Graduate Course Descriptions

Instructor: Dr. Dan Lochman

Description: This course introduces graduate-level scholarly resources, methods, and theories pertinent to the study of literature, and it considers professional opportunities and responsibilities related to English studies.

This course examines scholarly resources, methods, and theories by focusing on literary works by the early 17^th-century writer, Lady Mary Wroth, especially her innovative prose romance – the first in English to be composed by a woman – The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania (1623). This work, together with her closet drama Love’s Victory (the earliest extant play in English composed by a woman) and her poetry, established Wroth as an important, prolific, and controversial person and writer. Famously, she parodied and put down an aristocratic critic of her work, and she gave birth to and nurtured two illegitimate children by her first cousin. Her literary works are sensually bold and psychologically probing from women’s point of view, and they are rich sources for original research in textual and critical scholarship. They raise questions pertinent to many theoretical approaches, ranging from textual, formal or structural to psychological, as well as to cultural studies concerning identity, gender, class, colonialism, ecocriticism, cognition / affect, literary reception, and more. We will also view and review a 2022 performance with commentary of Love’s Victory, recorded last fall in the Great Hall of the Sidney estate, Penshurst, and available at https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/shakespeare-and-his-sisters/loves-victory-2022/).

Texts (tenative):

MLA Handbook, 9th edition (MLA, 2021)

Rob Pope, Studying English Language and Literature (Routledge, 2012)

Marta Straznicky and Sara Mueller, eds., Mary Wroth, Jane Cavendish, and Elizabeth Brackley: Women’s Household Drama: Loves Victorie, A Pastorall, and The concealed Fansyes (ACMRS, 2018)

Mary Wroth, The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, Abridged, ed., Mary Ellen Lamb (ACMRS, 2011)

___. Pamphilia to Amphilanthus in Manuscript and Print, ed. Ilon Bell (Iter Press, 2017)

Format: Entirely online. 

Evaluation:

• Report on a critical essay or cultural background (10%)
• Tentative thesis and prospectus for close-reading project. (5% )
• Close reading / analytic paper (1500-2000 words (25%)
• Tentative thesis and prospectus for research project (5%) 
•  Proposal and annotated bibliography (15%)
• Documented paper (2500-3000 words) (30%)
• Final examination: take-home essay (10%)

Spring Office Hours: FH 218, 10-11 TR; FH 358, 1-3:30 MW. 2-4:30 TR

Phone: 512-245-2163 (English department)

Email: dl02@txstate.edu

Instructor: Dr. Kate McClancy

Description: This course sneaks into the hidden world of fictional spies, moles, and sleeper agents, exploring the ways in which these liminal figures reveal secrets of governments, politics, and cultures.  In the process, we will examine the differences among representations of spies in various media, from literature, to film, to comics, to television, considering the way different methods of transmission of the same stories of deviousness and deviancy impact those narratives.  Thus spying will be the vector for our own investigation into the underlying structures of media.

Texts (tenative):

Films may include The Third Man, No Way Out, Little Nikita, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, From Russia With Love, The Ipcress File, Kingsman: The Secret Service, North By Northwest, The Bourne Identity, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Bridge of Spies, The Manchurian Candidate, Atomic Blonde, Three Days of the Condor, Zero Dark Thirty, The Woman on Pier 13. 

Television may include Alias, La Femme Nikita, The Americans, Scarecrow and Mrs. King. 

Comics may include Queen and Country, Velvet, The Coldest City, Sleeper.

Evaluation: Discussion lead, informal responses, papers.

Office: M24

Phone: 512-245-3777

Email: kmcclancy@txstate.edu

Instructor: Dr. Christopher Dayley

Description: Introduction to technical communication is a graduate level course meant to give students a broad understanding of the field of technical communication as both an academic and a professional discipline.

Course Objectives:

•  Learn the history of technical and professional communication
• Acquire practical technical communication skills
• Use basic research methods
• Apply theoretical concepts related to technical and professional communication

Books: Students are not required to buy a textbook for this course. We will use an online, open access textbook as well as peer reviewed articles.

Evaluation:

• Class Discussions: 25%
• Book Criticism Discussion: 5% Points
• Personal Document Revision: 20% Points
• Instruction Manual: 20%
• Technology Presentation: 30%

Email: c_d470@txstate.edu

Instructor: Amanda Scott

Description: This course will provide a combination of theoretical background and practical, hands-on experience in the field of literary magazine editing and publishing. As an editorial staff, students will work together to produce Porter House Review, Texas State University’s graduate literary journal. Duties involved in the production of the journal include soliciting and evaluating submissions, contributing original content, editing and proofreading, research, budget management, web design, public relations, and more.

