Winter 2022 Courses

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

Winter 2022: Undergraduate English Courses

ENG 204 001 SURVEY OF BRITISH LIT I

Instructor: Karen Grossweiner
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Survey of British Lit I will cover material from the Anglo-Saxon period through the 17th century. We will begin with the epic masterpiece Beowulf, read a judicious selection of tales from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, then proceed to the great Middle English Arthurian romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

While much of our focus will be on close reading, we will also discuss more general issues specific to reading medieval texts. Medieval poetry is oftentimes both extremely conventional and very sophisticated rhetorically; hence, we will explore the processes of composition and adaptation, and how composing rhetorically transforms ideas about originality. Moreover, we will look at such issues as transmission and dissemination in a manuscript culture, how genre operates in the middle ages, and what extensive scribal interventions and interpolations suggest about the sacrosanct concept of authorial privilege. Finally, we will encounter a wide variety of women (including Grendel’s notorious mother, the earthy Alisoun, the audacious Wife of Bathe, the loathly hag, and the enigmatic Bercilak’s wife) and will explore the different (often problematic) ways women were represented in the middle ages.

As we proceed to the Early Modern period (aka the Renaissance), we will consider many of these same issues in the context of different ideologies including rapidly changing religious values and political upheaval. We will begin with selections from Book One of Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene, proceed to a wide variety of sixteenth and seventeenth poetry, and conclude with selections from John Milton’s great epic Paradise Lost. We will explore such issues as power and authority, language and identity, and gender and desire, and will both consider how these texts are the product of early modern English culture and remain relevant for a 21st century audience.

Please buy or rent the editions found under the bookstore link for this course. Electronic copies are fine as long as you can access them in class.

ENG 253 001 SURVEY OF AMERICAN LIT I

Instructor: Prof. Elisabeth Ceppi
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course will survey works of literature written in English from the beginnings of European settler colonialism 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 Book: Norton Anthology of American Literature (9th edition, Vols. A and B) 978-0-393-26454-8

ENG 300 001 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS

Instructor: Alastair Hunt
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Many people suspect that English majors do little more than engage in idle chatter about their favorite characters in novels. This course will teach you the truth. English majors employ a specific set of knowledge and skills to explain the lessons literary and cultural texts can teach us about the world we live in and world we might yet live in. ENG 300 is one of the core courses required of all English majors at PSU. It focuses on three knowledge-and-skill areas: 1. literary form (genre, vocabulary, figurative language, narrative technique, prosody, and so on), 2. close reading, and 3. writing critical (interpretative and analytical) arguments. Beginning at a nuts-and-bolts level, we will build up your abilities as a student of literature and culture through a series of formal analysis, close reading, and critical writing exercises on poems, fiction, and drama. The process will culminate with a full-length critical essay. By the end of the course, students will have earned the right to call themselves English majors. In our dark times, this is no mean feat.

Required Texts (likely):

M. H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 11th ed. Wadsworth, 2015. ISBN 9781285465067.
Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. 4th ed. W. W. Norton & Co., 2019. ISBN: 9780393631678.
Brian Friel. Translations. Faber and Faber, 1981. ISBN 9780571117420.
NoViolet Bulawayo. We Need New Names. Back Bay Books, 2013. ISBN 9780316230841.
Modern Language Association. MLA Handbook. 9th ed. Modern Language Association of America, 2021. ISBN: 9781603293518.

ENG 300 003 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS

Instructor: John Vignaux Smyth
Instructional Method: Online
This course is low-cost.¹

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

Secondary texts will include the section on Nabokov in Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Richard Rorty’s “The Barber of Kasbeam: Nabokov on Cruelty,” as well as feminist articles on Isak Dinesen by Susan Guber and Marianne Stecher-Hansen. We will also watch Stanley Kubrick’s famous film of Lolita.

Primary requirements are a midterm and a final essay, and two weekly 100 word contributions to Canvas discussion (only one in the final week). The first contribution will be your own thread; the second will reply to someone else’s.

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

ENG 301U 001 TOP: SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

Instructor: Jonathan Walker
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 304 001 CRITICAL THEORY OF CINEMA

Instructor: Wendy Collins
Instructional Method: Online
This course is no-cost.²

ENG 305U 001 TOP: DAVID LYNCH & FILM NOIR

Instructor: Michael Clark
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Film Noir is a term popularized by Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton in their 1955 text, Panorama of American Film Noir (Panorama du film noir Américain), a study of the unique cinematic style that evolved in Hollywood in the late 1930s and continued until the late 1950s. Perhaps because it was a homegrown offshoot of the enormously popular U.S. gangster film, the appearance of noir as a signature style was largely invisible to American film critics. It was only after the end of World War II, when French audiences were re-exposed to U.S. filmmaking for the first time in six years, that the cinematic world realized that a strange hybrid of the gangster film and psychological hard-boiled novel had evolved. It was the French who gave use the term film noir (literally, “black film”).

American society has always had a fascination with criminality – a fact that raises significant questions about our cultural psyche. As suggested above, this fascination with criminality was most powerfully represented in the enormous popularity of gangster films of the 1930s. Three of the most seminal gangster films – Little Caesar (1930), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932) are justifiable classics, capturing our obsessions with those who attempt to “beat” the system in some grandiose way. But in the traditional gangster film, the gangster always loses in the end; the restoration law and order is central to the recuperative and conservative ideology of the gangster film.

Film noir takes things to a different level, since it focuses less on the grandiose schemes or plans of the protagonist (no big time gangsters here!), but on his[1]* psychological plight – on his tortured attempt to achieve something that will give his life coherence and meaning. The noir hero is usually a small-time manager of heists, a person with a strange but respected code of noble behavior, and a person that is ultimately doomed. The noir hero, unlike the grandiose gangster, is perhaps more like all of us ... in some way.

This course will analyze the noir film series, discussing its historical evolution, its themes, and its permutations in the criticism of the past 70 years. We will start with classic noir films like Double Indemnity and move on to some contemporary neo-noir classics, like Pulp Fiction and Red Rock West. But we’re pursuing this study with a significant twist: During the last half of the term, we’ll be focusing on the singular, haunting, and surreal adaptations of various noir tendencies by the brilliant and quirky David Lynch. More importantly, we will focus on psychoanalytic approaches to film; that is, we’ll ask about the underlying motives, drives, and obsessions that characterize both noir and Lynch. We will begin by acquainting ourselves with some fundamental features of noir, and then we will investigate the ways in which Lynch takes on and transforms these motifs.

Many film and cultural critics suggest that noir is one of the most powerfully illuminating products of U.S. culture; that is, noir is extremely significant as a sociological phenomenon. If this is true (and I believe it is), then Lynch takes things in an even stranger (and illuminating) direction. Thus some of our fundamental questions for the term will be as follows:

What is noir?
What are its stylistic and formal components?
What does noir tell us about our desires, our society, and ourselves?
What modes of psychoanalytic inquiry will tell us about the motives, fixations, obsessions, and dynamics of film noir?

