ENGL 413 - Senior Research and Writing

Credits: 3 Prerequisites: Six credits in English at the 300 level, senior major standing, and instructor consent. Enrollment limited to six. A collaborative group research and writing project for senior majors, conducted in supervising faculty members’ areas of expertise, with directed independent study culminating in a substantial final project. Possible topics include ecocriticism, literature and psychology, material conditions of authorship, and documentary poetics.

Winter 2021, ENGL 413-01: Senior Research and Writing: Disobedient Texts: Hybrid, Impure, and Bent Genres (3). Prerequisites: Six credits in English at the 300 level, senior major standing, and instructor consent. Hybrid texts combine, transform, and subvert the conventions of narrative sub-genres, breaking down the boundaries between fiction, poetry, memoir and drama.  Many hybrid texts also import/re-vision/transform non-literary discourses from traditional archival resources; within these hybrid texts, word and image combine to create a text that is neither purely written, nor purely visual.  This course explores alternative possibilities for literature to express and even bring about change in the worlds they describe.  Students will also compose a short hybrid text of their own as part of their final project. Possible authors include Silko, Carson, Spiegelman, Allison, Rankine, Cruse, Griffin, Phillips, Wright, Yamashita. (HL) Miranda.

Fall 2020, ENGL 413-01: Senior Research and Writing: The Art of Narrative (3). Prerequisites: Six credits in English at the 300 level, senior major standing, and instructor consent. Enrollment limited to six. A collaborative group research and writing project for senior majors, conducted in supervising faculty members’ areas of expertise, with directed independent study culminating in a substantial final project. This course has two interconnected focuses: the development of narrative strategies in short creative forms (short stories, personal essays, one-act plays, etc.) and the analysis of a literary topic directly related to each student’s narratives. Students conceive their own topics and develop them through workshops and student-run lessons. (HL) Gavaler.