Graduate Course Descriptions
Spring 2027
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For the most up-to-date list of classes offered, visit the . For questions about classes, consult our graduate advising page or contact the listed instructor. To see what we'll be offering in future semesters,
visit our two-year course rotation template. Interested in studying literature, taking a writing workshop, improving your writing
skills, or brushing up your teaching skills, but don't want to pursue a degree? You
should apply as a Non-Degree Seeking Student.
Jump to:
- Applied Linguistics/TESOL Courses
- Creative Writing Courses
- Literary & Cultural Studies Courses
- Writing, Rhetoric, & Technical Communication Courses
Click on each course title to read the professor's full course description; click on each thumbnail image to view the course flyer.
Applied Linguistics:
ENGL 6501 - History of the English Language | Dr. Leah Windsor | Online
Development of English from a minor Germanic dialect to a major international language.
ENGL 7/8508 - Corpus Linguistics | Dr. J. Elliott Casal | Wednesdays 5:30-8:30pm
This course emphasizes the methodological considerations involved in corpus construction,
annotation, and analysis within a broader picture of linguistic theory and application.
Students will develop an understanding of the motivations and affordances of a corpus-based
approach to language analysis, familiarity with freely available corpora and related
tools (e.g., the Corpus of Contemporary American English), basic skills in corpus
compilation and annotation (e.g., part of-speech tagging, syntactic parsing), and
an understanding of corpus-based analysis at lexical/phraseological levels.
ENGL 7/8517 - Studies in Discourse Analysis | Dr. Sage Graham | Thursdays 5:30-8:30pm
Examination of the tools and methods used by various subdisciplines of English (linguistics,
rhetoric, and literature) to analyze forms of discourse, including legal, medical,
scientific, technical, business, literary, academic, and oral texts.
ENGL 7/8529 - Language Policy | Dr. Lyn Wright | Online
This course explores questions related to language policy from a variety of theoretical
and practical perspectives.
ENGL 7/8532 - Theory/Skill Assessment in ESL | Dr. Başak Çermikli Ayvaz | Online
Application of theories of teaching second language skills with emphasis on testing
in a second language.
ENGL 7/8534 - Second Language Acquisition | Dr. Rebecca Adams | Mondays 5:30-8:30pm
In this course, we will delve into current, research-based understandings of how languages
are learned. Our focus will be three primary questions related to learning and teaching
of additional languages—languages learned after the first language is acquired: How
are additional languages learned? What factors influence acquisition of additional
languages? How are language learning and language teaching related? Along the way,
we will examine the linguistic, contextual, cognitive, individual, and social factors
that impact language learning.
ENGL 7/8539 - Issues in Second Language Reading & Writing | Dr. Emily Thrush | Online
Issues in Second Language Reading and Writing will survey research on the processes
of learning to read and write in a second language, with an emphasis on the teaching
and learning of English as a Second or Other Language.
Creative Writing:
ENGL 7471 - Forms of Fiction: Humor in Fiction | Dr. Eric Schlich | Mondays 5:30-8:30pm
We’ve all read or watched something that made us laugh, but have you ever stopped
and wondered: how’d the writer do that? What makes something funny? And how can you
learn from what you find funny to cultivate your own sense of humor and write funny
yourself? In this course we will explore various comic novels and short stories to
tickle our funny bones. You will also try your own hand at “writing funny” with short
assignments, one longer humor piece to be workshopped, and a “Sense of Humor” presentation.
ENGL 7475 - Literary Publishing | Prof. Courtney Santo | MW 2:20-3:45pm
Development of skills involved in editing, producing, and marketing a literary magazine;
further training in the skills of publishing the student’s own literary texts. May
be repeated for a maximum of 6 credit hours with change in course content.
ENGL 7601 - Creative Non-Fiction Workshop | Dr. Eric Schlich | Tuesdays 5:30-8:30pm
This class focuses on reading, drafting, and workshopping creative nonfiction—both
personal narrative/memoir and journalistic essays. Students will present a craft lecture
from an anthologized essay, workshop a personal essay and a research-based essay,
revise one essay, and write a craft review of a contemporary essay collection of their
choosing.
ENGL 7602 - Fiction Workshop | Dr. Jared Lemus | Wednesdays 5:30-8:30pm
Emphasis on the examination and the discussion of fiction written by students.
ENGL 7603 - Poetry Workshop | Prof. Marcus Wicker | Thursdays 5:30-8:30pm
How do writers make meaning from loss, wonder, laughter, longing, and love? This graduate
poetry workshop explores the wide spectrum between grief and joy, reading and writing
elegies, odes, humorous poems, and other lyric forms that illuminate our most difficult
and dazzling experiences. Welcoming poets as well as fiction writers and memoirists
interested in the art of language, the course emphasizes close reading, generative
writing, workshop discussion, and revision. Students will develop advanced creative
and editorial practices, deepen their understanding of poetic craft, and produce two
portfolios of original poems.
