Spring 2013 English Graduate Course Descriptions
ENGLISH GRADUATE COURSE DESCRIPTIONS for SPRING 2013
500- level courses (undergraduates and graduates)
4116 ENGL 504 1 ADV CR WR II-POETRY (Correction: this is FICTION )
TTh 04:00pm-05:15pm DA209B Naslund, S
English 504-Fiction is an advanced workshop-style undergraduate course which can also be taken for graduate credit. Most of the class time is used to discuss the fiction written by class members. Students are required to produce two (three for graduate credit) new short stories and a revision, to prepare and participate in class discussion, and to read and discuss stories in Best American Short Stories 2011. Critical thinking, creative productivity, and openness to the instructor's suggestions are required. The instructor is University of Louisville Writer in Residence and a New York Times critically acclaimed, national bestselling author.
3451 ENGL 506 75 TEACHING OF WRITING-WR
MW 05:30pm-06:45pm HM209 Horner, B
English 506-75 Teaching of Writing
MW 5:30-6:45 HU 209 Professor: Bruce Horner
This course will be devoted to making useful sense of scholarship on the teaching of writing by examining the terms, concepts, assumptions, and concerns that seem to be key in some of the literature constituting that scholarship. No course could adequately review the substantial literature on writing pedagogy. Readings for this course represent a small network of past and recent writings addressing writing pedagogy from the perspective of the teaching of college composition. Students will be expected to approach these texts as part of ongoing scholarly conversations and debates that they are in a position to begin to engage with and to contribute to through their written responses to these readings, discussions of these, and in their essays. In posing and pursuing questions about these texts—in journal responses, discussions, and position papers—students should become familiar with this writing pedagogy scholarship and find ways to make sense of it in ways that will be useful to them in their own thinking about and preparation for teaching writing.
5688 ENGL 510 1 GRAD COOP INTERNSHIP MA LEVEL TBA TBA Kopelson, K
Note: This section requires permission from the instructor.
5152 ENGL 518 1 FOUND OF LANG
MW 01:00pm-02:15pm HM112 Patton, E
Linguistics 518: Foundations of Language
Course Description: Pre-requisite: ENGL 102 or 105; junior standing. Note: Cross-listed with ENGL 518. A survey of both the theoretical and applied aspects of Linguistics. This is not an in-depth exploration of single-topic in the field of Linguistics. This course is designed to introduce graduate students to the discipline of linguistics. The course is, simply put, a graduate level introductory linguistics course. NOTE: If you have taken LING/ENGL 325, this may not be the course for you! Please see the instructor to determine the suitability of this course to fit your particular needs if you are an undergraduate student and/or you have recently taken LING/ENGL 325. This course will introduce students to aspects of theoretical (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) linguistics and explore various aspects of applied linguistics. This course will also encourage graduate students to think critically about language and its use.
5154 ENGL 522 1 STR OF MOD AM ENGL
TTh 04:00pm-05:15pm HM112 Stewart Jr, T
ENGL/LING 522 Structure of Modern English (3)
Description: The structure of English is provided within a contemporary theoretical framework such as government binding theory, optimal grammar theory, or cognitive grammar theory. Counts in the Theoretical Track of the Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics.
6289 ENGL 523 1 HIST-ENGLISH LANG
TTh 01:00pm-02:15pm HM112 Stewart Jr, T
ENGL/LING 523 History of the English Language (3) Prerequisites: ENGL 102 or 105; junior standing.
Description: The evolution of modern English in terms of social, historical, and linguistic forces which molded it; includes discussion of Anglo-Saxon metrics, Latin, French, and Danish influences, and cosmopolitan aspects of English. Counts in the Theoretical Track of the Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics.
