ENG 3014: Theories of Literature

What is theory? A theory is an account of what things are, why they are the way they are, and how and why they work. A "thing" can be a physical thing, like a person or book, or an abstract concept, like the proletariat or being or love.

From Wikipedia:

The English word theory was derived from a technical term in philosophy. in Ancient Greek. As an everyday word, theoria. θεωρία, meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", but in more technical contexts it came to refer to contemplative. or speculative. understandings of natural things. such as those of natural philosophers. as opposed to more practical ways of knowing things, like that of skilled orators or artisans. The word has been in use in English since at least the late 16th century. Modern uses of the word "theory" are derived from the original definition, but have taken on new shades of meaning, still based on the idea that a theory is a thoughtful and rational explanation of the general nature of things.

In this course, we will explore the question of how and why literary and other texts work as they do, but also we will explore and practice thinking. Intended as a survey of critical theory, this course is about how to think about and through literature. We are learning to think because thinking for ourselves is better than having other people do our thinking for us.

The discourses of theory in the 20th century and into the 21st include formalist, psychological, Marxist, feminist, semiotic, structuralist, post-structuralist, gender and queer, ecocriticism, and cultural studies areas such as new historicism, postcolonialism, and multiculturalism. We will examine works of literature using each theoretical discourse as a lens through which to view and understand them. Additionally, we will take time in the middle of the semester to gain a better understanding of interpretation itself.

ENG 3014 is designated as a Research-Intensive (RI) course. This designation will be noted on your transcripts. Your active engagement in the research and/or creative scholarship process will be the core of your learning experience in this course. A significant portion of your grade for ENG 3014 will be derived from both your active participation in the research process and the tangible course-related project(s) that comes out of said project. If you have any questions about this designation, please ask your course instructor.

ENG 3014 is also a Gordon Rule course. It contains 6000 words of evaluated writing as required by the English Department. Each has the following characteristics:

1.      The writing will have a clearly defined central idea or thesis

2.      It will provide adequate support for that idea

3.      It will be organized clearly and logically

4.      It will show awareness of the conventions of standard written English

5.      It will be formatted or presented in an appropriate way

LIT3212-24Spring 0W61

Course Description

LIT 3212: Research and Writing about Literature

Catalog Description: Research and Writing about Literature (LIT 3212) This course is designed to teach literary research and writing skills. PR: Grade of “C” (2.0) or better required in ENC 1102 or C.I. Research, writing, and critical analysis skills applicable to upper-level English courses. 3 credit hours

LIT 3212 is designated as a Research-Intensive (RI) course. This designation will be noted on your transcripts. Your active engagement in the research and/or creative scholarship process will be the core of your learning experience in this course. A significant portion of your grade for LIT 3212 will be derived from both your active participation in the research process and the tangible course-related project(s) that comes out of said project. If you have any questions about this designation, please ask your course instructor.

Detailed Description: This course walks you through the process of conducting literary research while helping to refine your library skills. Along the way, we will draw from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Framework. According to the ACRL, “Research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers lead to additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field.” We will discuss this concept more in-depth throughout the course. Your goal in the course is to produce a research paper suitable for publication in a literary studies journal.

The course will also focus on a research project created by Jada, an English major who conducted a literary study of James Baldwin’s classic short story, “Sonny’s Blues.”

The basic textbook we will be using for our class is Strategies for Conducting Literary Research, 2e. It has loads of concepts and vocabulary, some of which you may not have encountered before. In a research-based course, your instructor will require you to write a research paper of 8-12 pages, but the knowledge you need to perform this task can fill up dozens of pages. Writing about literature is a complicated, often messy process; it needs to meet high standards while incorporating knowledge from other fields such as psychology, history, science, and other arts. It entails knowledge about language, genre, structures, styles, and more. To produce good research about literature, we need to know a lot of things about a lot of things!

Although we will discuss the research process in a linear fashion throughout this course, you’ll find that, in practice, literary research is a highly recursive process. We’re constantly circling back through the process as we write. Because writing instructors are locked into presenting the writing process in a linear way, we tend to discuss it in terms of stages such as preliminary research, drafting, revising, and so on. But writing a research paper requires us to rethink and redo our work at any stage. It’s not uncommon for writers to be in the middle of proofreading (one of the final stages) and realize they need to go back and gather more research. Though this course focuses on research about literature, the skills and knowledge in these chapters apply to many other areas and topics, especially in the humanities.

