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Course Descriptions
Literature Courses
Writing and Creative Writing Courses
Comprehensive Exam
Thesis
Literature Courses
GEP 7000/CRW 7000 Seminar in Contemporary Women Writers
The best of women writing now. In a selection of contemporary American women writers, we'll examine current themes, obsessions, and interpersonal dynamics. We'll read fiction writers such as Karen Outen, Danzy Senna, and Maureen Howard, memoirists such as Vivien Gornick, playwrights such as Wendy Wasserstein, and poets such as Adrienne Rich, Louise Gluck, Toi Derricotte, Sharon Olds, and Sandra Kohler.
GEP 7001/CRW 7001 Ethnic Women's Literature
A study of women writers and how their ethnic identities affect their work. Students will read work by fiction writers such as: Jhumpa Lahiri, Danzy Senna, Maureen Howard, and Nancy Zafris, memoirists such as Kate Millett, Vivien Gornick, and Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, playwrights such as Wendy Wasserstein, and poets such as Adrienne Rich, Louise Gluck, Toi Derricotte, and Louise Erdrich.
GEP 7005/CRW 7005 Seminar in Modern Poetry
A course that extensively addresses the major poetic voices of the twentieth century with special emphasis on the close reading of the experimental and innovative.
GEP 7008/CRW 7008 Seminar in Fiction Since 1940
An analysis of contemporary experimental fiction since 1940. The seminar will focus primarily on the study of narrative technique and analysis of the primary texts; some theoretical and contextual ideas of postmodernism will be touched on as means to further appreciate and evaluate readings. Authors include: Barth, Borges, Nabokov, Coover, Calvino, Garcia Marquez, Morrison, Baker, McCarthy, DeLillo, Martone, and Auster.
GEP 7010/CRW 7010 Seminar in Victorian Readings
An intense study of the major novels, poetry, and prose stylists of the Victorian era. The course will consider authors such as Browning, Tennyson, Carlyle, Newman, Arnold, Dickens, Eliot, and Thackeray.
GEP 7015/CRW 7015 Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Poetry and Prose
A study of the social, historical, and aesthetic concerns of the eighteenth century. Representative genres provide an understanding of the shifting focus of this period from satire to sensibility.
GEP 7017/CRW 7017 Seminar in the American Renaissance: 1820-1860
Readings in Cooper, Melville, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman. This course will examine the varieties of Romantic writing in America.
GEP 7025/CRW 7025 Seminar in Medieval Readings
A consideration of the medieval signature as it appears in late antiquity, flourishes in the Middle Ages, and leaves its traces in modernity. Some attention will be given to manuscript form and to those textual changes occasioned by the arrival of print.
GEP 7030/CRW 7030 Seminar in the Modern Novel
An exploration in depth of the literary condition called Modernism through an investigation of the work of Henry James, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, and William Trevor.
GEP 7031/CRW 7031 Classical Readings
A study of ancient Greek and Latin writers in the genres of epic, lyric poetry, and prose. Selections include Homer (Iliad), Vergil (Aeneid), Ovid (Metamorphoses), Plautus (The Brothers Menaechmus), Plato, and Sophocles (Electra) in translation. Since the purpose of this course is to ground the student in the material that was the common repertory for western authors, the course will also study works, such as Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, and Donna Tartt's The Secret History, which have drawn both source material and inspiration from classical texts.
GEP 7035/CRW 7035 Masterpieces in European Drama
From ancient Greece to contemporary Ireland, drama is rooted in the age during which it is born. Through the action and the characters of a drama, the playwright shares his or her view of the nature of life and suggests an age's assessment of what it means to be human. This course will focus on a selection of the great European playwrights, such as Wilde, Shaw, Euripedes, Marlowe, Moliere, Ibsen, Chekhov, Brecht, and Friel.
GEP 7041/CRW 7041 Introduction to Critical Theory: Exploring Meaning
This course will introduce students to the discipline of critical thought and its use in the study of literature and art, particularly the concept of how meaning is shaped and interpreted by both the individual and society at large.
