MA in English Literature Course Offerings

English 527 Victorian Literature: Monsters of the Nineteenth Century
Carrie Dickison
21954

From Frankenstein's Monster to Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde to Count Dracula, many of our most enduring monsters emerged from nineteenth-century texts. This seminar examines these figures and their twentieth-century counterparts through a range of theoretical lenses in order to trace the evolution of the monstrous "other." Readings include Marry Shelly's Frankenstein, Polidori's The Vampyre, Le Fanu's Carmilla, Bram Sroker's Dracula, Marryat's The Blood of the Vampire, and Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Fulfills pre-1900 and British literature requirement; can be counted as an elective.

Engl 533B: 21^st Century American Literature
Jason Allen
23867

Focuses on 21st century American literature, primarily authors with particular interest in the working-class American experience. The reading list consists of ten books, constituting a diversity of contemporary American voices, and this list is meant to invite students to deepen their understanding of the rich diversity of American society and to empathize with a wide variety of individuals. Each featured author focuses on issues of American identity, with most stemming from socioeconomic concerns and marginalization in its myriad forms in present-day America. Through analysis of these works, students may call into question the notion that every American has an equal opportunity to achieve the “American Dream”, or this question may exist as subtext to their main thematic interests, though students are free to focus their analyses on any themes within the assigned reading that interest them most, and for which they can then engage an audience thoughtfully through their academic writing. Fulfills elective, American literature, or post-1900 period course requirement.

Engl 536B: Contemporary Writing by Women
Chinyere Okafor
22988

Different forms of expression by novelists and playwrights as well as researchers are studied through feminist lens that enrich the student's understanding of women and gender experiences. Texts on feminist theories and approaches are used to appreciate the creative works. Emphasis is on the intersection of gender with other axes of power such as race/ethnicity, class and postcoloniality. Focus is on African and African American works. Students need to be prepared to go out of their comfort zone, to terrains that are unfamiliar to some - feminism, postcolonialism and African literature. Fulfills elective or post-1900 requirement.

Engl 680: Theory and Practice in Composition
Melinda DeFrain
21957

The online English 680 course examines best pedagogical practices in the teaching of writing in the secondary school. The course requires students to read both relevant Composition theory and trade books that offer practical advice applicable to this classroom. Students will study methods for teaching both creative writing and academic writing. Fulfills an elective requirement.

Engl 703A: Seminar in American Literature I – Early American Methodologies
Rebeccah Bechtold
23868

In Unsettled States: Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies (2014), Dana Luciano and Ivy Wilson observe a “renewed vitality” in early American literary studies which they attribute to the increasing prevalence of “minoritarian” modes of inquiry (critical race and ethnic studies, feminist and gender studies, labor studies, disability studies, to name a few). The field’s embrace of varied methodologies certainly has encouraged a “kind of thinking that takes place across, between, and together.” Indeed scholars of early American literature are always “on the move,” looking for ways other disciplines and methodologies can benefit our field of study.

This seminar approaches the study of early American literature through this multidisciplinary framework. Over the course of the semester, the class will “roam the field,” working with several different methodological trends in American scholarship. These critical traditions will become the foundation for our weekly discussions of major nineteenth century American authors—from the sentimental Maria S. Cummins to the salacious George Lippard. Fulfills the pre-1900 and American literature requirement; can be counted as an elective.

In-Person

Engl 504A: Studies in American Lit II
Jean Griffith
21834
MW 2-3:15pm

This course--Natives and Strangers: Migration, Immigration, and Belonging in American literature and culture from the late 19^th century to after World War II-- will explore the relationships between rootedness, between belonging to a place, and movement, uprootedness. A massive increase in immigration from Europe and elsewhere, the resettlement of millions of Americans from East to West, and the Great Migration of formerly enslaved African Americans out of the South all took place in the decades between the Civil War and the World War II. What, if anything, does “home” mean in such a context? Where, if anywhere, can Americans locate their “roots?” How do strangers become natives? Reading works by Robert Frost, Willa Cather, James Baldwin, and others, we will explore how the interactions between natives and strangers shaped the way Americans define themselves, each other, and the nation and, in turn, altered the form and the content of twentieth-century artistic expression. Fulfills the post-1900 and American requirement; can be counted as an elective.

Engl 505A: Personal Essay
Adam Scheffler
21835
T 4:30-7:00pm

The personal essay, the essay written proudly in the first-person from the author’s perspective, offers students a powerful tool to practice thinking for themselves and to make sense of the issues most pressing to them. The first half of this class examines stand-out published essays that merge personal anecdotes with beautifully articulated, nuanced thinking on a variety of topics (from vegetarianism to grief to social media). In the second half of the class, students write, and the class workshops, a personal essay of theirs written about any subject they choose, so long as it is something that’s been weighing on them and that they haven’t figured out yet. Prerequisite(s): junior standing and one college literature course. Can be counted as an elective.