Format: We will screen one film per week. We will supplement these screenings with readings and discussion. Grading will be based on weekly journals and a final essay.

ENG 305U 002 TOP: THE NEW HOLLYWOOD

Instructor: Dan DeWeese
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

From sometime in the mid-1960s (many critics cite Bonnie & Clyde) until some point in the mid-to-late 1970s (we can trade theories about when), a new generation of American filmmakers, working for the most part within the Hollywood system, cultivated an aesthetic of seductive malaise and beautiful defeat that came to be called “The New Hollywood.” Many of these actors, directors, and producers were inspired by European art films of the 1960s, but those films were often produced through very different methods from the Hollywood studio model. How did this new generation of American filmmakers approach the challenges of getting films produced, distributed, and shown in theaters? What kind of audience existed (or was created) for these films? Did the New Hollywood era create an identifiable legacy in American movies, or was it merely a brief fad before the return of blockbusters? An examination of work by a cross section of writers, directors, and actors from the time will lead us toward an attempt to answer these questions and others.

ENG 305U 003 TOP: INDIGENOUS CINEMA

Instructor: Marcel Brousseau
Instructional Method: Online

ENG 306U 001 TOP: AMERICAN NOVEL & CULTURE

Instructor: Michael Clark
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Literary works are an embodiment of the human condition. Such works are a time machine – an expression of the spirit, struggles, potentialities, and failures of a society at any given moment.

This course will trace the relationship between the historical, political, economic, and other forces that are expressed in American literature during the 20th century. We will study these forces by reading great novels. We will begin with a discussion of the modernist masterpieces of American literature that followed World War I, works that captured the transformation of America from a largely rural and isolationist country to an urban, global power. Two of the central novelists of that period – Hemingway, and Fitzgerald – portrayed the effects of economic, political, and ideological changes that transformed American life. Hemingway captures the spiritual alienation, uncertainty and rebirth that followed World War I, while Fitzgerald addressed the limits of the “American dream” of self-transformation. Both of these remarkable authors offer a magnificent portrayal of a society that was, in a sense, entering young adulthood. Later, as the frenzy of the Roaring Twenties gave way to the Great Depression, a very different theme emerged: survival, journey, and possibilities of rebirth at home. Steinbeck is our guide to this moment.

The second half of the twentieth century saw a different kind of transformation in American cultural life. Kerouac’s landmark On the Road describes the restlessness of a growing youth culture, a societal fascination with the automobile and, to a greater or lesser extent, the wonders and limits of westward exploration in American life. Ellison explores the struggles of African Americans in a racist society, and points out the contradictions in a culture whose essential political and philosophical premises have not been realized. Toni Morrison is another writer – probably the greatest American literary voice of the last 40 years – who addresses race, culture, and identity.

In the latter decades of the twentieth century a highly pessimistic notion of American life evolves. Our first exploration of this moment will be Margaret Atwood’s dystopian masterpiece, A Handmaid’s Tale. Finally, Marilynne Robinson explores the tension between domesticity and errancy (movement) in the lives of three generations of women – a novel by a woman and about women. Robinson’s work illustrates many tensions of American culture: domesticity vs. errancy, middle-class values and their opposite.

Class Format:

This is a reading class. It is designed to teach through the reading of great literature. Our goal is to read, to enjoy, and to learn. I will present weekly lectures that outline the central themes and issues of the novel under review. I will include approximately one to two critical essays per week (commentaries, in essence) for you to read. I will make clear which additional reading is required. We have only 10 weeks, so I’m trying to maintain a reasonable workload.

ENG 306U 002 TOP: LATINX COMICS

Instructor: Marcel Brousseau
Instructional Method: Online

In this course we will read comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels by Latinx authors and artists in order to examine how verbal/visual texts represent and reimagine Latinx community and identity. Students will gain a background in comics theory, and will learn how to read and to analyze texts according to frameworks in the field of comics studies. Students will also examine concepts critical to Latinx studies, including identity, race, gender, family, community, sexuality, and the self, as they are depicted in the hybrid medium of comics.

ENG 318U 001 THE BIBLE AS LIT

Instructor: Joel Bettridge
Instructional Method: Online
This course is no-cost.²

ENG 326 001 LIT COMM DIFF

Instructor: Prof. Anoop Mirpuri
Instructional Method: Online
This course is low-cost.¹

What is the relation between a work of literature and its author? What makes literature different from other forms of writing? How did Western culture come to share the assumption that a work of literature is the “expression” of an author’s so-called “voice”? Why do we tend to assume that works of literature represent the experience of the identity group to which an author is said to belong? How have these assumptions shaped our approach to reading literary texts? And, finally, how might we expand our capacity as readers and lovers of literature by interrogating these assumptions?

We will address these questions through a carefully curated study of works in literary theory and criticism that have focused on the problem of interpretation. We will also test out some of their theories, insights, and interpretive strategies through a reading of one of the greatest works of American literature, Herman Melville’s novella, Benito Cereno (1855). The aim of this course is to develop a critical understanding of the way that racial classification has shaped the study of literature, and in turn, how the study of literature has shaped how we think about race. At the same time, we will reflect on how the study of literature can challenge the ways we’ve been taught to view the world around us, especially how we’ve been taught to think about race and identity. Most importantly, we will explore the capacity that we have as readers to expand the critical potential of the literature that we read.

This course fulfills the “Culture, Difference, and Representation” component of the PSU English Major.

Required Texts:

Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories (Penguin, ISBN: 978-0143107606)

ENG 335U 001 TOP: LITERATURE & FILM

Instructor: Anne-Charlotte Mecklenburg
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course offers an overview of British and American serial fiction from the nineteenth century to the present. “Seriality” refers to stories that are told in parts over an extended period of time; this category includes everything from nineteenth-century realist novels, to television shows, to film franchises, and more. By comparing serials from different periods and mediums, we be able to engage more fully with question like: how do serials use narrative techniques like suspense to keep its audience coming back, and how does a serial's medium influence its use of these strategies? What kinds of assumptions do these texts make about what a "popular audience" looks like and what it wants? To what extent have audiences been able to influence the direction of serial stories, and what have been the limitations of that power? How have historical contexts impacted this reciprocal relationship between popular serial texts and their audiences? Does it even make sense to call a serial a single “text” in the first place? Readings will include literary and visual works spanning the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, as well as these works' adaptations, illustrations, unauthorized sequels, reboots, or fanfiction.