During the course of the semester, students will:

• Learn about key aspects of contemporary literary magazine publishing—its history, production, the editorial process, and more.
• Produce Porter House Review, fulfilling the following duties: reading, tracking, and responding professionally to submissions of literary fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, and contributing original content, including interviews, reviews, and blog content.
• Develop professional skills in literary and digital publishing, and prepare for possible employment in publishing or arts administration.
• Contribute to the overall achievement of the course mission and goals through self-directed research and development projects.

Texts: TBD

Evaluation:

• Participation & Attendance (10%)
• Evaluation of Submissions (15%)
• Contribution of Original Content (20%)
• Weekly Topics & Discussion (15%)
• Editorial Apprenticeship/Special Projects (20%)
• End-of-Semester Project (20%)

Office: LAMP 309H

Phone: (512) 245-6220

E-Mail: aes126@txstate.edu

Instructor: Williams Jensen

Description: This course provides students the opportunity to write, select, and edit material for publication. Students will work as part of an editorial team on all stages of the publication process. They will learn how to write and revise book reviews of publishable quality. They will correspond with authors, evaluate submissions, and learn the daily operations of two print journals:

Texas Books in Review, which monitors the literary production of books from or about Texas, and Southwestern American Literature, which showcases contemporary writing and scholarship concerning the Greater Southwest. This course also offers practical experience working with desktop publishing software (Adobe InDesign/Photoshop).

Goals: Students will read and vote on submissions to Southwestern American Literature, line edit selected works, and write one book review. With hands on experience, the students will gain a deeper understanding of what is required to work for a publication.

Texts: No books are required, but reading assignments will be handed out in class or posted on CANVAS.

Format: Primarily discussion, with brief various projects.

Evaluation: This is a pass/fail course

For More Information: wj13@txstate.edu

Office: Brazos 220

Instructor: Dr. Pinfan Zhu

Description: Numerous software applications and programs are created every year. Our daily life and workplace life are inseparable from using these software tools for different purposes. Thus, writing software documentation becomes one of the important skills a technical writer must command in his/her professional career. English 5314 is just such a course that develops students’ expertise in the management and production of writing for both print and online media that supports the efficient and effective use of software in its intended environment.  Major genres include software and hardware manuals such as tutorials, procedures, and reference.  Students will also learn how to manage projects, how to address issues of user analysis, text design, page design, task-oriented manuals, and translation management. The class is basically online but will have the first class for the online course orientation. Since the class is mainly online, you will have to use my Canvass teaching website.  Most activities will be conducted online, so students need to learn how to use some online tools for their online learning and bring their research, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills into full play. Details will be found in the syllabus. Online office hours will be provided.

Books: Writing Software Documentation: A Task-oriented Approach, 2nd ed. by Thomas T. Barker. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2003. ISBN 1: 0-321-10328-9

Evaluation:

• 10%   Exercises
• 20%   Chapter quizzes
• 30%   3 short projects: tutorials, procedures and references.
• 10%   Usability design and implementation report
• 30%   Proposal for your semester project and the Semester project 

Office: M18, FL Hall

Phone: (512) 245- 3013

Email: pz10@txstate.edu

Instructor: Dr. Miriam Williams

Description: The purpose of this course is to introduce you to the proposal genre.  Students in this course will review, analyze, write, design, and present a variety of workplace and community-focused proposals. Students will learn to write, design, and deliver pitch decks, technology innovation proposals, grant proposals, and public policy proposals.

Course Objectives: The objectives for this course include acquainting students with the various types of proposals. For each type of proposal, students will learn 1) audience analysis and persuasion, 2) format and conventions, and 3) effective design and delivery.

Books: No textbook is required. Students will read peer-reviewed journal articles, which are available online via the Texas State Library databases. Students will also read assigned case studies that are available online.

