Spring 2020 Courses

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

Spring 2020 - Undergraduate English Courses

ENG 205-001 SURVEY OF BRITISH LIT II
Keri Behre

In this course, we will read and discuss literary works by Enlightenment, Romantic, Victorian, and twentieth-century writers, paying close attention to both genre and historical context. We will use The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors, Volume 2 as our textbook, supplemented with other readings available in PDF. This course is appropriate for anyone who needs or wants to understand more about English literature. Coursework will include weekly reading responses, two take-home exams, and a final essay. No prior background in the subject matter is required. This term, we will be piloting Canvas LMS, an intuitive and user-friendly platform.

ENG 254-001 SURVEY OF AMERICAN LIT II
Susan Reese

With a primary focus on race, we will read the texts Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Beloved by Toni Morrison, and one other book to be revealed in our first week of class. Stories, critical works, audio and visual pieces will be added to round out or selections as we trace our country’s presentations of and reactions to race from the Civil War to the present. Along the way, our reading materials will bring ethnicity, gender, and class issues to the forefront of our discussions and study. We’ll travel with writers from Mark Twain to Colson Whitehead, Louise Erdrich, and Tommy Orange; we’ll savor the poetry of Langston Hughes, Yusef Komunyakaa, Lucille Clifton, Maya Angelou, Natasha Trethewey and many others, with rich and memorable stops all along the way to tour words in all genres, alive across over a century of living. The chosen focus will facilitate our journey, in an expansive way, as we discover the importance of American Literature past, present, and future. How we talked and wrote about race, how we talk and write about race, and how we hope to talk and write about race in years to come. Please just purchase your ticket and join us. All Aboard!

ENG 300-001 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS
Keri Behre

The stories we tell ourselves are important. This course is about those stories – about how our stories mesh together as a community, and about how we use certain tools and methods to examine more closely the stories and ideas we encounter. Literary texts have value because they reflect and affect our humanity in surprising and sometimes uncomfortable ways. And the best stories, the best arguments, the best theory – all of these things speak to us only when we speak to them. This term, we will begin that process, together. In this class, we will read works of fiction, poetry, and drama; engage ourselves with the “discipline” of literary studies: its methodologies, terms, and theories; develop our skills in close, careful, methodical reading; study and practice the elements of argumentation; and experiment with genres of literary analysis and response. Our primary textbook will be the Seagull Book of Literature (which includes Stories, Poems, and Plays), selected for its breadth and relatively low cost. Other texts will be recommended, and I will refer you to open educational resource options wherever possible. This term, we will be piloting Canvas LMS, an intuitive and user-friendly platform.

ENG 300-002 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS
Marie Lo

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

ENG 300-003 LITERARY FORM AND ANALYSIS
John Smyth

Brief Overview
Primary texts are Isak Dinesen’s “The Blank Page” and Ehrengard; Vladimir Nabokov’s “That in Aleppo Once,” “Spring in Fialta,” and Lolita; Peter Greenaway’s film The Draughtsman’s Contract; Franz Kafka’s “A Country Doctor;” and Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. Secondary texts will include the section on Nabokov in Nafisi Azar’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Richard Rorty’s “The Barber of Kasbeam: Nabokov on Cruelty,” as well as feminist articles on Isak Dinesen. You will also watch Kubrick’s film of Lolita.

Primary requirements are two essays, two oral presentations of your work, and short weekly contributions to Canvas discussion.

ENG 301U-001 TOP: SHAKESPEAREAN HISTORY
Jonathan Walker

In this course we will read and discuss four Shakespearean history plays: Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V. Collectively, these four plays are known as the second tetralogy; the first tetralogy includes 1 Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI, and Richard III. Although Shakespeare wrote the first tetralogy before he wrote the second tetralogy, the historical events represented in the second tetralogy actually precede those of the first. These eight plays depict a period of English history from roughly 1398 to 1485, during which time England was embroiled in civil wars and in conflicts in continental Europe. The civil conflicts are called the Wars of the Roses, which came to an end in 1485 with the defeat of King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field by Henry Richmond, soon thereafter King Henry VII—the slain Richard III was then unceremoniously buried under a carpark.

Our guiding questions in this class will center on the generic or formal identity of these plays, that is, their historical and dramatic qualities. What is a history play? What did early modern audiences expect to see when they attended a history in the theater? Why did historical events involving mainly kings, queens, and nobility draw people out to watch histories? And how do the formal characteristics of history plays coincide with other genres, such as comedy and tragedy? We will examine how the literary form of the history play predisposes us as readers and playgoers to interpret its dramatic action in certain ways, and, in turn, how the plays’ disruption or frustration of our formal expectations transforms the possibilities of interpretation. We will likewise give attention to questions of social class, language, and gender (among others) as they are posed by these four plays and by the early modern English culture from which they come.

Most of our in-class time will involve discussing such questions in these four texts, along with other short readings. There will be very few lectures. The course will therefore require you to have read the plays carefully and to be prepared to discuss and ask questions about them during class meetings. Because of the course’s discussion-based format, its success will depend upon everyone’s active participation as we seek to answer these various questions together.

ENG 304-001 CRITICAL THEORY OF CINEMA
Josh Epstein

A loose and baggy term for a range of tools and methods, "critical theory" helps us to ask complex questions about how films generate meaning in the world—and then, to question the questions themselves. Our course will be broken into four units, each tackling a specific set of problems related to film theory:
1. Genre and authorship. What does it change if we understand films as “texts” authored by a singular artistic imagination (auteur)—or if we don’t? How do our preconceived assumptions about genre shape how we respond to films—consciously or unconsciously?
2. History, ideology, and realism. To what extent does a film present a vision of the “real world”; to what extent is that idea of “realism” bound up with ideological and historical assumptions; how can films not only represent or narrate the world, but act on it?
3. Gender, sexuality, and psychological subjectivity. What is the relationship between the film apparatus and the psyche of the spectator? How does a film’s manipulation of a “gaze” shape its/our attitudes, desires, and identification? How do films experiment with aesthetic or narrative form so as to challenge normative assumptions about gender?
4. Race, nation, and empire. What possibilities does film offer for resistant spectatorship that resists conventional stereotypes or inherited attitudes toward race and nation? How do genre and spectatorship work differently in global or postcolonial contexts?

Our primary critical theory readings will be posted to Canvas as PDF files. Students should budget to print these readings out and bring them in hard copy to class.
As a companion to these readings, I have ordered one textbook: Ruth Doughty and Christine Etherington-Wright, Understanding Film Theory, 2nd ed. (Palgrave; ISBN 978-1137528230).

