The following 500-level courses will be offered by the Department of English during the spring semester of 2007. Meeting times for some courses differ from those in the University Time Schedule, those in this bulletin are accurate.
Note:
MA students in their second semester must register for one credit of ENGL 598 and one credit of ENGL 600.
PhD students teaching ENGL 101 or other composition courses must register for one credit of ENGL 600.
All MA and PhD students holding Teaching Assistantships must register for a total of 18 credits. For more information, see details below for ENGL 598, 600, 700, 702, and 800.
501 Seminar in the Teaching of Writing: Methodology of Composition (3) The objective of this course is to clarify the relationships of theory and practice in the teaching and learning of composition. You, colleagues, will construct a writing sequence of the formal papers you will require your 101 students to produce next Spring in your course(s). The racism and pedagogy paper, which will grow out of your writing sequence, will be another key project of our course. The final grade will be constructed through portfolio assessment of a dozen items that will represent the major work of our 501 course. By the end of our course, these revised twelve items will represent thorough preparation of both the materials and approaches you will use in your teaching of 101 next semester. Robert Eddy (M, 3:10-6:00)
512 Introduction to Graduate Studies (3) This course is designed to facilitate the work of students in graduate literature courses through an investigation of scholarly and critical approaches to literature. The course will emphasize such practical matters as research methods, library resources, forms of citation, and procedures of scholarly publication and textual scholarship, and will also treat such general matters as the history of literary studies, professional ethics, and some current directions in scholarship, criticism, and literary theory. Jon Hegglund (Tu,Th 12:10-1:00)
514 The Fiction of Postmodern America (3) The course title is meant to suggest both a subject matter (postmodern American fiction) and a problem (that the concept of the "postmodern" is itself a fiction). While there is a body of literature and criticism that is often identified as postmodern, that concept, like all critical concepts, is merely a device that allows us to see some aspects of a text while obscuring others. And in this case the concept itself is a notoriously slippery one whose meaning is highly contested. Thus the course looks at various attempts to define "postmodernity" (as general social condition) and "postmodernism" (as aesthetic ideology & cultural style), recognizing that these definitions, while sometimes overlapping, are also at times contradictory. We can clarify this range of definitions, but we cannot by fiat eliminate the contradictions, since what is at stake in these debates is nothing less than the attempt to understand what is particular to our historical time and the fiction writing most characteristic of our time.
The course aims both to use conceptions of the postmodern to analyze the fiction texts, and to use those fictions texts to interrogate the concepts. We’ll take a heuristic approach to various conceptualizations of postmodernism and postmodernity. Throughout we will be evaluating the usefulness and limits of these concepts as lenses for reading a wide array of contemporary American written and filmed texts. We will look at a range of texts, some closely identified with postmodernism, some not generally considered postmodern, in an effort to understand the political uses and limits of the categories.
We will look at these texts in an effort to explore the specific, varied qualities of recent American fiction (and a few films) and the specific varied qualities of our own (perhaps) postmodern lives. Is there one postmodern condition we all share, or many postmodern conditions? Is there a common postmodern aesthetic, or a variety of such aesthetics?
We will examine in particular the uneven effects of postmodernities and postmodernisms as shaped by differences in race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender, and region/nation (in this regard the question of what constitutes "America" will be seen as a critical issue).
This semester we will focus primarily on women writers of color, including Morrison, Bambara, Kingston, Castillo, Yamashita, Silko, and others. In addition, or in some cases instead of, the traditional research paper, students will have a special opportunity to work with the most important online resource for US women writers of color – Voices from the Gap http://voices.cla.umn.edu/ -- to develop resources for use around the world. T. V. Reed (Th, 2:50-5:30)
515 Contemporary Rhetorical Theory (3) This course is not a survey of contemporary rhetoric (though I will provide a relatively comprehensive bibliography). This course will focus on marxist contributions to rhetorical theory and criticism, with particular emphasis on a survey of the concept of ideology. We will contrast rhetorical notions of subjectivity with classical, structuralist, and post-structuralist marxist and marxian discourse theories. Reading will include James Aune’s Rhetoric and Marxism, Michèle Barrett’s Women's Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis, Kenneth Burke’s Rhetoric of Motives, Collete Guillaumin’s Racism, Sexism, Power and Ideology, The Antonio Gramsci Reader, Rosemary Hennessy’s Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Manning Marable’sHow Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society,V.N. Volosinov’s Marxism and the Interpretation of Language and excerpts from Louis Althusser, Michele Foucault, Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams, and others. Very short response papers, one article-length seminar paper. Victor Villanueva (Tu,Th 10:35-11:50)
522 Medicine, Mind, and the Victorian Novel (3) This course will examine several canonical Victorian novels in relation to late-nineteenth-century medical theories and practices. We will focus especially (although not exclusively) on the relatively new science of psychology and its influence on the late-nineteenth-century realist novel. Weekly reading assignments will juxtapose literary texts including George Eliot’s Middlemarch and The Lifted Veil, Wilkie Collins’s Heart and Science, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray alongside contemporary scientific writings that likely influenced the composition of reception of each of these novels. The overall aim of the course is to show that the relationship between medicine and Victorian fiction was not one-sided, with medical science influencing fiction or vice-versa. Instead, the late-Victorian period witnessed extraordinary fruitful interdisciplinary conversations between scientists and literary authors, who played a central role in shaping public opinion towards scientific advances. Anne Stiles (W 3:10-6:00)
531 Administering a Writing Lab (3) Combining theory and practice in writing program supervision and management. Interns will work under direct faculty supervision and have the opportunity to intern with the Writing Center, Writing Assessment and/or Writing Across the Curriculum Programs. Diane Kelly-Riley, Lisa Johnson (ARRGT)
534 Theories and Methods of the Teaching of Technical and Professional Writing (3) This course begins with the rhetorical foundations of technical and professional writing, moves to models of inquiry and scholarship, and emphasizes connections between theory and pedagogy. Students become familiar with scholarly journals, foundational readings in technical and professional writing, and develop course material including a course proposal complete with theoretical and pedagogical justification, syllabi, assignments, and text choices.
