Fall 2016 Course Descriptions

500.001: Introduction to the Professional Study of English

TR 1230-1345
Sarah Townsend, sltownse@unm.edu

This course prepares first-semester M.A. and Ph.D. students for graduate literary study and professionalization. Students will develop skills and strategies aimed at preparing them to succeed at each level of a graduate career, from coursework and graduate-level research to qualifying exams, dissertation, archival work, conferences, publications, pedagogy, fellowships, job applications, and more. The assignments and readings aim not only to impart practical approaches to graduate study and professionalization, but also to facilitate students’ historical and theoretical understanding of English as a profession. The course will conclude by considering recent transformations in the profession, from the digital turn to changes in pedagogy, professional work (including “alt-ac” careers), and the place of humanities in the university.

511.001: Job Seekers Workshops

MW 1000-1200
Jonathan Davis-Secord, jwds@unm.edu

The academic job market presents a unique set of expectations and challenges. This course prepares students to craft their application materials and navigate the process successfully. Students will learn the timeline for assembling their materials and the expectations for the various documents in an application, including cover letters, CVs, writing samples, and teaching and research statements. In addition to discussions of the job application process and its documents, the course will involve significant workshopping of each student’s materials. We will also demystify conference interviews, Skype and phone interviews, campus visits, and job talks. While applying to academic jobs will be the main focus for the course, we will also discuss jobs outside of academia, including the challenge of identifying employment options, distinguishing between CVs and resumes, and justifying the PhD. This course will be especially useful to students finishing their degree, but it is open to students of every level, and it could be helpful for students to take the course more than once.

511.002: Feminist Theories

T 1600-1830
Adriana Ramírez de Arellano, ardap@comcast.net

513.001: Scientific Environmental Medical Writing

TR 1530-1645
Michelle Kells, mkells@unm.edu

Course Description: ENGL 413/513

This course will examine writing across academic, public, and professional spheres to promote the circulation of knowledge toward environmental justice, public health, and community wellbeing. We will apply the theoretical frame of Rhetorical Studies to Technical/Professional Writing as a field of practice to apply, analyze, evaluate, and engage diverse genres and media for a broad spectrum of document users (and stakeholders) within Science, Medical, and Environmental Studies.

Course projects include: Selecting a research topic (an environmental issue in and beyond the borders of the Americas) and writing and revising an intellectual project for academic, public, and professional audiences for publication. Capstone Project: Multi-Modal Working Group project researching (using field research and bibliographic inquiry methods) toward the production of digital articles on public health, environmental justice, and community wellbeing for digital publication in Writing Communities.

Required Books:

• Albrecht, Glenn. “Solastalgia: A New Concept in Human Health and Philosophy.”Philosophy, Activism, Nature (PAN) 1.3 (2005): 41-55.
• Cooperrider, David. L. et al. eds. Appreciative Inquiry: Rethinking Human Organization Toward a Positive Theory of Change.
• Farmer, Paul. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor.
• Kidder, Tracy. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World.
• Killingsworth, M. Jimmie and Jacqueline S. Palmer. Eco Speak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America.
• McMillan, Victoria E. Writing Papers in the Biological Sciences. 3^rd ed.
• Miriam F. Williams and Octavio Pimentel, eds. Communicating Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in Technical Communication.
• Edward O. Wilson Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.
• Course Projects:
• Multi-Modal Capstone Team Project;
• Field Research Exercises;
• Bibliographic Research (Annotated Bibliography);
• Student Selected Supplementary Reading.

518.002: Proposal & Grant Writing

MWF 1300-1350
Kyle Fiore, kfiore@unm.edu

This course explores the fine art of raising money for non-profit organizations. You will analyse and/or write effective non-profit documents, including appeals letters, cover letters, brochures, annual reports, case statements and, most importantly, grant proposals. You will study existing non-profit documents and proposals to understand the rhetorical moves they make. You will also learn how to locate and evaluate requests for proposals to ensure the documents you write contains information necessary to persuade a client or funder that they should fund your project. Please note that this is a slash course offered with English 418. As a graduate student, you will also be asked to write a research proposal for your area of study.

