Stories Matter--From Dr. Frankenstein to Dr. Strange: the Rise of Medical Professions in Literature and Culture
9:30-10:45 a.m. TR
"From Dr. Frankenstein to Dr. Strange: the Rise of Medical Professions in Literature and Culture” investigates a range of representations that include Victor Frankenstein, Florence Nightingale and 21st century pop culture superheroes, while also tracing the historical shifts occurring in the professionalization of the medical field.
Notes: This course satisfies the Gen Ed Humanities & Fine Arts requirements. All majors are welcome.
English 1099G Section 099 CRN 95566
Dagni Bredesen
Stories Matter, Honors--From Dr. Frankenstein to Dr. Strange: the Rise of Medical Professions in Literature and Culture 9:30-10:45 am TR
“From Dr. Frankenstein to Dr. Strange: the Rise of Medical Professions in Literature and Culture” investigates a range of representations that include Victor Frankenstein, Florence Nightingale and 21st century pop culture superheroes, while also tracing the historical shifts occurring in the professionalization of the medical field.
Notes: This course satisfies the Gen Ed Humanities & Fine Arts requirements. All majors are welcome.
English 1105 Sections 600 and 601 CRNs 96720 and 96721
Melissa Caldwell
English Forum Online
What can you do with an English major? This course is designed to answer that question from a wide variety of perspectives. Topics include academic choices within the major, minor(s), undergraduate research opportunities, English-related student organizations, study abroad, internships, scholarships, career options and career planning, graduate and professional programs, study abroad and internships. You will begin to plan the direction you want to go with your English major and with your subsequent career through writing projects and attendance at Department and University events.
English 2000 Section 001 CRN 97087
Bess Kosinec (Winter)
Introduction to Creative WritingOnline
Think of this class as imagination boot camp. Here, you’ll learn to tap into your innate creativity, and to give voice to ideas that excite you, intimidate you, even scare you.
Through a tasting menu of four different genres of creative writing, you’ll learn the basic tools necessary to turn your fascinations into work written, or performed, for others. This means you’ll learn both the habits of the artist and the artist’s tools in the form of writer’s craft, as well as engage in workshop by sharing your work with classmates and learning to critique the work of others constructively. The course culminates in the submission of a revised portfolio of workshopped writing.
English 2205 Section 001 CRN 93047
Randy Beebe
Introduction to Literary Studies 9:30-10:45 am TR
As a required course for all beginning English majors, this course seeks to help students understand the practical, theoretical, and professional contours of English studies. In other words, we will study what unites the concentrations in the major and what makes English an exciting and relevant means of inquiry in the 21st century. At the top of the list of goals for the course is to help you develop strategies and skills for becoming a better reader—more careful, nuanced, and intentional. As we do so, we will also consider questions about what we read, why we read, and how we read—questions that will carry us into topics of the need and challenges of connecting our reading to contemporary culture and to our pasts. To do this, we will be reading a variety of genres, including fiction, poetry, memoirs, critical essays, visual art, and nonfiction. Students will complete short essays, multimodal projects, a group project, and a presentation.
Prerequisites and Notes: ENG 1105 or concurrent enrollment in ENG 1105.
English 2760 Section 001 CRN 91527
Angela Vietto
Introduction to Professional Writing 3:30-4:45 pm TR
Introduction to the principles and practices of writing in professional settings. Students will complete case-based and/or client-based projects in multiple genres and media. This course will also address ethical communication, document design, intercultural/global communication, collaboration, basic copyediting, and oral presentation.
English 2901 Section 001 CRN 91233
Angela Vietto
Structure of English 11:00 am-12:15 pm TR
Language is one key to empowerment. In this introduction to the English language, we will explore the analytic approaches to language that can help prepare us to use language effectively to achieve goals of many kinds. Our study of the grammar of the English language is meant to help you think critically about language-related social issues and to apply an understanding of English grammar to a variety of practical uses, including your own writing in a variety of settings, teaching at a variety of levels, editing, and other language-related work. There will be several tests throughout the semester, a final exam, and a short research project.