As a "recommended"/optional purchase, I have ordered Ed Sikov's textbook Film Studies, for those who would like a little additional help with basics of film analysis and terminology.

Films will be screened in class or made available free of cost. These will likely include some (probably not all) of the following:
Alfie Hitchcock, Shadow of a Doubt
Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin
Vittorio De Sica, Bicycle Thieves
Ingmar Bergman, Persona
R.W. Fassbinder, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers
Short films by Barbara Hammer, Jack Smith, George Kuchar, and/or Maya Deren

ENG 305U-001 TOP: LYNCH, NOIR, ZIZEK
Michael Clark

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

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

(1) What is noir?

(2) What are its stylistic and formal components?

(3) What does noir tell us about our desires, our society, and ourselves?

(4) What modes of psychoanalytic inquiry will inform us about the motives, fixations, obsessions, and dynamics of film noir?

ENG 306U-001 TOP: PHILIP K. DICK
Tony Wolk

Reading and discussion of several PKD novels and short stories. They will include: The Man in the High Castle; Martian Time-slip; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; The Transmigration of Timothy Archer; as well as several short stories.

Note: There is Library of America edition of PKD with the above 5 books, as well as about 14 others. Its cost, $80. I’d say: Get the Boxed Set (ISBN 978-1-59853-049-0). Phone orders, 1-800-064-5778; ask for Product #210011. Note that the Library of America is non-profit. I highly recommend it, not just for PKD but for Ursula Le Guin and hundreds more of American writers.

Discussion will take place in class as well as in weekly small groups.
Writing for the course will consist of weekly Course-Related Dialogue Journals, which invite both the usual sorts of response to literary works as well as imaginative explorations as though you were gifted with a mind like P. K. Dick’s (which of course you are). In effect you are writing both ABOUT A WRITER & AS A WRITER.

ENG 312-001 COMEDY & SATIRE
Katya Amato

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

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

-Four Plays by Aristophanes, tr. William Arrowsmith et al. (Lysistrata and Frogs only)

-Menander, Dyskolos (The Grouch)

-Five Comedies by Plautus and Terence, tr. Deena Berg and Douglass Parker (The Wild, Wild Women or Bacchides)

-Cervantes, Don Quixote, tr. Edith Grossman (considered the best new translation)

-Voltaire, Candide and Related Texts, tr. David Wootton (excellent edition for context)

-Molière, Tartuffe, tr. Richard Wilbur (still the best translation)

-Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

-Beckett, Waiting for Godot

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

ENG 317U-001 GREEK MYTHOLOGY
Katya Amato

"…the helmet screams against the light;

Scratches the eye; so violent it can be seen

Across three thousand years."

--Christopher Logue, War Music

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

No Disney or Golden Books here: this is the harshly beautiful and cruel classical world that you've always suspected lay behind Zeus's lightning bolts and genital-loving Aphrodite's laughter.

Texts: Richmond Lattimore’s translation of The Iliad (ISBN 978-0-226-47049-8)

Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of The Odyssey (ISBN 978-0374525743)

Richmond Lattimore’s translation of Hesiod (Theogony and Works and Days in one volume) (ISBN 978-0472081615)

Jules Cashford’s translation of The Homeric Hymns (ISBN 978-0140437829)

Rolfe Humphries’ translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (ISBN 978-0253200013)

Requirements: Epic reading assignments, midterm and final exams, and regular attendance.

Note: Lattimore's translations are required; the others are optional. The texts are available at the PSU Bookstore. Feel free to email me if you have questions: amatok@pdx.edu.

ENG 320U-001 THE ENGLISH NOVEL I
John Smyth

Main Texts will include:
Jane Austen, Emma
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
plus
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (selections)
Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist (selections)
Nikolai Gogol, “The Nose”

Films/TV Series will include:
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 and two in-class presentations, plus brief weekly Canvas posts.

ENG 325U-001 POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE
Sarah DeYoreo

What contests or comes after colonization? This course begins from the premise that colonialism and neocolonialism are forms of social, political, economic, psychological, and linguistic othering, erasure, and domination, which necessarily grow out of, give rise to, and reinforce other, related forms of systemic violence and exploitation: e.g., capitalism, (hetero-)sexism, racism. While postcolonial studies as an academic field has its roots in the anti-colonial struggles of places formerly occupied by France, England, Belgium, and other European countries, it should be remembered that the United States, too, is a settler-colonial country: one founded on the genocide and (near-, failed-) erasure of indigenous communities, the theft of their land, and the systematic domination and exploitation of Africans, later African Americans, in the form of slavery.

Another premise of this course is that these connections must be recognized and loudly, continually affirmed; that, while it is important to acknowledge the distinctions that exist between the legacies of colonial violence in Nigeria versus South Africa versus India versus Jamaica versus the United States, it is no longer (or never has been) serviceable to keep them separate. Doing so merely obscures the problem of transnational systems of power and domination (e.g., white supremacy, global networks of capital, ecological destruction, gendered violence and exploitation), particularly in the globalized world we live in today, and—for those of us, like me, who have spent most our lives in the United States and who identify as Americans—it enables us to distance ourselves from the colonial problem: the problems of violence, domination, resistance, and freedom, and our own complicated, uncomfortable entanglements within these. This course asserts, on the contrary, that colonization is not, or not only, “back then” or “over there;” colonization is happening now, here. So, too, must the struggle against it.

ENG 372U-001 TOP: LESBIAN & WOMXN IDS IN LI
Sara McWilliams

In our course we’ll explore a range of literature that gives us entry into the construction of lesbian and womxn identities. This exploration will help us negotiate the following questions:
What are the different contemporary constructions of lesbian and womxn subjectivities and experiences that emerge from our readings?
How do cultural, racial, social, and transnational contexts impact the narrative renderings of lesbian and queer womxn identities and desires?
In what ways do the texts engage with critical issues such as the politics of identity, the power of naming, struggles for visibility, historical representations and silences, and love?
What factors impact our interpretations of these texts?
During our time together we will attempt to understand the challenges connected to the production and interpretation of lesbian and womxn representations in contemporary literature.

