Course Description:
This course of lectures on and exercises in bibliographical research is intended to help the student to develop effective techniques of literary study and satisfactory skills in the organizing and writing of scholarly literary papers.

Course Objectives:
Students will be expected to

• identify the major steps involved in establishing an authoritative text, including transcription and emendation;
• identify the major purposes of research;
• identify the major steps involved in doing bibliographical research;
• demonstrate the ability to do extensive bibliographical research to illuminate a given literary text;
• recognize the relationship between posing a critical hypothesis and adding to the critical discussion;
• demonstrate the ability to pose a critical hypothesis and use proper evidence to support a critical argument;
• identify major schools of critical theory, with the intention that the student will be able to place his or her own work within or among one or more of those schools;
• demonstrate understanding of course content through participation in informed class discussions and the preparation of written discussions of the literature under discussion, both with and without the incorporation of secondary source criticism.

• transcribe primary sources (holographic texts) in order to secure an authoritative text for critical analysis;
• as evidenced by the completion of an exercise in transcription.
• find evidence of the most recent research on a given literary text;
• as evidenced by the completion of a ten-entry bibliography compiled from Dissertation Abstracts and MLA’s most recent bibliography;
• identify the appropriate critical theories to inform discussion of a particular text;
• as evidenced by the completion of a five-page paper which argues for the usefulness of three theories in the illumination of a text.
• develop a unique critical argument, engaging with existing scholarship and supported by evidence compiled through bibliographical research;
• as evidenced by the creation of a scholarly, journal-quality article of 5000-8000 words;
• use Modern Language Association format guidelines (or, as necessary, American Psychological Association or Chicago Manual of Style guidelines) to document critical sources;
• as evidenced by article documentation in the body and the bibliographic section of the article.
• revise, edit, and proofread an article for confident submission to a journal.

Required Texts:

• Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism)
• Hurston, "Sweat" (Women Writers: Texts and Contexts)
• Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
  
• Shelley, Frankenstein (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism), 3rd. ed.
  
• Handouts and On-line Sources

Recommended Text:

• Acheson, Writing Essays About Literature: A Brief Guide for University and College Students, 2nd. ed.

Course Requirements and Student Evaluation:

• Students will be expected to complete all assigned readings for each session before coming to class and arrive prepared to discuss them.
• Written assignments will include weekly response papers and other brief assignments (ca. 500 words) on specifically assigned topics, various components of the research paper (abstract, annotated bibliography, outline, initial draft), and one fully-documented critical research paper (5000-word minimum). All written assignments must be submitted through Canvas to receive credit.
•  Written response papers/brief assignments are due at the beginning of class on the due dates. Late papers will be penalized.
• The final critical research paper is due by 11:59 pm on the due date. Late papers will be penalized.
• Students will also give a brief (20-30 minutes) oral presentation on a selected author.
• The brief presentation will be selected from a list of authors generated by the instructor. A written version of the presentation will be submitted at the time of the presentation.  All sources must be clearly cited in the written version of the presentation.  Oral citation of sources will be insufficient and may lead to serious consequences (Please familiarize yourself with the Graduate School's guidelines on academic dishonesty, which can be found in the most recent catalog).

• Abrams, M. H. Doing Things With Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory. NY: Norton, 1991.
• Altick, Fenstermake Daniel and Daniel D. The Art of Literary Research. Rev. ed. Norton, 1993.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. University of Texas Press, 1981.
• Bell, Bernard W. The Afro-American Novel and its Tradition. University of Massachusetts Press, 1990.
• Butler, Christopher. Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP, 2002.
• Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. 10th anniversary edition. Routledge, 2006.
• Campbell, Joseph. Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton UP, 1990.
• Christian, Barbara. Black Feminist Criticism. Pergamon Press, 1985.
• Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought. Rev. 2nd. ed. Routledge, 2000.
• Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. Cornell UP, 1990.
• Eagleton, Terry.  Literary Theory: An Introduction.25th Anniversary Edition. NY: Blackwell, 2008.
• Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Grove, 2005.
• Fishkin, Shelley Fisher, and Elaine Hedges, eds. Listening to Silence: New Essays in Feminist Criticism. Oxford UP, 1994.
• Gallagher, Catherine, and Stephen Greenblatt. Practicing New Historicism. University of Chicago Press, 2001.
• Gardiner, Judith Kegan, ed. Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory. Columbia UP, 2002.
• Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. Oxford UP, 1988.
  
• Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005.
• Groden, Michael, et. al. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. 2nd. ed. Johns Hopkins Press, 2004.
• Guerin, Wilfred, Earle Labor, et al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Oxford UP, 2011.
  
• Hiltner, Ken. Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader. Routledge, 2013.
• Huggan, Graham, and Helen Tiffin. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, and  Environment. Routledge, 2010.
• Jung, Carl Gustav. Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. 2nd ed. Trans. William Mc Guire. Princeton UP, 1969.
• Lazarus, Neil, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies.  Cambridge UP, 2004.
• Lynn, Steven.  Texts and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory.  3rd Ed.  New York: Addison-Wesley, 2001.
• McCann, Hannah, and Whitney Monoghan. Queer Theory Now: from Foundations to Futures. Red Globe/Bloomsbury, 2019.
• Said, Edward. Orientalism. 25th Anniversary ed. Penguin, 2007.
• Wang, Orrin, ed. Frankenstein in Theory: A Critical Anatomy. Bloomsbury, 2021.