Fall 2017

ENGL 504-01: Advanced Creative Writing II – Poetry: T/Th 9:30 – 10:45 AM: I. Stansel

This upper-division fiction course offers students who have already completed introductory and intermediate workshops the opportunity to further refine their craft. The discussion-based class will focus on the craft of short story writing, with a secondary and simultaneous examination of linked, or connected, stories. Through this we will begin to examine strategies for longer narratives, while still practicing the short form. We will read several collections of linked stories. Week-by-week, the class will examine different aspects of the storytelling craft, including scene-building, plot and sub-plot development, writing voice, among others. In addition to creating and workshopping short stories, students will work on developing story ideas and structuring approaches for a longer piece of writing.

ENGL 508-01: Literacy Tutoring: M/W/F 11:00-11:50 AM: A. Olinger

This course will focus on the theory and practice of teaching writing one-on-one and in small groups in academic, professional, and community settings. We will discuss the theoretical foundations of teaching and tutoring writing, reading scholarship from composition and literacy studies and writing center research, and we will explore pedagogical strategies for working with writers from a variety of backgrounds. Students completing this course will be eligible for internships in community-based settings such as Family Scholar House and the Louisville Free Public Library.

ENGL 510-01: MA Internship: N/A: S. Schneider

*Permission required. Students work within the University, community and local businesses to apply the knowledge they have gained in the program and obtain experience.

ENGL 518-01: Foundations of Language: T/Th 9:30 – 10:45 AM: T. Stewart Jr.

*This section is cross-listed

ENGL 522-01: Structure of Modern English: M/W/F 1:00 – 1:50 PM: T. Stewart Jr.

*This section is cross-listed.

Examination of the structure of modern English language; emphasis on grammatical terminology and systems of classification. Students collect and analyze linguistic examples, spoken and written. Recommended for prospective English teachers. Course Goals:

• Transform perceptions of the grammar of Modern English from intimidating and mysterious into a concrete, describable system.
• Build a repertoire of concepts, terms, and analytical skills for thinking, analyzing, and communicating about the linguistic structure of English.

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: distinguish between language issues that are fundamental to the construction of English sentences and those that constitute “pet peeves” and “complaint triggers”; identify and collect examples of specified structure-types encountered in everyday English language use; describe English sentence structures in detail, through the rigorous application of the concepts, categories, and methods of descriptive linguistics; and produce original English examples of said concepts, categories, and methods.

ENGL 541-01: Robin Hood & Other Medieval Outlaws: T/Th 1:00 – 2:15 PM: A. Rabin

Controversial during the Middle Ages for their depictions of disenfranchised and rebellious elements of medieval society, outlaw narratives provide some of the earliest examples of ‘popular’ English literature.  This course will trace the development of these narratives as a social phenomenon from the eleventh century Life of Hereward through the proliferation of Robin Hood tales in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  In particular, we will investigate how the outlaw as a popular or anti-establishment figure both expresses a notion of English national identity and functions as a form of social criticism calling into question the coherence of that identity. In doing so, we will examine also how the notion of the “greenwood” communicates and challenges the social and moral norms of medieval England.  Likewise, we will question how the figure of the outlaw functions as a projection of an idealized masculinity.  Finally, we will consider how more recent authors appropriate these narratives in order to project their own perspectives and desires concerning both medieval and modern society.  

ENGL 544-01: Studies in Restoration and 18^th C. British Literature: M/W/F 10:00 – 10:50: S. Biberman

"Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage." Was there ever a time when the logic in this Sinatra song did not make perfect sense? Some critics would claim so, asserting that marriage once existed to promote procreation, not monogamous love. This evolution in the concept of marriage is often said to begin in earnest during the late seventeenth and the early 18th century. In our class we will read a range of texts in order to evaluate this thesis. While arriving at an understanding of how the idea of marriage functioned in England during this time, we will also focus on a range of concepts which might define marriage by serving as its opposite. In a society working to elevate the roles of "husband" and "wife," prostitutes, pimps, and illegitimate children, for example, might become demonized. With this hypothesis in mind, we will study the representation of these two sets of characters--the sacred couple vs. the villains--in plays, poetry, and prose. We will test out possible links connecting all these "others" in order to answer the following question: How might the promotion of monogamous love encourage fear of foreigners, the cultivation of rationalism, and the eradication of magic within early modern culture? Texts include Paradise Lost, The Way of the World, The Blazing World, All for Love, Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Fielding’s Joseph Andrews. Requirements: Take home midterm, final seminar paper, presentation

