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NDSU

English Department Graduate Course Offerings: Spring 2009

English 459 / 659: Researching and Writing Grants and Proposals

Andrew Mara 05162 / 05163 W 5:00-7:30 pm

The course employs a rhetorical approach to writing academic and business and grant proposals, focusing on creating the best possible persuasive argument for a given audience and context. We will work on defining a need, locating a client who can help address the need, and finally constructing a document that effectively convinces the client to assist in addressing the need. During the first half of the semester, students will work on developing a toolbox of rhetorical strategies to complete a real grant proposal. During the second half of the semester, students will create and manage their own grant or proposal. You will receive assistance in locating a client (academic, community, or business); however, you will ultimately have to find a client for whom you can craft your grant or proposal. The ultimate goal of this class is for the student to leave with a professional quality document and the skill to articulate and replicate the process for creating professional grants and proposals.

English 453 / 653: Social & Regional Varieties of English

Bruce Maylath 12357 / 12362 W 5:00-7:30 p.m.

Linguists now talk not about English as a language in the singular but rather World Englishes-linguistic varieties in the plural. This course examines today's global lingua franca for business, science, entertainment, and international diplomacy; its diffusion to territories throughout the world; and its local character wherever it takes root as its users adapt English to their own needs. The course will highlight essential linguistic features, including the tensions between language for communication and language for local identity; the geographic, social, economic, and political factors of isolation, which give rise to language differences; the status of English(es) in the 21st century; and the phonetic, morphological, and syntactical features that distinguish language varieties.

Students will also be asked to examine emerging linguistic features in English at present and to consider where English is headed. All students, undergraduate and graduate, will read Wolfram & Schilling-Estes's American English: Dialects and Variation. In addition, undergraduates will read Hughes, Trudgill, & Watt's English Accents and Dialects: An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of English in the British Isles, which includes a CD of dialect voices, and Wolfram & Ward's American Voices. Graduate students will read Kortmann & Schneider's 4-volume Varieties of English: An Interactive Textbook, which likewise comes with a CD of dialect voices. Undergraduates and graduate students alike will discuss with each other in groups and in class what they have been learning from their respective readings so that each may gain insights from what the others are reading. All students will be assigned to read various topical articles and Websites posted on Blackboard. A primary research project will be a major assignment as graduate students lead undergraduates in teams investigating linguistic changes identified by the teams as currently unfolding.


English 474 / 674 Native American Literature

Linda Helstern 12358 / 15074 W 2:00-4:30 pm

In Engl 474/674 Native American Literature, we will read a range of prose and poetry written after 1965, including short fiction, novels, memoir, and a poem cycle-from classics of the Native American Renaissance to Louise Erdrich's latest novel. We will consider how Native writers use humor to construct identity, difference, social critique, and their discovery by Columbus and address such themes as homing in, survivance, and "real" Indians in the era of casino capitalism.

Our texts will include Louis Owens' Wolfsong, Gordon Henry's The Light People, Louise Erdrich's A Plague of Doves, N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain, Simon Ortiz' From Sand Creek, short stories by Gerald Vizenor and Leslie Silko, and poetry by Joy Harjo and Carter Revard.

English 480/680: Medieval Literature

Muriel Brown 12359 / 12361 MW 3:00-4:15 pm

English 480/680 will cover some of the literature written in England during the time of Chaucer, including authors and works such as Marie de France, William Langland, "The Owl and the Nightingale," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," "Havelok," and others. The genres covered will mainly be lays and romances, focusing especially on the development of the Arthurian legends. Most works will be in Middle English but some will be translated into Modern English.

English 483/683: Topics in British Literature

Verena Theile 12360 / 12364 TTH 2:00-3:15pm
Topic: LITERATURES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The sixteenth century gave rise to some of the greatest achievements in literature. In England, of course, William Shakespeare made his not so humble beginnings towards the end of the 1500s. But he was not the only sensation; nor was he the most unique vogue of the day. Rather, he was the result of a period of immense creative energy-an energy that engulfed early modern England but which had its beginnings in continental Europe. This course will examine European literatures of the sixteenth century in the context of both religious and cultural reformations. We will begin the semester by studying texts that contributed to the rise of the Italian Renaissance, Humanism, and the Protestant Reformation, i.e. Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man (Italy), Erasmus' The Praise of Folly (Holland), Thomas More's Utopia (England), Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince (Italy), Baldassare Castaglione's The Courtier (Italy), and Luther's debate with Erasmus about the Freedom of the Will (Germany/Holland). From there, we will move into the heart of the sixteenth century and study the diversity of early modern literatures that grew out of these texts and these reformatory/admonitory movements. As such, we will read polemical writings by Stephen Gosson, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sir Walter Raleigh; selections from demonological texts by Jean Bodin (France), Reginald Scot (England), James VI (Scotland), and Ludwig Lavater (Switzerland); as well as select dramatic works by Edmund Spenser, Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. Together we will attempt to understand beginnings and construct critical contexts which will aid us in our interpretation of this wide ranging discourse, which reaches beyond traditional/medieval topics of discussion such as faith, politics, and the dangers of witchcraft to include the newly emerging concepts of skepticism, individuality, and (inter)nationalism.

