Upcoming Semester Courses - Fall 2025

Online

Tiffany Bourelle, tbourell@unm.edu 

A workshop-based graduate-level introductory technical and professional communication course focused on audience and genre analysis, research, and persuasion. Included genres: brochures, instructions, reports.

519.001: Visual Rhetoric

Online
Julianne Newmark, newmark@unm.edu 

In this course we will engage with theories and practices of the production and consumption of visual images and information. 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 for local, national, and global audiences.

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. I hope students in this class will develop a vocabulary in rhetorical studies in two primary realms: one concerns the creation and use of images as tools in artistic, commercial, and political domains throughout history and the other concerns the application of visual-rhetorical communication techniques in workplaces today, wherein multimodal discourses are increasingly engaged. 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 forward into the twenty-first century.

520.001: T: Blue Mesa Review I

Face to Face, MWF 1400-1450
Marisa Clark, clarkmp@unm.edu

This class introduces you to the production of UNM’s national literary magazine, Blue Mesa Review. We receive hundreds of submissions each year from writers hoping to see their stories, essays, or poems published in our journal. Your primary responsibility is to assess these submissions for possible publication in BMR. In addition, you will keep a log about your participation reading submissions, write a couple of short papers (maybe a blog post or book review for BMR's website), and engage in discussions that arise from the submissions we receive. Understanding how literary magazines work can be of great value for writers; not only can it help you improve your own writing, but it can focus your editorial sensibilities as well as help you learn more about the submission and publication process.

This course is the gateway to becoming an editor for BMR, and is a course that can be taken multiple times for credit.

To enroll in the class, send an email to Dr. Clark at clarkmp@unm.edu briefly detailing your literary interests and aspirations, and include your Banner ID number.

521.001: Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction

Face to Face, W 1600-1830
Andrew Bourelle, abourelle@unm.edu

I normally focus my workshop classes on short stories, but it seems like lots of students are working on novels right now, so let’s do it—let’s talk about novels! You are more than welcome to workshop short stories in this class, but for much of the non-workshop discussions, I thought I’d focus on novel writing: structure, character arc, process, drafting, revision, planning, winging it, gaining momentum, losing momentum, slogging through the hard parts, wanting to give up, telling your partner how you wish you’d never started this stupid book … and so on. What will I have you read? I haven’t thought that far ahead. But I’m hoping we’ll create a community where we will be able to share our experiences and ideas as we wrestle with the daunting task of trying to write a novel. It’s my hope that the class will be beneficial to creative writers whether they’re in the third year of their MFA cranking out pages on their dissertation manuscripts or in their first year kinda sorta possibly maybe thinking about trying to write a novel someday.

523.001: Creative Writing Workshop: Nonfiction

Face to Face, T 1600-1830
Jennifer Jordan, gmartin@unm.edu

This writing workshop focuses on craft, revision, and developing your writing process. Students will write two new pieces of creative nonfiction. We will workshop each piece twice. Then, each of you will choose one of these two pieces to revise again, and you will submit this at the end of the semester to six literary magazines. Students may write short memoirs, personal or lyric essays, profiles, literary nonfiction, and more. The goal of the course is to make you work and to help you develop a habit of writing.

Readings for discussion in class will consist of (1) published essays from a variety of the subgenres above, as well as (2) essays on craft. The course will include experimental readings, writing prompts, in-class discussions, and workshops.

530.001: Teaching Composition

Face to Face, MWF 0900-1300 (08/11/25 - 08/15/25)

Lab, TR 0930-1045 (08/18/25 - 12/13/25)

Stephen Benz, sbenz@unm.edu

This course is designed for new teachers in UNM's Core Writing Program. We begin the week before the start of the fall semester with an overview of the goals, values, and student outcomes of the Core Writing Program. We will also review course materials for the semester and develop initial lesson plans so that you can hit the ground running. During the semester, the course will focus on issues related to your professional development as a teacher of diverse student writers. In addition to discussing selected readings on pedagogy, this course offers practical mentoring through classroom observation and feedback on the development of classroom materials.

540.001: T: Research Methods

Face to Face, T 1600-1830

Cris Elder, celder@unm.edu 

This course provides an introduction for MA and PhD students to three types of research­– action research (in the classroom), archival research (in the stacks), and empirical research methods (with a focus on human-subject based research) that will support you in your development as an ethical researcher. Weekly course assignments will include readings, a discussion board post, research-based activities, and in-class discussions. We will begin with readings that explore the research traditions in writing studies. Course participants will choose a topic of research to focus on for a menu of major course assignment options, allowing you to choose assignments that will best help you explore and address your academic and professional goals.

