Seminar designed to focus on current theories, research, and practices of writing program administration, including curricular design and assessment, faculty development, assessment of student achievement, budget oversight, the politics of administration in higher education, and historical studies of writing program administration. Designed for all interested MA, MFA and PhD students, but particularly valuable for those considering administrative work in first-year writing programs, writing centers, or WAC/WID/CAC programs at a range of institutions (community colleges, small liberal arts colleges, and large research universities). Course involves the study of an existing program through contact with its director(s).

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

Research strategies for understanding how spoken and written language shapes activities (e.g., design, instruction, counseling, gaming interactions, e-commerce, etc.). Tracking patterned uses of language as verbal data (e.g., grammatically topically, thematically), formulating research questions, and designing studies to answer those questions through quantitative descriptive means. Sampling, collecting and managing data, developing coding schemes, achieving reliability, using descriptive statistical measures, and reporting the results.

Typically offered in Fall only

This course is offered alternate odd years

Readings, on-site research, document gathering, and analysis of writing in health and environmental science fields. Students study, practice, and present major forms of writing in their profession. Professional portfolio due at the end of the semester. Intended for students interested in exploring or pursuing writing careers in medicine, pharmaceuticals, nutrition, agriculture, ecology, or other health and environmental science-related industries, or professionals who wish to improve knowledge and skills.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing, Doctoral student, Master's student

Typically offered in Fall only

This course is offered alternate odd years

Advanced study of usability inspection, inquiry, and testing theories and practices related to instrumental and instructive texts (i.e., computer-related, legal, medical, pharmaceutical, financial, etc.). Practical experience testing a variety of texts using several testing methods, including completion of a substantial, lab-based usability test. For students planning careers in technical communication, human factors, software design, and multimedia design.

Prerequisite: ENG 517

Typically offered in Fall only

Study of Old English language with selections from important poems including Beowulf. Examination of the poetry in the light of various modern critical approaches.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

Study of major works of medieval English literature (exclusive of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales) in historical context, as reflections of and influences on social and cultural change. Includes works such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Langland's Piers Plowman and Malory's Morte d'Arthur.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

Research and scholarship in composition and the teaching of writing. Major theoretical perspectives (such as expressive, social, cognitive, feminist), current issues (such as audience, invention, revision, evaluation) and various research methods.

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

Introduction to research and scholarship in professional writing and writing in the workplace. Major theoretical perspectives for studying writing; current issues (such as usability, readability, collaboration, gender, authorship); and various research methods.

Typically offered in Fall only

Reading and evaluation of empirical research in written composition; guided practice in qualitative and quantitative methods. Basic principles of research; problem definition, research design and statistical analysis, description and assessment of written products and processes.

Typically offered in Spring only

Historical development of rhetorical theory with attention to contemporaneous rhetorical practice and philosophical trends. Major focus on the classical period with briefer coverage of medieval, Renaissance, 18th-century, and 19th-century developments. Implications for contemporary theory and practice, including pedagogical practice.

Typically offered in Fall only

This course is offered alternate even years

The relationships among rhetoric, scientific knowledge and technological development and of changes in how these relationships understood historically. Practice in critical analysis of scientific and technical discourse. Consideration of scientific and technical language and of public controversy concerning science and technology.

Typically offered in Fall only

Development, achievements, limitation of major critical methods in the 20th century, including neo-Aristotelian, generic, metaphoric, dramatistic, feminist, social-movement, fantasy-theme and postmodern approaches. Criticism of political discourse,institutional discourse, discourses of law, medicine, religion, education, science, the media. Relations between rhetorical and literary criticism and other forms of cultural analysis.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing or the equivalent of COM/ENG 321 or COM/ENG 411

Typically offered in Spring only

Advanced study of technical communication practice, including content management, document design, and technical editing and usability. For students planning careers as technical communicators.

P: ENG 314 or graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall only

Advanced study of publication and team management issues such as staffing, scheduling, cost-reduction and subcontracting. For students planning careers as technical communicators.

Prerequisite: ENG 517

Typically offered in Spring only

Concepts and practices related to multimedia information design, information architectures, human-computer interaction, and genre for complex websites.

Prerequisite: ENG 517

Typically offered in Spring only

Coverage of three areas: how to write science articles for a variety of mass media, how to think critically about how mass media cover science, and how to think critically about science itself. Preparation for careers not only in mass media, but also in scientific and technological organizations.