Evaluation:

Case Study and Reading Responses: 20%

Project 1: Public Policy Proposal: 20%

Project 2: Technology Innovation Proposal: 20%

Project 3: Mini-Grant Proposal:20%

Project 4: Startup Pitch Deck: 20%

Email: mfw@txstate.edu

Instructor: Dr. Aimee Roundtree

Description: For more information, contact Dr. Roundtree at akr@txstate.edu

Instructor: Dr. Nancy Wilson

Description: English 5316 will introduce students to a variety of pedagogical frameworks and strategies for teaching composition. Students will learn best pedagogical practices for teaching writing, practices that inform teaching portfolio.

Books (all available online for free):

• Adler-Kassner, Linda, et al. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. Utah State UP, 2015. https://bit.ly/40F8yzS
• Barajas, E.Domínguez. “Crafting a Composition Pedagogy with Latino Students in Mind.” Composition Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, Oct. 2017, pp. 216–18. 
• Barkley, Elizabeth F., and Claire Howell Major. Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty. Second edition., Jossey-Bass, 2020.  https://bit.ly/3VmDBNH
• Bird, Barbara, et al. Next Steps: New Directions for/in Writing about Writing. Utah State UP, 2019. https://bit.ly/3XewR4U
• hooks, bell. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, Taylor & Francis Group, 2003. https://bit.ly/3I8pGXr
• Horner, Bruce, et al. Cross-Language Relations in Composition. Southern Illinois UP, 2010. https://bit.ly/3YBWwpi
• Palmeri, Jason. Remixing Composition: A History of Multimodal Writing Pedagogy. Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. https://bit.ly/40DOuhj
• Yancey, Kathleen Blake, et al. Writing across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing. Utah State UP, 2014. https://bit.ly/3HOOKRY

Evaluation: Weekly short papers and class presentations, 45%; teaching portfolio (sample composition syllabus, lesson plans, writing assignments, and teaching philosophy), drafts and final copy: 55%.

Office: FH 360

Phone: 512.245.5273

Email: nw05@txstate.edu

Instructor: Dr. Rebecca Jackson

Description: Auto/ethno/graphy—or self/culture/writing—is both an approach to qualitative research (methodology) and a product of qualitative research (the autoethnographic text). Definitions of autoethnography abound, but one of the clearest and most inclusive is this one from Stacy Holman Jones, Tony Adams, and Carolyn Ellis: autoethnography is research, writing, and method that “use[s] personal experience to examine and/or critique cultural experience” (22). Of course all genres of personal writing (autobiography and memoir, for example) examine culture by default. Talking about self IS talking about culture. Autoethnography distinguishes itself from these other genres in its systematic and rigorous critique of culture and cultural practices, its contribution to existing research, the value it places on “vulnerability with purpose,” and its commitment to “reciprocal relationships” with audiences that compel action in/on the world (22).

For rhetoric and writing folks, autoethnography has clear connections to well-known disciplinary conversations about personal narrative, as well as to the narrative turn in general and social justice efforts in particular. Suresh Canagarajah, writing about the emancipatory potential of autoethnography, observes that writing autoethnography “enables marginalized communities to publish their own culture and experiences in their own voices, resisting the knowledge constructed about them” (115). Victor Villanueva theorizes critical autobiography, more or less synonymous with autoethnography, while others in rhetoric and writing studies examine uses of autoethnography in the writing classroom (Kost, Lowe, & Sweetman 2014; Auten 2016, Damron & Brooks 2017) and as a research method (Noe 2016, Broad 2017).

In this course, we will study and write autoethnographies specific to writing studies: using personal narratives of literacy, writing, reading, teaching, learning, and/or representation to interrogate cultural narratives that privilege particular groups, experiences, and ways of being and knowing, while ignoring others.

Books:

Required texts will include the following:

• Chang, Heewon. Autoethnography as Method. Routledge, 2009.
• Jackson, Rebecca and Jackie Grutsch McKinney. Self + Culture + Writing: Autoethnography for/as Writing Studies. Logan: Utah State UP, 2021.

Course Goals

By semester’s end, you should be able to

• Sketch, in broad strokes, the history of autoethnography in the human sciences
• Define autoethnography 
• Discuss autoethnography as it is defined, practiced, and theorized in rhetoric and writing studies (or your primary discipline)
• Gather autoethnographic data
• Use data to craft an autoethnography

Format

Small and large group discussion

Evaluation

Student-led discussion, data gathering and analysis projects, writing workshops, final autoethnography

Office: Flowers Hall 245

Email: rj10@txstate.edu

Instructor: Debra Monroe

Description: This is a theory/craft class, a literature class, and a workshop. We first study the history of the genre and essential craft concepts, then read personal essays that exemplify many subgenres: the narrative essay, the lyric essay, the experimental essay, the lightly researched essay, the braided essay. We spend most of the class workshopping essays written by students.  The first round of workshop focuses on segments, not entire essays. Next we workshop full-length essays. Expect to study essays analytically, not casually, analyzing  how structure informs content.

