Spring 2019 Courses

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

Undergraduate English Courses

ENG 204 SURVEY OF BRITISH LITERATURE I

Instructor: Prof. C. Rose

A survey of English literature of the period from Old English (Beowulf, etc. c. 800) to the early 18th Century (John Milton), concerned with significant works and authors, as well as genres, forms and major literary movements.

Text: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 10th ed. Volumes A and B

ISBN 978-0-393-68577-0

Vol. I: Middle Ages, Restoration and Eighteenth Century ISBN 978-0393603125

--no other editions acceptable

ENG 253 SURVEY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE I

Instructor: Ceppi, Elisabeth

This course will survey works of literature written in English from colonial settlement in the Americas through the Civil War. We will focus on questions of genre and authorship and their relationships to the social, political, and intellectual histories of the geographic terrain that has become the United States. We will ask what, if anything, is distinctive about “American” versions of the themes and aesthetics associated with Protestantism, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism. We will also work to develop habits and skills of reading and writing necessary for critical analysis of literature.

REQUIRED TEXT (available at PSU Bookstore)

Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition (Package 1: Vols. A and B)

ENG 300 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS

Instructor: Hines, Maude

Emphasizes skills in close reading, formal analysis, the specialized study of literary genres, argumentation, and the process of drafting, revising, and editing academic essays. Required for, but not restricted to, English majors.

ENG 300 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS

Instructor: Knight, Bill

English 300 introduces students to the practices of the academic study of literature—to the work of the English major. It does this first by slowing down our galloping leap towards interpretation and judgments about literary works. Instead of quickly jumping to theoretical conclusions, in English 300 we are granted permission to think carefully and patiently about how literary form enables our interpretations. Provided this “luxury,” we can turn our attention to some of the unquestioned assumptions we have about reading and about the nature of literary works themselves. What do we do when we read “literarily”? Is there such a thing? And what kinds of knowledges are specific to acts of reading in this way? What skills and practices make up the study of expressive and narrative writing according to the university discipline of English? And in what ways might we put some of the institutional authority, norms, and requirements of the study of English to question? Our course will encourage self-discovery, mindfulness of the processes of reading and interpretation, and an informed critical engagement with the norms and rules of the discipline this course calls home.

Required Editions:

Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home. Mariner Books, 2007. ISBN: 978-0618871711
Mays, ed. The Norton Introduction to Literature (Portable Twelfth Edition). W.W. Norton, 2016. ISBN: 978-0393938937
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein: The 1818 Text. Penguin Classics, 2018. ISBN: 978-0143131847

ENG 300 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS

Instructor: Lo, Marie

ENG 301U TOP: SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

Instructor: Herrada-Nance, Jessie

Study of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, focusing on specific genres with an emphasis on close reading and historical context. Course may be repeated for credit with different topics. Up to 8 credits of this course number can be applied to the English major.

ENG 304 CRITICAL THEORY OF CINEMA

Instructor: Collins, Wendy

This course will attempt to cut through the veneer of much film criticism and theory in order to understand the compelling force of cinema as an art form. We will start with an investigation of the journalistic review -- often the product of writers with relatively limited knowledge of film history and theory -- and move quickly to a study of more academic methods of film analysis. Moving away from a blind focus on narrative coherence, we will study some of the essential components of film as a distinct art, including such features as space, image, temporal manipulation (flashback, jump cutting, parallel structure), camera use, montage, and editing.

We will also discuss various film genres as well as the theories that surround them. Finally, the core of the class will focus on various approaches to film often found in literary and aesthetic theory: semiotic theory, psychoanalytic theory, feminist theory, auteur theory, structuralism, and more. By the end of this course, you will be familiar with the central critical models and tools of film criticism, as well as with the more extensive and expansive theoretical elements of academic film analysis. In addition, you will be generally familiar with a number of the dominant schools of cinematic interpretation that help us understand the peculiar, compelling, and even frightening force of the cinematic artwork.

ENG 306U TOP: THE SIXTIES: CULTURE VS. COUNTERCULTURE

Instructor: Bohnaker, Will

The 1960s is arguably the watershed decade in American life in the twentieth century, not only dividing eras but pitting Americans against each other. Historical revisionism likes to recast the 60s as a time of ludicrous, even dangerous, infantilism. In fact, it engendered a revolution in spirit and imagination that changed culture, politics, aesthetics, minds and hearts, and the vision of the possible. Join us in our own magical mystery tour to discover what really happened in the last American revolution.

ENG 312 COMEDY AND SATIRE

Instructor: Amato, Katya

We trace the history of comedy and satire from Aristophanes to Beckett, including Old and New Comedy, comic archetypes, the language of the body, fabliaux, Carnival, the grotesque, the absurd, and named forms of comedy and satire, among them Rabelaisian, Horatian, and Juvenalian. We'll also take a look at a few contemporaries on film, including Hannah Gadsby (Nanette).

Don't let the unfamiliar names intimidate you: the ancients were wilder than Wilder. Athenian and Spartan men groan about their erections, medieval body parts can be lopped off or multiplied to everyone's great hilarity, and--yes--Don Quixote really does fight windmills and liberate galley slaves. In addition, instead of writing a long essay, those who want to can perform a comic scene at the end of the class, including the one with Oscar's famous cucumber sandwiches. (The class gets to eat the sandwiches.) Listed below are the books ordered, all available at the PSU Bookstore.

