Graduate Course Descriptions

Fall Semester 2015

Department of English and Comparative Literature

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

ENGL 8060 001 American Women Novelists Call Number: 505952 W 4:40-7:30 Instructor: Hogeland

The course focuses on works by American women writers post-1900, including fiction (both novels and stories), drama, poetry, and nonfiction.

ENGL 7052 001 Approaches to American Romanticism Call Number: 505935 R 2:00-4:50 Instructor: Person

A course devoted to novels, personal narrative, and poems published between 1850 and 1870, a period commonly associated with American “romanticism” or the “American Renaissance.” We shall read four pairs of works representing various genres and sub-genres. In addition to the primary texts, we shall read selected works of literary criticism exemplifying various critical and theoretical approaches.

Requirements: one short paper/prospectus, one article-length research paper, preparation of one annotated bibliography and leading class discussion.

Reading List:

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter Herman Melville, Moby-Dick Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (with emphasis on “Song of Myself”) Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems

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BRITISH LITERATURE

ENGB 7066 001 Approaches to Romantic Lit. II Call Number: 505047 T 5:00-7:50 Instructor: Carlson

Finding of Don Juan by Haidee, Ford Madox Brown (1873)

Approaches to Romanticism: “Sex, Death, & Modernity: Two Romantic Long Poems”

In this course we will read in detail two of the greatest long poems in the English language. In The Prelude Wordsworth developed a new poetic mode to explore a deep, psychologized self and in so doing inaugurated modernity in English writing. In Don Juan, his comic and satirical masterpiece, Byron challenged Wordsworth’s innovations with a representation of subjectivity that was equally groundbreaking in its self-reflexivity. Both poets revolutionized poetic form, genre, and diction; Byron’s “novel in verse” and Wordsworth’s “poem on the growth of my own mind” together constitute a decisive autobiographical turn whose influence continues to be felt in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction to this day. Among the issues they addressed are sexual deviance, urban alienation, the dynamics of consciousness, the clash of Christian and Muslim cultures, and revolutionary and post-revolutionary politics. Our reading will benefit from the latest critical approaches including digital forms of mapping textuality and historical examination of the lively manuscript, print, and visual culture in which the poems were produced and circulated. Students who have already taken ENGB 7066 (e.g., in Spring 2015) are eligible to take the course for credit. There will be jokes and rhymes—and opportunities for creative as well as critical writing.

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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

ENGC 7004 001 Introduction to Cultural Theory Call Number: 505053 T 2:00-4:50 Instructor: Weissman

This seminar provides an introduction to major critical theories that have shaped contemporary study of literature and culture in North America. We will examine scholarship informed by such fields, schools, and methodologies as New Criticism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, deconstruction, new historicism, queer studies, narrative theory, visual culture, cognitive studies, and quantitative research. Emphasis will be placed on the practice of using theory in one’s own written work. To this end, we will examine dialogues on topics explored through various theoretical lenses and learn about the place of theory in the fields of literary studies, composition and rhetoric, and creative writing.

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ENGL 7050 001 Studies in Diasporic Literature and Nationalism Call Number: 505932 W 4:40-7:30 Instructor: Dean

This seminar offers a multi-faceted examination of the African American genre of slave narratives and neo-slave narratives, from the shortest paragraph-long examinations to book-length manifestations that captured the imaginations of 19th century America and the world. We will trace the early origins of the slave narratives in the captivity narratives, in the 18th Century Conversion Narratives, in sentimental literature, as well as travel literature and the new Western adventure genre. We will also consider the amazing frequency of white women who wrote “masked” slave narratives as diatribes against their own domestic slavery.

The course will encompass issues of race, gender, and sexuality, and historical and literary contexts of important narratives, which will include those of Olaudah Equiano, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Hannah Craft, but also the neo/fictionalized

narratives, such as Our Nig . An important focus will be on the continued impact of the genre’s story and drama in modern fictional narratives inspired by the genre, such as Ishmael Reed’s Fight to Canada, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Kindred by Octavia Butler and Dessa Rose by Shirley Williams. The course will also ask what happens to a “slave narrative” in the hands of a white director, such as in Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Or

the female slave’s experience in the hands of a black male director in 12 Years a Slave? or, more to the point, where are the films about the female slave experience? Our job, though, is ,finally, to discuss modern and historical works influenced by the genre as well as the vibrant re-imaginings of fugitive narratives in contemporary art and culture.

