Fall 2025 Graduate Courses
Introduction to Graduate Study (ENGL 400)
Section: 001 #3633
Instructor: Staidum, F.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 4:15PM - 5:30PM
The course serves as an introduction to the profession of literary studies for students new to the graduate programs in English. It offers a review of current critical theories and methodologies, research techniques, bibliographic methods, and issues in textual criticism.
The Teaching of College Composition (ENGL 402)
Section: 001 #4595
Instructor: Weeks, Stogner, E
3.0 credit hours lecture
MW 4:15PM - 5:30PM
English 402 examines the practices of teaching college composition and the theories that inform these practices, familiarizing students with the professional work of composition and rhetoric. As we explore composition pedagogy, students will begin designing their own writing courses and defining their teaching philosophies. Course requirements include the design of a first-year composition course (syllabus, schedule, assignments, etc.), a composition class observation and reflection, and a series of reading response papers. This course is required for all doctoral students who will be teaching UCWR 110 and is strongly recommended for all graduate students who want to use their degree to teach composition courses.
Topics in Critical Theory (ENGL 420)
Section: 001 #5660
Instructor: Sen, A.
3.0 credit hours lecture
Th 7:00PM - 9:30PM
Specters of the Dialectic
Responses to the death of Fredric Jameson and trends in academic publishing speak to a re-emerging literary interest in Marxism and materialist analysis. However, the dialectic and its uses for literature remain mysterious. Often in conversation, the concept blurs into discussions of binaries, dichotomies, dualisms, and other forms of antagonisms, most of which produce embarrassment as they fly in the face of our scholarly zeitgeist’s investment in multiplicity. This course wants to shed some of that embarrassment and confront the always thorny matter of the dialectic to clarify what it means, explore its legacies, interrogate how it may or may not serve literary analysis and vice-versa, and whether it is compatible with other political commitments such as anti-colonial or ecocritical thought. Regardless of our feelings about dialectics itself, we will take seriously the idea of accounting for the movement of history as it manifests in text. In the process, we will try to fashion an account of dialectical and other rhythms that drive narrative and poetics. We will read widely and densely: other than Marx, our syllabus is likely to span Hegel, Freud, Bergson, Deleuze, Himani Banerjee, and Sylvia Wynter. Conversations will also open through Ato Sekyi-Otu on Fanon, Elizabeth Grosz on Luce Irigaray, Anna Kornbluh’s Jamesonian reading of contemporary culture, and Sophie Lewis on Donna Haraway’s turning away from cyborg Marxism
Topics in Early Modern Literature & Culture (ENGL 450)
Section: 001 #5661
Instructor: Knapp, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
W 7:00PM - 9:30PM
Literature and Science in the 17th Century
In this seminar we will explore the period’s literature in relation to developments in astronomy, cosmology, geography, and the medical and biological sciences. Our focus will be on “natural philosophy” (the term for science in the period), though we will consider this subset of philosophy in relation to “metaphysics” (the period’s term for what we would now call philosophy). On the cusp of the scientific revolution, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and theology were intertwined in surprising ways that informed poetic expression. While some writers, like John Donne, worried that the “new science” threatened the established order and would lead to incoherence, others embraced new theories of matter, the body, and the cosmos. In addition to Donne, we will read work by Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, Hester Pulter, and Thomas Traherne among others. Requirements will include informal reflections on the reading, a conference-style paper and presentation, an archival project, and a final seminar paper.
Victorian Novel (ENGL 478)
Section: 001 #5662
Instructor: Jacob, P.
