Fall 2023 Courses

Undergraduate English Courses
Graduate English Courses
Undergraduate Writing Courses
Graduate Writing Courses

Notes:

If a course is designated as low-cost, the course materials will cost $40 or less.
If a course is designated as no-cost, students do not need to purchase any course materials.
Course descriptions are subject to change based on instructor submissions. If the instructor has not submitted a course description, please refer to the PSU Bulletin for more information.

Fall 2023: Undergraduate English Courses

ENG 201 001 INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE

Instructor: Prof. Jonathan Walker
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies:

In this course we will read and discuss four Shakespearean plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Richard II, The Tragedy of Othello, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Othello appeared around the middle of Shakespeare’s career and it overturns a number of racial and generic expectations with its action. Classified as a chronicle history play in the 1623 Folio—the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays, from which this course takes its title—Richard II recounts English historical events 200 years before the play was written. Instead of being called a “history” play, however, the first printed edition was titled The Tragedie of King Richard the second (1597). Pericles didn’t appear in a Shakespeare Folio collection until 1663/4 and is now usually called a “romance,” which is a modern label for a group of only four Shakespearean plays, but Renaissance playgoers probably would have called it a “tragicomedy,” a hybrid genre. Finally, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s premier early comedies, featuring romance, fairies, magic, and mistaken identities.

Our guiding questions in this class will center on the generic or formal identities of these plays. In other words, we will discuss what it is that makes these plays either comical, historical, or tragical, while at the same time considering the possibility that such classifications might themselves be forms of mistaken identity. We will examine how the literary forms of comedy, history, and tragedy predispose us as readers and playgoers to interpret dramatic action in certain ways, and, in turn, how the plays’ disruption or frustration of our formal expectations transforms the possibilities of our interpretations. We will likewise give attention to questions of social class, race, nationality, sexuality, and gender (among other issues) as they are posed by these four plays and by the larger English Renaissance culture from which they come.

Most of our class time will involve discussing such questions in these four texts, along with four short critical readings. There will be few lectures. The course will therefore require you to have read the plays carefully and to be prepared to discuss and ask questions about them during class meetings. Because of the course’s discussion-based format, its success will depend upon everyone’s active participation as we seek to answer these various questions together.

ENG 205 001 SURVEY OF BRITISH LIT II

Instructor: W. Tracy Dillon
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

Our main objective is old-fashioned. This class can be described as a "coverage model" spanning roughly three centuries of literary, political, religious, and cultural thought in 10 weeks. No sweat, right? If we play well, we might even have some fun.

The goal is to introduce you to as much information as possible about the so-called Restoration (and eighteenth-century), about "Romanticism," and about the Victorian period. Hopefully, an author or topic will hook you and become the focus of further study as you move forward in your degree program, whether you are an English major or not.

Weekly reflective writing assignments will challenge you to think critically (and maybe creatively, if "critical" thinking and "creative thinking" can be thought of as the same thing) about the stock information contained in our definitive texts: Volumes C, D, and E of the 9th or 10th Edition of The Norton Anthology of English Literature.

Textbook: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th or 10th Edition, Volumes C, D, and E. Note that course lectures will refer to the pagination in these editions, but savvy students hoping to save money can find used editions or earlier editions for a good price and supplement these resources in consultation with the Professor. Read: If it’s a tight month and your priorities don’t include buying three volumes of a brand-new Norton Anthology, we will explore other options.

The course is entirely online in CANVAS.

I hope to see you on the inside. Before and until then, if you have questions, contact the Professor at dillont@pdx.edu.

ENG 260 001 INTRO TO WOMEN'S LIT

Instructor: Hildy Miller
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings

In this course we will read, discuss, and write about a sampling of short stories, novellas, a novel, and poetry, along with speeches and tracts written by women in English in the 19th /early 20th centuries. And we’ll watch two films, Northanger Abbey and Iron Jawed Angels. We’ll consider how women from different backgrounds write their life concerns and, in some cases, challenge established literary and cultural traditions. Such concerns include questions of gender identities, difference, and finding a voice; creativity, spirituality, and madness; motherhood, marriage, and partnerships of all sorts; sexualities, women’s bodies and bodily existence, and social justice and reform. Our goal will be to sample—and enjoy—writings from Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Sojourner Truth to Jane Austen, to consider their historical, intellectual, and aesthetic significance, their connection to other literary movements and canons, the intersections of gender with race, class, sexuality, and culture, and their contributions to building a remarkably nuanced set of feminist/gender theories. Format online/zoom.

The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. 3rd Ed. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. Volume One. New York: New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.
Northanger Abbey. Jane Austen. Norton Critical Edition, 2004.
& other readings on Canvas course site.

ENG 300 001 LIT FORM AND ANALYSIS

Instructor: Marcel Brousseau
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 300 002 LIT FORM AND ANALYSIS

Instructor: Josh Epstein
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

“Never again will a single story be told as though it were the only one.”
–John Berger, G

A core class in the PSU English major (though open to all students), ENG 300 prepares students for advanced coursework in literature—and, I hope, for a lifetime of thoughtful engagement with the challenges and pleasures of the written word. Analyzing literature for both content and form—both what a text conveys and how it is put together—we focus especially on poems, plays, and novels that stretch the limits of their genres, prompting us to interpret the multiplicity of meaning that even a “single story” can encompass. ENG 300 aims to help students develop the following skills:

Close reading: formulating sophisticated critical questions about literature, and investigating those questions through close textual analysis;
Formal interpretation: analyzing how the formal qualities of a literary text construct the text’s meaning and generate effects on a reader;
Facility with terms and concepts: applying terminology appropriate to the scholarly analysis of literary form, genre, technique, and style.
Argumentation: shaping our complex insights about a text into cogent essays, built on well-constructed sentences and paragraphs.

