Graduate Course Descriptions: Spring 2025

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For the most up-to-date list of classes offered, visit the dynamic schedule. For questions about classes, consult our graduate advising page or contact the listed instructor. To see what we'll be offering in future semesters, visit our two-year course rotation template. Interested in studying literature, taking a writing workshop, improving your writing skills, or brushing up your teaching skills, but don't want to pursue a degree? You should apply as a Non-Degree Seeking Student.

Jump to: 

• Applied Linguistics/TESOL Courses
• Creative Writing Courses
• Literary & Cultural Studies Courses
• Writing, Rhetoric, & Technical Communication Courses

*Click on each course title to read the professor's full course description; click on each thumbnail image to view the course flyer.

Applied Linguistics:

ENGL 7/8501 - History of the English Language | Dr. Leah Windsor | Online 
English has ancient origins, descending from a language called Indo-European. English shares commonalities with Bengali, Persian, Spanish, Dutch, and Albanian. Modern Englishes exist because of mass migration, trade, conquest, and the development of civilizations and cultures. In this class you will learn about the development of the English language from its earliest Celtic origins and Germanic influences, to the effect that William the Conqueror had on modern English.  We will also look at how English has changed through modern globalization, what influenced those changes, and how our language is continuing to evolve. 

ENGL 7/8508 - Corpus Linguistics | Dr. J. Elliott Casal | R 1-4pm
This course emphasizes the methodological considerations involved in corpus construction, annotation, and analysis within a broader picture of linguistic theory and application. Students will develop an understanding of the motivations and affordances of a corpus-based approach to language analysis, familiarity with freely available corpora and related tools (e.g., the Corpus of Contemporary American English), basic skills in corpus compilation and annotation (e.g., part-of-speech tagging, syntactic parsing), and an understanding of corpus-based analysis at lexical/phraseological levels. Applications for research and language teaching will also be considered. No background in corpus-linguistics is required

ENGL 7/8517 - Studies in Discourse Analysis | Dr. Lyn Wright | T 1-4pm 
Examination of the tools and methods used by various subdisciplines of English (linguistics, rhetoric, and literature) to analyze forms of discourse, including legal, medical, scientific, technical, business, literary, academic, and oral texts.

ENGL 7/8531 - Theory/History in ESL | Dr. Emily Thrush | T 5:30pm 
Survey of relation of linguistic principles to second language acquisition.

ENGL 7/8530 - Field Experience/Practicum in ESL | Dr. Rebecca Adams | Online 
Experience in observing and teaching, peer teaching, and work with an English as a Second Language (ESL) specialist.

ENGL 7/8532 - Theory/Skills Assessment in ESL | Dr. Ronald Fuentes | Online
The course takes a critical review of research in the areas of testing linguistically diverse students and the sociocultural dimensions of standardized testing, academic achievement, and accountability. Course topics include critical evaluations of standardized tests of language proficiency and literacy, and development of alternative and authentic language, literacy and content-area assessment techniques, processes for assessing language proficiency and content-area knowledge in bilingual and ESL/EFL programs.

ENGL 7/8534 - Second Language Acquisition | Dr. Rebecca Adams | M 5:30pm
Theories of second language acquisition, development of second language proficiency, and research in bilingualism.

ENGL 7/8536 - Second Language Writing | Dr. Emily Thrush | Online
Emphasis on research in second language writing, especially the role of psychological, social, and cultural influences on learning to write in a second language. 

ENGL 7/8590 - Applied Theory of Linguistics | Dr. Sage Graham | W 5:30pm
Is it harder to be polite online? How to people's idenities change on different digital platforms? Are people more toxic on social media than they are on email? Where and when do people use emojis, memes, and GIFs? How do spoken conversations differ from conversations on Discord? We will examine all of these questions and more! 

