Autumn Quarter 2008: Course Descriptions

ENG 402 - History of English Prose Style
Mulderig, W 5:45-9:00

A survey of alternative theoretical approaches to the study of style, followed by intensive study of changes in the conventions of English prose from the Renaissance to the present.

This class fulfills a Language and Style core requirement in the MAW program and a Language core requirement in the MAE program. It can also be used as an elective for either program.

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ENG 405 - Modern Rhetoric
Abraham, M 5:45-9:00

Modern Rhetoric (History of Rhetoric III) is a graduate seminar on contemporary rhetorical history devoted to examining the figures and themes animating discussions about how rhetoric has figured into the development of Western thought. Modern Rhetoric will focus on the history of rhetoric from the late nineteenth century through to the present. The course will bring together a select and diverse group of readings, spanning a range of figures important to the historical development of rhetoric, while helping students to understand the various outlooks sustaining the conversation known as “rhetorical theory.” We will come to see that rhetoric is a vibrant and adaptable conceptual tool, enabling a reframing of vexing social issues, and an important strategy through which to reconceive human agency and community. We will read primary texts by Kenneth Burke, Chaim Perelman, and James Berlin, while also incorporating the work of Judith Butler, Francois Lyotard, Dominick LaCapra, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Diane Davis, Sharon Crowley, and Victor Vitanza into a survey of twentieth-century rhetoric.

Course Goals: To trace the rise and development of rhetoric as a conceptual and heuristic tool in the twentieth century through several leading figures. By successfully completing this course, you should: 1) develop a multi-faceted conception of rhetoric; 2) come to understand rhetoric’s interdisciplinary applications; 3) come to appreciate that the use of rhetoric is a type of social action; 4) develop an understanding of how rhetoric can move individuals within a community, who are divided and isolated, toward unity and the sharing of experiences; 5) employ rhetoric to make certain types of arguments, which are considered familiar and common, strange and subject to reconceptualization.

This course fulfills a Rhetoric and Composition core requirement in the MAW program and can be used as an elective for both programs.

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ENG 406 - Multicultural Rhetoric
Abraham, T 5:45-9:00

Multicultural Rhetoric will focus on how issues of difference—whether of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or class—condition the production and reception of "minority rhetoric(s)" in institutional and public spaces. While we will read the work of such figures as Victor Villaneuva, Derrick Bell, Morris Young, Adam Banks, Lani Guinier, Ellen Cushman, Anthony Appiah, Paulo Freire, Patricia Williams, Gloria Anzaldua, Malea Powell, Karen Kopelson, Edward Said, and many others, we will also try to develop a radically new understanding of how multicultural rhetorics simultaneously stand in opposition to, and remain wholly party of, something called "dominant culture."

Course Goals:
1. Come to understand the relationship between rhetoric and minority subjectivities;
2. Extend understandings of rhetoric to include cultural practices often ignored or marginalized by dominant culture;
3. Consider how the “performance” of race and ethnicity can be considered a rhetorical act, allowing for a reworking of identity and the subversion of oppressive social practices and hegemonies;
4. Come to appreciate and interrogate the relationship between race/ethnicity and writing. Does writing contain within it a trace of the racial or ethnic subject? How can and does one theorize about this relationship?
5. At this historical moment, are the concepts of race and ethnicity coherent and meaningful? It’s often said that we live in a “post-racial” historical period. What does this statement mean and what implications does it hold for current conceptions of history, the academic institution, marginalization, justice, and fair social policies?

This course fulfills a requirement in the Technical/ Professional Writing and Writing Theory and Pedagogy concentrations in the MAW program and can be used as an elective for either program.

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ENG 409 - Topics: Teaching ESL Writing
Tardy, M 5:45-9:00

Both locally and globally, classrooms in public schools, two-year colleges, and universities are increasingly made up of students who use English as a second or additional language. This course provides an overview of the theory and practice of teaching ESL writing in today’s linguistically diverse classrooms; it does not require any prior coursework or teaching experience in this area. We will begin by examining some of the distinctions between writing in a first and second language, and then move on to explore issues like: literacy development; syllabus, assignment, and course design; teacher and peer feedback; error correction; writing assessment; plagiarism and borrowing strategies; and the role of politics, culture, and identity. Students will develop theoretical understandings of these issues through practical and hands-on activities and assignments.

This course fulfills a requirement in the Writing Theory and Pedagogy concentration in the MAW program and can be used as an elective for either program.