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Dissertation Workshop

ENGL 9010 001 Call Number: 505961 R 12:30-3:20 Instructor: Micciche 15FS.D-Aug. 24-Oct. 11

ENGL 9010 002 Call Number: 505063 R 12:30-3:20 Instructor: Micciche 15FS.E Oct. 12 – Dec. 5

Interdisciplinary Dissertation Workshop (7 week course; 1 credit hour tuition cost will be covered by the Graduate School)

This class is an intensive pass/fail workshop for doctoral students in any discipline. It is premised on three basic ideas: writers benefit from being in an environment in which writing is prioritized; sustained motivation and consistent progress can be helped by peer accountability; a structured schedule and set of flexible writing strategies can together contribute to successful writing sessions. Participants will spend the majority of their time writing in a shared space. The group will break periodically for discussions on topics of common interest, such as motivation, goal setting, time management, and successful writing habits and rituals, as well as for brief movement exercises and writing activities. Assessment will be based on consistent participation as well as a written reflection describing progress made during the workshop, strategies learned that will affect subsequent writing activities, and projected writing goals for the next three months.

ENGL 9090 001 MA Thesis Call Number: 510596 TBA Instructor: Griffith

Thesis course credit received for work completed during the final semester of the MA program.

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ENGL 9095 001 Teaching Call Number: 510598 TBA Instructor: Griffith

Academic course credit received for teaching as part of a Graduate Assistantship.

ENGL 9098 001 Independent Studies Call Number: 509701 TBA Instructor: Various Instructors

Academic course credit received for teaching as part of a Graduate Assistantship

ENGL 9099 001 Research Call Number: 510597 TBA Instructor: Griffith

Doctoral research coursework credit.

RHETORIC & COMPOSITION

ENGC 7020 001 Theories of Composing Call Number: 505054 T 11:00-1:50 Instructor: Micciche

We’ll begin with the idea that composing is an intentional act of making up, putting together, constructing and producing. This loose definition is situated for us by post-secondary writing instruction and by composing as it relates to cultural efforts of making and their contexts: making subjectivities, identities, language norms, and so forth. Composing with will be part of the vocabulary of this class as we consider that, in addition to composing with tools and technologies, writers also compose in partnership with sound, movement, others, disability, feelings, sexuality, power grids, food, behaviors and rituals, non-humans, and with(in) sociopolitical, biological, and natural environments. Readings will likely be drawn from comp studies, critical theory, nonfiction, and poetry, including work by Janet Emig, Ann Berthoff, Judith Halberstam, Haruki Murakami, Paul Prior, Margaret Price, Donna Haraway, Harryette Mullin, Peter Elbow, Sara Ahmed, James

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Baldwin, Rachel Carson, and others. This class fulfills the Critical Theory requirement, Rhetoric & Composition area requirements, and/or may be counted as a free elective.

ENGC 7031 001 Teaching Practicum Call Number: 505056 F 10:10-12:00 Instructor: Malek

Teaching Practicum is designed to support graduate students in the Department of English who are teaching first-year composition, Engl 1001. This required course builds from work begun during the pre-term orientation to help graduate student teachers familiarize themselves with the Engl 1001 curriculum goals, outcomes, and policies; design meaningful course activities; assess student writing; manage the paper load, and develop effective strategies for teaching first-year composition students.

ENGC 7002 001 Introduction to Graduate Studies Call Number: 510599 M 10:10-11:05 Instructor: Griffith

This is a one-hour course for incoming MA student. The course explores some of the ways that graduate study, graduate school, and graduate culture are distinct from other academic activities. Students will get a sense of the range of conversations--on paper, in person, and electronic--appropriate to graduate school as an intellectual community, and some of the specifics of how to situate themselves in the cluster of related disciplines and subdisciplines that make up the contemporary English department. The focus will be on practical matters of professionalization, but with the intellectual context of that professionalization always firmly in mind. Readings will consist primarily of articles and essays about the history and the current outlook of English studies.

ENGC 7003 001 Professionalization Seminar Call Number: 510600 M 10:10-11:05 Instructor: Griffith

This is a one-hour course for incoming PhD students. The focus will be practical matters of professionalization--we'll talk about conference papers, submission to scholarly and literary journals, applying for grants and fellowships, and the like--but with the intellectual context of that professionalization always firmly in mind. We'll also be working on ways to build and sustain an intellectual community that includes students and faculty in all the department's subdisciplines. Grading will be pass/fail.

