GRADUATE ENGLISH FLYER
FALL 2019
http://stjenglish.com/
ENG. 110: Introduction to The Profession (71874)
T. 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Dr. Jennifer Travis
Email: travisj@stjohns.edu
This course introduces students to graduate work in English. We will explore tools and techniques for scholarly research, practice strategies for successful academic writing, and discuss pedagogical models and methods. For more information, contact Dr. Jennifer Travis, travisj@stjohns.edu
ENG. 135: Critical Issues in the Teaching of Writing (75171)
Students’ Writing Experiences
Dr. Anne Geller
M. 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Email: gellera@stjohns.edu
What can we learn about writing and higher education if our focus is on students’ experiences? This semester we’ll focus on the stories and counterstories students tell about how they develop as writers, readers, and communicators as their literacies are shaped by – and shape — not just the curricular experiences led by teachers and faculty but also by extra-curricular, work and community experiences, and their relationships with family and friends. How do students’ stories and counterstories of language use challenge the ways writing and reading are taught in school and call for change in relationships among learners and teachers? How do students use activism and writing to push change, in everyday life and in local and global contexts? Email Dr. Geller for more information on this course: gellera@stjohns.edu
ENG. 300: Shakespeare and Early Modern Studies (75167)
Turks, Moors and Early Modern Christendom
T. 7:10 – 9:10 PM
Dr. Brian Lockey
Email: lockeyb@stjohns.edu
This course will consider a number of works of Renaissance English drama and fiction within the context of what contemporary Europeans perceived as the ongoing conflict between Christendom and the Muslim Ottoman Turks. As we shall see, Protestant England, marginal as it was to the rest of Europe, had a unique perspective on the conflict. Most fictional portrayals of Moors and Turks during the English Renaissance conformed to negative ethnic, religious and racial stereotypes of the infidel that existed throughout Continental Europe, but there were more complex portrayals as well, the most famous of which is William Shakespeare’s character Othello. In this course, we will consider some important works of English fiction as responses to popular perceptions of the conflict between Christendom and Islam, focusing on those works in which Arabs, Moors, and Turks assume a prominent role. We will examine a diverse array of literary constructions of the Moor and the Turk, as well as other dangerous, seductive, and exotic foreigners that English writers of fiction seemed both to fear and to perceive as fascinating. We will consider the vexed relationship between England and continental Europe, portrayals of hybrid identity, the way in which the English nation and Christendom were compared to female bodies, as well as how foreign lands were often figured as feminine and pliant to the conquering European. Among the works that we will read are Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Antony and Cleopatra, and Othello, the Moor of Venice, Philip Massinger’s The Renegado, and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.
ENG. 715: Modern Novel (75173)
Modern Fiction: Conrad, Joyce, and Woolf
M. 2:50 – 4:50 PM
Dr. Stephen Sicari
Email: sicaris@stjohns.edu
This course will focus on modernist prose fiction by reading novels from three canonical writers famous for their stylistic and thematic experiments. We will read Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad; Ulysses by James Joyce; and Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf. With these three writers as our base, we will be in position to understand how and why the novel changes in an era dominated by science, technology, imperialism, and war. Feel free to contact me at sicaris@stjohns.edu if you have any questions or concerns.
ENG. 745: Contemporary Poetry (75169)
W. 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Dr. Stephen Paul Miller
Email: millers@stjohns.edu
This class will focus on post-World War II poets, treating movements such as Confessional Poetry, New York School Poetry, Objectivism, Beat Poetry, Projective Verse, Deep Image Poetry, Conceptual Poetry, Flarf Poetry, Rap Poetry, Hip-Hop Poetry, and oral and performance poetry.
ENG. 765: American Ethnic (75172)
Theorizing Asian American Literature
R. 2:50 – 4:50 PM
Dr. Elda Tsou
Email: tsoue@stjohns.edu
This class will explore the challenge of “theorizing” literature through key texts in contemporary Asian American literature. It takes as its model the noted African American feminist Barbara Christian’s insight that “people of color have always theorized—but in forms quite different from the Western form of abstract logic. And I am inclined to say that our theorizing… is often in narrative forms, in the stories we create, in riddles and proverbs, in the play with language.” By theorizing, what is meant is how literary texts “think” or are “thinking”; in other words, how do literary texts “think” through certain problematics—such as race or sexuality or form—and in doing so offer us a theoretical model? We will draw on a range of Asian American texts, both literary and critical, to investigate whether Asian American literature has a form and if so, what that might look like.