Four Plays by Aristophanes, tr. William Arrowsmith et al. (Lysistrata and Frogs only)
Menander, Dyskolos (The Grouch)
Five Comedies by Plautus and Terence, tr. Deena Berg and Douglass Parker (The Wild, Wild Women or Bacchides)
Cervantes, Don Quixote, tr. Edith Grossman (considered the best new translation)
Voltaire, Candide and Related Texts, tr. David Wootton (excellent edition for context)
Moliere, Tartuffe, tr. Richard Wilbur (still the best translation)
Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Requirements: Regular attendance with midterm and final exams. A comic performance usually is, to everyone's great delight, substituted for the long essay of the final exam. For further information, feel free to get in touch: amatok@pdx.edu.

ENG 317U GREEK MYTHOLOGY

Instructor: Amato, Katya

...the helmet screams against the light;

Scratches the eye; so violent it can be seen

Across three thousand years.

--Christopher Logue, War Music (1981)

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

Texts: Richmond Lattimore's translation of the Iliad (required translation)

Robert Fitzgerald's translation of the Odyssey
Richmond Lattimore's translation of Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days
Jules Cashford's translation of The Homeric Hymns
Rolfe Humphries' translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses

Requirements: Epic reading assignments and the usual exams

For further information, feel free to get in touch.

ENG 327 CULTR IMPERIALISM GLOBALIZATION

Instructor: Anson, April

Examines cultural encounter and its effects. Topics may address various historical periods and geographical regions, but they will share a focus on connecting aesthetics to the political and institutional contexts of imperialism and globalization.

ENG 330U JEWISH & ISRAELI LITERATURE

Instructor: Weingrad, Michael

Introduction to modern Jewish literature in its diasporic and national contexts. Emphasis on the transition from sacred to secular literature; reflection of historical and social realities; development of literatures in Europe and the Middle East.

ENG 342U EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE: THE EMERGING MODERN SELF

Instructor: Knight, Bill

This course will outline the ways in which 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.

Required texts (we’ll also read other short and secondary works in pdf form on our course’s Canvas site):

Behn. Oroonoko, The Rover, and other Works. ISBN: 978-0140433388
Defoe. Moll Flanders. ISBN: 978-0192805355
Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. ISBN: 978-0199555468
Austen. Sense and Sensibility. ISBN: 978-0199535576

We’ll also read shorter works and excerpts by Haywood, Hume, Locke, Mandeville, Hume, Smith, Equiano, Wordsworth, and others.

Students will do one historical research assignment, one short paper, and a final paper, and will be expected to participate actively in discussion.

ENG 345U MODERN BRITISH LITERATURE

Instructor: Epstein, Josh

"I say, am I not perhaps a little unhinged already?"

–Samuel Beckett, Play

ENG 345U will focus on British and Anglophone literature that destabilizes the idea of the self. We will find selfhood and identity unsettled by various aspects of “modern” life: new scientific and philosophical theories of mind and psyche, time and space; new experiences of technology, migration, urbanization; evolving mores and categories of gender and sexuality; and confrontations with the legacies of the British Empire. The familiar questions of literature remain: Who am I? Why am I here? Am I the same I I was a minute ago? How do I perform various aspects of identity (gender, race, class, nation); how is my performance of the “self” mediated by the presence of others? Are my story and my voice my own? Is anybody listening to it? As “Britain” changes, do I change with it? Do I dare to eat a peach? We will find these and other questions “unhinged” and reimagined in the speculative terrains of modernist and postmodern literature and film.

Texts will be chosen from the following:

T.S. Eliot,The Waste Land (Broadview; 978-1551119687).
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Harcourt; 978-0156907392)
Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight (Norton; 978-0393303940)
Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (out of print; will need to be purchased online)
Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine (Samuel French; 978-0573618741)
Samuel Beckett, one or two short plays (distributed via Canvas)

We will also watch Neil Jordan's film The Crying Game

ENG 369U ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Instructor: Lo, Marie

An introduction to Asian American literature, including literary genres and themes, historical and cultural contexts, and major authors and movements.

ENG 385 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

Instructor: Reese, Susan

Study of contemporary prose, poetry, drama, and/or texts of other genres and media, focusing on the formal devices, intellectual undercurrents, and cultural implications of texts from a range of global, national, or regional traditions.

ENG 413 TEACHING AND TUTORING WRITING

Instructor: DeWeese, Dan

Examines current practices of tutoring and teaching writing in all subject areas. Focuses on the process theory of writing to foster thinking and learning in subject areas and the problems and issues surrounding individual composing.

ENG 422 AFRICAN FICTION

Instructor: Limbu, Bishupal

“In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. … Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African’s cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it—because you care.”

-- Binyavanga Wainaina, “How to Write about Africa”

This excerpt from a satirical piece by the Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina highlights the various ways in which the continent of Africa has been and continues to be misrepresented. ENG 422 African Fiction offers students an opportunity to go beyond the stereotypes and stale images often prevalent in writings about Africa. The four books and three films for the course will help us explore important themes and questions in postcolonial African cultural production. Is the English language an adequate medium for African literature? How can resistance to oppression be encoded in fiction? Does literature have a moral purpose? How do postcolonial writers adapt narrative forms inherited from Europe? What is the relationship between art and politics? How does African literature portray Africa and its relationship to the world? By investigating these questions, students will become critically aware readers of African fiction and learn how to interrogate their own knowledge and assumptions.

