Spring 2024 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- Writing a Life: Craft in Character (67271)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 12 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Enrollment Requirements:
- Graduate Student
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5310 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/16/2024 - 04/29/2024Mon 11:15AM - 01:10PMUMTC, East BankPillsbury Hall 212
- Enrollment Status:
- Open (4 of 5 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- Character is at the core of much of our work as writers, and in this seminar we will study a range of layered, complex characters, often in boundary-breaking texts, with a focus on the question: how do we write a life? We're interested in reading all the ways in which character can inhabit and infuse a text, all the ways in which character can determine the shape of a story and mode of telling, and so we will go beyond the usual examination of character as we try to imagine and understand every aspect of craft - structure, setting, genre, language - through the prism of character. Many of the texts selected for this course use radically unconventional approaches to develop character (fractured narratives, vignettes, lyricism) and as we explore how these writers' choices work in the text, we'll consider how the same kinds of techniques might work in our own writing. So alongside our inquiry into how we write a life, we'll also hold this question alongside it: how far are we willing to go in craft terms to write a life? In that sense, this seminar will also ask you to push your own craft to its limits, to explore, to play, and to discover more, not only about your characters, but also about yourselves as writers.
- Class Description:
- Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/67271/1243
Fall 2022 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- The Art of Change (31644)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 12 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person
- Class Attributes:
- Delivery ModeTopics Course
- Enrollment Requirements:
- Graduate Student
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5310 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session09/06/2022 - 12/14/2022Mon 11:15AM - 01:45PMUMTC, East BankPillsbury Hall 114
- Enrollment Status:
- Open (4 of 5 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- Routine, Stagnation, Epiphany, Growth, Revision: The Art of Change In this class, we'll be thinking about the role of change in literature and how we express that in our writing and how we push against it or deny it. We'll also think about how we read our own works while within the revision process. We'll read everything from traditional approaches--think epiphanies in fiction, think the ways a villanelle can make a repeated phrase have new meaning, a personal narrative that is explicitly about the person the essayist "used to be"--to looking at how shifts in structure, genre, style, and voice in more experimental forms of literature can have resonance. We will also write and generate and play in different genres and styles in the first third of the semester. We will revise and embroider those works in the semester's middle. And in the final third of the semester, we will have opportunities to present our works to one another both for reading as critique to encourage change, as well as reading for pleasure, and reflect on the ways we read in both situations.
- Class Description:
- Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/31644/1229
Fall 2021 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- Books Every Writer Should Read (33516)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 12 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- Completely Online
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Enrollment Requirements:
- Graduate Student
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5130 Section 001ENGW 5310 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session09/07/2021 - 12/15/2021Tue 03:35PM - 06:05PMOff CampusUMN REMOTE
- Enrollment Status:
- Open (0 of 1 seat filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- This course is a deep reading of influential books of fiction, non fiction, and poetry that have been named by many authors as key texts in their development as writers.
- Class Description:
- Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/33516/1219
Spring 2021 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- Writing Culture into Memoir (67718)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 12 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- Completely Online
- Class Attributes:
- Delivery ModeTopics Course
- Enrollment Requirements:
- Graduate Student
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5310 Section 001ENGW 5130 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/19/2021 - 05/03/2021Thu 03:35PM - 06:05PMOff CampusUMN REMOTE
- Enrollment Status:
- Open (1 of 5 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Description:
- Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/67718/1213
Fall 2020 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- GENRE AGNOSTIC?!: READINGS IN HYBRID LIT (33039)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 12 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- Completely Online
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Enrollment Requirements:
- Graduate Student
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5130 Section 001ENGW 5310 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session09/08/2020 - 12/16/2020Tue 03:35PM - 06:05PMOff CampusUMN REMOTE
- Enrollment Status:
- Closed (5 of 5 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- This course is completely online in a synchronous format. The course will meet online at the scheduled times and will focus on reading and developing textual strategies for what many call "hybrid" or "cross-genre" literature, alongside other experimental work. While many of the books we'll encounter foreground elements of what we might loosely call genre-driven, formal combinations (like lyric essays, closet dramas, verse novellas), others will emphasize authorial play with generic conventions (say, Afro-Feminist criticism rendered as apocalyptic speculative fiction; a study of a film written as a novella). In response to these often unruly, shapeshifting works, we will engage in our own experiments, so come ready to read, think, and play!
