NEOMFA Courses Spring 2009

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COURSE LIST SPRING 2009

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Questions about specific courses can be directed to the Program Offices

or to the appropriate English Department: CSU, KSU, UA, YSU.

CRAFT AND THEORY COURSES
Course title:	Campus:	Instructor:	Day & Time:	Course Code:
Craft & Theory: Fiction NOW FULL!	UA	Pope	M 5:20-7:50 pm	3300:689-802
This course, will look at the shape and structure of fiction through representative works and commentary by writers. Enrollment limits observed. Limited to students enrolled in NEOMFA.
Craft & Theory: Poetry	YSU	Greenway	Th 5:10-7:30 pm	ENG 6968
By reading examples of poems in traditional forms—sonnet, villanelle, sestina, etc.—from contemporary poetry and poetry’s golden oldies, we will explore both how great poems are always a blissful marriage of form and content, and how that marriage is achieved. Texts: Mark Strand & Eavan Boland’s The Making of a Poem, Tony Hoagland’s Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft, and Paul Fussell’s Poetic Meter and Poetic Form.
WORKSHOPS
Course title:	Campus:	Instructor:	Day & Time:	Course Code:
Workshop: Fiction	CSU MC 307A	Rahman	W 5:30-8:00 pm	ENG 610
We will focus on craft and structure in the short story. Student work is the primary text, but there will also be plenty of outside reading. You will be asked to write one short(er) story (between 6-15 pages) and one long(er) story (between 15-35 pages) for workshopping along with a revision of either one. We will also focus on pacing and escalation and the beginning/middle/ending dynamic as it relates to both the short(er) and long(er) form. The idea here is to expand your range as a writer, by having you think about both compression and expansion, etc.
Workshop: Playwriting	CSU MC 306A	Geither	T 5:30-8 pm	ENG 612
The focus of this workshop will be on creating plays that constitute a full evening in the theatre, either a single traditional full-length play or the combination of a short full-length play and a shorter work. We will write in and out of class and, after the fifth week, will work with actors to workshop our plays. Our reading will focus on understanding the contemporary emerging playwrights’ aesthetic and will draw primarily from Funny, Strange, Provocative: Seven Plays from Clubbed Thumb and New Downtown Now: An Anthology of New Theatre from Downtown New York.
Workshop: Nonfiction NOW FULL!	KSU	O'Connor	T 5:30-8:15 pm	76895

Graduate Writing Seminar: Poetry NOW FULL!	UA	Biddinger	T 5:20-7:50 pm	3300:689-803
This course will focus almost exclusively on student work, with a significant amount of time dedicated to workshopping. Additional topics will include publishing, assembling poetry manuscripts, and public reading. Enrollment limits observed. Limited to students enrolled in NEOMFA. (more...)
Workshop: Fiction	YSU	Barzak	M 5:10-7:50 pm	6967
This fiction workshop will focus on form and technique in the short story using student work as the primary text, with additional published work used for discussion of how stories create narrative effects. Topics include narrative voice, density (or weight of the writing), suggestion, economy, sound (aural effect) etc. We will also experiment with different ways to write and talk and think about fiction. Our goal is to develop both skills and a particular consciousness of our own making about writing fiction.
LITERATURE COURSES
Course title:	Campus:	Instructor:	Day & Time:	Course Code:
20th Century Irish Poetry	CSU	Archer	M 6:15-8:45 pm	ENG 616
A graduate literature course in Contemporary Irish Poetry. We will read and listen to the poems of W. B. Yeats, Ulysses by James Joyce and poems from two excellent contemporary anthologies which will bring us right up to 2008. Requirements include two research papers, journal, and two oral presentations. As a component of journaling, students will carry on an e-mail correspondence throughout the semester with a contemporary Irish poet living anywhere in the world. Each student will gather all his/her semester's work into a final portfolio.
20th Century Fiction NOW FULL!	CSU MC 306A	Rahman	Th 5:30-8 pm	ENG 616
We will take a very close look, as writers, at story collections that may or may not be novels, novels that may or may not be story collections, and everything in between. We will individuate between The Novel In Stories and Connected Stories and The Short Story Cycle. Along the way we will come an understanding of both Novel and Short Story (ies). The tentative reading list includes Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Lorrie Moore’s Anagrams, Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker, Stuart Dybek’s I Sailed With Magellan, Cathy Day’s The Circus In Winter, John McNally’s The Book Of Ralph, Joan Silber’s Ideas Of Heaven, Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Raymond Carver’s Short Cuts.
Critical Approaches to Literature	CSU MC 209	Jeffers	T/Th 6-7:50 pm	ENG 511

