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The number of important writers in this hundred year time span of American literature is remarkable. Acknowledging this variety, the faculty in the are have designed courses that approach this material with unusual strategies that are designed to match the distinctive creativity on display in this area. Introductory courses are followed by a number of individual courses that are oriented toward special problems and specific projects.
Courses
Faculty regularly schedule courses that provide introductory surveys to works in specific genres. Every academic year we list two courses in modern American fiction - one covering prose from the first half of the twentieth century (including Cather, Faulkner, Hurston and others), the other the postmodern texts of the last few decades (including Marilynne Robinson, Toni Morrison, Paul Auster, Don DeLillo and others). In addition, we regularly offer a survey course in twentieth century American drama from the Expressionist plays of Eugene O'Neill to the vanguard productions of the Wooster Group. And we also offer a survey course in poetry that concentrates on prosody from Robert Frost and Langston Hughes to James Merrill and Susan Howe. In addition, faculty also offer a series of upper-level courses for graduates and undergraduates which concentrate on literary movements or on special problems or on decades viewed from a wide cultural perspective. These courses examine topics whose relevance is still under discussion. In workshop settings that foster interchange between graduates and undergraduates, these courses explore approaches in keeping with the newness of the material under consideration. Recent courses include Robert Fox's examination of the figures in the Beat Generation, including Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg (along with a range of others); Elizabeth Klaver's overview of the contemporary influence of Samuel Beckett as both playwright and novelist; and Mary Bogumil's explorations of cultural diversity in America.
Special Topics Courses
Future special topics planned by the twentieth century literature faculty include Robert Fox's "Science Fiction: The Art of Protest," a study of the subversive tactics that are available within a mass culture medium; Mary Bogumil's "Cultural Diversity in America," an examination of the narratives generated as ethnic groups confront and respond to issues of Americanization; and Edward Brunner's "Dante's Inferno and Contemporary American Writing."
Seminars
In addition to these special topics, faculty in twentieth century American literature regularly offer a range of seminars on specialized intellectual areas. In the past, these have included Elizabeth Klaver's "Theater and the Performance of Theory," investigating the interrelations of literary theory and performance; Robert Fox's "Reading America(s): The Novel in a Multicultural Context," analyzing texts by Amy Tan, Sandra Cisneros, Jessica Hagedorn, Leslie Silko and others; and Edward Brunner's multidisciplinary overview of the 1930s, with emphasis on such writers as Dawn Powell, Muriel Rukeyser, Frank Marshall Davis, B. Traven and Erskine Caldwell, plus the music of Duke Ellington, the photographs of Walker Evans, and W.P.A. Mural Paintings.
Recent PhD Dissertations
Linda Lizut Helstern, "Trickster Chaos: Old Stories and New Science in the Postmodern Novel" (2001)
Donna Allego: “The Construction and the Role of Community in Political Long Poems of Twentieth Century American Women Poets: Lola Ridge, Genevieve Taggard, Joy Davidman and Margaret Walker” (1997)
Roy Flannagan: “‘The Beauty of Distance': The Centrality of Landscape Description in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita” (1997) Rebecca Flannagan: "Reading and Misreading the Family in Anne Tyler's Fiction" (1995)
Daniel Schmidt: “Rewriting the American Picaresque: Patterns of Adversity in the Novels of Erica Jong, Toni Morrison and Marilynne Robinson” (1993)
Hong-Pil Lee: “Self, World and Language: Robert Lowell's Life Studies” (1993)
Charles David Rota: “Rhetorical Irony and Modern American Fiction: The Clergy in the Novels of William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and John Updike” (1992)
Recent MA Theses
Javan E. Walker III: “Imagined Communities of Race in Ellison's Invisible Man” (1996). Awarded “Most Distinguished” M.A. Thesis in 1996 by the Midwest Association of Graduate Schools
Rebecca Flannagan: Reading and Misreading the Family in Anne Tyler's Fiction (1995)
Jeanne-Marie Zeck: "Jane Smiley's Domestic Fiction: Filling Blank Pages of American Literature" (1995)
Rosa Ramos: “Ambiguous Signs in Speed-the-Plow and Oleanna: A Semiotic Reading of David Mamet” (1994)
Tracey Moore: “The Role of Theatrical Coming-Out Scenarios in Establishing Gay Male Identity” (1994)
Miriam C. Gyimah: “Black Women as Spiritual Guides in the Works of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Gloria Naylor” (1994)
Laura L. Letbetter: “Irony, Violence and Creation of Self: Maxine Hong Kingston's Aesthetics of Peacemaking” (1993)
Earl Zeligman: “Misplaying a Dead Hand: Quentin Compson's Denial of Tradition” (1992)
Susan Kay Lewis: “Elizabeth Bishop and Vulnerability” (1992)
Faculty
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