ENG 342U-001 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE
Rebecca Schneider

This section of English 342U (Eighteenth Century British Literature) routes the period's most central concerns through Caribbean plots and places. British commerce, governance, defense, and nationalistic identity formed apace with the expansion of British plantation economies. Even authors who never personally set foot on “West Indian” soil imagined the sugar islands as contexts for their writing. In this infamous age of revolution, popular revolts against tyranny coalesced into newly freed states, while enslaved Africans daily asserted their own right to be free.

Given our Caribbean focus this term, most of the course texts explore unfreedom and resilience through the lives and experiences of African diasporic people in the British Caribbean. But, given the pervasive colonial opposition to literacy among enslaved populations, most of the course texts present Africans' perspectives as they were imagined by white authors. This conundrum will allow us to query how literary representations of Africans (and especially violence by and against racialized bodies) throughout the century informed political action, and vice versa. The reading list includes prose, natural history writing, confession and captivity narratives, eclogues, epistolary fiction, pantomime and melodrama, and abolitionist poetry.

ENG 345U-001 MODERN BRITISH LIT
Perrin Kerns

“Make it new,” Ezra Pound wrote. In this course, we will explore the British Modernist writers’ artistic revolution, their break from the past and their transformations of artistic forms as we read major writers from the modern period: Virginia Woolf, H.D., T.S. Eliot, Joyce, and others. In discussing short stories, novels, and poetry, we will explore some of the central issues that arise in the Modernist period: the turn from realism, the crisis of meaning brought about by World War, the dangers and openings residing in the modernist approach to language.

It is not possible to study British modern literature or the literary period from 1890-1945 without also spending time thinking about the changes that were taking place in science, technology, economics, politics, popular culture, gender and race relations, and colonialism. In this class, we will want to frame our reading of the Modernist writers with an understanding of the radical shifts in all these areas that created new ways of thinking about space, time, gender, race, identity, faith, and especially the mediating relationship of language to “reality” and “truth.” (And, we might think about how our own technological changes are radically shifting our sense of identity, language, and reality as we have moved from the 1900’s to the 2000’s.) In response to these changes, Modernist writers undertook experiments with language and form that challenged what they perceived to be dead tropes. They, in some cases, were intentionally trying to disrupt the reader’s sense of “meaning making.” The Modernists, as T.S.Eliot said, were seeking to “dislocate” language, creating an experience of de-familiarization for their reader. Thus, many of the texts we read this term are difficult reads. I only ask that you open yourself up to the difficulty. You can complain, you can claim to hate some of these writers, but ultimately if you give these texts the time they deserve you will find it well worth it.

ENG 353U-001 AFRICAN AMERICAN LIT III
Elizabeth Brown

This course is the third in a historical sequence of three courses on African American literature. Over the term, we will read works of contemporary African American literature from 1965 to the present through the lens of what scholars have called neo-slave narratives. Specifically, we will consider how authors have used fiction to remember and reimagine slavery in the context of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Some questions we will consider include: How have authors represented the relationship between past and present (and future)? What forms are history and memory given in fictional texts? How do authors treat histories of slavery in order to critically comment on their present? Texts we might read include Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad, and/or Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing.

ENG 363U-001 AMERICAN LIT AND CULTURE II
Perrin Kerns

The turn of the century from the 19th to the 20th was marked by an explosion of technology which led to radical cultural changes. The wars, political upheavals and social protests throughout the last century produced shifts in American identity and culture, as women, ethnic groups, and the working-class questioned the notion of a unified American identity and culture. Our study of this time period will focus on the complexity of American identities and the cultures of “outsiders”, as reflected in the work of major writers and in the literary movements.

ENG 372U-002 TOP: QUEER LATINX WRITERS
Jorge Estrada

This course is a critical examination of recent literary works written by and about LGBTQ+ Latinx writers in the U.S. We will look at how Latinx writers articulate issues dealing with gender and sexuality in their work, paying particular attention to constructions of homosexuality, femininity, masculinity, and non-binary identities and expressions. Students will apply theoretical frameworks from Latino Studies, queer theory, feminism, and jotería studies (queer Latinx studies).

ENG 387U-001 WOMEN'S LITERATURE
Sarah DeYoreo

What do we mean by the phrase “Women’s Literature”? What is implied or assumed about the term “women”? In this course, we will read, listen to, watch, and interact with a variety of 20th and 21st century texts by women, queer, and non-binary writers, including Virginia Woolf, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Jamaica Kincaid, Angela Davis, Gloria Anzaldúa, Ursula LeGuin, Anne Carson, Rebecca Solnit, Carmen Maria Machado, CA Conrad, Miriam Toews, Leni Zumas, and others. However, we will also, with the help of these writers and their texts, probe and trouble the concept of “women” (and, while we’re at it, of “men”). How and why are these gender categories constructed, enacted, normalized, and enforced, and what might happen if we cease to obey or believe in them? What sorts of possibilities—for how we think, feel, read, write, and relate to and love one another—could this open up?

ENG 416-001 HISTORY OF RHETORIC
Greg Jacob

Rhetoric has its western origins in the writings of Plato and Aristotle and the rhetorical tradition extends to contemporary rhetoricians, such as Bakhtin and Foucault. This course traces rhetoric’s influence from the Greek sophists to deconstructionists. We will talk about “how persuasive public discourse performs essential social functions and shapes our daily lives” (to quote from James Herrick). We will ask how rhetoric is defined. Is it seeking “the available means of persuasion” (Aristotle) or is it making use of the “symbolic means of inducing cooperation” (Kenneth Burke)?

ENG 428-001 CANONS AND CANONICITY
Elisabeth Ceppi

This course examines the historical, institutional, and ideological contexts in which traditions of “great works” have been established, contested, and creatively appropriated. It focuses on questions of literary value and its relation to national identity, cultural encounter, and power. It also investigates how categories of social difference such as gender, race, and class have shaped the criteria by which works and authors have been included and excluded from dominant traditions. We will explore these issues by taking Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter as a case study of “classic” American literature, tracing its critical and cultural history. We will read it alongside Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, a work with similar themes published a decade after Hawthorne’s novel, which has become a critical text in multiple “revisionist” canons. We will consider the afterlives of both of these texts in a range of contemporary works: two plays by Suzan-Lori Parks; the movie Easy A; and Leni Zumas’s recently-published novel, Red Clocks. Pre-requisite: ENG 300; Co-Requisite: WR 301. This course fills the Culture, Difference, and Representation requirement for the BA/BS in English.

