflix Explain series, 2021)
WEEK 6
Saci Lloyd. It’s the End of the World As We Know It (2015)
WEEK 7
Jeanette Winterson. The Stone Gods (2007)
WEEK 8
Jeanette Winterson. The Stone Gods (2007)
WEEK 9
Australian fiction and film of the Anthropocene (ecology, climate, dystopia, genre hybridity) 
WEEK 10
Discussion about documentaries: Fired Up (Apri 2021, Four Corners), Weather Alert  (March 2018, Four Corners), and Digging In: Why powering a green future means more mines (May 2022, Four Corners), What Coal Miners Think about Climate Change (March 2022, Vice News)
WEEK 11
Mireille Juchau. The World Without Us (2018)
WEEK 12
Alexis Wright: The Swan Book (2013)
– Polak, Iva. “Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book (2013) – Indigenous Cli-Fi”
WEEK 13
Alexis Wright: The Swan Book (2013)
WEEK 14
Final discussion

Reading list:
Novels
J. G. Ballard. High-Rise (1975)
Saci Lloyd. It’s the End of the World As We Know It (2015)
Jeanette Winterson. The Stone Gods (2007)
Mireille Juchau. The World Without Us (2015)
Alexis Wright. The Swan Book (2013)

Critical editions:
– Braidotti, Rosi and Maria Hlavajova (eds.) Posthuman Glossary, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. (terminology)
– Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Climate of History: Four Theses”, Critical Inquiry 35, 2009: 197-222.
– Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism, Routledge: London and New York, 2004, Glossary (terminology)
– Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 2016. Selected excerpts: pp. 1-27, 68-73.
– Goodbody, Axel and Adeline Johns-Putra. “Introduction”, Cli-Fi: A Companion, Alex Goodbody and Adeline Johns-Putra, eds., Peter Lang: Oxford, 2019: 1-18.
– Polak, Iva. “Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book (2013) – Indigenous Cli-Fi”, Cli-Fi: A Companion, Alex Goodbody and Adeline Johns-Putra, eds., Peter Lang: Oxford, 2019: 217-222.
– Trexler, Adam. Anthropocene Fictions: The Novel in a Time of Climate Change (Under the Sign of Nature), University of Virginia Press, 2015, “Introduction: Contextualising the Climate Change Novels”.
– Usher, Phillip John, “ Untranslating the Anthropocene”, Diacritics, 44:3, 2016: 56-77. 

Further reading (optional):
– Clark, Timothy. Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept., Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
– Hulme, Mike. Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity, 4th Ed, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
– Meneley, Tobians and Jesse Oak Taylor (eds). Anthropocene Reading: Literary History in Geological Times. Penn State University Press, 2017.
– Moore, Jason W. (ed.), Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History and the Crisis of Capitalism, PM Press, 2016.
– Morton, Timothy. Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Existence, Columbia University Press, 2016.
– Morton, Timothy. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Posthumanities), University of Minnesota Press 2013.
– Morton, Timothy. The Ecological Thought, Harvard University Press (2010) 2012.

All textual and audiovisual materials are available via cloud service.

Course title: Victorian Literature and the Transformation of the World in the Nineteenth Century
Instructor: Professor Tatjana Jukić
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Semester: 4 or 6

Enrollment requirements: Introduction to the Study of English Literature 1 and 2

Course description: Taking Jürgen Osterhammel’s history of the 19th century as its point of departure, the course will explore how Victorian literature engages and defines critical developments that we normally associate with modernity in the 20th and the 21st centuries, especially with the imaginary of catastrophe (ranging from world wars to climate change). We will focus on a selection of texts by Alfred Tennyson, Elizabeth Gaskell, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Course requirements: The grade is based on a written essay at the end of term (30% of the final grade), and two tests (30% of the final grade each), as well as on active participation in the class (10% of the final grade).