Texts to be studied will include Federico García Lorca's House of Bernarda Alba; Toni Morrison's Jazz; Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion; and a sampling of poems and short fiction.

ENG 300 003 LIT FORM AND ANALYSIS

Instructor: John Vignaux Smyth
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
This course is low-cost.¹

Primary texts are Isak Dinesen’s “The Blank Page” and Ehrengard; Vladimir Nabokov’s “That in Aleppo Once,” “Spring in Fialta,” and Lolita; an excerpt from James Joyce’s Ulysses; Franz Kafka’s “A Country Doctor” and “In the Penal Colony,” and Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman.

Secondary texts include the section on Nabokov in Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Richard Rorty’s “The Barber of Kasbeam: Nabokov on Cruelty,” as well as feminist articles on Isak Dinesen by Susan Guber and Marianne Stecher-Hansen. (Please note that the well-known subject matter of Lolita may be disturbing to some, although past students have always more or less unanimously recommended that I continue to include it, as much for its literary form and virtuosic technique as for its important themes.)

Primary requirements are a midterm and a final essay, and two 100-150 word contributions to Canvas discussion each week. The first contribution will be your own thread; the second will reply to someone else’s.

This class will be conducted entirely in writing without class meetings or zoom lectures. Guides to thinking about our texts will be provided each week by the Professor’s Notes, and biweekly dialogue between students will occur as just described. If email is not sufficient for communication with me, I will schedule at least one zoom meeting with any students who request this.

ENG 304 001 CRITICAL THEORY OF CINEMA

Instructor: Matthew Ellis
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 305U 001 TOP IN FLM: HITCHCOCK

Instructor: Michael Clark
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 305U 002 TOP: FUTURES OF NOSTALGIA

Instructor: Matthew Ellis
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 306U 001 TOP: LATINX COMICS

Instructor: Marcel Brousseau
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

ENG 306U 002 TOP: HORROR, TERROR, MONSTERS

Instructor: Karen Grossweiner
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 307U 001 SCIENCE FICTION

Instructor: Bill Knight
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Dystopian fiction has become a peculiarly sublime object of desire. In our time it is marked by extensive popularity, and our fascinations have imbued it with an aura of relevance and urgency. In this version of ENG 307 we'll consider the historical foundations of the dystopian mode of speculative fiction. We'll read some "classics" of the genre in order to ask abiding questions about what these kinds of stories do for us and among themselves. From there we'll turn—in presentations—to contemporary examples and divergent new strains of dystopian storytelling across many different media. Because of dystopias' popularity, many of you will have read the primary works of our course before. But within the theoretical and literary framework we'll unfold, these canonical novels will seem new, vibrant, and productive, sending us toward energizing questions and problems rather than to humdrum, mundane rehearsals.

Course requirements: two projects, a cooperative/group presentation, regular participation, and periodic written reactions to our discussions.

Required texts:

Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale. ISBN: 978-0385490818
Butler. Parable of the Sower. ISBN: 978-1538732182
Huxley. Brave New World. ISBN: 978-0060850524
Orwell. 1984. ISBN: 978-0451524935
Zamyatin. We. ISBN: 978-0140185850

ENG 309U 001 INDIGENOUS NATIONS LITERATURE

Instructor: Kali Simmons
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 310U 001 TOP: CHILD/YOUNG ADULT LIT

Instructor: Elizabeth C. Brown
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

In this course, you will learn critical methods to think about how contemporary young adult (YA) fiction treats controversial pasts, including histories of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism. Questions we will consider include: What is YA fiction? How do works of YA fiction imagine relationships between family and society, past and future, history and the process of growing up? How does contemporary YA fiction teach new or unexpected ways to think about history in the context of the early 21st century? Instead of limiting ourselves to works of historical realism, we will investigate these and related questions in works that span a variety of genres and forms, such as apocalyptic fiction and graphic novel, that center young adults.

ENG 326 001 LIT, COMMUNITY, DIFFERENCE

Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
This course is low-cost.¹

ENG 327 001 CULTURE, IMPER, GLOBALIZATION

Instructor: Sarah Lincoln
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 331U 001 INTRO RHETORIC & COMP

Instructor: Daniel DeWeese
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Introduction to Rhetoric and Composition Studies offers students an opportunity to discuss contemporary issues in writing instruction, persuasion in a world in which artificial intelligence would like to weigh in, and the interplay of traditional and visual literacies. The course touches upon the rhetorical tradition of Greece, the rise of “process-oriented” writing instruction in American universities, and visual elements of rhetoric that began with professional typography and now extend into film, television, and the Internet. In addition to a variety of texts covering rhetoric and composition and the teaching of writing, we will also look at John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. Although history provides the course’s structure, the focus is on such perennial issues as the relationship of writing to speech and reading; the teaching of writing (and the role of audience in composing); the relationship between writing, technology, and the self; and the political implications bound up in differing representations of thought and methods of argument.

Required texts:

On Rhetoric, Aristotle, translated by George A. Kennedy (Oxford)
Ways of Seeing, John Berger (Penguin)
Gorgias, Plato, translated by Robin Waterfield (Oxford)

ENG 332U 001 HST CINEMA & NARRATIVE MEDIA I

Instructor: Matthew Ellis
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

ENG 335U 001 TOP: ADAPTING LIT TO FILM

Instructor: Marcel Brousseau
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

ENG 340U 001 MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

Instructor: Keri Behre
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Study of medieval literature, including literary genres and themes, historical and cultural contexts, and major authors and movements. Medieval literature echoes all around us. In this course, we will undertake a close study of literary works by medieval women and men, paying close attention to both genre and historical context. This particular version of the course has grown out of my enjoyment of teaching the material through the lens of a variety of digital adaptations and reflections. We’ll incorporate short clips of these and other media to engage questions of relevance, theme, and critical issues of adaption and relevance for many of our texts. We will also confront and challenge the problematic ways white supremacists have attempted, based on misunderstandings of history and globalism, to co-opt medieval culture and symbology for their extremist purposes. Our text will be The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages, 10th Edition. Coursework will include class participation, short reading responses, and multiple drafts of two interpretive essays. This course is a great fit for anyone who needs or wants to understand more about English literature in the Middle Ages; no prior background in the subject matter or language is required.

