Upcoming Courses
Spring 2013 course descriptions are available under current courses. For descriptions of all English graduate courses, refer to the Graduate Catalog.
Summer 2013 Graduate Course List –
1st Summer Session 2013:
ENG 611: Workshop in Creative Nonfiction
ENG 629: Topics in Applied Linguistics
ENG 659: Workshop in Literature
ENG 690: Seminar in Composition
Fall 2013 Graduate Course List -
ENG 520: Introduction to Linguistics
ENG 601: Research in English Studies (Linguistics)
ENG 601: Research in English Studies (Literature)
ENG 605: Teaching in English Studies (Literature)
ENG 610: Reading and Writing Across the Genres
ENG 612: Workshop in Fiction Writing
ENG 615: Workshop in Screenwriting
ENG 616: Introduction to Theories of Language Learning
ENG 617: Methods for Teaching English Language Learners
ENG 621: Meaning and Structure in English
ENG 625: Phonology
ENG 627: Sociolinguistics
ENG 629: Topics in Applied Linguistics
ENG 632: Discourse Analysis
ENG 647: African American Literature
ENG 663: Studies in Shakespeare
ENG 665: Romantic Studies
ENG 690: Seminar in Composition
ENG 693: Writing in the Profession
ENG 696: Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric
ID 601: Teaching Practicum
1st Summer Session 2013 Course Descriptions –
ENG 611: Creative Nonfiction Workshop -
Five Weeks of Flash
Monday-Friday, 9:15-10:50 a.m.
Prof. Jill Christman
In this graduate-level creative nonfiction class we will focus on the techniques and art of super-short true things. Call them flash nonfiction, sudden essays, or miniature memoirs, but when you submit your polished essay each week, be sure to check Tools/Word Count and make sure you haven’t exceeded the 750-word maximum. If you’re at 836, keep working: condense, refine, extract. Think about what to put in, what to leave out, and why. We’ll test drive Brevity editor Dinty Moore’s brand-new Rose Metal flash nonfiction guide, study the precise ways in which Masters of Distillation before us have harnessed the tools we may associate with more leisurely literary pursuits—scene and character, language and image, dialogue and diatribe, sound and silence, rhythm and ruckus—in order to rearrange the world in words.
I like fives: high fives, taking five, the five-second rule, and certainly five-star hotels. If you want to write, join me this summer. Five weeks, five essays, one course objective—figure out how to say something true that matters. Five times.
Probable Texts
The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction: Advice and Essential Exercises from Respected Writers, Editors, and Teachers (edited by Dinty Moore)
In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal (edited by Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones)
And, of course, essays and craft notes from Brevity: www.brevitymag.com
ENG 629: Topics in Applied Linguistics -
Quantitative Research Design and Analysis
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 12:00-2:40 p.m.
Prof. Megumi Hamada
This course introduces the practical aspects of quantitative research design and analysis that are directly relevant to studies in applied linguistics. Through discussion and hands-on activities using various materials (an introductory statistics textbook, journal articles, the APA publication manual, Microsoft Excel, and the statistical software, SPSS), upon completion of this course, students are expected to be able to (a) understand experimental research design, and select appropriate design and analysis procedures, (b) interpret common statistical results in applied linguistics research, (c) perform analyses, and (d) report the results in writing.
ENG 659: Workshop in Literature –
Romanticisms
Monday – Friday, 11:00 a.m.-12:35 p.m.
Prof. Robert Habich
In this workshop, students will investigate the ideas and products of Romanticism, concentrating primarily on its expression in nineteenth-century American and British literature but with some attention to its global manifestations in the visual arts, in philosophy and social thought, and in material and popular culture. We will read a selection of Romantic fiction and poetry, explore the world of the Romantic artists, see how Romanticism affected politics, social reform, and the visual arts, and examine the legacy of Romanticism today, from romantic comedies through “romance novels.”
Our goal as a class will be to construct a functioning definition of the term “Romanticism” that accommodates its various manifestations. Individual grading will be based upon class preparation and participation (20%), two reports to the class (20% each), a multimedia group project (20%), and a final essay examination (20%).
ENG 690: Seminar in Composition –
Writing Center Theory and Administration
Monday – Friday, 3:00-4:45 p.m.
Prof. Jackie Grutsch McKinney
Writing centers are a locus of self-sponsored writing instruction and writing learning in colleges and universities and increasingly in K-12 and community centers. Separate, though interconnected, to classroom teaching of writing, writing centers have developed their own histories, narratives, theories, and pedagogies, which students in this course will explore. Additionally, the course will engage students in issues of writing center administration to inform students for possible future roles as writing center administrators.
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Fall 2013 Course Descriptions -
ENG 520: Introduction to Linguistics
Monday and Wednesday, 5:00-6:15 p.m.
Prof. Mai Kuha
Basic concepts, scope, and methodology of the science of language. Prerequisite: Permission of the department chairperson. Not open to students who have credit in ENG 320.
ENG 601: Research in English Studies (Linguistics)
Section 1
Tuesday, 2:00-4:40 p.m.
Prof. Carolyn MacKay
This course is a graduate-level introduction to research methods in linguistics. The course will focus on research methodology: project design, data collection, and data analysis. This course will also introduce students to the writing of grant proposals, abstracts for professional conferences, and review articles. Students will get hands-on experience in working with issues related to original research. As a final paper they will be expected to design a research project (choosing a topic, articulating hypotheses and goals, describing the significance of the project, researching the literature available, and determining the methods of data collection and analysis). Students will write a conference abstract, a literature review for the project, and will write a book review of one of the key sources for their topic. The final paper is a complete research proposal.
ENG 601: Research in English Studies (Literature)
Section 2
Monday and Wednesday, 4:45-6:00 p.m.
Prof. Robert Habich
English 601 is designed to introduce graduate students majoring in literature to some of the resources, issues, terminology, methods, and uses of literary research. A "hands-on" seminar, it requires weekly ungraded reports as well as five graded papers: an evaluation of three similar reference sources; an annotated bibliography of major scholarship and criticism for an author of your choice; a paper “solving” a literary myth or hoax; a report on the current status of a professional or research issue; and a research statement and proposal.
The goals of the course are
1. To give you practice using research resources available in Bracken Library and elsewhere, both on-line and in print
2. To familiarize you with some of the scholarly issues impacting the critical study of literature: establishing texts, evaluating evidence, editing documents
3. To help you develop some of the basic writing tasks of literary scholars: establishing research issues, creating fundable "problems" for grants, preparing a bibliography, and
4. To communicate some of the fun of doing primary literary research.
ENG 605: Teaching in English Studies -
Teaching Literature in Higher Education
Monday, 6:30-9:10 p.m.
Prof. Patrick Collier
In this class, we will focus on the theory and practice of teaching literature to college students. We will ask the basic historical and existential questions: Why teach literature? What benefits do college students gain from close and careful attention to literary works? Why does this seemingly non-instrumental practice exist in our seemingly instrumental society? What are—or what might be—the politics of the literature classroom? What exactly is this thing we all love called “Critical Thinking”? Having come to your own conclusions on these questions, and articulated them in a Statement of Teaching Philosophy, you will then work on establishing objectives and methods for teaching particular kinds of literature (historical periods, genres, “insurgent” literatures, etc.). The semester will conclude with “micro-teaching” demonstrations in which you devise and put into practice plans to teach several literary texts.
ENG 610: Reading and Writing Across the Genres –
Theory of Creative Writing
Tuesday and Thursday, 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Prof. Mark Neely
This graduate creative writing class course is designed for MA students who are interested in reading and writing fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting. This course will encourage students to both think critically about creativity and the mechanical elements of these genres and to experiment with various forms and styles. In addition to reading writers on writing (on topics such as creativity, imaginative and critical processes, language usage, creative writing pedagogy, etcetera), students will also read, write, and critique original fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and screenwriting. Class time will include discussion of assigned reading, writing assignments and experiments, writer visits and workshops.
Texts for this course include a novel (Sideways by Rex Pickett), a work of graphic nonfiction (Fun Home by Allison Bechdel) a collection of short fiction (Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolano, two books of poems (Robinson Alone by Kathleen Rooney and Engine Empire by Cathy Park Hong, and an anthology of creative nonfiction (Best American Essays ed. by David Foster Wallace).
Course requirements will include regular reading and writing assignments and a final project.
ENG 612: Workshop in Fiction Writing
Wednesday, 2:00-4:40 p.m.
