Fall 2019 Course Descriptions

ENGL 501-01: Independent Study (Professor TBA)

ENGL 504-01: Advanced CW-Fiction (P. Griner)

Welcome to 504, Advanced Creative Writing, fiction. We'll be reading a lot of published work and doing some in and out of class exercises, but the heart of the class will be workshops, devoted to your work. I hope to help all of you improve and expand your craft. MA students may take this course as an elective.

ENGL 506-01: Teaching of Writing;WR;CUE (T. Johnson)

The Teaching of Writing is an introduction to the theories, research, and practice that informs the effective teaching of writing. Beginning with theories and research that examine what writing is, why it is important to teach writing, and how best to teach writing, the course will then move on to applying these concepts to practical applications (syllabi, assignment trajectories, paper comments) for teaching writing at the secondary and post-secondary levels. Guided by the common assumption that teaching is theory in practice, and that one must be reflective about one’s practice (continually examining and revising) to be an effective teacher, we will interrogate popular theories of writing with the goal of developing our own theories and approaches to teaching writing. Students should leave the course with the ability to draw connections between theories of writing, learning, teaching, and classroom practice as well as strategies for curricular, syllabus, and assignment design. MA students may take this course as an elective.

ENGL 522-01: Structure of Mod Engl (Stewart, Jr.)

An 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. This course can count in the Theoretical Track concentration or as an Elective for the Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics. For more information, see http://bit.ly/UG_lingminor. MA students may take this course as an elective.

Course Goals:

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

Course-level Student Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

1. distinguish between language issues that are fundamental to the construction of English sentences and those that constitute “pet peeves” and “complaint triggers”;
2. identify and collect examples of specified structure-types encountered in everyday English language use;
3. describe English sentence structures in detail, through the rigorous application of the concepts, categories, and methods of descriptive linguistics; and
4. produce original English examples of said concepts, categories, and methods. 

ENGL 522-50/51: Structure of Mod Engl (Blended Format) (Stewart, Jr.)

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.

Format:T his course is delivered substantially through the Blackboard system, with seven face-to-face class meetings on campus. Dates approximately every other week during the semester (TBA). This is nota fully on-line course, and cannot be taken as such. This course can count in the Theoretical Track concentration or as an Elective for the Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics. For more information, see http://bit.ly/UG_lingminor. MA students may take this course as an elective.

Course Goals:

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

Course-level Student Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

1. distinguish between language issues that are fundamental to the construction of English sentences and those that constitute “pet peeves” and “complaint triggers”;
2. identify and collect examples of specified structure-types encountered in everyday English language use;
3. describe English sentence structures in detail, through the rigorous application of the concepts, categories, and methods of descriptive linguistics; and
4. produce original English examples of said concepts, categories, and methods.

ENGL 543-01: Studies in Stuart and Commonwealth Literature - CUE (D.Billingsley)

In-depth study of selected move­ments, genres, topics or groupings of writers from the Stuart and/or Commonwealth periods. Students earn graduate or undergraduate credit depending upon their registration status. By university policy, graduate credit requires additional work. This offering of the course will be based upon intensive readings of the work of John Donne and his contemporaries, both in poetry and in prose, as reflections or refractions of the various continuities and disjunctions of seventeenth-century England.  The course is designed to take advantage of the active-learning environment of the Belknap Academic Building and Blackboard, but no special tech expertise or access is necessary for success. This course satisfies pre-1700  literature requirement for MA students.

ENGL 555-01: Coop Internship-CUE (K. Chandler)

This coop course is designed to accompany an internship that has approved for three hours of credit. The course requires descriptive and reflective writing about the internship, in the form of weekly reports, as well as a substantial final research project, a portfolio and evaluation by the intern’s site supervisor. MA students may take this course as an elective.

ENGL 567-01: Postcolonial Voices (E. 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.  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. This course satisfies the post-1900 literature requirement for MA students.