GEP 7045/CRW 7045 Self-Portraits in Literature
How do writers shape their experience and try to define themselves in their art? We will explore these questions by reading memoirs such as Virginia Woolf's Moments of Being, Marjorie Keenan Rawling's Cross Creek, Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Sons' First Year, Richard Wertime's Citadel on the Mountain, and Kate Millett's AD, as well as poets such as Yeats, Robert Lowell, and Adrienne Rich. Artists and photographers such as Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Imogen Cunningham and Becky Young will supplement discussions of literature with some attention to self-portraits. Students will keep a journal for the initial weeks of class. They will draw from that journal to transform their experience into a short story, poem, or short memoir.
GEP 7050/CRW 7050 The Irish Novel
This course will explore the rich literary traditions of Ireland in relation to the novel. Through the works of Irish authors, such as James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Flann O'Brien, Emma Donoghue, and Roddy Doyle, we will examine Ireland's continual struggle to construct a usable national identity in both her fiction and her history.
GEP 7055/CRW 7055 Shakespeare in Performance: From Page to Stage
Employing the techniques of John Barton (Royal Shakespeare Company) and Patsy Rodenburg (Royal National Theatre), students will discover and experience the performance language of 3 plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo & Juliet, and Macbeth. These techniques transform the dynamics of these texts -- structure, rhythm, and imagery -- into specific and clear action, so that the text can be brought to life physically and emotionally.
GEP 7060/CRW 7060 Seminar in The Bloomsbury Group
Movies like A Room With a View and Mrs. Dalloway highlight the talents of two members of one of the most brilliant circles of friends ever: the Bloomsbury Group. In addition to the novelists E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf, this group, which flourished in England in the first half of the twentieth century, includes painters, art critics, essayists, and the great economist John Maynard Keynes. We will concentrate on novelists (E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West) and non-fiction writers (Lytton Strachey, Harold Nicholson, Virginia Woolf). However, we will also consider paintings, decorative arts, and garden design (Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Vita Sackville-West) to uncover the shared aesthetics and artistic cross-fertilization among these talented friends.
GEP 7065/CRW 7065 From Hansel's Oven to the Fire: Perceptions of Witchcraft in Literature
This course will study the witch as a stock character of literature and how that character is shaped by each author who writes it. This course will examine the portrayal of the witch in fairytales, novels, plays, comic books, and film, paying close attention to how the character of the witch is adapted to the specific message and symbolism of each particular work she appears in. Reading selections include Shakespeare's Macbeth, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick, Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch, and the Harry Potter series.
GEP 7070/CRW 7070 Film: Adaptation of Literature to Film
Like the translator, the adaptor who translates a classic work of literature for the screen is engaged in an act of transformation which requires him or her to balance the narrational, thematic, and stylistic elements of one moment in a text with those in another and to choose from this nexus of interaction and meaning a solution that is cinematically equivalent to the original situation. The central aim of this course then is to examine the challenging process of translating literature to film and to determine either the richness or the impoverishment of adaptations based on the works of celebrated authors.
Writing and Creative Writing Courses
GEP 7105 Literary Writing in Journalism: Feature Writing
This course will examine writing in the popular narrative style of today's journalism, known as the "New Journalism," developed by such writers as Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, Joe McGinniss, and Ryszard Kapuscinski. In studying such authors, we will analyze their styles and the manner in which they use techniques usually associated with fiction to create compelling works that are both literary and journalistic. In addition, we will discuss the ethical issues involved when writers use the resources of fiction to describe non-fiction.
GEP 7110 Magazine Writing
A course which enters the world of professional magazine writing by learning how to identify a good, salable idea, by researching it, and by writing and marketing it. Non-fiction of all types, including magazine-length feature writing, is the foundation upon which the other skills are based.
GEP 7115 Newswriting
Learn how to find story ideas, interview people, and make sense of the world as you write quickly and clearly for daily and weekly newspapers. Traditional and offbeat news will be examined, while creativity, ethics and professional standards will be stressed. Read examples of great writing as you learn techniques to improve your own.