Prof. Cathy Day
Students in this course will study the different forms that fiction can take, notably the spectrum between “story collection” and “novel.” Located somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, the linked story collection goes by many names: story cycle, novel-in-stories, composite novels, the story sequence, etc. In linked story collections, stand-alone pieces are recognized as stories, not chapters. They are often published individually, but when read in the context of a book, linked as they are by setting, theme, characters, or geography, the stories gather accumulated meaning and the book assumes the kind of unity we ascribe to novels. Using a few of these books as models, students will write and workshop manuscripts written in this form. We will also practice presenting our work in various online environments (via websites, blogs, and social media) in order to further professionalize ourselves as working writers in the 21st century.
Possible Texts:
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad
Evan S. Connell, Mrs. Bridge
Dean Bakopoulos, Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon
ENG 615: Workshop in Screenwriting
Monday, 2:00-4:40 p.m.
Prof. Matt Mullins
English 615 is a graduate level course in the theory and practice of screenwriting (i.e., writing for film, not television). Students will write short screenplays, the first act/outline of a feature-length screenplay, as well as potentially develop premises and outlines for the Telecommunication Department’s annual Summer HD Movie Immersion Course. In addition, they will complete a number of screenwriting exercises, view films, and read scripts and other material related to the craft of screenwriting. The bulk of this course will focus on the workshopping and collective critique of student screenplays and the reading and analysis of professional screenplays and screenplay excerpts considered from the perspective of craft. Our focus will be graduate level of discussion related to the practice and analysis of the techniques and processes of screenwriting. This includes matters of content, structure, format/style, drafting, and revision, among other things. Overall, this graduate-level workshop will give students the opportunity to learn and practice the art of screenwriting and exchange ideas related to the craft within a constructively critical community.
As such, student work will involve the following:
• Utilizing the essential techniques of cinematic storytelling.
• Utilizing/mastering the major structural elements of screenwriting form.
• Further developing original story ideas into coherent scenes and complete screenplays.
• Incorporating into their work feedback about structure, content, and format/style from their professor and peers, and revising accordingly.
• Reading, evaluating, and offering constructive criticism on the work of their classmates.
• Reading material related to the craft of screenwriting and screenplays written by established screenwriters.
• “Reading” (i.e., analytical viewing of) films to better understand the craft of screenwriting.
• Engaging in various assignments designed to develop their skill as screenwriters.
ENG 616: Introduction to Theories of Language Learning
Monday, 12:00-2:40 p.m.
Prof. Megumi Hamada
Psychological, sociocultural, and linguistics basis of language learning; research and theoretical perspectives related to second language teaching. Prerequisite: knowledge of a foreign language; permission of the department chairperson. ENG 520 or equivalent.
ENG 617: Methods for Teaching English language Learners
Wednesday, 12:00-2:40 p.m.
Prof. Lynne Stallings
The aim of this course is to prepare students not only to understand and recognize, but to also address, the language acquisition challenges of non-native English speakers, both in the U.S. and abroad. Students will consider a) the methods that have been used historically in the field and b) the post-method approach that often guides current practices in ESL and EFL settings. Students will apply this information along with what they know about second language acquisition theories to develop their own principle-based approach to teaching ESL and EFL.
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ENG 621: Meaning and Structure in English
Monday, 6:30-9:10 p.m.
Prof. Elizabeth Riddle
A critical study, from a pragmatic/discourse-functional and cognitive linguistic perspective, of aspects of Modern English grammar (including the lexicon, syntax, and semantics) important for the teaching of EFL/ESL and for further linguistics study. Key theoretical linguistic concepts and research methodologies will be introduced throughout the course. A major aspect of the course will be to develop your critical thinking skills and to provide you with the basic knowledge and resources to continue to learn about the structure of English on your own in the future.
Goals for students
1. Develop a deeper understanding of some of the major English syntactic and semantic phenomena.
2. Develop familiarity with some important literature on English grammar, including the major reference grammars, as both teaching and research resources, and with selected theoretical approaches to the analysis of grammar and the lexicon necessary for further study of English in particular and linguistics in general.