ENGL 572-01: Studies in American Literature, 1865-191 –CUE (S. Ryan)

Recent controversies over Confederate monuments (most dramatically, in Charlottesville, VA and Chapel Hill, NC) have sparked renewed interest in the American Civil War and its long afterlife. This course will focus not on generals and battles, but rather on cultural production during and after the war, with particular attention to questions of race, mourning, reunion, and memory. Primary materials will include a range of texts that are in various ways commenting on or haunted by the war, including, for example, Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus tales, Charles Chesnutt's short stories, Frances Harper’s reconstruction novel (Iola Leroy), magazine features that recount the war and its aftermath, and poetry by Whitman, Melville, Dickinson, and others.  I plan to use texts that are obviously about the war as well as those that reference it more obliquely, with attention in the last 20% of the course to the ways in which 21^st-century cultural and political life continue to address and appropriate the war. Secondary texts will include historical and literary analyses. Students will do original archival work (no travel required) as part of this course. The course fulfills a 1700-1900 requirement for undergraduate English majors and MA students. 

ENGL 599-50: Writing From Life (S. Strickley)

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 and workshop sessions with peers will help participants shape the raw materials of life into persuasive works of prose or poetry. Undergraduates, graduates, and non-degree students are welcome to enroll in this unique online offering. Benefits include rolling deadlines designed to accommodate any schedule and the option of learning and writing from the comfort of your own home. MA students may take this course as an elective.

 ENGL 599-51: Writing From Life (Professor Strickley)

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 and workshop sessions with peers will help participants shape the raw materials of life into persuasive works of prose or poetry. Undergraduates, graduates, and non-degree students are welcome to enroll in this unique online offering. Benefits include rolling deadlines designed to accommodate any schedule and the option of learning and writing from the comfort of your own home. MA students may take this course as an elective.

English 601: Introduction to English Studies (T. Johnson)

English 602: Teaching College Composition (K. Kopelson)

English 602 will help you theorize, historicize, and reflect upon the teaching of introductory college writing in the context of your first year of teaching at UofL. Thus, though the course functions largely as a seminar - providing a broad overview of composition pedagogies and related practices from the inception of the process movement until present - it will always focus on the implications, and sometimes direct application, of the scholarship we read to our teaching. The course will also involve you in discussion of and planning toward your own classroom experiences as they are unfolding. And the course’s final project will leave you fully prepared to teach the next course in our sequence, Engl 102, during your second semester. This is a required course for all MA and PhD GTAs.

English 604: Writing Center Theory and Practice (B. Williams)

ENGL 606: Creative Writing I (K. Maxwell)

This is a graduate creative writing workshop. In addition to reading and providing feedback on class members’ writing, we will consider, experiment with, and push against genre(s) and explore hybridity and intersections among genres. Because this is a graduate-level workshop, all class members are expected to have a working knowledge of basic literary terms appropriate to discussions of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and drama. Class members will generate, distribute, and revise original work in the genre(s) of their choosing; provide thoughtful feedback on one another’s writing; present a craft lecture; produce two imitations; test out a few in-class writing experiments; and read and discuss published work, which will likely include essays from Aisha Sabatini Sloan’s Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit; poems by Anne Carson, Jack Gilbert, Jillian Weise, Cathy Park Hong, Cynthia Arrieu-King, and Morgan Parker; fiction by Tessa Mellas, Lauren Groff, Raymond Chandler, Carmen Maria Machado, and Kelly Link; and Suzan-Lori Parks’ play Topdog/Underdog. This course is an elective.

ENGL 632: Weird Shakespeare (H. Stanev)

While Shakespeare’s works are usually not straightforward and easy to interpret, they have sometimes baffled and perplexed generations of audiences and readers. This course will focus on plays that become weird and unnerving – in dramatic, cultural, aesthetic, philosophical, and thematic ways. From lurid visions of imperfect love, misanthropy and exile, to desultory kingship, violent dismemberment, and unspeakable, fragmented visions of self and others, we will investigate the plays through interpretative lenses (especially historicism) that will help us unravel a complex register of dramatic commentaries and allusions related to representations of uncommon royal prerogative, political opportunism, social alienation, unorthodox sexual fulfillment, twisted desire, gender transgression, fictions of disease, cultural defiance, philosophical skepticism, and visionary, often symbolic, forms of knowledge. The student learning outcomes aim at developing significant awareness of the restless complexity and inner controversies of a relatively unfamiliar, if outright strange, body of Shakespeare’s plays that will not only enhance awareness 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 shadowy “siblings.” The student learning outcomes will be assessed through class discussions, 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. In addition, once during the semester, you will be responsible for generating several discussion questions on a play of your choice and share them with the rest of the class. This course fulfills the pre-1700 literature requirement for MA students and 3 hours of literature for PhD students.

