Winter 2017 Courses

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

Undergraduate English Courses

ENG 205-002 SURVEY ENGLISH LIT II

Instructor: Tracy Dillon

FULFILLS LOWER DIVISION REQUIREMENT

From Beowulf to 1900: Eng 204, Beowulf to Milton; Eng 205, Enlightenment through Victorian period. This is the second course in a sequence of two: Eng 204 and Eng 205.

ENG 254-001 SURVEY OF AMER LIT II

Instructor: Sarah Ensor

FULFILLS LOWER DIVISION REQUIREMENT

In this course, we will read American Literature from the Civil War to the present with an emphasis on matters of temporality. As we study a young nation trying to make sense of what it means to have a (violent, fraught, and complex) history, we will confront the complicated relationship between tradition and custom, on the one hand, and ferment and innovation, on the other. The texts we read will engage these topics – and their related questions of race, gender, class, and nationalism – both thematically and formally; one of our main concerns will involve how these works play structurally with time in the way they unfold. Some of the questions that will concern us along the way include: How do forms of collective memory (and collective amnesia) help to constitute America – and Americanness – in these years? How do technological developments, the rise of industrialization, and shifting patterns of population affect how Americans experience and understand the passage of time? What does it mean when American writers look backward? And what emotions do they (and we) feel when – at various moments, from various junctures, and in various voices – they look ahead? How is community defined – and performed – by writers of this period? Relatedly, how are questions of national and literary tradition embroiled in questions of identity, (in)equality, and power? Who determines, in other words, which stories matter, and which stories are told? As we discuss such questions, we will also develop and practice the skills necessary for effective literary analysis.

ENG 300-001 WIC: INTRO TO ENGLISH MAJOR

Instructor: Alastair Hunt

FULFILLS GROUP A FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

The late Texan comedian Bill Hicks used to tell a joke about the time he was in a waffle house quietly reading a book, when a waitress asked him, “What you reading for?” Hicks responded, “Well I guess I read for a lot of reasons, but the main one is so I don’t end up being a waffle waitress.” This course is built on the assumption that the waffle waitress is asking a very good question, and it aims to help students come up with a better answer to the question than the one Hicks offers. The course introduces students to the fundamental knowledge and skill-set required of university students of literature: close reading, archival research, critical theories, writing interpretative essays. It will transform all those to take it from something rather ordinary—human beings—into something extraordinary: skillful readers of literary texts attuned to what they tell us about the world we live in and world we might yet live in.

Required Texts

Jonathan Culler. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. [ISBN 9780199691340]
M. H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 10th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2011. [ISBN 9781285465067]
Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness. London: Penguin Classics, 2007. [ISBN 9780141441672]

ENG 300-002 WIC: INTRO TO ENGLISH MAJOR

Instructor: Tom Fisher

FULFILLS GROUP A FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Focuses on methods of textual interpretation. This course provides students with the analytical and critical tools necessary for the successful study of English at the upper division level. Required for, but not restricted to, English majors. A prerequisite for 400-level English courses, English 300 is also strongly recommended as preparation for all upper-division English classes. Expected preparation: 8 lower-division credits in literature.

ENG 300-003 WIC: INTRO TO ENGLISH MAJOR

Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri

FULFILLS GROUP A FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

This course focuses on the building blocks of literary studies as a disciplinary and scholarly practice. As such, it is meant to prepare you to be an English major, but also to know how to read "texts" of all kinds outside the classroom from the perspective of a literary or cultural critic.

Required Texts:

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Nella Larsen, Passing (Norton Critical Edition)
Chris Baldick, The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms
Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction
David Macey, Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory (recommended)

ENG 301U-001 TOPICS: SHAKESPEAREAN ROMANCE

Instructor: Jonathan Walker

FULFILLS GROUP C ( PRE-1800 ) OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR INTERPRETING THE PAST CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

In this course we will read and discuss four Shakespearean plays: The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre. All four of these plays come late in Shakespeare’s career and are now usually called “romance” plays, which is a modern label for what early moderns usually called “tragicomedy.” For a long time, The Tempest was taken to be Shakespeare’s final play and was even likened to an autobiographical farewell to the theater. Both The Winter’s Tale and Cymbeline revisit earlier preoccupations in Shakespeare’s comedies, featuring disguise and mistaken identity, but they also incorporate dominant themes in some of his tragedies, such as extreme jealousy and fierce maliciousness. In addition, the action in The Winter’s Tale and Pericles takes place over a long period of time, which is highly unusual in early drama. Of these four plays, only Pericles appeared in print during Shakespeare’s lifetime.

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 “romances” or “tragicomedies,” while at the same time considering the possibility that such classifications are themselves forms of mistaken identity. We will examine how this hybrid literary form predisposes 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, 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 in-class time will involve discussing such questions in these four texts, along with other short readings. There will be very 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 304-001 CRITICAL THEORY OF CINEMA

Instructor: Wendy Collins

FULFILLS GROUP A UNDER 2010 CATALOG YEAR, OTHERWISE FULFILLS GROUP E

Outlines the central elements of cinema criticism, including interpretive theories and approaches. Begins with an outline of critical approaches, including critical history. Moves to contemporary criticism, including feminist, structuralist, sociological, and psychoanalytic analyses. Includes discussion of film as a cultural commodity.

ENG 305U-001 TOP IN FILM: IMAGINARIUM

Instructor: William Bohnaker

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

If, as Shakespeare suggested, we are such stuff as dreams are made on, movies are such dreams. In this course we will concern ourselves with films that brood on the peculiar nature irreal worlds–“imaginariums”—which dramatize the social structures, cultural presumptions, psychic patterns, and spiritual intuitions that are the warp and weft of our consciousness. We’ll expose ourselves to films fixated on an imaginarium, while we endeavor for an alertness to its effects to make some sense of the imaginary's role in “reality,” and what it means to be such stuff as dreams are made on. For our investigations, we’ll hope to get a little help from our friends in critical theory, film studies, and post-Jungian archetypal analysis. As important, we’ll bring our own imaginations.

ENG 305U-002 TOP IN FILM: MELODRAMA, RACE, AUTHENTICITY

Instructor: Joshua Epstein

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

This course will explore the tense and fertile relationship between American (mostly) film melodrama and national questions of race, nation, and authenticity. Though often denigrated as over-the-top “tear-jerkers” and “weepies,” melodramas end up pointing us—not always intentionally—to very complex questions about the role of emotion and sentiment in our explicit and implicit conversations about race and nation. As we will see, melodrama can be both deceiving as a way of understanding our past, and useful as a catalyst for social change. Why is it, we will ask, that melodrama—a genre associated with extremes of sentimentality, irrationality, excess, and unrealism—is the mode of choice for our national narratives about slavery, Reconstruction, “passing,” and race? How do film artists use, and also complicate, the traditions of melodrama in order to explore the social constructions of race? How can melodramas call on tropes of racial, familial, or national "authenticity" (authentically American, authentically black, etc.) when the form itself is so outlandish? If melodrama is saturated with anxieties about sex, gender, modernity, and consumer culture, what light and heat do these questions shed on the complexities of race in America? And how do filmmakers, tempted but frustrated by melodrama, work against the grain of melodramatic tropes and clichés?

ENG 305U satisfies the Popular Culture cluster requirement, one purpose of which is "to gain control of, rather than being controlled by, the texts of popular culture." This course aims to help students develop critical responses to forms of expression that manipulate our raw emotional reflexes.

