Graduate Course Offerings
Spring 2012
SPRING 2012
English 5000
Introduction to Graduate Study
Ebest
T 4:00, ESH 016
(Consent numbers: Grady)
Introduction to Graduate Studies analyzes the theories and research methodologies underlying the disciplines which comprise the field: linguistics and discourse analysis, rhetoric and composition, creative writing, literature and literary criticism, critical theory, and English Education. Course requirements include an oral report (analyzing research articles re: methodology), weekly response journals, and two papers (one comp, one lit).
5100 Graduate Workshop in Poetry
Schwartz
T 4:00, LH 450
(Consent numbers: Dalton)
Prerequisite: Open to students in the MFA program and to others with permission of instructor. Consists of a writing workshop in which the poetry written by the students enrolled in the course is discussed and analyzed by the instructor and members of the class. Students taking this course will be expected to write original poetry throughout the course. May be repeated for maximum graduate credit of fifteen hours.
5110 Graduate Workshop in Fiction
Tintocalis
T 6:55, LH 493
(Consent numbers: Dalton)
Prerequisite: Open to students in the MFA program and to others with permission of instructor. Consists of a writing workshop in which the fiction (short stories or chapters of a novel) written by the students enrolled in the course is discussed and analyzed by the instructor and members of the class. Students taking this course will be expected to write original fiction throughout the course. May be repeated for maximum graduate credit of fifteen (15) hours.
5170 Techniques, Methods, and Effects in Fiction Writing.
Troy
M 6:55, LH 450
(Consent numbers: Dalton)
This course is designed first for writers of short fiction who struggle with form and theory as they create, and it is designed also for other creative writers who, along with the fiction writers, want to discover what well-published writers did to make their stories work, how the stories work, why they made the decisions they made, and what other options would or would not have been better. (Of course, I won’t dare define “better,” but will let it stand, the burden of proof being on whoever uses it in class discussion.) It is also designed for students of literature who want to understand what goes into a story. This course begins with the understanding that what exists finally on paper is the result of many drafts, many revisions, and numerous decisions made along the way.
With every decision, something is gained, and something is lost. There are many possible ways, but no perfectly right way, for writing is not a science. The hope is that by analyzing how others made their choices, and what effects the decisions had, we will all become better at our own stories, be clearer about our own choices because we may understand what we will gain and what we will be giving up. A good side effect is we will become better readers.
Texts: Bringing the Devil To His Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life, ed. Baxter & Turchi.
The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories, ed. Daniel Halpern
Pushcart Prize XXXV: The Best of the Small Presses (2011)
And likely one other book to be announced later.
Students will write two-three page weekly papers, and present a longer conference-like paper at the end of the semester.
5190 Literary Journal Editing
Dalton
TH 6:55, LH 493
(Consent numbers: Dalton)
In this course students serve as the first readers of all submissions to the university's literary magazine, Natural Bridge. Students will read and evaluate poems, short stories, and essays and recommend a body of work to the editorial board of the magazine. The editorial board will then consider the class consensus in its final selection of material for publication. In addition to this primary task of editorial selection, students will also be involved in the production of an issue of the magazine.
5300 Studies in Renaissance Literature: Milton and Spencer
Aldrich-Watson
M 6:55, LH 493
(Consent numbers: Grady; area 1)
The two greatest English epic poems are Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Written some 50 years apart, they share some remarkable similarities as well as substantial differences in style, purpose, and tone. Since Milton remarked that Spenser was his “originall” and since he considered Spenser a greater teacher than many of the classical authors, the pairing of these two works in a seminar setting should clarify and elucidate both poems. Although we will focus most of our attention on the two long works, we may, as time and interest permit, also work with some shorter poems by these two Renaissance poets. The seminar will consist of discussion, oral reports, a short paper, and a long seminar paper. Although not a formal prerequisite, prior reading of Paradise Lost is recommended.
5500 Nineteenth Century Literature: British Fiction of the Later Nineteenth Century
Carroll
TH 6:55, LH 450
(Consent numbers: Grady; area 2)
This course is a period survey that ranges between naturalism and symbolic fantasy. By naturalism I mean the realistic depiction of people locked into the physical world and driven by animal passions. By symbolic fantasy I mean supernatural situations that either depict the inner lives of characters or allegorize a philosophical vision.