English 2901 Section 003 CRN 90334
Jad Smith
Structure of English 12:30-1:45 pm TR
This course is an introduction to the grammar of English. It is designed to help you learn to describe and analyze the structure of sentences in English and, as such, focuses primarily on syntax. However, phonology (pronunciation), morphology (word forms), and semantics (meaning) will also come up from time to time. Although we will consider grammar from both traditional and modern perspectives, we will take a rhetorical rather than rules-based approach. In other words, we will treat grammar as a tool for reflecting on possible stylistic choices, not as a set of inflexible rules. Ideally, this course will heighten your understanding of the complexity of the English language and help you develop strategies for communicating clearly and effectively in speech and writing.
English 2901 Section 600 CRN96789
Terri Fredrick
Structure of English Online
In this class students will analyze the rules that govern the English grammatical system. They will develop a deeper understanding of the systematic nature of language. By the end of the course they will be able to comprehend the major differences between traditional, structural, and transformational approaches to grammar, identify sentence patterns and their expansions, and understand verb tense, aspect, voice, and modality. There will be several tests throughout the semester, a final exam, and two short research projects.
English 2950 Section 600 CRN 96728
Bobby Martinez
Transatlantic Literary History: Culture, Literacies, and Technologies I Online
In this course we will examine some of the main events in the development of literature and language, its conception, production, and reception. More than simply an introduction to the key cultural movements and genres in British and American literary history, this course will ask you not just to accept but also to think critically about literary history and tradition. In addition to familiarizing you with the history of orality, literacy, and print technology in textual production from the Anglo-Saxon period to the beginning of the 18th century, this core course of the English major will prepare you to enter your concentration with a foundation in critical issues surrounding the lives and afterlives of texts, genres, and traditions. Specifically, in this course we will think about how the use of language changes our sense of self, our sense of others, and our consciousness altogether.
English 3001 Section 600 CRN 95571
Bobby Martinez
Advanced CompositionOnline
Advanced study and practice of writing in public, professional, and discipline-specific genres.
English 3001 Section 601 CRN 96454
Tim Engles
Advanced Composition Online
This course will improve your writing skills as you gather your forces toward a career in a professional work environment. Nearly all professional fields include more writing tasks than those entering them usually realize, and the quality of a worker's writing greatly affects interactions with colleagues and supervisors. In addition to getting your skills up to speed for specific forms of professional writing, this course will help you anticipate key features of your future workplace, including those related to race, class, gender, and sexuality.
English 3008 Section 600 CRN 96914
Robin Murray
Digital Writing and Multimodal Texts Online
Digital Writing and Multimodal Texts, will address digital writing and multimodal theory and production through the lens of nonfiction literary, film and media texts. The course will also engage the history of digital and multimodal literacy.
Themes: Law & Social Justice; Genre, Form, & Poetics; Science & the Environment; and Media, Technology, & Popular Culture
English 3009G Section 600 CRN 96909
Chris Wixson
Myth and CultureOnline
Even the observant animals are aware That we’re not very happily home here In this --- our interpreted world.
--Rainer Maria Rilke
This course explores the ways in which myth and myth-making across cultures relate to issues of identity, desire, language, epistemology, and violence. Requirements include short papers, critical essays, dedicated participation in discussion, a midterm, and a final exam.
Themes: Identity & Culture; Genre, Form & Poetics
English 3062 Section 600 CRN 96729
Colleen Abel
Intermediate Poetry Writing Online
Poetry readership is on the rise, as more and more people turn to poems to provide solace, or to reflect their feelings in our uncertain times. This course will focus on the writing and revising of poems at an intermediate level, with an emphasis on building vocabulary and learning the wide range of moves that poems can make. Using some of the best collections of poems from the past few decades as our guide, we’ll craft and revise poems that showcase each student’s individual voice. Through workshops, students will end the course with a complete chapbook of poetry.
Prerequisites and Notes: ENG 2000 or equivalent.
English 3063 Section 600 CRN 96944
Woody Skinner
Intermediate Fiction Writing Online
This course will provide participants with an overview of the styles and techniques of contemporary fiction while also offering a venue for student work. We will begin the semester by analyzing anthologized stories, focusing on different elements of craft each week. Then we’ll dedicate the second half of the semester to workshop—we’ll critique student work, in other words, using the craft concepts covered earlier in the term.
