Fall 2017 Courses

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

Undergraduate English Courses

ENG 253 SURVEY OF AMER LIT I

Instructor: Elisabeth Ceppi

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

ENG 300 LIT FORM AND ANALYSIS

Instructor: Joshua Epstein

This course introduces students to the analysis of literary form, genre, and technique as a way into the "big questions" of literary study—what, how, and why do we read; what are the relationships between literature and its historical contexts? What kinds of cultural work do literary texts perform? How can we use writing as a tool to think through literature in its full complexity? Though we will dabble in a little bit of criticism and theory, our main focus will be on developing rigorous methods for asking sophisticated critical questions about literary texts, and exploring those texts through engaged and subtle close reading. This course thus aims to help students read literature with more subtlety, precision, and pleasure—preparing them also for the newly-minted WR 301, and for more advanced work in the English major.

Book list, in addition to an array of poems provided in class:

Hacker, Diana and Nancy Sommers, A Pocket Style Manual (2016 edition) (Bedford; ISBN 978-1319083526) Gardner,
Janet and Joanne Diaz, Reading and Writing About Literature, 4th ed. (Bedford; ISBN 978-1319035365).
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. (Bedford Case Studies; ISBN 978-0-312-45752-5).
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. (Broadview; ISBN 978-1551113074).
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart (Anchor Books. ISBN: 978-0385474542).

We will also watch the 1956 sci-fi film Forbidden Planet.

ENG 300 LIT FORM AND ANALYSIS

Instructor: Maude Hines

"What is literature? How have we determined what is ""great"" literature? Do we need to know ""what the author intended""? Is there more than one way to find ""meaning"" in a story? ""Aren't we reading too much into it?"" Questions like these will guide us throughout this course, which is designed as an introduction to literary form and analysis. Rather than surveying particular theoretical schools or movements, we will focus on central questions and problems. This is a “crash course” in interpretive strategies—the goal is introduction, not mastery. Our primary texts will be ghost stories, from a genre that foregrounds interpretive acts and moves toward revelation of things “hidden.”

This is a hybrid course. This course is a requirement for the English major.

ENG 301U TOPICS: SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

Instructor: Jonathan Walker

Study of Shakespeare's works focusing on topics such as genre (tragedy, comedy, etc.), period (Elizabethan/Jacobean) or cultural context. Some familiarity with Shakespeare and/or the Renaissance is expected. Course may be repeated for credit with different topics.

ENG 304 CRITICAL THEORY OF CINEMA

Instructor: Wendy Collins

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

ENG 305U TOP IN FLM: HITCHCOCK

Instructor: Michael Clark

Study of film as text, including auteur, formalist, historical, and cultural perspectives. Course may be repeated for credit with different topics.

ENG 305U TOP IN FLM: UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA

Instructor: William Bohnaker

Study of film as text, including auteur, formalist, historical, and cultural perspectives. Course may be repeated for credit with different topics.

ENG 306U TOP: OVID AND GAIMAN

Instructor: Katya Amato

These writers need no introduction. We'll read Ovid's Metamorphoses and Neil Gaiman's Sandman over the course of a term and explore their great storytelling machines to see how they do it, what their contexts are, where their influence lies, and what it means to invade the worlds of myth, dream, and story. Along the way, we'll look at other related texts, both classical and post-modern.

Course requirements are regular attendance and various/varied writing assignments.

I have ordered the Rolfe Humphries translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses through the PSU Bookstore, but you may use another recent edition of Ovid if you already own one.

The Sandman series is 10 books (Preludes and Nocturnes, Doll's House, Dream Country, Season of Mists, A Game of You, Fables and Reflections, Brief Lives, World's End, The Kindly Ones, The Wake). These are available everywhere, used and new. In addition, there is a later prequel, Overture, whose expense can be shared among two or three students at the end of the term.

Feel free to get in touch over the summer if you'd like more information: amatok@pdx.edu.

ENG 306U TOPICS IN LIT & POP CULTURE

Instructor: TBD

Study of literary issues in popular culture. Courses taught under this number may examine literature as a popular form (such as detective or romance fiction) and the relationship between literature and popular genres (such as comics or music), or use techniques of literary/textual analysis to analyze forms of popular culture (blogs, music videos, etc.). Course may be repeated for credit with different topics.

ENG 307U SCIENCE FICTION

Instructor: William Knight

This term’s 307 course is an introduction to science fiction that centers on dystopia. We’ll examine the ways in which science fiction and dystopia intersect, returning to the “classics"" of the mode (The Time Machine, 1984, Brave New World) but also considering more recent tales of humanity's creation of bleak, hostile, and horrific futures. We'll ask fundamental and abiding questions about the tasks of dystopia’s readers, about how to understand the relation between dystopia and hope, about the characteristics of the malformed social, political, and economic futures these works imagine, and about the range and variety of works written in this powerful mode. Students will offer a presentation on a work not included in our course syllabus, write a midterm paper, and produce a final paper/project. Participation will be highly encouraged: prepare to be active thinkers and imaginers and to face dystopia’s relentless despair with brave, stoic, or optimistic openness.