551.001: T: Medieval Latin

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

The phrase “medieval Latin” covers a wide array of times, genres, and areas. It applies to philosophical treatises written in Italy in the fifth century, letters written in northern Europe in the ninth century, and saints’ lives written in England in the fifteenth century. As a result of this abundance, this course will touch upon only a small number of important texts and authors from the medieval period. We will concentrate on sections of these texts to allow students to become familiar with major texts and authors of Medieval Latin and increase their facility with Latin generally and their knowledge of the distinguishing features of Medieval Latin specifically. Prerequisite: familiarity with Latin grammar and syntax.

551.002: T: Uppity Medieval Women

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

This course examines medieval discourses 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 nuovo women, bourgeois merchants, lovers, witches, writers, and fighters. The course explores 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 examine the ways the writings of medieval women differ from works by men, both in British and continental literary texts. For the theoretical framework, we 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, The Roman de Silence, Chaucer, Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan, The Condemnation Trial of Joan of Arc, and the Malleus Maleficarum.

556.001: British Romanticism

Face to Face, T 1600-1830
Aeron Haynie, ahaynie@unm.edu

What does it mean to live in a time of profound and (in some cases) disturbing change? In this course we will read British Romantic literature (1785-1832) within the socio-political context of the French and Haitian Revolutions, the British Abolition Movement, 18th century feminism, and concerns with industrialization and (even) climate change. In what ways is the Romantic glorification of the natural, the imagination, and individual freedom still part of our contemporary cultural heritage? We will read a mix of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and you will be encouraged to approach the materiall through an interdisciplinary lens. 

565.001: Chicanx Literary Studies: Chicana Feminism

Face to Face, M 1600-1830
Bernadine Hernandez, berna18@unm.edu

This course will focus on Chicana feminism through its historical, theoretical, literary and artistic formation.  We will first begin with a historical overview of Mexican American women in the U.S. and form a historical trajectory of “Chicana” from nineteenth and twentieth-century Caifornia, Tejana, and Hispana writers and examine different histories (e.g. U.S. imperialism and settler colonialism) and positionalities (e.g. class) inform social, political, and cultural crisis.  We will trace out the emergence of Chicana feminism and examine the genesis of the term “Chicana” as it was developed and deployed during the Chicana Movement in the early 1970’s.  Looking at early Chicana writers from Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings, we will examine how Chicana’s are critiquing social relations and structures of power tied to labor, education, and migration.  From this historical foundation, we will look at how Chicana writers and artists use multifaceted forms, genres, and techniques to express subjectivity and write in the social process of race, gender, sexuality, and class.  Some questions we will be asking are: What are the historical conditions that enable conversations of Chicana racialized sexuality and gendered racialization to cohere in this contemporary moment?  How do we (re)member and grapple with the construction of Chicana subjectivity that are tied to historical moments of racialization, dispossession, and/or migration?  We will be reading novels, short stories, essays and drama by Maria Helena Viramontes The Moths and Other Stories (1985), Sandra Cisneros Women Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991), Gloría Anzaldua Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), Cherrie Moraga Heroes and Saints (1994), Emma Perez Gulf Dreams (1996), Josefina López Real Women Have Curves (1996), and Ana Castillo Give It To Me (2014).  We will also be looking at visual art by Alma López and Yolanda M. López, performance art by La Chica Boom, and films by Lourdes Portillo and Almudena Carracedo.  Aside from the primary texts of Chicana writers, we will be reading general theory regarding gender and sexuality in feminism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism and be interrogating and examining these theories in relation to our primary novels and the intersectional theories from Chicana feminism and decolonial feminism. 

568.001: T: The African American Novel

Face to Face, MW 1400-1515
Finnie Coleman, coleman@unm.edu

In this course, we explore the first century of the African-American novel – arguably the most tumultuous 100-year period in African American cultural history.  Bookended by the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s momentous Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, we begin our study of this period with William Wells Brown’s Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (1853) and close with James Baldwin’s autobiographical novel,Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953). African American religious traditions, Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, segregation, Black nationalism, lynching, and the struggle for civil rights will dominate our discussions as we tease out the complex cultural politics of the Reconstruction period, appraise the flowering of literature during the Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance, question the economic and social realities that coalesced in Black communities during the Great Depression and World War II, and assess the cautious optimism that characterized the early years of the Civil Rights movement.  Our reading list includes well-known novels like Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952).  These better-known novels help us to grasp the dominant themes that circulated in all genres of African American literature during this fecund period. Our list also includes more obscure novels like Martin Delany’s Blake (1861) and Sutton E. Griggs’ Imperium in Imperio (1899) and the Hindered Hand (1905). These lesser known novels will help us to understand the complicated internal racial politics that governed the rise of the so-called “Talented Tenth,” the pervasiveness and durability of “intra-racism” and “colorism,” and the “pride of the rising tide” that accompanied the birth of the Black middle class.  At every opportunity, we will discuss ways in which we might recruit the metanarratives of yesterday to help us to make sense of mutations in racism and White Supremacy in our own “tumultuous” historical moment.  