ENG 428 CANONS AND CANONICITY

Instructor: Limbu, Bishupal

Examines the historical, institutional, and ideological contexts in which traditions of "great works" have been established, contested, and creatively appropriated. Investigates how categories of social difference such as gender, race, and class have shaped the criteria by which works and authors have been included and excluded from dominant traditions.

ENG 441 ADV TOP: RENAISSANCE LITERATURE: APOCRYPHAL SHAKESPEARE

Instructor: Walker, Jonathan

In this advanced course, we will read a selection of Renaissance plays that have at one time or another been attributed—either wholly or in part—to William Shakespeare. Pericles, for instance, was excluded from the First Folio of 1623, though in 1609 it had been printed in quarto with Shakespeare’s name on the title page. Yet, while the title page of A YORKSHIRE Tragedy (1608) also bears his name, no modern editor in her or his right mind would include it in the Shakespearean canon. The canonical status of each of the other plays we will read has also been difficult to determine, often resulting in heated critical debates.

One of our goals will be to read these plays with an eye to their dramatic qualities and the cultural circumstances in which they were produced. During our discussions, we will continually question our assumptions about what kind of dramatic material qualifies as “Shakespearean,” and for whom. In order to question such assumptions, we will explore the institutional practices in the culture that produced dramatic scripts for performance as well as printed texts for reading. Collaboration, the comparatively low literary value of drama in the culture, authorship, textual ownership, and canonicity: these issues will inform our discussion and assessment of the plays.

This course will be driven by the discussion of these questions as they are formulated in both the dramatic and critical texts we will read. There will be very few lectures. You will therefore be expected to participate actively in class discussions and to contribute to the knowledge that we will create together out of our conversations about the texts.

This course satisfies a 400-level historical literacy requirement.

ENG 488 CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY

Instructor: Bettridge, Joel

This class will focus on American poetry published during the last fifteen years. Given the fact that such a timeframe still does not sufficiently narrow our field of study, we will examine work that explicitly marks itself as, or tends toward, the “experimental.” At the same time, we will take an expansive and critical approach to that framework, looking at poetry that places itself explicitly in the avant-garde tradition as well as poetry that concerns itself with matters of politics, race, ecology and lyric form.

ENG 490 ADV TOP: DIGITAL RHETORIC

Instructor: Comer, Kate

This course explores digital rhetoric—the arts of communication in multiple media and across platforms—in theory and practice. We will begin with an introduction to rhetorical theory, connecting long-standing conversations about persuasion in public discourse to increasingly complex questions of design, delivery, and circulation. With these concepts in mind, we will turn toward practical application creating digital materials with and for local community partners. Throughout this process of research, analysis, design, feedback, revision, and reflection, you will hone your critical perspective as a producer and consumer of digital rhetoric while developing your own digital literacies.

ENG 496 COMICS THEORY

Instructor: Schutz, Diana

“Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny

more interesting than either parent.” —Dr. Seuss

Comics are a rich form of artistic and narrative expression, a modern exemplar of the picture story whose history dates as far back as the Lascaux and Chauvet cave paintings in France. Boldly combining images and text, today’s comics fearlessly go where even Superman himself would not have dared: into stories of war, trauma, sexuality, spirituality, and more. This course will explore the contemporary comics medium and its theoretical underpinnings through intensive reading of seminal American texts. In particular, we will consider the unique visual grammar of the medium, paying special attention to current scholarship in the thriving new field of Comics Studies as a means of engaging with theory and applying it to our texts.

Graduate English Classes

ENG 507 SEM: LITERARATURE AND POLITICS

Instructor: Fisher, Tom

Reading a range of texts from antiquity to the present, this class thinks through how literature both produces and inhibits particular forms and possibilities of politics. We will also consider the specific rhetorical and textual tendencies of language-as-politics that mark our own moment, observing especially the (possibly) new modes of political speech that structure social media and post-network television.

Most readings (Plato, Herman Melville, Claudia Rankine, Jacques Rancière, Langston Hughes, William Wordsworth, Fred Moten, James Joyce, Toni Morrison, Claude McKay, Karl Marx, and others) will be available online or through instructor provided PDFs. Course work will be a final essay (15-20 pgs) and one presentation (10-15 minutes).

ENG 517 MIDDLE ENGLISH

Instructor: Prof. C. Rose

‘And for ther is so gret diversite

In Englissh and in writyng of oure tonge’ [Chaucer, Troilus 5. 1793-4]

This graduate seminar on Middle English language and literature examines representative texts from the 12th through the 15th centuries. We will learn of the emergence of Middle English from its Anglo-Saxon and continental ancestors, and study its various dialects and grammar. In its earliest almost unrecognizable (as English) forms, as in The ANCRENE WISSE, to its flowering as a literary language in the 14th-century Alliterative Revival, as in Pearl, Middle English literature culminates in the outpouring of literary activity surrounding the period of Chaucer, Langland and Gower in the late 14th and early 15th C. We will read and discuss a selection of works, including the English mystics, romances, drama, dream visions and lyrics—in their entirety or as extracts. The seminar will also acquaint students with some of the best scholarly responses to ME literature up to the present day. Students will be engaged in a term-long project/paper on a single ME work. Translation/reading aloud; introduction to palaeography of Middle English MSS. No previous study of Old or Middle English required, but desirable. Middle English presents charms and challenges. Study masterpieces (and other texts) in the original language!

