2023 - 2024 Graduate Course Archive
Fall 2023
ENGL 5127: Queer Ladies
Stacey D'Erasmo
CRN 50683
A hybrid literature and workshop course in which we focus on fiction written by and about queer ladies, which doesn't mean only or even primarily cisgender women. We will explore, and respond creatively, to non-binary, gender-fluid, high femme, and cisgender queer writers and characters.
ENGL 5129: Disability Studies and Justice
Rebecca Sanchez
CRN 50687
This seminar will engage with contemporary conversations in critical disability studies and disability justice movements. Drawing on disability literature and aesthetic forms, activist writing, and theoretical texts from around the world, the seminar will trace histories of discourse about bodymind norms and difference that center the perspectives of disabled people.
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Fulfills DI
ENGL 5130: Poetry and Politics
Lawrence Kramer
CRN 50688
Lyric poetry has since roughly 1800 been regarded as a “higher” literary genre defined primarily as experimental in form, personal in content, and apolitical. Political poetry, though it flourished at the same time, has generally been regarded as a “lesser” genre with limited formal and thematic interest. In this course we will look at the sources of this conventional wisdom about poetry and politics and test its claims against a wide range of “lyric” and “political” poems, by poets embodying a broad spectrum of differences, from the nineteenth century to the present.
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Fulfills H3, DI
ENGL 5131: Theory of Mind and Literature
Frank Boyle
CRN 51264
The term “theory of mind” originated in cognitive animal studies in the 1970s, alongside a range of related concepts that came to have a significant impact on literary studies — a phenomenon significant enough for the New York Times to ask in a 2010 headline, “Can ‘Neuro Lit Crit’ save the humanities?" This course takes a longer view, starting with key early modern neurological and literary texts and moving selectively across time to contemporary literary and theoretical texts that consider and/or represent our changing understandings of what happens in our brains. As an organizing principle, the texts selected will as often as possible consider these questions in relation to comparative cognition in humans, other animals, and machines. Texts include: Andrew Marvell’s “A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body,” Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Anne Finch’s “The Spleen,” Franz Kafka’s “A Report to an Academy,” Amy Bonnafon’s, “Horse,” Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif,” J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, Ted Chiang’s “The Evolution of Human Science.”
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Fulfills H2, H3
ENGL 5203: The Postcolonial Middle Ages
Suzanne Yeager
CRN 50690
Postcolonial study has been a productive scholarly approach for decades. The accuracy of the term, “postcolonial,” with reference to premodern literature, has been an ongoing subject of debate. According to accepted, critical definitions, postcolonial literatures are products of colonizing communities and previously colonized cultures, rising in the wake of periods of industrial colonization; moreover, postcolonial study has been linked to modern European communities which formed global empires. These expectations and others have made the “postcolonial” Middle Ages appear controversial. In spite of these controversies, productive understanding of premodern culture has emerged from research under the postcolonial lens, encouraging the study of diverse premodern cultures, displaced or subjugated voices within the medieval period, the production and performance of identity, and the ways in which communities define, remember, and perpetuate themselves. This course is global in its scope, and will focus on medieval texts produced in Africa, Asia, England, France, and the Levant under changing premodern regimes, and will explore the varied literary responses to colonization, diaspora, and displacement that occurred long before the Age of Empire.
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Fulfills H1, DI
ENGL 6107: Early Modern Lyric Poetry, and Lyric Theory
Heather Dubrow
CRN 50691
What is lyric poetry? The course will explore the transhistorical and transcultural challenges of defining and analyzing lyric. What cultural and critical work is done when poets, critics, anthropologists and so on affix a generic label? Why is lyric distinctively tricky—and intriguing—to identify? What are the implications of this mode for cutting-edge questions about subjectivity, gender, affect, and the material text, as well as for more longstanding but recently contested concerns about the workings of genre and the relationship of poetry and song? And in what ways are all these questions also historically and culturally specific?
Our reading will focus on early modern English poetry, including about eight of the major poets of the period (e.g., Wyatt, Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, Donne, Wroth, Marvell, and Phillips) and also some less known work like poetry from miscellanies. It will, however, also encompass some work on lyrics from other periods and countries. Students whose specialty is lyric from another era may write on it in their final paper; students engaged with creative writing can substitute a project in it for one of the shorter assignments (though not the seminar paper). We will deploy—and evaluate—a wide range of critical methods, including cultural critique, study of the material text, and the new formalisms.
