Graduate Courses
Fall 2020
ENG 607 001 GRAD WRTNG WKSHP Poetry
Frank X Walker
In this graduate workshop advance poets will read and critique each other's original work with a focus on editing and polishing individual pieces for publication and inclusion in graduate portfolios. These seasoned poets will study the work of established and contemporary poets and focus on sharpening their critical eye, fine-tuning their voice, and creating a sustained narrative in a cycle of original poems. Students will explore and discuss the written work of published poets as well as their professional and personal lives. They will also practice writing life in the real world by organizing and planning a public reading, developing and executing a conference panel, and planning and executing a poetry project that utilizes the latest media and technology.
In this graduate workshop advance poets will read and critique each other's original work with a focus on editing and polishing individual pieces for publication and inclusion in graduate portfolios. These seasoned poets will study the work of established and contemporary poets and focus on sharpening their critical eye, fine-tuning their voice, and creating a sustained narrative in a cycle of original poems. Students will explore and discuss the written work of published poets as well as their professional and personal lives. They will also practice writing life in the real world by organizing and planning a public reading, developing and executing a conference panel, and planning and executing a poetry project that utilizes the latest media and technology.
ENG 607 002 GRAD WRTNG WKSHP Fiction
Andrew Malan Milward
This is a graduate level course in fiction writing open only to MFA fiction students. 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/or 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.
ENG 608 001 CRAFT OF WRITING: Nonfiction
Erik A. Reece
This course examines the craft, emphasizing techniques, style, and structure. May be offered in each genre offered in the MFA degree program. At least 6 hours of courses related to the study of creative writing genres, such as: Craft of Poetry, Fiction, or Nonfiction, with emphasis on themes such as: Ekphrastic Writing, Experimental Forms, Working Class Themes, etc.
This course examines the craft, emphasizing techniques, style, and structure. May be offered in each genre offered in the MFA degree program. At least 6 hours of courses related to the study of creative writing genres, such as: Craft of Poetry, Fiction, or Nonfiction, with emphasis on themes such as: Ekphrastic Writing, Experimental Forms, Working Class Themes, etc.
ENG 625 001 Studies in Renaissance Literature Exclusive of Shakespeare
Joyce M. MacDonald
This section of ENG 625 is subtitled “Race in Renaissance Drama”. In this course, we will read a range of early modern plays in search of the ways in which they conceptualized and performed racial identity and difference. A particular focus of the course will be to develop a sense of the kinds of work that race was asked to do in premodern England, as ideas about essential human differences developed and revealed themselves across domains as different as mercantilism, colonization and exploration, war and slavery, and across dramatic genres. Besides our plays and secondary critical lioterature, readings will also include selections from Renaissance nondramatic literature and from travellers’ descriptions of Africa, the east, and the new world. What did race mean in early modern England? How might this period’s understanding of race differ from, or even lead to, what would later develop in the Atlantic world?
This section of ENG 625 is subtitled “Race in Renaissance Drama”. In this course, we will read a range of early modern plays in search of the ways in which they conceptualized and performed racial identity and difference. A particular focus of the course will be to develop a sense of the kinds of work that race was asked to do in premodern England, as ideas about essential human differences developed and revealed themselves across domains as different as mercantilism, colonization and exploration, war and slavery, and across dramatic genres. Besides our plays and secondary critical lioterature, readings will also include selections from Renaissance nondramatic literature and from travellers’ descriptions of Africa, the east, and the new world. What did race mean in early modern England? How might this period’s understanding of race differ from, or even lead to, what would later develop in the Atlantic world?
ENG 656 001 BLACK AMER LITERATURE
Regina Danielle Hamilton
In the introduction to his 2014 book, Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human, Alexander Weheliye argues that “since bare life and biopolitics discourse largely occludes race as a critical category of analysis, as do many other current articulations of critical theory, it cannot provide the methodological instruments for diagnosing the tight bonds between humanity and racializing assemblages in the modern era” (8). While diagnosing might be beyond us, in Race, Humanity, and Humanness we will use African American literature, critical race theory, and queer theory to delve into these “tight bonds” between humanity and race. One goal of this course is to consider how race might be foundational to biopolitics, and to our understandings of humanness, more generally. The second goal of this course is to unpack a posthumanism that also ignores the connections between race and the humanism it tries to eschew. In this course, we will cover fictional and non-fictional texts by authors including, but not limited to, Saidiya Hartman, Jasbir K. Puar, Sylvia Wynter, Katherine McKittrick, Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, and Alexander Weheliye.