ENG 341U 001 RENAISSANCE LITERATURE

Instructor: Jonathan Walker
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

The Life of Love in Renaissance Poetry and Drama:

Love is, of course, a many splendored thing. But it is also a very complicated, irrational, and often painful affair. As the cultural critic Laura Kipnis has put it (and not a little acerbically):

Saying no to love isn’t simply heresy; it is tragedy—the failure to achieve what is most essentially human. So deeply internalized is our obedience to this most capricious despot [of love] that artists create passionate odes to its cruelty, and audiences seem never to tire of the most deeply unoriginal mass spectacles devoted to rehearsing the litany of its torments, fixating their very beings on the narrowest glimmer of its fleeting satisfactions. [“A Treatise on the Tyranny of Two,” 1]

It was no less so during the English Renaissance.

In this course, we will read primarily English Renaissance poetry along with one dramatic text, all of which centers on the subject of love. Yet because love encompasses so many other dimensions—attraction, rejection, desire, loss, beauty, sex, gender, eroticism, social roles, familial expectations, marriage, and so forth—our readings will touch upon a wide range of themes, many of which overlap. The course will not be comprehensive in its coverage, but we will address questions of desire, the body, eroticism, clothing, seduction, and leavetaking within four broad units. In addition, we will occasionally read non-literary texts, such as a religious homily, essays, and even parliamentary legislation, which will help us to orient ourselves within English Renaissance culture. Doing so will help us to understand the similarities and differences between Renaissance English and contemporary American notions of that crazy little thing called love.

Finally, this class will be discussion-based. There will be very few lectures. Participation is key, so I will expect you to have read the poetry several times for each day, to have ideas and questions about the readings, and to be prepared to discuss the material during our class time.

ENG 344U 001 VICTORIAN LITERATURE

Instructor: Anne-Charlotte Mecklenburg
Instructional Method: Remote - Scheduled Meetings

What does it mean for a novel to “feel real?” Why do readers sometimes feel like a character could walk off the page, or like a novel’s setting exists beyond the events of the story? And does this feeling of realness have any ramifications in our actual real lives? Nineteenth-century British novels are often concerned with precisely these questions. In this course, we will read a variety of Victorian realist novels in order to better understand the stakes and consequences of novels, characters, and fictional places that feel real. We will consider some of the assumptions these authors make about what “real life” in Victorian Britain looks like, and situate these novels within their historical contexts. Similarly, we will investigate how these novels navigate the relationship between individual characters and larger, overlapping communities and spaces in Victorian Britain, including the family, the city, one’s social class, and the British Empire. We will also explore how novels embed us within particular characters’ minds and points of view, often by simultaneously excluding us from the minds of others. Throughout the course, we will ask: which characters and spaces are these novelists invested in making real for us, how did Victorian readers incorporate these novels and their ideas into their daily lives, and how has the tradition of Victorian realism impacted our contemporary beliefs about what a category like “the novel” can be?

ENG 352U 001 AFRICAN AMERICAN LIT II

Instructor: Hines
Instructional Method: Remote - Scheduled Meetings
This course is low-cost.¹

About the course delivery method: About a week before the course begins, I will survey registered students to find out their learning styles and how the course can help them meet their needs. Given the difficulty of remote learning and the environment in which we find ourselves, the course is organized in predictable weekly Canvas modules, with reading due on Mondays, recorded lectures watched for Wednesdays. My lectures will be responsive to Monday's breakout discussions of the material, and Wednesday zoom sessions will be organized by your classmates' connections to the same material (last year students overwhelmingly wanted to connect readings to the current moment, so that focused our class). Zoom sessions are optional except for the one day in the term you will lead 15" of the discussion, although you will be responsible for watching recordings of classes you missed.

ENG / BST 352U is an introduction to African American literature from the late 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: beginning in the second week, student presentations will generate class conversations. The class will focus on gothic themes, temporality, childhood, gender, and sexuality in African American literature. The anthology we use (because it is inexpensive, and also because it was published in the late 1960s, and so presents a useful "look back" for a course that ends at its publication date) must be supplemented (on Canvas) by works by women authors. Such questions of unequal access, canonization, and memory will be foregrounded as we approach the materials.

This course fills the American Identities and Gender and Sexualities cluster requirements for non-majors (see cluster web pages).

University Studies Goals:

Inquiry and Critical Thinking
Communication
Diversity, Equity & Social Justice
Ethics and Social Responsibility

Course Learning Goals:

From the “American Identities” cluster goals, we will focus on the following:
An understanding of [some of] the tensions and contradictions of the American Experience and its ethical, social, and political implications (UNST Goals #3, #4)
An ability to engage with and write critically about primary texts (UNST Goals #1, #2)
An ability to research and communicate about American identities and related ethical issues using both primary and secondary sources (UNST Goals #2, #4)
[Exposure to] diverse [African] American identities and how these identities have shaped [and been shaped by] cultural traditions and values and the distribution of power (UNST Goals #1, #3)
From the “Gender and Sexualities Studies” cluster goals, we will focus on the following:
Acquire knowledge of sexuality and gender studies, including intersectional theory and critical race theory that shape knowledge in these areas of study (UNST Goals #1, #3, #4)
Critically examine the constructs of gender, race, class, sexuality, religion, ability, and nation and their intersecting relationships, both past and present (UNST Goals #1, #3)
Explore and contextualize the meaning of social identities historically, politically, and personally (UNST Goals #1, #3, #4)
Create a collaborative and mutually beneficial learning environment (UNST Goals #2, #3, #4)
Other Learning Goals:
Explore contemporary issues through literature (UNST Goals #3, #4)
Improve skills in critical thinking and written communication (UNST Goals #1, #2)
Learn to organize ideas through writing (UNST Goals #1, #2)
Increase familiarity with MLA-style citation and research methods (UNST Goal #2)
Develop tools of literary and cultural analysis (UNST Goal #1)

Required Materials:

Chapman, (Ed.), Black Voices: An Anthology of African-American Literature
Baldwin, Another Country

ENG 363U 001 AMERICAN LIT AND CULTURE II

Instructor: Prof. Anoop Mirpuri
Instructional Method: Online
This course is low-cost.¹

Sex, Gender, and the American Scene:

This survey course in American literature from 1865-1965 focuses on how American novelists of the late-19th to the mid-20th century imagined the relation between capitalism, gender, sexuality, and marriage. We will read key works in the canon of American literature that have revised the traditional marriage plot in new and unexpected ways. Along the way, we’ll examine how some of the most prevalent contemporary questions about the politics of sex and gender have long been worked through by some of America’s most visionary literary artists.