Course fulfills graduate 507 requirement and pre-1800 lit. requirement

Textbooks:

Dunn and Byrnes, eds. Middle English Literature (anthology) Garland Press, 1990 ISBN: 978-0824052973
Burrow and Turville-Petre, eds. A Book of Middle English (Blackwell’s, 2005) 3rd ed. ISBN: 978-1405117098
Boffey, Julia, ed. Fifteenth-century English Dream Visions (Oxford UP) ISBN: 978-0199263981
Burrow, J.A. Medieval Writers and Their Work: Middle English Literature and its Background 1100-150. 2nd edn (Oxford, 2008). ISBN: 978-0199532049 (earlier edition OK)
Sections of various ME texts from TEAMS website (online)
[Recommended/Optional]:
Bennett and Gray, eds. Middle English Literature (Oxford, 1990) —isbn 0198119704 available used.
Gray, Douglas, ed. The Oxford Book of Late Medieval Verse and Prose (Oxford, 1985). isbn 0192822454
Bennett, J.A.W. and G.V. Smithers. Early Middle English Verse and Prose (Oxford, 1974--2nd ed., rev.) isbn 0198114931 –available used

ENG 518 COLLEGE COMPOSITION TEACHING

Instructor: Kirtley, Susan

Introduces and develops the theoretical and practical expertise of the graduate teaching assistant in the area of college composition teaching. May be taken up to three times for credit.

ENG 519 ADVANCED COLLEGE COMPOSITION TEACHING

Instructor: Kirtley, Susan

Continues the development of the theoretical and practical expertise of the graduate teaching assistant in advanced areas of college composition teaching. May be repeated up to three times for credit. Required prerequisite: appointment to 2nd year teaching assistantship in English Department.

ENG 531 THE FIELD OF ENGLISH

Instructor: Epstein, Josh

A one-credit class for first-year M.A. students. We will spend our time this quarter discussing research practices, with a view toward developing a draft of a focus area or Qualifying Essay proposal that you can then polish and pursue during your second year. Meets for two hours, every other week.

ENG 590 ADV TOP: DIGITAL RHETORIC

Instructor: Comer, Kate

ENG 596 COMICS THEORY

Instructor: Schutz, Diana

“Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny

more interesting than either parent.” —Dr. Seuss

Undergraduate Writing Classes

WR 121 COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Various Instructors

A writing course for lower-division students, in which they develop critical thinking abilities by reading and writing, increase their rhetorical strategies, practice writing processes, and learn textual conventions. Includes formal and informal writing, responding to a variety of readings, sharing writing with other students, and revising individual pieces for a final portfolio of work.

WR 199 WRITING FOR COLLEGE

Instructor: DeWeese, Dan

WR 200 WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE: THE CITY AND LITERATURE

Instructor: Zettle, PJ

In this class, we will take an interdisciplinary view on literature produced in urban spaces, with attention to the ways in which literature, in turn, produces cities and the people who live in them. We will look specifically at works that take place in Oakland, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Washington DC. We will synthesize various literary critical tools as we practice responding to literary texts. We will read novels, short stories, and poems, while learning different ways of interpreting and comprehending each type of work. Furthermore, we will develop our drafting, revision, and editorial capabilities in a user-friendly, immersive online format.

Texts for the Class:

Zone One by Colson Whitehead
City of Glass by Paul Auster (online, free)
There, There by Tommy Orange
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
Howl by Allen Ginsberg (online, free)
Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

WR 212 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Urza, Gabe

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 212 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Wensink, Patrick

The main goal of this course is to teach budding authors the basic principles of fiction. By learning how to create foundational elements like characters, relationships, and settings (among others) we will demystify the creative process and discover the writer's voice inside everyone. Students will be assigned several short stories, craft essays, and writing exercises in order to complete a short story by the end of term.

WR 213 INTRO POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Beer, John

Introduces the beginning writer of poetry to basic techniques for developing a sense of language, meter, sound, imagery, and structure. Includes discussion of professional examples and student work. May be repeated for a total of 8 credits. Expected preparation: Freshman Inquiry.

WR 213 INTRO POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Hiestand, Jessica

WR 214 INTRO NONFICTION WRITING

Instructor: Hobson, Lauren

This course will introduce you to the nonfiction genre, covering a wide range of texts, styles and authors, and help you strengthen your ability to express yourself on the page. Nonfiction narratives are the foundation of our world, the building blocks from which we create our identities as human beings and the cultures we live in. We create our realities through the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we hear from others. This course is designed to help you tap into the universality of storytelling, and to strengthen your ability to tell the stories of your lived experience and the lived experiences of those around you.

WR 222 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

Instructor: Various Instructors

An elective course. The techniques for compiling and writing research papers. Attention to available reference materials, use of library, taking notes, critical evaluation of evidence, and conventions for documenting academic papers. Practice in organizing and writing a long expository essay based on use of library resources. Recommended: Wr 121 or Freshman Inquiry. May not be used to fulfill English major requirements.

WR 227 INTRO TECHNICAL WRITING

Instructor: Covey, Henry

The purpose of this course is to learn strategies for successfully navigating technical writing situations. A strategy is the thinking aspect of planning to write in a technical context—it’s the framework you adopt as you make a series of choices about how you will respond to a technical writing situation. The strength of learning strategies is that they are fully portable across any technical writing context. In other words, you can take them with you no matter what company, industry or profession you end up in—and you will work in many over the course of your career. Strategies can be adapted to any technical writing situation.

