Graduate Course Descriptions Spring 2012
500-level classes for the Spring 2012 Semester (15 sections)
504 - 01: Poetry (Advanced Creative Writing II)
Instructor: Petrosino, Courteney (Kiki)
Meeting Times: MWF 12:00PM-12:50PM
Room: HM220
Registration Number: 4366
Prerequisites:ENGL 403 and consent of instructor
Class Description:
This advanced course is for serious poets who are interested in sharpening their skills as writers, readers, and critics. Students must demonstrate familiarity with the workshop model of peer review and be knowledgeable about poetic form and meter. Successful students in this course will actively engage in a regular writing practice, and will take seriously the processes of composition, critique, and revision. We will spend most class sessions “workshopping” student poems, but we will also devote significant time to discussing assigned reading and to performing in-class writing exercises. Written assignments will include: brief responses to peer manuscripts, journal entries composed in response to assigned readings, a portfolio containing 15-20 finished poems, and a Final Challenge (a creative assignment that the instructor will personalize for each student). Students will also be required to attend ONE live poetry reading of their choice and compose a 1-page reflection by semester’s end. [Note: This course requires from each student significant commitments to reading and writing. Consistent attendance is also required. Students must observe all deadlines noted in the syllabus.]
506 - 75: Teaching of Writing - WR
Instructor: Cross, Geoff
Meeting Times: TTh 5:30pm-6:45pm
Room: DA308
Registration Number: 3659
Prerequisites:ENGL 309 or ENGL 310, or consent of instructor.
Class Description: In introducing you to the teaching of writing this course focuses both upon 1) the nature of writing and 2) approaches to its teaching.
In focusing upon the nature of writing, this course will introduce you to: basic rhetorical concepts, critical pertinent concepts from linguistics; cognitive theory of individual and group writing processes; tone; structure; logic; knowledge of the effect of dialects and the student's right to his/her own oral language; and the opportunity to improve your own writing through study, teaching, and practice.
In focusing upon the teaching of writing, this course will address planning lessons; sequencing assignments and planning units; classroom teaching; evaluating writing formatively and summatively,; evaluating tone, syntax, arrangement, format, and ideas; evaluating the teaching of others and oneself; and developing reflective practice.
507 - 75: The Teaching of Creative Writing -WR
Instructor: Knickerbocker, Alyssa
Meeting Times: MW 5:30pm-6:45pm
Room: HM 108
Registration Number: 7493
Prerequisites:ENGL 102 or 105; junior standing.
Class Description: Can creative writing be taught? This class will address this fundamental question as well as different approaches to teaching creative writing to meet the needs of various student groups. We’ll tackle the questions of why we teach creative writing and how students can benefit from the workshop model. Through a hands-on, experiential process, students will learn methods of leading workshops and discussions of published work, responding to student work, implementing writing exercises, structuring a semester-length syllabus and building individual lesson plans.
Course work will include: extensive reading on creative writing pedagogy, writers on the writing process, and craft essays; participating in and leading discussions of published work; participating in and leading creative writing exercises; development of a creative writing class syllabus of your own design; and a teaching practicum outside the classroom.
510 - 01: Grad Coop Internship MA Level
Instructor: Kopelson, Karen
Meeting Times: TBA TBA
Room: TBA
Registration Number: 6453
Class Description:
Special Notes: This section requires permission from the Director of Graduate Studies.
518 - 01: Foundations of Language
Instructor: Patton, Elizabeth
Meeting Times: TTh 1:00pm-2:15pm
Room: HM 123
Registration Number: 5641
Prerequisites:
Class Description: LING/ENGL 518, the Foundations of Language, will explore the five theoretical aspects of linguistics (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) as well as aspects of applied linguistics (sociolinguistics, language acquisition, sign language, and writing systems). This course is designed as a graduate introductory linguistic course for the student with little or no prior knowledge of linguistics who is interested in understanding the basic concepts of linguistics in order that he/she might later pursue a more detailed and advanced treatment of either the applied or theoretical aspects of linguistics.
