Summer Grad Classes

Once again we’re offering three online grad courses during the summer. A copy of our summer course flyer is here: Summer13Flyer. Feel free to contact Steve Mentz (mentzs@stjohns.edu) or the instructors with any questions about these courses.

Course flyers for grad and undergrad fall 2013 are available now from the English dept office and will be posted here soon, along with the schedule of registration dates this spring.

Here’s the text of the summer course flyer —

St. John’s University Department of English

Summer 2013: Graduate Course Offerings Online

The St. John’s University English Department will offer three graduate seminars online this summer. All qualified students are welcome; nonmatriculated students can take a summer course and apply to the program next year.

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Summer Session I: June 13 – July 9

E. 135: Critical Issues in the Teaching of Writing: Exploring Inquiry-Based Practice at the Intersection of Theory & Methods (31113)

Dr. Harry Denny

Wherever we work with writers and learners – writing centers, classrooms, courses, programs, departments – questions arise. Why aren’t holistic grades sufficient? What does formative insight offer over simple signifiers? How do we know what learners take away from teaching? What do we really value, how do we index those traits, and what metrics do we find meaningful? This course invites students to explore theories that inform our everyday practices as teachers, consultants, and learners. Among the potential methods students will sample include content analysis, interviewing, participant observation/ethnography, and survey/questionnaire design. Aside from substantial online discussion and workshopping, students will develop an authentic research proposal, including any necessary human subjects/IRB review documentation.

Summer Session II: July 11 – August 14

E. 710: Postmodernism: Theory and/as Literature (31958)

Dr. Steve Mentz

This course starts from the presumption that our own era has seen literature and critical theory combine as many different writers have engaged global postmodernity. We’ll read six short postmodern masterpieces that span the theory / literature divide in different ways. Taking seriously the desire of theoretical texts by Jonathan Culler, Judith Butler, Bruno Latour, and Jacques Derrida to work as literature, and the ambition of literary works by Thomas Pynchon and Anne Carson to function as theory, we ask what happens when these forms merge. What might this hybrid genre mean for the next generation of critical and creative writers? Students will write a critical paper and pursue a literary/theoretical intervention.

E. 775 Topics in 20th Century British Lit & Culture: James Joyce’s Ulysses (31957)

Dr. Stephen Sicari

The goal for this course is to read and enjoy James Joyce’s Ulysses.  As we make progress toward this goal, we will identify, and try out, various approaches to this seminal text of literary modernism: as the epitome of modernist experimentation in response to the conditions of modernity; as a self-conscious reflection on the history of the novel; as an attempt to write epic or allegory in the modern age; as a modern Commedia; as the great Irish postcolonial text. We will read Dubliners, A Portrait, and Exiles both for the own sake but especially as they set up Ulysses.

Please email the instructor, Stephen Sicari, for more details: sicaris@stjohns.edu

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For information, please contact Lana Umali umalil@stjohns.edu or

Steve Mentz, Director of Graduate Studies mentzs@stjohns.edu

For a registration form, visit http://www.stjohns.edu/admission/undergraduate/visitsummer/register.stj

For more on St. John’s Graduate Programs in English, please visit these two sites http://www.stjohns.edu/academics/graduate/liberalarts/departments/english

www.stjenglish.com