WEEK 1 Osterhammel’s history of the world in the nineteenth century. The Victorians and the transformation of the world.
WEEK 2 Victorian literature: narrative transformations.
WEEK 3 Tennyson’s early poetry: psychopolitics in the 1830s and the 1840s. „The Lady of Shalott“
WEEK 4 The Industrial Revolution and the industrial novel (1): Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South.
WEEK 5 The Industrial Revolution and the industrial novel (2): Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South.
WEEK 6 Browning in the 1850s: Victorian modernities. „Love Among the Ruins“
WEEK 7 Midterm.
WEEK 8 Dickens on revolution (1): A Tale of Two Cities.
WEEK 9 Dickens on revolution (2): A Tale of Two Cities.
WEEK 10 Arnold on revolution: psychopolitics in the 1860s. „The Function of Criticism at the Present Time“
WEEK 11 The Victorian Anthropocene: John Ruskin, „The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century“
WEEK 12 The Victorian biopolitics (1): Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet.
WEEK 13 The Victorian biopolitics (2): Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet.
WEEK 14 Final discussion.
WEEK 15 Final test. Evaluation.

Required reading:
Arnold, Matthew. „The Function of Criticism at the Present Time“
Browning, Robert. Poetry (selection)
Conan Doyle, Arthur. A Study in Scarlet
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities
Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South
Ruskin, John. „The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century“
Tennyson, Alfred. Poetry (selection)
Osterhammel, Jürgen. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (selection)

Optional reading:
Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1750-1950. 1958. (selection)
Ginzburg, Carlo. „Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method.“ 1980.
Gallagher, Catherine. The Industrial Reformation of English Fiction. Social Discourse and Narrative Form 1832-1867. 1985. (selection)
Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction. A Political History of the Novel. 1987. (selection)
Armstrong, Isobel. Victorian Poetry. Poetry, Politics and Poetics. 1993. (selection)
Schor, Hilary M. Dickens and the Daughter of the House. 1999. (selection)
Jordan, John O. (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens. 2001. (selection)
Matus, Jill (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell. 2007. (selection)
Behlman, Lee and Anne Longmuir (eds.). Victorian Literature. Criticism and Debates. 2015. (selection)

Course title: British Romanticism: poetry
(Former course title: English Romantic Poetry)
Course coordinator: Martina Domines Veliki, PhD
Instructor: Martina Domines Veliki, PhD
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 1 semester (3rd or 5th, 4th or 6th semester)
Status: elective
Course type: 1 hour of lecture, 2 hours of seminar
Prerequisites: Introduction to English Literature or Introduction into English Lit 1 and 2, 3/5 or 4/6 semester enrollment
Course requirements: continuous assessment (midterm and final exam, final paper, class attendance and participation)

Objective: The students will be introduced to the major poets of English Romanticism, as well as their relevant historical, cultural, political and aesthetic milieu. The aim of this course is to encourage students to create their own view of the suggested array of poems through close reading. They will be asked to think about and analyze these poems with the help of a number of critical texts (from new historicist to post-structuralist ones).

Course description: Authors we will read include Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats. Through reading of their representative poetry we will tackle some fundamental Romantic concepts such as poetic inspiration, memory of the past events, the sublime, deism and mysticism, the relationship between the poetic subject and nature as well as the role played by language. The poetic subject becomes the central topic of most Romantic poetry and it is actualized through a close relationship with nature that acts as either a consoling or a debilitating force. Priority will be given to the Romantic poets of the first generation. These poets often imagine themselves to be responding to the French Revolution. They rebel against social injustice, cherishing feelings for ‘common’ people and believing, in the words of Shelley, that they are indeed the acknowledged ‘legislators of the world’.

Weekly schedule:
week 1: Introduction into English Romanticism. Historical background.
week 2: William Blake – selections from Songs of Innocence and Experience
week 3: Blake continued – “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”
week 4: William Wordsworth – excerpts from the 1800 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, a selection of poems from Lyrical Ballads
week 5: Wordsworth continued: a selection of poems from Poems in Two Volumes
week 6: Wordsworth continued – The Prelude (chosen books)
week 7: Samuel Taylor Coleridge – selections from Biographia Literaria
week 8: Coleridge continued – “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Dejection: an Ode”, “Kubla Khan”
midterm exam
week 9: George Gordon Byron – excerpts from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
week 10: Byron continued – excerpts from Don Juan , “Prometheus”, “Fare Thee Well”
week 11: Percy Bysshe Shelley – “Ozymandias”, “Ode to the West Wind”
week 12: Shelley continued – “To a Skylark”, excerpts from “A Defence of Poetry”, “Prometheus Unbound”
week 13: John Keats: “To Autumn”, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”
week 14: Keats continued – “Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
week 15. : final exam and final paper

