Upcoming Course Offerings

This course involves participation in the CUWP’s summer institute (SI). The course dates are unique, and graduate students should contact Debbie Dean before March 1 with their intention to participate as the course begins with an evening session in March, a full day in May, and then three weeks in June of daily, all-day, attendance. The program encourages teachers to be writers and focuses on improving writing instruction in a highly collaborative environment with teachers of multiple grade levels and content areas.

What is rhetoric, and how can the study and practice of rhetoric be a benefit to individuals and communities? This course will provide you with the opportunity to study a range of major rhetorical works in the Western rhetorical tradition from classical antiquity to the present. You’ll use these key texts to identify and explore issues of contemporary scholarly import in the development of rhetorical theory and practice. Finally, you’ll use these texts to prepare a scholarly essay on a topic of current interest. The essay will be of conference-paper length and suitable for professional presentation.

In this course we will examine stories written in medieval England by and about peoples of the Book – Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The concept of a “People of the Book” originates in the Qur’an and refers to communities oriented around reveled scripture – the Gospels, the Torah, and Qur’an. These communities and books intersected in complex ways during the Middle Ages. We will trace the differing visions of pluralistic communities through Jewish, Christian, and Islamic narratives. Texts will include translations of Old and Middle English, Arabic, and Hebrew poetry, fables, travelogues, chronicles, romances, and saints’ lives as well as contextual scholarship.

Following the Puritan Interregnum, during which time London playhouses were effectively shut down, the English theater had to essentially reinvent itself. This process resulted in new plays and new dramatic types, but theater managers likewise tapped plays from England’s not-to-distant past, including those by Shakespeare. Although Shakespeare became the most celebrated playwright of his day, it was during the Long Eighteenth Century that he was canonized—and immortalized—not merely through the reproduction of his plays, which were sometimes revised for eighteenth-century tastes—but through literary criticism as Samuel Johnson and others submitted the bard’s works to serious literary criticism for the first time. It was also during this period that we can talk about literary tourism as Shakespeare’s birthplace became a site of pilgrimage for Shakespeare enthusiasts. This section will examine the process of canonizing Shakespeare—as well as issues of canonization more broadly conceived—and explore how Shakespeare became Shakespeare while reflecting on what this process tells us about literary and cultural sensibilities during the period.

This seminar examines the fin de siècle vogue for new, esoteric insight into the human mind and its potential. Cosmic consciousness, panpsychism, theosophy, creative evolution, practical mysticism, occultism, and magic gain force in later-nineteenth-and early twentieth-century transatlantic literature. We will consider how and why artists, philosophers, and psychologists increasingly resist both religious and materialist conceptions of human nature in this era, turning instead to the lingering mysteries of our evolving, subjective conscious experience and the primordial relationship of our individual being to the whole of the evolving cosmos and planetary life. We will examine cosmism as both response to and a product of ongoing disruptions in thought and perception brought on by what Charles Taylor calls a secular age. We will consider how evolutionary models of cosmos and consciousness shape new poetics in Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. We will consider how pioneering fiction writers of the era—Algernon Blackwood, Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Virginia Woolf—draw upon similar sources of insight. Innovative philosophers of mind and post-metaphysics like William James, Maurice Bucke, Henri Bergson, Evelyn Underhill, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin will suggest offer radical new understanding of the relationship between body, brain, mind, and world. Much of what becomes alternative and New Age has its start in this period and continues to resonate in our own time.

This seminar pairs readings in speculative fiction with readings in transnational American studies, examining speculative novels and short stories as arenas for thinking about where the field of American studies has been during the past three decades and imagining the futures that may arise from our present.

“Happy are they who understand the words of Jesus, but happier still are they who listen to His silence.” So remarks a contemporary French theologian, evoking silence of a peculiar kind – what scripture describes as the still, small voice. Such a thought attests to how divine silence may be revelatory as well as opaque, peaceful as well as disapproving, anxiety-inducing as well as blissful. Approaching divine silence as a vital feature of spiritual life, our seminar will trace how its themes and resonances are taken up in literary criticism and theory, theology, poetry, and fiction.

Workshopping of Creative Nonfiction Drafts

• Students in English 667R will evaluate and critique the creative nonfiction of their peers.

Current Techniques in Creative Nonfiction Writing

• Students in English 667R will identify current techniques in the writing of creative nonfiction through the study and written assessment of published examples.

Writing and Revision of Creative Nonfiction

• Students in English 667R write and revise creative nonfiction suitable for publication in a literary journal of national reputation.