- Class Description:
- Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/33039/1209
Spring 2020 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- Realism and Its Discontents (65466)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- Department Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5130 Section 001ENGW 5310 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/21/2020 - 05/04/2020Thu 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 207A
- Enrollment Status:
- Closed (8 of 8 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- Please contact Holly Vanderhaar
for permission to enroll. We'll be close reading some novels and poems that push at the edges of realism, as it's commonly understood, for the sake of a visionary, alternative world. We'll be using Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer and studying some of her recommended text. - Class Description:
- Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/65466/1203
Fall 2019 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- The Literary Community (31844)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5310 Section 001ENGW 5130 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session09/03/2019 - 12/11/2019Tue 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 229
- Enrollment Status:
- Open (3 of 5 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- The Literary Community: Activism, The Public Writer, Commitment, and Getting Published. This course discusses how writers commit to a public role and how they work as activists with communities. We will use the class as an open forum for debating issues writers face in the US literary world and we look at getting published in search of a larger audience. Students will participate in at least one public event.
- Class Description:
- Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/31844/1199
Spring 2019 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- Mutations in Ekphrasis: A Writing Laboratory (66513)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5130 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/22/2019 - 05/06/2019Thu 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, East BankKolthoff Hall 137
- Enrollment Status:
- Closed (6 of 6 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- Ekphrastic writing has traditionally involved the description of visual art as a means of framing arguments and observations. In our course, we'll stretch out, engaging cinema, performance, music, GIFs, etc. - sometimes describing, but often inhabiting, critiquing, and building associative connections between the artwork and our writing. To scaffold our experiments, we will explore multiple modes of ekphrasis, including synthesis, live film narration, textual recordings, and critical karaoke.
- Class Description:
- Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/66513/1193
Fall 2018 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- First Person Singular (31904)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5310 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session09/04/2018 - 12/12/2018Mon 04:40PM - 07:10PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 207A
- Enrollment Status:
- Closed (7 of 7 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?hampl+ENGL5090+Fall2018 We will address questions about this alluring but often vexing narrative voice that comes in for so much criticism (Is the first person voice inevitably self-absorbed? How do you get the authority to narrate from the "I"?) We will attempt to look at our subject as dynamically as possible in an effort to take us beyond the narrow confines so often assumed about the first person pronoun. How can the first person represent more than one point of view? How does the first person narrator achieve detachment? Is the first person the voice of feeling or of thought? This is a reading course, not a workshop. There will, however, be opportunities for brief writing exercises, usually in the form of pastiches from our reading and sometimes brief personal essays related to specific reading. Class participation in discussion as well as willingness to read one's own work aloud and make brief formal presentations on the readings are key to success in the course. Readings will include at least one novel, short fiction, memoirs and essays, as well as an array of poetry. Some of the readings will be from "canonical" texts, but our focus will take us mainly to modern and contemporary writers in an effort to hear the first person as a leading voice of the age. Two or three writers whose work will be on the syllabus will visit the class during the semester. This course is designed for graduate students in creative writing and literature. It is an ideal reading course not only for nonfiction students but for poets and fiction writers and future literary critics and scholars who wish to focus on aspects of narration, and on what appears to be the signature voice of the age.
- Class Description:
- FIRST PERSON SINGULAR:
A course devoted to reading works in all three genres that employ the first person voice. While we will consider long and short examples from poetry and fiction, the heaviest concentration of readings will be from forms of nonfiction such as memoirs and personal essays. We will address questions about this alluring but often vexing narrative voice that comes in for so much criticism (Is the first person voice inevitably self-absorbed? How do you get the authority to narrate from the "I"?) We will attempt to look at our subject as dynamically as possible in an effort to take us beyond the narrow confines so often assumed about the first person pronoun. How can the first person represent more than one point of view? How does the first person narrator achieve detachment? Is the first person the voice of feeling or of thought?This is a reading course, not a workshop. There will, however, be opportunities for brief writing exercises, usually in the form of pastiches from our reading and sometimes brief personal essays related to specific reading. Class participation in discussion as well as willingness to read one's own work aloud and make brief formal presentations on the readings are key to success in the course.
