Fall 2013 Course Descriptions

500-Level

500.001: Introduction to the Professional Study of English

TR 12:30-1:45
Daniel Worden

This course will prepare students for literary studies at the graduate level. The semester will be divided up into three parts. First, we will discuss the history of English as a field of study; second, we will read about and discuss some current developments in literary theory; third, we will discuss how to be successful as a graduate student as well as how to do practical things like familiarize yourself with scholarship in your field of interest, present your work at conferences, and submit your work for publication. Course assignments will include a bibliographic exercise, a brief review of an academic journal, and a 10-page essay on a topic of your choosing that will be presented as a conference paper at the end of the semester.

501.001: Introduction to the Profession for Writers

R 4:00-6:30
Daniel Mueller

In this course we’ll examine all aspects of the writing life, from the professional to the personal and the balancing act that most writers perform in order to support themselves and their families while engaged in the production of literature. We’ll examine creative writing’s history in the academy; teaching inside and outside the hallowed halls including pedagogical strategies; publishing (traditional, corporate, university, indie, self, and online); finding an agent; applying for fellowships, teaching positions, and prizes; organizing one’s time; and participating in the global, national, and local literary communities as book reviewers, bloggers, teachers, editors, interviewers, interviewees, publicists, and experts. For sure we’ll read Betsy Lerner’s The Forest for the Trees, Carolyn See’s Making a Literary Life, Dale Peck’s Hack Jobs, and Seth Abrahamson’s “A Brief History of Creative Writing.” Expect excerpts from Sven Birkert’s The Gutenberg Elegies, D.G. Myers’ The Elephants Teach, random handouts, and several special guests. Assignments: a “Why I Write” personal essay drafted and revised, an investigation into a book’s journey from manuscript to edition, and a book review drafted, revised, and submitted for publication.

510.002: Literary Criticism and Theory

TR 9:30-10:45
Kathryn Wichelns

This graduate survey examines movements in twentieth-century and contemporary literary criticism in order to prepare students for more specialized study. Together, we will review key texts in Marxist, feminist, queer, and critical race theories—as well as New Historicism, postcolonialism, and deconstruction—in part to understand the stakes involved in work at the convergences of some of these intellectual nodal points. For example, philosophy and literature, border studies, and queer of color criticism emphasize transnational and/or interdisciplinary analysis of literatures and individual authors. Our course reader will include shorter works by Arturo Aldama, Alicia Arrizón, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Jonathan Goldberg, Stephen Greenblatt, Judith Halberstam, Mae G. Henderson, Frederic Jameson, Jacques Lacan, Ania Loomba, Walter Benn Michaels, José Esteban Muñoz, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Michael Warner, and Slavoj Žižek, among others. In addition to a presentation and active participation in our class discussions, students will be expected to submit a 15-20 page final paper framing their own critical methodology.

511.004: Feminist Theories

T 4:00-6:30
Adriana Ramirez de Arellan

In this course, we will engage in an intensive overview of significant movements in feminist theory and philosophy, through close analysis of foundational texts that continue to frame contemporary research in the humanities and social sciences. The relationship between feminism and “conventional” philosophy is both fruitful and deeply fraught. Beginning with Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) and American abolitionist movements of the 19th Century, we will examine the role that Enlightenment humanism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis played in the development of early feminisms. Even as they continue to use these approaches, 20th Century and contemporary scholars criticize their implicit “masculinism;” several, including French feminists Monique Wittig and Luce Irigaray, present alternatives to what they describe as the predominantly “phallocentric” logic of specific philosophical frameworks. Black feminists, lesbian feminists, post-colonial feminists and transactivists usefully have argued that Euro-American discourses rely on presumptions of racial, cultural, religious, sexual, and gender-identity homogeneity. In addition, we will examine the ongoing role of activism in feminist theory: for example, sex workers and contemporary Marxism-influenced feminists argue that academic feminism upholds gendered, bourgeois standards. This seminar is the first of two required for completion of the Women Studies Graduate Certificate Program; however, all A&S graduate students are welcome.

515.001: Publishing

R 7:00-9:30 pm
David Dunaway

This course introduces students to the publishing industry, in the U.S. and internationally, from the multiple perspectives of the author, the editor, the agent, and the publisher. Our goal is to provide a successful strategy for publishing your work in journals, magazines, books, and on the Internet.

