Home » KNJIŽEVNI SEMINARI – 4. ili 6. semestar (Page 3)
Category Archives: KNJIŽEVNI SEMINARI – 4. ili 6. semestar
American literature and culture 2: American Non-Fiction Writing, 1580-1880
Course title: American literature and culture 2: American Non-Fiction Writing, 1580-1880
Instructor: Prof. Douglas Ambrose
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 4th or 6th semester
Status: elective
Enrolment requirements: completed Introduction to English literature, enrolment in the 4th or 6th semester
COURSE PURPOSE: This course provides an introduction to American history through various forms of non-fiction writing. Beginning with sixteenth-century English accounts of the New World, we will explore the development of certain themes and genres that came to characterize American non-fiction, including the jeremiad, the captivity narrative, social and physical mobility, “manifest destiny” and providentialism, the slave narrative, nature writing, and the promise of “the west.” We will follow a chronological narrative through American history, recognizing throughout the political and social contexts of the texts while paying close attention to the internal development of the genres to which they belong.
COURSE STRUCTURE: Students must complete the readings for the week prior to our Monday meetings. Each Monday meeting will begin with a brief quiz on that week’s materials. Each student must bring the week’s readings to class each week. Although I will occasionally lecture in order to situate the texts, class discussion of the readings will constitute the bulk of our meetings. A successful class requires the participation of all students.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS: In addition to regular attendance, preparation, and participation, students will write three short papers (500-750 words each) and take a midterm and final exam. Beginning with Week 2 and continuing for every subsequent week through week 15, I will provide a question at the conclusion of Tuesday’s meeting. Students will pick three of these questions to write on. Papers are always due the following Monday. I will not accept any late papers, so choose wisely. The midterm exam will take place on either 15 or 16 April. The final exam will take place on either 10 or 11 June.
COURSE SCHEDULE
Week 1: Envisioning America. Read Thomas Harriot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588/1590).
Week 2: Planting a “New England.” Read John Cotton, “God’s Promise to His Plantation” (1630); John Winthrop, “Model of Christian Charity” (1630).
Week 3: Exhorting America: The Jeremiad and its Meanings. Read Samuel Danforth, New England’s Errand into the Wilderness (1670); Increase Mather, An Exhortation To the Inhabitants of New England (1676).
Week 4: Captivity, Identity, and Redemption. Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (1682).
Week 5: Becoming American. Read Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (1791).
Week 6: The Transformation of Political Discourse. Read Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776); Samuel Sherwood, “The Church’s Flight into the Wilderness” (1776).
Week 7: Midterm exam.
Week 8: Explaining America. Read Hector St. John de Crevecour, Letters From an American Farmer (1782) Read “Advertisement and Dedication,” Letter I, Letter III, and Letter IX; Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1787). Read “Front Matter,” Query 8, Query 11, Query 14, and Query 17.
Week 9: Exploring America. William Bartram, Travels (1791). Read Part IV, Chapters I-VI; Lewis and Clark, Journals (1814). Read July 30, 1804; August 25, 1804; September 24 & 25, 1804; October 8, 9, 10, 11, & 12, 1804; October 27, 1804; October 29, 1804; October 31, 1804; November 4, 1804.
Week 10: American Destiny. Read Lyman Beecher, A Plea for the West (1832); and John L. O’Sullivan, “The Great Nation of Futurity” (1839).
Week 11: The Beginnings of African American Political Writing. Read David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829).
Week 12: Narrating American Slavery and American Freedom. Read William Wells Brown, Narrative of William Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave (1847); Josiah Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson . . . (1849).
Week 13: The “Other America”: The South. Read James Henley Thornwell, “The Christian Doctrine of Slavery” (1850); Louisa McCord, “Woman and Her Needs” (1852); George Fitzhugh, “Southern Thought” (1857), on Omega.
Week 14: A New Birth: Postbellum America. Read Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address” (1865); Horace Bushnell, “Our Obligations to the Dead” (1865) on Omega; Frederick Douglass, “What the Black Man Wants” (1865); and “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln” (1876).
Week 15: Final Exam.