Required Texts:

Henry James, Washington Square
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Nella Larsen, Passing
Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

ENG 367U 001 TOP: AMERICAN GOTHIC LIT

Instructor: Hildy Miller
Instructional Method: Remote - Scheduled Meetings

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 individuals in some way—and what haunts American culture at different historical moments. 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 at least one film in an effort to define for ourselves the history of the American Gothic. We’ll consider the tropes of this genre and the fears and anxieties about race, genders, sexuality, urban, rural, and domestic spaces, ghosts, witches, grotesques, monstrosities, ancestral curses, the unconscious and dreams, and death itself. Figures include Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Louisa May Alcott, Flannery O’Connor, Henry James, Ray Bradbury, Zora Neale Hurston, Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, and others. Counts for credit in American Studies Cluster. Course will be held as remote synchronous on zoom.

Texts:

American Gothic: An Anthology from Salem Witchcraft to H.P. Lovecraft. Ed. Charles L. Crow. 2nd edition. London: Blackwell
American Gothic Tales. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates. New York: Plume-Penguin, 1996.

Both texts available at PSU bookstore, Amazon, and elsewhere.

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

ENG 371 001 THE NOVEL

Instructor: John Vignaux Smyth
Instructional Method: Online
This course is low-cost.¹

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

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

Using works by French, Russian, Danish, and Irish writers, we will study how theorists make claims for their exceptional importance in understanding the modern world. The main focus of the class is the novelistic treatment of desire.

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

ENG 372U 001 TOP: LIT, GENDER, & SEXUALITY

Instructor: Hildy Miller
Instructional Method: Remote - Scheduled Meetings

Gender and the Experimental Gothic:

The Gothic reflects what haunts the cultures in which we find ourselves and reveals that which is hidden, forbidden, denied. In this course we’ll study writings and films, primarily by women and others expressing varied gender identities, who have experimented with the Gothic genre and found a space from which to speak. What haunts these writers varies from one story to another, but we’ll find new twists on Gothic tropes such as ghosts, ghostliness, and spectrality; the power of houses and places in the domestic Gothic; witches and witchcraft; Gothic romances; monstrosities, vampires, and grotesques; ancestral or generational curses or memories; and queer sexualities that seek expression. We’ll focus on snapshots of late 19th century, mid-late 20th, and contemporary Gothic, including such figures as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Jean Rhys, Octavia Butler, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, Alison Bechdel, and films such as Daughters of the Dust, Crimson Peak, and Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger. Counts for credit in the Gender and Sexuality Cluster. Course will be held as remote synchronous on Zoom.

Texts—buy in any form or edition at PSU bookstore, Amazon, and elsewhere:

Octavia Butler. Fledgling. NY: Seven Stories Press, 2005.
Sylvia Moreno-Garcia. Mexican Gothic. NY: Del Ray, 2020.
Jean Rhys. Wide Sargasso Sea. NY: Norton, 1966/1982.

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

ENG 373U 001 TOP: ARAB-AMERICAN LITERATURE

Instructor: Diana Abu-Jaber
Instructional Method: Online

WS 374U 001 MEMOIR, GENDER AND SEXUALITY

Instructor: Sally McWiliams
Instructional Method: Remote - Scheduled Meetings

“Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously” says Edwidge Danticat. We’ll take up her challenge by reading creative narratives called “memoirs.” We will explore both the possibilities and the limitations of the form, examine the diverse aesthetics of such personally political writing, investigate the particular resonance “memoir” has across and within various categories of difference (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, sexuality, class, ability, appearance, age), and reflect on the meaning these engagements have for us individually and collectively. Prerequisites: none.

Texts: (alphabetical order by writer’s last name)

Doty, Mark. Firebird
Habib, Samra. We Have Always Been Here
Jones, Sa’eed. How We Fight For Our Lives
Machado, Carmen Maria. In the Dream House
Miranda, Deborah A. Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir
Winterson, Jeanette. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

If you would like this course to count for your English major or minor, please email eng-advising@pdx.edu with your request.

ENG 378U 001 AMERICAN POETRY II

Instructor: Tom Fisher
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course focuses on American Poetry from the second half of the nineteenth century through the decades following WWII. We'll begin with Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, move to select Modernist and Harlem Renaissance writers of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, read the New American and Black Arts Movement poets of the 1950s and 1960s, and conclude with various writers from the 1970s and 1980s. Fulfills the American Studies Cluster requirement.

ENG 414 001 COMPOSITION THEORY

Instructor: Kate Comer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

What is writing? How does it work? How do we work it? This course explores questions that matter to all writers, especially students and teachers. It also offers an introduction to the wonderful world of Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies.

Through readings and discussion, we’ll explore topics as varied as genre analysis, cognitive processes, linguistic diversity, multimodal composition, antiracist pedagogy, and learning transfer. Along the way, you’ll develop new insights on writing in theory and practice, pursue research related to your own interests, and hone your critical skills—all of which will make you a stronger writer, thinker, and learner.

ENG 428 001 CANONS AND CANONICITY

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 458 001 ADV TOP: ROMANTICISM & ECOLOGY

Instructor: Alastair Hunt
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Why does Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s influential account of the harmful effects of synthetic pesticide, begin with an epitaph from a poem by British romantic John Keats: “The sedge has withered from the lake, / And no birds sing”? The romantics have long been popularly, and very often dismissively, perceived as unusually invested in heightened subjective experiences of the nonhuman environment. This course invites students to read British romantic literature as centrally concerned with how human beings can live well in and with the nonhuman environment. From their vantage point in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the romantics in fact had front-row seats to the two interrelated historical events that started our current global environmental crisis: Industrial Revolution and Agricultural Revolution. We will consider how many of their literary works—canonical and lesser-known—can be fruitfully read in light of the consequences of these events, such as global warming and mass wildlife extinction. What, we will ask, might romanticism yet teach us about what Carson herself calls “the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures”?

Required Texts:

Mary Shelley, The Last Man. Edited by Morton D. Paley, Oxford UP, 1998.
Susan Wolfson and Peter Manning, eds. The Romantics and Their Contemporaries, 5th edition, Pearson 2012. Or a similar scholarly anthology of British romantic literature.

ENG 460 001 ADV TOP: CAPTIVITY EARLY AMER

Instructor: Prof. Elisabeth Ceppi
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Captives were some of the most compelling cultural figures of early America: prisoners taken during Anglo-Native wars; servants possessed by the Devil and imprisoned for infanticide; enslaved persons taking up their pens to denounce the hypocrisies of their masters; women ensnared by marriage and seduction plots. In this class, we will read non-fiction narrative, letters, fiction, and poetry produced by and about these captives from 16th century European colonialism through the 1820s. We will read these texts alongside scholarship about them to consider questions about the gendering and racialization of freedom and consent, publicity and privacy, virtue and deviance, authority and resistance. This course fills the Historical Literacy requirement for the BA/BS in English and the Group C (pre-1800) requirement under the old major.

