English 350-624-001
Seminar in Modern Literature: Postmodern Fictions
Instr:
Cam Tatham
Office:
CRT 392, 229-4504
e-mail:
ctatham@uwm.edu
Office hours: by appointment.
Course Information:
MW, 9:30-10:45, CRT 368
Required Texts:
Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues
Ron Sukenick, 98.6
Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters
Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy
Marian Engel, Bear
William Gibson, Neuromancer
Joanna Russ, The Female Man
Don DeLillo, White Noise
Cris Mazza, Your Name Here:_______
Course Requirements:
1. Regular Attendance (no more than two cuts allowed without subsequent
grade penalty), participation in class discussion.
2. Participation in an on-line Discussion Forum, posting at least twice
weakly.
3. Keeping a Writing Journal, in which you comment on texts, issues
raised in class discussion and on the Forum, and the ways in which these
intersect with your own experience. The entries for the Writing Journal
may double as postings to the Forum. You should write at least two
single-spaced pages a week. Date your entries and number your pages.
4. Discussion Leader: for one class, you will be responsible to introduce
what, to you, are interesting issues for the text assigned for that day,
to generate a subsequent discussion, and to lead that discussion.
Grade:
Participation = 20%; Forum = 20%; Journal = 50%; Discussion Leader
= 10%
Description:
Without worrying overmuch about a precise definition of “postmodern,”
we will be reading a series of texts which perform a multiplicity of responses/challenges
to received structures of perception. As a tentative possible organizing
pattern, I have put certain of these texts in dialogues with one another
to see what they have to say; moreover, with little regard for historical
sequence, I have chosen to gender these pairings, wondering what sorts
of conversations may result. The voices interacting through these
novels raise many issues often associated with “postmodernism”: e.g., the
inevitability and risks of acute self-consciousness; the transformation
of traditional and popular literary forms; the fascination with technology
and the future; the necessity and the difficulty or cultural criticism.
Our goal will be to amplify and multiply these possible dialogues.
The reading is extensive and intense; this will not be an easy course,
but hopefully, it will be engaging and in that sense satisfying.