Malory	CSU MC 426	Anderson	T/Th 6-7:50 pm	ENG 695

Shakespeare & Contemporaries	CSU FT 12	Marino	M/W 6-7:50 pm	ENG 695

African-American Literature	KSU	M'Baye	T/Th 2:15-3:30 pm	66104
This graduate course explores the history of African American literature from its inception in African oral traditions to its manifestation in African American poetry, folktales, slave narratives, protest literature, and travel writings. (more...)
Literature and Human Development	KSU	Bracher	T 5:30-8:15 pm	66895
In this course we will read accounts of human intellectual, emotional, social, moral, and identity development and then explore how various elements of literature and modes of literary study can be mobilized to promote the sorts of development that enable greater personal fulfillment and social justice. (more...)
Nineteenth Century British Women Readers/Writers	KSU	Shaw	T/Th 3:45-5 pm	66504
This course examines contentious literary issues related to working and middle class women in 19th c. England and addresses the questions of why what women read and wrote was limited or controlled, why novels were considered dangerous, and how women firstdominated novel writing and then were marginalized as authors. Texts include work by Austen, Braddon, Bronte, and Gaskell as well as scholarship surrounding women writers.
Shakespeare	KSU	Dugas	M 6:15-8:55 pm	66051
We will read selected Shakespeare plays as well as secondary works about them. Our emphasis will be on understanding and participating in current scholarly conversations with particular attention paid to professionalizing MA and PhD candidates.
Twentieth Century Irish Poetry	KSU 104 SFH	Culleton	W 5:30-8:15 pm	ENG 66503
Graduate seminar rich with readings and discussion in 20th century Irish poetry and the history and culture affecting writer's sensibilities. Serious research component: students will immerse themselves in not only the poetry, but also in the literature, history, culture, and in understanding recent debates in Irish studies.
Literary Criticism NOW FULL!	UA	Nunn	W 5:20-7:50 pm	3300:665-801
This course explores modern critical theories and methods in literary research. While analyzing representative theorists and critics, members of this seminar will find ways to use concepts of literary theory in their own writing.
New American Novel NOW FULL!	UA	Pope	Th 5:20-7:50 pm	3300:689-801
This course looks at contemporary novelists to see what traditions they work from, how they see themselves, and how others define them. We will read representative novels carefully, allow time for students to look at reviews, interviews, critical response and other work by the authors.
Shakespearean Drama NOW FULL!	UA	Nunn	T 5:20-7:50 pm	3300:615-801
This seminar concentrates on Shakespeare as professional dramatist. Focus will be on text, performance, and theatrical conditions, of the early modern era and today.
Whitman & Dickinson *NOW FULL!*	UA	Miller	M 5:20-7:50 pm	3300:646-801
Seminar in the life and writings of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. We will also read and study the scholarship on these authors. Assignments will culminate in a substantial and scholarly research paper that engages and contributes to appropriate scholarship.
Old English Literature and Culture.	YSU	Barnhouse	W 5:10-7:50 pm	English 6911 (CRN 21935)
The literature composed in England during the Anglo-Saxon period (approximately 600-1100 C.E.) still enchants readers and has influenced writers from Gerard Manley Hopkins to J.K. Rowling. To gain a nuanced understanding of the literature, we will delve into the culture that created it—and of which it is a part—as we read a variety of Old English poetry and prose.
Early American Studies. The Novel 1789-1839	YSU	Schramer	Th 5:10-7:50 pm	English 6915 (CRN 21937)
Early nineteenth-century English critics taunted their American cousins by asking "who in the world reads an American book?" Their queries made it appear as if there were few American books and even fewer of any merit. This course will explore the development of the American novel, the print culture that made it possible, and the readership for such works.
20^th-Century British Studies: Poetry 1950-2000	YSU	Reese	M 5:10-7:50 pm	English 6920 (CRN 21936)
This course will focus on half a dozen poets whose work has gained prominence in the second half of the 20^th century: Ted Hughes, Tony Harrison, Carol Ann Duffy, Andrew Motion, Selima Hill, and Simon Armitage. This list will be augmented by in-class presentations on other poets active during this period.
Studies in Young Adult Literature	YSU	Hauschildt	M 5:10-7:50 pm	English 6919 (CRN 21938)
Course participants will read works of young adult (YA) literature, including the 2009 English Festival book list, to explore the genre's relevancy for middle and high school readers. In combination, a variety of theoretical readings about YA literature and strategies for teaching will provide a base from which to develop several short papers and a personally/professionally relevant final project. The course will thrive on active discussion, collaboration, investigation, and some participation in the English Festival.
see all YSU courses: workshops, craft & theory, literature, and electives here!
MFA INTERNSHIP	UA	Wasserman	Saturdays, time TBD	3300:689-804