REQUIRED TEXTS (available at PSU Bookstore)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (Norton)
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Dover)
Suzan-Lori Parks, The Red Letter Plays (TCG)
Leni Zumas, Red Clocks (Bay Back)

ENG 444-001 BRITISH WOMEN WRITERS
Hildy Miller

French feminist Helene Cixous once asked if we had yet actually heard a woman’s voice—that is to say, a literary voice not co-opted by the dominant voices in the general culture. In this course we’ll read samples of British women writers from the mid-nineteenth century through the first quarter of the twenty-first century who certainly come close to providing an answer to Cixous’ question. These writers are notable for their innovations in narrative genre, style, and structure, and for their challenges to literary and cultural traditions and practices. They give voice to questions of gender identities; racial, ethnic, and class difference; creativity; madness; motherhood; marriage and partnerships of all sorts; sexualities; women’s bodies and bodily existence; and social justice and reform. We’ll consider conditions in Britain in the times in which they lived, along with the particular feminist/gender theories most relevant to their work. And we’ll discuss their intellectual and cultural significance and their connections to particular literary movements.

From fairy tales to war stories, these writers challenge narrative forms in order to explore new stories and new visions of the world. Readings will include several novels (Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, and On Beauty by Zadie Smith.) There will also be short stories and excerpts (Elizabeth Gaskell, Radclyffe Hall, Doris Lessing, Katherine Mansfield, Angela Carter, and Jeanette Winterson), along with poetry (Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Louise Bennett). And we’ll read excerpts of scholarly work, including those from several prominent feminist theorists (Mary Wollstonecraft, Silvia Federici, Adrienne Rich, Helene Cixous, Gayatri Spivak, Judith Butler, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Judith/Jack Halberstam, and Susan Bordo).

ENG 497-001 COMICS HISTORY
Diana Schutz

“Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny more interesting than either parent.”

—Dr. Seuss

Comics are a rich form of artistic and narrative expression, a modern exemplar of the picture story whose history dates as far back as the Lascaux and Chauvet cave paintings in France. Boldly combining images and text, today’s comics fearlessly go where even Superman himself would not have dared: into stories of war, trauma, sexuality, spirituality, and more. But how did we get here? From simple beginnings, the much maligned American comic book has evolved through the last century into today’s more sophisticated graphic novel, whose authors have won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, and the MacArthur Fellowship a.k.a. “Genius Grant,” among others. In order to understand how the once-trifling comic has become today’s literary heavyweight—and what that means for the art form—this course will trace the history of the American comic, from its birth in the newspapers to its explosion in the superhero genre, its shifting nature in the Underground and Alternative movements, all the way to today’s digital comics and what might lie beyond. Together, we will read over a hundred years (!) of comics narratives, identifying trends and authors of note. In the process, with luck, we will all get a taste of what it means to be a comics history scholar and to understand both the growth and incredible potential of this crazy, wonderful storytelling form.

ENG 497-002 COMICS HISTORY
Douglas Wolk

This class is an overview of the bizarre, delightful history of American periodical comic books, in the context of the cultural and aesthetic currents that have shaped the form. We'll read and discuss a wide variety of comics spanning the past 80 years or so, from their newsprint origins to their genre diversification in the '40s, the "ten-cent plague" of the '50s, the mainstream, underground and art-comics movements that warily circled each other for decades, and the spectacular creative boom of the current century.

Spring 2020 - Graduate English Courses

ENG 507-001 SEM: THE ROMANTIC ANTHROPOCENE
Tracy Dillon

The Romantic Anthropocene; or, the Romanthropocene:
Finding Antecedents for Anthropogenic Apprehension
In Romantic Literature

Key Text

David Higgins, British Romanticism, Climate Change, and the Anthropocene: Writing Tambora (2017). But it’s $70! Thus, I am certainly not requiring you to buy it. We can get along without dropping major $ on readings. I will provide them online.

Higgins’ essential argument contends that Romantic authors can imagine Anthropogenic/Apocalyptic through “the apprehension of deep time.”

Class Themes:

1.1816: The Year Without a Summer. Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Polidori spend the summer in Geneva and produce the essential Anthropogenic monsters of current popular culture: Mary, Frankenstein. Polidori, The Vampyre. Byron, the Zombie.

2. The Anthropocene: Not Your Daddy’s Apocalypse

Anthropocene: Our contemporary geologic epic, aka “the recent age of man.” Human species extinction created by human technologies.

Apocalypse: Revelation of a Change, portending “End Times, or the End of the World as We Know It.” However, humans survive in some form on Earth (even a new one). In fact, Apocalypse can be read as hopeful for the future rather than indicative of failure or doom. Normally the understanding that “apocalypse” refers to an End Time overshadows the ineluctable fact that, rather than all time completely ending, a new time is just beginning, and that an Apocalypse simply is the revelation of this transition, accompanied by the unveiling of secret meanings about how it all came to pass.

That distinction is an important theme in this course: distinguishing between literary imaginings of the Anthropocene and of the Apocalypse, paying particular attention to how Romantic writers and artists of the 18th- and 19th-centuries apprehended this distinction long before any of them might have guessed the extent to which industrialization and human technology, which many Romantics famously lamented back in the day, would become the Frankenstein’s monster that killed the world.

3. A smattering of probable texts that we will look at, following David Higgins’ assertion that these authors experience “the apprehension of deep time”:

William Wordsworth (1770-1850). “The Dream of the Arab” from The Prelude, Book V.

Comte de Buffon, “Les époques de la nature” (1778). Theory of Earth cooling to the point of being unhabitable. Big influence on Percy Bysshe Shelley.

George Gordon, Lord Byron. “Alpine Journal,” Cain, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, “Darkness,” Manfred, “Prometheus.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

Eleanor Anne Porden, The Artic Expedition (1819) in conjunction with climate change reports Sir John Barrow’s writings on melting Artic ice.

John Keats, “To Autumn” (1820), “After dark vapours have oppressed our plains”(1817).

Polidori, John William. The Vampyre.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), History of a Six Weeks’ Tour, The Last Man.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” Masque of Anarchy, “Mont Blanc,” Prometheus Unbound.

(And do we need to stay completely pre-19th century? Hmmmm.)

There you go! A course about End Times during a worldwide pandemic. Ironic. Tragic. Let’s see what we can make of it.