Workshop means first describing the submitted draft’s strengths, its appeals, its emerging shape, its ideal form, and craft features that are helping that draft, only then moving on to craft decisions that not helping it. I run a generative workshop in which students leave with practical advice for revision.

Books: Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: An Anthology, edited by Debra Monroe, published by Kendall Hunt Higher Ed, ISBN # 9781524980092. Available in paper and as an e-book.

Evaluation:

• Writing Exercises/Essay Segments 20%
• A 15-20 minute oral presentation about one of the readings, 20%
• Class participation, not just talking but fostering inclusive group discussion, 20%.
• Essay 20%
• Final Portfolio 20%

Email: dm24@txstate.edu

Instructor: Steve Wilson

Description: US Romanticism asserts the self as the center of human culture and societies.  This attitude serves as the foundation for American cultural achievements, but also its failures, fueling a "renaissance" in the early nineteenth century that would seek to assert a truly unique American perspective in letters.  Among the concerns of these first Romantics were individual rights, woman's rights, the nature of sexual identity, and the value of the natural world. These same concerns would surface again in the 1950s among the writers of the Beat generation, who resisted social conformists who devalued the individual before the needs of security – national and psychological; as well as among environmentalists who read in the 19th-century Transcendentalists a philosophy for the preservation of the wilderness as a necessity for human growth.  In this course we will examine the rise of Romanticism and its resurfacing, its implications and its impacts; in other words, this course will be a primer in the American identity. 

Books: Bremser, Troia; Emerson, Portable Emerson; Thoreau, Portable Thoreau; Melville, Bartleby and Benito Cereno; Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance; di Prima, Memoirs of a Beatnik; Jones, Dutchman; Kerouac, On the Road; Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century; Johnson, Come and Join the Dance.

Evaluation: Several in-class essay examinations, a group oral report, and participation in class discussions.

Office: FH 349

Phone: 512 245 7680

Email: sw13@txstate.edu

Instructor: William Jensen

Description: This course is the first in a two-course sequence leading to a minor in Southwestern Studies, designed to examine the richness and diversity of the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. The course offers a multicultural focus by studying the region’s people, institutions, history, and physical and cultural ecology. An intercultural and interdisciplinary approach increases awareness of and sensitivity to the diversity of ethnic and cultural traditions in the area.  Students will discover what distinguishes the Southwest from other regions of the United States, as well as its similarities, physically and culturally. The images, myths, themes, and perceptions of the region will be examined in light of historical and literary texts.

Books:

• The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (available free online at http://alkek.library.txstate.edu/swwc/cdv/index.html)
• Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 by David Montejano (University of Texas Press, 1987)
• Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy (Vintage International 1992)

Evaluation: One major paper, one midterm, and a final exam. Graduate students must also give a formal fifteen-minute presentation.

Email: wj13@txstate.edu

Instructor: Dr. Susan Morrison

Description: Demonic monsters, greedy dragons, courageous virgin martyrs, obscene onions, and a speaking crucifix -- vastly different threads weave a richly textured tapestry that veils the body of Anglo-Saxon culture. 

We will begin with an introduction to Old English to heighten our appreciation of poetic verse. We will do some translating, but mainly read in translation the texts constituting the culture and literature of Anglo-Saxon England.  We will explore Old English texts, discovering the "multi-cultural" character of a country experiencing numerous influences (Christian, Scandinavian, native Celtic) before the decisive invasion of 1066.  We will read passionate lyrics ("women's songs"), saints' legends, exile poems and heroic epic.  We will also address neglected genres like bestiaries, charms -- now considered a source for understanding women's roles as medical providers -- as well as riddles, both perplexing and bawdy. 

Reading these works taking the historical, cultural and religious contexts into account, we move on to Beowulf. After reading texts directly influencing the Beowulf poet, we will compare several translations of Beowulf: Roy Liuzza’s verse translation in a facing-page edition (Old and Modern English); Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney’s verse translation; Headley’s new “feminist” translation and J. R. R. Tolkien’s newly published prose rendition, along with Bradley’s.