In the introduction to his 2014 book, Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human, Alexander Weheliye argues that “since bare life and biopolitics discourse largely occludes race as a critical category of analysis, as do many other current articulations of critical theory, it cannot provide the methodological instruments for diagnosing the tight bonds between humanity and racializing assemblages in the modern era” (8). While diagnosing might be beyond us, in Race, Humanity, and Humanness we will use African American literature, critical race theory, and queer theory to delve into these “tight bonds” between humanity and race. One goal of this course is to consider how race might be foundational to biopolitics, and to our understandings of humanness, more generally. The second goal of this course is to unpack a posthumanism that also ignores the connections between race and the humanism it tries to eschew. In this course, we will cover fictional and non-fictional texts by authors including, but not limited to, Saidiya Hartman, Jasbir K. Puar, Sylvia Wynter, Katherine McKittrick, Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, and Alexander Weheliye.
ENG 700 001 TUTORIAL PH.D.CANDIDATES
Emily E. Shortslef
The goal of ENG 700 is to prepare students for their qualifying examinations, writing a dissertation prospectus, and transitioning to independent research. It will also assist students in developing skills and strategies for matters of professionalization, including applying for fellowships, applying to and presenting at conferences, submitting articles for publication, and preparing to go on the job market. In addition to making the shift from coursework to exams to dissertating less opaque, ENG 700 also provides a regular opportunity for students to convene with their cohort, a group of colleagues who will serve as a valuable intellectual resource and network of support. This is a discussion-based course that will include readings, writing assignments, workshops, and presentations by faculty and graduate students.
The goal of ENG 700 is to prepare students for their qualifying examinations, writing a dissertation prospectus, and transitioning to independent research. It will also assist students in developing skills and strategies for matters of professionalization, including applying for fellowships, applying to and presenting at conferences, submitting articles for publication, and preparing to go on the job market. In addition to making the shift from coursework to exams to dissertating less opaque, ENG 700 also provides a regular opportunity for students to convene with their cohort, a group of colleagues who will serve as a valuable intellectual resource and network of support. This is a discussion-based course that will include readings, writing assignments, workshops, and presentations by faculty and graduate students.
ENG 730 001 Seminar in 18th Century Literature: The Rise of the Novel
Lisa Zunshine
As an introduction to the eighteenth-century novel, this course will feature such authors as Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and Jane Austen. Topics to be considered: evolving cultural practices of novel-reading; the novel in history and the history of the novel; experimental representations of fictional consciousness; emergence of the Gothic sensibility; and contemporary cinematic treatments of eighteenth-century novels. Requirements: short written responses, pedagogical practicums, final oral presentation, and final research paper.
ENG 753 Sem Amer Lit Since 1900
Michael Trask
When did the contemporary start? The journal Contemporary Literature, first known as Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, was founded in 1960, but few scholars these days would be comfortable defining the contemporary as 60 years old. For at least two generations, “contemporary” has formed something of a shifting time horizon: the period after World War 2; the period since the sixties; the period since the economic crises of 1973; the period since Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election; the period since September 11, 2001. This class will look, first, at how recent criticism has handled the history of the present and, second, at representative texts from the end of the twentieth century to last week that raise interesting questions about using “contemporary” as our heuristic. Critical frameworks will include Postmodernism (Jameson), The Program Era (McGurl), Our Aesthetic Categories (Ngai); primary texts will include Beloved (Morrison), Galatea 2.2 (Powers), Gilead (Robinson), Taipei (Lin), Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Fountain), The Sympathizer (Nguyen), Leaving the Atocha Station (Lerner), How Should a Person Be? (Heti), You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine (Kleeman).