Readings will include at least one novel, short fiction, memoirs and essays, as well as a rich array of poetry. Some of the readings will be from the "canonical" texts, but our focus will take us mainly to modern and contemporary writers in an effort to hear the first person as a leading voice of the age.
This course is designed for graduate students in creative writing and literature. It is an ideal reading course not only for nonfiction students but for poets and fiction writers and future literary critics and scholars who wish to focus on aspects of narration, and on what appears to be the signature voice of the age.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/31904/1189
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 11 March 2016
Spring 2018 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- Political Novels (67342)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 1-4 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- ENGL 5090 Section 003ENGW 5130 Section 001ENGW 5310 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/16/2018 - 05/04/2018Tue 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 207A
- Enrollment Status:
- Closed (7 of 7 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?vganesha+ENGL5090+Spring2018
- Class Description:
- In this seminar, we will read novels (and a few short stories) by writers concerned with politics and the political. What makes fiction political? Can writers incorporate history, research, and political and moral stances into creative work without sounding didactic or pedantic? What makes a novel political and not merely historical? The class will also incorporate the option of workshop; logistics for this will depend somewhat on the number of people in the class. Reading may include Chimamanda Adichie, Chinua Achebe, Han Kang, James McPherson, Arundhati Roy, Robert Penn Warren, James Baldwin, James McBride, Amy Waldman, Mohsin Hamid, Dana Spiotta, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Isabel Allende, Rohinton Mistry, and Nadine Gordimer.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/67342/1183
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 13 November 2017
Fall 2017 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- Prose Poetry and Hybrid Prose (34731)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5310 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session09/05/2017 - 12/13/2017Thu 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 303
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?gonza049+ENGL5090+Fall2017
- Class Description:
- This course investigates the evolution of the prose poem (poetry in paragraphs) and the current success of hybrid prose (combinations of poetic sentences and brief, experimental fiction and non-fiction). A selected list of books by prose poets and anthologies of hybrids will be read, along with writing a sequence of prose poems and genre-less texts.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/34731/1179
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 22 February 2017
Spring 2017 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- Science and Scientism in the Humanities (51958)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- CSCL 5910 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/17/2017 - 05/05/2017Tue 05:30PM - 08:00PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 207A
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?brenn032+ENGL5090+Spring2017
- Class Description:
- This course will question the effects of the natural sciences on the humanities, especially recently, but also historically. We will study the public and media devaluation of the humanities, the deference to the sciences, and the assumption that there is nothing uniquely "scientific" about the humanities themselves. Also, and more significantly, we will explore the tendency by humanists (literary critics, artists, philosophers and social theorists) to defer to the claims of science: its evidentiary models, its futurisms, its speculative materialism. We will be interested as well in counter-trends: the critique of scientism, for example; resistance to technological or instrumental reason, to a pure productivity without negation, to the death of the subject, and the rhetoric of "being," which is almost everywhere today. We will discuss the many forms of scientism in the humanities: thing theory, posthumanism, ecocriticism, speculative realism; object-oriented philosophy, the neo-positivism of distant reading, and the digital humanities. If Julien de la Mettrie in eighteenth-century France regarded man as a self-moving machine, the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo, calls for "strip[ping] the human sciences of any hermeneutic privilege and assign[ing] the position of chief importance to technoscience, the history of which he equates with Being." Scientism, in short, has a long history.But there is another side of the coin. The sciences are more and more reliant on ideas taken from the humanities without acknowledgement - the "Big Bang," for example, "the God particle," the "selfish gene." The infiltration of the sciences by the humanities (again, without acknowledgement) is explored in the work of many of the most celebrated theorists of science in practice: viz, Ian Hacking (Historical Ontology and The Emergence of Probability) and Paul Feyerabend, Against Method. We will assess these trends, explore what is methodologically unique to the humanities, weigh the meaning of the word "materialist," discuss