After we read Anglo-Saxon poetry, we will read some 20th/21st century writers who are inspired by the Anglo-Saxon period. These “new Old English” poets and writers have been influenced by the Anglo-Saxon poetic mode and transform Anglo-Saxon themes and structures, creating their own aesthetic.  This section of the course allows students to see how "antiquated" texts have a fertile influence on present literary production.  We will conclude with three works “inspired” by Beowulf: Tolkien [Sellic Spell], Gardner [Grendel], and Morrison [Grendel’s Mother: The Saga of the Wyrd-Wife]. 

For the final project, students may write a traditional research paper, or may create their own poetry or prose, written in the Anglo-Saxon tradition.  This creative element to the course will allow students to express themselves with what they have learned (though students must include an academically detailed and scholarly analysis of their own creative work).  In the end, they, too, will have become "new Old English” writers and poets.

Each text is like a little treasure from Beowulf’s literary hoard.

Books:

REQUIRED

R. M. Liuzza.  Beowulf: Facing Page Translation.  Second Edition. Broadview, 2012.  ISBN: 9781554811137 / 1554811139

Beowulf: A Verse Translation. A Norton Critical Edition. 2^nd Edition. Trans. By Seamus Heaney. Edited by Daniel Donoghue. NYL W. W. Norton & Co., 2002/2019. ISBN-13: 978-0393-93837-1

Bradley, S.A.J., ed.  Anglo-Saxon Poetry.  London:  J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1982.  ISBN-10: 0460875078 ; ISBN-13: 978-0460875073

John Gardner. Grendel. NY: Vintage, 1971/1989.  ISBN-10: 0679723110

ISBN-13: 978-0679723110

Susan Signe Morrison: Grendel’s Mother: The Saga of the Wyrd-Wife. Alresford, England: Top Hat Books, 2015. ISBN 978-1-78535-009-2

And one of the two following:

J. R. R. Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. NY: HarperCollins 2015.  ISBN-10: 000811658X ISBN-13: 978-0008116583.

Maria Dahvana Headley, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. [9780374110031]

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Murray McGillivray, A Gentle Introduction to Old English. Broadview, 2011. ISBN: 9781551118413 / 1551118416

Evaluation:

• 25% final research paper or creative paper with analysis: 3,000 words
• 20% short critical paper (5-7 pages) with oral report
• 10% Grammar and Old English Language Take Home Exam
• 15% comparative translation analysis of Beowulf passage with brief report
• 10% poetry translation and presentation
• 15% class participation and discussion posts on CANVAS
• 5% recite from memory first 11 lines of Beowulf (in Old English)

Office: Flowers Hall M12

Office Phone: 512-245-7669

Email: morrison@txstate.edu

Instructor: Dr. Leah Schwebel

Description: In this summer seminar, we will explore one of the greatest works of Western Literature, Dante’s Divine Comedy, along with some of the more foundational readings of this work. Special attention will be given to the commentary tradition on the Comedy, Dante’s classical and contemporary sources, and to the historical, political, and literary context of the figures that populate Dante’s poetic world.

Tentative Texts:

-The Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso (Oxford) trans. Robert Durling

-Metamorphoses (Indiana UP) trans. Rolfe Humphries

Format: TBA

Evaluation: Presentation, 3 discussion posts, final essay, commentary project

For More Information: las235@txstate.edu

Instructor: Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler

Description: John Milton (1608-1674) is recognized as a world author, known for both his poetry and his political activism. He lived through challenging times that included civil wars and revolution. Scholars of literature have often regarded him as the last major writer of the old order or the first of the new, and Milton scholars (with some notable exceptions) have typically approached his work from a historical perspective. This seminar will continue this tradition with a focus not often seen in recent years: the question of how knowledge of the civil wars (and combat in particular) may inform our understanding of Milton’s work. Key texts will include Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, and The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.

The seminar will include an introduction to working with primary sources of the period and practice in the crafting and writing of professional-quality scholarship.

Books:

The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, ed. William Kerrigan et al. Modern Library, 2007. MLA Handbook, 9^th ed.