ENG 342U 001 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE

Instructor: Bill Knight
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Eighteenth-century British literature is a remarkable crucible for new combinations in genre, new ideas about subjectivity, morality, and politics, new representations of what it means to be *modern* and of how we might imagine a critical or interpretive stance occasioned by that modernity. The British eighteenth century was but a brief period; in it, however, the ideologies of capitalism, cosmopolitanism, and universalism were brewing. In the midst of these new “modern” ways of being, the role of writing and print blossomed or exploded, an unruly outpouring of a diverse multiplicity of efforts to make sense of and to define the shifting values and the broad transformations that were beginning to make themselves felt at every level of the social hierarchy.

This course will outline the ways in which—intimately related to these broader developments—aspects of the modern notion of the individual self emerged in 18th-century writing, with particular emphasis on developments in autonomy, responsibility, sympathy & empathy, psychology, sexuality, political rights, and the sublime. We’ll trace the features of selves across their expression in gendered and raced bodies, and we’ll work to articulate the values of selfhood within the wider context of literary history, politics, and social change across the period.

Works:

Aphra Behn. Oroonoko. ISBN: 978-0140439885
Daniel Defoe. Roxana. ISBN: 978-0199536740
William Earle. Obi: or, The History of Three-Fingered Jack. ISBN: 978-1551116693
Olaudah Equiano. The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings. ISBN: 978-0142437162
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels. ISBN: 978-0553212327
Unca Eliza Winkfield. The Female American. ISBN: 978-1554810963
Wordsworth and Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads. ISBN: 978-0140424621

ENG 343U 001 ROMANTICISM

Instructor: Alastair Hunt
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 351U 001 AFRICAN AMERICAN LIT I

Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

ENG 360U 001 AMERICAN LIT AND CULTURE I

Instructor: Elisabeth Ceppi
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course surveys major genres and writers of the Anglo-American tradition, from settler colonialism in New England through the antebellum period. Our authors and texts provide diverse perspectives from which to examine how the literary history of the period intersects with the histories of race, gender, class, religion, and nationalism. We will focus on close and careful readings of a variety of genres to illuminate the central role of narrative, literature, and publication in constructing and contesting the meanings of American ideals of freedom, democracy, justice, social mobility, and self-making. By considering how the writers on our syllabus both represent and dramatize their own historical moment and actively engage with and critique the texts and events of the past, the course will help students develop their own skills at reading the past and understanding the social, ethical, and aesthetic implications of the ways our present is shaped by and responds to it. This course fills the Historical Literacy requirement for the BA/BS in English and the American Identities and Interpreting the Past cluster requirement for non-majors.

Required Books: (available at PSU Bookstore)

Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (Bedford/St. Martin’s)
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Gustavus Vassa (Dover)
Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette (Dover)
Herman Melville, Bartleby and Benito Cereno (Dover)
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Dover)

ENG 371 001 THE NOVEL

Instructor: John Vignaux Smyth
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
This course is low-cost.¹

Primary texts are Balzac’s “Sarrasine,” Stendhal’s The Red and The Black, Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, and Isak Dinesen’s Ehrengard. Theoretical commentary will include Roland Barthes’ S/Z and René Girard’s Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, and Susan Gubar and Marianne Stecher-Hansen on Dinesen.

The main requirements are a midterm and a final essay, and two 100-150 word contributions to Canvas discussion each week. The first contribution will be your own thread; the second will reply to someone else’s.

Using works by French, Russian, Danish, and Irish writers, we study in this class how theorists and critics make claims for their exceptional importance in understanding the modern world. The main focus of the class is the novelistic treatment of desire. Often this is amorous desire, but it also includes economic and even intellectual desire.

This class will be conducted entirely in writing without class meetings or zoom lectures. Guides to thinking about our texts will be provided each week by the Professor’s Notes, and biweekly dialogue between students will occur as described above. If email is not sufficient for communication with me, I will schedule at least one zoom meeting with any students who request this.

ENG 372U 001 TOP: LESBIAN&WOMXN IDS IN LIT

Instructor: Sally McWilliams
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Explores diverse contemporary constructions of lesbian, queer & trans womxn subjectivities and identities in fiction. Topics: politics of identity; power of naming; struggles for visibility; cultural, racial, social, and transnational contexts; historical representations and silences, and desire and love.

ENG 413 001 TEACHING & TUTORING WRITING

Instructor: Hildy Miller
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings

Are you planning on teaching writing at either the college or secondary level? Most English grads who teach actually spend the majority of their time teaching writing. This course introduces you to the theory and practice of teaching and tutoring writing. We’ll focus on writing processes (invention, revision, editing, formal and informal writing, and writing groups); teaching strategies (responding to writing, developing your teaching ethos, working with non-native speakers, handling plagiarism, teaching critical reading, and developing a teaching philosophy); and look at specific issues (how tutorial sessions work, what writing in the disciplines means, how to create such teaching staples as a syllabus, a writing assignment, a unit plan, and a lesson plan).

And you’ll get actual teaching experience by spending at least 3 hours a week in a tutoring or teaching practicum of your choice beginning the about the third week. So, in short, this won’t be your average lecture class. Instead, you’ll be reading and researching materials, working in small groups, doing practice teaching and tutoring sessions, producing formal and informal writing, and applying all you’re learning to your practicum. At the end of the course you should possess both the tools and the confidence to teach writing in any context. Format: online/zoom

Readings will be available on Canvas course site.

