Fall 2015 Courses

English classes
Writing classes

English classes

ENG 106 INTRO TO POETRY

Instructor: Susan Reese

Our text will be the 9th edition of The Norton Introduction to Poetry, a vast buffet of verse we will savor over the course of the term as we familiarize ourselves with the myriad options in form and style and voice within the genre of poetry. My goal is that each person in the class feels invited by poetry to dive into it, own it, enjoy it, maybe even love it, maybe even write it. We will find “your” poem(s) as we share a magnificent journey. Please join me. I can’t wait to share my own passion for poetry with each of you.
*This course will fulfill 4 of the required credits for Arts & Letters in BA requirements.

ENG 201 SHAKESPEARE

Instructor: Amy Greenstadt

ENG 204 SURVEY OF ENGLISH LIT

Instructor: William Knight

Our course is an introduction to an emerging national literary culture in England across the years 700-1740. The course begins with a time before those practices we now label literature existed and ends in the very moment when all of the fictional, poetic, or dramatic writing being produced in Britain is beginning to be understood as the intricate parts of a secular and market-driven literary culture. We will come to understand how written culture of these periods worked in startlingly different ways from its more modern forms—and that these differences can be productive for us, as earnest thinkers about the nature of our own time. As a survey course, English 204 hits what exemplary heights it can—time is limited, so we are left with a series of what might seem like literary plateaus rather than a smoothly developed narrative of the growth of literature in Britain. But among these plateaus we will find a great deal to move us, inspire us, and enlighten us about the role of writing in cultural life. Above all, what this survey will provide is an encounter with the complex tradition of literary writing, and with a broad historical experience of a prominent national version of that tradition. What is literature, and how does British literature allow us to begin to respond to this question?
Required Texts (Available at the Textbook Store):

• Greenblatt, et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature (Ninth Edition) (Vol. Package 1: A, B, C). ISBN: 978-0-393-91300-2

ENG 205 SURVEY OF ENGLISH LIT II

Instructor: Tracy Dillon

ENG 300 INTRO TO THE ENGLISH MAJOR

Instructor: Sarah Ensor

This course will introduce you to the basic skills and tools of literary criticism and to some of the major modern theoretical approaches to the analysis of literary works.  We will be guided by questions of meaning: what is it, how is it produced, and by whom?  To consider these questions, we will focus on close reading as the basis of textual interpretation. We will also engage theoretical and practical questions about what defines literature; the relationships between text, author, and reader; and the status of literature as evidence of history and culture.
The goals for the course are:  1) to introduce you to the English major and the field of English as a discipline; 2) to examine the literary and rhetorical dimensions of texts by developing close reading skills, including the ability to analyze relationships between form and meaning, identify interpretive questions, look for ways that texts seem to invite or preclude certain readings, and explain multiple levels of meaning; 3) to introduce you to research methods in the field, including how to locate, interpret, and cite critical sources; 4) to familiarize you with some major critical approaches to textual study; 5) to help you write effective and elegant interpretations of texts and learn techniques of argumentation specific to the discipline; 6) to prepare you for 400-level English courses.

ENG 300 INTRO TO THE ENGLISH MAJOR

Instructor: Marie Lo

ENG 300 INTRO TO THE ENGLISH MAJOR

Instructor: Sarah Lincoln

There is no document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism
    —Walter Benjamin, 1940

The course provides a rigorous introduction to the methods, approaches and questions necessary for advanced scholarly work in English, including close reading, historicism, research and argument: consider it boot camp for English majors! This is not a survey of theoretical perspectives, though we will read and discuss some important examples of literary theory along the way. Rather, the class prepares you for upper-division scholarship by asking what it is that we “do” as readers and critics—what English is “for,” why literature matters, and how encounters with the strangeness of literary language reflect and model other sorts of strange encounters. A careful reading of J.M. Coetzee’s 1980 novel Waiting for the Barbarians serves as a basis for our broader consideration of the ethical and political significance of reading, interpretation, and translation; we will also put the novel in dialogue with other works of literature, including Camus’s “The Guest”; Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden; Kafka’s In the Penal Colony; DH Lawrence, “Snake”; and Cavafy’s “Waiting for the Barbarians; along with theoretical perspectives from Derek Attridge, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault and others.
As a Writing Intensive Class (WIC), the course will also focus on the strategies, conventions and techniques of scholarly writing. Reading and responding to other students’ work; drafting, revising and polishing written assignments in response to feedback; and improving grammar, style, clarity and argument will all form part of your work in the class.
Required Texts

• J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (9780143116929)
• Ariel Dorfman, Death and the Maiden (978-0140246841)
• The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th Edition (978-1603290241)

ENG 301U TOPICS: Shakespearean Romance

Instructor: Jonathan Walker

ENG 304 CRITICAL THEORY OF CINEMA

Instructor: Michael Clark

ENG 305U TOPICS IN FILM: Films & Social Justice

Instructor: William Bohnaker

Citizens, comrades:   The time is at hand when we must set aside our differences ("identity politics"), examine the current elite ideology ("neoliberalism"), pierce the beguiling fog of consumerism ("commodity fetish"), awake from our fantasy role in the political economy ("false consciousness"), reject the virtual opiate of corporate media ("hegemony")...and examine these concepts the fun way : at the movies!  Social justice, for some time now a marginal notion, is again coming into favor (fashion?).  Join us as we examine cinematic representations (old and new, fictional and documentary) of justice and injustice in society.  Part film studies, part social analysis, part historical recovery, this course is also part tribute to the themes of liberte, egalite, fraternite(er,  humanite).  Join us.  You have nothing to lose but your change (for pop corn).

ENG 305U TOPICS IN FILM: Utopia/Distopia in Film

Instructor: William Bohnaker

Is humankind the victim of society, or is society merely the imperfect creation of a flawed humanity?  Both?  From its beginnings cinema has zealously dramatized such interrogations.  Moreover, recent technological developments have supercharged the visual field in commercial movies, and no more so than in portrayals of utopian and dystopian societies.  Imagined societies are now depicted with a retina-burn brightness and a sensory shock wave unavailable to literary description.  With a view to both filmic form and social content we'll examine some cinematic X-rays of the "perfect" social body.  Big Brother Wants You.  Don't let him down.

ENG 306U TOPICS: Transcendent Texts

Instructor: William Bohnaker

Language is generally thought to be a reflection of the world or the aesthetic imagination.  But what happens when the word tries to step through the looking glass itself? Can it transcend itself?  What is thereby transcended, and what is the transcendence that results?  And what happens when the word returns to this side of the mirror and tries to represent the unrepresentable?  We'll examine some classic and contemporary texts of transcendence from Zen, Sufism, Gnosticism, fiction, and the like, attentive to their unique literary and cultural protocols of representation and practice, hoping to discover, what, after all, is the sound of one hand clapping.

ENG 306U TOPICS: Pop Culture Trading Place

Instructor: Maude Hines

This course explores racial and ethnic place switching in American cultural production. We examine films and literature in which this trope is a major plot device: what do these texts tell us about the lines being crossed when racial and ethnic identities are traded, exchanged, added, or discarded? What implicit or explicit theories of identity undergird these plots? How are race and identity imbricated with issues of sexuality, gender, and class in these texts?

