ENGL 554: Seminar in Prose Fiction
Professor Jo Carney
July 19-August 19, 2021
M, T, R 5:00-7:30
Talking Back to the Canon: Literary Adaptations and Appropriations
The scholarly discourse on adaption, appropriation, and intertextuality is dynamic, extensive, and
productively contentious. Adaptation theory has emerged as a robust field of critical study in its
own right, though still peripheral to more entrenched forms of literary criticism. Popular culture
lags even further in absorbing some of the most fundamental tenets of current adaptation
discourse even as actual adaptations across media appear at a prodigious rate.
While adaptation theory has predominantly involved the transposition from literary texts to film,
we will examine literary adaptations that talk back to prior literary, and often foundational, texts.
Works may include Toni Morrison’s Desdemona, Mark Haddon’s The Porpoise, Maria Dahvana
Headley’s The Merewife, Madeline Miller’s Circe, and Sarah Waters’ Affinity.
ENGL 670: Literature and Science
Professor Mindi McMann
June 14—July 15, 2021
M, T, R 5:00–7:30
This graduate seminar explores the intersections of science and literature, focusing specifically on how we tell stories about science, human (and other) bodies, our environment, and biotechnology. Some questions we will consider are: What can fiction tell us about how we understand science and technology? How does science affect our understandings of subjectivity and what constitutes a person? What role does the body play in our understandings of science, and how do these new understandings impact how we tell stories about those bodies and their role in our society? What may separate distinctly human experiences from the experiences of others deemed less than human often by both literary and scientific discourses? What are the ethics of science, as viewed through a literary lens?