Prerequisites and Notes: ENG 2000 or equivalent.
English 3300 Section 600 CRN96741
Bobby Martinez
Seminar in English Studies--Masculinity in Literature and Film Online
This section of English 3300 (3 credits) will focus on the theme of masculinity as represented through fiction and film. Following the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School in Florida, Michael Black penned an essay in the New York Times and started a viral discussion about the lack of conversation surrounding how boys grow into men and the sometimes confusing and dangerous expectations of masculinity they inherit. In this course we will examine this question of masculinity and identity, particularly as it relates to differing cultural attitudes. We will study a variety of topics including African-American masculinity, transgender identity, and the cultural roots and formation of heteronormative formations of male identity. Text selection will include works dealing with superheroes/superhero culture, film noir/crime fiction, and some YA fiction. Students will complete a variety of writing and presentation projects for both professional and popular audiences.
Themes: Identity & Culture; Genre, Form, & Poetics; Education & Society; and Media, Technology, & Popular Culture
Prerequisite: ENG 2205 or equivalent.
English 3401 Section 600 CRN 96994
Elizabeth Tacke
Methods of Teaching Composition in the Secondary School Online
Approaches to the teaching of composition in junior and senior high school. Includes 5 hours of on-site pre-clinical experience.
Prerequisites & Notes: ENG 2901 and SED 2000. EDP 3331 and SED 3330; for ISEP students, SED 3000 and 3100; for Middle Level Education majors, MLE 3110. University Approval to Teacher Education is required prior to taking this course.
English 3405 Section 001 CRN 95580
Charlotte England
Children's Literature 2:00-3:15 pm TR
Children’s Literature is not just good fun, it is complicated, multilayered, and often thought provoking. This class will examine texts appropriated by or produced for young readers with a view to understanding how they have been shaped by tradition, history and changing adult assumptions about what children need and enjoy. We will read lots of short fiction, a few chapter books aimed at the under 12’s, a bit of poetry and a selection of picture books as we explore the rich potential of this remarkable literature.
English 3504 Section 600 CRN95582
Robin Murray
Film and Literature Online
This section of ENG 3504 will explore literature written by and films directed by American Indians. American Indian cinema and literature draw on a devastating history of genocide and forced assimilation. Because of this, much of the literature and cinema rests on the idea of adapting horrific environments into homes. Although westerns with American Indians at the center or on their edges do construct American Indians as either savage or noble “others,” the literary works and films also (and maybe more importantly) demonstrate how effectively American Indians have adapted, and adapted to, what white settlers see as an environmental “hell” or something worse.
As the Fort Lowell commander Major Cartwright (Douglass Watson) declares before pursuing Chief Ulzana (Joaquín Martínez) and his war party in Ulzana’s Raid (1972), “You know what General Sheridan said of this country, lieutenant? ... If he owned hell and Arizona, he’d live in hell and rent out Arizona.”
This section of ENG 3504 will begin to explore themes related to “home” in relation to American literature and film.
Themes: Identity & Culture; Genre, Form, & Poetics; and Media, Technology, & Popular Culture
Notes: This course may be repeated once with the permission of the department chairperson.
English3705Section 600 CRN96730
Tim Engles
American Multicultural Literatures--Coming of Age in Multicultural Comics Online
As certain forms of comics have ascended to the lofty-sounding status of "graphic narratives,” many such works also fall into the genres of “multicultural literature” and “coming of age narratives.” We will study those that belong in all three. Our course will begin with a review of the intricacies of comics itself as a “sequential art,” and of methods traditionally deployed by authors of the bildungsroman, or coming of age novel. As we move on to a diverse array of graphic narratives, guiding questions will include: How do the many graphic narratives that tell "coming of age" stories do so differently from narratives confined to printed words? How do authors from diverse backgrounds combine the visual and verbal tracks of comics in ways that draw from, signify on, and otherwise differ from conventional methods? If characters in comics are simplistic representations of people, and stereotypes are too, how do comics artists portray diverse characters in ways that avoid the pitfalls of ethno racial caricature?
