Graduate Courses Fall 2012 (Part 1)

Registration is just around the corner, fellow graduate students. It's time to choose your classes, but which ones are you going to take? A few weeks ago, the English Department hosted a roundtable discussion with many of the professors teaching in the fall. If you were not able to attend, fear not. I am here to fill you in on all the details you missed.

Read on to find out about a few of the courses being taught this fall. I will be publishing a follow-up post on the Final Four (ha!) later this week. So watch your Google Reader or your News Feed for the next post.

Professor Lee Ann Brown is teaching a Workshop in Poetry and Poetics. The course number is 878, and the registration number 76117. The primary focus of the class will be to write your own poetry, but there will also be a focus on reading 20th Century and modern writing by other poets. Some of the texts you will be working with are The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard and I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women.

from Amazon.com

from Amazon.com

We will be thinking on biographies, how a poet's work is manifested. How does the biographic influence the creative? Also, how do we negotiate the public vs. the private space of the poet? There will also be a focus on reading aloud, poetry in performance, and ear training.

Another highlight of the course will be a public reading on April 18 by Joe Brainard.

Dr. Nicole Rice will be teaching a course on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The course number is 230, and the registration number is 76116. This course is designed as an introduction to Chaucer. We will be reading a selection of the tales in detail and considering the relationships between them as well as between Chaucer and his historical circumstance. Other texts will be included, both primary and secondary. Some issues we will be considering in the texts are marriage, gender and sexual roles. We will also be learning to read and speak Middle English. There will be weekly reading responses (to a different tale each week), a short paper, and a final long paper at the end of the semester.

Dr. Melissa Mowry is teaching Milton and the English Civil War. The course number is 350, and the registration number is 76099. This course will be putting Milton into conversation with his contemporaries. We will read essays, pamphlets, and pieces by Cromwell. In the Post-Restoration, we will question why Milton has cultivated the iconic reputation as the Poet of the Republic. We will look at Shannon Miller's Engendering the Fall. There will also be time spent doing archival work in electronic databases.