Required Texts:

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. ISBN: 978-0385721677
Butler, Octavia. The Parable of the Sower. ISBN: 978-0446675505
Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ISBN: 978-0345404473
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. ISBN: 978-0061767647
Orwell, George. 1984. ISBN: 978-0452262935
Wells, H.G. The Time Machine. ISBN: 978-0141439976"

ENG 318U THE BIBLE AS LIT

Instructor: Joel Bettridge

In his essay on Genesis in The Literary guide to the Bible J.P. Fokkelman points out that “historians are apt to regard the [Bible] as a source for something beyond itself because their proper interest or attention is directed to contextual realities. And theologians tend to read the text as message, and to that end separate form from content without realizing that in doing so they violate the literary integrity of the text” (36). Taking Fokkelman’s warning to heart, we will in this class take the Bible on its own terms, neither making it say more or less than it does. To do so—to take the Bible seriously as a work of literature—this class will revolve around one central question: how is the Bible asking us to read it? Rather than focus on our own assumptions about what the Bible might be saying, or the assumptions of religious and cultural authorities, we will look to see what the Bible might have to say about itself. Certainly we will need to address cultural and historical concerns; however, these lenses are meant primarily to aid us in understanding the effects the Bible achieves as a literary work. For example, when we talk about God we will do so with the understanding that we are talking about a literary character, one we need to read well and closely, which means you will, in part, need to give some time over to secondary reading focused on the history of ancient Israel. Mostly, however, you will need to consider the poetic and narrative elements of the Bible in order to see how literary form affects the way we read the text, and a character like God, as well as the meanings we arrive at when we do so. In the end, this manner of attention will provide you with a better grasp of the Bible’s content and character, as well as allow you to negotiate the Bible’s complexity with more skill and attention.

ENG 327 CULTURE, IMPERIALISM, AND GLOBALIZATION

Instructor: Sarah Lincoln

This course provides an introduction to some of the fundamental concepts, debates, theories and literary works associated with the important field of postcolonial studies. Though “postcolonial” first described nations emerging from the shadow of colonial domination, it is more than a simple historical marker: “postcolonialism” is most fundamentally a project, an ongoing struggle for freedom whose battleground is every sphere of human life, from the individual psyche to national and indeed global political life. As we consider how postcolonial perspectives help us read literature and other texts, we will be talking and thinking about its broader significance for the world beyond, including struggles underway in our own historical moment--political, cultural, and environmental.

Close readings of novels and films will help us stay grounded as we work through some of the field's important theoretical texts and the issues they address: sovereignty, nationalism, violence, psychology, gender, language & culture, ethics and justice, and the environment, among many others.

Required books: (available at campus bookstore)

Aime Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (978-1-58367-025-5)
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (978-0-14-311528-1)
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions (978-0-9547023-3-5)
Brian Friel, Translations (978-0571117420)
Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place (978-0374527075)

Films on reserve at Miller Library:

Xala, dir. Ousmane Sembène (Senegal, 1974)
The Battle of Algiers, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo (Algeria/France, 1966)
Life and Debt, dir. Stephanie Black (USA, 2001)
Beasts of the Southern Wild, dir. Benh Zeitlin (USA, 2012)

ENG 330U JEWISH & ISRAELI LITERATURE

Instructor: Michael Weingrad

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

ENG 331U INTRO RHETORIC & COMP STUDIES

Instructor: Daniel DeWeese

Introduction to contemporary issues in rhetoric and composition studies by way of the rhetorical tradition of Greece, the rise of composition in the modern North American university, and their relation to the process-oriented approach to composition which has dominated composition instruction since the 1960's. Focuses are on such perennial issues as the relationship between writing and the self, the link between writing and "content," the relationship of writing to speech and reading, the political dimensions of writing, and the role of the audience in composing.