Materials: Early English Books Online database (access through Alkek Library)

Evaluation:

• Seminar project          30%
• Proposal                      20%
• Abstract                      15%
• Bibliography               15%
• Review                        10%
• Participation               10%

Office:  243 Flowers Hall (on leave Spring 2023 so please use email)

Phone: 512-245-3727

Email: es10@txstate.edu

Instructor: Dr. James Reeves

Description: In common parlance, “Enlightenment” often refers to an eighteenth-century philosophical movement that rejected tradition and asserted the primacy of individual reason. As Immanuel Kant claimed in his famous essay “What is Enlightenment,” Enlightenment is nothing less than “man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage.” In other words, Enlightenment means growing up, leaving behind childish things, rejecting the myths, beliefs, and politics of Europe’s pre-modern past.

However, Kant’s view of Enlightenment was not universal. Eighteenth-century authors did not advocate a consistent set of intellectual propositions, and debate and argumentation were rampant in the period. As Lynn Festa and Daniel Carey note, numerous variations of Enlightenment emerged throughout the period. There were Catholic Enlightenments, Portestant Enlightenments, regional Enlightenments, national Enlightenments, and so forth. Moreover, Enlightenment was not simply an isolated European affair but was entangled with colonial projects and engagements. Indeed, Enlightenment had “global aspirations,” as Carey and Festa contend.

With this in mind, our course will pose the following questions: What is the relationship between Enlightenment and globalization? How can postcolonial theory nuance eighteenth-century studies’ understanding of Enlightenment? Are Enlightenment ideals redeemable, or are they inextricably bound to colonial ideologies and oppressions? What is the relationship between Enlightenment and secularization? And, finally, is “Enlightenment” a useful lens through which we can view the multifaceted, variegated literary output of eighteenth-century Britain?

Books: Specific texts TBD, but we will read work by 18^th-century authors like Alexander Pope, David Hume, Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Mary Astell, Kant, and more, alongside eighteenth-century scholars and critics, such as Lynn Festa, Felicity Nussbaum, Srinivas Aravamudan, Clifford Siskin, and William Warner.

Evaluation: One 200-word mini paper (10%); two presentations (20% each); a final seminar paper (50%)

Office: FH 212

Email: jreeves@txstate.edu

Instructor: Dr. Julie Weng

Description:This course will study modern and contemporary Irish poetry of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. We will study a range of established and emerging poets, from works of nobel laureates WB Yeats and Seamus Heaney, to bilingual Gaelic poets, to works of immigrant populations who have made Ireland their home and are reconstituting notions of modern Irishness.

Books: TBA

Evaluation: essays, presentations, creative final project option

Office: M08

Email: Julie.weng@txstate.edu

Instructor: Dr. Eric Leake

Description: This course is a historical survey and introduction to rhetorical theory. The course is organized thematically to pose connections between classic and contemporary texts, highlight the relevance of rhetorical history, spotlight key issues, and better balance rhetorical history with current concerns. The driving questions throughout the course will be: what is rhetoric and what does rhetoric do? The course will address those questions by considering how rhetoric has developed in different times and places and how it matters today, particularly in composition, pedagogy, English studies, and public life.

Goals: Students will be able to demonstrate familiarity with key rhetorical figures and concepts, articulate the historical development of rhetoric, perform rhetorical analysis of a variety of texts, map rhetoric’s relationship with other fields of inquiry, and design and complete graduate-level research in a significant rhetorical issue.

Books: Bizzell, Patricia, et al., editors. The Rhetorical Tradition, 3rd edition. Bedford / St. Martins, 2020.

Format: Online reading responses and class discussions

Evaluation: Weekly reading responses, annotated bibliography, seminar paper, research presentation

Email: eleake@txstate.edu

Instructor: Dr. Robert Tally

Description: Fredric Jameson is among the most significant and influential literary critics of the past century, and for nearly half that period he has been unquestionably the leading Marxist critic in the United States. Over the course of his career, Jameson has published a wealth of scholarly criticism and theory, including more than 25 books and many hundreds of essays, on a vast range of subjects. Jameson has written about art, architecture, film, television, economic theory, philosophy, and so on, in addition to his expertise in modern European and world literature; as critic Colin MacCabe has put it, “nothing cultural is alien to him.” A literature professor deeply committee to teaching, Jameson has introduced thousands of students to what at times seemed arcane theories from various linguistic and methodological traditions. (He is, at age 89, teaching a course on “modernism” at Duke University this very semester!) Although his work has always been at the “cutting edge” of contemporary theory, he also maintains a strong connection to older traditions of scholarship, and Jameson thus combines and augments the best practices of the new and the old in cultural critique. In this course, we will study several key works by Jameson, paying particular attention to his writings on postmodernism and on film, while examining what he calls “the poetics of social forms.”

