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The following information is subject to change.

For the most up-to-date and comprehensive course schedule, including meeting times, course additions, cancellations, and room assignments, visit the Registrar’s website. See Banner Class Schedule for ENGL 9990 Dissertation and ENGL 9996 Dissertation Continuation CRNs.

Courses by Curricular Area

ENGL 5103 Proseminar
Professor Theo Davis
Time Sequence: Wednesdays, 3:30-5:45 p.m.
CRN: 12075

Proseminar 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. Prereq. English degree students only.

ENGL 7358 Topics in Literature and other Disciplines: Visual Culture and Contemporary Literature
Professor Hillary Chute
Time Sequence: Thursdays, 3:30 p.m.-5:45 p.m.
CRN: 15793
Other Attributes: May fulfill 19th/20th Century -or- Theories & Methods

This course reads the concerns and techniques of contemporary literature by exploring its significant intersection with visual culture.  Why is the visual such a vital aspect, formally, of today’s literary landscape?  What is the narrative/political/aesthetic effect of literature that mixes prose with images, both drawn and photographed?  What does this interplay accomplish? We will study fiction and nonfiction, across a range of genres, from the 1970s to the present with an emphasis on the 21st-century.  All of our course works draw on visual form in addition to prose to conceptualize and thematize issues of identity, history, memory, loss, and evidence.  We will begin by considering what “visual culture” means, in order to explore how it intersects today with literature.  We will also examine word-and-image studies as a framework, reading visual theory by scholars such as Nicholas Mirzoeff and W.J.T. Mitchell alongside theories of photography by Roland Barthes, among others.  Our course texts include literature that incorporates prose with photography; literature that incorporates prose with drawing and other graphics; graphic novels; and hard-to-classify experimental narratives such as Phoebe Gloeckner’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Images (2002) and Lynda Barry’s groundbreaking “activity book” What It Is (2008).  A guiding question throughout is: what constitutes the experimental, and does this category matter?  Additional course authors include Ishmael Reed, Kathy Acker, W.G. Sebald, Art Spiegelman, Jonathan Safran Foer, Aleksandar Hemon, Jennifer Egan, and Allie Brosh.

ENGL 7395 Topics in Writing: Qualitative Methods & Methodologies
Professor Ellen Cushman
Time Sequence: Mondays, 3:30 p.m.-5:45 p.m.
CRN: 17474
*Updated 04-07-2017* Other Attributes: May fulfill Writing & Rhetoric -or- Theories & Methods

The goal of this class is to introduce you to qualitative methodologies and methods. Qualitative methodologies are helpful in understanding what meanings and values are attached to everyday practices such as reading, writing, speaking, listening, teaching, and learning. We’ll open with an overview of four longstanding qualitative methodologies in writing and rhetoric specifically and in the humanities and social sciences more generally — narrative research, phenomenology, case study, and ethnography. We’ll then consider the workings of power in qualitative research that uses activist, critical, decolonial, queer, and/or feminist qualitative methods and methodologies. Throughout the semester, short writing assignments offer the opportunity to analyze sample qualitative studies to see how they accomplished their work. Two longer assignments will engage the creative work of designing qualitative studies. The semester will end with the creation and presentation of qualitative methodology maps. By the end of the semester, you will be able to see the strengths and weaknesses of various qualitative research studies. You will have two research designs perhaps useful in future projects. And you will have demonstrated understanding of the disciplinary terrains of qualitative methodologies. Readings will include a course reader of sample studies and texts such as: Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches and the Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research.

ENGL 7281 Topics in Medieval Literature: Why Do People Still Read Chaucer?
Professor Kathleen Kelly
Time Sequence: Mondays, 6:15-8:30 p.m.
CRN: 17961