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ENG 409 - Topics: Grant & Proposal Writing
Ceraso, TH 5:45-9:00

This course will cover a range of skills for writing grant proposals and reports. Students will develop facility with the grant and proposal process, from finding and assessing funding sources and Requests for Proposals, to researching, project planning, writing grant and proposal parts, and designing finished documents. The main text for the course will be Richard Johnson-Sheehan’s Writing Proposals, but the class will also read a variety of case studies and sample proposals from different fields. While students will develop expertise in the process and features of proposal writing, the class will also examine these genres as living forms that affect social and organizational change. We will conduct short case studies in order to learn how grant proposals and reports respond to social needs and play a role in social transformation. To this end, students will also have the option of completing a writing project for a non-profit community organization.

This course fulfills a requirement in the Technical/Professional Writing concentration in the MAW program and can be used as an elective for either program.

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ENG 409 - Topics: Short Story Cycle
Stolar, W 5:45-9:00

This course fulfills a requirement in the Literary Writing concentration in the MAW program and can be used as an elective in either program.

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ENG 416 -Structure of Modern English
Meyer
LPC M 5:45-9:00
NAP W 5:45-9:00

A systematic outline of modern English from both traditional and contemporary linguistic perspectives. Examines descriptive grammars, word and phrase structure, syntax and semantics, and formal issues of style and rhetoric.

This course fulfills a Language and Style core requirement in the MAW program and a Language core requirement in the MAE program. It can also be used as an elective for either program.

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ENG 419 - Angels & Devils in Medieval Literature
Breen, M 5:45-9:00

This course is an examination of the appearance and roles of angels and devils in medieval English narrative prose, poetry, and drama. Since the Christian tradition, specifically the Bible, is relatively brief in its treatment of these characters, the primary questions that this course seeks to examine are why medieval literature attempts to develop stories around them, and how the resultant tales complement or conflict with more orthodox treatments (such as the Bible) of angels and devils. From a critical perspective, we will look at the characters in terms of when they appear; how they are described by the narrator, and what is contained in their speeches (narratology); as well as how their roles are contextualized by historical and contemporary ideologies of good and evil (cultural poetics). The texts for this course represent both the earlier (Anglo-Saxon) and later (Middle English) traditions, with some background materials from the classical period.

This class fulfills the Medieval period requirement in the MAE program and can be used as an elective for either program.

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ENG 431 - Invention of the Novel
Shanahan, W 5:45-9:00

How did readers from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries come to identify some types of prose narrative as “novelistic”? We will read some candidates for the “first English novel” alongside some precursor and rival forms (romance, allegory, scandal narrative, autobiography, etc.) in order to begin to answer the question. Topics will include the changing strategies for representing psychology in prose; changing opinions of ‘realistic’ narration and truth; epistolary form; and rival critical models for the “rise” (or not) of the novel as the dominant modern genre. Readings will include Behn, Congreve, Bunyan, Manley, Defoe, Haywood, Richardson, Fielding, Cleland, Sterne, Walpole, and Austen.

This course satisfies the Restoration/Eighteenth-Century British and/or Early American period requirement in the MAE program and may be used as an elective in both programs.

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ENG 449 - Victorian Arts and Literature: Interrelations
Garrigan, Sat. 9:30-12:45

This course will examine the artistic interests of Victorian writers and the literary preoccupations of Victorian artists to reveal how their mutual concerns both reflected and embodied the period's conflicting views on the functions of art and literature in an increasingly pluralistic and democratic society. We will focus especially on shifting definitions of the artist's nature and role and on how the early Victorian belief in the moral efficacy of art evolved into the later Victorian doctrine of Art for Art's Sake. Among writers covered will be Alfred Tennyson, John Ruskin, Robert Browning, George Eliot, and Oscar Wilde; among artists, J.M.W. Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, James McNeil Whistler, W.P. Frith, Aubrey Beardsley, and the architect A.N.W. Pugin. Please note: this is the last time this course will be offered.

This course fulfills the Nineteenth-Century British and/or American period requirement in the MAE program and may be used as an elective in both programs.

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ENG 453 - Studies in Modern British Poetry
Fairhall, M 5:45-9:00

Modern British Poetry is an intensive examination of a handful of major poems by English and Irish poets ranging from Yeats and Eliot to Stevie Smith and Philip Larkin. Of necessity it leaves out many significant poets, especially post-World War II Irish and English poets as well as poets of Asian, African, and Caribbean background who reflect today’s Great Britain--a small country very different from the imperial world power of the beginning of the 20th century.

