Texas Tech University

Spring 2018 Course Offerings

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ENGL 2383.160 Bible as Literature

Dr. Ryan Hackenbracht
MWF 11:00-11:50 AM
CRN: 56403

"Till heaven and earth pass," Jesus declared, "not one jot or tittle shall pass from the law," and two thousand years later, the Bible continues to be read, studied, and taught in cultures across the world. Yet the Bible is in fact composed of many different books, and our objective over the course of the semester is to learn about the genres and styles of scriptural writing. We will cover such genres as Jesus' parables, Paul's letters, wisdom literature, Jewish epic, and apocalypse, and we will discuss topics like grace, sacrifice and the scapegoat, just war theory, and religious environmentalism. Examining the Bible's beautiful language, brilliant imagery, and fascinating symbolism offers us an exciting, new way of understanding the most popular book in human history.

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ENGL 2307.160 Introduction to Fiction

Dr. Marta Kvande
TR 11:00-12:20 PM
CRN: 29797

Who gets to speak in fiction? Whose story gets told? How do short stories and novels frame those stories to make us think? What effect does it have when Frankenstein has many narrators or when Jane Eyre has only one narrator? How do these voices shape how we respond to these fictions? In this course, we'll study the basic elements of fiction, like characters, plot, setting, and so on, and we'll think about how those elements work together to create meaning. Readings with include short stories as well as novels like Frankenstein and Jane Eyre. Assignments will be multiple choice exams.

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ENGL 2311: Introduction to Technical Writing

Multiple Selections with various instructions

Prerequisite: ENGL 1301 and 1302. Introduction to patterns of writing used in reports and letters for business, industry, and technology.

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ENGL 2351.D01 Introduction to Creative Writing (Distance)

Brian Larsen
M 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN: 31423

As a society, we tend to view writers through two primary lenses - either they are crazy, depressed, hermit-like introverts or witty, boisterous, life-of-the-party extroverts. For every Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald there is an Emily Dickinson or a Thomas Pynchon

So what does it mean, then, "to write" or to be a "creative writer?" This online course explores those questions on an introductory level. We will wrestle with poems and stories from a variety of authors and covering a variety of themes. We will engage their techniques and their forms; we will "try on" some of their habits and even begin (or continue) our own writing journey by writing our own original poems and stories

Assignments will include reading original poems and stories by established writers; writing responses; making an introduction video; keeping a writing journal; participating in class discussions; generating three original poems and two original short stories; responding to the creative work of peers; making a revision plan; and, to cap off the semester, turning in a final portfolio.

While there are no pre-requisites for this class, an attitude of critical and creative exploration is required for success. As well, this intensive reading and writing course fulfills the Humanities requirement for Texas Tech University's Core Curriculum.

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ENGL 2351.D02 Introduction to Creative Writing (Distance)

Brian Larsen
W 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN: 55208

As a society, we tend to view writers through two primary lenses - either they are crazy, depressed, hermit-like introverts or witty, boisterous, life-of-the-party extroverts. For every Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald there is an Emily Dickinson or a Thomas Pynchon

So what does it mean, then, "to write" or to be a "creative writer?" This online course explores those questions on an introductory level. We will wrestle with poems and stories from a variety of authors and covering a variety of themes. We will engage their techniques and their forms; we will "try on" some of their habits and even begin (or continue) our own writing journey by writing our own original poems and stories

Assignments will include reading original poems and stories by established writers; writing responses; making an introduction video; keeping a writing journal; participating in class discussions; generating three original poems and two original short stories; responding to the creative work of peers; making a revision plan; and, to cap off the semester, turning in a final portfolio.

While there are no pre-requisites for this class, an attitude of critical and creative exploration is required for success. As well, this intensive reading and writing course fulfills the Humanities requirement for Texas Tech University's Core Curriculum.

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ENGL 2371.002 Language in Multicultural America"

Dr. Aaron Braver
MWF 1:00-1:50 PM
CRN: 55246

Language does more than just convey facts - it carries a great deal of social information, too. This course examines the relationship between language and social interaction in the United States. We will look at how variables like group membership, racial, gender, and sexual identity, power asymmetries, and other social dynamics impact the way people speak and also the way people interpret what they hear. We will also look at the ways in which language affects politics/policy and vice versa.

In addition to course readings and lectures, we will be doing hands-on data collection, learning the methods involved in gathering sociolinguistic data, forming and testing hypotheses, and analyzing evidence from a variety of sources.

Specific topics we will cover include the "Observer's Paradox," regional identity (especially Texan identity), official languages, sex and gender, and languages in politics.

*This class fulfills the multicultural requirement.*

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ENGL 2388.001 Introduction to Film Studies

Dr. Ben Rogerson
MW 9:00-9:50 AM
CRN: 25744

    Linked Discussion*:
  • F 9:00-9:50 AM CRN 56374
  • *You must register for the course and discussion section.*

This course is intended to introduce students to the techniques, the vocabulary, and ultimately the “rhetoric” of cinema. Although the course is designed to carefully explore the formal components of filmmaking, most of which students intuitively understand, the ultimate purpose of the class is to inquire into the effects that these formal components produce. Why would a given director use a wide-angle lens in a particular scene, and what does such a lens, or a long-take, or an abrupt cut accomplish? These and other similar questions determine the first half of the course, whereas the second half of the class will move into considerations of the significance and specificity of different modes of cinema—narrative, documentary, and avant-garde. What distinguishes the cinema, apart from all other arts, and what makes this “Seventh Art” at once so conceptually rich and so potentially deceptive?

Selected films for outside viewing may include the following (many of which are available for free online, but some of which must be rented):

  • A Trip to the Moon (Méliès, 1902)
  • Entr'acte (Clair, 1294)
  • Our Hospitality (Keaton, 1923)
  • Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929)
  • Un Chien Andalou (Buñel and Dali, 1929)
  • Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren and Hammid, 1943)
  • Singin' in the Rain (Kelly and Donen, 1952)
  • Night and Fog (Resnais, 1956)
  • L'Eclisse (Antonioni, 1962)
  • (nostalgia) (Frampton, 1971)
  • Do the Right Thing (Lee, 1989)
  • Jerry Maguire (Crowe, 1996)
  • Stories We Tell (Polley, 2012)
  • Whiplash (Chazelle, 2014)

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ENGL 2388.160 Introduction to Film Studies Lecture

Dr. Wyatt Phillips
MW 3:00-3:50 PM
CRN: 56364

    Linked Discussion Sections*:
  • TH 2:00-2:50 PM CRN 56371
  • TH 3:30-4:20 PM CRN 56367
  • TH 5:00-5:50 PM CRN 56368
  • F 1:00-1:50 PM CRN 56371
  • F 2:00-2:50 PM CRN 56370
  • F 3:00-3:50 PM CRN 56372
  • *You must register for the course and one discusion section.*

This course offers an introduction to film analysis and moving image comprehension. The course emphasizes critical viewing and writing, with special attention paid to the aesthetic form of films, cinema's approach to storytelling, and its relationship with broader cultural contexts. We will view and discuss films such as The Matrix (1999), Lost in Translation (2003), The Searchers (1956), and Do the Right Thing (1989).

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ENGL 2391.001 Introduction to Literary Studies

Dr. Ben Rogerson
MWF 10:00-10:50 AM
CRN 47846

This class will serve to introduce students to the practice of literary study. We will develop the skills for close reading and interpretation, for sustained academic arguments about literature, and for obtaining a familiarity with different literary approaches and critical vocabularies. To develop such skills, we will consider a variety of texts in different genres—prose, poetry, and drama—and spend considerable time discussing and, furthermore, writing about texts.

In order to focus our investigations into literary studies, this course will concentrate on the idea of maturation and adulthood. In turn, our assigned texts will depict the historical development and mutability of ideas about adulthood in the United States as the nation undergoes political, cultural, social, and technological upheavals.

    Selected texts may include the following:
  • Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920)
  • William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)
  • Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (1953)
  • James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues" (1957)
  • John Berryman, selections from 77 Dream Songs (1964)
  • Sylvia Plath, selections from <emAriel (1965)
  • August Wilson, Fences (1983)
  • Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984)
  • Jhumpa Lahiri, selections from Interpreters of Maladies (1999)
  • Jennifer Egan, selections from A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010)

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ENGL 2391.002 Introduction to Literary Studies

Dr. Ben Rogerson
MWF 11:00-11:50 AM
CRN 31516

This class will serve to introduce students to the practice of literary study. We will develop the skills for close reading and interpretation, for sustained academic arguments about literature, and for obtaining a familiarity with different literary approaches and critical vocabularies. To develop such skills, we will consider a variety of texts in different genres—prose, poetry, and drama—and spend considerable time discussing and, furthermore, writing about texts.

In order to focus our investigations into literary studies, this course will concentrate on the idea of maturation and adulthood. In turn, our assigned texts will depict the historical development and mutability of ideas about adulthood in the United States as the nation undergoes political, cultural, social, and technological upheavals.

    Selected texts may include the following:
  • Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920)
  • William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)
  • Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (1953)
  • James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues" (1957)
  • John Berryman, selections from 77 Dream Songs (1964)
  • Sylvia Plath, selections from <emAriel (1965)
  • August Wilson, Fences (1983)
  • Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984)
  • Jhumpa Lahiri, selections from Interpreters of Maladies (1999)
  • Jennifer Egan, selections from A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010)

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ENGL 2391.004 Introduction to Literary Studies

Dr. John Samson
MWF 3:00-3:50 PM
CRN 31520

The purpose of this course is to provide students with an introduction to literary interpretation and analysis: to determine what details in a text are significant, to find and develop topics from the text, and to write analytical essays. Students will read texts in the three major genres—fiction, drama, and poetry—and be introduced to some of the major concerns of literary studies—gender, class, and ethnicity; the modern and postmodern worlds; and romanticism and realism. Students will write three shorter interpretive papers and one longer paper involving primary and/or secondary research. Texts: Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies; Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The Silent Partner; William Shakespeare, Hamlet; Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; John Keats, selected poems; and Langston Hughes, selected poems.