3.0 credit hours lecture
M 7:00PM - 9:30PM
The Paper Trails of Victorian Literature
Before we went “paperless,” paper was the substance of our letters, our laws, and our literature. The nineteenth century saw an outpouring of paper (and paper litter), as innovations in paper production coincided with the expansion of print media, advertising, and a nationalized postal service. These bits of paper make their way into the novel as well—from the torn clue to the well-timed love note. In this seminar on Victorian literature, we will examine the literary function of paper objects: the letters that ricochet through the long narrative poem; the crucial piece of paperwork that drives plots of blackmail, detection, and inheritance; and the eerily multiplying documents of late-Victorian Gothic fiction. We will explore paper as a material, a medium, and a metaphor. Paper will also serve as an entry point for considering questions of law, media, authorship, and the archive—as well as the ways that social networks and affective ties are constituted through the circulation of calling cards and, eventually, telegrams. We will pay special attention to developments in information technology over the course of the Victorian period, and we will directly encounter the serial installments of some Victorian texts in the Special Collections. Toward the close of the semester, we will also consider the lingering place of paper in the digital world. Readings will include: Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, George Gissing’s New Grub Street, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, and, briefly crossing the pond, Henry James’s “In the Cage” and Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth.
Black Inquiries in Contemporary Literature (ENGL 485)
Section: 001 #5663
Instructor: Graves, H.
3.0 credit hours lecture
T 7:00PM - 9:30PM
Stories of Black Masculinities, Manhood, & Fatherhood: Black Inquiries in Contemporary Literature
This course considers how African American writers and artists have negotiated notions of gendered identity, specifically masculinities, in post-45 literary movements. Within the dominant cultural imagination, Black masculinities have been culturally coded as indolently excessive, pathological, nihilistic, dangerous, & impotent. Furthermore, this course will explore the experience of racialized gender as a form of cultural unbelonging and specifically apply this understanding to literary depictions of black masculinities. Guided by scholarship on black masculinities and black critical theories engagement with ontology, we will consider how contemporary African American literature theorizes a set of concerns like black abjection, racial fetish, black ungendering, & the psycho-existential paradox of the Black man within racist culture due to the production of a black imago. In this context, how do we understand black masculinities, black boys, and men in relationship to power? How have black writers explored the psycho-political experience of black masculine figures in their depictions? Of particular interest to us will be African American texts that thematically explore black family/kinship, where psycho-political notions of the nation emerge, critical reflections of state-sanctioned and extra-legal violence on the black body, and African American political, economic, and spatial experiences after the 20th century Great Migration.
Introduction to Graduate Study (ENGL 400)
Section: 001 #3633
Instructor: Staidum, F.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 4:15PM - 5:30PM
The course serves as an introduction to the profession of literary studies for students new to the graduate programs in English. It offers a review of current critical theories and methodologies, research techniques, bibliographic methods, and issues in textual criticism.
The Teaching of College Composition (ENGL 402)
Section: 001 #4595
Instructor: Weeks, Stogner, E
3.0 credit hours lecture
MW 4:15PM - 5:30PM
English 402 examines the practices of teaching college composition and the theories that inform these practices, familiarizing students with the professional work of composition and rhetoric. As we explore composition pedagogy, students will begin designing their own writing courses and defining their teaching philosophies. Course requirements include the design of a first-year composition course (syllabus, schedule, assignments, etc.), a composition class observation and reflection, and a series of reading response papers. This course is required for all doctoral students who will be teaching UCWR 110 and is strongly recommended for all graduate students who want to use their degree to teach composition courses.
Topics in Critical Theory (ENGL 420)
Section: 001 #5660
Instructor: Sen, A.