Typically offered in Fall only

Directed work experience for English Department graduate students including work-site mentoring and evaluation and concurrent academic assignments. Academic component includes reading and discussing articles relevant to the day-to-day practice of writing in nonacademic settings and completion of a project that connects academic and nonacademic components. Graduate Standing in an English Department graduate program required. Modest liability insurance fee required. Students must provide their own transportation to the practicum site.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate even years

Field-initiated research. Group and individual research topics focused on current sociolinguistic issues related to language variation and changes. Ethnographic and quantitative methods of analysis.

Prerequisite: ENG 525

Typically offered in Spring only

Introduction to theoretical linguistics, especially for students in language, writing and literature curricula. Phonology, syntax, semantics, history of linguistics; relation of linguistics to philosophy, sociology and psychology; application of theory to analysis of texts.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing or 12 hrs. in ENG

Typically offered in Fall only

Language variation description, theory, method and application; focus on regional, social, ethnic and gender varieties; sociolinguistic analysis, basic discourse analysis.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing or 12 hrs. in ENG

Typically offered in Fall only

Overview of major issues, theories, and research methods in contemporary discourse analysis. It explores how language as a form of social practice regulates social actions, relations and identities; how ways of speaking construct and are constructed by social order, cultural practice, and individual agency. Texts/discourses are analyzed to examine how speakers create meaning through formal linguistic choices; what the micro-organization of talk reveals about social order; how critical understanding of discourse helps to interpret complex processes of social life.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall only

A survey of sociophonetics: the study of language variation using modern phonetic techniques. Acoustic analysis of consonants, vowels, prosody, voice quality. Speech perception experiments and how they can be applied to a variety of issues. Applications to theoretical issues in sound change, sociolinguistics, phonetics and phonology, and cognition of language. Graduate standing required.

Typically offered in Fall only

Prose and poetry of the English Renaissance, excluding drama. Special attention to major authors, including Spenser and Sidney, and to intellectual, cultural and literary backgrounds and developments. Introduction to pertinent methods and issues of scholarly inquiry and critical interpretation.

Typically offered in Fall only

A close examination of the literature of England from 1600 to 1660 with emphasis on major literary figures and movements, development of important literary forms and genres and relationship between literary texts of this period and their philosophical, political and theological contexts. Some bibliographical and textural assignments. Content and focus varies according to instructor's emphasis, but writers covered usually include Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Marvell and Browne.

Typically offered in Spring only

Survey of American literature and thought from the beginning to adoption of the constitution. Representative works such as travel and exploration reports, Indian captivity narratives, diaries, journals, auto biographies, sermons and poetry.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

Introduction to theories concerning the structure, use, and interpretation of narratively organized discourse; application of methods of narrative analysis to both spoken and written narratives.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall only

This course is offered alternate even years

Linguistic, cultural and socio-political aspects of bi- and mulitlingualism in a global context. Issues and implications of bilingualism from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Topics inlcude: language maintenance and shift; child and adult bilingualism; relationship between language, culture and identity in bi- and multilingual situations; psycholinguistic aspects and lingustic outcomes of bilingual contact, such as code-switching, convergence and language attrition; language ideology, the politics of language choice and language policy; globalization and intercultural communication. Must hold graduate standing or get consent of instructor for advanced undergraduate students.

Typically offered in Spring only

The quantitative methods specific to sociolinguistic variation are examined in detail, focusing both on gaining experience using quantitative analysis software and on understanding fundamental concepts underlying the quantitative analysis of language variation. This course takes students beyond the basic familiarity with quantitative analysis gained in ENG 523, both in depth of investigation and in attention to the link between method and theory.

Typically offered in Fall only

This course explores laboratory and computational tools for investigating linguistic sound systems (e.g., speech perception experiments, speech production tools such as ultrasound imaging, and computational tools such as automated transcription and acoustic measurement). Requires enrollment in the Sociolinguistics MA or PhD program or permission of instructor.

Requisite: Enrollment in the Sociolinguistics concentrations of the MA English or PhD Sociology programs or permission of instructor.

Typically offered in Fall only

Rotating topics in world literature, including treatment of the subject's theoretical or methodological framework. Possible subjects: colonialism and literature; orality and literature; the Renaissance; the Enlightenment; translation; comparison ofNorth and South American literatures; African literary traditions; post-modernism and gender. Readings in English (original languages encouraged but not required).