ENG 313U AMERICAN SHORT STORY

Instructor: A.B. Paulson

ENG 315 THE SHORTER POEM

Instructor: Maria Depriest

ENG 317U GREEK MYTHOLOGY

Instructor: Katya Amato

Luminous and terrifying, alien yet familiar, the mythic figures of the classical world haunt the Western imagination. In this course, we read original sources from the archaic period and the Augustan period in their cultural contexts; we also glance at transformations of mythic figures and narratives in post-classical literature.

Texts:

• Richmond Lattimore's translation of the ILIAD (this translation required)
• Richmond Lattimore's translation of Hesiod's THEOGONY and WORKS AND DAYS
• Robert Fitzgerald's translation of the ODYSSEY
• Jules Cashford's translation of THE HOMERIC HYMNS
• Rolfe Humphries' translation of Ovid's METAMORPHOSES

There are epic reading assignments and the usual exams. All texts are available at the PSU Bookstore; its website lists ISBN numbers.

This literature is alive in surprising ways. As Christopher Logue says in WAR MUSIC, "...the helmet screams against the light; / Scratches the eye; so violent it can be seen / Across three thousand years." Come feel for yourself its power despite its heroes being dust for millennia.

ENG 320U  ENGLISH NOVEL

Instructor: John Smyth

In the first half of the term, we approach the eighteenth-century English novel via what is perhaps its most remarkable achievement, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. We will also read Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist and Gogol’s “The Nose” to see how Sterne influenced European (French and Russian) fiction.

In the second half of term, we read Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman – also influenced at least in part by Sterne – and Samuel Beckett’s Molloy and Malone Dies. These novels are chosen because they are perhaps the most significant and ambitious comic allegories in English/Irish fiction aside from Tristram Shandy itself.

Main requirements: Two substantial essays and an in-class presentation.

ENG 325 POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE

Instructor: Sarah Lincoln

This course provides an introduction to some of the fundamental concepts, debates, theories and literary works
associated with the field of postcolonial studies. Though “postcolonial” first described nations emerging from
the shadow of colonial domination, it is more than a simple historical marker: “postcolonialism” is most
fundamentally a *project*, an ongoing struggle for freedom whose battleground is every sphere of human life,
from the individual psyche to national and indeed global political life. As we consider how postcolonial
perspectives help us read literature and other texts, we will be talking and thinking about its broader
significance for the world beyond, including struggles underway in our own historical moment.
Close readings of novels, poems, and films will help us stay grounded as we work through some of the field's
important theoretical texts and the issues they address: sovereignty, nationalism, violence, psychology, gender,
the family, culture, ethics and justice, among many others.

Required books (available at campus bookstore)

• Aime Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (978-1-58367-025-5)
• J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (978-0-14-311528-1)
• Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions (978-0-9547023-3-5)
• Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (WE) (978-0-8021-4132-3)
• Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (978-0-15-603402-9)
• Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place (978-0374527075)
• Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (978-0-415-35064-8)

Films on reserve at Miller Library

• District 9, dir. Neal Blomkamp (South Africa, 2009)
• Xala, dir. Ousmane Sembène (Senegal, 1974)
• Mandabi, dir. Ousmane Sembene (Senegal, 1968)
• The Battle of Algiers, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo (Algeria/France, 1966)
• Paradise Now, dir. Hany Abu-Assad (Palestine, 2005)
• Life and Debt, dir. Stephanie Black (USA, 2001)
• Black Hawk Down, dir. Ridley Scott (USA, 2001)

ENG 335U  TOP: LITERATURE & FILM: Lit Genocide Film

Instructor: Jacqueline Arante

ENG 335U  TOP: LITERATURE & FILM

Instructor: Joshua Epstein

Topic: Melodrama, Race, and Authenticity

[Cue: THUNDERCLAP!]
The melodrama—a genre of heightened emotional extremes, irrational climaxes, and sweeping performative gestures—often finds itself intervening into questions of race, nation, and cultural authenticity. Referred to as a "weepie" or a "tear-jerker," the melodrama's exaggerated intensity has made it both useful and dangerous for exploring race. Both powerfully gripping and grotesquely unrealistic, melodrama tests the limits of sentiment and feeling as deceptive, but potentially productive, responses to historical violence and structural oppression.

[Cue: DISSONANT CHORD!]
The sentimental distortions of melodrama reflect deep social and psychological traumas in our own world. As Lauren Berlant has written, melodrama reads as a "new realism, the realism wrought from the absurd demands of power, contradictions of human attachment in scenes of inequality, and…the strangeness of difference itself."

[Cue: SWOON!]
Hence this course will study the role that melodramatic literature and film can play in probing the political, cultural, and emotional complexities of race and nation. We will examine how the melodrama sheds both light and heat on various issues circulating around race—inequality and difference, "passing" and belonging, authenticity and performance—even as the melodrama's own artificiality is under suspicion.

[Cue: RACE TO THE RESCUE!]
Texts to be studied will include Harriet Beecher Stowe, UNCLE TOM'S CABIN (excerpts); Fannie Hurst, THE IMITATION OF LIFE; Elizabeth Kata, A PATCH OF BLUE; Sapphire, PUSH; Vikas Swarup, Q&A; Linda Williams, PLAYING THE RACE CARD.

Films may include some (probably not all) of the following:
D.W. Griffith, THE BIRTH OF A NATION; Oscar Micheaux, WITHIN OUR GATES; Victor Fleming, GONE WITH THE WIND; John Stahl, THE IMITATION OF LIFE; Douglas Sirk, THE IMITATION OF LIFE; Walter Lang, THE KING AND I; Guy Green, A PATCH OF BLUE; Lee Daniels, PRECIOUS; Dannie Boyle, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE.

ENG 343U  ROMANTICISM

Instructor: Alastair Hunt

ENG 351U  AFRICAN/AMER LIT

Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri

This course is the first in a three-part survey of African American literature. It will cover a broad selection of literature written by, and about, African Americans during the formation of the U.S. nation-state and the era of slavery and abolition. Additionally, we will read a wide swath of recent and contemporary scholarship on slavery, the slave trade, and the formation of racial identities in the U.S. The course will focus on the historical formation of a “black” literary tradition in the context of plantation slavery and the colonization/conquest of Africa and the Americas by Europe and Euro-Americans who came to understand themselves as “white.” Fundamentally, this course seeks to reexamine the formation of the modern world—particularly as it shapes American ways of thinking, knowing, and being—from the critical and epistemological perspective of black literary and cultural studies.

This course fills the Group B requirement for the English major and the American Studies cluster requirement for non-majors.

ENG 367U TOP: AMERICAN LIT & CULTURE: Canadian Literature

Instructor: Susan Reese

I can hardly wait to begin!  Our reading will take us through poetry and fiction as we share how certain people in a certain time and very particular Canadian places survive their way to their identity.  We will read What the Crow Said by Robert Kroetch, Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese, Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King, Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage Stories by Alice Munro, Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson and one muddy hand by Earle Birney. So we will read some really fine literature and have a conversation about how Canadian writers are carrying tradition into the present and what that means in terms of the literary identity of this expansive and beautiful nation.
*This course can be used in the English Major as an Elective in E or in B: Literature of Gender, Ethnicity, Class and Culture; it may also be used to count toward the Program/Certificate in Canadian Studies, in the American Identities Cluster or in the Popular Culture Cluster.