Goals: (1) To become familiar with important works by and ideas of Fredric Jameson; (2) to understand the literary, cultural, social, and historical background of these works and their subjects; and (3) to analyze these works in light of contemporary critical theory and practice.

Required Texts: To be determined, but likely to include such works by Jameson as The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act [9780801492228]; Signatures of the Visible [9780415771610]; Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism [9780822310907]; The Seeds of Time [9780231080590]; Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism [9780822341093]; Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions [9781844675388]; and selected essays.

Recommended: Ian Buchanan, Fredric Jameson: Live Theory [9780826491091]; Clint Burnham, Fredric Jameson and ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ [9781501308345]; Robert T. Tally Jr., Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism [9780745332109]; and Phillip E. Wegner, Periodizing Jameson: Dialectics, the University, and the Desire for Narrative [9780810129818].

Format: Seminar (interactive lecture and discussion).

Evaluation: Based on overall contributions, but roughly distributed as follows: two papers, a final exam, and class participation.

Office: M09

Spring Office Hours: By appointment only.

For More Information: Email Professor Tally at robert.tally@txstate.edu

Instructor: Dr. Katherine Kapurch

Description: What does it mean to be “iconic”? What— or who— becomes an “icon”? What rhetorical functions do icons serve, especially in terms of identity and representation? What structures and institutions participate in the creation of icons? To approach these questions, this course will explore the narrative, semiotic, and rhetorical construction of visual and aural icons in pop culture often associated with (but not limited to) youth.

The course begins with foundational theories of signs in pop culture with particular attention to narrative. During the first month of class, we will consider mermaids as an exemplar, engaging with related texts in literature, film, and music ahead of San Marcos’s mermaid festival in September. Afterwards, we will explore a few more pop icons; students will then develop an individual research plan related to an icon of their choice and share those findings with the class. The last part of the course will be devoted to these projects, whose focus and format can be tailored to each student’s degree, emphasis, and interests.

Books: TBD

Evaluation: Response papers, Individual project

Office: FH 244

Phone: n/a

Email: kk19@txstate.edu

Instructor: Cyrus Cassells

Description: Through examination and discussion of three of the seminal works of American confessional poetry, Robert Lowell’s Life Studies, Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, and Anne Sexton’s Live or Die,we will go on to explore how this always controversial genre has developed since the pioneering literary candor of Lowell, Plath, and Sexton. This course provides greater exposure to the confessional genre through energetic discussion of the work of over a dozen acclaimed poets. We will focus on issues such as truth-telling, self-exposure, shock tactics, wound-sharing, personal liberation, voyeurism, and exhibitionism, as well as examining the traditional aesthetic elements of the confessional texts. Among the many questions to be considered: how much has confessional poetry mirrored the rise of American social phenomena such as talk shows, blogs, reality TV, and shock radio?

Books:

• Life Studies by Robert Lowell
• Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
•  Selected Poems by Anne Sexton
• The Colors of Desire by David Mura
• Collected Poems by Ai
• Ararat by Louise Glück
• Strike Sparks: Selected Poems by Sharon Olds
•  Eva-Mary by Linda McCarriston
• Half-Light: Collected Poems by Frank Bidart
• Vox Angelica by Timothy Liu
• Poems Seven by Alan Dugan
• Crush by Richard Siken
• Stupid Hope by Jason Shinder

Evaluation:

• 10% participation (discussion and class contribution)
• 15% joint presentations with a classmate on a mutually agreed-upon topic 
• 35% mid-term essays 
• 40% research paper

Email: cc37@txstate.edu

Instructor: Thomas Grimes

Description: Some writers believe novels have to be long. They don’t. They have to be interesting. To study short novels, we’ll read thirteen of them. Then you can consider whether a short novel will serve your imagination better than a long one.

Books:

• Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong
• Such Small Hands by Andres Barba
• Snow Country by Yusunari Kawabata
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
• Winter in the Blood by James Welch
• Sula by Toni Morrison          
• The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
• What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell    
• Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez                                                 
• The Employees by Olga Ravn
• Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett      

Evaluation: 50% to lead a discussion about a novel; 50% journal about the novels.

Office: M-25

Phone: 512-245-7690

Email: tg02@txstate.edu