English Graduate Program
Course Offerings for Fall 2008

ENGL 4901. 351 - Tutor Training / Damron
M 9:30-10:20. CID  13754
This course provides graduate students with tools to become effective writing tutors/teachers through seminar presentations and discussion of current writing center theory and practice. Journals chart progress as each tutor conducts face-to-face conferences with writing students, based on model conferences and mentoring by experienced tutors. Required of all new first-semester writing center tutors.

ENGL 5143. 001 - Seminar in Descriptive Linguistics / Moder
TR 2:00-3:15. CID  13791
This course is an introduction to the linguistic analysis and description of language, focusing on phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Readings, two exams, linguistic analysis assignments, an L2 phonetic profile, and a linguistic description project.

ENGL 5143. 801 - Seminar in Descriptive Linguistics / Halleck (TULSA)
T 4:30-7:10. CID  19451
An introduction to the linguistic analysis and description of language, focusing on phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Students will examine linguistic data from a variety of the world’s languages.

ENGL 5213. 001 - Composition Theory and Pedagogy / Brooks
MWF 9:30-10:20. CID  13824
English 5213 is a course that helps teachers develop methods and generate materials for teaching college composition at Oklahoma State. Students work collaboratively within a workshop format to design units for their future classes. Course readings offer theories of learning and composing that will help them develop effective instructional strategies. Topics include environmental approaches to teaching, unit planning, the writing process, conferencing, dynamic modeling, evaluation, professional responsibilities, and problem-solving strategies.

ENGL 5223. 001 - Teaching Technical and Business Writing / Cheng
TR 10:30-11:45. CID  13825
This course examines the theories and practices of teaching technical and business writing. We will explore the needs of students of technical and business writing, survey major approaches to teaching technical and business writing, and examine the major genres often taught in technical and business writing courses. As a class, we will also design a theoretically informed and learner-sensitive teaching portfolio. The course is required to teach ENGL 2333/3323. Assignments will include class presentations, a needs-analysis project/paper, a materials development portfolio, and a final exam.

ENGL 5243. 001 - Teaching English as a Second Language / Cheng
TR 12:30-1:45. CID  13826
This course introduces students to the theories and practices of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). Through a program of lectures, readings, discussions, practical teaching exercises, and reflections, we will explore the contexts in which English as an L2/FL is taught and learned, some methods and materials that teachers have used to teach it, and the links between what teachers and learners do in class and what applied linguistics research tells us about L2 learning.

ENGL 5243. 801 - Teaching English as a Second Language / Sheorey (TULSA)
M 4:30-7:10. CID  13827
The course provides theoretical background for an understanding of the complexity of the second language learning and teaching process, especially as it relates to teaching English as a second language.

ENGL 5293. 001 - Interdisciplinary Uses of English: Media, Excess, & Sublimity / Sutherland
M 4:30-7:10. CID  13828
Aesthetic theory has long connected the experience and judgment of great art to the experience of the sublime. The concept of excess has a more sordid place in this tradition of thought, often serving as the watchword for low, depraved, irrational, or popular aesthetic forms, ranging from pornography to horror and spectacle. In this course we will read both major and recent works of aesthetic and political theory that deal with these concepts—including Immanuel Kant, Georges Bataille, Linda Williams, and Ernesto Laclau, among many others—and discuss them in tandem with a wide range of media texts that might be described as either excessive or sublime—from television spectacles, to experimental film and video art, to horror and drug films. Along the way, we will explore the way in which aesthetics, politics, and social formations intersect in the kind of total engulfment they describe, and how we might in turn rethink the nature of this intersection for contemporary media theory.

ENGL 5333. 001 - Seminar in Teaching English as a Second Language: Testing / Halleck
R 4:30-7:10. CID  13829
The major goal of this course is to explore the key issues in second language assessment. In this exploration, we will discuss the theory, construction, and use of standardized and teacher-made tests and will become familiar with basic statistical concepts used in second language testing.

ENGL 5340.001 - Studies in Discourse Analysis: Spoken Discourse / Damron
T 4:30-7:10. CID  20823
We will examine language in its spoken form in this course. Students will learn about transcription conventions; the basic phenomena involved in studying language in interaction (such as intonation, turn-taking, repetition, repair etc).; and the role of context in studying interactional language. We will examine data from oral histories, and institutional discourse (such as spoken academic discourse) as well as everyday conversation. Major course requirements will include three transcription assignments, a midterm exam and research paper.

ENGL 5363. 001 - Critical Approaches to Screen Studies: Theory & History / Manon
TR 2:00-3:15. CID  20049
This course is designed to provide graduate students with an overview of the basic theoretical and historical models in the fields of film and television studies. Students will encounter not only fundamental texts in the discipline, but also very recent work in the field. Our aim here is to see that students understand the traditions and approaches employed by screen studies scholars and also have a sense of how certain discourses, theoretical and historical, are developing. Students should leave the course with a sense of what it will require to make an intervention in the field. Moreover, this course will help students to understand not only the differences between theory and history, but also the very important ways in which they intersect. Likewise, students will become acclimated to doing close readings of theory, history and the moving image. The course should have the added benefit of enabling students to come to some understanding of their own scholarly inclinations, which they can continue to pursue and develop in a more explicit fashion.

