Graduate Studies Bulletin
Spring 2020 Course Offerings
English 502: Seminar in the Teaching Writing: Contemporary Theories
Wendy Olson
Description not available. Contact the instructor for more information.
English 508: Assessment of Writing
Johanna Phelps
In English 508, we will spend the semester engaging with writing assessment theory, design, and practice. We’ll focus on social justice and ethics in writing assessment. First, we’ll discuss the history of writing assessment with an emphasis on methodologies and tools for designing and deploying qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods studies. We’ll reflect on how traditional tools can reify and perpetuate systemic oppression of marginalized groups in assessment settings. We’ll discuss issues of assessment related to topics such as justice, fairness, reliability, validity, born-digital tool use, data repositories, and big data. Readings, discussions, and assignments are intended to help students articulate their writing assessment frameworks, as well as practice, design, implement and report classroom, program, and/or institutional writing assessment projects.
English 544: Syntax
Michael Thomas
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/Digital Technology and Culture 560: Critical Theories, Methods, and Practice in Digital Humanities
Mike Edwards
Description not available. Contact the instructor for more information.
English 580: Medieval Literature
Michael Hanly
Description not available. Contact the instructor for more information.
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 591: Topics in Pedagogy: Anti-Oppressive Literature Pedagogy
Ashley Boyd
What educational theories exist to guide our teaching in ways that combat oppression? How do we translate those theoretical approaches into practice? This course will survey various critical frameworks and apply them to a host of texts (literary and beyond) in order to model myriad approaches to pedagogy. We will develop ways to teach from the perspectives offered in fields such as feminist, media, queer, and critical race studies, and we will simultaneously analyze these approaches for their benefits and limitations. In addition, we will review and practice relevant pedagogical strategies, such as leading effective discussion or engaging students in learning experiences, and we will explore pedagogical challenges presented in teaching different genres including short stories, film, novels, poetry, and drama. Finally, we will consider issues related to the social contexts of pedagogy and texts, such as being inclusive of the needs of diverse students and discerning how social justice relates to the study of texts. Students will develop, through course assignments, a series of documents to accompany their teaching portfolios, including a teaching philosophy and a potential course syllabus.
At the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Discuss their goals and foundational purposes for teaching literature (and beyond)
- Illuminate the connections between critical theories and critical pedagogies
- Exhibit an understanding of concepts and frameworks central to specific critical approaches to teaching including feminist, media, and race studies
- Incorporate strategies for teaching that are culturally responsive
- Articulate relationships between course content and specific research interests or areas of teaching
English 597: Topics in Composition and Rhetoric: Rhetorics of the Western Hemisphere
Victor Villanueva
A part of Kenneth Burke’s definition of rhetoric is that it is “rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew.” In so saying, he is arguing here (and in other places) that rhetoric is basic to the creature, at the very least epistemological and maybe ontological. If that’s the case, then every culture, every cooperating group of people, would have its rhetorical history, would not have to have been introduced to rhetoric by the people of Athens or Rome. It is with this line of thought that we will look in this course, not at “alternative rhetorics,” but at the rhetorics of this part of the world, from the pre-Columbian, to the nineteenth century Latin American and African American, to the Indigenous of North America and some of its islands. These are the rhetorics that have not yet been canonized within the history of rhetoric. Very short response papers, one article-length seminar paper.