Alternative Worlds in Contemporary British Fiction
Course title: Alternative Worlds in Contemporary British Fiction
Instructor: Assoc. Prof. Iva Polak
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: Semester 3 or 5
Status: elective
Enrolment requirements: completed Introduction to English Lit/Introduction to English Lit 1 and 2
Course description: The course focuses on the establishment of a different literary canon following WW2 in the UK, which is embedded in various genres of the fantastic. Ranging from primarily male dystopian SF fiction, feminist SF fiction to fantasy and magical realism coming from former colonial subjects and new regional voices in the UK, selected texts raise the issue of the construction of new contemporary identities and realities of the UK through the vehicle of fantasy. The aim is to cover a whole spectrum of gendered, transcultural and regional voices present in the last 60 years in British fiction. The course also includes discussions on a range of cinematic adaptations accompanying selected texts.
Objectives: Widening awareness of some of the most recent trends in British fiction and learning the basic postulates of literary fantasy.
Course requirements: The final grade is based on continuous assessment which includes regular attendance (max. 4 unattended classes), preparation for and participation in class, writing small assignments, timely submission of the final paper, and obligatory sitting for midterm and endterm exam. The paper is worth 35%, midterm and endterm exams are worth 50% and other elements of continuous assessment are worth 15% of the final grade. Students must meet all requirements of continuous assessment.
Week by week schedule
WEEK 1
Post-WW2 socio-historical context in the UK: literary reaction to the post-WW2 years; a decade after “Angry Young Men”; dystopian reaction; feminist novel after V. Woolf (second wave feminism, postfeminism); gendered novel; novel and the end of the Empire; regional voices; the notion of belonging and trans/national identity
WEEK 2
Historical development of literary utopia/dystopia (Republic; Utopia; New Atlantis; Gulliver’s Travels); utopian/dystopian SF novel (Brave New World; We)
Michel Foucault. “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias”
Peter Fitting. “A Short History of Utopian Studies”
WEEK 3
George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) (dystopia; mind-control)
Patrick Parrinder. Nation & Novel, pp. 314-320 (on Orwell)
Adam Roberts. Science Fiction: Chapter 1: “Defining science fiction”
Darko Suvin. “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre”
WEEK 4
Nineteen Eighty-Four cont.
WEEK 5
Nineteen Eighty-Four. (1984) dir. Michael Radford, and Brazil (1985) dir. Terry Gilliam
Adam Roberts. Science Fiction: Chapter 5: “Technology and Metaphor”
WEEK 6
Anthony Burgess. A Clockwork Orange (1962); (dystopia; violence)
WEEK 7
A Clockwork Orange (1971) dir. Stanley Kubrick
Guidelines for writing research paper
WEEK 8 – 45min midterm exam; no classes
WEEK 9
Jeanette Winterson. The.PowerBook (2000): metafiction; gendered narrator
Brian McHale. Postmodernist Fiction: Chap. “Chinese-box worlds”
WEEK 10
Magical realism genre theory
Wendy B. Faris. “Scheherezade’s Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction.”
WEEK 11
Angela Carter. Nights at the Circus (1984): postmodernism, metafiction, feminism, Victorian Period and “side-shows” (freak shows); Freaks (1932) dir. Ted Browning.
Brian Finney. Ch. 9 “Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus” in English Fiction since 1984: Narrating a Nation.
WEEK 12
Nights at the Circus cont.
WEEK 13
The most distinct regional voice: Scottish “New Wave” (Gray, Kennedy, Kelman…)
Alasdair Gray. “Wellbeing: A Fiction” in Why Scots Should Rule Scotland (1997): postmodernism, fantasy, Scottish identity
Richard Bradword. Ch.10 “Scotland” in The Novel Now. Contemporary British Fiction.
WEEK 14 – Endterm exam
Reading list:
Novels
George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
Anthony Burgess. A Clockwork Orange (1962)
Jeanette Winterson. The.PowerBook (2000)
Angela Carter. Nights at the Circus (1984)
Alasdair Gray. “Wellbeing: A Fiction” in Why Scots Should Rule Scotland (1997)
Critical editions:
– Bowers, Maggie Ann. Magic(al) Realism. Routledge: NY. 2004.
– Bradford, Richard. The Novel Now. Contemporary British Fiction. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford, 2007: Ch. 10.
