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Graduate Course Descriptions: Fall 2024

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For the most up-to-date list of classes offered, visit the dynamic schedule. For questions about classes, consult our graduate advising page or contact the listed instructor. To see what we'll be offering in future semesters, visit our two-year course rotation template. Interested in studying literature, taking a writing workshop, improving your writing skills, or brushing up your teaching skills, but don't want to pursue a degree? You should apply as a Non-Degree Seeking Student.

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*Click on each course title to read the professor's full course description; click on each thumbnail image to view the course flyer.

Applied Linguistics:

ENGL 6533 - ESL/EFL in Multicultural Settings | Dr. Emily Thrush | Online 
Approaches to working with ESL or EFL students in multicultural settings. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credit hours.


7507 iconENGL 7/8507 - Empirical Methods for Linguistic Research | Dr. J. Elliott Casal | W 1-4pm
The course will include interactive seminar components, critical methodological review of current research in major Applied Linguistics journals, and the design and discussion on our own studies. Topics will include research ethics and integrity, experimental design, data collection procedures, qualitative and quantitative analysis, tools and resources for data collection and analysis, and research/grant writing.


ENGL 7/8510 - Gender and Language | Dr. Lyn Wright | R 1-4pm 
Study of gender as a variable as it intersects with language use in a variety of contexts, including professional, legal, medical, and classroom settings.


7511 iconENGL 7/8511 - Survey of Linguistics | Dr. Leah Windsor | Online 
Introduction to the nature of language with emphasis on basic principles of English phonology, morphology, and syntax; emphasis on collecting and analyzing linguistic data for research purposes.

 


ENGL 7/8530 - Field Experience/Practicum in ESL | Dr. Rebecca Adams | Online 
Experience in observing and teaching, peer teaching, and work with an English as a Second Language (ESL) specialist.


7531 iconENGL 7/8531 - Theory & History of ESL | Dr. J. Elliott Casal | Online 
As part of regular course activity, we will examine how diverse theoretical approaches to language learning theory have implications on language teaching and language assessment. Coursework will include short weekly reflections, collaborative critiques of ESL materials and syllabi, and a final written project reviewing scholarship in an area of interest, analyzing a linguistic dataset, or recounting a personal language learning narrative.


ENGL 7/8533 - Methods & Techniques in ESL K-12 | Dr. Emily Thrush | M 5:30pm
Techniques and resources for working with children and adolescents for whom English is a second language. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credit hours when topic changes.


7535 iconENGL 7/8535 - ESL Grammar | Dr. Rebecca Adams | Online 
In this course, we focus on the nature of grammatical knowledge, considering what it means to develop linguistic competence in a second language. We focus on key aspects of English grammar, particularly those areas that cause most difficulty for non-native speakers, and consider linguistic to analyze their use in different genres of language use. Students will learn how form, meaning, and use of grammatical structures play a role in allowing English language learners to communicate effectively in English. We will also consider theory and practice associated with grammar teaching methods, including classroom and computer-based practices for promoting grammatical knowledge. 


7590 iconENGL 7/8590 - Applied Theory of Linguistics: Bilingualism and Bilingual Education: Theories and Politics | Dr. Ronald Fuentes | T 5:30pm
Bilingualism/multilingualism is an increasingly common feature of contemporary nation-states. Yet, bilingualism and bilingual education is a controversial and oftentimes misunderstood field in many monolingual-oriented countries such as the United States. This course focuses on the basic theories and concepts of bilingualism, the role of schooling in the development and educational possibilities of bilingual learners, and the practical implications these have for social and educational policy, both in the United States and elsewhere.

Creative Writing: 

*full Creative Writing schedule is TBD*

ENGL 7472 - Forms of Poetry | Prof. Marcus Wicker | T 5:30pm
A study of meters, forms, and types of poetry in English with attention to the principal traditions and critical ideas associated with the writing of verse in English. May be repeated up to 6 hours with change of topic/course content and approval of Program Coordinator.


ENGL 7485 - Literary Arts Programming | Prof. Courtney Santo | M 5:30pm
Development of skills involved in planning and administering community arts events and organizations; further training in the skills of author interviewing and book reviewing. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credit hours.


7602 iconENGL 7602 - Fiction Workshop | Dr. Eric Schlich | W 5:30pm
Students’ original fiction is the primary focus for this graduate workshop. Your reading in this class should be focused not on the lit-crit question what does this mean? but on the more writerly how does this work? You will study contemporary short fiction as models for your own work, present a craft lecture on a story of your choosing from the anthology, workshop two to three complete story drafts or chapters of a novel, and revise one of your workshop submissions.


ENGL 7603 - Poetry Workshop | Prof. Marcus Wicker | R 5:30pm
Emphasis on the examination and the discussion of poetry written by students.