ENG 332U HST CINEMA & NARRATIVE MEDIA I

Instructor: Wendy Collins

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

ENG 335U TOP: RACE & MELODRAMA

Instructor: Joshua Epstein

The melodrama—a genre of emotional extremes, sweeping gestures, and irrational climaxes—has saturated contemporary popular culture; in so doing, it has found itself intervening into questions of race, nation, and culture. This course will examine melodramatic films and novels that tackle the political, cultural, and emotional complexities of race. Melodramas, often called ""weepies"" or ""tear-jerkers,"" have an exaggerated emotional intensity that makes them both powerfully gripping and grotesquely unrealistic. That is, sentiment can be both deceiving as a way of understanding our past, and useful as a catalyst for social change. Thus, even as we remain suspicious of melodrama's exaggerated artificiality, we will see how the genre sheds both light and heat on various issues of race and nation: ""passing"" and belonging, inequality and difference, authenticity and performance. We will also look at texts whose representations of race satirize, repurpose, or work against the grain of melodramatic tropes and clichés. As part of the Popular Culture cluster, ENG 335U aims to develop critical responses to forms of expression that manipulate our raw emotional reflexes.

ENG 340U MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

Instructor: Sharon Rhodes

Selected works of medieval literature; introduction to the themes, genres, history, and cultures of the Middle Ages.

ENG 342U RESTORATION & 18TH C LIT

Instructor: William Knight

We’ll engage the varied, complex, urgent, and entertaining writing of the eighteenth century through five major concepts: Economy, Enlightenment, Empire, Empathy, and Aesthetics.

Required texts (others will be available in pdf format on our Canvas site):

Behn. Oroonoko. ISBN: 978-0140439885
Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. ISBN: 978-0141439822
Blake. Songs of Innocence and Experience. ISBN: 978-0192810892
Wordsworth & Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads. ISBN: 978-0140424621
Shelley. Frankenstein. ISBN: 978-0199537150

Apart from these, we’ll sample from Mandeville, Burke, Adam Smith, Kant, Wollstonecraft, Swift, Gray, Goldsmith, and perhaps others. Assignments will likely consist of a response journal, a short presentation, excellent participation in discussions and debates, and a final paper.

ENG 344U VICTORIAN LITERATURE

Instructor: Lorraine Mercer

“Art is the nearest thing to life. It is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. All the more sacred is the task of the artist when she undertakes to paint the life of the People.” George Eliot, 1856

During the Victorian age change was rampant and reached into most areas of life including politics, labor, law, science, religion, commerce and the arts. It was also a time of conquest and empire building through colonialism and imperialism. It was a time when “The sun never set on the British Empire,” the significance of which will be one of our topics. In addition there were numerous reform movements such as the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage among other prominent issues.

During this time, the novel became the most popular form of literary achievement followed closely by poetry. This term we will have the pleasure of sampling both genres in our study of these intriguing times.

Readings may include novels, essays, and poetry from George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charlotte Bronte, Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, and other 19th century literary and artistic rock stars.

Join us!

ENG 351U AFRICAN/AMER LIT

Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri

This course is the first in a three-part survey of African American literature. It will cover a broad selection of literature written by, and about, people of African descent in the Americas during the formation of the U.S. nation-state and the era of slavery and abolition. The course will focus on the emergence of the black literary tradition in the context of the transatlantic slave trade, plantation slavery, and the conquest and colonization of the so-called “new world.” We will focus in particular on the genre of the slave narrative.

As a literature class, our method will be to read these texts as literary texts rather than as transparent representations of a black experience. At the same time, we will explore what is at stake in the idea of a “black experience.” Is there such a thing as a “black experience” that we can somehow come to know through reading? What is useful about this idea? What are its limits or pitfalls? In particular, we will engage with feminist critiques of the gendering of the “slave” as male and the consequent erasure of black women’s experience.

Ultimately, we will examine what it means to rethink our world from the perspective of the enslaved. What happens when we treat this perspective as the history of western civilization itself? The course will challenge the common-sense belief that the study of African-American literature is only a partial examination of the world (i.e., the study of only black people). What if the study of African-American literature is the study of the world itself?

ENG 384 CONTEMPORARY LIT

Instructor: Susan Reese

4:40-6:30 pm, Tuesday and Thursday

This will be rich and exciting, so please join me. We’re going to be focusing on the work of some my favorite authors, traveling across pertinent issues to our lives, applying a variety of lenses. There is much to share, to learn:

Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Louise Erdrich, The Round House
Haruki Murakami, Men Without Women
Orhan Pamuk, Snow
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

ENG 413 TEACHING & TUTORING WR

Instructor: Kate Comer

This course pursues the core questions of writing (or any) pedagogy: What do we teach? Who do we teach? How do we teach? and Why do we teach? First, we’ll situate the course within the field of composition studies as we consider what writing is and what literacy education does. Next, we’ll examine our particular student population to explore how context shapes curriculum, before turning to the burning questions of practical implementation in the classroom, writing center, and/or online. Throughout, you will gain experience designing and revising lessons, assignments, and feedback while continuing our theoretical conversations. We’ll conclude by considering the personal, professional, and political stakes of teaching writing as you articulate your own philosophy. By the end of the course, you will have a firm foundation in the theory and practice of composition pedagogy; you will be prepared to teach and tutor writing effectively—and to continue your own development as a writer and teacher.