Typically offered in Spring only

Survey of the history of literary criticism from Antiquity to early Modern period. Introduction to major theoretical definitions of literature and modes of practical criticism. Close study of Aristotle's Poetics, Sidney's Apology for Poetry, Pope's Essay on Criticism, Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, Eliot's essays and other landmark works in development of literary criticism.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing or PBS status

Typically offered in Fall only

A survey of literary theory in the 20th century from New Criticism to postmodernism. Examines the virtues and pitfalls of these approaches to the study of culture and literature. A course on issues, concepts, theorists and the sociohistorical and political context in which the theorists are writing. Taught in English. No formal pre-requisites. However, students who have not had advanced literature will be disadvantaged.

Typically offered in Fall only

This course invites students of all technical abilities to explore the ongoing digital transformation of resources, tools, and methods in the humanities. As an introduction, this course is a gateway into a variety of representative subfields in digital humanities. It is designed to generate curiosity about how this emerging arena of scholarly activity might intersect with students' own disciplines, research interests, and pedagogies. It aims to provide a working knowledge of: 1) backgrounds of new media and humanities computing, 2) debates and outlooks for the digital humanities today, as well as 3) hands-on experience collaborating on, creating, and critiquing digital humanities projects.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall only

Survey of African-American literature and its relationships to American culture, with an emphasis on fiction and poetry since 1945. Writers such as Bontemps, Morrison, Hurston, Baldwin, Hayden, Brooks, Naylor, Harper, and Dove.

Requirement: Junior Standing

GEP Humanities, GEP U.S. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, GEP U.S. Diversity

Typically offered in Fall and Summer

The works of the most important writers shaping modern African literature in English (and English translation). Selections from East, West, North and South Africa, spanning colonial through post-colonial Africa--from literature of protest and culture conflict to that of disillusionment, reappraisal and feminism.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

A study of British literature during the Romantic era (1780s-1830s), including poetry, periodicals, novels, drama, and criticism as well as their political and cultural contexts.

Typically offered in Fall only

Introduction to the study of Chaucer through an intensive reading of The Canterbury Tales.

R: Sophomore standing and above

GEP Global Knowledge, GEP Humanities

Typically offered in Fall only

Contemporary rhetorical theory covering the 20th and 21st centuries. Conceptual connections with and disruptions of the classical tradition and its, successors; relationship between rhetorical theory and philosophical trends, institutional histories, socioeconomic circumstances, and pedagogical needs. Attention to current issues such as the revival of invention, rhetorical agency, and ethics.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate odd years

The literary culture of the United States from 1820s through 1860s, setting works of transcendentalists and other romantic writers within sociohistorical contexts. Consideration of writing by women, slave narratives and popular fiction as well as such major figures as Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau and Melville.

Typically offered in Fall only

An intensive study of a particular phase of the Shakespeare canon. Emphasis will normally be on one dramatic genre (tragedy, comedy, history), but occasionally the focus may be more limited.

Typically offered in Fall and Summer

Explore how writers represented the tumultuous Victorian era (1837-1901), spanning responses to industrialization, political reform, religion, colonialism, class, gender, and race at home and abroad. The course covers an array of literary forms and seeks to include perspectives from within the British Isles as well as from across the British empire.

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

An intensive reading of Milton with attention to background materials in history and culture of seventeenth-century England.

Typically offered in Spring only

British writers of the period 1600-1790 studied in historical and cultural contexts. Usually includes works by Dryden, Swift, Pope, Defoe, Mandeville, Boswell and Johnson, but addition of other significant writers possible.

Typically offered in Fall only

Selected British novels of the Restoration and eighteenth century from a variety of contemporary critical perspectives. Such writers as Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Burney, Smollett and Austen.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

Study of selected British novels published between 1837 and 1901 in contexts of the development of the genre, historical period and current literary theory. Such writers as Dickens, Thackeray, Bronte, Trollope, Eliot, Meredith and Hardy.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

Study of literary culture of United States from 1860s to early 1900s with emphasis on fiction by such realists and naturalists as Twain, Howells, Chesnutt, James, Crane, Wharton, Dreiser and Norris. Inclusion of prose of writers such as Adams and DuBois possible.

Typically offered in Spring only

Examination of British fiction of this century and relationship of significant intellectual, historical and political issues. Inclusion of such writers as Joyce, Conrad, Woolf, Lawrence, Beckett and Murdoch possible but also post-colonial novelists as well.