But it isn’t enough to just think about an approach to writing, you also have to do it to learn it. So you will also learn the practices of technical writing that are currently conventional in many technical professions and industries. Since you can’t learn the practices of all of the future technical writing situations that you can expect to encounter, this course is built around those that provide a foundation to build on in the future. Practices are specific to a technical writing situation.

WR 227 INTRO TECHNICAL WRITING

Instructor: Mary Sylwester

This course introduces students to a variety of technical writing, including proposals, instructions, reports, summaries, and basic page design. Writing instruction includes review of topics such as standard punctuation and grammar.

WR 227 INTRO TECHNICAL WRITING

Instructor: Other Various Instructors

Practical experience in forms of technical communication, emphasizing basic organization and presentation of technical information. Focuses on strategies for analyzing the audience and its information needs. Recommended: Wr 121 or Freshman Inquiry.

WR 300 TOP IN COMP: CITIZEN CRITIC

Instructor: Karnezis, George

Citizen Critic should interest you for several reasons. First, you are probably a reader who finds the act of reading as essential to your life as the act of seeing. You also understand that language, and perhaps images, offer us the equipment for reflecting on and making sense of the world, and may even even help change it. Second, you want to see how critical works can address diverse public issues that any educated citizen habitually attends to. Finally, you believe that spending a term immersing yourself in such critical works will quite possibly sharpen your perceptions and further develop your own capacity to think and write more imaginatively and responsibly about public life and culture.

In reading authors like James Baldwin, Jane Addams, Katha Pollitt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas Paine, Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain, Langston Hughes, Claudia Rankine, Wendell Berry, or Sherman Alexie, many of whom are proficient in several genres, we will become better acquainted with the variety of forms (essays, poems, graphic journalism, film, fiction) in which critique can be practiced, paying special attention to the constraints of audience and publication that affect a critic’s presentation.

Students will offer final papers on a particular critic’s work OR on a study of criticism prompted by a particular issue, or theme. You will offer a presentation, based on your final paper, that will help the class appreciate why a given critic’s work contributes to our work as citizens. A short essay based on reading in or out of class will be due each week.

Class’s success will depend on your contribution to guided conversation and give-and-take among your peers. Any lectures will be minimal and you are encouraged to suggest readings and Internet sources worth our attention . You will be provided with an extensive annotated bibliography of Citizen Critics that will assist you in surveying the history of this tradition of critical expression.

WR 301 CRITICAL WRITING IN ENGLISH

Instructor: Ceppi, Elisabeth

"This course is designed to develop advanced skills for writing clear, compelling, and sophisticated interpretations of literary texts. We will focus on strategies, conventions, and techniques for conducting research within the text (gathering evidence through the method of “close reading”) and outside the text, using a variety of secondary sources to develop ideas and insights and to explain why those ideas matter. During the term, students will learn and practice a variety of methods for becoming more astute readers and critics of literature and scholarly writing. They will also learn to become better readers and critics of their own scholarly writing through the process of drafting, peer review, and revision.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

The course will improve students’ ability to:

Use close reading skills to develop interpretations of literary texts and to communicate those interpretations clearly and persuasively in their scholarly writing.
Comprehend and use concepts from critical theory as a lens for interpreting works of literature.
Locate and cite works of scholarship and engage with them effectively to frame complex arguments about texts.
Grasp the importance of drafting and revision to intellectual growth and successful college writing.

REQUIRED BOOKS (available at PSU Bookstore)

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, 3rd Edition (Norton)
Toni Morrison, A Mercy (Vintage)

WR 301 CRITICAL WRITING IN ENGLISH

Instructor: Miller, Hildy

WR 301: CRITICAL WRITING ENGLISH (Two Sections)

Instructor: Hildy Miller

As English majors, you're probably already familiar with much of what we do in our courses. This class is designed to stretch that knowledge further and prepare you to succeed in upper division work. We'll highlight strategies for writing and conducting secondary research and for reading and interpreting texts through the lenses of varied critical theories. And we’ll discuss and prepare some preliminary materials that you can use for the wide variety of writing and teaching careers of English majors, including writing and teaching internships and teaching abroad. The class will include formal and informal writing, responding to a variety of readings, sharing writing with other students, and reflecting on writing. Our class will run as a workshop in which you’ll be collaborating with other students throughout phases of the writing processes. If all goes as promised, you should emerge from the course with a renewed sense of how to read, write, and think critically about English Studies—and how to parlay your major into a career.

Questions? Contact Hildy Miller at milleh@pdx.edu.

Texts—can find in PSU bookstore or online. Just be sure to get the identical text:

Texts and Contexts:

Writing about Literature with Critical Theory (7th ed paperback). Steven J. Lynn. Pearson, 2016.
The Turn of the Screw (Henry James): Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Peter Beidler, Ed. Macmillan, 2010.

Online materials as assigned

WR 312 INTERMEDIATE FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Lee, Janice

Builds on fictional techniques introduced in Wr 212, including variations on the classic plot, complex points of view, and conventions of genre. Emphasizes discussion of student work. May be repeated once for credit.

WR 312 INTERMEDIATE FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Urza, Gabe

WR 313 INTERMEDIATE POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Perry, Erin

Continues the study of poetry writing techniques introduced in Wr 213. Includes additional instruction in poetic forms, variations on traditional forms, and experimental forms. Emphasizes discussion of student work. May be repeated once for credit.