7727 ENGL 535 1 APPLIED LING FOR ENGL TEACHERS
W 04:00pm-06:45pm HM112 Patton, E
Linguistics 535/590/690: Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Course Description: Pre-requisite: ENGL 325/518 or LING 325/518; junior standing. Note: Cross-listed with ENGL 535. This course is an applied linguistic course that explores the theoretical and practical construct from which to view the discipline of Teaching of English as a Foreign Language. It is, from a theoretical standpoint, the intersection between the fields of World Englishes and Teaching English as a Second Language. From a practical perspective, this course is designed for any student interested in second language learning and more specifically, for those who are particularly interested in teaching English overseas. While theoretically grounded, the course will provide practical applications and projects for students planning on Teaching English as a Foreign Language.
7706 ENGL 543 1 RELIGION,SCIENCE, COLONIALISM
MWF 01:00pm-01:50pm DA104 Stanev, H
This course will explore three of the most significant creative impulses behind the turbulent Stuart and Commonwealth years in England – colonial expansion, religious thought, and scientific exploration. We will not only study their separate impact upon the early modern imagination and the political and social events of the seventeenth century, but also consider ways in which all three appeared and reflected upon each other in the writings of seminal early modern authors, such as Shakespeare, Jonson, and Milton. We will read and discuss a wide range of plays, travel narratives, discovery reports, poems, scientific tracts, statements of religious doctrine, and utopian adventures. The major texts will include Shakespeare’s Tempest, Macbeth, and Othello, Jonson’s Alchemist, Rowley, Dekker, and Ford’s Witch of Edmonton, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Cavendish’s Blazing New World, Godwin’s Man in the Moon, Behn’s Oroonoko, as well as selected poems by George Herbert.
7707 ENGL 544 1 SAMUEL JOHNSON: PREFIGURING POPULAR CULTURE
TTh 02:30pm-03:45pm DA208B Hall, D
ENGL 544-01 is an exploration of the early rise of what is now known as popular culture as was manifested in the 18th century, more specifically as it is reflected in the works of Samuel Johnson, more particularly his biographical writings, in his periodical writings, and even in the dictionary, among other works. This course satisfies the 1700-1900 period requirement for graduate students in English.
7708 ENGL 549 75 GLOBAL MODERNISMS
TTh 05:30pm-06:45pm HM209 Clukey, A
549 Global Modernisms—this course will take a “planetary” approach to modernist studies. In the first few weeks, we'll begin by looking at the ways that canonical modernists like Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and E.M. Forster approach colonial/transnational themes and subjects. Then we'll turn to examples of marginalized modernisms from the colonial periphery that respond to, adapt, reject, or ignore European models. Course discussions will consider issues of historicity, colonialism, race, ethnicity, region, nation, and form. Our readings will be drawn from a wide swath of the globe: Latin America, Europe, Africa, India, and North America. Most of these texts will be Anglophone, but we will also read several in translation. Enrolled students who have any preferences they may email me before mid-November and I will take their interests into consideration when finalizing our booklist. A tentative syllabus will be sent out via Blackboard in early December.
Special Notes: Non-majors with an interest in transnational or postcolonial approaches to literature are welcome to enroll, but should be aware that this class will feature intensive reading and writing appropriate for 500 literature course.
7709 ENGL 564 1 POETS & POLITICS IN THE 20TH C
TTh 01:00pm-02:15pm EH112 Golding, A
Under the rubric "Experimental Modernism," this course attends to the language experiments initiated by such US American writers as Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, T. S. Eliot, Mina Loy, William Carlos Williams, Jean Toomer and Gertrude Stein in the early 20th Century. The primary emphasis will be on poetic texts and essays by the poets; relevant critical, theoretical and historical background reading will also be assigned. If Pound's dictum to "make it new" was the driving force behind this particular strain of modernist writing, what did that look like? What diverse forms did "experiment" take and why did these writers feel it to be such a powerful imperative?
In addition to discussing representative work from these and other writers, we will also examine--time permitting-- the cultural and aesthetic contexts of the emergence of experimental modern verse in the salons, networks of patronage, and little magazines of the period such as The Egoist magazine, Dial, BLAST, The Little Review, The New Age, The New Freewoman, and so on.
Prospective students should understand that the course explores a particular perspective on modernism, and does so mainly via poetry. It is not a survey of US American modernist writing. As a 500-level course, it is also not introductory, and I recommend that students who take it have at least some minimal background in the period.