Literary & Cultural Studies:
ENGL 7/8211 - Medieval Literature | Dr. Cristina Maria Cervone | Tuesdays 5:30-8:30pm
This course serves as an introduction to late medieval English language, literature,
and culture. Our focus is on Middle English texts that have been read through a variety
of critical lenses that have proved productive (or not), emphasizing recent important
work in medieval studies that prompts us to ponder how ideologies and contemporary
conversations influence how we read and how our myopias might affect our interpretations
of the past. Topics include, for example, racism in medieval studies, feminist readings,
animal studies, queer theory, cognitive approaches, materiality, manuscript contexts,
and present-day poets’ interest in Middle English, William Langland, and Chaucer.
Prior knowledge of Middle English is not expected.
ENGL 7/8332 - Literature of the African Diaspora | Dr. Kathy Lou Schultz | Thursdays
5:30-8:30pm
This course will cover classic texts such as Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin / White Masks,
Eduardo Glissant’s essays in Caribbean Discourse, and Aimé Césaire’s Notebook of Return
to My Native Land, while also paying special attention to still-understudied texts
by women, including Suzanne Césaire’s The Great Camouflage: Writings of Dissent and
essays by Jane and Paulette Nardal, who led a famous salon in Clamart, France. Other
texts may include Sylvia Wynter’s work in philosophy and novels by Nigerian author
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jamaican Marlon James. We’ll also take a wild and beautiful
ride through the world of global Black Surrealisms. This course is essential for African
Americanists who wish to meet job market demands to teach global literatures.
ENGL 7/8394 - Modern American Literature | Dr. Theron Britt | Wednesdays 5:30-8:30pm
Advanced study of American literature produced between 1900 and 1950.
ENGL 7/8468 - Literature of the Harlem Renaissance | Dr. Verner Mitchell | Online
You can expect to come away from the class having read—and enjoyed—major works of
Harlem Renaissance literature. The Harlem Renaissance generally refers to the decade
following World War I, as African American artists produced a wealth of music, literature,
dance, visual art, and social discourse. Although centered in New York City, artists
from all over the United States, including California, Utah, Kansas, and Tennessee
contributed to the movement. In recent years, a steady stream of anthologies, memoirs,
criticism, biographies, and collections of letters from the period attests to the
popular and academic interest in the Harlem Renaissance. Indeed, since the Renaissance’s
zenith in 1926, interest in the field has never been keener.
ENGL 7/8480 - Cultural Texts & Theory: The Problem of Work | Dr. Carey Mickalites
| Mondays 5:30-8:30pm
Work is the contested middle term in the stark opposition (or dialectical antithesis)
between capitalism and utopia. As subjects of the modern Western world, we are instilled
with the demands of the Protestant work ethic, even when it doesn’t pay. We aspire
to finding good work that is fulfilling while often recognizing that such a position
depends on the conditions of austerity and exploitation in other places. In its current
forms, work cannot escape the marks of capitalist dystopia, but in our collective
study of a range of cultural texts and theories, we will work to envision alternative
ways of being, thinking, and playing on the horizons of that dystopia. And we will
also address some of the exploitative contradictions and conditions structuring contemporary
higher education, which affects us all.
Writing, Rhetoric, & Technical Communication:
ENGL 6619 - Web Design & Online Writing | Dr. Emily Gillo | Online
Principles and techniques of creating online user help for software and usable web
sites; emphasis on needs of technical writers in professional development environment;
task analysis, information architecture, content management, single sourcing, visual
rhetoric, navigation, usability testing; technology tools intensive.
ENGL 6701 - Being an English Teacher | Dr. Joseph Jones | TR 1:00-2:25pm
This course addresses an apparently simple, innocent question: What does it mean to
"teach English"? By the end of the course, however, it is hoped that you realize that
teaching English is a terrifically complicated, fascinating undertaking. We will begin
with an overview of English studies and English teaching before focusing more closely
on the nature of writing and literature. While this course does not contribute toward
teacher licensure, it aims to provide you with an awareness of what's possible, and
what's at stake, in being an English teacher. NOTE: This course does not contribute toward teacher licensure.
ENGL 7/8801 - History of Composition | Dr. Joseph Jones | Wednesdays 5:30-8:30pm
This course traces the historical arc of college writing and explores the social forces
and cultural values that have informed writing instruction over the past century as
well as the pedagogical practices and commitments of those charged with teaching college
writing. The goal is to provide those interested in the teaching and learning of writing
a panoramic view of what’s come before so that we might be more fully prepared for
what lies ahead.
ENGL 7/8806 - Research Methods in Writing | Dr. Shiva Mainaly | Tuesdays 5:30-8:30pm
How do we study writing, how do different research methods affect our understanding
of it, and how is AI revitalizing our research methods? This course introduces students
to the broad field of research methodologies (methodological pluralism) essential
for scholarly inquiry in writing studies, rhetoric, and composition. Designed to enhance
both theoretical and practical knowledge, it offers an opportunity to examine various
research traditions, including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. It also
covers newer approaches like digital/synthetic ethnography, iconographic tracking,
grounded theory, corpus analysis, internet research ethics, feminist methodologies,
indigenous methodologies (research as ceremony), data visualization, data epistemologies,
and community-based research.
ENGL 7/8809 - Technical Editing | Dr. Chloe Robertson | Online
Current practices in editing and publication in the field of technical communication;
topics include copy-editing, substantive editing, author-editor relations, and the
production practice.