English winter 2021 course sampler
1000 level
ENG 1010 - Basic Writing
All sections
English 1010 prepares students for English 1020 by building upon their diverse skills to help them become critical readers and effective writers at the college level. The main goals of the course are (1) to teach students to integrate reading and writing in basic academic genres; (2) to use a writing process that incorporates drafting, revising, and editing for grammar and mechanics; and (3) to write according to the conventions of college writing, including documentation.
To achieve these goals, the course encourages students to read carefully; respond analytically and critically; and write in a variety of academic genres, including summary, response, analysis and argument for an academic audience.
ENG 1020 - (BC) Introductory College Writing
All sections
In ENG 1020 you'll apply the Wayne State writing curriculum's core emphases of discourse community, genre, rhetorical situation, and metacognition/reflection to written and multimedia works focused on specific audiences, such as your classmates, academic and professional audiences of various types, or civic communities you might belong to or wish to influence in a particular way. While, as with all of the courses in the Wayne State required writing sequence, mechanical correctness and appropriate academic writing styles are a key concern, in ENG 1020 you'll also concentrate specifically on rhetoric (or persuasion) and argument as major objectives of many important kinds of writing you may be asked to produce. By focusing on rhetoric and on audience, assignments in ENG 1020 will require you do two major types of work. In one type, you'll analyze a particular piece of argumentative discourse to determine how it succeeds (or fails) to appropriately impact its audience. In another type, you'll choose a particular issue and a relevant audience for that issue and then argue for a certain point or for a certain action to be taken by that audience. Work in 1020 often takes place through the following key writing tasks, several of which might serve as long-term projects in your 1020 course: genre and subgenre analyses, genre critiques, researched position arguments, rhetorical analyses, definition analyses and arguments, proposal arguments, and reflective argument and portfolio.
ENG 1050 - (BC) Freshman Honors: Introductory College Writing
All sections
Building upon students' diverse skills, English 1050 prepares students for reading, research, and writing in college classes. The main goals of the course are (1) to teach students to consider the rhetorical situation for any piece of writing; (2) to have students integrate reading, research, and writing in the academic genres of analysis and argument; and (3) to teach students to develop analyses and arguments using research-based content, effective organization, and appropriate expression and mechanics, all while using a flexible writing process that incorporates drafting, revising, editing, and documenting sources.
To achieve these goals, the course places considerable emphasis upon the relationship between reading and writing, the development and evaluation of information and ideas through research, the genres of analysis and argumentation, and the use of multiple technologies for research and writing.
2000 level
ENG 2200 - (PL) Shakespeare
Jaime Goodrich
William Shakespeare was an astute student of the human condition, and this class will explore what his writings can teach us about identity in his time and our own. While reading major works by Shakespeare, we will consider identity in relation to class (Midsummer Night's Dream), disability (Richard III), gender (1 Henry IV, Taming of the Shrew), queerness (the sonnets), race (Othello), and religion (Merchant of Venice). We will then read three plays where different kinds of identity intersect: King Lear, The Tempest, and Titus Andronicus. Throughout the semester, we will place Shakespeare's plays in conversation with our contemporary moment by thinking about identity and movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo. Students will also gain the necessary background to appreciate Shakespeare's works by learning how to deal with his dense language, generic conventions, and sophisticated plots. Requirements include diligent preparation for class, active participation in an online discussion board, weekly quizzes, two short papers, a creative group project, and a digital service-learning assignment.
ENG 2450 - (CI, VPA) Introduction to Film (COM 2010)
All sections
This course introduces students to films from a broad-based spectrum of styles, genres, historical periods, and national cultures. The primary method of the course is to break films down into their component features-i.e., narrative, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound; to analyze the operations of each of these constituent parts in detail; and then to return each of the parts to the whole. In this course, students will learn, practice, and perform the analytical and critical methods necessary to describe, interpret, and appreciate the film text. There will be weekly screenings and lectures. This course fulfills the visual and performing arts requirement of the general education requirement in humanities.