Typically offered in Fall only

This course is offered alternate years

Development of English poetry from its late Victorian phase through Modernism to present post-war scene. Inclusion of such writers as Hardy, Yeats, Eliot, Smith, Auden, Larkin, Heaney, Wolcott and Hill possible.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

Survey of modern British drama from its beginnings at turn of the century to present.

Typically offered in Fall only

This course is offered alternate years

A survey of modern American drama centering on major figures.

Typically offered in Fall only

This course is offered alternate years

Introduction to literary culture of "the South," tracing the roots of the twentieth-century "Southern Renaissance" in such ante-bellum genres as plantation fiction, Southwestern humor, fugitive-slave narration and pastoral elegy. Examination of persistence of "Southern" writing within increasingly standardized culture of the United States.

Typically offered in Spring only

Development of modern American poetry from rebellion against the romantic and genteel verse of the 1890's; special attention to Robinson, Frost, Pound, Williams, Stevens and Ransom.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

An examination of representative American writers of novel and short fiction.

Typically offered in Spring only

Elizabethan and Jacobean drama from 1580 to 1642, excluding Shakespeare. Coverage of such writers as Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher, Heywood, Tourneur and Ford.

Prerequisite: ENG 261 and upper division or Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall only

This course is offered alternate years

Representative British plays of the period 1660-1780 studied in cultural, social and ethical contexts. Usually includes works by Etherege, Wycherley, Behn, Dry-den, Otway, Vanburgh, Farquhar, Congreve, Lillo, Gay, Goldsmith and Sheridan.

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

Post-1945 literary theory in relationship with representative avant-garde writers. Theoretical and argumentative essays in such areas as chaos theory, deconstruction, feminism and the limits of fiction. Fiction readings by Calvino, Pynchon, Barthelme, Cortazar and others.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate years

Application of visual theory to rhetoric and of rhetorical theory to visual forms of communication. Discussion and analysis may include advertising, photography, news and informational media, political communication, instructional material, scientific visualization, visual arts, public commemorative artifacts, internet and other digital media.

R: Graduate Students Only

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate even years

Variation in content. Selected problems and issues in literature.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

Variation in content. Selected problems and issues in rhetoric and writing.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

Variation in content. Selected problems and issues in linguistics.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

Variation in content. Selected problems and issues in film.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

Variation in content. Selected problems and issues in theory.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

Content varies. Selected topics and issues that cross disciplinary boundaries in English Studies. May be repeated for credit with different topics. Graduate standing is required.

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

Advanced work in techniques of writing fiction for students with substantial experience in writing. Workshop sessions with students commenting on each other's work.

Prerequisite: ENG 488 or ENG 489

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

Advanced work in techniques of writing poetry for students with substantial experience in writing. Workshop sessions with students commenting on each other's work.

Prerequisite: ENG 488 or ENG 489

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

Techniques special to a particular kind of writing within the traditional genres of prose, poetry or drama, such as "Speculative Fiction" or "The Long Poem or Poetic Sequence." Various subjects.

Prerequisite: ENG 588 or 589

Typically offered in Spring only

Aesthetic develpments and historical importance of national cinema traditions in specific cultural contexts. Focus on the relation between cinema and linguistic, literary and artistic develpments within a national setting or in regional or international contexts. Topics, which change each year, may include Italian Neorealism, French New Wave, and British Social Realism.

Typically offered in Spring only

Critical approaches to focused film topics involving film genres, directorial styles, or trends within a national cinema. Topics will vary from semester to semester. Students cannot obtain credit for both ENG 492 and ENG 592.

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

Typically offered in Fall, Spring, and Summer

Preparation for teaching college composition. Introduction to pedagogical principles and practices. Practice in setting course goals, designing writing assignments to meet those goals, developing instructional activities to support assignments, andevaluating student writing. The course is scheduled as a 5-day workshop before classes begin, followed by weekly meetings and mentoring during the fall semester.

