Courses by semester
Courses for Fall 20
Complete Cornell University course descriptions and section times are in the Class Roster.
| Course ID | Title | Offered |
|---|---|---|
| ENGL 1105 |
FWS: Writing and Sexual Politics
Topics and reading lists vary from section to section, but all will in some way address the subject of sexual politics. Some sections may deal with fiction, poetry, film, or drama, and many include a mix of literary genres. Students will practice close, attentive, and imaginative reading and writing. Consult the John S. Knight Institute Current Courses webpage to access current year offerings, instructors and section descriptions. Full details for ENGL 1105 - FWS: Writing and Sexual Politics |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 1111 |
FWS: Writing Across Cultures
Topics and reading lists vary from section to section, but all will engage in some way with an aspect of culture or subculture. Some sections may deal with fiction, poetry, film, or drama, and many include a mix of literary genres. Students will practice close, attentive, and imaginative reading and writing. Consult the John S. Knight Institute Current Courses webpage to access current year offerings, instructors and section descriptions. |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 1120 |
FWS: Writing and Community Engagement
From literature to literacy, comics to archival work, writing can build bridges between campus and communities. Sections vary in topic, and issues may include healthcare, social justice, environmental studies, and others, but all will enable students to work with community partners. Students will learn skills in critical thinking and reflection, writing for specialized and non-specialized audiences, community engagement, and cultural awareness. Consult the John S. Knight Institute Current Courses webpage to access current year offerings, instructors and section descriptions. Full details for ENGL 1120 - FWS: Writing and Community Engagement |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 1130 |
FWS: Writing the Environment
Our human abilities to communicate about nature, the environment, and climate change are challenged by the scale and scope of the topics. This course enables students to read, write, and design forms of communication that engage with the environment, in order to inform, advocate, and to connect with our world. Consult the John S. Knight Institute Current Courses webpage to access current year offerings, instructors and section descriptions. |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 1134 |
FWS: True Stories
How do we understand the reality of others? For that matter, how do we know and understand our own experience? One answer is writing: writing can crystalize lived experience for others. We can record our observations, our thoughts, our feelings and insights and hopes and failures, to communicate them, to understand them. In this course, we will read nonfiction narratives that explore and shape the self and reality, including the personal essay, memoir, autobiography, documentary film, and journalism. We will write essays that explore and explain these complex issues of presenting one's self and others. |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 1158 |
FWS: American Voices
Topics and reading lists vary from section to section, but all will engage in some way with an aspect of American culture. Some sections may deal with fiction, poetry, film, or drama, and many include a mix of literary genres. Students will practice close, attentive, and imaginative reading and writing. Consult the John S. Knight Institute Current Courses webpage to access current year offerings, instructors and section descriptions. |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 1167 |
FWS: Reading Now
Reading is experiencing a new revolution in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We still read paper books, but we also read by scrolling on screen, through search engines, and in images and memes. What kinds of texts are emerging in this new era, and how do we read them? How do writing—and our ways of reading—connect with the urgent topics before us now: technology and social control, truth and media, climate change and apocalypse, identity, equality, and human rights? This course will examine the past twenty years of writing in a variety of genres, printed and/or online, from fiction to memoir to poetry and beyond. As we read, we will explore and discover the forms that our own writing can take in response. |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 1168 |
FWS: Cultural Studies
From TV news to rock lyrics, from ads to political speeches to productions of Shakespeare, the forms of culture surround us at every moment. In addition to entertaining us or enticing us, they carry implied messages about who we are, what world we live in, and what we should value. Topics and reading lists vary from section to section, but all are built on the assumption that learning to decode these messages is a survival skill in today's media-saturated world and also excellent training for reading literature. Consult the John S. Knight Institute Current Courses webpage to access current year offerings, instructors and section descriptions. |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 1170 |
FWS: Short Stories
What can a short story do that no other art form can do? We all consume and produce stories. To write about how narrative works, both within and against tradition, is to touch the core of identity, the quick of what makes us human. Storytelling informs all writing. Engaging diverse authors, we will practice not only reading sensitively and incisively but also making evidence-based arguments with power and grace, learning the habits of writing, revision, and documentation that allow us to join public or scholarly conversation. We will embrace "shortness" as a compression of meaning to unpack. Our own writing may include close analyses of texts, syntheses that place stories in critical dialogue, and both creative and research-based projects. |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 1183 |
FWS: Word and Image
What happens when we adapt books into movies, write fan-fiction about video games, or create poetry about paintings? What happens when we write about one genre as though it were another? We have been writing about images and making images about writing for a long time. In addition to conventional types of art and literature like paintings, novels, or poetry, other forms such as film, video games, exhibitions, and virtual reality offer lively areas for analysis. In this class, we will engage with widely varied cultural forms—including, perhaps, experimental poetry, medieval manuscripts, graphic novels, memoirs, plays, films, podcasts, and more—to develop multiple media literacies as we sharpen our own writing about culture, literature, and art. |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 1191 |
FWS: British Literature
Topics and reading lists vary from section to section, but all will engage in some way with the subject of British literature. Some sections may deal with fiction, poetry, or drama, and many include a mix of literary genres. Students will practice close, attentive, and imaginative reading and writing. Consult the John S. Knight Institute Current Courses webpage to access current year offerings, instructors and section descriptions. |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 1270 |
FWS: Writing About Literature
Reading lists vary from section to section, but close, attentive, and imaginative reading and writing are central to all. Some sections may deal with fiction, poetry, or drama, or include a mix of literary kinds. By engaging in discussions and working with varied writing assignments, students will explore major modes and genres of English poetry and prose, and may learn about versification techniques, rhetorical strategies, performance as interpretation, and thematic and topical concerns. In the process students will expand the possibilities of their own writing. Sections that invite students to study and write critically about plays or films in a variety of dramatic idioms and cultural traditions may require attendance at screenings or at live productions by the theatre department. All sections are taught by Department of English faculty. Consult the John S. Knight Institute Current Courses webpage to access current year offerings, instructors and section descriptions. |
Fall, Spring, Summer. |
| ENGL 2000 |
Introduction to Criticism and Theory
An introductory survey of literary and cultural criticism and theory, with a more general focus on developing critical thinking skills. The course draws on literature and film and gives students a solid foundation in the issues and vocabularies of the critical analysis of literature and culture. It is designed to be accessible and useful not only for English and literature majors (and prospective majors) but also for anyone interested in gaining a foundation in critical approaches to culture and society. The contemporary humanistic disciplines largely share many common concerns and this class provides undergraduates from various disciplines a firm grounding in the key concepts and issues of what has come to be called "theory." Readings from such schools as New Criticism, post-structuralism, Marxism, feminism, and postcolonial studies. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for ENGL 2000 - Introduction to Criticism and Theory |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2010 |
Literatures in English I: From Old English to the New World
An introduction to key works of English and American literature for majors and non-majors. Here's a chance to study some of the greatest hits of the literary tradition in a single semester: Beowulf; Arthurian legends; works by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Anne Bradstreet, Ben Franklin, Sageyowatha, Phillis Wheatley. Reading across history and geography allows us to ask big questions about literature and society. How did literature factor in England's transformation from a cultural backwater into a global empire? What role does literature play in disciplining, civilizing, and colonizing subjects? When and how is literature used to delight, resist, and rebel? From our reading, we will create a toolkit of literary terms and techniques. And through a series of exercises, students will get hands-on experience with literary experimentation. The class counts toward the pre-1800 requirement for English majors. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for ENGL 2010 - Literatures in English I: From Old English to the New World |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2035 |
Science Fiction
Science fiction is not merely a literary genre but a whole way of being, thinking, and acting in the modern world. This course explores classic and contemporary science fiction from Frankenstein to The Hunger Games alongside a rich array of fiction and films from Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Our discussions will position these works vis-à-vis seminal thinkers, ranging from Plato to Descartes and Donna Haraway to Paul Crutzen, who ask the same questions as science fiction does about our selves, our world, and our future. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2160 |
Television
In this introductory course, participants will study the economic and technological history of the television industry, with a particular emphasis on its manifestations in the United States and the United Kingdom; the changing shape of the medium of television over time and in ever-wider global contexts; the social meanings, political stakes, and ideological effects of the medium; and the major methodological tools and critical concepts used in the interpretation of the medium, including Marxist, feminist, queer, and postcolonial approaches. Two to three hours of television viewing per week will be accompanied by short, sometimes dense readings, as well as written exercises. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2270 |
Shakespeare
This course aims to give students a good historical and critical grounding in Shakespeare's drama and its central and continuing place in Renaissance culture and beyond. We will read poetry and primarily plays representing the shape of Shakespeare's career as it moves through comedies, histories, tragedies, and a romance. Specific plays include The Two Gentleman of Verona, Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry V, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Othello, Macbeth and The Tempest. We will focus on dramatic forms (genres), Shakespeare's themes, and social and historical contexts. The course combines lectures and hands-on work in weekly discussions. While we will view some scenes from film adaptations, the main focus is on careful close interaction with the language of the plays. This class counts toward the pre-1800 requirement for English majors. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2512 |
Caribbean Worlds
This introductory course to the study of the Caribbean will begin with examinations of what constitutes the Caribbean and an understanding of Caribbean space. We will then study its peoples, contact between Europeans and indigenous peoples, African enslavement and resistance, Indian indentureship and other forced migrations. By mid semester we will identify a cross-section of leading thinkers and ideas. We will also pay attention to issues of identity, migration and the creation of the Caribbean diaspora. Constructions of tourist paradise and other stereotypes and the development of critical Caribbean institutions and national development will be discussed as we read and listen to some representative oral and written literature of the Caribbean and view some relevant film on the Caribbean. This inter-disciplinary survey provides students with a foundation for more specialized coursework on the Caribbean offered in our department. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS, GLC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2600 |
Introduction to Native American Literature
The production of North American Indigenous literatures began long before European colonization, and persists in a variety of printed, sung, carved, painted, written, spoken, and digital media. From oral traditions transmitted through memory and mnemonics to contemporary genres and media, Native North American authors offer Indigenous perspectives on social, political, and environmental experience, through deft artistry and place-specific aesthetics. Our attention will focus on the contexts from which particular Native American literatures emerge, the ethics to consider when entering Indigenous intellectual territory, and close attention to common themes and techniques that frequently appear in contemporary Native American literature. Readings will feature a range of novels, poetry, short fiction, graphic novel/comics, and film. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, SCD, AS) Full details for ENGL 2600 - Introduction to Native American Literature |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2602 |
The Bluest Eye at Fifty
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Nobel Laureate and Cornell alumna Toni Morrison's first novel, The Bluest Eye. Now considered a classic of American literature, the book explores the psychological traumas inflicted on African American children by racism and violence, while richly evoking the community that surrounds and struggles to protect them. In this course we will read the novel carefully, consider its impact on contemporary culture, and take part in an online reading and discussion that will be streamed around the world on October 8. Guest lectures will be provided by faculty from English, Africana, and Comparative Literature. |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2630 |
Brazil to Brooklyn: Jewish Cultures of the Americas
Jewish cultures in the New World are far more diverse than most Americans realize. Some know the history of Ashkenazi (German and Eastern European) Jews, most of whom immigrated to the U.S. between 1880-1920. In addition to Ashkenazi cultures, our course introduces the Sephardi (Spanish/Portuguese), Mizrahi (Arab), Persian, and Ethiopian Jews who have immigrated to the Americas since the 16th century. Students will learn how Jews of all origins have built communities across the Americas, from Jamaica, Bolivia, and Brazil to Mexico, the U.S., and Canada. We will focus on the resources that diverse Jewish communities drew on to face challenges in creating new Jewish American cultures, such as how to navigate assimilation, religious observance, legal discrimination, and gender and sexual reform. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for ENGL 2630 - Brazil to Brooklyn: Jewish Cultures of the Americas |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2770 |
Representing Racial Encounters, Encountering Racial Representations
Designed for the general student population, this course appeals to students who intend to work with diverse communities (for example, students with interests in medicine, law, labor, government, business, the hospitality industry, or in the fields of gender, queer, or ethnic studies), or who are from diverse backgrounds and are now navigating the university. Serving as an introduction to the critical inquiries and scholarly fields of the English department, the course uses literature, visual, digital, and popular culture, alongside literary, social, and cultural theory to consider how people from different cultures encounter and experience each other. In light of changing national and global contexts of pandemic, environmental and climate change, trade and civil wars, and growing interracial and interethnic tensions, the course examines histories of racial representations, dating to the colonial era that resonates in twenty-first century depictions of race, class, gender, and other markers of "difference". Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, SCD-AS) Full details for ENGL 2770 - Representing Racial Encounters, Encountering Racial Representations |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2785 |
Comic Books and Graphic Novels
POW! ZAP! DOOM! This is a class about how we can draw together, studying a medium that is based in the practice, in all senses, of "drawing together." We will read Pulitzer winning memoirs and NSFW gutter rubbish. We will trace the history of sequential art from about 1898 to the present, including caricature, pop art, and meme cultures, Wonder Woman and Wimmin's Comix, Archie and archives. Studying comics requires us to entangle disciplines and to make things: graphic design, marketing, media studies, law, education, and various illuminated cosmologies. What is this medium that teaches us to read the page anew, to speak in bubbles, to witness and play with apocalypse, to enjoy our suspension in the infinite, and to indulge in graphic sensations? Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2800 |
Creative Writing
An introductory course in the theory, practice, and reading of fiction, poetry, and allied forms. Both narrative and verse readings are assigned. Students will learn to savor and practice the craft of poetry and narrative writing, developing techniques that inform both. Some class meetings may feature peer review of student work, and instructors may assign writing exercises or prompts. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2880 |
Expository Writing
This course offers guidance and an audience for students who wish to gain skill in expository writing—a common term for critical, reflective, investigative, and creative nonfiction. Each section provides a context for writing defined by a form of exposition, a disciplinary area, a practice, or a topic intimately related to the written medium. Course members will read in relevant published material and write and revise their own work regularly, while reviewing and responding to one another's. Students and instructors will confer individually throughout the term. Topics differ for each section. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2906 |
Punk Culture: The Aesthetics and Politics of Refusal
Punk Culture–comprised of music, fashion, literature, and visual arts–represents a complex critical stance of resistance and refusal that coalesced at a particular historical moment in the mid-1970s, and continues to be invoked, revived, and revised. In this course we will explore punk's origins in New York and London, U.S. punk's regional differences (the New York scene's connection to the art and literary worlds, Southern California's skate and surf culture, etc.), its key movements (hardcore, straight edge, riot grrrl, crust, queercore), its race, class and gender relations, and its ongoing influence on global youth culture. We will read, listen, and examine a variety of visual media to analyze how punk draws from and alters previous aesthetic and political movements. No previous experience studying music is necessary. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for ENGL 2906 - Punk Culture: The Aesthetics and Politics of Refusal |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2917 |
Race and Sex: Arabian Nights
What does the representation of sexual encounter in the Arabian Nights ('Alf layla-wa layla) have to do with a politics of race and gender? This course explores the millenia-long history of mediations and translations of this ancient Perso-Arabic text across literature, film, and popular culture, in the Middle East and in Europe. We will pay attention to the transmission of phobic tropes about female sexuality and miscegenation, or "interracial" sex as they manifest in various versions of 1001 Nights across time and space. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, SCD-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 2935 |
New Visions in African Cinema
This undergraduate course introduces the formal and topical innovations that African cinema has experienced since its inception in the 1960s. Sections will explore, among others, Nollywood, sci-fi, and ideological cinema. Films include: Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako, Mohamed Camara's Dakan, Djibril Diop Mambéty's Touki-Bouki, Cheikh Oumar Sissoko's Finzan, Anne-Laure Folly's Women with Open Eyes, Ousmane Sembène's Camp de Thiaroye, Jean-Pierre Bekolo's Quartier Mozart. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS, GLC-AS) |
Spring. |
| ENGL 3080 |
Icelandic Family Sagas
An introduction to Old Norse-Icelandic mythology and the Icelandic family saga-the "native" heroic literary genre of Icelandic tradition. Texts will vary but will normally include the Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda, Hrafnkels Saga, Njals Saga, Laxdaela Saga, and Grettirs Saga. All readings will be in translation. The class counts toward the pre-1800 requirement for English majors. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3110 |
Old English
In this course, we will read and discuss some of the earliest surviving English poetry and prose. Attention will be paid to (1) learning to read the language in which this literature is written, (2) evaluating the poetry as poetry: its form, structure, style, and varieties of meaning, and (3) seeing what can be learned about the culture of Anglo-Saxon England and about the early Germanic world in general, from an examination of the Old English literary records. We will begin by reading some easy prose and will go on to consider some more challenging heroic, elegiac, and devotional poetry, including an excerpt from the masterpiece Beowulf. The course may also be used as preparation for the sequence ENGL 3120/ENGL 6120. The class counts toward the pre-1800 requirement for English majors. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3130 |
