Graduate Classes
2009
Fall
Spring (partial listing)
English 436: Writing for Information Society sec 001 (online) U/G
Professor Dave Clark
This course explores theories, practices, and tools used by professional documentation specialists. Our topics will include knowledge management, information architecture, information design, and of course instructional writing. While designing and producing individual and group projects, students will have the opportunity to gain both theoretical and practical experience with designing and writing tools, processes, and languages. Projects will also require learning effective strategies for managing writing projects, audience analysis and usability testing, and collaboration. This course does not assume any prior technical expertise, and students from all plans and majors are welcome.
English 442: Writing Center Tutoring Practicum sec 001 U/G
Margaret Mika
This course is designed to prepare peer tutors to work one on one with writers who visit the UWM Writing Center. We will begin to examine writing and tutoring processes on theoretical and practical levels. Specific topics will include the role of the peer tutor, the rhetorical situation, strategies for talking with writers at different stages of the process, different genres of academic and personal writing, cultural perspectives in writing and English as a Second Language issues.
In many ways, learning to tutor well is a baptism-by-fire enterprise requiring hours of on-the-job practice. This course provides Writing Center tutors with a foundation of concentrated study and supervised practice from which to begin. Therefore, the first two-thirds of class will be frontloaded, i.e., conducted before the semester starts and 3 weeks before the Writing Center opens. We will meet for 10 hours over two days during the week prior to the first day of classes and again for 1.5 hrs, one Friday each month to complete the course requirements. As important as these formal classes will be the many day to day opportunities for tutors to talk with the director, the graduate assistant coordinator and fellow tutors once the Center opens.
Prerequisites: Instructor's permission required to enroll. Students must have attained junior status, successfully completed the Writing Center application process and hired as a prospective Writing Center tutor. All majors, especially non-English, are welcome.
English 443: Grant Writing sec 001 U/G
Sally Stanton
T 5:30-8:10 pm
Do you want to help nonprofit organizations serve the public? Grant writing combines richly descriptive storytelling and subtle persuasion within technical limits established by potential charitable funders of these organizations. The practical skill of preparing clear, concise grant proposals is valued and desired by employers in higher education, engineering, science and medicine, human services, the arts, and cultural institutions.
In this class, students will learn the basics of researching and writing effective, persuasive grants, and will then develop and apply that knowledge in a writing internship with a community-based nonprofit organization. They will learn how to find and research the sources of charitable funding information available to Milwaukee area organizations and how to effectively organize and present that information for writing grants. Representatives of charitable foundations, professional grant writers, and others will share their knowledge of the nonprofit-funding world and successful grant writing. Students will leave this course with marketable skills and a greater knowledge of the ways in which effective communication adds value to the workplace.
English 444: Technical Editing sec 001 (online) U/G
Professor Rachel Spilka
This course is a hands-on practicum in which students are responsible for both individual and collaborative editing projects. Students learn that in work contexts, the scope of editing tasks can vary dramatically: In some cases, editors "fix up" minor grammatical and usage errors (copyediting); in other cases, editors question, "re-envision," and then reshape major aspects of a document such as its purposes, target audiences, content, style, organization, and design (comprehensive editing). The primary goal of this course is to prepare students to handle both copyediting and comprehensive editing tasks -- and to edit both hard copy and electronic documents -- in future work contexts. A secondary emphasis is on helping students better understand the roles and responsibilities of editors, the ethical dimensions of editing, how editors contribute to document effectiveness, how editors relate to writers during a document's life cycle, and what is involved in becoming a successful editor.
Weekly course assignments are likely to include discussion forum posts on ethical issues and the editor-writer relationship, in addition to "mini assignments" aimed at developing skills and practice in copyediting; relearning (or learning for the first time) the fundamentals of English grammar, spelling, mechanics and usage; and gaining competence in proofreading and editing technical material. Major editing assignments are likely to include copyediting and comprehensive editing tasks on actual work documents in a variety of content areas (such as public policy, science, and health/medicine). A final collaborative course project will involve working in a team to conduct a comprehensive edit on an actual organization's document, website, or set of documents.
English 449: Internship in English sec 001, 002, 003, 004 (depending on credits taken) U/G
Carolyn Washburne
M 4:30-7:10 pm (initial meeting only; course does not meet regularly)
This flexible-credit internship for English majors (and selected non-majors) provides students with the opportunity to:
- Apply their coursework and writing skills while working in a "real world" setting
- Develop professional skills and experience that are valuable in the marketplace
- Synthesize course and work experience through progress reports, class discussion, conferences with the instructor, and a final paper
Internship placements have been arranged with a variety of Milwaukee-area organizations and businesses in the following fields: publishing, public relations/advertising/corporate communications not-for-profit agencies, and technical writing firms/departments (see the URL below for more information on placements). As a writing intern, a student may be called upon to do a variety of tasks, including writing, editing, proofreading, and research.
