Upcoming Semester Courses - Spring 2025

500.001: Introduction to the Professional Study of English

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

This course prepares M.A. and Ph.D. students in English for graduate study and professionalization. The first unit of the course will trace the stages of a graduate career in English. Our focus will be on professionalization, and students will develop skills and strategies aimed at preparing them to succeed in each phase of a graduate career, from coursework and graduate-level research to qualifying exams, thesis/dissertation, conferences, publications, pedagogy, the job search (both academic and alt-ac), and more. Advanced graduate students, faculty, librarians, dissertation coaches, and consultants will also share their expertise. The second unit of the course will reflect historically and philosophically upon English as a discipline and academia as a profession. The focus will be on interrogating our shared assumptions about the practices we implement (writing, pedagogy, critique) and the values we seek to foster in our scholarly work (accessibility, collegiality, mindfulness, and joy). By reexamining our textual objects of inquiry, considering the relationship between scholarship and teaching, and contemplating the changing nature of academic labor and the university workplace, the course will prepare students to navigate their graduate degrees and professional careers with knowledge and purpose. You will be guided throughout the semester by a first-generation college and graduate student turned tenured professor who is committed to demystifying academia so that everyone has a fair shot at succeeding in it.

516.001: Indigenous Biography & Autobiography

Face to Face, T 1600-1830
Sarah Hernandez, hernands@unm.edu

Life writing (a generic term to describe a vast range of texts: from biography and autobiography to memoirs, letters, journals, etc.) has been richly practiced by a number of Indigenous authors from the boarding school era until present. This semester, students will focus upon select works by Oceti Sakowin (Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota) writers from the Northern Great Plains. We will analyze key terms to discuss this literature (life, writing, self, identity, fiction, history) as well as consider the unique cultural approaches specifically taken by Indigenous authors (nationhood, sovereignty, self-determination, and community-building). In this course, we will use the tools of literary and cultural studies to analyze the works of Oceti Sakowin writers and scholars such as: Charles Eastman (Santee Dakota), Luther Standing Bear (Oglala Lakota), Zitkala Sa (Yankton Nakota), Ella Cara Deloria (Yankton Nakota), and Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (Crow Creek Dakota) to name a few.

520.001: T: Blue Mesa Review II

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.

If you're interested in the class, talk to other grad students who have taken it; talk to the current editors! They'll give you more insight about how the class works and what to expect overall. You can talk to me too, of course. This class is also the gateway to becoming an editor for BMR.

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

521.001: Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction

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

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”

--Stephen King

In English 521, students will read a lot and write a lot, as Stephen King suggests, but we will take this practice one step further. Students will read a lot and write a lot together, helping each other through critique, discussion, and support. The class will address fiction in general but will focus specifically on short stories. Students will write, read, analyze, and discuss a variety of short stories in an exploration into the realm of possibilities available in fiction writing. Class discussions will address plot, point of view, character, conflict, setting, style, syntax, and more. Students will write and workshop at least two of their own stories, with classmates providing substantive written feedback as well as engaging in comprehensive discussions about the students’ work. By reading a lot and writing a lot—and doing so in a guided and supportive environment— students will be able to continue to develop their skills, craft, and processes for writing fiction.

522.001: Creative Writing Workshop: Poetry

Face to Face, M 1600-1830
Sara Rivera, english@unm.edu

This graduate workshop will focus on generating, workshopping, and revising poetry, while also exploring the concept of a writing community and how advanced writers can become compassionate literary citizens. Self-reflection, journaling, student-led discussion, and collaborative exercises will be central to this ethos. The majority of class time will be spent in workshop, but there will also be readings and assignments that prompt students to experience contemporary poetry within and outside of class. The workshop methodologies in this class will be derived from two foundational texts: The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom by Felicia Rose Chavez and Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses.

535.001: Ethics

Online
Tiffany Bourelle, tbourell@unm.edu

Many theories influence technical communication, especially as the field grows. From the title of this course, you know that we will be examining ethics in technical communication. But as you’ll learn, the idea of ethics is complicated, and we’ll further complicate and problematize the definition(s). The course readings will be grounded in foundational rhetoric as well as newer theories, and we’ll read about and consider ethics through a frame of social justice. In other words, the course will focus on who the idea(s) of ethics serves, who it oppresses, and who it leaves out. 