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ENGL 2391.006 Introduction to Literary Studies

Dr. Bruce Clarke
TTh 11:00-12:20 PM
CRN 56235

In Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle's An Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and Theory, a text that will guide our discussions throughout this class, the authors remind their readers that when great literature is given proper attention, the effects will reliably be “powerful, complex, and strange.” Such responses will also be our aim: to make literary experience and study as compelling and provocative as possible. Additionally, on a practical level, in this section of English 2391 you will develop skills that will prepare you for success not just in English courses, but also in your majors in any discipline. You will practice advanced analytical, research, and writing skills through engaging the key forms and themes of poetry, fiction, and drama; comedy and tragedy; prose narrative and cinematic narrative; and key concepts and methods of literary criticism and theory. Studying a select handful of traditional and contemporary texts, you will have ample time and guidance over the semester to produce four literary papers of increasing depth. There will be four short reading reports in preparation for the four essays, a midterm and a final exam.

    Texts:
  • Bennett and Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and Theory (9781138119031)
  • A. S. Blatt, Possession (9780679735908)
  • S. T. Coleridge, Cristabel
  • S. T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
  • Debra Granik, director, Winter's Bone, DVD
  • John Keats, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"
  • MLA Handbook, 8th edition (9781603292627)
  • Bill Nichols, "Film as a Language" (exerpt), from Engaging Cinema
  • William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (9780743477543)
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (9780743484954)
  • Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone (9780316066419)

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ENGL 3302.001 Anglo-Saxon Literature

Dr. Brian McFadden
TR 9:30-10:50 AM
CRN 31530

This course will look at three major figures and movements in Anglo-Saxon England to analyze how the scholarly translation and transmission of early texts affected the English literary milieu. The first section of the course will look at the age of Bede and representative Old English and Anglo-Latin texts from the eighth to the mid-ninth centuries; it will include Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Gildas's On the Fall of Britain, the Life of St. Wilfrid, The Life of St. Cuthbert, and The Life of St. Ceolfrid, as well as the Liber Monstrorum (Book of Monsters), Beowulf, and The Voyage of St. Brendan. The middle section of the course will look at the impact of the reign of Alfred the Great and his translation project on English letters; readings will include selections from Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, Augustine's Soliloquies, and Gregory the Great's On Pastoral Care, and selected Psalms, in addition to Asserius's Life of Alfred and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The last section of the course will examine the Benedictine Reform of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, with its focus on increasing Latin learning and language skills in the monastic community, as well as translations and/or compositions in English for the purpose of preaching. We will examine homiletic and social works of Ælfric and Wulfstan, as well as adapted and translated scholarly and scriptural texts such as Judith, The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, Physiologus, the Exeter Book Riddles, the Wonders of the East, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and Dream of the Rood. Course requirements will be a midterm examination, a final examination, three response papers, and an annotated bibliography with a short explanatory essay.

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ENGL 3305.001 British Renaissane Literature: Specters of Monstrosity

Dr. Ryan Hackenbracht
MWF 9:00-9:50 AM
CRN 49622

This course surveys English poetry, prose, and drama c. 1500-1700 with a focus on major authors and classic texts. Our guiding theme is monstrosity: how did Renaissance writers conceive of the monstrous, and how did interaction with this imagined “other” shape cultural beliefs and mores? How did specters of monstrosity allow writers to redefine life, vitality, and the human experience? From Spenser's apocalyptic dragon to Cavendish's Science Fiction aliens and Milton's fallen angels, Renaissance literature is filled with monsters who continue to pique the imagination and whose existence beg larger questions of how and where humanity fits within the cosmos. Over the course of the semester, we will study a range of genres—including epic, lyric, tragedy, romance, and prose fiction—and a number of historical phenomena, including Protestantism, proto-feminism, travel to the New World, the new science, and the rise of democracy.

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ENGL 3309.001 Modern and Contemporary British Literature

Dr. Bruce Clarke
T Th 4:00-5:20 PM
CRN 51670

This course will look at how literary narratives written or set in 20th century England have portrayed the interplay between science and society. It is good to recall that coming out of the 19th century, England was at the forefront of scientific and technological developments. And over the last century, British literature has recorded and reflected on the ways that scientific ideas related to biological evolution, physical energy, the force of entropy, and complex systems have interacted with a host of social schemes and concerns. These stories narrate or dramatize worlds seized by dubious notions such as biological degeneration and social eugenics, as well as by wider anxieties over political order versus cultural chaos, over the possibilities of individual and social renovation through science and technology, over visions of global utopia versus specters of planetary catastrophe. Some of these texts are considered science fiction, while others are categorized simply as mainstream works that engage scientific themes. As we encounter them, we will also think about theories of observation as a mode of attention that draws the scientific study of nature together with the literary study of narratives.

    Texts:
  • H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (Signet Classics: 9780451528551)
  • H. G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau (Signet Classics: 9780451529893)
  • H. G. Wells, The War of the World (Signet Classics: 9780451522764)
  • Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (Harper Perennial: 9780060929879)
  • Arthur C. Clarke Childhood's End (Del Ray: 9780345444059)
  • J. G. Ballard, Best Short Stories (Picador: 9780312278441)
  • Naomi Mitchison, Solution Three (Feminist Press: 9781558610965)
  • Tom Stoppard, Arcadia (Faber & Faber: 9780571169344)
  • Ronald Wright, A Scientific Romance (Picador: 9780312199999)

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ENGL 3323.001 Early American Lit: Literature and Culture of Colonial North America the Early U.S. Republic

Dr. Daniel Hutchins
MWF 11:00-11:50 AM
CRN 52641

This course is a survey of the literature and culture from the colonial British Atlantic World through the first decades of the United States Republic. It begins with early narratives of discovery and settlement, and stretches to the fiction, poetry and public performances of the early national period. We will consider a wide range of writings, from an official “history” of the Puritan settlers to Christian sermons written by a converted Native American to the autobiography of freed slave. Our texts will also represent numerous genres, including diaries, lyric poetry, novels and political tracts. The chief objective of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the history and major writers of this period and to learn the critical terminology necessary to read and discuss its varied literature. While we will focus on printed and written materials, we will also consider other forms of media including sermons, songs, performances, and popular ballads. As we will see, the United States literary tradition does not simply exist in the past but continues to shape the present we share.

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ENGL 3324.001 19th Century American Literature

Dr. John Samson
MWF 4:00-4:50 PM
CRN 49628

In 1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner coined the term “The Gilded Age,” which would come to characterize American society in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. The obsession with wealth and its ostentatious display gave rise to a literature that was highly critical of the resulting problems in social class, gender roles, and political corruption. We will begin with Thorstein Veblen's 1899 The Theory of the Leisure Class, an ironic and sarcastic analysis of the ideology and practices of the period (it's also great nonfictional literature). Then we will read and discuss five significant novelistic explorations of these themes: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's The Silent Partner, Henry Adams's Democracy, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, William Dean Howells's A Hazard of New Fortunes, and Frank Norris's McTeague.

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ENGL 3325.002 Modern and Contemporary American Literature: Rethinking the Maternal

Professor Taryn Gilbert
MWF 1:00-1:50 PM
CRN 31638

This course will introduce students to a range of fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction published by American writers focusing on the subject of motherhood. Women writers throughout history have written with affirmation, anger, and ambivalence about motherhood, perhaps the most complex of any female experience. In her treatise on motherhood, Of Woman Born, Adrienne Rich distinguishes between two definitions: motherhood as experience, which encompasses the potentially powerful relationship of any woman to her reproductive capacities and her children; and motherhood as institution, which in a patriarchal society tries to keep women and children under male control. The institution of motherhood is underwritten by a series of unexamined assumptions: that motherhood is woman's destiny, her sacred calling; that mothers lack further identities and are so selfless as not to need any; that mothers feel only tenderness for their children, never resentment or rage. The experience of motherhood, varied according to race and class and geographic location, acknowledges that maternity is one part of the life process for many—not all—women rather than identity for all time. Though the course will predominately focus on motherhood, the texts also examine other aspects of gendered experiences such as marriage, sexuality, self-expression, and independence. And although female authors dominate the course texts, the class will also examine selected male authors who focus on motherhood; more specifically, the class will consider how these authors deal with the feminine voice and subject matter in comparison to female authors. And, finally, as women rethink the maternal in both institutional and experiential terms, Rich claims, its landscape shifts; “the words are being spoken, are being written down; the taboos are being broken, the masks of motherhood are cracking through.”

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ENGL 3325.003 Modern and Contemporary American Literature

Dr. Yuan Shu
T Th 4:00-5:20 PM
CRN 49629

This course explores how contemporary American authors articulate their visions and senses of American culture and society in response to the social, political, economic, cultural, and technological changes in the U.S. and around the globe since the 1960s. Beginning with an examination of the postmodernist concept, we read texts that engage formalistic experimentation and innovation and feel the ways in which these authors negotiate and represent our changing senses of humanity in our culture and society. We then scrutinize the writing of ethnic minorities and women and explore the new critical vigor and sensibilities that they have brought to U.S. literature and culture. As a gesture of conclusion, we finally investigate work that reflects a sense of post-9/11 globalism in the U.S. in the twenty-first century.

    Texts:
  • Paul Lauter, The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. E
  • Don DeLillo, Libra
  • David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly
  • Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
  • Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres
  • Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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ENGL 3351.001 Creative Writing: Poetry

Dr. John Poch
MWF 10:00-10:50 AM
CRN 31673

This is a dynamic class in writing poems. The first few weeks we'll read amazing poems that will get us all on the same page as to what a poem is and how the best poems work. Then we'll start writing poems. In a traditional workshop setting, we'll give each other thoughtful feedback and continue building as we go, writing a new poem each week. We'll also have an independent project in the TTU Letterpress Studio where we design and print (old school, on a printing press with wood or lead type) a poem of your devising.

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ENGL 3351.002 Creative Writing: Non-Fiction - Cut to the Quick

Dr. D. Gilson
MWF 11:00-11:50 AM
CRN 31675

Titled Cut to the Quick, this course will focus on the sub-genre of the flash essay. Situated somewhere between prose poem and micro-narrative, flash essays provide us the path to lyrically explore a topic while taking both narrative and syntactical leaps. Or, as Bernard Cooper says, the flash essay teaches us “an alertness to detail, a quickening of the senses, and a focusing of the literary lens until one has magnified some small aspect of what it means to be human.” During the course of the semester, we will approach our classroom like a writing lab, conducting in-class writing experiments and workshops of each other's work. We will write five flash essays — 1,000 words or less — to be revised in a final portfolio

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ENGL 3351.003 Creative Writing: Poetry

Dr. John Poch
MWF 12:00-12:50 PM
CRN 50429

This is a dynamic class in writing poems. The first few weeks we'll read amazing poems that will get us all on the same page as to what a poem is and how the best poems work. Then we'll start writing poems. In a traditional workshop setting, we'll give each other thoughtful feedback and continue building as we go, writing a new poem each week. We'll also have an independent project in the TTU Letterpress Studio where we design and print (old school, on a printing press with wood or lead type) a poem of your devising.

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ENGL 3351.010 Creative Writing: Fiction

Dr. Katie Cortese
TR 12:30-1:50 PM
CRN 55214

In this course, students will write and critique short stories, as well as analyze canonical and contemporary examples of the form by such authors as Roxane Gay, Sherman Alexie, Randa Jarrar, Karen Russell, Gish Jen, and more. Students will write several short exercises and a longer story to be critiqued in a large-group format. Class discussions will focus on the craft of writing stories as seen in published examples and highlighted in assigned craft talks. Elements discussed will include but not be limited to aspects of character, dialogue, style, setting, point of view, endings, and other topics as they arise. As students learn to read, write, and critique short stories, they will also broaden their experience of what it means to be human.

The assigned textbooks will be Flash Fiction Forward ed. by James Thomas and Robert Shapard, and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

Fulfills multicultural requirement.

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ENGL 3351.012 Creative Writing: Fiction

Dr. Katie Cortese
TR 2:00-3:20 PM
CRN 55216

In this course, students will write and critique short stories, as well as analyze canonical and contemporary examples of the form by such authors as Roxane Gay, Sherman Alexie, Randa Jarrar, Karen Russell, Gish Jen, and more. Students will write several short exercises and a longer story to be critiqued in a large-group format. Class discussions will focus on the craft of writing stories as seen in published examples and highlighted in assigned craft talks. Elements discussed will include but not be limited to aspects of character, dialogue, style, setting, point of view, endings, and other topics as they arise. As students learn to read, write, and critique short stories, they will also broaden their experience of what it means to be human.

The assigned textbooks will be Flash Fiction Forward ed. by James Thomas and Robert Shapard, and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

Fulfills multicultural requirement.

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ENGL 3360.002: Issues in Composition

Dr. Ken Baake
T 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 31703

This Spring 2018 class is designed to help students in various disciplines improve their writing and ability to teach writing. We will focus on principles of expository and expressive writing with some attention to grammar and style. The class will include the following elements:

  • Class lectures, discussions and activities. Student led classes on the textbook chapters.
  • Written postings to Blackboard.
  • A short research paper.
  • A final exam.

The class will have a theme that underlies many of our readings and the research project. As most of you are at key moments of transition in your lives, we may explore what it means to move from one phase of life to another through readings on identity and rites of passage. We may also look at a few arguments that examine topics like climate change, which will have a profound effect on the world you are entering into.

Through the research project, you will have the opportunity to research and write a persuasive report or essay in which you present a plan for your future direction. I approach the course through the principles of grammar, expository and expressive writing, and rhetorical theory.

Possible texts:

  1. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings (Concise 7th Edition). Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. Boston: Pearson, 2012. ISBN: 13: 978-0-321-96428-1
  2. The Structure of English: A Handbook of English Grammar. Newby, Michael. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge, 1987. ISBN: 0521349966
  3. Concisce Dictionary of English Etymology (Wordsworth Reference) (Wordsworth Collection) New Edition by Walter W. Skeat. ISBN-13: 978-1853263118
  4. Readings and lecture notes from Dr. Baake posted to Blackboard.

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ENGL 3360.D02: Issues in Composition

Dr. Ken Baake
T 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 31701

This Spring 2018 class is designed to help students in various disciplines improve their writing and ability to teach writing. We will focus on principles of expository and expressive writing with some attention to grammar and style. The class will include the following elements:

  • Class lectures, discussions and activities. Student led classes on the textbook chapters.
  • Written postings to Blackboard.
  • A short research paper.
  • A final exam.

The class will have a theme that underlies many of our readings and the research project. As most of you are at key moments of transition in your lives, we may explore what it means to move from one phase of life to another through readings on identity and rites of passage. We may also look at a few arguments that examine topics like climate change, which will have a profound effect on the world you are entering into.

Through the research project, you will have the opportunity to research and write a persuasive report or essay in which you present a plan for your future direction. I approach the course through the principles of grammar, expository and expressive writing, and rhetorical theory.

Possible texts:

  1. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings (Concise 7th Edition). Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. Boston: Pearson, 2012. ISBN: 13: 978-0-321-96428-1
  2. The Structure of English: A Handbook of English Grammar. Newby, Michael. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge, 1987. ISBN: 0521349966
  3. Concisce Dictionary of English Etymology (Wordsworth Reference) (Wordsworth Collection) New Edition by Walter W. Skeat. ISBN-13: 978-1853263118
  4. Readings and lecture notes from Dr. Baake posted to Blackboard.

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ENGL 3363.001 Introduction to Science Rhetoric

Mr. David Young
T Th 12:30-1:50 AM
CRN 56246

What is science? We know it exists. We know people work as scientists, but what is it? Even though we may have trouble defining science, we can see it as a tool that helps us understand and stabilize what we see in the world around us. This course examines how scientific professionals work with knowledge and the essential role of communication.

      Throughout the semester, we will discuss:
    • How scientists develop arguments for technical audiences. How they present problems, methods, and findings to move observations to scientific fact.
    • How scientists develop arguments for non-technical audiences. How they translate, shift, and align information for the public and why they do it.

Throughout the semester, we will study how scientists strategically craft their arguments for multiple audiences and the obstacles they encounter; however, we will also discuss the role of technical communicators in these processes. Specifically, we will discuss how technical communicators shape scientific arguments for multiple audiences and purposes.

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ENGL 3365.003 Professional Report Writing

Dr. Beau Pihlaja
MW 10:00-11:20 AM
CRN 55231

Professional Report Writing is an opportunity to prepare for the kinds of writing you will do in your future work, whether in the private or public sector, in for-profit or non-profit ventures. While some forms of reporting are standardized in an industry or field, reporting practices can vary significantly and change over time. Our course will explore specific genres and conventions for report writing, but more importantly will encourage you as writers to think “rhetorically” about the reporting you do. This means that, as you write, you will need to think about the goals and objectives of your reporting, the audience for your writing, their expectations for your writing, and so on. In our class, we will practice asking these questions as we learn to write various kinds of reports. The course will also require you to consider the research process you use as you write reports, the kinds of sources you use, as well as how you use information to make a report. We will consider design questions, how to format reports to be maximally effective. Finally, we will practice reporting orally on written material. Throughout we will consider the larger socio-cultural, political, and ethical concerns that confront us as we write reports in professional settings.

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ENGL 3365.003 Professional Report Writing

Dr. Beau Pihlaja
MW 2:00-3:20 PM
CRN 54628

Professional Report Writing is an opportunity to prepare for the kinds of writing you will do in your future work, whether in the private or public sector, in for-profit or non-profit ventures. While some forms of reporting are standardized in an industry or field, reporting practices can vary significantly and change over time. Our course will explore specific genres and conventions for report writing, but more importantly will encourage you as writers to think “rhetorically” about the reporting you do. This means that, as you write, you will need to think about the goals and objectives of your reporting, the audience for your writing, their expectations for your writing, and so on. In our class, we will practice asking these questions as we learn to write various kinds of reports. The course will also require you to consider the research process you use as you write reports, the kinds of sources you use, as well as how you use information to make a report. We will consider design questions, how to format reports to be maximally effective. Finally, we will practice reporting orally on written material. Throughout we will consider the larger socio-cultural, political, and ethical concerns that confront us as we write reports in professional settings.

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ENGL 3366.D01 Style in Technical Writing

Dr. Angela Eaton
M 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN49631

In Style in Technical Communication, we will examine what constitutes a style and identify characteristics of the most frequently used styles in technical and professional communication. We will study discourse communities, how they determine which styles are appropriate for which contexts, and how we as authors can determine the appropriateness of a certain style for a situation. Finally, we will learn how to create these styles in our own writing.

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ENGL 3365.001 Information Design

Dr. Abigail Selzer King
T Th 11:00-12:20 PM
CRN 52487

This course addresses two features of our daily lives: the proliferation of complex information and the value of visuals. Students who take Information Design will learn how to draw their own ideas and communicate through visual stories to make change. We will be reading books including Rohde's Sketchnote Handbook and Baer's Information Design Workbook to learn to identify features of strong visual communication. These books will also help us develop our own skills as information designers. Students who want to get jobs in usability, information architecture, technical communication, graphic design, interaction design, journalism, and social media will find the lessons from Information Design valuable and relevant.

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ENGL 3365.D01 Information Design

Dr. Abigail Selzer King
T Th 11:00-12:20 PM
CRN 47883

This course addresses two features of our daily lives: the proliferation of complex information and the value of visuals. Students who take Information Design will learn how to draw their own ideas and communicate through visual stories to make change. We will be reading books including Rohde's Sketchnote Handbook and Baer's Information Design Workbook to learn to identify features of strong visual communication. These books will also help us develop our own skills as information designers. Students who want to get jobs in usability, information architecture, technical communication, graphic design, interaction design, journalism, and social media will find the lessons from Information Design valuable and relevant.