English 3803 Section 600 CRN96738
Melissa Caldwell
Renaissance & 17th-Century British Literature--Personal Liberty and Personal Responsibility in Early Modern British Literature Online
When John Donne famously declared that "the new philosophy calls all in doubt" in his 1611 poem The Anatomy of the World, he was lamenting the loss of a universe of comparative certainty, a world in which a person knew their place in the world order. Confronted with the increasingly loud voice of the individual conscience, radical forms of political and religious protest, demands for personal liberties, the complete overhaul of scientific knowledge, the eruption of civil war, and the beheading of a king, writers in the seventeenth century sought to come to terms with the opportunities and consequences brought about by these changes. As you might notice, many of the issues dotting this cultural landscape are not entirely unlike the ones we face today, and we will examine them with an eye to their continued relevance and to understanding the important roles that literature can play during times of unprecedented cultural change. Issues raised by this class will include the nature of gender and sexuality, free will, the relationship of the individual to their government, the relationship between knowledge and civic activism, and the difficulty of ascertaining truth in a world dominated by opinion. Students will be encouraged to develop projects related to their concentration in English studies and/or major field of study.
Themes: Identity & Culture; Law & Social Justice; Genre, Form, & Poetics; Education & Society; and Science & the Environment
If you think of the Victorian era as being staid and prim, think again. In this seminar-style course we will focus on the emergence of Sensation Fiction, the enormously popular genre that took nineteenth-century British and American readers by storm. Sensation novels wove thoroughly modern technologies like the telegraph and train travel into narratives that probed long-held secrets hiding beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary domestic life—secrets like bigamy, insanity, illegitimacy and murder. We will read the first and best-known sensation novels—Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1860), Ellen Wood’s East Lynne (1861) and Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), while examining the literary, scientific and social intersections that made these stories so fascinating and so dangerous.
“[T]he Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy.” Gloria Anzaldúa, “Preface,” Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.
ENG 3903 will explore the power of languages to break down barriers and enable resistance. In particular, we will study texts that explore the experiences of those who live on or cross over borders: im/migrants and refugees; queer, trans, and nonbinary persons; people with disabilities; and those who live or work on the margins of dominant society. ENG 3903B is an elective in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minor. 50% or more of the course materials in this section will be by authors who identify as Chicana, Latina, Latin American, or Caribbean; therefore, this section will also count as an elective toward the Latin American Studies minor.
English 4060 Section 001 CRN 93965
Angela Vietto
English Studies Career Development 12:00-12:50 pm M
This course is designed to prepare English majors and Professional Writing minors for the job market and/or for graduate school applications. In this course, you will research job openings and professional organizations, participate in discussions with professional guest speakers, analyze your own professional skills and abilities, and read course materials related to career development. As part of the class, you will create your final resume, a cover letter template, a print portfolio, and a professional website or digital portfolio.
English 4060 Section 600 CRN 96638
Terri Fredrick
English Studies Career Development Online
This course is designed to prepare English majors for the job market and/or for graduate school applications. In this course, you will research job openings and professional organizations, participate in discussions with professional guest speakers, analyze your own professional skills and abilities, and read course materials related to career development. As part of the class, you will create your final resume, a cover letter template, a print portfolio, and a professional website or online portfolio.
English 4275 Section 001 CRN 94048
Terri Fredrick
Internship in Professional Writing
Students must meet with the Internship Coordinator (Dr. Fredrick) to arrange an internship placement before registering for ENG 4275.
A community-based experience featuring practical application of skills developed in the English curriculum, the Internship is open to any student who has taken ENG 2760 or ENG 3005. To the extent possible, placement is matched to career goals with the expectation that students might approach graduation and the job search with writing/editing portfolios to show potential employers. Recent English interns have worked as writers or editors for nonprofit organizations, small businesses, corporations, libraries, local government offices.
English 4275 is a four-hour course offered on a credit/no credit basis. In addition to work created as part of the internship, students will engage in reflective writing about the internship and organizational culture. The coordinator and site-supervisors cooperate in evaluation. Students who have taken English 4275 previously may repeat it again as an elective; students who repeat the course will be placed at a different internship site.
