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The following information is subject to change.

For the most up-to-date and comprehensive course information, including current offerings, meeting times, and classrooms, visit the Registrar’s website. For curriculum information, see the Academic Catalog.

Sections of ENGL 7976 Directed Study and ENGL 7990 Master’s Thesis are created upon successful petition. These are credit-bearing courses. See Banner Class Schedule for non-credit bearing course information (ENGL 6960, 7000, 8960, 9986, 9990, and 9996).

First day of fall graduate class registration: November 15

Courses by Curricular Area

See Fall 2020.

ENGL 7358 Topics in Literature & Other Disciplines – Feminism & Visual Culture

Instructor: Professor Hillary Chute
Sequence: Monday, 1:35-5:05 PM

This interdisciplinary course explores a range of creative forms, including but limited to: comics and graphic novels, film, painting, performance art, theater, photography, propaganda, television, digital projects and videos.

Establishes a critical trajectory by reading historically important works of theory and criticism alongside additional feminist and visual theory.

Focuses on frameworks for understanding varieties of feminist cultural production that exist in the realm of visual culture–and also that themselves shape what “visual culture” means.

Offers a grounding in key concepts driving feminist cultural production, and in debates about visual culture, including around issues such as embodiment, subjectivity, spectatorship, and desire. What does the visual accomplish for differently-conceived feminisms?

See Fall 2020.

See Fall 2020.

ENGL 7244 African-American Novel

Instructor: Professor Carla Kaplan
Sequence: Wednesday, 2:40-6:00 PM

This course will focus on the development of the modern African-American novel by tracing its lineage back to pre-Civil War slave narratives and, from there, following how a range of modern and contemporary African American novelists have developed the novel in the context of that social and formal history, a history that haunts the modern black novel in myriad, complex ways.  Our emphasis in this course will be intertextual and contextual as we seek to understand the specific features that make this tradition distinct and as we investigate the ways that specific cultural histories can determine new literary and cultural forms.  Among the writers we will read are: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Ann Petry, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Edward P. Jones, Octavia Butler, and Colson Whitehead. Our readings will include a range of critical and theoretical resources ranging from theory of the novel to recent works of critical race theory by such scholars as Farrah Jasmine Griffin, Saidiya Hartman, Kenneth Warren, Christina Sharpe, C. Riley Snorton, Kimberly Juanita Brown, Hortense Spilliers, Jacqueline Goldsby, Sandra Gunning, Roderick Ferguson, Imani Perry, Stephen Best, Jennifer Nash, and others, with particular attention to theories of identity, race, intersectionality, how the field of African American literature is shaped, and how the past haunts the present.

ENGL 7395 Topics in Writing: Social Theories of Learning and Writing

Instructor: Professor Neal Lerner
Sequence: Thursday, 3:30-6:00 PM

What do we know about how people learn to write, whether in school or outside-of-school settings? How do language, identity, and activity shape writing development? In this seminar, we will read, write, and explore what is currently known about writing development, particularly social theories of learning and writing (e.g., Vygotsky, Prior, Shipka, Roozen, Guerra, Kinloch). We will also team with a class at Boston’s Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School to study writing development in action, learn research methods appropriate to studying writing development, and propose and extend theories of learning and writing.

INSH 7910 NULab Project Seminar – 2 semester hours

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

  • Applicable certificate: Digital Humanities
  • Core requirement met: Lab project seminar (1/2)

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 and lab sessions 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 7244 African-American Novel

Instructor: Professor Carla Kaplan
Sequence: Wednesday, 2:40-6:00 PM
Attributes:

This course will focus on the development of the modern African-American novel by tracing its lineage back to pre-Civil War slave narratives and, from there, following how a range of modern and contemporary African American novelists have developed the novel in the context of that social and formal history, a history that haunts the modern black novel in myriad, complex ways.  Our emphasis in this course will be intertextual and contextual as we seek to understand the specific features that make this tradition distinct and as we investigate the ways that specific cultural histories can determine new literary and cultural forms.  Among the writers we will read are: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Ann Petry, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Edward P. Jones, Octavia Butler, and Colson Whitehead. Our readings will include a range of critical and theoretical resources ranging from theory of the novel to recent works of critical race theory by such scholars as Farrah Jasmine Griffin, Saidiya Hartman, Kenneth Warren, Christina Sharpe, C. Riley Snorton, Kimberly Juanita Brown, Hortense Spilliers, Jacqueline Goldsby, Sandra Gunning, Roderick Ferguson, Imani Perry, Stephen Best, Jennifer Nash, and others, with particular attention to theories of identity, race, intersectionality, how the field of African American literature is shaped, and how the past haunts the present.

ENGL 7358 Topics in Literature & Other Disciplines – Feminism & Visual Culture

Instructor: Professor Hillary Chute
Sequence: Monday, 1:35-5:05 PM
Attributes:

This interdisciplinary course explores a range of creative forms, including but limited to: comics and graphic novels, film, painting, performance art, theater, photography, propaganda, television, digital projects and videos.

Establishes a critical trajectory by reading historically important works of theory and criticism alongside additional feminist and visual theory.

Focuses on frameworks for understanding varieties of feminist cultural production that exist in the realm of visual culture–and also that themselves shape what “visual culture” means.

Offers a grounding in key concepts driving feminist cultural production, and in debates about visual culture, including around issues such as embodiment, subjectivity, spectatorship, and desire. What does the visual accomplish for differently-conceived feminisms?