Winter 2023 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 2023: Undergraduate English Courses

ENG 201 001 SHAKESPEARE

Instructor: Daniel Pollack-Pelzner
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Shakespeare may be Hollywood’s most prolific screenwriter, as well as the world’s most-performed playwright and best-known author. This course will examine the lives and afterlives of his plays on the page, on the stage, and on the screen, introducing you to a tragedy, a history, and a couple of (tragi-)comedies, as well as the varied ways they have been imagined and reconstructed over the past four hundred years. We will analyze each play’s text (or texts, in many cases) as a script for performance. We will also explore how these texts have been realized and adapted on stage, considering casting, production design, and performance scripts in their cultural context. We will read adaptations and responses from our own time, too. Film viewing outside of class will allow us to develop a vocabulary for analyzing cinematic choices. In all media, we will explore the inseparability of performance and interpretation, focusing on questions of genre, gender, race, religion, theatricality, and the elusive notion of the “authentic” Shakespeare. Student performance (with practice) will be a central part of the course.

ENG 205 001 SURVEY OF BRITISH LIT II

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

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

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

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

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

The course is entirely online in CANVAS.

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

ENG 300 001 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS

Instructor: Marcel Brousseau
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

ENG 300 002 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS

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

Primary texts are Isak Dinesen’s “The Blank Page” and Ehrengard; Vladimir Nabokov’s “That in Aleppo Once,” “Spring in Fialta,” and Lolita; an excerpt from James Joyce’s Ulysses; Franz Kafka’s “A Country Doctor;” and 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 100-200 word contributions to Canvas discussion. 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 zoom meetings with students who request this.

Above all, this class will explore how form relates to (diverse) "content."

ENG 304 001 CRITICAL THEORY OF CINEMA

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

What is cinema? What is the relationship between film, photography, and a “real” world captured on camera? How do films “mean” what they do? How do they construct or affect a spectator? Who or what is a film spectator, and how do they interface with questions of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, empire, and the economy? What distinguishes cinema from other media, especially digital media, which have in recent decades been replacing the analog components of filmmaking first established in the late nineteenth century? Can watching a movie on your phone be considered the same activity as visiting a cinema? Questions such as these have long been posed within a rich tradition of film and media theory by scholars, filmmakers, and activists. This course serves as an introduction to this field within a broader critical theory tradition, moving (for the most part) chronologically from the early twentieth century to our contemporary moment, using both readings and film screenings as our materials.

While “theory” can have a reputation for being dense and obtuse at times, we all have watched movies, and thought about them afterwards. This is ultimately the work we will be doing in this course, and no prior experience with film studies is expected, or required. By course’s end, you may never watch a movie the same way again—but you also may never want to!

ENG 305U 001 TOP: DAVID LYNCH & FILM NOIR

Instructor: Michael Clark
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 305U 002 TOP IN FILM: SCIENCE FICTION

Instructor: Karen Grossweiner
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course will focus on the science fiction film and its complex and shifting relation to the cultural and historical context that produced it. We will consider individual films in visual and narrative detail as well as broader philosophical issues inherent in the genre of science fiction. Central to our study will be the ways in which the films visualize difference--sexual, gender, racial, class, human/alien. We will also explore the concept of genre theoretically, both through films that seemingly fall neatly under the descriptor “science fiction” and those that are explicitly hybrid in nature (Alien, Dark City). We will screen one film in class per week beginning with Fritz Lang’s highly influential early film Metropolis and concluding with the recent Nope or Sorry to Bother You. Students can expect to read approximately 3 scholarly articles per week.

ENG 306U 001 TOP: LATINX COMICS

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

ENG 306U 002 TOP: TOLKIEN

Instructor: Valah Steffen-Wittwer
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings

J.R.R. Tolkien and his “Secondary World” of Middle-earth are known to many though the film adaptations of Peter Jackson, but fewer know Tolkien’s books. As Tolkien argued in his essay “On Fairy Stories,” “[i]n human art Fantasy is a thing best left to words, to true literature.” This course will address itself entirely to Tolkien’s own writing and through his written words we will explore the wonders and terrors of Middle-earth.

Required Books:

The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
The Tolkien Reader

ENG 310U 001 TOP: CHILD/YOUNG ADULT LIT

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

History Lessons?: Representations of the Past in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction:

Young adult fiction continues to be a site of popular debate over how history gets told. This course will introduce you to critical frameworks for approaching representations of the past, particularly pasts of slavery, settler colonialism, and imperialism, in contemporary young adult fiction. How does young adult fiction treat historical processes and events? To what extent does it “teach” history to a young adult audience? (And what does it mean to approach literature this way?) How are representations of the past keyed to the present? Rather than limiting ourselves to works of realist historical fiction, we will investigate these questions in works across a variety of genres and forms, such as dystopian fiction and graphic novel, that center young adults. Some authors we might read include Cherie Dimaline, Jesmyn Ward, Malinda Lo, Kiku Hughes, Junot Diaz, Elizabeth Acavedo, Nnedi Okorafor, and/or Alexis Pauline Gumbs.

ENG 315 001 POETRY AND FORM

Instructor: Tom Fisher
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings
This course is low-cost.¹

In this course we will conduct a wide study of poetic forms, from the sonnet to free verse, across historical periods and places as we trace and track the various ways in which formal conventions (or the lack thereof) create and respond to assumptions about the possibilities of poetry as a cultural, social, political and aesthetic practice.