This course fulfills the Modern British and/or American period requirement for the MAE program and can be used as an elective in either program.

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ENG 459 - Modern British Drama
Cameron, TH 5:45-9:00

This course will focus on twentieth-century British and Irish drama, a century in which dramatists sought to bring unconventional subject matter to the stage and experimented with new dramatic forms. Our primary readings will include plays by Bernard Shaw, J. M. Synge, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane, and others. We will consider how these playwrights manipulated dramatic conventions in response to social, political, or cultural developments such as first- and second-wave feminism, Irish nationalism, twentieth-century wars, and the Thatcher era. With the help of selected readings in dramatic theory and criticism, we will also discuss such topics as modernism and postmodernism in theatre, dramatic realism and absurdism, stage semiotics, and performance theory.

This course fulfills fulfills the Modern British and/or American period requirement for the MAE program and can be used as an elective in either program.

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ENG 469 - Media, Technology & American Literature
Chung, W 5:45-9:00

This course fulfills fulfills the Modern British and/or American period requirement for the MAE program and can be used as an elective in either program.

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ENG 471 - Bibliography and Literary Research
Fahrenbach, Sat. 9:30-12:45

This course provides an intensive introduction to the graduate-level study of English. Throughout the quarter we'll develop and polish the skills necessary for advanced research, and we'll discuss important professional issues.

This course fulfills a Language core requirement in the MAE program. This course may NOT be used for credit in the
MAW program.

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ENG 472 - Literary Criticism
Kordecki, T 5:45-9:00

Study of the theoretical foundations of literary criticism, exemplified by major texts from ancient Greece to the present.

This course fulfills a Language core requirement in the MAE program. It can also be used as an elective in either program.

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ENG 482 -Writing Center Theory & Pedagogy
Vandenberg, W 5:45-9:00

Writing Center Theory and Pedagogy will be taught by Professor Peter Vandenberg. The course will meet on Wednesdays from 5:45-9:00 pm in both the autumn and winter quarters. WCTP is designed to allow each student to develop a theorized practice for guiding writing tutorials. Students will study interpersonal dynamics and conferencing strategies, methods of response to student writing, multiple approaches to revision, English as a Second Language (ESL), the ethics of text intervention, and the use of digital technologies in one-to-one teaching situations.

As a course requirement, students must satisfy a practicum commitment by working a minimum of three paid hours per week in the Lincoln Park and/or Loop Centers. This practicum is the only opportunity available for on-campus, teaching-related experience in writing. (These practicum hours typically must be met during business hours on weekdays, though a very limited number of hours might be available on Saturday mornings at LPC and on one or two evenings at the Loop campus.)

In addition to the practicum, students must attend paid orientation and staff development events when their schedules permit. Students who continue working in the Center for Writing after the practicum is complete are expected to attend one paid “in-service” meeting per quarter.

Questions about the class can be directed to Professor Vandenberg at 773.325.1795 or pvandenb@depaul.edu.

Should you need to register for classes before we finish interviewing applicants, you should sign up for your usual course load. If you are selected for Writing Center Theory and Pedagogy, you will be able to adjust your schedule. Enrollment for the course is by the Writing Center Director’s permission only; if you are selected, Professor Vandenberg will handle your registration.

This course fulfills a Writing Theory and Pedagogy concentration requirement in the MAW program and can be used as an elective in either program.

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ENG 483 -Composition Theory
Turnley, TH 5:45-9:00

This course explores contemporary theories of written composition and the development of the field of composition studies, which informs writing and rhetoric instruction in postsecondary education.

This course fulfills a Rhetoric and Composition core requirement in the MAW program. It can be used to fulfill a Writing Theory and Pedagogy concentration requirement in the MAW program if it is not used to satisfy the Rhetoric and Composition requirement. It can also be used as an elective in either program.

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ENG 490 - Writing for Magazines
Anton
LPC T 5:45-9:00
NAP TH 6:00-9:15

Covers the range of skills necessary for magazine writing. Discussion of the elements of style, humor, research, concept and imagery that characterize the literature of fact. Students investigate, compose, and edit finished magazine articles to be submitted for publication.

This course fulfills a requirement in the Technical and Professional Writing or Literary Writing concentrations in the MAW program and can be used as an elective in either program.

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ENG 493 - Writing Poetry
Jones, TH 5:45-9:00

This course fulfills a requirement in the Literary Writing concentration in the MAW program and can be used as an elective in either program.

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