– Faris, Wendy B. “Scheherezade’s Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction.” Magical Realism Theory, History, Community, Lois Parkinson Zamora i Wendy B. Faris (eds). Duke University Press: Durham & London. 2005 (1995): 163-190.
– Finney Brian. English Fiction Since 1984: Narrating a Nation. Palgrave: NY, 2006: Ch. 9.
– Fitting, Peter. “A Short History of Utopian Studies”. Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2009: 121-131.
– McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction, Routledge: London/NY, 2004 (1987): Chap. 8.
– Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias”, 1967.
– Parrinder, Patrick. Nation & Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 (selection on Orwell)
– Roberts, Adam. Science Fiction. 2nd ed, Routledge: London/New York, 2006: Ch. 1 and 3
– Suvin, Darko. “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre.” College English, Vol. 34, No. 3, 1972: 372-382.
All textual and audiovisual materials are provided in electronic format.
War, Reconstruction and Transformation: American Literature 1860-1914 (arch.)
Course title: War, Reconstruction and Transformation: American Literature 1860-1914
Instructor: Dr Jelena Šesnić
ECTS credits: 6
Language of instruction: English
Semester: Spring 2012, Spring 2017
Status: elective
Form of instruction: lecture (1 hour) + seminar (2 hours)
Enrollment requirements: Introduction into the Study of English Literature
Course description: In the seminar we shall cover a period in American Literature variousy designated as the Age of Realism and Naturalism or the Gilded Age. 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 look 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 the way these affect social relations; and, finally, the emergence of new identities, both in the public and the private sphere.
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). It is essential to observe the deadlines set down for particular assignments; if not, this can adversely affect your grade. Grade breakdown: tests—50%; seminar paper—35 %; the rest (see above)—15 %.
Readings (subject to change)
Primary texts
Section 1: the Civil War and its aftermath
Herman Melville: from Battle Pieces (1866; selection of poetry)
Walt Whitman: from Drum-Taps and Memories of President Lincoln (1891-92; selection of poetry)
Rebecca Harding Davis: Waiting for the Verdict (1868; novel; selected chapters)
Section 2: The question of race and Reconstruction
Mark Twain: Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894; novel)
Charles Chesnutt: „The Wife of His Youth“ (1899; short story); „What Is a White Man?“ (1889; essay)
Section 3: Matters of the economy
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps: The Silent Partner (1871; novel)
Upton Sinclair: The Jungle (1906; novel)
Section 4: Emergence of new subjects
Abraham Cahan: „Yekl“ (1896; novella)
Ezra Pound: „Hugh Selwyn Mauberly“ (1920; poetry, selection)
(Note: most of the texts are available in digital form, or can be checked out from the library.)
Secondary readings
Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought (1944), Boston: Beacon P, 1992. (selection)
Sundquist, Eric. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature, Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. (selection)
Trachtenberg, Alan. The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age, New York: Hill and Wang, 1982. (selection)
Nineteenth-Century American Short Fiction
Course title: Nineteenth-Century American Short Fiction
Undergraduate Elective
Nineteenth-Century American Short Fiction
Prof. Charles L. Crow
Thursday 11:45-12:30, D-5
Friday 2:45-4:15, A-123
charleslcrow@yahoo.com
Course requirements: regular attendance, and readings completed before class discussions. Two short essays of approximately 1000-1250 words each. Final examination.
Note 1: I welcome enthusiastic class discussion, including constructive disagreement, and conversations continued after class, in my office, and by e-mail.
Note 2: There may be some modification of this syllabus after the pace of the class is established.
Note 3: Most of these stories are available on the internet. In some cases it may be necessary to provide a copy for duplication.
Week 1. 8-9 March
Introductions. Overview of periods, issues in 19th century American literature and culture. A few American paintings shown to illustrate trends and themes. Two brief folk tales from non-white cultures represent voices to be heard later in the semester.
Charles Brockden Brown, “Somnambulism”
Washington Irving, “Rip van Winkle”
Week 2: 15-16 March
The “Dark Romantics” and their quarrel with Emerson.
E. A. Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado,” “Hop Frog.
Nathanael Hawthorne, “Alice Doan’s Appeal.” “Young Goodman Brown.”