ENG 2530 - Literature and Identity
renee c. hoogland
How do we learn to "act like a man" or to "throw like a girl"? How do we acquire the bodily skills that help us present ourselves in our various roles as men/women, straight/gay/trans, white/black, young/old, etcetera? Since none of us were born with such kinds of complex social knowledge, a primary function of cultural production-literature, film, TV, music, and other (popular & social) media-is to provide the frameworks within which we can identify and give meaning to ourselves. Culture hence plays a significant role in the ways in which we-individually and collectively-come to regard and know our selves, as well as those whom we learn to see as variously defined "others." Such distinctions are never "innocent": categories of identity carry values and meanings that serve to structure social reality along the unequal lines of, among others, gender, sexuality, "race," ethnicity, class, age, and ability. Paying special attention to the function and effects of cultural representation, this course will focus on the ways in which literary and other texts (including novels, plays, documentary and feature film) mediate who, what, and how we can be in contemporary Western society. Critical theoretical readings and narratological "tools" will help us understand the ways in which such texts enable as well as confine our differently defined identities.
ENG 2570 - (IC) Literature By and About Women: Literature and Writing
Erika Carbonara
This course introduces students to a wide range of literary genres, styles, and historical periods in women's literature. Although grounded in traditional understandings of women's literature more broadly, the course will focus primarily on women's literature invested in utopias and dystopias, a profoundly timely topic. The course will take an intersectional approach by investigating the relationships between gender, sex, sexuality, race, and class through texts such as Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure, Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," Butler's The Parable of the Sower, and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. This course will help students further their critical thinking skills while developing their ability to write about literature. Students should expect to produce weekly discussion posts and two more substantial papers. This course fulfills the requirements for the "Cultural Inquiry" (CI) and "Diversity Equity and Inclusion" (DEI) General Education Requirements.
ENG 2570 - (IC) Literature By and About Women: Literature and Writing
renee c. hoogland
This course focuses on modern and contemporary literature by women, and, just as importantly, on the ways in which we can read and ourselves write about such texts. Form and content, social-historical contexts, differences other than gender-e.g., in terms of race, class, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, and age-of both writers and readers play equally critical roles in the production, distribution, reception, and evaluation of both literary texts. By studying and discussing a broad range of female-authored writing in and across different genres (short stories, poems, essays, plays, novels), we will not only gain insight into the interrelations between gender and genre but also explore the unpredictable and sometimes contradictory processes of meaning-production as such. Coursework comprises (thorough) readings of fictional and non-fictional texts, active participation in class, weekly reader responses, a longer scholarly paper, a short reflection essay, and a final exam.
ENG 2720 - (PL) Basic Concepts in Linguistics (LIN 2720)
Petr Staroverov
This course provides an introduction to the nature and complexity of human language. We will study the structure of language at the level of words (morphology), the level of sounds (phonetics and phonology), and the level of phrases and sentences (syntax). We will also consider common attitudes that people hold about language, and how the discipline of linguistics can lead to a deeper understanding of these issues. Much of the data we analyze will come from English; however, since the principles we discuss have universal validity, we will work with data from other languages as well. This course fulfills the "Cultural Inquiry" General Education requirement.
ENG 2720 - (PL) Basic Concepts in Linguistics (LIN 2720)
Ljiljana Progovac
This course will provide an introduction to the nature and complexity of human language, starting with the level of sounds (phonology), the level of words (morphology), and the level of phrases and sentences (syntax). Topics will further include the study of meaning (semantics), language use (pragmatics), language and thought language variation, language learning, and animal communication systems. We will consider common attitudes that people hold about language, and how the discipline of linguistics can contribute to a deeper understanding of these issues. Much of the data we analyze will come from English, but we will work with data from other languages as well.
This course fulfills the Cultural Inquiry General Education requirement and has no prerequisites.
ENG 2800 - Techniques of Imaginative Writing
A Map of Days-Retrospection, Introspection, Witness, Narration
Natalie Bakopoulos
This course will explore creative ways of writing the everyday: to mine memory, to record our days, to observe our cultural moment, and to capture the world around us, past and present. These are strange, troubling times, and writing through them can allow us means for understanding. In this course, we'll examine the way writers capture time and respond to what they witness-what they notice at home and beyond, what they remember, what they feel, and even what they read and listen to and watch on screen-and how these things give rise to poems, essays, and stories. As Sarah Manguso writes in her book Ongoingness: "I wrote so I could say I was truly paying attention. Experience in itself wasn't enough. The diary was my defense against waking up at the end of my life and realizing I'd missed it." There will be weekly writing prompts, readings, discussion posts, and a final creative project.
This course will be asynchronous.