519.001: Visual Rhetoric

MW 1600-1715
Julianne Newmark Engberg, newmark@unm.edu

In the interdisciplinary course ENGL 519, Visual Rhetoric, students will engage with theories and practices of the production and consumption of visual images. We will consider the historical aspects of the generation and use of images, as they have functioned as persuasive, rhetorical mediums in political, social, and personal domains. On the subject of visual communication artifacts as mediums, we will study multimedia communication, multimodal delivery, and the unique challenges and resonances of hypertextual modes. Students will develop a vocabulary in rhetorical studies in two primary realms: one concerns the creation and use of images as tools in commercial and political domains and the other concerns teaching and learning in a variety of interdisciplinary fields with their growing multimodal dimensions. We will inquire into the significance of the late-twentieth-century “pictorial turn” and we will probe the function of our mediated relationships to visual texts of many kinds as we proceed into the twenty-first century.

Students in this course will

• give a classroom presentation that is a case-study analysis of a visual artifact of her/his choice (or of his or her design and creation), focusing on the historical, utilitarian, and sociocultural significances of the artifact;
• create a multimodal visual rhetoric portfolio with substantive analysis (one component of which can be the above case-study analysis);
• compose a final course project that harmonizes theory and practice in visual rhetoric; the project can be completed in a medium of the student’s choice, pending approval of Dr. Newmark after a one-on-one conference and a workshop with class peers;
• complete a series of shorter writing assignments in the veins of analysis, discussion, and response.

TR 0800-0915
Jerome Shea, jshea@unm.edu

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, leaning 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.

520.003: T: Blue Mesa Review

TR 1230-1545
Jose Orduna

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.

Please contact instructor for more information on requirements and meeting times.

521.001: Creative Writing Workshop Fiction

T 1600-1830
Sharon Warner, swarner@unm.edu

Writing (and Reading) the Novella

First off, let’s get straight on our terms. For our purposes, we will define the novella as 60-120 pages of fiction that typically follows “the fortunes of a single character through a limited time in a circumscribed locale, focused on a central action.” This working definition comes courtesy of Philip Gerard, from his essay, “An Architecture of Light: Structuring the Novel & Story Collection.”

Early in the semester, we will delve deeper into the various descriptions of the genre by writers as diverse as Steven Millhauser, Howard Nemerov, and Henry James. We will also read several novellas—both classic and contemporary.

As a form, the novella lends itself to both expansion and compression and is therefore an excellent project for fiction writers who find themselves challenged in either direction. A novella can contain more characters than a story, but, that said, the dramatic arc is still relatively simple. As Debra Spark so aptly puts it, “the novella is Goldilock’s form, not too much of this and not too much of that but just right.”

Those enrolled in the course will be expected to formulate and draft the major scenes of a novella (in accordance with the Aristotlean plot line). Additionally, students will draft successive scenarios/synopses.

522.001: Creative Writing Workshop Poetry

R 1600-1830
Diane Thiel, dthiel@unm.edu

This graduate course will have an emphasis on generating new poems and revising poems in progress. Because students arrive in a graduate workshop with a variety of backgrounds, styles, and interests in poetry, we will also engage in ongoing discussions about lineage and the different schools of thought in poetry. The course will include some exploration of writing which crosses genres, such as the verse novel. The course will also involve some focus on the theory and practice of translating poetry and on prose written about the art. Students will write one critical essay or review and give a brief presentation. The essay might respond to selected poems/poets in a reflective way (as writers engaged in the art). As students write and collect their poems together for the course portfolio, they will be thinking about connective themes, etc. in the development of a future body of work (working toward a book, or the creative dissertation). Workshops, as well as individual and class assignments, will sometimes focus on this future goal as well. Portfolios of 20-25 pages, including about 8-10 significantly revised pieces, will be due near the end of the semester.

533.003: Teaching Professional & Technical Writing

MTWRF 09:30-1300, T 1100-1215
Tiffany Bourelle, tbourelle@unm.edu

This course is designed to help students to become effective instructors of technical writing and technical communication. At the end of this course, students should have a strong foundation for building their own technical communication courses. Throughout the course of this semester, we will read a great deal of theory about technical communication pedagogy. We will examine the intersections of theory and pedagogy and identify ways that theory informs pedagogy. In addition, we will work on practical skills, like creating assignments and activities and assessing student writing in a technical communication course. This class will also have a semester-long component, where we will meet on Tuesdays from 11-12:15. Some of the Tuesday sessions will meet online.

540.001: Multimodal and Online Pedagogies

T 1600-1830
Tiffany Bourelle, tbourelle@unm.edu

In this class, you will learn 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 pratice of multimodal composition, helping you create materials such as assignments and multimodal instructional tools that mimic the texts your students develop.

