English 621-001
Seminar in the Literature of England: 19th Century English Literature: English Nation, British Empire
Instr: Banerjee, Sukanya
Office: CRT 497; 229-5454
e-mail: banerjee@uwm.edu
Office hours:
Course Information: W; 4:30-7:10pm; BOL 281
Course Description
Examining the literature and culture of nineteenth century England, this course will focus on how social categories and moral ideals were represented and reconstituted through the novels of the day. Foregrounding the complex interaction between literary representation and material practice, we will examine how important concepts of bourgeois femininity, notions of gentlemanliness, ideas of sexuality, representations of the "gothic," and categories of racial identity were variously formulated at sites of labor, trade, domesticity, pedagogy, science, professionalism, and liberal discourse. In fact, we will examine how the idea of England as a nation was itself constituted through these vectors and how a composite sense of "Englishness" relied upon, challenged, or reinscribed England's status as an imperial power. The literary texts for the course will include Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (Thomas De Quincey); Mansfield Park (Jane Austen); Frankenstein (Mary Shelley); Three Clerks (Anthony Trollope); Vanity Fair (William Thackeray); Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (R.L.Stevenson); On the Face of the Waters (Flora Annie Steele); Plain Tales from the Hills (Rudyard Kipling). There will also be a course-packet that will include primary and secondary readings.
The final course-grade will be calculated on the basis of class participation, class presentation, response papers, and a 10-page final paper (15-20 pages for graduate students).
