I’m eager to begin another semester at the University of Pittsburgh. This spring I am teaching three classes: Seminar in Composition (ENGCMP 0200), Reading Poetry (ENGLIT 0315), and Introduction to Critical Reading (ENGLIT 0500). I have taught all three courses before and enjoy each one. Seminar in Composition is a newly redesigned course on the campus novel and the syllabus can be found on my Academia.edu page. I’d be happy to send along the syllabi for the other classes to interested parties, which tweak previous versions. (Among other texts, I’m eager to return to Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves [2000] in Introduction to Critical Reading, and quite excited to read Claudia Rankine’s Citizen [2014] in Reading Poetry). I have again decided not to do any class blogs this semester. For the blogs of previous classes, see the category “Teaching” to the right.
Reading Poetry
Spring Semester 2014
In two days I start a new semester teaching three classes I am very much looking forward to at the University of Pittsburgh: Reading Poetry (ENGLIT 0315), Narrative and Technology (ENGLIT 0399), and Introduction to Critical Reading (ENGLIT 0500). The links on the last two classes take you to the class blogs. I am especially excited for Introduction to Critical Reading, as I will be teaching Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) for the first time. “A screaming comes across the sky.” I cannot wait.
Fall 2013
Here are .pdfs of syllabi for classes I will be teaching this fall at the University of Pittsburgh:
Reading Poetry (ENGLIT 0315)–“American Poeisis: Imagining the Twentieth Century”
Introduction to Critical Reading (ENGLIT 0500)–“Light and Darkness in the Twentieth Century”
Narrative and Technology (ENGLIT 0399)–“Narrating Nuclear, Information, and Biological Technology”
And my Narrative and Technology students will be keeping a class blog. Check it out here.
Spring Semester 2013
Beginning next Tuesday I will be teaching two courses at the University of Pittsburgh during the spring semester: Seminar in Composition (ENGCMP 0200, Pitt’s freshman English) and Reading Poetry (ENGLIT 0315). I am greatly looking forward to both classes as each should prove to be interesting, challenging, and fun. These courses reprise courses taught the previous semester.
In Seminar in Composition we’ll be reading selections from the following:
David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky eds., Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers, 9th ed. (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010).
William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White, The Elements of Style: With Revisions, an Introduction, and a Chapter on Writing, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 2000).
David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1997).
And, among a number of other poems and poets, in Reading Poetry we’ll primarily be looking at:
John Ashbery, Selected Poems (New York: Penguin, 1986).
Ben Lerner, The Lichtenberg Figures (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2004).
Robert Lowell, Life Studies and For the Union Dead (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007).
Harryette Mullen, Recylcopdeia: Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge (Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2006).
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Writings (New York: The Modern Library, 2001).
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, ed. Susan Rattiner (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001).
Fall 2012
Beginning on Monday (wow the summer stormed by) I will be teaching 2 courses at the University of Pittsburgh during the fall semester: Seminar in Composition (ENGCMP 0200, Pitt’s freshman English) and Reading Poetry (ENGLIT 0315). I am greatly looking forward to both classes as each should prove to be interesting, challenging, and fun. In Seminar in Composition we’ll be reading selections from the following:
David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky eds., Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers, 9th ed. (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010).
William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White, The Elements of Style: With Revisions, an Introduction, and a Chapter on Writing, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 2000).
David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1997).
And, among a number of other poems and poets, in Reading Poetry we’ll primarily be looking at:
John Ashbery, Selected Poems (New York: Penguin, 1986).
Ben Lerner, The Lichtenberg Figures (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2004).
Robert Lowell, Life Studies and For the Union Dead (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007).
Harryette Mullen, Recylcopdeia: Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge (Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2006).
T.S. Eliot The Wasteland (Norton Critical Edition), ed. Michael North (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001).
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself and Other Poems, ed. Robert Haas and Paul Ebenkamp (Counterpoint: Berkeley, 2011).
The Hyperarchival Parallax 