520 - 01: World Englishes
Instructor: Soldat-Jaffe, T
Meeting Times: MW 2pm- 3:15pm
Room: DA 111
Registration Number:
Prerequisites:Junior standing
Class Description: English as a World Language
English has rapidly spread throughout the world over the last few decades; it has replaced other (national) languages or taken the function of "the other" (additional) national language –a so-called intranational language. Why English? Is it just a historical accident? How can we understand the role of English in a foreign country if a (national) language is generally been used as a tool for unifying a nation, for establishing political boundaries, and for creating dissent. We will explore how different varieties of English have their own sociological, linguistic, and literary manifestations in different countries, and we will try to understand why an artificial or constructed language (as opposed to English) could not be used as an international language. What are the motivations and attitudes favoring the spread of English? What is the perceived status of English? Is it an institutionalized or just a performance variety? And, last but not least, what is the difference between an international and a global language? Is it World Englishes or World English? This is a sociolinguistic course exploring the above questions from an ethnolinguistic and sociolinguistic point of view.
Special Notes:
Will be crosslisted with LING 520. English should have nine spaces. If this does not appear in the English schedule before Nov. 4 (it should), use the LING code to register (7919). You will need to have your schedule changed once the ENGL course appears. (This will likely be unnecessary: we are working on getting the ENGL course up now.)
522 - 01: Structure of Modern English (Structure of Modern American English)
Instructor: Stewart, Thomas
Meeting Times: TTh 9:30am-10:45am
Room: HM 123
Registration Number: 5641
Prerequisites:
Class Description:
Required Textbook:
Kersti Börjars & Kate Burridge. 2010. Introducing English Grammar. 2nd ed. London: Hodder. ISBN: 978-1444109870.
Course Description and Objectives:
This course is designed as a linguistic exploration of the various forms and combinations words, phrases, and sentences that contemporary speakers of English typically recognize as belonging to language, i.e. “English”.
To help in this exploration, students will:
- examine both popular and technical conceptions of “grammar”
- examine that variety of English referred to as Standard American (SAE)
- consider some of the ways in which one can vary from SAE and still be speaking English
- consider the role of situation, audience, etc., in determining “appropriate use”
- acquire terminology and methods that permit clear description of English grammar
- collect real-life examples of actual English usage for detailed description
- identify and monitor trends in English usage to evaluate “changes in progress”
523 - 01: History of the English Language
Instructor: Stewart, Thomas
Meeting Times: TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm
Room: HM 215
Registration Number: 7498
Prerequisites:
Class Description:
Required text:
Jan Svartvik & Geoffrey Leech. 2006. English: One Tongue, Many Voices. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN: 978-1403918307.
Recommended text:
David Crystal. 2003. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 978-0521530330.
Description:
This course traces the development of English from Old English (Anglo-Saxon) origins, through the Middle English (e.g., Chaucer) and Early Modern English (e.g., Shakespeare) periods, to Present-Day English.
The course has a double emphasis:
- internal history (diachronic change), or how grammar and vocabulary change with use over time and space, and
- external history (language and dialect contact), including influences such as the 9th century settlement of Vikings in Britain and the 11th century Norman-French conquest of Britain.
Because English hasn’t been “perfected” (whatever that would mean), it hasn’t stopped changing, and it won’t, as long as people use it as a living language. In order to speculate as to how English might change in the future, this course will also consider regional dialects, and both current and post-colonial English vernaculars around the world.
Successful completion of this course will provide the student with:
- greater appreciation for the fluidity of language usage,
- broader understanding of the socio-political contexts for language change, and
- increased ability to describe language phenomena objectively.
