Registration Begins on March 31, 2014
Fall 2014 Writing Studies Course Schedule
Mondays
ENG 635: The Writing Teacher Writing
Dr. Ann Green
Tuesdays
ENG 670: Fiction Writing Workshop
Prof. Tom Coyne
Wednesdays
ENG 620: Special Topics in Lit. – Caribbean Literature in English
Dr. Aisha Lockridge
Thursdays
ENG 550: Practice of Writing
Prof. Eleanor Stanford
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
Mondays
ENG 635: The Writing Teacher Writing/CRN 42023
Dr. Ann Green
In the “Writing Teacher Writing,” we’ll consider how teachers write about classrooms—creatively and theoretically. We’ll consider how the creative is theoretical and the theoretical is creative by reading novels, an autobiography, poems, articles, and composition theory. Students will consider how teachers of literacy novelize their experience of work through Push by Sapphire and Fight for Your Long Day by Alex Kudera and explore what marginalized students experience in the writing classroom (Lives on the Boundary and Literacy with an Attitude). We’ll think about how to write ethically about classrooms and students in both creative and critical forms. Readings will explore literacy teaching (GED and basic literacy), high school teaching, and college-level teaching. We will consider assignment design and how to respond to writing through the genre writing teachers use most—marginal remarks and the end comment—and we will think about how writing teachers manage to write their own work when they are teaching upwards of 100 students and reading thousands of pages each week. This course is for anyone who has been in a writing classroom and anyone who may be interested in teaching writing.
Books (tentative):
- Teaching Composition: Background Readings by T.R. Johnson
- Teaching Lives Wendy Bishop
- **Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working Class Students in Their Own Self-Interest Patrick Finn **Second edition. Must have second edition.
- Fight for Your Long Day Alex Kudera
- Lives on the Boundary Mike Rose
- Push Sapphire
Note: This class fulfills the course requirement in Area II: Rhetoric and Composition.
Tuesdays
ENG 670: Fiction Writing Workshop/CRN 42024
Prof. Tom Coyne
In this class, we will write, discuss, and revise original short stories/novellas/novels-in-progress in a workshop format. Over the course of the semester, you will submit three works of fiction for class discussion, and you will revise each piece and submit your revised work in a final portfolio. You will also keep a journal for weekly writing exercises. Some of the books we may/will be reading include James Wood’s How Fiction Works, John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, the 2013 Best American Short Stories, and a novel TBD.
Note: This class fulfills the course requirement in Area III: Professional Writing.
Wednesdays
ENG 620: Special Topics in Lit. – Caribbean Literature in English/CRN 42022
Dr. Aisha Lockridge
This course will examine Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean Literature in English with a focus on the intersections of racial, ethnic, and linguistic identities. In this course we will examine these two literary traditions in order to highlight the complex history of what is often monolithically called “Caribbean literature.” We will have the opportunity to study the ways race, language, and identity converge and diverge in these literary texts and the complicated ways in which authors contend with the histories of French, British, and American imperialisms. Questions we may focus on include: what are the legacies of colonialisms in the Caribbeans we encounter textually? How and to what extent do race and class intersect in the authors’ conceptions of “the island” and of the emigration from it? How is gender and sexuality reflected in linguistic and racial topographies? What is the role of family and nation in the dynamics of racial and linguistic identities as these authors and texts conceive them? Likely texts will include: Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven, Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory, Merle Hodge’s Crick Crack Monkey, George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin, Earl Lovelace’s The Wine of Astonishment, and Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place.
Note: This class fulfills the course requirement in Area I: Writing & Culture
Thursdays
ENG 550: Practice of Writing/CRN 42042
Prof. Eleanor Stanford
This course is designed as an introduction to the Writing Studies M.A. Program, and it allows students to explore a variety of genres while they explore career options within the writing/publishing world. Students will literally “walk in the shoes” of different writers, playing the role of columnists, reporters, editors, poets, and fiction writers. At the end of the course, students will reflect on these different roles and begin brainstorming a possible thesis project in one area.
Note: This is a core requirement and should be taken by all new students.