You may think you already know what ethics is: the ethical obligation to provide honest, accurate, safe, and usable information to end users, clients, and customers. However, sometimes ethics goes beyond “doing the right thing” to include making sure that the documents you produce, both multimodal and print-based (and the organization you work for), do no harm to specific groups or communities and/or the environment. For instance, consider the Enron scandal where documents were written to cover up the fact that the company was in a massive downfall. These documents were first written and then distributed and read by employees of the company who eventually blew the whistle on the organization’s ethical mishandling of information. Or consider environmental implications where employees might be asked to bury waste or cover up researched data regarding pollutant damage to the environment (this example goes beyond “documents” to consider technical communication more broadly). Lastly, consider how documents and even technology dehumanizes and/or further marginalizes groups of people or communities, or how certain communities might not have access to informational documents (i.e., recent research has indicated that specific communities did not receive adequate information regarding how to receive the Covid vaccine).

As you might be gathering from this description, in this class, we will consider ethics from a variety of angles, looking at communication and reviewing cases where documents, activities, and technologies have impacted people, places, and the environment; these cases will explore local and global ramifications. Finally, we will look at social justice theory to inform our research where we will analyze documents that may impact or have impacted communities in which we are a part or are familiar.

543.001: Contemporary Texts in Rhetoric

Face to Face, W 1600-1830
Bethany Davila, bdavila@unm.edu 

This course is a survey of situated histories and theories of contemporary rhetorical studies. Drawing from ethnic studies, disability studies, queer theory, and feminist rhetorical theories, we will engage the production of knowledge as a raced, gendered, ableist, and contested process with material consequences. We will examine social constructs created by rhetoric(s) as they exist in cultural, historic, economic, and political contexts. As a survey course, this class involves a lot of reading (although, I attempt to make it realistic) with weekly homework, informal reader response papers, a reading presentation activity, and a final project in which students will engage the topics we’ve discussed throughout the semester.

550.001: T: Middle English Heroes, Saints, and Lovers

Face to Face, TR 1400-1515
Anita Obermeier, aobermei@unm.edu

This course is an introductory sampling of medieval literature (and some art) produced in England and the immediate Continent between 1066 and 1500. We start this historical, linguistic, and literary enterprise with the Bayeux Tapestry—art with text—fighting alongside Anglo-Saxon warriors. Then we will pray with English saints, sleuth with historians, learn the art of courtly love from medieval knights and ladies, look at the nature of God with mystics, and watch biblical drama unfold. The original texts are in Latin, Anglo-Norman, and various dialects of Middle English, which we will study in modern English, in bilingual facing-page translations, and the easier ones in Middle English. The texts cover various secular and religious genres, including epic, debate, saints’ lives, fabliau, lais, romance, drama, allegory, and lyrics. The goal of the course is to highlight the variety and range of texts of the Middle English period, and to place those writings in their cultural, linguistic, and historical contexts. When appropriate and available, visual and aural material will be presented both to complement the written text and to deepen the overall experience of medieval culture.

568.001: African American Novel

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

In this course, we explore the African-American novel from the Harlem Renaissance until the publication of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. – arguably the most tumultuous 100-year period in African American cultural history.  We begin our study of this period with Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) as a primer for our study of African American religious traditions, the legacy of Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, segregation, Black nationalism, lynching, and the struggle for civil rights.  These moments, themes, and ideas will dominate our discussions as we appraise the flowering of literature during the Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance, tease out the complex cultural politics of American Modernism, 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 includeswell-known novels like Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982).  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 include more obscure novels that 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 and the rise of the “New Negro.”  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.  Students should understand that most novels in this course contain graphic material that will be discussed regularly and openly in class. 

578.001: T: Jane Austen

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

What explains the enduring popularity of Jane Austen's novels? With countless film adaptations, fan fiction, memoirs, and spins offs, Austen's fiction seems more popular than ever. Arguably no other British writer has been as widely read, filmed, and imitated and these novels have come to represent Britishness, chick-lit, and whiteness. But do her novels offer an uncritical representation the landed gentry and marriage? In this course we will look at how Austen's novels (and a selection of retellings and criticism) grapple with changing ideas of marriage and class, colonialism and slavery. I am particularly interested in examining the voices of non-white readers/critics of Austen.