540.002: T: Pedagogy Teaching Adult ESL Students

R 1900-2130
Bee Chamcharatsri, bee@unm.edu

542.001: Major Texts in Rhetoric

TR 1100-1215
Joseph Bartolotta, jbartolotta@unm.edu

545.001: History of the English Language

MWF 1300-1350
Jonathan Davis-Secord, jwds@unm.edu

The English language can be traced back many centuries to a form nearly unrecognizable to most modern speakers. Nonetheless, Present-day English still contains many significant features of its previous incarnations. This course will examine the history of English from its Indo-European roots through its medieval developments to its modern, international forms and the politics and racism of language. In the process, students will learn methods of linguistic analysis and description along with the historical contexts of the developments. No previous knowledge of Old or Middle English is necessary.

556.001: British Romaticism

TR 1100-1215
Gary Harrison, garyh@unm.edu

Studies in British Romanticism this semester will examine literary works of British and Irish literature from roughly 1769 through 1832 as they intersect with pertinent historical events, cultural practices, and philosophical ideas emerging in Britain, Ireland, and Europe. One aim of the course will be to construct a genealogy and working definition of Romanticism. We will also consider the role of Romantic literature in shaping the rise of Romantic nature philosophy and what some critics call proto-ecological poetics. Primary reading will be in the poetry and fiction of Charlotte Smith, Anna Barbauld, Mary Robinson, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Clare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, John Keats, Felicia Hemans, L.E.L., Jane Austen, Sydney Owensen, Mary Shelley, and possibly Emily Brontë. Selections from Rousseau, Herder, Goethe, Kant, Schiller, de Staël, Heine, and Hegel will help us establish the theoretical/aesthetic grounds of Romanticism that for better or for worse still underpin literary criticism and theory.

568.001: T: Mark Twain and Race

M 1600-1830
Finnie Coleman, coleman@unm.edu

580.001: T: DH Lawrence & Sense of Place

R 1600-1830
Feroza Jussawalla, fjussawa@unm.edu

This is a very special one-time only opportunity to read the work of D.H. Lawrence with the focus on how he writes about a "place." This course is set up in conjunction with a D.H. Lawrence festival and an exhibition, part of it at the Taos Ranch and part of it in Albuquerque, though the course will be taught entirely in Albuquerque on the UNM campus. You have the option of visiting the celebrations and will be given extra-extra credit for this. We will read Sons and Lovers,Lady Chatterly's Lover, look at the various movies of the last and look at how Lawrence writes about England, the coal mining districts etc. Then we will move to Lawrence's writings about New Mexico, his stay with Mabel Dodge Luhan and eventually his writing about Mexico in the Plumed Serpent. What do Lawrence's descriptions of people and places say about his attitudes to the places he is writing about? How racist or not? How loving? Can you be both at the same time as a writer? No doubt Lawrence loved New Mexico and I will take you on tours to show that he did. Additionally we can look at the Lawrence papers in our special collections library. This is a unique and fun opportunity to get into the life and mind of a writer and may be of great interest to Creative Writers, to see how a foreigner fashioned people and places in our state. Both out of state students and local students will love this course Even if you participate in the poetry reading and sessions with Mark Doty in Taos, I will take you again to the Ranch for a second time. In the Fall, the D.H. Lawrence ranch is spectacular. It is just a short drive away. We can car pool! Come take this once in a life time opportunity. Additionally this is a one night a week course that will not impinge on your other activities.

580.002: T: Imagining Ireland

MW 0800-0915
Sarah Townsend, sltownse@unm.edu

This is course connected to a UNM Study Abroad course, “Imagining Ireland.” Admission is by instructor approval only. The deadline to apply has passed.

English 480/580 will explore how Irish history and identity is negotiated through the production of literary canons and counter-canons. Focusing on Irish realism, the Celtic Revival, literature of the Troubles, contemporary writing, and the recent controversy over the Abbey Theatre’s commemoration of the 1916 Rising, we will consider how literature shapes and challenges the very idea of the Irish nation. The class includes regular reading and discussion, short written responses, a final exam, and a research report and presentation. This course is taught in conjunction with History 418/618: Modern Ireland. Our approach to the two courses (each 3 credits) is interdisciplinary: we will study important events in Irish history and explore the ways they are commemorated and contested in literature and culture. The course will include a site-specific immersion in Irish history and literature through study in three cities (Dublin, Galway, and Letterkenny); visits to important landmarks (like the Aran Islands, the Cliffs of Moher, Sligo and W.B. Yeats’s grave, the Derry Guildhall, the ancient monastery at Glendalough, the medieval city of Trim, the National Library, the National Museum, Glasnevin Cemetery); theatrical productions and a tour of the Abbey Theatre; lectures and guest speakers; and much more.