Key Objectives for This Course

·         Read disciplinary texts and develop a “toolbox” of content knowledge, core principles, and practices. 

·         Improve research, interpretation, writing, and argumentation skills about literary texts and society by obtaining, critically evaluating, and synthesizing scholarly literature and relevant data. 

·         Implement appropriate methodologies to address key research problems.

·         Gain communication skills through the dissemination of the research (process and product) in appropriate formats and venues, including professional journals and platforms in literary studies.

·         A more granular breakdown of course objectives is below:

o    Understand the assignment 

o    Identify a research problem 

o    Develop audience awareness

o    Enter a scholarly conversation

o    Understand theory’s integral role within humanities research

o    Understand how theory relates to particular research methodologies and methods for gathering evidence

o    Learn to use online library catalogs, database search strategies, library services, citation management, and search alerts

o    Evaluate source credibility

o    Posit your research question

o    Posit a thesis statement

o    Compose a title

o    Define your key terms

o    Write persuasively

o    Write academic prose

o    Steer clear of plagiarism

“Research & Writing about Literature” is a Gordon Rule course, which means you will produce at least 6000 words of evaluated writing as required by the English Department. Each Gordon Rule assignment has the following characteristics:

1.      The writing will have a clearly defined central idea or thesis.

2.      It will provide adequate support for that idea

3.      It will be organized clearly and logically

4.      It will show awareness of the conventions of standard written English

5.      It will be formatted or presented in an appropriate way

Note that our course discussions will take place in Yellowdig, a social media type application.  You are free to use any of the questions there or to post your own questions and topics.

ENG 3014: Theories of Literature

What is theory? A theory is an account of what things are, why they are the way they are, and how and why they work. A "thing" can be a physical thing, like a person or book, or an abstract concept, like the proletariat or being or love.

From Wikipedia:

The English word theory was derived from a technical term in philosophy. in Ancient Greek. As an everyday word, theoria. θεωρία, meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", but in more technical contexts it came to refer to contemplative. or speculative. understandings of natural things. such as those of natural philosophers. as opposed to more practical ways of knowing things, like that of skilled orators or artisans. The word has been in use in English since at least the late 16th century. Modern uses of the word "theory" are derived from the original definition, but have taken on new shades of meaning, still based on the idea that a theory is a thoughtful and rational explanation of the general nature of things.

In this course, we will explore the question of how and why literary and other texts work as they do, but also we will explore and practice thinking. Intended as a survey of critical theory, this course is about how to think about and through literature. We are learning to think because thinking for ourselves is better than having other people do our thinking for us.

The discourses of theory in the 20th century and into the 21st include formalist, psychological, Marxist, feminist, semiotic, structuralist, post-structuralist, gender and queer, ecocriticism, and cultural studies areas such as new historicism, postcolonialism, and multiculturalism. We will examine works of literature using each theoretical discourse as a lens through which to view and understand them. Additionally, we will take time in the middle of the semester to gain a better understanding of interpretation itself.

ENG 3014 is designated as a Research-Intensive (RI) course. This designation will be noted on your transcripts. Your active engagement in the research and/or creative scholarship process will be the core of your learning experience in this course. A significant portion of your grade for ENG 3014 will be derived from both your active participation in the research process and the tangible course-related project(s) that comes out of said project. If you have any questions about this designation, please ask your course instructor.

ENG 3014 is also a Gordon Rule course. It contains 6000 words of evaluated writing as required by the English Department. Each has the following characteristics:

1.      The writing will have a clearly defined central idea or thesis

2.      It will provide adequate support for that idea

3.      It will be organized clearly and logically

4.      It will show awareness of the conventions of standard written English

5.      It will be formatted or presented in an appropriate way

LIT3212-24Spring 0W61

Course Description

LIT 3212: Research and Writing about Literature

Catalog Description: Research and Writing about Literature (LIT 3212) This course is designed to teach literary research and writing skills. PR: Grade of “C” (2.0) or better required in ENC 1102 or C.I. Research, writing, and critical analysis skills applicable to upper-level English courses. 3 credit hours

LIT 3212 is designated as a Research-Intensive (RI) course. This designation will be noted on your transcripts. Your active engagement in the research and/or creative scholarship process will be the core of your learning experience in this course. A significant portion of your grade for LIT 3212 will be derived from both your active participation in the research process and the tangible course-related project(s) that comes out of said project. If you have any questions about this designation, please ask your course instructor.

