Courses – Department of English and Communication

Downloadable Fall 2021 Course Guides

List of Courses

UndergraduateMAMFA

Introduction to Communication

50:192:101:01
MW 12:30-1:50
Gimbal

Introduction to Communication is designed to introduce the basic concepts of human communication and interaction behavior. Through lectures, online discussions, and reading materials, this course surveys communication topics related to culture, gender, identity, diversity, groups, organizations and relationships.

Special Topics: Computational Thinking

50:192:229:01
TTh 11:10-12:20
DuBose

How do we use computation to solve problems? What kinds of problems are solvable with computation, and what kinds aren’t? This course offers students both practical and theoretical experience with computer programming. No previous programming experience is required. Requirements: Coding projects. Possibility of short, informal quizzes.

Public Speaking

50:192:281:01
MW 2:05-3:25
Gimbal

Public speaking is something that everyone will have to encounter at some point in their lives, and this course will help students focus on the skills necessary for effective public speaking. This includes delivery techniques, speech-writing, persuasion abilities and the ability to critically evaluate both written and spoken speeches of others. Students will research, write and deliver several speeches in class.

Special Topics: Popular Culture

50:192:329:91
M 9:35-10:55
W Hybrid
Gimbal

The course covers critical theory (such as marxist, feminist criticism) as a way of critiquing popular culture. We will learn about critical theory and apply it to current pop culture artifacts such as television shows, movies, video games, music videos and advertisements. Students will leave the course with a better understanding about the ways pop culture messages influence them.

Special Topics: Workplace Communication

50:192:330:90
Online
Gimbal
In this course, students will not only learn the fundamentals of communication, but also how to communicate in a work environment. This will include understanding how to use face to face and technologically mediated communication in the business world, effective interview and negotiation skills, and presenting oneself for the job market. Course will consist of readings, online lectures, discussions, assignments and exams.

LITERATURE

Literature Appreciation

50:350:106:01
MW 9:35-10:55
Martin

This course is an introduction to literature designed for non-majors, though current and future English majors are welcome. We will study the three genres–fiction, drama, and poetry–in the three main units of the course. Each unit will start with a warm-up: short stories followed by a novel (by Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child); short poems written by a wide range of writers leading up to study of a single poet to be determined; two or three short plays followed by a full-length play, also to be determined. The aim of the course is to encourage a deeper appreciation of imaginative writing through a study of the elements of which it is made: plot, character, diction, setting, image, voice, figurative language, and so on. Ecosystem willing, the course will be taught traditionally (in person), possibly with some incorporation of the advantages of distance learning. Generally, we’ll have tests rather than papers, and there will be a term project that is conducted throughout the semester and handed in at the end. Fulfills the AAI General Education category.

Introduction to Disability Studies

50:350:200:01
TTh 11:10-12:30
Green

The objective of this course is to introduce students to disability as a category of critical inquiry, cultural analysis, and political organization. It understands the notion of disability as socially constructed while also recognizing people with disabilities as a political minority that deserve similar consideration as other interconnected and overlapping groups, such as people of color, women, and members of various LGBTQ communities. While it recognizes that people live with real somatic, psychological, and developmental differences, the course aims to identify and deconstruct the mythologies associated with those differences. Weekly blogs, regular exams, final exam, a group presentation, a final project, and active participation are required.

Introduction to English Studies

50:350:201:01
TTh 2:00-3:20
Sayre

This course provides an overview of the areas of study gathered together in the Rutgers-Camden Department of English and Communication. Students will learn about the history, theory, and methods of literary analysis, linguistics, rhetoric and composition, communication, creative writing, film and digital studies. Assignments will include short writings and exercises as well as two exams. Fulfills the AAI General Education category. This course is required for English majors.