Required Books:

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Relación (Arte Público) 9781558850606
Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (Bedford/St. Martin’s 1997) 9780312111519
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Gustavus Vassa (Dover) 9780486406619
Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Hope Leslie (Penguin) 978-0140436761

ENG 496 001 COMICS THEORY

Instructor: Marcel Brousseau
Instructional Method: Hybrid

Winter 2022: Graduate English Courses

ENG 507 001 SEM: SENTIMENT&SENTIMENTALITY

Instructor: Josh Epstein; Leni Zumas
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

“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 try to understand “the sentimental” in its historical and political contexts. Assignments will include weekly reading notes, brief writing exercises, and a final project. Open to all graduate students in the English Dept.

Note: Despite the ENG prefix, this seminar can be used for the seminar requirement for students in the fiction strand of the MFA program. It can count as an elective for all students.

ENG 514 001 COMPOSITION THEORY

Instructor: Kate Comer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

ENG 518 001 COLLEGE COMP TEACHING

Instructor: Kate Comer
Instructional Method: Hybrid
This course is no-cost.²

ENG 519 001 ADV COLLEGE COMP TEACHING

Instructor: Kate Comer
Instructional Method: Hybrid
This course is no-cost.²

ENG 522 001 AFRICAN FICTION

Instructor: Sarah Lincoln
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This class undertakes a survey of twentieth- and twenty-first century African fiction, exploring the historical development of the African novel and other fictional forms along with the divergent geographical, political, cultural, environmental and generic contexts that shape literary production on the continent. Alongside canonical texts by some of the most famous writers of African fiction, the course will consider the influence of “popular” modes of writing and reading, from oral epics and self-help manuals to contemporary scifi, on the novel and other varieties of continental fiction.

We will focus on questions of genre to investigate how forms like the epic, “pulp” fiction, gothic, sci-fi, the Bildungsroman, graphic novels, and others frame African experience in different ways. Fiction writers’ engagement with colonialism and its aftermath; the politics of gender and sexuality; class struggle; language, tradition and modernity; and human relations with the nonhuman world will form intellectual touchstones throughout.

In addition to formal essays and presentations, students will tackle extended group projects exploring alternative forms of engagement with African fiction, from games, playlists, and podcasts to lesson plans and twitter feeds.

Likely Required Texts include:

Abouet, Aya: Life in Yop City
Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions
Habila, Oil on Water
Niane, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali
Oyeyemi, White is for Witching
Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard

ENG 531 001 TOP: COLLOQUIUM

Instructor: Prof. Josh Epstein
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 598 001 ECO/CRIT/CLT

Instructor: Alastair Hunt
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course offers students an advanced introduction to the scholarly field known as ecocriticism. “Nature” has long been recognized as one of the great themes of literature and art. In our age of global warming and biodiversity loss, however, literary and cultural critics are making nature and human relations with it objects of intense, sustained scholarly study. Attention to human relations with the nonhuman environment, they argue, is a necessary part of the critical study of literature and culture. And discursive and rhetorical analysis that literary studies specializes in offers unique resources for an effective understanding of and response to environmental crisis. We will take in the founding theoretical principles of the critical study of the environment, ecocritical methodologies, canonical examples of ecocriticism, and both recent trends and new directions for future scholarship. Topics covered will be: the Anthropocene, post-nature, and new materialism; environmental justice (capitalism, racism, colonialism); animal studies and multispecies communities; and ecofeminism and queer ecology. Likely readings include: Jedediah Purdy, Andreas Malm, Jane Bennett, Rob Nixon, Dipesh Chakravarty, Ursula K. Heise, Timothy Morton, William Cronon, Cary Wolfe, Jack Halberstam, Amitav Gosh, Jason W. Moore, Donna J. Haraway, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Bruno Latour.

Fulfills critical theory requirement for MA English.

Winter 2022: Undergraduate Writing Courses

WR 115 001 INTRO TO COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Theo Thompson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 121 001 COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Brittany Shike
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

WR 121 002 COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Ryan Goderez
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 121 003 COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Francisco Cabre Vásquez
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 121 004 COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Robin Emanuelson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 200 001 WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE

Instructor: Elle Wilder
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 200: “Writing About Literature” uses writing as a way to engage with literature personally and academically. We will:

Examine how and why different kinds of people write about literature
Write as a way of enjoying and analyzing literature
Practice writing as a form of “academic discourse.”

Students will read nonfiction, fiction, and poetry for the purpose of literary analysis as well as writings on the texts to evaluate their form. This section will have a modern Gothic focus because Gothic texts are rich in recognizable yet provocative themes, symbols, and narratives. This gives students an advantage in literary analysis without sacrificing the thrill of a juicy story. Students will be able to individualize writing assignments to explore areas of interests and work on personal writing goals. Assessment is based on practicing the writing process: research, drafting, revision, and peer review not on creating a finished product.

WR 212 001 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Janice Lee
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

In this class we will explore the practice of writing fiction as an experience that not only includes putting words to page and telling stories, but also listening, observing, giving attention, feeling, moving, walking, meditating, and sensing. The course will work as a creative laboratory, giving the students the opportunity to experiment and investigate within the realm of fiction. Our work will be guided by writing exercises, readings by diverse contemporary authors, and discussions of core craft elements such as point of view, character, plot, and setting. There will also be some discussion of student work. Throughout, we will explore what it means to articulate via language, to be challenged by language, to recreate intimacy with language, and to see differently because of language.

WR 212 002 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Josef Ginsberg
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 212 003 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Rubén Gil Herrera
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 213 001 INTRO POETRY WRITING

Instructor: John Beer
Instructional Method: Remote - Scheduled Meetings

WR 213 002 INTRO POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Mark Guziel
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

WR 214 001 INTRO NONFICTION WRITING

Instructor: Ryan O'Connell
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

An introduction to writing creative nonfiction, focusing on basic elements of writing craft and on writing as an iterative process.

We will complete weekly Short Writing Assignments, read long and short works from across the genre, and give/receive feedback in small informal workshop groups. We will also investigate submitting for publication, graduate writing programs, and working habits of professional writers.

The course will culminate in a Long Writing Assignment, developed from one of the previous Short Writing Assignments, due at the end of finals week in lieu of an exam.

Required Texts:

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City - Nick Flynn (ISBN 9780393329407)
Sorry I Was Gone - Martha Grover (ISBN 9780578880969)

WR 222 001 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

Instructor: Jason Stieber
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 222 003 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

Instructor: Elizabeth Miossec-Backer
Instructional Method: Online
This course is no-cost.²

WR 227 001 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG

Instructor: Garret Romaine
Instructional Method: Online
This course is no-cost.²

WR 227 introduces you to the world of technical communication, which is a different style and voice from other writing. You will progress through a wide variety of typical technical writing projects, such as emails, reports, presentations, proposals, and procedures.