Week 3: 22-23 March
From Romanticism to Realism
Herman Melville, “The Bell Tower,” “Bartleby the Scrivener”
Rebecca Harding Davis, “Life in the Iron Mills”
Week 4: 29-30 March
Harriet Prescott Spofford, “Circumstance”
S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain) “A True Story,” selection from “Old Times on the Mississippi.” “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”
Week 5: 5-6 April
Two anti-war stories by realist masters.
Mark Twain, “The War Prayer”
W. D. Howells, “Editha”
Note: April 6 is Good Friday
Week 6: 12-13 April
The “American Girl” and women’s regional realism
Henry James, “A Bundle of Letters”
M. E. Wilkins Freeman. “The Revolt of Mother,’ “A Church Mouse”
Week 7: 19-20 April
Regional realism, continued
Sarah Orne Jewett, “A White Heron,” “The Foreigner,” “The Circus at Denby.”
Joel Chandler Harris, “The Wonderful Tar Baby,” “How Mr. Rabbit was too Sharp for Mr. Fox.”
Week 8: 26-27 April
Race and the South
Charles Chesnutt, “The Passing of Grandison” “The Sheriff’s Children,” “The Dumb Witness”
Paul Laurence Dunbar, “The Lynching of Jube Benson”
Week 9: 3-4 May
Race and the South, continued
Alice Dunbar Nelson, “Sister Josepha”
Grace King, “The Little Convent Girl”
George Washington Cable, “Jean-Ah Poquelin”
Week 10: 10-11 May
Kate Chopin’s Louisiana:
“Désirée’s Baby,” “The Story of an Hour,” “The Storm,” “A Pair of Silk Stockings,” “A Respectable Woman,” “A Gentleman of Bayou Teche.”
Week 11: 17-18 May
Naturalism and beyond.
Frank Norris, “A Deal in Wheat”
Stephen Crane, “The Monster”
Jack London, “To Build a Fire,” “South of the Slot”
Week 12: 24-25 May
Willa Cather’s Nebraska:
“Old Mrs. Harris,” “Neighbor Rosicky”
Week 13: 31 May-1 June
A feminist classic and a new voice.
Charlotte Perkin’s Gilman, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”
John M. Oskison, “The Problem of Old Harjo”
Week 14: 7-8 June
Thursday is Corpus Christi
Theodore Dreiser, “Typhoon”
Literature and the ‘Troubles’ (en)
Naziv kolegija: Literature and the ‘Troubles’
Dr. Aidan O’Malley (Irish guest professor)
Irish Literature
Title of Course: Literature and the ‘Troubles’
Language: English
Duration:1 semester, 4th or 6th
Status: Elective
Lecture and seminar
____________________________________________________________________________________
Literature and the ‘Troubles’
Some of the most important Irish writing of the past 40-50 years emerged in the context of the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’, and this course will examine what has been termed the “Ulster Renaissance” (Clarke 2006).
The first part of course gives a historical and cultural introduction to Northern Ireland and the ‘Troubles’. It examines issues such as: the social and political life in the North before 1968; the Civil Rights movement; the emergence of paramilitary organisations; Unionist and Presbyterian identities.
The second part of the course explores how a set of writers (poets, dramatists and novelists) responded to this crisis. Authors to be studied include: Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Frank McGuinness, Brian Friel, Stewart Parker and Seamus Deane. While the focus is on close readings of individual texts, in discussing these writers, students are also introduced to some of the critical discussions that this artistic activity inspired, with an emphasis on different debates about the role literature plays in creating a sense of communal identity and its appropriate response to political upheaval, repression and violence.
Provisional Schedule
Week 1: The founding of the Northern Irish state and life there up to 1968
Week 2: The start of the ‘Troubles’: from the Civil Rights movement to Bloody Sunday
Week 3: Unionist identities
Weeks 4-6: Dramatic responses to the ‘Troubles’: Brian Friel, The Freedom of the City; Frank McGuinness, Carthaginians; Stewart Parker, Pentecost
Weeks 7-12: The ‘Belfast Group’: Seamus Heaney, selected poems and The Cure at Troy; Derek Mahon, selected poems; Michael Longley, selected poems
Weeks 13-14: Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark
Week 15: Review and final exam
Canadian Literature and Culture
Course title: Canadian Literature and Culture
Instructor: Dr. Vanja Polić
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective
Semester: one semester, 4th or 6th (2012/13)
Enrolment requirements: completed Introduction in English Literature; enrolment in the 4th or 6th semester
Course description: The course will consist of a close reading and analysis of selected (representative) Canadian texts and of placing them into the context of Canadian culture, history and present times.