ENG 319U 001 NORTH EUROPEAN MYTH

Instructor: Valah Steffen-Wittwer
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings

Northern European Mythology is a broad and rich area of literature where what we know what has been lost or altered is larger than what we know we have retained. It is far too broad to be encompassed by a single class. With this in mind, this course will explore pieces of several of the major texts of the Norse and Celtic mythologies to provide a sampling of this rich area of literature and culture.

ENG 320U 001 THE ENGLISH NOVEL I

Instructor: John Vignaux Smyth
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

Main Texts:

Aphra Behn, The Fair Jilt
Jane Austen, Emma
Henry Fielding, Shamela and Joseph Andrews
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (selections)
Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist (selections)
Nikolai Gogol, “The Nose”
Paul de Man, “The Epistemology of Metaphor”

Films/TV Series:

Peter Greenaway, The Draughtsman’s Contract
Amy Heckerling, Clueless
Stanley Kubrick, Barry Lyndon
Diarmuid Lawrence, Emma
Jim O’Hanlon, Emma (4-part BBC TV series)
Michael Winterbottom, A Cock and Bull Story

Primary requirements: Two essays plus 2 weekly Canvas posts.

This course will be conducted entirely in writing, without zoom lectures or meetings. When email communication is not sufficient, I will video-meet with any individual students who request this.

ENG 326 001 LIT COMM DIFF

Instructor: Prof. Anoop Mirpuri
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

What is “fiction,” and how and when did it become the dominant literary form? What makes fiction different from other forms of writing? How should we view the relation between a work of fiction and the identity of its author? Finally, why do we read fiction? What exactly are we doing when we read it? And what should we be doing when we read it?

We will address these questions through a careful study of four novels written and published in the previous century. In a world where we’re increasingly compelled to talk and write about ourselves—our identities, our experience, our personal traumas—these novels demonstrate that the power of fiction resides in its capacity to imagine the world through the eyes of others. In a world in which racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual identity are generally assumed to be the key to knowing the truth about one’s self, the novel form offers an occasion to explore what Zadie Smith calls “the mystery that lies at the heart of all selfhood.” Finally, in a world where works of literature are generally understood to have a specific moral or political content, what would it mean to read without the assumption that a work of literature has a specific message or meaning to convey? Perhaps the most important objective of this course is to expand the potential of the literature that we read by expanding our own capacities as readers and interpreters of literature.

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

Required Texts:

James Weldon Johnson, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)
Nella Larsen, Passing (1929)
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989)
Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle (1996)

ENG 331U 001 INTRO RHETORIC & COMP

Instructor: Dan DeWeese
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Introduction to Rhetoric and Composition Studies offers students an opportunity to discuss contemporary issues in writing instruction, persuasion in a multimedia world, and the interplay of traditional and visual literacies. The course touches upon the rhetorical traditions argued in ancient Greece, challenges to those traditions, the rise of “process-oriented” writing instruction in American universities, and visual elements of rhetoric that began with professional typography and now extend into film, television, and the Internet. Although history provides the course’s structure, the focus is on such perennial issues as the relationship of writing to speech and reading, the teaching of writing (and the role of audience in composing), the relationship between writing and “the self,” and the political implications bound up in differing representations of thought and methods of argument.

ENG 333U 001 HST CINEMA/NARRATIVE MEDIA II

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

This course traces the major developments in film and media history from the end of World War Two to the early 1980s. Beginning with the waning of the Classical Hollywood Studio System in the US, we will move around the world and follow postwar developments in European avant-garde cinema, modernist cinema, postcolonial, global, and Third cinemas, and New Waves and the New Hollywood during the 1970s, before concluding with the deregulation of global media industries and the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s. Special attention will be paid to the emergence of television, video, and digital media, and their impact on cinematic form and textuality.

ENG 335U 001 TOP: ADAPTING LIT TO FILM

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

ENG 335U 002 TOP: CONSPIRACY THEORY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

From the mundane to the dangerous, conspiracy theories continue to exert an outsized influence on our culture. But what would it mean to think of the conspiracy theory less as a product of "fake news" or "media diets," and more as a narrative form that began to take shape in the latter decades of the twentieth century, carrying through to the present? In this course we will analyze a series of novels and films that take the conspiracy theory as their object, asking why and how the conspiracy emerges as a form for making sense of the world at certain historical moments. Attention will be paid to the difference (and congruities) between literary form and film language, as well as discrete periods of conspiracy in film and literature (post-Watergate New Hollywood thrillers, 1980s/90s alternate history novels, etc).

ENG 341U 001 RENAISSANCE LITERATURE

Instructor: Prof. Jonathan Walker
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

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 overlapping themes. 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: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings

ENG 352U 001 AFRICAN AMERICAN LIT II

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

ENG/BST 352U 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.