3. Develop research skills.
4. Develop analytical skills for: (a) EFL/ESL error diagnosis and correction;
(b) evaluation of treatments of grammar in teaching materials; (c) developing better explanations of grammatical phenomena inadequately treated in the professional literature; (d) answering EFL/ESL students’ questions.
ENG 625: Phonology
Tuesday and Thursday, 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Prof. Mary Lou Vercellotti
General characteristics of speech sounds and of the systematic relationships they exhibit in natural languages. Emphasizes current research in generative phonology. Prerequisite: ENG 623; permission of the department chairperson.
ENG 627: Sociolinguistics
Thursdays, 2:00-4:40 p.m.
Prof. Carolyn MacKay
This course is a graduate-level introduction to sociolinguistics that investigates how social structure influences the way people talk. We will focus on regional variation in American English and the correlation between language use and social factors such as age, sex, social class, social networks, ethnicity, and identity. The requirements for the course are 2 papers. The first paper will discuss in detail an aspect of linguistic variation of interest to the student (e.g. Chicano English, the use of non-standard 'like', uptalk, the origin of African American English, the Northern Cities Shift, Gullah, gender differences in language use, Hoosier dialect, etc.) while the second paper involves data collection and an analysis of the linguistic variation found in conversational styles.
ENG 629: Topics in Applied Linguistics
Wednesday, 6:30-9:10 p.m.
Prof. Megumi Hamada
The horse raced past the barn fell. – Why do we have difficulty reading a sentence like this? Why do we sometimes make speech errors, for example, saying gargle for garlic? Why does language impairment, such as dyslexia and aphasia, occur? How do we learn a language? How do our eyes and brain function when we read? This course provides a foundation for answering these and other common questions that concern psycholinguistic processes involving recognition, comprehension, production, and acquisition, in both oral and written language, and in both first and second language. Some of the topics covered will be: language and thought, child/bilingual sentence processing, language impairment, lexical memory, second language pronunciation/foreign accents, word recognition, and discourse comprehension and inference. Various languages other than English will be discussed. In examining different theories, we will also discuss educational and clinical applications of each particular theory.
ENG 632: Discourse Analysis
Monday and Wednesday, 3:00-4:15 p.m.
Prof. Mary Theresa Seig
The subject matter for “discourse analysis” is vast - it is often treated as a discipline in texts that are organized in areas of institutional discourse, political discourse, language and gender, narrative, language of the media, and so on. In this course, we will approach discourse analysis as a variety of research methods, which can be used to suggest answers across a variety of questions posed in and across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The critical component of this course will be the “doing” of discourse analysis – working with the messy data, finding and re-finding the patterns, drawing conclusions from those patterns and supporting those conclusions from the evidence in the data.
ENG 647: African American Literature
Monday and Wednesday, 9:00-10:15 a.m.
Prof. Deborah Mix
This course will focus on the Harlem Renaissance, a pivotal movement in African American arts and letters that flourished between World Wars I and II. We will read poetry, prose, drama, and fiction by some of the leading figures of the literary movement: Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright. We’ll also read work by lesser known authors like Sterling Brown, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Angelina Weld Grimké, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Wallace Thurman. We’ll look at some of the major anthologies and organs of the day: James Weldon Johnson’s path-breaking Book of American Negro Poetry, Alain Locke’s The New Negro anthology, the collaboratively-edited Fire!!, and selected issues of Crisis, among others. We’ll contextualize the movement through its aesthetic, historical, and political milieus, considering work by such figures as Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, W.E.B. DuBois, and Marcus Garvey. We’ll also read some of the precursors to the movement—Paul Dunbar, Charles Chesnutt—and some more contemporary texts that speak to its legacies—Black Arts writers and Toni Morrison’s Jazz, for instance. In addition to a major seminar paper, students will also complete at least one short paper or book review and an in-class cultural presentation; regular and substantive participation in class discussion will also be required.
ENG 663: Studies in Shakespeare –
Building a Shakespearean Archive
Thursday, 6:30-9:10 p.m.
Prof. Miranda Nesler
Shakespeare is a major literary and historical figure whose name and works shape most students’ perceptions of the early modern period. Yet Shakespeare’s texts did not exist in isolation; their importance emerged out of the complex cultural conversations they engaged. By considering Shakespeare’s plays and poems within their historical context, this course will encourage graduate students to consider the key debates that shaped and were shaped by Shakespeare, to explore how those texts and contexts affect trends in Shakespeare studies, and, ultimately, to think through how familiarity with a Shakespearean archive can affect pedagogy.