The film list is still in flux but is likely to include some (perhaps not all) of the following:

D.W. Griffith, The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Oscar Micheaux, Within Our Gates
Victor Fleming, Gone with the Wind
Douglas Sirk, The Imitation of Life
R.W. Fassbinder, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing
Todd Haynes, Far from Heaven
Nate Parker, The Birth of a Nation (2016)

ENG 305U-003 TOP IN FLM: SHAKESPEARE IN FILM

Instructor: Jessie Herrada Nance

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be performed, though most students first encounter them (often unwillingly) in dusty high school textbooks. Some students emerge from this initial experience with an appreciation of Shakespeare’s language and storytelling, but many heave a sigh when they are forced by circumstance to pick up the dusty old book again. The objective of this course will appeal to both groups. Through a study of film, we will develop our understanding of Shakespeare’s plays as visual and auditory texts. Together, we will analyze how elements of film, such as props, stage directions, costumes, and setting, bring Shakespeare into the modern, global age. As we develop a literacy in the medium of film, we will approach the movies we study as legitimate texts in themselves, not just as versions of Shakespeare’s plays. Ultimately, we will learn how Shakespeare’s original themes resonate with audiences today and we will examine how the plays and movies exist between low and high, popular and elite forms of artistic expression and entertainment.

Plays and movies we will study include Macbeth, Throne of Blood, and Scotland, PA; Taming of the Shrew, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Zeffirelli’s Taming of the Shrew; The Tempest, Prospero’s Books, Taymor’s The Tempest, and Forbidden Planet; Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Shakespeare in Love, and Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet.

ENG 305U-004 TOP IN FLM: SPECULATIVE CINEMA

Instructor: Daniel DeWeese

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

“Speculative cinema,” is a term used much less often than its literary analogue, “speculative fiction.” Because film is a medium in which the means of production are foregrounded as part of the product—audiences often conflate how a film was made with what the film “is”—it’s possible that all cinema contains a speculative element. What we will explore in this course, then, are the critical ways in which speculative cinema differs in definition and content from speculative fiction. Centered on and obsessed with looks and “the look,” film is particularly adept at exploring the power dynamics and manipulations latent in visions and images. (Manipulated images are, after all, what films are.) When these images transport us to unknowable points in time and space, offer us the power of looking at an unknown “Other,” or depict the invisible in physical form, cinema speculates not only on other worlds and selves, but on its own possibilities—and problems—as a medium. In other words: we want to look at the alien future because it is difficult to see ourselves, now. Films studied will include Metropolis, Island of Lost Souls, Forbidden Planet, Fahrenheit 451, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, Walkabout, Brazil, Blade Runner, Videodrome, and others. In addition to readings of criticism and short fiction, students will be asked to purchase the novels The Invention of Morel by Casares and Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury.

ENG 306U-001 TOP: J.R.R. TOLKIEN

Instructor: Katya Amato

FULFILLS GROUP E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

J. R. R. Tolkien has been called "the author of the century" because he is so greatly loved, has been compared to Joyce as a twentieth-century modernist (not always to J. R. R.'s detriment), and has been seen by many as the great innovator in Beowulf studies as well as in fantasy fiction. He is a major writer belatedly entering the canon and one who seeks to give his readers "a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief." We will approach his work as literature, not as film, in his words "there and back again," with emphasis on the interlace of linguistics, medieval literature, history, and mythology.

In an informal 1958 letter, Tolkien described himself: "I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much. I love Wales (what is left of it, when mines, and the even more ghastly sea-side resorts, have done their worst), and especially the Welsh language." In this letter, J. R. R. puts language last, but throughout his life it was central to all his undertakings, evident in his great affection for Old and Middle English, Medieval Welsh, Old Norse, and Finnish linguistics and mythology.

The required texts for the course are all by Tolkien:

The Hobbit 054792822X (Houghton Mifflin, 2012)
The Lord of the Rings 0618640150 (Mariner 50th Anniversary edition, 2005)
The Tolkien Reader 0345345061 (Del Ray 1986)--We will read "On Fairy-Stories," "Leaf by Niggle," and "Farmer Giles of Ham"

If you own older editions--sweet dog-eared editions treasured by you or by others for years--you may use them instead of the more recent editions listed here.

Requirements of the course include regular attendance, a liking for group work, quizzes, and the usual exams.

ENG 306U-002 TOP: VIDEO GAMES AND E-LIT

Instructor: Kathleen Berens

FULFILLS GROUP E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

Overview of video games and digital literature using theoretical readings, playthroughs, and hands-on play. Explores the mechanics and aesthetics of digital games and literature. Examines the cultural impact of computational games and literature as new contexts for reading, social interaction, and popular entertainment.

ENG 307U-001 SCIENCE FICTION

Instructor: William Knight

FULFILLS GROUP E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

This course will survey the genre of science fiction through one of its most powerful and noteworthy modes: contact. We’ll look at some of the most important SF novels of (first) contact, thinking carefully about the variety of crises that these stories link to moments of encounter between mutually foreign beings, cultures, and technologies. Contact often means real crisis in science fiction, a powerful and unrepeatable moment of engagement that throws everything into a new light. It divides the present from the past, periodizing the emergence of a new moment that can never return to identity with the old. Contact is a paradigmatic narrative event, an eruption or arrival that creates crisis out of what will have been a mundane normalcy, revolution from what becomes tagged as an ancien regime.

Science fiction allows us imaginative access to the most unexpected and transformative experiences of contact— as well as to the various fantasies of autonomy, power, and domination that can capture moments of contact in their own narratives; we will wonder, among other things, why narratives of contact tend in their way towards masculine (as well as Eurocentric or American) norms and perspectives. In so many ways first contact in SF allows—or requires—us to address the role and question of the other: the “alien,” the stranger, the outsider who arrives at our door. We’ll uncover and examine the crises that accompany contact in these novels. And we’ll reach toward our own theories about the function and significance of contact in science fiction narratives. Above all, we’ll do this by reading some really exemplary SF novels and looking (in presentations) outward to other works (films, tv, other novels) that tell further tales of SF contact, other encounters with the unanticipated and unknown that threaten to turn everything upside down or inside out.

Assignments: group presentations, two papers, occasional short writing

Texts:

Lem. Solaris. ISBN: 978-0156027601
Clarke. Rendezvous With Rama. ISBN: 978-0553287899
Sagan. Contact. ISBN: 978-0671004101
Leguin. The Left Hand of Darkness. ISBN: 978-0441007318
Watts. Blindsight. ISBN: 978-0765319647
Okorafor. Lagoon. ISBN: 978-1481440882

ENG 311-001 TRAGEDY

Instructor: John Smyth

FULFILLS GROUP C ( PRE-1800 ) OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Main Texts:

Aristophanes, The Frogs
Euripides, The Bacchae
Plato, Symposium
Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, Othello, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Troilus & Cressida
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Antonin Artaud, The Theater of Cruelty

In Britain, Cambridge BA English students used to be required to take an exam titled “Tragedy,” which commonly asked the question: “It has been said that tragedy is no longer possible in the modern world. Discuss.”

The Romantics claimed that Shakespeare was in a certain sense the first thoroughly modern writer, even the first “novelist,” because he undermined the classical opposition between tragedy and comedy.

Indeed from their mutual origin in the Dionysiac festivals and rituals of Greece, Western tragedy and comedy have always been more or less intimately linked.