the politics of scientism, and think about the reasons for its current prominence. It would have been possible to find relevant readings from many genres: novels, criticism, manifestoes. But for reasons of time, we will concentrate on position pieces, methodological inquiries, and histories of science and the humanities in order to cover as much territory as possible. There are a number of important works on our theme, obviously, that we will not be able to consider. Time permitting, I will be supplying you with supplementary bibliographies to point you in the direction of relevant work by: Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Francis Bacon, Benedict de Spinoza, Rene Descartes, G. W. Leibniz, Giambattista Vico, William Blake, Auguste Comte, Alan Turing, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Popper, J. D. Bernal, Douglas Hofstadter, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bruno Latour, Henri Atlan, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, Stanislaw Lem, R. F. Georgy, and others.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/51958/1173
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 30 September 2016
Spring 2017 | ENGL 5090 Section 002: Readings in Special Subjects -- Writing About the Visual Arts (67158)
- Instructor(s)
- Ramon Gonzalez (Proxy)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5130 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/17/2017 - 05/05/2017Wed 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 207A
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?gonza049+ENGL5090+Spring2017
- Class Description:
- This course is designed to create informal writing about the visual arts without having a background in arts criticism. Through poetry, short fiction, and essays, students will write about famous artworks of the past, contemporary movements, and their own work. The goal is to use the imagination, some knowledge of art, and personal experiences, to respond through visionary, original pieces that show how important art is to writing. Each student will complete a portfolio of writing in various genres and design an art project that will be shared with the class. Personal essays on art and ways of seeing will be read and discussed.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/67158/1173
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 27 September 2016
Spring 2017 | ENGL 5090 Section 003: Readings in Special Subjects -- Minnesota Poets (68490)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5310 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/17/2017 - 05/05/2017Mon 04:40PM - 07:10PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 207A
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?spren001+ENGL5090+Spring2017
- Class Description:
- This course will focus on contemporary Minnesota poets and their editors and publishers, in conjunction with the discussion of student writing in a workshop environment. Poets whose work we will read and who will visit our class will be chosen from former classroom visitors, such as Michael Bazzett, Todd Boss, Jim Cihlar, Dobby Gibson, Patricia Kirkpatrick, Jim Moore, Kathryn Kysar, Matt Rasmussen, Lynette Reini-Grandell, Sun Yung Shin, and Jenny Willoughby. I may also choose other poets who live and work in this area. Editors and publishers will include Chris Fischbach (Coffee House Press), Jeff Shotts (Graywolf Press) and Daniel Slager (Milkweed Editions). They will meet with us to discuss the work of the poets they have edited and published as well as more general matters of manuscript submission, editing, marketing and publicity, and their individual press profiles. Classroom time will be divided between classroom visits and presentation and discussion of student writing.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/68490/1173
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 19 October 2016
Fall 2016 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- First Person Singular (34063)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5310 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session09/06/2016 - 12/14/2016Tue 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 207A
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?hampl+ENGL5090+Fall2016
- Class Description:
- FIRST PERSON SINGULAR:
A course devoted to reading works in all three genres that employ the first person voice. While we will consider long and short examples from poetry and fiction, the heaviest concentration of readings will be from forms of nonfiction such as memoirs and personal essays. We will address questions about this alluring but often vexing narrative voice that comes in for so much criticism (Is the first person voice inevitably self-absorbed? How do you get the authority to narrate from the "I"?) We will attempt to look at our subject as dynamically as possible in an effort to take us beyond the narrow confines so often assumed about the first person pronoun. How can the first person represent more than one point of view? How does the first person narrator achieve detachment? Is the first person the voice of feeling or of thought?This is a reading course, not a workshop. There will, however, be opportunities for brief writing exercises, usually in the form of pastiches from our reading and sometimes brief personal essays related to specific reading. Class participation in discussion as well as willingness to read one's own work aloud and make brief formal presentations on the readings are key to success in the course.