Required Materials:

Chapman, (Ed.), Black Voices: An Anthology of African-American Literature
Kelley, A Different Drummer

ENG 368U 001 LITERATURE AND ECOLOGY

Instructor: Alastair Hunt
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

What lessons can literature teach us about what environmentalist Rachel Carson once called “the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures”? Human-animal relations today stand at a critical juncture. The global population of wild animals is, thanks to human actions, plummeting at a catastrophic rate, while the number of animals that the agricultural industry breeds into existence, mostly to live in some of the worst places in the world, is exploding. Human beings may end up living on a planet with only their livestock as company. In this course we will consider the unique resources literature provides both for thinking critically about the various ways we have lived with animals up till now and for thinking creatively about how we might live well with them in the future. Our reading will take in a selection of mostly twentieth- and twenty-first century literary texts from diverse prose genres (fiction, nonfiction, fable) and various national Anglophone traditions (American, British, South African). In addition, we will read a small number of works of poetry, theory, criticism, and history. Topics to be addressed include: species as a category of social difference; human supremacy; animal subjectivity; animals and social justice; intersections between species, race, and gender; representing animals; eating animals; animals and radical politics; animal resistance.

ENG 377U 001 AMERICAN POETRY I

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

ENG 380 001 INTRO COMP LIT CULTURE STUDIES

Instructor: Cynthia Sloan
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 383U 001 TOP: SUPERHEROES JAPAN VS WEST

Instructor: Jon Holt
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

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
This course is low-cost.¹

ENG 429 001 ADV TOP: SAMUEL DELANY

Instructor: Bill Knight
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Samuel Delany's works of science fiction are iconoclastic dances of reflexivity and transgression, full of boundary-crossing linguistic experiments and a persistent, unruly demand for a reimagination of the body's relation to the symbolic order. From his earliest efforts at meeting and subverting his publishers' expectations about genre fiction to his later metafictional experiments and his starkly visceral blending of polymorphous erotica with speculative dystopia and futurity, Delany is singular, challenging, disturbing, and vital.

In this advanced topics course we'll read a number of Delany's most notable works of speculative fiction with the goal of thinking carefully about their willfully transgressive performances of genre, race, desire, sex, subjectivity, and sociability. We'll range across Delany's works from the earlier SF genre fiction to the discordantly psychedelic and sexually turbulent cityscape of his magnum opus Dhalgren and beyond. The reading will be demanding-- there will be many pages to cross in our time together. But it will be powerful and diverting and our conversations will pull us through.

Alongside novels and stories, we'll read excerpts from Delany's autobiographical prose (The Motion of Light in Water; Times Square Red, Times Square Blue) and a number of his essays and interviews on writing, language, afrofuturism, literary canons, and sexuality. We'll consider all this alongside an investigation of contemporary theories of the subject, sexuality, identity, and desire.

Novels we'll read:

Babel-17. Vintage, 2002 (originally published 1966) (ISBN: 978-0375706691)
Dhalgren. Vintage, 2001 (originally published 1975) (ISBN: 978-0375706684).
Trouble on Triton. Wesleyan University Press, 1996 (Originally published 1976)(ISBN: 978-0819562982).
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. Wesleyan University Press, 1994 (Originally published 1984). (ISBN: 978-0819567147)

Students will keep analytical reading journals, participate in occasional discussion forums, compose an online "presentation," and write a research paper. Classroom participation will be required-- we'll have lots to talk about, and the conversation will be the centerpiece of what will be a quarter of energetic encounter with Samuel Delany's life and work.

ENG 447 001 MJR FORCES: LIT AND PHILOSOPHY

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

This class begins with the rivalry between poetry and philosophy in classical Greece, specifically with the dialogue between philosopher Plato and comedian Aristophanes as we may deduce it from the former’s Symposium and Republic, and the latter’s Clouds, Frogs, and Assembly of Women.

Via Jacques Derrida’s, Leo Strauss’, and Martha Nussbaum’s commentaries on Plato and Aristophanes, we will also explore the problem as it has been interpreted by well-known philosophers in the twentieth century.

In the second half of term, we turn to René Girard’s theoretical reading of Shakespeare in A Theater of Envy, particularly A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Troilus and Cressida.

Finally, we read several of Franz Kafka’s stories, including especially "Investigations of a Dog" and "Josephine the Singer, or The Mouse-Folk," which treat the relation between knowledge and art in modernity.

Main requirements: Two essays and two weekly Canvas posts on the texts we are reading. This course will be conducted entirely in writing, without zoom lectures or meetings. When email communication is not sufficient, however, I will video-meet with individual students who request such a meeting.

ENG 450 001 ADV TOP: 18TH-CENTURY LIT

Instructor: Bill Knight
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course will give us occasion to think in a careful, focused way about the 18th and early 19th century origins of the Gothic genre in British and colonial writing. We'll cover five major, canonical novels that help establish the parameters of the genre, but we'll also look at examples of or excerpts from minor or less canonical tales, poems, plays, and essayistic writing, particularly emphasizing colonial contexts. We'll attempt to come to terms with the British Gothic's unique narrative entanglement with colonialism and the violences of the colonial economy. We'll parallel these readings with an ongoing consideration of theories of subjectivity, terror, trauma, the uncanny, the sublime, the obscene, historicity, gender, guilt, and violence.

Students will present on an outside work, compose an analytical reading journal, and write a research paper. Regular, engaged classroom participation will be required: our conversations will be the living centerpiece of the course, and there will be far more to talk about than we have time to cover! Come prepared for active, ongoing inquiry and for conversations that will in urgent and meaningful ways encompass literary, political, psychological, ethical, and personal topics.