ENGL 549-01: Studies in Postcolonial and/or Ethnic Literatures: Afrofuturism and African Science Fiction: A. Willey

In this course, we will examine key texts in the development of Afrofuturism in the American diaspora and African Science Fiction from the continent.  To what extent are the two discourses linked or different?  Our work will take us from early stories by WEB DuBois through to Sun Ra and Amiri Baraka and Octavia Butler.  We will then turn to examine how futurism has taken shape on the African continent through examining such authors as Dongala and Okorafor and films such as “Pumzi.”  Of special interest will be the connections between Futurist and Ecological discourses.

ENGL 551-01: Popular Nature Writing: T/Th 11:00AM – 12:15PM: G. Ridley

The course will examine the ever-growing market for trade non-fiction nature writing, that is, writing about nature, or aspects of nature, designed to appeal to a general audience.

It has become commonplace among reviewers of nature-themed books to say that we live in a golden age of nature writing. This is typically explained by way of comparing nature writing following the worldwide financial crisis of 2008 to nature writing in the decade following the conclusion of the First World War: in both cases, readers living in uncertain times seem to take comfort in nature writers’ evocation of the unchanging rhythms of the natural world. But if we really are living at the beginning of what has been termed the Anthropocene (an age of mass extinctions caused by man), then the rhythms of the natural world are being disrupted and changing as never before.

Early weeks of the course will introduce a range of classic Anglo-American nature writing in excerpt form, including selections from Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selborne (1789) and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854) before moving to consider leading twentieth-century exponents of nature writing. David Quammen’s writing evolution from popular nature features in Outside magazine to the multi-award winning The Song of the Dodo (1996) will be examined, and the course will come up to the present with consideration of two surprise international best-sellers: Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk (2015) and Peter  Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees (2015). What makes good nature writing and what does the current popularity of nature writing say about our culture more widely?

Students interested in taking this course should note that our reading will consist almost entirely of non-fictional prose about the natural world. If you prefer your texts to be fictions, this is probably not the course for you. If you have questions, please feel free to email me: glynis.ridley@louisville.edu.

ENGL 563-01: Milton: Th 7:00 – 9:45PM: D. Billingsley

ENGL 567-75: Post-Colonial Voices: Th 5:30 – 8:15 PM: K. Logan

*This section is cross-listed

ENGL 571-01: Studies in American Literature to 1865: M/W/F 2:00 – 3:15PM: S. Ryan

Some of the most intriguing works in early and  nineteenth-century American literature either take place elsewhere—that is, not on American soil—or meditate at length on some notion of foreignness or cultural hybridity. In reading and analyzing these encounters with the nation’s many exteriors or others, participants in the course will develop a keener sense of how American national consciousness has always been both under formation and under pressure. Possible texts include Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, in which she moves from the Massachusetts Bay Colony through “Indian country”; Royall Tyler’s The Algerine Captive (a novel about North African piracy and captivity); Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative; Mary Prince’s slave narrative (set in the West Indies and England, but commenting on matters of keen interest to Americans); Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick or Benito Cereno; Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady.

ENGL 574: American Literature 1960-Present: T/Th 5:30 – 6:45PM: F. Kelderman

This course examines anglophone indigenous literatures from the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia since the 1960s.  It will focus on how indigenous literatures are shaped by, and reflect on, globalization and transnationalism. Rather than assuming a global indigenous “sameness,” we will use what Chadwick Allen calls “purposeful indigenous juxtapositions” to consider the following questions: what global events, legal contexts, and cultural forces have shaped the production of indigenous literatures around the world? And how have global indigenous literatures reflected and influenced cultural and political movements around the world? Assigned readings will include short stories, poetry, and novels, and will cover various genres, including creative non-fiction, science fiction, detective stories, and several films. The novels that we will read include Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, Patricia Grace’s Tu, and Kim Scott’s That Deadman’s Dance. The requirements are active class participation, several short writing assignments, one oral presentation, and a final research paper.