Readings will include at least one novel, short fiction, memoirs and essays, as well as a rich array of poetry. Some of the readings will be from the "canonical" texts, but our focus will take us mainly to modern and contemporary writers in an effort to hear the first person as a leading voice of the age.
This course is designed for graduate students in creative writing and literature. It is an ideal reading course not only for nonfiction students but for poets and fiction writers and future literary critics and scholars who wish to focus on aspects of narration, and on what appears to be the signature voice of the age.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/34063/1169
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 11 March 2016
Fall 2016 | ENGL 5090 Section 003: Readings in Special Subjects -- Fascisms, Empires, Visualities (35401)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session09/06/2016 - 12/14/2016Wed 06:20PM - 08:50PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 202
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?craig026+ENGL5090+Fall2016
- Class Description:
Fascisms, Empires, Visualities, Geographies
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/35401/1169
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 18 July 2016
Spring 2016 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- Great River Review (57689)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 1-4 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5130 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/19/2016 - 05/06/2016Mon 04:40PM - 07:10PMUMTC, East BankFord Hall 155
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule. prereq: grad student or instr consent
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?pcampion+ENGL5090+Spring2016
- Class Description:
- Great River Review
This course will offer students the opportunity to study the production of literary periodicals, while helping to produce The Great River Review, an award-winning journal now housed at the University of Minnesota. Students will explore and present on the history and present of the small magazine in American literature. The class will also meet with twin cities publishing professionals, who have generously offered their time and mentorship. Students will be assigned roles, both editorial and managerial, and will perform these roles under the supervision of the instructor.Students will apply for admission to this course during the preceding fall. Admitted students will meet twice with the instructor, near the end of the fall semester.
Required Text: The Little Magazine in America: A Modern Documentary History Ed. Elliott Anderson and Mary Kinzie - Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/57689/1163
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 8 October 2015
Fall 2015 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- Labor, Work, and Class in U.S. Literature and Film (31504)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 1-4 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- ENGL 3090 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session09/08/2015 - 12/16/2015Tue 02:30PM - 05:00PMUMTC, East BankAmundson Hall 240
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule. prereq: grad student or instr consent
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?rabin001+ENGL5090+Fall2015
- Class Description:
- "What Work Is"...the title poem of a volume by Detroit poet Philip Levine will serve as the guidepost for this course examining the literary, cinematic, visual and musical representations of work and workers in America, how work effects and produces culture, its place in historical memory. As part of the growing field of working-class cultural studies, it considers how various media represented the variety (or lack thereof) of work performed by the citizens, immigrants, slaves, aliens, and other residents of the United States. Using the monumental trilogy of novels that comprises U.S.A. by John Dos Passos (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money) as a template, we will investigate how artists responded to massive boom and bust of the first part of the American Century. But we will travel back in time and around the globe to track what work is in its fullest expression. As a course focused on how labor in the United States was represented, it considers cultural constructions of the actions and activities of work as essentially a project of creation--not only of goods and services--but of ideas, ideologies and practices that contribute to seeing what is meant to remain invisible: the efforts of humans to alter our world. We will be at once intensive and wide-ranging in our sources and methods as we try to determine "what work is" (Philip Levine), who workers are and how workers construct and define themselves, especially in the face of economic disaster.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/31504/1159
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 16 February 2015
Fall 2015 | ENGL 5090 Section 002: Readings in Special Subjects -- The Lyric Essay (35083)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 1-4 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5310 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session09/08/2015 - 12/16/2015Tue 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 50
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule. prereq: grad student or instr consent
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?gonza049+ENGL5090+Fall2015
- Class Description:
This course looks at the breaking of genres that creates the lyric essay—a popular, dynamic, and complex form that combines nonÂfiction, poetry and prose. Through close reading and discussion of key books of lyric essays, along with writing several original pieces, students will explore the methods that have made the form influential. We will find ways to use previous practices in nonÂfiction, fiction, and poetry to work in the lyric essay and find experimental structures from all three genres as we enter new textual territory.