British literature of this period, unlike the French and American, has no works of simple, hard-core naturalism in which people are depicted as beasts without imaginative life. What it has instead are works that take in the best of naturalism and integrate it with the highly developed English traditions of allegory, moral irony, and tender lyricism. Wells allegorizes the Darwinian idea of human evolution. Conrad broods over the heart of darkness with ironic intensity, and Hardy evokes the life of country people with more passionate sensuousness than any other writer in English. George Gissing gives the feel of life for people hard pressed by the basic necessities of life—food and shelter—while also struggling to maintain an imaginative life. Henry James and Rudyard Kipling occupy the far corners of the English world. James offers a tonally nuanced, ultra-sophisticated depiction of personal relationships among the upper classes in Europe, and Kipling depicts exotic climes and exciting adventures among people living on the margins of civilization.
H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau, Oscar Wilde's fairy tales and his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, operate in a range of fantasy that mingles science-fiction, fairy-tale, and myth. Symbolic fantasy is a mode of representation, not a doctrine, and the works we shall read range doctrinally from the grim Darwinism of Wells to the Christian allegories of Wilde’s fairy tales. In Dorian Gray, Wilde uses supernatural fantasy to dramatize the conflict between his Christian values and the decadent aestheticism for which he is best known.
Grades in the course will be based on discussion, several short oral reports, and a long seminar paper.
English 5600: American Literature Before 1900
R. Cook
W 6:55-9:25, LH 450
(Consent numbers: Grady; area 4)
This course will entail an intensive reading (or rereading) of some of the “classic” works in American literature written in the period between 1835 and 1871, sometimes called the “American Renaissance.” We will also be reading pertinent criticism and scholarship, paying special attention to recent critical developments. Among the works we will be studying are: selections from Emerson’s journals and essays, selections from Thoreau’s journals and Walden, Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Hawthorne’s short fiction and The Scarlet Letter, Melville’s short fiction and Moby Dick, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative, selections from Whitman’s poetry and prose.
There will be short class reports each week and a final paper.
5840 Theories of Writing
Duffey
W 4:00, LH 450
(Consent numbers: Grady; area 5)
The college bulletin describes English 5840 as “an analysis of major modern theories in composition,” but it leaves open just what theories will be subject of study. The typical approach might be to explore the taxonomy into which composition pedagogy has often been divided: expressivist/process, cognitivist, social-epistemic, and post-process theories. Because this taxonomy is so commonly used, it will naturally infuse any examination of composition theories. But this course will reach widely into the range of ways in which composition scholars are exploring theory/pedagogy now, since the taxonomy was constructed. Titles of books being considered for the course further suggest this range:
- ALT DiS: Alternative Discourses and the Academy, Schroeder, Fox, & Bizzell, eds.
- Revisionary Rhetoric, Feminist Pedagogy, and Multigenre Texts, Julie Jung
- Coming to Class: Pedagogy and the Social Class of Teachers, Shepard, McMillan, & Tate, eds.
- Writing and Healing: Toward an Informed Practice, Anderson & MacCurdy, eds.
- Voices on Voice: Perspectives, Definitions, Inquiry, Kathleen Yancey, ed.
Through readings and class discussion, we will examine frameworks for understanding writing pedagogy, the purposes of such theoretical frameworks, and the problems with them. Among the course goals are these:
- become familiar with a number of theoretical frameworks used to conceptualize writing itself, writing instruction, writing course goals, and societal impulses toward writing
- understand and interrogate the impulse to theory in Composition Studies
- articulate, in your own words, several of the important concepts through which writing theory is and has been developed
- synthesize your understanding of theoretical concepts with scholarship about them.