ENG 507-002 SEM: ZIZEK, FILM, CULTURE
Michael Clark

This course will focus on Zizek’s analyses of film and culture, though in the process we will engage in discussions of other topics (it’s inevitable with Zizek, whose own thought has an intentionally digressive quality). Our goal will be threefold: (1) to come to understand the fundamental theoretical, philosophical, and cultural issues that Zizek finds central to his critical project; (2) to understand his specific analyses of a handful of films; and, (3) to try to develop or understand the “style” of Zizekian literary, aesthetic, and filmic analysis – inseparable from his readings of culture. I promise you that this will be fun – Zizek is a prankster who delights in tweaking and challenging our common preconceptions; he also loves jokes. Like many psychoanalytic theorists, he believes that jokes are a place where the unpermitted is (temporarily) permitted, and where the unconscious speaks.

Another crucial component of this course will be a study of the work of Theodor Adorno, the leading critic of the Frankfurt School and in many, many ways a clear progenitor of Zizek’s mode of critical analysis. Adorno was one of the first neo-Marxist thinkers to use psychoanalytic theory as a central component of his work, a shift that Zizek takes to the next level. In addition, Adorno was one of the first neo-Marxist theorists to address popular culture as a crucial subject matter, something that (again) Zizek takes to a whole new level. The affinities and contrasts between these two thinkers is, I think, an essential element of any critical understanding today.

Students will be asked to write a research paper of 15-20 pages and present their work before the class (towards the end of the term).

ENG 507-003 SEM: TECHNOLOGIES OF TEXT
Kathi Berens

What is literature in today's context of digital superabundance, where one million books are published with ISBNs each year, and self-publishing and fanfic sites produce tens of millions of stories annually? Students in this course will study media theory, book history, and new contexts of literary close reading of a wide variety of texts, including "literary" videogames, digital and printed Instagram Poetry, and Orwell's 1984.

ENG 531-001 TOP: COLLOQUIUM
Joshua Epstein

A one-credit class that meets every other week, ENG 531 will assist students in preparing for the M.A. exams. Depending on where they are in the program, students may begin developing areas of focus for their exams or qualifying essays; or may organize materials and practice sessions for the exams coming up in April (written and oral). No required book purchases.

Spring 2020 - Undergraduate Writing Courses

WR 212-001 INTRO FICTION WRITING
Neil Hetrick

Introduction to Fiction Writing will establish basic critical fiction vocabulary and introduce writing skills and practices useful in creating engaging and deliberate works of short fiction. Course activities will be centered around reading and responding to a variety of works of short fiction, examining craft terminology, and engaging in critical examination of essays focused on the craft of writing. Students will also submit their own fiction works to workshop groups and provide supportive and critical feedback to one another.

WR 213-002 INTRO POETRY WRITING
Consuelo Wise

This course will offer a variety of poems—prose, fragment, narrative, sonnet, experimental, hybrid, etcetera. We will read poems, write poems, discuss poems, and gather tools for engaging with them.

One of the course’s primary objectives is to learn how to follow and listen better, to identify how a poem’s images, sounds, syntax, lineation, rhythm, form—and more—are working, with the goal of becoming sharper, more curious readers and writers.

As an introductory workshop class, we will also practice how to give and receive helpful feedback. Often more than discussion of your own poems, discussing your peers’ work will help you with your writing & revision process.

Additional thoughts for the course—thinking about poems today, what has changed in how language is used? How do poems look now, versus in the time of Shakespeare or Sappho? What do these changes mean? What does language mean?

How does tracking a poem’s breath, movement and pace inform your own sense of form?
How do you, personally, experience a poem?
What draws you or dissuades you from reading poetry?

WR 212-003 INTRO FICTION WRITING
Sean Hennessey

“Opening the Book,” is a discussion-orientated class that seeks to open up the process of fiction writing. Starting with idea creation and leading to story workshop, the course uses in-class writing and explorations into the elements of story to help the students see their own work differently and to empower them with the language used to discuss their writing in a workshop environment. Students will be prompts for short writing exercises, focusing on the aspects of story writing under study, and to submit one to two full stories for in-class workshop.

WR 214-001 INTRO NONFICTION WRITING
Sophia Shalmiyev

In this writing workshop, students will explore the broad genre of creative nonfiction-from small-scale constraint-based writing exercises to the personal essay to academic articles to art reviews to non-narrative poetry and beyond. Through a variety of writing exercises, experiments, and reading assignments, we will play with language, content, and form. Emphasis is placed on experimentation and argument as means to develop a personal vocabulary while initiating a self-directed writing practice. The course is designed to support students of all levels and interests preparing for thesis writing, visual artists who use language and text in their work, and creative writers.

WR 227-001 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG
Garret Romaine

WR227 introduces you to the world of technical communication, which is a different style and voice from other writing. Successful completion of WR227 prepares students to produce instructive, informative, and persuasive documents. Technical documents are often based on complex information. The purpose, target audience, and complexity of the task influence the choices technical writers make in writing style, document design, vocabulary, sentence and paragraph structure, and inclusion of visuals. WR227 is grounded in rhetorical theory and focuses on producing usable, reader-centered content that is clear, concise, and ethical.

WR 227-002 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG
Mary Sylwester

This class introduces technical and professional communication. Students compose, design, revise, and edit letters, memos, reports, descriptions, 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 227-003 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG
Henry Covey

WR227 introduces the principles and applications of technical, scientific, and professional communication. Learn how to write informative, instructive, and persuasive technical documentation in your discipline (WR121 or Freshman Inquiry recommended for this class but not required).

Please note: The primary textbook for this course will be the 'IEEE Guide to Writing in the Engineering and Technical Fields' by Kmiec and Longo. Go to https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/doi/book/10.1002/97811.... To download your free PDF copy, you will be prompted to log in to your @pdx.edu PSU account. Once logged in with your @pdx.edu PSU account, click on the "Download Full Book" link or Adobe PDF icon under the "Table of Contents" (see Canvas for more detailed instructions).

WR 227-005 INTRO TECHNICAL WRTG
Jordana Bowen

Technical writing: another ho-hum class you take to check a box on the way to graduation. Or, so the story seems to go.

What if I told you a different story: one where technical writing is much more than writing as clearly and accurately as possible? A story where doing your job well -- and getting raises and promotions along the way -- is likely dependent on your ability to identify your audience and communicate effectively with them?

Surprise: it’s not just a story. Welcome to the world of technical communication. Our primary goal in this course is to learn strategies for successfully navigating technical writing situations. A strategy is the thinking aspect of planning to write in a technical context: it is the framework that you adopt as you make a series of choices about how you will respond to a technical writing situation. Strategies are fully portable across any technical writing context. You can take them with you no matter what company, industry or profession you end up in.