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ENGL 8035 001 R/C Research Methods in Rhetoric and Composition Call Number: 505949 M 10:10-1:00 Instructor: Carter

This course addresses research methods in Rhetoric and Composition from the 1960s to the present. Course participants perform close examinations of qualitative and quantitative studies, considering how various critical theories inform research design and reporting. Those examinations aim not toward achieving an ideal methodology, but toward shaping scholarly practices that are appropriate to our chosen topics as well as the material and social circumstances of our investigations. We attend to how method at once enables and constrains what we learn from each study, and how our choice of analytical terms makes certain insights available while obscuring others. Key areas of inquiry include writing pedagogy, the history of rhetoric, digital communications, family and community literacies, and visual rhetoric, though weekly activities will accommodate the particular interests of class participants. As we discuss those interests, we also review methodological interventions by disciplinary historians, feminists, theorists of race relations, and teacher-scholars working in transnational contexts.

Those interventions appear at various points in our course readings, some of which include Lee Nickoson et al’s Writing Studies Research in Practice, Michelle Ballif’s Theorizing Histories of Rhetoric, Eileen Schell and K. J. Rawson’s Rhetorica in Motion: Feminist Rhetorical Methods and Methodologies, Laura Greis’s Still Life with Rhetoric, Jay Dolmage’s Disability Rhetoric, and David Fleming’s From Form to Meaning: Freshman Composition and the Long Sixties, 1957-1974. As we explore those texts we take on two major writing tasks, the first of which is to describe an area of debate within the conversation about research methods and make a brief contribution to that discourse. The second task is to formulate a research study that articulates a pressing concern, reviews literature relevant to that concern, and presents a detailed proposal for examining the issue using qualitative and/or quantitative techniques. With careful planning, the first project can fit seamlessly with the second, though such continuity is not necessary to your success in the class.

CREATIVE WRITING

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ENGL 7011 001 Graduate Fiction Workshop Call Number: 505919 W 12:20-3:25 Instructor: Griffith

This fiction-writing workshop will usually focus on short stories, occasionally on novels in progress, with the aim of producing publishable work. Student writing is supplemented by reading in contemporary or canonical literature. Students who have been admitted to the graduate program in fiction writing may take the course; others must receive permission from the instructor.

ENGL 7015 001 The Literary Essay Call Number: 505925 R 11:00-1:50

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Instructor: Iversen

“A true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.”—Tobias Wolff

In this reading and writing course we will focus on the literary essay from its deep historical roots to its current renaissance status—a thrilling, wide-ranging, expansive genre that engages a variety of topics and draws poets, fiction writers, and literary nonfiction writers alike. From Michel de Montaigne to Susan Sontag and many others in between, we will explore the possibilities of the literary essay and debate Joseph Epstein’s observation: “It is a sweet time to be an essayist.” Ultimately these readings and discussions will sharpen reading and analytical skills, and inspire students in the writing of their own literary essays.

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present, Ed. Phillip Lopate The Next American Essay, John D’Agata A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace Additional selected reading

ENGL 7017 001 Graduate Poetry Workshop Call Number: 505929 M 12:20-3:25 Instructor: Bogen

A course in the writing of poetry, the graduate workshop offers extensive discussion of students' poems, with a focus on revision and generation of new material. Along with the workshop sessions, we will explore different approaches to poetry in published work, concentrating on books by poets visiting this year. Our focus for the term will include issues of voice and the line. The course provides a chance to develop your own poetic voice and actively engage others'.

ENGL 7085 001 Technique & Form in Poetry Call Number: 505941 W 12:20-3:25

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Instructor: Drury

We’ll focus on the sonnet and variations on the 14-line “norm,” proceeding historically but including a lot of contemporary work that “makes it new” while observing the traditional rules or breaking away, corrupting the form, and perhaps redefining it. Phyllis Levin’s The Penguin Book of the Sonnet will be our guide, but we’ll supplement it with handouts and individual collections of sonnets by poets such as John Berryman, Marilyn Hacker, Karen Volkman, Moira Egan, David Wojahn, Rita Dove, and others. We’ll consider sonnets that alter the number of lines, such as Hopkins’s curtal sonnets, John Hollander’s thirteeners, Norman Dubie’s 15-line Alehouse Sonnets, George Meredith’s 16-line Modern Love sonnets, and Gerald Stern’s American Sonnets. In addition to reading and responding to many sonnets, we’ll be writing our own, of course, starting with exercises in strict form but moving on to individual, personal, perhaps contrary approaches that might (or might not) subvert or play around with meter and/or rhyme (if any), rhyme-scheme, structure, volta, and the number of lines. We might find ourselves writing sequences, although that is certainly not required. Each member of the class will also make a presentation of sonnets by a poet whose work we have not had time to read or consider in depth