Required for students applying to the GTEP program; recommended for anyone entering other Masters of Education/Teaching programs.

ENG 420 001 CARIBBEAN LIT

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course is an advanced introduction to contemporary Caribbean literature. We will study a selection of works by influential writers from the region. Our focus will be on understanding the historical and theoretical contexts of literary production, the cultural legacies of colonialism and slavery, the formal and thematic concerns of Caribbean writers, and the use of linguistic innovations that modify and displace the imposed language (English). We will organize our exploration of Caribbean literature along two broad axes: history and diaspora.

Caribbean literature, like the Caribbean itself, displays the traces of a painful history. Please note that some of the material for this term describes, sometimes graphically, physical and sexual violence, racist behavior, and other examples of human nastiness. (Of course, the texts contain many other things as well and cannot be reduced to these negative aspects alone.) As curious readers and literary scholars, we cannot always avoid challenging material. I hope you will join me in creating a classroom environment where we can discuss difficult topics with tact, care, and respect for each other. If you do not feel comfortable reading and discussing texts that contain such topics, it is best to consider taking this course in a different term. Please feel free to contact me to discuss this further or to request more specific information about content.

Required books:

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé (ISBN: 978-0813927671)
The Book of Night Women by Marlon James (ISBN: 978-1594484360)
Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat (ISBN: 978-1400034307)

ENG 467 001 ADV TOP: AMER LIT & CULTURE

Instructor: Michael Clark
Instructional Method: Hybrid

ENG 497 001 COMICS HISTORY

Instructor: Douglas Wolk
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Fall 2023: Graduate English Courses

ENG 500 001 PROBLEMS AND METHODS

Instructor: Prof. Jonathan Walker
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

As its title suggests, this graduate course will introduce you to some of the central problems that literary scholars address as well as some of the key methodologies that they use to examine those problems. Our approach will be both practical and theoretical. This approach will allow us to develop specific, applicable skills in our writing and conversations, while also understanding some of the conceptual underpinnings and implications of literary critical work. Our readings will therefore range from nuts-and-bolts questions to more abstract ideas that modify the way we read and grapple with literary texts.

The course assignments will support both the practical skills and theoretical knowledge you will acquire. By virtue of your presence in the graduate program, I will assume that you already possess some dexterity with literary analysis, but I do not expect you to be experts, so I encourage you to ask plenty of questions and to be patient with yourselves and your peers as you wrestle with new concepts. A ten-week term is a short time, however, so our focus and readings will be selective and strategic. Nonetheless, by the end of term you should be a stronger close-reader, be more attuned to the elements and vocabulary of literary form, be able to engage with scholarship in effective ways, gain more control over your own scholarly writing, and develop an awareness of how theory informs the work of literary criticism. Here are our course objectives:

To develop and expand close reading skills as an entryway into larger questions of interpretation.
To understand and appreciate the significance of formal elements and rhetorical devices, including genre and generic conventions.
To understand critical arguments and scholarly conversations, including the ability to identify and summarize critical positions and use secondary material strategically.
To refine writing skills: constructing interpretive questions, crafting arguments, organizing paragraphs, using appropriate evidence, developing style, assessing rhetorical situations, addressing specific audiences, and writing with purpose.
To engage with theoretical essays and approaches.

ENG 507 001 SEM: ROMANTICISM/CAPITALOCENE

Instructor: Alastair Hunt
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 518 001 TEACHING COLLEGE COMPOSITION

Instructor: Susan Kirtley
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 519 001 ADV TEACHING COLLEGE COMP

Instructor: Susan Kirtley
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

ENG 520 001 CARIBBEAN LIT

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Required books:

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé (ISBN: 978-0813927671)
The Book of Night Women by Marlon James (ISBN: 978-1594484360)
Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat (ISBN: 978-1400034307)
A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being by Kaiama Glover (ISBN: 978-1478011248) – this is also available as an e-book via the PSU Library

ENG 531 001 TOP: THE FIELD OF ENGLISH

Instructor: Elisabeth Ceppi
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 531 002 COLLOQUIUM

Instructor: Elisabeth Ceppi
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 580 001 ADV TOP: LISTENING TO MODERNSM

Instructor: Josh Epstein
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

“All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music."
–Walter Pater, "The School of Giorgione” (1877)

"Dissonance
(if you are interested)
leads to discovery"
–William Carlos Williams, Paterson

"Noise! Noise! Noise!
All through the night and all through the day, it's noise.
Just try to go to sleep,
Count forty million sheep
But it's no use with that terrible noise, noise, noise!
Oh, there is no pity
In this great big city
With its noise, noise, noise!”
–Betty Boop, “Stop That Noise!” (1935)

Modernism—what Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane call the “art that responds to the scenario of our chaos”—constantly simulates the noise of that chaos: the rhythms of machines, the clatter of urban spaces, the static of new media. This seminar examines (mostly) British and European novels, poems, radio plays, films, anthologies, and musical works from the early 20th century, in relation to the field known as sound studies: a hybrid mix of media history and theory attuned to the cultural practices of listening. We’ll ask a range of questions: How do modernist texts bear out Marx’s dictum that “the senses have a history,” or Walter Pater's magisterial endorsement of music as the pinnacle of artistic form? How is the nebulous thing we call “voice” mediated by modern technologies and modernist artistic forms? How are acoustic spaces raced, gendered, classed; what assumptions about sound shape our understanding of disability and ecology? How are film and radio, and the different forms of listening they engender, situated in the conflicted histories of the British Empire? And how might sound studies give us new vocabulary for “close reading” the sonic elements of literature?

