The University of St. Thomas

College of Arts & Sciences | Department of English

Young-ok An

Young-ok An

Young-ok An

Associate Professor of English

yan@stthomas.edu
Phone: (651) 962-5621

Office Location: JRC 306
Office Hours: (Spring 2012): R 3:00-5:00pm

Courses taught in Spring 2012
GENG 672-01
22148		 Brit Women Writers Long 19th C 1800-2100 R JRC 222

3 Credit Hours

This seminar examines British women writers from the French Revolution to the dawn of modernism, exploring key questions relative to women's writing (such as gender norms of domesticity and subordination, female desire, and struggles for authorship, career, and fame, etc.) and varied forms (tracts, poetry, novel, plays, short stories, travel narratives). In particular, the thematic focus will be on tracing female friendship, from those involving fictional characters to those of the writers themselves through biographical and/or intertextual relationships. We will read such writers as Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Mary Tighe, Maria Jane Jewsbury, Felicia Hemans, Letitia Landon, Charlotte Bronte, Christina Rossetti, and Elizabeth Browning. The notion of female literary friendship, drawn from Derrida's "Politics of Friendship" and Sharon Marcus's "Between Women," will help us discern the intertextuality of women's writing. Some of the key questions we will examine are as follows: What are the conceptions of friendships that emerge in these women's writings, whether through the relationships between their characters, in their lives, or intertextually? Do female friendships reflect or resist the model of male friendships? In what ways do women writers emphasize or (de-emphasize) the genders of their characters/narrators/authors when they forge friendships? How does female rivalry or jealousy figure in the constellation of friendships? For the final research paper, students will work towards writing a conference paper for BWWC ("Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Conference). This course counts as one 600-level course and is considered elective credit. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
Courses taught in Fall 2012
GENG 513-01
40215		 Issues in Criticism 1800-2100 W TBD

3 Credit Hours

An introduction to the principal theoretical issues and questions in the discipline of literary studies. The course explores the major contemporary approaches to literary studies in the context of various traditions of literary theory and criticism. It encourages students to assess constructively some of the key controversies in contemporary critical theory and apply their learning to the interpretation of literary texts. This required course must be taken as one of the first three courses in the program.

Academic History

Ph.D., University of Southern California
B.A. and M.A., Seoul National University, Korea                 
At St. Thomas since 1997

Specialties / Interests

British Romanticism (esp. Blake, the Shelleys, Byron, Hemans, and Landon)
Women Writers of the Long 18th- and 19th- Centuries
Contemporary Theory (esp. Deleuze, Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, Benjamin, Jameson, and Zizek)
Feminist and Gender Theory (esp. Spivak, French Feminists, S. Felman, J. Butler, and E. Grosz)

Courses Taught

Undergraduate:
British Romanticism; Romanticism Across Boundaries (British, American, and European); General Core Courses in Literature and Writing (Fiction and Non-Fiction; Poetry and Drama); British Literature Survey; Various Topics on Women’s Literature (Cross-listed Courses in English and Women’s Studies); Issues in English Studies; Senior Seminars in English and Women’s Studies.

Graduate:
British Romanticism; Women Writers of the Long 19th-Century; Issues in Theory and Criticism; Psychoanalytic Theory; Feminist Theory.

Current Project

Prometheus Unmanned: Becoming Promethea

Selected Publications 

“The Historicity of Byron’s Promethean Agon,” Lord Byron and History. Eds. Maria  Schoina, Nic Panagopoulos, and M. B. Raizis. Collection of 35th International Byron Conference Papers, The Messolonghi Byron Society and International Byron Research Centre, Greece. (Forthcoming)

“The Historicity of Promethean Agon in Manfred.” Freedom and Violence in Byron. Eds. Matt Green and Piya Lapinski (Palgrave, 2011). 102-117.    

“‘Read Your Fall’: the Signs of Plague in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man.” Studies in Romanticism 44.4 (Winter 2005): 581-604.

“The Specter’s Haunting: Fantastic Crossings in Frankenstein.” The Journal of Humanities 51 (June 2004) [Seoul National University, Korea]: 159-207.

"The Double Formations of the Colonial Masculine Subjectivity.” Studies of English Languages and Cultures 5 (1997), 139-164.

"Beatrice's Gaze Revisited: Anatomizing The Cenci." Criticism (Winter 1996): 27-68.

Selected Presentations

"Spanish Minervans in Byron and Hemans," International Byron Conference, University of Valladroid, Spain. July, 2011.

"'All [Her] Melancholic Sounds': the Poetics of Felicia Hemans," Poetry and Melancholia Conference, University of Stirling, Scotland. June, 2011.

"Curiosity Beyond Morbidity: Hemans and Landon Raising the Dead," Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Conference, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. March, 2011.

"Creating Distances: Felicia Hemans's Flight into the Foreign" "Romanticism and the Tyranny of Distance," Romantic Studies Associations of Australia, University of Sydney, Australia. February, 2011.

“The Female Body and the Drinking Cup.” International Conference in “Blake, Gender and Sexuality in the 21st Century,” Oxford, England. July 2010.

“The Historicity of Byron’s Promethean Agon,” International Byron Society. Athens and Missonlonghi, Greece. September 2009.

“Rethinking The Post-modern Prince through Reading Mary Shelley’s Critique of The Prince in Valperga.” Confele 2009: “Education, Labor, and Emancipation.” Bahia, Brazil. June 2009.

“Byron Unmanned,” University of Minnesota 19th-Century Subfield Group, Minneapolis. March 2009.
 
“The Charmed Cup of Fame: Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Felicia Hemans,” M/MLA. Minneapolis. November 2008.

“Transnational, Trans-historical Imagination in Mary Shelley’s Valperga: Question of Language of Romance within History,” North American Society in Studies in Romanticism, University of Bologna, Italy. March 2008. 
 
“The Female Body and the Wine Cup in William Blake.” Feminist Research Presentation UST. February 2007.
 
“Crossing Boundaries, Annihilating Identities: Thinking Post-Identity.” M/MLA. Minneapolis. November 2002.

“Fame as Guilty Pleasure in Women’s Writing.” American Conference in Romanticism. Indiana University. November 1999.

“Rape, Patricide and Execution: A Play on Violence.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism. Duke University, Durham, NC. November 1994.

 “Blake and the Negative Dialectics of Enlightenment.” M/MLA. Western Illinois University. October 1990.
    
“History, Textuality, and Blake: A Feminist Critique.” International  Historicizing Blake Conference. St. Mary’s College, England. September 1990.

"Construction of Femininity: A Political Reading of Psychoanalytic Feminism." International Lacan Society on "Lacan, Culture, and Sexual Identity.” Kent State University. May 1990.

"Theorizing the Ends of Feminism and Politicizing Feminist Theories." The Ends of Theory International Conference. Wayne State University. March 1990.

"On Oroonoko's Ideological Formation: Reading Oroonoko from a Feminist, Third-worldist Perspective." Aphra Behn Society's Inaugural "Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Women's Voice" Conference. University of San Diego.  February 1990.

Respondent to Gayatri Spivak, "Critical Theory: Poststructuralism and Issues of Gender, Race and Class." Rhetoric, Linguistics and Literature Conference. USC. March 1988.