ENG 368U LITERATURE AND ECOLOGY

Instructor: Alastair Hunt

This course offers a guided tour of literature in English about animals since 1800. The industrial and political revolutions of this time fundamentally reorganized the economy of relations between human beings and the other creatures with whom we share the earth. And this reorganization finds interesting and often surprising expressions in modern literature. Highlights will include literary works by the British and American Romantics, science fiction by H. G. Wells, a biography of a dog by Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka’s most famous short story (to be read in translation), the Hollywood blockbuster Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and difficult-to-define texts by contemporary writers J. M. Coetzee and Jonathan Safran Foer. We will also take some guidance from recent philosophy and critical theory by Adorno, Derrida, Nagel, and Singer. As we read these works, we will think through two sets of questions. First, how can reading literature teach us something about the complexities of relations between human beings and animals? Does literature stabilize the opposition between human beings and animals or does it into question? How does literary form influence human perception and understanding of animals? To what extent can animal experience be represented in a work of literature? Can literature help us decide whether we should eat animals? And second, how might attention to animals in poems, fiction, and film offer interesting perspectives on the nature of literature? Why is it that literary writers sometimes represent themselves and their works as animals? Can animals write literature?

Course fulfills: Group E: Elective; UNST Cluster: Environmental Sustainability

Required texts:

• J. M. Coetzee, Lives of Animals. Ed. Amy Gutman. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999. (ISBN 069107089)
• George Orwell, Animal Farm: A Fairy Tale. Signet, 2004. (ISBN 0451526341)
• Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2009. (ISBN 978031669885)
• H. G. Wells, Island of Dr Moreau, A Possibility. Penguin, 2005. (ISBN 9780141441023)
• Virginia Woolf, Flush: A Biography. Mansfield Center, CT: Martino Books, 2013. (ISBN 9781614274902)

ENG 373 TOP: LIT, RACE, ETHNICITY: Arab-American Lit

Instructor: Diana Abu-Jaber

ENG 384 CONTEMPORARY LIT

Instructor: Katya Amato

We will read mostly fiction by writers from around the world. Their subjects are those of the greatest literature: war, coming of age, transitioning gender, sex, love, abuse, vengeance, friendship, healing, survival, immigration, death. The writers (except Haruf, who died last year) are very much alive in the world, and the contemporary nature of their experience is poignant in its immediacy. I have invited one of our writers to visit and talk about creating literature now.

The texts for the course are as follows:

• Julian Barnes, THE SENSE OF AN ENDING
• Joseph Boyden, THREE DAY ROAD
• Jane Gardam, THE HOLLOW LAND
• Kent Haruf, PLAINSONG
• Takashi Hiraide, THE GUEST CAT
• Akhil Sharma, FAMILY LIFE
• Loretta Stinson, LITTLE GREEN
• GRANTA, The Magazine of New Writing #129, Autumn 2014, "Fate"--Note that this issue contains work by Louise Erdrich, Will Self, Miranda July, Helen Oyeyemi, Cynthia Ozick, and Isabella Tree.

All the books are available at the PSU Bookstore, with their ISBN numbers listed at its website. For more information, feel free to get in touch over the summer: amatok@pdx.edu.

ENG 387U WOMEN'S LITERATURE

Instructor: Maria Depriest

ENG 413 TEACHING & TUTORING WRITING

Instructor: Dan DeWeese

ENG 420 CARIBBEAN LIT

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu

ENG 425 PRACTICAL GRAMMAR

Instructor: Greg Jacob

ENG 441 ADV TOP RENAISSANCE CULTURE: Jews, Turks, and Moors

Instructor: Amy Greenstadt

ENG 448 MJR FIGURES: Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

Instructor: Christine Rose

AIMS:
To introduce you to Chaucer in Middle English, with emphasis on learning to read and interpret the Canterbury Tales in ME.
To place the CT in their literary, social and historical context
To familiarize you with some of the best critical interpretations of Chaucer’s work
To understand the extraordinary complexity of the CT as poetry, yet see them also as wonderfully entertaining stories
To appreciate Chaucer’s genius
Prerequisite: ENG 204, 340 or equivalent
[N.B. Fulfills the English major pre-1800 requirement or Grad. pre-1800 or pre-1900 requirement]

REQUIRED TEXTS:

• Undergrads: Benson, Larry D., ed.  The Canterbury Tales (Wadsworth Publ.) ISBN
• Grad. Students: Benson, Larry D.  The Riverside Chaucer, Houghton-Mifflin,
• ALL: Boethius (trans. R. Green) The Consolation of Philosophy, Macmillan. ISBN:
• Optional: Some required reading in these
• Miller, Robt. Ed. Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds (Oxford) ISBN: 0195021673
• Mann, Jill and Piero Boitani, eds.  Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, 2nd ed. ISBN: 0521894670
• Beidler, Peter, The Wife of Bath: Case Studies in Contemp.Crit., 1996 (grad students) ISBN: 0312111282
• Cooper, Helen, ed. The Canterbury Tales: Oxford Guides To Chaucer. Oxford UP0395978238.[pbk]1987.[pbk or hardcover] 002346450X

ENG 448 MJR FIGURES: Borges & Calvino

Instructor: Tony Wolk

ENG 448 MJR FIGURES: Dickens & Conrad

Instructor: Jennifer Ruth

ENG 449 ADV TOP: Comics Theory & History

Instructor: Susan Kirtley

ENG 450 18TH CENTURY LIT: Enlightenment, Empire, and Exoticism

Instructor: William Knight

The British eighteenth-century is often thought of as a highly ordered, stately, and (yes) somewhat boring historical and literary period. But this was a time when contact with Asia, Africa, the Americas and the people who inhabited these regions was transforming British sensibilities and radically reshaping literary production. In this course, we will study the excitement, horror, and transfixed fascination generated by the spectacles of enlightenment, colonialism, slavery, empire, and even literary writing itself. We’ll witness a wide array of energized writings across a period in which rationalism and empiricism began to hold sway over the sense of what counted as a “self” and in which colonialism and empire had come to hold sway over what counted as a “nation.” We’ll look at the century’s literary engagements with the East (or the South) and witness the way that these texts testify to the emergence of global empire even as they transform this testimony into aesthetic forms and categories that offered pleasure and diversion to British audiences. Where do these aesthetic transmutations of figures of the East, empire, and the values of the Enlightenment take us? In a very real sense, they point to us, to the emergence of our modern world, and we’ll keep that destination in mind as we look back to this early moment in the emergence of global modernity.

