So, after having completed my first year of grad school, and being a year closer to getting my Masters in English Studies (also known as Literary Studies elsewhere) I get to spend my summer reading books for my Qualifying Exams. Theoretically the “exam offers the opportunity to develop a body of knowledge in two historical periods and to demonstrate [my] ability to think theoretically across authors, genres, and periods. More broadly, this exams offers a unique opportunity in [my] graduate career to perform the kind of sustained and self-directed work required of faculty and scholars in the field. Unlike the work that [I] do in [my] seminars, which is supported and shaped by [my] professors and the course materials they have organized for [me], this exam asks [me] to demonstrate intellectual independence and self-motivation in [my] reading and writing.” So, hooray for me, right?
We are given six “Historical Period Reading Lists”—Pre-16th Century, 16th-18th Century, 18th-19th Century, Second Half of the 19th Century, First Half of the 20th Century and Second Half of the 20th Century—and then have to pick two of the time periods (only one of which can be from the 20th Century) and then craft two reading lists of the equivalent of twelve books and a minimum of ten authors from each time period as well as at least three critical tests from each time period to create a “scholarly context.”
We had to turn our Reading Lists in around the end of May, and get them approved by our Committee Chair … and once they were approved, we were off to the races. We spend the summer reading the books, steeping ourselves in our time periods, the texts and the scholarly work so that in the Fall Quarter we can submit a handful of potential essay questions based on all of our reading and once our Committees pick the two questions/prompts they like the best, we spend a weekend fast and furiously writing the two essays which then get judged, for lack of a better word, and we then find out if we pass or not. Loads of fun.
As anyone who knows me could have guessed, my chosen time periods were Second Half of the 19th Century and Second Half of the 20th Century (in fact, a number of the other grad students were able to easily guess what lists I had chosen when we were discussing them). Big surprise, I know, but there you go, and my reading lists are as follows:
Second Half of the 19th Century
PRIMARY TEXTS
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Behind a Mask, or, A Woman’s Power by Louisa May Alcott
Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Dracula by Bram Stoker
“Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Dubois
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James
“The Yellow Wall-paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
SCHOLARLY TEXTS
Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism by Richard Dellamora
Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism by Patrick Brantlinger
Second Half of the 20th Century
PRIMARY TEXTS
Angels in America, Parts I and II by Tony Kushner
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Libra by Don DeLillo
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
The Shining by Stephen King
Watchmen by Alan Moore
Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros
SCHOLARLY TEXTS
America by Jean Baudrillard
Mythologies by Roland Barthes
Postmodern Literature by Ian Gregson
I made some changes to the list and so I had to submit a rationale for said changes since I have an overall reasoning for the two lists I crafted:
I have attempted to craft two reading lists across two time periods that run roughly parallel to each other in terms of content and critique. There are a number of reasons for this, but chief among them is my belief that literature reflects and is a reaction to the social changes that were occurring during its time. I find this to be especially true for the late Victorian Period and the last half of the Twentieth Century, especially since both those time periods are dealing with many of the same issues: gender roles, societal violence, burgeoning sexuality, reactionary politics, immigration, etc.
I have tried to craft two reading lists that are not only coherent in their internal rationale, but also that run parallel to each other in terms of the issues that the books are dealing with. To that end, I have made a handful of changes: I have included Henry James’ novella “The Turn of the Screw” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to the Second Half of the 19th Century reading list because it is my belief that the role of Gothic literature in exposing societal anxieties is indispensible and, while this genre was somewhat represented in the 19th Century reading list (with Stoker and Wilde’s novels and Gilman’s short story) I felt it stood to be augmented by the inclusion of James’s novella and Stevenson’s story as these to works serve to amplify Victorian concerns of the mental/inner self as well as working intertextually with many of the other books on my list.
In terms of the Second Half of the 20th Century, I have included Stephen King’s novel The Shining and Ira Levin’s novel Rosemary’s Baby to the reading list because, as with the 19th Century, is my belief that the role of Gothic literature in exposing societal anxieties is indispensible and felt that the genre was under-represented in the Master Lists (with only Carter’s short story and Morrison’s novel representing the genre). I feel that both King and Levin’s novels, critically speaking, are their most complex in terms of relaying the social anxieties of their respective times: King’s dealing with issues of gender roles and the changing face of masculinity, and Levin’s dealing with the anxieties of urban living and the shifting views of religion in the 1960s (culminating in the April 8, 1966 (a year before Levin’s novel was published) cover of Time reading “Is God Dead?”).
As for the substitution of DeLillo’s White Noise with his 1988 novel Libra, I made that change chiefly because I have read (and written on White Noise) a number of times in my undergrad career and am, quite frankly, sick of the book. However, I recognize that DeLillo is an important writer of the time period and to that end, I made the substitution of Libra, which not only serves to replace White Noise but also fits with my overall rationale for my two reading lists which is I believe that Libra brings certain elements—plot-wise—to the discussion of literature’s ability to reflect on and react to the social anxieties of its time, specifically the “unknowability” of history and how a violent act (the assassination of JFK) can create a point in history where so much is known and yet nothing is known at all. This simultaneous knowing and unknowing is, as I see it, a major concern of both time periods I have chosen.
So, this is how I’ll be spending my summer vacation. That and I’ll be prepping to start my Masters Thesis, my proposal for which reads thus: I am interested in exploring the intersections of sex, violence, gender and race in contemporary horror (specifically horror written in the 1970s (with a major focus on Stephen King's The Shining)) and how this genre at this specific moment in time and its recurring themes both reflect and are a reaction to the social changes that were occurring during this era (i.e. Affirmative Action, The Men's Movement, the ERA, Gay Rights, etc.).
Oh, and there will be another little Reader coming into the family some time in August, so I’ll be having a busy busy Summer!
by Robert A. Heinlein
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