Graduate Studies Bulletin
Spring 2019 Course Offerings
English 509: Classical Rhetoric
Victor Villanueva
Description not available. Contact the instructor for more information.
English 534: Theories and Methods of the Teaching of Technical and Professional Writing
Johanna Hillen
In this seminar, we’ll engage with landmark texts in technical communication to develop a keen understanding of the trends, practices, and outcomes common amongst technical and professional writing (TPW) courses. We will focus on effective methods for engaging specific student populations (i.e. engineers or business majors) at varying academic levels by using pedagogical strategies such as community engagement, industry partnerships, and problem-based projects. While this seminar focuses on the practice of skills and development of deliverables for the teaching of English 402, we’ll emphasize flexible design so that you have a solid framework for TPW instruction throughout your teaching career.
Texts Include:
- Central Works in Technical Communication (Johnson-Eilola and Selber)
- WSU’s English 402 Textbook(s)
- Selected articles
English 527: Resistance and Revolution
Kirk L. McAuley
Description not available. Contact the instructor for more information.
English 544: Syntax
Lynn Gordon
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 549: 20th and 21st Century Irish Literature and Trauma
Donna Potts
Within the last ten years (including, most recently, the 2009 release of the Ryan Report on child abuse in Irish industrial schools), reports of abuse in the church and in Ireland’s industrial school system have produced a great deal of public discourse. Irish literature has long registered an awareness of these issues, beginning in the modern era with James Joyce’sDubliners, in which child sexual abuse, incest, domestic violence, and rape are in many ways sanctioned by the official discourse of church and state. Irish colonial and postcolonial discourses have had an impact on a number of social issues, such as abortion and reproductive rights, gay rights, domestic violence, and divorce, which have also garnered a great deal of literary attention in works such as Edna O’Brien’s Down by the River, Kate O’Brien’s The Land of Spices, John McGahern’s The Dark, Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half Formed Thing, Emma Donoghue’s Room, Roddy Doyle’s The Woman who Walked into Doors, Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy, Patricia Burke Brogan’s Eclipsed and poetry by W.B. Yeats, Eva Gore-Booth, Paula Meehan, Seamus Heaney, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and others. After an examination of the colonial rhetoric that shaped and continued to shape representations of Ireland, we will examine cultural moments such as the trials of Oscar Wilde and Roger Casement, the Kerry Babies case in the 1980s, the X Case in 1992, the Kincora Boys’ Home scandal, the Tuam Babies, the Ryan Report, and the Magdalene Laundries Report, in relation to the literary texts that respond to these events, as well as the contemporary trauma theory that helps to make sense of them.
English 561: Electronic Literature
Dene Grigar
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 595: Topics in English: Anthropocene
Jon Hegglund
Description not available. Contact the instructor for more information.