Graduate Reading Groups

The "Plus-Minus" American Reading Group

Americanist graduate students and faculty interested in American Literature and Culture of the nineteenth century ("plus or minus" a few centuries) are welcome to join this monthly reading group.  The group has selected novels, short stories, essays, and even a bit of film and television, sometimes paired with a critical reading in preparation of a monthly discussion.  Some recent selections include: Twain's Puddnhead Wilson , Melville's Typee , Faulkner's  Absalom, Absalom!, sermons of Cotton Mather, Poe's "The Gold Bug" and "Murder in the Rue Morgue", Cather's My Antonia , McCarthy's The Road , Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' The Story of Avis and The Silent Partner , and episodes of HBO's The Wire.

If interested, please contact:
Amy Lang: ( aslang@syr.edu )
Susan Edmunds ( sledmund@syr.edu )

The Long Nineteenth Century Reading Group

Graduate students interested in nineteenth-century British Studies can join the Victorian Reading Group, a discussion group that meets bi-monthly for dinner and lively discussions outside the classroom in the spring and fall semesters. The group is co-directed by faculty area-specialists Professors Michael Goode and Claudia Klaver and is designed to give Ph.D. and M.A. students greater exposure to the period's central ideas, debates, issues, traditions, and evolving perspectives. It also trouble-shoots specific aspects of the vast field that graduate students feel deserve special attention - such topics include evolutionary theory, sexuality and the novel, changing models of writing history, gender and social theory, and others. Together faculty and graduate students build a set of critical readings - from novels, essays, criticism, theory, case studies, history, and historiography - and then graduate students introduce these readings with a short talk at the start of each session. Occasionally the group invites faculty from nearby colleges and universities to attend meetings. Membership includes those pursuing a Ph.D. or M.A. students working toward the Ph.D. in the period, and graduate students finishing dossiers in the nineteenth century, gender studies, and social theory.

Claudia Klaver ( ccklaver@syr.edu )
Mike Goode ( mgoode@syr.edu )

Graduate students studying film for their major field or a special interest can participate in the Film Studies discussion group, which meets monthly on Sunday afternoons throughout the year. The group was formed with the purpose of fostering a sense of intellectual community amongst the persons working in film, and it now comprises graduate students and faculty in English and the film program of the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Each month a different member chooses a topic arising from his or her research or teaching, hosts the meeting off campus and facilitates what is always a lively two-hour discussion. There is usually a screening of one or more films to be discussed before each meeting, and critical reading to contextualize the discussion is circulated in advance. In the past year the group has met to discuss such varied topics as 1930s melodrama, the representation of LA in studio-era and contemporary film, death in WWII films, the showgirl musical, contemporary teen movies, representations of the British Empire in India, African-American masculinity and the contemporary action film, teaching film in critical theory courses. On occasion, the group has also planned other activities, such as attending a symposium on queer representations in the media at Cornell, arranging for a workshop on film production, and even having an Oscar party. The group also has an informal email list for posting announcements, forwarding information about upcoming conferences and calls for papers, and for beginning some conversation before each month's meeting.

Contact information: