Graduate Course Offerings Summer 2020

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ENGL 5351: STUDIES IN FILM & LITERATURE: American Cinema and American Culture of the 1960s and 1970s

Dr. Wyatt Phillips
Mondays 6:00 – 8:50 PM
Distance CRN: 73091

This course will look at the transformation in American culture of the 1960s and 1970s through the lens of its cinema. The glow of post-war prosperity and an idealistic hope for broader social equalities that existed in America at the beginning of the 1960s collided with political assassinations, the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the 1970s economic downturn; this cultural volatility produced a vibrant but also complex range of cultural responses. At the same time, the economic realities of Hollywood changed substantially during this period, providing openings for new perspectives and new voices on American movie screens. This potent mix of cultural and industrial transformation produced a dynamic range of films, from challenging works for new audiences to distracting spectacles for the masses. Class viewings will address such a range of films from across this period; readings will include cultural theory as well as cultural, political, and media histories of the era. Assignments will include a scholarly book review, a midterm essay, and a final research paper.

Requirements Fulfilled: American Literature; Period: Later; Genre: Film

ENGL 5340: Research Methods

Dr. Alison Rukavina
Thursdays 6:00-8:50 PM
Distance CRN: 72717

This course is an introduction to the methods, processes, and procedures for graduate-level (MA and PhD) research in English and is for students pursuing MA and PhD degrees in English with concentrations primarily in Literature, Linguistics, and Creative Writing. Students will learn about the uses of archival, bibliographic, textual, and web-based sources in graduate-level scholarship, as well as consider the professional realities of modern scholarship that asks academics to not only be excellent researchers but also be good at promoting themselves and their work with appropriate venues and audiences. In the first part of the course students will study the theories and practices related to literary criticism and textual scholarship. In the second half of the course, students will learn about how to publish and promote their research, including how to determine appropriate venues, how to apply to and then present at conferences, and how to use social media like Twitter to promote themselves and their research. Throughout the course, students will develop a research project that relates to his or her own particular area of interest.

Requirement fulfilled: Foundation course

ENGL 5355: Studies in Comparative Literature: Small Acts/Big Scenes: Postcoloniality, Performance, and Globalization

Dr. Kanika Batra
Tuesdays 6:00-8:50 PM
Distance CRN: 72149

The Kenyan playwright and novelist Ngugi wa Thiong'o has suggested that drama arising from formerly colonized nations is engaged in a struggle for control over the performance space with the postcolonial state. Starting from this idea, our focus in this course will be on drama emerging from formerly colonized nations in Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia. During the struggle for independence from colonial rule and after it -- in the postcolonial era, so to speak – African, Caribbean, and Asian dramatists developed innovative forms of performance that included indigenous as well as Western modes of performance. In many of these nations there exist strong performance traditions related to rituals, festivals, and other religious ceremonies. While some playwrights and performance artists prefer to use these forms to express contemporary political conditions in their nations, others rely on a more syncretic approach that combines indigenous with Western forms.

Taking a broad conception of postcoloniality, performance, and globalization as involving cultural and political acts, this course will focus on a selection of drama that consciously engages with national and international concerns. To this end we will begin the course by reading an introductory account of post-colonial literatures and theory. We will then move on to an examination of plays such as The Hungry Earth,Pantomime, QPH, and others. These readings will be supplemented with writings by Western and non-Western theatre practitioners. The broad set of concerns addressed in the course are: the continuing legacies of colonialism and neocolonialism; according recognition to local cultures; analyzing capital-driven global inequities that impact on nation-states and performance artists. This course will thus enable you to perceive the intersection of drama criticism with postcolonialism and globalization as theoretical and political modes of analysis.

Requirements Fulfilled: CLGT; Period: Later; Genre: Non-fiction; Methods Course for Comparative Literature Specialization

ENGL 5370: Studies in Creative Writing: Nonfiction Workshop - Experiments at the Edge of the Essay

Dr. Noam Dorr
Asynchronous
Distance CRN:72065

If we think of the essay as “seeing the writer's mind at work unfolding on the page” this class will allow us the opportunity to explore the far reaches of our minds. This course is about the process of asking questions, of experimenting with our writing in order to see what we can learn when we push our creative boundaries. Even if you're interested in more conventional nonfiction writing, the tools you learn through these experiments will serve you in honing your writing skills and allow you to see what's possible before choosing your form. The class exercises and readings will help us rethink the possibility of the essay, and though we will primarily investigate nonfiction essays, we will also steal various techniques from poetry and fiction to deepen our work. Through these attempts we will work towards writing and revising publishable work, work that you can be proud of, work that you can send out into the world.

Course requirement: Creative Writing Workshop

Department of English

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P.O. Box 43091 Lubbock, TX 79409-3091
Phone
806.742.2501
Email
english@ttu.edu