7711 ENGL 577 1 HARLEM RENAISSANCE
MWF 10:00am-10:50am HM112 Anderson, D
English 577/PAS 577. |
600- level courses (graduate only)
4117 ENGL 601 1 INTRO TO ENGLISH STUDIES
M 04:00pm-06:45pm HM224 Rabin, A
Note: This section requires permission from the instructor.
An introduction to graduate study in the context of the intellectual and institutional history of English and American literary scholarship over the course of the past century. We will look primarily at the development of professional literary study in the United States, with attention as well to British and Continental trends and contemporary global developments. The course will focus on case studies, with clusters of readings that illustrate major issues and varying approaches to the study of literature in a university setting.
3452 ENGL 607- 75 CREATIVE WRITING II
M 07:00pm-09:45pm HM208 Leung, B
Note: This section requires permission from the instructor.
This course assumes a class comprised of serious, thoughtful artists who are excited about, and engaged in, their art both as readers and writers. These are artists who have studied and practiced creative writing and have a mature knowledge of form, craft, and literary content and concerns. Through writing, reading, and discussion, this semester each student will explore and expand his or her interests and boundaries. In addition to writing either two significant narrative pieces, two groups of poems, two dramatic pieces, or a combination of these, each student will also write significant responses to each peer work. We will also take advantage of our academic setting by engaging published work and how that published work intersects with the practical theoretical concerns of contemporary literature and its practioners. Some of this published work will be provided by students in the course via either pdf or photocopy. This student-selected work will be from literary sources published in print within the last three years and will contain the quality of literary writing to which the student aspires. Students who are not readers of current contemporary literature may have a difficult time in the course.
Special Notes: It essential that students in this course have creative writing experience at the level equivalent to our Engl 403 course or higher.
5689 ENGL 610 1 COOP INTERNSHIP PhD LEV TBA TBA Kopelson, K
Note: This section requires permission from the instructor.
3454 ENGL 615 1 THESIS GUIDANCE TBA TBA Kopelson, K
Note: This section requires permission from the instructor.
7721 ENGL 620 1 RESEARCH IN COMPOSITION
M 04:00pm-06:45pm HM219 Journet, D
We will examine various research models used in empirical composition research. Our emphasis will be on qualitative methods as employed in case studies and ethnographies. Our primary texts will include recent empirical research published in major composition journals. For the primary class project, each student will write a draft of a potential dissertation prospectus.
7723 ENGL 643 1 18TH C POETRY&PROSE
Th 04:00pm-06:45pm HM122 Ridley, G
ENGL 643-01 Eighteenth-Century Poetry and Prose Th 4.00-6.45 Instructor: Dr Glynis Ridley
Those working in the field of eighteenth-century studies talk of a ‘long eighteenth century’ that goes from approximately 1660-1830. (We can think about the formation of such labels and their validity in class.) One of the justifications for conceptualizing a long eighteenth century is that the canonical literature, art, and thought of the period is indebted to a core group of ideas and principles. Bookending the period are two momentous socio-political occurrences: the conclusion of Britain’s experimentation with a republic and the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and a period of revolutionary turmoil across north America and Europe culminating in major political reform in Britain in the 1830s. In between, literature engaged with questions of the responsibilities of rulers to those they ruled and of government to citizens; European imperial expansion flooded its consumer markets with a range of exotica; women writers began to dominate the emerging market for the novel; Gothic horror crystallized as a genre; and male satirists observed all of the preceding.
As we consider these issues, we will be reading some of the most familiar eighteenth-century canonical works, but we’ll set these texts against some less familiar productions. Works studied (from across the period 1660-1830, and embracing fiction, non-fiction, and poetry) will include, but are not limited to: Behn, Oroonoko; extracts from Locke’s Two Treatises of Government; Defoe, Moll Flanders; Haywood, Fantomina; Pope, Essay on Criticism; Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Voltaire, Candide (in translation); extracts from the works of Paine, ‘Common Sense’ and The Rights of Man; Wordsworth, The Prelude; Austen, Northanger Abbey; extracts from De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater.
