Ryan Kaveh Sheldon

Reading Literature
Please refer to each section for specific course descriptions.

Creative Derivation: Rewriting, Remaking, and Unmaking Literature
The American experimental poet Robert Duncan famously described his work as “derivative.” His contemporary, Ronald Johnson, once remarked: “I read to steal.” In this course we will take these articulations of reading-focused poetics as a premise for surveying seventeenth- through twenty-first-century literature that enacts the reading of other texts; repurposes the narratives and terms of canonical or hegemonic writing; or uses critique as a means of generative engagement. Along the way, we will consider the stakes of rewriting or reworking texts across cultural, historical, generic, and formal distances. Students will be invited to pursue creative final projects. 3 hrs. lect./disc.

Commerce of the World-Century Literature (Pre-1800)
British society, politics, and culture shifted dramatically over the course of the eighteenth century in response to the ascendance of an empowered mercantile bourgeoisie, an expanding empire, and the intensification of its investments in the transatlantic slave trade. In this course we will explore how writers and thinkers grappled with these economic, social, and political transformations at the levels of narrative, form, and genre by reading novels, plays, poems, and essays by Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Susanna Centlivre, Laurence Sterne, Olaudah Equiano, and others. 3 hrs. lect./disc.

Revolt and Rebellion in Long Eighteenth Century Literature
The long eighteenth century is replete with uprisings, rebellions, and revolutions. In this course we will think about why the event of the revolt, especially in colonial contexts, proved intriguing for British writers and thinkers throughout the period. How did representing historical and imagined uprisings alike enable Britons to diagnose social and political problems? When and why does it become permissible to revolt? What makes a revolutionary subject? Authors include: John Milton, John Locke, Aphra Behn, Ottobah Cugoano, Helen Maria Williams, and Mary Shelley. Critical/theoretical interlocutors might include Laura Brown, Susan Buck-Morss, C.L.R. James, and Anthony Paul Farley. Pre-1800. (REC) 3 hrs. lect./disc.