Objectives: The objective of this course is to acquaint the students with selected works from Canadian literature, fiction as well as non-fiction (some of the most prominent literary critics are Canadian: McLuhan, Margaret Atwood, Northrop Frye, Brian McHale, Linda Hutcheon, Simon During), and to enable students to place Canadian literature into a broader context of literatures written in English language (in “english” languages).
Course requirements: The finalgrade is based on continuous assessment which includes regular attendance, preparation for and participation in class, writing small assignments, timely submission of the final paper, and obligatory sitting for midterm and endterm exam. The paper is worth 35%, midterm and endterm exams are worth 50% and other elements of continuous assessment are worth 15% of the final grade. Students must fulfill all elements of continuous assessment.
Week by week schedule:
1st week: introduction, general info on the seminar
2nd week: a short introduction into Canada’s geography and the influence it exerted on Canadian history, culture and literature
3rd week: a short introduction into the Canadian history
4th week: multiculturalism and globalization: concepts that were coined in Canada. Also, a discussion about the diversity of Canadian society and the attempts to preserve it
5th week: introduction into literature: how Canadians perceive Can Lit: M. Atwood, Survival and N. Frye, Bush Garden and Mythologizing Canada.
6th week: historical overview of literature, traveller accounts and literature of the first immigrants (e.g. S. Moodie, C. Parr Traill)
7th week: overview of 19th and 20th century poetry (Confederation poets, as well as contemporary poets such as M. A. Klein, M. Atwood, L. Cohen, R. Kroetsch, et al.)
8th week: multiculturalism, 2nd part on the example of a short story: R. Mistry, «Swimming Lessons».
9th week: multiculturalism 3rd part: “the first settlers”, Inuit and “Indians”: a documentary Nunavuk and discussion on the current position of the First Nations in the multicultural society of contemporary Canada
10th week: a selection from the first settlers’ literature, e.g. E. P. Johnson, T. Highway, T. King et al.
11th week: identity in Canada (M. Atwood, Surfacing, J. Kogawa, Obasan)
12th week: identity in Canada: female identity: M. Laurence, A. Munro, M. Atwood, C. Shields (a selection of short stories and novels)
13th week: revision and preparation for the final exam
14th week: final exam
Reading:
Obligatory:
– Keith, W. J., Canadian Literature in English, Longman Literature in English Series; London and New York: Longman, 1985
– A New Anthology of Canadian Literature in English, D. Bennet, R. Brown ed., Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press Canada, 2002
– Profiles of Canada, K. G. Pryke and W. Soderlund, 3rd ed., Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc., 2003
– Riendeau, R. A Brief History of Canada, Markham, Ontario: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2000
– primary texts given in class
Additional:
– Atwood, M. Survival: a thematic guide to Canadian literature, Toronto: Anansiland and Stewart, 1972
– Frye, N. The Bush Garden: essays on the Canadian imagination, Toronto: Anansi, 1971
– Hutcheon, L., As Canadian as… Possible… Under the Circumstances!, Toronto: York University, 1990
– A Passion for Identity: Canadian Studies for the 21st Century, D. Taras and B. Rasporich, 4. ed., Scarborough, Ontario: Nelson Thomson Learning, 2001
– Internet: official sites on various aspects of Canadian society sponsored by Canadian Government
The Trans/national in Contemporary Australian Literature and Film
Course title: The Trans/national in Contemporary Australian Literature and Film
Instructor: Assoc. Prof. Iva Polak
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective
Semester: 4th and/or 6th
Enrollment requirements: completed Introduction to English Literature; enrolment in 4th and/or 6th semester
Course description: Selected literary and cinematic texts from the 2nd half of the 20th cent. are studied in the light of contemporary reinscriptions of Australian identity. Issues such as colonialism and postcolonialism, the mainstream and margin, history and story, natural and supernatural are discussed to show complexities of Australian multiculturalism (cultural difference and cultural diversity). Due to the relative remoteness of Australian space, the course includes a survey Australian history as well as a survey of the culture of the First Australians.
