Back to the Thirties, graduate seminar
The recent global economic collapse has lately turned our attention back to the 1930s: are we headed for another Great Depression? Should we brace for double-digit unemployment? Will a new president offer us a new New Deal? Is John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) a prophet for our time? In the spirit of this mood of historical comparison, this course will also return to the 1930s and the scholarship it has inspired.

Modern American Epic, graduate seminar
Examines forms of epic narrative—film, poetry, and fiction—in the context of American naturalism and modernism.

Rationality, Irrationality, Modernity, graduate seminar

Theorizing Culture, graduate seminar
Addressed the development of the concept of “culture” in the context of the twentieth century U.S.  Special emphasis on “culture” in relation to debates about nationality, identity, ideology, aesthetic value, and social authority

American Modernism, graduate seminar
American Modernism, honors seminar
Interrogated the “nativist” strain in literary modernism in the U.S., in the works of Anderson, Hart Crane, Cather, Williams, and others.  Special emphasis on historical and theoretical contexts of modernism

Gender and Modernity, graduate seminar
Surveyed major theoretical statements on “modernity” with an emphasis on gender and sexuality

The City and the Country, graduate seminar
Addressed the geography of modernity in the context of the literature of the US, 1880s to present

Reading the Literary Academy, graduate seminar
Examined critical debates over the cultural role of the intellectual, using as a particular case the history of literary intellectuals in the American academy

Realism, Naturalism, Local Color, advanced lecture-discussion course
Survey of American literature 1880-1915 with particular attention to the experience of modernity and to the practice of historical and genre criticism

American Indian Literature advanced lecture-discussion course
Survey of American Indian literature with special attention to historical context, oral culture, cultural survival, and intercultural contact and communication

Hollywood and the Novel, advanced lecture-discussion course
Examined the relationship between the development of the Hollywood film industry and the twentieth century novel, including Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust and Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman. Topics included the formal problem of adaptation, representations of Hollywood history, and the thematic relationship between Hollywood and fantasy

 Women, Work, and Popular Culture, advanced lecture-discussion course
Discussed film, fashion, popular and historical novels, and popular works of non-fiction to develop a history of women and work in the twentieth century.

American Literature and Consumer Society, lecture course
Discussed American narratives including Dreiser’s Sister Carrie and Nabokov’s Lolita in relation to changes in American attitudes towards work, social mobility, the mass media, and consumerism.  An important theme was the portrayal of women as consumers and as bearers of values associated with mass culture

Introduction to Cultural Studies, lecture-discussion course
Introduction to key theoretical texts, methods, and problems of cultural studies.  The course linked canonical works of philosophy and literary criticism to cultural studies through a focus on the problem of aesthetic pleasure