No previous knowledge of modernism or sound studies is required to take this class—just a spirit of intellectual curiosity and an eagerness to read, write, research, and think across a broad range of topics and genres.

Fall 2023: Undergraduate Writing Courses

WR 121Z 001 COMPOSITION I

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 121Z 002 COMPOSITION I

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 121Z 003 COMPOSITION I

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This class prioritizes critical thinking skills through reading and writing and emphasizes the processes we use to read, write, and think. During our time together, we’ll develop habits that can assist students in transferring the practices and skills we learn in this class to other writing scenarios (both academic and non-academic).

Students who take Writing 121 will have the opportunity to do the following:

Develop a productive composing process that includes strategies for reading, drafting, reviewing, collaborating, incorporating feedback, revising, and editing.
Use key rhetorical concepts—like context, author, audience, purpose, and genre—to analyze your own and others’ writing.
Practice reading and writing skills that support critical engagement across contexts.
Compose texts that employ appropriate conventions of structure, style, tone, and delivery for their rhetorical situation.
Explore the beliefs and behaviors that influence your learning, and take ownership of your future literacy development.

WR 121Z 004 COMPOSITION I

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 210 001 GRAMMAR REFRESHER

Instructor: Caroline Hayes
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 212 001 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 212 002 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 212 003 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Ryan Goderez
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Introduces the beginning fiction writer to basic techniques of developing character, point of view, plot, and story idea in fiction. Includes discussion of student work. May be repeated for a total of 8 credits. Expected preparation: Freshman Inquiry.

WR 213 001 INTRO POETRY WRITING

Instructor: John Beer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 214 001 INTRO NONFICTION WRITING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 222 001 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

Instructor: Jarrod Dunham
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 222 002 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

Instructor: Mackenzie Streissguth
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 227Z 001 TECHNICAL WRITING

Instructor: Francisco Cábre Vasquez
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 227Z 002 TECHNICAL WRITING

Instructor: Francisco Cábre Vasquez
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 227Z 003 TECHNICAL WRITING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
This course is no-cost.²

WR 227Z 004 TECHNICAL WRITING

Instructor: Jacob Tootalian
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 228 001 MEDIA WRITING

Instructor: Eben Pindyck
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

This is an introductory course in Journalism. Students learn to create interesting, informative, and accurate stories by identifying newsworthiness, finding and interviewing sources, crafting strong ledes, and writing clearly. The course demands engaging in the most fundamental aspect of Journalism: reporting. This might involve, for example, interviewing a policy expert or government official or even witnessing a heated public protest. Discussions of assigned readings help with understanding the field.

WR 301 001 WIC: CRITICAL WRTING ENGLISH

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This writing-intensive course introduces students to research methods as a way of entering scholarly conversations. Through studying a wide variety of primary and secondary texts and through both formal and informal writing exercises, students will gain confidence and ability in close reading and interpretation, exploring the formal and thematic intricacies of a text, conducting research, and using writing as a tool for developing complex interpretations supported by evidence.

Students will learn how to design meaningful critical questions and claims; to support claims with internal/textual evidence; to draw connections within and between texts; to move beyond superficial readings to explore questions of form, theme, language, POV); to consider the broader philosophical and/or cultural questions a text raises.

WR 301 002 WIC: CRITICAL WRTING ENGLISH

Instructor: Sarah Lincoln
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 312 001 INTERMED FICTION WR

Instructor: Justin Hocking
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

What new and vibrant species of narrative emerges when writers cross-pollinate a short story with a poem or an essay, or realistic fiction with a fairy tale? What happens when we dress up “high literature” in clothing usually reserved for horror or speculative fiction? Or accessorize flash fiction with visual art? What connections might we draw between the terms genre and gender, and what part does genre-crossing play in queering the literary cannon? While exploring the freedoms that exist beyond genre, how might we also rethink conventional notions about plot, character, point of view and setting? This intermediate course will examine these and other questions, along with generative writing exercises and weekly student workshops.

WR 312 002 INTERMED FICTION WR

Instructor: Emme Lund
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

When we are at our most creative, we write the stories that only we can write. In this intermediate fiction writing course, we will explore the constructs and craft of what makes the stories we write unique to us, the writers, each honing our distinct voice and perspective. We will read a wide array of stories, poems, and essays (with an emphasis on work by queer/trans, POC, disabled, and women writers), studying them so that we can better understand the tools at our disposal. Writing is a means of discovery, and we will explore ourselves and our world through the work of building a regular writing practice, gravitating towards what excites us as writers, and writing the stories we want to tell, even (especially) if they’ve never been told before. Together, we will create a container in workshop where fellow students are encouraged to grow and write into their strengths. This course is designed for those writers who want to build and further their relationship to fiction writing.

WR 312 003 INTERMED FICTION WR

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 313 001 INTERMEDIATE POETRY WRITING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 314 001 INTERMEDIATE NONFICTION WRITIN

Instructor: Paul Collins
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Nonfiction is unusual in being ostensibly defined by what it is not: Not Fiction, apparently. But this course focuses on what creative nonfiction writing *is*: an approach that shares profound commonalities with the narrative possibilities of fiction and the aesthetic intensity and richness of poetry, while also making use of field observation and research. Students will draft, workshop, and revise their own creative nonfiction, and our classroom discussion will explore flash nonfiction, Esmé Weijun Wang's personal essays on mental illness, John McPhee's field reporting on Colorado dams, and Wayétu Moore's memoir of retracing her and her mother's journey from Liberia's civil war.

Texts:
(We'll be reading chapters from each, but only Moore's book will be read in full.)