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ENGL 3371.001 Linguistic Science

Dr. Aaron Braver
MWF 2:00-2:50 PM
CRN 49633

Language touches every aspect of our lives. From reading the morning paper to decrypting secret codes, the subconscious knowledge of language is uniquely human. In this course we'll ask what it means to have a command of language-do animals have it? Infants? By examining the structures of the world's languages, we will discover why linguists believe in a "universal grammar" in spite of the world's rich linguistic diversity. No prior knowledge of languages or linguistics is required for this course.

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ENGL 3373 Modern English Syntax

Dr. Min-Joo Kim
T Th 9:30-10:50 AM
CRN 49635

Most native speakers of English would say that interested is an adjective but talked is a verb. But have you ever wondered about why both contain -ed? Can it just be an accident? This course will offer an answer to this question, not to mention providing an overview of the form and function of present-day English including both its standard and non-standard varieties. The analytical and critical thinking abilities you will be acquiring from this course will well prepare you regardless of whether you wish to become an English teacher, a lawyer, a writer, an editor, or a linguist. Topics will include but will not be limited to (i) prescriptive vs. descriptive approaches to grammar; (ii) basic word structure; (iii) syntactic categories (what are traditionally known as parts of speech); (iv) the internal structure of various types of phrases (e.g., noun phrases, verb phrase, adjective phrase); (v) Tense/Aspect/Mood of present-day English; (vi) dialectal variation in English syntax; and (vii) grammaticalization and language change.

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ENGL 3381.001 Literature of the Fantastic

Dr. Roger McNamara
MWF 10:00-10:50 AM
CRN 31744

This course will introduce students to Science Fiction (Sci-fi) and Fantasy. While Sci-fi speculates about realistic potential about our future, fantasy focuses on the magical and the supernatural. However, both genres tap into our innate desire to imagine new possibilities and explore alternative realities. More importantly, even though both genres excite our imagination, they ultimately are allegories and commentaries about their contemporary moment and engage in the social, cultural, and political debates of their historical milieu. These include critiques of political conflicts (such as WWI and the Cold War), explorations of social identities including religious, racial, and gender categories, and cultural debates associated with post-humanism (such as animal rights and of the distinction between human/machines).

Possible texts include: Sandman (Neil Gaiman), Dawn (Octavia Butler), Lord of the Rings (J.R. R. Tolkien), Perdido Street Station (China Mieville), Watchmen (Alan Moore).

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ENGL 3382.001 Women Writers

Dr. Jen Shelton
MWF 12:00-12:50 PM
CRN 31745

This course will examine women in literature as authors and protagonists by focusing on the most typical plot for women before the 20th century, the marriage plot. Marriage plot novels feature usually young female protagonists whose chief narrative goal is to marry well, which typically means both that their prospective husbands have material wealth and that they are appropriate “soul mates” who can supply the protagonist's emotional and social needs. We will read a variety of novels that conform to and resist the power of the marriage plot, including novels by Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and Virginia Woolf. There will be a few ringers, too — what does Frances Hodgson Burnett's children's novel A Little Princess have to do with the marriage plot? A key focus of the course will be student writing; nested assignments will help all students polish and hone their communications abilities as we contemplate the ideologymaking and ideology-reflecting genre of the marriage plot.

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ENGL 3385.001

Dr. Matthew Hunter
MWF 12:00-12:50 PM
CRN 32215

This course will introduce students to Shakespeare's poetry and plays by examining Shakespeare's shifting depictions of love--love within marriages, love within families, love between friends, and love between enemies.

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ENGL 3386.D01 Literature and Science

Dr. Alison Rukavina
W 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 55686

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new.” —Alfred, Lord Tennyson “Idylls of the King”

This course explores how literature engaged with the advances in science and technology that transformed society in the nineteenth century. Authors in novels like Frankenstein, Dracula, and Jekyll and Hyde wrestled with the ideas of whether scientific progress was a good thing or even potentially dangerous. In “Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse,” Matthew Arnold writes of being caught “between two worlds, one dead,/ The other powerless to be born,/ With nowhere yet to rest my head.” If one response dominated among authors of the nineteenth century it was anxiety and worry at how inventions like steam technology, photography, and electricity, as well as developments in biology, psychology, and sociology, were remaking the world at such a rapid pace that they felt displaced and disoriented. Students in the course will learn about how nineteenth-century authors turned to the genres of science fiction, horror, and mystery as venues for exploring the possible consequences and effects of these tumultuous changes on society. Assignments will include participation, discussions, short literary analysis, presentation, and research essay.

    Required Course Texts:
  • Doyle, Arthur Conan. Hound of the Baskervilles. Broadview, 2006
  • Otis, Laura, editor. Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford University Press, 2009.
  • Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Oxford University Press, 2009.
  • Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories. Oxford University Press, 2008.
  • Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Oxford University Press, 2011.

All other readings available from the course instructor via links (in various formats) or through the course Blackboard site.

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ENGL 3387.D01 Multicultural Literatures of America

Dr. Alison Rukavina
M 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 49639

Fulfills the TTU multicultural requirement and focuses on works of literature by Americans of different US cultures.

This course explores diverse multicultural American literature that addresses issues around identity and place. Students in the online class will read short stories, autobiography, poems, and nonfiction by African American, Native American, Asian American, and Latina/o authors, as well as works from marginalized groups such as immigrants and the mentally-ill who sometimes struggled to find acceptance and a safe space. We will discuss race, class, ethnicity, and gender in relation to the various course readings like James Baldwin's “Sonny's Blues,” Alice Walker's “Everyday Use,” Amy Tan's “Two Kinds,” Jimmy Santiago Baca's “Immigrants in Our Own Land,” Flannery O'Connor's “The Displaced Person,” Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave, and Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place. While the Jacobs and Kincaid readings will need to be purchased, text copies of all other readings will be made available to students via Blackboard. Assignments will include class participation, discussions, two short literary analysis essays, edited versions of these essays, research essay draft and final version, and a presentation.

    Readings:
  • Harriet Jacobs. Incidents in the Life of a Slave.
  • Jamacia Kincaid. A Small Place.

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ENGL 3387.002 Multicultural Literatures of America: US Visionary Speculative Fiction

Dr. Cordelia Barrera
T Th 11:00-12:20 PM
CRN 49638

In this class, students will explore the dimensions of different genres that often overlap but fall under the umbrella term “speculative fiction.” These genres include science fiction, utopian and dystopian fictions, horror and gothic forms, and magical realism. Because this class centers on works of speculative fiction by US multiethnic and multicultural authors, the texts we study are associated with movements for social, political and environmental justice. Some questions that will form our discussions include: How do multiethnic authors create meaning from alternative narratives of “belonging” in the US? How are ideas about race, ethnicity, class, and gender conceived within speculative forms, and to what ends? How do multiethnic artists challenge and reimagine genres to critique contemporary ideas about technology, indigeneity, and identity? Assignments include: Weekly Writing Journals, short research projects, daily quizzes, midterm and final exam. Texts include works by Carlos Fuentes, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sherman Alexie, Junot Díaz, Octavia E. Butler, Leslie Marmon Silko, Rudolfo Anaya, and others.

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ENGL 3388.001 Film Genres

Dr. Scott Baugh
T Th 9:30-10:50 AM
CRN 32229

How might The Lord of the Rings' extraordinary characters & great adventures reflect on our beliefs & everyday lives today? Do movies like Inception and Gravity unfold the complications of our everyday lives or fold in on themselves for larger-than-life spiritual issues? As an organizing principle for the course this term, we will develop and interrogate research questions around the story structure and style of fictive-narrative movies as well as the tension among “spectacle,” “the fantastic,” and spirituality as opposed to the “political realities” that they may reflect &/or draw from.

English 3388 introduces students to the modes in cinema (fiction, nonfiction, experimental), and this section will emphasize fictive-narrative films. More specifically, students will be able to apply foundational concepts [cinematography, mise-en-scene, editing, sound, narrative structure] and critical strategies [ideology and style comparisons] to actively “read,” analyze, discuss, and write about a representative sample of fictive-narrative movies. Mainstream commercial films typically—conventionally—make use of a particular story structure, and the basis of Hollywood has been the peculiar blending of realistic and formalistic aspects into what has been called “Classic style.” We will start to consider trends across periods of film history, and ultimately we will attempt to interpret how those trends might operate and how their movies mean something to us as viewers.

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ENGL 3388.002 Film Genres

Dr. Scott Baugh
T Th 11:00-12:20 PM
CRN 49640

How might The Lord of the Rings' extraordinary characters & great adventures reflect on our beliefs & everyday lives today? Do movies like Inception and Gravity unfold the complications of our everyday lives or fold in on themselves for larger-than-life spiritual issues? As an organizing principle for the course this term, we will develop and interrogate research questions around the story structure and style of fictive-narrative movies as well as the tension among “spectacle,” “the fantastic,” and spirituality as opposed to the “political realities” that they may reflect &/or draw from.

English 3388 introduces students to the modes in cinema (fiction, nonfiction, experimental), and this section will emphasize fictive-narrative films. More specifically, students will be able to apply foundational concepts [cinematography, mise-en-scene, editing, sound, narrative structure] and critical strategies [ideology and style comparisons] to actively “read,” analyze, discuss, and write about a representative sample of fictive-narrative movies. Mainstream commercial films typically—conventionally—make use of a particular story structure, and the basis of Hollywood has been the peculiar blending of realistic and formalistic aspects into what has been called “Classic style.” We will start to consider trends across periods of film history, and ultimately we will attempt to interpret how those trends might operate and how their movies mean something to us as viewers.

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ENGL 3388.D01 Film Genres: Narrative Cinema

Dr. Wyatt Phillips
Th 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 56188

This course introduces students to the history, aesthetics, and criticism of narrative cinema: films in which the primary goal is to tell a story. Students will develop skills of formal analysis specific to film studies, explore a variety of theoretical approaches to cinema, and survey the alternatives to narrative cinema in its documentary and avant-garde forms. The course emphasizes critical viewing and writing.

