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Susan Sage Heinzelman, Director 116 Inner Campus Dr Stop A4900, GEB 4.200C, Austin Texas 78712 • 512-471-5765

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Phillip J Barrish

Associate Professor — Ph.D., 1991, Cornell University

Curriculum Vitae
Phillip J Barrish

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Biography

College: Liberal Arts

Home Department: English

Education: PhD, Cornell University

Research interests:Post-Civil War American literature and culture; whiteness studies and critical race theory; "masculinity" as a cultural construction; gender studies; psychoanalytic approaches to literary study; relationship between literature and liberalism

Courses taught:
E 338 American Literature: From 1865 to the Present-W

E372M American Literary Realism

E 395M Literary
Whiteness Since the Civil War

Recent Publications:White Liberal Identity, Literary Pedagogy, and Classic American Realism (Ohio State UP, 2005).

WGS 345 • Amer Literary Masculinities

47090 • Spring 2012
Meets MWF 900am-1000am PAR 204
(also listed as E 370W )
show description

Instructor:  Barrish, P            Areas:  V / G

Unique #:  35435            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Spring 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  WGS 345            Computer Instruction:  n/a

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: This course will explore constructions of masculinity in American literature, taking a generally but not exclusively feminist perspective. Masculinity, as we will discover, has meant very different things at different times in US history, and has also varied in meaning and significance according to such broad categories of identity as social class, race, region, and queerness. Our primary focus will be on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but we will also cover more recent materials.

Students should be prepared for a significant amount of reading, some of it challenging either in content or in level of difficulty.

Texts: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance; Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, written by himself (1845); Owen Wister, The Virginian (1903); Ernest Hemingway, Assorted short stories; James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room; One (or two) feature-length films suggested by the class; Miscellaneous secondary sources (theoretical, historical, critical) which will be available in a course packet.

Requirements & Grading: An annotated bibliography on some tightly focused topic related to the theme of U.S. masculinities: 10%; Participation in a group presentation on some recent cultural phenomenon or text relevant to the course (e.g., the recent “It Gets Better” youtube project): 20%; 2-page, 3-page, and 8-page essays: 50%; Overall commitment to class (participation, attendance, etc.): 20%.

Publications

"The Cambridge Introduction to American Literary Realism" (Cambridge University Press, in progress).

White Liberal Identity, Literary Pedagogy, and Classic American Realism (Ohio State University Press, 2006).

''The Secret Joys of Antiracist Pedagogy: Huckleberry Finn in the Classroom.'' American Imago: Studies in Psychoanalysis and Culture (Summer 2002): 65-76.

American Literary Realism, Critical Theory, and Intellectual Prestige, 1880-1995. (Cambridge University Press, 2001)

''The Awakening's Signifying 'Mexicanist' Presence,'' Studies in American Fiction (Spring 2000): 65-76.

''The Remarrying Woman and Male Hysteria in The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country,''American Literary Realism (1994)

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Center for Women's and Gender Studies in The College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin
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