552 - 01: Vision and Voice in Fiction (Special Topics in Literature in English)
Instructor: Naslund, Sena
Meeting Times: T 4:00pm-6:45pm
Room: HM 109
Registration Number: 6356
Prerequisites:
Class Description:
Short stories and novels are rooted in both the oral tradition of storytelling and in the visual traditions of pictures; the former tradition emphasizes the voice of the storyteller, while the latter emphasizes creating images and scenes in the reader's mind. Highly successful writers often rely more on one technique in establishing their uniqueness than on the other. To understand the dynamics and interplay of voice and vision in fiction, class lectures will introduce a technical understanding of stylistic modes: narrative summary, description, scene, and half-scene, as well as other analytic tools to facilitate systematic critical thinking about fiction. The class reading includes classic short stories by Henry James, Faulkner, Hemingway, Lawrence, Katherine Ann Porter, and Flannery O’Connor; contemporary novels are Colm Toibin’s THE MASTER, Michael Ondaatje’s THE ENGLISH PATIENT, and Ann Patchett’s BEL CANTO. Students taking the course for graduate credit will also read and write a short paper on THE POET OF TOLSTOY PARK by Sonny Brewer. Students demonstrate their understanding of voice and vision through both critical and creative writing. No final exam.
552 - 02: Victorian Travel Stories. (Special Topics in Literature in English)
Instructor: Rosner, Mary
Meeting Times: MWF 11:00am-11:50am
Room: DA 202
Registration Number: 7494
Prerequisites:
Class Description: This is a new course.
We will read and discuss several non-fiction Victorian travel/exploration stories in order to discover some of the values and the rhetorics of Victorians. Then, with that information in mind, we will read and discuss two Victorian fiction stories involving exploration.
Tentative Texts--
NONFICTION: Livingstone, Missionary Travels; Kinglsey, Travels in West Africa; Uganda's Katikiro in England.
FICTION: Haggard's She; Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
CULTURAL HISTORY: Coombes, Reinventing Africa
Expect reading quizzes, regular written homework, participation in class and in the discussion list, critical reading of several critical essays, and several short papers.
Any graduate students enrolled will be responsible for additional work as well, including teaching part of a class.
Special Notes: English 102.
562 - 01: Shakespeare
Instructor: Stanev, Hristomir
Meeting Times: MWF 1:00pm-1:50pm
Room: DA 303
Registration Number: 7484
Prerequisites:
Class Description: The course will examine a number of Shakespeare’s tragedies, histories, romances, comedies, and sonnets. We will contextualize some of the major socio-political and cultural changes in England during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, which influenced the Bard, and our discussions will explore how he reflected on the dynamism of Tudor and Stuart society. We will specifically target controversial moments, in which Shakespeare’s characters understand the making of society and history as a process that involves a complicated register of ideas, among which dynastic continuity, opportunism, alienation, resistance, republican and monarchist values, and justice and justification are especially prominent. We will further discuss the role and performance of gender in Shakespeare’s plays as a history-building narrative. We will approach the plays from a variety of perspectives and learn about these masterpieces not only through close reading and creative discussion, but also through observing excerpts from film adaptations.
Tentative list of plays: Measure for Measure, 1 Henry IV, As You Like It, Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, the Sonnets.
564 - 75: American Monsters (Selected Figures in American Literature)
Instructor: Leung, Brian This course focuses on “American Monsters,” repellant, yet compelling, characters such as American Psycho’s Patrick and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’s George and Martha. We’ll discuss these texts, as well as Invisible Monsters, Lolita, and other select texts in prose, poetry and drama. Set both in relief and in context, we’ll discuss The Maytrees by Annie Dillard, and selected stories by Tobias Wolff. We will focus largely on cultural implications and on why and how these texts pull readers beyond literary voyeurism and/or schadenfreude. Likely requirements for undergraduates: one short paper, a midterm exam, and 1 final paper; for graduate students: 1 mid-term paper, one longer “specialty” paper, and a final exam. .
Meeting Times: MW 5:30pm-6:45pm
Room: HM 117
Registration Number: 8018
Prerequisites:ENGL 102 or 105; junior standing.
Class Description:
This course focuses on “American Monsters,” repellant, yet compelling, characters such as American Psycho’s Patrick and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’s George and Martha. We’ll discuss these texts, as well as Invisible Monsters, Lolita, and other select texts in prose, poetry and drama. Set both in relief and in context, we’ll discuss The Maytrees by Annie Dillard, and selected stories by Tobias Wolff. We will focus largely on cultural implications and on why and how these texts pull readers beyond literary voyeurism and/or schadenfreude. Likely requirements for undergraduates: one short paper, a midterm exam, and 1 final paper; for graduate students: 1 mid-term paper, one longer “specialty” paper, and a final exam. .