Medieval Women Writers
This course will study medieval women writers and some of the contexts and methodologies that might help us assess their works and lives. There will be some attention to writings to women, and we'll sample the vast range of writings about women; but the main focus will be on writing (apparently) by women, considered historically and in the literary, religious, and other terms that the writings invite, as well as modern theories and historical stratagems for approaching the topic. Early texts will include Perpetua's martyrdom, Heloise's letters, Hildegard of Bingen and other visionaries, poetry by Marie de France and some trobaritz, then a substantial part of the term will treat visionary writings, family letters, poetry collections, and even drama by women in late medieval England. This class may be used as one of the three pre-1800 courses required of English majors. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3190 |
Chaucer
Chaucer became known as the "father of English poetry" before he was entirely cold in his grave. Why is what he wrote more than six hundred years ago still riveting for us today? It's not just because he is the granddaddy of this language and its literature; it's because what he wrote was funny, fierce, thoughtful, political, philosophical and, oh yes, notoriously bawdy. We'll read some of Chaucer's brilliant early work, and then dig into his two greatest achievements: the epic Troilus and Crisyede, and The Canterbury Tales, his oft-censored panorama of medieval English life. Chaucer will be read in Middle English, which will prove surprisingly easy and pleasant. The class counts toward the pre-1800 requirement for English majors. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS) |
Spring. |
| ENGL 3240 |
Blood Politics: Comparative Renaissance Drama
Blood is everywhere. From vampire shows to video games, our culture seems to be obsessed with it. The course examines the power of "blood" in the early modern period as a figure that continues to capture our imagination, not only as a marker of racial, religious, and sexual difference and desire, but also as a dramatic player in its own right. How does a politics of blood appear on stage when populations are being expelled and colonized for reasons (mis)understood in terms of blood? In the course of trying to answer this and other questions of blood, we will read plays by Shakespeare, Webster, Kyd, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderón de la Barca. Topics include honor, revenge, purity, the body, sexuality, conversion, and death. This course counts as a pre-1800 course for English majors. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for ENGL 3240 - Blood Politics: Comparative Renaissance Drama |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3290 |
Milton: Political Revolution and Paradise Lost
Was Milton a revolutionary poet? During the English civil war, he wrote radical political pamphlets defending regicide, divorce, unlicensed printing, and religious dissent. Yet he also saw himself as the epic poet of English Protestantism. Modern readers tend to separate these two aspects of his writing but, for Milton, poetry was crucial to proper governance. In this course, we'll focus on how Milton reconciled the dual imperatives to resist illegitimate rule and to obey true authority. We'll learn about the poetic and rhetorical techniques that Milton used to distinguish paradox from contradiction, action from activity, and dissent from rebellion. And we'll consider the importance of this kind of thinking to political action and public life. This course may be used as one of the three pre-1800 courses required of English majors. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for ENGL 3290 - Milton: Political Revolution and Paradise Lost |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3320 |
The World Turned Upside Down: Literature and Revolution
In Hamilton, Lin Manuel Miranda marks the victory of the American Revolution with a ballad originally sung in Britain and associated with parliament's beheading of the king in 1649. In this course, we will examine the literary representation of revolution as both a liberatory and ghastly "overturning" of hierarchical order from the Puritan revolution to British responses to the American and French revolutions. Reading poetry, drama, fiction, and political essays, we will especially focus on the way sexual and familial tyranny and terror in sentimental and Gothic literature figure socio-political violence in upside-down worlds. We will also discuss revolutions in literature and their overturning and remaking of genres and forms. Authors include Milton, Behn, Defoe, Burke, Paine, Brockden Brown, Wollstonecraft and Godwin. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for ENGL 3320 - The World Turned Upside Down: Literature and Revolution |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3500 |
The High Modernist Tradition
Critical, historical and interdisciplinary study of major works by Joyce, Woolf, Conrad, Forster, Lawrence, Eliot, Yeats, Wilde, Hardy, and Hopkins. The emphasis will be on the joy of close reading of wonderful, powerful, and innovative individual works, all of which I love to teach. We shall place the authors and works within the context of literary, political, cultural, and intellectual history. The course will seek to define the development of literary modernism (mostly but not exclusively in England), and relate literary modernism in England to that in Europe and America as well as to other intellectual developments. We shall be especially interested in the relationship between modern literature and modern painting and sculpture. Within this course, I work closely with students as they select and develop the topics on which they write essays. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3520 |
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf – writer, feminist, and anti-colonial pacifist – is among the most important figures of the twentieth century. She was central to the modernist reinvention of the novel around subjective experience. She was also an astute social critic, exposing the extra burdens placed upon women even as their opportunities were curtailed. Alert to the hypocrisies of the powerful and the coercion of master narratives, her writing gives voice to the outsider, the marginal, and the contingent. Woolf's influence keeps growing. In this course we will read her most significant novels, essays, and stories. While learning about their original contexts (e.g., debates about women's suffrage, imperialism, WWI, the rise of fascism, the coming of WWII), we'll also explore what makes Woolf an icon today. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3550 |
Decadence
"My existence is a scandal," Oscar Wilde once wrote, summing up in an epigram the effect of his carefully cultivated style of perversity and paradox. Through their celebration of "art for art's sake" and all that was considered artificial, unnatural, or obscene, the Decadent writers of the late-nineteenth century sought to free the pleasures of beauty, spirituality, and sexual desire from their more conventional ethical moorings. We will focus on the literature of the period, including works by Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, A. C. Swinburne, and especially Oscar Wilde, and we will also consider related developments in aesthetic philosophy, painting, music, theater, architecture, and design. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3552 |
Oscar Wilde
"My existence is a scandal," Oscar Wilde once wrote. With his legendary wit, his exuberant style of perversity and paradox, and his audacious sexual transgressions, his scandals continue to fascinate and delight. Through different approaches to interpretive writing, we will explore his work in a variety of genres, including his brilliant comedy The Importance of Being Earnest, his banned drama Salomé, and his Decadent novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. |
Fall (weeks 8-14). |
| ENGL 3606 |
Black Women and Political Leadership
This course studies the life experiences and political struggles of black women who have attained political leadership. It will study their rise to political power through an examination of the autobiographies of women from the Caribbean, the U.S., Africa and Brazil. Political figures such as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Shirley Chisholm, Benedita da Silva will serve as some of the primary sources of analysis and discussion. Students will have the opportunity to select and follow a political leader and her challenges closely. The first half of the course will examine some of the general literature on the subject; the second half will study the women in their own words. We will attempt to have some available local political leaders visit the class. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS, GLC-AS) Full details for ENGL 3606 - Black Women and Political Leadership |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3615 |
Podcast, Radio, Gramophone: Literary Technologies of Sound
How can we account for the contemporary popularity of podcasts? In what ways do they build on, and break from, earlier forms of writing for the ear? In this class we will study innovative podcast fictions like Welcome to Night Vale, Forest 404, and Homecoming together with pathbreaking aural works of the 20th century, from The War of the Worlds to John Cage's Roaratorio and albums by the Firesign Theatre. We will consider the new opportunities and challenges of the podcasting medium, making our own recordings along the way. And we will look at well-known authors — from James Joyce and Dylan Thomas to Ursula Le Guin and Amiri Baraka — who experimented with then-new technologies like the gramophone, radio, audiotape, LP, headphones, the Walkman, and more. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for ENGL 3615 - Podcast, Radio, Gramophone: Literary Technologies of Sound |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3675 |
The Environmental Imagination in American Literature
This course focuses on works that exemplify environmental consciousness—a sense that humans are not the center of the world and that to think they are may have catastrophic consequences for humans themselves. Environmental literature is not just a major strand of American literature but one of its most distinctive contributions to the literature of the world. We will be reading works mainly from the 19th and 20th centuries, both poetry and fiction, confronting the challenges of thinking and writing with an ecological consciousness in the 21st. Cornell being a rich environment in which to pursue such investigations, creative projects will be encouraged. Inspiration is assured. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS) Full details for ENGL 3675 - The Environmental Imagination in American Literature |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3705 |
Serial Stories: Television and the Novel
The past two decades have seen a whole new kind of television: long, multi-plot narratives spun out over many seasons. Some producers have made use of this serial mode to offer complex and inventive models of social analysis. These often share goals with the serial storytelling of the past, including cartoons and novels, and draw on similar strategies. We will watch such series as The Wire and Russian Doll, and we will read serialized fictions, including Wilkie Collins' page-turner, The Woman in White and Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. First-year students and non-majors welcome. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for ENGL 3705 - Serial Stories: Television and the Novel |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3707 |
Hidden Identities Onscreen
From White Chicks to Blackkklansman, American film has often depicted characters who conceal their race or gender, like black male cops "passing" as wealthy white women. This class will examine how Hollywood has depicted race and gender "passing" from the early 20th century to the present. While tracing common themes across films, we will also study the ideological role of passing films: how they thrill audiences by challenging social boundaries and hierarchies, only to reestablish familiar boundaries by the end. We will not treat these films as accurate depictions of real-world passing, but rather as cultural tools that help audiences to manage ideological contradictions about race, gender, sexuality, and class. Students will finish the course by creating their own short films about passing. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3717 |
Trauma and Invention
This course will examine modes of invention that emerge from and engage with trauma. We will focus on inventive explorations of different cultural and intersectional experiences. Students will offer critical and creative responses to film (including Get Out by Jordan Peele, Mother of George by Andrew Dosunmu, Moonlight by Barry Jenkins), poetry collections (including Book of Light by Lucille Clifton, Schizophrene by Bhanu Kapil, Zong! By NourbeSe Philip, Explanation of America by Robert Pinsky and The Real Horse by Farid Matuk) and a variety of critical and theoretical essays. We will trace the inventive processes and articulations that arise at the site of trauma and ask what it means to listen and to write at the limits of experience. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3721 |
Food, Gender, and Culture
In addition to nourishing the body, food operates as a cultural system that produces and reflects group and individual identities. In this class we will examine foodways-the behaviors and beliefs attached to the production, distribution, and consumption of food-to explore the way food practices help shape our sense of gender, race, sexual orientation, and national identity. In doing so we will focus primarily on literature and film but will also range into the fields of anthropology, sociology, and history. Some questions under discussion: How do factors such as gender, class, race, and religion shape the foods we eat and the circumstances in which we eat them? How do writers use the language of food to explore issues such as gender, sexuality, class, and race? Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, SCD-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3790 |
Reading Nabokov
This course offers an exciting trip to the intricate world of Nabokov's fiction. After establishing himself in Europe as a distinguished Russian writer, Nabokov, at the outbreak of World War II, came to the United States where he reestablished himself, this time as an American writer of world renown. In our analysis of Nabokov's fictional universe, we shall focus on his Russian corpus of works, from Mary (1926) to The Enchanter (writ. 1939), all in English translation, and then shall examine the two widely read novels which he wrote in English in Ithaca while teaching literature at Cornell: Lolita (1955) and Pnin (1957). Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3820 |
Narrative Writing