Novels:

Walpole. The Castle of Otranto (1765).
Beckford. Vathek (1786).
Lewis. The Monk (1796).
Austen. Northanger Abbey (1817).
Shelley. Frankenstein (1818).

ENG 458 001 ADV TOP: ROMANTICISM

Instructor: Alastair Hunt
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

Readers and scholars have long known that “nature” was a major preoccupation of the writers active during the Romantic period. But what, if anything, can the Romantics teach us about the global environmental crisis? Environmental researchers generally date the start of the environmental crisis to the late eighteenth century and the rise of industrial capitalism. This places the beginning of climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and so on smack in the Romantic period in Britain (1780-1830). In this course we will examine Romantic literature as a reflection of and on the root of our global environmental crisis. Taking in poetry, one novel, nonfiction, and works of criticism, history, and philosophy, we will see how Romantic writers make sense of climate change, wild nature, plantations in the Caribbean, intensive agriculture, infectious disease, our fellow creatures, vegetarianism.

ENG 496 001 COMICS THEORY

Instructor: Dr. Susan Kirtley
Instructional Method: Hybrid

Comics, graphic novels, comic strips, cartoons. There are many terms for them, but they are all names for innovative storytelling done through some combination of words and images. While picture-images date as far back as the Egyptian tombs, or the caves of Lascaux, our course will consider the development of the modern comic in twentieth- and twenty-first- century America. This course will focus on comics theory, understanding and applying theory to primary texts.

Winter 2023: Graduate English Courses

ENG 507 001 SEM: LITERARY PEDAGOGIES

Instructor: Bishupal Limbu
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

What, if anything, does literature teach us? How do we learn from literature and how can we use what we learn to teach? How do we mobilize a literary way of reading and apprehending the world, and how do we do so in order to change it (to echo Marx)? This course will investigate the assumptions, ideas, and practices that constitute literary pedagogies as both an apparatus (Foucault) and a set of strategies for the classroom. We will mix theory and practice in our class meetings and address big-picture questions (e.g., What is the role of literary and humanistic education in a democratic society?) as well as more immediate ones (e.g., How does one conduct a productive class discussion?). To help us in our efforts, we will read essays by the following scholars (the list may change): Adorno, Freire, Nussbaum, Rancière, Scarry, and Spivak. We will also examine the pedagogy-focused ideas of literary critics such as Graff, Scholes, and Showalter. Our aim will be to arrive at an understanding of literary pedagogies that takes into account their purpose, content, and approach. Along the way, we will read, discuss, and teach two works of literature: Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and (probably) Bechdel’s Fun Home.

Required texts:

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (Norton Critical Edition, ISBN 9780393932195)
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (ISBN 9780544709041)

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: In-Person Meeting

ENG 519 001 ADV COLLEGE COMP TEACHING

Instructor: Kate Comer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 529 001 ADV TOP: SAMUEL DELANY

Instructor: Bill Knight
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Novels we'll read:

Babel-17. Vintage, 2002 (originally published 1966) (ISBN: 978-0375706691)
Dhalgren. Vintage, 2001 (originally published 1975) (ISBN: 978-0375706684).
Trouble on Triton. Wesleyan University Press, 1996 (Originally published 1976)(ISBN: 978-0819562982).
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. Wesleyan University Press, 1994 (Originally published 1984). (ISBN: 978-0819567147)

ENG 531 001 TOP: COLLOQUIUM

Instructor: Professor Elisabeth Ceppi
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

ENG 560 001 ADV TOP: FICTIONS OF ERLY AMER

Instructor: Professor Elisabeth Ceppi
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course examines historical and contemporary narratives that construct the early American past, focusing on stories of conquest, slavery, captivity, witchcraft, the Revolution, and the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. We will read 16th-18th century nonfiction accounts that dramatized these events and experiences in their time, and which have served as source material for the scholarship and contemporary fiction and film that shapes what they mean in ours. We will take a comparative approach, examining different modes of narrating history and imagining past worlds practiced by literary critics, historians, fiction writers and filmmakers. This approach will allow us to explore questions about the premises, methods, forms, politics and ethics of representing early America and its relevance to understanding US culture today. The class fills the pre-1800 or pre-1900 literature requirement for the MA in English.

Required Books:

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Relación (Arte Público)
Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (Bedford)
Laila Lalami, The Moor's Account
Toni Morrison, A Mercy
Laurie Halse Anderson, Fever 1793

Winter 2023: Undergraduate Writing Courses

WR 121 001 COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Kelly Connor
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 121 002 COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Kate Chilelli
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 121 003 COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Hannah Ahern
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 121 004 COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Emma Luthy
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 200 001 WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE

Instructor: Brittany Shike
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

WR 212 001 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Ryan Goderez
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

An examination of craft in fiction for the beginning fiction writer. Students will read a variety of contemporary authors in various genres and practice sharing and revising their own work.

WR 212 002 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Theo Thompson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

An introduction to Craft and the Creative Writing Workshop. Features units on point of view, setting/world building, pacing, character, story/narrative, and more.

Activities include sharing weekly writing exercises among a small group of peers and providing feedback.

Read and discuss short fiction by a vast selection of writers (Neil Gaiman, Octavia E. Butler, Han Kang, Helena María Viramontes, Karen Russel).

May be repeated for a total of 8 credits. Expected preparation: Freshman Inquiry.