Required Texts:

• Aphra Behn. Oroonoko. ISBN: 978-0140439885
• Jonathan Swift. Gulliver’s Travels. ISBN: 978-0141439495
• Samuel Johnson. Rasselas. ISBN: 978-0141439709
• William Beckford. Vathek. ISBN: 978-0199576951
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. ISBN: 978-0486223056

ENG 461 ADV TOP IN AMER LIT TO 1900: Staying Single

Instructor: Sarah Ensor

In her 2008 song “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” Beyoncé Knowles famously proclaimed “If you like it, then you should have put a ring on it” – a sentiment familiar not only within contemporary American culture but also within many novels of the nineteenth century, whose unfolding is governed by courtship rituals and marriage plots. But what if we want to understand singleness not as a step on the way to coupledom but rather as a meaningful – and fundamentally relational – state all its own? In this course, we will read texts from the American nineteenth (and early twentieth) century that depict experiences of singleness – the lives of spinsters and widows, of “maiden aunts and bachelor uncles” (Thoreau’s phrase), of communities whose households are defined not by marital bonds or nuclear families but by other relational models entirely. As we read, we will ask the following questions: What are the affects or emotions of the uncoupled subject? How does a community of singles differ in important ways from a community defined by more traditional familial bonds? How do single characters define intimacy and care? How do they differently experience the passage of time? How are literary texts’ tone, structure, and plots (or lack thereof) shaped by the presence of such concerns? (Can a text be single? How?) And how might attending to such particularities of the nineteenth century help us to intervene differently in discussions about alternative family models circulating through American culture today?

ENG 467 AMER LIT & CULTURE

Instructor: Michael Weingrad

ENG 478 AMERICAN POETRY II

Instructor: Joel Bettridge

ENG 486 CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN NOVEL

Instructor: Michael Clark

ENG 490 ADV TOP R&C: Gender, Rhetoric, and the Body

Instructor: Kendall Leon

Gender. Rhetoric. The Body. Three terms with contestable definitions and intersections. In classical Greece, while the body and how it was read and received by audiences was integral to rhetorical practice, the assumption was that only certain bodies mattered in the polis. Since Descartes, the mind has been treated as distinct from the material world. In this course, we will take an active investigation into the way that the bodies we inhabit unquestionably shape how we interpret and produce meaning. To do this, we will cover some of the “cannon” in feminist and rhetorical theory and writing on and from the body, along with folks who challenge, complicate or expand this cannon.

Some of the questions guiding this course are: How has the body been overlooked or incorporated into rhetorical theory? What are the connections between discourse and gendered bodies? How does the body shape rhetorical practice? How has our understanding of rhetoric—how we study it, teach it, what it looks like, and how we define it—been shaped by [gendered] bodies? Finally, what are the implications for conceiving of the body methodologically and pedagogically as integral to how we write, act, think, and make in the world?

ENG 491 HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM & THEORY I

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu

ENG 494 TOPICS IN CRITICAL THEORY: Prison, University, Crisis

Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri

This course seeks to examine the concurrent and contemporary “crises” of two institutions central to the U.S. social formation: the university and the prison. We will attempt to think through the problem of mass incarceration through the “crisis of the university,” and to think through the contemporary struggle over the future of the higher education through the radical and abolitionist modes of thought and practice developed in response to the prison industrial complex. While both the university and the prison are largely viewed as in crisis across the political spectrum, they are rarely (if ever) discussed together. And yet, there is an emergent critique among intellectuals and activists trying to think about these institutions as they interrelate both historically and structurally.

What constitutes the crisis of the university and of the prison? How have different critics and social actors defined them? What happens to our understanding of these institutions, and of their apparent “crises," when we think of them in their interrelation? What has been the historical relationship between the university and the prison? How did identity-based movements for social and economic equality in the 1960s and 1970s reshape the university? What have been the role, function, and value of the formation of departments such as ethnic studies, black studies, and women's studies? What are we to make of the cultural and institutional dominance of the language of “diversity” in the university at the same time as endemic forms of social and racial inequality have been further entrenched socially? How has the relationship between the university and the prison taken shape particularly over the last 40 years, which has seen the soaring cost of higher education, the exponential growth in student debt, the explosion of prisons across the social and geographical landscape, the massive growth in economic inequality, austerity and budget cuts, and the hegemony of neoliberalism as a governmental practice and political rationality?

ENG 500 PROBLEMS & METHODS LITERARY STUDY

Instructor: Jennifer Ruth

ENG 500 PROBLEMS & METHODS LITERARY STUDY

Instructor: Jonathan Walker

ENG 507 SEMINAR: Literature and Philosophy

Instructor: John Smyth

Main texts:

• Plato, Symposium; Republic (ed. Allan Bloom, Chicago).
• Aristophanes, Clouds, Frogs, Assembly of Women (in Complete Plays)
• Leo Strauss, The City and Man, Socrates and Aristophanes
• Jacques Derrida, Dissemination
• Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Troilus and Cressida (Arden editions if possible)
• Rene Girard, A Theater of Envy

Primary requirements: Final essay on topic of your choice related to the texts (3750 for grads); in-class presentation during the term.

Basic idea for the course: An exploration of the ancient war and love affair (as Plato put it) between literature and philosophy at an inaugural moment in the history of Western thought, using texts by a writer and philosopher who knew one another, and modern commentary on these. Topics will include epistemology, mimesis, gender, and political philosophy. Plays by Shakespeare will be used to further explore, among other things, the relation between comedy and tragedy—a topic already central in both Aristophanes and Plato. Derrida, Strauss, and Girard encourage philosophical and political as well as literary reflection—indeed they serve not merely to provide brilliant commentaries on the earlier texts, but also to stage the contemporary relation between literature and philosophy (and the social sciences) in a manner that is thoroughly up-to-date, controversial, and sui generis.               

ENG 518 COLLEGE COMP TEACHING

Instructor: Susan Kirtley

ENG 519 ADV COLLEGE COMP TEACHING

Instructor: Susan Kirtley

ENG 525 PRACTICAL GRAMMAR

Instructor: Greg Jacob

ENG 531 TOPICS IN ENGLISH STUDIES: The Field of English

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu

ENG 531 TOPICS IN ENGLISH STUDIES: Rhet Comp Discussion

Instructor: Kendall Leon

ENG 531 TOPICS IN ENGLISH STUDIES: Colloquium

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu

ENG 548 Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

Instructor: Christine Rose

AIMS:

To introduce you to Chaucer in Middle English, with emphasis on learning to read and interpret the Canterbury Tales in ME.
To place the CT in their literary, social and historical context
To familiarize you with some of the best critical interpretations of Chaucer’s work
To understand the extraordinary complexity of the CT as poetry, yet see them also as wonderfully entertaining stories
To appreciate Chaucer’s genius

Prerequisite: ENG 204, 340 or equivalent

[N.B. Fulfills the English major pre-1800 requirement or Grad. pre-1800 or pre-1900 requirement]

REQUIRED TEXTS:

• Undergrads: Benson, Larry D., ed.  The Canterbury Tales (Wadsworth Publ.) ISBN
• Grad. Students: Benson, Larry D.  The Riverside Chaucer, Houghton-Mifflin,
• ALL: Boethius (trans. R. Green) The Consolation of Philosophy, Macmillan. ISBN:
• Optional: Some required reading in these
• Miller, Robt. Ed. Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds (Oxford) ISBN: 0195021673
• Mann, Jill and Piero Boitani, eds.  Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, 2nd ed. ISBN: 0521894670
• Beidler, Peter, The Wife of Bath: Case Studies in Contemp.Crit., 1996 (grad students) ISBN: 0312111282
• Cooper, Helen, ed. The Canterbury Tales: Oxford Guides To Chaucer. Oxford UP0395978238.[pbk]1987.[pbk or hardcover] 002346450X