The axiom “publish or perish” remains true for those planning a future in publishing or the academy. This course offers publications-related survival skills for future employment and fulfillment in university life.

The class begins with a survey of trends, then a history of publishing in the U.S.; followed by an overview of ownership and control in the modern era. We will discuss procedures and standards for submissions of articles and book proposals to publishers of literary, scholarly, technical, and trade (general-adult) materials. We examine in detail the roles of editors and agents in manuscripts—with an emphasis on the increasing digitization (e-books) and globalization of publishing/media activities. Any writer interested in these topics is welcome to join us.

520.001: Writing with Classical Tropes

TR 9:30-10:45 am
Jerry Shea

This course focuses on rhetorical tropes and schemes, on recognizing them and using them in our writing. You will develop a store of particularly useful tropes to amaze your friends and confound your enemies. Not only will we write, but we will analyze other writings, learning to spot the coy apophasis, the elusive hypophora, the flashy chiasmus, the bullying bdelygmia, and many more. No exams, just writing: five or six short papers.

520.002: Multimodal Visual Rhetoric TC

TR 2:00-3:15 pm
Tiffany Bourelle

In this class, you will learn how the theory behind online teaching and multimodal composition. Beth Hewett and Christa Ehmann (2004) indicate that teachers are often concerned about teaching online for the first time; however, they suggest that this worry is caused by a lack of proper training. This course will prepare you to teach your online course, helping you understand the best practices of designing a course, facilitating course discussions, holding online conferences, and providing feedback. In addition, the class will also be practical, as you will develop your own course shell to teach in the subsequent semester. The class you’ll teach will be part of our new online program, eComp, which is based on a multimodal pedagogy, where students are asked to choose their medium in response to the needs of their audience and the purpose of the document. As such, this class will teach you the theory and practice of multimodal composition, helping you create materials such as assignments and multimodal instructional tools that mimic the texts your students develop.

520.004: Blue Mesa Review

W 2:00-3:50, F 3:00-5:00
Justin St. Germain

This class introduces you to the production of UNM’s national literary magazine, Blue Mesa Review. We receive hundreds and sometimes thousands of submissions each year from authors hoping to see their stories, essays, or poems published in our journal. Your primary responsibility in this course is to assess these submissions—collectively called “slush”—for possible publication in BMR. In addition, you will keep an informal journal about your participation in slush, attend discussion meetings, and write a few short papers. This class requires you to be self-motivating; in some respects, it is very much like an independent study. You must be able to keep up with the workload on your own—and often on your own time.
NOTE: The meeting times listed for this course include open computer lab hours which are NOT mandatory. Mandatory class meetings will occur on Fridays from 3-4. Please contact instructor for more information on requirements and meeting times.

522.003: Poetry Workshop

MW 2:00-3:15
Luci Tapahonso

This poetry workshop examines poetry through several lenses: your poetry as the main focus, close studies of contemporary American poets, as well as your careful critical responses to peers’ work. You will write in open form and fixed forms, and complete a portfolio of 15 poems during the semester. Attendance and participation are critical in this course.

523.002: Creative Nonfiction Workshop

W 4:00-6:30
Justin St. Germain

This graduate workshop will focus on the craft and process of writing. Members of the class will receive substantive feedback on their works in progress, and will be expected to carefully critique the work of their classmates. Students will be required to hand in multiple (the exact number depends on enrollment) new pieces of work, as well as at least one revision, and any form or sub-genre of nonfiction is welcome -- memoir, essay, literary journalism, lyric or hybrid forms. This course will also focus on focus itself: on finding the core of a project, and choosing the structure that will best reveal it to the reader.

Like most workshops, we’ll spend a lot of time discussing the fundamentals of craft and the choices authors make in that regard: voice, characterization, story/plot, and so on. But because good writing requires more from the writer than fundamentals, this course will also emphasize revision. Students will be required to turn in a revision, as well as explanatory notes on their revision. Course readings will be chosen with an eye for illuminating particular craft issues, especially structure and scope, and students will be required to bring in one published piece to be read and discussed by the class.

My primary goal in this course is to foster an environment of mutual respect and dedication, in which class members will produce and polish excellent work over the course of the semester.

537.001: Teaching Composition

M 4:00-6:30
Cristyn Elder

This course is designed specifically for new TAs in UNM’s Core Writing Program. You will learn and apply current theory and pedagogy in Composition Studies and Rhetorical Genre Studies to guide you as a teacher of diverse student writers. Our focus will be on helping students gain skills, strategies, know-how, and habits of mind that will transfer to other college courses across the disciplines and to students’ personal and professional environments. We aim to help students develop the capacities that will allow them to negotiate these new and various contexts and write successfully in them. This class will provide many opportunities to reflect on your current and possibly future career as a composition instructor through reading, research, class discussion, conferencing, and course projects. This is a three-credit graduate course.

537.002: Teaching Composition

M 4:00-6:30pm
Beth Davila

540.001: Multimodal & Online Pedagogy

T 4:00-6:30 pm
Tiffany Bourelle

540.002: Pedagogies in Teaching Adult ESL Students

T 7:00-9:30 pm
Pisarn Bee Chamcharatsri

The purpose of this course is to approach teaching adult ESL students from both theory and practices (praxis). Through exploratory and critical lenses, we will explore different pedagogies in teaching listening, speaking, reading, writing, testing, and other related literacy skills. Moreover, we will also discuss issues of language, class, race, gender, cultural, and issues of emotions inside classrooms.

542.001: Major Texts in Rhetoric

W 4:00-6:30
Michelle Hall Kells

This course will explore classical rhetorical theory and practice as reflected in literary representations of Western history, education, and democratic political systems. We will examine the Greco-Roman Rhetorical tradition as it has shaped our historical and current roles as citizens, rhetors, and scholars. We will focus on the rhetoric of the Classical Period with a special focus on Gorgias, Isocrates, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero as well as selected texts of influential women rhetoricians Sappho, Aspasia, Diotima, Sor Juana de la Cruz, and Sarah Grimké. Supplementary readings will be included to map the evolution of Athenian democracy and Socratic citizenship as these influence contemporary democratic thought and institutions. This course will emphasize the application and analysis of rhetorical theory (key terms and concepts) through the generation of multi-perspectival interpretations of classical texts.

The rich literary and rhetorical legacy of Western traditions can be examined through diverse rhetorical artifacts including film, poetry, speeches, drama, essays, letters, fiction as well legal treatises and policies. These different genres tell the stories of collective struggle, achievement, and citizenship that shape current trends in education, law, socio-economic status, government, and political participation.

Course Assignments include:

Team Rhetorical Analysis Exercises (5)
Class Discussion Presentations (2)
Working Group Public Rhetoric Field Observations (3)
Supplementary Reading Report & Presentation (1)
Mid-Term Take Home Exam
Final Rhetorical Analysis Project

Learning Outcomes:
Course readings, assignments, exercises, and class discussions are designed to promote the following learning outcomes:

Generate principled interpretations of classical rhetorical texts;
Appropriately explain and apply classical rhetorical theory;
Analyze diverse literary and oral genres from various rhetorical perspectives;
Synthesize (bring into conversation) multiple rhetorical theoretical systems toward the production of an original scholarly project;
Evaluate the potential value and application of key rhetorical theories;
Critique (and engage the explanatory possibilities) of major rhetorical theories;
Situate the study of classical rhetorical theory within the context of deliberative democratic social systems;
Define and apply critical rhetorical terms to text analysis;
Conduct primary and secondary scholarly research;
Produce a research-based scholarly project using the critical lens of rhetorical analysis;

Guide and participate in class discussions of course readings;
Use the writing process as recursive stages (from invention to editing) for writing tasks;
Cultivate alliances with peers and work collaboratively toward common goals;