ENGL 547: Latinx Literature
Vanessa Aguilar
21836
R 4:30-7:00pm

How do we witness? What does it mean to faithfully witness? How can we become witnesses while engaging with Latine/x Literature? Through this frame of reference, we will explore themes of (im)migration, exile, displacement, race, class, gender, social justice, etc. Students will engage with novels, poetry, plays, and short stories, drawing broadly from the 19th to 21st centuries. Fulfills the post-1900 requirement; can be counted as an elective.

Engl 577: Digital Textual Editing
Fran Connor
21837

First, what this class is not: we're not learning line editing, proofreading, or how to tell an author what 10000 words need to be excised from their manuscript.

This course is an introduction to scholarly textual editing, the foundational practice of literary scholarship. It concerns how texts are created, from an author's mind to a written page to a printed book, all with a particular attention to how texts are reshaped, deformed, re-imagined along the way. Textual editors use this knowledge to create critical editions, which are printed or digital projects in which the editor makes an argument about what a text should be (e.g., demonstrating the author’s intended text, a publisher’s intended text, a text as represented in a particular document, and so on.) Whenever you've read a Norton Anthology, a Penguin Classic, the Oxford Complete Works of [your favorite author], or other such things, you've engaged with the work of a textual editor.  In recent years textual editing has moved from a book-ish practice to an electronic one, with many recent scholarly editions being Born Digital.

In this class you will take the first steps to become a scholarly textual editor. We'll grapple with the core issues of textual theory, which we will apply through workshops and coursework as we gradually initiate a short edition of our own design. We'll think about the nature of ERROR, theories of print and manuscript transmission, constructing commentaries and annotations, deciding when spelling and punctuation do and don't matter, deciding when authors do and don't matter, and other such things. To familiarize ourselves with the basic tools of Digital Humanities we'll be gently introduced to XML-TEI, and think about how we can use digital large language corpora in our work.

In short, this course is an opportunity to approach literature with closer attention to its subtleties and complexities than you ever have before, and to develop a better understanding of how meaning is made. Counts as an elective.

Ling/Engl 668: Field Methods in Linguistics
Mythili Menon
21838
R 2-4:20pm

This iteration of Field Methods will focus on Malayalam, a Dravidian Language spoken in South India, in preparation for the India Travel Seminar scheduled for Winter 2028. You will work with language consultants who are native speakers of the language; learn the phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax of the language; and create you rown dictionary and grammar book of the language. Can be counted as an elective.

Engl 713: Seminar in Poetry
T.J. Boynton
21839
W 4:30-7:00pm

Dr. Boynton is still deciding between two options:

1). This course will focus on the history of “British” poetry from the early twentieth century to the present. For our purposes, the term in quotation marks will encompass not only poetries authored by “English” writers but will extend to other populations hailing from such locales as Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and the various originating territories known as “Black Britain,” all of whom were encircled by the English language and by the identity of “Britishness” during this era. The course will be divided into three rough periods: Modernism, encompassing such famous names as W.B. Yeats, Mina Loy, Hugh McDiarmid and David Jones; the post-Modernism poetries of midcentury and “The Movement,” featuring poets such as W.H. Auden, Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, and Ted Hughes (and Sylvia Plath); and the increasingly diverse, later twentieth- and twenty-first century moment, featuring such figures as Geoffrey Hill (England), Seamus Heaney (Ireland), Linton Kwesi-Johnson (Jamaican-British), and Jackie Kay (Nigerian-Scottish). Along the way, we will trace the variety and metamorphoses of both ideas of “Britishness” and of the forms and strategies of poetry itself.  

OR 2). Since the dissolution of the British Empire, which at its height during the early twentieth century extended to every inhabited continent and covered one quarter of the world’s surface, the English language has remained a major medium of creative expression for its former colonial subjects.  During the ensuing period from roughly the end of World War II to the present, such “Anglophone” literatures have proved some of the most dynamic and vital in the world.  This course will examine these literatures, focusing specifically on Anglophone poetry of the contemporary period produced in former colonial territories such as Northern Ireland, the Caribbean, Africa, India, Canada, and Australia, as well as the work of the U.K. immigrant population known collectively as "Black Britain."  It will spotlight a broad set of major contemporary poets and will seek to trace amid their work: the legacies of British imperialism; the influence of the British literary tradition; the common, yet diverse effort to move beyond the imperial inheritance to modes of cultural, national, and literary self-determination; and the interrelationships between these concerns and the complexities and possibilities of poetic form.  Fulfills post-1900 British requirement (as a substitution) and can be used as an elective.

Capstones

• available to both online and in-person MA students
• requires paperwork prior to enrollment

Engl 890: Master's Thesis

Student-driven research experience to address a specific research question. Potential topics should be formulated by the student and discussed with their advisor. A thesis prospectus must be approved by the thesis advisor and the graduate coordinator before the student may register for Engl 890.

Engl 895:  Master's Portfolio

Student-driven research experience to address a specific research question. Potential topics should be formulated by the student and discussed with their advisor. Nonthesis graduate students must submit a master’s portfolio near the end of their coursework containing representative documents from their course of study along with a self-reflective introductory statement. The portfolio must be ready for faculty review by December 1st for a fall enrollment, or May 1st for a spring enrollment.