English 486 / 686: 19th Century British Literature

Robert O'Connor 12361 / 12365 M 5:00 - 7:30 PM

English 486/686, British Romantic Literature, will cover major poets, novelists, and essayists whose careers flourished between the beginning of the French Revolution (1789) and the passage of the First Reform Bill (1832). We will read and discuss works by Jane Austen, William Blake, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Thomas DeQuincey, Lord Byron, Percy and Mary Shelley, William Hazlitt, and John Keats. Along the way we will attempt to define the traits of Gothicism, Romanticism, in both its Liberal and its Conservative forms, and Anti-Jacobinism, the movement to resist the spread of revolution from France to England. Each student will take a mid-term and a final exam and complete one extended or two medium-length research papers.

English 755: Composition Theory

Andrew Mara 12366 T 5:00-7:30

Composition Theory will help graduate students connect what they do in the composition classroom with the theory and scholarship of writing instruction. We will explore the major strands of composition theory (including, but not exclusively, process, expressivist, cognitive, social constructivist, and post-process theory) and relate it to what we do in the writing classroom today. You will get a chance to think about what you teach and why in discussions and reflections. We will also walk you through setting up the theoretical reasoning of a classroom study. The readings will include Christine Farris', Christine, and Chris Anson's text Under Construction: Working at the Intersections of Composition Theory, Research, and Practice, Gail Hawisher's and Cynthia Selfe's Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies, and Victor Villanueva's collection, Cross-Talk in Comp Theory.

English 758: Topics in Rhetoric and Writing

Enrico Sassi 12461 M 5:00-7:30

This course is designed to help students from all departments at NDSU become successful writers in their academic and post-academic careers. While addressing elements that are shared across the disciplines (e.g. abstracts, literature reviews, academic honesty), this course emphasizes learning to write academic and research texts within different disciplines. Students will report on discourse practices in their own fields and produce written work in their own disciplines. A portion of the course will be dedicated to developing clear, correct, and audience-appropriate documents.

English 759: History of Writing Instruction

Kelly Sassi 12467 Th 5:00-7:30

English 759 is the study of the history of writing instruction from antiquity to the present, with an emphasis on relevance to modern writing instruction. Students study the major concepts in composition (invention, genre, assessment, audience, to name a few) from a historical perspective. Students will then position their own teaching practice within an historical/theoretical perspective in the form of an instructional plan focused on one of the major concepts from the course. Preparatory to this project, students will do additional reading in their area of interest, which they will present seminar style.

Texts will include James Murphy's A Short History of Writing Instruction, Irene Clark's Concepts in Composition and additional materials chosen by students.

English 762: Critical Theory

RS Krishnan 12368 Tuesday 5:00-7:30

The purpose of this course is three-fold: to familiarize students with some fundamental questions regarding contemporary literary theories and practice, and to examine in-depth the various contemporary approaches to criticism (from Formalism to Poststructuralism [Modernism to Postmodernism]). By the end of the course, students should (1) develop some familiarity with these theories; (2) should be comfortable in using the terminology of theories; and, (3) should achieve some felicity in the application of theories to text. Texts, readings, and requirements to be determined.

English 780: Studies in British Literature

Miriam Mara 12369 Thursday 5:00-7:30

Topic: Identity in Irish Women's Literature.

This course will examine Irish literature written by women and contextualize those works within questions whether women have access to Irish identity. We will interrogate issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and class as elements of identity. Importantly, the course will move through a Post-Colonial approach into a Globalization theory reading of the texts, investigating National and Global identities. Finally, we will consider how Irishness is viewed both inside the country and outside (if that divide exists). The course will work toward familiarity with how literary texts reflect and project identity in addition to deepened understanding of the place of Irish texts in canon discourse.

Texts will include:
In a Time of Violence Eavon Boland
Shadows on our Skin Jennifer Johnston
Mother of Pearl Mary Morrissey
The Country Girls Edna O'Brien
The Light of Evening, Edna O'Brien
My Dream of You Nuala O'Faolain
The Gathering Anne Enright


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