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ENGL 3390.001: Literatures of the Southwest (Distance)

Dr. Sara Spurgeon
T Th 2:30-3:50 PM
CRN 33236

This course introduces students to a variety of texts from the region currently referred to as the American Southwest. We will explore several distinctive subcultures of the United States through traditional and contemporary Native American fiction, early and recent Anglo adventure writing, Chicana short fiction, Westerns, and classic Southwestern nature writing. What common threads run through these works? Where do the visions and voices of authors collide or overlap? How is the sense of this region imagined across cultures, histories, and into a globalized future? We will attempt to answer these questions through class discussions, close readings of literature and film, and essays.

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ENGL 3391.D01 Literature and War

Dr. Jen Shelton
T 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 56189

This version of Literature and War will explore the Great War (First World War) in the centenary year of the war's end. The Great War was the first truly modern war, with weapons and technology we would recognize today. And it was the first global war, with combatants from Japan, China, India, Australia and New Zealand as well as European powers and America. A terrible mismatch between the power of the weapons deployed and the strategies used meant casualties at unheard of rates as well as the emergence of a new scourge of wartime, shell shock. Our course will examine texts from a variety of genres, fiction, poetry, memoir, even technical manuals as we seek to understand the war that made Hitler possible and World War II necessary. We may be able to learn about our own world in studying this war of 100 years ago. Texts for the course will reflect the experiences of combatants and noncombatants on both sides of the war. Students in the course can expect an emphasis on writing and communications skills to prepare you for life in the 21st century. This online course has a scheduled meeting time; meetings will take place on Skype or Zoom. In addition to required texts, students should also have a computer with an up-to-date operating system, a stable high-speed internet connection, and a headset (the one that came with your phone usually works fine).

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ENGL 4311.002 Studies in Poetry

Dr. Julie Couch
T Th 11:00-12:20 PM
CRN 32255

Game theory assumes that games, like narratives, use rules to confine and determine activity within a finite space and time. In this course we will examine this “magic circle” of game and play within the magic circle of medieval poetry. We will consider actual games played in medieval poems and also read narrative structures as games. Discussion topics will include: the relation between games and reading practices, the social and cultural contexts of game-playing, the game aspects of form and content. We will read game theory and medieval poetry, including Floris and Blaunchfleur, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer's Book of the Duchess and Legend of Good Women among others. In addition to writing two short essays about game in narrative, students will produce a final project which articulates a relation between game theory, medieval culture, and a text not read in class. Pairing present experience of gaming with past manifestations of games in culture and narrative, students will find the past relevant to how they shape their own pasts and sense of themselves.

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ENGL 4313.001 Studies in Fiction: Beyond Dystopia

Dr. Cordelia Barrera
T Th 8:00-9:20 AM
CRN 49645

Thomas More literally wrote the book on utopia in 1516, and in 1868 John Stuart Mill coined “dystopia” as the antithesis of More's beautiful nowhere-land. This course will explore some dimensions of utopian and dystopian thinking, focusing on the impulses that drive each. Some questions that will form the basis of our discussions include: How does our increasing dependence on science and technology have the potential to transform into frightening methods of control, censorship, conformity, and isolation? Are our virtual connections/lives/memories displacing our sense of the “real”? How has the nature of our “humanity” altered in this “post-human” age of commodification, cybernetics, and catastrophe? Will the environment withstand our relentless abuse of it? In our attempt to answer these questions (and others) throughout the semester, we will develop critical perspectives that are an integral part of becoming competent thinkers, readers, writers, and citizens of the world. Final Assessment by professor is made on the basis of participation in daily assignments/group work and class discussion; presentation of ideas, theory, and critical analysis in written essays; thoughtful and coherent presentation of ideas in group oral report. Texts include: essays on historical utopias/dystopias; stories by Octavia Butler, Ernest Callenbach, Kurt Vonnegut, Junot Díaz, Ray Bradbury; Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, Herland; Ursula K. Le Guin's, The Lathe of Heaven; Margaret Atwood's, The Handmaid's Tale.

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ENGL 4315.001 Studies in Film: Film and Technology

Dr. Allison Whitney
T Th 12:30-1:50 AM
CRN 55218

This course will focus on critical approaches to narratives of technological change in the history of cinema. Students will receive an overview of cinema technologies, devoting particular attention to camera systems, color processes, sound, widescreen formats, lighting, special effects, IMAX, 3D, digital filmmaking, and film restoration. Students will learn about artists' relationship to the apparatus of cinema and its implications for film style via screenings of representative films, while also developing skills in studying primary documents such as technical manuals to inform their understanding of the historical contexts of film production, exhibition and reception. The course will also address the many theoretical traditions that are grounded in matters of technology, and will incorporate multi-modal assignments such as sound recording and editing, and hands-on activities with production and projection technologies.

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ENGL 4321.001: Studies in Literary Topics: Aesthetics, Politics, and Affect in the Early U.S. Republic

Dr. Daniel Hutchins
MWF 9:00-9:50 AM
CRN 32263

This course focuses on the literature and culture of the early U.S. republic (roughly 1780-1820) with a special emphasis on exploring different kinds of media and representation and also on Transatlantic intellectual exchange. We'll look at transnational movements like Romanticism, abolitionism, and religious revivalism during this period, and try to understand how they impacted the thinking and attitudes of people living in the United States. We'll also explore changing ideas about rhetoric and public speaking (aka 'natural language'), theatrical and non-theatrical performances, material print culture, the Revolutionary-era politics of Spanish-speaking Latin America, and figurative art and the relationship of these cultural trends to literary production. For example, we'll examine the connections between the early U.S.'s obsession with optical illusion in painting and portraiture alongside the idea of perspective in early U.S. epistolary novels like The Coquette and The Power of Sympathy.

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ENGL 4321.002 Studies in Literary Topics

Dr. Roger McNamara
MWF 12:00-12:50 PM
CRN 32264

At the beginning of the 20th century Western societies seemed confident that humanism and secular liberalism could replace religion as the moral compass for humanity and be more successful at promoting social harmony and peace because the “common good” could be agreed upon through the basis of reason. However, the major historical events that followed in the 20th century and in our contemporary moment—such as two World Wars, the collapse of newly liberated African and Asian nation-states in the 1960s and 1970s, and 9/11— undermined this confidence in humanism, secular liberalism, and reason. Critics and writers have once again turned to religion, albeit one that is wary of religious fundamentalism, as an alternative to promote social harmony and peace. This turn to religion, one that reprises the commitment to faith, the role of ritual, and need for communal relationships has been broadly referred to as the “Postsecular.”

This course will investigate literature and theory that deals with the Postsecular, and will include writers from the US, Canada, South Africa, and India.

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ENGL 4351.003 Advanced Creative Writing: Non-Fiction: Pop Culture Criticism

Dr. D. Gilson
MWF 1:00-1:50 PM
CRN 55221

We've all got something to say about our favorite pop song, movie, novel, or celebrity. In an era when criticism has been democratized and art is often judged exclusively by the amount of chatter it incites, the role of the critic is changing (and fast – these days, even reviews are subject to reviews). In this advanced creative nonfiction workshop, we'll explore the best, most effective ways for writers to engage both creatively and critically with popular culture. Should cultural criticism writing be personal or objective? Is it more important to contextualize or describe? Given the overwhelming deluge of options facing media consumers, is the critic's job merely to direct the conversation? We'll look to a broad range of writers — from Roxane Gay to John Jeremiah Sullivan, Truman Capote to Joan Didion — to answer these questions and more. Students will submit four original pieces of personal pop criticism for workshop to be revised in a final portfolio.

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ENGL 4351.005 Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry

Dr. Curtis Bauer
T 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 47818

Are you interested in doing graduate work in creative writing? Have you written and read poetry in the past but know you need extra study and practice to be a better writer, a better reader? If so, this is the class for you. In this advanced poetry workshop you will write new poems and learn how to revise them; you will read contemporary American and world poetry as well as texts on prosody and poetics; you will read the work of your peers; and you will write critically about what you read and your process/development as a poet. By semester's end, you will have a polished group of poems that you can include in an application and/or possibly send to literary journals and magazines.

The minimum prerequisite is having taken ENGL 3351: Creative Writing, in poetry. It is preferable that you've also taken ENGL 3351 in another genre as well. If you've met this prerequisite, you should then obtain PERMISSION OF THE INSTRUCTOR to enroll: you can do this by sending four of your best poems, as an email attachment in MS Word, to Dr. Bauer (curtis.bauer@ttu.edu).

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ENGL 4360.001 Issues in Composition

Dr. Kendall Gerdes
MWF 12:00-1:20 PM
CRN 49647

Want to play videogames in class? This is the class for you. Some people think videogames are an art form—a medium akin to literary fiction that enables players (like readers) to take on other people's lives and perspectives. Others view videogames as technical challenges to be mastered, quickly and thoroughly (if you're any good). This class will explore a variety of weird videogames, games that pose problems for both these points of view. Students will play videogames together and for homework. Assignments will include an on-going gameplay journal, short rhetorical analysis papers focused on the arguments that games make, and a position statement on rhetoric and identification. Finally, you'll learn to make your own videogame (no prior experience required).

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ENGL 4360.D01 Issues in Composition

Dr. Kendall Gerdes
MWF 12:00-1:20 PM
CRN 55260

Want to play videogames in class? This is the class for you. Some people think videogames are an art form—a medium akin to literary fiction that enables players (like readers) to take on other people's lives and perspectives. Others view videogames as technical challenges to be mastered, quickly and thoroughly (if you're any good). This class will explore a variety of weird videogames, games that pose problems for both these points of view. Students will play videogames together and for homework. Assignments will include an on-going gameplay journal, short rhetorical analysis papers focused on the arguments that games make, and a position statement on rhetoric and identification. Finally, you'll learn to make your own videogame (no prior experience required).

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ENGL 4365.001 Special Topics in Technical Communication

Dr. Rachel Wolford
T Th 9:30-10:50 AM
CRN 51677

Money by itself doesn't necessarily bring happiness, but winning proposals and grants definitely does. Learning to write proposals and grant applications successfully can give you and the organizations you represent more capital to improve the world and the communities you care about. It's also an invaluable skill to carry with you into your professional field.

