Fall 2021 Graduate Courses

ENGL 5103 Proseminar

Instructor: Professor Hillary Chute
Sequence: Monday, 1:35-4:55 PM

Introduces the history and current scholarly practices of English studies. Surveys theoretical, methodological, and institutional issues in the development of the discipline; introduces students to the research of the English department’s graduate faculty; and offers opportunities for the practice of key components of scholarly production, including formulating research questions, using databases, conducting literature reviews, and writing and presenting scholarship in common formats other than the long research paper, such as conference proposals, oral presentations, and book reviews.

ENGL 7351 Topics in Literary Study: Embodiment

Instructor: Professor Theo Davis
Sequence: Monday, 5:00-8:20 PM

NOTE: This class is currently full. Please add your name to the waitlist if you’re interested. Many scholars are interested in embodiment, but what do we really mean by this term? This course will look at the history of embodiment as an ideal, a practice, and an experience in 20th century critical and theoretical writing. We will begin with phenomenology’s turn to situate subjectivity in the body rather than in the cogito, look at poststructural approaches to the body as an object of modern discipline and as a form of performance, explore the role of the body and embodied knowledge in scholarship on race, gender, and sexuality, and reflect on the history and future of embodied knowledges.

*NEW as of 6/25/21* ENGL 7370 Introduction to Digital Humanities 

Instructor: Professor Julia Flanders
Sequence: Wednesday, 11:20 AM-2:40 PM

Offers a critical orientation to the tools, methods, and intellectual history of the digital humanities (DH). Explores key questions such as what debates are (re)shaping DH in this moment; what central theories lead humanities scholars to experiment with computational, geospatial, and network methodologies; how visualization can illuminate literature, history, writing, and other humanities subjects; and how new modes of research and publication might influence our teaching. Balances theory and praxis: Successful students come away with a well-grounded understanding of the DH field and a set of foundational skills to support their future research. No prior technical expertise is required to take the course, but students should be willing to experiment with new skills.

ENGL 7282 Topics in Renaissance Literature: Shakespeare

Instructor: Professor Erika Boeckeler
Sequence: Thursday, 2:50-6:10 PM

NOTE: This class is currently full. Please add your name to the waitlist if you’re interested. Shakespeare is simultaneously familiar and foreign. We hear echoes of his phrases and plots all around us. But their Shakespearean context is exquisite early modern blank verse. The plays grapple with racial differences, gender and sexual expression, empire-building, and the natural world in ways that evoke our current dynamic social formations. But early modern ideas don’t fit our categories neatly. Some media of the sixteenth century are recognizable, such as printed books. And yet these books were created by different means with different materials and look substantially different from our books today; they also contain unrecognizable or unstable genres, and are only one form of written expression in a different media ecology. This course examines Shakespearean elasticity: how we process our world through this four hundred year old literary inheritance, and how our world challenges and troubles Shakespeare back. But we also examine how the pre-Enlightenment Shakespeare estranges us from ourselves to open new avenues for critique on the issues we care about.  The course focus will be on plays across all Shakespearean genres (comedy, tragedy, history, romance), with some attention to the sonnets.

See Spring 2022.

See Spring 2022.

ENGL 7360 Topics in Rhetoric: Rhetorics of Resistance 

Instructor: Professor K.J. Rawson
Sequence: Wednesday, 2:50-6:10 PM

NOTE: This class is currently full. Please add your name to the waitlist if you’re interested. The canon of rhetoric may be dominated by a privileged subset of individual thinkers, but the powerful effects of rhetoric can be far more effectively studied through attention to the ways that oppressed communities have employed rhetoric as a tool for resistance. This course will take a thoroughly intersectional approach to cultural rhetorics as we consider various modes and themes of rhetorical resistance. We will study direct action strategies, sites and genres for counter-hegemonic engagement, tactics for persuasion, community-based language practices, and grassroots knowledge-making projects. Our focus will be on shared and overlapping rhetorical strategies that have been deployed across identity-based communities and cultural groups, primarily in the U.S. in the 20th and 21st centuries.

ENGL 7392 Writing and the Teaching of Writing

Instructor: Professor Neal Lerner
Sequence: Tuesday, 4:15-7:35 PM

NOTE: This class is currently full. Please add your name to the waitlist if you’re interested. This course engages MA and PhD students in the theory, practice, and praxis of teaching writing at the university level, drawing on recent scholarship in rhetoric and writing studies. We will explore theories and practices regarding the nature of written expression; the role of diversity, inclusion, and equity in writing instruction; the research on how people learn to write and how that writing might be assessed; the historical contexts for required writing in US higher education; the nature of multimodal composing; and the environments and activities best help students learn writing. The goal is for each graduate student to develop a coherent position on the teaching of writing, along with practical teaching materials that can be employed at Northeastern and elsewhere.