3000 level
ENG 3010 - (IC) Intermediate Writing
All sections
Building on students' diverse skills, ENG 3010 prepares students for reading, research, and writing in the disciplines and professions, particularly for Writing Intensive courses in the majors. To do so, it asks students to consider how research and writing are fundamentally shaped by the disciplinary and professional communities using them. Students analyze the kinds of texts, evidence, and writing conventions used in their own disciplinary or professional communities and consider how these items differ across communities. Thus students achieve key composition objectives: (1) learn how the goals and expectations of specific communities shape texts and their functions; (2) learn how writing constructs knowledge in the disciplines and professions, and (3) develop a sustained research project that analyzes or undertakes writing in a discipline or profession.
ENG 3020 - (IC) Writing and Community
All sections
ENG 3020 satisfies the Intermediate Composition (IC) requirement. It combines advanced research writing techniques with community-based activities with local community organizations. In addition to coursework, the course requires community-based work outside of normal class time distributed across the semester. Satisfies the Honors College service-learning requirement.
ENG 3050 - (IC) Technical Communication I: Report Writing
All sections
ENG 3050 prepares students from across disciplines for the reading, researching, writing, and designing Technical and Professional genres. The value that technical communicators provide stems from making technical or professional information more usable and accessible to diverse audiences, most often to advance the goals of a workplace, organization, or company. While some technical writing in 3050 addresses a general audience (e.g., instructions for online communities), technical documents are often written for multiple audiences with different specializations (e.g., technical reports for executives and implementers). Technical documents incorporate both textual (writing) and visual (graphics, illustrations, media, etc.) elements of design, and deal with topics that range from technical or specialized (computer applications, medical research, or environmental impacts), to the development or use of technology (help files, social media sites, web-pages) to more general instructions about how to do almost anything (from technical instructions to managerial and ethical workplace procedures).
ENG 3060 - (OC) Technical Communication II: Writing and Speaking
All sections
ENG 3060 prepares students for researching and developing technical proposals and presentations as members of collaborative writing teams. Technical proposals are a central genre in the workplace, often developed collaboratively and delivered in presentation form to multiple audiences. Research-based technical presentations incorporate both textual (written information) and visual (graphics, illustrations, etc.) elements of design, often in digital environments (e.g., PowerPoint, Prezi, Wikis, etc.). The main goals of the course are (1) to teach students to consider the audience(s) and purpose(s) in developing proposals and presentations as members of collaborative teams; (2) to teach students presentation delivery skills; (3) to integrate research, design, and writing in the effective development of technical presentations, including text, slides, visuals, format, and mechanics; and (4) to work with current technologies for technical proposal and presentation design designed for multiple audiences with different specializations (e.g., researchers, executives, implementers, communications or media representatives).
ENG 3120 - (PL) English Literature After 1700
Michael Scrivener
The course surveys British literature from the 18th to the 21st centuries. As an introductory course, it will acquaint students with some important aspects of the literature (poetry, prose, fiction, drama) and literary history (from neoclassicism [Pope and Swift] to post-modernism [Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith]). The writing assignments include the following: two papers (45%); short response papers (30%); and a take-home final (25%).
ENG 3200 - Grant Writing
Clay Walker
This course will look at grant writing in the private and public sectors. Students will learn how to find grant opportunities and how to develop essential genres in the grant-writing process, including Letters of Interest, needs statements, sustainability statements, and full grant proposals. Students will have an opportunity to work on a real grant-writing opportunity in the course with a partner organization. Through this experience, students will learn how to assess community needs, identify and analyze how program activities can respond to these needs, find and develop grant proposals to support program activities, and conceptualize strategies for making community programming sustainable.
ENG 3800 - Introduction to Creative Writing
Chris Tysh
Whether prose or poetry, imaginative writing is removed from ordinary channels of communication. This space is what we call the "poetic." The present course should be viewed as an introduction to some of the most innovative contemporary writing in English. Emphasis will be laid upon various conventions governing literary production. The goal is to develop a certain competency in the reading and writing of an imaginative text and acquaint students with a basic repertoire of interpretive operations and language moves necessary to the reading and writing of modern texts. The class will read short stories, plays and poems which will be the basis for students' own writing. The format of the class will be web-based, asynchronous, with frequent discussion board postings, which will account for the attendance/participation grade.
Requirements: attendance, preparedness, participation, ten weekly assignments (approx. one page) and a final manuscript (25 pages minimum), reflective of the three genres studied and practiced during the semester.