During this course, you'll apply these strategies to a few specific technical writing situations that are common in many technical professions and industries. These will provide you with a strong foundation of practice to build on in the future, along with a strategic toolbox for technical communication to help set you apart from the crowd.

This class includes a group project to create a how-to video (yes, video is part of modern technical communication). You'll be taught the basics of meaningful workplace collaboration. You'll also research, propose, develop a script and storyboard, film and edit your video, and then conduct a usability test and write a usability report based on your results.

WR 301-001 WIC: CRITICAL WRTING ENGLISH
Elisabeth Ceppi

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

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

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

WR 301-002 WIC: CRITICAL WRTING ENGLISH
Hildy Miller

WR 301 Critical Writing in English TR 10-11:50 am
As English majors, you're probably already familiar with much of what we do in our courses. This class is designed to stretch that knowledge further and prepare you to succeed in upper division work. We'll consider strategies for writing and conducting secondary research. And we'll practice reading and interpreting texts through the lenses of varied critical theories. Includes formal and informal writing, responding to a variety of readings, sharing writing with other students, and reflecting on writing. Our class will run as a workshop in which you’ll be collaborating with other students throughout phases of both your and their writing processes. If all goes as promised, you should emerge from the course with a renewed sense of how to produce knowledge in English Studies.
Questions? Contact milleh@pdx.edu

WR 323-002 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY
Amy Harper Russell

Course Objective: In this class we will learn what it is to be a writer. We will explore genres of writing, draft work, reflect upon work, and have the opportunity to peer-review work. Please save all notes, blog entries, journaling, drafts, source materials, peer reviews, and papers to include in a portfolio. The end result should be a complete portfolio of work to share.

Different Genres by Category:
• Film Analysis
This genre includes viewing a film and analyzing themes and techniques
• Creative Non-fiction
This genre shall include personal narrative and/or memoir
• Literary Analysis
This genre will explore short fiction, song lyrics, poetry, and comedy

WR 323-004 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY
Amy Harper Russell

This course is a survey of different writing styles. Bloom’s Taxonomy

Learning Objectives:

The student will use prior Knowledge in order to Comprehend and Interpret Narrative Literature. The student will take acquired knowledge and demonstrate via writing assignments: the arc of a personal story, lyric analysis, film analysis, poetry, and the structure of an essay. In addition, the student will be able to Analyze the distinctions between and the hybridization of memoir and essay. Furthermore, the student will be able to Apply this knowledge by Synthesizing and composing original writing of their own in these genres. Ultimately, the student will be able to assess their writing, as well as the writing of others by collaborative Evaluation.

WR 327-003 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING
Jacob Tootalian

WR 327 is a course designed to give students experience with the conventions of technical reporting. While other composition classes often highlight academic forms of writing, this course emphasizes communication relevant to workplace situations and technical applications. Focusing on the genres of the technical report, students will consider how to engage users with a diversity of cultural/intellectual values and information needs. They will exercise process-oriented skills that can also be applied to other forms of communication that might be unfamiliar to them or new to their fields. The goal of the course to encourage students to hone a rhetorical sensibility that will allow them to succeed as both effective communicators and careful interpreters of technical knowledge.

WR 333-001 ADVANCED COMPOSITION
Keri Behre

In this class, we will spend the first half of the term studying the personal essay genre and the second half of the term studying the formal essay genre. Students are encouraged to choose topics for their personal and formal essays based upon their own interests and areas of academic specialization. Ultimately, the class is devoted to seeking a greater understanding of the essay form. The text will be the Little Norton Reader; students nominate a selection of readings that constitute our term-long reading list. This term, we will be piloting Canvas LMS, an intuitive and user-friendly platform that allows for best practices in writing process instruction.

WR 394-001 WRITING CAREERS FOR ENG MAJORS
Abbey Gaterud

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

WR 407-002 SEM: ADVANCED NONFICTION
Gabriel Urza

Creative Nonfiction is an act of exploration; as writers, we search out new phenomena, new voices, new experiences. We reconsider old stories for new meaning. We discover new ways to use language, or form, or structure.

In this seminar, we will examine the role of the explorer both literally and figuratively. We will be using explorers and innovators as research subjects, examining the dangers and limitations that come with the very idea of “discovery.” But we will also consider the work of writers who have set out into the world, or sat down to the page, with a purpose of discovery. And we’ll use these examples as jumping-off points for our own work, with a series of writing and research prompts meant to explore the limits of our own writing.

WR 410-003 TOP: AUDIOBOOKS
Anna Noak

This course provides an overview of the state of the publishing industry’s audiobook format value stream—its history, current state, and trajectory in the market. Case studies, expert interviews, in depth industry articles, and audiobook dissections will be used to help the students learn audiobook production (from scripting to pickups), industry standards for QA, sales and marketing, and distribution.

WR 410-004 TOP: ADVANCED BOOK DESIGN
Kelley Dodd

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

WR 410-005 TOP: EBOOK PRODUCTION
Pariah Burke

EBOOK PRODUCTION teaches the hands-on skills of modern digital publishing in EPUB and beyond. The course will build on an established understanding of book design and layout with Adobe InDesign to teach you to create and fully understand reflowable, fixed-layout, and audio and video "enhanced" ebooks in EPUB, iBook, PDF, Adobe Publish Online, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Kindle formats. This course is hands-on, and you will create several different epublishing projects throughout. Most past students create projects that become proud additions to their portfolios or that they continue to expand on after the semester ends.

It is highly recommended (though not required) that you first take WR 4/510: DIGITAL SKILLS and WR 562-001 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE before taking this course or have basic knowledge of InDesign, Photoshop, HTML, and CSS.

WR 412-001 ADV FICTION WRITING
Gabriel Urza

This class will primarily be dedicated to the writing and improvement of two original works of fiction (either a completed short story, sections of a novel, or novella). If you are submitting an excerpt from a longer work, I ask that you write a letter to the class that explains your vision of the project and where this piece fits into that vision. We will consider and discuss these manuscripts in the workshop format, as well as in written critiques. In addition, we will read and discuss as series of craft essays and published short stories. Finally, we’ll use a series of revision exercises intended to spur new ideas in further drafts.

WR 427-001 TECHNICAL EDITING
Aaron Bannister

Gives technical writers practice in technical editing by introducing them to the principles of minimalism with the aim of editing documentation in a “mobile-friendly” world. Learning professional editing practices and standards for achieving concision and clarity for a variety of audiences is key in this course, where students hear from technical writing and editing professionals, and work on projects in collaborative student-editing teams.