Detailed Description: This course walks you through the process of conducting literary research while helping to refine your library skills. Along the way, we will draw from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Framework. According to the ACRL, “Research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers lead to additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field.” We will discuss this concept more in-depth throughout the course. Your goal in the course is to produce a research paper suitable for publication in a literary studies journal.

The course will also focus on a research project created by Jada, an English major who conducted a literary study of James Baldwin’s classic short story, “Sonny’s Blues.”

The basic textbook we will be using for our class is Strategies for Conducting Literary Research, 2e. It has loads of concepts and vocabulary, some of which you may not have encountered before. In a research-based course, your instructor will require you to write a research paper of 8-12 pages, but the knowledge you need to perform this task can fill up dozens of pages. Writing about literature is a complicated, often messy process; it needs to meet high standards while incorporating knowledge from other fields such as psychology, history, science, and other arts. It entails knowledge about language, genre, structures, styles, and more. To produce good research about literature, we need to know a lot of things about a lot of things!

Although we will discuss the research process in a linear fashion throughout this course, you’ll find that, in practice, literary research is a highly recursive process. We’re constantly circling back through the process as we write. Because writing instructors are locked into presenting the writing process in a linear way, we tend to discuss it in terms of stages such as preliminary research, drafting, revising, and so on. But writing a research paper requires us to rethink and redo our work at any stage. It’s not uncommon for writers to be in the middle of proofreading (one of the final stages) and realize they need to go back and gather more research. Though this course focuses on research about literature, the skills and knowledge in these chapters apply to many other areas and topics, especially in the humanities.

Key Objectives for This Course

·         Read disciplinary texts and develop a “toolbox” of content knowledge, core principles, and practices. 

·         Improve research, interpretation, writing, and argumentation skills about literary texts and society by obtaining, critically evaluating, and synthesizing scholarly literature and relevant data. 

·         Implement appropriate methodologies to address key research problems.

·         Gain communication skills through the dissemination of the research (process and product) in appropriate formats and venues, including professional journals and platforms in literary studies.

·         A more granular breakdown of course objectives is below:

o    Understand the assignment 

o    Identify a research problem 

o    Develop audience awareness

o    Enter a scholarly conversation

o    Understand theory’s integral role within humanities research

o    Understand how theory relates to particular research methodologies and methods for gathering evidence

o    Learn to use online library catalogs, database search strategies, library services, citation management, and search alerts

o    Evaluate source credibility

o    Posit your research question

o    Posit a thesis statement

o    Compose a title

o    Define your key terms

o    Write persuasively

o    Write academic prose

o    Steer clear of plagiarism

“Research & Writing about Literature” is a Gordon Rule course, which means you will produce at least 6000 words of evaluated writing as required by the English Department. Each Gordon Rule assignment has the following characteristics:

1.      The writing will have a clearly defined central idea or thesis.

2.      It will provide adequate support for that idea

3.      It will be organized clearly and logically

4.      It will show awareness of the conventions of standard written English

5.      It will be formatted or presented in an appropriate way

Note that our course discussions will take place in Yellowdig, a social media type application.  You are free to use any of the questions there or to post your own questions and topics.

Catalog Description: Research and Writing about Literature (LIT 3212) This course is designed to teach literary research and writing skills. PR: Grade of “C” (2.0) or better required in ENC 1102 or C.I. Research, writing, and critical analysis skills applicable to upper-level English courses. 3 credit hours

LIT 3212 is designated as a Research-Intensive (RI) course. This designation will be noted on your transcripts. Your active engagement in the research and/or creative scholarship process will be the core of your learning experience in this course. A significant portion of your grade for LIT 3212 will be derived from both your active participation in the research process and the tangible course-related project(s) that comes out of said project. If you have any questions about this designation, please ask your course instructor.