More specifically, students will explore the tension between the practical and the theoretical that has fueled debates in technical and professional writing for decades through the work of Carolyn Miller, Lester Faigley, Steven Katz, Jennifer Slack (et al), and others. Students will consider Actor Network Theory as a theoretical framework by reading Aramis by Bruno Latour. Issues of design will be analyzed through a history of design provided by Charles Kostelnick and Michael Hassett in Shaping Information: The Rhetoric of Visual Conventions and several other design theorists such as Robin Williams, Anne Wysocki, Kristin Arola, and Cheryl Ball. Pedagogical approaches, informed by the literacy work of James Paul Gee, will be articulated in the development of course materials. In addition to developing these materials, students will analyze several scholarly journals in technical and professional writing to become familiar with current issues in the field, the range of issues considered, and how discussion of these issues may inform research possibilities in the field, as well as classroom approaches in teaching technical and professional writing courses. Patricia Ericsson (M 3:10-6:00)
548 Cultural Theory and Visual Culture (3) This graduate seminar explores theories of culture by such writers as Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Pierre Bourdieu, Guy Debord, Michael Foucalt, Antonio Gramsci, Stuart Hall, Karl Marx, Edward Said, and Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak. Emphasis will be placed on the readings that interpret literature, popular culture, and visual culture. Over the course of the semester each student will be required to work with another student and present two short, collaborative (5-7 page) papers on some aspect of the weekly assigned readings. The final research paper (15-20 pages) will apply a particular cultural theory or theories to a literary text, a cultural event, or a visual production. The final research paper will be accompanied by an oral presentation to the seminar. Joan Burbick (Tu 6:00-8:40 p.m.)
550 Writing Workshop in Literary Nonfiction (3) This course is a reading course and writing workshop in literary nonfiction, a genre that combines the elements of the short story with solid research and reporting. We will study how literary nonfiction is represented in the personal memoir, investigative reporting, travel writing, science, nature and sports writing, and the so-called New Journalism, which includes a sub-genre known as Gonzo Journalism. The reading list will be weighted toward nonfiction, but we will also read short stories to study what fiction lends in technique to literary journalism. Our reading will start with the early narratives of the Greek historian Herodotus and examine as well Homer’s epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey as reportage and travel writing. We will study other early examples of reportage. We will take our reading through the 19th and early 20th centuries with Rene Caillie, Stephen Crane, Mary Kingsley, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, George Orwell, Rebecca West, Wole Soyinka, Lewis Thomas, Barry Lopez, Tom Wolfe, John McPhee, Joan Didion and Hunter S. Thompson. We will conclude with some of the best known writers of today, including Scott Anderson, Diane Ackerman, Mark Kramer, Eddy Harris, Kim Barnes, Susan Orlean, Nega Mezlekia and Ted Conover.
Requirements: Be ready to read roughly a book every other week, with reading handouts. Papers include one 6-8-minute critical presentation on a work of literary nonfiction, a 6-8 page personal essay and a final 15 to 20-page creative final project which students have the option of making into a project for a magazine or literary journal. Students will also participate in regular in-class writing exercises, as well as workshop sessions focused on critiquing student work. Peter Chilson (W, 6:10-8:50 p.m.)
