Graduate Courses
ENG 440G STUDIES IN BRITISH LIT: Gender, Sex, and Power in Early Modern Literature
TR 9:30-10:45
Emily E Shortslef
Course description pending
ENG 450G Studies in American Literature: Gender, Sex, and Power in Early Modern Literature
TR 2:00-3:15
Pearl James
This senior-level seminar will focus on war literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Some of the questions we will consider: What makes a war-story “true”? Why are war stories hard to tell, and to read? Can war be funny? War is fought for abstract ideals such as the nation and patriotism, but those ideals are often elusive for soldiers whose lives are both scary and, at times, boring. How then do soldiers find meaning in their experiences? Do men and women experience and write about war differently, and if so, why? Some texts will include: The Things They Carried, The Backwash of War, A Farewell to Arms, Catch-22, Billy Lynn’s Long Half-Time Walk, and more. Students will write two short papers and a longer research paper in addition to shorter assignments along the way.
ENG 507 ADV WKSHP IMAG WRTNG: The Art and Craft of the Short Story
TR 3:30-4:45
Crystal E. Wilkinson
This is an advanced fiction workshop for those with fiction writing experience. You will submit three stories (45-60 pages over the course of the semester). One submission can be a novel chapter. During the course of the semester, you will read published works (novels or short stories) for insight into the craft. You will give a craft presentation on a topic that is of interest to you or is related to your own writing. Prereq: ENG 207 and ENG 407, or the equivalent, and/or consent of the instructor.
ENG 607 GRAD WRTNG WKSHP: Poetry
T 2:00-4:30
Julia M. Johnson
Course description pending
ENG 607 GRAD WRTNG WKSHP: Fiction
R 5:00-7:30
Andrew Milward
This is a graduate level course in fiction writing, so it assumes that students signed up for it are pre-professionals who hope to make a career of it. The class will follow the workshop model, and therefore student work, and the intensive discussion of same, will be our main focus; however, we will supplement this with careful study of professional writers and craft essays. Students will be required to share at least two new pieces, as well as a revision and a paper about the revision process. Admission is open to MFA fiction students only.
ENG 608 CRAFT OF WRITNG: Autobiography and Auto-fiction
T 5:00-7:30
Erik A Reece
What is the self? It's a big question. This course will attempt to navigate the murky terrain between autobiography and auto-fiction. It will be half craft and half workshop. That is to say, there will be one critical essay and one personal piece (auto-fiction or autobiography). We will read the likes of Teju Cole, Eve Babitz, Maggie Nelson, Sheila Heti and others.
ENG 611 LITERATURE TEACHING SEMINAR
T 2:00-4:30
Matthew Godbey
Eng. 611 is the required course for graduate students wishing to teach classes in the UK literature curriculum. The seminar will take a theoretical and practical approach as we consider the ideas and ideals of literary education as well as the practical activities of teaching literature: course focus, text selection, syllabus design, assignments, teaching strategies, and myriad other issues related to the conceptual and day-to-day design of the course. Seminar participants will be required to read a variety of texts and articles dealing with issues such as but not limited to literary studies as a field, pedagogical theory, and professional issues. Additionally, and importantly, participants will participate in weekly discussions and exercises geared toward developing a teaching portfolio that will assist them as they develop and teach their own courses.
ENG 642 Studies in Modern British Literature: British and Irish Poetry after modernism
F 2:00-4:30
Jonathan M. Allison
A course on modern British and Irish poetry from the second world war to the present, viewed against a background of relentless social and political change. Topics to include the influence of modernist writing in the postwar and contemporary period; the relationship between poetry and politics, variously conceived, and the tensions between personal, regional and national identities. English, Scottish, Irish and Caribbean voices in relation to landscape, place and cultural allegiance, and in light of transatlantic influence and connection. We will explore the relationship between poetry and poets’ prose, including literary and cultural criticism and life-writing such as autobiography, diaries, and letters. Poetry in anthologies as well as a selection of key volumes which helped define the literary landscape. Poets to include T. S. Eliot, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Stevie Smith, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Derek Walcott, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Carol Ann Duffy, Paul Muldoon. Requirements to include class participation, oral presentations, a short paper and a final research paper.
ENG 651 Studies in Amer Lit Before 1860: Disenfranchised Voices in Early Amer Narrative
M 2:00-4:30
Marion L. Rust
"Disenfranchised": African American, Native American, female, transgender, nonmarital, antinomian, young, indentured. "Narrative": poetry, captivity narrative, criminal narrative, spiritual autobiography, feminist theory, musical drama, trial transcript, slave narrative, epistolary correspondence, novel, newspaper. In this class, we will read work by and about escaped captives, religious subversives, con men, anonymous congregations, abused wives, midwives, Black seamen, same-sex married women, and Native American preachers. Possible authors include Anne Hutchinson, Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Olaudah Equiano, Martha Ballard, Abigail Abbot Bailey, Samson Occom, William Apess, Sarah Pierpont Edwards, Phyllis Wheatley, Judith Sargent Murray, Stephen Burroughs, and others whose names we may never know. Requirements consist of active preparation and participation, a final research paper of about 20 pages, multiple short written commentaries, and willingness to lead at least one class.
ENG 722 Seminar in Renaissance Studies: Memory, History, and Forgetting in Renaissance Literature
TR 11:00-12:15
Joyce MacDonald
The art of memory was central to Renaissance rhetorical culture, as Frances Yates first observed more than 50 years ago. Vitally important to theatrical practice as well, memory participated in acts of imagination and invention as well as in simple repetition, linking the present to the past in ways that often proved to be chaotic, unpredictable, and incomplete. Henry V assured his reluctant soldiers at Agincourt that memory would reproduce them as heroes for future generations, but his play also speaks to the sorrow of loss, separation, and absence that can never be healed or made productive. In this course, we will read a range of (mostly) Renaissance texts that try to reconcile the difficult connections between the past and the present or that try to define the present in terms of a carefully chosen heroic past, as well as contemporary commentaries on yearning, nostalgia, and the relations between memory and current political, racial, and gendered projects. How does contemporary writing remember the early modern past, and to what purpose? What do our texts decide to forget?
ENG 771 Seminar in Special Topics: Writing for Academic Publication
T 5:00-7:30
Alan M Nadel
This course will concentrate on the process of revising a research paper and submitting it for publication in a refereed journal. We will analyze scholarly journals and book reviews, and we will study the process of preparing and submitting a book proposal based on a dissertation. The class will be a combination of group meetings and individual conferences. Professor Nadel has over 100 publications; he is the author of six scholarly monographs, two edited books, and one co-edited book. His essays have won prizes for the best essay in Modern Fiction Studies, and the best essay in PMLA. He has also served on the editorial boards of several academic journals and evaluated manuscripts for over 40 journals and academic presses.