Kitchen, Judith & Dinah Lenney. Brief Encounters (2015) 978-0393350999
McPhee, John. The John McPhee Reader (1976) 978-0374517199
Moore, Wayétu. The Dragons, the Giant, The Women (2021) 978-1644450567
Wallace, David Foster. Consider the Lobster (2005) 978-0316013321
Wang, Esmé Weijun. The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays (2019) 978-1555978273

WR 323 001 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 323 002 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Elle Wilder
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 323 003 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 323 004 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Talitha May
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Throughout our units, we will embrace writing as inquiry and problematize deeply inscribed cultural narratives that are passed along as truths. Our first unit, for instance, will interrogate commonplace ways of thinking about writing and rhetoric. We will question normalized cultural narratives and academic givens such as linguistic supremacy, standared English, perfectionism, objectivity, and more. We will examine how these myths circumscribe our views of the function(s) of writing and explore new possibilities of meaning. Developing a meta-communicative awareness of writing helps us reclaim agency as writers and citizens rather than merely repeat the same. Our second unit will continue our focus on discourse, but in the context of the unexpected intersections of language, environmentalism, and settler colonialism. As such, we will explore perspectivism, framing, power, ideology while simultaneously critiquing our tools of critique via critical and queer rhetorics. Our last unit will move beyond perspectivism and examine the complex intersections of identity and social justice issues in the US food system. Intersectionality will provide a framework from which we can grapple with complex and nuanced social issues such as food apartheid, settler-colonialism, food sovereignty and more. Overall, our course will regard writing as a form of inquiry, so we will resist settled positions. As a participation-based class, the cornerstones are being curious and engaging in group inquiry and overall class discussion.

WR 323 005 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Hybrid

WR 323 006 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Hybrid

WR 323 007 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Talitha May
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

Throughout our units, we will embrace writing as inquiry and problematize deeply inscribed cultural narratives that are passed along as truths. Our first unit, for instance, will interrogate commonplace ways of thinking about writing and rhetoric. We will question normalized cultural narratives and academic givens such as the judgment reflex, linguistic supremacy, perfectionism, objectivity, and more. We will examine how these myths circumscribe our views of the function(s) of writing and explore new possibilities of meaning. Developing a meta-communicative awareness of writing helps us reclaim agency as writers and citizens rather than merely repeat the same. Our second unit will continue our focus on discourse, but in the context of the unexpected intersections of language, environmentalism, and settler colonialism. As such, we will explore perspectivism, framing, power, ideology all the while critiquing our tools of critique via critical and queer rhetorics. Our last unit will move beyond perspectivism and examine the complex intersections of identity and social justice issues in the US food system. Intersectionality will provide a framework from which we can grapple with complex and nuanced social issues such as food apartheid, settler-colonialism, and more. Overall, our course will regard writing as a form of inquiry, so we will resist settling on definitive answers. As a participation-based class, the cornerstones are being curious and engaging in group inquiry and overall class discussion.

WR 323 008 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 323 009 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 323 010 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 323 011 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 323 012 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 327 001 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 327 002 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: W. Tracy Dillon
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
This course is no-cost.²

This course prepares students for writing as professionals in engineering, scientific and other technical disciplines. Topics covered include technical and workplace genres of writing, such as proposals and reports, oral presentation, writing about and with data, effective language practices, writing collaboratively and ethics. Emphasis (and the ultimate end-product) will be a short but formal technical report based on your own personal interests and experience. The report will propose a solution to a problem to decision makers who have the authority to act on your recommendations.

What about textbooks? Due to the cross-disciplinary nature of students taking this course for their program requirements or electives, no one-size-fits-all textbook will work for us. Course lectures should be sufficient to help you complete assignments. In short, no textbook is required. However, if you want to purchase a textbook, the course materials identify options for each major.

Should be fun!

WR 327 003 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 331 001 BOOK PUBLISHING FOR WRITERS

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 398 001 WRITING COMICS

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Hybrid

WR 407 004 SEM: RESEARCH INTO COMICS

Instructor: Kacy McKinney
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 410 002 TOP: MANGMNT SKILLS IN PBLSHNG

Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course provides students with a broad overview of management skills to prepare them for a career in book publishing. Both Ooligan managers and other students currently working in or hoping to work in a management position in publishing will benefit from the discussion-based, skills-based approach of this course. Topics covered include personal strengths assessment, emotional intelligence, interpersonal communication, leadership, teamwork, and negotiation. All topics will be addressed with awareness and conversation about personal biases and with the goal of co-creating more inclusive teams and equitable workplace environments.

Textbooks:

Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. First trade paperback printing. New York, New York: Avery, 2015.
Jana, Tiffany. Subtle Acts of Exclusion: How to Understand, Identify, and Stop Microaggressions. First edition. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, 2020.
Kogon, Kory. Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager. Dallas, Texas: BenBella Books, 2015.
Parker, Priya. The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. First Riverhead trade paperback edition. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020.

WR 410 003 TOP: SECOND LIFE OF BOOKS

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

What happens to a book after it has been purchased and enjoyed? This course examines the rare and used book markets so students can develop an understanding of what gives a book collectible value. Topics covered will include book auctions, remaindering/returns/pulping, the impact of literary prizes on value, out-of-print books, reprinted books, and much more.

WR 410 004 TOP: SCIENCE WRITING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Attend Anywhere

The goal of this course is to prepare students to be effective writers and communicators about science for both scientific and public audiences. Students will study a variety of genres of scientific writing, including scientific research reports, research posters, research proposals, science journalism, science non-fiction and various digital genres (e.g., blogs and websites). Students will learn rhetorical and stylistic strategies for writing across multiple audience types about science. Students can choose a focus on writing for scientific or public audiences for the course project. Opportunities for collaborative work as well.