WR 212 003 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Gabriel Urza
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 213 001 INTRO POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Ambra Wilson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 213 002 INTRO POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Consuelo Wise
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

A few words gathering. Trees in a nightwind. Sound of rain, heavy on a tin roof. Someone’s voice you remember the shape of.

Where do poems come from? What do you expect of them? Can they change you? Can you make a practice of careful listening, and hear a poem out?

In this class we will slow down to the page, an image, a far off sound. We will follow a poem’s breath by studying lines, how they break and shift and jolt. What rhythms, or formal patterns—why a cluster, why that gap or strike or mode of address? Who is speaking? Who are they speaking to? Where are you? What sounds do the words make? Where do you feel something, what makes you catch, repeat back?

In our close readings and in our workshop, there will be care in how we approach the work—this is a course in listening, and the poems and us—in it, depend upon that care and attention.

WR 214 001 INTRO NONFICTION WRITING

Instructor: Robin Emanuelson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 222 001 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

Instructor: Echo Meyers
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

WR 222 002 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 227 001 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG

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

WR 227 002 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG

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

WR 227 003 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG

Instructor: Sumayyah Uddin
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 300 001 TOP: PROFESSIONAL WRITING

Instructor: Keri Behre
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
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 and communication 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. 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 non-majors alike are welcome.

WR 301 001 WIC: CRITICAL WRTING ENGLISH

Instructor: Professor Elisabeth Ceppi
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
This course is low-cost.¹

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

The course will improve students’ ability to:

Use close reading skills to develop interpretations of literary texts
Communicate those interpretations clearly and persuasively in their scholarly writing
Locate and cite works of scholarship and engage with them effectively to frame complex arguments about texts
Grasp the importance of drafting and revision to intellectual growth and successful college writing

Required Books: Toni Morrison, A Mercy; Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say/I Say: the Moves that Matter in Academic Writing

WR 301 002 WIC: CRITICAL WRITING ENGLISH

Instructor: Dr. Madeline Lane-McKinley
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Literature and the Politics of Authorship:

In this course we will develop skills for critical writing, textual interpretation, and literary analysis, through a sustained inquiry into the politics of authorship. What is an author and what constitutes authorship? Who has and has not had access to authorship in literary history? How can we approach writing as a political practice in relation to institutions of private property, patriarchy, and racism? These are some of the questions that will guide our study of authorship and the practice of writing, as we read various works of poetry, creative nonfiction, critical theory, and documentary film. Throughout the course we will practice different tactics for reading and writing, for incorporating scholarship sources and independent research into our analysis, and for putting texts into meaningful dialogue with each other.

WR 312 001 INTERMED FICTION WRITING

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

In this class, students will engage with topics related to craft (point of view, character, narrative, setting, etc.), look more closely at their own relationship with language, and aim to produce two completed works of original fiction. Students will also participate in workshops and provide written critical engagements of the works of their peers. Our work will be guided by various writing & revision exercises, as well as readings by diverse contemporary authors.

WR 312 002 INTERMED FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Mark Allen Cunningham
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is low-cost.¹

In this course we will strive to hone our perceptive powers as writers, in order to breathe new life into our language, forms, characters, plots, and use of perspective. Through reading and discussion, writing experiments, and analysis of published texts and student work, we’ll broaden the ways we think about fiction and creative writing in general. Note: Rather than using this course to polish their pre-existing work, students will be expected to create new writing in response to explorative prompts, and will leave this course with new generative tools at their disposal, several pieces of fresh creative writing in progress, and a longer, more developed work of original fiction.

WR 313 001 INTERMEDIATE POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Alice Hall
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Document. Artifact. Image. Text.

The poet Susan Howe has argued that writers such as Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman “were using cinematic montage before it was a word for a working method,” “comparing and linking fragments or shots, selecting fragments for scenes, reducing multitudes (chapters or stanzas) and shots (lines and single words) to correlate with one another, constantly interweaving traces of the past to overcome restrictions of temporal framing.”

In this poetry workshop we will think about writing poetry in the age of spectacle. We will read experimental poets who create hybrid works that blend image and text, photography and poetry, cinema and writing. How do we, as poets, enter and engage with history? How do we document our own consciousness, whether it is a gesture of sunlight on the side of a house or an international war unfolding on TV? How do we experience the world mediated by documents, information, and screens? What does “cinematic” poetry look like––and how do we make it?

Required texts: Muriel Rukeyser, Book of the Dead, Claudia Rankine, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee.

WR 323 001 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Hybrid

WR 323 002 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Hybrid

WR 323 003 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Talitha May
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Our first unit will adopt a meta-communicative awareness of writing and rhetoric and interrogate commonplace ways of thinking about writing. We will examine questionable writing constructs and explore how they might overlap or even diverge from our personal literacy experiences. The second unit will examine environmental issues through a rhetorical lens and examine how power operates through language. Finally, the last unit will adopt an intersectional approach to reading a text about social justice and non-human animal rights. The cornerstones of this class are group inquiry and class discussion.

WR 323 004 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

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

In this course, we will practice critical inquiry in personal, academic, and professional writing. This is a process-oriented class, which means we will be studying and practicing writing techniques to develop insight into how we function best as writers. We will develop skills in critical reading, thinking and writing. Students will be given reign to choose their own topics within the assignment structures, so our work can encompass personal writing goals. There is no required textbook; all readings will be provided. Required course work will constitute multiple drafts of three essays, peer-review workshops, weekly low-stakes writing assignments, participation in class discussions, and a final self-reflective essay.