Grading: Attendance/participation: 20%; 10 weekly assignments: 40%; final manuscript: 40%
ENG 3800 - Introduction to Creative Writing
Donovan Hohn
This synchronous remote course, meeting over Zoom, will introduce students to the craft of writing in three genres-in this case, poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction with an emphasis on poetry and fiction. (We won't be studying drama on its own, but the practice you gain writing dialogue, scenes, plots, and characters will be of use to aspiring playwrights.) Instead of taking on these three genres in sequential order, we'll study them simultaneously, organizing our efforts around the various sources and forms from which poems, stories, and essays can be made.
Guided by Faulkner's remark that "a writer needs three things: experience, observation, and imagination; any two of which, at times any one of which can supply the lack of the others," we will seek out material wherever we can find it: in libraries and museums, wetlands and wastelands, on the bus and on the street, in memories and dreams. We will read, respond to, and otherwise learn from an aesthetically eclectic selection of stories, essays, and poems, most but not all of them published in the last several decades. During the first half of the semester, weekly writing exercises will accompany our weekly readings. In the second half of the semester, students will work on a single extended writing project of their own devising-a short story, a narrative essay, a sequence of poems. Using the workshop method, we will practice responding to one another's efforts with editorial rigor, precision, and sympathy. By the end of the semester, each student in the course will have written between 20 and 30 pages of original work.
Although this is an introductory course, it serves as the prerequisite to all advanced creative writing courses offered at Wayne State and is designed to prepare students for more advanced work, should they choose to pursue it.
5000 level
ENG 5010 - Advanced Expository Writing
Environmental Writing
Thomas Trimble
Students will study and practice a variety of strategies and rhetorical techniques for writing environmental non-fiction. Students will prepare a portfolio of writing featuring pieces from at least two genres of their own choosing. Readings will include the edited collections *Colors of Nature* and the 2019 edition of *The Best American Science and Nature Writing.*
ENG 5040 - Film Criticism and Theory
Steven Shaviro
This class provides an introduction to major trends in the theory of film, from the early twentieth century to the present. Topics include theories of silent film, formalism (Eisenstein), realism (Bazin), semiotic and psychoanalytic approaches, auteur theory, genre theory, theory of sound, feminist film theory, and recent approaches that deal with currently evolving digital technologies and the relations of film to new media (video, television, computer games).
ENG 5260 - Literature of the Romantic Period
Michael Scrivener
The course will examine some of the major Romantic poems and works of fiction, as well as some works outside the usual canon (a factory worker and slave narrative) in their historical context-the French Revolution, slavery, and the Industrial Revolution. The Romantic era (1780-1840) was unusually rich in great poetry and fiction. The Romantics, according to Freud, were the first to "discover" the unconscious and were also pioneers in the novel (domestic, historical, Gothic), political critique, the visionary epic, autobiographical lyric, and writing about childhood. A common theme is justice. We will read Mary Prince, Robert Blincoe, Blake, Shelley, Mary Shelley and her parents (Wollstonecraft and Godwin), Austen, Edgeworth, Wordsworth, Clare, Coleridge, and others. Course requirements: a research paper (10 pages), short response papers, and a take-home final.
ENG 5860 - Topics in Creative Writing
Performance Art
M. L. Liebler
This course "topics in creative writing" will utilize and consider fiction, poetry, drama/dialogue, film, music, sound, photographs, fine art, dance, puppetry, mime (really??) and things yet unknown to humankind. We will do some writing & performance exercises, read performance texts, view films, clips, sketches, skits, etc. The emphasis will be to combine creative writing with art, music, film, etc.
The way I teach such an abstract, unique and highly subjective subject as performance art as creative writing is by exposing you to the history of performance from the 1800s to today. To do this, I use many different examples of performance art from Futurism to Russian Futurism to Dada through Surrealism, Bauhaus, Living Arts, The Kitchen and into the 21st century. We will view, listen to, observe, and take part in as many "performance art" activities, projects and prompts. All of our discussions and prompts are designed to stimulate your creativity and to help give your ideas, definition and focus for your small and larger projects. This is a "Think Outside of the Box" type of class. I will put course readings and clips on our canvas site throughout the term. We will do a live final performance either on zoom or in person at The Jazz Cafe at The Music Hall if our current situation changes by mid-April. We will plan to hold synchronous meetings for the most part on days listed. We will have plenty of workshops and one on one conferences. Several well-known writers and artists will visit.