This course focuses upon the writing of fiction or related narrative forms. May include significant reading and discussion, explorations of form and technique, completion of writing assignments and prompts, and workshop peer review of student work. Many students will choose to write short stories, but excerpts from longer works will also be accepted. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3840 |
Poetry Writing
This course focuses upon the writing of poetry. May include significant reading and discussion, explorations of form and technique, completion of writing assignments and prompts, and workshop peer review of student work. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 3954 |
Spoken Word, Hip-Hop Theater, and the Politics of Performance
In this course, we will critically examine the production and performance of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender through literature and contemporary performance genres such as spoken word, slam poetry, and hip-hop theatre. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, SCD-AS) Full details for ENGL 3954 - Spoken Word, Hip-Hop Theater, and the Politics of Performance |
Fall. |
| ENGL 4315 |
Passions and Literary Enlightenment
Taking its inspiration from David Hume's famous remark that "reason ought only to be the slave of the passions," this course will consider the Enlightenment's "science of human nature" not as the triumph of rationality but as a drama of competing psychologies of the passions. We will consider how the priority accorded the passion of self-preservation or life, the body, and the sexual and acquisitive drives subverted traditional ethics and was countervailed by compassion, sympathy, and other sentiments. We will read a short story and novels as well as some moral and political philosophy (Margaret Cavendish, Hobbes, Defoe, Cleland, Rousseau, Sterne, Laclos, Wollstonecraft, and Nietzsche) to address such topics as the "marriage contract" and the gender politics and economics of the family; love and benevolence in relation to law and obligation; medical discourse in relation to sexual "criminality"; pornography as materialist science and sentimental-sexual education; suffering and the ethics and politics of pity. We will also read theoretical work by Althusser, Foucault and Butler to focus on narrative form and mechanisms of identity formation. This course may be used as one of the three pre-1800 courses required of English majors. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for ENGL 4315 - Passions and Literary Enlightenment |
Fall. |
| ENGL 4550 |
Race and Time
Race, comparison, and time—what do these terms have to do with each other? What does it mean to be in time, or out of time? What are some other ways of inhabiting time, or of being inhabited by time? What is the time of the racialized subject? How is time and temporality figured in literature? Some of the writers we'll be reading in the course include Carolivia Herron, Carlos Bulosan, Jamaica Kincaid, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Joy Kogawa. Other readings will be drawn from a range of disciplines, including selections from the work of Johannes Fabian, Frantz Fanon, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Cathy Caruth, Thomas Bender and David Wellbery. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, SCD, AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 4605 |
Black Speculative Fiction
This course takes up literatures and arts of Black speculation in the broadest terms, from science fiction and fantasy to Afrofuturism and Afropunk to Phillis Wheatley's and Outkast's poetics. We'll give special attention to speculation in African American literature to think through how Black people used art in the midst of anti-blackness to imagine worlds otherwise and for the pleasure of the craft. We'll read Black speculation through multiple forms, including novels, graphic novels, film, and music. Figures for consideration include William J. Wilson ("Ethiop), Pauline Hopkins, Frances E. W. Harper, W. E. B. Du Bois, Octavia Butler, Ryan Coogler, Eve Ewing, N.K. Jemisin, Sun Ra, and Erykah Badu. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS, SCD-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 4705 |
Human-Centered Design and Engaged Media
What happens when Greta Thunberg tears into the EU? Or Banksy interrupts Disney World? Or Black Lives Matters confronts the justice system? How can we help local communities use media to address their concerns? This course mixes seminar, studio, and field activities to explore community-engaged media through hands-on study of media activism, human centered design, and project-based learning. Students combine cultural analysis and media production to study how artists and activists engage audiences in direct action and civic engagement. We'll draw on fields of performance studies, human-computer interaction, and media theory to study how artists and activists use media to create social engagement. Working as critical design teams, we will work with local schools and community organizations on an on-going civic storytelling project. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for ENGL 4705 - Human-Centered Design and Engaged Media |
Fall. |
| ENGL 4733 |
The Future of Whiteness
How should anti-racist people respond to the new racialized white identities that have emerged recently in Europe and the United States? What alternative conceptions of whiteness are available? How can we form cross-racial progressive coalitions? How should we understand the nature of our social identities and what they make possible? This course is a wide-ranging introduction to these questions with readings drawn from social and cultural theory, as well as literature and film. Films include Get Out and I Am Not Your Negro, as well as such Hollywood classics as Imitation of Life. Texts by such writers as James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Danzy Senna and Dorothy Allison, as well as relevant anthropological and social-theoretical work (Strangers in Their Own Land, Whiteness of a Different Color) and memoirs of anti-racist activists. A central text will be the recent book The Future of Whiteness by the Latina feminist scholar Linda Martin Alcoff. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, SCD-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 4766 |
Practicum in Performance Criticism and Dramaturgy
The function of the theatre critic is well understood, but the role of the dramaturg remains mysterious in the American theatre. Yet theatre critics and dramaturgs use many of the same research, analytic, and writing skills, and need the same knowledge of history, literature, and culture, to perform their duties effectively. This practicum, designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, will allow participants to develop the skills central to these complementary professions. The course will include units on writing effective performance reviews, working with student playwrights on new script development, preparing informational materials for directors, designers and actors, writing program essays and other informational materials for audiences, script preparation for production, and selecting/preparing translations for production. While our focus will be on the theatre, students with interest in applying these skills to film/television/media or dance contexts are welcome. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS) Full details for ENGL 4766 - Practicum in Performance Criticism and Dramaturgy |
Fall. |
| ENGL 4800 |
Advanced Poetry Writing
This course is intended for creative writers who have completed ENGL 3840 or ENGL 3850 and wish to refine their poetry writing. It may include significant reading and discussion, explorations of form and technique, completion of writing assignments and prompts, and workshop peer review of student work. In addition to the instructor's assigned writing requirements, students may work on longer-form verse writing projects. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 4801 |
