GRADUATE ENGLISH FLYER SPRING 2024
ENG. 100: MODERN CRITICAL THEORIES (13477)
THEORY AS HOSPITALITY
W. 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Dr. Rachel Hollander
Email: hollanr1@stjohns.edu
In this class, we will read a range of theoretical, critical, and fictional texts to explore
ideas of home, ethics, and the welcome of the other. We will consider issues including
class, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, colonialism, disability, and the environment, as
we ask what it means to be “at home” in various locations and communities, including
the body, the nation, and the earth. Starting with Marx and Freud as foundational thinkers
who continue to influence contemporary theory, we will learn how to read dense and
abstract writing, and we will place theoretical and literary texts in dialogue with each
other.
ENG. 590: TOPICS IN 19
TH CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE & CULTURE (15774)
JANE AUSTEN TODAY
T. 2:50 – 4:50 PM
Dr. Amy King
Email: kinga@stjohns.edu
This course concentrates on the novels of Jane Austen (1775-1817), and the various ways
in which her work has been understood and situated both in her own moment and in ours.
That is, Austen in her own time— in relation to the politics, culture, aesthetics, and
literary landscape of the early nineteenth century— and “today”: what does our cultural
moment, which reprises Austen’s work to such an extent, want or need from Austen’s
marriage plots? In this course we will read Austen’s major novels—including Sense and
Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816),
and Persuasion (1818)— alongside the anonymously published epistolary novel The
Woman of Colour (1808), which centers a biracial heiress from Jamaica who (according
to the terms of her father’s will) must travel to England to marry. We will focus on the
novels themselves, especially their linguistic texture, as well as such things as: the way
irony in the text works; the exigencies of free-indirect discourse; moral, legal, and
aesthetic issues in the text; the representation of gendered experience; class, race, and
political (especially colonial) issues. “Jane Austen Today” implies recent Austen
scholarship that will form a part of each week’s reading, but also the contemporary
publishing phenomenon of Austen revisions (via zombies, vampires, and contemporary
updates) and the “filmic Austen”: the various popular filmic and televisual adaptations of
the novels. We will query whether Austen is, as the Victorians believed her to be,
“gentle Jane,” or a wicked satirist; whether she avoided— or engaged— the politics of
her time; whether she was an early feminist, or a conservative about gender norms.
ENG. 670: TOPICS IN 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE & CULTURE (15467)
M. 2:50 – 4:50 PM
Dr. Granville Ganter
Email: ganterg@stjohns.edu
This class will examine the literary face of a number of important stories that shape the
humanities rubric generally called, “American Studies.” Although the course will
encourage students to develop individual research directions of their own as part of the
class, the course will begin with a few basic discussions in American studies, both past
and future-oriented: we will read Maggie Nelson’s category-bending memoir about the
birth of her son, The Argonauts; we will look at the controversy generated by Ta-Nehisi
Coates’ “The Case for Reparations” (as well as Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project) to
think about the wide legacy of slavery in American society to the present day. We will
examine myths of Native identity in Tommy Orange’s recent novel, There, There. We
will also discuss the way ecological consciousness is threatening to upend or complicate
our nationalist discourses. But for the most part, students will also be asked to choose
course readings—this is an exciting opportunity for students to drive their educations
toward a destination of their choice.
ENG. 755: TOPICS IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE (15775)
ABOLITION STUDIES
R. 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Dr. Robert Fanuzzi
Email: fanuzzir@stjohns.edu
What makes today’s abolitionists some of our most polarizing and arresting public
intellectuals? In this class, we investigate prison abolition movements of the late 20th
century and 21st century as a new convergence of Black scholarship and activism that has
changed our national conversations about social justice and, for many, the future of
universities. Our inquiry is anchored by Angela Davis’s scholarly activist journey and
her rediscovery of the promise of “abolition democracy” from W. E. B. DuBois for a new
generation. What has drawn feminism and anti-racist movements towards this goal?
What critiques have opened up this possibility and made abolition once again worth
striving toward? From a wide range of media, social critiques, Black studies theorists,
and contemporary literature, our class pulls together a new form of knowledge that is
becoming known as “abolition studies.”
ENG. 845: APPROACHES TO TEACHING OF COMPOSITION (16132)
R. 2:50 – 4:50 PM
Dr. Steven Alvarez
Email: alvares1@stjohns.edu
This course will be an overview of the field of composition studies, introducing students
to major trends in the research and teaching of writing. Students will examine key
debates and historical movements that have influenced the teaching of writing at the
college level, including theories of process, social constructionism, translingual writing,
genre, critical pedagogy, and new media. Students will also focus on pedagogical
methods for examining and assessing writing, grounded in strategies for classroom
practices. Readings for the course will include journal articles from College Composition
and Communication, Composition Studies, Composition Forum, Enculturation, Written
Communication, College English, and Literacy in Composition Studies. Students will
produce a researched, autoethnographic writing project over the course of the semester,
exploring their own literacy practices related to the teaching of writing.
ENG. 878: WORKSHOP IN POETRY & POETICS (15468)
M. 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Professor Lee Ann Brown
Email: brownl@stjohns.edu
This graduate level poetry workshop will be centered around reading and writing
practice using contemporary models as “seeds” or samplings of both traditional and
experimental poetic forms and procedures. Students will write weekly to compile a
poetry chapbook length manuscript of at least 22 pages, as well as take part in class
discussion and prose response to literary events and both live and recorded poetry
readings and performance. There will be a component of the course which will allow for
performance and or production of a small publication of student work.
ENG. 880: TOPICS INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES (15472)
ANTHROPOCENE NEW YORK
T. 5:00 – 7:00 PM ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS
Dr. Steven Mentz
Email: mentzs@stjohns.edu
This online theory course explores the cultural and geophysical consequences of the
Anthropocene – the geological era in which humans have become the drivers of global
climate disruption – by engaging with local New York environments and artists. Our core
text will be the open-source book Oceanic New York (2015), which contains
experimental essays by nineteen scholars and artists, including several St. John’s faculty
and former graduate students. We will also explore the places and artists in Elizabeth
Albert’s book, Silent Beaches, Untold Stories (2016) and read widely in blue humanities,
ecotheory, Anthropocene studies, and ecopoetics. The class will mostly meet via Zoom
during our assigned synchronous hour, but there will also be some asynchronous work
and as many field seminars to local watery places like Newtown Creek or Glass Bottle
Beach as we can organize. Students will be encouraged to participate in the Spring
Graduate Symposium hosted by SJU English.
ENG. 105: Comprehensive Portfolio/Masters (11749)
Course designation for MA students in their last semester of coursework if they choose
the Portfolio option rather than the M.A. thesis.
ENG. 105: Comprehensive Portfolio/Doctoral (11769)
ENG. 105Q: Doctoral Qualifying Exam (11750)
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 (11981)
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 (11182)
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 (10547)
Independent readings and research supervised by, and in conversation with, a faculty
mentor.
ENG. 906: English Internship (11752)
ENG. 925: Maintaining Matriculation (MA) (10051)
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 (PhD) (10050)
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 (1 credit) (10973)
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.