Graduate of English Language and Literature
Fu Jen Catholic University

Curriculum: Spring 2008

Senior Thesis/4 credits

English Writing II and Independent Study/3 credits/Dr. Raphael Schulte & Dr. Kate Liu

Pre-Requisites: students taking this course should
1) have a thesis topic(s) in mind, and
2) have finished 1/2 of the course work (15 credits).

English Writing II aims to prepare students for the major task and challenge in the MA program of the English department, Fu Jen, before graduation: MA thesis writing.

An MA thesis in our program is a long piece of writing which makes a clearly defined argument on some literary work(s) in response to the existing critical scholarship of the chosen author/field. In the thesis, the argument is elaborated and substantiated in a sequence of interconnected chapters, where students demonstrate their competence in logical thinking and academic critical writing, as well as their firm grasp of the chosen texts, their related historical and critical contexts. Last but not the least, students’ formal and stylistic presentation follows the guidelines set out in the MLA Handbook.

To prepare students for such an exciting but challenging job, this course is divided into two parts: 1) an independent study with students’ thesis advisors and 2) writing practice in a research community. The two parts are described below:

1) independent study with students’ thesis advisors—on preparing for the major exam, selecting major texts and their contexts, and, possibly, forming a major question/argument, (6 hours altogether or 27/number of students. e.g. 24-27/3 = 8-9 hours for each students.) *IIf the students do not have a thesis advisor yet, the writing teacher helps—though it is strongly advisable that the students find their advisors before class.

Tentative Schedule:

1 wk before the semester starts	Students get their major/thesis advisors’ agreement.
1st Month	A “tentative” reading list with objective and a meeting schedule given to the department as well as “the writing teacher.” * possible objectives: (can be more than one) 1) major exam preparation 2) major exam topic selection 3) thesis proposal
The term	3 meetings at least. Objective(s) reached at the end of the semester or before the beginning of the following semester.
End of the term (first day of the following semester)	-- Final grade due.

2) writing practice in a research community: on writing (logical thinking included), MLA format, presentation and critical response. 27 hours

Assignments: a paper proposal, a short text analysis and one final paper (Ideally, the first two should be preparatory writings for the final paper.) If possible, formal paper presentation

Tentative Schedule

Wk 1 – wk 4	Text analysis 2 meetings – 1) text analysis; 2) criticism review
Wk 5 - wk 8	Paper/thesis proposal 3 meetings 1) context and framework 2) argument and scholarship review 3) proposal finalized and MLA format check
Wk 9 – wk 12	Final Paper draft 1 2 meetings 1) outline critique 2) peer response
Wk 13 – wk 18	Final Paper draft 2 and Presentation 2 meetings 1) language review 2) presentation

Canadian Postmodernism and Postcolonialism in the Context of Globalization: Margaret Atwood, SKY Lee and Larissa Lai as Examples/3 credits/Dr. Kate Liu

“For if you are Canadian, home is a place that is not home to you - it is even less your home than the imperial centre you used to dream about.” Dennis Lee

The issue of “home” and identity has been a dominant one in Canadian literature—whether in its early nationalist definitions (Margaret Atwood--victim mentality, Northrop Frye --garrison mentality, Dennis Lee -- namelessness, spacelessness and Robert Kroestch-- Disunity as unity), amidst the recent voices of minority writers, or in the writers’ responses to the rapid flows in globalization. This issue can be placed in the intersections of postmodernism and postcolonialism, both using strategies of mimicry, parody, irony and allegory to contest the center and challenge fixed identities. This course chooses Margaret Atwood in the canonical center, and two Chinese-Canadian novelists, SKY Lee and Larissa Lai, to examine how their novels use various postmodern and postcolonial strategies to construct ‘home’ and identity.

The central questions we raise are:
-- Where is “home”? How is it delineated spatially and temporally?
-- How are the female characters positioned in their “homes”?
-- How is identity constructed in response to colonial and patriarchal oppression and global flows of people, commodities and cultures?
-- What writing strategies are used to de/construct identity? How are the genres of histriographical metafiction and science fiction used?

