This page features general descriptions of graduate English courses, as they appear in the Graduate Bulletin. These descriptions outline the general parameters of each course. Instructors write more specific, individualized descriptions each semester the course is offered. (For those descriptions of specific sections, click here for a semester-by-semester list.)

English 502 Writers on Writing

Students will attend a weekly series of readings, lectures, and discussions by visiting writers. With a faculty member, students will read and analyze the works of a range of prominent and emerging writers and then interact with the writers themselves in the classroom. Offered every third semester. Required of students in the Creative Writing M.F.A. program.

English 503 Theory of Writing

This seminar concentrates on the major twentieth century theorists of poetry and fiction, many of whom were great creative writers themselves. The course makes the connection between literary theory and the work of the creative writer. Amongh the works under discussion are the theoretical works of Maurice Blanchot, Walter Benjamin, Julia Kristeva, Lyn Hejinian, Charles Olson, E. M. Forster, M. M. Bakhtin, Wayne Booth, and Gertrude Stein. The emphasis will be on a close reading of these texts in order to understand the place of theory in students' own creative writing. Offered every third semester. Required of students in the Creative Writing M.F.A. program.

English 504 Traditions and Lineages

English 508 General Linguistics (same as Anthropology 508)

An introduction to the basic disciplines of linguistics: phonology, history of the English language, semantics and syntax, including traditional and generative-tranformational grammar.

English 509 Sociolinguistics and the Teaching of Writing

An introduction to the major theories and fieldwork in sociolinguistics. Students examine the connections between language and social class, ethnicity and gender and the implications of those connections for the teaching of writing. There is also a strong focus on the analysis of second language and second dialect writing, along with an exploration of multiple literacies.

English 520 Nonfiction Writing Workshop

An intensive workshop devoted to writing literary nonfiction. Class time will be spent critiquing each other's writing and discussing traditional and experimental forms. Students in the Creative Writing track or Professional Writing track may take this class three times.

English 522 Academic Writing WorkshopAn intensive advanced writing workshop for graduate students across the disciplines who wish to polish their academic writing skills. Students write critical essays in response to professional readings.

English 523 Fiction Writing Workshop
Prerequisite: Permission of the Instructor

An intensive workshop devoted to writing works of fiction. Class time will be spent critiquing each other's writing and discussing traditional and experimental forms. Students in the Creative Writing track may take this class three times.

English 524 Poetry Writing Workshop
Prerequisite: Permission of the Instructor

An intensive workshop devoted to writing works of poetry. Class time will be spent critiquing each other's writing and discussing traditional and experimental forms. Students in the Creative Writing track may take this class three times.

English 525 Play Writing Workshop
Prerequisite: Permission of the Instructor

An intensive workshop devoted to writing plays. Class time will be spent critiquing each other's writing and discussing traditional and experimental forms. Students in the Creative Writing track may take this class three times.

English 526 Writing for Media I: The Story (same as Media Arts 600)

An introduction to the principles of screenwriting. Students explore dramatic structure, character development, dialogue, and plot through analysis of television and film narratives. They complete a story treatment and short screenplay or teleplay as their final project.

English 527 Professional Writing Workshop

An introduction to the theory, research, and practice of professional writing. Topics may include writing in such professions as medicine and law, writing for non-profit and cultural institutions, writing in digital media, scientific and technical writing, business writing, and grant writing. Students will both analyze and write professional writing documents and receive detailed feedback on their writing in intensive workshops. Students in the Professional Writing track may take this class three times.

English 528 Seminar in Creative Writing

An intensive workshop devoted to different strategies for writing imaginative texts, especially those that cross genres. Examples of special topics are: Collage: Image and Text, Science Fiction Writing, and The Prose Poem. Students in the Creative Writing track may take this class three times.

English 529 Topics in Creative Writing (one credit)

This workshop will be taught by a visiting writer. Students in the Creative Writing track may take this class six times.

English 546 Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature

Against the backdrop of sex, scandal, war, and revolution, the eighteenth century is fundamentally a time of change. This course studies the shift in popular literary forms from drama to poetry to the newly emerging novel. Students examine cultural themes of nationalism, empire, and revolution over roughly 120 years. Authors include Aphra Behn, John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Olaudah Equiano, and Fanny Burney.

English 571 The Eighteenth Century English Novel

This course will trace the rise of the English novel and the authors who helped shape its form. Authors include Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, Fanny Burney, Henry Fielding, and Jane Austen.

English 573 The Nineteenth Century English Novel

Topics include the Gothic novel, women novelists, the novel of empire. Authors might include Dickens, the Brontës, Eliot, Hardy, Thackeray.

English 574 The Twentieth Century English Novel

Studying the short and long fiction of male and female novelists, such as Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, Iris Murdoch, Ian McEwan, et al., this course will span the entire twentieth century and investigate topics like politics, gender relations, empire, or the development of modernist and postmodernist aesthetics.

English 579 Seminar in Special Studies

An intensive study of special areas of interest in literature. Examples of special topics are the works of a major author, English Renaissance and the arts, and detective fiction.

