English Graduate Program
Course Offerings for Spring 2010

ENGL 5013.001    Introduction to Graduate Studies – Literature, PhD Creative Writing
CID 12997             TR 330PM-445PM, Mayer

Topics include research methods, textual scholarship, poetics, interpretation, critical theory, literary history, scholarly forms, and professionalization.  Active participation, weekly projects and assignments, and a final paper.

ENGL 5013.002    Introduction to Graduate Studies - Professional Writing, TESL, and Linguistics
CID 18794             TR 0200PM-0315PM, Cheng

This course provides an overview of major research methodologies in applied linguistics and professional writing. Students will read articles and book chapters on both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. They will then use their knowledge of research design and data analysis to critique studies that adopt various research methodologies. They will also carry out an empirical research project related to their specific fields of study and write up a research report. Students will also read about, and discuss extensively, the literacy and professional practices related to graduate studies in applied linguistics and professional writing.

ENGL 5120.351    Studies in TESL: Teaching & Researching SL Reading
CID 12998             R 0645PM-0930PM, Sheorey

This course will explore the complex nature of SL reading and the connection between research on reading and the teaching of reading to ESL students. We will examine key issues in first and second language reading and critically evaluate some of the key research studies and how they inform the teaching of reading to second language learners. Students will also engage in meaningful research projects on reading-related topics (e.g., reading strategies) and prepare [publishable] papers, using the tools of survey research.

ENGL 5123.001    Social and Psychological Aspects of Language
CID 12999             TR 1030AM-1145AM, Damron

This course is an overview of the sociological and psychological factors that affect the acquisition, processing, and use of language. Topics include first language acquisition, animal language, deafness, language and the brain, multilingual speech communities, gendered language, and language variation and change.

ENGL 5130.001    Studies in English Grammar
CID 13000             M 0430PM-0710PM, Moder

An overview of key aspects of English Grammar from a usage-based discourse perspective, with discussion of current theoretical issues and approaches to the teaching of grammar. Two exams, assignments, lesson plans and presentations. 

ENGL 5130.801    Studies in English Grammar: Pedagogical English Grammar (Tulsa)
CID 13001             R 0430PM-0710PM, Schick

This course is intended to provide an overview of English grammar and to familiarize prospective ESL teachers with issues and techniques related to teaching grammar. It is not intended to teach students enrolled in this class to speak or write “proper” English themselves nor is it intended primarily to prepare students to conduct research or publish articles in theoretical linguistics. In addition to helping students gain tools that will help them talk about and teach English grammar, this class will offer practice in identifying “grammar trouble spots” and in using and developing techniques for helping ESL learners to address these “trouble spots.”

ENGL 5143.801    Seminar in Descriptive Linguistics (Tulsa)
CID 18872             T 0430PM-0710PM, Garzon

An introduction to the analysis and description of language, focusing on phonetics, phonology, writing systems, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Students will examine linguistic data from a variety of the world’s languages and will collect and analyze their own data.

ENGL 5333.801    Seminar in TESL: Testing (Tulsa)
CID 13037             M 0430PM-0710PM, Halleck

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 5370.001    Studies in Television and New Media: Teletopias
CID 18784             T 0430PM-0710PM, Sutherland

Since the medium of television first emerged in the late 1940s, critics and theorists have tried to make sense of its complicated role in our experience of space and time. Some of them offer utopian accounts and some of them offer dystopian accounts of this role, but in one way or another the question of how electronic media transform our topographic experience of the world itself—at levels that are social, geographical, cultural, and architectural at once—remains one of the most vital and politically significant issues that the medium raises. This course will provide students with an intensive engagement in the discourse of electronically mediated space and time that unfolds across the fields of television and new media studies, cultural studies, geography, and philosophy. In the process, though, it will also challenge them to grapple with the methodological debates that have arisen around the issue of television and topography in the history of this literature, and to re-think the entire problem it addresses in their own terms.

ENGL 5480.001    Seminar in Modern Literature: Modernist Fiction
CID 19362             W 0645PM-0930PM, Grubgeld

This course will consider three novels (Ford, Keane, Bowen) and three collections of short fiction (Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence) in terms of both formal considerations—particularly plot structure, time, and narrative perspective--and wider cultural problems such as class tensions, ethnic and gender identities, the idea of nation, and the concept of the modern. Essays by the writers whose fiction we are studying (in addition to other writers such as James, Forster and Woolf) will inform this discussion, as will selections from narrative theory and cultural studies of the period.

ENGL 5520.351    Internship in Technical Writing
CID 13043             TBA N/A-N/A, Batteiger

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 5553.001    Visual Rhetorics and Design (formerly Information Design)
CID 19722             T 0430PM-0710PM, Lewis, Lynn

If, indeed, the 21st century world has taken a “visual turn,” how can we, as scholars and teachers, make sense of it? What rhetorics does the visual world privilege? This course investigates these questions through themes such as the question of looking, the image-text divide, identity, remembering, consuming and resisting.  As we develop our theoretical foundation, students will learn to design and evaluate a variety of visuals and consider how visual rhetorics are represented in their fields of study. Design project, assignments, presentation, 15-20 page research paper.