573 Introduction to the History of the Book: Theory & Practice (3) This course is designed to be what Meredith McGill called “an extended experiment in thinking about the relations of literary texts to their conditions of publication.” In order to perform this experiment with a mixture of theoretical lucidity and historical accuracy, our readings will range from the abstract and deeply theoretical to more historically focused studies. The goal in selecting the readings is to provide seminar members with a familiarity of foundational texts in the field as well as to develop significant exposure to more contemporary work. Pushing beyond the limitations typical to literary analysis that focus on text as an abstract and stable product of a single-author, we will trouble the distinctions that constitute basic literary analysis through a close inspection of the material contingencies of publication and authorship. We will organize our efforts around defining (and challenging) the meaning of several key terms that are essential to notions of literature in general and the book in particular including Author, Publisher, Editor, Edition, Book, and the Serial. In addition to regular weekly meetings, we will hold “labs” in special collections where students will design and present mini-projects several times during the semester. Students will be asked to select a focal “text” of their own that will be the focus of their final projects; the class will have the option of developing a larger group project in combination with a seminar paper. Readings will likely include selections from:
Barthes, Roland, “The Death of the Author.”
Blanchot, Maurice. The Book to Come
Charvat, William Literary Publishing in America
Darnton, Robert, “What is the History of Books?”
Davidson, Cathy N. Revolution and the Word.
Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever
Febvre, Lucian and Martin, Henri-Jean. The Coming of the Book
Foucault, Michael “What is an Author?”
Genette, Gerald. Paratexts
McGIll, Meredith. American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting.
Okker, Patricia, Social Stories
Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy
Zboray, A Fictive People.
Augusta Rohrbach (Tu 2:50-4:30)
580 Seminar in Medieval Literature: Medieval Drama(3) We will undertake a thorough survey of medieval drama, from its first examples in 10th-century liturgical representations and 12th century church drama to a brief consideration of early Tudor drama. We’ll spend most of time in between, on the English "cycle" and morality plays of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, particularly the "mystery" plays or four extant civic biblical dramas of York, Chester, Towneley, and N-Town. The Middle English and Tudor texts will be read in their dialects; the other texts will be read in translation. This multifarious drama will be considered in historical context and in the light of both early and contemporary critical perspectives.
Seminar participants will present several reports on essential cultural concepts and on critical articles and controversies. The semester will culminate in an informal “conference” in which students will present the fruits of their research; this material will be finalized as a seminar paper. Michael Hanly (Tu,Th 9:10-10:25)
598 Teaching Apprenticeship (pass/fail) All graduate students holding Teaching Assistantships must sign up for a total of three credits of English 598; normally one credit is taken during each of the first three semesters. The responsibilities for English 598 are as follows:
First Semester: Directed Study in the Writing Center (English 102); arrangements will be made by the Director of the Writing Center. Students attend several tutor-training sessions at the Writing Center, and they participate in English 102 meetings (normally held every other week).
Second Semester: Weekly Colloquium on Freshman Composition, to be attended by all first-time Teaching Assistants (normally held on Mondays from 12:10 – 1:00 p.m.). Arrangements will be made by the Director of Composition.
Third or Fourth Semester: Mentored Teaching – students work as apprentice teachers with a faculty member of their choice who is currently teaching an undergraduate course. They attend classes, discuss pedagogical strategies, plan assignments, teach occasionally, etc. Precise arrangements are negotiated by the student and faculty member.
Exceptions to the 598 sequence must be approved by the Director of Graduate Studies.
600 Special Projects or Independent Study (pass/fail) Graduate students may enroll in an ungraded independent study with a faculty member of their choice. In order to do this they must submit an independent study proposal to the Director of Graduate Studies; the proposal should previously have been signed by the faculty member in question. Forms for this proposal are available from the Graduate Program Coordinator.
Otherwise, there are two reasons to sign up for English 600:
- All new Teaching Assistants and returning graduate students who are currently teaching English 101 must sign up for one credit of English 600. This credit compensates their participation in a weekly staff meeting on the teaching of English 101. The meeting normally takes place on Wednesdays from 12:10 – 1:00 p.m.
- All graduate students enrolled in English 512 (Introduction to Graduate Study) must sign up for one credit of English 600. This credit awards attendance and participation in the Department’s ongoing Colloquium Series.
700 Master’s Research, Thesis and/or Examination (Variable credit) English 700 is for a THESIS DEGREE program ONLY and must consist of at least 4 hours on the M.A. program. Time, place, and instructor by arrangement.
702 Master’s Special Problems, Directed Study, and/or Examination (Variable credit) English 702 is for a NON-THESIS DEGREE program ONLY and must consist of 4 hours on the M.A. program, 2 of which must be in the semester of written and final exams. Time, place, and instructor by arrangement.
800 Doctoral Research, Dissertation, and/or Examination (Variable credit) Time, place, and instructor by arrangement; at least 20 hours are required on the program.
For additional information, contact the professors listed or Will Hamlin, Director of Graduate Studies (whamlin@wsu.edu)