As we explore the question of why people still read Chaucer, we will consider such topics as aesthetics, taste, fashion, canonization, genre, the making of English, the history of the book (from manuscripts to print to digital editions), medievalism, colonialism, the gothic, fantasy literature, adaptation, and modern responses to medieval representations of class, race, gender, and sexual preference and identity. In addition to reading some of Chaucer’s major works (The Book of the DuchessThe Parliament of Birds, and selected Canterbury Tales, and Troilus and Criseyde (the first novel in English, I contend, though it is written in rhyme royal), we will read a handful of other medieval texts, including the Irish Táin Bó Cúailnge, the French Song of RolandTristan and Iseult, and Roman de Silence (a tale of born-sex vs. cultural assignment), and the Icelandic Vínland Sagas (the tale of the Norse discovery of America), the Spanish El Cantar de mio Cid, and the West African SundiataAll texts in translation. We’ll also read examples of modern poetry and fiction based on medieval texts, as well view a few films. Students are encouraged to make connections between the medieval and their own areas of interest. Requirements: short responses, a class presentation, and a final paper.

ENGL 7284 Topics in 18th-Century Literatures: Jane Austen
Professor Nicole Aljoe
Time Sequence: Tuesday, 3:30-5:45 p.m.
CRN: 17472
*Updated 05-01-2017* Other Attributes: WGSS graduate certificate elective

Jane Austen and the 18th C Novel. It is a truth universally acknowledged that the writings by “A Lady” known as Jane Austen are the sources of trenchant debates: are her novels politically conservative, progressive, radical, or apolitical? Are they early examples of market-driven ‘chick-lit’? Nuanced parodies of staid literary conventions? Or assertions of a centuries long female literary tradition? Do her novels celebrate the marriage plot, complicate, or subvert it? What about the impact of 18th century conversations about race and slavery? Are they completely absent, merely background context, or metaphorical? One point of agreement is on the complexly formative relationships between Austen’s novels and those written earlier in 18th century Britain. This seminar will read most of Austen’s novels and also examine several earlier 18th century novels such as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, Francis Burney’s Evelina, Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote, , Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda, and Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho in order to consider the ways in which Austen’s novels comment on developments of the 18th century novel.  In addition to engaging with notions of novel reading and writing/authorship, Austen’s novels comment on major 18th century literary preoccupations like the Gothic, relationships between gender and genre, notions of performance, traditions of sentiment, slavery and abolitionism, and of course, the marriage plot. In addition to considering key critical debates about these topics and Austen’s novels by scholars such as Sedgwick, Butler, Zunshine, and Said, we will conclude by considering film and other media representations in order to further explore the role of adaptation and Austen’s work. As well as attending to the continued fascination with Austen (including the celebration this year of the 200th anniversary of her death and the appearance of her portrait on the 10£ note), we may also consider what the Bollywood, zombie, Manga, or Baby Lit versions may tell us about Austen’s work and the continuing development of novel as a genre.

ENGL 7358 Topics in Literature and other Disciplines: Visual Culture and Contemporary Literature
Professor Hillary Chute
Time Sequence: Thursdays, 3:30 p.m.-5:45 p.m.
CRN: 15793
Other Attributes: May fulfill 19th/20th Century -or- Theories & Methods

This course reads the concerns and techniques of contemporary literature by exploring its significant intersection with visual culture.  Why is the visual such a vital aspect, formally, of today’s literary landscape?  What is the narrative/political/aesthetic effect of literature that mixes prose with images, both drawn and photographed?  What does this interplay accomplish? We will study fiction and nonfiction, across a range of genres, from the 1970s to the present with an emphasis on the 21st-century.  All of our course works draw on visual form in addition to prose to conceptualize and thematize issues of identity, history, memory, loss, and evidence.  We will begin by considering what “visual culture” means, in order to explore how it intersects today with literature.  We will also examine word-and-image studies as a framework, reading visual theory by scholars such as Nicholas Mirzoeff and W.J.T. Mitchell alongside theories of photography by Roland Barthes, among others.  Our course texts include literature that incorporates prose with photography; literature that incorporates prose with drawing and other graphics; graphic novels; and hard-to-classify experimental narratives such as Phoebe Gloeckner’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Images (2002) and Lynda Barry’s groundbreaking “activity book” What It Is (2008).  A guiding question throughout is: what constitutes the experimental, and does this category matter?  Additional course authors include Ishmael Reed, Kathy Acker, W.G. Sebald, Art Spiegelman, Jonathan Safran Foer, Aleksandar Hemon, Jennifer Egan, and Allie Brosh.