Required Texts:
Aristotle. Aristotle on Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. 2nd ed. Ed. and trans. George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg. 2nd ed. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to Present. Bedford Books, 2000.
Hauser, Gerard A. Introduction to Rhetorical Theory. 2nd ed. Waveland Press, 2002.
Glenn, Cheryl. Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity through the Renaissance. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997.
Lanham, Richard A. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. 2nd ed. University of California Press, 1991.
Lipson, Carol S. and Robert A. Binkley, eds. Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks. New York: SUNY Press, 2004.
Ritchie, Joy and Kate Ronald, eds. Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric(s). University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001.
Woodruff, Paul. First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea. Oxford UP, 2006.
Woodruff, Paul. Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue. Oxford University Press, 2001.
Required Films:
Athens: The Dawn of Democracy

551.001/LING 590.001: Old Norse Language and Literature

MW 2:00-3:15
Helen Damico

This course introduces students to the chief features of the language, literature, and culture of medieval Iceland, what we in the 21st century might consider as being the language of the Vikings. The primary objective will be to develop an understanding of the grammatical structure and acquire a reading knowledge of Old Norse/Old Icelandic by reading excerpts from texts drawn from the vast and varied prose and poetic corpus. The secondary focus will rest on general aspects of the culture and literature of Early Iceland. In order to accomplish these goals, thoughtful attention to the assigned paragraphs on grammar and some memorization of paradigms will be necessary. Translation techniques will include both close reading of texts with sentence analysis (parsing/identifying grammatical forms) and rapid reading for content only, with the help of reading guides. Expect to meet in the original: Snorting Freyja & Thor in Drag; Loki & Sleipnir horsing about; Leif and Tyrkir getting drunk in Newfoundland touch land on Newfoundland; Njal on his death-bed; Egil’s defeating of Gunnhildr; and perhaps, the wrestling match between Grettir & Glamr. There might also be some slightly evil ladies running around as well. Some knowledge of Old Norse and its literature is essential to any attempt at understanding Anglo-Saxon culture and literature of the eleventh century, one of the most prolific literary periods in Anglo-Danish England during the first period of Conquest under the reign of the Danish King Cnut (AD 1016-1035). In fact, the excerpt from Egil’s saga takes place in England. The start of the eleventh century also marked the discovery of Newfoundland which connects Norse/Icelandic culture with North America, an event documented in two sagas written in later centuries, from which we will read excerpts. Quizzes, midterm, and final; and a short translation project. Texts: E. V. Gordon, An Introduction to Old Norse. Oxford: Clarendon, rev. ed. 1957 (or later edition). Other translation and grammar aids will be provided. And, of course, there will be a slide introduction to Iceland. A supplementary list of books will be on Hard Reserve at Zimmerman.

551.003: Uppity Medieval Women

R 4:00-6:30
Anita Obermeier

This course examines medieval discourse about women and by women. Even though many dichotomous labels exist for women in the Middle Ages—such as saint and sinner, virgin and whore—these belie the variety of subcategories within the spheres of medieval women: handmaidens to God, virgin saints, mystics, anchoresses, trobairitz, courtly ladies, ethereal dolce stil nuovowomen, bourgeois merchants, lovers, witches, and writers. The course will explore female characters penned by male authors and works written by medieval women. Women in the Middle Ages can be “uppity” in a number of ways but especially through sword, pen, and sex. For instance, female authorship is a transgressive act. We will examine in which ways the writing of medieval men differs from the works by women, both in British and continental literary texts. For the theoretical framework, we will apply medieval authorship theories, ancient and medieval gender theories, and modern feminist approaches. Authors and texts may include, but are not limited to, Sappho, Ovid’s Heroides, trobaritz poetry, Lais of Marie de France, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise,Julian of Norwich, Celtic Women, the Virgin Mary, Christina of Markyate, Margery Kempe, Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Silence, Chaucer, Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan, The CondemnationTrial of Joan of Arc, the Malleus Maleficarum.

552.001: Home Spaces in Early Modern English Literature

T 4:00-6:30
Marissa Greenberg

In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, at the same time as plays, poems, prose narratives, maps, and other images were rendering the so-called “new worlds” more comprehensible, these same media registered an increasing sense of alienation from once familiar “home-born” spaces. In this course, we will examine texts that represent the changing perception and experience of city, country, household, borderlands, and the individual interior between the ascension of Queen Elizabeth I through the English Civil Wars to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. We will read both well-known texts, such as William Shakespeare’s King Lear, Andrew Marvell’s mower poems, and John Milton’s A Masque (a. k. a. Comus), and lesser-known ones, including the anonymous domestic tragedy Arden of Faversham, Thomas Dekker’s and Ben Jonson’s scripts for James’s royal entry into London, Aemilia Lanyer’s country house poem, “The Description of Cooke-ham,” and the metaphysical poetry of Robert Herrick and Thomas Carew. Critical readings will focus on particular “genres” of spatial representation in early modern England, such as recent reassessments of Raymond Williams’s seminal The Country and the City, discursive analyses of the space of theatrical performance, and considerations of the space of the page amidst the proliferation of print.