Responses to Landscape

50:350:205:40
MW 6:00-7:20

From the Middle Ages to the present, landscapes have been praised as realms of wonder (sites of religious revelation or emotional release and joy), yet also persistently devastated, deforested, and polluted. Mindful of global warming, we will track these contradictory processes, in and around literature, from Gawain and the Green Knight through to our Nobel Prize-winning contemporary, Seamus Heaney. Two exams, and a 6– 8-page term paper. Fulfills the EAV General Education category.

Literatures in English I

50:350:221:01
MW 9:35-10:55
Habib

A survey, within their historical contexts, of some of the renowned texts of English literature from the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century. Fulfills the HAC General Education category. For English majors, this course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement.

Ten Books You Should Have Read by Now

50:350:251:01
TTh 11:10-12:30
Barbarese

Why do the same books or films or graphic novels always appear on our syllabi? What do we mean by “classic,” “universal,” or “standard” text? Ten Books looks at ten “classics”” that always appear on syllabi and asks how they got there—from the inevitable (Hamlet, Paradise Lost, The Great Gatsby) to the controversial (Lolita, Watchman)—and may include one or two films, both original (Chinatown, Mean Girls) and adaptations. Good for future educators. Quizzes, a midterm and final, and a short essay. Fulfills the HAC General Education category.

The Short Story

50:350:264:01
MW 12:30-1:50
Grodstein

Students will read and discuss contemporary short fiction by George Saunders, Jhumpa Lahiri, Alice Munro, Octavia Butler and others. Students will be responsible for a midterm and a final paper which can be creative or research-based, and for a presentation on the short fiction of their choice.

Foundations of Literature

50:350:300:01
MW 3:45-5:05
Fitter

What’s life been like for human beings in the last five thousand years? Would you have liked to live in ancient Rome, Biblical times, or Shakespeare’s London? This course is nothing less than an overview of Western cultures and their literary masterpieces, from the world’s first civilization (Sumeria) through the early modern period: witnessing in Shakespeare and some of his contemporaries the emergence of our own values and outlook. We will survey the genre devoted to (allegedly) heroic greatness, the epic, in Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Aeneid and Beowulf; but also the literature of everyday life, and humor. We shall observe, also, the many, surprisingly different value-schemes that Christianity has promoted over two thousand years. You will leave this course understanding where many of your assumptions about ‘life’ actually come from. Fulfills the HAC General Education category. This course is required for English majors.

Gothic Writing

50:350:319:01
MW 2:05-3:25
Ledoux

This course begins with the “first” Gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), and concludes with an iconic text from the end of the nineteenth century, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). In addition to novels, we will read some poems, a play, and a sampling of short fiction. We will investigate what aspects of Gothic writing are critical to describing it as a cohesive category and how this aesthetic mode can be used as a vehicle for exploring issues of gender, sexuality, race, and class. Fulfills the AAI General Education category. For English majors, this course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement.

Children’s Literature in Print and Film

50:350:362:90
Online
Hoffman

In this course we will examine modern British and American children’s literature and film adaptations of it produced in the 20th and 21st centuries. Of special interest will be the public political discourses into which these texts intervene, as well as issues of adaptation and intertextuality. The reading list likely will include Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Alcott, Little Women; Stevenson, Treasure Island; Kipling, The Jungle Book; Baum, The Wizard of Oz; Barrie, Peter Pan; Burnett, The Secret Garden; Travers, Mary Poppins; Dahl, Matilda; Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are; and Neil Gaiman, Coraline. Requirements: reading quizzes; discussion posts; occasional short critical writing assignments; a final essay (approx. 8 pp.), and a final exam.

Popular Culture

50:350:367:91
M 9:35-10:55
W Hybrid
Gimbal

Irish Literature

50:350:372:01
MW 2:05-3:25
Martin

Why might students be interested in Irish literature? Perhaps they are among 40 million Americans of Irish heritage who want to know more about their roots. Maybe they are interested in histories of politically-repressed minorities struggling for independence and recognition. Or maybe they would like to get to know one of the world’s most compelling literary traditions: Ireland has produced four Nobel Prize winners, and its population has never exceeded 8 million people.

This course will study stories, poems, and plays written in Ireland since the beginning of the twentieth century. We will consider the difficult relationship between Ireland and its former English oppressors, the complicated role of the Roman Catholic Church in Irish life, and the harshness of Irish family life in the context of poverty and chronic economic underdevelopment. Famous writers like James Joyce and W. B. Yeats will be supplemented by lesser known but important figures like Liam O’Flaherty, Edna O’Brien, and Eavan Boland. Pending GCM approval.

Special Topics: Girl’s Literature

50:350:381:01
MWF 10:20-11:05
Blackford Humes

This course analyzes the shaping of girlhood in bildungsroman texts. Works under consideration include: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, selections from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series, Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, Zora Neale Hurston’s “Drenched in Light,” Carol Ryrie Brink’s Caddie Woodlawn, Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones, Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Requirements include a presentation on the historical, literary, and cultural context of a particular work and author (with peers); ongoing active participation in class and online, a take-home close-reading exam, and a final project that is comparable to a 5-7 pp paper but may be electronic or multimodal.

Women in Literature

50:350:388:01
MW 3:45-5:05
Ledoux

This class will investigate how women authors from different backgrounds and time periods describe their experiences in print. We will explore whether women’s writing has a particular aesthetic or voice that sets it apart from men’s. For example, we will ask ourselves if women are attracted to some styles or themes more than others. By approaching texts by women of different races, sexual orientations, and social classes, we’ll see how diversity creates a lively dialogue about what it means to be female. Texts will include Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Rita May Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, along with various short stories. Fulfills the AAI General Education category.

Special Topics: Edmund Spenser’s the Faerie Queene: Allegory at the Root of Empire

50:350:391:01
TTh 3:35-4:55
Hostetter

Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (2nd version 1596) was long held up as an epitome of Elizabethan poetic brilliance & ambition. The six finished books of FQ are sprawling, obsessively detailed, baroque, and often staggeringly beautiful. Spenser was called the “Prince of Poets” — the “poet’s poet.” A poet for other poets to emulate & model. However, the last thirty years have clarified Spenser’s enthusiastic participation in the genocidal colonial regime in Ireland. But this is not simply a struggle between poet versus work. An ugly, viciously nationalistic & imperial spirit motivates much of the poem, weaponizing his dazzling poetics against Catholics, the Irish, Muslims, and indigenous people. This seminar is an attempt to renegotiate aesthetics AS politics, starting with “allegory” itself, Spenser’s central structure and a key hermeneutic strategy for Christian Europe since earliest times. Here we’ll engage Spenser’s influences & sources, biography, lesser works, & a critical revision what Spenser means to English poetry. Standard final project expectations apply here — this is a class that should prove valuable to scholars & writers alike. For English majors, this course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement.

Portfolio Seminar

50:350:400:01
T 3:45-4:45
DuBose

A one-hour seminar in which students complete a self-directed electronic portfolio that presents their experience and achievements as English majors in relation to professional life, graduate school, and/or other post-baccalaureate goals.

AMERICAN LITERATURE

Myths of America

50:352:254:01
TTh 3:35-4:55
Singley

United States of America: Place of opportunity? Land of the free and home of the brave? Model of individualism and beacon for the world? In this course, we explore myths of a single American identity from diverse and often dissenting perspectives. We read short stories, poems, and essays by well-known and less well-known writers of different races, ethnicities, faiths, and genders. We examine the origins of the “American dream” and chart its changes over time to understand how the nation has lived up to, or failed to achieve, its promise. We also analyze popular culture and legends to assess the truths, half-truths, and lies that make up our national mythologies. You’ll leave the course with a clearer sense of the American project and your place in it. Assignments include short papers, one or two presentations, and a final written or digital project of your choice. Fulfills the USW General Education category. Fulfills the WRI General Education category.