This course focuses on “American Monsters,” repellant, yet compelling, characters such as American Psycho’s Patrick and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’s George and Martha. We’ll discuss these texts, as well as Invisible Monsters, Lolita, and other select texts in prose, poetry and drama. Set both in relief and in context, we’ll discuss The Maytrees by Annie Dillard, and selected stories by Tobias Wolff. We will focus largely on cultural implications and on why and how these texts pull readers beyond literary voyeurism and/or schadenfreude. Likely requirements for undergraduates: one short paper, a midterm exam, and 1 final paper; for graduate students: 1 mid-term paper, one longer “specialty” paper, and a final exam. .
Special Notes:
See course catalog for prerequisites. Students in this class must be eager readers and eager participants in class discussions.
570 - 01: Language and Social Identity
Instructor: Stewart, Thomas
Meeting Times: M 4:00-6:45 pm
Room: Life Sciences 130
Registration Number: 8314
Class Description:
Course Textbook:
Lippi-Green, Rosina. 2011. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States (2nd edn.). London/New York: Routledge. ISBN: 978-0-415-55911-9.
Course Objectives:
In this class, we will talk about the interaction of the social systems and the language varieties observable in the United States. In order to discuss this dynamic rationally, it will be necessary to talk about social norms and linguistic norms in an objective manner. This will almost certainly prove challenging, because chances are very good that each and every one of us:
- has been raised with certain speech patterns,
- has acquired particular other language habits along the way,
- has had contact with people in other groups, with different speech patterns, and
- has evaluated others' language use as somehow better or worse than our own.
It can be said that the role of a "standard" variety of American English is both deep and wide in the culture of the United States today. This claim, however, provokes several rather complex, yet seldom-asked, questions. Among these are the following:
- What is Standard American English (SAE)?
- Is SAE anyone's native language variety?
- Where did the SAE we have today come from?
- Is SAE "better" than other varieties of English?
- Who has authority in matters of SAE use?
This course will address each of these questions and more, presenting a framework for thinking about the nature and significance of variation in language use, and hands-on investigations of what people do with their language depending on their social identity and the social contexts in which they participate.
Special Notes:
Prerequisite: Junior standing. LING 325 or ENGL 325 for undergraduates.
599 - 01: American Popular Icons (Advanced Studies in English)
Instructor: Hall, Dennis
Meeting Times: TTh 9:30am-10:45am
Room: HM 122
Registration Number: 6438
Prerequisites:ENGL 310; junior standing
Class Description: American Popular Icons: An Exercise in Cultural Studies and Composition
This special topics course is a continuation of an experiment begun in Spring 2006, which I ask you to engage in a spirit of exploration and discovery. My initial vision of the course is as half non-fiction writing workshop and half cultural studies course focused upon American cultural icons, places and things, as well as people. The course arises out of the work Susan Grove Hall and I completed in June 2006 as editors for Greenwood Press of a collection of 117 ten-page essays, by nearly as many hands: American Icons: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Things That Have Shaped Our Culture.
We will develop a working definition (an account worthy of philosophy or high theory of the necessary and sufficient conditions of iconicity probably is not possible and certainly not worth arguing about) of cultural icon and a sense of its features and functions. We will study collectively some icons. Working in small groups, we will study other icons and report to the class as a whole--this last exercise by way of practice for the essays.
Each member of the class will write two ten-fifteen page essays on two different icons, each suitable for publication and/or presentation at a professional meeting. Moreover, each of you will write on different icons. So if the class numbers 20 people, we will produce an informal anthology of 40 icon essays. Indeed, I will be asking you to do what we asked the contributors to American icons project to do.
There will be only one brief text for this class, Roland Barthes’ Mythologies, but there will be very many texts in this class, which we all will share in supplying to the course. You will be asked to get onto the web, get into the library, and to make copies, lots of copies, of stuff for your reports on icons and in exploration of the icons you will be writing about.
Course outcomes and goals sought:
Develop a sense of what constitutes a cultural icon.
