ENGL 413 - Senior Research and Writing

Credits: 3

Winter 2022, 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. The course focuses on the analysis and development of narrative strategies in short creative works. Students will produce two types of writings: creative narratives and an analytical essay exploring a related literary topic. (HL) Gavaler.

Winter 2022, ENGL 413-02: Senior Research and Writing: Versions of Epic (3). Prerequisites: Six credits in English at the 300 level, senior major standing, and instructor consent. Enrollment limited to six. This capstone courses centers upon the theory and practice of epic from Aristotle and Le Bossu through leading modern theorists of this form or mode such as Georg Lukacs, Franco Moretti, and Herbert Tucker.  In addition to emphasizing the theoretical tradition, the course will sample exemplary instances from poetry, history, and the novel to film, television, and video games in order to provide a fruitful context in which individual students can conceive and pursue a major term paper on texts, theorists, and debates about epic that most appeal to them. (HL) Adams.

Fall 2021, ENGL 413-01: Senior Research and Writing: Taking Literature Personally (3). Prerequisites: Six credits in English at the 300 level, senior major standing, and instructor consent. This capstone seminar begins with readings about reading, emphasizing cognitive studies, queer theory, and the postcritique movement. Most other readings will be chosen by students for student-led discussions. For the final project, everyone is encouraged to choose a research topic and methodology informed by their previous studies or, perhaps, addressing a gap in their experience of the major. The topics will likely vary wildly, and their forms may, too: while projects must be well-researched and argument-driven, creative or hybrid approaches will be welcome. (HL) Wheeler.

Fall 2021, ENGL 413-02: Senior Research and Writing: Queering the Text (3). Prerequisites: Six credits in English at the 300 level, senior major standing, and instructor consent. Does text have a gender or sexuality? Or does text both embody and challenge socio-political norms? One of the aims of this seminar is to investigate the inherent queerness and trans*ness of text. Reading across historical periods and working on individual projects, we ask whether constructs of sexuality and gender inform or problematize studies of texts, and how race, class, and culture complicate notions of the queer. We learn how to engage in practices of queering and trans*ing, a la Raymond Williams, through a series of keywords: body, prosthetic, desire, friendship, romance (and “bromance”), performativity, author, reader, time, space, normativity, marriage, conduct, and reproduction. (HL) Kao.