WR 323 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Warren, Sean

In this class students will read a range of non-fiction and fiction writers with an eye toward advancing the ambition and craft of their own writing. Students will explore the essay and short fiction form with passion, intelligence, and wit in the following genres: memoir, cultural/travel writing, and fiction. Students will produce several pages of writing each week, including responses to writing prompts and discussion threads; mini-essays/fictions; and workshop responses, among others. The aim of the class is to explore self and society through the unique medium of writing sentences.

WR 323 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Other Various Instructors

A writing course for upper-division students, which offers sophisticated approaches to writing and reading. Students enhance critical thinking abilities by reading and writing challenging material, refine their rhetorical strategies, practice writing processes with special attention to revision and style, and write and read in a variety of genres. Includes formal and informal writing, sharing writing with other students, and preparing a final portfolio of work. Recommended: satisfactory completion of Wr 121 or Freshman Inquiry.

WR 327 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: Kares, Julie

Sharing your ideas can be challenging! When those ideas convey complex, technical information, it can seem overwhelming! Building skills that allow you to speak to varied audiences on any number of technical topics will ensure that you successfully express your great concepts! In WR 327, we’ll explore technical writing across career fields, exploring the “how” of technical writing versus the “what.” While we will focus on particular kinds of reports to familiarize you with the possibilities, the emphasis will be on the process. Using the core skills you learn in this class, you will be able to recognize and apply the effective components of report writing to create strong documents in diverse situations.

WR 327 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: Other Various Instructors

Strategies for presenting technical information from the technician, management, and lay person's perspectives; rhetorical theory and techniques for adapting technical prose to nontechnical audiences; and techniques for emphasizing and de-emphasizing information. Recommended: Wr 323.

WR 331 BOOK PUBLISHING FOR WRITERS

Instructor: Berens, Kathi

In this course we study the development of modern trade publishing and connect it to trends in online publishing. You will learn how to:

find publishing outlets appropriate to your work
developmentally edit a manuscript
write query letters
build an audience for your writing using social media
attract a publisher
evaluate the range of nontraditional publishing options, including self-publishing and crowdfunded publishing
model your career on a current, published writer you admire

WR 333 ADVANCED COMPOSITION

Instructor: Behre, Keri

Essay writing with particular attention to student's area of specialization. Advanced practice in essay writing. Recommended: Freshman Inquiry or two writing courses.

WR 394 WRITING CAREERS FOR ENG MAJORS

Instructor: Gaterud, Abbey

This course is for upper division English/Arts and Letters majors who want to figure out how to use their major to shape a viable career, particularly a non-teaching one. Some 50% of English majors nationwide choose careers in business, nonprofits, publishing companies, government, and the like; some go into business for themselves as writing consultants or freelance writers. But how do you turn an English degree into such a job? This course will give you the tools to do so by focusing on the kinds of writing you are likely to do on the job, including public relations writing, business writing, and more, as well as helping develop basic digital skills that will enhance your understanding of writing in the modern world.

WR 398 WRITING COMICS

Instructor: Bendis, Brian and Walker, David

The graphic novel features the unique marriage of words and pictures that has seeped into every facet of popular culture. This course will focus on composing graphic narratives, exploring all the storytelling elements that create this unique visual medium.

WR 407 SEM: ADVANCED FICTION

Instructor: Cunningham, Mark Allen

A compelling fictional narrative involves much more than a beginning, middle, and end, and the imaginative forms available to fiction writers are myriad. In this seminar we’ll seek inspiration and instruction from a variety of formally innovative and uniquely structured literary works, and we’ll make several interdisciplinary forays in search of vital relationships between creative writing and other art forms. Through reading, writing experiments, discussions, film viewings, listening exercises, and a field trip or two, we’ll explore the flexibility of voice, linearity, perspective, plot, and more. We’ll consider the ways writers have made the most of form in centuries past and today. And together we’ll try out new forms in our own fiction. Writers of all genres are welcome. We will read fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid works. The course will include a final writing project.

Required readings include short works by Aleksandar Hemon, Tyehimba Jess, Michael Ondaatje, Karen Tei Yamashita, and others, along with the following books:

Time’s Arrow by Martin Amis
Here by Richard McGuire
The Call by Yannick Murphy
Artful by Ali Smith
American Histories by John Edgar Wideman

WR 407 RESEARCH FOR WRITERS

Instructor: Collins, Paul

This seminar covers research techniques for creative and academic writing, including the use of archives, field reporting, databases and investigative work. The course is open-subject, and focuses on the exploratory side of the writing process; rather than the creation of a finished work, it develops a research portfolio that can serve as a starting point for your artistic and scholarly projects.

Required Texts: other than the Mary Roach text below, our readings will be drawn from free online materials.

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach (9780393339918)

WR 410 ADVANCED BOOK DESIGN

Instructor: Dodd, Kelley

This course is exactly what it sounds like: an advanced course in book design. Prerequisite: WR 4/571: Typography, Layout, and Production.

WR 410 BOOK ARCHEOLOGY

Instructor: Seluzicki, Charles

Archaeology of the Book investigates a wide range of subjects relating to the history and culture of the book through a material textual lens. Lectures include topics as varied as cuneiform and the economic origins of the alphabet, Gutenberg’s career as a jeweler and the origins of moveable type, and Dante’s sudden popularity and publishing trends in 19th century America. These topics all conspire to a singular and coherent understanding of the nature of the material book. Field trips to local rare book collections provide exposure to original editions of classic works. Traditional seminar format coincides with the presentation of independent student research projects.