Objectives: The aim is to awaken students’ awareness of some of the distinctive features of Australian contemporary literature and cinema as well as to show the necessity of a different approach to Indigenous texts due to their culture-specific content.
Course requirements: The finalgrade is based on continuous assessment which includes regular attendance, preparation for and participation in class, writing small assignments, timely submission of the final paper, and obligatory sitting for midterm and endterm exam. The paper is worth 35%, midterm and endterm exams are worth 50% and other elements of continuous assessment are worth 15% of the final grade. Students must meet all requirements of continuous assessment.
The exact date of the mid-term exam is defined in cooperation with the students. Topics for the main written assignment (student paper) are selected in week 8.
Course schedule:
Week 1
Distinctivenes of Australian space: location, size, appearance
Week 2
Introduction to the history of Australia
Week 3
Postcolonial Australia: introduction to postcolonial theory
Week 4
Australian identity: in search of Australianness
Claymation short: Harvie Krampet (2003), dir. Adam Elliot
Graham Huggan. Australian Literature. Postcolonialism, Racism, Transnationalism: Chap. 1;
Catriona Elder. Being Australian: Chap. 1 (nationalism, imagined community, commentary)
Bill Ashcroft. “Is Australian Literature Post-Colonial?”
Week 5
Australian identity and Australian space: the Great Australian Outback
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), dir. Peter Weir (New Wave)
Wolf Creek (2005), dir. Greg McLean (Ozploitation)
The Rover (2014), dir. David Michod (dystopia)
Gelder and Jacobs. Uncanny Australia (1998): Chap. 1, terminology: uncanny (Freud) and differend (Lyotard)
Week 6
Reinscriptions of Australian literary canon: from documentary realism to postmodernist reinscriptions and fantastic worlds
Frank Moorehouse “From a bush log book“
Murry Bail “A, B, C, D, E,F, G,H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O,P Q, R, S, T U, V, W, X, Y, Z“
Peter Carey “American Dreams“; “Peeling“
A. Bertram Chandler “Grimes and the Gajin Daimyo” (Australian SF)
Week 7
Deconstructing the Eurocentric canon and literary theory from an Australian perspective
David Williamson, Dead White Males (1995)
*Guidelines for research paper
Week 8
Tim. Winton. Cloudstreet (1991)
Week 9
Cloudstreet cont.
Magical realism: Wendy B. Faris. “Scheherezade’s Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction.”
Week 10
Introduction to the history and culture of Aboriginal Australia
Contact (2009) documentary
Christine Nicholls. “‘Dreamtime’ and ‘The Dreaming’ – an introduction”
Week 11
Stolen Generations
Doris Pilkington Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence (1996)
Rabbit-Proof Fence (2001), dir. Phillip Noyce
Documentary series First Australians (2008). Episode 5: “Unhealthy Government Experiment”
Week 12
Contemporary Aboriginalities
Gayle Kennedy, Me, Antman & Fleabag (2007)
Mad Bastards (2010), dir. Brendan Fletcher
Week 13
Contemporary women’s writing
Lisa Jacobson “The Master Builder’s House”
Ania Walwicz “Flight”
Janeen Webb “Paradise Design’d“
Finola Moorhead “Miss Marple Goes to Ayers Rock“
Week 14
Endterm exam
Reading list
Due to unavailability of reference materials, all relevant texts are contained in The Trans/national in Contemporary Australian Literature and Film Reader which includes the following:
Fiction:
Tim Winton. Cloudstreet (1991)
David Williamson. Dead White Males (1995)
Doris Pilkington. Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
Gayle Kennedy. Me, Antman & Fleabag (2007)
+ selected short stories
Theory:
– Ashcroft, Bill. “Is Australian Literature Post-Colonial?”. Modern Australian Criticism and Theory. Eds. David Carter and Wang Guanglin. Qingdao: China Ocean University Press: 1-13.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (eds). Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, Routledge: London/New York, 2002. (selected terminology)
– Elder, Catriona. Being Australian Allen and Uwin: Crows Nest, 2007. (Chaps 1, 3 and 8)
– Gelder, Ken and Jane M. Jacobs. Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation, Melbourne University Press: Carlton South, Victoria, 1998. (Chap. 1)
– Huggan, Graham. Australian Literature. Postcolonialism, Racism, Transnationalism, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2007 (Chap. 1)
– Lever, Susan. “The challenge of the novel: Australian fiction since 1950”. The Cambridge History of Australian Literature. Peter Pierce (ed.). Cambridge University Press: Port Melbourne, Vic., 2009: 498-517.
