Graduate of English Language and Literature
Fu Jen Catholic University

Curriculum: Spring 2009

Senior Thesis/4 credits

Independent Study/3 credits/Bro. Nicholas Koss

There is no description for this course. Please feel free to contact the teacher if you have any questions.

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Witchcraft in Literature/3 credits/Prof. Cecilia Liu

Course Overview:

In a culture where the supernatural possessed an immediacy now strange to us, magic was of great importance both in the literary and mythic tradition and in ritual practice. Recently, ancient magic has hit a high in popularity, both as an area of scholarly inquiry and as one of general, popular interest. From the witch-hunts of medieval times to the attempts to ban Harry Potter in our own day, the idea of witchcraft has been a lightening rod for social and cultural anxieties and these discomforts and fantasies as they appear in literature are our focus for this course. Stories about witchcraft and witch-hunts do not spring from a vacuum, they are integrally connected to the cultural forces which surround them. Therefore, in this course we will be reading not only the written stories about witchcraft, but we will also be exploring other types of texts. Some of these will be primary sources, such as the manual for witch-hunters, the Malleus Malleficum and the transcripts of the Salem Witch Trials. Other types will be cultural representations of witches and witchcraft in image and film, as well as in literature. The readings and coursework will help us consider the gender, political, and social debates surrounding the figure of the witch through history and through a variety of cultures and will help us reflect on why a preoccupation with witchcraft surfaces again and again in very different cultural contexts.

Tentative Course Texts (in the reading order)

Marlowe, Christopher. Dr. Faustus. The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe. Ed. Gill Roma. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990.

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth: Texts and Contexts. Ed. William C. Carroll. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. Arthur Miller's Collected Plays. New York: Viking, 1957.

Picoult, Jodi. Salem Falls. New York: Washington Square Press, 2002.

Churchill, Caryl. Vinegar Tom in Plays: One. New York: Routledge, 1985. 127-79.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Scholastic, 2002.

And other excerpts and handouts.

Requirements

1. Regular attendance with preparation and active class participation is expected. The best way to have a fun and exciting class is for each of us to come prepared for discussion and to be willing to risk speaking out when we have something to say. Please plan on contributing to the fullest in whole class and small group work.
2. Group Presentation: Most of our class time will be spent in sharing ideas and discussion, so each group of 2-3 will be responsible for two in-class oral presentations (contingent on the class size). For this presentation, each group will be choosing a representation of witches, witchcraft, or witch-hunting to analyze as a group. These representations may be from TV, film, books, physical spaces…the list is open to your groups' creativity. Your group will then look for information to effectively analyze the cultural significance of your representation; you will ultimately present the example and research to the rest of the class in some dynamic way. In/before class, you’ll have to provide handouts, including bibliography references.
3. Reading Journals: Each week you will be writing short journal-entry type responses to the reading and to others' ideas about what we've read. In order to facilitate an interactive, rather than static, type of response, we will be using an electronic forum to post and respond. I hope that we will be able to hear as many of everyone's ideas as possible.

Grading system:
Class Participation/Collaboration 10%
Reading Journals 30%
Individual Report 20%
Group Presentation 20%

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Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences/3 credits/Dr. Raphael Schulte

This course will focus on several of the sonnet sequences published at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth. With the publication of Sir Philip Sydney’s sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella in 1591, the popularity of the English sonnet and the sonnet sequence began. This course will examine in detail three of the most influential sequences published within a twenty-year period: Sydney’s Astrophil and Stella, Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti in 1595, and Shakespeare’s Sonnets in 1609. Also, if students are interested, we can look in detail at Lady Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, published in 1621, to see how a female poet dealt with the sonnet sequence. We will also look briefly at some sonnets by Sir Thomas Wyatt, John Donne, George Herbert, and John Milton. This course will both examine the nature and structure of the sonnet and sonnet sequences, as well as closely examine the various uses of the sonnet form by several Renaissance poets.