Detailed Description: This course walks you through the process of conducting literary research while helping to refine your library skills. Along the way, we will draw from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Framework. According to the ACRL, “Research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers lead to additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field.” We will discuss this concept more in-depth throughout the course. Your goal in the course is to produce a research paper suitable for publication in a literary studies journal.

The course will also focus on a research project created by Jada, an English major who conducted a literary study of James Baldwin’s classic short story, “Sonny’s Blues.”

The basic textbook we will be using for our class is Strategies for Conducting Literary Research, 2e. It has loads of concepts and vocabulary, some of which you may not have encountered before. In a research-based course, your instructor will require you to write a research paper of 8-12 pages, but the knowledge you need to perform this task can fill up dozens of pages. Writing about literature is a complicated, often messy process; it needs to meet high standards while incorporating knowledge from other fields such as psychology, history, science, and other arts. It entails knowledge about language, genre, structures, styles, and more. To produce good research about literature, we need to know a lot of things about a lot of things!

Although we will discuss the research process in a linear fashion throughout this course, you’ll find that, in practice, literary research is a highly recursive process. We’re constantly circling back through the process as we write. Because writing instructors are locked into presenting the writing process in a linear way, we tend to discuss it in terms of stages such as preliminary research, drafting, revising, and so on. But writing a research paper requires us to rethink and redo our work at any stage. It’s not uncommon for writers to be in the middle of proofreading (one of the final stages) and realize they need to go back and gather more research. Though this course focuses on research about literature, the skills and knowledge in these chapters apply to many other areas and topics, especially in the humanities.

Key Objectives for This Course

·         Read disciplinary texts and develop a “toolbox” of content knowledge, core principles, and practices. 

·         Improve research, interpretation, writing, and argumentation skills about literary texts and society by obtaining, critically evaluating, and synthesizing scholarly literature and relevant data. 

·         Implement appropriate methodologies to address key research problems.

·         Gain communication skills through the dissemination of the research (process and product) in appropriate formats and venues, including professional journals and platforms in literary studies.

·         A more granular breakdown of course objectives is below:

o    Understand the assignment 

o    Identify a research problem 

o    Develop audience awareness

o    Enter a scholarly conversation

o    Understand theory’s integral role within humanities research

o    Understand how theory relates to particular research methodologies and methods for gathering evidence

o    Learn to use online library catalogs, database search strategies, library services, citation management, and search alerts

o    Evaluate source credibility

o    Posit your research question

o    Posit a thesis statement

o    Compose a title

o    Define your key terms

o    Write persuasively

o    Write academic prose

o    Steer clear of plagiarism

“Research & Writing about Literature” is a Gordon Rule course, which means you will produce at least 6000 words of evaluated writing as required by the English Department. Each Gordon Rule assignment has the following characteristics:

1.      The writing will have a clearly defined central idea or thesis.

2.      It will provide adequate support for that idea

3.      It will be organized clearly and logically

4.      It will show awareness of the conventions of standard written English

5.      It will be formatted or presented in an appropriate way

Note that our course discussions will take place in Yellowdig, a social media type application.  You are free to use any of the questions there or to post your own questions and topics.

“The dilemmas of the practical world are fundamentally resistant to policies that neglect the human question.” - Gregory Ulmer

What is theory? A theory is an account of what things are, why they are the way they are, and how and why they work. A "thing" can be a physical thing, like a person or book, or an abstract concept, like the proletariat or being or love.

From Wikipedia:
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in philosophy. in Ancient Greek. As an everyday word, theoria meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", but in more technical contexts it came to refer to contemplative. or speculative, understandings of natural things, such as those of natural philosophers, as opposed to more practical ways of knowing things, like that of skilled orators or artisans. The word has been in use in English since at least the late 16th century. Modern uses of the word "theory" are derived from the original definition, but have taken on new shades of meaning, still based on the idea that a theory is a thoughtful and rational explanation of the general nature of things.

In this course, we will explore the question of how and why literary and other texts work as they do, but we will also explore and practice thinking. Intended as a survey of critical theory, this course is about how to think about and through literature. We are learning to think because thinking for ourselves is better than having other people do our thinking for us.