5850 Studies in Composition: Sites of Writing
Duffey
M 4:00, LH 493
(Consent numbers: Grady; area 5)
In Language as Symbolic Action, Kenneth Burke wrote that humans are “the symbol-using animal, inventor of the negative, separated from [their] natural condition by instruments of [their] own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy, and rotten with perfection.” My hope is that Burke’s terms, especially “rotten with perfection,” will entice you to consider this class, particularly because I see it as an appropriate starting place to consider why, when, how, and where humans write. These questions might seem to have obvious answers because our culture is so print-heavy. But it behooves us to consider what it is about “symbol-using animals” that makes us write. And, further, how do the social, historical, cultural (and other) sites in which we use the symbols of written language influence writing, writers, and their processes.
Taking up these questions through particular sites (see the partial book list below), this class will not only explore writers and their texts but also places that sponsor writing, e.g., community literacy centers, university writing centers, and writing groups. The work of the course will include weekly reading and writing; a medium sized project where, most likely, students will explore a “site of writing” for their professional development, and a final project that addresses the questions above with respect to a specific writer or site.
Some books we’ll read:
- Kirsch, Gesa, Beyond the Archives: Research as Lived Experience
- Heller, Caroline, Until We Are Strong Together: Women Writers in the Tenderloin
- Moss, Beverly, A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and a Literacy Traditionin African-American Churches.
- Sinor, Jennifer, The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing: Annie Ray’s Diary
- Tram, Dang Thuy, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace
- Lebsock, Susanne, Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial
- Gold, David, Rhetoric at the Margins
5940 Seminar in Gender and Literature: Comedy--Genders and Genres
Gentile
TH 4:00, LH 450
(Consent numbers: Grady; area 6; same as GS 5450)
This course will provide an overview of the development of comedy from the Greeks to contemporary film. Readings and viewings will include Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Restoration comedy, Moliere, Austen, as well as 20th and 21st-century comedies. Along with historical coverage, class will examine definitions and theories of the comic from Aristotle to Bergson and Bakhtin. While our focus will be on the gender politics of the primary genres of romantic comedy and the picaresque, we will also consider a variety of comic forms, including satire, parody, and the sitcom.
English 5950 G 01 Seminar Special Topics: Contemporary Irish Literature
E. Wall
T 6:55 LH 450
(Consent numbers: Grady; area 3 or 6)
This semester we will explore the work of a selection of the most highly-regarded Irish writers to have published work since 1970 in the genres of fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction. In addition, we will trace connections between writing and film during this period. Some of the writers under consideration will be Irish-language authors and we will read their work in translation. Among the writers whose work we will read will be Colm Toibin, Anne Enright, Colum McCann, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, John McGahern, Brian Friel, Eavan Boland, Martin McDonagh, Brian Moore, and others. In additional to working with texts, we will also explore various social, cultural, and historical phenomena and controversies that find their way into contemporary writing. Students will also be brought up-to-date on contemporary trends in literary scholarship as they relate to Irish Studies in Ireland and the United States. Each student will be expected to write a seminar paper and provide an oral report.
Other English Courses of Interest
4320 Sixteenth-Century Poetry & Prose
TR 9:30
Aldrich-Watson
Area 1
4360 Tudor & Stuart Drama
MW 12:30
Schreyer
Area 1
4520 Later Romantic Poetry & Prose
MW 9:30
Mayhan
Area 2
4580 Literature of the Late 19th & Early 20th Centuries
TR 11:00
Carroll
Areas 2 & 3
4650 Modern American Fiction
MW 2:00
S. Cook
Areas 3 & 4
4750 Modern British Fiction
TR 12:30
Gentile
Area 3
4820 History of the English Language
TR 2:00
Torbert
Area 5
4930/Hon 3010 Studies in Gender and Literature
Women Writing Nature: Literature and the Environment
MW 12:30
Nigro
Area 6
4950 Special Topics in Literature
(American Film in the 1930s)
MW 11:00
Grady
Areas 3 & 6
4950/Hon 3100 Special Topics in Literature
(The Wire: Language, Ethnicity, Inequality)
TR 11:00
Torbert
Areas 5 & 6
4950/Hon 3100 Special Topics in Literature
(Gothic Literature)
T 2:00-4:40
Baldus
Area 2 & 6
4950 Special Topics in Literature
(Contemporary Multicultural Fiction)
W 5:30-8:00
Tintocalis
Area 4