581.001: Chaucer & Gender

R 1600-1830
Anita Obermeier, aobermei@unm.edu

Chaucer has often been credited with creating the first psychologically viable women characters in English literature: The Wife of Bath and Criseyde, one a contemporary fourteenth-century antifeminist caricature, the other an ancient Juliet. In this course, we will test this scholarly commonplace and examine just how conservative or avant-garde Chaucer really was in relation to gender. Of course, Chaucer’s canon contains numerous women characters aside from Alisoun and Criseyde—among them nuns, lovers, martyrs, wives, virgins, queens, bourgeois merchants, adulteresses, courtly and peasant women—as well as colorful male characters, such as the Troilus, Pandarus, the Miller, the Reeve, Harry Bailey, the Friar, the Pardoner, to name a few. We will read a selection of shorter poems, The Book of the Duchess, The Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde, The Legend of Good Women, and an assortment of Canterbury Tales. In our inquiries, we will enlist feminist, gender, and queer theory. I posit that the examination of Chaucer’s works with a gendered lens will provide us with new and fresh insights into the characters—both male and female—the works, and the author.

587.001: T: C20 Poetics Theories

W 1600-1830
Matthew Hofer, mrh@unm.edu

This course will introduce students to some of the most influential and enduring poetics theories of the twentieth century, with a special focus on the experimental work that amplifies and extends the “classical” tradition (in the senses of “Romanticism” and “classicism”). The goal of the course is to reveal how key discoveries of the twentieth century inform how writing is written now. In this sense, the course is meant to prove useful to MFA students as well as those in the MA and PhD programs. Given the scope of the topic, some breadth has been surrendered in order to attain deeper knowledge in a main line of aesthetic and intellectual development of the so-called “language art.” Our readings will detail the progression from 1) high modernist poetics, 2) objectivist poetics, 3) projectivist/open-field poetics, 4) “new thing” poetics, to 5) language-centered poetics.

592.001

TR 0930-1045
Jesse Aleman, jman@unm.edu

This course is part seminar and part practicum focused on the pedagogical art, practice, and practicalities of literary learning. We’ll weigh the relationship between teaching literature and literary learning; discuss the curricular organizations of literary fields; and consider the pedagogical correlations between literary learning and core writing instruction practices. Our overall goal is to identify and cultivate your pedagogical style in relation to your field of literary study, and our final project will be a pedagogical portfolio, which will include a preface, teaching statement, CV, sample syllabi, course designs, rationales and methodologies, a resource bibliography, and peer and faculty teaching observations. Fulfills the department’s pedagogical requirement.

650.001: Sem: Lit Carnival & Carribean Culture

T 1600-1930
Belinda Wallace, bwallace@unm.edu

Carnival, a festival held before Lent, is a celebration that includes masquerade, music, dance, processions and, of course, revelry. Present-day carnival in such places as Rio (Brazil), New Orleans (USA), and Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago), is represented as nothing more than commodified state-sanctioned debauchery that is completely devoid of any cultural, historical, or “authentic” significance. However, this representation is a gross misrepresentation: carnival, specifically Caribbean carnival, is a disruptive space for the manifestation of, to quote Lisa Knauer, “complex cultural performances that reflect larger social realities—in particular, the interplay of race, gender, social class, and national identity.” We will examine literary representations of carnival in the writing of Earl Lovelace, Pierre Clitandre, and Reinaldo Arenas, among others. Theorists such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Wilson Harris, and Samantha A. Noel will provide the theoretic framework for understanding carnival as a cultural phenomenon. Through literary analysis, we will unpack several critical issues that include an examination of carnival as a challenge to oppressive power structures; an excavation of the ways in which carnival promotes national belonging; and an analysis of carnival as a key component of Caribbean culture and identity.

660.001: Sem: Southwestern Writers

W 1600-1930
Melina Vizcaino-Aleman, mviz@unm.edu

This graduate seminar on Southwestern writers begins in the early twentieth-century with the 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. Readings are primarily literary, and they chart the emergence of New Deal regionalism, feminism, modernism, WWII, the Civil Rights era, and environmental racism. The class also becomes familiar with a cultural studies approach to the region, and we will consider why an interdisciplinary approach is relevant and necessary. Students shoyld be prepared to read, develop their research skills on the topic, and produce their own scholarship using these research skills and methods. As a seminar, everyone is expected to particiapte in a conscientous and well-informed manner, so as to create an open and intellectual atmospheres for the exchange of ideas about the topic.