ENGL 7900 - Creative Writing Colloquium | Prof. Courtney Santo | MW 12:40-2:05
A course in the preparation for the MFA thesis and the MFA comprehensive exam. NOTE: May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credit hours, but only three hours with any one professor may be applied toward the degree; recommended to be taken in the last semester of regular course work and first semester of thesis work.

 

Literary & Cultural Studies:

6346 iconENGL 6346 - Studies in American Literature: What Are the Public Humanities? | Dr. Donal Harris | TR 1:00-2:25
This course will introduce late-stage undergraduates and early graduate students to these ‘public humanities’ initiatives: how they differ from traditional scholarship, what they share and where they depart in their own methods, and how they open up new careers for humanities students. This class will be interactive and project-based: you will end the course having made something. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 hours credit with change in course content. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credit hours with change in course content.


7000 iconENGL 7/8000 - Literary Research | Dr. Theron Britt | T 5:30pm
This introductory course is meant to provide a survey of contemporary literary theory and research methods with the aim of giving students a strong and useful grasp on the critical tools necessary for literary scholarship. We will begin with an overview of literary research methods and library and online research tools, and we will continue by reading primary literary texts—short stories and The Great Gatsby—through a number of contemporary critical approaches. Such approaches will include but not be limited to psychoanalysis, feminism, deconstruction and postmodernism, Marxism, postcolonialism, queer theory, trauma theory, ecocriticism, speculative realism (object oriented ontology), cognitive theory, African American criticism, and cultural criticism.


7264 iconENGL 7/8264 - 18th Century British Literature: News, Novelty, & the Early English Novel | Dr. Darryl Domingo | M 5:30pm
In this graduate seminar we will examine the development of the newest and most controversial of the many inter-related genres competing for cultural ascendance in England between the late-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth century: the eponymous novel. Although it is now difficult for us to think of the novel as something that could ever have been new, during its formative years the genre provoked anxiety among critics who dismissed it as an upstart without classical precedent and who associated novelistic publications with gossip and scandal, low-brow entertainment, and commercial journalism.


ENGL 7/8335 - African American Literature 1989-Present | Dr. Ladrica Menson-Furr | W 5:30pm 
Survey of African American writing from 1989 to the present, situated in relation to recent developments in theory and other arts as well as contemporary cultural and political contexts.


7339 iconENGL 7/8339 - Afrofuturism & Black Speculative Fiction | Dr. Shelby Crosby | T 5:30pm
Afrofuturism is social, political, and artistic movement that encourages Blacks across the Diaspora to re-imagine the world as one where people of African descent and their cultures are central to the creation of the world. As a literary movement, Afrofuturism is “an aesthetic practice that enables artists to communicate the experience of science, technology, and race across centuries, continents, and cultures” (Lavendar). In this course we will be examining Afrofuturism as a literary movement and as an artistic space that encourages and/or demands that readers engage with ideas and concepts that are uncomfortable and push them to open up to new possibilities and to the inevitability of change.


7392 iconENGL 7/8392 - American Poetry: Modern & Contemporary Poetry | Dr. Kathy Lou Schultz | R 5:30pm
Everything you ever wanted to know about poetry, but were afraid to ask. From Emily Dickinson to Claudia Rankine, Walt Whitman to Joy Harjo and all the modernists in between!

 

Writing, Rhetoric, & Technical Communication: 

ENGL 6618 - Document Design | TBD | Online
Theories of visual and written communication, focusing on the interrelationship between visual and verbal elements; practice in effective design using layout and graphics software; working on client projects in a collaborative setting.


4620 iconENGL 6620.M50 - Digital Rhetoric & Writing | Dr. Scott Sundvall | Online 
This course will immerse students in the complexities and nuances of digital writing and rhetoric as understood within that post-literate medium. Within the context of the digital institution, students will analyze, create, remix, and remediate various forms and methods of writing and rhetoric.

 


ENGL 7/8003 - Theory & Practice in Teaching Composition | Dr. Katherine Fredlund | M 1-4pm
Designed for graduate assistants teaching English 1010. Emphasis on the ways and techniques of teaching rudiments of English composition on college level. Each graduate teaching assistant in the Department of English must enroll in English 7003-8003 before or concurrent with first teaching assignment.


7350 iconENGL 7/8350 - Rhetorical Theory | Dr. Joseph Jones | T 5:30pm
The catalog description for this course reads: "history of rhetoric from the sophists through the present; includes readings from Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Erasmus, Ramus, Campbell, Blair, John Q. Adams, and others." Such a course description is commendable for its ambition. But cramming the “history of rhetoric” into fourteen weeks is like stuffing an elephant into a duffel bag. What we can do, however, is explore some important historical texts from key rhetorical theorists as the means of engaging philosophical and practical knowledge regarding the ways human beings use language to understand the world and relate to others.