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Tag: PhD

  • Reading List for PhD Major Exam on 20th Century American Literature

    In June 2010, I will take my three PhD exams in the Kent State University English Literature PhD program.  For these exams, I convened a committee of trusted professors, each administering one exam. I choose to take my exams in these areas: 20th Century American Literature (administered by Kevin Floyd), Postmodern Theory (administered by Tammy Clewell), and the Philip K. Dick Canon (administered by Donald “Mack” Hassler). Below, I have included my 20th Century American Literature reading list. Go here to read my Postmodern Theory exam list, and here to read my Philip K. Dick exam list.

    PhD Major Exam Area:  Twentieth-Century American Literature

    Director:  Kevin Floyd

    Texts:

    CANONICAL

    1. Chopin, Kate. The Awakening (1899).
    2. Cather, Willa. O Pioneers! (1913).
    3. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper”
    4. TS Eliot: “The Waste Land,” “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”
    5. Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio (1919).
    6. William, Carlos Williams. Spring and All (1923).
    7. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby (1925).
    8. Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury (1929).
    9. Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying (1930).
    10. Langston Hughes: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”; “Epilogue”; “Harlem”; “Same in Blues”; “Theme for English B”; “Mother to Son”; “Song for a Dark Girl.”
    11. Countee Cullen: “Yet Do I Marvel”; “Heritage”; “Incident.”
    12. Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms (1929).
    13. Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).
    14. Dos Passos, John. The Big Money (1936).
    15. Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath (1939).
    16. Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).
    17. Wright, Richard. Native Son (1940).
    18. Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire (1947).
    19. Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman (1949).
    20. Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye (1951).
    21. Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man (1952).
    22. Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time.
    23. Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
    24. Eugene O’Neill, Long Days Journey Into Night
    25. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
    26. Ginsberg, Allen. “Howl” and “Kaddish.”
    27. Kerouac, Jack. On the Road (1957)
    28. Burroughs, William S. Naked Lunch (1959).
    29. Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun (1959).
    30. Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962).
    31. Plath, Sylvia. Ariel.
    32. Pynchon, Thomas. V. (1963).
    33. Sam Shepard, True West
    34. LeRoi Jones, Dutchman (1964)
    35. O’Connor, Flannery. “A good man is hard to find”; “everything that rises must converge”; “revelation”; “good country people”
    36. Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness (1969).
    37. Reed, Ishmael. Mumbo Jumbo (1972).
    38. Delany, Samuel R. Dhalgren (1975).
    39. Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony (1977).
    40. Gibson, William. Neuromancer (1984)
    41. DeLillo, Don. White Noise (1985).
    42. Morrison, Toni. Beloved (1987).
    43. Gloria Naylor, Linden Hills
    44. Roth, Philip. American Pastoral (1997).
    45. Updike, John.  Rabbit, Run
    46. Butler, Octavia. Kindred (1979).
    47. Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex (2002).
    48. Vonnegut, Jr., Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).

    NON-CANONICAL

    1. Asimov, Isaac. I, Robot (1950).
    2. Bradbury, Ray. The Martian Chronicles (1950).
    3. Kornbluth, Cyril M. and Fredrick Pohl. The Space Merchants (1953).
    4. Ellison, Harlan.  “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967).
    5. Tiptree, James Jr. (Alice B. Sheldon), “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1973).
    6. Delany, Samuel R. Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)
    7. Sterling, Bruce ed. Mirrorshades:  The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986).
    8. Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash (1992).
    9. Powers, Richard. Galatea 2.2 (1995).
    10. Di Filippo, Paul. Ribofunk (1996).
    11. Cunningham, Michael. Specimen Days (2005).

  • PhD Exam Reading List Progress Thus Far

    inside the cathedral of learning at the university of pittsburgh, stone columns dwarf the students reading at tables below

    I’ve been working my ass off preparing for my PhD exams, but the numbers are saying that I haven’t done as much reading as I had thought. After finishing Alan Wilde’s Horizons of Assent a few moments ago, I decided to crunch the numbers on the number of books that I had read on my reading list. Here’s how it shakes out:

    Major Exam, 20th Century American Literature, 27/59, 32 remaining

    Minor Exam, Postmodern Theory, 15/29, 14 remaining

    Minor Exam, Philip K. Dick, 14/45, 31 remaining

    Total read, 56/133, 77 remaining

    I checked off 14 authors over the winter break between semesters (some of these ‘numbers’ include several short works by one author), and I am hopeful that having only one class to teach this coming semester will allow me the time and attention necessary to properly prepare myself for my exams (including my French language exam).

    I would probably get a lot of reading done if I locked myself in the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning (interior pictured above) and asked Y to bring me a picnic basket everyday, which I suspect will contain a sleepy Miao Miao cat who ate all of my food! Admittedly, that’s too far away, so I’ll sequester myself in my office. I do, however, need to venture out now to take the trash out and get some sleep. Adieu.

  • Bruno Latour and James Burke

    I just finished reading Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern (1991/translation 1993), and I was struck by how similar his ideas about the interplay of Nature and Society–that they are not the poles, but orbit about the quasi-object and quasi-subject–that collectives and networks are definitive. However, I was more struck by how much his ideas seemed to reflect those of James Burke in his Connections (1978) and The Day the Universe Changed (1985) television series, albeit in much more philosophical terms. Burke’s demonstration that science, technology, culture, and society are all interconnected and construct one another. Or, to beat a dead cliche, nothing (but subatomic particles) are created in a vacuum. I do not know to what extent Burke’s work may have informed Latour’s theories, but I do know that Latour was a constant presence in my Georgia Tech literature and cultural studies classes. I am done for the evening, but I will think more about Latour tomorrow when I write up my notes.