The goal is to keep building around the course project, a technical proposal that you can include in your portfolio. By the end of the term, you will develop the ability to summarize key points, create lists and tables, write in an active voice, and avoid wordiness. You will learn some tips and tricks built into your word processor to make technical information easier to understand, and you will gain insight into information design.

You should come out of this class with some good samples and templates that you can use later in your career.

WR 227 003 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG

Instructor: Anna Diehl
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 227 004 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG

Instructor: Mackenzie Streissguth
Instructional Method: Online
This course is no-cost.²

This course will use game design and game theory as the basis for practical experience in forms of technical communication, emphasizing basic organization and presentation of information. Though the focus will be on games (from tabletops to video games to card game classics), the goal is for students to develop transferrable writing strategies for analyzing the audience and information needs. For individual projects, students will be able to utilize their specific career, discipline, or area of study, if they like. This is a completely online, asynchronous course. Recommended, but not required: WR121 or Freshman Inquiry.

WR 300 001 TOP: PROFESSIONAL WRITING

Instructor: Keri Behre
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

Have you ever wished you had a portfolio of tailored professional documents, so that when the perfect opportunity came along, you felt ready? This course focuses on professional writing through a genre theory approach. Together, we will identify and undertake a study of examples of the types of writing required for various professional and scholarly aspirations, which may include (but will not be limited to) resumés/CVs, LinkedIn profiles, emails/letters, reviews, professional websites, grants, and personal statements. This is a process-oriented course that will utilize peer-review writing workshops and extensive revision. Each student will build a portfolio of polished work targeted to their individual goals. We will use Mignon Fogarty's "Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Writing" as a reference and occasional point of discussion. This course is a good fit for anyone seeking to transfer academic writing skills to the various sectors of the professional world; English/writing majors and nonmajors alike are welcome. This course qualifies for the University Writing Requirement. This is a low-cost course.

WR 301 001 WIC: CRITICAL WRTING ENGLISH

Instructor: Keri Behre
Instructional Method: Remote - Scheduled Meetings

This class will ask you to reflect upon what it means to engage in the study of and writing about texts and, in the process, introduce you to the history of, conventions within, and controversies surrounding English as an academic field. We will use the lens of fairy tales, both classical and contemporary and from a variety of cultures, to develop skills in analyzing poetry, prose, and drama; familiarize ourselves with genre; establish a working vocabulary of literary terms; consider historical context as part of the reading experience; and interpret texts critically. We will read a variety of fairy tales in the first half of the term, and will follow the thread of one tale type through the remainder of the term: Aarne-Thompson type 709, Snow White. We will encounter several of the major theoretical approaches to reading and writing about literature practiced by contemporary scholars, which will help you to better understand the secondary sources you will utilize in your research and writing. All the while, you will practice writing academic arguments based on close reading, interpretation, and careful research through three writing projects designed to give you a solid process-based grounding in the creation of academic arguments.

Textbooks:

The Classic Fairy Tales, 2nd Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Maria Tatar. Norton: 978-0-393-60297-5.
They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, 4th Edition. Ed. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. Norton: 978-0-393-63167-8.
Cymbeline (The Pelican Shakespeare). William Shakespeare, Ed. Peter Holland. Penguin: 978-0-140-71472-2.
MLA Handbook, 9th Ed. By Modern Language Association of America. MLA: 978-1-603-29562-8.

This section of the course will be taught in the remote/synchronous modality, via Zoom.

WR 301 002 WIC: CRITICAL WRITING ENGLISH

Instructor: Sarah Lincoln
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 312 001 INTERMED FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Gabriel Urza
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 312 002 INTERMED FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Leni Zumas
Instructional Method: Remote - Scheduled Meetings
This course is no-cost.²

WR 323 001 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Alexander Dannemiller
Instructional Method: Online

WR 323 002 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Karyn-Lynn Fisette
Instructional Method: Online

WR 323 003 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Susan Reese
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 323 004 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Karyn-Lynn Fisette
Instructional Method: Online

WR 323 005 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Caroline Hayes
Instructional Method: Online

WR 323 006 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Sean Warren
Instructional Method: Online

WR 323 007 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Travis Willmore
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 323 008 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Jarrod Dunham
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

WR 323 009 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Alexander Dannemiller
Instructional Method: Online

WR 323 010 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Amy Harper
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

WR 327 001 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: Lee Ware
Instructional Method: Online

WR 327 002 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: Lezlie Hall
Instructional Method: Online

WR 327 003 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: Julie Kares
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

WR 333 001 ADVANCED ESSAY WRITING

Instructor: Kirsten Rian
Instructional Method: Online
This course is no-cost.²

Writing 333 is designed to build on your nonfiction short and long form essay writing skills. We will use formal and informal writing to explore and study the assigned readings, examine our own and other students' writings, and reflect upon the nature of writing. The class will focus on the process of writing, effective use of language, and the studying of well-written pieces by other authors.

WR 398 001 TOP: WRITING COMICS

Instructor: Brian Bendis
Instructional Method: Remote - Scheduled Meetings

WR 410 002 TOP: ENTREPRNEURSHP IN PBLSHNG

Instructor: Ali Shaw
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course provides an overview of the role of entrepreneurship in the book publishing industry and equips students with skills to start up their own entrepreneurial ventures in publishing, from freelancing to publishing company creation. Topics include risk management, value creation, business models, financial management, and organizational creation.

WR 410 004 TOP: SCIENCE WRITING

Instructor: Jacob Tootalian
Instructional Method: Attend Anywhere
This course is low-cost.¹

The goal of this course is to prepare students to be effective writers and communicators of science for both scientific and public audiences. Students will study a variety of genres of scientific writing—from scientific reports and research proposals to science journalism and science non-fiction—considering how those genres take shape in both print and digital formats. They will learn rhetorical and stylistic strategies for writing science, including rhetorical analysis, genre research, audience analysis, and narrative storytelling. They will also be encouraged to locate themselves within the ecosystem of science communication. For the course project, students will adopt a role (such as researcher, grant writer, or journalist), identify a scientific or public audience to address, and write in a genre appropriate to their situation. They will also have the chance to practice collaboration within and across professions. Overall, the course aims to give students an understanding of the generative impact of communication in both the production and transmission of scientific knowledge.

WR 412 001 ADVANCED FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Gabriel Urza
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 412 002 ADV FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Matthew Robinson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

WR 413 001 ADVANCED POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Jennifer Denrow
Instructional Method: Remote - Scheduled Meetings

WR 416 001 SCREENWRITING

Instructor: Thom Bray
Instructional Method: Remote - Scheduled Meetings

WR 420 001 WRITING STUDIO

Instructor: Tony Wolk
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Texts: William Stafford, Crossing Unmarked Snow [ISBN 0-3472-06664-1]; Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind [ISBN 9781590300060]; The books will be available on campus at the PSU Bookstore.