The discourses of theory in the 20th century and into the 21st include formalist, psychological, Marxist, feminist, semiotic, structuralist, post-structuralist, gender and queer, and cultural studies areas such as new historicism, postcolonialism, multiculturalism, and ecocriticism. We will examine works of literature using each theoretical discourse as a lens through which to view and understand them. Additionally, we will take time in the middle of the semester to gain a better understanding of interpretation itself.

This course is a Gordon Rule course. It contains 6000 words of evaluated writing as required by the English Department. Each has the following characteristics:

1.      The writing will have a clearly defined central idea or thesis

2.      It will provide adequate support for that idea

3.      It will be organized clearly and logically

4.      It will show awareness of the conventions of standard written English

5.      It will be formatted or presented in an appropriate way

Course Prerequisites: ENC 1102 or Instructor Permission

No purchased text will be required for this course. Required readings will be included in Canvas.

Catalog Description: Explores the development of digital rhetorics appearing in online environments through close reading and analysis of formative rhetorical texts, fiction, and internet materials.

Key Objectives for This Course  

·         Read disciplinary texts and develop a “toolbox” of content knowledge, core principles, and practices. 

·         Improve research, interpretation, writing, and argumentation skills about texts, technology, and society by obtaining, critically evaluating, and synthesizing scholarly literature and relevant data.

·         Learn about your beliefs, values, and the sacrifices associated with them in relation to a public policy dilemma or catastrophe by implementing appropriate methodologies to address the key research problems.

·         Gain communication skills through the dissemination of the research (process and product) in appropriate formats and venues, including professional journals and platforms in digital humanities, rhetoric, pedagogy, design, etc.

Required Texts

·         Ulmer, Gregory Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy. New York: Pearson, 2002.

·         Course Packet [Available in course as pdf document]

·         Extra (suggested reading): Read Ulmer's webpages about the book and assignments (Links to an external site.).

·         Extra (suggested reading): Strategies for Conducting Literary Research, 2eLinks to an external site.

Detailed Course Description

The course title - "Digital Rhetoric and the Modern Dialectic" - can mean many things. We could imagine a class focused on coding and how ideological biases make their way into software. We could also imagine a class focused on how people use social media to persuade others. Other possibilities include studies of popular culture, science, religion, and other institutions and their use of digital tools to achieve their ends. This class takes a different approach; rather than focus our studies solely on rhetoric and dialectic already in use, we will be inventing new rhetorical and dialectical practices for digital media. Since each era needs to reinvent these things as it adapts to new media, why not give that challenge to ourselves?

The basic textbook we will be using for our class is Gregory Ulmer's Internet Invention. I'll be frank ("Hello, Frank!"); it is not an easy book! It has loads of concepts and vocabulary that you have probably not encountered before. We will be learning about a vast number of things along the way to achieving our main goal, which is to create a "widesite konsult." Ulmer defines a widesite as a personalized emblem that allows us to make sense of the world in our own way. It is a tool and a method that allows us to gain the "truth" for ourselves and share that truth with others. The question - "what is a widesite and how do we make one?" - will take up most of our effort during the semester. There isn't a strict formula for making one, but rather a set of processes. We are in invention mode.

In this course, we will address "emergent problems," which are problems that arise in our current historical moment and pose immediate danger (emergency). Emergence is "a property which a complex system has, but which the individual members do not have" (Issam Sinjab). These include problems affecting the environment (the 6th extinction, depletion of natural resources, climate change), human society (authoritarianism, propaganda, cults), public health (pollution, guns, addiction, vaccine hesitancy), civil rights (degradation of voting rights, reproduction rights, immigrant rights), and the economy (growing inequality, market volatility, externalities). These are also "wicked problems," which means they are resistant to resolution because of "incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems" (AC4D). What can we do? Or, should we accept that it is already too late? Should we mock those who are concerned (as Alfred Jarry did)? In this class you will work to address a wicked problem using our theories as methods.

From Quora:

A theory is a system of assumptions, principles, and relationships posited to explain a specified set of phenomena. A methodology is often a whole set of methods developed according to a philosophical theory about how best to research and learn about natural or social phenomena.

Gregory Ulmer's book, Internet Invention, serves as the main textbook for this course. Other assigned readings are related to this work and to help us make sense of it. Because Ulmer's work is so important, and is also somewhat difficult to understand, you might benefit by looking into additional online resources by and about Ulmer.