ENG 443 BRIT WOMEN WRITERS

Instructor: Lorraine Mercer

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

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

Class Goals:

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

Practice interpretations of literary texts based on close reading.

Discuss the relationship between literature and cultural context of the times.

Participate in scholarly research in academic books and articles.

Texts:

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

Attention: If you are a student completing the old major requirements and are not able to register for this class, please contact the instructor via email to discuss a registration override that will enable you to register for this class.

ENG 458 ADV TOP: ROMANTICISM

Instructor: Alastair Hunt

Specialized studies in literature of the Romantic movement in Britain and continental Europe. Topics include individual writers and literary groups; poetry and poetic theory; gothic fiction; romanticism and the novel; autobiographical and confessional literature; aesthetic ideologies; women and romanticism; revolutionary and imperialist aspects of romanticism; the impact of romanticism on later literary movements (such as symbolism and modernism). Expected preparation: Eng 342U and 4 additional upper division Literature credits.

ENG 461 ADV TOP IN AMER LIT TO 1900

Instructor: TBD

Study of themes, genres, history, and culture in 19th century American literature: Topics: sentimental literature, immigrant literature, post- Civil War literature, imperial adventures, minority literatures in 19th century American literature. For offerings for a particular term, consult the University schedule, the English Department website and/or an adviser. May be repeated with different topics: maximum of 8 hours to be applied to master's degree. Expected preparation: Eng 360U and/or Eng 363U and 4 additional upper division Literature credits.

ENG 397 DIGITAL LITERARY STUDIES (CLASS NOT LISTED)

Instructor: Kathleen Berens

Students take an arts-based approach to literary criticism, making digital artifacts as a means of understanding how poetry, novels, and other literary forms are constructed and interpreted. Reading “The Waste Land” as a core text, we begin with print and move to audio, browser-based, video collage and literary app presentations of the poem to understand how each medium influences what, and how, the poem means. Students also engage “distant reading” techniques of literary datasets using visualization tools, and study how literary databases construct interfaces designed for search, find and storage. No software or programming experience is required!

ENG 467 AMER LIT & CULTURE

Instructor: Elisabeth Ceppi

Fictions of Early America

In this course, we will read contemporary novels that tell stories about captivity, witchcraft, and slavery in 17th and 18th century America. Each novel will be paired with non-fiction texts and primary historical documents from the colonial period to raise questions about the histories of race and gender, freedom and unfreedom, in American culture; for example, we will read Salem witchcraft trial transcripts with Maryse Condé’s novel, I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem and 18th century scientific race theory with M.T. Anderson’s YA novel, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation. We will consider the literary techniques that these writers use to construct past worlds that address powerful questions to the present. What does America’s colonial past mean in contemporary culture? In addition to the novels mentioned above, readings will include Toni Morrison, A Mercy; Laila Lalami, The Moor’s Account; and Deborah Larsen, The White.

ENG 469 ADV TOP ASIAN-AMER LIT & CLTRE

Instructor: Mengyu Lo

Readings in Asian-American literature and culture in generational, national, international, and gendered contexts. Topics will include gender and sexuality in Asian-American literature and film; transnational Asian-American narrative; Asian North American literature. Expected preparation: Eng 369U and 4 additional upper division Literature credits.

ENG 490 COMICS HISTORY

Instructor: Andrea Gilroy

As Carl Sagan told us, you have to know the past to understand the present. While we might not go back to the origins of the universe, in “ENG: 490/590 - Comics History,” we will explore the history of the comics form in American tradition, tracing its birth in the newspapers, its bombastic explosion in the comic books, and its proliferation and shifting nature in Underground Comix, the Alternative movement, and beyond. We will also briefly examine two other global traditions—manga in Japan and bandes desinneés in France.

ENG 491 HST OF LITERARY CRIT & THRY I

Instructor: Thomas Fisher

Examines the history of Western critical approaches to language and literature from ancient traditions through the Enlightenment. Expected preparation: 8 upper-division credits in literature.

Graduate English Classes

ENG 500 PROBLEMS & MTHDS LIT STUDY

Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri

This course introduces students to literary studies as a field of interdisciplinary inquiry and knowledge production. We will focus on the practice of interpretation we call “close reading”; what it means to historicize literary texts; and how literary studies has drawn on and advanced new ways of thinking about language, meaning, subjectivity, identity, and politics. Along the way, we will explore the following questions: What is “literature”? What is the difference between “literature” and other types of texts? How do we read a “text” from a literary studies perspective? What is the relation between a text and the social and economic forces that give rise to it? Finally, what is political about literature and the practice of interpretation?