WR 431-001 ADV TOP TECH WRITING TECHNLOGY
Bryan Schnabel

In Technical Communications, Information Technology, Content Management Systems, and Technical Publication, XML is the de facto underlying structure. A technical communicator wishing to enter the field will do well to understand mainstream XML formats like DITA, Docbook, HTML, SVG, and XLIFF. Among these XML formats DITA distinguishes itself as a structure that enables information to be created, managed, compiled, single-sourced, reused and published to enable all aspects of professional industry throughput. MTPW students: One WR 531 course is a program core requirement, but WR 531 can be repeated as many times as you want for elective credit. This is a recommended resume-building corse for 431 and 531 students looking to find work as a technical writer in industry. (No prerequisite programming skills are required for this class.)

WR 433-001 RESEARCH METHODS FOR TECHNICAL WRITERS
Sarah Read

This course will introduce students to the research methods commonly practiced by professional technical writers. These methods include interviewing subject-matter experts, researching genre conventions, user research, content analysis of existing websites and usability testing. Students will practice methods via client-projects with local community partners. Students can expect to develop at least one portfolio piece during this course. This course is a core course in the MTPW curriculum.

WR 466-001 DIGITAL SKILLS
Kathi Berens

Hands-on lab and discussion seminar. Students code webpages in HTML and CSS, then use domain management software to upload these pages to their own server space on the web. Students build digital portfolios using WordPress, optimizing for target audiences. Information architecture, UX and rudimentary JavaScript fundamentals are explored. Media theory and its reading techniques, such as stylometry and distant reading, are also studied.

WR 474-001 PUBLISHING STUDIO
Abbey Gaterud

Publishing Studio & Lab are the courses for hands-on learning at Ooligan Press. Designed to give students the freedom and responsibility of running a real-world trade publishing house, students are assigned to projects where they will work on a variety of publishing tasks. Project teams will work collaboratively to assess, plan, and execute editorial, design, digital content, marketing, and sales tasks throughout the term.

WR 475-001 PUBLISHING LAB
Abbey Gaterud

Spring 2020 - Graduate Writing Courses

WR 507-001 SEM: MFA POETRY
John Beer

“The long song, the long poem, particularly the serial poem, culls and extends a field of sympathetic resonances, lingering whilst moving on by way of recursiveness and feeling-with,” Nathaniel Mackey tells us. In this seminary, we’ll be exploring long poems both ancient and contemporary. We’ll consider practical questions of construction—e.g. how to sustain interest; how to create a field of “sympathetic resonances”—as well as theoretical questions around genre—e.g. is this a class on the “epic poem”? Assignments will be a mix of critical and creative, though you will not be expected to match our exemplars in length.

Texts: Diné Bahane’; Vergil, Aeneid; Langland, Piers Plowman; Notley, The Descent of Alette; Mackey, Splay Anthem

WR 507-002 SEM: MFA FICTION
Janice Lee

Han: On Healing, Remembering, Breathing & Writing Trauma

“A feeling of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered, a sense of helplessness because of the overwhelming odds against one, a feeling of acute pain in one's guts and bowels, making the whole body writhe and squirm, and an obstinate urge to take revenge and to right the wrong—all these combined.” — Suh Nam-dong

"There is not a wound within you that doesn't have a gift." – Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams

"Death needs a new cosmology. Death is not a black hole where things cease to be. If you want to live well, keep death close. Hope includes hopelessness and grieving is showing gratitude for that which has been lost. What would it be like to treat grief as power? Even our hopelessness as a form of decomposing and falling away that is sacred." – Bayo Akomolafe

This seminar will begin with the Korean concept of “han” and its relationship to concepts of inherited trauma, looking closely at the relationship of cultural history & identity and aesthetics & narrative and exploring how the presence of unresolved corporeal history and the impossibility of articulation or expression leads to new encounters in language and narrative.

We will ask: How are the frames of reference and relationships between and of living beings activated? That is, how do different bodies and worlds articulate each other, or, how do we learn to be affected? How do we reconcile personal experience with historical fact? How do we reconcile history with memory? How do we reconcile truths with other truths? How does writing open up space while processing trauma or grief? How do history and accuracy intersect in individual creative work? How does emotional and real violence intersect with aesthetic contradiction? How do the limits and failures of language allow for reaching beyond traditional narrative structures, and how does lived experience intersect with individual identity?

We will read texts from all genres, including texts that investigate different types of trauma & healing, how emotions like “han” relate to themes of historical accuracy and lived/embodied experience, the body as a compromised site and as a site for resistance, and connections to thinking about healing from other lineages, including plant & animal medicine, Buddhism, and shamanism. Students will work in a collaborative atmosphere by participating in discussion, exploring concepts of failure and inarticulation in their own creative writing practices. The seminar will also include writing prompts, guided meditations, intuition exercises, shamanic practices, divination, mapping, unbinding wounds & trauma, communing with plant and animal beings, and ceremony.

WR 507-003 SEM: MFA NONFICTION (MEMOIR)
Justin Hocking

How does it feel to be alive in 2020, and what use does the memoir genre serve during a time of such political and environmental upheaval? What possibilities exist for raising the sashes between our small selves and the larger world via memoir? To engage these and other perennial questions, this genre-fluid seminar/workshop will seek inspiration in visual art, architecture, poetry, and the natural world. Architects employ the term "fenestration" to designate any openings in the walls or enclosures of a building: windows, skylights, ventilation, doorways. We will thus experiment with "windowing" our personal writing with glimpses into history, ecology, politics, social justice issues, literary criticism, and poetics. We will also explore the seemingly paradoxical ways that embracing the wider world in memoir can allow us to risk more personal vulnerability on the page. Open to graduate students from all English Department Programs.