Current Techniques in Poetry Writing

• Students in English 669R will identify current techniques in the writing of poetry through the study and written assessment of published examples.

Workshopping

• Students in English 669R will evaluate and critique the poetry of their peers.

Writing and Revision of Poetry

• Students in English 669R write and revise poetry suitable for publication in a literary journal of national reputation.

Workshopping

• Students in English 670R will evaluate and critique the young adult novels of their peers.

Current Techniques in Writing Young Adult Novels

• Students in English 670R will identify current techniques in the writing of young adult novels through the study and written assessment of published examples.

Writing and Revision of Young Adult Novels

• Students in English 670R write and revise creative nonfiction suitable for publication by a recognized publisher of young adult novels.

This course prepares you for a career in technical and professional communication by giving you hands-on experience in writing for real-world professional environments. You’ll work on projects like proposals, technical documentation, website content, and client deliverables, all designed to simulate the writing tasks you’ll encounter in industries such as technology, business, healthcare, and public relations. This graduate course also introduces you to the scholarship behind professional writing, helping you understand how communication theories influence practical writing strategies in the workplace.

By the end of the course, you’ll have a polished digital portfolio that showcases your best work, including a brief self-reflection on your development as a writer. The portfolio is designed to help you move forward in your career, whether you’re aiming for positions in technical writing, corporate communication, grant writing, or any other field where clear, effective writing is important. You’ll also have the chance to explore research opportunities in the field, setting a foundation for advanced work in technical communication or digital humanities.

For what is by far the shortest traditional period in British literary history, the Romantic Age (ca. 1780s–1830s) continues to have an outsized impact on contemporary literature and culture. This seminar will explore this phenomenon by pairing Romantic-era writers and texts with important works from recent decades that grapple with Romanticism’s legacies. We will study, for instance, how William Blake’s radical ethical vision undergirds Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, the 2009 eco-thriller by the Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk; how an explicitly Byronic strain of toxic masculinity infects the protagonist of Disgrace, the 1999 Booker Prize winner by the South African Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee; and how other contemporary writers grapple with the legacies of Romantic-era authors like Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, and John Clare. Accordingly, this course should appeal not only to those specializing in nineteenth-century British literature but to any English graduate student—whether a rhetorician, Americanist, or aspiring novelist—interested in the long shadow that writers from ages past still cast upon the literature of today.

This course explores the relationship between clothing, identity, and social change in British Modernist literature. Students will read novels and short fiction from influential 20th-century writers, including Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Rudyard Kipling, Rebecca West, Siegfried Sassoon, Katherine Mansfield, and Aldous Huxley, among others. We will connect representations of clothing in these works to Britain’s rich fashion history, exploring how clothing: (1) reveals shifting class dynamics in Edwardian and early 20th-century society; (2) confronts the politics of power and identity, particularly in colonial settings; (3) reflects the trauma and experiences of war; and (4) shapes social transformation, particularly through the rise of consumer culture. We will look at everything from the little black dress to the Burberry trench coat—a striking example of fashion’s ability to repurpose history, turning a piece of wartime equipment into an enduring icon of high fashion.

In an 1835 letter to an editor who found one of his pieces a bit too disturbing, Edgar Allan Poe responded, “To be appreciated you must be read, and these things are invariably sought after with avidity.” Both literary scholarship and popular culture demonstrate that Poe has been read consistently from the mid-1800s until now, although the appreciation came a bit later. In this course, we will read a lot of Poe. The “now” will become apparent in at least five ways. First, why has there been a renaissance of serious Poe biographies during the last 5-8 years? How do these biographies treat Poe in different ways? (Each student will read 1 major Poe biography at the beginning of the semester.) Second, what do Poe’s works say, for better and for worse, about pressing issues of our times, including pandemics, race relations, gender, climate change, and populism? We will read works by Poe that address each of these subjects and many others. Third, what can Poe tell us about fear, terror, horror, and other emotions that many of us are experiencing in 2027? When it comes to creating and maintaining these feelings in a piece of literature, Poe’s “theory of effect” is as relevant now as ever. We will examine this theory, see how Poe put it into practice, and discuss how other authors and artists still use his techniques today. Fourth, what are scholars saying about Poe in current Poe scholarship? The scholarship is vast and varied and comes from multiple theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. Students will occasionally choose and read contemporary Poe scholarship that fits their own interests while the class will explore several pieces of current and historical Poe scholarship as a group. Fifth, what is Poe’s influence on world literature and global popular culture? It is ubiquitous. We will read selected works by a few authors who are responding to Poe, and students will have the opportunity to examine Poe in a medium of their choice—e.g. Poe in film, Poe on the internet, Poe paraphernalia, Poe on Netflix, Poe and comics, Poe and (video)games, Poe and memes, Poe and popular music. The list could go on and on. In short, we will read a large amount of Poe’s fictional corpus (while dabbling in his poetry and his literary criticism), and we will spend significant time and energy discovering how scholars and artists have responded to (and continue to respond to) Poe.

