Douglas S Bruster

Instructor:  Bruster, D            Areas:  -- / B

Unique #:  35335-35390            Flags:  Global cultures

Semester:  Fall 2013            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A; and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: Literature and Culture --

This course takes up some of the finest literature written in the English language. Beginning with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and making our way through various works by Shakespeare, Austen, and T.S. Eliot, among others, we will follow out the rich narrative of British literary history as it unfolded from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Literary form and its relation to meaning will provide us with a special focus, as will the changing relations between authors and readers. We will also be attuned to the ways in which these literary works challenge us as both readers and citizens.

Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th edition, vols. 1 and 2; William Shakespeare, King Lear (Arden, 3rd edition); Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Harold Pinter, The Homecoming.

Sample Authors:  Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare
, John Milton, Jane Austen.

Requirements & Grading: Discussion Section attendance, participation, short assignments: 20%; Test One (regular semester): 20%; Test Two (regular semester): 20%; Cumulative Final Exam (administered at officially scheduled time during the final examination period): 40%.

This seminar aims to introduce students to current discussion of Shakespeare’s works through an emergent form of aesthetics. Developments in the history of the book, phenomenology, the study of material culture, and the digital humanities have added new paradigms and questions to Shakespeare studies. Correspondingly, Shakespeare’s art no longer seems transcendent and ineffable, but is concretely figured through—and studied with the aid of—a variety of critical media and tools. Using case studies, this seminar will investigate (even as it defamiliarizes) the workings of such formal elements as character, plot, language, and genre.  By contextualizing his achievement within the larger field of cultural production, we will attempt to understand Shakespeare’s plays and poems as material objects that functioned within a marketplace of representations. Criticism may include works by Bruce Smith, Patricia Parker, Franco Moretti, Lukas Erne, Michael Witmore, and Bradin Cormack, among others.

Instructor:  Bruster, D            Areas:  -- / B

Unique #:  83500            Flags:  Global Cultures

Semester:  Summer 2013, first session            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: This course seeks to introduce you to some of the best works of literature written in English. Concentrating on poetry, we will investigate the changing shapes of literary representation over the centuries. One of our primary topics will be the relation of form to content. How do these poems work? In what ways do literary forms shape what they present---and, at the same time, our responses to them? How has literature been affected by changes in society? What role does the speaking voice play in our understanding of poetry? How do various poems wish to be read? These are a few of the many questions we will address in our daily discussions.

Texts: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Shorter Fifth Edition [Paperback]. Margaret Ferguson et al., eds.

·  ISBN-10: 0393979210

·  ISBN-13: 978-0393979213

Sample Authors: Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare
, John Milton, John Keats, T.S. Eliot.

Requirements & Grading: Quizzes (number to be determined) 30%; First Examination 35%; Second Examination 35%.

Instructor:  Bruster, D            Areas:  -- / B

Unique #:  35130-35175            Flags:  Global cultures

Semester:  Spring 2013            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A; and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: Literature and Culture --

This course takes up some of the finest literature written in the English language. Beginning with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and making our way through various works by Shakespeare, Austen, and T.S. Eliot, among others, we will follow out the rich narrative of British literary history as it unfolded from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Literary form and its relation to meaning will provide us with a special focus, as will the changing relations between authors and readers. We will also be attuned to the ways in which these literary works challenge us as both readers and citizens.

Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th edition, vols. 1 and 2; William Shakespeare, King Lear (Arden, 3rd edition); Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Harold Pinter, The Homecoming.

Sample Authors:  Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare
, John Milton, Jane Austen.

Requirements & Grading: Discussion Section attendance, participation, short assignments: 20%; Test One (regular semester): 20%; Test Two (regular semester): 20%; Cumulative Final Exam (administered at officially scheduled time during the final examination period): 40%.

Instructor:  Bruster, D            Areas:  III / U

Unique #:  35705            Flags:  Writing

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

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

Description: This course examines British and American plays written in the latter half of the twentieth century. Our reading may include A Streetcar Named Desire, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Homecoming, Look Back in Anger, Top Girls, Plenty, and Angels in America (Parts One and Two).

Requirements & Grading: Grades will be determined on the basis of three 6-7-page essays, two examinations, and class attendance and participation (measured in part by pop quizzes).

Three 6-7-page essays, 50%; Examinations, 30%; Attendance and participation, 20%.