Special Topics: Black Speculative Fiction

50:352:379:01
TTh 2:00-3:20
Green

This course is an exploration of speculative fiction (broadly conceived) produced by people of African descent. Organized around units that derive from fairly established sci-fi conventions – dystopia, artificial intelligence, and space adventure, for example – it surveys how imaginary worlds and fantastic situations have animated black cultural production. Though the course’s main material will be written texts, it will also take note of the wider impact of the fanciful in such mediums as film, music, and clothing. Representative authors include Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, and Nalo Hopkinson.

Special Topics: Southern Literature

50:352:380:01
MW 12:30-1:50
Blackford Humes

This course investigates the motif of “gone with the wind” throughout Southern literature, in dialogue with interrogations of white supremacy, patriarchy, hetero-normativity, and class consciousness. Potential readings include: Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), Edgar Allen Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson (1893), Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1900), Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road (1932), Carson McCullers’s Reflections in a Golden Eye (1942), short stories of Flannery O’Connor, Truman Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1958), Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina (1992), and John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994). Requirements include a presentation on the historical, literary, and cultural context of a particular work and author (with peers); ongoing active participation in class and online, a take-home close-reading exam, and a final project that is comparable to a 5-7 pp paper but may be electronic or multimodal.

FILM

The Art of Film

50:354:201:91
T Hybrid
Th 11:10-12:30
Zeidner

This is an introductory course to discuss all the elements of cinematic style. We’ll cover cinematography, editing, sound, scripts, and performance, while watching a series of movies to demonstrate the complicated number of elements that must come together to make a successful film. Assigned screenings on your own, weekly forum posts, and in-class discussions on Thursdays. Course requirements also include a midterm, a final exam, and a final paper. Fulfills the AAI General Education category. Counts toward the interdisciplinary film minor.

Special Topics: How to Read a Screenplay

50:354:211:40
MW 6:00-7:20
Mokhberi

This course covers the fundamentals of writing for film with a focus on story structure. We will study various narrative conventions and screenwriting paradigms and look at what works and why by analyzing existing screenplays and through script to screen comparisons. Students will also examine screenplay formatting, discuss style and how to best write for film, and consider how the medium differs from other dramatic and literary forms. Counts toward the interdisciplinary film minor.

The Journalist in and on Film

50:354:316:91
T 2:00-3:20
Th Hybrid
Capuzzo

For many, understanding what journalists do is defined by how they are portrayed in films. From the hapless bumbler to the ambitious crusader, from the hard-bitten cynic to the power-hungry megalomaniac, Hollywood’s depictions of journalists, real or fictional, both reinforce stereotypes and provide keen insights. Viewing a wide array of films from the last 80 years, this course will offer a comprehensive look at the actions and ethics of journalists in cinema, while tracing milestones in the history of our country and of the media. As a hybrid course, we will meet once a week for discussions; with the remainder of work being done online, including a weekly film viewing blog. Fulfills the AAI General Education category. Counts toward the interdisciplinary film minor.

Major Filmmakers: Polanski and Kubrick

50:354:350:90
Online
Sorrento

This course will explore the work of two auteurs of cinema, Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) and Roman Polanski (1933- ), who have developed similar but distinct filmmaking styles. Through close readings of their major works, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rosemary’s Baby, and Chinatown, and accompanying texts, students will investigate the development of each director’s style in relation to the “New Hollywood” movement of the 1960s and 70s and the scope of contemporary cinema. We will also analyze the filmmakers’ approach to genre – Film Noir, Science Fiction, the Horror Film – and literary adaptation – Macbeth, Lolita, A Clockwork Orange. Counts toward the interdisciplinary film minor.

Special Topics: Review Writing

50:354:3390:90
Online
Capuzzo

So you want to be a critic? Whether it’s weighing in on the latest controversy or recommending a must-see movie, everyone has an opinion and most people want to share that opinion through a venue that may reach, and hopefully influence, others. This online course will teach students to apply a more critical eye toward the social and cultural activities they engage in, and to shape those observations and judgments into various forms of opinion and review writing, using the same discerning measures employed by professional critics. Assignments will include writing various types of reviews and criticism, and developing personal blogs, with the goal of establishing authority and a voice on subjects students are passionate about and seek to share. Counts toward the interdisciplinary film minor.