ENG 5710 - Phonology (LIN 5290)
Petr Staroverov
This course provides an introduction to phonological theory and phonological analysis. We will study linguistic sound patterns paying particular attention to two aspects: (i) the nature and structure of sound representations, and (ii) the nature of the mapping between the abstract representation of sounds in the mind and actual human speech. The course will also cover the relationship between phonology and the neighboring disciplines such as morphology and phonetics. Prerequisites: ENG/LIN 5700 (M.A. students and UG students), or 2720 (UG students only), or consent of the instructor.
ENG 5880 - Fiction Writing Workshop
Building a Short Story
Natalie Bakopoulos
English 5880 is an intermediate-level short fiction writing seminar, where we will closely examine the art of the short story, with a particular focus on process, language and style, and the various elements of fiction. Our classes will consist of discussions of both assigned readings and student work. The primary focus of the class will be on short stories, both on writing them and discussing them, and we will emphasize both the processes of drafting (where story ideas come from) and revising (how we fully realize those ideas). We will examine the various choices and craft elements (plot, character, dialogue, point of view, etc.) that both published writers and you, our student writers, use to achieve their/your goals, and the way those choices affect the work as a whole, as well as thinking about the way our own personal identities are linked with the stories we tell-even when we are writing fiction. Each week, you'll be required to produce another 500 words of your story, so by seven to eight weeks you'll have a complete, albeit rough, draft, and various informal reflections, ready to think about revision. Though this class is SYNCHRONOUS and will meet on Zoom, please expect several asynchronous sessions devoted to drafting and revising.
ENG 5992 - Senior Seminar
From English to the World: Independent Project Capstone
Lisa Maruca
This capstone course will be a true culmination of the English major-a chance for students to reflect on what they've learned so far, dig deep into a research project of their choice, and launch themselves into the future with a sense of readiness. In this highly individualized class, students will undertake independent research projects, either traditional or innovative, that build on past course work and areas of intellectual interest. Class sessions will focus on choosing and developing a topic, practicing advanced research skills, improving our writing and editing, and sharing work in progress. We will also read about and mull over the bigger ideas engendered by the English major and the study of the humanities: What are the methodologies of humanistic study? Why is careful reading and precise writing so important? What do we mean when we talk about "critical thinking"? Can we be ethical humans and creative agents and still pay our rent? At the same time, students will engage with the practical elements of career readiness. The class will end with students presenting their projects in a year-end virtual conference.
6000 level
ENG 6002 - Teaching of Literary and Cultural Studies
Lisa Maruca
This course provides an opportunity for a deep dive into the teaching of literature and cultural studies in traditional, hybrid, and online formats. By the end of the semester, students who take this course will be able to:
ENG 6010 - Tutoring Practicum
Writing and Research for Secondary Education Majors
Jule Thomas
This course will investigate the theories of tutoring and secondary educational pedagogy. This class has a service-learning component that connects both theory and practice by requiring every student to tutor in the Wayne State WRT Zone or 826Michigan for 20 hours by the end of the semester. Failure to complete the full 20 service hours will result in failure to pass the course. Students will be required to read and sign a tutoring contract. Students will research best practices for tutoring and teaching. Students will also investigate secondary pedagogical approaches for teaching writing. We will discuss and respond to this scholarship in class and use it to complete assigned projects.
Course goals
This course will introduce students to the idea of a Writing Center and to a tutoring pedagogy that embraces collaborative methods as a means to develop best practices for teaching. The course will lead students through both observations of and engagement of tutorial sessions. This course will also explore writing pedagogy and writing workshops as a mode for writing instruction. Students will utilize tutor and writing pedagogy theory for the construction of projects leading towards their development of best practices for teaching writing.
Course objectives
Students will:
Texts
ENG 6800 - Advanced Creative Writing
Donovan Hohn
This is an advanced, multi-genre creative writing course open to graduate students, and, with permission of the instructor, to qualified undergraduates who have taken at least one 5000-level creative writing course. In winter 2021, we will meet synchronously but remotely over Zoom. Writers of fiction and creative nonfiction will be required to write and revise between twenty-five and fifty pages of prose. Poets will write and revise a sequence or chapbook comprising at least ten poems. Students may, with the instructor's permission, write in more than one genre. Playwrights are also welcome, despite the absence of plays on our reading list, which will comprise selections of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction to be chosen by students from one of three anthologies. Most of our time will be devoted to workshop. Every week we will read a few student manuscripts and respond to them with detailed critiques.
