2025—2026 Graduate Course Archive

Fall 2025

ENGL 5029:  The Invention of Nature
Lawrence Kramer
CRN 53469
The idea of nature as the autonomous realm of nonhuman life is essentially literary in origin, dating from the early modern era and extending to the present.  Nature has come into being in writing, and its elements--animal, vegetable, and mineral--have been brought together under a changing series of rubrics including landscape, wilderness, environment, world, and ecosystem.  This course will trace the writing of nature from the early-modern representations of Shakespeare and Montaigne through the pre- and post-Darwinian writings of the nineteenth century (Wordsworth, Poe, Thoreau, and Darwin himself) to modern representations of nature in relation to civilization, race, migration, and ecological crisis (D. H. Lawrence, Elizabeth Bishop, Annie Dillard, Anne Carson).  Topics include the aesthetics of nature, the boundaries between the human and nonhuman worlds, and the relationship between the human and the animal.
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Fulfills H2, H3

ENGL 5189:  Birdsong
Sarah Zimmerman
CRN 53470
The close association of poetry and birdsong is ancient and global. We explore that endlessly renewable connection with a special emphasis on Romantic-era poetry. Writers have long listened closely to birds and been inspired by their singing to experiment with literary innovation. Yet the question of how we listen to birds takes on new urgency in our own era of climate crisis, marked by declining bird populations and extinction. Our wide range of readings features birds alternately sounding warnings as canaries in the coal mine and figuring hope as “the thing with feathers.” We take an interdisciplinary approach to the topic of birds inspired by environmental and sound studies in reading literature and non-fiction prose, including essays and memoirs. We put our learning into practice by birdwatching in local parks, taking advantage of NYC’s location on the Atlantic flyway. Readings include works by Phillis Wheatley Peters, William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and John Clare.
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Fulfills H2

ENGL 5196: Master Class: Dragons, Daggers, and Dukes: Writing Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Romance/Mystery
Mary Bly
CRN 53471
Genre fiction is, by definition, writing that bows to limitation: Conventions shape the parameters of a story. Yet, in excellent genre fiction, the imaginary world is doubly creative despite constraints or conventions. In this class, we’ll tackle bestsellers—pop fiction that engages and enthralls readers. We will study and experiment before setting into a final manuscript in the genre of your choice.
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Fulfills CVWG

ENGL 5223:  Embodied Research in Medieval Drama
Andrew Albin
CRN 53721
What did it feel like to hammer nails into Jesus’s hands or to intone judgements at Doomsday or to dance with the Deadly Sins on an open-air stage in the late Middle Ages? How far can we go in reconstructing, practicing, and sharing medieval performance styles today? What kind of knowledge might the evidence of our own bodies afford us in support of our study of the medieval past? In this course, we will tug at this knot of questions through careful reading, writing, discussion, and experimentation across an uncommon collection of sources, including medieval English playtexts and documents; scholarship on medieval drama and its reenactment; theoretical texts in performance studies, theater-making, and embodied technique; and the witness of our own embodied and reflective experience. Relevant research areas include medieval drama, history of the body, history of experience, history of spirituality, critical temporality studies, non-discursive epistemology, affect studies. Primary source readings will include much of the corpus of surviving Middle English drama supplemented by the Records of Early English Drama project; further readings include Sharon Aronson-Lehavi, Augusto Boal, Rob Boddice, Jerzy Grotowski, Andre Lepecki, Lauren Mancia, Mary Overlie, Rebecca Schneider, Matthew Sergi, Mark Smith, Ben Spatz, and others. Course assignments will center close reading, scholarly research, and academic writing, with options for digital humanities and performance-driven research, undertaken independently or collaboratively. Students may also opt into a parallel laboratory in Mary Overlie’s Six Viewpoints and/or a public performance of medieval drama at the Cloisters Museum in Spring 2026. While helpful, no prior knowledge of Middle English or Latin is expected or required.
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Fulfills H1

ENGL 5252:  Exhibiting Latinidad: Curation/Display/Intervention
Robb Hernández
CRN 53473
Museums have played critical roles in defining Latinidad for mass publics in the U.S. and abroad. In particular, curators and their exhibits can assume great power over our understandings of authenticity, cultural authority, and the historical “truth” about Latinx cultures. By retracing exhibition histories from classic shows like Cuba-USA and the Decade Show to the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time LA/LA initiative, we will confront the different material, textual, and visual dilemmas provoked by museums. We will also ponder alternative exhibition practices for Latinidad’s representation and remembrance in the future.
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Fulfills H3, DI

ENGL 5544:  Eighteenth-Century Black Thought
Julie Kim
CRN 54688
This course will examine Black writing and art in the eighteenth century, which was defined both by the rise of Atlantic slavery and by resistance to it. How did enslaved individuals describe their experiences of bondage and captivity? How did they respond to rhetorics of racial difference and dehumanization? What alternatives to enslavement, including possibilities of escape, fugitivity, and freedom, did they imagine, and what forms did they deploy to express these alternatives? We will consider these questions to understand the richness and complexity of eighteenth-century Black artistic practices, as well as to theorize these practices as ways of thinking through the fundamental dilemma of living in circumstances of unfreedom. In addition to looking at writings by such authors as Phillis Wheatley, Ignatius Sancho, Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, David Walker, and Mary Prince, we will look at works of visual art by Prince Demah, Guillaume Lethière, Moses Williams, Joshua Johnson, John Tyley, Sarah Mapps Douglass, and David Drake. We will also consider other art forms, including music and dance, and draw comparisons to present-day works of Black writing and art. 
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Fulfills H2, DI

ENGL 5651:  Writing Center Theory and Praxis (RW)
Elisabeth Buck
CRN 53474
This course will explore what it means to be a writing center practitioner through empirical, practical, and theoretical experiences. Working one-on-one with another student—while ostensibly a straightforward process—can instead reveal the many complexities of language, education, and culture. As such, the Writing Center is the ideal site through which to explore nuances of speech, conversational dynamics, ways to dismantle hegemonic language practices, and, critically, strategies for communicating knowledge. No prior writing center experience is required for this class, but this course will be useful to anyone who has an interest in teaching and/or tutoring writing.
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Fulfills Rhetoric & Writing Adv Cert

         
ENGL 5001: Research Methods
Julie Kim
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) TBA
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 Master’s Capstone
Leonard Cassuto
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
Maria Farland
CRN 40212
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.
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Required for all PhD students preparing the dissertation prospectus.

ENGL 8936: Issues in Scholarship and Academia
Maria Farland
CRN 14025
This 0-credit seminar, open to all doctoral students, provides a forum in which to discuss the issues that shape the pursuit of a career professing literature as well as the pursuit of a career outside of the academy. The semester will provide opportunities for workshopping writing-in-process in a collaborative and supportive environment, and for directed conversation on varied aspects of the academic professionalization.
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