English 4742 Section 600 CRN 96739
Melissa Ames
Studies in Genre--Vampires, and Zombies, and Fear--Oh My!: How Trends in Horror Sub-Genres Respond to Societal Concerns Online
Scholars have long discussed the ways in which horror narratives embody and reflect on societal fears about a range of issues: race, gender, sexuality, disease, terrorism, capitalism, and more. Therefore, studying trends in horror sub-genres can provide great insight into the cultural climate that produced them. This course analyzes vampire and zombie narratives across genre and media attending to the social commentary contained within these fictional stories. From novels, films, and graphic novels to television, video games, and choose-your-own-adventures books, students will reflect on how these supernatural figures are much more than just narrative devices meant to trigger emotional responses. Through a series of presentations and projects (with options ranging from academic research papers to creative writing pieces), students will take a historical stroll through time looking at the evolution of these two horror sub-genres, focusing most heavily on their increasing popularity and proliferation in the 21st century.
Themes: Genre, Form & Poetics; Education & Society; and Media, Technology, & Popular Culture
Prerequisites and Notes: ENG 2205. This course may be repeated once with the permission of the department chairperson.
CLASSES NUMBERED 4750 THROUGH 4999 - THESE CLASSES ARE OPEN TO JUNIORS, SENIORS, AND GRADUATE STUDENTS. GRADUATE STUDENTS ARE LIMITED TO TWELVE HOURS OF COURSEWORK IN THIS CATEGORY.
English 4750 Section 600 CRN96953
Chris Wixson
Studies in African-American Literature--Legacy and Contemporary African-American Drama Online
This course explores the work of three generations of contemporary African-American playwrights through the lens of “legacy” --- specifically, plays that take the past as their setting and pose urgent questions about what we inherit, how we carry it, and what we do with it.
Much time will be devoted to components of two epic play cycles. August Wilson ambitiously chronicled his vision of African-American experience in the twentieth-century by crafting a play set in each of its decades while Suzan-Lori Parks is currently at work on her own nine-part saga, inspired by Homer’s The Odyssey and stretching from the Civil War to the present day. We will also engage with other acclaimed current playwrights (including Jackie Sibblies Drury, Katori Hall, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and Dominique Morisseau) and some non-dramatic texts by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Spike Lee, and Toni Morrison. All of these writers ask us to look back, look around, and look ahead and to ponder seriously what binds us together and what keeps us apart.
Our primary task will be to read (and, whenever possible, see/hear) these plays collaboratively and meaningfully --- living in the language together and responding to the choices made by these brilliant storytellers. We will be particularly attentive to the ways in which the plays speak to one another in dialogue about notions of “history,” “culture,” and collective/personal identity. Requirements include dedicated participation in discussion and both scholarly and creative projects.
Themes: Identity & Culture; Law & Social Justice; Genre, Form, & Poetics
English 4760 Section 600 CRN 94049
Donna Binns
Special Topics in Professional Writing Online
This course involves focused study of professional writing, designed to enhance understanding of workplace writing and provide experience in producing it. The topic will vary semester to semester. For this semester, our topic will be Writing for and about Health Organizations. Material covered will include revising medical forms; composing proposals related to health concerns; advocating for/as patients; and health-related grant writing. This course may be repeated once for credit.
Learning Objectives (connections to EIU learning objectives in parentheses):Use effective professional communication strategies to create accessible materials and high-quality projects (CT 1/ SL 2–3, 7/ RC 1–2, 4/ Graduate: 3–4)
Demonstrate understanding of principles of and research on professional communication and accessibility (CT /QR 4–5 /Graduate: 1)
Use communication and collaboration strategies to solve hypothetical and real workplace problems (i.e., critical thinking and problem solving) (CT/WR/SL/Graduate: 2–3)
Adapt general professional communication principles (related to content, organization, tone, and design) to specific audiences, purposes, and contexts (CT/WR/SL/RC /Graduate: 3)
Use revision and editing to improve your own and others’ writing (WR/Graduate: 3)
English 4761/4761Z Section 600 CRN 96826/96825
Woody Skinner
Advanced Nonfiction Writing Online
This advanced workshop is designed to deepen student knowledge of narrative craft while also encouraging participants to explore a variety of contemporary subjects, styles, forms, and genres. Our workshop conversations will draw on a diverse range of nonfiction pieces and craft readings, providing students with strategies for revision and publication.
Prerequisites and Notes: ENG 3061 or, with permission of Department Chairperson, ENG 3062, 3063, or 3064. May be repeated once with permission of the Department Chairperson.
English 4763 Section 600 CRN96459
Bess Kosinec (Winter)
Advanced Fiction Writing Online
This course builds on the concepts of writer’s craft introduced in Intermediate Fiction. It challenges writers to both workshop their own fiction intensively and approach the published work of contemporary authors with an eye to how those authors construct their writerly fascinations—voice, subject matter, the interplay of the personal and the fictional, and the little tics that make fiction vital, human, and necessary—and sustain them over the course of a book or body of work. Participants will read and discuss several short story collections in their entirety, and workshop multiple short stories of their own. By the end of the course, they will have developed a greater awareness of their own writerly fascinations, more familiarity with advanced workshop and revision strategies, and an increased ability to approach contemporary published work critically, like a writer.
Prerequisites and Notes: ENG 3061 or, with permission of Department Chairperson, ENG 3062, 3063, or 3064. May be repeated once with permission of the Department Chairperson.
English 4765 Section 600 CRN 96740
Colleen Abel
Professional Editing Online
Advanced practice and theory in professional editing, beginning with proofreading and copyediting then advancing to comprehensive editing for style, organization, content, and design. Focus on working effectively with writers, publishers, and audiences. Discussion of the production process and the role of technology in editing and information design. Course will also address ethics and liability in editing, editing in global contexts, and editing for accessibility.
English 4903 Section 600 CRN96541
Donna Binns
Young Adult Literature Online
We will explore the range of literary works written or marketed as "Young Adult" (YA), for a readership usually defined as 12-18-year old young people. Shared and self-selected readings include literature in a variety of formats, forms, and genres from a variety of perspectives.
Reading, online discussion, and writing assignments will require critical analysis of the literary features of these books and invite discussion of the craftsmanship and rhetorical strategies of the authors, artists, and publishers who produce and market them. We will also explore the range of criteria professionals use to evaluate books for young adults, including reader appeal, pedagogical usefulness, and cultural authority. This focus on the merits of individual books will be complemented by a broader consideration of diversity and inclusion in young adult literature.
By the end of this course, you should have a working knowledge of the resources available to the scholars and professionals who work with Young Adult Literature. You should also do some important thinking about young adult readers, literature, and genres.
Film 2759G Section 600 CRN 94806
Robin Murray
History of Cinema Online
Film 2759G offers a comprehensive yet selective overview of the history of cinema, integrating the basic tools for analyzing film as art. It will examine how the uses of camera, editing, lighting, sound, and acting contribute to the construction of meaning for audiences, as well as consider how meaning is filtered through various cultural contexts.
GRADUATE SEMINARS
English 5000 Section 600 CRN 95165 Online
English 5000Z Section 600 CRN96460 Online
English 5000 Section 001 CRN90361 7:00-9:30 pm M
Marjorie Worthington
Introduction to Methods and Issues in English Studies
An introduction to critical approaches, research methods, and current issues in English studies. Required in first year of enrollment.
English 5004 Section 600 CRN 96542
Jad Smith
Studies in Restoration and 18th-Century British Literature--Literature and Visual Culture in the Long 18th-Century Online
Encompassing a wide range of cultural forms from illustrated street ballads to stage spectacle, Restoration and eighteenth-century visual culture is a rich counterpart to the literature of the period. Approaches to the long eighteenth century emphasizing visual culture largely grew out of cultural studies, a field of study that according to Paul Gilroy, “directed scholarly attention toward areas hardly taken seriously elsewhere as objects of sustained academic interest.” Practitioners of cultural studies tend to break down the high and low art distinction, and to look at how individual texts emerge and circulate within larger historical networks of production and consumption. Our work in the course will follow this pattern, for instance, approaching Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave alongside illustrated travel literature, John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera alongside William Hogarth’s paintings and engravings, and William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience alongside illustrated broadside hymns, manuals, and subscription tickets related to the charity school movement.