7000 level
ENG 7043 - Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture
S. Chandra
This course provides access to scholarship that theorizes the United States in relationship to broader global systemic processes. It takes up crucial contemporary questions through an interdisciplinary framework, including those of race, gender, economic inequities, incarceration, the environment, health, migration, and borders. The course readings will help theorize the interconnections between various concepts. Readings may include texts by Timothy Mitchell, Ashley Dawson, Joseph Nevins, Rachel Buff, David Harvey, Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Natalia Molina, and Fredric Jameson. This is a discussion-based course. Students will have the opportunity to complete written projects commensurate with each own student's intellectual interest. You are also welcome to develop a draft of a thesis chapter or possible publication utilizing the framework that this course provides. You can choose to analyze primary cultural texts in media, film, literature, or work out a more theoretical project.
ENG 7053 - Film and Media Genres
Horror and Gender
Chera Kee
From your skin tingling to that scream stuck in your throat, horror is intended to evoke a bodily reaction, and horror is very often about bodies gone "wrong": monstrous bodies, bodies that change and mutate, and bodies that challenge the borders between life and death, human and animal, or even desire and disgust. This preoccupation with making bodies react and presenting bodies in flux makes horror a fantastic means for interrogating gender.
This course presents a survey of horror across film, television, video games, and comic books, exploring not only the genre itself, but also how horror produces, challenges, and disrupts gender and gendered bodies. During the semester, students will undertake traditional or creative research projects that integrate their interests with the course topic. While this course is officially listed as online synchronous, it will move between asynchronous and synchronous formats during the semester.
ENG 7710 - Advanced Studies in Linguistic Structure (LIN 7710)
Approaches to Language Evolution
Ljiljana Progovac
This class will explore a variety of approaches to the enigma of how language (and cognition more generally) evolved in the human species. Several very specific proposals will be considered, cross-fertilizing linguistic theories, biological and genetic findings and theories, including the self-domestication hypothesis, and neuroscientific experiments and findings about the brain. The class will include lectures, discussions, reading reports, and a term paper.
ENG 7840 - Technical and Professional Communication
Jeff Pruchnic
A growing field of scholarship and practice since early in the mid-twentieth century, contemporary work in Technical and Professional Communication encompasses not only the effective production of practical documents, but such topics as the design of digital information systems and user experiences, the challenges of preparing communications for multiple media and global audiences, and the cognitive and communicative processes of readers and users of technical documents and systems. This course surveys contemporary research in technical and professional communication with a focus on such topics as research methods, information design, new media composing, and the study of usability, as well as the ethical, political, and pedagogical dimensions of work in technical and professional writing. This course is taught with the assumption that students may be unfamiliar with technical and professional communication as a field of scholarship and a set of practices and skills. Thus we will begin by defining the field and its history and also spend a significant amount of time discussing the intersections between this work and the broader realms of rhetoric and composition and English studies. Successful completion of the course will prepare interested students to begin pursuing Technical & Professional Communication as a primary or secondary research field as well as aid them in becoming better instructors of courses in technical and professional writing and communication. Major deliverables for the course include regular written response to course readings, a multimodal assignment on ethics and information visualization, as well as a research project delivered in multiple parts (i.e., proposal, annotated bibliography, conference-style presentation, and a written or multimedia scholarly essay).
ENG 7860 - Teaching Intermediate College Writing
Adrienne Jankens
Students in this course will read and discuss scholarly texts that inform and are used by undergraduate students in the ENG 3010 (Intermediate Writing Course), to help them develop a pedagogical, practical and theoretical understanding of the core concepts of that class: primary and secondary research, disciplinary and professional communities, genre analysis, scholarly writing, etc. Projects and assignments will include practical application of course readings, written reflection, teaching demonstrations (via Canvas modules and instructional videos), and peer mentoring. Students will have the opportunity to learn from multiple experienced instructors of the course through synchronous class discussions and asynchronous work with other materials. Weekly whole-class discussion will allow for group attention to teaching strategies, challenges, goals, and concepts.
8000 level
ENG 8008 - Seminar in Theory
Volume 1 of Marx's *Capital: A Critique of Political Economy*
Jonathan Flatley
In this seminar, we will study the first volume of Marx's Capital: A Critique of Political Economy with the aim of understanding it on its own terms. A guiding assumption will be that Marx's critique is not only valuable and interesting in itself as a model of dialectical thinking (and as a curiously difficult-to-categorize 19th C text), but that it is also relevant for understanding our current historical moment in all its complexity and contradictoriness. We will decide on the writing requirements as a group (perhaps something like short weekly writing and one longer paper).