ENGL 7360 Topics in Rhetoric: Rhetorics of Resistance 

Instructor: Professor K.J. Rawson
Sequence: Wednesday, 2:50-6:10 PM
Attributes:

• Counts as an elective towards the Graduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

NOTE: This class is currently full. Please add your name to the waitlist if you’re interested. The canon of rhetoric may be dominated by a privileged subset of individual thinkers, but the powerful effects of rhetoric can be far more effectively studied through attention to the ways that oppressed communities have employed rhetoric as a tool for resistance. This course will take a thoroughly intersectional approach to cultural rhetorics as we consider various modes and themes of rhetorical resistance. We will study direct action strategies, sites and genres for counter-hegemonic engagement, tactics for persuasion, community-based language practices, and grassroots knowledge-making projects. Our focus will be on shared and overlapping rhetorical strategies that have been deployed across identity-based communities and cultural groups, primarily in the U.S. in the 20th and 21st centuries.

*NEW as of 6/25/21* ENGL 7370 Introduction to Digital Humanities 

Instructor: Professor Julia Flanders
Sequence: Wednesday, 11:20 AM-2:40 PM
Attributes:

• Counts as a Core Requirement for the Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities

Offers a critical orientation to the tools, methods, and intellectual history of the digital humanities (DH). Explores key questions such as what debates are (re)shaping DH in this moment; what central theories lead humanities scholars to experiment with computational, geospatial, and network methodologies; how visualization can illuminate literature, history, writing, and other humanities subjects; and how new modes of research and publication might influence our teaching. Balances theory and praxis: Successful students come away with a well-grounded understanding of the DH field and a set of foundational skills to support their future research. No prior technical expertise is required to take the course, but students should be willing to experiment with new skills.

INSH 7910: NULab Project Seminar

Instructor: Professor Julia Flanders
Sequence: Tuesday, 2:30-4:10 PM
Attributes:

• Counts as a Core Requirement for the Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities
• Can also count as an elective towards the English MA/PhD degree (does not require GSC petition)

Offers students an opportunity to learn and use digital humanities methods with others in groups and across disciplines in the collaborative space of the NULab seminar. May be repeated up to three times.

Workshop for Dissertation Writers in Women’s and Gender Studies [Course number TBD]

Instructor: Professor Carla Kaplan
Sequence: Tuesdays, 5:00-8:00 PM – full year course meeting every other week
Attributes:

• Counts as an elective towards the Graduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
• Can also count as an elective towards the English MA/PhD degree upon successful GSC petition

This workshop is designed for feminist dissertators from all disciplines and at all stages of the dissertation process. We will combine theories of interdisciplinarity and intersectionality as well as histories of academic writing and its protocols (as well as its secret rules) with practical instruction in how to become better/more comfortable writers and get more writing done. Readings, which will also cover important related topics such as balancing writing and activism, the racial, sexual and gender politics of the academy, the politics of acknowledgement, feminist voice, women’s anger and self-care, will be varied and total approximately 30-35 pages every two weeks. We will work together to both build a supportive community and to break down the process of a dissertation into short, tangible, manageable activities and task; short writing exercises will include practical training in those tasks. Each semester we will workshop writing.

The Dissertation Workshop is designed to serve the needs of its participants. Hence, the syllabus is a flexible one, open to changes, especially in the second semester, in structure, readings, and assignments. In the first semester we will concentrate our shared writing on the early (sometimes the most difficult) stages of dissertation writing: abstracts or first paragraphs of research proposals. In the spring, we will share full chapters of dissertations. The workshop is open to students at all stages of the dissertation process. The workshop portion of the course will accommodate those in different stages, accordingly.

This course is offered through the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality. You must submit an application through their website (www.gcws.mit.edu) and be accepted to the course before registering for the course through Northeastern. PhD students who are past their coursework phase are also welcome to apply to audit the course to avoid tuition charges.

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See the Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities or Graduate Certificate in Womens, Gender and Sexuality Studies catalog pages for complete course lists and certificate information.

Please note:
*Electives must be ENGL courses unless otherwise approved by the Graduate Studies Committee, including electives taken for graduate certificates. Students seeking to take non-ENGL electives in CSSH or through the GCWS Consortium should submit a General Petition Form to the GSC via Heather Hardy, located on the Current Student Resources webpage. Core courses taken toward a graduate certificate do not require a petition if the certificate has been formally declared. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to Heather for any questions.

Theories & Methods:

• ENGL 7380 Topics in Digital Humanities (tentative topic: Exploratory and Creative Programming for Poets & Writers), Professor Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

Writing & Rhetoric:

• ENGL 7395 Topics in Writing (Topic TBD), Professor Qianqian Zhang-Wu

Literature 1700-1900:

• ENGL 7284 Topics in 18th-Century Literature: Gender and Racial Capitalism, Professor Elizabeth Maddock Dillon

Literature Post-1900:

• ENGL 7351 Topics in Literary Study: Joyce & Modernism, Professor Patrick Mullen

Electives:

• INSH 7910 NULab Seminar, Professor Julia Flanders
• ENGL 7284 Topics in 18th-Century Literature: Gender and Racial Capitalism, Professor Elizabeth Maddock Dillon (counts as WGSS elective)
• ENGL 7380 Topics in Digital Humanities (tentative topic: Exploratory and Creative Programming for Poets & Writers), Professor Lillian-Yvonne Bertram (counts as DH elective)