572.001: Contemporary American Literature

Face to Face, R 1600-1830
Scarlett Higgins, shiggins@unm.edu

This course in contemporary American literature will cover the literature and culture of the period from the 1980s through the recent past (2020s). We will read across genres, including poetry, prose (fiction and non-fiction), film, and comix. This course will contain a special emphasis on literature that has responded to the socio-political tensions that defined the post-World War II era.

To do so, we'll be spending our time on texts that responded to the two "plagues" or pandemics of our times: the AIDS and the COVID-19 crises. Both medical health events became inextricacbly politicized in ways that continue to reverberate to our present moment; both became gateways for the important use of the arts (visual, performing, and literary) toward social justice issues. Questions: please contact me, shiggins@unm.edu

587.001: T: Genre Studies: Image and Time in Narrative

Face to Face, M 1600-1830
Daniel Mueller, dmueller@unm.edu 

In this graduate seminar course, we'll read and discuss works of fiction and creative nonfiction that make use of visual images as structural attributes of narrative.  Writers in the seminar will be asked to make conscious use of new narrative and lyric strategies in their creative work and lead class discussions on assigned readings.  This is a course designed to deepen and broaden MFA students' engagement with their own creative work. 

610.001: SEM: Bad Feminists

Face to Face, M 1600-1830
Belinda Wallace, bwallace@unm.edu 

This theory course, “Bad Feminist,” focuses on intersectionality and its feminist manifestations. We will explore various feminist critiques and theories shaped by intersectionality, examining how it offers new ways to understand contemporary women’s lives, culture, politics, and experiences. Key thinkers like Roxane Gay, Brittany Cooper, Maya Bailey, and, of course, Kimberlé Crenshaw will guide our study. While the course primarily centers on Black women’s experiences in the U.S., it also acknowledges the intersectional experiences of global majority women, including Indigenous, Latina/Latinx, Asian American, Chicana/Chicanx, and African-descended women worldwide.

640.001: SEM: AI Theory and Ethics

Face to Face, R 1600-1830
Tiffany Bourelle, tbourell@unm.edu 

This course will guide students to consider AI theory and ethics, focusing on topics such as privacy, surveillance, bias, discrimination, what constitutes plagiarism, the decline of critical thinking, the value of human roles within augmented AI spaces, AI in the workplace vs. academia, and so on. We will explore the role of AI literacy as it pertains to critical literacy, considering the ways AI can be discriminatory and biased; functional literacy, using a variety of AI tools to generate content; and rhetorical literacy, discerning how, when, and in what context it is appropriate to use AI in the writing process. Students will have a role in deciding what scholarship to read in the last half of the class, and they will also decide the appropriate topic and medium for their final projects (i.e., literature review, scholarly article, teaching portfolio, etc.).

660.001: SEM: Queer Fictions

Face to Face, W 1600-1830
Kathryn Wichelns, wichelns@unm.edu

This seminar will examine the contentious questions of canonicity, representation, and voice, through the lens of a field determined by constant fracture and reevaluation. The novels and short fiction we read together will allow us to evaluate other stories, including those scholars construct about the political dimensions of their work. We will focus on the mid-nineteenth-century through the contemporary period, beginning with a selective exploration of some of the early fiction around which the field of literary queer theory was initially organized (in the 1980s and 1990s). This first section of the course allows us to explore the problems resulting from transhistorical notions of queer “identity.” Exclusively Anglo-American, Northeastern, and upper-middle-class, the narrative of queer American life constructed during this period reflects differential access to publishing and profound inequalities in the levels of privacy and sexual self-determination accorded to white, middle-class men. Yet alternative stories of what today we might call queer lives have always existed in American literary history, if we know where to look and are willing to challenge our own ideas about what counts as literature. We open the class with a 1629 legal case in colonial Virginia focusing on the unplaceable gender of an indentured servant—and from there, the bulk of the course will challenge the various forms of occlusion resulting from mainstream version of queer writing. Authors we read together will include James Baldwin, Octavia E. Butler, the Combahee River Collective, Samuel R. Delany, Julia Ward Howe, Henry James, Leslie Feinberg, Nella Larsen, Herman Melville, Cherríe Moraga, John Rechy, Assotto Saint, and others. Grading will be based on one conference-style in-class presentation and an article-length final research paper. Regular, informed participation is expected.