Katherine Brundan, Ph.D.

Instructor

Education

PhD, Comparative Literature, University of Oregon, 2006
MA, English Literature, Cambridge University,1996
BA, (Hons) English Literature, Cambridge University,1992

Field of Interest

19th century European novel, trauma studies, gender, sensationalism

Publications

• “Cosmopolitan Complexities in Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui,” Studies in the Novel 37:2 (Summer 2005): 123-40

Courses

COLT 204 World of Fiction: The European Novel

• This course explores trend-setting novels from France, Russia, England, and Germany that have had significant cultural and literary impact, particularly on the development of the novel. The readings offer a tour of provocative themes – power, romance, sexuality, hysteria, criminality, psychology, and justice, to name a few. We will discuss the novels in both historically specific and broader terms: how each text displays particular cultural, national, and gender anxieties, as well as how each contributes to our idea of what a novel should be. We will think critically about questions such as who gets to be the hero or heroine, how a novel portrays the interiority of the mind, what ideas or dilemmas a novel should cover, and the narrative choices of individual writers. By beginning our reading with an early novel by a woman writer, we will consider the centrality of women to the creation of the novel as a genre. Texts: Madame de Lafayette, The Princess of Clèves, Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Stoker, Dracula, Kafka, The Trial. [Fall]

COLT 204 World of Fiction: Trauma Fictions

• This course investigates fictional representations of traumatic events – novels concerned with passing on stories of catastrophic events and personal trauma. We will begin with a brief reading in trauma theory to ground our subsequent discussion, and then explore how novelists put traumatic experiences into words. We will consider questions such as how do writers represent events that are unspeakable, and even unthinkable? How does trauma impact memory and self-representation, and what narrative strategies can writers use to express this? How do novels grapple with the idea of trauma being passed on through generations? We will consider the impact of race, gender, and oppression as we read texts from a variety of historical, cultural, and national contexts, including the Holocaust, slavery, the legacy of Caribbean colonialism, and the French Revolution.
  Texts include: Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Toni Morrison, Beloved,
  Caryl Philips, The Nature of Blood, Maryse Condé, Desirada. [Winter]