WR 323 005 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

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

WR 323 006 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Alex Dannemiller
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 323 007 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

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

WR 323 008 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Travis Willmore
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 323 009 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Talitha May
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 323 010 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Alex Dannemiller
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 323 011 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

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

In this course, we will practice critical inquiry in personal, academic, and professional writing. This is a process-oriented class, which means we will be studying and practicing writing techniques to develop insight into how we function best as writers. We will develop skills in critical reading, thinking, and writing. Students will be able to choose their own topics within the assignment structures, so our work can encompass personal writing goals. There is no required textbook; all readings will be provided. Required coursework will constitute multiple drafts of three essays, peer-review workshops, weekly low-stakes writing assignments, participation in class discussions, and a final self-reflective essay.

WR 327 001 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

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

WR 327 002 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

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

WR 327 003 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: Sidouane Patcha Lum
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

WR 328 001 MEDIA EDITING

Instructor: Kjerstin Johnson
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 331 001 BOOK PUBLISHING FOR WRITERS

Instructor: Brian Parker
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 394 001 CAREERS FOR ENGLISH MAJORS

Instructor: Paul Collins
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course is no-cost.²

This course gives students an opportunity to explore and write on the career paths open to English majors. This includes areas commonly associated with English – teaching, writing, editing – but also some you might not expect, like law and medicine. We'll engage in critical reflection on what each student is considering for their own path, and on the meaning of the English major and of labor itself. What is the English major, and how did it come about? What are the demographics of English majors? What's the research on the various career routes that they take? What are the technological, financial, and ethical challenges and changes in these fields?

This course counts towards the University Writing Requirement. It can be used as upper-division elective in the English BA/BS, the Creative Writing BFA, or the English or Writing minors. It is a designated low-cost course; our readings will be drawn from articles available online, and through research journals accessible through our library.

WR 398 001 TOP: WRITING COMICS

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings

WR 410 002 TOP: ENTREPRNEURSHP IN PBLSHNG

Instructor: Alicia 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 to bookstore management and more. Topics include opportunity analysis, business models, organizational creation, business integrity, financial planning, and risk management.

Course Objectives:

Introduce students to the role of entrepreneurship in society and in the book industry
Familiarize students with key concepts and competencies of entrepreneurship
Expose students to the social, political, and economic contexts that impact entrepreneurship and how their businesses will impact those contexts as well
Teach students skills needed to identify business opportunities and manage risk
Convey principles for starting and running a business in the book industry
Emphasize that freelancing is a business and lay groundwork for successful freelancing

WR 410 003 TOP: SCIENCE WRITING

Instructor: Jacob Tootalian
Instructional Method: Attend Anywhere
This course is no-cost.²

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, as well as in text, audio, or video. 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: Leni Zumas
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 413 001 ADVANCED POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Ashley Toliver
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 416 001 SCREENWRITING

Instructor: Thom Bray
Instructional Method: Online - 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 420 002 WRITING STUDIO

Instructor: Leni Zumas
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 424 001 GRANT WRITING FOR PROF WRITERS

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

Grant Writing for Professional Writers (WR 424/524) is an online, community-based learning (CBL) course designed for two main audiences: 1) students primarily from the Technical and Professional Writing Program who wish to supplement their professional development options or to explore a career path with grant writing and 2) students who understand that their professional, often academic, careers will require familiarity with grant writing processes, practices, and funding cycles. Students majoring in Public Administration or Social Work should consult their departmental offerings for PA 425/525 Grant Writing for Nonprofit Organizations and for SW 585 Fund Development and Grant Writing. Grant writing is a key competency of all three of the graduate programs that run a course in grant writing (MTPW, SW and PA) and each program offers the course in the professional context that best trains their students.

As an online course, students do not meet collectively, working instead in small teams or occasionally independently. As a CBL course, much communication management and planning occur outside the norms of a traditional—even an online—academic classroom. Attendance and participation policies adapt to the challenges of online, CBL teaching and learning.

The course introduces students to best practices in grant writing. Students will work with community-partner nonprofits that are seeking funds to solve social problems. Students can expect to become involved in a variety of grant writing activities depending on where they find their community partners are at in the grant writing cycle. You might, for instance develop business plans, identify potential funding sources, and begin preparing grants according to your funder’s template. Additionally, this course is an elective in the MA/MS in Technical and Professional Writing along with serving as a general writing elective.

An end goal: Your name on a well-done (even funded? Yeah, it happens!) grant is a great addition to a professional portfolio.

WR 431 001 ADV TOP TECH WRITING TECHNLOGY

Instructor: Carrie Gilbert
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings

In this course you will expand your technical communication problem solving skill set by learning how to complement your writing with effective visuals. Students will learn how to create and manipulate simple vector graphics, first in Microsoft PowerPoint and then in Inkscape (an open-source alternative to Adobe Illustrator). Along the way, we will explore basic design and visual communication concepts, troubleshooting techniques, and common considerations for leveraging graphics in technical documents. No software purchase is necessary for this course.