READING LIST:

Primary literature:
Curran, Stuart (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998)
Roe, Nicholas. Romanticism: An Oxford Guide (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005)
Wu, Duncan. Romanticism: An Anthology (3rd edition) (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006)
Wu, Duncan: A Companion to Romanticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001)

Secondary literature:
Abrams, M. H.: The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (London: Oxford UP, 1960)
Abrams, M. H.: Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (London: Oxford UP, 1971)
Ashfield, Andrew and Peter de Bolla. The Sublime: A Reader in British Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UP, 1996)
Bainbridge, Simon (ed.) Romanticism: A Sourcebook (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
Bennett, Andrew: Romantic Poets and the Culture of Posterity (Cambridge UP, 1999)
Bloom, Harold: The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry (London: Cornell UP, any edition)
Bone, Drummond: The Cambridge Companion to Byron (Cambridge UP, 2004)
Bromwich, David: Disowned by Memory: Wordsworth’s Poetry of the 1790s (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000)
Butler, Marilyn: Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries – English Literature and its Background 1760-1830 (Oxford, New York: Oxford UP, 1981)
Day, Aidan: Romanticism (London and New York: Routledge, 1996)
de Man, Paul: The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York: Columbia UP, 1984)
Duffy, Cian. Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime (Cambridge UP, 2005)
Duffy, Cian and Peter Howell (ed.) Cultures of the Sublime (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
Erdman, David: Blake : Prophet against Empire (New York : Dover, 1991)
Gill, Stephen: The Cambridge Companion to Wordsworth (Cambridge UP, 2003)
Hartman, Geoffrey: Wordsworth’s Poetry 1787-1813 (Harvard UP, 1987)
Lucas, John. William Blake: Longman Critical Reader (New York: Longman, 1998)
Mellor, Anne K.: Romanticism and Gender (Routledge, 1993)
Morton, Timothy: The Cambridge Companion to Shelley (Cambridge UP, 2006)
Newlyn, Lucy: The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge (Cambridge UP, 2002)
Pfau, Thomas and Robert F. Gleckner (ed.) Lessons of Romanticism (Durham and London: Duke UP, 1998)
Roe, Nicholas. Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003)
Scrivener, Michael Henry. Radical Shelley (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982)
Simpson, David. Wordsworth’s Historical Imagination (New York and London: Methuen, 1987)
White, R.S. Natural Rights and the Birth of Romanticism in the 1790s (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
Wolfson, Susan: The Cambridge Companion to Keats (Cambridge UP, 2001)

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(except ac. year 2019/20)

Course title: Contemporary American Novel
Instructor: Prof. Stipe Grgas, Dr. Sven Cvek, Dr. Hrvoje Tutek
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective
Semester: 3rd and 5th or 4th and 6th
Enrollment requirements: enrollment in the 3rd and 5th or 4th and 6th semester
Course description: The course explores a number of novels which have been published since 9/11. The argument for targeting this body of texts derives from the notion that the contemporary or the “now” of the United States dates from this event. The course attempts to describe the form of the novel in contemporary US writing, the manner in which it reflects the present moment in US history and the way it engages the challenges of present reality.
Objectives: The purpose of the course is to develop the student’s ability to approach literary texts and to broaden their perspectives on the complexity of US reality.
Course requirements: continual attendance, oral presentation, written assignment, written final exam

Week by week schedule: the event, the present, 9/11 and its representations, American myths and their literary representations, the new regionalism, the city and capital, the sense of the ending

Reading List:
Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
Steve Erickson, Shadowbahn
Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
Don Delillo, Cosmopolis
Don DeLillo, „Hammer and Sickle“
Annie Proulx, „Tits Up in a Ditch“
Paul Beatty, The Sellout
Cormac McCarthy, The Road