To enroll in this course, students must fill out an application form, which is available at www.uwm.edu/Dept/English/bustech/internship/ . The application asks for a summary of their school and work experience, references, and a sample of their writing. A faculty committee will screen applicants for their competency in English grammar, punctuation, and usage, as well as for their ability to conduct themselves appropriately in the workplace.
English 504: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature sec 001 U/G
Subtitle: Sex and Enlightenment
Professor Barrett Kalter
TR 11:00 am-12:15 pm
The Enlightenment is commonly understood as a philosophical movement that affirms society's progressive discovery of universal moral principles and nature's laws through the public use of critical reason. Sexuality, by contrast, is often seen as a private facet of identity that emanates in unruly ways from the body and its passions. This course will explore the relation between these contradictory categories as represented in eighteenth-century literature, considering: 1) modern notions of sexuality as products of Enlightenment thought; 2) the challenges sex poses to Enlightenment values of self-control, equality, free expression, normalcy, and consent.
Our discussion will center on the following: the bawdy poetry of the Earl of Rochester and The Libertine, a film of his life starring Johnny Depp; Eliza Haywood's Love in Excess, an early bestseller rivaled in popularity only by Robinson Crusoe; John Cleland's pornographic Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure; and Matthew Lewis's The Monk, a Gothic tale of religious prohibition, transgressive desire, and revolution. We will also read selections from works by Enlightenment intellectuals, including the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the Marquis de Sade, as well as recent theorists, such as Michel Foucault and Laura Kipnis.
Topics to be discussed include: libertinism as instance of and resistance to political tyranny; romantic love, intimacy, and private life; pornography, censorship, and freedom of expression; prostitution, urban sexual subcultures (e.g., the proto-homosexual mollies), and the legal and medical definition of deviance.
English 624: Seminar in Modern Literature U/G
Subtitle: Dangerous Fictions
Professor Jason Puskar
English 625: Seminar in Literary History U/G
Subtitle: Carribean Literary History
Professor Kevin Browne
English 628: Seminar in Literature by Women U/G
Subtitle: Captivity, Seduction and Domesticity
Professor Kristie Hamilton
English 629: Seminar in Literature and Sexuality sec 001 U/G
Subtitle: Contemporary LGBT Literature
Professor Barrett Kalter
TR 3:30-4:45 pm
In recent years, authors have tried to fill gaps in the historical record by imagining the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people in periods when such lives were routinely kept secret, ignored, and destroyed. Critics of this act of imaginative reclamation question the relevance of modern identities to earlier periods, and wonder if a past isn't being so much restored as created anew, as fiction with no counterpart in fact. In this course, we will read some of the most gorgeously written, thematically ambitious, and sexy works of literature to address these issues, works that satisfy the desire for a queer past while troubling the assumptions about authenticity and knowability that stir that desire.
Readings may include: C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, in Daniel Mendelsohn's acclaimed new translation; Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex; Colm Toibin, The Master; Sarah Waters, Affinity; Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry.
English 708: Advanced Professional Writing sec 001 (online) G
Professor Gerald Alred
Advanced Professional Writing is a course for those interested in developing skill in advanced academic writing or functioning as professional writers in organizations. The course will examine the theory and practice of professional writing in education, business, and government. Students will analyze the rhetoric of professional documents and will receive intensive practice in producing documents of professional quality. The course goals include the following:
- Develop the skills and ethos of a professional technical writer.
- Develop a professional writing process both to produce high-quality documents and to diagnose problems in documents.
- Learn how to conceptualize, develop, and manage large, complex, and challenging writing tasks, such as proposals, professional articles, and major academic projects.
- Determine how to choose the most appropriate medium or combination of media to accomplish the goals of documentation.
- Learn audience analysis and develop a "sense of audience."
- Polish a piece of writing through multiple revisions to a professional level and learn how to work with reviewers.
- Learn the rhetorical strategies of document organization: be able to sift, evaluate (determine what's relevant and what's not), and integrate information from multiple sources to accomplish a document's purpose and to meet the readers' needs.
- How are our conceptions of rhetoric shaped by the communication technologies we use?
