This course provides an introduction to the expectations and conventions of graduate study, including research and writing methodology. In addition, it will introduce students to the field of English studies: its areas of specialization, key issues, and genres of writing. This course must be taken as one of the first three courses in the MA in English program.
Possible topics may include literature and film, the Bible and literature, the memoir, ecology and literature, literatures of the Holocaust, and literary biography. Credit may be earned more than once under this course number for different emphases.
This is a workshop-centered course involving the study and practice of fiction writing techniques. Class work is designed to holistically develop students as rigorous readers and perceptive writers. Along with participating in regular writing workshops—where students submit their own fiction and critique the work of their peers—students will also read and analyze theoretical and literary texts and participate in class discussions. Students will have the opportunity to grow as writers and sharpen their editorial capabilities. This course will also discuss fiction writing in publishing contexts—locally and nationally. Students will explore the process of how literary works are written, revised, submitted, acquired, edited, and marketed by literary journals as well as by small, university, and traditional presses. Issues of access and diversity in the literary marketplace will also be considered. The course will invite local publishing professionals to offer firsthand insights about the literary world.
Using Cheryl Glenn's text RHETORICAL FEMINISM AND THIS THING CALLED HOPE (STUDIES IN RHETORICS AND FEMINISMS), this course will first establish a theoretical lens and then use that lens to make meaning from a wide variety of texts written by women and feminists. Glenn's text "offers an alternative to hegemonic rhetorical histories, theories, and practices articulated in Western culture. [...] Rhetorical feminists establish greater representation and inclusivity of everyday rhetors, disidentification with traditional rhetorical practices, and greater appreciation for alternative means of delivery, including silence and listening. These tenets are supported by a cogent reconceptualization of the traditional rhetorical appeals, situating logos alongside dialogue and understanding, ethos alongside experience, and pathos alongside valued emotion" (Southern Illinois Press). The course will put Glenn's feminist rhetorical theory in conversation with writings from The Portable Feminist Reader edited by Roxanne Gay as well as with selected short stories and poems.