We will thus begin with Aristophanes’ comedy about the best tragedy, the Frogs, and Plato’s Symposium, in which Socrates argues for the basic unity of comedy and tragedy - though his argument is lost on Aristophanes and Agathon, the comic and the tragic poets, because they have passed out drinking. We will then examine the relation between comedy and tragedy in Shakespeare.

Finally we will read Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, as a novelistic example of “tragedy” in the 19th century, and discuss Artaud’s radical proposals in the 20th century for the revival of a “theater of cruelty."

ENG 319U-001 NORTHERN EUROPEAN MYTHOLOGY

Instructor: Katya Amato

FULFILLS GROUP E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR INTERPRETING THE PAST CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

Come to Valhalla, the Spring of Mimir, the Lands of the Giants and of the Dark and Light Elves, and then travel south to the Celtic Otherworlds of Wales and Ireland before embarking on a mythic journey across America. We will immerse ourselves in Norse and Celtic mythologies collected and redacted in medieval times and then see the myths at play in a contemporary text by Neil Gaiman.

The texts below are all required; please make sure you're using the translations listed. If you have an older edition of the same translation, it will probably do.

Jesse L. Byock, translator, The Saga of the Volsungs (Penguin, 2013)
Anthony Faulkes, tr., Edda by Snorri Sturluson (Everyman, 1995)
Carolyne Larrington, tr., The Poetic Edda (Oxford, 2nd ed., 2014)
Thomas Kinsella, tr., The Táin (Oxford, 2002)
Jeffrey Gantz, tr., Early Irish Myths and Sagas (Penguin, 1982)
Patrick K. Ford, tr., The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales (UC Press, 2nd ed., 2008)
Neil Gaiman, American Gods (William Morrow, 2013)--This is the author's preferred edition, but you can use an older edition if you like

Requirements: The usual exams, a short paper, and regular attendance. If you have time over the holidays, start reading Gaiman's novel, which is the last text we'll be reading in the term and does not require a guide as the medieval texts do.

ENG 321-001 ENGLISH NOVEL II

Instructor: Lorraine Mercer

FULFILLS GROUP C OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

“It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.” ― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

This course examines a selection of English novels from the 19th to the 21st century. Goals are to become highly committed scholars of the English Novel. Our methods will be based in research, reading, discussion and discovery. To this end we will read mainly novels, but possibly non-fiction, poetry, view films and artworks and whatever else it takes!

Texts

Treasure Island, R.L. Stevenson 1883
Wuthering Heights, E. Bronte, 1847, plus supplemental material from Norton Critical Edition
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, 1925
A Room With a View, E.M. Forster, 1908
The Passion, Jeanette Winterson, 1987

And supplemental reading material as assigned

Please note that this is a hybrid course that meets two days on campus and has an online component on Canvas.

ENG 332U-001 HST CINEMA & NARRATIVE MEDIA I

Instructor: TBD

FULFILLS GROUP E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS AND POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON MAJORS

Surveys the history of cinema and narrative media from the late nineteenth-century moving image through the Second World War.

ENG 335U-001 TOP: CINEMA, LIT, MUSIC

Instructor: John Smyth

FULFILLS GROUP E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

Photographed Fantasy and Real Ways of Seeing:

Primary materials:

Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov.
Lolita. Director: Stanley Kubrick. Script: Vladimir Nabokov and Stanley Kubrick.
Lolita. Director: Adrian Lyne. Script: Stephen Schiff.
The Birds. Daphne du Maurier
The Birds. Director: Alfred Hitchcock.
The Draughtsman’s Contract. Director and writer: Peter Greenaway. Music: Michael Nyman.
Prospero’s Books. Director: Peter Greenaway. Script: Shakespeare.
The Cook, The Thief, The Wife, and Her Lover. Director and writer: Peter Greenaway.
The Sacrifice. Director and writer: Andrei Tarkovsky.
Beauty and the Beast. Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont
Beauty and the Beast. Director and Writer: Jean Cocteau. Starring Josette Day and Jean Marais
Beauty and the Beast: Scenario and Dialogue. Jean Cocteau
Beauty and the Beast. Composer: Philip Glass
The Rise and Fall of Barry Lyndon. Director: Stanley Kubrick.
Dangerous Liaisons. Choderlos de Laclos
Dangerous Liaisons. Director: Stephen Frears. Script: Christopher Hampton and Choderlos de Laclos.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare.
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy. Directed and written by Woody Allen.

ENG 352U-001 AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIT

Instructor: Maude Hines

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR AMERICAN IDENTITIES CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

This course is an introduction to African American literature from the mid-nineteenth century to the beginnings of the “Black Arts” movement. It is the second in a three-part survey of African American literature. In addition to short stories, poetry, and novels, we will look at essays, journals, autobiographies, audio-recordings, fine art, photography, and performance. Students will have an active role in the class: after the first week, the classes will rely heavily on student presentations; as often as possible, these will generate class conversations.

ENG 367U-001 TOP: AMERICAN GOTHIC LIT

Instructor: Hildy Miller

FULFILLS GROUP C OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS AND POP CULTURE OR AMERICAN IDENTITIES CLUSTERS FOR NON MAJORS

Gothic literature is positioned right on the boundaries between reason and madness, mind and spirit, self and Other, natural and supernatural. Always, it reflects what haunts us in some way—and what haunts American culture. In this course we will read as widely as we can through two centuries of Gothic novels, short stories, and poetry and we’ll watch several films along the way in an effort to define for ourselves the components of the American Gothic tradition. We’ll consider the conventions, theories, and techniques of this genre and the fears and anxieties about race, gender, sexuality, urban and rural spaces, the unconscious and dreams, and death itself from both psychoanalytic and cultural perspectives.

ENG 372U-001 TOP: BODIES, POWER, & PLACES

Instructor: Sara McWilliams

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR GENDER AND SEXUALITIES STUDIES CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

Study of representations of gender and sexuality in literature and related cultural forms. May be repeated for credit with different topics. This is the same course as WS 372 and may be taken only once for credit.

ENG 373U-001 TOP: GENDER & CULTURE IN FILM

Instructor: Diana Abu-Jaber

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR POP CULTURE CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

Study of representations of racial and ethnic identity in literature and related cultural forms. May be repeated for credit with different topics.

ENG 387U-001 WOMEN'S LITERATURE

Instructor: Maria Depriest

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS OR GENDER AND SEXUALITIES STUDIES CLUSTER FOR NON-MAJORS

“The beauty of the world, which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” --Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

ENG 387U engages us in what poet Joy Harjo might call “an epic search for Grace.” In that search, all of the writers on our list grapple with the existence of the past in the present, which is to say, with histories of gender/race oppression. The prose, poetry, and drama embrace beauty and politics, paradox and chance, anguish and laughter, tic-toc time and time immemorial. For women, that struggle leads us to the question of how each writer’s refiguring of the past seems to result in new ways of seeing, new ways of knowing, and new connections between form and content.

We will start with Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One's Own and end with Suheir Hammad's Zaatar Diva.

ENG 399-002 SPST: COMICS HISTORY

Instructor: Diana Schutz

FULFILLS GROUP E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

ENG 422-001 African Fiction

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu

FULFILLS GROUP A, B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

“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.”

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

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 an excellent opportunity to go beyond the stereotypes and stale images often prevalent in writings about Africa. This course will introduce students to important writers from various countries, including Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Senegal, and South Africa. The four novels for the course will be complemented by three films that explore society and politics, colonialism and cultural imperialism, conflict and resistance. Students will also explore important social and theoretical questions: 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.