The secularization thesis is one of the most powerful progress narratives to develop in the modern era. It suggests that with increasing scientific knowledge, industrialization, and technological advancements, religion and religious practice declines. In recent decades, however, it has become increasingly clear that such is not the case. In spite of secularization’s attempts to marginalize and even eradicate it, religion remains as present as it ever was—it has only changed shape. Literature, in particular, has remained a repository for what we might call postsecular concerns, and many contemporary poets and novelists continue to articulate a specific ethical and moral vision as they seek to reconnect spiritual and secular virtues. That vision is not an atavistic return to pre-modern religious paradigms, but rather a uniquely postsecular sensibility developed in light of both the scientific advancements and the tumultuous cultural upheavals of the past century.

In this course we will take what Paul Ricœur calls an “affirmative” approach to a selection of American literary texts published in the last half-century that demonstrate a postsecular sensibility. Our goal, in part, is to practice a mode of scholarship that remains open and responsive to what a text has to offer, and one that accepts what it reveals as of equal importance to what it might conceal.

Disability theorists have called disability “the master trope of human disqualification.” Every person is born into a state of dependence on others, and every human life ends as the body breaks down, a fact disability theorists underscore by dubbing those who find themselves outside the world of disability the “temporarily able-bodied.” Given the omnipresence of disability, readers will find that any literary text–from the Bible to King Lear to The Old Man and the Sea and everything beyond–yields new and significant meanings under this theoretical lens. This seminar will survey the history of disability studies, from its inception as a political movement in the 1960s, through its introduction into academia in the 1980s-90s, and to its force in the present day. We will use foundational theoretical texts to study the medical models, social construction, literary representation, and embodied experience of disability. Throughout the seminar, we will discover the potential of these theories by applying them to primary texts including a novella, a play, a short story, children's literature, essays, and a film.

This seminar explores the theories and practices of digital literacy and technology integration in secondary English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms. We will examine how digital tools—especially emerging technologies like artificial intelligence—shape literacy practices, including reading, writing, and multimodal composition. Additionally, we will consider their implications for ELA instruction, with attention to both the affordances and challenges of integrating technology in meaningful ways. We will also explore how researchers study these evolving practices, analyzing the research methods and theoretical frameworks used in the field. As we investigate what we know about technology in literacy education, we will experiment with digital tools to critically reflect on their role in ELA classrooms and our own professional practice.

Workshopping of Creative Nonfiction Drafts

• Students in English 667R will evaluate and critique the creative nonfiction of their peers.

Current Techniques in Creative Nonfiction Writing

• Students in English 667R will identify current techniques in the writing of creative nonfiction through the study and written assessment of published examples.

Writing and Revision of Creative Nonfiction

• Students in English 667R write and revise creative nonfiction suitable for publication in a literary journal of national reputation.

Current Techniques in Fiction Writing

• Students in English 668R will identify current techniques in the writing of fiction through the study and written assessment of published examples.

Workshopping

• Students in English 668R will evaluate and critique the fiction of their peers.

Writing and Revision of Fiction

• Students in English 668R write and revise fiction suitable for publication in a literary journal of national reputation.

Current Techniques in Poetry Writing

• Students in English 669R will identify current techniques in the writing of poetry through the study and written assessment of published examples.

Workshopping

• Students in English 669R will evaluate and critique the poetry of their peers.

Writing and Revision of Poetry

• Students in English 669R write and revise poetry suitable for publication in a literary journal of national reputation.

This course involves participation in the CUWP’s summer institute (SI). The course dates are unique, and graduate students should contact Amber Jensen before March 1 with their intention to participate as the course begins with an evening session in March, a full day in May, and then three weeks in June of daily, all-day, attendance. The program encourages teachers to be writers and focuses on improving writing instruction in a highly collaborative environment with teachers of multiple grade levels and content areas.

This course involves participation in the CUWP’s summer institute (SI). The course dates are unique, and graduate students should contact Amber Jensen before March 1 with their intention to participate as the course begins with an evening session in March, a full day in May, and then three weeks in June of daily, all-day, attendance. The program encourages teachers to be writers and focuses on improving writing instruction in a highly collaborative environment with teachers of multiple grade levels and content areas.