Special Topics: Medieval Film

50:354:392:40
TTh 6:00-7:20
Hostetter

Many people find the Middle Ages fascinating, & they mainline its imagery, narratives, & mythologies through film. This course will be an exploration of how & why the Middle Ages is represented in such colorful yet distorted ways, revealing the ideologies we nurse in our modern world. Also, the picture we get of this Middle Ages is overwhelming white & European. So we’ll go round the world from early classics like the Passion of St. Joan (1929) and Alexander Nevsky (1938) to the recent version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but also look at contributions from Mongolia, India, and the Middle East. Of course, we’ll talk about Beowulf and King Arthur and stuff like that too. All films will be viewable outside of class from streaming sources whenever possible. Course assignments includes two short papers and a larger semester-end project. Counts toward the interdisciplinary film minor.

JOURNALISM

Introduction to Journalism

50:570:201:01
TTh 11:10-12:30
Capuzzo

This ground-level journalism course will introduce students to the fundamental skills involved in reporting and writing for the news media. Students will learn how to identify and develop news stories, research and gather information, find sources, conduct interviews, and write on a variety of subjects. They will also dive into today’s complex media environment, becoming savvy consumers of what is being reported globally.

The course places a strong emphasis on building reporting and news writing skills through exercises and assignments. Students are also urged to become more discerning news consumers through news quizzes and class discussions of current events.

The Journalist in and on Film

50:570:316:91
T 2:00-3:20
Th Hybrid
Capuzzo

Review Writing

50:570:336:90
Online
Capuzzo

Special Topics: Campus Reporting

50:570:395:01
TTh 3:35-4:55
Capuzzo

Using our campus as our palette, students will dive into the community around them in this hyper-local journalism course that will identify and report on stories worthy of coverage in and around Rutgers Camden. Students will initially learn what it means to cover a local beat, and the skills involved in rooting out stories that paint a picture of a community, through words and images. They will then apply those skills to explore the many facets of our university, our campus, and the surrounding neighborhood, producing breaking news stories, features and perhaps even investigative pieces about the world just outside our doors. Students will also have the opportunity to work in tandem with our school newspaper, The Gleaner, with opportunities to get stories published and shared on the paper’s social media networks.

LINGUISTICS

History of the English Language

50:615:341:01
MW 345:5:05
Epstein

This course will address the growth and structure of the English language from its origins to the present, with attention to methods of linguistic description. In addition to more traditional historical linguistics (i.e. the effect of language change on the phonology, morphology, semantics and syntax of the language), we will devote considerable attention to socio-historical influences on the development of English, addressing, in particular, questions relating to authority in language: Standard vs. non-standard dialects of English, the rise of dictionary making, spelling reform movements, English as a world language, etc. Although basic knowledge of grammar will be very helpful, there is no prerequisite to this course. Course requirements: Two midterms, final exam and (optional) final paper. Fulfills the HAC General Education category.

WRITING

Art of Revision

50:989:301:90
Online
Staff

Practice in the art of constructing clear, concise prose, with emphasis on developing a personal style. Fulfills the WRI General Education category.

Introduction to Creative Writing

50:989:305:90
Online
Staff

Introduction to the writer’s craft that surveys available genres of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Poetry Writing Workshop

50:989:306:90
Online
Barbarese

Study of the creative process involved in the writing of poetry, the techniques and discipline required, and trends in contemporary poetry. Fulfills the AAI General Education category. Fulfills the WRI General Education category.

Writing New Media

50:989:312:01
TTh 2:00-3:20
DuBose

This course serves as an introduction to both media production and major ideas in new media criticism. We will engage with and create texts in several mediums (video games, podcasts, websites and more) while discussing the social and cultural impact of new forms of media.