Novels:

Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
July’s People by Nadine Gordimer
GraceLand by Chris Abani

Films:

Xala by Ousmane Sembene
Quartier Mozart by Jean-Pierre Bekolo
Timbuktu by Abderrahmane Sissako

We will also read a few poems and a selection of criticism and theory.

ENG 425-001 PRACTICAL GRAMMAR

Instructor: Greg Jacob

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Designed to enable students to understand, and therefore consciously to make effective, the structures of their written sentences. The course examines grammatical categories, structures, and terminology; relationships between grammatical structures and punctuation; and prescriptive grammars for written texts. Expected preparation: 4 upper division Literature/Writing credits.

ENG 440-001 MILTON AMONG WOMEN

Instructor: Eliza (Amy) Greenstadt

FULFILLS GROUP C ( PRE-1800 ) OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

This course examines Milton's writings from his early poetry through his polemical works to his masterpiece Paradise Lost. To situate Milton's work within its historical and cultural moment, alongside his writings we will read the work of female writers who explore similar topics: religious faith vs. scientific knowledge, sexuality, consent, colonization, education, political and social equality, and the natural world. These writers will include Aemilia Lanyer, Bathsua Makin, Lucy Hutchinson, and Margaret Cavendish.

ENG 443-001 BRIT WOMEN WRITERS

Instructor: Lorraine Mercer

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

“Be good sweet maid and let who will be clever.” Charles Kingsley

This is a course that focuses primarily on literature written by British women in the 19th century. The development of the narrative voice in 19th century literature is one reason this is such a rich area of study. Alongside the novels we will read some of the major poets to provide context for the course and to examine how narrative voice evolves in the form of the poem. Like the nineteenth century novel, poetry of the period often centers on the individual and the social situation.

Class Goals: In this course, our learning methods will be based in research, reading, discussion and discovery. Our goals are to become scholars of 19th century British Women Writers. To this end we will do the following:

Practice interpretations of literary texts based on close reading.
Discuss the relationship between literature and cultural context of the times.
Participate in scholarly research in academic books and articles.

Texts:

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Penguin Edition
George Eliot, Middlemarch, Norton Critical Edition
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, St. Martin’s Critical Edition
Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford, Dover Thrift Edition
Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems, Dover
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Selected Poems
Supplemental material including poems, essays, etc.

ENG 447-001 MJR FORCES: IRISH LITERATURE

Instructor: Susan Reese

FULFILLS GROUP B OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Texts:

Contemporary Irish Poetry, edited by Anthony Bradley
The Dubliners, James Joyce
Amongst Women, John McGahern
Translations, Brian Friel
The Poor Mouth, Flann O'Brien
Stones in His PocketsI, Marie Jones
Bog of Cats, Marina Carr
A Pagan Place, Edna O'Brien

The works by Friel, Jones and Carr are individual plays, so not a lot of reading. Joyce's book is a collection of short stories, Edna O'Brien and Flann O'Brien's works are also short, and the novel, The Dark, is also not that long. So it's not as much reading as it looks! We'll share a journey from the 18th century to the present via film, poetry, plays, a novel and prose, the above supplemented by the Professor's insertions of Yeats, Swift, Beckett and others. And it's going to be a lot of fun! Please join me.

ENG 448-001 MJR FIGURES: FAULKNER/MORRISON

Instructor: Maude Hines

FULFILLS GROUP C OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

ENG 458-001 ADV TOP: ROMANTICISM & DEMOCRACY

Instructor: Alastair Hunt

FULFILLS GROUP C (PRE-1800) OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

The Romantics were among the most powerful advocates of a political community in which the people (demos) rule themselves, and made democracy central to their theory and practice of literature. However, they were also among its most infamous traitors. This course will consider the dispute about democracy as a constitutive fault-line of Romanticism—and by implication all modern literature. Overall, the goal of this course is in part to appreciate the difficult birth of democracy. It is also to ask, what Romanticism’s struggle with the principle of “rule of the people” might teach us about still possible futures of democracy in the twenty-first century. Primary readings will include texts by writers such as Thomas Paine, Edmund Burke, William Wordsworth, William Hazlitt, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Percy Shelley. We will also draw upon more recent and contemporary writings on democracy by Jacques Derrida, Wendy Brown, Carl Schmidt, Jacques Ranciere, Tom Keenan, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, David Graeber, Hannah Arendt, and Ernesto Laclau.

Book List

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Oxford World Classics, 1999) ISBN 0199539022
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (Penguin, 1984) NO ISBN
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads: 1798 and 1802 (Oxford World Classics, 2013) ISBN 0199601968
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Oxford World Classics, 2009) ISBN 019955546X
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Declaration (Argo-Navis, 2012) ISBN 0786752904
William Wordsworth, The Prelude: A Parallel Text (Rev. edition. Penguin Classics, 1996) ISBN 0140433694
Percy Shelley, The Major Works (Oxford Classics, 2009) ISBN 0199538972
John Keats, Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats (Modern Library Classics, 2001) ISBN 0375756698

ENG 461-001 ADV TOP IN AMER LIT TO 1900: STAYING SINGLE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Instructor: Sarah Ensor

FULFILLS GROUP C OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

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

ENG 478-001 AMERICAN POETRY

Instructor: Joel Bettridge

FULFILLS GROUP C OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

This course will focus on American Poetry from the second decade of the twentieth century through the 1980s. We will begin with Modernist writers like Wallace Stevens, Sterling Brown, Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein. We will then turn to the diverse group of poets who follow Modernism, from writers like Louis Zukofsky and Elizabeth Bishop, to the New American Poets (such as Allen Ginsberg and Frank O’Hara). Next, we will examine the various writers who take part in the narrative, free verse poetry that dominates American letters in the postwar period, and we will pay particular attention to the “confessional” and political writing of poets such as Robert Lowell and Adrienne Rich. We will take time as well to explore the poetry of the Black Arts movement and end by reading several of the poets now associated loosely with Language poetry, like Lyn Hejinian, Charles Bernstein, and Rae Armantrout, who celebrate textual disruption, difficulty and readers’ participation in the making of a poem’s meaning.

ENG 494-001 TOP: ZIZEK AND CINEMA

Instructor: Michael Clark

FULFILLS GROUP A FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

A course in critical theories and techniques, to complement offerings in literary history and textual analysis. This course will focus on the critical or methodological topic selected by the instructor. Recommended for advanced students in literature and theory. Recommended: 12 credits in literature. Course may be repeated for credit with different topics. Expected preparation: Eng 492 and 4 additional upper division Literature credits.

ENG 494-002 ADV TOP: THEORIES OF FAILURE

Instructor: Joshua Epstein

FULFILLS GROUP A FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

In The Queer Art of Failure, Jack Halberstam speaks up for the generative possibilities of "failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, and not knowing." These political, aesthetic, and interpretive failures allow, Halberstam argues, for "more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world" than those practices we qualify as "success." This class will examine explorations of failure, in dialogue with various modes of queer, materialist, postcolonial, and affect theory, thinking about a range of gaps and failures that question our ideals of productivity and value, health and wholeness, beauty and truth.

