Spring 2022 Graduate Courses (2024)

ENGL 7358 Topics in Literature and Other Disciplines: The Other-Than-Human-World – Ecotheories and New Materialisms

Instructor: Professor Kathleen Kelly
Sequence: Monday, 5:00-8:20 PM

To begin with a broad and obvious generalization, humans have always re-presented the natural world back to themselves in imaginative ways, from prehistoric cave paintings to an Ansel Adams photograph or Audubon print, from a simile in Homer in which he compares the rush of men in battle to a summer rainstorm, to a Mary Oliver poem about a Cape Cod beach. And scholars have pretty much always noticed, examined, and attempted to explain or interpret the different ways in which the natural world has been represented in the arts. Moreover, we have a long history of investing objects, human-made or natural, cultural or personal, with symbolic, even magical, power: things query, summon, and demand—ankhs, a favorite toy, crucifixes, a stolen Rembrandt locked in a vault, souvenirs, a myriad of tchotchkes, a shell picked up on the beach. Even imaginary things beckon: a grail, a handkerchief, a million-pound bank note. In this course, we will explore our tendency to use things, from turtles to trees to totems, to think through. (We will also have opportunities to consider how ecocritical and materialist practices intersect with race, class, gender, and identity.) Finally (and impossibly) we will attempt to attend to the other-than-human world on, as it were, its/their own terms.

The first part of the course is dedicated to learning our way around the theories and debates that constitute ecocriticism and what has come to be called the new materialism; we’ll read a selection of representative theoretical texts drawn from philosophy, literary studies, rhetoric, and the natural sciences alongside texts/films/other art forms across genres and literary periods. In the second part of the course, students are invited to choose what we read/view in order to further ground theory in practice. For the last part of the course, students will develop their own projects connected to their own interests and concentrations. Requirements: a reading journal, an object project to be presented in class (any thing, or a representation of a thing if the thing is too unwieldly to bring to class—or too alive!), and a final project, to be workshopped from proposal through drafts to finished form.

ENGL 7380 Topics in Digital Humanities: Exploratory and Creative Programming for Poets and Writers

Instructor: Professor Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
Sequence: Tuesday, 4:20-7:50 PM

from textblob import TextBlob
import random
from random import randint

CourseDescriptionSpring2022 = “In this project-based course, students will explore \
using coding and creative computation to generate and remix their own creative works. \
Students will learn about some key moments in the history of programmed text \
while creating their own. An essential question is how have, and how can, \
writers use computational and digital practices to create meaningful, engaging, \
and relevant writing. A significant portion of the course will explore using \
Python to create small programs like chatbots, poem generators, and prose generators; \
and using Python to explore features of text. Other detours may include HTML \
and JavaScript for web-based work, and literary and interactive fiction games. \
No prior technical expertise is required to take the course but students \
should be willing to experiment with new skills—this course is designed for \
writers and literary types with little to no programming experience, so all are welcome!”

CourseDescriptionSpring2022 = TextBlob(CourseDescriptionSpring2022)

nps = list()
for (w,tag) in CourseDescriptionSpring2022.tags:
if tag == “NN”:
nouns.append(word.lemmatize())

summary = CourseDescriptionSpring2022.noun_phrases
summary = list(dict.fromkeys(summary))

print(“In short, this course is about: “,end=’\n’*2)

rnps = [choice(summary) for i in range(6)]
for i in rnps:
print(f’-{i}’)

In short, this course is about:

-own creative works
-key moments
-python
-digital practices
-small programs
-html

ENGL 7284 Topics in 18th-Century Literature: Gender & Racial Capitalism

Instructor: Professor Elizabeth Maddock Dillon
Sequence: Wednesday, 2:50-6:10 PM

NOTE: This class is currently full. Please join the waitlist if interested.

The eighteenth century saw the birth of a new economic system premised on colonialism in the Americas and the extraction of land and labor by Europeans from Indigenous people and enslaved Africans. The social, cultural, and political worlds of Europeans, Native Americans, and diasporic Africans underwent enormous changes: gender and sexuality helped to organize the new world of racial capital that emerged. In this class, we explore the intersecting texts and performances of settler colonials, diasporic Africans, and Native Americans with a focus on the role of gender and race in the eighteenth-century Anglo-Atlantic World. We will focus, in particular, on the relation of gender and race to empire, nationhood, property ownership, and the environment; we will read across a range of genres, from slave narratives, to captivity narratives, to poetry, novels, and plays of the period.

ENGL 7351 Topics in Literary Study: Joyce & Modernism

Instructor: Professor Patrick Mullen
Sequence: Wednesday, 11:20 AM-2:40 PM

James Joyce’s Ulysses was first published in full by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, a date was to coincide with Joyce’s 40^th birthday. This seminar will celebrate the centenary publication by offering students the opportunity to read this great novel and to read through the history of criticism through which different generations made sense of it. Ulysseswas the most influential English-language novel of the 20^th century and inaugurated what was called a revolution of the word. Joyce pioneered forms of literary expression that came to define modernism, he offered representations of sex and sexuality, gender and desire that inspired feminists, he connected language to politics in a way that helped to launch French theory and postmodernism, and he wrote the first postcolonial novel that helped colonial writers in Ireland and across the globe imagine what life after empire might look like. Reading the criticism that emerged to engage Ulysses is to read through the development of criticism of the 20^th century from new formalism, to postmodernism, to postcolonial theory, to feminism, to queer theory. We will consider these various iterations of literary studies and how they took shape in relation to the reception of Joyce. Most importantly, we will spend time close reading, digesting, appreciating, arguing with, Joyce’s writing. Students will be asked to do a presentation, to produce an annotated bibliography of criticism, and to write a seminar essay.

ENGL 7395 Topics in Writing: Writing in the Multilingual World

Instructor: Professor Qianqian Zhang-Wu
Sequence: Monday, 1:35-4:50 PM

NOTE: This class is currently full. Please join the waitlist if interested.

This course explores writing in the multilingual world and the various ways that linguistic diversity shapes our everyday, academic, and professional lives. Students will learn about the changing place of World Englishes in globalization, what contemporary theories of linguistic diversity mean for written communication, and how multilingual identities can be included in writing research/practice. Students will conduct research on their own linguistic communities and identities.

INSH 7910: NULab Project Seminar

Instructor: Professor Julia Flanders
Sequence: Tuesday, 2:30-4:10 PM
Attributes:

• Counts as a Core Requirement for the Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities
• Can also count as an elective towards the English MA/PhD degree (does not require GSC petition)

NOTE: This class is currently full. Please join the waitlist if interested.

Offers students an opportunity to learn and use digital humanities methods with others in groups and across disciplines in the collaborative space of the NULab seminar. May be repeated up to three times.

ENGL 7284 Topics in 18th-Century Literature: Gender & Racial Capitalism

Instructor: Professor Elizabeth Maddock Dillon
Sequence: Wednesday, 2:50-6:10 PM
Attributes:

• Counts as an elective for the Graduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

NOTE: This class is currently full. Please join the waitlist if interested.

The eighteenth century saw the birth of a new economic system premised on colonialism in the Americas and the extraction of land and labor by Europeans from Indigenous people and enslaved Africans. The social, cultural, and political worlds of Europeans, Native Americans, and diasporic Africans underwent enormous changes: gender and sexuality helped to organize the new world of racial capital that emerged. In this class, we explore the intersecting texts and performances of settler colonials, diasporic Africans, and Native Americans with a focus on the role of gender and race in the eighteenth-century Anglo-Atlantic World. We will focus, in particular, on the relation of gender and race to empire, nationhood, property ownership, and the environment; we will read across a range of genres, from slave narratives, to captivity narratives, to poetry, novels, and plays of the period.

See theGraduate Certificate in Digital HumanitiesorGraduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies catalog pages for complete course lists and certificate information.

Please note:
*Electives must be ENGL courses unless otherwise approved by the Graduate Studies Committee, including electives taken for graduate certificates. Students seeking to take non-ENGL electives in CSSH or through the GCWS Consortium should submit a General Petition Form to the GSC via Heather Hardy, located on the Current Student Resources webpage. Core courses taken toward a graduate certificate do not require a petition if the certificate has been formally declared. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to Heather for any questions.

Proseminar:

• ENGL 5103 Proseminar, Professor Erika Boeckeler

Theories & Methods:

• ENGL 7370 Introduction to Digital Humanities, Professor Julia Flanders

Writing & Rhetoric:

• ENGL 7395 Topics in Writing: Decolonial Theory and Methods, Professor Ellen Cushman
• ENGL 7360 Topics in Rhetoric: Justice-oriented Writing Assessment – Antiracist, Decolonial, and Anti-Ableist Approaches to Evaluating Writing, Professor Mya Poe

Literature Pre-1700:

• ENGL 7281 Topics in Medieval Literature: Afterlives of the Middle Ages, Professor Kathleen Kelly

Literature Post-1900:

• ENGL 7351 Topics in Literary Study: Trauma, Memory, and Contemporary Literature, Professor Hillary Chute

Electives:

• INSH 7910 NULab Seminar, Professor Julia Flanders