English 4365 will help you understand the theory, rhetorical principles, and processes of proposal and grant writing. “A proposal is a tool for managing change,” states our textbook author, and one of your tasks in the course will be to identify a real problem faced by a real, local organization (that you choose), and help your audience work toward a positive change through the proposal process. In the first major assignment, you will write a persuasive proposal that details that organization's problems and presents a workable, cost-effective solution and deliverables. In the second major assignment, as a seeker of grant funding, you will collaborate with your classmates to research funding agencies and write a grant application with the goal of helping another organization in West Texas receive financial assistance to more capably impact its community. This course will also focus on project planning as well as document and presentation design. The ability to design and present your ideas visually and verbally is also a hallmark of being in the proposal and grant business. The required books are listed below:

    • Johnson-Sheehan, R. (2007). Writing proposals (2nd Ed.). New York: Pearson.
    • Williams, R. (2014). The non-designer's design book (4th Ed.). San Francisco: Peachpit Press.

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ENGL 4380.001 Professional Issues in Technical Communication

Dr. Craig Baehr
Th 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 55720

This advanced undergraduate capstone course covers professional issues, processes, and specializations in the field of technical communication, strategies for developing a professional dossier appropriate for entry-level employment, and preparation for certification in the field. The course will build on skills acquired in previous coursework and introduce you to project management processes and methods used in producing technical communication projects, including process maturity, content strategy development, and methods of tracking and assessment. Additionally, the course provides professional development through the introduction of various professional organizations and development strategies for professional portfolios and dossiers. Coursework will involve the development of a professional portfolio, a pre-certification exam, and a group project.

*Must be a graduating Senior - Email (english.advisor@ttu.edu) for more information.*

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ENGL 4380.D21 Professional Issues in Technical Communication

Dr. Craig Baehr
Th 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 55720

This advanced undergraduate capstone course covers professional issues, processes, and specializations in the field of technical communication, strategies for developing a professional dossier appropriate for entry-level employment, and preparation for certification in the field. The course will build on skills acquired in previous coursework and introduce you to project management processes and methods used in producing technical communication projects, including process maturity, content strategy development, and methods of tracking and assessment. Additionally, the course provides professional development through the introduction of various professional organizations and development strategies for professional portfolios and dossiers. Coursework will involve the development of a professional portfolio, a pre-certification exam, and a group project.

*Must be a graduating Senior - Email (english.advisor@ttu.edu) for more information.*

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ENGL 5303 Medieval English: Vernacular Arthur

Dr. Julie Couch
T 2:00-4:50 PM
CRN 49653

King Arthur became part of Britain's glorious past in the nationalist, Latin history of Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1138. By 1469, stories of Arthur and his knights had traveled widely, to high French romance and to the colloquial verse romances of Middle English. By the end of the Middle Ages the legend of Arthur was made whole again, this time in English, in the epic-sized prose tale, Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. In this course, we will read the vernacular Arthur, the Middle English romances set in an Arthurian world. Applying genre and reception theory while attending to cultural, historical, and manuscript contexts, we will trace the manifold uses of Arthur in the English tradition.

Prerequisite: English 5302 is a prerequisite for this course unless the student receives the professor's permission to enroll by demonstrating adequate, prior training in reading Middle English.

Assignments: oral presentation, annotated bibliography, conference-length paper, article-length paper

Primary Texts:: Arthurian romances published by TEAMS (http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text-online)

Requirements Fulfilled: British Literature, Medieval & Renaissance Studies Graduate (MRSC) Certificate

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ENGL 5305 Studies in Shakespeare: Staging the Social in Early Modern Drama

Dr. Matthew Hunter
W 2:00-4:50 PM
CRN 49654

The London of Shakespeare's moment was a city of changing social relations. The city was expanding at a rapid rate, hierarchies of class and signs of status were in flux, and new professions and social types were emerging. Public spaces like Paul's Churchyard and the Royal Exchange facilitated novel interactions among these types. So too did city's many theaters, where audiences of all social classes converged to watch plays about the brave new world in which they found themselves. Emphasizing the “public” in public theater, this seminar considers how early modern drama facilitates, depicts, and invites audiences to practice for themselves some of the many social relations that were coming to define public urban life.

The aspirations of our meetings will be literary, historical, and theoretical. First, readings will provide students with advanced knowledge of Shakespeare's plays—both the canonical (Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet) and the neglected (Love's Labours Lost)—and those of his contemporaries (Ben Jonson, John Marston, Thomas Heywood, and others). Along the way, non-dramatic readings like poems, satires, prose pamphlets, and printed commonplace books will deepen our understanding of the period, illuminating practices of performance, the flourishing print marketplace, emergent forms of cultural distinction, anxieties of urban living, and the rise of new social networks. Finally, as a course designed to inquire into the meaning of “the social”—what it means for Shakespeare's moment, what it means for ours—we will draw upon some of the key thinkers in critical social theory, from Norbert Elias (The Civilizing Process) and Erving Goffman, to Pierre Bourdieu (Distinction, The Logic of Practice) and Jürgen Habermas (The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere), to Bruno Latour (Reassembling the Social) and Niklas Luhmann (Love as Passion). The question of what it means to be social, we will see, is a question that drama is uniquely suited to answer.

Assignments will include an annotated bibliography, a conference-style presentation, and an expanded, 20-page research paper.

Requirements Fulfilled: British Literature, Drama Genre, Medieval & Renaissance Studies Graduate (MRSC) Certificate

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ENGL 5307.001 Studies in Restoration & Eighteenth-Century British Literature: Making the Novel in the Long Eighteenth Century

Dr. Marta Kvande
T 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 49565

Many of us talk about “the novel” as if the term were both self-evident and immutably fixed. But eighteenth-century writers had no such misconceptions; in fact, early novelists often strenuously denied that their works were novels. After all, novels were trash—potentially dangerous, salacious trash, fit only for fools and whores and certainly not worthy of any literary consideration. It was not until late in the century that the term “novel” arrived at some critical acceptance. Modern critics, too, have struggled to define the novel, and especially the eighteenth-century novel, just as they have struggled to explain its apparent “rise.” This course will study the British novel in the eighteenth century, focusing particularly on how novels defined and presented themselves—both textually and materially—and how the idea of the “novel” gradually coalesced into something we now understand as a coherent genre. The course will combine both literary-critical and book-historical methods; students will be required to use ECCO and (when possible) the library's Special Collections. Assignments will include shorter papers, a presentation, and a seminar paper.

Requirements Fulfilled: Later British; Book History

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ENGL 5307.D01 Studies in Restoration & Eighteenth-Century British Literature: Making the Novel in the Long Eighteenth Century

Dr. Marta Kvande
T 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 56191

Many of us talk about “the novel” as if the term were both self-evident and immutably fixed. But eighteenth-century writers had no such misconceptions; in fact, early novelists often strenuously denied that their works were novels. After all, novels were trash—potentially dangerous, salacious trash, fit only for fools and whores and certainly not worthy of any literary consideration. It was not until late in the century that the term “novel” arrived at some critical acceptance. Modern critics, too, have struggled to define the novel, and especially the eighteenth-century novel, just as they have struggled to explain its apparent “rise.” This course will study the British novel in the eighteenth century, focusing particularly on how novels defined and presented themselves—both textually and materially—and how the idea of the “novel” gradually coalesced into something we now understand as a coherent genre. The course will combine both literary-critical and book-historical methods; students will be required to use ECCO and (when possible) the library's Special Collections. Assignments will include shorter papers, a presentation, and a seminar paper.

Requirements Fulfilled: Later British; Book History

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ENGL 5324 Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century American Literature: Post 9/11

Dr. Yuan Shu
T 9:30-12:20 PM
CRN 49658

How worlding is American literature today? In reiterating Bruce Robbins' question, this course investigates post-9/11 American literature not only in terms of trauma and healing but also in light of literary responses to the social, political, economic, and cultural changes in the United States and around the globe since the tragic events on September 11, 2001. We begin by examining how New York-based poets address the trauma and inaugurate the process of healing, and also by considering how diverse literary forms such as graphic novel engage the tragic events. Then, we read how the work of Don DeLillo, Jonathan Safran Foer, Lorrie Moore, and Joseph O'Neill represent the events differently and understand the United States in relation to the rest of the globe geopolitically, economically, and culturally. Meanwhile, we also explore the work of Mohsin Hamid and Salman Rushdie as alternative visions, which explore the U.S.-centered global order, neoliberal capitalism, third world poverty and instability. Finally, we focus on the war on terrorism as reflected in the texts of Jess Walter, Ben Fountain, and Paul Auster in terms of changing dynamics of the local and the global. During our discussion of these primary texts, we employ the concepts of trauma and healing and other critical theories in postcolonial and globalization studies as articulated by David Harvey, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Immanuel Wallerstein, Gayatri Spivak, and Walter Mignolo among others readings.

Requirements Fulfilled: American Literature; LSJE

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ENGL 5327 Advanced Problems in Literary Studies: "An Otherwise Unavailabe Clarification of Vision": African American Humor and Comedy from Slavery to the Present

Dr. Michael Borshuk
W 9:00-11:50 AM
CRN 51679

“[C]omedy,” Ralph Ellison writes in his 1986 collection Going to the Territory, “is a disguised form of philosophy . . . . For by allowing us to laugh at that which is normally unlaughable, comedy provides an otherwise unavailable clarification of vision that calms the clammy trembling which ensues whenever we pierce the veil of conventions that guard us from the basic absurdity of the human condition.” This class will examine this “clarification of vision” through the specific example of a tradition Ellison knew well: African American humor and comedy. We will map the long history of black comic expression in the United States, beginning first with the oral vernacular ripostes of African American slaves, moving through the overdetermined racial spectacle of blackface minstrelsy, and continuing through the various literary, performative, and popular culture transfigurations that followed, in the emergence of a distinctly black American tradition in humor. Our course materials will include examples drawn from music, stand-up comedy, film, television, and literature. More specifically, we will consider writers like George Schuyler, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Fran Ross, Ishmael Reed, Paul Beatty, and Baratunde Thurston; and a range of performers including Bert Williams, Louis Armstrong, Lincoln Perry, Moms Mabley, Redd Foxx, Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor, and Dave Chappelle. In all, we will be attentive to the critical insight these various figures provide about the “basic absurdity” of race and democratic paradoxes in America, and the palliative role African American humor and comedy have played in the face of those cruelties. Students will be expected to write one short paper, contribute to an ongoing class blog, prepare a research prospectus, and compose an article-length research paper by semester's end. As well, we will collaborate as a class on some kind of outreach project that enables us to extend our academic activity beyond the borders of our classroom.

