Mark Sherman

Professor
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BA, University of Rhode Island
MA, University of Rhode Island
PHD, University of Rhode Island

Whenever he is asked what he teaches at RISD, Mark Sherman tries to keep it simple by responding, “Old stuff.” He is interested in intertextual exchanges among narrative poets, and his primary topics of inquiry are located, geographically, between England and Italy, and historically between the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

How writers in these various zones employed the literature of antiquity (Roman in particular) is central to Sherman’s thinking as well, so his scholarship tends to focus on questions of historicity and ideology, cultural exchange and transformation, as well as the evolving relationships among gender, representation, authority and violence that feed into ideas of modernity. Few poetic genres register this complex of issues quite so well as the epic, and he teaches several courses in which epic poetry figures prominently.

Sherman’s recent research has taken up questions of political theology and post-Copernican cosmology in early modern writers and how a radically altered view of creation informed their ethical, political and artistic perspectives.

Courses

Fall 2023 Courses

LAS E101-05 - FIRST-YEAR LITERATURE SEMINAR
Level Undergraduate
Unit Literary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

LAS E101-05

FIRST-YEAR LITERATURE SEMINAR

Level Undergraduate
Unit Literary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: MW | 11:20 AM - 12:50 PM Instructor(s): Mark Sherman Location(s): College Building, Room 410 Enrolled / Capacity: 15 Status: Closed

SECTION DESCRIPTION

An introduction to literary study that helps students develop the skills necessary for college-level reading, writing, research and critical thinking. Through exposure to a variety of literary forms and genres, historical periods and critical approaches, students are taught how to read closely, argue effectively and develop a strong writing voice. The course is reading and writing intensive and organized around weekly assignments. There are no waivers for LAS-E101 except for transfer students who have taken an equivalent college course.

First-year Students are pre-registered for this course by the department.

Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Transfer Students register into the designated section(s).

Major Requirement | BFA

LAS E211-01 - MEDIEVAL TO EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE
Level Undergraduate
Unit Literary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

LAS E211-01

MEDIEVAL TO EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE

Level Undergraduate
Unit Literary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: TH | 9:40 AM - 12:40 PM Instructor(s): Mark Sherman Location(s): College Building, Room 431 Enrolled / Capacity: 25 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

This discussion-based course surveys major and minor works of British literature, mostly poetry, from the late Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century, with emphasis on the way these works relate to broad cultural phenomena in other areas, including philosophy, theology, and visual arts. Regular homework emphasizes independent critical and investigative reading of complex texts and images; formal writing assignments develop your ability to combine your own insights with those gained from casual and scholarly research, open-book midterm and final exams allow you to demonstrate your ability to analyze unfamiliar works and place them in context with those we have studied. Readings include (mostly short) works by Chaucer (3 Canterbury Tales), Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare (Sonnets and The Tempest), Donne, Marvell, Herbert, Herrick, Milton, Bunyan, Butler, Behn, Rochester, Locke, Dryden, Pope, Hogarth, Gray, Boswell and Johnson.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

LAS E746-01 - THE SPARK OF HOPE IN THE PAST: MORRIS' CHAUCER/CRANE'S SPENSER
Level Undergraduate
Unit Literary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

LAS E746-01

THE SPARK OF HOPE IN THE PAST: MORRIS' CHAUCER/CRANE'S SPENSER

Level Undergraduate
Unit Literary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: M | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM Instructor(s): Mark Sherman Location(s): College Building, Room 410 Enrolled / Capacity: 15 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

Among the greatest monuments of the Arts & Crafts movement is the Kelmscott Chaucer published by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in 1896.  Featuring eighty-seven wood-cut illustrations by Burne-Jones, the book is the culmination of Morris’s career as a utopian socialist reformer and a manifestation of his ideals.  Habitually looking forward by engaging the late-medieval past, Morris’s edition is not only one of the most beautiful artifacts of the age but also registers a trenchant critique of the industrial, colonial empire that England had become.  While work proceeded on the Chaucer, Morris’s colleague Walter Crane—unquestionably the foremost illustrator of children’s literature and himself a strident socialist like Morris—produced a magnificent edition of Edmund Spenser’s Elizabethan romance epic, The Faerie Queene, a work which Karl Marx saw as little more than imperialist propaganda by “Elizabeth’s arse-kissing poet.”  The plot thickens when, mindful of the mentorship between Morris and Crane, we note that something similar existed in the relationship between Chaucer and Spenser (despite the two hundred years that separated them).  Both Chaucer and Spenser are considered “philosophical” poets, just as Morris and Crane are philosophically and politically driven in their visual art work.  If we map out the complex interrelationships among these four artists, what can we discern about the ways that literary and visual media interrogate historical consciousness to “negotiate the past,” as one scholar put it?  What are the politics of nostalgia, and what potential/perils might ride along with it?  Is the idea of a progressive past little more than a grammatical category, or does it carry the sort of weight that the future perfect does as “the utopian tense”?  And just how should we understand the relationship between literary and visual representation?  What is the critical potential of visual “illumination” of literary narrative?  As a seminar, this course will be driven by independent student inquiry into the topic, culminating in a significant project to conclude the semester.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

Spring 2024 Courses

LAS E209-01 - EPIC
Level Undergraduate
Unit Literary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

LAS E209-01

EPIC

Level Undergraduate
Unit Literary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2024-02-15 to 2024-05-24
Times: M | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM Instructor(s): Mark Sherman Location(s): College Building, Room 442 Enrolled / Capacity: 25 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

Epic narratives seem antagonistically devoted to their predecessors in the genre and to the cultural mythologies of their own times. Students in this course will read a series of epics written from antiquity to the present and consider as well the genre's incursions into film. Texts might include: Homer's Iliad or Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Inferno, and Walcott's Omeros. There will be midterm and final examinations, an independently researched essay, and regular short writing assignments.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

LAS E209-02 - EPIC
Level Undergraduate
Unit Literary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

LAS E209-02

EPIC

Level Undergraduate
Unit Literary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2024-02-15 to 2024-05-24
Times: W | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM Instructor(s): Mark Sherman Location(s): College Building, Room 442 Enrolled / Capacity: 25 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

Epic narratives seem antagonistically devoted to their predecessors in the genre and to the cultural mythologies of their own times. Students in this course will read a series of epics written from antiquity to the present and consider as well the genre's incursions into film. Texts might include: Homer's Iliad or Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Inferno, and Walcott's Omeros. There will be midterm and final examinations, an independently researched essay, and regular short writing assignments.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

LAS E343-01 - SHAKESPEARE
Level Undergraduate
Unit Literary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

LAS E343-01

SHAKESPEARE

Level Undergraduate
Unit Literary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2024-02-15 to 2024-05-24
Times: M | 9:40 AM - 12:40 PM Instructor(s): Mark Sherman Location(s): College Building, Room 442 Enrolled / Capacity: 25 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

The name Shakespeare conveys a set of assumptions about style and eloquence in the English language, the course of European history, the power of dramatic literature, the protocols of theatrical performance and of Renaissance/Early Modern Culture in general--not to mention incontrovertible truths about the human condition. In this course, we will undertake a creatively critical examination of several plays in the context of 16th- and 17th-century political struggles, major ideological shifts, colonial expansion, literary movements, and the cultural place of the commercial theatre as a new and controversial space of representation that vigorously appropriated traditional narratives. Requirements for the course include regular short writing assignments, a modest research paper, a final examination, and (if possible) attendance at a local theatrical production.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

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BA, University of Rhode Island
MA, University of Rhode Island
PHD, University of Rhode Island