– Nicholls, Christine. “‘Dreamtime’ and ‘The Dreaming’ – an introduction”. A Year in Life of Australia. The Conversation. Ed. The Conversation, Sydney: Future Leaders, 2014: 77-82.
– Polak, Iva. Razvoj književne proze australskih Aboridžina. Od nevidljive do postkolonijalne priče, HFD: Zagreb, 2011. (excerpts)
– Rossier, Richard and Lyn Jacobs (eds). Reading Tim Winton. Angus and Robertson: Sydney, 1993. (selection)
– Torre, Stephen. “The short story since 1950”. The Cambridge History of Australian Literature. Peter Pierce (ed.). Cambridge University Press: Port Melbourne, Vic., 2009: 419-451.
– Van Toorn, Penny. “Indigenous Texts and Narratives”.The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature, Elizabeth Webby (ed.). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2000: 19-59.
– West, Barbara A. A Brief History of Australia. Facts on File Inc.: New York. 2010.
– Faris, Wendy B. “Scheherezade’s Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction.” Magical Realism Theory, History, Community, Lois Parkinson Zamora i Wendy B. Faris (ed). Duke University Press: Durham & London. 2005 (1995): 163-190.
Materials (textual+audiovisual) for the course shall be made available to the enrolled students in electronic form. Additional materials are received in class.
American postmodernism and popular culture-archive
Course title: American Postmodernism and Popular Culture
Instructor: Asst. Prof. Sven Cvek
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective
Semester: 2nd or 3rd year of undegraduate studies
Enrollment requirements: student must be registered in the 3rd semester
Course description: This course centers on some crucial aspects of US postmodernism, such as a transforming relationship between “popular” and “high” culture, inquiries into the exchanges between historiography and fiction, and questions of availability of critical positions in the “late-capitalist” society. The course will focus on selected US postmodern novels, their interpretations, and their interactions with various forms of popular culture (textual, visual, musical), commonly understood either as sites of authentic expression of “the people,” or as fundamentally inauthentic products of an alienating culture industry. The discussion will include issues of: the distinction between mass and popular culture, consumerism, culture industry and cultural amnesia, simulacra, culture as a question of identity, globalization and Americanization.
Objectives: students will learn about the important cultural, social and political aspects of American postmodernism and their relation to the literary production of the period. The course also aims at preparing the students for a critical, contextually and theoretically informed reading of the novels, with a special emphasis on approaches informed by cultural studies.
Course requirements: regular attendance, written test, essay paper.
Week by week schedule: TBA
Reading: Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (or another novel); Willam Gibson, Neuromancer; Don DeLillo, White Noise; Art Spiegelman, Maus; Douglas Coupland, Generation X; Thomas Pynchon, Vineland; Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues. Students will also be required to read the course reader (about 200 pages) that provides the historical context and theoretical background for the course.
Victorian Literature: Genres and Issues (arch.)
Course title: Victorian Literature: Genres and Issues
before 2020/21
Instructor: Prof. Borislav Knežević
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective
Semester: 3rd and 5th, 4th and 6th
Enrollment requirements: Introduction to English Literature
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, gender ideologies, 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 a written essay at the end of term (5-6) pages, a mid-term quiz and a quiz at the end of term.
Week by week schedule:
1. week: Introduction
2. week: Poetry Tennyson
3. week: Poetry: Robert Browning; Elizabeth Barrett Browning
4. week: The novel: Dickens. Great Expectations
5. week: Dickens, Great Expectations. Gaskell, “Our Society at Cranford”
6. week: Gaskell, North and South.
7 week: First Quiz. Gaskell, North and South
8 week: Gaskell. Cannadine
9 week: Social ethnography: Frances Trollope. Thackeray. Mayhew. Social criticism: Carlyle.
10 week: Ruskin. J.S. Mill
11 week: Criticism: Arnold. Essay due.