ENG 548  MJR FIGURES: Borges & Calvino

Instructor: Tony Wolk

ENG 549 ADV TOP: Comics Theory & History

Instructor: Susan Kirtley

ENG 561 ADV TOP IN AMER LIT TO 1900: Staying Single

Instructor: Sarah Ensor

In her 2008 song “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” Beyoncé Knowles famously proclaimed “If you like it, then you should have put a ring on it” – a sentiment familiar not only within contemporary American culture but also within many novels of the nineteenth century, whose unfolding is governed by courtship rituals and marriage plots. But what if we want to understand singleness not as a step on the way to coupledom but rather as a meaningful – and fundamentally relational – state all its own? In this course, we will read texts from the American nineteenth (and early twentieth) century that depict experiences of singleness – the lives of spinsters and widows, of “maiden aunts and bachelor uncles” (Thoreau’s phrase), of communities whose households are defined not by marital bonds or nuclear families but by other relational models entirely. As we read, we will ask the following questions: What are the affects or emotions of the uncoupled subject? How does a community of singles differ in important ways from a community defined by more traditional familial bonds? How do single characters define intimacy and care? How do they differently experience the passage of time? How are literary texts’ tone, structure, and plots (or lack thereof) shaped by the presence of such concerns? (Can a text be single? How?) And how might attending to such particularities of the nineteenth century help us to intervene differently in discussions about alternative family models circulating through American culture today?

ENG 578 AMERICAN POETRY II

Instructor: Joel Bettridge

ENG 590 ADV TOP R&C: Gender, Rhetoric, and the Body

Instructor: Kendall Leon

Gender. Rhetoric. The Body. Three terms with contestable definitions and intersections. In classical Greece, while the body and how it was read and received by audiences was integral to rhetorical practice, the assumption was that only certain bodies mattered in the polis. Since Descartes, the mind has been treated as distinct from the material world. In this course, we will take an active investigation into the way that the bodies we inhabit unquestionably shape how we interpret and produce meaning. To do this, we will cover some of the “cannon” in feminist and rhetorical theory and writing on and from the body, along with folks who challenge, complicate or expand this cannon.

Some of the questions guiding this course are: How has the body been overlooked or incorporated into rhetorical theory? What are the connections between discourse and gendered bodies? How does the body shape rhetorical practice? How has our understanding of rhetoric—how we study it, teach it, what it looks like, and how we define it—been shaped by [gendered] bodies? Finally, what are the implications for conceiving of the body methodologically and pedagogically as integral to how we write, act, think, and make in the world?

ENG 591 HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM & THEORY I

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu

ENG 594 TOPICS IN CRITICAL THEORY: Prison, University, Crisis

Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri 

This course seeks to examine the concurrent and contemporary “crises” of two institutions central to the U.S. social formation: the university and the prison. We will attempt to think through the problem of mass incarceration through the “crisis of the university,” and to think through the contemporary struggle over the future of the higher education through the radical and abolitionist modes of thought and practice developed in response to the prison industrial complex. While both the university and the prison are largely viewed as in crisis across the political spectrum, they are rarely (if ever) discussed together. And yet, there is an emergent critique among intellectuals and activists trying to think about these institutions as they interrelate both historically and structurally.

What constitutes the crisis of the university and of the prison? How have different critics and social actors defined them? What happens to our understanding of these institutions, and of their apparent “crises," when we think of them in their interrelation? What has been the historical relationship between the university and the prison? How did identity-based movements for social and economic equality in the 1960s and 1970s reshape the university? What have been the role, function, and value of the formation of departments such as ethnic studies, black studies, and women's studies? What are we to make of the cultural and institutional dominance of the language of “diversity” in the university at the same time as endemic forms of social and racial inequality have been further entrenched socially? How has the relationship between the university and the prison taken shape particularly over the last 40 years, which has seen the soaring cost of higher education, the exponential growth in student debt, the explosion of prisons across the social and geographical landscape, the massive growth in economic inequality, austerity and budget cuts, and the hegemony of neoliberalism as a governmental practice and political rationality?

 

Writing classes

WR 115 INTRO TO COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: TBD

WR 121 COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: TBD

WR 200 WRITING ABOUT LIT

Instructor: Liz Ceppi

WR 212 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: TBD

WR 213 INTRO POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Erin Perry

Introduces the beginning writer of poetry to basic techniques for developing a sense of language, meter, sound, imagery, and structure.  Class discussion will include elements of work shop and will encounter both foundational poetic texts, as well as, contemporary works bent on toeing past poetry’s traditional schema.  This course seeks to help writers further develop a sense of poetry’s continued relevance in, and out of, the academic world.   Recommended: Freshman Inquiry.

WR 213 INTRO POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Alexa Mallernee

This course will focus on helping new writers of poems engage in the ancient, teeming, wide-eyed conversation that is poetry, and, by extension, develop a deeper relationship with themselves and the world around them. Students will explore the innumerable ways in which language carries meaning, learning to examine and employ aspects of craft such as image, sound, line, syntax, space and form. While the class will be primarily concerned with student writing, we will also devote a substantial portion of our time to reading and discussing assigned works by contemporary (and some less contemporary) poets so that we may remain wildly immersed in the influence of poetic tradition.

WR 214 INTRO NONFICTION WRITING

Instructor: Mackenzie Myers

WR 222 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

Instructor: TBD

WR 227 INTRO TECHNICAL WRITING

Instructor: Christine Mitchell

WR 227 INTRO TECHNICAL WRITING

Instructor: Garret Romaine

WR 228 NEWS WRITING

Instructor: TBD

WR 300: WRITING FOR COMICS

Instructor: Douglas Wolk

Writing comics means writing stories whose audience will experience them as a particular artist's drawings and some carefully chosen words. Students in this class will study a broad range of comics, figure out the mechanics of their storytelling, language and imagery, and make use of those strategies in the original works that you will create. We'll also discuss what gives drawn narrative its power, as well as how to collaborate with a visual artist--whether that artist is you or someone else.

WR 312 INTERMEDIATE FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Diana Abu-Jaber

WR 313 INTERMEDIATE POETRY WRITING

Instructor: John Beer

Intermediate: something has begun, and we’re on the way to somewhere else. The question of transition will orient us in this workshop class; we’ll focus our attention on how poems move: from one line to another, one image to another, one thought to another; and in so moving, move us. Discussions of student work will be our primary method; we’ll also attend, though, to exemplary poems of the past and present, and to issues of form and metrics.

WR 323 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Loretta Rosenberg

“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes,
a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”
Wendell Berry

Students in this course will read essays, poetry and fiction about the ecology of place, the impact of agribusiness, the
politics of consumerism on nature, and the place of wilderness in the American imagination. 
Writing short informal weekly responses to readings, films and discussions, students will discover an area of interest to research as they write and revise a longer final critical essay
over the course of the term.