ENGL 5480. 001 - Seminar in Modern Literature: American Poetry in the Little Magazines / Leavell
MW 6:45-8:00. CID  19557
The seminar will provide an overview of American modernist poetry from 1912 to 1929. Students new to the subject will meet the major poets and study key works of the period. But a significant portion of the class will be devoted to the study of “little magazines”—so called because of their experimental nature and small circulation. What can be learned about the politics, aesthetics, and development of modernist poetry, the seminar asks, by examining it on the pages where it first appeared?

ENGL 5513. 001 - Introduction to Technical Communication / Warren
M 4:30-7:10. CID  13833
This course is, in effect, a course in research methodology for students in the MA Program in Technical Writing who intend to pursue a career other than an academic one. However, should students decide to study for a PhD (here or somewhere else), they will have had a sufficient introduction to research methodology (including statistical interpretation) to pursue the PhD comfortably.

ENGL 5520. 351 - Internship in Technical Writing / Warren
TBA. CID  13843
This course is open only to students in the MA Option or PhD in Professional Writing. Students who wish to enroll must receive prior permission from the instructor.

ENGL 5563. 001 - History of Scientific Rhetoric / Brooks
MWF 11:30-12:20. CID  19553
In 5563, students will explore the following questions:

• How has the relationship between rhetoric and science changed since classical times?

• How does science work as a particular type of persuasion, and what are the ethical implications of scientific style?

• Did “the Scientific Revolution” ever take place?

• What has happened to the field of science studies since Thomas S. Kuhn?

• Can rhetoric help mend the gap between science and the humanities?

Texts include Aristotle's Rhetoric, Montgomery's The Scientific Voice, Ceccarelli's Shaping Science with Rhetoric, Gould's The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox, and Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Other readings will be placed on reserve and/or D2L. Students will complete reading responses, write two conference-length papers, give two presentations, and take a final exam.

ENGL 5573. 001 - Theories of Communication / Cheng
TR 3:30-4:45. CID  19554
This course examines a variety of communication theories with a special focus on how language reflects, creates, sustains, and transforms social meanings in communicative practices. Major theories examined include symbolic interactionism, dramatism, the narrative paradigm, dramaturgical and ethnographic performance theories, (social) constructivism/constructionism, dialectical theory, speech community theory, and others. The course keeps in mind students’ diverse disciplinary backgrounds—professional/technical writing, rhetoric and composition, and second language research. Students will be encouraged to bring the communication theories examined in class into coherence with current theories and practices in their respective fields.

ENGL 5740. 351 - Seminar in Poetry Writing / Lewis
T 4:30-7:10. CID  13839
A graduate poetry workshop with readings in contemporary poetry.

ENGL 5990. 351 - Special Problems in Teaching English as a Second Language
CID  13840
Support for the TESL Creative Component. See your advisor.

ENGL 6130. 351 - Studies in Fiction Writing / Graham
MWF 2:30-3:20. CID  13862
This is a craft-oriented workshop environment with outside readings.

ENGL 6220. 351 - Seminar in Genre: The Narrative & Techniques of Persuasion / Walker
MWF 1:30-2:20. CID  13894
A close examination of storytellers (novelists, playwrights, filmmakers, historians, poets) and the diverse narrative strategies they employ to shape the attitudes and beliefs of their readers.

ENGL 6240. 351 - Studies in Literature: Utopia and Dystopia from the Garden of Eden to
V for Vendetta / Price, M.
MWF 12:30-1:20. CID  13895
Utopias and dystopias restructure the world, in optimism or in horror, respectively. This class will explore some of the classic utopian and dystopian texts that have permeated our culture, and supplement them with interdisciplinary readings on the nature and function of the genre. Presentation; discussion; research paper.

ENGL 6250. 001 - Seminar in Race/Region/Gender: Major Works in Native American Literature / Smith
MWF 10:30-11:20. CID  19559
Responding to new methodologies, scholars of American literature are reexamining and interrogating constructs of "the frontier," "wilderness," and "the West" and seeking more nuanced approaches to the mythologies of American literatures and cultures. Part of this effort involves learning about indigenous writers who respond to and contradict such constructs as well as offer wholly separate portraits of their literatures and cultures. With the goal of preparing students to meet a growing expectation for greater breadth and diversity in American literary study, this course is an introduction to major works of Native American literature and the theoretical parameters for the field of Native American studies. We will read selections from early, modern, and contemporary authors such as William Apess, Zitkala Sa, Alice Callahan, Ella Cara Deloria, Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon Silko, N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, Susan Power, and Sherman Alexie. Our secondary readings will include the work of Gerald Vizenor, Paula Gunn Allen, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Robert Warrior, Craig Womack, and others. Course requirements include class leadership assignments, conference presentations, article-length manuscripts, and peer review.

English Department
College of Arts & Sciences
Oklahoma State University
205 Morrill Hall
Stillwater, OK 74078
Phone: 405-744-9474
For Information about English Programs: english.information@okstate.edu
Webmaster: engweb@okstate.edu