This course is part of a two-course sequence on the representation of space in early modern English literature and culture. Students are encouraged to take the second part of this sequence, Dr. Nocentelli's English 553, in Spring 2014.

574.001: Southwest Writers

TR 11:00-12:15
Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán

A study of Southwest writers who from the 1920s forward define the region as a place. We read a wide range of texts and situate them within their social histories. The class begins with the Writer’s Era (1916-1942) and the early twentieth-century writings of Willa Cather, Mary Austin and Alice Corbin Henderson; it concludes with the late twentieth-century writings of Leslie Marmon Silko, Ana Castillo and Luci Tapahonso. In-between, the class charts the emergence of New Deal regionalism, WWII and the Civil Rights era. Students will become familiar with archival research and incorporate it into their own writing about the Anglo, Native, and Mexican American literatures of the region, and they will learn how to utilizes the critical language of folklore, fiction and ethnography. Assignments combine archival and textual studies, and students learn how to utilize the tools and terminology of the region so as to come away from the seminar more poised in their own writing about the Southwest.

579.001: Postcolonial Literatures

MW 12:30-1:45
Feroza Jussawalla

This is a basic introduction to Postcolonial Literature. We will start with some Colonial Literature about India such as Kipling’sKim and E.M Forster’s Passage to India transition into the beginnings of Indian Literature written in English such as that by R.K. Narayan, anything we can find on- line, do Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and work our way up to Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. We will use Chrisman and Williams’ basic anthology Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory and Ania Loomba’s Colonialism/Postcolonialism. We will write one longer research paper with an annotated bibliography and two short reaction response papers.

587.001: Genre Studies: Poetic Tradition and Innovation

T 5:30-8:00
Lisa D Chavez

This class will explore the big issues: what is poetry? Is it dependent on the poetic line? On heightened language and imagery? What about narrative poetry? What about works that blur boundaries: prose poetry, the lyric essay, flash fiction?

To prepare ourselves to examine poetry in this way, we’ll explore some of the traditions of the 20th century, from modernist movements to the postmodern, from the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement, from Confessionalism to feminist poetry, from free verse to the New Formalism, and others.

This reading based seminar is geared for creative writers, but open to others with an interest in poetry. Assignments will include much reading and discussion, of course, but also a series of short responses, some of which will have creative options, and a presentation on a poetic movement. We will also work with a transformation exercise, taking a piece of writing and trying it out in a variety of different genres and forms, so the ways in which form effects content will be vividly demonstrated. You should come out of this class with a deeper understanding of poetic terms and traditions, as well as an understanding of how the craft of poetry can improve writing in any genre.

600-Level

500-Level | 600-Level

650.001: Nineteenth-century British Women Writers on the Fallen Woman

T 4:00-7:30
Gail Houston

The image and reality of the fallen women was central “Englishness” in the nineteenth century. Prime Minister Gladstone and Charles Dickens literally went out to the streets to save them; artists depicted them ad nauseam; newspapers and journalists did studies of them; and the Angel in the House needed her in order to retain her own innocence. As was typical in the Victorian period, male writers monopolized the discussion about the fallen woman. What did women writers have to say? We will begin by looking at Mary Wollstonecraft and some little known feminist-socialist radical women writers of the early nineteenth century and move on to some major female writers at mid-century (Brontë, Gaskell, Eliot) and on to female sensation writing and New Woman writing at the end of the century. The course assignments will include a major paper (20-25 pages), presentations, primary research, and possibly some acting.

Department of English Language and Literature
Humanities Building, Second Floor
MSC03 2170
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001

Phone: (505) 277-6347
Fax: (505) 277-0021

english@unm.edu