As this description suggests, the course is tailored to students with a range of different backgrounds and interests. It is designed to be valuable for people interested in lyric poetry written in other eras and in form and genre in general. It will also provide intensive work on the major English poets of the period for both specialists and non-specialists. As in all my graduate courses, we’ll work together on techniques of “professionalizing”—e.g., beginning to publish, delivering conference papers successfully.
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Fulfills H2
ENGL 5001: Research Methods
Stuart Sherman
CRN 13250
An introduction to English studies at the graduate level, emphasizing bibliography, scholarly writing, and critical intervention. Although the emphasis of the course will vary according to the aims of the instructor, areas covered may also include book history, textual editing, historical research, and other issues of professional concern to graduate students.
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Required for all incoming PhD students.
ENGL 5115: Internship Seminar (Tutorial)
John Bugg
CRN 33500
Open to graduate students who have secured an internship in publishing or other degree-related fields for the fall 2021 semester. Before enrolling in this Tutorial, you must contact the Director of Graduate Studies to make sure that your internship qualifies for course credit.
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ENGL 5998: MA Capstone
John Bugg
CRN 45455
Seminar for MA students who wish to fulfill the Capstone requirement (note: the Capstone requirement may also be fulfilled, as an independent study, during the spring or summer semesters. Please contact the DGS if you are unsure about which semester would be best for your Capstone completion.
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ENGL 6004: Colloquium: Pedagogy Theory Practicum
Catherine Chaput
CRN 13269
This course introduces students to central histories, issues, and debates in writing and rhetorical studies. By highlighting key theoretical and terminological developments, this course lays the way for informed self-reflective practice based in awareness of the most current scholarly work in rhetoric and composition, thereby helping participants start to define their own identities as teachers of first-year composition as well as literature and other courses.
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ENGL 8935: Dissertation Seminar
John Bugg
CRN 40212
This 0-credit seminar is designed as a resource for all doctoral students. Students working on the dissertation proposal are encouraged to take this class. During each meeting students will present and respond to work in progress. Across the semester, the seminar will treat challenges of research and strategies of effective writing specific to large projects.
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Required for all PhD students preparing the dissertation prospectus.
ENGL 8936: Issues In Scholarship and Academia
Andrew Albin
CRN 14025
This 0-credit seminar, open to all graduate students, serves two purposes. First, it provides a forum for workshopping writing projects apart from the dissertation: qualifying papers, conference papers, article submissions, fellowship narratives (internal and external), job market materials, and the like. Second, it invites speakers and builds conversations around aspects of the profession in need of demystification: collegial networking, edited collections, conference panel proposal/organizing, writing a peer review, writing a book review, etc. Mode of instruction will seek to accommodate the widest range of students, including ABD students.
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Spring 2024
ENGL 5018: Modern American Drama
Shonni Enelow
CRN 49679
A survey of major American plays from the early twentieth century to the present, examined alongside contemporary scholarly debates in theater and performance studies. Topics of study will include theater and media, theories of spectatorship, ideologies of acting, performance as work and the performance of work, liveness and authenticity, and representations of difference. Playwrights studied will include (but not be limited to) Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Adrienne Kennedy, David Mamet, Suzan-Lori Parks, Young Jean Lee, Richard Maxwell, Annie Baker, and Jackie Sibblies Drury.
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Fulfills H3
ENGL 5132: Early Environmental Humanities
Julie Kim
CRN 49680
In this class, we will explore the interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities, which brings together methods from literature, history, philosophy, anthropology, and other disciplines to address pressing questions involving our environment. In particular, we will focus on the question of ‘how we got here’: what historical factors, including ways of thinking about our relationship with nature, have contributed to the present-day climate crisis? The rise of colonialism, empire, industrialization, and capitalism in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries will be of special interest, although we will also pay considerable attention to writers, artists, and others who dissented from the idea that the non-human world was primarily a natural resource from which to extract economic value. How can looking at early works of literature and art provide us with a long view of our current problems—and with possible solutions? How can we use our knowledge of old stories about Earth to create new ones that imagine a sustainable and equitable future? Because of its focus on the early modern era, this class will serve as an introduction to studying and writing about the past. At the same time, it will be centrally concerned with the question of how scholars of English and the humanities can contribute to widespread academic and societal debates happening today about environmental history, destruction, and justice. As such, assignments will allow you the opportunity to practice multiple forms of writing, including literary analyses, conference papers, syllabi, and proposals for public humanities and collaborative work.