In addition to the goals discussed above, this course also surveys modern critical theory and its relationship to the arts, technology, and to social and political shifts, and it invites us to participate in the invention of electracy -- a social-machinic apparatus to support wellbeing in the digital age. 

It puts digital rhetoric theory in context by exploring its relationship to the modernist and postmodernist movements across the arts. It treats these movements as a set of practices: aesthetic or formal strategies applied to poetry, novels, manifestoes, paintings, films, music, games, software, and essays. Thus, sections of this course will focus on cultural questions and the relationship of the arts to mass media and modern politics. Formal practice is not everything, however; we are also concerned with style.

In his autobiography, Roland Barthes observed that

Many (still unpublished) avant-­garde texts are uncertain: how to judge, to classify them, how to predict their immediate or eventual future? Do they please? Do they bore? Their obvious quality is of an intentional order: they are concerned to serve theory. Yet this quality is a blackmail as well (theory blackmailed): love me, keep me, defend me, since I conform to the theory you call for; do I not do what Artaud, Cage, etc. have done? -­‐But Artaud is not just "avant-­garde"; he is a kind of writing as well; Cage has a certain charm as well . . . But those are precisely the attributes which are not recognized by theory, which are sometimes even execrated by theory. At least make your taste and your ideas match. (Roland Barthes, 54)

While providing an introduction to some of the central ideas in contemporary theory, this course will assume that such theory is "a kind of writing as well" - in other words, that such works experiment as much with the style of "the essay" as they do with the ideas of "criticism." Thus, the texts we read will serve as sources for assignments asking you to invent new ways of writing (broadly defined).

This course is a Gordon Rule course. It contains 6000 words of evaluated writing as required by the English Department. Each has the following characteristics:

1.       The writing will have a clearly defined central idea or thesis

2.       It will provide adequate support for that idea

3.       It will be organized clearly and logically

4.       It will show awareness of the conventions of standard written English

5.       It will be formatted or presented in an appropriate way

Additional Course Goals  

1.       Students need help to enter into academic and professional discourse communities. My teaching aims to help you enter these communities by integrating four knowledge areas: literacy, critical thinking, self-knowledge, and citizenship.

o    Literacy is more than the ability merely to read and write; it is also the ability to read reality and to interpret the "instrument panels" (the mediated data streams and theoretical frameworks) that tell us about it. At the university level, literacy means the ability to communicate within academic and professional communities using specialized discourses. From my perspective, I want your literacy skills to be high enough to write for publication in a professional peer-reviewed journal.  Such work requires new habits of reading and writing, habits that do not come easily or naturally for most people. Greg Ulmer used to remind me that a pencil was probably the cheapest technology a person could buy but the most expensive to learn to use effectively. I focus on improving each student’s abilities regardless of his or her skills on the first day of class. You may not reach the level of a professional writer, but with practice you will move closer to that goal.

o    Critical thinking is the ability to assess the merits of an idea or text. It requires skills in analysis and interpretation. Analysis describes what type a text is, how it functions, details its elements and explains how it achieves its effects. Interpretation declares what a text means, what its major themes are, and what morals or lessons the reader should draw from it. When students become adept at these skills, they are ready to assess the merits of ideas, including their own.

o    Self-knowledge lies at the origins of scholarly learning, beginning with the Delphic Oracle’s instruction to Socrates: “Know thyself!” Self-knowledge is the process of creating an inventory of one’s thoughts and behaviors, discovering one’s values, and checking for congruence. By studying literature, we explore different ways of being in the world.

o    Citizenship is a process of engagement with the world, one that balances empowerment with humility. It begins with an understanding of self, of groups, of traditions, and of actions and their consequences. The citizenship process is similar to the self-knowledge process. It entails examination of a group’s values and its beliefs and behaviors. Again, theory and the arts are agents for understanding what it means to have responsibility, power, and limitations in our own place and time.

By integrating these four areas, you will gain a sense of confidence about your place in academic and professional worlds. You will have the ability to find, evaluate, and use information. Below are additional goals of the course.