Special Topics: Singer Songwriter

50:989:390:01
TTh 11:10-12:20
Lisicky

Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Björk, James Blake, Frank Ocean, Mitski: What do these iconic figures have in common? What can the solo artist achieve that a band can’t? Over the course of the term we’ll think about the singer-songwriter as an auteur, an artist developing a singular, vital vision over time. We’ll discuss individual songs, as well as watch the occasional performance. Through rigorous and joyful appreciation of these figures, we’ll learn to be more confident interpreters of word and sound—in other words, better readers and listeners of the world around us.

Professional Seminar in English Studies

56:350:509:01
W 6:00-8:50
Fiske

This course serves as an introduction to the academic and professional skills required for successful study of English at the post-graduate level. Topics will include the explication of literary texts; writing of bibliographical and critical essays; locating and documenting primary and secondary sources; understanding and skillfully deploying critical theory in literary analysis; and refining writing and critical thinking skills.

Students will also be introduced to resources geared toward exploring professions related to English study, including scholarly editing, writing for publication, and teaching at different types of institutions. This course is required for the Master of Arts degree.

Horror and Literature and Theory

56:350:522:01
T 6:00-8:50
Sayre

This course will look at broad range of literary and cultural artifacts in an attempt to better understand how their authors use horror to explore their world or to imagine others. During the semester, will be unpacking the work of horror itself, its conventions, tropes, as well its intersection with theories of affect, gender and sexuality, race and indigeneity. We will focus our work on the ways in which horror is deployed to manage threats of difference and disorder, an abjection of otherness that has served structures of discrimination as well as social critique. How does horror attach to threats of otherness and insecurity, a terror that comes from without, but also an intimate, unsettling fear of the self and the potential for our own monstrous transformation?

Special Topics: Spencer and Social Justice

56:350:530:01
TTh 3:35-4:55
Hostetter

Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (2nd version 1596) was long held up as an epitome of Elizabethan poetic brilliance & ambition. The six finished books of FQ are sprawling, obsessively detailed, baroque, and often staggeringly beautiful. Spenser was called the “Prince of Poets” — the “poet’s poet.” A poet for other poets to emulate & model. However, the last thirty years have clarified Spenser’s enthusiastic participation in the genocidal colonial regime in Ireland. But this is not simply a struggle between poet versus work. An ugly, viciously nationalistic & imperial spirit motivates much of the poem, weaponizing his dazzling poetics against Catholics, the Irish, Muslims, and indigenous people. This seminar is an attempt to renegotiate aesthetics AS politics, starting with “allegory” itself, Spenser’s central structure and a key hermeneutic strategy for Christian Europe since earliest times. Here we’ll engage Spenser’s influences & sources, biography, lesser works, & a critical revision what Spenser means to English poetry. Standard final project expectations apply here — this is a class that should prove valuable to scholars & writers alike. Fulfills the Social Justice concentration in the MA.

Publishing and Editing in Print and Online

56:615:538:01
Th 6:00-8:50
Singley

Editors are the “hidden figures” of the publishing industry. Learn more about what they do and build editing skills in this course. You’ll explore theories and practices of editing both in print and online. You’ll work with texts in various stages of production—from manuscript to published book. You’ll participate in developments in the digital humanities and recent technologies such as Scalar, a digital publishing platform. Projects include hands-on scholarly editing of archival texts, including those in The Complete Works of Edith Wharton project (Oxford University Press), for which Dr. Singley is the General Editor, and work with local historical projects such as the online Encyclopedia of Great Philadelphia and the Cooper Street Project. Assignments include readings, one or two oral presentations, at least two hands-on editing projects; and a writing or editing project of your choice.