Please note that it is impossible to understand the literature of the period without having some appreciation of its history. While this is not a history class, we will have to discuss political and social events to give a context to our reading. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me: glynis.ridley@louisville.edu
7714 ENGL 652- 01 VICTORIAN SCIENCE AND LIT
TTh 02:30pm-03:45pm ED 262 Rosner, M.
English 652: Victorian Science and Victorian Literature.
In this course we will examine some popular Victorian Literature (fiction and non-fiction) through the frame of some Victorian Science. Tentative Reading List: Darwin's Origin of Species (condensed) & Wells' The Island of Dr Moreau and The Time Machine; Foucault's I, Pierre Riviere and Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as well as Rosina Bulwer-Lytton's A Blighted Life; Anne Coombes' Reinventing Africa & David Livingstone's Missionary Travels and H. Rider Haggard's She. We will also read some critical essays.
The usual oral reports, Discussion List, a research assignment, and several short essays.
7715 ENGL 654- 75 WOOLF AND BLOOMSBURY
W 07:00pm-09:45pm HM216 Henke, S
Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group
This course will be devoted to an examination of the unique constitution and modernist aesthetic practices of the London Bloomsbury Group, with emphasis on the fiction of Virginia Woolf. After discussing the Bloomsbury Group through the lens of various memoirs, we will concentrate on a critical examination of the novels of Virginia Woolf, from The Voyage Out to Between the Acts. The course will conclude with a discussion of Michael Cunningham’s Bloomsbury-based text, The Hours.
Students are urged to read Hermione Lee’s biography of Virginia Woolf over the winter break. Seminar participants will also read selections from Julia Briggs’s critical study of Woolf throughout the semester.
7999 ENGL 681 1 SEM-SPECIAL STUDIES : Re-Vision
W 04:00pm-06:45pm HM208 Lu, M
Note: This section will require permission from the instructor.
Re-vision: Theory and Practice English 681, Spring 2012
Re-vision: Theory and Practice is designed for students interested in the question of how to best go about developing a long-term scholarly project.
It centers attention on the mutually constitutive relations of reading, writing, and the production, reception, and dissemination of knowledge. It defines revision as a process of re-searching: exploring alternative and often conflicting perspectives on issues and approaches one is interested in advancing and examining why and how one might employ previously delegitimized alternatives in developing a writing project. It proceeds with a dual purpose in mind:
1) To examine the implications of various theories of language, writing, and learning on how we might go about re-vising a writing project.
2) To test out one’s evolving understanding of ways of re-vision by enacting them in practice.
Students will be asked to generate three re-visions of a previously written text of their choice. These revisions are to be conceived as part of a project leading to an MA thesis, PhD prospectus, parts of a dissertation, or a submission to a national journal in English studies.
4734 ENGL 681 75 DIGITAL/NEW MEDIA
Tu 4pm- 7pm HM222 (?) Sheridan, M (date/time change. check room)
English 681-75: Digital/New Media Seminar
In this seminar, we’ll explore what Brian Street considers a central question for literacy researchers today: what would an ideological model of multimodality look like? To help us unpack and attempt to answer that question, we’ll take two intertwining paths. First, we’ll read some foundational theories on the social constructions of literacy (print, multimodality, and meaning making on a broad scale). Second, we’ll read about and engage in various modes of composing. We’ll locate our explorations in both academic and community settings.
This course will likely require response papers, a blog, class presentations, and an extended final portfolio composed of a series of digital projects.