ENG 507 SEMINAR

Instructor: Jonathan Walker

Variable topics. Graduate only or consent of instructor. At least one Eng 507 seminar is required of M.A. candidates in English. (Credit to be arranged.)

ENG 513 TCHG & TUTORING WR

Instructor: TBD

ENG 518 COLLEGE COMP TEACHING

Instructor: Hildy Miller

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

ENG 519 ADV COLLEGE COMP TEACHING

Instructor: Hildy Miller

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

ENG 531 TOPICS ENG STUDIES

Instructor: William Knight

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

ENG 531 TOPICS ENG STUDIES: COLLOQUIUM

Instructor: William Knight

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

ENG 561 ADV TOP IN AMER LIT TO 1900

Instructor: TBD

ENG 569 ADV TOP ASIAN-AMER LIT & CLTR

Instructor: Mengyu Lo

Readings in Asian-American literature and culture in generational, national, international, and gendered contexts. Topics will include gender and sexuality in Asian-American literature and film; transnational Asian-American narrative; Asian North American literature. Also offered for undergraduate-level credit as Eng 469.

ENG 590 COMICS HISTORY

Instructor: ANDREA GILROY

ENG 591 HST OF LITERARY CRIT & THRY I

Instructor: Thomas Fisher

Examines the history of Western critical approaches to language and literature from ancient traditions through the Enlightenment.

ENG 596 COMICS THEORY

Instructor: TBD

Focus on various critical approaches to comics, exploring interdisciplinary theories and methods and applying these theories to primary texts.

Undergraduate Writing Classes

WR 115 INTRO TO COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: TBD

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

WR 121 COLLEGE WRITING

Instructor: Kate Comer

This course offers the rhetorical perspective and productive strategies essential to successful writing in college and beyond. We’ll consider what “successful writing” means—and why that matters—in your life as well as broader contexts. The course design follows the writing process of inquiry, exploration, reflection, and revision; in a series of related projects, you’ll pursue self-directed research while analyzing and composing different academic genres. Throughout, we will examine the role of rhetoric in successful writing. At the end of the course, you will be a stronger communicator prepared to pursue your literacy development in line with your own priorities.

WR 199 SPST: WRITING FOR COLLEGE

Instructor: Daniel DeWeese

May be repeated for a maximum of 12 credits. See department for course description. (Credit to be arranged.)

WR 212 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Cassandra Duncanson

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

WR 212 INTRO FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Rayna Jensen

WR 213 INTRO POETRY WRITING

Instructor: TBD

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

WR 214 INTRO NONFICTION WRITING

Instructor: TBD

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

WR 222 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

Instructor: Amy Harper

This course will cover the process of writing research papers. We will discover how to find a worthy topic for research, how to formulate a working thesis, how to write a research proposal, how to find and evaluate sources, and how to synthesize these sources into cohesive and informative research papers. This course will also cover correct citation for MLA, APA, and Chicago Style documentation.

In this course we will focus on creating “new research” or new ideas demonstrated by focused research based on the worth of previous reliable sources. We will also cover plagiarism and how to avoid it.

One of the course requirements is collaborative feedback, peer edits, and reviews. The purpose of this format is to allow a collective learning style that is designed to improve all research-based writing.

WR 227 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG

Instructor: Jessicah Carver

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

WR 227 INTOR TO TECHNICAL WRTG

Instructor: Mary Sylwester

This class introduces technical and professional communication. Students compose, design, revise, and edit effective letters, memos, reports, descriptions, proposals, instructions, and employment documents. The course emphasizes precise use of language and graphics to communicate complex technical and procedural information safely, legally, and ethically.

WR 301 WIC: CRITICAL WRTING ENGLISH

Instructor: John Vignaux Smyth

This writing-intensive course extends the skills developed in ENG 300 by studying selected theoretical and disciplinary approaches to the study of literary and other texts (including film), and by introducing students to research methods as a way of entering scholarly conversations. Primary texts will include Isak Dinesen’s “The Blank Page” and Ehrengard; Vladimir Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols,” “That in Aleppo Once,” “Spring in Fialta,” and Lolita; and Peter Greenaway’s films “The Cook, The Thief, The Wife, and Her Lover” and “The Draughtsman’s Contract.” Secondary commentaries will include Nafisi Azar’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, Richard Rorty’s “The Barber of Kasbeam: Nabokov on Cruelty,” and “Hannah Arendt on Isak Dinesen: Between Storytelling and Theory” by L.R. Wilkinson.

WR 312 INTERMED FICTION WR

Instructor: Janice Lee

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, paying attention, feeling, moving, walking, forgiving, and sensing. The course will introduce students to various methods of crafting and revising fiction and students will have the goal of producing two completed works of original fiction which will be critiqued in a workshop setting. Our work will be guided by writing exercises and readings by diverse contemporary authors. 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.