12 week: Poetry: Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti
13 week: Poetry: D.G. Rossetti
14 week: Poetry: Arnold
15 week: Second quiz.
Reading:
Required reading:
Poetry:
Alfred Lord Tennyson, ”The Lotos-Eaters,” “Ulyssess,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade”
Elizabeth Barret Browning, from Sonnets from the Portuguese
Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess,” “Love Among the Ruins”
Matthew Arnold, ”Dover Beach,” “The Buried Life”
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “The Blessed Damozel,” “The Burden of Nineveh”
Nonfiction prose:
Thomas Carlyle, “Signs of the Times,” “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)
Novels:
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
Optional reading:
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor
J.S. Mill, from The Subjection of Women
Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market”
Raymond Williams, “People of the City” from The Country and the City
Hilary Schor, “If He Should Turn to Beat Her: Violence, Desire and the Woman’s Story
in The Great Expectations”
Jay Clayton, “Is Pip Postmodern? Or, Dickens at the End of the Twentieth Century”
Edward Said, “Dickens and Australia”
David Cannadine, “A Viable Hierarchical Society,” from The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain
Contemporary American Novel (arch.)
Course title: Contemporary American Novel
Instructor: Prof. Stipe Grgas
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:
John Barth, The book of Ten Nights and a Night
Don DeLillo, Falling Man
Jonathan Foer, Extremely Loud &Incredibly Close
Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
DeLillo, Cosmopolis
Cormac Mc Carthy, The Road
Beginnings of the Modern Novel in the Early 18th-century England
Course title: Beginnings of the Modern Novel in the Early 18th-century England
Instructor: Assoc. Prof. Vanja Polić
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 4th or 6th semester
Status: elective
Enrolment requirements: completed Introduction to English literature, enrolment in the 4th or 6th semester
Course description: The course will acquaint the students with historical, social and cultural aspects of the 18th century England with a special focus on those social-historical traits which fostered the emergence of the modern novel. Within this broader context representative novels will be studied in more detail, such as Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe, Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and others. In the course the main tenets of the novel genre will be analyzed, as well as the types of the novel existent on the early 18th century literary scene. The phenomenon of the contemporary popularity of the genre will also be discussed, and its struggle to become accepted into the highbrow literature.
Objectives: The aim of the course is to acquaint students with a period of English literary history and to teach them about the genre of the novel by studying the emergence of those novelistic tenets which will later become characteristic of the genre.
Course requirements: The final grade is based on continuous assessment which includes regular attendance, preparation for and participation in class, writing small assignments, timely submission of the final paper, and obligatory sitting for midterm and endterm exam. The paper is worth 35%, midterm and endterm exams are worth 50% and other elements of continuous assessment are worth 15% of the final grade. Students must meet all requirements of continuous assessment.
The exact date of the mid-term exam is defined in cooperation with the students. Topics for the main written assignment (student paper) are selected during week 8.
Week by week schedule
WEEK 1: introduction into the social, cultural and economic circumstances of the early 18th century
WEEK 2: key theories about the emergence of the modern novel
WEEK 3: pretexts of the English novel
WEEK 4: history, historiography or story – what is the novel genre in 18th c.
WEEK 5: Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
WEEK 6: Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe
WEEK 7: mid-term exam and paper topics
WEEK 8: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
WEEK 9: Swift continued
WEEK 10: Henry Fielding, the father of the novel, Tom Jones
WEEK 11: Fielding continued, Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews
WEEK12: Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
WEEK 13: Sterne continued
WEEK 14: final remarks, end-term exam
Reading list:
Novels:
Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe – selections
Fielding, Henry. Joseph Andrews – selections
Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones – selections
Sterne, Laurence. Tristram Shandy
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels
Theory:
Hunter, J. Paul, Before Novels, The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth Century English Fiction
McKeon, Michael, The Origins of the English Novel 1600-1740
Richetti, John J., ed, The Cambridge Companion to The Eighteenth Century Novel
Richetti, John J., Popular Fiction Before Richardson, Narrative Patterns 1700-1739
Richetti, John J., The English Novel in History 1700-1780
Spencer, Jane, The Rise of the Woman Novelist, From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen
Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel
Williams, Ioan, ed, Novel and Romance 1700-1800
Žmegač, Viktor, Povijesna poetika romana