Fall 2020 Graduate Flyer
ENG. 110: Introduction To The Profession (71737)
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. 150: Critical Race Theory (75629)
University Edition
W. 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Dr. Robert Fanuzzi
Email: fanuzzir@stjohns.edu
Though they remain enduring symbols of meritocracy, universities, like all institutions, perpetuate and create racialized identities, trajectories, and outcomes that are visible to students and increasingly transparent. In this course, we adopt Critical Race Theory to better understand how and why higher education regulates and manages racial difference. One strand of our inquiry unravels the epistemologies and administrative policies responsible for the goals of “multiculturalism” “outreach,” “access”, and “diversity and inclusion,” particularly as adopted by humanities and writing programs. We ask: how are racialized practices distributed and departmentalized within the academy? Another strand traces the impact of ongoing student-lead social movements and radical black intellectual traditions that have renewed the role of black studies in the academy and traced the long life of American racial capitalism to the door of the university. What is the future of higher education and the academic profession in a time when emerging professionals and marginalized members of university communities are calling for “abolition universities”? Our course extends the formative insights of Critical Race Theory to new analyses of “critical university studies” by Roderick Ferguson, Jodi Melamed, Fred Moten, and Dylan Rodriguez while embracing the “abolitionist” scholarship of W. E. B. DuBois, June Jordan, bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldua, and Angela Davis.
ENG. 580: Studies in 19th Century British Authors (75631)
John Keats, Culture Warrior: Poetic Form and Aesthetics in an Age of Political and Social Rebellion
T. 2:50 – 4:50 PM
Dr. Gregory Maertz
Email: maertzg@stjohns.edu
In this course the poetry and letters of John Keats (1795-1821) will serve as the lens affording access to conflicts over political and social reform that characterized the Romantic Period. Contested in the public sphere—which was comprised of magazines and newspapers, book shops and coffee houses, lecture halls and performance spaces—these conflicts reveal that Romantic creativity was the product of a dialogic process traceable to both the material culture and the political discourse of the times. Keats’s brief and tragic career–the subject of intense pathos and sentimentalization over two centuries–requires contextualization in a way that the careers of his older contemporaries do not. Topics to be investigated will depend on students’ interests but may include:
Property Laws and the Women’s Question * Religion and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Roman Catholics, Dissenters, and Jews * The Industrial Revolution, Urbanization, and the Pauperization of the Landed and Peasant Classes * Colonialism, the Slave Trade, and the Irish Question * Reform Agitation and Conservative Reaction.
ENG. 646: American Poetics (75805)
T. 7:10 – 9:10 PM
Dr. Granville Ganter
Email: ganterg@stjohns.edu
This course will be a cross-over inquiry between literature and rhetoric, investigating the difference between western traditions of persuasion (Aristotle & most debate manuals) and those of understanding, empathy, and consensus. We will read some famous American oratorical texts that contrast techniques of persuasion and empathy, ranging from Native, Abolition, and women’s rights oratory. We will also look at novels that explicitly frame alternatives to the business of persuasion, such as James’ Bostonians (about a women’s right speaker) and Hurston’s Eyes Were Watching God. We will also consider the mechanics of contemporary social media, where conflict so often pushes all other forms of expression aside. Along the way we will survey theories of gendered discourse with excerpts from Men Are From Mars, Women Are from Venus; Deborah Tannen’s research, and feminist rhetorics from Sonja Foss to Shirley Wilson Logan and Cheryl Glenn.
ENG. 755: Topics in African American Literature (75630)
The Long Civil Rights Movement
R. 2:50 – 4:50 PM
Dr. John Lowney
Email: lowneyj@stjohns.edu
This seminar will examine the ongoing experience of the Civil Rights Movement for African American cultural, literary, and social history. Beginning with pre-World War II social activism, this course will explore what has come to be known as the “Long Civil Rights Movement,” with continuity between generations of activists from the prewar years through the present. The course will emphasize how African American literature has shaped as well as responded to questions of social justice. Course readings and topics will address specifically how the African American freedom movement has interacted with and influenced debates about nationalism and internationalism and has interacted with and influenced debates about nationalism and internationalism. Readings will include Richard Wright, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun; Amiri Baraka, Dutchman; James Baldwin, The Fire Next time; Alice Walker, Meridien; Anthony Grooms, Bombingham; Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric; and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me.
ENG. 760: Postcolonial Literature (75628)
Postcolonial Theory: Origins and Directions
M. 2:50 – 4:50 PM
Dr. Dohra Ahmad
Email: ahmadd@stjohns.edu
This class will investigate the past and present of postcolonial theory. In the second half of the twentieth century, postcolonialism emerged out of and in conversation with many other critical schools and political movements, including anti-colonial nationalisms as well as poststructuralism, Marxism, and feminism. After spending some time studying the central debates within each of these areas, we will also examine how postcolonialism has absorbed and reshaped newer theoretical schools like queer theory and ecocriticism. We will end with independent studies and presentations of other areas of interest to students, such as comp/rhet, music, sports, gaming, and any others. Throughout the semester we will continually use literary texts (novels, short stories, poems, etc.) to elucidate the overlaps and tensions among these many incarnations of postcolonial thought.
ENG. 875: Feminist Theory (75626)
Feminist Rhetorics
M. 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Dr. LaToya Sawyer
Email: Sawyerl@stjohns.edu
Rhetoric as a discipline has historically been framed and understood in terms of Western, white, heteronormative, and patriarchal theories, methodologies, and praxis. Such a limited approach to rhetoric’s project of understanding of how human’s use of symbols to make meaning would be severely inadequate for addressing current social and political issues of importance such as ensuring reproductive rights, sexual autonomy, and ending sexual harassment and violence. Fortunately, feminist rhetoricians continue to expand rhetorical theory to be inclusive of all genders, their practices, topoi and concerns. This seminar will cover numerous time periods beginning with feminist recovery efforts that reveal speeches and writing from women rhetors such as Aspasia as early as fifth-century BC and the club women of the 19th century. We will move forward through the study of contemporary feminist theories, methods, and pedagogies through print, film, and digital texts. Collectively, we will work to uncover possibilities for the future of feminist rhetoric and what it can do. Texts will include: Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric, Feminist Rhetoric Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Rhetorica in Motion: Feminist Rhetorical Methods and Methodologies, and Black Girl Magic Beyond the Hashtag: Twenty-First Century Acts of Self-Definition.
ENG. 975: Doctoral Research Essay Workshop (71492)
M. 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Dr. Amy King
Email: kinga@stjohns.edu
The dissertation workshop 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 that is designed to jumpstart the dissertation process and provide a structure for continued progress towards completion. The course will emphasize prospectus writing, first-chapter drafts, 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. If a student begins ENG 975 with an approved prospectus then they can use our regularly scheduled peer-review workshops to draft and revise a portion of the dissertation. Whatever stage the ABD student enters the workshop, our common goal will be: an approved dissertation prospectus, and some work on one chapter. 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. By the end of the semester, students (in consultation with their committees) will have set clear goals for the independent continuation and completion of their dissertation.
ENG. 105: Comprehensive Portfolio/Masters (72795)
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 (72797)
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 (74197)
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 (70548)
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 (74525)
Independent readings and research supervised by, and in conversation with, a faculty mentor.
ENG. 906: English Internship (75136)
ENG. 925: Maintaining Matriculation (MA) (70073)
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) (70072)
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 (71493) (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.
The fall 2020 graduate course flyers are also available here.
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