ENGL 599 - 50: Writing From Life: Online: S. Strickley

*This section requires permission

Have you ever wondered if the stories you’ve grown up hearing about your family would make for a powerful written work? Have you ever considered bringing the story of your own life to the page? If so, this online creative writing workshop might be right for you. Students will learn the difference between an engaging anecdote and a compelling work of art by experimenting in a variety of forms: short stories, literary essays, and poems. Close readings of published work and regular writing exercises will draw forth the matters of craft at hand; workshop sessions with peers will help participants shape the raw materials of life into persuasive works of prose or poetry.   

ENGL 601-01: Introduction to English Studies: W 4:00 – 6:45PM: S. Griffin

*This section requires permission

What have been the “key” terms of literary study? How and why have they changed? Of course, such questions could take us back to the classical era. For purposes of this course we will focus on three examples: Raymond William’s Key Words: A Vocabulary of Culture & Society, Frank Lentricchia & Thomas McLaughlin’s Critical Terms for Literary Study, and Bruce Burgett and Glenn Handler’s Keywords for American Cultural Studies. In addition to these books, there will be shorter readings: literary, critical, and theoretical. We will also study, and engage in, some of the “key” forms of professional writing in the field. During the course of the seminar participants will:

• “Follow” a scholarly journal relevant to your area(s) of interest
• Evaluate a scholarly electronic research resource
• Write an abstract for a presentation at a professional conference
• Write and present a 20 minute paper based on that abstract
• Workshop the presentation with an eye towards revising into an article

ENGL 602-01: Teaching College Composition: M 4:00-6:45 PM: K. Kopelson

*This course requires permission

English 602 focuses on the theory and practice of teaching writing at the college level.  We will engage reading, activities, and discussion that encourage reflective, critical, and flexible teaching practices in college-level writing classrooms.  This course is designed for graduate students who are teaching in the Composition Program at the University of Louisville.

ENGL 604-01: Writing Center Theory and Practice: T/Th 2:30 – 3:45PM: B.  Williams

*This section requires permission

This course prepares incoming GTAs to teach in the University Writing Center. In this course we will discuss the theoretical foundation necessary for examining pedagogical issues important to an effective writing center. We will cover topics including ways of approaching writing consultations with students, responding effectively to student writing, the role of style and grammar instruction in the writing center, consulting strategies for ESL students, digital media and writing center work, assessment and record-keeping, and resource development. We read a variety of scholarship on issues of literacy, composition and rhetoric, and writing center work as well as discuss issues raised in weekly work in the Writing Center.

ENGL 606-75: Advanced Creative Writing: Wednesday 7:00 – 9:45PM: K. Petrosino

*This section requires permission

This graduate-level workshop is for writers of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and drama. Because this is an advanced course, I expect students to demonstrate a working knowledge of the basic literary terms appropriate to each genre. Students may write in any genre or combination of genres. This workshop-style course invites students to continue developing their own writing practices, while adding new compositional and critical techniques to their repertoires. We’ll devote most class sessions to reviewing peer-generated works-in-progress, but we’ll also discuss some published texts and take time to explore other relevant elements of the creative process. Students should be prepared to participate energetically in group critique sessions (i.e., “workshop”) in addition to polishing their own writing. Students will assemble a portfolio (containing 30-60 pages of prose/drama OR 20-30 pages of poetry OR some combination of these) at semester’s end. Each student will also write significant responses to each peer manuscript, create an individual author website or blog, and compose four website entries about their ongoing research and creative activity. The final grade will be calculated based on the above items, plus attendance and participation.