Short list of literary texts:

Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle (Dover; 978-0486275529)
Nella Larsen, Quicksand (Penguin; 978-0141181271)
Samuel Beckett, Murphy (978-0802144454)
Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight (Norton; 978-0393303940)
Claudia Rankine, Don't Let Me be Lonely: An American Lyric
Theorists studied may include: Jack Halberstam, Theodor Adorno, Lee Edelman, Sianne Ngai, Lauren Berlant, and/or Slavoj Žižek.

Graduate English Courses

ENG 507-001 SEM: FUGITIVE AESTHETICS

Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri

FULFILLS GRADUATE SEMINAR AND THEORY REQUIREMENTS FOR MA IN ENGLISH STUDENTS

This is a graduate seminar on black radicalism as theory, method, and practice. The course will focus on major currents in African American cultural studies and their implications for the study of literature. As such, we will combine an intensive focus on cultural theory in and around black studies with a broad selection of primary texts. A particular focal point will be how theories of black performance can animate an engagement with the tradition of black autobiography and its offshoots. In addition to the likely required texts below, the course will engage with the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, Angela Davis, Stuart Hall, Cedric Robinson, Robin Kelley, Deborah McDowell, Fred Moten, Thomas Holt, and many others.

Required texts:

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America
Kenneth Warren, What Was African American Literature?
Claudia Rankine, Citizen
Paul Beatty, White Boy Shuffle

ENG 518-001 COLLEGE COMP TEACHING

Instructor: Susan Kirtley

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 519-001 ADV COLLEGE COMP TEACHING

Instructor: Susan Kirtley

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 526-001 ADV TOPICS IN MEDIEVAL LIT: MEDIEVAL LITERATURE AND CRITICAL THEORY

Instructor: Christine Rose

This class will focus on the close reading of some important medieval texts, while also considering how critical theory can be used to open up the texts to nuanced interpretations. Medieval texts (and their scholars) have sometimes seemed to resist the indeterminacy and uncertainty championed by modern critical theory since post-structuralism, but indeed such critical tools are now established practice in considering the interpretation of Old and Middle English texts. Theoretically informed questions from the methodologies of feminism, queer theory, ecocriticism, affect theory, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, deconstruction, new historicism, or postcolonial studies, for example, as well as the “old” historicism, formalism and “source-studies,”— or hybrid forms of these models— can fruitfully interrogate medieval texts and surprise them into yielding readings rich in cultural meanings. We will not, however, forget to read actual medieval literary theory (Dante’s Vita Nuova, St. Augustine, etc.) or fail to give historical and cultural context, philological and textual/manuscript studies their due in the task of how to decode medieval literary artifacts. Students will read both primary texts and theory, and class discussions/presentations/papers will be on close readings and on explaining how theoretical perspectives can be useful interpretive tools. Some familiarity with theory and Middle English an asset; texts are well-glossed or translated.

***This course fulfills the graduate requirement for THEORY and PRE-1800 coursework.

Primary texts: tentative list

Beowulf, Howell D. Chickering Jr. (trans. and ed.) (Anchor, Doubleday) isbn= 0-38506213-3
Pearl, Boroff, Marie (trans.) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, Pearl: Verse Translations (Norton) ISBN
0393976580
Thos. Hoccleve, “Complaint”—any edition
The Wife of Bath {Chaucer}, ed. Beidler, Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism (Palgrave) 0333657063
Julian of Norwich, Showings, ed. Baker (Norton) 0393979156
Dante, La Vita Nuova (Rossetti translation; NYRB Classics) isbn= 1590170113
Assembly of Ladies ed. Boffey (Oxford) 0199263981

ENG 531-001 TOP: THE FIELD OF ENGLISH

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu

Examines various theories, history, scholarship, pedagogy, and professional development in the field of English Studies. Topics always differ each term. May be repeated for up to six credits.

ENG 531-002 TOP: COLLOQUIUM

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu

Examines various theories, history, scholarship, pedagogy, and professional development in the field of English Studies. Topics always differ each term. May be repeated for up to six credits.

ENG 543-001 BRIT WOMEN WRITERS

Instructor: Lorraine Mercer

“Be good sweet maid and let who will be clever.” Charles Kingsley

Practice interpretations of literary texts based on close reading.
Discuss the relationship between literature and cultural context of the times.
Participate in scholarly research in academic books and articles.

Texts:

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Penguin Edition
George Eliot, Middlemarch, Norton Critical Edition
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, St. Martin’s Critical Edition
Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford, Dover Thrift Edition
Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems, Dover
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Selected Poems
Supplemental material including poems, essays, etc.

ENG 547-001 MJR FORCES: LIT AND PHILOSOPHY

Instructor: John Smyth

Key Figures: Aristophanes, Plato, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Strauss, Derrida, De Man, Badiou.

This graduate seminar will bring together philosophers from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries with classical texts that bear directly on the relations between thought, poetry, and politics. In this way, we will try to re-imagine and re-think the relation between “philosophy” and “literature” (including “science” and “art”) in the West, a problem that arguably has radical implications not only for the academic divisions between university departments, but also for perennial quarrels within them.

It is difficult to imagine, for example, a modern class in Political Science making “poetry” into a foundational issue for the theory of justice. But Socrates famously does just that in Plato’s Republic – and certain modern philosophers like Jacques Derrida, Leo Strauss, and Alain Badiou applaud him, in contrasting and sometimes conflicting ways, for grasping key issues that many other political thinkers ignore or repress.

Central topics will include epistemology, political theory, gender, the sacred, and aesthetics (especially the relation between comedy and tragedy). Our philosophers are often better or worse “poets” too – as when Badiou replaces Plato’s brother by his sister in his rewriting of the Republic, for example, or Nietzsche introduces Beyond Good and Evil with the line “Supposing Truth were a woman – what then?”

Main Texts:

Aristophanes, Clouds, Frogs, Birds, Assembly of Women
Plato, Symposium; Republic
Friedrich Schlegel, Dialogue on Poetry & Aphorisms (selections)
Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, Either/Or (selections)
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil and The Will to Power (selections)
Leo Strauss, “Plato’s Republic” in The City and Man, Socrates and Aristophanes
Jacques Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy” in Dissemination, Spurs
Paul de Man, Aesthetic Ideology (selections)
Alain Badiou, Plato’s Republic
René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (selections)

ENG 561-001 ADV TOP IN AMER LIT TO 1900: STAYING SINGLE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Instructor: Sarah Ensor

ENG 578-001 AMERICAN POETRY

Instructor: Joel Bettridge

ENG 594-001 TOP IN CRIT THRY: ZIZEK & CINE

Instructor: Michael Clark

Undergraduate Writing Courses

WR 115 INTRO TO COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Kallista Kidd

A writing course for first-year students to help prepare them for Freshman Inquiry or Wr 121. Introduces college-level writing and reading, along with general study skills. Provides practice at formal and informal writing, responding to a variety of readings, learning textual conventions, and building confidence.

WR 121 COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Samuel Moyle

This course is designed to help students develop strategies to ease the process of college composition. Classes include technological training, attention to format, a focus on the revision of writing, and numerous in-class activities and workshops. Students will leave with a superior confidence in their ability to write academically and we might even have fun along the way.

WR 121 COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Ken Blom

This course supports and encourages students to become better college essay writers. Students are given the opportunity to explore their own writing and to engage with the writing of essayists from various cultural backgrounds. We will cover all aspects of the writing process, including workshops and peer review, with a special focus on theories and conventions of academic writing.