Coursework will consist of engaged class discussions, short papers, and an individual project of your choosing, which can be a traditional research paper, an analysis of Austen-inspired pop culture, a lesson plan for teaching Austen to undergraduates, a piece of creative nonfiction, or other projects. 

587.001: T: Speculative Fiction 

Face to Face, R 1600-1830
Lisa Chavez, ldchavez@unm.edu

What do vampires, cosmic horror, and heroic quests have in common? They fall into the category of contemporary speculative fiction, a term for a variety of fictional genres, including fantasy, science fiction, and horror.  From dystopian worlds to alternate history to ghost stories, writing in this genre focuses on worldbuilding and  "what if?" and lets readers and writers engage their imaginations in the broadest sense.  

This course is appropriate for both readers and writers of speculative fiction, and writing assignments will include creative and more traditional options.  This class also includes a new reading list, focused on fiction published in this century, and will include short reading (novellas and short stories) as well as novels. 

598.001: Graduate Internship

Online
Tiffany Bourelle, tbourell@unm.edu

The graduate internship in Professional and Technical Communication will prepare graduates to write in technical and other professional settings and/or to pursue doctoral work in the field.

610.001: SEM: Marxist Theory

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

Marxist theory has been useful not only for the critique of social systems, but for the study of literature and culture, as well. Decades later—and with the political, economic and environmental contradictions of the "new world order" now in plain sight—critics will benefit once again from reassessing the appropriateness of Marxism for the study of literature and culture. We will spend the first 8-weeks of our seminar reading and engaging with the writing of Karl Marx. We will read texts like Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, The Jewish Question, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, The Communist Manifest, and Das Capital. We will move from early Marx’s understanding of a theory of history, the state, and democracy to his labor theory of value and capital. We will end Marx reading his revolutionary program and his views on society and politics in the nineteenth century. After getting a firm understanding of Marxist thought we will look at contemporary Marxist criticism that takes Marx and Engles to task for their glaring omissions and concentration on European economics. The criticism will intervene in Marxist theory through Marxist feminism, racial capitalism, environmentalism, and other theories. Throughout, we will attempt to understand and theorize the relation between the material conditions of social life and aesthetic forms.

640.001: SEM: Language and Rhetoric: Current Trends in L2 Writing

Face to Face, M 1600-1830
Pisarn Chamcharatsri, bee@unm.edu

The seminar course will focus on the current trends in the field of teaching writing to multilingual students. The course will cover topics such as multimodality, writing assessment, the topic of AI in writing classrooms, and other related topics.

650.001: SEM: Old English Race, Sex and Gender

Face to Face, T 1600-1830
Jonathan Davis-Secord, jwds@unm.edu

Ask new questions of medieval texts in this class. This seminar will explore major critical theoretical approaches to Old English literature, including critical race studies, trans studies, and feminist theory. Knowledge of Old English is not strictly necessary, although secondary readings and discussions will engage with primary texts in the original. The course will primarily consist of reading and discussing important recent scholarship each week; students will also develop a presentation and write a major paper for the semester.

660.001: SEM: Race and 19th Century Literature

Face to Face, W 1600-1830
Jesse Aleman, jman@unm.edu

This seminar examines the social construction of race in relation to the rise of a relatively new genre in nineteenth-century America—the novel. We’ll be reading foundational or transformative narratives that self-consciously experimented with the novel’s form to convey or critique prevailing racial ideologies about Native, African, or Mexican America. There are two main goals for the course. First, we’ll strive to understand and analyze the literary construction and circulation of racialist discourses that emerged around issues of expansionism, slavery, and citizenship in the nineteenth century. Second, we’ll study how the emergence of the novel, with its many forms of romance, sensationalism, sentimentalism, and realism, became one of the most powerful cultural tools used to construct and circulate ideas about race. The course will put attention to genre and craft, in other others, as well as content and critique to analyze how the rise of the novel corresponded with the problems and pressures of racial formation and the creative signs of resistance nineteenth-century writers of color produced when they experimented with the form. We’ll read gothic texts haunted by the specter of race; sensational narratives fueling the empire of expansion; and the ostensible “first” attempts at the novel by Black, Indigenous, and Mexican American writers.