Advanced Narrative Writing
This course is intended for narrative writing students who have completed ENGL 3820 or ENGL 3830 and wish to refine their writing. It may include significant reading and discussion, explorations of form and technique, completion of writing assignments and prompts, and workshop peer review of student work. In addition to the instructor's assigned writing requirements, students may work on longer-form narrative writing projects. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 4910 |
Honors Seminar I
The purpose of the Honors Seminar is to acquaint students with methods of study and research to help them write their senior Honors Essay. However, all interested students are welcome to enroll. The seminar will require a substantial essay that incorporates literary evidence and critical material effectively, and develops an argument. Topics and instructors vary each semester. For Fall 2020 the topic is Irish Literature: Myths for Rebellion & Partitions of Elsewhere. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 4912 |
Black Women's Autobiography in the 21st Century WritingHerStory
Black women first began to shape the genre of autobiography during antebellum era slavery. They were prolific in developing the genre of autobiography throughout the twentieth century, to the point of emerging as serial autobiographers in the case of Maya Angelou. Significantly, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings(1970), the first autobiography of six by Angelou, along with autobiographies by a range of other black women writers, helped to launch the renaissance in black women's literature and criticism in African American literature during the 1970s. In this course, we will focus on how black women have continued to write and share their personal stories in the new millennium by examining autobiographies that they have produced in the first years of the twenty-first century. More broadly, we will consider the impact of this writing on twenty-first century African American literature, as well as African diasporan writing in Africa and the Caribbean. In the process, we will draw on a range of critical and theoretical perspectives. We will read memoirs and autobiographies by a range of figures, including Michelle Obama, Jennifer Lewis, Monica Coleman, Serena Williams, Gabrielle Union, and Tiffany Haddish, among others. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, SCD-AS) Full details for ENGL 4912 - Black Women's Autobiography in the 21st Century WritingHerStory |
Fall. |
| ENGL 4923 |
Archipelagoes: Cartographies of Race, Sound, and Sexuality
Considering the archipelagic turn, this course takes a transnational approach to geographies, ecologies, literatures, and cultures of island chains. How are archipelagoes understood in relations of power to the mainland? Taking up Michelle Stephens and Brian Roberts "Archipelagic American Studies" students will depart from the conventional and continental definition of the United States and center a hemispheric approach to the Americas. Students will also consider the soundscapes of island cartographies and how gender and sexuality is mapped onto the land. How do island formations provide a framework for understanding militarization, Indigenous sovereignty, creolization, extractive capitalism, and imperialism? Archival analysis as well as experimentation with digital cartography and DJ'ing tools to produce original research theorizing islands will be part of the final project. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for ENGL 4923 - Archipelagoes: Cartographies of Race, Sound, and Sexuality |
Fall or Spring. |
| ENGL 4930 |
Honors Essay Tutorial I
Students should secure a thesis advisor by the end of the junior year and should enroll in that faculty member's section of ENGL 4930. Students enrolling in the fall will automatically be enrolled in a discussion section, which will meet a few times throughout the semester and will give students a chance to get together with other honors students to discuss issues pertinent to writing a thesis. Topics will include compiling a critical bibliography and writing a prospectus. Professor Elisha Cohn, the Honors Director in English, will contact students to set up the first meeting time. |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 4940 |
Honors Essay Tutorial II
This course is the second of a two-part series of courses required for students pursuing a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English. The first course in the series is ENGL 4930 Honors Essay Tutorial I. |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 4950 |
Independent Study
Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work. |
Fall, Spring, Summer. |
| ENGL 4982 |
Poetry in the Expanded Field
What does it mean to make a poem? How might the act of poetic making—poïesis—unfold on the canvas, on the letterpress bed, or within a graphics layout program like Adobe Illustrator? What choices, what innovations in form, become possible when the fabrication of poetry is an equally textual and material process? An interdisciplinary seminar and collaborative workshop, "Poetry in the Expanded Field" combines critical inquiry with sustained creative practice and experimentation. We will examine emergent practices at the intersections of drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, poetry, song, dance, performance, film, and digital technologies, while also engaging in archival research and practicing poetic composition and 2- and 3-D design in programs like Adobe Illustrator and InDesign. For additional information visit the Society for the Humanities website. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 4985 |
The Album
What was the album? Does it still exist? The 2-sided, 40-minute collection of recorded tracks became the dominant mode of consuming popular music from the mid-1960s until the rise of digital CDs in 1980. During this time, the album transformed from a format to a genre in its own right. In this seminar we will study the various species of record albums in the period – the concept album, live and greatest hits albums, spoken word recordings, posthumous releases, and novelty records — as we study the aesthetics and sociology of this key cultural form. In addition to questions of music and commerce, we will consider the way LPs structured time, forms of record collecting, and the visual and tactile experiences which accompanied the playing of records. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall. |
| ENGL 6000 |
Colloquium for Entering Students
An introduction to practical and theoretical aspects of graduate English studies, conducted with the help of weekly visitors from the English department. There will be regular short readings and brief presentations, but no formal papers. The colloquium is required for all entering PhD students; MFA students are welcome to attend any sessions that interest them. Full details for ENGL 6000 - Colloquium for Entering Students |
Fall. |
| ENGL 6110 |
Old English
In this course, we will read and discuss some of the earliest surviving English poetry and prose. Attention will be paid to (1) learning to read the language in which this literature is written, (2) evaluating the poetry as poetry: its form, structure, style, and varieties of meaning, and (3) seeing what can be learned about the culture of Anglo-Saxon England and about the early Germanic world in general, from an examination of the Old English literary records. We will begin by reading some easy prose and will go on to consider some more challenging heroic, elegiac, and devotional poetry, including an excerpt from the masterpiece Beowulf. The course may also be used as preparation for the sequence ENGL 3120/ENGL 6120. |
Fall. |