Required texts will include stories and works by David Antin, Lydia Davis, Alissa Nutting, Octavia Butler, Jorge Luis Borges, Alice Munro, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, J.G. Ballard, Yi Sang, Jamaica Kincaid, Jhumpa Lahiri, Cormac McCarthy, Kate Bernheimer, and Neil Gaiman.

WR 313 INTERMEDIATE POETRY WRITING

Instructor: TBD

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

WR 323 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY

Instructor: Caroline Hayes

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

WR 327 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: Julie Kares

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

WR 327 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING

Instructor: Jeff Gunderson

This course covers the fundamentals of creating accurate, effective, and well-designed technical reports, emphasizing the fundamentals of technical communications. Students draw on personal work experiences and career interests to practice strategies for developing technical briefs, informal reports, formal technical reports, and feasibility reports. Through the course, students will obtain an understanding of technical communication basics, develop knowledge of technical writing styles, and learn the technical communication process including profiling audiences, research, and design strategies.

WR 331 BOOK PUBLISHING FOR WRITERS

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

Provides an overview of the book publishing process, organized around the division of labor typically found in publishing houses. Through readings, discussion, and participation in mock publishing companies, students learn about editorial, design, production, marketing, distribution, and sales.

WR 333 ADVANCED COMPOSITION

Instructor: TBD

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

WR 398 WRITING COMICS

Instructor: TBD

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

WR 407 SEM: READING AND WRITING ABOUT FOOD

Instructor: Diana Abu-Jaber

Tell me what you eat, said Brillat-Savarin, and I shall tell you what you are. Lives are filled with stories and plots but none is juicier than the one told with food. Culinary memoirs are wildly popular, taking readers beyond memory into the senses—especially the deep pleasures of the appetite. Food sharpens the focus, introduces universal themes, and endows writing with imaginative, emotional, and physical layers of complexity.

This course will look at ways to write through the culinary lens. There will be readings, writing prompts, exercises, discussions, guest appearances, field trips, and food. We’ll be tasting and thinking and comparing notes, considering all the ways that our connections to eating gives rise to remembering and inspiration. Come and see what you cook up. Bring your curiosity and your appetite, a sense of play and a sense of humor.

WR 410 TOP: LITERARY AGENTS & ACQUISITIONS

Instructor: Dong Won Song

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

WR 410 TOP: GRANT WRITING

Instructor: W. Tracy Dillon

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

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

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

Questions? Write to dillont@pdx.edu.

WR 410 TOP: DIGITAL BOOK MARKETING

Instructor: Kathleen Berens

Data gathering and audience customization differentiate digital from traditional book marketing. This class examines and then applies various digital techniques of book marketing. Students begin by tracking best practices in social media marketing by frontlist authors across genres, then broaden to examine how authors gain attention in massively scaled ecosystems like Amazon, Goodreads, and Wattpad. A comparative media approach situates book marketing alongside other forms of entertainment marketing such as comics, videogames and film/TV. Our core textbook is Spreadable Media by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green. Students practice messaging techniques by promoting the Ooligan Press fall release at Wordstock, Portland’s premier literary event. Students make oral presentations and write papers reflecting on their learning process, and create portfolio objects in digital book marketing.

WR 410 TOP: TECHNCL COMMNCTN TECHNO

Instructor: TBD

This course focuses on the practical use of Adobe FrameMaker, one of the most common and versatile authoring and desktop publishing tools in the technical writer’s toolkit. FrameMaker is compared to the more familiar authoring tool Microsoft Word, thus providing technical communicators with another layer of competency. Basic principles of written technical communication are examined in theory and practice. Document organization, design and layout, writing strategies, and grammatical conventions are explored as well. Other areas of examination include unstructured and structured (XML) authoring, content reuse, and the book-building process.

WR 410 TOP: LITERARY MAGAZINES

Instructor: Thea Prieto

This course is intended to introduce students to the world of literary publishing on Portland State University’s campus, in the Portland area, and abroad. By participating in Portland Review’s editorial process and understanding the practices of an international journal over sixty years old, students will gain practical experience and ethical insight in the field of literary publishing. Prerequisite: any introductory creative writing course (fiction, nonfiction, or poetry).