ENGL 643: Eighteenth-Century Poetry and Prose  (G. Ridley)

Those working in the field of eighteenth-century studies talk of a ‘long eighteenth century’ that goes from approximately 1660-1830. We will think about the formation of such labels and their validity in class, but these dates are a good indication of the period we will cover on the course. 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, such as Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, but we’ll set these texts against some less familiar productions, such as Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina and Olaudah Equiano’s Narrative of his life.

At the conclusion of the course, students will have gained an overview of the socio-political issues informing the production and consumption of literature in the period, including, but not limited to: colonization and slavery; the rise of the professional woman writer; and the function of art in political debate. As film representations of the period attempt to engage with a more diverse and less decorous eighteenth-century than that given to us by traditional period dramas, the course will also examine how literary history continually remakes the past to meet readers and viewers in the present. This course satisfies the 1700-1900 literature requirement for MA students and 3 hours of literature for PhD students.

English 660: African American Literature and Social Conflict (D. Anderson)

From its beginnings, African American writers often used literature for polemical ends. In this class, we examine ways that selected writers have written about difficult subjects—ranging from segregation, class, black nationalism, language, gentrification, homelessness, and police brutality—and how their literary strategies and targeted audiences have shifted over time. Writers may include Charles Chesnutt, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Malcolm X, June Jordan, John Lewis, Dana Johnson, and Claudia Rankine. This course satisfies the post-1900 literature requirement for MA students and 3 hours of literature for PhD students.

English 681: Seminar in Special Studies; Community Literacy (M P. Sheridan)

This course will examine the histories, theories, and methods of our field’s current engagement with researching community literacy practices. We will then try to enact, on a small scale, our own understandings of meaningful community literacy work.

We will read approximately 4 book-length research studies (such as those by Ralph Cintron, Ellen Cushman, Linda Flower, Eli Goldblatt, Jeff Grabill, Jabari Mahiri, Paula Mattieu, Beverly Moss), a series of foundational articles (from edited collections like Writing and Community Engagement: A Critical Sourcebook, Unsustainable, and Making Future Matters as well as from various journals), institutional documents about community engagement, and primary documents from our research sites.

In addition to reading, we will research and/or participate in community literacy practices. Students are encouraged to work with partners where they already have connections, or many of us may work with a class-identified partner; one such project could be to partner with local communities to develop digital archives that amplify partner voices at the Frazier Museum’s exhibit “What Is A Vote Worth”—a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. 

Class assignments will include weekly responses, a mid-term academic paper, and a final textual or digital project that responds to the needs of our community partners. This course is an elective.

English 688: Watson Seminar (G. Kirsch)

In this seminar, we will examine key issues in rhetoric and writing studies, with a particular focus on ethics, gender, and diversity, broadly defined. “Looking back, looking forward,” will frame our discussion. That is, we will read research on 19th century feminist activism while examining what we can learn about 21st century activism, and vice versa. In like manner, we will examine the ethics of representation, now and then, attending to ethical dilemmas and challenging conversations that have confronted, and at times haunted, our profession, now and then. I will invite several scholars to visit our class, scholars whose work challenges the status quo in rhetoric and writing studies, scholars who investigate questions of intersectionality; violence in the archives; ethics and diversity, activism, and other challenging topics. We will ask visitors to discuss their work-in-progress and reflect on their challenges, insights, and visions for the future. During weeks when we host visitors, I will open up our seminar to entire U of L community. Get ready for an exciting semester! This course is an elective.