ENGL 610-01: PhD Internship: N/A: S. Schneider

*This section requires permission

Students work within the University, community and local businesses to apply the knowledge they have gained in the program and obtain experience.

ENGL 615-01: Thesis Guidance: N/A: S. Schneider

*This section requires permission

This course is for student who are in the process of completing their thesis

ENGL 632-75: Shakespeare: On Unfamiliar Ground: W 7:00 – 9:45PM: H. Stanev

This course will examine a number of the lesser known works of the Bard, particularly those that have baffled and perplexed generations of audiences and readers. We will study in considerable detail the dramatic, philosophical, cultural, sexual, and political build-up of select plays in regard to four significant clusters of ideas: imperfect love, misanthropy and exile, desultory kingship, and uncommon redemption. We will investigate Shakespeare’s works further through a number of interpretative lenses (especially historicism) that will help us unravel a complex register of dramatic commentaries related to representations of royal prerogative, political opportunism, social alienation, sexual fulfillment, erotic desire, gender transgression, cultural defiance, philosophical skepticism, psychological breakdown, and emotional disparagement. The student learning outcome aims at developing significant awareness of the restless complexity and inner controversies of a relatively unfamiliar body of Shakespeare’s plays that will not only enhance knowledge of the Bard’s dramatic genius, but will also help us place some of the better-known works in dialogue and critical negotiation with their lesser known “siblings.” The student learning outcome will be assessed primarily through a longer research essay on one or several of Shakespeare’s dramatic works, as well as through a research database and an abstract that can double as a conference proposal.

ENGL 660-01: African American Fiction: Th 4:00 – 6:45 PM: K. Chandler

This course will explore African American fiction, from the mid-nineteenth century through the present. The course will enable close attention to the development of a central mode in African American literary history, social realism, as well as to important challenges and alternatives to realist practices. English 660 will afford us opportunities to consider pertinent criticism on African American fiction and on realism, fantasy, and other relevant genres and modes. Required work for the course will include short papers, a longer seminar paper, and student reports. Among the writers the course may explore are Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Pauline Hopkins, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Langston Hughes, Dorothy West, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Colson Whitehead.

ENGL 681-75: Translingual Writing Theory and Practice: M 7:00 – 9:45: B. Horner

The term “translingual” has become a term of contention, seeming both to cross and create divides within and among the fields of composition and rhetoric, second language writing, translation studies, and sociolinguistics.  To explore what translinguality might mean for work in rhetoric and composition, we will consider a broad range of scholarship on theories of language difference generally, and language difference in writing in particular, including work in translation studies, applied linguistics, and second language writing and its teaching that address translanguaging, plurilingualism, as well as translingual theory, and we will experiment with and reflect on writing across languages both as languages are conventionally understood and in ways that might defy such conventional understandings of languages and language relations.

ENGL 687-75: Spatial Rhetorics: T 7:00 – 9:45PM: T. Johnson

This course invites students to engage with the diverse scholarship working at the intersections of rhetoric, composing, and the visual. Conversations will cover a wide variety of issues: visual and archival methodologies, the history of (visual) rhetoric, multimodal theory, visual culture, critical and rhetorical theory, pedagogy, and film studies. As a vehicle for scholarly work, however, I find that the visual fuses with existing research agendas and interests to create rich, fascinating work. Following this premise, students will be invited to bring artifacts and texts (billboards, films, commercials, to class for us to “read” and discuss. Students will also produce an artifact analysis, academic book review, and a seminar paper applying and adapting the theories and methods of visual rhetoric to their own interests. Perhaps the best way to know the course, though, is to know its potential reading list: Provisional Reading List (some of this will get cut):

What is Visual Rhetoric

[B] Defining Visual Rhetoric by Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers

[B] Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching Visual Materials by Gillian Rose

[B] Envisioning Information by Edward TufteTufte, Edward R. Envisioning Information. 4th print., July 1994. Cheshire, Conn.: Graphics Press, 1994

McComiskey, Bruce. "Visual rhetoric and the new public discourse." JAC (2004): 187-206.