Develop a sense of how cultural icons relate to cultural indexes and symbols and how they function in contemporary culture, specifically American culture.
Practice in research.
Practice in writing and in the revision of writing.
Practice in working in groups.
Goal is to produce at least one publishable essay
Requirements include:
*reading with care, attention, and comprehension all assignments from the instructor and from class colleagues;
*attending class, being prepared, and actively participating in class meetings;
*participation in the preparation and presentation of two team reports supported with outlines, bibliography, illustrations and any other appropriate materials;
*two documented icon essays of from 10 to no more than 15 pages each, one at mid-term and one at term’s end—the midterm paper may be revised;
*a course portfolio which includes the entire paper trail of your work in the course;
*completing course evaluations.
Graduate student differential:
*Graduate students will be responsible for providing bibliographical training and assistance to the undergraduates on their first report team, particularly with regard to critical theory;
*Graduate students will be a team of one for the second report;
*Graduate students will provide a much longer and an annotated bibliography for their second report;
*Graduate students will provide a 2-5 page introductory essay characterizing the current state of the scholarship on the subject of their second report;
*Graduate students will serve as role models for the American youth in this class.
The only book on order is Roland Barthes Mythologies, but you ought to be able to find a used copy of this antiquity on line. We will be heavily dependent upon library resources that require actually (as distinct from virtually) working in Ekstrom Library, but we will also make substantial—but judicious—use of the web. As members of the class discover materials of common interest or need, they will be shared via the Blackboard system. The Selected Bibliography for the Icons Project is in the documents section on Blackboard.
600-level classes for the Spring 2012 Semester (16 sections)
601 - 75: Introduction to English Studies
Instructor: Ridley, Glynis
Meeting Times: Th 7:00pm-9:45pm
Room: HM 122
Registration Number: 4367
Class Description: How is English Studies at the graduate level different from the typical undergraduate experience? Whether graduate students are considering a career in the field or not, the ability to engage in original research and to present that research, both orally and in written form, are clearly important transferable skills, of use within the academy and beyond.
The course will focus on enabling graduate students to find their own critical voice and will consider some of the many ways in which a newcomer can join the critical conversation. Assignments will include options allowing students to develop academic conference presentations, from proposals to finished product, while those interested in pedagogy will have the chance to think about assessment options that include designing syllabi.
At the time of writing this course description, the instructor is weighing the final choice of texts. All members of the class will be notified of the choice of texts by email before Thanksgiving. In the meantime, please don't hesitate to email me with any questions.
603 - 01: Autobiographical Writing & Film (Studies in Genres)
Instructor: Chandler, Karen
Meeting Times: TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm
Room: DA 203
Registration Number: 5462
Class Description: In this course, we will explore autobiographies that engage with questions of
American identity and culture. Focusing for the most part on prose narratives from the eighteenth century to the present (mainly texts produced since 1850), the course will offer an in-depth look at an enduring and versatile genre. By the end of the course our focus on contemporary autobiography will expand to include film.
As a self-authored account of a life, autobiography raises questions about character, culture, truth, and representation. Such questions may pertain, for instance, to the connections between self and society (or societies) and pressures to conform to or resist social models. They will prompt us to explore the fictive
qualities of telling tales about self. And they prompt concern with autobiography as a form of historical record. Other matters of interest will include language and audience. With a collaborative medium such as film, authorship also becomes an issue, though admittedly, questions of authorship are also important to discussions of autobiographical writing such as the slave narrative. Pertinent theoretical and critical writing on autobiography by Françoise Lionnet, John Paul Eakin, Robert Stepto, and Timothy Dow Adams will complement our study of the genre.
Readings, to be announced, may include the work of Benjamin Franklin, Elizabeth Ashbridge, Julia Foote, Frederick Douglass, Zitkala-Sa, M. Scott Momaday, Maya Angelou, Tobias Wolff, Samuel Delany, and/or Julia Alvarez. Films may include work by Spike Lee, Mike Mills, and Yvonne Welbon.