WR 412 001 ADVANCED FICTION WRITING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 412 002 ADV FICTION WRITING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings

This advanced course is for writers aiming to develop a new or ongoing fiction project. Our online class time will be dedicated primarily to discussing student manuscripts and building reflective conversations about our creative processes. Our online activities will also include weekly readings (short stories, novel excerpts, craft essays, multimedia works, etc.), student-led discussions, and exploratory writing exercises. Students will receive a survey prior to the first day of class as well, which will help tailor our course materials and structure to student goals and interests.

WR 413 001 ADVANCED POETRY WRITING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 416 002 SCREENWRITING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings

Everything is now a screen, from a phone to a 60 inch TV, to a motion picture screen. In our time, writers who desire to make a career in screenwriting need to understand multiple structures, since these structures are now being pulled apart and reassembled. In this course students will examine and work with three of the most common forms of screenwriting: One Hour Dramatic Television, Half Hour Situation Comedy and Three Act Traditional Cinema.

WR 425 001 ADVANCED TECHNICAL WRITING

Instructor: Sidouane Patcha Lum
Instructional Method: Attend Anywhere

Study and practice of foundational ways of thinking and professional skills for students planning to pursue a role or a career as a technical writer across a variety of industries and disciplines, including technology, health, engineering, science, manufacturing and non-profits. Course topics include audience analysis, writing and editing in plain language for diverse audiences, common genres, ethics, collaborative writing, and project management. Students author individual and collaborative projects for a personal or program professional portfolio.

WR 431 001 ADV TOP TECH WRITING TECHNLOGY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings

Technical Writing Tools for Translation and Localization:

We will look at how translation empowers technical communicators. Historically translation providers have been in total control of the translation workflow. But with the maturity of open standards like XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format), TMX (Translation Memory eXchange), and TBX (Term Base eXchange), and others, and with the proliferation of commercial and open source tools, customers of translations (writers, managers, etc.) are more in control. This class will show how technical communicators, writers, and managers can work more efficiently with translation providers in a way that everybody wins. The framework of this class will be based on Globalization, Internationalization, Localization, and Translation (GILT).

WR 457 001 PERSONAL ESSAY WRITING

Instructor: Justin Hocking
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings

The word "essay" derives from the French "essai," meaning "to attempt, try, or experiment." In this workshop we will subvert formulaic approaches to writing, and instead embrace the personal essay as a dynamic art form that allows us to meditate on a subject without necessarily arriving at any pat conclusions. We will explore various purposes for "essaying," from attempting to heal past traumas, to enacting political or cultural change, to simply making readers laugh. We will also experiment with lyrical flights of fancy, poetic moves, and techniques from the genre of fiction—all of which are all admissible within the bounds of a single essay. Students will also learn to choreograph various levels of narrative intimacy and distance by engaging with works that dive deep into personal and emotionally charged material, while also expanding outward, well beyond the self, to weave in news from the wider world. During the course of the quarter, students will write and workshop one "mini-essay" in small groups; you will then write and workshop one full-length essay with the entire class.

WR 460 001 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

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 461 001 BOOK EDITING

Instructor: Katie Van Heest
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This is a comprehensive course in professional book editing. Here we will encounter acquisitions editing, substantive/developmental editing, copyediting, freelance editing, and—perhaps most important of all—mindful editing. You’ll gain familiarity with book publishing’s leading handbook, The Chicago Manual of Style, and edit a live manuscript by a real author. The goal is to acquaint you with the editorial processes that transform a manuscript (or an idea) into a book and to help you put professional editing skills to work in your studies, your occupation, and your life.

WR 462 001 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Provides a strong foundation in 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 466 001 DIGITAL SKILLS

Instructor: Kathi Berens
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course is a hands-on lab and a discussion seminar about writing in computational environments. Students code webpages in HTML and CSS, then use domain management software to upload these pages to the web. Students modify website templates such as Wordpress and Squarespace, and can craft final projects of their choice in consultation with the instructor. Programming fundamentals are explored by modifying a JavaScript program that outputs a poem, which prompts discussion about the culture of copying and remix. Computational literacy is a systems approach to creative thinking. We critically analyze writing productivity software, multimodal “database” essays, and best practices of website design for desktop and mobile. We read texts about the history of writing software and coding as a cultural literacy.

This course is not focused on ebook publishing. It is a prerequisite for the spring’s ebook production course. Students with programming background should not take this course unless they wish to work on a specific project of their choice, and engage in humanities discourse about writing in computational environments.

WR 474 001 PUBLISHING STUDIO

Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

Publishing Studio & Lab are the courses for hands-on learning at Ooligan Press. Designed to give students the freedom and responsibility of running a real-world trade publishing house, students are assigned to projects where they will work on a variety of publishing tasks. Project teams will work collaboratively to assess, plan, and execute editorial, design, digital content, marketing, and sales tasks throughout the term.

Publishing Studio: Graduate students in Publishing Studio should expect assignments to take approximately 12 hours per week; undergraduate students in Publishing Studio should expect 9 hours per week.

Publishing Lab: Graduate students in Publishing Lab should expect assignments to take approximately 4 hours per week; undergraduate students in Publishing Lab should expect 3 hours per week.

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

explain and understand the book production cycle;
competently use industry-standard terminology;
analyze disruptions to their project as they arise and actively problem-solve to address issues;
track, maintain, and update project management software, in the form of Trello;
communicate efficiently through email and face-to-face meetings;
complete assigned tasks efficiently as an individual and within a group; and
perform various tasks at a professional level, as assigned by a team manager.

WR 475 001 PUBLISHING LAB

Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

explain and understand the book production cycle;
competently use industry-standard terminology;
analyze disruptions to their project as they arise and actively problem-solve to address issues;
track, maintain, and update project management software, in the form of Trello;
communicate efficiently through email and face-to-face meetings;
complete assigned tasks efficiently as an individual and within a group; and
perform various tasks at a professional level, as assigned by a team manager.