Foss, Sonja K. "Framing the study of visual rhetoric: Toward a transformation of rhetorical theory." Defining visual rhetorics (2004): 303-313

Visual Rhetoric and Public Memory

[B] Rhetoric, Remembrance, and Visual Form Edited by Anne Teresa Demo and Bradford Vivian

Haskins, Ekaterina. "Between archive and participation: Public memory in a digital age." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 37.4 (2007): 401-422.

Duro, Paul “A Disturbance of Memory”: Travel, Recollection, and the Experience of Place”

Kalin, Jason. "Remembering with rephotography: a social practice for the inventions of memories." Visual Communication Quarterly 20.3 (2013): 168-179.

Critical Studies in Visual Culture

[B] Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA Photographs by Cara Finnegan

Finnegan, Cara A. "Recognizing Lincoln: Image vernaculars in nineteenth-century visual culture." Rhetoric& Public Affairs 8.1 (2005): 31-57.

Delicath, John W., and Kevin Michael Deluca. "Image events, the public sphere, and argumentative practice: The case of radical environmental groups." Argumentation 17.3 (2003): 315-333.

Barnett, Joshua Trey. "Toxic portraits: Resisting multiple invisibilities in the environmental justice movement." Quarterly Journal of Speech 101.2 (2015): 405-425.

[B] Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights Visions, Recognitions, Feminisms by Wendy S. Hesford

 [B] Writing without words: Alternative literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes. By: Elizabeth Hill Boone and Walter Mignolo

[B] Constitutive Visions: Indigeneity and Commonplaces of National Identity in Republican Ecuador by Christa Olson

Kleege, Georgina. "Blindness and visual culture: An eyewitness account." Journal of Visual Culture 4.2 (2005): 179-190.

[B] No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy by Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites

Hum, Sue. "" Between the Eyes": The Racialized Gaze as Design." College English 77.3 (2015): 191-215.

Harold, Christine, and Kevin Michael DeLuca. "Behold the corpse: Violent images and the case of Emmett Till." Rhetoric& Public Affairs 8.2 (2005): 263-286.

Hancock, Ange-Marie. "Trayvon Martin, intersectionality, and the politics of disgust." Theory & Event 15.3 (2012).

Multimodal Composing

[B]Non-discursive rhetoric: Image and affect in multimodal composition. By: Murray, Joddy.

Gries, Laurie E. "Iconographic tracking: A digital research method for visual rhetoric and circulation studies." Computers and Composition 30.4 (2013): 332-348.

The New London Group. "A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures." Harvard educational review 66.1 (1996): 60-93.

Hocks, Mary E. "Understanding visual rhetoric in digital writing environments." College composition and communication (2003): 629-656.

Marback, Richard. "Embracing wicked problems: The turn to design in composition studies." College composition and communication 61.2 (2009): W397.

Dyehouse, Jeremiah, Michael Pennell, and Linda K. Shamoon. "" Writing in Electronic Environments": A Concept and a Course for the Writing and Rhetoric Major." College Composition and Communication 61.2 (2009): W330.

ENGL 688-75: Watson Seminar: T 7:00 – 9:45PM: L. Mao

For the past few decades we have seen a growing trend in our field to study non-Euro-American rhetorical traditions and to interrogate and move beyond the dominant rhetorical and writing paradigms. The emergence of comparative rhetoric as a field of study is an integral part of this trend. Comparative rhetoric engages non-Euro-American rhetorical practices, as well as other silenced or marginalized rhetorical voices within the spaces of the (heterogeneous) Euro-American traditions, across time, place, and space. It fosters a commitment to different ways of knowing and speaking and to different forms of inquiry and knowledge-making. This seminar is squarely situated in this context and aims to contribute to what can be described as a comparative turn in our field. We will therefore engage current scholarships on comparative rhetoric, as well as on cultural and intercultural rhetorics, and we will also read translations of primary materials on non-Euro-American rhetorics.