Required texts:
George Albon, Aspiration—Omnidawn Publishing. Eula Biss, The Balloonists—Hanging Loose Press. Ann Carson, Plainwater—Vintage. Julio Cortazar, From the Observatory—Archipelago Books. John D’ Agata, The Next American Essay—Graywolf. Ben Marcus, The Age of Wire and String—Dalkey Archive. Ander Monson, Vanishing Point—Graywolf. Maggie Nelson, Bluets—Wave Books. Frances Ponge, Mute Objects of Expression—Archipelago. Lia Purpura, On Looking—Sarabande Books Alan Zieglar, Short: Five Centuries of ShortÂShort Stories, Prose Poems, Brief Essays, and Other Short Prose Forms—Persea Books.
Meets with: ENGW 5310 section 001- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/35083/1159
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 28 April 2015
Spring 2015 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- Writing About Rock and Roll Music (58813)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 1-4 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Class Attributes:
- Topics Course
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5130 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/20/2015 - 05/08/2015Wed 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, East BankTate Laboratory of Physics 143
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule. prereq: grad student or instr consent
- Class Description:
- Topics in Advanced Creative Writing: 'You Bought a Guitar to Punish Your Ma-Writing About Rock and Roll Music.' This is a course that celebrates rock and roll by analyzing how writers confront the power and impact of popular music and write about it. Through reading of books and articles, group presentations, and listening to CDs and watching documentary DVDs, we will investigate issues that have made rock an influential art form. Participants will write pieces from the point of view of a fan, or a musician, pop culture critic or rock snob. The books use literary methods to wrestle with one of the key factors in rock - the relationship between musician and audience. Other issues include the power of the electric guitar, the creation of 'rock star' (triumphs and tragedies), the meaning of lyrics and how they transform the personal into the universal. We will look at the political responsibility of rock icons, the rock media, the influence of one generation of listeners and musicians upon the next, the question of rebellion and selling out, the indie scene, and music as both sound and visual power (MTV, videos, DVDs). By discussing how writers deal with these issues, we will come to an understanding of where music fits into our lives and how personal tastes and obsessions are transformed through writing about them. Required texts: Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo. Penguin. The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s. Peter Doggett. Harper. You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup. Peter Doggett. Harper. Chronicles by Bob Dylan. Simon & Schuster. A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Anchor Books. I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp by Richard Hell. Ecco Press. Love Goes to Buildings On Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever by Will Hermes. Faber and Faber. Fear of Music by Jonathan Lethem. Continuum. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock'n'Roll Music by Greil Marcus. Plume. Just Kids by Patti Smith. Ecco Press. Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta. Simon & Schuster. Who I Am by Pete Townshend. Harper Perennial.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/58813/1153
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 3 October 2014
Spring 2014 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- The Working Writer (64589)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5130 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/21/2014 - 05/09/2014Wed 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, East BankFord Hall 155
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- Patricia Kirkpatrick will teach this course.
- Class Description:
- Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/64589/1143
Spring 2014 | ENGL 5090 Section 002: Readings in Special Subjects -- Henry James and Literary Criticism (64590)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/21/2014 - 05/09/2014Tue 02:30PM - 05:00PMUMTC, East BankRapson Hall 13
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Description:
- According to recent MLA study, Henry James is now the #1 most written about American author, so this course is designed to offer students a space where they can work through the key literature and criticism of this most compelling writer. We'll look at all facets of James's work as a writer -- early middle and late; canonical works and some of the lesser known texts; tales, novels, criticism, travel writing, notebooks, correspondence, and drama. We'll also survey the major criticism on James, from contemporaneous commentary through contemporary, criticism which so very often rises to the occasion of its subject, and which offers an interesting lens through which to view the evolution of modern literary criticism. Besides course reading, students will work on a presentation of some of the critical writing on James and a course project (a draft of a possible article on James, as well as a conference presentation distillation of that project).
