Spring 26 Courses Revealed!

 ENG 8260: Medieval Romance
Dr. Brooke Hunter
CRN 34350
Thursday from 5:20 pm to 07:20 pm

A black and white drawing of a knight on a horse

Romance—the mode of literature that tells stories of chivalry, ladies, and love—shaped medieval ideas about everything from racial and cultural identity to best practices for flirting. Focusing on the romances of King Arthur and other English heroes, this course will consider three main questions: how romances structure the experience of love, sexuality, and gender; how romances shape the practice of religion and notions of religious and racial otherness; and how romances construct ideas about peoples (nationes) and political power. Half of the course reading will be in Middle English, including the cannibalistic crusader sieges of Richard Coer de Lyon, several works by Geoffrey Chaucer, and a selection from Thomas Malory’s exhaustive collection of Arthuriana, Le Morte d’Arthur. We will also read several works of early Arthuriana in translation, including Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain and Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot: Knight of the Cart. Previous experience with Middle English will be helpful but not necessary.

*This course fulfills the pre-1800 British/Irish literature requirement


ENG 8620 Virginia Woolf & Resistance
Dr. Megan Quigley
CRN 34351
Tuesday 5:20-7:20 pm

A photo of Virginia Woolf next to a tattoo reading 'Feminist Killjoy'

“No more Woolf!” So it was fashionable to declare five years ago. Enough books, enough articles, enough feminism—we have learned all we need to know! But even if Virginia Woolf’s suffragists had their first major victory over a century ago, their battle is far from won. #MeToo Woolf; Lesbian Woolf; Transgender Novelist Woolf; Eco-Woolf; Woolf for European Union; Woolf and social activism—our current political climate makes Woolf’s writing and legacy more urgent than ever. We need to know our Woolf, this course argues, so that when we fight the backlash against feminism, we know its origins. Understanding first-wave feminists like Woolf—warts and all—helps us to see how gender, sexuality, and race played a role in early twentieth-century conceptions of self, family, and citizenship. Woolf’s idiosyncratic voice can continue to guide intersectional feminists in their current struggles.

Over the semester we will ask: Why are audiences as fascinated by Virginia Woolf's life as they are by the novels she wrote? Why does she think that every woman needs A Room of One's Own? What is the boundary between fiction and autobiography? What role does Woolf's gender play in her status as a literary celebrity? This course will posit that Woolf's novels and essays themselves instigate these debates. In seeking to destroy the conventions of the realist novel and simultaneously explain new forms through what life is like “here, now,” Woolf's novels interrogate the relationships among fiction, biography, gender and autobiography.

We will read four novels by Woolf as well as extracts from her Essays and Diaries. We will study explosive issues in Woolf studies (snobbery, racism, anti-Semitism, sexual molestation, lesbianism, suicidal ideation) while we also learn about literary high modernism by immersing ourselves in Woolf's own writing.

 

ENG 9640 Latinx Literature & Culture
Dr. Michael Dowdy
CRN 34355
Monday 5:20-7:20 pm

A red and white label with a skeleton holding a basket of grapes; text on the label reads 'Sun Raid Raisins, Guaranteed Deportation'

Ester Hernandez, Sun Raid, screenprint on paper, 2008

This seminar surveys a far-flung range of literary and cultural texts by Latina/e/o/x writers, artists, and performers. Students will encounter texts that move between the sacred and profane, crossing back and forth from spiritual to material concerns and from the deep past to the distant future. We will explore how these texts are anchored in techniques of craft and sabotage, as Juan Felipe Herrera once described the wildly divergent aesthetic choices for Latino poets. In an era of limitless cruelty to migrants and immigrants, including de jure racial profiling and state-sponsored disappearances, we will chart the boundless creativities, both assimilative and subversive, of Chicano (Mexican American), Boricua (Puerto Rican), Cuban, Dominican, and Central and South American descent artists. Though discussion, writing (creative and critical, informal and formal), and regular engagements with fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, film, music, and performance, we will study how Latinos have made sense (and nonsense) of their material, spiritual, and psychic conditions in the US, from the borderlands and agricultural fields to major cities and unexpected states (Indiana) and regions (Appalachia). Requirements include class participation, short writing assignments, and a final project. Spanish is not required.

 

GWS 8000 Critical Perspectives on Gender
Dr. Yumi Lee
CRN 34533
Monday 7:30-9:30 pm

Feminist marchers carrying a banner that reads 'Wages for Housework'

In this course, we will examine feminist theories produced in and across different disciplines, intellectual and political traditions, and generations. We will study contemporary philosophical and theoretical developments in the study of gender in relation to specific histories of class, race, ethnicity, nation and sexuality in both US-based and global contexts. Alongside these theoretical readings, we will read select literary and cultural texts that will help us work through the implications of these concepts and questions together. Participants in the seminar will incorporate an analysis of gender into a culminating final project based on independent research. Key readings include works by Hortense Spillers, Sylvia Wynter, Angela Davis, Silvia Federici, Gayatri Spivak, Judith Butler, and others.

NB: This is a GWS course which we will consider as counting automatically toward the English MA; it will NOT count against your two allowed ‘courses outside the department’ 


ENG 8090: Thesis Direction
CRN 34347

Direction of writing of the thesis, focused research on a narrowly defined question, under supervision of an individual instructor.

 

ENG 8092: Field Examination
CRN 34348

A broader exploration of a theme or area of literature than a thesis. The examination comprises a comprehensive statement essay and an oral exam component.

 

ENG 9031: Independent Study
CRN 34352

A special project pursued under the direction of an individual professor.

 

ENG 9080: Thesis Continuation
CRN 34354

 

ENG 8093: Field Exam Continuation
CRN 34349

 

ENG 9035
Dr. Evan Radcliffe
CRN 34353

Professional Research Option (PRO)

This option for second-year graduate students is a three-credit independent study in which students identify one or a cluster of jobs or professions in which an advanced degree in literature is of benefit. In the course of the semester, students will research the career options of interest, identifying one or two fields as the focus of their work. They must generate a research paper that explores the history and future prospects of the field of interest, as well as current information about the requirements of the work, geographical information about centers of activity for the profession, and desirable employers. This research should include at least two meetings with professionals who work in the field. The paper must also analyze how advanced study of literature serves to enhance the students' desirability in the profession in question. As part of their final project, students must develop a cover letter outlining the ways their particular training makes them suitable to work in this field. Students will make their research available to other students in the program by uploading part of their final project onto a special section of the Graduate English Program blog. Potential fields of research include the following:

E-Book Industry                                 Teaching

Public relations                                   Rare book broker

Advertising                                         Web design

College admissions                             Journalism

University administration                   Testing industry

Arts administration                             Tutoring industry

Library science                                   Technical writing 


ENG 9800
CRN 34356

Internship in Teaching English

Graduate students entering their second year (or sometimes their second semester) have the option to serve as an intern for a graduate faculty member in an undergraduate English course. Interns will attend all class sessions, confer at least once with each student on their written work, lead two or three class sessions under the supervision of the faculty member, and complete a final project that is either (1) a substantial critical essay concerning the subject matter of the course or (2) a research project concerning trends and issues within college-level pedagogy. The aim of the program is to provide students with teaching and classroom experience. Students may apply to serve as interns by consulting with a faculty member who is teaching in an area of interest, and, if the faculty member is amenable, submitting a one-two page statement, outlining how this course addresses their larger intellectual goals, and what they hope to accomplish as an intern.