Instructor:  Bruster, D            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  83605            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Summer 2012, first session            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: This course seeks to introduce you to some of the best works of literature written in English. Concentrating on poetry, we will investigate the changing shapes of literary representation over the centuries. One of our primary topics will be the relation of form to content. How do these poems work? In what ways do literary forms shape what they present---and, at the same time, our responses to them? How has literature been affected by changes in society? What role does the speaking voice play in our understanding of poetry? How do various poems wish to be read? These are a few of the many questions we will address in our daily discussions.

Texts: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Shorter Fifth Edition [Paperback]. Margaret Ferguson et al., eds.

·  ISBN-10: 0393979210

·  ISBN-13: 978-0393979213

Sample Authors: Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare
, John Milton, John Keats, T.S. Eliot.

Requirements & Grading: Quizzes (number to be determined) 30%; First Examination 35%; Second Examination 35%.

Instructor:  Bruster, D            Areas:  n/a

Unique #:  34995-35040            Flags:  Global cultures

Semester:  Spring 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: Literature and Culture --

This course takes up some of the finest literature written in the English language. Beginning with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and making our way through various works by Shakespeare, Austen, and T.S. Eliot, among others, we will follow out the rich narrative of British literary history as it unfolded from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Literary form and its relation to meaning will provide us with a special focus, as will the changing relations between authors and readers. We will also be attuned to the ways in which these literary works challenge us as both readers and citizens.

Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th edition, vols. 1 and 2; William Shakespeare, King Lear (Arden, 3rd edition); Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Harold Pinter, The Homecoming.

Sample Authors:  Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare
, John Milton, Jane Austen.

Requirements & Grading: Discussion Section attendance, participation, short assignments: 20%; Test One (regular semester): 20%; Test Two (regular semester): 20%; Cumulative Final Exam (administered at officially scheduled time during the final examination period): 40%.

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: Literature and Culture --

This course takes up some of the finest literature written in the English language. Beginning with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and making our way through various works by Shakespeare, Austen, and T.S. Eliot, among others, we will follow out the rich narrative of British literary history as it unfolded from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Literary form and its relation to meaning will provide us with a special focus, as will the changing relations between authors and readers. We will also be attuned to the ways in which these literary works challenge us as both readers and citizens. 

Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th edition, vols. 1 and 2; William Shakespeare, King Lear (Arden, 3rd edition); Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Harold Pinter, The Homecoming.

Sample Authors:  Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare
, John Milton, Jane Austen.

Requirements & Grading: Discussion Section attendance, participation, short assignments: 20%; Test One (regular semester): 20%; Test Two (regular semester): 20%; Cumulative Final Exam (administered at officially scheduled time during the final examination period): 40%.

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

Description: This course will survey Shakespeare’s career as a playwright, emphasizing questions of literary form. What makes a play a comedy, a history, or a tragedy? Shakespeare himself recognized these distinctions; what differences might they have made in how he wrote his plays, and in how these plays work? To answer these questions, we will pay special attention to the “rules of the game,” noticing where Shakespeare followed them, and where he chose to depart from them. Our readings will include such plays as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, 1 Henry IV, and King Lear. 

Recommended Text: The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (either 1st or 2nd edition). However, you may use any scholarly edition of Shakespeare's works (in single-volume version or as separate paperbacks). Please check with the instructor if you have questions about the suitability of any editions.

Requirements & Grading (subject to change upon notice): There will be two examinations during the regular semester as well as a final examination administered at the officially scheduled time. Students may also be asked to submit short exercises on a regular basis. Provisional grading breakdown: first exam 20%; second exam 20%; final exam 40%; exercises 20%.

Prerequisites: Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: This course seeks to introduce you to some of the best works of literature written in English. Concentrating on poetry, we will investigate the changing shapes of literary representation over the centuries. One of our primary topics will be the relation of form to content. How do these poems work? In what ways do literary forms shape what they present---and, at the same time, our responses to them? How has literature been affected by changes in society? What role does the speaking voice play in our understanding of poetry? How do various poems wish to be read? These are a few of the many questions we will address in our daily discussions.

Texts: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Shorter Fifth Edition [Paperback]. Margaret Ferguson et al., eds.

·  ISBN-10: 0393979210

·  ISBN-13: 978-0393979213

Sample Authors: Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare
, John Milton, John Keats, T.S. Eliot.