ENG. 800: Forms and Themes in Film (75168)
Introduction to Film Theory and Analysis
T. 2:50 – 4:50 PM
Dr. Scott Combs
Email: combss@stjohns.edu
Introduction to Film Theory
This course will familiarize students with basic concepts of film theory and film analysis. Special attention will be devoted the ways race-focused critiques and queer theory have shaped — and will continue to shape — some of the fundamental assumptions made in the field. Weekly screenings will be paired with our theoretical readings, offering us a shared object with which we might clarify the readings but also develop them further.
ENG. 876: Writing Nonfiction (75170)
Writers of Witness
R. 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Professor Catina Bacote
Email: bacotec@stjohns.edu
This course serves as an introduction to a body of nonfiction called Literature of Witness. We will read literary nonfiction and poetry about those who have traditionally been silenced in the wider society. Specifically, we will examine how writers such as Svetlana Alexievich, M. NourbeSe Philip, Matthew Desmond, Solmaz Shaif, and others understand and confront historical and contemporary injustices through acts of the imagination. Our reading list will help us explore such questions as: What methods do writers use to transform far-reaching political, social, and economic events into compelling and intimate stories? How do writers create counter narratives focused on marginalized people and communities? What role do memory, photographs, public documents, and oral history play along the way? During our discussions, we will explore the craft techniques and ethical choices of each writer of witness. As practicing writers, we will engage in creative work that draws direct influence from our readings, and thereby, join the ranks of those who write to speak out against the injustices of their time.
ENG. 975: Doctoral Research Essay Workshop (71587)
T. 7:10 – 9:10 PM
Dr. Granville Ganter
Email: ganterg@stjohns.edu
Assists students embarking on their dissertations, putting especial emphasis on creating a shared community of, and supportive environment for, newly-independent writers and scholars. We are a faculty-supervised and peer-review-based workshop, one which is designed to jumpstart the dissertation process and provide a structure for continued progress towards completion. The course will emphasize prospectus writing, techniques for revision, and strategies for completion. Students will meet weekly for a two-hour workshop that will include peer-editing, in-class writing exercises and brainstorming, and discussion of relevant issues in dissertation-writing.
This course guides students through the early stages of project formation: what texts or subjects do I care most about? what research question most pressingly needs answering? how will my dissertation constitute me as an academic professional? how will this dissertation contribute an original idea to research and scholarship? Once the dissertation topic has been chosen and refined, we will write and workshop a dissertation prospectus, which will include an overview of the project and brief chapter summaries. Our goals by the end of the semester will vary depending on what stage a student enters the class, but our common goal will be an approved dissertation prospectus, and some work on one chapter. By the end of the semester, individuals will have set clear goals for the continuation and completion of their dissertation. If a student begins ENG 975 with an approved prospectus then they can use our regularly scheduled peer-review workshops to draft and revise significant portions of the dissertation. This course is not intended as a substitute for close direction by a thesis advisor, and students will be encouraged to schedule regular meetings with their dissertation advisor(s) to complement their progress in the course.
ENG. 105: Comprehensive Portfolio/Masters (73118)
Course designation for MA students in their last semester of coursework if they choose the Portfolio option rather than the M.A. thesis.
ENG. 105Q: Doctoral Qualifying Exam (73120)
Preparation for and oral examination in three scholarly fields of the doctoral student’s devising, in consultation with three faculty mentors/examiners.
ENG. 105T: Master’s Thesis Defense (75028)
Placeholder designation for students who have written the M.A. thesis in the previous semester and who are in their last semester of coursework. Please only register for this class if you have already registered for ENG 900 in the previous semester and have completed or are intending to complete the thesis as your capstone project for the MA. Students who are pursuing the Portfolio as their capstone project should register instead for ENG 105.
ENG. 900: Master’s Research (70580)
M.A. thesis; capstone project of the M.A. student’s devising, written in consultation with a mentor and several faculty readers.
ENG. 901: Readings and Research (75469)
Independent readings and research supervised by, and in conversation with, a faculty mentor.
ENG. 925: Maintaining Matriculation (MA) (70081)
Designation for M.A. students pausing studies for personal reasons not medical in nature; a zero-credit course, available for no more than two consecutive semesters.
ENG. 930: Maintaining Matriculation (DA) (70080)
Designation for Ph.D. students pausing studies for personal reasons not medical in nature; a zero-credit course, available for no more than two consecutive semesters.
ENG. 975: Doctoral Research Essay (DA) Workshop (71588) (1 credit)
This is the one-credit version of Eng. 975, only to be taken after the student has completed one semester of the three-credit version of Eng. 975.
Doctoral research colloquium or independent doctoral research supervised by doctoral committee.