WR 410 TOP: POPULAR BOOK IN THE US

Instructor: John Henley

Few readers have heard of Maria Cummins, Susan Warner, Eden Southworth, Laura Jean Libbey, Timothy Shay Arthur, George Lippard, Augusta Jane Evans Wilson, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, or Harold Bell Wright. But just a century ago, their works were beloved, debated, and popular. We know modern publishing houses such as Random House, Little Brown, and Simon and Schuster, but what of the publishers that once populated the booksellers’ shelves, such as A.L. Burt, Street and Smith, and Porter and Coates. Most American literature survey courses introduce students to the great literature from our past, yet many of the “great writers” were not popular in their lifetime. In this class, the student will be challenged to unlearn all they have been taught about “great literature” and explore books often ignored by scholars, but devoured by American readers, and to investigate the factors that determine the likelihood of a book being a bestseller. While designed for those wishing to pursue a career in acquisitions editing, the course will also prove interesting to students of popular culture and the history of the book in America.

WR 412 ADV FICTION WRITING

Instructor: Gabriel Urza

Our primary goal for the term will be to produce two completed drafts of original fiction. Students will provide written critiques prior to discussion of each piece in workshop. We will use several craft essays jumping-off points to discuss how decisions such as Point of View, Characterization, and Story Arc are at play in our own work and the work of established writers. In addition, we will utilize writing exercises and directed readings to challenge the way we think about current drafts, to generate specific strategies for revision, and to provide novel starting points for new work.

WR 413 ADVANCED POETRY WRITING

Instructor: Michele Glazer

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

WR 416 SCREENWRITING

Instructor: Thomas Bray

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

WR 420 WRITING PROCESS RESPONSE

Instructor: Anthony Wolk

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: (1) In class discussion of Language Attitudes & the Composing Process, as well as several dialogue journals on that subject. (2) 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 456 FORMS OF NONFICTION

Instructor: Justin Hocking

This course will explore various forms of creative nonfiction, including personal essays, lyric essays, memoir, literary journalism, oral history, political & environmental writing, and graphic memoir, with practice writing in each. We will also investigate the permeable boundaries between these and other literary forms, with a focus on the braiding of the personal and the political.

Texts:

Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction (second edition) by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola
Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption by Walidah Imirisha
My Body is a Book of Rules by Elissa Washuta
One with the Tiger: Sublime and Violent Encounters Between Humans and Animals by Steven Church
Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale by Belle Yang
Expecting Something Else by A.M. O'Malley

WR 460 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

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 460 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Rachel Noorda

WR 461 BOOK EDITING

Instructor: Adam Rodriguez

Provides a comprehensive course in professional book editing, including editorial management, acquisitions editing, substantive/developmental editing, and copyediting. Issues specific to both fiction and nonfiction books will be covered.

WR 462 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE

Instructor: Kelley Dodd

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

WR 463 BOOK MARKETING

Instructor: TBD

Comprehensive course in professional book marketing. Issues specific to the marketing of fiction/ nonfiction books in variety of genres and markets will be covered. Students will do market research, produce marketing plans, write press releases, write advertising copy, and develop related marketing materials.

WR 474 PUBLISHING STUDIO

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

Perform the work of a real publishing house, from acquiring manuscripts to selling books. Gain publishing experience by participating in the various departments of a student-staffed publishing house, Ooligan Press. Departments include Acquisitions, Editing, Design and Sustainable Production, Marketing, External Promotions, Sales, Digital Content, Social Media, and Project Management and Operations. Course may be repeated multiple times.

WR 475 PUBLISHING LAB

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

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

Graduate Writing Courses

WR 507 SEM: FICTION: Writing About Place

Gabriel Urza

This course will consider the concept of “place” broadly, examining the ways in which writing is influenced by the politics, history, culture, and geography of a story or essay’s physical location. While we will read and discuss widely-known examples of writing centered in place (the Southern Gothic, the Western, etc.), the reading list for this class will also feature contemporary texts that illustrate how regional tropes are changing, and how present-day writers are challenging or subverting these traditions. This course will also incorporate a series of guided prompts, asking writers to consider the role of place in their own writing.

WR 507 SEM: POETRY

Instructor: TBD

Consent of instructor. See department for course description. (Credit to be arranged.)

WR 510 TOP: TECHNCL COMMCTN TECHNO

Instructor: TBD

WR 510 TOP: PORTLAND REVIEW

Instructor: Thea Prieto

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

WR 510 TOP: LITERARY AGENTS & ACQUISITIONS

Instructor: Dong Won Song

WR 510 TOP: GRANT WRITING

Instructor: W. Tracy Dillon

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

Questions? Write to dillont@pdx.edu."

WR 510 TOP: DIGITAL BOOK MARKETING

Instructor: Kathleen Berens

WR 510 TOP: MFA 1ST-YEAR COLLOQUIUM

Instructor: Michele Glazer

This one-credit class meets alternate Tuesdays beginning in week 1.The MFA Colloquium for first-year MFA students is designed to help orient you in theprogram, acquaint you with faculty members and their work, help you plan out your time inthe program, and look ahead to post-grad possibilities by taking advantage of internships andother opportunities now. Our format will be deliberately loose so we can address yourquestions, frustrations, and excitements as they arise. Plausible topics include procrastination,writers block, originality, and creativity, as well as funding, housing, readings, and using yourtime well.