- How are our conceptions of rhetoric shaped by the kinds of composing available to us? By the kinds of texts we can compose and the publishing options open to us?
- How do digital and network rhetorics shape our sense of the possible relations we, as composers, can establish with readers?
- How do digital and network rhetorics shape our sense of the possible relations we, as textual consumers, establish with a text's composer(s)?
- What general shifts can we notice in how we read in print to how we read online?
- When we compose digitally, for network consumption, what are our ethical obligations to our students, our other audiences, ourselves, and our own texts?
Although this course is rewarding, it is also demanding: students should be prepared to spend considerable time on research, organization, writing, and revising. For a first-hand account of this course, use the following link to download an article written by a former student: http://www.uwm.edu/~alred/pdf/Schoenecker.pdf.
English 711: Information Design sec 001 G
Professor Dave Clark
T 5:30-8:10 pm
This course explores the underpinnings, theories, and applications of information design. We will read key works by influential information designers (Tufte, Norman, Nielsen, Jacobson), related theory (Latour, Engestrom, Nardi), and scholarship from rhetoric and professional communication. We will critique texts, design approaches, and interfaces, and get hands-on practice with the design, implementation and testing of design projects for external clients (no prior experience expected or required).
English 753: Contemporary Rhetorical Theory sec 001 (online) G
Professor Anne Wysocki
We will focus on digital and networked rhetorics and their relations to (and breaks from) traditional rhetorics -- and, coming from this, how composition pedagogy might be shaped in light of these newer rhetorics.
In addition to the sorts of questions implied by the above paragraph, we will also consider questions like the following:
Because it makes sense to explore the possibilities of digital rhetorics through production and use rather than from the distance of print only, this will be an online class in which we will explore the sorts of writing/composing that the currently configured digital rhetorics make possible.
English 754: Autobiography as Pedagogy for Teachers of Writing G
Professor Mary Louise Buley-Meissner
T 4:30-7:10 pm
This course is open to graduate students who are seriously interested in the teaching of writing, particularly in becoming more self-reflective and critically aware of how their work in the classroom is inevitably influenced by their experiences beyond it. The main project for this course will be a personal narrative integrating autobiographical reflection with professional concerns directly relevant to the teaching of writing. This narrative is to be centered in individual experience and informed by research. Guidance for an appropriate approach to take will be provided by course reading, class discussion of work in progress, and instructor consultation.
You are likely to enjoy this seminar if you enjoy reading, writing, and collaborative learning as opportunities to reconsider what you believe and re-envision what might be true (about teachers, students, literacy, the purposes of higher education). Everyone is expected to share responsibility for the seminar itself as a "work in progress" (with the participants' questions and concerns influencing the direction we take together). Given the diverse backgrounds of people in our graduate program, I look forward to a lively exchange of ideas. Whatever your individual interests may be, I hope that together we can experience the extraordinary power of the written word in shaping who we are, what we believe, and why we reach for truth beyond the telling.
Texts (a tentative list)
Behar, Ruth. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. Boston: Beacon, 1997.
Dews, C.L. Barney, and Carolyn Leste Laws, eds. This Fine Place So Far from Home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1995.
hooks, bell. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Martin, Rachel. Listening Up: Reinventing Ourselves as Teachers and Students. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann/Boynton/Cook, 2001.
Ogulnick, Karen, ed. Language Crossings: Negotiating the Self in a Multicultural World. New York: Teachers College P, 2001.
Perl, Sondra. On Austrian Soil: Teaching Those I Was Taught to Hate. New York: State U of NY P, 2005.
Schmidt, Jan Zlotnik, ed. Women/Writing/Teaching. New York: State U of NY P, 1998.
Singley, Bernestine, ed. When Race Becomes Real: Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008.
Trimmer, Joseph, ed. Narration as Knowledge: Tales of the Teaching Life. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1997.
English 777: American Literature to 1830 G
Subtitle: Survey of Literature and Critical History
Professor Kristie Hamilton
English 824: Seminar in Special Topics in Literature G
Subtitle: Modernism, Urbanism, and the Novel
Professor Andrew Kincaid
English 825: Seminar in Major Figures G
Subtitle: James Joyce
Professor Josepha Lanters
English 871: Seminar in African American Literature G
Subtitle: Black Literature and Film: Africa and the African Diaspora
Professor Sandra Grayson
English 878: Seminar in Feminist Critical Theory G
Subtitle: Cultural Diversity, Multiculturalism, Globalization: Gendered Debates
Professor Kumkum Sangari