| ENGL 6551 |
Decadence and the Modern Novel
As Théophile Gautier said of Decadent writing, "It is an ingenious, complex, learned style, full of shades and refinements of meaning, ever extending the bounds of language, borrowing from every technical vocabulary, taking colors from every palette and notes from every keyboard; a style that endeavors to express the most inexpressible thoughts, the vaguest and most fleeting contours of form, that listens, with a view to rendering them, to the subtle confidences of neurosis, to the confessions of aging lust turning into depravity, and to the odd hallucinations of fixed ideas passing into mania." We associate this aesthetic with Oscar Wilde in English, but we will explore it as a modernist innovation also for more recent canonical novelists, from Henry James to Thomas Pynchon. |
Fall. |
| ENGL 6707 |
Theory and Method
This course juxtaposes selected significant theoretical concepts and ensuing critical methodologies from the mid-twentieth century to the current moment, including poststructuralism, marxist theory, critical race theory, gender theory, new materialism, and eco-criticism. We will engage with major conceptual statements, as well as illustrative and symptomatic methods of critique. Thus, the course will include reflection on the nature, status, and impact of critique itself, as a signal of the place of humanistic inquiry in intellectual, ethical, and political contexts. Theoretical readings will include statements by Jacques Derrida, Fredric Jameson, Judith Butler, Stephen Greenblatt, Cornel West, Jane Bennett, and Ursula Heise. Explorations of method will offer opportunities for students to test concepts in relation to their own critical practice, and to project a theoretical rationale for their experience as critics. |
Fall. |
| ENGL 6733 |
The Future of Whiteness
How should anti-racist people respond to the new racialized white identities that have emerged recently in Europe and the United States? What alternative conceptions of whiteness are available? How can we form cross-racial progressive coalitions? How should we understand the nature of our social identities and what they make possible? This course is a wide-ranging introduction to these questions with readings drawn from social and cultural theory, as well as literature and film. Films include Get Out and I Am Not Your Negro, as well as such Hollywood classics as Imitation of Life. Texts by such writers as James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Danzy Senna and Dorothy Allison, as well as relevant anthropological and social-theoretical work (Strangers in Their Own Land, Whiteness of a Different Color) and memoirs of anti-racist activists. A central text will be the recent book The Future of Whiteness by the Latina feminist scholar Linda Martin Alcoff. |
Fall. |
| ENGL 6791 |
Acoustic Horizons
The course will explore the philosophy, psychoanalysis, and politics of sound along the artistic interface of cinema, video, performance, and new media art. From analysis of synchronization of sound and image in the talking movie to its discruption in experimental music, video, new media and sound art, we will consider the prominence of sound and noise as carriers of gender, ethnic and cultural difference. We also will explore the theory of sound, from tracts on futurism, feminism, new music, and sampling, to more recent acoustic applications of eco-theory in which sound merges with discourses of water and environment. In addition to studying a wide range of artistic production in audio, sound, new media, and screen arts, we will discuss the dialogical impact of theoretical discussions of sound in psychoanalysis and aesthetics, as well as the phenomenal growth of digital acoustic horizons in the Pacific Rim. |
Fall. |
| ENGL 6985 |
The Album
What was the album? Does it still exist? The 2-sided, 40-minute collection of recorded tracks became the dominant mode of consuming popular music from the mid-1960s until the rise of digital CDs in 1980. During this time, the album transformed from a format to a genre in its own right. In this seminar we will study the various species of record albums in the period – the concept album, live and greatest hits albums, spoken word recordings, posthumous releases, and novelty records — as we study the aesthetics and sociology of this key cultural form. In addition to questions of music and commerce, we will consider the way LPs structured time, forms of record collecting, and the visual and tactile experiences which accompanied the playing of records. |
Fall. |
| ENGL 7800 |
MFA Seminar: Poetry
The MFA poetry seminar is a required course for MFA poetry students. |
Fall. |
| ENGL 7801 |
MFA Seminar: Fiction
The MFA fiction seminar is a required course for all MFA fiction students. |
Fall. |
| ENGL 7910 |
Article Writing Seminar
This workshop will take you through the process of writing and polishing an academic article. We will begin by introducing you to the genre of the article, including its length and standard sections (central claims, methodological approach, scholarly intervention, readings). The seminar will discuss the foundations of writing in conjunction with Eric Hayot's The Elements of Academic Style. But it will primarily function as a workshop, providing you with in-depth feedback on drafts of your article. At the end of the workshop you will have a polished draft of your article as well as a sense of where and how to circulate it. |
Fall. |
| ENGL 7920 |
Prospectus and Dissertation Strategies
This workshop will prepare you to research and write your dissertation. We will begin by introducing you to the genre of the dissertation prospectus, including its length and standard contents (such as the central research question/s, methodological approach, scholarly implications, chapter breakdown, and short bibliography). The seminar will function as a workshop, providing you with in-depth feedback on drafts of your prospectus. Midway through the workshop each student will have a rough draft of your dissertation prospectus as well as materials that can be used as the basis for grant and fellowship proposals. In later weeks we will develop more general strategies for researching and writing the dissertation. Full details for ENGL 7920 - Prospectus and Dissertation Strategies |
Fall. |
| ENGL 7940 |
Directed Study
This course gives students the opportunity to work with a selected instructor to pursue special interests or research not treated in regularly scheduled courses. After getting permission of the instructor, students should enroll online in the instructor's section. Enrolled students are required to provide the department with a course description and/or syllabus along with the instructor's approval by the end of the first week of classes. |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 7950 |
Group Study
This course should be used for an independent study in which a small group of students works with one member of the graduate faculty. After getting permission of the instructor, students should enroll online in the instructor's section. Enrolled students are required to provide the department with a course description and/or syllabus along with the instructor's approval by the end of the first week of classes. |
Fall, Spring. |
| ENGL 7960 |
Placement Seminar
This seminar will help prepare graduate students for the academic job market. Though students will study sample materials from successful job applicants, much of the seminar will function as a workshop, providing them with in-depth feedback on multiple drafts of their job materials. Interview skills will be practiced in every seminar meeting. The seminar meetings will be supplemented with individual conferences with the placement mentor, and students should also share copies of their job materials with their dissertation committees. |
Fall. |