Graduate Courses Fall 2025
ENGL 709: Critical Theory: Problems & Principles, Marx and Cultural Criticism
Instructor: Phillip Drake
24458 | TuTh 11:00-12:15 PM | Wescoe 3001A
This course provides an introduction to Marxian approaches to literary and cultural criticism. After familiarizing ourselves with key Marxian terms and concepts (e.g., alienation, dialectic, ideology, materialism, surplus value, etc.), the class will focus on applying Marxian approaches to literary and cultural analysis, while also exploring areas of controversy and conflict that shape understandings and practices of Marxian critique. Assignments will include papers, presentations, and several informal reaction papers. This is a useful course for students who plan to enroll in graduate programs in any disciplinary field, as basic knowledge of Marxian theoretical models and their implications will be a valuable asset for advanced study. Likely Texts: The Marx-Engels Reader, second edition, ed. Robert Tucker (W. W. Norton & Company); Marx, Capital: Volume 1 (Penguin Classics); Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth; Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks; Wells, The Time Machine; Capek, RUR; Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; and other literary and critical works that will be posted on canvas.
ENGL 751: Fiction Writing III
Instructor: Silvia Park
26556 | M 3:30-6:00 PM | Wescoe 3001A
Practice in the writing of fiction under the direction of a member of the department working in conjunction with one or more writers in residence. Membership is limited to students who submit, well in advance enrollment, manuscripts showing unusual ability. May be repeated for credit. The focus of this graduate workshop will tilt speculative fiction but all genres are welcome.
ENGL 790: The History of the Book in Indigenous Intellectual and Literary History
Instructor: Robert Warrior
26557 | M 12:00-2:20 PM | Wescoe 3001A
ENGL 800: Methods, Theory & Professionalism
Instructor: Kathryn Conrad
22019 | Th 2:00-2:50 PM | Wescoe 1045 - Lawrence
English 800 prepares students for graduate coursework and exams, the writing of a scholarly thesis or dissertation, and the submission of work to the larger scholarly community. Assignments facilitate the acquisition of skills and tools essential to these activities. Across the Fall and Spring semesters, students will acquire strategies for reading scholarly writing; produce a range of professional genres, including conference proposals; learn more about their selected areas of study and the best venues for sharing work in those areas; and develop a comprehensive plan for their graduate studies. In the Spring semester, in addition to continuing our exploration of methods, we will learn about research resources in English Studies, practice writing conference abstracts, conduct more research on areas of scholarly focus, and further develop individual academic plans.
ENGL 801: Study and Teaching of Writing
Instructor: Sarah Ngoh
18960 | TuTh 9:30-10:20 AM | Wescoe 4037 - Lawrence
English 801 aims to support new GTAs’ teaching of first-year writing by providing structured opportunities to reflect on their teaching practices in dialogue with other writing teachers. Over the course of the fall and spring semesters, GTAs will examine perspectives on writing pedagogy that inform their practices in the classroom (from responding to student writing, to facilitating writing groups and peer review, to creating inclusive classrooms, etc.) and will produce their own pedagogical and professional materials, including a research-based pedagogical application, a teaching statement, and a digital teaching portfolio. As such, this course will give GTAs an opportunity to critically examine and reflect on their teaching practices as they work to develop pedagogical approaches that they can build on throughout their teaching careers.
ENGL 904: Seminar in Composition Theory: Affective Rhetorics: Emotion, Embodiment, Empathy
Instructor: Mary Jo Reiff
26558 | TuTh 12:30-1:45 PM | Wescoe 3001A
This seminar will explore how the study of affect is integral to composition theory, research, and teaching, with a focus on the role of sensory and bodily responses, embodied memories, and emotions in the invention, production, reception, and circulation of texts. We will begin by exploring the interdisciplinarity of “the affective turn” and its multiple theoretical frameworks (cultural studies, trauma studies, feminisms, new materialism, and critical race theory), with a focus on the overlaps/distinctions between affect and emotion (Ahmed, Massumi, Nelson). We will then focus on varied approaches to affect in rhetoric and writing studies including: intersections with feminist and embodied rhetorics, the workings of “affective publics” (Edbauer, Papacharissi), the affective dimensions of political rhetoric (demagoguery, post-truth rhetoric, and affective manipulation), the role of affect in mobilization/social action within activist rhetorics, and the critical relationship between emotion, affect, and social media identity formation and relationality (what Fernandes, Homer, and Sano-Franchini call “sneaky rhetorics” and the affective politics of lurking). In addition, we will examine the affective dimensions of pedagogy (in research on writing feedback, assessment, revision), the emotional labor of teaching and administering writing programs, the effects of emotion and student disposition on motivation and learning, and ways to address “pedagogic violence” through contemplative pedagogies and critical pedagogies of empathy. Because affects flow through and emerge from a set of relations that inform how we experience, respond to, interact, process, communicate, are categorized in, and act in the world, there are multiple points of entry for scholars from all areas of English Studies—and related areas—to explore how affect and affective attachments (and the relational, embodied, and emergent dimensions of affect) are integral to their own research.
ENGL 980: Seminar in: Love’s Labour’s Lost and the Crises of English Studies
Instructor: Jonathan Lamb
26559 | W 2:00-4:30 PM | Wescoe 3001A
This seminar will offer a “state of the field” of English Studies by way of a William Shakespeare play. We will begin by studying Shakespeare’s comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost, which famously begins with the founding of a scholarly academy, features some of Shakespeare’s most focused representations of scholarship, and ends with the intrusion of death and a failed comic resolution. These and other features position Love’s Labour’s Lost to help us explore the crises of English Studies in the twenty-first century. We will use our study of the play as a lens through which to consider major recent shifts in English: the so-called “material turn” and “method wars,” problems of relevance and evidence, questions of canonicity and curriculum, new phenomenologies of race and gender, the relationship of major subfields (i.e., literary studies, rhetoric and composition, and creative writing), and more. We will contemplate the future of English Studies in the face of methodological, epistemological, institutional, and formal crises. Students will complete several short assignments and a long final paper.