WR 410 EBOOK PRODUCTION

Instructor: Burke, Pariah

Ebook Production teaches the hands-on skills of digital publishing. The course will build on an established understanding of basic text-based languages like HTML, CSS, and XML. Students will be introduced to new tools like iBooks Author, oXygen, and Sigil. It is highly recommended (though not required) that you first take WR 4/510: Digital Skills before taking this course or have intermediate coding knowledge.

WR 410 TOP: RESRCH MTHDS FOR TECH COMM

Instructor: Read, Sarah

This course introduces students to the research methods commonly practiced by professional technical communicators. These methods may include interviewing subject-matter experts, researching genre conventions, user research, content analysis of existing websites and usability testing. Students will practice methods via client-projects with local community partners, so the methods taught in any given section of the course will be shaped by the needs of the client-project. Students will produce professional-quality project deliverables for the client and the program portfolio.

WR 410 TOP: WEB TOOLS FOR TECH WRITERS

Instructor: Schnabel, Bryan

As websites have grown more robust and complex to satisfy the needs of website visitors, the systems and tools have grown in robustness and complexity. The days of adding content to a static HTML website are diminishing, and the Web Content Management System (CMS) are a fact of life. This class will show how a modern CMS works. Students will also learn how the auxiliary tools (translation, SEO, analytics, authoring tools) are a part of this system. Beyond the tools, this class will feature best practices in content strategy, content modeling, and workflows.

WR 411 INTERNSHIP

Instructor: Reese, Susan

Students apply their academic training and skills in the workforce, further developing those skills and learning new skills in the process. Students develop a better understanding of the value to employers of their education in literature, writing, and/or publishing. Integrating an internship with reflection and professional development enhances the experience.

WR 412 ADVANCED FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Zumas, Leni

By honing their powers of observation and insight, members of this workshop will test Marcel 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 conversations will push each writer to investigate fresh possibilities in her/his/their fiction. Discussion of student manuscripts will be a central activity; we may also examine published stories and novel excerpts as models and inspiration.

Prerequisite: Grade of B or higher in WR 312, or consent of instructor based on a writing sample. Email Leni Zumas at zumas@pdx.edu if you have questions about your eligibility."

WR 413 ADVANCED POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Beer, John

Students can expect to explore a variety of demanding technical problems and to experiment with poetic voices. Course may be repeated once for credit.

WR 427 TECHNICAL EDITING

Instructor: Romaine, Garrett

Advanced Technical Editing is a web-based and community-based approach to providing students with real-world opportunities to improve their editing skills. Students will undertake a client-project with a local business, non-profit, or other organization. By the end of the term, students will be comfortable with various style guides, mark-up symbols, and online editing tools.

WR 458 MAGAZINE WRITING

Instructor: Pindyck, Eben

Examines the development of both long- and short-form magazine pieces, as well as the business and economics of magazine publishing. Students write and peer-critique articles in the styles and formats of a variety of publications and magazine departments.

WR 459 MEMOIR

Instructor: Hocking, Justin

How do we define memoir? When and where did the memoir form originate, and how has it developed? What responsibilities does the memoirist have for engaging the pressing political/cultural issues of our times? Can the act of writing memoir be a form of resistance? How might embracing the wider world in our personal writing paradoxically allow us to go deeper into our selves? Can exploring past traumas have a therapeutic effect for both writer and reader? How do we share difficult/traumatic stories without overwhelming our audience? And what role does craft play in transforming our memories/experiences into art? While engaging these questions, students will gain intuitive and research-based skills for accessing memoir material, with particular attention to the physical body as a repository and conduit for our most important stories. They will enhance their abilities to write across multiple genres and collage various modes of narrative, reportage, storytelling, poetics, and criticism. By quarter's end, students will write, workshop, and revise two memoir pieces, with the goal of publishing these works in literary journals.

Required Texts*:

Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir by Deborah A. Miranda
Expecting Something Else by A.M. O'Malley
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Trans: A Memoir by Juliette Jacques
(*This list is subject to change)

WR 461 BOOK EDITING

Instructor: O'Connor Rodriguez, Adam

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 SOFTWARE

Instructor: Dodd, Kelley

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 464 BUSINESS OF BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Watson, Kent

Comprehensive course in the business of book publishing. Topics covered include publications management, accounting, book production, distribution, and bookselling. Students learn how a variety of agents, including publishers, publishing services companies, distributors, wholesalers, bookstores, etc., are organized and function in the marketplace.

WR 466 DIGITAL SKILLS

Instructor: Berens, Kathi

A hands-on lab and discussion seminar about digital skills useful to people working in book publishing. Students code webpages in HTML and CSS, then use domain management software to upload these pages to the web. Students modify Wordpress themes and publish digital portfolios optimized to meet the user experience needs of target audiences. Basic search engine optimization, sentiment analysis, information architecture, UX and very rudimentary JavaScript fundamentals are explored. Digital literacy is taught as a cultural literacy.

WR 472 COPYEDITING

Instructor: Carver, Jessicah

Learn how to improve the clarity, coherency, consistency, and correctness of other people’s writing through application of grammatical and stylistic guidelines. Study grammar, usage, punctuation, and style. Narrow focus on editing at the line and substantive level, with little to no attention given to broad development of a manuscript. Prerequisite: WR 4/561: Book Editing.