WR 510 TOP: MFA CRAFT COLLOQUIUM

Instructor: Michele Glazer

This one-credit class meets alternate Tuesdays, beginning in week 2.This colloquium is intended primarily for MFA students, both first- and second-year and fromall strands—fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. It is also open to MA and MS students who wantto explore from multiple angles a focused area of craft that is important to you in your ownwriting. The colloquium is intended to be useful whether you are just beginning the MFAprogram, or you are thinking about your thesis.

WR 510 TOP: POPULAR BOOK IN THE US

Instructor: John Henley

WR 520 WRITING PROCESS RESPONSE

Instructor: Anthony Wolk

Provides opportunities for students to write in various genres. Includes language attitudes, writing process, and reader response. Expected preparation: one upper-division writing course. May be repeated for a maximum of 8 credits.

WR 521 MFA CORE WORKSHOP FICTION

Instructor: Janice Lee

To imagine a language is to imagine a way of life,” writes Ludwig Wittgenstein. In this workshop we will examine what it means to see and sense the world around us and to articulate those sensory experiences in fiction. We will examine stories and utilize writing exercises around notions of intimacy, time, space, world-building, and seeing. In addition we will work on various revision and rewriting strategies, including “rewriting” each other’s stories, and work towards having two completed drafts of original fiction.

This course will focus on workshopping student texts, with supplementary required texts by Bhanu Kapil, Grace M. Cho, Lidia Yuknavitch, Gregory Howard, Mahmoud Darwish, and Gaston Bachelard.

WR 521 MFA CORE WORKSHOP FICTION

Instructor: Diana Abu-Jaber

The MFA Core Workshop in Fiction focuses on the writing, revision, and critical discussion of student short stories and chapters from novels. Students' critical analyses of their peers' work are informed by their study of published fiction in the texts, supplemented by lectures clarifying technical strategies in the writing of fiction. May be taken up to six times for credit. This course is restricted to graduate students admitted to the Writing Program (Fiction).

WR 522 MFA CORE WORKSHOP POETRY

Instructor: Michele Glazer

"I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out," Oscar Wilde said. Flaubert put it this way, "I spent the morning putting in a comma and the afternoon removing it."

Revision is hard. "Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying," wrote John Updike.

The focus of this workshop will be on the act of revision. Each student will be expected to take three poems through multiple radical re-envisionings and submit each one to workshop. In this process of revising, we will hold in mind the idea of ecounter--with the self, with the world outside the self, and as it occurs in language--as place to press and listen. In conjunction with the writing, we will study drafts of poems by published writers (and the occasional published drafts of the same poem), as well as read essays, interviews, manifestos and other works that speak to the revision process.

Required works:

Alice Oswald's Falling Awake, C.D. Wright's One Big Self, and selections from other writers.

WR 523 MFA CORE WORKSHOP NONFICTION

Instructor: Michael McGregor

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

WR 525 ADV TECHNICAL WRIT

Instructor: TBD

Emphasis on a problem-solving approach to adapting technical documents to audiences and organizations. The course includes strategies of organization for complex technical documents, such as proposals and professional articles; strategies for discussing tables and figures; and the use of metaphor to communicate technical information to lay audiences. May be repeated for a maximum of 8 credits. Expected preparation: Wr 327.

WR 556 FORMS OF NONFICTION

Instructor: Paul Collins

As an introduction to writing with the major forms and techniques of literary nonfiction, Forms of Nonfiction will explore landmark works by such writers as Joan Didion and David Foster Wallace, and will delve into the periodicals and contemporary currents that have shaped the art form.

Texts:

D'Agata, John. The Lifespan of a Fact.
Didion, Joan. Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Kitchen, Judith & Diana Lenney. Brief Encounters.
McPhee, John. The John McPhee Reader.
Petty, Audrey. High Rise Stories.
Wallace, David Foster. Consider the Lobster.

WR 560 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

WR 561 BOOK EDITING

Instructor: Adam Rodriguez

WR 562 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE

Instructor: Kelley Dodd

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

WR 563 BOOK MARKETING

Instructor: TBD

Comprehensive course in professional book marketing. Issues specific to marketing of fiction and nonfiction books in variety of genres and markets will be covered. Students will do market research, produce marketing plans, write press releases, write advertising copy, and develop related marketing materials.

WR 574 PUBLISHING STUDIO

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

WR 575 PUBLISHING LAB

Instructor: Abbey Gaterud

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