ENGL 5583.001    Environmental Writing
CID 18774             R 0430PM-0710PM, Batteiger

The course will focus on a variety of types of environmental writing, including Environmental Impact Statements, history, science writing, and advocacy. Several short papers and one seminar project; final exam.

ENGL 5660.001    Seminar in American Literature, 19th Century: Bestsellers and the History of the Book
CID 18785             TR 1230PM-0145PM, Walker

Seduction, betrayal, murder, moral outrage, mystery, and romance are the narrative engines of American’s most popular bestsellers, often published as series, serials, sequels, and subscriptions. What texts were popular and why? What is the nature of the book and the role of the author, the publisher, and the reader? How did the idea of authorship (and copyright) develop? What can our reading of the book (a historie du livre) tell us about the society that produced and then by the millions, consumed them?

ENGL 5730.001    Seminar in Fiction Writing
CID 13045             TR 1030AM-1145AM, Billman, J.

Writing fiction at the professional level.

ENGL 6140.001    Studies in Poetry Writing
CID 13070             TR 0200PM-0315PM, Ai

This will be a poetry workshop with some readings in contemporary poetry and essays about poetry by poets, but creative work will be the central focus of the course.

ENGL 6220.351    Seminar in Genre: Georgics--Wendell Berry & beyond
CID 13103             MWF 1230PM-0120PM, Eldevik

Everyone knows that, traditionally, Virgil's earliest and latest works validated the pastoral genre and the epic genre respectively.  But what are we to make of the fact that Virgil's second work, The Georgics, was a poem about farming?  In America today, celebrated farmer/writer Wendell Berry best exemplifies continuing developments in the georgic genre.  During the centuries in between come major British writers such as Langland, Dryden, and Addison, plus the early American classic Letters from an American Farmer by Crevecoeur and, in both countries, numerous 19th/20th-century poets and novelists.  Film students take note: also included in this seminar is the French cinematic milestone La Terre, with opportunities to explore other georgic works for the screen as well.

ENGL 6250.001    Seminar in Race, Region, or Gender: Journeys and Arrests in Postcolonial Thought
CID 13104             M 0430PM-0710PM, Rizzuto

This course examines how the figure of journey structures and is problematized by literary, theoretical, and philosophical works.  We will consider theories of textuality and ethico-politics that address this issue through the lenses of cosmopolitanism, translation, globalization, and to a lesser extent, migration.  Literature includes Caribbean and African novels by Head, Coetzee, Selvon, and Rhys; theoretical and philosophical works by Kant, Arendt, Derrida, Cheah, Balibar, Irigaray among others. 

ENGL 6350.001    Topics in Rhetorical Theory: Rhetoric and Radicalism
CID 18775             MWF 0130PM-0220PM, Brooks

In this course, we will survey the long standing—though sometimes tenuous—relationship between rhetoric-composition and radicalism in its various guises. 
Sirc, Geoffrey.  English Composition as a Happening.  Utah State UP, 2002.
Rice, Jeff.  The Rhetoric of Cool: Composition Studies and New Media.  Southern Illinois UP, 2007. 
Rickert, Thomas.  Acts of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Zizek, and the Return of the Subject. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007.
hooks, bell.  Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representation.  Routledge, 2006.
Hawk, Byron.  A Counter-History of Composition: Toward Methodologies of Complexity.  University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007.
Berlin, James.  Rhetorics, Poetics and Culture: Refiguring College English Studies.
 Parlor Press, 2003.
Course requirements will include online postings, a presentation, and a seminar paper.

ENGL 6360.001    Seminar in Film and Society: Lacan and His Followers
CID 18780             MWF 0230PM-0320PM, Manon
Lab             M 0720PM-0930PM

Originally published in 1966, Jacques Lacan’s Écrits recently became available for the first time in English—all 878 pages of it—a good sign that Lacanian theory is as relevant (and daunting) as ever.  This seminar takes Bruce Fink’s new translation as occasion to explore Lacan in the primary, including selections from Écrits, Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, and the brief but illuminating My Teaching.  Our course will begin as a primer in the cornerstones of Lacanian theory: Real, Imaginary & Symbolic, the notion that “the unconscious is structured like a language,” and the famous assertion that “there is no sexual relationship.”  Later, we will engage in a discussion of works by the some of the best contemporary Lacanians: Slavoj Žižek, Joan Copjec, Alenka Zupančič, Todd McGowan and others.  This seminar engages with theory per se and has no particular programmatic affiliation; students from all disciplines are encouraged to enroll and no prior knowledge of Lacan is expected.  Students will produce weekly journals entries, a mid-term draft, and a 25-page term paper.  The seminar will have no outside screenings.

ENGL 6410.001    Topics in Linguistics: Language Socialization  
CID 18790             T 0430PM-0710PM, Schick

This course gives an overview of theories and research methods associated with studying language socialization. Topics include perspectives on linguistic and interactional resources used in socialization practices and the socialization of socio-culturally valued cognitive, behavioral, and linguistic competencies. Semester project will include producing an example of a language socialization research plan.

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