Prerequisite: ENG 511 and mentored assistantship in ENG 101

Typically offered in Fall only

A seminar and workshop for graduate students in empirical research fields working on grant proposals, theses and dissertations, papers for professional journals, conference proposals, and other significant research texts. Intensive practice and feedback on writing, grounded in an introduction to theory and research on writing processes, products, and contexts. Requirements include three major writing projects designed by the student, review and discussion of drafts written by other workshop members, analysis and presentation of discipline-specific communication patterns and practices.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall only

Intensive study of a specific topic from various specializations of the English faculty. Negotiation between the student and the director for variable credit and approved by Director of Graduate Studies.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Fall, Spring, and Summer

This course initiates students into ways of thinking and practicing in English literary studies. We will explore critical traditions, research methods, and emerging approaches, including literary criticism and theory, globalization, transnationalism, and postcolonialism in literature, together with introductions to cultural studies, rhetoric, composition, film studies, and media studies as they influenced literary criticism and theories. The course also prepares students to begin formulating their own academic and professional pathways with attention to practical considerations of how to become a professional in graduate school. You will become familiar with faculty from the department, develop research plans, and discover resources to start trajectories that include careers in writing, media, and teaching.

Typically offered in Fall only

Capstone course for M.S. in Technical Communication. Students engage in major semester-long individual project under direction of instructor.

Prerequisite: ENG 518

Typically offered in Spring only

Individual capstone project in English Studies. Topic and mode of study determined in consultation with faculty project advisor. For students in the final semester of the English MA program.

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

Teaching experience under the mentorship of faculty who assist the student in planning for the teaching assignment, observe and provide feedback to the student during the teaching assignment, and evaluate the student upon completion of the assignment.

Prerequisite: Master's student

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

For students in non-thesis master's programs who have completed all credit hour requirements for their degree but need to maintain half-time continuous registration to complete incomplete grades, projects, final master's exam, etc.

Prerequisite: Master's student

Typically offered in Fall only

For students in non thesis master's programs who have completed all other requirements of the degree except preparing for and taking the final master's exam.

Prerequisite: Master's student

Typically offered in Fall, Spring, and Summer

Instruction in research and research under the mentorship of a member of the Graduate Faculty.

Prerequisite: Master's student

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

Thesis research.

Prerequisite: Master's student

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

For graduate students whose programs of work specify no formal course work during a summer session and who will be devoting full time to thesis research.

Prerequisite: Master's student

Typically offered in Summer only

For students who have completed all credit hour requirements and full-time enrollment for the master's degree and are writing and defending their theses.

Prerequisite: Master's student

Typically offered in Summer only

Focus on two-way relationship between linguistic theory and literacy. Metalinguistic awareness and acquisition of literacy, orthography and phonology, oral vs. written language, oral vs. literate cultures, and metalinguistic assumptions in linguistic theory.

Prerequisite: ENG 525

Typically offered in Spring only

Overview of major issues, theories, and research methods in contemporary discourse analysis. It explores how language as a form of social practice regulates social actions, relations and identities; how ways of speaking construct and are constructed by social order, cultural practice, and individual agency. Texts/discourses are analyzed to examine how speakers create meaning through formal linguistic choices; what the micro-organization of talk reveals about social order; how critical understanding of discourse helps to interpret complex processes of social life.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing

Typically offered in Spring only

Although the field of sociolinguistic variation has developed its own body of theory, its central questions continue to call for engagement with theory in related socio-cultural disciplines. This course examines sociolinguists' explicit and implicit incorporation of social theory into the analysis of language variation; it also explores the many ways in which social theory could yet enrich, and be enriched by, empirical sociolinguistic analysis.

Prerequisite: ENG 523

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate even years

This course examines the nature of ethnolinguistic variation in the English-speaking diaspora, with particular attention to the ethnic varieties in the United States, including African American English, Hispanic English, and Native American English.

Prerequisite: ENG 525

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate odd years

This course will introduce the main research concentrations and methods in Applied Sociolinguistics, including first language acquisition and teaching, second language learning, bilingualism, and clinical assessment and treatment of communication disorders. Students will be introduced to the basic foundations of language variation from linguistic and sociocultural/historical perspectives and learn how sociolinguistic variation affects clinical and educational processes and organizations.

Prerequisite: ENG 525

Typically offered in Spring only

This course is offered alternate odd years

Intensive exploration of specialized or emerging topics in an area of language, literature, rhetoric, film, or other aspect of English studies. Emphasis on student research and writing. May be used to test and develop new courses. May be repeated for credit.

Typically offered in Fall and Spring

This course is offered alternate odd years

Intensive study of a specific topic from various specializations of the English faculty. Negotiation between the student and the director for the variable credit and approved by the director of Graduate Studies. May be repeated for credit.

Typically offered in Fall and Spring