WR 474 PUBLISHING STUDIO

Instructor: Gaterud, Abbey

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. May be taken multiple times for credit.

WR 475 PUBLISHING LAB

Instructor: Gaterud, Abbey

Graduate Writing Courses

WR 507 SEM: FICTION: CO-DEPENDENCIES: AFFECTED BODIES & THE LANGUAGES OF PERSONHOOD

Instructor: Lee, Janice

"How are the frames of reference and relationships between and of living being: plants, animal, (including human animals) activated, and how do these activations create new conditions for increased sensitivities among others(ness)? That is, how do bodies and worlds articulate each other, how does a human body allow an animal’s world to affect her, and in turn, how does a human’s world affect an animal’s body? Or, how do we learn to be affected? We will look at both critical and creative readings (in all genres) and explore how various systems of language, knowledge and sensing create relations between different bodies, especially in terms of the topics: the compromised body, inherited trauma and physical memory, animal/plant perspectives, influence and reciprocity, personhood, co-dependency, interspecies communication, uncertainty, and polyphony.

Required Texts:

What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? by Vinciane Despret
Tree Talks by Wendy Burk
The Book of Feral Flora by Amanda Ackerman
Humaminal by Bhanu Kapil
Remembering Animals by Brenda Iijima
The Overstory by Richard Powers "

WR 507 SEM: NONFICTION MEMOIR

Instructor: Hocking, Justin

As writers of memoir and personal essay, how might we open “windows” into history, literary/art criticism, poetics, visual art, metaphysics, science, critical theory, and other disciplines? And how might embracing the wider world in our personal writing paradoxically allow us to go deeper into our selves, to explore our own multi-layered identities? This hybrid seminar/workshop will itself focus on hybridity in the memoir form, with readings from a series of genre-fluid works. Along with writing exercises and craft discussions, students will be invited to workshop memoir excerpts, personal essays and/or hybrid work.

Required Texts*:

Mother Winter: A Memoir by Sophia Shalmiyev
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Trans: A memoir by Juliet Jacques
The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui
Unaccompanied: Poems by Javier Zamora
(*reading list subject to change)

WR 510 ADVANCED BOOK DESIGN

Instructor: Dodd, Kelley

This course is exactly what it sounds like: an advanced course in book design. Prerequisite: WR 4/571: Typography, Layout, and Production.

WR 510 BOOK ARCHEOLOGY

Instructor: Seluzicki, Charles

WR 510 EBOOK PRODUCTION

Instructor: Burke, Pariah

WR 510 TOP: 1ST YR PORTFOLIO WORKSHOP

Instructor: Read, Sarah

Begin to think through organizational and design issues and share ideas for your MTPW program graduation portfolio in a structured and supported environment. Develop a way of thinking about program course projects that will prepare you for the portfolio and graduation process. This section is for students who do NOT plan to graduate between spring quarter 2019-winter quarter 2020.

WR 510 TOP: 2ND YR PORTFOLIO WORKSHOP

Instructor: Read, Sarah

Make decisions about Portfolio organizational and design issues and share ideas for your MTPW program graduation portfolio in a structured and supported environment in preparation for graduation spring quarter 2019-winter quarter 2020.

WR 510 TOP: PORTLAND REVIEW MARKETING

Instructor: TBD

This series of courses is intended to provide graduate students with the editorial, publishing, and marketing skills necessary to run an international literary journal. By participating in Portland Review’s publication process and understanding the practices of a journal over sixty years old, students will gain practical experience in the field of literary publishing. This course is the third of three Portland Review classes, which combined with the editorial (fall) and publishing (winter) courses will collectively satisfy four units of graduate elective credit. Students are welcome to join the course series at any time.

WR 510 TOP: RESRCH MTHDS FOR TECH COMM

Instructor: Read, Sarah

WR 510 TOP: WEB TOOLS FOR TECH WRITERS

Instructor: Schnabel, Bryan

WR 511 INTERNSHIP

Instructor: Reese, Susan

WR 521 MFA CORE WORKSHOP (FICTION)

Instructor: Zumas, Leni

Experiments, investigations, fruitful mistakes.

WR 522 MFA CORE WORKSHOP (POETRY)

Instructor: Alexander, Will

The Spring MFA poetry workshop will be taught by Tin House Writer in Residence Will Alexander. Alexander is a poet, novelist, essayist, philosopher, aphorist, playwright, visual artist, and pianist. His books include Asia and Haiti, The Sri Lankan Loxodrome, Compression and Purity, Sunrise In Armageddon, Diary As Sin, Inside the Earthquake Palace, Towards The Primeval Lightning Field, and Mirach Speaks To His Grammatical Transparents. Alexander is a recipient of the Whiting Fellowship for Poetry, California Arts Council Fellowship, PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award, American Book Award, and Jackson Poetry Prize. He lives in Los Angeles.

WR 527 TECHNICAL EDITING

Instructor: Romaine, Garrett

WR 561 BOOK EDITING

Instructor: O'Connor Rodriguez, Adam

WR 562 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE

Instructor: Dodd, Kelley

WR 564 BUSINESS OF BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Watson, Kent

WR 566 DIGITAL SKILLS

Instructor: Berens, Kathi

WR 572 COPYEDITING

Instructor: Carver, Jessicah

WR 574 PUBLISHING STUDIO

Instructor: Gaterud, Abbey

WR 575 PUBLISHING LAB

Instructor: Gaterud, Abbey