English 580 Seminar in Twentieth Century Literature

This course will trace some of the salient developments in Twentieth-Century World Literature. Possible topics include a study of genres such as fantasy, dystopia, or novels of ideas across different cultures, the emergence of postcolonial, minority, and diaspora literatures, the consolidation of women's literature, or the phenomenon of international modernism and postmodernism.

English 620 Theories of Rhetoric and Teaching Writing

An introduction to theories of teaching writing. Examines contemporary theories of rhetoric and composition, such as reader response, expressionist, cognitive, and social constructivist.

English 624 Seminar in American Literature

An intensive study of special areas of interest. Examples of special topics are romancing the frontier, the body in American literature, and melancholia and American literature.

English 625 Nineteenth Century American Literature

A study of the making of an American literature with diverse voices. Narratives, poetry, journals, essays, autobiographies, and folktalkes are considered. Authors include Poe, Hawthorne, James, Melville, Emerson, Whitman, Douglass, Twain, Crane, Dickinson, Chesnutt, Wharton, and Dreiser.

English 626 Twentieth Century American Literature

A review of the flowering of American letters between the two world wars. Modernism, new regionalism, expatriatism, the Harlem Renaissance, and gendered perspectives are among topics covered. Authors include Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Stein, Hurston, Frost, Hughes, Steinbeck, Eliot, Cather, West, and Stevens.

English 631 Seminar in English and American Poetry

Modernism, new regionalism, expatriatism, the Harlem Renaissance, and gender perspectives are among topics covered. Authors inlcude Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Stein, Hurston, Hughes, Steinbeck, Eliot, Cather, and Stevens.

English 634 Twentieth Century Drama

A study of selected masters of modern theater from Ibsen to Beckett.

English 636 Seminar in Literary Periods and Movements

An intensive study of special areas of interest. Examples of special topics are modernism, post-modernism, post-colonial literature, comparative literature.

English 641 Literacy and Basic Writing

An examination of the theoretical and practical questions surrounding the development of literacy, particularly in relation to basic writing instruction and multicultural contexts.

English 643 Seminar in Shakespeare

A review of the major scholarly and critical approaches to Shakespeare.

English 646 Individual and Small Group Writing Instruction

A study of various collaborative and conference techniques for the teaching of writing. Designed to include theories of collaborative learning, practical applications in the classroom, and ethnographic or case study.

English 649 Seminar in British Literature

An intensive study of special areas of interest. Examples of special topics are Africa in British eyes and British women novelists.

English 650 Seminar in Medieval Literature

The course focuses on a particular text, topic, or tradition. Topics include Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Arthurian tradition, gender and sexuality in Medieval literature, and women of the Middle Ages.

English 651 Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century English Literature

With the transformations and tensions inherent in Christianity shaping the cultural climate of the time, the poetry and prose of the early modern period explore the contrast between the sacred and the profane. Authors include Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, Aemilia Lanyer, John Donne, Lady Mary Wroth, Andrew Marvell, and Queen Elizabeth.

Protestant Dissenter to Roman Catholic, radical to traditionalist, John Milton is a study in constrasts. This course will examine a representative body of Milton's essays and poetry in the context of his very turbulent times. Works examined include Comus, Lycidas, Of Reformation, and the greatest epic poem in English literature--Paradise Lost.

English 655 Early Nineteenth Century English Literature

A study of English Romantic poetry and prose non-fiction writers inlcuding Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Hemans, and Wollstonecraft. Topics might include the lyric poem, the development of national identity, the female author, the construction of the poet.

English 656 Later Nineteenth Century English Literature

A study of Victorian poets and non-fiction prose writers including Tennyson, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Arnold, Swinburne, Hopkins, Dante and Christina Rosetti. Topics might include the epic poem, Victorians at home, race and empire, the medieval revival.

English 670 Seminar in the Critical Tradition

A study of the great literary critics, from Aristotle to T.S. Eliot.

English 700 Practicum in the Teaching of Composition
Prerequisite: English 641

A practicum designed to introduce new teachers to the theory and methods of writing pedagogy, with a central emphasis on classroom practice.

English 705 Independent Study
Prerequisite: Twelve graduate credits in English and permission of Department Chair.

A tutorial seminar designed for advanced individual research or writing projects. Hours to be arranged.

English 707 Methods of Research and Criticism

A study of research techniques and critical approaches to literature. The writing of a literary critical essay is included. Required of students in all concentrations. Must be taken in the first Fall semester of graduate enrollment.

English 708 Thesis (Pass/Fail Only)

With Concentration in Literature
Prerequisite: At least 21credits in graduate English courses completed with a 3.0 grade point average and permission of the thesis director, the graduate advisor, and the Department Chair.

With Concentration in Creative Writing
Prerequisite: At least 21 credits in graduate English courses (12 of them in writing) completed with a 3.0 grade point average and permission of the thesis director, the graduate advisor, and the Department Chair.

With Concentration in Professional Writing
Prerequisite: At least 21 credits in graduate English courses (12 of them in writing) completed with a 3.0 grade point average and permission of the thesis director, the graduate advisor, and the Department Chair.

With Concentration in the Teaching of Writing
Prerequisite: At least 21 credits in graduate English courses (12 of them in the teaching of writing) completed with a 3.0 grade point average and permission of the thesis director, the graduate advisor, and the Department Chair.