Requirements:

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

WR 424 001 GRANT WRITING FOR PROF WRITERS

Instructor: Dr. Tracy Dillon
Instructional Method: Online
This course is no-cost.²

This course introduces students training for careers as professional writers to the best practices in writing grants and managing the grant writing process across multiple sectors of the nonprofit world and in academia. Students will apply their knowledge and skill by working with community-partner nonprofits that are seeking funds to solve social problems. Students will work collaboratively and individually to develop business plans, identify potential funding sources, and begin preparing grants.

WR 431 001 ADV TOP TECH WRITING TECHNLOGY

Instructor: Chad Kreiger
Instructional Method: Attend Anywhere

This course will teach students how to use the core features of the content management, authoring and publishing platform MadCap Flare in order to create and manage professional-grade projects. Topic-based writing will be emphasized as a valuable documentation method in which content is managed in smaller standalone topics, each focusing on a very specific issue, process, or concept. MTPW students will produce multiple professional-grade deliverables, which include print and web-based projects, suitable for the program portfolio.

WR 432 001 FRAMEWORKS FOR TECH WRITING

Instructor: Dr. Sarah Read
Instructional Method: Online

This course introduces students to the many frameworks for understanding the fundamental questions that shape technical communication as a practice in industry and as a field of academic study. Frameworks introduced may include rhetoric, design, ethics, social justice, network and ethics. Students will choose a framework to analyze and respond to a technical communication problem or situation of their choice and produce a portfolio piece to report and disseminate findings. This is a required core course in the MA/MS in Technical and Professional Writing.

WR 456 001 FORMS OF NONFICTION

Instructor: Justin Hocking
Instructional Method: Remote - Scheduled Meetings

This course will explore various forms of nonfiction, including personal essays, lyric essays, memoir, graphic memoir/comics, literary journalism, criticism, and oral history, with practice writing in each. We will also investigate the permeable boundaries between these and other literary forms, with a focus on the weaving of the personal and the political, the creative and the critical. Individual classes will contain discourse and writing experiments designed to deepen students’ critical understanding of various nonfiction forms, and to enhance their creative repertoires with a wide variety of nonfiction techniques and craft elements.

WR 458 001 MAGAZINE WRITING

Instructor: Paul Collins
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

This seminar uses conferencing and peer reading to research and draft short and long-form work for periodicals in both online and print formats. We'll also examine the profession of freelancing and the economic and production parameters of periodical publishing.

Texts:

Guide to Magazine Article Writing -- Kerrie Flanagan (978-1440351242)
Telling True Stories -- Mark Kramer and Wendy Call (978-0452287556)

WR 460 001 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Jyoti Roy
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

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

WR 461 001 BOOK EDITING

Instructor: Des Hewson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

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
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

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

WR 463 001 BOOK MARKETING

Instructor: Robyn Crummer-Olson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

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 466 001 DIGITAL SKILLS

Instructor: Pariah Burke
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

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

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

WR 471 001 TYPOGRAPHY, LAYOUT, PRODUCTION

Instructor: Kelley Dodd
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

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. Prerequisite: WR 562: Book Design Software.

WR 473 001 DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING

Instructor: Abby Ranger
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

Developmental editing is the interactive, multi-stage process of helping authors meaningfully strengthen their manuscripts. Shaping drafts and proposals into compelling books requires keen analysis, creativity, and the ability to communicate clearly and persuasively. This course explores the nature of editor-author relationships within the book publishing ecosystem, and delves deeply into the craft of developmental editing. Both fiction and nonfiction manuscripts and contexts will be explored. Students will gain practical tools for selecting projects and establishing productive editorial relationships, identifying untapped potential in stories and book concepts, and guiding writers through substantive improvements. Assignments will be students’ editorial responses to actual working manuscripts, culminating in a detailed editorial letter responding to a novel-length manuscript.

WR 474 001 PUBLISHING STUDIO

Instructor: Robyn Crummer-Olson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

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. Prerequisite: WR 575: Publishing Lab.

WR 475 001 PUBLISHING LAB

Instructor: Robyn Crummer-Olson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

Winter 2022: Graduate Writing Courses

ENG 507 001 SEM: SENTIMENT&SENTIMENTALITY

Instructor: Josh Epstein; Leni Zumas
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Note: Despite the ENG prefix, this seminar can be used for the seminar requirement for students in the fiction strand of the MFA program. It can count as an elective for all students.

WR 507 001 SEM: MFA POETRY

Instructor: Ed Skoog
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course will explore fundamental arguments about the nature of lyric poetry, past and present.

WR 507 005 SEM: MEMOIR WRITING

Instructor: Paul Collins
Instructional Method: Hybrid

Memoir Writing is a workshop focused on the development and revision of new work, as well as exploring authors and issues in memoir. This course is open to graduate students across the English department; prior writing workshop experience is helpful, but not required. The class has a brief online component each week that can be completed at your convenience, followed by a workshop meeting on campus from 4 - 6:30 pm on Fridays.

Our texts will be:

Autobiography of a Face – Lucy Grealy (978-0544837393)
The Magical Language of Others – E.J. Koh (978-1951142278)
Truth and Beauty – Ann Patchett (978-0060572150)
The Book of Eels – Patrik Svensson (978-0062968821)

Plus additional pieces online by Francisco Cantú, Lacy Johnson, Wayétu Moore, and Anthony So.

WR 509 001 PRAC: TCHING TECH & PRO WRITNG

Instructor: Dr. Sarah Read
Instructional Method: Online

This is the second quarter of the 1-credit practicum for GAs teaching WR 227 and other MTPW students interested in engaging with the teaching of technical writing—something you will be qualified to do as a MA/MS in Technical Writing. If you are in need of a 9th credit for winter term, I recommend registering for this course. Your short project can reflect a current interest that you are working towards.

WR 510 001 TOP: PORTLAND REVIEW PBLSHNG

Instructor: Michael Seidlinger
Instructional Method: Online

WR 510 002 TOP: ENTREPRNEURSHP IN PBLSHNG

Instructor: Ali Shaw
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 510 004 TOP: SCIENCE WRITING

Instructor: Jacob Tootalian
Instructional Method: Attend Anywhere
This course is low-cost.¹

WR 520 001 WRITING STUDIO

Instructor: Tony Wolk
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Requirements:

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

WR 521 001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP FICTION

Instructor: Janice Lee
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

In this workshop we will examine the entire spectrum of the writing process, and use revision as a way to rewrite, rebuild, and “re-see” a work of fiction. We will read various essays on craft, writing, language, and ways of engaging with the world, and also work on our conceptions of major craft terms, with a particular focus on point of view. Students will apply a variety of revision procedures to their work and work on re-envisioning the structural frameworks that shape not only their individual stories and chapters, but also their collections or novels as a whole, think more critically about writing as a unique process of becoming, and engage in critical analyses and discussions of their peers’ work.