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Screening Literature: British Novel and Film/3 credits/Dr. Marguerite Connor

Theory of Subjectivity: Exploring the Self through Literary Theories and Practice/3 credits/Dr. Doris L.W. Chang

Course Objectives:

In this course, we shall survey and explore theories about subjectivity in various theoretical contexts: from classical and pre-modern discourse on identity/subjectivity to those elaborated in modern and post-modern thinkers such as Wollstonecraft, Nietzsche, Freud, Lacan, Althusser, Foucault, Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattari, and Haraway. We shall mainly rely on secondary text by Donald Hall and Nick Mansfield for the survey, and focus on psychoanalytic perspectives on subjectivity from Freud to Lacan and Kristeva. Along with our exploration, articles that put these theories into practice will also be examined and discussed as demonstrations of how these theoretical discourses can enrich our reading experiences of literature.

You can choose to read and report on a primary theoretical text by any thinker above as you may find him/her more stimulating for your reading of the literary texts you are working on.

Tentative Course Requirements:

1. Keep a weekly reading journal that discusses your response to the survey on theories of subjectivity. By the end of the semester, try to come up with your own elaboration on what “subjectivity” means to you.
2. Present an in-class report of a primary theoretical text you choose from the syllabus.
3. In-class report of an application article that employs the theory you choose to report on.
4. Submit a 10-15 page term paper at the end of the semester and present it at the mock conference of our course.
5. All students are encouraged to finish all the reading before class and participate actively in class discussions.

Tentative Syllabus (subject to change)

wk	Focus
1	Course Introduction: Subjectivity in Lit. Theory
2	What is Subjectivity? Classical and Pre-modern Identities The Early Modern Era and Enlightenment The Free and Autonomous Individual
3	The 19th C & Early 20th C Freud and the Split Subject Class Subjectivity Nietzsche and the Existentialists
4	Lacan: The Subject is Language Althusser
5	Foucault: The Subject and Power Foucault and the Discourse Theory
6	Femininity Wollstonecraft and Early Feminist Subjectivity The Politics of Gender and Sexuality
7	Kristeva and Abjection: The Subject as a Process
8	Kristeva’ Theory of Subjectivity
9	Radical Sexuality: from Perverse to Queer Masculinity: Saving the Post-Oedipal World
10	Subjectivity and Ethnicity: Otherness, Policy, Colonialism Race and Postcoloniality
11	Deleuze and Guattari: Rhizomatics
12	The Subject and Technology Haraway and Cyborg Subjectivity
13	The Subject and Postmodernism
14	Post-modernism and the Question of Agency
15	Individual Conference for Final Project
16	Individual Conference for Final Project
17	Final Project Presentations
18	Final Project Presentations

Selected Bibliography

Hall, Donald. Subjectivity (New Critical Idiom). New York: Routledge, 2004. [ISBN-10: 0415287618 ]

Mansfield, Nick: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway. New York: New York UP, 2001. ISBN-10: 0814756514

Selden, Raman, et. al. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. 5th Ed. Application. New York: Pearson, 2005.

Recommended Application Articles

Fiction: Frankenstein (19th C)

Berman, Jeffery. “Frankenstein; or the Modern Narcissus” Narcissism and the Novel. New York: New York UP, 1990. 56-77.

Poetry: Wordsworth: “Prelude” (19th C)

Robbins, Ruth. “Two Romantic Egos: Wordsworth’s Prelude and De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater” Subjectivity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 50-60.