ENGL 7395 Topics in Writing: Qualitative Methods & Methodologies
Professor Ellen Cushman
Time Sequence: Mondays, 3:30 p.m.-5:45 p.m.
CRN: 17474
*Updated 04-07-2017* Other Attributes: May fulfill Writing & Rhetoric -or- Theories & Methods

The goal of this class is to introduce you to qualitative methodologies and methods. Qualitative methodologies are helpful in understanding what meanings and values are attached to everyday practices such as reading, writing, speaking, listening, teaching, and learning. We’ll open with an overview of four longstanding qualitative methodologies in writing and rhetoric specifically and in the humanities and social sciences more generally — narrative research, phenomenology, case study, and ethnography. We’ll then consider the workings of power in qualitative research that uses activist, critical, decolonial, queer, and/or feminist qualitative methods and methodologies. Throughout the semester, short writing assignments offer the opportunity to analyze sample qualitative studies to see how they accomplished their work. Two longer assignments will engage the creative work of designing qualitative studies. The semester will end with the creation and presentation of qualitative methodology maps. By the end of the semester, you will be able to see the strengths and weaknesses of various qualitative research studies. You will have two research designs perhaps useful in future projects. And you will have demonstrated understanding of the disciplinary terrains of qualitative methodologies. Readings will include a course reader of sample studies and texts such as: Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches and the Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research.

INSH 7910 NULab Project Seminar – 1 semester hour
Professor Julia Flanders
Time Sequence: Mondays, 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.
CRN: 15559

This workshop course supports the project development component of the certificate in Digital Humanities, aimed at graduate students enrolled in MA and PhD programs in humanities and social sciences. Students in the course will engage in a sustained, interdisciplinary exploration of digital humanities methods and projects as they plan and develop their own research projects during their progress on the certificate. As needed, the course will also organize working groups on special topics to cover additional skills and methods. The course is designed to be taken in successive years by students in the certificate program, but may also be taken on its own. No prior technical experience or familiarity with digital humanities or digital tools is required, but participants should be prepared to identify an area of research interest that is connected in some way with the general domain of digital humanities, computational social science, and related fields.

ENGL 7284 Topics in 18th-Century Literatures: Jane Austen
Professor Nicole Aljoe
Time Sequence: Tuesday, 3:30-5:45 p.m.
CRN: 17472
Other Attributes: 17th Century/Restoration/18th Century

Jane Austen and the 18th C Novel. It is a truth universally acknowledged that the writings by “A Lady” known as Jane Austen are the sources of trenchant debates: are her novels politically conservative, progressive, radical, or apolitical? Are they early examples of market-driven ‘chick-lit’? Nuanced parodies of staid literary conventions? Or assertions of a centuries long female literary tradition? Do her novels celebrate the marriage plot, complicate, or subvert it? What about the impact of 18th century conversations about race and slavery? Are they completely absent, merely background context, or metaphorical? One point of agreement is on the complexly formative relationships between Austen’s novels and those written earlier in 18th century Britain. This seminar will read most of Austen’s novels and also examine several earlier 18th century novels such as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, Francis Burney’s Evelina, Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote, , Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda, and Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho in order to consider the ways in which Austen’s novels comment on developments of the 18th century novel.  In addition to engaging with notions of novel reading and writing/authorship, Austen’s novels comment on major 18th century literary preoccupations like the Gothic, relationships between gender and genre, notions of performance, traditions of sentiment, slavery and abolitionism, and of course, the marriage plot. In addition to considering key critical debates about these topics and Austen’s novels by scholars such as Sedgwick, Butler, Zunshine, and Said, we will conclude by considering film and other media representations in order to further explore the role of adaptation and Austen’s work. As well as attending to the continued fascination with Austen (including the celebration this year of the 200th anniversary of her death and the appearance of her portrait on the 10£ note), we may also consider what the Bollywood, zombie, Manga, or Baby Lit versions may tell us about Austen’s work and the continuing development of novel as a genre.

See the Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities or Graduate Certificate in Womens, Gender and Sexuality Studies websites for course lists and more information.