English 5007 Section 001 CRN 91407
Tim Taylor
Composition Pedagogies 3:30-6:00 pm M
This graduate seminar focuses on theories and pedagogies important to students interested in teaching writing at the middle school, high school, and college level. Students will explore diverse composition pedagogies, be introduced to the theoretical influences that have shaped the teaching of writing, and learn how knowledge gets made in Rhetoric-Composition. Since this is an inquiry-based seminar, active and constructive class participation is key.
The seminar will consist of these activities and assignments:
Discussion in class or via discussion board posts
Group work
Work as a discussion leader for selected articles (ftf)
Reaction memoranda in response to reading assignments (ftf)
Lesson plans (online)
Two larger writing assignments: a synthesis paper and a seminar project.
This graduate seminar focuses on theories and pedagogies of teaching college writing. Students will explore diverse composition pedagogies, be introduced to various theoretical influences that have shaped the teaching of college writing, and learn about the history of composition/rhetoric as a discipline.
English 5025 Section 600 CRN 96552
Bess Kosinec (Winter)
Creative Writing Professional Development--Joining the Lit Community Online
Being a writer is all about the writing—but, when you’re not writing, there are myriad ways to engage with local, national, and international writing communities.
In this hands-on class, students will learn about the ins-and-outs of publishing and managing a literary journal by completing a directed project with the Bluestem editorial team. They will also deepen their knowledge of the “lit community” and the concept of “good literary citizenship,” and explore possibilities for publication, as well as learn about further graduate study in creative writing, working toward developing both a plan for their next steps and a strong statement of purpose.
English5742/5742Z Section 600 CRN96543/96657
Randy Beebe
Studies in Genre for Writers and Teachers: Un/Reliable--Narrative Discourse & Form in YA Fiction
Online (8 weeks-8/24 to 10/14)
In this 8-week seminar, we will study the always-interesting but vexing problem of unreliable narration in YA fiction. While unreliable narration is hardly new, it’s going through a renaissance of sorts in current YA fiction to the extent that unreliability, in a variety of forms, is almost the default mode. As one writer recently acknowledged, “I have a thing for unreliable narrators. I’m suspicious of polarities, of the black and white, and I tend to gravitate toward the grey area where, ironically, not-completely-trustworthy characters reside.”
As we discuss the history and various discursive forms and features of unreliable narration, we will use the rise of unreliability as an opportunity to take a careful look into the larger field of narrative studies, tracing how theorists have tried to explain unreliability as well as how some expressions of unreliability challenge or even break such theories. In our study, we will also take a close look at what disability studies offers to narrative theory and to the concept of unreliability. While we will be reading several works together, students will be encouraged to self-select other YA titles to inform individual writing assignments and a group project.
A final project is also required (due in week 9), which can be a critical/theoretical, pedagogical, or creative project. Please note: the reading list and tentative schedule will be available to students before the August 24th start date to help you plan and prepare.
English 5960 Section 001 CRN 94145
Terri Fredrick
Internship in Professional Writing
Students must meet with the Internship Coordinator (Dr. Fredrick) to arrange an internship placement before registering for ENG 5960.
A community-based experience featuring practical application of skills developed in the English curriculum, to the extent possible, placement is matched to career goals with the expectation that students might approach graduation and the job search with writing/editing portfolios to show potential employers. Recent English interns have worked as writers or editors for nonprofit organization, small businesses, corporations, libraries, and local government offices.
English 5960 is a three-hour course offered on a credit/no credit basis. Internship work is part time (an average of 10 hours per week over a 15-week semester) and can be completed while enrolled in other courses and/or while holding a graduate assistantship. In addition to work created as part of the internship, students will engage in reflective writing about the internship and organizational culture. The coordinator and site-supervisors cooperate in evaluation.
Notes
ENG 1002G is a prerequisite for 2000-level courses and above.
All courses designated with a G (for example, ENG 1009G) fulfill requirements in the EIU General Education Program.
Concurrent or prior registration in ENG 2205 is strongly recommended for majors in all courses at the 2000-level and above.