Special Topics: Issues in Public Policy: Colloquium on Urban History

56:350:594:01
T 6:00-8:50
Mires

Controversies over historical monuments are raising awareness of the issues embedded in the processes of creating, communicating, and contesting public understanding of history. This seminar goes behind the scenes of public history settings such as museums, historic sites, and archives to delve into these dynamics. Through a series of case studies, we will discover how historical narratives are constructed and communicated within history-focused organizations, in public space, and the digital realm. Students will expand professional networks by contributing to the annual Public History Year in Review (https://phyearbook.wordpress.com/); collaborate on a study of the job market for public history; and deepen their understanding of the field with a seminar paper connecting public history scholarship with professional practice. Students from all fields are welcome in this seminar. Fulfills the Social Justice concentration in the MA.

Special Topics: Digital Inequality

56:350:595:01
M 6:00-8:50
Brown

Algorithmic inequality and digital profiling. Disinformation. Cyberbullying and online harassment. Dark patterns. Sexist apps. Toxic online communities. Gendered Artificial Intelligence. Multimodal orientalism. Digital divides, digital redlining, and the New Jim Code. Dissemination of racialized media and yellow peril rhetoric in the coverage of COVID-19. While technologies have been used for purposes of systematic exclusion for millennia, the exacerbation of those exclusions in contemporary digital systems has led to sustained attention to such matters in digital studies, cultural studies, and rhetorical theory. This course will address these systems of digital inequality and exclusion, or, the rhetorical processes by which digital technologies assemble and privilege certain communities while excluding others, whether in terms of access to information, rhetorical agency and sovereignty, or other material resources. In doing so, we will consider the affordances of rhetoric as an analytic for interrogating how communities are excluded in and through digital technologies, the wide ranging impacts of digital inequalities, and the various ways communities respond to digital exclusions, including how communities have subverted technical systems to make their voices and perspectives heard. The course asks students to rethink, reimagine, redesign, and develop strategies for living within unjust, unequal, and exclusionary digital infrastructures.

History of the English Language

56:615:530:01
MW 345:5:05
Epstein

Practicum in the Teaching of Writing

56:842:569:01
W 12:30-3:20
FitzGerald

This course introduces current and future college instructors to the pedagogy of writing. A blend of theory and practice, action and reflection, the Practicum exposes students to major approaches to the design and delivery of writing instruction, from developing syllabi and crafting assignment sheets to the complexities of writing assessment and response. Its central aim is to create an environment in which writing instructors become reflective practitioners of their craft, able to teach in a range of contexts and cultures. Texts for purchase: Coxwell-Teague, Deborah and Ronald Lunsford. First Year Composition: From Theory to

Practice (Parlor Press 2014). ISBN: 978-1602355187; Warner, John. Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities (Johns Hopkins University Press 2018). ISBN: 9781421427102.

The following courses are open to students registered in the MFA Program. Some space may be available to English MA students by permission of Paul Lisicky.

Fiction

56:200:517:01
M 2:00-4:50
Grodstein

In this workshop, students will regularly submit short stories and novel excerpts for class discussion and critique. The workshop will be complemented by the analysis of published work.

Poetry

56:200:519:01
M 6:00-8:50
Matthews

Using a variety of forms from sonnet and sestina to free verse, students experiment with poetic techniques and voices.

Creative Nonfiction Workshop

56:200:528:01
Th 2:00-4:50
Lisicky

What does it mean to write creative nonfiction and memoir in 2021? How to write out of our personal urgency while also asking questions about community, survival, isolation, and power—all that is wrong with the world and all we’d like to make better? How does it feel to be alive right now? We’ll think about those questions alongside all the matters of craft: voice, structure, focus, sonics, description, polarity, openings. You’ll be responsible for providing verbal and written feedback to your peers, as well as workshopping three pieces of your own over the course of the term. Along the way we’ll work hard, take care of each other, and make sure that joy and seriousness share the same space.

Craft: Screenplay

56:200:570:01
T 2:00-4:50
Zeidner

This course introduces students to screenplay form and format. We will learn to “read” a script, then produce first acts and outlines for our own projects. Even if you don’t plan a future as a screenwriter, this course is useful for fiction writers as a way of thinking about plot and character, since scripts require elements to be telegraphed so efficiently.