Fall 2002 Graduate Courses
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- 570C/771A: Sixteenth-Century Nondramatic Literature
- 570O/775A: American Literature to Civil War: Exploring the Transatlantic
- 591: Teaching College English I
- 592B: Composition Research and Teaching Research Methods in Composition: Examining Writers' Products, Processes, and Practices
- 593: Bibliography and Research Methods
- 690: Creative Writing Seminar: Poetry
- 777: Doctoral Colloquium
- 780: Special Studies Seminar: Contemporary American Drama
- 791: Professional Issues in Teaching College English
570C/771A: Sixteenth-Century Nondramatic Literature
Instructor: Janis Holm
Description:
In this course, we'll look at selected poetry and prose of sixteenth-century England, focusing on the interrelations of poetry, power, gender, and desire. Additionally, we'll be exploring various technologies now available for teaching and learning.
Course Format:
Multimedia--Internet, video, audiocassette tape, email, print, class meeting, conference, telephone
Texts:
The Literature of Renaissance England, ed. John Hollander and Frank Kermode (New York: Oxford UP, 1973); English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century, by Gary Waller (London: Longman, 1993); course pack, Internet sites as assigned, videos as assigned, audiocassettes as assigned, email discussion
570O/775A: American Literature to Civil War: Exploring the Transatlantic
Instructor: Thomas Scanlan
Description:
In 1921, T.S. Eliot wrote, �In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered.� In the decades that followed, words like "dissociation" and "alienation" came to dominate the way literary and cultural critics thought about modernity. This course will pose a few simple questions. First, is it possible that Eliot was right in locating the beginnings of the modern condition in the seventeenth century? Second, is it possible that he was wrong to see it as an almost exclusively literary and metaphysical phenomenon? What happens when one posits transatlantic travel as one of the essential precursors of modern alienation? With these questions in mind, we will explore the notion of the "transatlantic" from the early colonial period to 1900.
Readings:
We will read a broad range of texts: literary, cultural, theoretical. The writers we will read will include Anne Bradstreet, Roger Williams, Daniel Defoe, Thomas Jefferson, Olaudah Equiano, Benjamin Franklin, Catherine Sedgwick, Margaret Fuller, W.E.B. DuBois, and others.
Assignments:
Weekly discussion board postings, 2 oral presentations, 1 bibliographical assignment, 2 papers.
591: Teaching College English
Instructor: Sherrie Gradin
Description:
This course is required of all entering graduate students who will be teaching. The course is designed to introduce graduate students to the philosophical and practical understandings of the rhetoric and composition program here at Ohio University. The course also supports novice teachers in learning how to teach rhetoric and composition based on current models of rhetorical and composition theory and practice, and the course serves to introduce teachers to some of the political/theoretical positions and issues within the field.
Course Objectives:
Following the completion of this course you should: have an introductory understanding of writing-to-learn practice and theory; have an introductory understanding of collaborative learning practice and theory; have an introductory understanding of composition theory and practice; have an introductory understanding of rhetorical theory; have learned ways in which to link course assignments and grading to Freshman English outcome goals; have begun to locate your centers of strengths and weaknesses as teachers.
592B: Composition Research and Teaching Research Methods in Composition: Examining Writers' Products, Processes, and Practices
Instructor: Jennie Nelson
Description:
This seminar is designed to introduce students to a range of empirical methods available for the study of writing products, processes, and social contexts. The goal of the course is twofold: 1) to develop a basic understanding of research methods and design needed to read and evaluate published research in composition and 2) to enable class members to evaluate the advantages and limitations of different research designs and to select methods appropriate to their own research questions.
Assignments:
Requirements will include a reading log consisting of weekly written responses to two or more of the assigned readings, a collaborative project consisting of an exploratory literature review of a recent issue of concern in composition studies, a major project consisting of a pilot-study and written report describing the study.
Texts:
For the course include (tentatively) Reading Empirical Research Studies: The Rhetoric of Research by Hayes et al. (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1992); The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders by Emig (NCTE, 1971), and additional articles/text to be announced.
593: Bibliography and Research Methods
Instructor: Janis Holm
Goal:
To develop research skills and a professional vocabulary.
Readings:
MLA Style Manual, by Gibaldi; Literary Theory, by Eagleton; Online!, by Harnack & Kleppinger; Literary Research Guide, by Harner; course pack; miscellaneous handouts.
Assignments:
Enumerative bibliography, book review, take-home final, and miscellaneous homework.
690: Creative Writing Seminar: Poetry
Instructor: Mark Halliday
Description:
In our endless effort to find ways of writing deeper and more exciting poems, and our endless effort to appreciate the truthful strangeness in poems by other people, we will discuss poems by workshop members and poems by an odd variety of other poets. Some poets I'm especially interested in discussing include: Wallace Stevens, Randall Jarrell, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, Mary Ruefle, William Olsen, Claire Bateman, Elizabeth Powell; many others will also appear on our table. We will watch for jadoo that is not jadery. We will dance a jaleo with mortality, and avoid jaundering unless it turns out to be profound jaundering. We will try to alembicate the salmagundi of motivation but not to laconize at the expense of insight. We will not be the ichoglans of fashion. We will try to fecundate each other's scintillations without utterly abjuring the apodictic. We will remember that John Donne was smarter than us; but we will believe we contain nooks unlimned by him. We hope to jabble the surface of experience until the hansa of Helicon floats near our dripping fingers. May our feluccas return loaded with sublime types of pemmican.
Assignments:
Each student is expected to present eight new poems (or more) to the group.
Readings:
We will find time to read poems published in 1992 and 1982—deep in the archives!
777: Doctoral Colloquium
Instructor: Susan Crowl
Description:
This colloquium prepares doctoral students in English for the profession of college teaching and research. It discusses professional matters which are not usually addressed in more traditional, subject-matter centered courses. These concerns may be practical or theoretical. Specific topics will be suggested by contemporary conditions within the profession and they will vary from year to year.
780: Special Studies Seminar: Contemporary American Drama
Instructor: Jeremy Webster
Description:
Antonin Artaud famously wrote in The Theater and Its Double, "We are all mad, desperate, and sick." From Waiting for Godot to 'Night Mother to The Laramie Project, one could easily argue that serious drama since the 1950s rehearses this sentiment over and over again. This course will test the applicability of Artaud's statement to contemporary American drama and will highlight the major issues and artistic trends of American theater since the 1960s. We will begin with a non-American play, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, arguably the most important play of the twentieth century. After reading two or three plays and some drama theory from the 1960s and 70s, we will spend most of the quarter reading play texts from the 1980s and 90s.
Readings:
We will usually read two plays for each four-hour class meeting. Our reading list will probably include Waiting for Godot, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Buried Child, True West, 'Night Mother, Heidi Chronicles, Fences, The Piano Lesson, Oleanna, Angels in America (both parts), Wit, Proof, How I Learned to Drive, The Laramie Project, and one or two more plays. We will supplement our reading of play texts with drama theory and criticism. I will order the least expensive editions I can find. Even so, if you find (cheap) used copies of these plays over the summer, I strongly suggest you buy them; otherwise, the cost of texts for this course could be relatively expensive
Assignments:
abstract/presentation of a short work of criticism and a 15-page seminar paper (with preliminary proposal/annotated bibliography)
791: Professional Issues in Teaching College English
Instructor: Jennie Nelson
Description:
Colloquium for apprentice teachers designed to explore alternative approaches to classroom planning and presentation and to discuss professional issues in the discipline.