7669 ENGL 682 1 LANGUAGE AND POLITICS
TTh 11:00am-12:15pm HM109 Soldat-Jaffe, T
Objectives for Language and Politics (Ling 690 & Engl 682):
As Raymond Williams observed, “a definition of language is always, implicitly or explicitly, a definition of human beings in the world.” Ideologies of language are not about language alone but are linked to the identity of the speaker and national identities. We deal with a set of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization of perceived language structure and use. Language policies are best studied when we have two or more languages with different backgrounds (culture, social status, religion, ethnicity) in contact. This course will explore how language as a system of meaning is nothing but a mental phenomenon – an idea – and how this (in)coherent system of signification becomes what Bourdieu calls the habitus. We will look at different languages and their discursive construction of national and transnational identities incorporating political, cultural and popular discourse. You will learn how to engage critically discussions concerning “speaker identity,” “collective identity,” and “cultural diversity” in the context of language use.
ENGL 682-02 LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
TTh 2:30-3:45 pm Soldat-Jaffe, T. (room unknown)
Objectives for Language and Culture (Ling 630 & English 682-02)
Language is a social behavior in which the speaker expresses his/her identity through language (usage). However, the relationship between the speaker’s identity and the language variation is not always obvious. Instead, we encounter speakers with multiple identities -- so called hyphenated identities or collective identities. These collective identities are seen as cognitive social constructs in which group boundaries between cultures become often blurry and/or are redefined according to new and less traditional values. As a result, we often find ourselves conceptualizing the various aspects of globalization in our struggle to define “culture.” Is it the “language of culture” or “the culture of language?”
This course investigates the close relationship between language and culture in a national, transnational, and global perspective. It will look at how language and cultural practices influence each other and how language embodies, expresses and symbolizes cultural reality through verbal and nonverbal means such as spoken, written and visual modes.
6288 ENGL 687 1 TEACHING LITERATURE
Th 04:00pm-06:45pm HM113 Boehm, B
English 687: Teaching Literature: Theory and Practice
Course Description: Why do we assume that everyone who gets a PhD in English knows how to teach literature? This course begins by asking that question, but we will ask many others: What is the relation of reading literature to teaching literature? What is the relation of theories of literature to theories of teaching? What is the relation of theories of literature to the practice of teaching literature? What is the relation of writing pedagogy to literature pedagogy? What does it mean to teach literature rhetorically? And finally, an overriding question of the course will be “Why should students read literature?” This question will force us to deal with questions about the function of literature at the present time, the role of English in the college curriculum, and others. This course will provide with the tools you need to make decisions about the kinds of reading and writing assignments you’ll develop depending upon how you answer the question, “Why should students read literature.”
We will read a variety of texts (mostly article length, although there will be one or two books) about the art of teaching literature. There will some short response papers and practical assignments, as well as the opportunity to team teach an article that you’ll pair with a short literary text. The major project for the course will be your adoption of a literary text around which you will complete a variety of assignments, including a syllabus for a course in which you would teach that text, a teaching outline including sets of discussion questions, a writing assignment, a theoretical essay in which you consider how some of the works we’ve read would inform the teaching of the text, and so on. The hope is that you will have a portfolio of useful materials by the end of the term.
4901 ENGL 689 1 DIR READING-COMP EXAM TBA TBA Kopelson, K
Note: This section requires permission from the instructor.
3455 ENGL 690 1 DISSERTATION RESEARCH TBA TBA Kopelson, K
Note: This section requires permission from the instructor.
3456 ENGL 691 75 CONTEMP THEOR INTERP
T 07:00pm-09:45pm HM222 Biberman, S
In this course we will explore subject of theory via three questions: first, what is the historical genealogy that informs the field of theory; second, how is (or how should) theory be taught at the undergraduate level within American universities, and finally, what are some of the key topics within theory today? Our readings will be responsive to this three questions. We will look at history of teaching literature, with an eye to tracking the migration of theoretical discourse from what is now called romanticism, continental philosophy and avant garde poetics into American English Departments. Also, we will read some foundational essays or excerpts that are widely used in theory classes, and finally we will read three recent books on theory: Alain Badiou's In Praise of Love, Jacques Ranciere's Aesthetics and Its Discontents, and Slavoj Zizek's Less Than Nothing.
Special Notes:
Take Home Midterm (with an exercise in question construction), Final Paper (as 20 minute conf paper)--or approved alternate project, and a final presentation, with periodic short writings and brief in-class presentations.