WR 199-001 SPST: WRITING FOR COLLEGE

Instructor: Daniel DeWeese

WR 200-001 WRITING ABOUT LIT

Instructor: TBD

Introduction to various approaches for writing about literature. Focuses on ways of responding to literature, ways of explicating literature, ways of analyzing literature through writing, and ways of integrating formal research into a written analysis of literature. Special attention will be paid to the writing process, including multiple drafting and revision.

WR 212-002 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Corey Millard

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 212-003 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Leanna Moxley

WR 213-001 INTRO POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Alice Hall

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 214-001 INTRO NONFICTION WRITING

Instructor: Jennifer Woodman

An introduction to writing with the major forms and techniques of literary nonfiction. Beginning with exercises in foundational skills such as description, reportage and the crafting of personal narrative, students will write and respond to short works of creative nonfiction. May be repeated for a total of 8 credits. Expected preparation: Freshman Inquiry or equivalent.

WR 222 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

Instructor: TBD

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 227-002 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG

Instructor: Mary Sylwester

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. The course emphasizes precise use of language to communicate complex technical and procedural information safely, legally and ethically. Recommended: Wr 121 or Freshman Inquiry.

Required Text:

Nell Johnson and Mary Sylwester, Technical Writing, Simplified. 3rd edition. ISBN 978-0-04-535483-2. Available from the PSU Bookstore, printed on demand.

WR 299-001 SPST: GRAMMAR REFRESHER

Instructor: TBD

WR 312-001 INTERMED FICTION WR

Instructor: Gabriel Urza

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

The primary goal of this class will be to produce two substantial works of original fiction, which will be critiqued in a workshop setting. In addition, we will read and analyze a selection of published short stories demonstrating specific craft considerations, engage in directed experiential research in furtherance of our stories, and revise a completed draft of one story. Students completing this class will have a thorough understanding of craft terminology, have read and discussed a diverse body of short fiction, and will be proficient in revising and improving their own writing as well as critiquing their classmates’ stories.

WR 313-001 INTERMEDIATE POETRY WRITING

Instructor: TBD

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

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 323-012 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Jessie Herrada Nance

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

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 323 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Maggie O'Leary

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

The theme of this section of WR 323 is narratives that portray justice and the pursuit of justice from distinct perspectives. This course will approach reading about others’ lives and difficulties with attention to form and perspective, and also critically examine how malleable past events become when we incorporate them into our own stories. The frame of this course will be on non-fiction tales of global transition— transitions into new countries, new regimes, new lives, new realities, and new truths.

The purpose of WR 323 is to further develop your voice as an academic writer. We will explore writing as a mode of thinking that invites discovery, as well as a means of communication. This is part of a longer process that will unfold in a variety of ways during your studies at Portland State. As you research the elements of the academic essay and of narrative non-fiction, you will develop your ability to think critically, to engage in a meaningful way with other authors’ texts, to express and justify your own insights, interpretations and arguments. Students will enhance their critical thinking abilities by reading and writing challenging material, refining their rhetorical strategies, practicing writing processes with special attention to revision and style, and by writing and reading in a variety of genres. Work for this course includes formal and informal writing, sharing writing with other students, engaging in class discussion both in person and through our class discussion board, and crafting two longer writing assignments throughout the term.

WR 327-003 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: Maralee Sautter

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Strategies for presenting technical information from the technician, management, and lay person’s perspectives; rhetorical theory and techniques for adapting technical prose to non-technical audiences; and techniques for emphasizing and de-emphasizing information.

WR 327-001 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: Jeffrey Gunderson

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

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 333-001 ADVANCED COMPOSITION

Instructor: Susan Reese

This course is designed to nurture and challenge the writer you already are, providing inspiration and the nudge to push boundaries and hone existing technical skills. We will strive for a balance between discussing texts, writing and workshops. Please join me!

Texts:

Six Kinds of Sky by Luis Alberto Urrea
Paris Spleen by Charles Baudelaire
In Search of Duende by Federico Garcia Lorca

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

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

WR 394-001 WRITING CAREERS FOR ENG MAJORS

Instructor: Hildy Miller

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

This course is for upper division English majors who want to figure out how to use their English major to shape a viable career, particularly a non-teaching one. Some 50% of English majors nation-wide choose careers in business, non-profits, publishing companies, government, and the like; some go into business for themselves as writing consultants or freelance writers. But how do you parlay an English degree into such a job? This course will give you the research tools you need to identify career paths and practice in the kinds of writing you are likely to do on the job, including public relations writing, business writing, and more. In addition, it will feature speakers, former English majors, who will share their strategies and career paths, and a speaker from the PSU Career Center who can suggest the scope of possibilities and tactics to use. If all goes as planned, everyone should leave with a firmer sense of an individualized career path and what writing beyond the academy is like.

WR 398-001 WRITING COMICS

Instructor: TBD

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

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 407-001 SEM: ADV FICTION SEMINAR: SENTIMENT AND SENTIMENTALITY

Instructor: Leni Zumas

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

“Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty,” said James Baldwin. The problem of “excessive and spurious emotion” is familiar to most writers: we don’t want to be accused of creating something maudlin, tear-jerky, clichéd, or manipulative, yet we may be so anxious to eschew sentimentality that we end up avoiding emotion altogether. How, then, can we move our readers? How can we probe and rouse human feeling? In this seminar we’ll discuss a range of texts that illuminate the border between sentiment and sentimentality, and we will aim to understand “the sentimental” in its historical and political contexts. Assignments will include weekly reading notes, brief writing exercises, and a final project. Writers of all genres are welcome, and we’ll be reading poetry and nonfiction as well as fiction.

Required Texts:

Gwenaëlle Aubry, No One. Trans. by Trista Selous. ISBN 978-1935639220
Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone. ISBN 978-0671021009
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye. ISBN 978-0307278449
Eva Sjödin, Inner China. Trans. by Jennifer Hayashida. ISBN 978-0972333177
Justin Torres, We the Animals. ISBN 978-0547844190
Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds. ISBN 978-1556594953

WR 407-002 SEM: ADV POETRY

Instructor: John Beer

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

This course will be an intensive study in the work of Amiri Baraka, the poet, playwright, essayist, and political activist born LeRoi Jones in 1934. In a fifty-year journey that took him from downtown New York bohemian to black nationalist to revolutionary socialist, Baraka remained committed to the centrality of political engagement in his writing, as well as to a deep concern with musicality in language. As we trace the major books in his dauntingly productive body of work, we will also consider the model of an artistic life offered by the course of Baraka’s work and writing. Our reading of his poetry, plays, and prose will be supplemented by both critical articles and the work of poets who influenced or who were influenced by Baraka. Course assignments will include both critical and creative exercises.