Tentative Reading List:
Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock (1999); Paul Beatty, Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor (2006); George Schuyler, Black No More (1931); Langston Hughes, The Best of Simple (1961); Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (1972); Fran Ross, Oreo (1974); Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle (1996); Baratunde Thurston, How to Be Black (2012); plus a wide range of supplementary critical readings and multimedia materials, including film and television excerpts and historical comedy albums available online.

Requirements Fulfilled: American Literature; LSJE

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ENGL 5334 History of the English Language

Dr. Brian McFadden
Th 2:00-4:50 PM
CRN 56192

We will be examining the history and development of the English language from its origins in Anglo-Saxon England through the high Middle Ages and the Early Modern period to Modern English and issues and controversies of the present day; this entails studying the internal history, external history, and the development of its morphology, phonology, semantics, and syntax, in addition to an examination of orality and literacy and the effects of developing methods of textual production on the language. We will also be reading short pieces written at different times through English history (e.g. Ælfric of Eynsham, Alfred the Great, Chaucer, Milton, Sidney, Johnson, Swift, Jefferson, Orwell) to gain a historical perspective on how authors perceived the language in which they were writing and how they claim authority to define and use the English language for their social and political ends. The earlier parts of the course will be highly technical and mechanical; as the course progresses, there will be more opportunity for discussion and development of current topics of interest to the student. The requirements will be a dialect project examining how different people read the same passage, a seminar paper on a topic of interest to the study of English as a language, a prospectus at midterm in order to give me an idea of what you wish to discuss in the essay, and an oral presentation on one of the texts to be discussed in class. Primary texts: Gramley, The History of English: An Introduction; Knowles, A Cultural History of the English Language; Orwell, 1984; Gilliver, Marshall, and Weiner, The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary; McCrum, Globish; George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion; Wilton, Word Myths; plus additional reading assignments via Dropbox.

Requirements Fulfilled: British Literature, Drama Genre, Medieval & Renaissance Studies Graduate (MRSC) Certificate

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ENGL 5335 Principles of Language

Dr. Min-Joo Kim
T Th 12:30-1:50 PM
CRN 46721

Have you ever wondered about why sentences like Visiting relatives can be boring. and Everyone loves a woman. are ambiguous, despite the fact that none of the lexical items in them are? Also, have you ever wondered about why all adnominal adjectives occur before a noun in English (e.g., a white house) but they occur following a noun in languages like Spanish (e.g., una casa blanca)? In this course, we will address questions like these, as we try to uncover the underlying principles of human language in an introductory graduate-level course. For this reason, this course will not only introduce the field of linguistics as a whole but also provide opportunities for students to explore various linguistic phenomena at a more advanced level. Students will get to see what is at the core of all human languages and how their constrained behavior tells us something about the human mind. Class meetings will be organized around lectures and discussions about weekly homework assignments. In addition to weekly homework assignments, there will also be an exam, a final term-paper, and a presentation on the final paper.

Requirements Fulfilled: Linguistics; Methods

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ENGL 5351 Film Noir and Global Crime Cinemas

Dr. Allison Whitney
M 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 32443

This course will focus on film noir and crime cinema as phenomena that grow out of intercultural and cross-cultural relationships among film industries, audiences, and critics. Students will develop skills in both formal analysis and historical research that are specific to film studies, while also learning about film aesthetics, narrative structures, technologies, authorship, performance styles, and institutions (from censorship boards to award shows). Focusing primarily on the intersections of major film industries, including the US, Germany, France, India, Japan, and Hong Kong, topics will include the influence of German industrial practice in American film noir, the role of French film criticism in establishing genre definitions, the global presence of Hong Kong fight choreography, and the ways cross-cultural remakes transform the conventions of national cinemas. We will also discuss censorship practices and the power relations they reproduce (i.e. who has the power to declare material obscene, socially harmful, or artistically valid).

Requirements Fulfilled: Film and Media studies; Methods

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ENGL 5355.001 Comparative Literature Methods

Dr. Kanika Batra
W 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 53179

Worldings, Globalization or Planetarity?: Urban Forms and Human Rights in the Twenty-First Century

Starting with the landmark essay by John Friedman which first introduced the World City hypothesis, moving on to Saskia Sassen's theorization of Global Cities, and taking a turn towards contemporary non-fiction, this course will examine urban literary and social forms within the framework of human rights. Sociological and philosophical writing on urbanization and human rights included in the course will establish a comparative mode of analysis. Some of the central concerns guiding our enquiry will be: securitization, publicness, and the right to the city; gendered and sexualized violence in urban spaces; global justice and the rise of Human Rights Cities. The Asian, Caribbean, and African cities of Mumbai, Kingston, and Accra will lend the urban forms for our discussion. Non-fictional texts in the course might include: Gyan Prakash's Mumbai Fables (2011) and Kaherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (2014); Imani Tafara-Ama's Blood, Bullets and Bodies: Sexual Politics below Jamaica's Poverty Line (2017); Ato Quayson's Oxford Street, Accra (2014). The course encourages independent research in a literary or extra-literary field/period/genre of your choice using a working knowledge of comparative methodologies.

Requirements Fulfilled: Comparative Literature; Methods; Non-Fiction

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ENGL 5355.D01 Comparative Literature Methods

Dr. Kanika Batra
W 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 50202

Worldings, Globalization or Planetarity?: Urban Forms and Human Rights in the Twenty-First Century

Starting with the landmark essay by John Friedman which first introduced the World City hypothesis, moving on to Saskia Sassen's theorization of Global Cities, and taking a turn towards contemporary non-fiction, this course will examine urban literary and social forms within the framework of human rights. Sociological and philosophical writing on urbanization and human rights included in the course will establish a comparative mode of analysis. Some of the central concerns guiding our enquiry will be: securitization, publicness, and the right to the city; gendered and sexualized violence in urban spaces; global justice and the rise of Human Rights Cities. The Asian, Caribbean, and African cities of Mumbai, Kingston, and Accra will lend the urban forms for our discussion. Non-fictional texts in the course might include: Gyan Prakash's Mumbai Fables (2011) and Kaherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (2014); Imani Tafara-Ama's Blood, Bullets and Bodies: Sexual Politics below Jamaica's Poverty Line (2017); Ato Quayson's Oxford Street, Accra (2014). The course encourages independent research in a literary or extra-literary field/period/genre of your choice using a working knowledge of comparative methodologies.

Requirements Fulfilled: Comparative Literature; Methods; Non-Fiction

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ENGL 5370 Graduate Fiction Workshop

Dr. Jacqueline Kolosov
T 2:00-4:50 PM
CRN 32541

This will be a reading-and-writing-intensive workshop in which we explore both the short story and the novel. At the center of our semester-long conversation are these three intertwined, inextricable facets: voice, character, and structure. Characters who linger, who refuse to be forgotten, are at the heart of why so many of us read and reread fiction. These characters are intrinsic to the story/novel's structure which is intrinsic to its voice. Writers continue to write pages about voice, bringing forth its mysterious, even mystical quality. At the same time, there is Charles Baxter's pragmatic view: “Isn't voice really an outgrowth of a stance and point of view, both of which get transmogrified into a characteristic way of saying something? [Voice, CB's own anyway] doesn't announce itself in the first sentence. You try to make the sentences serve the story and the situation and not blast out from the first paragraph. You don't have to set a Chevrolet on fire in the first sentence, and you don't have to make an assertion that turns the volume up to eleven, either.” Of course there are writers who do set the Chevrolet or a building on fire in the first paragraph, sometimes the first sentence, and we'll read them alongside earlier masters like Chekhov, James Baldwin, and Virginia Woolf. We will read a host of contemporary writers in English and in translation, among them Elizabeth Strout and Ahdaf Soueif. 2 un-lengthy contemporary novels will figure in the reading, among them Dinaw Mengestu's All Our Names. Participants should plan on writing and revising some 50+ pages of fiction over the course of the semester. This may be a group of short stories, a novella (we'll read “Dirty Love” by Andre Dubus III), or a section of a novel.

Requirements Fulfilled: Creative Writing Workshop

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ENGL 5370 Nonfiction Workshop

Dr. Leslie Jill Patterson
M 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 32540

In this workshop, we'll study the unusual narrative strategies and structures created and adopted by diverse voices to tell the stories that simply don't fit traditional molds, stories that are frequently silenced by established critics, conventional standards of “good,” and the idea of what “sells” in the publishing world. Students will practice using these methodologies in their own works, whether addressing their personal stories … and/or the environment, mental illness, family trauma, racial injustice, history and memory, domestic violence, sexual assault, gender discrimination, and bigotry. The semester-long goal: 45-60 manuscript pages, whether 1) a chapbook of several shorter essays focused on a particular topic, 2) a novella-length essay, 3) three single essays, or 4) two single essays and a video or graphic essay.

