Skip to main content

Graduate Courses

 

 

Spring 2024

 


ENG 607-001    Graduate Writing Workshop: Poetry
W 5:00 PM-7:30 PM        
Shauna Morgan

Course description forthcoming.


ENG 607-002    Graduate Writing Workshop: Autofiction
R 4:00 PM-6:30 PM        
Hannah Pittard

“An autofiction,” writes French author Nina Bouraoui, “is a work of truth; the author is not hiding behind an invented character, she is that character. The character’s spiritual and philosophical quest is the author’s own; the ‘I’ of the narrative is the author, recreating the world according to his or her own experience.” We’ll begin the course with a discussion of authors who have published in or acted as (unwitting?) trail-blazers for the genre. Such a discussion might include Susan Choi, Alexander Chee, Rachel Cusk, Annie Ernaux, Deborah Levy, Herbert Guibert, Sheila Heti, Teju Cole, Diana Athill… Over the course of the semester, all students will respond to a series of short, specific writing assignments, which will then be workshopped by the group. Together, we will seek to investigate the pros and cons, the possibilities and constraints, and the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. Enrollment is limited to students admitted into the MFA program or by written permission of the instructor.


ENG 607-003    Graduate Writing Workshop: CNF    
M 2:00 PM-4:30 PM        
Erik Reece

Course description forthcoming.


ENG 608-001    The Craft of Writing: Short Story Cycle
M 5:00 PM-7:30 PM        
Crystal Wilkinson

Course description forthcoming.


ENG 611-001    Literature Teaching Seminar
TR 11:00 AM-12:15 PM        
Matt Godbey

Course description forthcoming.


ENG 620 -001    Stdies in Middle Eng Lit
M 2:00 PM-4:30 PM        
Matthew Giancarlo

This graduate seminar will focus on literature of the “Age of Chaucer” and his contemporaries from about 1350 to 1450. Texts to be read will include a selection of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and early dream visions (The Book of the Duchess, The Parliament of Fowls); excerpts from Thomas Hoccleve’s Complaint; excerpts from John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (Lover’s Confession); William Langland’s Piers Plowman; the poems "Pearl" and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" by the Gawain-Poet; the Book of Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich’s Showings; and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Most of the texts will be read in the original language so prior experience with Middle English is advised but not required: we will focus on acquiring reading ability as well as critical context for the works. Graduate coursework will include two papers, one mid-term shorter “encounter” paper (7-10 pages) and a research term paper (20 pages). Additional work will include a prospectus and bibliography for the research term paper; an in-class presentation on a chosen text; regular seminar attendance and contributions to seminar discussion.


ENG 690-001    Stds in Lit & Gender: Writing by Radical Women of Color  
R 2:00 PM-4:30 PM        
Geronimo Sarmiento Cruz

This course will think about literature and gender (along with race, class, and sexuality) by focusing on writings by women of color in the US during the second half of the twentieth century. Centered around the anthology This Bridge Called My Back (1981), the course will think about the literary texts that many of its contributors—for example, editors Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, as well as Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, Tony Cade Bambara, Chrystos, and Mitsuye Yamada—published there and elsewhere. We will reflect on their conception of literature and the empowerment they believed it conferred upon them both as individuals and, importantly, as a coalition of solidarity. We will extend our analysis by considering adjacent authors and allies, such as the Combahee River Collective, and by learning about theorizations of the interaction of gender, sexuality, race, and class by feminist thinkers, among them bell hooks, María Lugones, and Catharine Mackinnon.


ENG 751-001    Seminar in Amer Lit: 1800-1860    
W 11:00 AM-1:30 PM        
Andy Doolen

One of the most important developments in American literary studies has been the turn towards settler colonialism. Beginning in the early 2000s, settler colonialism emerged with increasing frequency as a framework for examining and understanding social justice, culture, identity, nation, empire, and many other areas of critical interest. We will read some of the best scholarship in settler colonial studies and consider its implications for doing innovative literary criticism. This course also has the practical value of exploring in depth the old/new major authors from the period, tentatively including Charles Brockden Brown, Leonora Sansay, Herman Melville, Blackhawk, Mary Jemison, Frederick Douglass, and William Apess, which will prove useful in your teaching career. 


ENG 781-001    Seminar in Film: 21st-Century American War Films  
T 2:00 PM-4:30 PM      
Alan Nadel

Fundamental to the war film genre is the concept of the “mission” (tactical, strategic, or long-term) that justifies the mortal risks the genre entails. Exemplary of this tradition is Saving Private Ryan, a film that iterates, regularly and frequently, reminders of the immediate mission and the larger objective (to earn the right to go home by defeating Hitler). This course will examine two genres of the American war films that emerge after the 2003 declaration “Mission Accomplished,” that is, genres of war films about wars without a mission, and occupations without a surrender. The films we will consider include Jarhead, The Hurt Locker, The Green Zone, Redacted, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, American Sniper, Eye in the Sky, 13 Hours, Hacksaw Ridge, Dunkirk, and 1917, along with selected readings. There will be two short analytic papers and a research paper.