Required Text:

• American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, ed. Bill McKibben, Library of America, 2008.
• They Say, I Say, Gerald Graff & Cathy Birkenstein, W.W. Norton & Co. 2nd edition, 2009.

WR 327 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: Arlene Krasner

WR 327 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: Maralee Sautter

WR 327 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: Jack Bedell

WR 333 ADVANCED COMPOSITION

Instructor: Susan Reese
                                                          
Our texts will be The Best American Essays of 2011, edited by Robert Atwan and Edwidge Danticat and Create Dangerously by Edwidge Danticat. This juxtaposition will not only provide a variety of excellent reading but will provide insight into Danticat's selections for the anthology as we become familiar with some of her own work before we embark upon reading those choices.  You will have a good deal of latitude in selection of essay topics and I can’t wait to hear your voices as we all work to imbue them with greater clarity and power.  This is going to be a lot of fun.
Important: Essay writing with particular attention to student’s area of specialization. Advanced practice in essay writing. Recommended: Freshman Inquiry or two writing courses.
*This course counts in “D” or “E” of the English major and in the Minor in Writing.

WR 410 TOP: Framemaker

Instructor: Maralee Sautter

WR 410 TOP: Editorial Theory

Instructor: Per Henningsgaard

Concepts in Digital Publishing will look at the recent history, current issues, and possible future of the publishing industry. We will explore broader, industry-wide concerns like the changing face of storytelling, archiving digital data, digital design and typography, ownership and privacy, the new definitions and goals of publishing, and how to be a successful publisher in a world that changes daily. This course is concerned with understanding the big picture rather than learning the hands-on skills of digital publishing.

WR 410 TOP: Editorial Theory

Instructor: Per Henningsgaard

The role of the author in relation to the text has been much debated in literary theory and criticism. However, this course asks the less-often considered, but equally crucial question, “What is the role of the editor in relation to the text?” In its variety of possible answers to this question, editorial theory affects every text you have ever read. This is especially true when the editor is confronted with the practical problem of preserving or transmitting past texts to contemporary readers, often in media or languages different than those in which the text was originally composed. But it is also relevant to contemporary texts and their living authors, as editorial theory helps us think about tricky situations involving Western editors of non-Western texts, male editors of female texts, and so forth.

WR 410 TOP: Transmedia Marketing for Publishers

Instructor: Kathi Inman Berens

Media is ever changing, and that evolution only seems to be accelerating. Traditional media, new media, social media—these paradigms are now an amalgam of multi-platform media consumption referred to as transmedia. Transmedia is storytelling across multiple forms of media with each element making distinctive contributions to a viewer/user/player’s understanding of the story world. By using different media formats, it attempts to create entry-points through which consumers can become immersed in a story world. This class looks at how these transmedia methodologies can be applied to market and extend stories for the book publishing industry. It is recommended (though not required) that students have taken Book Marketing and Promotion prior to enrolling in this class.

WR 410 TOP: The Popular Book in the US

Instructor: John Henley

Few readers have heard of Maria Cummins, Susan Warner, Eden Southworth, Laura Jean Libbey, Timothy Shay Arthur, George Lippard, Augusta Jane Evans Wilson, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, or Harold Bell Wright. But just a century ago, their works were beloved, debated, and popular. We know modern publishing houses such as Random House, Little Brown, and Simon and Schuster, but what of the publishers that once populated the booksellers’ shelves, such as A.L. Burt, Street and Smith, and Porter and Coates. Most American literature survey courses introduce students to the great literature from our past, yet many of the “great writers” were not popular in their lifetime. In this class, the student will be challenged to unlearn all they have been taught about “great literature” and explore books often ignored by scholars, but devoured by American readers, and to investigate the factors that determine the likelihood of a book being a bestseller. While designed for those wishing to pursue a career in acquisitions editing, the course will also prove interesting to students of popular culture and the history of the book in America.

WR 410 TOP: Concepts in Digital Publishing

Instructor: Kathi Inman Berens

Concepts in Digital Publishing will look at the recent history, current issues, and possible future of the publishing industry. We will explore broader, industry-wide concerns like the changing face of storytelling, archiving digital data, digital design and typography, ownership and privacy, the new definitions and goals of publishing, and how to be a successful publisher in a world that changes daily. This course is concerned with understanding the big picture rather than learning the hands-on skills of digital publishing.

WR 410 TOP: Intro to Trade Publication Writing

Instructor: Jeff Gunderson

This special topics course introduces students to the field of trade publication writing, including the opportunities and requirements for writing for these types of publications. The course will cover the breadth of prospects, strategies for researching ideas and developing pitches, interview techniques, and writing informative articles.
Instructor bio:

Jeff Gunderson is a full-time professional writer with over 10 years of experience writing for industry trade publications, agencies and a variety of companies and organizations. He has written hundreds of articles and features stories for leading industry trade publications serving the water quality, water treatment, stormwater, engineering and construction, and building industries.
In his writings, Mr. Gunderson specializes in a range of topics related to water, environment, energy, infrastructure, low-impact development, water/wastewater treatment, energy efficiency, resource recovery and sustainable systems.
Prior to his professional writing career, Mr. Gunderson spent four years in the environmental consulting field, primarily in California, specializing in environmental impact assessment. He also previously taught college courses including classes in environmental education programs. His education includes a Master’s degree in Environmental Science and Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon in General Science.

WR 410 VISUAL STORYTELLING

Instructor: Sarah Berry

Data visualization has become an essential tool for informational writers; data is abundant, but readers need ways to contextualize and interpret it. Data visualization is a powerful tool but also problematic because values like color, area, and shape aren’t perceived with equal significance. As Edward Tufte wrote, it’s important for communicators to “show data variation, not design variation.
Allowing readers to interact with different representations of the same data set is a powerful way to make information “readerly” rather than just rhetorical. This course will provide a basic toolkit for online data visualization using the JavaScript library called D3.js.
Using this tool requires some understanding of basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript, so this course will provide an introductory skill set for using these tools. You will come away with a basic code library and enough understanding to explore, modify, and extend the most common forms of online data presentation.

Participants do not need to have any previous coding skill. Please note that this is not a deep dive into data science, and is intended for generalists rather than those working with complex scientific data sets.

WR 412 ADV FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Leni Zumas

By honing—relentlessly—their powers of observation and insight, members of this workshop will test Proust’s claim that “the voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” A range of exercises, readings, and discussions will push each writer to unearth fresh possibilities in her work. We’ll examine habitual tendencies in the making of fiction and how we might profitably disrupt (or question, at least) the formal, thematic, and stylistic ruts we fall into.
Recommended prerequisite: WR 312 or equivalent. Permission of instructor is required prior to registering. Interested students should submit 5-7 pages of fiction, via email attachment, to zumas@pdx.edu.

WR 413 ADV POETRY WRITING

Instructor: TBD

WR 416 SCREENWRITING

Instructor: TBD

WR 420 ADVANCED WRITING: Process & Response

Instructor: Tony Wolk

Texts: William Stafford, Crossing Unmarked Snow [ISBN 0-3472-06664-1]; Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind [SKU# 9781590300060]; Alice Munro, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage [ISBN 0-375-72743-4]. The books will be available on campus at the PSU Bookstore.