607 - 75: Creative Writing II
Instructor: Skinner, Jeff
Meeting Times: M 7:00pm-9:45pm
Room: HM 220
Registration Number: 3660
Prerequisites:Permission of instructor or enrollment in a degree program in English.
Class Description: This is a workshop-style course in the writing of original fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and drama. While class sessions are used primarily to discuss work written by class members, some classes will focus on discussion of contemporary published work, and other issues relevant to creative writing.
COURSE GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
Through the work of the course students will: build a vocabulary with which to discuss contemporary poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and drama; explore in some depth a number of contemporary published works, and discern their strengths and weaknesses with increasing insight and clarity; learn to recognize the difference between levels of precision in language; learn something of the historical context for contemporary writing; become familiar with some of the basics of structure in the genres; and learn to profitably apply all of the foregoing to the improvement and growth of their own original writing, and that of their peers. The course may include some emphasis on “longer” works in the genres, for example: the long poem or poem sequence; the novella; the full-length play.
Texts will probably include at least one example from each of the genres.
610 - 01: Coop Internship PhD Lev
Instructor: Kopelson, Karen
Meeting Times: TBA TBA
Room: TBA
Registration Number: 6454
Class Description:
Special Notes:
This section requires permission from the Director of Graduate Studies.
615 - 01: Thesis Guidance
Instructor: Kopelson, Karen
Meeting Times: TBA TBA
Room: TBA
Registration Number: 3662
Class Description: This course is for MA students writing theses ONLY. Choose the number of hours (units) you want when you register in the drop-down menu box. If you do not specify '3' it will default to 1, and cause a registration hassle. (If you are writing a culminating project, it will not work for you-- please contact the department at 852-0505 for other options.)
664 - 01: American Authors: 1900-Present: Postmodern Literature and Culture (Twentieth-Century American Writers)
Instructor: Byers, Tom
Meeting Times: T 4:00pm-6:45pm
Room: HM 210
Registration Number: 8035
Class Description: This course will focus primarily on two matters:
1)
defining and analyzing late capitalism, postmodernity (the condition of life under late capitalism in the highly developed countries), and postmodernisms (the range of textual and cultural responses to postmodernity). An understanding of these will require readings from Fredric Jameson, David Harvey, Don DeLillo, Richard
Powers, Andreas Huyssen, Jean Baudrillard, Donna Haraway, Jean-François Lyotard, and others.
2)
considering the different kinds of responses that might properly be though of as competing postmodernisms. These include a) the postmodernism of play, or what we might call High Postmodernism. Texts of this sort tend
to be influenced by poststructuralism and the critiques of Truth and History that arise from it. Often they tend to show a disposition toward experimentation, pastiche, and playfulness. Examples ight include, but not be confined to, the poetry of John Ashbery, fiction by Thomas Pynchon and Percival Everett, theory by Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard, films such as Adaptation, Memento, and Moulin Rouge, Michael Graves’s Humana Building, performances by Madonna, art works by Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Duane Hansen, and others
b)
the postmodernism of resistance. Texts of this sort tend to propose counter-hegemonic histories, to give voice to previously silenced groups, and to attack the hegemony of post-Enlightenment Western philosophy from a
political perspective. These texts often come from and/or focus on women, racial or sexual minorities, and postcolonial, immigrant, or borderland subjects. Examples: The Woman Warrior, fiction by Toni
Morrison, Karen Tei Yamashita, Gerald Vizenor, and Junot Diaz, poems and essays by Adrienne Rich, Harryette Mullen, and David Antin, plays by Suzan-Lori Parks, Anna Deavere Smith, and Tony Kushner, art by Kara Walker and Barbara Kruger, theory by Judith Butler, Stuart Hall, Fredric Jameson, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, films such as Lone Star, Do the Right Thing, and Frozen River.
c) the anti-postmodern. This category takes in all the postmodernisms that react against
postmodernity in favor of earlier cultural formations, from traditional religion through liberal humanism to high modernist aesthetics. Examples here might include Southeast Christian Church, the architectural and cultural writing of Hilton Kramer, theory by Jürgen Habermas, fiction by Saul Bellow or Philip Roth, art and aesthetics
by Frederick Hart, films such as Die Hard and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
670 - 75: Composition Studies and the Question(s) of Disciplinarity (Composition Theory and Practice)
Instructor: Kopelson, Karen
Meeting Times: Th 7:00pm-9:45pm
Room: HM 111
Registration Number: 7495
Class Description: Though it is becoming an increasingly difficult task, this course attempts a broad survey of (r)evolutions in composition theory from its inception as a discipline to present. In the process of this survey, we will also inquire--sometimes implicitly, often explicitly--into Composition Studies’ conception of itself as an academic discipline. A question that drives this course might be, “who have we been and where are we going?”(Which is really two questions.)