ENG 665: Romantic Studies
Tuesday, 6:30-9:10 p.m.
Prof. Frank Felsenstein
ROMANTICISM: “a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in the 18th century, characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and an emphasis on the imagination and emotions, and marked especially in English literature by sensibility and the use of autobiographical material, an exaltation of the primitive and the common man, an appreciation of external nature, an interest in the remote, a predilection for melancholy, and the use in poetry of older verse forms” (Merriam-Webster On-Line Dictionary)
This graduate class will endeavor to explore some of the roots of British Romanticism in the eighteenth century, while concentrating in particular on major English poets of the turn of the century, namely Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Keats, Shelley, and Byron. We shall consider contemporary debates in England, as represented in verse and prose, over such pressing topics as the abolition of the slave trade, the status of women (why is the traditional canon so male oriented?), cross-Channel reaction to the French Revolution, mental and aesthetic beliefs, and the early effects of the Industrial Revolution. Implicit to our discussions will be questions as to why the Romantics should matter to us today.
Please feel free to contact me for more information at felsenstein@bsu.edu.
ENG 690: Seminar in Composition –
Politics, Composition, and Radical Pedagogy(s)
Tuesday, 2:00-4:40 p.m.
Prof. Mike Donnelly
Politics in the classroom has been at the center of on-going debate both within academia and across U.S. culture at large. The debate has particular significance and urgency in Rhetoric and Composition Studies. In this course, we will discuss the politics of rhetoric and writing instruction—its traditional and revised, and hotly contested, roles in the curriculum and place in the academy (and relationships to Departments of English)—as well as the debate over “doing politics” in the classroom; we will also explore some of the varied pedagogies that might be called “radical,” with particular attention to critical pedagogy and community-service approaches.
This course may fulfill a Ph.D. requirement in rhetorical history or digital literacies, in consultation with the instructor and with the approval of the area chair.
ENG 693: Writing in the Profession
Thursday, 2:00-4:40 p.m.
Prof. Jennifer Grouling
This course is designed to teach you how to participate in several significant academic and professional genres: conference participation; journal publication; grant application; and professional portfolio. We’ll discuss strategies by which materials you have already written or will soon write—especially seminar papers, research projects, and dissertation chapters—can be transformed into conference papers and journal articles. At the end of the class, you will have completed an abstract for a conference paper, a conference paper, a draft of a journal article, a preliminary grant application, and a professional dossier.
As we write, workshop, and revise these materials, we’ll also carry on conversations about strategies for writing regularly and productively, for presenting yourself professionally, and for finding and building communities of scholars here at Ball State and beyond.
ENG 696: Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric
Wednesday, 6:30-9:10 p.m.
Prof. Webster Newbold
This course will survey a crucial period (late eighteenth through early twentieth centuries) for the history of rhetoric and composition in North America that established the roots of contemporary teaching practices. We will examine identified trends, key primary and secondary texts, and the factors that contributed to shaping those trends. A primary focus of the course will be intellectual inquiry into recent perceptions of nineteenth-century rhetoric and the shifts in those perceptions over the last 30 years. Class activities will include reports on readings, group discussions, reaction papers, and a position paper on independent research.
ID 601: Teaching Practicum
Tuesday and Thursday, 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Prof. Jackie Grutsch McKinney
ID 601 is a required course for new teaching assistants in the English Department. It is a class that will prepare you for teaching first-year writing. Students enrolled in this course will also simultaneously work in the Writing Center and attend (and later teach in) a mentor's class. These experiences will be drawn on and situated in a broader context in this class.
The course is designed to introduce you to best practices for teaching. We will discuss very practical aspects of teaching at the college-level to prepare you for the hundreds of little decisions you have to make when you craft your own syllabi and courses. This class also introduces you to composition theory in order for you to begin to see the context, implications, and consequences of the choices you make. By the end of the course, you will compose a statement of your teaching philosophy, a syllabus for English 103 and English 104, and a research project all of which you will integrate into a teaching website. Thus, at the end of ID601, you will have the documents--and an educated rationale for the contents of those documents--ready for teaching the following term.
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