REQUIREMENTS: (1) In class discussion of Language Attitudes & the Composing Process, as well as several dialogue journals on that subject. (2) The Writing Response Groups, where twice weekly we will write in any mode we wish, on any subject.  We will make copies of said writing for our group, and then read aloud to the group what we’ve written. Then comes feedback. Very simple. Twice during the term we will have whole class Read Arounds, mid-way and at the close.

WR 426 DOCUMENT DESIGN

Instructor: Tracy Dillon

Document Design is a core course in PSU’s Technical and Professional MA/MS in Writing program. Thus, the course focuses on “technical writing” but is structured to accommodate writers with varying interests and career goals.

Students will:

1. Apply the Six Principles of Design when creating documents.
2. Apply design theories relating to visual perception, visual culture, and visual rhetoric when creating documents.
3. Consider five basic design elements that create effective documents.
4. Apply principles of project management and team building in order to design a “living document” for a community-based partner.
5. Run prototype versions of Adobe FrameMaker, DITA, and Madcap Flare in order to begin mastering technical tools that will get you jobs.

The work produced in WR 526/426: Document Design should establish your credentials as a technical communicator who can “design” ideas in addition to writing and editing them. Another way of spinning this description: You’ll be exercising and reflecting on your “visual rhetoric” skills. The overarching outcomes of the course include at least four documents that you can add to your professional development portfolio.

In sum, the course is all about equipping you with skills that you can sell to a prospective employer.

WR 456 / 456H FORMS OF NONFICTION

Instructor: Paul Collins

As an introduction to writing with the major forms and techniques of literary nonfiction, Forms of Nonfiction will explore landmark works by such writers as Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and David Foster Wallace, and will delve into the periodicals that have fostered their art.

Texts:

• Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood
• Wolfe, Tom. Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby
• Didion, Joan. Slouching Towards Bethlehem
• McPhee, John. The John McPhee Reader
• Roach, Mary. Gulp
• Spiegelman, Art. Maus
• Karr, Mary. The Liar's Club
• Wallace, David Foster. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
• Kramer, Mark and Wendy Call. Telling True Stories

WR 460 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Per Henningsgaard /Abbey Gaterud

Provides a detailed overview of the publishing process, organized around the division of labor, including introductions to contemporary American publishing, issues of intellectual commerce, copyright law, publishing contracts, book editing, book design and production, book marketing and distribution, and bookselling. Based on work in mock publishing companies, students prepare portfolios of written documents, i.e., book proposals, editorial guidelines, design and production standards, and marketing plans. Guest speakers from the publishing industry and field trips provide exposure to the industry.

WR 461 BOOK EDITING

Instructor: Adam Rodriguez

Provides a comprehensive course in professional book editing, including editorial management, acquisitions editing, substantive/developmental editing, and copyediting. Issues specific to both fiction and nonfiction books will be covered.

WR 462 BOOK DESIGN & PRODUCTION

Instructor: Kelley Dodd

Provides a strong foundation in the design software used in the book publishing industry, focusing on Adobe InDesign. Also explores Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat, as well as XHTML and e-book design. The class considers audience expectations through a range of hands-on design projects.

WR 463 BOOK MARKETING & PROMOTION

Instructor: Rhonda Hughes

Comprehensive course in professional book marketing. Issues specific to the marketing of fiction and nonfiction books in a variety of genres and markets will be covered. Students will do market research, produce marketing plans, write press releases, write advertising copy, and develop related marketing materials.

WR 474 PUBLISHING STUDIO

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

Perform the work of a real publishing house, from acquiring manuscripts to selling books. Gain publishing experience by participating in the various departments of a student-staffed publishing house, Ooligan Press.

WR 475 PUBLISHING LAB

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

Perform the work of a real publishing house, from acquiring manuscripts to selling books. Gain publishing experience by participating in the various departments of a student-staffed publishing house, Ooligan Press.

WR 507 SEMINAR: Constraints in Poetry and Fiction

Instructor: John Beer; Leni Zumas

Novels written eschewing certain letters, or patterned according to the Tarot deck or problems in chess; poems that gather dozens of translations of a tercet from Dante, or document the author’s physical movements in a 24-hour period; writings of indeterminate genre that repeatedly subject the same episode to stylistic variations, or record a month-long exploration of highway rest stops: this graduate seminar will investigate a variety of highly singular compositions, all of which share the quality of having been written, in part or entirely, according to some governing procedure or constraint. Centrally, we’ll ask what a writer gains, and loses, by adopting such an approach, and also whether certain types of constraint seem to be more or less generative of original and compelling work. We’ll also take a more theoretical perspective on the nature of constrained writing: what is its history? Its politics? Can such methods be effectively distinguished from literary form in general?

This course satisfies the following requirements:
MFA in Creative Writing:  Seminar (fiction or poetry), Literature, Writing elective
MA/MS in Writing:  Writing elective (with advisor approval)

WR 510 TOP: Framemaker

Instructor: Maralee Sautter

WR 510 TOP: Editorial Theory

Instructor: Per Henningsgaard

Concepts in Digital Publishing will look at the recent history, current issues, and possible future of the publishing industry. We will explore broader, industry-wide concerns like the changing face of storytelling, archiving digital data, digital design and typography, ownership and privacy, the new definitions and goals of publishing, and how to be a successful publisher in a world that changes daily. This course is concerned with understanding the big picture rather than learning the hands-on skills of digital publishing.

WR 510 TOP: Editorial Theory

Instructor: Per Henningsgaard

The role of the author in relation to the text has been much debated in literary theory and criticism. However, this course asks the less-often considered, but equally crucial question, “What is the role of the editor in relation to the text?” In its variety of possible answers to this question, editorial theory affects every text you have ever read. This is especially true when the editor is confronted with the practical problem of preserving or transmitting past texts to contemporary readers, often in media or languages different than those in which the text was originally composed. But it is also relevant to contemporary texts and their living authors, as editorial theory helps us think about tricky situations involving Western editors of non-Western texts, male editors of female texts, and so forth.

WR 510 TOP: Transmedia Marketing for Publishers

Instructor: Kathi Inman Berens

Media is ever changing, and that evolution only seems to be accelerating. Traditional media, new media, social media—these paradigms are now an amalgam of multi-platform media consumption referred to as transmedia. Transmedia is storytelling across multiple forms of media with each element making distinctive contributions to a viewer/user/player’s understanding of the story world. By using different media formats, it attempts to create entry-points through which consumers can become immersed in a story world. This class looks at how these transmedia methodologies can be applied to market and extend stories for the book publishing industry. It is recommended (though not required) that students have taken Book Marketing and Promotion prior to enrolling in this class.