We will begin this endeavor by first connecting comparative rhetoric to contrastive rhetoric and intercultural rhetoric. Thanks to Robert Kaplan’s work in 1960s and, in particular, to his insight that different cultures have different rhetorical tendencies, attention to and interest in non- Euro-American rhetorical practices began to emerge in English Studies, though the focus then was largely limited to helping to understand and improve the discursive practices of ESL students in the U.S. In spite of this narrow and flawed focus, it was in part Kaplan’s insight that gradually led rhetoricians and writing specialists to study other, non-Euro-American rhetorical traditions without either pitting them against the Euro-American “norms” or romanticizing them beyond their “otherness.”

We will explore, among other issues, on-going tensions underlying the pursuit of comparative rhetoric between, for example, the disciplinary desire to search for a Theory of Rhetoric (Kennedy) and the need of any comparative endeavor to challenge such a desire and to develop local terms and different “grids of intelligibility” (Rey Chow), and between an appeal to the dominant paradigms of logic and rationality and a call for aesthetic, analogical, or other indigenous frames of ordering and knowledge-making (Hall and Ames). We will also investigate what it means to represent the native’s point of view and to search for a third in comparative work. We will consider such questions as: (1) how knowledge gets produced and disseminated at points of comparison; (2) what are the possibilities and impossibilities of studying the other on its own terms and in its own context; and (3) how the art of recontextualization can serve as a productive heuristic in the global contact zones where boundaries of all kinds are being blurred, conflated, and/or recreated. Readings1. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. Trans. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr. New York, NY: Ballantine, 1998. Print.2. The Bhagavad Gita. Trans. W. J. Johnson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994. Print.3. Combs, Steve. The Dao of Rhetoric. Albany: SUNY, 2005. Print.4. Dao de Jing: Making This Life Significant. Trans. Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall. New York, NY: Ballantine, 2003. Print.5. Hall, David, and Roger Ames. Anticipating China: Thinking through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture. Albany: SUNY P, 1995. Print.6. Kennedy, George. Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-cultural Introduction. New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print.7. Lipson, Carol, and Roberta Binkley, eds. Ancient Non-Greek Rhetorics. Albany: SUNY, 2009. Print.8. Lloyd, G. E. R. Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Print.9. Selections from Rhetorics of the Americas, 3114 BCE to 2012 CE (Baca and Villanueva, eds., Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Rhetoric in the Rest of the West (Shane Borrowman et al., eds., Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies (Lunsford et al., eds., 2009); and Early China and Ancient Greece (Shankman and Durrant, eds., SUNY P, 2002), and among others.

ENGL 689-01: Composition Exams: N/A: S. Schneider

*This section requires permission

This course should be taken in the semester during which the PhD student is actively taking exams. If all ENGL 690 credits have been taken the student should request permission to be enrolled in GS 799 (Doctoral Exam Prep).

ENGL 690-01: Dissertation Research: N/A: S. Schneider

*This section requires permission

This course is taken by PhD students to allow time to work with their advisor on their dissertation. 12 credits, total, are required.

ENGL 692-01: Theories of Language: T 4:00-6:45PM: K. Hadley

*This section requires permission

Using early twentieth-century generative figures in the fields of philosophy and linguistics (Frege, de Saussure), we’ll begin by addressing representative texts from Phenomenology, Structuralism, Formalism, and the Philosophy of Language before moving into the heart of the course, which is deconstruction. Devoting three to four weeks to representative deconstructive theorists Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, we will explore the ways in which they critiqued and drew from what preceded them, as we anticipate larger historically-based post-structuralist perspectives. The final third of the course will look toward the latter part of the century to (largely) socio-historically inflected perspectives influenced by deconstruction: historical materialism, social constructivism, Marxism, Feminism(s), and Post-Colonial Studies. The richly dense texts we will be working from will dictate course expectations in terms of research and writing: presentation and discussion will be focused largely around intrinsic matters, and writing projects will be student-generated and formatted more loosely as take-home exams, rather than as (polished) essays.

ENGL 692-02: Gender and Science Fiction: M/W 4:00 – 5:15PM: D. Heinecken

*This section is cross listed.