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Fulfills H2, DI
ENGL 5133: Fiction and Other Forms
Stacey D'Erasmo
CRN 49681
Neither the writing nor the reading of fiction happens in an aesthetic vacuum. We read, watch, listen, feel, and even taste all manner of other art forms, and these experiences inspire us, move us, and often find their way into what and how we write. In this course, we will explore the influence of music, the visual arts, film, architecture, and the internet on the fiction we read and write, and vice versa. Authors may include Sofia Samatar, Ali Smith, Gaston Bachelard, Toni Morrison, and Albert Murray.
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ENGL 5134: Queer Theory
Corey McEleney
CRN 49682
This course provides a survey of the field(s) of intellectual inquiry known as “queer theory,” which arose in the late 1980s and early 1990s and continues to shape important conversations in the humanities and social sciences. We will begin by considering how queer theory emerged in tandem with a variety of academic, artistic, and activist contexts, such as the AIDS epidemic, lesbian and gay studies, women of color feminism, poststructuralism, and the New Queer Cinema. We will then spend the rest of the semester tracing the contours and limits of queer theory as it has divided and mutated over issues of rhetoric, race, class, disability, gender, religion, and temporality. Because queer theorists have often expressed their ideas in experimental modes of writing that challenge the conventions of scholarly, academic discourse, we will work and play with the styles and forms of their work as much as with the argumentative content.
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Fulfills DI
ENGL 5135: Paleography
Thomas O'Donnell
CRN 49683
This course offers an in-depth introduction to the history of handwriting and book production ("paleography" and "codicology") in western and central Europe during the years 400-1500 -- a critical period for the creation of the book as we know it. Students will receive training in the handling and interpretation of rare materials from across the whole medieval period and will have the option to complete a manuscript description as their final project. Students will learn how to read and transcribe ancient and medieval writing (a set of skills that will transfer to later periods of handwriting); how to determine the place and date of production of a book based on its script, material, or decoration; and how to interpret the manuscript book as a primary source for the study of society, politics, and culture. Trips to special collections and visits from period experts are a feature of the course. No prior knowledge of Latin or another medieval language is required or assumed, and specialists of any historical period are welcome.
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Fulfills H1
ENGL 5749: Twentieth Century Studies: Decolonization and World Literature
Chris GoGwilt
CRN 49684
Introductory graduate course in the study of selected twentieth-century figures from comparative cultural, literary, and theoretical perspectives. The course will examine the changing contours of literary theory, literary studies, and the status of literature itself in the twentieth century, in light of the contending imperatives of decolonization and globalization. The course will focus on three pairings of writers: Joseph Conrad and W. E. B. Du Bois; Jean Rhys and C. L. R. James; Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Amitav Ghosh. Select works from these writers will be studied in conjunction with critical selections from Fanon, Glissant, Pheng Cheah, and others.
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Fulfills H3, DI
ENGL 5115: Internship Seminar
John Bugg
CRN 44277
This seminar is open to graduate students pursuing internships in publishing, museum management, or arts administration during the spring 2021 semester. Please contact the Director of Graduate Studies to make sure that your internship qualifies for course credit.
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ENGL 5998: MA Capstone
John Bugg
CRN 45053
Required course for MA students who wish to fulfill the Capstone assignment. Please contact the DGS if you are unsure about which semester would be best for your Capstone completion.
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ENGL 5999: THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TEACHING WRITING
Crystal Colombini
CRN 45053
This course builds on the foundation developed in ENGL 5999 by delving into research-supported best practices for preparing students for diverse writing contexts. Readings and discussions will highlight writing and teaching strategies that support students' critical thinking and writing skills, covering topics related to primary and secondary research, information literacy, discourse and disciplinary communities, rhetorical and audience analysis, multimodal composition, effective response and assessment strategies, cognitive scaffolding and assignment design, and more.
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ENGL 8935: Dissertation Seminar
Andrew Albin
CRN 44283
This 0-credit seminar is designed as a resource for all doctoral students who have passed the comprehensive exam. Students working on the dissertation proposal are encouraged to take this class. During each meeting students will present and respond to work in progress. Across the semester, the seminar will treat challenges of bibliographic research and strategies of effective writing specific to large projects.
Required for all PhD students preparing the dissertation prospectus.
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