ENGL 7086 001 Technique & Form in Fiction Call Number: 505944 M 12:20-3:25 Instructor: Stewart

In this seminar, we’ll explore the interdependent relationship between world building and the construction of a narrative. What are the conventions, advantages, and challenges to various approaches to reality? We’ll read realism, magical realism, fantasy, detective fiction, alternative history, etc., and we’ll look at plot through the lens of those approaches. How does the invented world determine the story that’s necessary to explore it? How does a particular approach to story create a world? What are the similarities and differences in a quest plot, both in aim and execution, if it’s employed in a fantasy novel or a magical realist one? How does mystery work in detective fiction versus realism versus alternative history? Our readings will include a number of different types of world-and-plot pairings.

PROFESSIONAL WRITING

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PWRT 6021 001 Instructional Design Call Number: 505964 M 4:40-7:30 Instructor: Rentz

Are you a good explainer? If you’re planning on a career in professional writing, or any career using a lot of writing, the answer had better be “yes”! This is a course for people whose explaining skills need a boost, or who want to practice different kinds of explaining, or who want to get familiar with the tools and practices used in the instructional design field—or all of the above. You’ll be introduced to principles of verbal and visual design as they apply to instructional/educational materials, for both print and electronic delivery. You’ll get (more) experience analyzing audiences, gathering information, planning content and format, and testing results in order to produce usable, user-centered documents. Assignments will range from writing short print instructions to developing an online tutorial in Adobe Captivate—the top e-learning tool in the ID profession.

PWRT 6023 001 Reports and Proposals Call Number: 505974 W 4:40-7:30 Instructor: Arduser

The ability to write grants is a highly marketable skill, especially in today's economic climate. Grant writers can work for government agencies, higher education institutions, and non-profit and for-profit organizations. This course gives students actual experience writing grants on behalf of a local community service or government agency.

Students will learn the basics of grant and report writing, but they will also learn how to put the “sales pitch” into grants in order to fund anything from a local dog park to events promoting race equity. Topics will include understanding the process of locating funding opportunities, determining persuasive appeals, and writing and editing proposals. Students also will be introduced to scholarship and research funding databases. Coursework will involve readings, request for proposal summaries, and writing and editing proposals.

PWRT 7001 001 Introduction to Professional Writing

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Call Number: 505977 TBA Instructor: Debs

This foundational course is designed as an introduction to the genres, models, and standards of the Professional Writing degree. The course will also introduce students to graduate study at the University and will consider expectations about graduate-level work in the program. Students will also be introduced to professional writing through its published research and perform a pilot research study.

PWRT 7030 001 Internship in Professional Writing Call Number: 505981 TBA Instructor: Debs

Supervised experience in the professional work force. Permission of Professional Writing director required. Usually completed in the summer before the final year. May be repeated with permission of PW director.

PWRT 7043 001 Science & Health Writing Call Number: 505984 R 5:00-7:50 Instructor: Arduser

In this course you’ll learn a range of writing and communication strategies used in science, health, and medicine so that you can write for both general and specialized audiences. Class readings, discussions, and assignments will focus on audience, style, and genres of science and health writing, such as press releases, feature stories, and patient educational materials.

Students will also critically examine how popular discourse changes our understanding of the practices of science, medicine, health, and the social consequences of this discourse.

PWRT 7044 001 Document Design Call Number: 505992 T 5:00-7:50

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Instructor: Larkin

Students will learn to use the digital tools of the 21st century to publish professional documents for multiple purposes and audiences. This course is print focused. Projects include hands on work that result in the creation of flyers, brochures, presentations, and/or mail away marketing materials. Projects may be client focused.

PWRT 9096 001 Professional Practice Call Number: 505998 TBA Instructor: Debs

Formal recognition of work done by graduate students conducting projects under the terms of graduate Administrative/Research Assistantships.

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