Creative Writing: 

ENGL 7471 - Forms of Fiction | Dr. Mark Mayer | T 5:30pm
No other medium can mold time as fiction can. In fiction, we can compress, expand, or rearrange time at will, covering years in a sentence or dwelling in a single moment for pages. Fictional time can move in a straight chronological line or zig-zag between eras. It can plod or race. It can reveal how the past haunts the present. It can color how past-ness of the past feels. This course will focus on the novel and short story but should benefit any creative writer or lit scholar working with narrative forms.

ENGL 7475 - Literary Publishing | Prof. Courtney Santo | W 5:30pm
Development of skills involved in editing, producing, and marketing a literary magazine; further training in the skills of publishing the student’s own literary texts. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credit hours.

ENGL 7601 - Creative Nonfiction Workshop | Prof. Courtney Santo | R 5:30pm
Emphasis on examination and discussion of creative nonfiction written by students. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credit hours when topic changes.

ENGL 7602 - Fiction Workshop | Dr. Mark Mayer | M 5:30pm
In a creative writing workshop, a community of other minds helps us to interrogate our own. By providing us with travelogues of their ventures into our fiction, our peers help us perceive what we have dreamt. This process requires difference—peers with their own instincts for language, their own sensitivities to experience, and their own narrative intuitions—and solidarity, a shared commitment to putting this difference in service of the author’s vision. You’ll have the freedom to pursue your ongoing projects, and where appropriate, critiques will consider stories and chapters in the context of book-length projects. We will also discuss published fiction, representing a variety of narrative and emotional strategies, as well as some works of theory and literary criticism. 

ENGL 7603 - Poetry Workshop | Dr. Emily Skaja | R 5:30pm
This is a graduate-level workshop devoted to the creation, revision, and critical analysis of poetry. Students will submit original work and improve their craft through dedicated practice and intensive study. Analyzing contemporary collections of poetry, the students will work to understand how the poet is using figurative language, form, music, and arrangement to create intricate layers of meaning. The workshop is a constructive community environment where students are invited to encourage and challenge one another as they refine their work. 

Literary & Cultural Studies:

ENGL 6243 - Studies in British Literature: The Age of Satire in Britain | Dr. Darryl Domingo | MW 12:40-2:05pm
In this course, we will examine the form and function of satire by surveying a diverse range of satiric works produced by British men and women between approximately 1660 and 1750. We will familiarize ourselves with mock-epic and mock-pastoral; Horatian, Juvenalian, and Ovidian imitation; Menippean satire; ballad opera; ironic fable; spurious travelogue; lampoon; satiric epistle; parody; travesty and burlesque; graphic satire; as well as meta-satire that comments upon the ethics and aesthetics of satire as a literary mode. The course will work from the assumption that literature which provokes laughter sometimes broaches topics that are so unsettling or profound or threatening that they would be difficult to deal with in a more serious mode.

ENGL 7/8230 - Chaucer | Dr. Cristina Maria Cervone | T 5:30pm
This course reads Chaucer through a variety of critical lenses that have proved productive (or not), emphasizing recent important work in medieval studies that  prompts us to ponder how ideologies and contemporary conversations influence how we read and how our myopias might affect our interpretations of the past. Topics include, for example, racism in medieval studies, feminist readings, animal studies, queer theory, cognitive approaches, materiality, manuscript contexts, and present-day poets’ interest in Middle English and Chaucer. Prior knowledge of Middle English is not expected. The readings and topics provide something of interest for students from all concentrations and all are welcome. Major assignments can be adapted in ways useful to other concentrations (particularly creative writing). Work on many of the fundamental critical questions can be readily applied to other subfields of English studies.

ENGL 7/8339 - Black Speculative Fiction: Afrofuturism | Dr. Shelby Crosby | W 5:30pm
Afrofuturism is social, political, and artistic movement that encourages Blacks across the Diaspora to re-imagine the world as one where people of African descent and their cultures are central to the creation of the world. As a literary movement, Afrofuturism is “an aesthetic practice that enables artists to communicate the experience of science, technology, and race across centuries, continents, and cultures” (Lavendar). In this course we will be examining Afrofuturism as a literary movement and as an artistic space that encourages and/or demands that readers engage with ideas and concepts that are uncomfortable and push them to open up to new possibilities and to the inevitability of change. 