Whether we laud Composition Studies for its persistent self-reflexivity or lament its endless self-scrutiny, such questions are again and increasingly relevant—as what it means to “compose” continues to shift, as graduate programs rename themselves as something other than Composition (and Rhetoric), as the entire field tries on and debates new appellations such as “Writing Studies” etc.
Course texts will include: a lot of readings I will post to Blackboard plus either Cross-Talk in Comp Theory (3rd edition; Villanueva and Arola, eds.) OR the Norton Book of Composition Studies (Miller, ed.) as our main anthology. I’ll decide soon.
Course requirements will include: spirited and rigorous class discussion; weekly reading; weekly written responses to the readings; and a “Keyword” essay as your final project. More on this to follow.
674 - 01: Perspectives on Literacy (Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhetoric and Composition)
Instructor: Mattingly, Carol
Meeting Times: W 4:00pm-6:45pm
Room: HM 220
Registration Number: 6451
Class Description:
Course Description and Goals:
This course will focus on the definition of literacy and how that definition has changed over time, as well as on research from the New Literacy Studies (NLS) and like-minded work. NLS treats writing and reading as pluralistic cultural practices whose forms, functions, and influences take shape as part of larger contexts–social, political, historical, material and, always, ideological. The New Literacy Studies arose in reaction to earlier theories that treated (alphabetic) literacy as an autonomous technology delivering certain predictable consequences, social and cognitive, to its users. We will try to understand how literacy has been defined in the United States historically and currently, and we will read with a particular eye to the difficulty of studying literacy in context. We also will try to identify the next frontier in new literacy studies: What should be studied now and how? Finally, we will ask whether the premises of NLS have themselves reached a level of orthodoxy worthy of questioning and, perhaps, overturning.
Specific goals are as follows:
- To understand how literacy has been defined in the United States historically
- To learn about pivotal points in the treatment of literacy in this country
- To attempt our own definition of literacy
- To examine the developments of the New Literacy Studies
- To begin to question the premises of the New Literacy Studies
- To predict the new frontier in literacy studies
681 - 01: Gender and Science Fiction (Seminar in Special Studies)
Instructor: Heinecken, Dawn
Meeting Times: MW 3:00pm-4:15pm
Room: HM 111
Registration Number: 8012
Class Description:
This class will examine the representation of women and gender in science fiction. The course will develop student's critical reading, thinking, writing and presentation skills. Reading works of science fiction against classic readings in feminist theory, students will examine women's contributions to the science fiction genre to develop an understanding of the ways women have worked within the genre to explore issues related to gender, race, class, and sexuality. Students will be asked to consider the ways science fiction writers have participated in on-going dialogues within both larger culture and within the SF community, developing, responding to, and resisting SF tropes, particularly those related to gender roles, identity, and social structure. Some areas we will consider include women's early presence in the pulps, distinctions between women's "soft" SF and the "hard" SF of male writers, as well as the ways that women have used the extrapolatory nature of SF to explore feminist issues.
681 - 75: Archival Research Methods (Seminar in Special Studies)
Instructor: Ryan, Susan
Meeting Times: T 7:00pm-9:45pm
Room: HM 216
Registration Number: 5097
Class Description:
How have ideological, cultural, economic, and technological forces shaped the archives that are available for scholarly research? What kinds of questions can archival research answer? What methods have archival researchers employed? What are their possibilities and limitations? As we explore the theory and practice of archival research, participants in this seminar will read works that address archival research methods overtly as well as articles or book chapters that use archives in especially interesting ways. Throughout the semester, students will engage in hands-on archival research, using both paper and digital sources. While the instructor will introduce readings and examples from her own area of expertise (nineteenth-century American studies), students will be free to develop independent projects that accord with their own areas of interest.