2.       To train you to work in the field of digital rhetoric.

3.       To learn about the recent movements in context by exploring the transformational ideas and events of the past 180 years, including the triumph of science over religion, the invention of photography, audio recording, and the cinema, the rise of modern cities, the emergence of trains and automobiles, the arrival of mechanized warfare, the theories of Marx and Freud, Feminism and Structuralism, the rise of Taylorist economies, which include liberal democracies and fascist and communist states, and the rise of cognitive capitalism, which we are living through now. The historical context supplies the problems that our theorists and authors address, provides them with means for addressing those problems, and allows them access to markets that had not previously been available.

4.       To enter and understand the changing theoretical discourse surrounding evolving platforms and engage with the interdisciplinary skillset required to make a meaningful study of technology.

5.       To identify the formal and stylistic features of a variety of texts.

6.       To identify the methods of composition practiced by the producers of such.

7.       To learn how to read and incorporate elements from difficult works, including experimental texts, theories that account for such texts’ methods and meanings, and written accounts of complex historical events in your own.

8.       To write persuasively about the “how” and “why” of critical and theoretical work, particularly your own. Each act of composition, even in theory and criticism, involves developing the “rules of the game,” a set of constraints about what is and isn’t allowed. You will learn to explain and justify the rules of the game for your own as you communicate your findings.

9.       To create a bridge between criticism and practice, as numerous modernist authors and artists like Mallarmé and Breton tried to do. In other words, criticism is not separate from the concerns of artists; it has its own compositional principles and is open to invention. Occupy criticism!

10.   To formulate an original research question or objective appropriate to the discipline.

11.   To experiment with modernist and postmodernist methods in our own writing in order to experience it. For instance, it is one thing to come across someone else’s work that seems merely strange. It is quite another to take up Shklovsky’s challenge to defamiliarize an object by making it strange.

“The dilemmas of the practical world are fundamentally resistant to policies that neglect the human question.” Gregory Ulmer, Internet Invention

This course walks you through the process of conducting literary research while helping to refine your library skills. Along the way, we draw from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Framework. According to the ACRL, “Research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers lead to additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field.” We will discuss this concept more in-depth throughout the course. Your goal in the course is to produce a research paper suitable for publication in a literary studies journal.

Required Text

·         Mauer, Barry and John Venecek. Strategies for Conducting Literary Research, 2e. Pressbooks, 2022. (Note: This is a free open-access resource. No textbook purchase is required).

Course Learning Objectives

·   Understand the assignment

·   Identify a research problem

·   Develop audience awareness

·   Enter a scholarly conversation

·   Understand theory’s integral role within humanities research

·   Understand how theory relates to particular research methodologies and methods for gathering evidence

·   Learn to use online library catalogs, database search strategies, library services, citation management, and search alerts

·   Evaluate source credibility

·   Posit your research question

·   Posit a thesis statement

·   Compose a title

·   Define your key term

·   Write persuasively

·   Write academic prose

·   Steer clear of plagiarism

·   Finish your research project

“Research & Writing about Literature” is a Gordon Rule course, which means you will produce at least 6000 words  of evaluated writing as required by the English Department. Each Gordon Rule assignment has the following characteristics:

1.        The writing will have a clearly defined central idea or thesis.

2.        It will provide adequate support for that idea.

3.        It will be organized clearly and logically.

4.        It will show awareness of the conventions of standard written English.

5.        It will be formatted or presented in an appropriate way.

Persuasive writing has a long history, going back at least Plato and Aristotle, and one issues has

dominated this history: whether to persuade for ethical or unethical purposes. As persuaders, are we

pushing people to accept the truth or to accept lies? Are we pushing them to act in their own best

interest or in ours? And what about the audience - what are our routes to persuasion? Are we able to

sort out true from false and good from evil? Are we easily fooled?

This course examines our capacity to be fooled, either be another's misrepresentation or be our own reasoning errors. At worst, this capacity can lead us into fiascos. For instance, during the housing bubble that preceded the 2008 financial collapse, so many people were fooled about the security of subprime loans that they brought on a global economic meltdown. Could this crisis have been avoided? Why are people fooled? More specifically, "why are some people fooled more than others, and why are we fooled about some things more than about other things?"