ENGL 7/8464 - Contemporary American Literature: 21st Century Uses of the Western | Dr. Jeffrey Scraba | M 5:30pm 
During the 20^th century, the genre of the Western became one of the most important vehicles through which America narrated its identity and values. Since its heyday in the 1940s and 50s, cultural critics have frequently heralded the end of the Western, as the ideology on which it was based came into question. But beginning with the “revisionist” texts of the 1960s and 70s, the Western as genre has proved surprisingly adaptable, capable of interrogating and addressing a wide range of issues and concerns. This class will focus on how elements of the Western genre have been repurposed in 21^st-century fiction, film, and television, exploring how the Western has enabled contemporary artists to address ideas about nation, race, class, and gender. 

ENGL 7/8468 - Literature of the Harlem Renaissance | Dr. Verner Mitchell | Online
The Harlem Renaissance generally refers to the decade following World War I, as African American artists produced a wealth of music, literature, dance, visual art, and social discourse. Although centered in New York City, artists from all over the United States, including California, Utah, Kansas, and Tennessee contributed to the movement. Musician W.C. Handy and blues singer Alberta Hunter were from Memphis, and though the novelist and physician Rudolph “Bud” Fisher was born in Washington D.C., his parents were Memphians. In recent years, a steady stream of anthologies, memoirs, criticism, biographies, and collections of letters from the period attests to the popular and academic interest in the Harlem Renaissance. Indeed, since the Renaissance’s zenith in 1926, interest in the field has never been keener. 

ENGL 7/8701 - History of Critical Theory | Dr. Andrew Donnelly | R 5:30pm
For most of us doing literary criticism today, literary theory and the history of criticism serve two important functions: First, a map of the history of thought through which we categorize, genealogize, hierarchize, find, understand, embrace, and sometimes even dismiss scholarship within our fields and beyond. Second, fuel for new insights, approaches, readings, interpretations and ways of seeing the world and our work. This course, on the History of Criticism and Theory, aims for both functions, so that no matter your prior experience with theory or literary criticism, you’ll leave with both a cartographer’s knowledge of what’s out there and enthusiasm for where you want to go.

Writing, Rhetoric, & Technical Communication: 

ENGL 6619 - Web & Online Writing | Dr. Chloe Robertson | Online
This course is intended to review specific ethics, writing practices, design modalities, and information management norms online. Students will be introduced to best practices in the field and will have the opportunity to create social media campaigns, engage in collaborative online writing, and gain skills with web editing software.

ENGL 7/8801 - Diverging Disciplines: The Past, Present, and Future of Writing and Communication Studies | Dr. Will Duffy | M 5:30pm
This seminar examines the historical divergence of composition studies and communication studies, beginning with the institutional split between the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the National Communication Association (NCA) in 1920. Using this moment as a foundation, students will explore the development of writing instruction and public speaking as separate yet connected fields, investigating key historical moments and pedagogical shifts that shaped U.S. higher education. As we chart these developments, we will also turn our attention to the future, considering how the ongoing evolution of these fields can address emerging challenges in literacy education, such as the rise of generative AI and digital literacy. 

ENGL 7/8806 - Research Methods in Writing | Dr. Shiva Mainaly | T 5:30pm
We will pay special attention to how research methods intersect with issues of power, identity, and access, encouraging students to consider how their research might advocate for social justice, inclusivity, positionality, and equity in the world of writing. Whether you plan to pursue academic, pedagogical, or professional research, this course offers a dynamic, holistic introduction to the methods that will inform your work as a scholar of writing.

ENGL 7/8809 - Technical Editing | Dr. Chloe Robertson | Online
This course is designed as a primer on editing in technical communication with a specific focus on substantive editing, copy editing, proofreading, document organization, visual design, and team management skills and software. Students in this course will practice different levels of editing on different texts from a wide variety of genres. As well as presenting and practicing the different stages of editing, this course will ask students to engage with the rhetorical nuances of the editing process and the ethical responsibilities of editors.