Required texts (all by Amiri Baraka):

SOS: Poems 1961-2013
Dutchman and The Slave: Two Plays
Blues People
Tales of the Out & Gone

WR 410-001 TOP: RSRCHNG BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Per Henningsgaard

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

The first 2 weeks of this 4-credit course are designed to prepare students in the MA/MS in Writing with a specialization in Book Publishing to complete the final paper that is required for graduation. Anyone is welcome to attend these first 2 weeks, even without registering for the course. Of course, if you attend the first 2 weeks without registering, you will not be receiving any credit for this course, but it will be enormously beneficial when you sit down to write that final paper that is required for graduation. If you really, really need just 1 extra credit in the Winter 2017 term, we can discuss an independent study that would have you attending the first 2 weeks of this course and then completing an independent research assignment. For those who actually register for the 4-credit course, you will conduct research projects designed to contribute to the scholarly conversation about publishing studies, and you will write scholarly journal articles presenting your research. You will also conduct research projects designed to contribute to the publishing industry’s knowledge of itself and of its best practices, and you will produce a variety of documents presenting your research (e.g. a white paper, a news article for an industry publication like Publishers Weekly, a news article for the general media, an infographic, and a PowerPoint presentation). The research you conduct and the documents you produce in this course will be worthy of publication, and the goal will be to actually get you some publication credits. There will be both individual research projects and group research projects. Any and all publishing-related topics that are of interest to you (e.g., ebook pricing, the role of social media in book sales, the role of cover design in book sales, the rapidly morphing responsibilities of the literary agent, estimating sales of a potential acquisition, how readers discover a given book, etc.), we will learn how to identify, collect, and analyze the relevant data/evidence in order to provide answers to these questions.

WR 410-002 TOP: DIGITAL SKILLS

Instructor: Kathi Inman Berens

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Blends hands-on lab with discussion of key aspects of digital identity and culture. Domain management, HTML, CSS, website template modification, image modification. Creative Commons, Fair Use, and copyright. Programming fundamentals explored by modifying a program. Computational literacy as a systems approach to creative thinking.

WR 410-003 TOP: GRANT WRITING

Instructor: Tracy Dillon

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

A grant is a proposal that seeks funds in order to solve a social problem and normally is directed by a nonprofit organization [IRS 501(c)(3) designation] to a federal, state, or local government agency, a foundation, or a corporation. In this course, you should expect to prepare a business plan for an organization, identify potential grant sources, and begin preparing a grant. The estimated amount of time to prepare a grant seeking dollars from a federal granting agency is between 80-120 hours. Since we have only 40 hours of class time condensed into 10 weeks of instruction, you may find that you need to finish the grant after the course has ended. I will work with you to ensure that you meet course expectations without submitting a grant application prematurely, a mistake that would seriously undermine our ultimate course goal: getting your grant funded.

This course has wide appeal and multiple audiences: from professional writers who want to experiment with grants to non-profit employees or volunteers who are taking on a grant writing task where they work. You might even be contemplating starting your own non-profit (a viable option for your final project). You might be a current student in the writing minor or Master’s program, or you might be a professional who is dipping into the course as a one-time visitor to PSU, or you might be a writer who sells poetry for massive amounts of money and now wants to find out about grants. Some of you will come into the course with a partner in mind. If you don't have a partner, I will make suggestions, and even create connections.

Whatever your story, this course gives you community-based (read: “real”) grant writing experience as a way of building your professional development.

Questions? Write to dillont@pdx.edu.

WR 412-001 ADV FICTION WRITING

Instructor: TBD

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Students can expect to write longer and more ambitious works of fiction, while exploring a variety of technical problems and other questions emerging from class discussion. Course may be repeated once for credit.

WR 416-001 SCREENWRITING

Instructor: Thomas Bray

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Students will be introduced to the process of conceiving, structuring, writing, rewriting, and marketing a screenplay for the contemporary American marketplace. "Screenplay paradigms" will be discussed, and a variety of movies will be analyzed. May be repeated for credit.

WR 425-001 ADV TECHNICAL WRIT

Instructor: Bryan Schnabel

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Consider Technical Writing as a continuum with "Technical" at one end, and "Writing" on the other end. This class is weighted heavily toward the “Technical” end of the continuum. The objectives for this class are drawn from real-world experience with an emphasis on real-world preparedness. The technical part introduces tools, standards, and systems that will distinguish students with technical proficiency. And the writing part will empower the students with must-have writing skills.

WR 428-001 ADVANCED MEDIA WRITING

Instructor: Elizabeth Slovic

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Building on the journalism skills learned in Media Writing and Media Editing, students write news stories about people and controversies in Portland using interviews, public records and other investigative tools. Stories (with photos and other online features as appropriate) will be posted to a class blog edited collaboratively by students. Students are also introduced to reporting on a regular basis from news beats of their choosing. The course also features frequent guest speakers from Portland media.

WR 459-001 MEMOIR WRITING

Instructor: Justin Hocking

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

In the early eleventh century, Japanese author Sei Shonagon created The Pillow Book—a series of lists, poetic observations, memories and political insights that many consider a prototypical form of memoir. In this intensive, cross-disciplinary workshop, we will examine short excerpts from The Pillow Book and other hybrid-form narratives, with particular attention to ways in which these works subvert and expand conventional definitions of the memoir form. Individual classes will contain lively critical discussions and dynamic experiments designed to help students generate and collage together personal writing, lyrical language, fictional and poetic techniques, research and political activism. 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. Employing disciplined practice and a multi-stage writing process, students will create and polish several pieces for peer workshop, with the goal of creating a short experimental memoir by quarter's end.

Required Readings:

The Chronology of Water: A Memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Expecting Something Else by A.M. O'Malley
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir by Nick Flynn

WR 460-PB4 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

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: Dong Won Song

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

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 462-001 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE

Instructor: Kelley Dodd

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Comprehensive course in professional book design and production. Issues specific to the design of fiction and nonfiction books in a variety of genres and markets will be covered, including the applications of both old and new technologies in design and production.

WR 463-001 BOOK MARKETING

Instructor: Kathryn Juergens

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

The objective of this course is to understand the role of marketing and publicity in publishing and to obtain the necessary skills to create a sales presentation, tip sheet, marketing plan, press release, and pitch letter. Your goal is to end the course able to create marketing and publicity campaigns and press kits that are directly applicable to a career in book publishing.

WR 464-001 BUSINESS OF BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Kent Watson

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

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.

WR 465-001 INTELLECTUAL PROP & COPYRIGHT

Instructor: Michael Clark

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Outlines opportunities and pitfalls faced by writer (editor, graphic designer, artist) in legal and ethical spheres. Copyright law, U.S. First Amendment law, defamation, right of privacy, trademark, trade secret law. Discusses the importance of the Internet in rethinking copyright and intellectual property rules.

WR 471-001 TYPOGRAPHY, LAYOUT, PRODUCTION

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Comprehensive course in professional book design and production. Issues specific to the design of fiction and nonfiction books in a variety of genres and markets will be covered.

WR 473-001 DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING

Instructor: Adam Rodriguez

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Explores the relationship between an editor, a writer, and the work in the process of developmental editing—also known as global, substantive, or comprehensive editing. Examines historically significant editor/author relations, how the editorial process and relationships have changed over time, and how editorial expectations shift based on the expectations of the publisher, the constantly changing global marketplace, and the introduction of new technologies.

WR 474-001 PUBLISHING STUDIO

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

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. Departments include Acquisitions, Editing, Design and Sustainable Production, Marketing, External Promotions, Sales, Digital Content, Social Media, and Project Management and Operations. Course may be repeated multiple times.

WR 475-001 PUBLISHING LAB

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

FULFILLS GROUP D OR E FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

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. Departments include Acquisitions, Editorial, Design, Marketing and Sales, Digital, and Social Media. Course may be taken multiple times for credit.