Possible Texts (This list will shift as new books come out and I pare it down):
  • Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do
  • Tim Hernadez, All They Will Call You
  • Ken Lamberton, Wilderness and Razor Wire
  • Terese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries
  • Sarah Manguso, The Two Kinds of Decay or Ongoingness: The End of a Diary
  • Kelcey Parker Ervick, The Bitter Life of Bozena Nemcova
  • Nicole Walker, Egg
  • Elissa Washuta, My Body is a Book of Rules
  • Other individual essays

Requirements Fulfilled: Creative Writing Workshop

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ENGL 5370 Critical Writing: Poetry

Dr. William Wenthe
Th 2:00-4:50 PM
CRN 32542

First, let me reveal the secret to publishing poems in the best places. That secret is: write the best poems. Fortunately, while there are some aspects of “best” that are bigger than any of us, you do get to define a good portion of “best” in your own way. The bigger question, really, is “how”? Well, I will show you how*—but you will have to work very hard. Assisting in this endeavor will be yourself, our colleagues in the classroom, and all poems ever written. The aim of this course is to give you not only the guidance, but the space to achieve this goal. We will follow the inevitable threefold path of reading, writing, revising (in no particular order).

Readings will consist mostly of contemporary and older individual poems that offer us particular insights; and short prose pieces that will do the same. Generally I am interested in the ways and degrees to which a poem gestures toward itself, and/or gestures toward a world beyond itself, and the infinity of pleasures and problems involved in these gestures. I am very open to student suggestions; like writing itself, the class must be open to possibilities.

Writing will consist of new poems and revisions, submitted through the course of the semester. I don't work with deadlines generally, but if that helps you or if I feel you need to get more done, we will do that. Similarly with exercises: my sense, corroborated by the statements of interest submitted with your applications, is that you have things you need to write, and ways you want to explore them. However, we can come up with exercises if needed. One should treat revision comments as a kind of exercise assignment: something to explore with diligence to see where it leads.

Revisions: Years ago I had the opportunity to ask William Meredith, aged and debilitated by a stroke, what key advice he would give to a young poet. With effort, he summoned up one word: “Revise.” If it's good enough for Meredith, it's good enough for us. I have no method; but like most teachers I know a few tricks. But mainly, it's a matter of finding your own angel, and wrestling it. The key is to find in revision the glow and seduction of first writings.

*Results may vary

Requirements Fulfilled: Creative Writing Workshop

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ENGL 5380.001 Multicultural American Literature - Indigenous Futurism

Dr. Sara Spurgeon
Th 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 54916

This course will explore creative and scholarly works in the emerging field of Indigenous Futurism. We will read novels, short stories, graphic novellas/comics, and watch one full-length film as well as several short films. All our primary texts, both literary and filmic, are created by Native American, First Nations, tribal authors, artists, and/or filmmakers from somewhere in the Americas, with the exception of Toa Fraser who is from New Zealand. Among the questions we will consider are: Why has speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, alternative history, futurism, etc.) traditionally been so closely associated with white, Western, male authors and narratives of invasion and conquest? What happens when authors from a culture which has already survived an alien invasion and conquest claims the forms of speculative fiction to tell their own stories? Why are we currently experiencing a groundswell of publications in speculative fiction by authors/filmmakers of color, including native/tribal peoples?

Requirements Fulfilled: American Literature; LSJE

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ENGL 5380.D01 Multicultural American Literature - Indigenous Futurism

Dr. Sara Spurgeon
Th 6:00-8:50 PM
CRN 56195

This course will explore creative and scholarly works in the emerging field of Indigenous Futurism. We will read novels, short stories, graphic novellas/comics, and watch one full-length film as well as several short films. All our primary texts, both literary and filmic, are created by Native American, First Nations, tribal authors, artists, and/or filmmakers from somewhere in the Americas, with the exception of Toa Fraser who is from New Zealand. Among the questions we will consider are: Why has speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, alternative history, futurism, etc.) traditionally been so closely associated with white, Western, male authors and narratives of invasion and conquest? What happens when authors from a culture which has already survived an alien invasion and conquest claims the forms of speculative fiction to tell their own stories? Why are we currently experiencing a groundswell of publications in speculative fiction by authors/filmmakers of color, including native/tribal peoples?

Requirements Fulfilled: American Literature; LSJE

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ENGL 5380 Advanced Problems in Literary Studies: Translation Theory-Poetics

Dr. Curtis Bauer
M 9:00-11:50 AM
CRN 32565

This course is extremely important for us—poets, fiction writers, dramaturges, linguists, literary critics, technical writers…all—in the grand scheme of an education in the arts. We must not only be aware of basic grammatical, syntactical and phonological nuances, but also a writer's craft, literary tradition and contemporary literary contexts. This course will be a combination seminar in which we will read and discuss translation theory and then put it to practice by translating literary texts from a foreign language into English.

Literature in its original language is not a static, fixed entity whereby the translator need only extract its core and carry it over into the new language. Nor is the work as it enters the new language arriving at a fixed destination. It is more like a moving target, constantly subject to change in whichever stage of transformation it may currently occupy. Translations deaden over time, because they are marked by the literary conventions of their translators. Thus new translations of The Divine Comedy are ever being published. We have read Dante as John Ciardi, as Robert Pinsky, as Anthony Esolen…. But you might say that only Dante's translators (and his medieval readers) have ever really heard Dante. For to translate Dante, you must hear with Dante's ear.

To translate is to fully read; it is “a kind of reading, the assumption or transformation of one personal idiom into another,” writes Mark Strand. The act of translation, as you will hear from its various practitioners in essays and articles, intensifies our comprehension. Translation is good for writers (notorious skimmers) because we must parse, research, say out loud. We make conscious, clear decisions about words and idioms and sounds and rhythms. Further, we discover that the process is not about us, our egos, or what we want to say. We kneel at the altar of the other, not the altar of the self. Here's the idea: that by discovering the other, we find ourselves. And we become better writers through the writing of others.

What we will do:
  • Read poetry in translation
  • Read what others have to say about their own translations and translation process
  • Write about what we read
  • Attempt our own translation
  • Read and discuss our peers' translations

Requirements Fulfilled: Comparative Literature; Methods

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ENGL 5380 Feminist Thought and Theories (Cross-Listed as Women's Studies 4310/5310)

Dr. Marjean D. Purinton
M 2:00-4:50 PM
CRN 54349

This seminar constitutes a culminating framework course for Women's Studies minors, certificate students, and interested graduate students than can help to inform and structure their analytical work from feminist perspectives.

Using cross-disciplinary approaches, we will explore the broad range of theories that make up a body of scholarship termed “feminist theory” or “feminist thought.” We will read excerpts from long works and essays from both historically derived and contemporary feminist theorists, recognizing and interrogating the assumptions underpinning these writings. We will discuss fundamental questions these theories and methodologies raise about the origins of sex and gender differences, the nature and origins of patriarchy and feminism. We will explore the formations of gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, age, and nationality as categories or bases of oppression and empowerment.

Our learning environment will be interactive, intensive, and fun. We will examine and apply feminist critiques and innovations in methodologies in diverse fields of study, selecting from among them those that best inform our scholarly work. We will view videos that feature feminists. Other activities will include provocative discussions, role-playing scenarios, group work, presentations, and response papers. We will enrich our study by attending events associated with the annual All University Conference on the Advancement of Women in Higher Education, sponsored by the Women's Studies Program.

Graduate students will write and present a report of a long feminist theoretical work. Undergraduates will conduct a feminist scholar interview and write a report based on that interview. We will conclude the course with a critical, research-based project emanating from pre-existing work that we will, in the course of the semester, expand, inform, and enrich with feminist theories, thought, and methodologies.

You will find in this seminar a safe space in which to test new ideas and feminist thinking. In addition to a better understanding of feminist theories and methodologies, you should emerge from this course with a writing sample for your dossier (undergraduates) or work in progress applicable to your scholarship (graduate students).

Because my scholarship and pedagogy are informed by feminism, you will encounter in this course a learning environment of de-centered authority, one that invites you to participate in your own learning/discover process.

    Textbooks we will use for the seminar include the following:
  • Kolmar, Wendy, and Frances Bartkowski, ed. Feminist Theory: A Reader. 4th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2012.
  • Nicholson, Linda, ed. The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Thoughts. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1997.
  • Tong, Rosemarie Putnam. Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction. 5th ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2017.

Requirements Fulfilled: WS Certificate; Methods

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ENGL 5392 Teaching College English

Dr. Marjean D. Purinton
Th 9:30-12:20 PM
CRN 32586

This course, designed for doctoral students who wish to teach literature courses, examines theories, challenges, problems, and pedagogies of teaching literary students at the collegiate level. Its focus is both theoretical and practical.

We will examine approaches to teaching diverse literary genres and periods and at various undergraduate levels from core curriculum requirements (usually sophomore-level) to English majors and minors. We will explore effective pedagogical practices appropriate for various undergraduate classes. We will consider the conceptualization and content of different kinds of literature classes. We will evaluate learning outcomes activities and methods of assessments. And we will analyze the purpose for teaching literature at the university in the twenty-first century, how teaching literature contributes to the university's overall teaching mission, and the ways we can communicate the value of teaching literature at the undergraduate level to non-academic publics.

In addition to reflection essays addressing these theoretical matters, we will create practical documents useful to delivering a literature class: course descriptions, learning outcomes activities and assessments, class syllabi. We will observe colleagues who are teaching literature classes and reflect on their praxis. We will enrich our discoveries of best practices by attending pedagogical events sponsored by the Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development Center (TLPDC). We will present mock mini-lessons to our classmates. We will construct a teaching philosophy. We will discuss the kinds of teaching questions you can anticipate at a job interview.

Successful completion of this course makes you eligible to teach a 2000-level literature course in the English department at Texas Tech University.

Because my own pedagogy is informed by feminist theory and active-learning strategies, you will encounter in this course a learning environment f de-centered authority, one that invites you to participate in your own learning process and professional development.

    The following texts are required for the course:
  • Bain, Ken. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2004.
  • Blau, Sheridan. The Literature Workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2008.
  • Bruns, Cristina Vischer. Why Literature: The Value of Literary Reading and What It Means for Teaching. Bloomsbury Academic, 2011.
  • Scholes, Robert. The Crafty Reader. New Haven: Yale UP, 2001.
  • Showalter, Elaine. Teaching Literature. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.

Requirements Fulfilled: Pedagogy

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