Graduate Studies Bulletin
Fall 2018 Course Offerings
English 501: Teaching of Writing: Methodology of Composition
Beth Buyserie, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:35-11:50 am
Description not available. Contact the instructor for more information.
English 514: 20th-Century African American Literature and Hip Hop
Thabiti Lewis, Wednesdays, 3:10-5:40 pm
Description not available. Contact the instructor for more information.
English 543: Syntax
Lynn Gordon, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12-1:15 pm
Description not available. Contact the instructor for more information.
English 545: Graduate Student Writing Workshop
Elizabeth (Liz) Siler, by arrangement
The Graduate Student Writing Workshop is open to all graduate students at Washington State University, including those for whom English is not a first language (ESL). Enrollment is limited. No over-enrollments are allowed in any section at any time, so encourage students, friends, and colleagues to sign up early.
This is a completely web-arranged class, but it is taught through the English Department, not through Global Campus. To be in the class, a student needs two things: a substantial piece of graduate writing to work on and a computer that handles web video conferencing via Zoom. A substantial piece of writing could be an article, a proposal, a report, a presentation, a dissertation, a thesis, or any of many other types of writing. A minimum of seven individual conferences are held via Zoom. At each meeting, the student and I meet online at a mutually arranged time to work on their writing.
Each student is different; each student has different writing needs. This class offers a highly individualized type of instruction — each student’s needs form that student’s course of studies. The class is suitable for students at all levels, from incoming graduate students to those in the last stage of dissertation production.
There is some collateral instruction in oral production skills available through this class, often in the context of work with students who are preparing presentations for conferences, defenses, etc. However, the primary focus of the class is writing development.
English 584: 16th Century Literature
William Hamlin, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 9:10-10 am
This course will be a proseminar, open to graduate students and to upper-level undergraduates. I plan to devote the first half to major topics and works from the early sixteenth century up to about 1590, when Spenser’s Faerie Queene was initially published. Readings will include More’s Utopia, lyric poetry by Wyatt and Surrey, samples of biblical translation (Tyndale, Coverdale, Geneva, Bishop’s, Douay/Rheims, King James), examples of the English ars poetica (Sidney’s Defence of Poesy, Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie), and selections from Spenser. I’ll also weave in relevant Continental writings such as Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, Machiavelli’s The Prince, and possibly a few selections from Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron. My goal will be for students to acquire a functional understanding (a) of Renaissance humanism, (b) of the impact of the Reformation upon English literary production, and (c) of the major preoccupations of literary theory at this moment in English history.
The second half of the course will consist of a set of more detailed explorations of specific writers and works. I currently envision four units of roughly two weeks apiece: (1) Montaigne and Bacon, wherein we’ll investigate the ways in which the French writer established a new prose genre which the English writer immediately appropriated; (2) psalm translation, which is one of the activities in which Protestant poetics manifested itself most conspicuously in English devotional life, for men and women alike; (3) Doctor Faustus, a play developed by Christopher Marlowe from a recent English translation of the German Faustbook, and ultimately surviving in two vastly different texts; and (4) King Lear, adapted by Shakespeare from an anonymous 1590 play (King Leir) along with a range of other sources, including portions of The Faerie Queene and Sidney’s Arcadia.
Class work will include at least one oral presentation, one short essay (5-6 pages), one longer essay (12-15 pages), and a variety of less conventionally academic assignments such as the preparation of a commonplace book (a standard humanist project).
English 590: Research in English Studies
By arrangement
English 590 is a graded independent study designed to provide directed research in English studies for individuals (or small groups) in conjunction with one or more faculty members. English 590 may be taken for 1 credit per semester up to a total of 3 credits altogether. One credit of English 590 is required for the Ph.D. program.
In Option One, the student would prepare least a one-page (typed and double-spaced) bibliography on key primary and secondary works in a specific research field along with a project description or rationale for choosing the works. In Option Two, the student’s work might include not only readings but also a practical exploration of other methods of research, including but not limited to learning statistical methods, working with digital technologies, or gaining experience with editorial work.
For both options, students typically meet with their research mentors once a week and at the outset draw up a memorandum of understanding that delimits the relative proportions of readings, discussion, and, if appropriate, practice, along with a clearly delineated set of standards for assessing quality and progress. The student’s research goals should be the focus of all work undertaken for the project. Under no circumstances may the instructor allow the needs of a larger project (for data collection, coding, and so forth) to supersede the benefit to the student.
All doctoral students must take at least 1 credit of English 590, but no more than 3 credits total are allowed. English 590 is not intended to be a substitute for a viable graduate seminar. M.A. students may take English 590 but might not find the time to do so in their program of study.
Students are encouraged to seek out faculty members to learn their research areas and availability for an English 590.
English 597.01: Topics in Composition and Rhetoric
Patty Wilde, Tuesdays 2:50-5:20 pm
Description not available. Contact the instructor for more information.
English 597.02: Literatures and Rhetorics of War
Mike Edwards, Thursdays, 2:20-5:20 pm
In this seminar, we will explore diverse genres of literature about post-mid 20th Century wars with emphasis on voices of alterity and divergent representations of peoples in/at/observing war. We will examine the experiences and representations of war from perspectives in and outside the military, from the families of those who serve and the many who do not, from veterans, victims, prisoners, enemies, activists, and bystanders.
Together we will ask:
- How do we understand social, cultural and individual experiences and representations of America’s recent wars?
- How do we approach the multiple understandings and realities of war that are a near-constant element of the modern human condition?
- Who helps us draw out our own experiences of war, however removed from battle’s consequences they may be?
- How are wars remembered, and how are those memories shaped and manipulated?
- How do our experiences affect our (mis)understandings of war, and what are the roles of aesthetics, poetics, rhetorics, identities, and relations of power in crafting our shared beliefs about the conditions and experiences of war?
Through increased appreciation of the significant differences in the ways different authors portray war, we will increase our sensitivity to and understanding of the expressive, mimetic, and rhetorical figurations of contemporary war.
English 597.03: Topics in Composition and Rhetoric
Victor Villanueva, Wednesdays, 3:10-5:40 pm
Description not available. Contact the instructor for more information.