Tentative Reading List:
Rebecca Solnit, THE FARAWAY NEARBY
Aimee Nezhukimatathil, OCEANIC: POEMS
A.J. Dungo, IN WAVES, A GRAPHIC MEMOIR
Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane, NONBINARY: MEMOIRS OF GENDER AND IDENTITY

WR 507-009 SEM: BK PUBLISHING FOR WRTRS
Justin Hocking

This course will empower you to find appropriate publishing outlets for your writing, and to navigate beyond the conventional corporate pathways for propelling creative work into the world. By writing sample queries and book proposals, students will learn to effectively approach literary agents and large, mid-size, and micro-presses, as well as various online venues. The course schedule includes field trips to the Independent Publishing Resource Center and other local publishing/printing facilities, plus guest talks from small-press publishers, editors, Portland Zine Fest organizers, and a professional literary agent. Along with practice in basic editing and book design (using Creative Suite tools), we will learn saddle-stitch binding (commonly used to bind chapbooks and zines) and other hands-on skills, which you will utilize to create a modest DIY publication of your choice. We will also explore various other nontraditional publishing options, audience-building resources such as Patreon, and grant opportunities for writers/publishers. Open to graduate students from all English Department programs.

WR 510-001 TOP: PORTLAND REVIEW MARKETING
Benjamin Kessler

In this, the culminating course of the 2019 - 2020 Portland Review publishing season, we will be working to market and promote the print anthology finished in the Winter, as well as publishing online-specific pieces selected in the prior term. Students will gain experience in digital marketing and literary promotion, event planning, and publishing work online.

WR 510-004 TOP: TOP: 1ST YR PORTFOLIO WKSP
Sarah Read

Begin to think through organizational and design issues and share ideas for your MTPW program graduation portfolio in a structured and supported environment. Develop a way of thinking about program course projects that will prepare you for the portfolio and graduation process. This section is for students who do NOT plan to graduate between spring quarter 2020-winter quarter 2021.

Note: This course is recommended for all MTPW students, but not required. It is also the best way to register for a 9th credit for spring quarter. Please note the separate sections.

WR 510-005 TOP: TOP: 2ND YR PORTFOLIO WKSP
Sarah Read

Make decisions about Portfolio organizational and design issues and share ideas for your MTPW program graduation portfolio in a structured and supported environment in preparation for graduation spring quarter 2020-winter quarter 2021.

Note: This course is recommended for all MTPW students, but not required. It is also the best way to register for a 9th credit for spring quarter. Please note the separate sections.

WR 510-006 TOP: ADVANCED BOOK DESIGN
Kelley Dodd

This course requires students to design the interior, front and back matter, and cover jackets for both a fiction and nonfiction title. The students work in critique groups to provide peer-to-peer feedback and support. Along the way, we will look at design considerations for different types of manuscript materials, such as poetry and cookbooks, and automation techniques available in the Adobe InDesign software.

Textbook:
Aspects of Contemporary Book Design by Richard Hendel (978-1609381752)

WR 510-007 TOP: AUDIOBOOKS
Anna Noak

WR 510-010 TOP: EBOOK PRODUCTION
Pariah Burke

WR 521-001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP FICTION
Leni Zumas

The MFA fiction workshop focuses on the writing, revision, and critical discussion of prose works in progress. Students’ critical analyses of their peers’ work are informed by their study of published fiction, supplemented by lectures clarifying technical strategies in the writing of fiction. Restricted to student admitted to the MFA program’s fiction strand.

WR 522-002 MFA CORE WORKSHOP POETRY
Michele Glazer

The critic and poet James Longenbach said that, in the act of writing, as with the experience of
art, we want “the freedom to forget ourselves so that we might discover we are different from ourselves.”

This workshop will focus on generating and revising poems. In considering the long-term development of your creative work, we will spend part of the term with the Clot Project, in which we focus on a substantial group of poems by each student; if you think you know another’s work and, more importantly, your own, you may be surprised at the insight a body of work yields.

In conjunction with the Clot Project, students will be encouraged to consider their revision process and assumptions they might hold about what a poem should be. How can you turn a fault, a tic, a habit, into an asset? Revising often begins with writing more deeply into the poem rather than cutting out the “bad” parts.

Reading will include essays on craft and language. Texts tbd. In addition, students will be encouraged to read following their own tastes, and in opposition to their own tastes, and will be expected to report back to the workshop what they find.

WR 523-001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP NONFICTION
Paul Collins

This quarter's core workshop will focus on science writing -- both in reportage and its use in personal essays and long-form narrative. Although much of its focus is in researching and reporting in the sciences, the course does not assume any previous experience in the subject.

Texts:
Gawande, Atul. Complications: Surgeon's Notes on Imperfect Science
Montgomery, Sy. Best American Science & Nature Writing 2019
Rush, Elizabeth. Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore
Scilance. Science Writers' Handbook
Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

WR 527-001 TECHNICAL EDITING
Aaron Bannister

WR 531-001 ADV TOP TECH WRITING TECHNLOGY
Bryan Schnabel

WR 533-001 RESEARCH METHODS FOR TECHNICAL WRITERS
Sarah Read

WR 561-001 BOOK EDITING
Rachel Noorda

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 562-001 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE
Kelley Dodd

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

WR 563-001 BOOK MARKETING
Robyn Crummer-Olson

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 564-001 BUSINESS OF BOOK PUBLISHING
Kent Watson

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

WR 566-001 DIGITAL SKILLS
Kathi Berens

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

This course is not focused on ebook publishing. It is recommended to take this course before taking WR 410/510 Ebook Production. Students with programming background should not take this course unless they wish to work on a specific project of their choice, and engage in humanities discourse about writing in computational environments.

WR 572-001 COPYEDITING
Jessicah Carver

Learn how to improve clarity, coherency, consistency, and correctness through the application of grammatical and stylistic guidelines. Study the rules of punctuation, grammar, usage, language, and style. Learn to create and adhere to style sheets, develop skills editing both manually using standard copyediting marks and using digital markup in Microsoft Word’s Track Changes, and preserve the author’s voice while emphasizing the precision of a manuscript. This course will contain narrow focus on copyediting at the sentence level, with little to no attention given to developmental editing. Although copyediting skills will be applicable to any type of publication, class lectures and assignments are slanted toward books. By the end of the course, you should be able to spot and correct errors in written documents of all lengths, apply widely accepted principles of correct word usage, explain the reasons for each correction or suggested change you make, effectively craft queries, and pass an entry-level copyeditor’s test with ease.

WR 574-001 PUBLISHING STUDIO
Abbey Gaterud

WR 575-001 PUBLISHING LAB
Abbey Gaterud

WR 576-001 PUBLISHING FOR YOUNG ADULTS
Abby Ranger

An exploration of the current publishing landscape of young adult fiction, with attention to the dynamic challenges, responsibilities, and opportunities inherent in publishing books for young readers (age 12+). Coursework will include reading and discussion of 9 recently published young adult novels, along with assignments in developmental editing, cover design, and positioning original content for young audiences.