3.0 credit hours lecture
Th 7:00PM - 9:30PM
Specters of the Dialectic
Responses to the death of Fredric Jameson and trends in academic publishing speak to a re-emerging literary interest in Marxism and materialist analysis. However, the dialectic and its uses for literature remain mysterious. Often in conversation, the concept blurs into discussions of binaries, dichotomies, dualisms, and other forms of antagonisms, most of which produce embarrassment as they fly in the face of our scholarly zeitgeist’s investment in multiplicity. This course wants to shed some of that embarrassment and confront the always thorny matter of the dialectic to clarify what it means, explore its legacies, interrogate how it may or may not serve literary analysis and vice-versa, and whether it is compatible with other political commitments such as anti-colonial or ecocritical thought. Regardless of our feelings about dialectics itself, we will take seriously the idea of accounting for the movement of history as it manifests in text. In the process, we will try to fashion an account of dialectical and other rhythms that drive narrative and poetics. We will read widely and densely: other than Marx, our syllabus is likely to span Hegel, Freud, Bergson, Deleuze, Himani Banerjee, and Sylvia Wynter. Conversations will also open through Ato Sekyi-Otu on Fanon, Elizabeth Grosz on Luce Irigaray, Anna Kornbluh’s Jamesonian reading of contemporary culture, and Sophie Lewis on Donna Haraway’s turning away from cyborg Marxism
Topics in Early Modern Literature & Culture (ENGL 450)
Section: 001 #5661
Instructor: Knapp, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
W 7:00PM - 9:30PM
Literature and Science in the 17th Century
In this seminar we will explore the period’s literature in relation to developments in astronomy, cosmology, geography, and the medical and biological sciences. Our focus will be on “natural philosophy” (the term for science in the period), though we will consider this subset of philosophy in relation to “metaphysics” (the period’s term for what we would now call philosophy). On the cusp of the scientific revolution, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and theology were intertwined in surprising ways that informed poetic expression. While some writers, like John Donne, worried that the “new science” threatened the established order and would lead to incoherence, others embraced new theories of matter, the body, and the cosmos. In addition to Donne, we will read work by Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, Hester Pulter, and Thomas Traherne among others. Requirements will include informal reflections on the reading, a conference-style paper and presentation, an archival project, and a final seminar paper.
Victorian Novel (ENGL 478)
Section: 001 #5662
Instructor: Jacob, P.
3.0 credit hours lecture
M 7:00PM - 9:30PM
The Paper Trails of Victorian Literature
Before we went “paperless,” paper was the substance of our letters, our laws, and our literature. The nineteenth century saw an outpouring of paper (and paper litter), as innovations in paper production coincided with the expansion of print media, advertising, and a nationalized postal service. These bits of paper make their way into the novel as well—from the torn clue to the well-timed love note. In this seminar on Victorian literature, we will examine the literary function of paper objects: the letters that ricochet through the long narrative poem; the crucial piece of paperwork that drives plots of blackmail, detection, and inheritance; and the eerily multiplying documents of late-Victorian Gothic fiction. We will explore paper as a material, a medium, and a metaphor. Paper will also serve as an entry point for considering questions of law, media, authorship, and the archive—as well as the ways that social networks and affective ties are constituted through the circulation of calling cards and, eventually, telegrams. We will pay special attention to developments in information technology over the course of the Victorian period, and we will directly encounter the serial installments of some Victorian texts in the Special Collections. Toward the close of the semester, we will also consider the lingering place of paper in the digital world. Readings will include: Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, George Gissing’s New Grub Street, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, and, briefly crossing the pond, Henry James’s “In the Cage” and Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth.
Black Inquiries in Contemporary Literature (ENGL 485)
Section: 001 #5663
Instructor: Graves, H.
3.0 credit hours lecture
T 7:00PM - 9:30PM
Stories of Black Masculinities, Manhood, & Fatherhood: Black Inquiries in Contemporary Literature
This course considers how African American writers and artists have negotiated notions of gendered identity, specifically masculinities, in post-45 literary movements. Within the dominant cultural imagination, Black masculinities have been culturally coded as indolently excessive, pathological, nihilistic, dangerous, & impotent. Furthermore, this course will explore the experience of racialized gender as a form of cultural unbelonging and specifically apply this understanding to literary depictions of black masculinities. Guided by scholarship on black masculinities and black critical theories engagement with ontology, we will consider how contemporary African American literature theorizes a set of concerns like black abjection, racial fetish, black ungendering, & the psycho-existential paradox of the Black man within racist culture due to the production of a black imago. In this context, how do we understand black masculinities, black boys, and men in relationship to power? How have black writers explored the psycho-political experience of black masculine figures in their depictions? Of particular interest to us will be African American texts that thematically explore black family/kinship, where psycho-political notions of the nation emerge, critical reflections of state-sanctioned and extra-legal violence on the black body, and African American political, economic, and spatial experiences after the 20th century Great Migration.