Drama: All’s Well that Ends Well (1602-4)

Asp, Carolyn. “Subjectivity, Desire, and Female Friendship in All’s Well that Ends Well. Ed. Gary Waller. Shakespeare’s Comedies. New York: Longman, 1991. 175-192

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Translation seminar/3 credits/Fr. Daniel Bauer

The purpose of this course is to offer students an opportunity to learn a fundamental amount of theory that is useful in the doing of literary translation, and to help them to develop and sharpen translation skills by the doing of translation. Approximately 80% of the work we will be do will move from the source language of Chinese into the target language of English. While the instructor will be the primary evaluator and commentator for these assignments, students will lead the way when the seminar deals with the translation of English materials into Chinese. The seminar focuses on literary translation, not general translation. Students will be allowed to choose their own materials for about half of the assignments. Although the amount of translation per week may vary, a working goal of 2 1/2 – 3 pages per student each week seems reasonable. All material will be revised at least once. The instructor will offer coaching of individual translators as much as time permits. A textbook may be used.

Questions? Please contact the instructor by e-mail 015130@mail.fju.edu.tw.

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Otherness in Nineteenth-century British Culture and Society/3 credits/Dr. Petros Dovolis

This course introduces students to the study of Otherness in pre-Twentieth British literature. The notion of the Other is a fairly recent theoretical concept which has significantly influenced the field of Literary Criticism. After a necessary introduction to the concept of otherness and its impact upon literary analysis, students will be given the opportunity to actively reflect upon the role of the Other in the making of pre-twentieth British literature and society. Different types of materials (literary, autobiographical, journalistic etc) of the 19th century period will be read in order to establish how nineteenth-century England was the product of collision and negotiation with real and imaginary aliens, outcasts or misfits. As part of preparing students for the successful completion of the MA thesis, a crucial underlying objective for this course is to offer a systematic training in how to critically identify and discuss otherness in any piece of literature, regardless of the period it was written in.

The figure of the Jew has been selected as the specific topic of investigation in this course. The work of Dickens exemplifies how the Nineteenth Century was a period peculiarly able to entertain both demonizing and positive representations of the Jew. A crucial concern of this course will be to identify the historical and literary contours of this double-mindedness. This is meant to benefit both participants specializing in 19th century literature and those who will go on to research other literary periods. The former students will become aware of the extent to which, in the 19th century, reflection on the Jewish question involved a crucial political clash between conservatism and liberalism (in terms of moral, social, political and religious attitudes). Thus, future nineteenth-century scholars will learn how to identify the criteria of belonging that shaped the identity of Britain as a nation. However, participants whose research interests are not related to the study of the 19th century have much to gain too. ‘The Jew’ occupied a real but problematic position in relation to social, cultural and gendered prejudice. Analysis of Benjamin Disraeli’s Coningsby (1844), Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist (1837), and Anthony Trollope’s The Prime Minister (1874) can and will lead students to discuss the representation of the social Other in concrete terms and in relation to wider and perennial concerns over race, politics, gender, social status, ethics and so on.

Full Texts*:
Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1837)
Disraeli, Benjamin. Coningsby (1844)
Trollope, Anthony. The Prime Minister (1874)
* Editions to be used will be communicated at a later date.

Texts (Excerpts)
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant Of Venice
Marlowe, Christopher. The Jew of Malta

Secondary Material:
Will be announced and provided by the course instructor throughout the course.

Requirements AND Grading
In class Presentation (ASSESSED) 30%
Class Participation 20 %
Term paper 50 %

Presentation:
Each student will be required to give a presentation on a weekly assigned secondary reading. They have the option of using PowerPoint or using a Printed handout, Regardless of their choice, the material must be distributed to all students during/ after the presentation. A copy of their notes must be submitted to the course instructor for assessment.

Class participation:
Students must read, take notes, formulate questions on the primary (literary) and secondary (critical) material assigned them from week to week. Their ability to do the reading and give feedback on and engage with the issues discussed in each seminar will be part of their overall performance score.

Term Paper
Students will be given the opportunity to write a 10-15 page essay on any of the issues discussed throughout the course. Students can choose to analyze literary works of the period which were not covered in the course but their argument should also provide a sustained reflection of at least one of the primary literary texts. Their argument and bibliography should show an understanding of some of the secondary material used in the course as well as demonstrate independently pursued research.

Seminar Schedule

Week 1:	INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE: Otherness, the Jew and influential representational precedents. Marlowe’s Barabas and Shakespeare’s Shylock
Week 2:	19th century reception of The Merchant of Venice, The notion of Assimilation of the Other
Week 3:	Disraeli’s Coningsby, part 1
Week 4:	Disraeli’s Coningsby, part 2
Week 5:	Disraeli’s Coningsby, part 3
Week 6:	Disraeli’s Coningsby, part 4
Week 7:	Disraeli’s Coningsby, part 5
Week 8:	Dickens’ Oliver Twist, part 1
Week 9:	Dickens’ Oliver Twist, part 2
Week 10:	Dickens’ Oliver Twist, part 3
Week 11:	Dickens’ Oliver Twist, part 4
Week 12:	Dickens’ Oliver Twist, part 5
Week 13:	Dickens’ Oliver Twist, part 6
Week 14:	Trollope’s The Prime Minister, part 1
Week 15:	Trollope’s The Prime Minister, part 2
Week 16:	Trollope’s The Prime Minister, part 3
Week 17:	Trollope’s The Prime Minister, part 4
Week 18:	Trollope’s The Prime Minister, part 5

Useful Secondary reading list

Ahmed, Sara. Differences That Matter: Feminist Theory and Postmodernism. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Baucom, Ian. Out of Place: Englishness, Empire, and the Locations of Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Bhabha, Homi. ‘The Other Question: Stereotype and Colonial Discourse,’ Screen 24. November-december, 1983. 18-36.

Brace, C. Loring. "Race" Is a Four-Letter Word: The Genesis of the Concept. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Brustein, William I. Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe before the Holocaust. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Endelman, Todd M. The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.

Endelman, Todd M. The Jews of Georgian England, 1714-1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society. 1st ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1979.

Finch, Harold. The Dual Image: A Study of the Jew in English Literature. London: 1959.

Finkielkraut, Alain. The Imaginary Jew: Le Juif Imaginaire. Trans. Kevin R. O'Neill and David Suchoff. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

Frankel, Jonathan, ed. Jews and Gender: The Challenge to Hierarchy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Gilman, Sander L. Love + Marriage = Death: And Other Essays on Representing Difference. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.

Gilman, Sander L. Smart Jews: The Construction of the Image of Jewish Superior Intelligence. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

Grebanier, Bernard. The Truth about Shylock. New York: Random House, 1962.

Judaken, Jonathan. Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question: Anti-Antisemitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.

Kagan, Henry Enoch. Changing the Attitude of Christian toward Jew: A Psychological Approach through Religion. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952.

Kearney, Richard. Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Ideas of Otherness. London: Routledge, 2002.

Medding, Peter Y., ed. Jews and Violence: Images, Ideologies, Realities. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Mendelsohn, Ezra, ed. People of the City: Jews and the Urban Challenge. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Modder, Montagu Frank. The Jew in the Literature of England to the End of the 19th Century. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1939.

Olster, David M. Roman Defeat, Christian Response, and the Literary Construction of the Jew. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.

Pinson, Koppel S., ed. Essays on Antisemitism. New York: Conference on Jewish Relations, 1942.

Ragussis, Michael. Figures of Conversion: The Jewish Question & English National Identity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.

Reizbaum, Marilyn. James Joyce's Judaic Other. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Ring, Jennifer. The Political Consequences of Thinking : Gender and Judaism in the Work of Hannah Arendt /. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998.

Rosenberg, Edgar. From Shylock to Svengali: Jewish stereotypes in English Fiction. Stanford, 1960.

Scheinberg, Cynthia. Women's Poetry and Religion in Victorian England: Jewish Identity and Christian Culture. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Turnbull, Malcolm J. Victims or Villains: Jewish Images in Classic English Detective Fiction. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1998.

Vital, David. A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Willett, Herbert L. The Jew through the Centuries. Chicago: Willett, Clark and Company, 1932.

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