Graduate Writing Courses

WR 507-002 MFA SEM: FICTION

Instructor: Leni Zumas

“Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty,” said James Baldwin. The problem of “excessive and spurious emotion” is familiar to most writers: we don’t want to be accused of creating something maudlin, tear-jerky, clichéd, or manipulative, yet we may be so anxious to eschew sentimentality that we end up avoiding emotion altogether. How, then, can we move our readers? How can we probe and rouse human feeling? In this seminar we’ll discuss a range of texts that illuminate the border between sentiment and sentimentality, and we will aim to understand “the sentimental” in its historical context. Assignments will include weekly reading notes, brief writing exercises, and a final project. Writers of all genres are welcome, and we’ll be reading poetry and nonfiction as well as fiction.

Required Texts:

Gwenaëlle Aubry, No One. Translated by Trista Selous. ISBN 978-1935639220
Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone. ISBN 978-0671021009
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye. ISBN 978-0307278449
Eva Sjödin, Inner China. Translated by Jennifer Hayashida. ISBN 978-0972333177
Justin Torres, We the Animals. ISBN 978-0547844190
Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds. ISBN 978-1556594953
C. D. Wright, One Big Self. ISBN 978-1556592584

This course satisfies the Seminar and Elective requirements for the MFA in Creative Writing.

WR 510-004 TOP: MFA COLLOQUIM

Instructor: Michele Glazer

This is a one-credit colloquium for MFA students who are or may be interested in teaching undergraduate creative writing classes, in particular the intro class. The intro classes are often the students’ first experience of a workshop. We will emphasize the practical: effective exercises, working in small groups, writing a syllabus, as well as discuss some of the emotional and psychological challenges that arise, including dealing effectively with emotionally difficult or controversial subject matter in poems, handling disruptive students, and engaging reticent students.

WR 510-005 TOP: MFA THESIS WORKSHOP

Instructor: Michele Glazer

This one-credit colloquium is intended for students who are working on their thesis. The colloquium is intended to be responsive, focused and nimble in providing support while you are drafting and revising your thesis project and abstract. Students will present informal talks on their theses, set goals throughout the term, discuss writing and research strategies, write the thesis abstract, and support one another’s progress toward thesis completion. The spirit behind this colloquium is to harness the energy of camaraderie and shared purpose that will keep your thesis moving forward. The colloquium is a complement to the workshop, with a more driven aim of offering support and accountability. Guests may include a representative from the Grad Office to answer questions about the thesis presentation and submission.

WR 510-001 TOP: RSRCHNG BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Per Henningsgaard

WR 510-002 TOP: DIGITAL SKILLS

Instructor: Kathi Inman Berens

WR 510-003 TOP: GRANT WRITING

Instructor: Tracy Dillon

Whatever your story, this course gives you community-based (read: “real”) grant writing experience as a way of building your professional development.

Questions? Write to dillont@pdx.edu.

WR 514-001 GRADUATE POETRY WRITING

Instructor: John Beer

Within a workshop format of writing, revising, critiquing and reading, students will strengthen their writing skills, and their understanding of how poems work. May be repeated once for credit.

This poetry workshop will concentrate on the consanguinities and disaffiliations of poetry and prose, which will also lead us to focus intensely on the metrical properties of language. Exercises and models will supplement our discussions of student work.

Texts:

James Galvin, Everything We Always Knew Was True
Renee Gladman, Calamities
Rodrigo Toscano, Explosion Rocks Springfield

WR 521-001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP FICTION

Instructor: Gabriel Urza

Our primary goal for the semester will be to produce two completed drafts of original fiction, which will be critiqued in a workshop setting. Students will be expected to provide written critiques prior to each workshop. We will also use Charles Baxter’s Burning Down the House as a jumping-off point for discussing how decisions such as Point of View, Characterization, and Story Arc are at play in our own work and in the work of established writers. In addition, we will utilize writing exercises and directed readings to challenge the way we are thinking about current drafts, to generate specific strategies for revision, and to provide novel starting points for new work.

WR 522-002 MFA CORE WORKSHOP POETRY

Instructor: Michele Glazer

The MFA Core Workshop in Poetry focuses on the writing, revision, and critical discussion of student poems. Students' verbal and written critical analyses of their peers' work are informed by their reading of published poems representing a range of formal strategies and historical and cultural contexts, and by their reading in prosody and poetics. May be taken up to six times for credit. This course is restricted to graduate students admitted to the Writing Program (Poetry).

The emphasis in this workshop will be on process, with the larger intention to open ways to deepen a poem’s expressive possibilities. Students will be expected to generate new work and to revise. There will be exercises aimed at developing ligature and muscle. We will discuss poems individually, as well as in clumps--a small body of work by each student—as window to habit and voice. Students will prepare written and verbal critical analyses of their peers’ work, informed by a study of published poems, a focus on formal elements, e.g., structure, syntax, imagery, and the student poem itself, which will suggest its own direction for discussion. May be repeated three times for a total of 16 credits. Restricted to student admitted to the MFA writing program (poetry strand).

Texts:

Everything We Always Knew Was True, James Galvin
Song, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Travels of Marco, Mark Levine

WR 523-001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP NONFICTION

Instructor: Michael McGregor

The MFA Core Workshop in Nonfiction concentrates on elements necessary for writing successful nonfiction prose --including structure, voice, dialog, characterization, and point-of-view-- with a primary emphasis on the in-class workshop and peer review of student pieces. Nonfiction models, both short pieces and book-length, will be read and discussed, and students will write critical responses regarding those models. May be taken up to three times for credit. This course is restricted to graduate students admitted to the Writing Program (Nonfiction).

WR 525-001 ADV TECHNICAL WRIT

Instructor: Bryan Schnabel

WR 559-001 MEMOIR WRITING

Instructor: Paul Collins

Delving into the most vibrant and contentious area of creative nonfiction, Memoir Writing is a workshop focused on the development and revision of new work, as well as exploring major authors and issues in modern memoir.

Enrollment is by instructor approval.

Texts:

The Language of Baklava -- Diana Abu Jaber (978-1400077762)
Dust to Dust -- Benjamin Busch (978-0062014856)
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City -- Nick Flynn ( 978-0393329407)
Autobiography of a Face -- Lucy Grealy (978-0544837393)
Truth and Beauty -- Ann Patchett (978-0060572150)
The Autobiographer's Handbook -- Jennifer Traig (978-0805087130)

WR 560-PB4 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

WR 561-001 BOOK EDITING

Instructor: Dong Won Song

WR 562-001 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE

Instructor: Kelley Dodd

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 563-001 BOOK MARKETING

Instructor: Kathryn Juergens

WR 564-001 BUSINESS OF BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Kent Watson

WR 565-001 INTELLECTUAL PROP & COPYRIGHT

Instructor: Michael Clark

WR 571-001 TYPOGRAPHY, LAYOUT, PRODUCTION

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

Comprehensive course in professional book design and production. Issues specific to the design of fiction and nonfiction books in a variety of genres and markets will be covered.

WR 573-001 DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING

Instructor: Adam Rodriguez

WR 574-001 PUBLISHING STUDIO

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

Perform the work of a real publishing house, from acquiring manuscripts to selling books. Gain publishing experience by participating in the various departments of a student-staffed publishing house, Ooligan Press. Departments include Acquisitions, Editorial, Design, Marketing and Sales, Digital, and Social Media. May be taken multiple times for credit.

WR 575-001 PUBLISHING LAB

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

Perform the work of a real publishing house, from acquiring manuscripts to selling books. Gain publishing experience by participating in the various departments of a student-staffed publishing house, Ooligan Press. Departments include Acquisitions, Editorial, Design, Marketing and Sales, Digital, and Social Media. May be taken multiple times for credit.