WR 432 001 FRAMEWORKS FOR TECH WRITING

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

WR 456 001 FORMS OF NONFICTION

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

This course will explore various forms of nonfiction, including personal essays, lyric essays, memoir, graphic narrative/comics, literary journalism, 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 twining of the personal and the political, the creative and the critical. Individual classes will contain discussions and writing experiments designed to deepen your critical understanding of various nonfiction forms, and to enhance your creative repertoires with a wide variety of nonfiction techniques and craft elements. Students will participate in numerous writing exercises and craft a final essay, in which you will be challenged to analyze, synthesize, and respond creatively to a number of our readings.

Reading List:

Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction (Third Edition) by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola
Expecting Something Else by A.M. O'Malley
Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption by Walidah Imarisha
In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado
In Waves (Graphic Memoir) by A.J. Dungo

WR 460 001 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Jyoti Roy
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 461 001 BOOK EDITING

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

Provides a comprehensive course in professional book editing, including editorial management, acquisitions editing, substantive/developmental editing, and copyediting.

WR 462 001 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE

Instructor: Pariah Burke
Instructional Method: Hybrid

WR 463 001 BOOK MARKETING

Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 465 001 INTELLECTUAL PROP & COPYRIGHT

Instructor: Michael Clark
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 466 001 DIGITAL SKILLS

Instructor: Kathi Berens
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 471 001 TYPOGRAPHY, LAYOUT, PRODUCTION

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 473 001 DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING

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

WR 474 001 PUBLISHING STUDIO

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

WR 475 001 PUBLISHING LAB

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

WR 477 001 CHILDREN'S BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Brian Parker
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Winter 2023: Graduate Writing Courses

WR 507 001 SEM: MFA POETRY

Instructor: Consuelo Wise
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Silence that hovers and gathers as you settle into the space of a poem, or language, or even the tone or slant of some thing. Silence as moisture in the air of a poem, or pressurizing between two people. Speaking to someone you love or did love or once loved or still love. How do you follow it back to its origin, see how it grows, inhabits the space of the piece—then you? Silence through breath, pacing, syntax. Silence between lines, around thinking, on the edges of words or pushing lines back in or towards themselves. Silence that grows in a sound spoken of, called to, in an image. Sometimes the intrusion of it—how permeating it can be, how you experience while reading as it sinks in, that you are reading something quiet, still. What is attunement?

Silence as rest, as presence.

How do you make silence a priority? A steady part of your practice, to be able to make things. When you settle into an experience that allows you to tune into your own thinking or feeling—that mode of intimacy.

In this course we will examine silence in poems, stories, through writing and practice. We will look at ways in which silence is effected or made.

WR 507 002 SEM: MFA FICTION

Instructor: Janice Lee
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

“Form is about listening.” –Teresa Carmody

“I think particularly of the English sentence, which forces one to begin with a subject, a kind of encapsulated self or other that speaks, sees, knows, or, in the case of objects, a subjectivity that presumes grasp-ability.” –Renee Gladman

“How could we be one, or two, or three? We are more gerund than cold, hard noun. More animacy than strictly animal. We ensoul the world and are ensouled in return. Our myths about individuation and linearity no longer hold all the trouble. And all the love. We need to stop sticking out our two hands like it proves everything comes in oppositional dualisms. How many hands does the tree have? The peony? The pileated woodpecker? How many hands is the mycelium using to crochet intimacy from plant to tree to plant through the soil?” –Sophie Strand

What is the language with which you move through the world, through which you think, experience, and “are”? Where does that language come from and what does it say about who you are, how you have come to be, how you continue to become, your environment, your privileges, your contextual entanglement with the world around you? When you look closely at just one sentence you have written, how does the sentence enact the performance of your existence and relationship to the world? What method of reading does your writing invite?

In this class, we will explore how the structure of the sentence can represent and enact particular ways of seeing the world, being in the world, and relating to the world. We’ll investigate how the sentence might reveal an entire worldview through the shape it assumes, through the relationships it maps, which ideological systems it upholds, what power structures it validates simply through its grammar, syntax, and contextual placement. This class is an invitation to listen to form and to ourselves. We will delve into the multi-sensory modes of language, ecological, spiritual, & relational storytelling, and grammatical sense-making via craft discussions, guided meditations, generative writing prompts, and inquiry/investigation of our own writing. We’ll be reading contemporary texts from all genres.

Texts will include: Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley, Plans For Sentences by Renee Gladman, and The Flowering Wand by Sophie Strand, as well as selections from authors such as Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Natalie Diaz, Jerome Ellis, and Kamau Brathwaite.

WR 507 003 SEM: MAGAZINE WRITING

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

Our seminar will use conferencing and peer reading to research and draft short and long-form work for periodicals, in formats that include websites, commercial glossies, and literary quarterlies. We'll be examining a wide range of local and national publications, as well as the research, drafting, editing, and production process involved in writing for them; students will be writing around their own individual interests, and with the aim of preparing work for the publication of their choice.