ENC4415-0001: Digital Rhetoric and the Modern Dialectic

Professor Barry Mauer

Course Description

“The dilemmas of the practical world are fundamentally resistant to policies that neglect the human question.” Gregory Ulmer, Internet Invention

The course title - "Digital Rhetoric and the Modern Dialectic" - can mean many things. We could imagine a class focused on coding and how ideological biases make their way into software. We could also imagine a class focused on how people use social media to persuade others. Other possibilities include studies of popular culture, science, religion, and other institutions and their use of digital tools to achieve their ends. This class takes a different approach; rather than focus our studies solely on rhetoric and dialectic already in use, we will be inventing new rhetorical and dialectical practices for digital media. Since each era needs to reinvent these things as it adapts to new media, why not give that challenge to ourselves?

The basic textbook we will be using for our class is Gregory Ulmer's Internet Invention. It is not an easy book! We will be learning about a vast number of things along the way to achieving our main goal, which is to create a "widesite." Ulmer defines a widesite as a personalized emblem that allows us to make sense of the world in our own way. It is a tool and a method that allows us to gain the "truth" for ourselves and share that truth with others.

In this course, we will address "emergent problems," which are problems that arise in our current historical moment and pose immediate danger (emergency). Emergence is "a property which a complex system has, but which the individual members do not have" (Issam Sinjab). These include problems affecting the environment (the 6th extinction, depletion of natural resources, climate change), human society (authoritarianism, propaganda, cults), public health (pollution, guns, addiction, vaccine hesitancy), civil rights (degradation of voting rights, reproduction rights, immigrant rights), and the economy (growing inequality, market volatility, externalities). These are also "wicked problems," which means they are resistant to resolution because of "incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems" (AC4D). What can we do? Or, should we accept that it is already too late? Should we mock those who are concerned (as Alfred Jarry did)? In this class you will work to address a wicked problem using our theories as methods.

"Digital Rhetoric and the Modern Dialectic" is a Gordon Rule course, which means you will produce at least 6000 words  of evaluated writing as required by the English Department. Each Gordon Rule assignment has the following characteristics:

1.        The writing will have a clearly defined central idea or thesis.

2.        It will provide adequate support for that idea.

3.        It will be organized clearly and logically.

4.        It will show awareness of the conventions of standard written English.

5.        It will be formatted or presented in an appropriate way.

ENG3930H 201: Honors The Age of Mass Delusion

Professor Barry Mauer

Prerequisite: Grade of C (2.0) or better in ENC 1102 or equivalent and Consent of Honors

"It is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer, but man himself that is man's greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes."

Carl Jung

Course Description

This course explores the rise of mass delusions in the internet age. The internet, which promised to create an archive of all the world’s knowledge and connect people from around the world, has achieved some of its promise but has also fueled conspiracy theories, cults, propaganda, disinformation, and given rise to racist, misogynistic, authoritarian, and fascist movements that perpetrate psychic and physical violence.

In previous eras, such as the print era that began with the invention of the printing press, we have seen similar eruptions of mass delusion. Is there a way to change course?

We will seek to understand how humans are prone to self-deception, ignorance, credulity, propaganda, prejudice, groupthink, and mass delusion; our goal is to have a greater chance to counteract the psychological pressures and reasoning errors that lead to these outcomes. This learning process involves gaining critical self- awareness, and we might discover that each of us holds beliefs, including our most cherished core beliefs, that are likely false and may also be dangerous. Learning how to resist delusion is a large part of critical thinking, which is central to a humanities education. This course teaches critical thinking in new and exciting ways by including lessons about how to stop our automatic reactions and about acquiring life management. We will examine this theme in relation to several areas of study:

1.        Modes of persuasion, ranging from dialogue to war

2.        Propaganda and public relations

3.        Science and pseudo-science

4.        Mental illness and health

5.        Technology and culture

The course draws upon materials from many knowledge areas-philosophy, cognitive science, economics, rhetoric, history, sociology, politics, and communications theory. The result will be an accessible, yet challenging and engaging course.

“The Age of Mass Delusion” is a Gordon Rule course, which means you will produce at least 6000 words  of evaluated writing as required by the English Department. Each Gordon Rule assignment has the following characteristics:

1.        The writing will have a clearly defined central idea or thesis.

2.        It will provide adequate support for that idea.

3.        It will be organized clearly and logically.

4.        It will show awareness of the conventions of standard written English.

5.        It will be formatted or presented in an appropriate way.