Tentative Schedule:

1. Postmodernism and Canadian Postmodernism: General Introduction

2. Canadian Postmodernism: Margaret Atwood’s Poems as Examples

3. Atwood -- The Handmaid’s Tale: Women’s Positions and The Female Artist’s Growth

4. Atwood -- The Handmaid’s Tale as Historiographical Metafiction

5. Atwood -- The Blind Assassin: Women’s Positions

6. Atwood -- The Blind Assassin: as Historiographical Metafiction

7. Atwood -- The Blind Assassin: Science Fiction

8. Atwood -- The Blind Assassin: The Female Artists in a Global City

9. Postmodernism vs. Postcolonialism

10. Theories of Canadian Postcolonialisms: Dionne Brand’s Poems and Some Chinese Canadian Poems as Examples

11. SKY Lee – Disappearing Moon Café as Historiographical Metafiction

12. SKY Lee – Disappearing Moon Café The Female Artist as a Migrant

13. Larissa Lai – Salt Fish Girl: Women’s Positions Past and Future

14. Larissa Lai – Salt Fish Girl: Global Mix vs. Postcolonial Hybridity

15. Conclusion: Canadian Literature in the Era of Globalization: Multiple Voices
    (One Possibility: Online Discussion with Larissa Lai and/or Diane Brydon)

16. Paper Presentation

Work Cited:

Lee, Dennis. “Cadence, Country, Silence: Writing in Colonial Space.” boundary 2, Vol. 3, No. 1, A Canadian Issue (Autumn, 1974), pp. 151-168.

Requirements:

1. leading a one-hour discussion with questions and quotations
2. an oral presentation
3. final paper

Reference:

Brydon, Diana. Canadian Writers Negotiating Home Within Global Imaginaries (part of a book length project on "Writing Home") http://myuminfo.umanitoba.ca/Documents/1169/Negotiating%20Home.pdf

---. “Transforming Knowledges: global interactions in Canadian space.” http://myuminfo.umanitoba.ca/Documents/i1402/TransformingKnowldedges.pdf

Davey, Frank. Post-National Arguments: The Politics of the Anglophone-Canadian Novels since 1967. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1993.

Hutcheon, Linda. The Canadian Postmodern: A Study of Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction. Oxford University Press, 1988.

Moss, John, ed. Future Indicative: Literary Theory and Canadian Literature. Ottawa: U of Ottawa P; 1987.

Moss, Laura. Is Canada postcolonial?: Unsettling Canadian literature. Waterloo, Ont : Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2003.

Sugars, Cynthia. Unhomely states: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Peterborough, Ont: Broadview Press, 2004.

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Friends, Family, and Lovers in Shakespeare/3 credits/Dr. Raphael Schulte

This course will not address a specific genre among Shakespeare’s plays; instead, the course will focus on plays (including at least one history play, two comedies, three tragedies, and one late romance) that share common thematic concerns, especially various forms and views on human relationships and interconnections. We may also explore issues of religious practices, Renaissance philosophy, gender formation, sexual identity, language usage, and power structures present in the plays and within the social and political contexts of Elizabethan and Jacobean history and how they interplay with the web of links between people.

The reading list for the course is not firmly set and is negotiable. So if there are plays that interested students prefer to read, please let me know. We may also discuss some of the sonnets. At present, I am planning to focus discussion primarily on Richard III, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Titus Andronicus, As You Like It, Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Winter’s Tale. As always, I welcome student input in our choice of texts and am willing to help students outside of class to understand better the texts we read and offer help with the paper(s) they write.

Each student will be responsible for three in-class presentations. In one of the presentations, you will lead the discussion of a particular aspect of the play being addressed; in the second, you will briefly summarize and critique a recent critical writing about the play under discussion; in the third, you will apply a critical methodology of your choice to some aspect(s) of the play we will discuss that week. You may be expected to write regular response journals. You will have the choice of writing two papers (the first due during midterm week; the second due at the end of the semester) or one long paper due at the end of the semester. You will also be expected to fully engage in class discussions. Your final grade for the semester will be based on the assigned writings, presentations, participation in class discussion, and attendance.

I prefer students to read from the Riverside Shakespeare (second edition), but any scholarly edition of Shakespeare’s plays will be acceptable.

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Sex and Sin: Two Sides of Restoration Literature: An On-Line Graduate Seminar/3 credits/Dr. Marguerite Connor

Experimentation in Film, Text and Performance/3 credits/Dr. Kurt Cline

Narcissism and the Novel/1 credit/Dr. Jeffery Berman

This course will be a brief introduction to psychoanalytic theory focusing on narcissism. In particular we'll discuss the differences between healthy and pathological love, idealization and devaluation, grandiosity, splitting, the double, and transference and countertransference. We'll then show how an awareness of narcissism theory can help illuminate several major English novels, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Emily Bronte's Wuthering heights, Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers.

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中國文學與文化心理/3 credits/Mr. Hsieh

Please click here to download the course description.

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