GEP 7120 Workshop: Poetry
A workshop course concentrating on poetry. This course concentrates on the craft of writing the poem. Students will work on their poetry and then evaluate their own and others' work in a supportive atmosphere. Each semester, the poetry workshop may concentrate on specific aspects of the poet's art, such as studying the techniques of a specific poetic genre or movement (e.g., the Romantics); focusing on specific methods or aspects of creating poetry, such as subverting sentimentality; or investigating larger issues of the poetic life, such as creating a chapbook or thematic collection of poetry.
GEP 7135 Writing for the Web
A course that teaches the student the unique and very current style of writing for the Web. Students will create copy for their own Web sites and will discuss the psychology of navigating through the information.
GEP 7140 Writing Entertainment Reviews
Students will learn how to write meaningful, in-depth reviews, and we will see at least three live performances during class. Students can expect to have directors and some performers available to answer questions from the class, and we will learn how to do the research necessary to ask thoughtful questions.
GEP 7145 Workshop: Creative Nonfiction
A workshop course concentrating on creative nonfiction. Students will study the published work of others in this genre, engage in writing exercises, and craft work of their own to be critiqued by their fellow students. Ethical issues, especially as it pertains to memoirs, will be explored. Each semester, the creative nonfiction workshop may vary from a general workshop encompassing a variety of forms within the genre to specialized workshop that focuses on a specific aspect of the genre, including memoir, the personal and literary essay, opinion pieces and narrative nonfiction.
Comprehensive Exam
Candidates for the M.A. in English Literature are required to take and successfully pass a Comprehensive Exam. Students must take this exam during their last semester in the program prior to participating in graduation.
To schedule the exam, the student should contact the Director of the English Literature Program two months prior to the time when they wish to sit for the exam.
The student must pass the Comprehensive Exam in order to graduate from the English Literature program. Exams are graded on a Pass/Fail basis.
Thesis
GEP 7500 Thesis
The thesis is designed as a culminating experience that allows students to undertake original work to reflect and extend the breadth of their graduate program experience. Eligible students choose a topic, secure a faculty thesis advisor, and submit, for review and approval by the program director, a written plan for the thesis project. Thesis is open only to matriculated students in good academic standing (GPA of 3.0 or higher) who are within 12 credit hours of graduation.
Policies & Procedures Related to Thesis
- Students who are in good academic standing (GPA of at least 3.0) and who are within 12 credit hours of graduation are eligible to undertake their thesis.
- Eligible students create a thesis idea that is related to their program of study in English Literature. The thesis project should be an academic study or analysis of some aspect of English Literature. The completed project should be at least 50 pages in length and explore the chosen topic in depth.
- Students are responsible for identifying and obtaining the cooperation of a faculty advisor, who will supervise all phases of their thesis-related work.
- Following input from and discussion with the thesis advisor, students prepare a 1-2 page thesis proposal, and submit this for approval to the program director. Once approved, this proposal is the "blueprint" for the thesis project.
- After obtaining approval of the thesis proposal, the student may register for GEP 7500. The name of the thesis advisor must be included with the student's registration, and a copy of the approved thesis proposal must be sent to the Office of Graduate and Continuing Studies.
- Thesis registration is valid for one calendar year. After that time, if the student has not yet completed the thesis, he or she must withdraw from the thesis course. In order to continue work on the thesis, the student must register again and pay all relevant course fees a second time. Thesis registration is subject to the same course registration deadlines that apply to all other courses. Students may register for thesis a maximum of two times. If a student does not complete their thesis project by the end of the second registration period, a failing grade will be given for thesis. A total of 3 thesis credits are required for program completion; additional thesis credits may not be substituted for other program requirements.
- The completed thesis must be at least 50 pages in length and must explore the thesis topic to the mutual satisfaction of the student and the thesis advisor. Students may not graduate from the program until they have satisfactorily completed their thesis project.