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/64590/1143
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 4 October 2013
Fall 2013 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- Comedy (28998)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session09/03/2013 - 12/11/2013Fri 11:00AM - 01:30PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 202
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Description:
- Comedy has been described as "one of the permanently unsolved problems of literary study." This seminar will focus on what comedy is and how it works, in theory and practice; we will examine a number of theories of comedy and laughter from Aristotle to the present, as well as representative examples of comedy from the early modern period to the present. Topics for discussion may include: What is the role of comedy in society? Why/how do common topics (such as love, sex, fools, parents/children, death, and society) change and/or endure? Is comedy normative or transgressive? Why has there remained a gap between the theory and practice of comedy?
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/28998/1139
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 15 April 2013
Fall 2013 | ENGL 5090 Section 002: Readings in Special Subjects (35259)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5310 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session09/03/2013 - 12/11/2013Wed 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 202
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Notes:
- Reading as Writers
- Class Description:
- Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/35259/1139
Spring 2013 | ENGL 5090 Section 001: Readings in Special Subjects -- Ins and Outs of English, for Writers and Critics (66422)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Meets With:
- ENGW 5130 Section 002
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/22/2013 - 05/10/2013Thu 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 302
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Description:
- Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/66422/1133
Spring 2013 | ENGL 5090 Section 002: Readings in Special Subjects -- Spenser/Milton (66423)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Meets With:
- EMS 8500 Section 003
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/22/2013 - 05/10/2013Tue 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, West BankWalter W Heller Hall 1024
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Description:
- Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/66423/1133
Spring 2013 | ENGL 5090 Section 003: Readings in Special Subjects -- Figure of the Stranger in Literature (66424)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 4 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Meets With:
- CSCL 5910 Section 001
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/22/2013 - 05/10/2013Thu 03:35PM - 06:05PMUMTC, East BankLind Hall 325
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- General background preparation for advanced study. Diverse selection of literatures written in English, usually bridging national cultures and time periods. Readings specified in Class Schedule.
- Class Description:
- The stranger leaves and enters space without appearing to alter it. Not necessarily alien (darker than others, speaking a different language, misunderstood), the stranger nevertheless has no home. S/he wanders even as s/he stays, the victim of restlessness and disgust, but always a certain clarity about being alone in a crowd. Is this the paradigm of the artist? Does the artist play the role of the alien, the foreign, the pariah, standing in for the real-life outcasts? Is art by its very nature about representing those on the social margins, or pretending to live there? This will be an introduction to world literature and to the basic methods of comparative literary study. We will discuss the origins of comparative literature ? that is, the study of literature written in a variety of languages ? and explore how it differs from studying ?English.? We will concentrate on reading literary texts in this course, and mastering some of the classics of world literature. We will read two lengthy classics (an epic and a novel,), the work of the early 20th-century Chinese short-story writer, Lu Hsun, the poems of Naguid Bargouti, and we may read a novella by the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. We will also read selections from Erich Auerbach's Mimesis ? one of the central critical texts of the 20th century. This schedule will allow us to examine at a leisurely pace some of the problems of literary form, and the way that form is conditioned by place, culture, and situation. Our primary task will be to develop a vocabulary and a set of critical options for the close reading of imaginative texts, and we will mostly be involved in basic literary interpretation. Our looking at narrative, representation, translation, genre, and figural language will give way to a questioning of another sort ? one that places literary form itself in a world context. Comparative literature has undergone a decisive change in recent decades. Students of English, cultural studies, and national literatures have all been influenced to various degrees by new scholarship on colonialism, postcoloniality, and transnational systems of value. How does all of this affect literature? Is there such a thing as a world literature? What happens to comparative literature when forced to confront the world outside Europe and the United States? I have structured the course around the theme of the stranger because it evokes so many different ? often antagonistic ? meanings. It marks in many ways the passage from a European bohemian, artist-as-outcast, view of literature to the more literal and politically potent concept of the ?foreign? or ?alien? implied by the contact of peoples on a world scale. The syllabus itself suggests the different ways the ?stranger? might be understood in The Odyssey, Don Quixote, Lu Hsun and Dostoevsky.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/66424/1133
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 9 October 2012
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