WR 510 TOP: The Popular Book in the US

Instructor: John Henley

Few readers have heard of Maria Cummins, Susan Warner, Eden Southworth, Laura Jean Libbey, Timothy Shay Arthur, George Lippard, Augusta Jane Evans Wilson, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, or Harold Bell Wright. But just a century ago, their works were beloved, debated, and popular. We know modern publishing houses such as Random House, Little Brown, and Simon and Schuster, but what of the publishers that once populated the booksellers’ shelves, such as A.L. Burt, Street and Smith, and Porter and Coates. Most American literature survey courses introduce students to the great literature from our past, yet many of the “great writers” were not popular in their lifetime. In this class, the student will be challenged to unlearn all they have been taught about “great literature” and explore books often ignored by scholars, but devoured by American readers, and to investigate the factors that determine the likelihood of a book being a bestseller. While designed for those wishing to pursue a career in acquisitions editing, the course will also prove interesting to students of popular culture and the history of the book in America.

WR 510 TOP: Concepts in Digital Publishing

Instructor: Kathi Inman Berens

Concepts in Digital Publishing will look at the recent history, current issues, and possible future of the publishing industry. We will explore broader, industry-wide concerns like the changing face of storytelling, archiving digital data, digital design and typography, ownership and privacy, the new definitions and goals of publishing, and how to be a successful publisher in a world that changes daily. This course is concerned with understanding the big picture rather than learning the hands-on skills of digital publishing.

WR 510: MFA Colloquium

Instructor: Michele Glazer

Designed for first-year students in PSU’s MFA Program (all strands), the MFA Colloquium is a one-credit class that will orient you in the MFA, connect you with fellow students, acquaint you with faculty members and their work, and help you map out your time in the program. Our format will be deliberately loose so that we can address any questions you may have as they come up. Held every other Tuesday through the Fall term.

WR 520 ADVANCED WRITING: Process & Response

Instructor: Tony Wolk

Texts: William Stafford, Crossing Unmarked Snow [ISBN 0-3472-06664-1]; Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind [SKU# 9781590300060]; Alice Munro, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage [ISBN 0-375-72743-4]. The books will be available on campus at the PSU Bookstore.

REQUIREMENTS: (1) In class discussion of Language Attitudes & the Composing Process, as well as several dialogue journals on that subject. (2) The Writing Response Groups, where twice weekly we will write in any mode we wish, on any subject.  We will make copies of said writing for our group, and then read aloud to the group what we’ve written. Then comes feedback. Very simple. Twice during the term we will have whole class Read Arounds, mid-way and at the close.

WR 510 TOP: Intro to Trade Publication Writing

Instructor: Jeff Gunderson

This special topics course introduces students to the field of trade publication writing, including the opportunities and requirements for writing for these types of publications. The course will cover the breadth of prospects, strategies for researching ideas and developing pitches, interview techniques, and writing informative articles.

Instructor bio: Jeff Gunderson is a full-time professional writer with over 10 years of experience writing for industry trade publications, agencies and a variety of companies and organizations. He has written hundreds of articles and features stories for leading industry trade publications serving the water quality, water treatment, stormwater, engineering and construction, and building industries.

In his writings, Mr. Gunderson specializes in a range of topics related to water, environment, energy, infrastructure, low-impact development, water/wastewater treatment, energy efficiency, resource recovery and sustainable systems.

Prior to his professional writing career, Mr. Gunderson spent four years in the environmental consulting field, primarily in California, specializing in environmental impact assessment. He also previously taught college courses including classes in environmental education programs. His education includes a Master’s degree in Environmental Science and Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon in General Science.

WR 410 VISUAL STORYTELLING

Instructor: Sarah Berry

Data visualization has become an essential tool for informational writers; data is abundant, but readers need ways to contextualize and interpret it. Data visualization is a powerful tool but also problematic because values like color, area, and shape aren’t perceived with equal significance. As Edward Tufte wrote, it’s important for communicators to “show data variation, not design variation.
Allowing readers to interact with different representations of the same data set is a powerful way to make information “readerly” rather than just rhetorical. This course will provide a basic toolkit for online data visualization using the JavaScript library called D3.js.
Using this tool requires some understanding of basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript, so this course will provide an introductory skill set for using these tools. You will come away with a basic code library and enough understanding to explore, modify, and extend the most common forms of online data presentation.

Participants do not need to have any previous coding skill. Please note that this is not a deep dive into data science,and is intended for generalists rather than those working with complex scientific data sets.

WR 521 MFA CORE WORKSHOP FICTION

Instructor: A.B. Paulson

WR 522 MFA CORE WORKSHOP POETRY

Instructor: Michele Glazer

WR 523 MFA CORE WORKSHOP NONFICTION

Instructor: Michael McGregor

WR 526 DOCUMENT DESIGN

Instructor: Tracy Dillon

Document Design is a core course in PSU’s Technical and Professional MA/MS in Writing program. Thus, the course focuses on “technical writing” but is structured to accommodate writers with varying interests and career goals.

Students will:

1. Apply the Six Principles of Design when creating documents.
2. Apply design theories relating to visual perception, visual culture, and visual rhetoric when creating documents.
3. Consider five basic design elements that create effective documents.
4. Apply principles of project management and team building in order to design a “living document” for a community-based partner.
5. Run prototype versions of Adobe FrameMaker, DITA, and Madcap Flare in order to begin mastering technical tools that will get you jobs.

The work produced in WR 526: Document Design should establish your credentials as a technical communicator who can “design” ideas in addition to writing and editing them. Another way of spinning this description: You’ll be exercising and reflecting on your “visual rhetoric” skills. The overarching outcomes of the course include at least four documents that you can add to your professional development portfolio.

In sum, the course is all about equipping you with skills that you can sell to a prospective employer.

WR 560 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Per Henningsgaard / Abbey Gaterud

Provides a detailed overview of the publishing process, organized around the division of labor, including introductions to contemporary American publishing, issues of intellectual commerce, copyright law, publishing contracts, book editing, book design and production, book marketing and distribution, and bookselling. Based on work in mock publishing companies, students prepare portfolios of written documents, i.e., book proposals, editorial guidelines, design and production standards, and marketing plans. Guest speakers from the publishing industry and field trips provide exposure to the industry.

WR 561 BOOK EDITING

Instructor: Adam Rodriguez

Provides a comprehensive course in professional book editing, including editorial management, acquisitions editing, substantive/developmental editing, and copyediting. Issues specific to both fiction and nonfiction books will be covered.

WR 562 BOOK DESIGN & PRODUCTION

Instructor: Kelley Dodd

Provides a strong foundation in the design software used in the book publishing industry, focusing on Adobe InDesign. Also explores Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat, as well as XHTML and e-book design. The class considers audience expectations through a range of hands-on design projects.

WR 563 BOOK MARKETING & PROMOTION

Instructor: Rhonda Hughes

Comprehensive course in professional book marketing. Issues specific to the marketing of fiction and nonfiction books in a variety of genres and markets will be covered. Students will do market research, produce marketing plans, write press releases, write advertising copy, and develop related marketing materials.

WR 574 PUBLISHING STUDIO

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

Perform the work of a real publishing house, from acquiring manuscripts to selling books. Gain publishing experience by participating in the various departments of a student-staffed publishing house, Ooligan Press.

WR 575 PUBLISHING LAB

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

Perform the work of a real publishing house, from acquiring manuscripts to selling books. Gain publishing experience by participating in the various departments of a student-staffed publishing house, Ooligan Press.