Optional Text: Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses

Required Texts:

Human Acts by Hang Kang, translated by Deborah Smith
The Reconception of Marie by Teresa Carmody

WR 522 001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP POETRY

Instructor: John Beer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

In this studio class, we will seek to enlarge our sense of the possibilities for expression, and for the expressive failures of expression, that language opens up. By developing their own work through multiple drafts and commenting vigorously upon the work of fellow writers, participants will gradually accumulate both a body of work and an analytical toolkit.

Texts:

Sho, Douglas Kearney
Interventions for Women, Angela Hume
The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void, Jackie Wang

WR 523 001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP NONFICTION

Instructor: Justin Hocking
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course will explore the motif of survival from a number of literary, psychological, and ecological perspectives. In addition to weekly peer critiques, we will examine new and classic works of creative nonfiction, and discuss how the authors (or their subjects) survive trauma, chronic illness/disability, racism, environmental catastrophe, and other challenges. Via regular writing exercises, we will also experiment with various craft elements, research tools, and line-level choices that these and other writers employ to generate vital narratives of survival.

Tentative Reading List:

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli
Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala
The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch

WR 524 001 GRANT WRITING FOR PROF WRITERS

Instructor: Dr. Tracy Dillon
Instructional Method: Online
This course is no-cost.²

WR 531 001 ADV TOP TECH WRITING TECHNLOGY

Instructor: Chad Kreiger
Instructional Method: Attend Anywhere

WR 532 001 FRAMEWORK FOR TECH WRITING

Instructor: Dr. Sarah Read
Instructional Method: Online

WR 560 001 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Jyoti Roy
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 561 001 BOOK EDITING

Instructor: Des Hewson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 562 001 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE

Instructor: Kelley Dodd
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 563 001 BOOK MARKETING

Instructor: Robyn Crummer-Olson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

WR 566 001 DIGITAL SKILLS

Instructor: Pariah Burke
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 571 001 TYPOGRAPHY, LAYOUT, PRODUCTION

Instructor: Kelley Dodd
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 573 001 DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING

Instructor: Abby Ranger
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

WR 574 001 PUBLISHING STUDIO

Instructor: Robyn Crummer-Olson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

WR 575 001 PUBLISHING LAB

Instructor: Robyn Crummer-Olson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

WR 579 001 RESEARCHING BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Rachel Noorda
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

This course introduces research methods specific to book publishing and is particularly geared toward Book Publishing Master’s students to equip them to write their final research paper for the program. Students will learn about qualitative and quantitative book publishing research methods and work through various stages of their final research paper for the Book Publishing Master’s Program. Students will emerge from the course with a measurable, right-sized research question, a methodology plan, and draft of the research paper.

Winter 2022 Courses

On This Page

Winter 2022: Undergraduate English Courses

ENG 204 001 SURVEY OF BRITISH LIT I

ENG 253 001 SURVEY OF AMERICAN LIT I

ENG 300 001 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS

ENG 300 003 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS

ENG 301U 001 TOP: SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

ENG 304 001 CRITICAL THEORY OF CINEMA

ENG 305U 001 TOP: DAVID LYNCH & FILM NOIR

ENG 305U 002 TOP: THE NEW HOLLYWOOD

ENG 305U 003 TOP: INDIGENOUS CINEMA

ENG 306U 001 TOP: AMERICAN NOVEL & CULTURE

ENG 306U 002 TOP: LATINX COMICS

ENG 318U 001 THE BIBLE AS LIT

ENG 326 001 LIT COMM DIFF

ENG 335U 001 TOP: LITERATURE & FILM

ENG 341U 001 RENAISSANCE LITERATURE

ENG 344U 001 VICTORIAN LITERATURE

ENG 352U 001 AFRICAN AMERICAN LIT II

ENG 363U 001 AMERICAN LIT AND CULTURE II

ENG 367U 001 TOP: AMERICAN GOTHIC LIT

ENG 371 001 THE NOVEL

ENG 372U 001 TOP: LIT, GENDER, & SEXUALITY

ENG 373U 001 TOP: ARAB-AMERICAN LITERATURE

WS 374U 001 MEMOIR, GENDER AND SEXUALITY

ENG 378U 001 AMERICAN POETRY II

ENG 414 001 COMPOSITION THEORY

ENG 428 001 CANONS AND CANONICITY

ENG 458 001 ADV TOP: ROMANTICISM & ECOLOGY

ENG 460 001 ADV TOP: CAPTIVITY EARLY AMER

ENG 496 001 COMICS THEORY

Winter 2022: Graduate English Courses

ENG 507 001 SEM: SENTIMENT&SENTIMENTALITY

ENG 514 001 COMPOSITION THEORY

ENG 518 001 COLLEGE COMP TEACHING

ENG 519 001 ADV COLLEGE COMP TEACHING

ENG 522 001 AFRICAN FICTION

ENG 531 001 TOP: COLLOQUIUM

ENG 598 001 ECO/CRIT/CLT

Winter 2022: Undergraduate Writing Courses

WR 115 001 INTRO TO COLLEGE WRITING

WR 121 001 COLLEGE WRITING

WR 121 002 COLLEGE WRITING

WR 121 003 COLLEGE WRITING

WR 121 004 COLLEGE WRITING

WR 200 001 WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE

WR 212 001 INTRO FICTION WRITING

WR 212 002 INTRO FICTION WRITING

WR 212 003 INTRO FICTION WRITING

WR 213 001 INTRO POETRY WRITING

WR 213 002 INTRO POETRY WRITING

WR 214 001 INTRO NONFICTION WRITING

WR 222 001 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

WR 222 003 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

WR 227 001 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG

WR 227 003 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG

WR 227 004 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG

WR 300 001 TOP: PROFESSIONAL WRITING

WR 301 001 WIC: CRITICAL WRTING ENGLISH

WR 301 002 WIC: CRITICAL WRITING ENGLISH

WR 312 001 INTERMED FICTION WRITING

WR 312 002 INTERMED FICTION WRITING

WR 323 001 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

WR 323 002 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

WR 323 003 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

WR 323 004 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

WR 323 005 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

WR 323 006 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

WR 323 007 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

WR 323 008 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

WR 323 009 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

WR 323 010 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

WR 327 001 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

WR 327 002 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

WR 327 003 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

WR 333 001 ADVANCED ESSAY WRITING

WR 398 001 TOP: WRITING COMICS

WR 410 002 TOP: ENTREPRNEURSHP IN PBLSHNG

WR 410 004 TOP: SCIENCE WRITING