WR 509 001 PRAC: TCHING TECH & PRO WRITNG

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

WR 510 002 TOP: ENTREPRNEURSHP IN PBLSHNG

Instructor: Alicia Shaw
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Introduce students to the role of entrepreneurship in society and in the book industry
Familiarize students with key concepts and competencies of entrepreneurship
Expose students to the social, political, and economic contexts that impact entrepreneurship and how their businesses will impact those contexts as well
Teach students skills needed to identify business opportunities and manage risk
Convey principles for starting and running a business in the book industry
Emphasize that freelancing is a business and lay groundwork for successful freelancing

WR 510 003 TOP: SCIENCE WRITING

Instructor: Jacob Tootalian
Instructional Method: Attend Anywhere
This course is no-cost.²

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 520 002 WRITING STUDIO

Instructor: Leni Zumas
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 521 001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP FICTION

Instructor: Gabriel Urza
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 522 001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP POETRY

Instructor: John Beer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 523 001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP NONFICTION

Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Though this course will unfold much like a standard workshop (and is appropriate for any level MFA student), we will place a significant emphasis on generating, compiling, organizing, and polishing work for your final graduate thesis project. We'll discuss the global choices writers make for sequencing essays in a collection, and/or the chapters of a memoir. In advance of guest visits from PSU MFA alumni, we'll read excerpts from their now-archived thesis projects and published works. In turn, we will workshop excerpts from each other's thesis projects-in-progress, with an eye toward recurring thematics and cohesiveness across various pieces. Students will begin to compile a simple bibliography of outside texts that inspire their creative work or contribute to the research process. As the course culminates, we'll also explore the process of eventually transforming your thesis project into a book-length work, as well as tips and best practices for navigating small-press and commercial publishing landscapes.

WR 524 001 GRANT WRITING FOR PROF WRITERS

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

WR 531 001 ADV TOP TECH WRITING TECHNLOGY

Instructor: Carrie Gilbert
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings

WR 532 001 FRAMEWORK FOR TECH WRITING

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

WR 550 001 PORTLAND REVIEW

Instructor: Michael Seidlinger
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings

WR 560 001 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Jyoti Roy
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 561 001 BOOK EDITING

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

Provides a comprehensive course in professional book editing, including editorial management, acquisitions editing, substantive/developmental editing, and copyediting.

WR 562 001 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE

Instructor: Pariah Burke
Instructional Method: Hybrid

WR 563 001 BOOK MARKETING

Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 565 001 INTELLECTUAL PROP & COPYRIGHT

Instructor: Michael Clark
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 566 001 DIGITAL SKILLS

Instructor: Kathi Berens
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 571 001 TYPOGRAPHY, LAYOUT, PRODUCTION

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

WR 575 001 PUBLISHING LAB

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

WR 577 001 CHILDREN'S BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Brian Parker
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

WR 579 001 RESEARCHING BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Kathi Berens
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting

Winter 2023 Courses

On This Page

Winter 2023: Undergraduate English Courses

ENG 201 001 SHAKESPEARE

ENG 205 001 SURVEY OF BRITISH LIT II

ENG 300 001 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS

ENG 300 002 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS

ENG 304 001 CRITICAL THEORY OF CINEMA

ENG 305U 001 TOP: DAVID LYNCH & FILM NOIR

ENG 305U 002 TOP IN FILM: SCIENCE FICTION

ENG 306U 001 TOP: LATINX COMICS

ENG 306U 002 TOP: TOLKIEN

ENG 310U 001 TOP: CHILD/YOUNG ADULT LIT

ENG 315 001 POETRY AND FORM

ENG 319U 001 NORTH EUROPEAN MYTH

ENG 320U 001 THE ENGLISH NOVEL I

ENG 326 001 LIT COMM DIFF

ENG 331U 001 INTRO RHETORIC & COMP

ENG 333U 001 HST CINEMA/NARRATIVE MEDIA II

ENG 335U 001 TOP: ADAPTING LIT TO FILM

ENG 335U 002 TOP: CONSPIRACY THEORY

ENG 341U 001 RENAISSANCE LITERATURE

ENG 344U 001 VICTORIAN LITERATURE

ENG 352U 001 AFRICAN AMERICAN LIT II

ENG 368U 001 LITERATURE AND ECOLOGY

ENG 377U 001 AMERICAN POETRY I

ENG 380 001 INTRO COMP LIT CULTURE STUDIES

ENG 383U 001 TOP: SUPERHEROES JAPAN VS WEST

ENG 414 001 COMPOSITION THEORY

ENG 428 001 CANONS AND CANONICITY

ENG 429 001 ADV TOP: SAMUEL DELANY

ENG 447 001 MJR FORCES: LIT AND PHILOSOPHY

ENG 450 001 ADV TOP: 18TH-CENTURY LIT

ENG 458 001 ADV TOP: ROMANTICISM

ENG 496 001 COMICS THEORY

Winter 2023: Graduate English Courses

ENG 507 001 SEM: LITERARY PEDAGOGIES

ENG 514 001 COMPOSITION THEORY

ENG 518 001 COLLEGE COMP TEACHING

ENG 519 001 ADV COLLEGE COMP TEACHING

ENG 529 001 ADV TOP: SAMUEL DELANY

ENG 531 001 TOP: COLLOQUIUM

ENG 560 001 ADV TOP: FICTIONS OF ERLY AMER

Winter 2023: Undergraduate Writing Courses

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 222 002 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

WR 227 001 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG

WR 227 002 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG

WR 227 003 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 313 001 INTERMEDIATE POETRY 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 323 011 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

WR 327 001 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

WR 327 002 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

WR 327 003 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING