Graduate Courses, Summer 2004
Times and locations of class meetings are subject to change. Consult the UF Schedule of Courses for an explanation of the class period abbreviations.
Summer Session A
| Course no. | Time(s) | Course title | Instructor |
|---|---|---|---|
 ENG
6855 |
TBA | Blake, Newton, & Disney: Re-Thinking the Myth of Cultural Paradigms | Ault |
| ENG
6276 |
TBA | The Joyce of Cultural Studies | Kershner |
ENG 6855
Blake, Newton, and Disney: Re-Thinking the Myth of Cultural Paradigms
Though it will deal with many additional related texts, this seminar will use the names (and detailed analysis of the works) of Blake, Newton, and Disney as a springboard to study the extent to which academic scholarship has circumscribed and homogenized fields such as Romanticism, the history of science, and popular culture and has thus been complicit with ways these conceptual myths have reductively circulated through world culture. Each of the figures exemplifies a central – sometimes dominant, sometimes residual – cultural myth: the ideology of the individualized, alienated, anti-industrialized artist (Blake), the ideology of the exemplary scientific mind initiating a breakthrough discovery that constitutes a “scientific revolution” which initiates a new stage in industrialization (Newton), and the ideology of the industrial corporation standing at the forefront of media invention and tapping into “natural” utopian desires of an emerging mass audience (Disney). In each case we will be looking at how these paradigms have come to dominate both popular and academic discourse and the ways in which detailed analysis of actual productions emanating from these and analogous cultural sites can serve to call widespread paradigms into question, just as the issue of “paradigm” itself will come under scrutiny. Additional texts will include other “Romantic” poetry including that of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Byron, scientific writings, including works by Berkeley, Leibniz, and Voltaire, and productions of other “culture industry” studios such as Warner Brothers. We will be looking at a variety of critical positions that have been taken toward these fields of research.
Requirements: Keeping up with the reading, participating productively in seminar discussions, and submitting a final project, which may involve creative as well as analytical dimensions.
ENL 6276
The Joyce of Cultural Studies
This course will mostly consist in a read-through of Portrait of the Artist followed by Ulysses. We will concentrate on a variety of cultural studies perspectives; work by Barthes, Benjamin, Jameson, de Certeau, Foucault, and several post-colonial critics will be on reserve. Brief oral reports and a fifteen-page paper will be required.