Requirements & Grading: Quizzes (number to be determined) 15%; First Examination 35%; Second Examination 35%; Participation 15%.

May be counted toward the writing flag requirement.

May be counted toward the global cultures flag requirement.

Description: This course takes up Shakespeare’s best plays, examining them in terms of genre, or literary kind.  We will focus on what makes a tragedy a tragedy, a comedy a comedy, and a history play a history play.  Our texts may include Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, 1 Henry IV, and Henry V.

Grading and Requirements: There will be two examinations.  Attendance is required; all unexcused absences will count against the final grade.

Three 5-7-page papers will be required (one of which must be at least 6 pages in length), for a minimum of 16 pages of writing.  This is a substantial writing component course, and at least 50% of the final grade will come from assigned papers.

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

This seminar will introduce students to current and potential avenues for research in Shakespeare studies. We will focus primarily on what has been called a new “historical formalism.” Responding to a sense that the new historicism of the last century shortchanged the present as well as the past in overlooking the material dimensions of the aesthetic text—what makes literature literature—a cutting-edge formalism has worked to energize our understanding of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Such critics as Tiffany Stern, Patrick Cheney, Patricia Parker, and Lukas Erne, among others, have given us new ways of viewing seemingly familiar texts by attending to the historical, material, and social dimensions of the literary in early modern England. Some of the questions this newer formalism has attended to are the following:

• What status should we accord the material dimensions of Shakespeare’s first publications?
• How best to conceive of form’s relation to questions of gender, sexuality, power, and identity?
• What role did the market for performances, playbooks, and printed verse have in Shakespeare’s career?
• Indeed, given our new paradigms of Shakespeare as both courtly maker and theatrical journeyman, how should we describe his literary professionalism?
• How did those in early modern England process Shakespeare’s verse and prose?
• What language should we use—that of literary criticism, or neuroscience—to frame the habits of thought that shaped Shakespeare’s works, and their contemporary reception?

Requirements

Our conversations about such works as Venus and Adonis, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, and The Tempest will try to answer these and other questions even as they lead to research papers on topics of the seminar members’ choosing. In addition to making individual presentations on critical readings, students will learn the basics of conducting research in the exciting, somewhat intimidating field of Shakespeare studies. We will learn and utilize such databases as the World Shakespeare Bibliography Online, Early English Books Online, the English Short Title Catalogue, and Literature Online. At least one seminar meeting will be devoted to exploring the HRC’s archival holdings of early modern texts, and of Shakespearean materials from the 18th century to the present day.

E 379M (Topic 3: Shakespeare in Performance) may not also be counted.

Course Description: This course examines Shakespeare's achievement by looking at his plays in their theatrical and historical settings. We will read As You Like It, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and The Winter’s Tale, with the possibility of other plays. Because Shakespeare appears to have been thinking about readers and audience members when he composed his dramas, we will focus on these works--two comedies and two histories--by examining them both as literary documents (that is, as things to be read) and as performance pieces (things unfolded in production). Through guided discussion in our classroom, we will seek to understand the "rules of the game" for Shakespearean comedy and history. What conventions did he inherit for the writing of each genre? Which rules did he follow? Which did he break? What kind of overlap might we detect between the otherwise diverse "worlds" of these two genres? That is, what remains "Shakespearean" about his plays once we account for their genre? In addition to reading and discussing the play texts, we will travel to Stratford-upon-Avon and to London to see productions of these four plays by professional actors. We will take such productions as interpretations of the texts--arguments, that is, about what and how Shakespeare's words, stories, and characters mean.

Grading: Grading: Students will be required to keep a critical journal while in residence at Oxford. This journal will be the venue for both informal and formal writing--the latter in response to assigned questions and/or exercises. Students are also required to attend class and the featured productions. Grades will be determined as follows: Written work = 60%; Class participation (measured in part on quality of contributions) = 40%.

Prerequisites: A) Completion of at least thirty semester hours of coursework, including E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A, and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test. B) English 316K, 603B, Comparative Literature 315, or Tutorial Course 603B. C) Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

For more information, please download the full syllabus.

E316K: Masterworks of Lit: English Literature and Culture

Professor Bruster

Unique #s: 34690, 34695, 34700. 34705, 34710. 34715, 34720, 34725, 34730, 34735, 34740, 34745

Students with Disabilities:

Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities, 471-6259.