Requirements:
Active participation in seminar discussions, several brief writing assignments and presentations, a small-scale editing project, and a substantial final research paper.
681 - 76: Conversion in Medieval Culture (with visiting professor Dr. S. Kruger) (Seminar in Special Studies)
Instructor: ,
Meeting Times: W 7:00pm-9:45pm
Room: HM 216
Registration Number: 7496
Class Description: Conversions
This course examines the significance of religious conversion for medieval literature and culture. We will read a wide range of medieval work in which conversion experience is at the center, drawing from such genres as autobiography, saint’s life, dream vision, miracle of the Virgin, drama, lyric, romance, and from such authors as Hermann/Judah, Hildegard of Bingen, Dante, Chaucer, Langland, Gower, Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich,
Lydgate, Hoccleve. Though the main line of readings in the course will be medieval, we will work comparatively, considering how medieval texts reshape their predecessors (Acts of the Apostles, Augustine) and prepare for their successors (Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, Kushner’s Angels in America). We will also consider how a religious self is shaped by and shapes other categories of identity (gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, class, age), and what happens to these other “parts” of one’s identity when a religious conversion occurs. Alongside primary texts, we will read a variety of theoretical and critical work that takes up conversionary experience, including scholarship that treats non-religious experiences that might nonetheless be useful for thinking about religious conversion (e.g., transgender theory). Students will complete semester-long projects that include both oral and written components; non-medievalists are encouraged to work comparatively, bringing material from their primary fields of interest into conversation with the course material.
682 - 01: Language and Culture (Seminar in Linguistics)
Instructor: Soldat-Jaffe, T
Meeting Times: W 4:00pm-6:45pm
Room: HM 216
Registration Number: 5458
Prerequisites:LING 325 or ENGL 325 or ENGL 518.
Class Description:
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.
687 - 01: The Work of Ethnography (Seminar in Rhetorical Studies)
Instructor: Journet, Debra
Meeting Times: Th 4:00pm-6:45pm
Room: HM 220
Registration Number: 7497
Prerequisites: NONE
Class Description: The “Work” of Ethnography
The genre of the ethnography arose in anthropology. In rhetoric and composition, we have borrowed much of the disciplinary and rhetorical “work” that anthropological ethnographies represent. But as anthropologists themselves are doing, we are experimenting with textual forms and new modes of representation.
Jame Agee and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath.
Zora Neal Hurston. Mules and Men.
Ralph Cintron. Angels’ Town.
Special Notes:
There is NO prerequisite for this course. The website incorrectly shows 602 as a pre-req.
689 - 01: Directed Reading for Comprehensive Preliminary Examinations
Instructor: Kopelson, Karen
Meeting Times: TBA TBA
Room: TBA
Registration Number: 5306
Class Description: This course is for Ph.D. students in their third year who are taking their comprehensive exams ONLY.
690 - 01: Dissertation Research
Instructor: Kopelson, Karen
Meeting Times: TBA TBA
Room: TBA
Registration Number: 3663
Class Description:
691 - 01: Contemporary Theories of Interpretation
Instructor: Hadley, Karen
Meeting Times: M 4:00pm-6:45pm
Room: HM 220
Registration Number: 7482
Class Description:
This graduate-level introductory course proposes to introduce students to recent developments in contemporary theory through the study of primary texts; to deepen and refine students’ skills in reading and critical analysis; to increase students’ awareness of the variety of issues and approaches available for literary interpretation and criticism; and to give students the opportunity to work with these materials through discussion (both verbal and online), Louisville Conference attendance, drafting a project proposal, and through a comprehensive exam. The bulk of course readings will be taken from Rivkin & Ryan’s Literary Theory: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2004). In addition, and to illuminate critical and theoretical materials within a literary context, each week’s convergence of theoretical issues will be applied to some aspect of our touchstone literary text, which will very likely be Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