Fall 2023: Graduate Writing Courses

WR 507 002 SEM: POETRY

Instructor: John Beer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 507 003 SEM: FICTION

Instructor: Madeline McDonnell
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Rising Above Rising Action: Unexpected Approaches to Plot:

“We are all like Scheherazade's husband,” E.M. Forster writes, “in that we want to know what happens next. That is universal and that is why the backbone of the novel has to be a...narrative of events.” But this seminar will consider how aspects of a novel or story other than event might drive a fiction forward and determine its structure. Is it possible, for example, to produce narrative pressure, momentum, climax, and resolution through sound, image, or inquiry rather than action? Might lyric pattern and variation create entertaining tension, compelling a reader to turn the pages in search of sonic resolution? Might a significant shift in diction or description be experienced as a dramatic act or “happening”? What subjects or stories might desire—or even require—this sort of structural approach? And what role might action and event still play in fictions that are organized around other aspects of craft? As we attempt to answer such questions and produce our own compelling if “uneventful” fictions, we will interrogate workshop truisms surrounding plot (e.g. “change must happen in scene”; “do not leave your characters alone”; “drama=desire + danger”; etc.) and look closely at poetic and joke structures, as well as works patterned around objects, details, refrains, and themes.

Though we will focus on the novel, course materials will also include short stories, poetry, film, music, and visual and performance art, and may include works by Paul Beatty, Amit Chaudhuri, Blossom Dearie, Danielle Dutton, Geoff Dyer, Janet Frame, Sheila Heti, Ragnar Kjartansson, Ben Lerner, Chris Marker, Shane McCrae, Rick Moody, My Bloody Valentine, Kiki Petrosino, Leonard Michaels, Alice Munro, Grace Paley, Giada Scodellaro, James Turrell, and others.

WR 507 004 SEM: RESEARCH INTO COMICS

Instructor: Kacy McKinney
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 510 001 TOP: SCIENCE WRITING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Attend Anywhere

The goal of this course is to prepare students to be effective writers and communicators about science for both scientific and public audiences. Students will study a variety of genres of scientific writing, including scientific research reports, research posters, research proposals, science journalism, science non-fiction and various digital genres (e.g., blogs and websites). Students will learn rhetorical and stylistic strategies for writing across multiple audience types about science. Students can choose a focus on writing for scientific or public audiences for the course project. Opportunities for collaborative work as well.

WR 510 002 TOP: MANGMNT SKILLS IN PBLSHNG

Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. First trade paperback printing. New York, New York: Avery, 2015.
Jana, Tiffany. Subtle Acts of Exclusion: How to Understand, Identify, and Stop Microaggressions. First edition. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, 2020.
Kogon, Kory. Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager. Dallas, Texas: BenBella Books, 2015.
Parker, Priya. The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. First Riverhead trade paperback edition. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020.

WR 510 003 TOP: SECOND LIFE OF BOOKS

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 521 001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP FICTION

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 522 001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP POETRY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 523 001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP NONFICTION

Instructor: Paul Collins
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This MFA Core Workshop in Nonfiction will focus on experiences of labor – seen and unseen, paid and unpaid, corporate and familial – and how they are expressed through personal essay, oral history, reportage, and memoir. Along with essays by Natalie So, Francisco Cantu, Vanessa Veselka, and others, we'll be using the following texts:

Stephanie Elizondo Griest – All the Agents and Saints (2020), 978-1469659244
Taylor Harris – This Boy We Made (2023), 978-1646221622
Emily Maloney – Cost of Living (2023), 978-1250213303
John McPhee – The Second John McPhee Reader (1996), 978-0374524630
Studs Terkel – Working (1997), 978-1565843424

WR 525 001 ADVANCED TECHNICAL WRITING

Instructor: Sidouane Patcha Lum
Instructional Method: Attend Anywhere

WR 531 001 ADV TOP TECH WRITING TECHNLOGY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings

WR 550 001 PORTLAND REVIEW

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 560 001 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 561 001 BOOK EDITING

Instructor: Katie Van Heest
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 562 001 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 566 001 DIGITAL SKILLS

Instructor: Kathi Berens
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 574 001 PUBLISHING STUDIO

Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

explain and understand the book production cycle;
competently use industry-standard terminology;
analyze disruptions to their project as they arise and actively problem-solve to address issues;
track, maintain, and update project management software, in the form of Trello;
communicate efficiently through email and face-to-face meetings;
complete assigned tasks efficiently as an individual and within a group; and
perform various tasks at a professional level, as assigned by a team manager.

WR 575 001 PUBLISHING LAB

Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

explain and understand the book production cycle;
competently use industry-standard terminology;
analyze disruptions to their project as they arise and actively problem-solve to address issues;
track, maintain, and update project management software, in the form of Trello;
communicate efficiently through email and face-to-face meetings;
complete assigned tasks efficiently as an individual and within a group; and
perform various tasks at a professional level, as assigned by a team manager.

WR 579 001 RESEARCHING BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Kathi Berens
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Students will learn about book publishing research methods (both qualitative and quantitative) and work through various stages of their final research paper for the culmination of the Book Publishing Master’s Program. Students will emerge from the course with a measurable and right-sized research question that is valuable to the industry and addresses gaps in the literature, a methodology plan, and sample paper outlines that refine their critical thinking skills. There will also be an industry-based research project that students develop and carry out.

WR 582 001 LIT AGENTS AND ACQUISITIONS

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

An in-depth examination of how a book gets selected for publication by those in the traditional role of gatekeeper: literary agents and acquisitions editors. Also examines the labor performed by literary agents and acquisitions editors after they acquire a manuscript, as well as the act of commissioning a book.