Graduate Studies Bulletin

Fall 2018 Course Offerings

English 501: Teaching of Writing: Methodology and Composition

Melissa Nicolas, Mondays, 3:10-5:40 pm

Description not available. Contact the instructor for more information.  

English 515: Contemporary Theories of Rhetoric

Victor Villanueva, Wednesdays, 3:10-5:40 pm

This course is not a survey of contemporary rhetoric (though I will provide a relatively comprehensive bibliography).  For this course we will focus on marxian trends in rhetoric. We will contrast rhetorical notions of subjectivity with classical, structuralist, and post-structuralist marxist and marxian discourse theories—and some of their applications by scholars in Rhetoric & Composition.  Readings will include Kenneth Burke’s A Rhetoric of Motives, Rosemary Hennessy’s Profit + Pleasure, Chantal Mouffe’s On the Political,V.N. Volosinov’s Marxism and the Interpretation of Language, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Krista Ratcliffe’s Rhetorical Listening, and snippets (or snippets+) from Louis Althusser, Michele Foucault, and readings from rhet/comp folks.  Very short response papers, one article-length seminar paper. 

English 522: Victorian Literature: The Creation and Re-Creation of Victorian Literature

Carol Siegel, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12-1:15 pm

The class will have two purposes. One: to help students produce two pieces of work (a conference paper and a journal article) that can help advance their careers. Two: to help students understand that the ways literary periods and movements are shaped is a dynamic process involving not only the writers who participate in them and critical responses, but also by subsequent generations of writers. “Victorian literature” is a concept always in flux. Students should not consider this class a complete survey of Victorian literature. Because the scholarly material on this topic could fill a large library, we will only look at a selection of key texts. Their own interests will dictate the direction their research will take.

Assignments:

• 1-2 page written responses to the reading or film viewing assigned for each class
• One 15 minute conference style paper, with bibliography
• One 15-20 page research paper

Required readings:

• Katherine Hughes, Victorians Undone
• Sharon Marcus, Between Women
• Judith Flanders, Inside the Victorian Home
• Florence Nightingale, “Cassandra”
• Lytton Strachey, “Florence Nightingale”
• Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
• Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
• H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
• Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight
• Alan Moore, From Hell
• Some viewings of relevant films, such as Time After Time
• Various literary critical and theoretical essays  

English 543: Phonology

Michael Thomas, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:25-2:40 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 546: Topics in Teaching English as a Second Language

Nancy Bell, Tuesdays, 2:50-5:20 pm

This seminar is designed to prepare you to teach second language (L2) users in composition courses in higher education. The course will provide an introduction to literacies and second language acquisition (SLA) in general, but the main focus will be on learning about the experiences of non-native English speaking students in US university settings and ways of teaching academic literacy to these students. Much of the course will be devoted to researching an academic task/genre and designing activities to teach that task/genre to university level ESL students. Observation of at least two weeks of an ESL class will also be required. Students who take this class will be qualified to teach English 105, 303, and 403 (if they are already qualified to teach 402).

At the end of this course you should be able to:

• identify differences between first and second language acquisition of literacies,
• identify different types of L2 learners and their needs,
• identify specific ways of supporting L2 users in your classes,
• use feedback and assessment techniques that are appropriate for these learners,
• design and implement a curriculum to teach academic literacies to L2 users.

English 549: 20th Century British Literature

Pavithra Narayanan, Thursdays 2:50-5:20 pm

Description not available. Contact the instructor for more information.  

English 550: Poetry or Non-fiction Prose: Lifewriting

Debbie (DJ) Lee, Tuesdays, 2:50-5:20 pm

“Lifewriting” is an interdisciplinary term that manifests itself in most genres of writing and art. While the genres may seem to have nothing in common (conceptual art and slave narratives, for example), when examined through as Lifewriting, they do. Lifewriting’s emphasis on individual lives allows scholars to look at the intersection of identity and theories of trauma, gender, race, neuroscience, digital culture, and philosophy. Lifewriting has a strong presence in academia with Lifewriting, a scholarly journal published by Routledge, and programs like Oxford University’s Centre for Life-Writing.

Lifewriting brings to mind autobiographies, biographies, and oral history, and in this course we will examine these genres and go beyond them. So, while Michel de Montaigne, Thomas DeQuincey, and Virginia Woolf may serve as touchstones, we’ll also look at how places, animals, and objects have autobiographical lives. Speaking about the autobiographical self at the center of Lifewriting, theroist Philippe Lejeune says that “an autobiographer isn’t someone who tells the truth about himself but rather someone who says that he does.” To examine this idea, we’ll cover l’autofiction, a literary form that combines entirely real content and entirely fictional form, where authors and artists insert themselves into their own fictions in search of a self. Any course on Lifewriting must address the roles of memory and invention in self-fashioning, but we’ll also come at the idea of memory through stories of haunting, such as W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz and an audio recording of a Joseph Cornell seance. We’ll look at intellectual autobiographies and literary biographies, asking why we’re so interested in writer’s lives and the curious things that accrue to those lives, such as Jane Austen’s fainting, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s jawbone, Sylvia Plath’s letters. Finally, we’ll examine how film biographies, postcards, (self-) portraiture, digital stories, social media selves, and graphic forms work to create, or fragment, a life. Course requirements: Students will produce 1) either a traditional piece of Lifewriting (memoir, biography, intellectual autobiography, etc.) or an experimental, artistic piece; 2) an analytical, conference-length paper. They will also be give an oral presentation and/or act as discussion leader.

English 554: History of the English Language

Donna Potts, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 11:10-12 pm

This course explores the history of the English language from its Indo-European origins to the present. After a brief consideration of the origins of language, we will learn the I.P.A. (international phonetic alphabet) so that we may better understand the sound changes that English has undergone, and continues to undergo. We will also consider how and why meanings of words have changed over time, and will talk about dictionaries and their history. The history of the English alphabet will involve a discussion of our writing system, which has also changed over time. In order to understand the Indo-European origin of the English language and influences from other language groups, we will learn about both Indo-European and non-Indo-European language groups. We will then examine Old English, emphasizing elements of its lexical and inflectional systems that remain in Modern English. In “The Middle English Period,” we will consider how the Norman Conquest influenced the English language as Chaucer wrote it.  “The Modern English Period to 1800” will cover Early Modern English grammar, pronunciation and spelling, with emphasis on Shakespear as well as the effects of the Great Vowel Shift, exploration and colonization, and the Protestant Reformation.  In “Recent British and American English,” we will focus on differences between British and American pronunciation, spelling, and vocabulary, and then move on to other varieties of Late Modern English. We will also spend some time on other varieties of English, depending on your interests: South African, Irish English, Australian English, etc.

Our text will be Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way, supplemented by the PBS series, “The Story of English,” as well as handouts.

For more information, contact dl.potts@wsu.edu

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.