Graduate English Course Catalog
A variety of classes are offered each semester, depending on anticipated enrollments. The following list includes all potential courses; all courses are 3 credits.
GENG 501 Introduction to Creative Writing (3 credits)
Intended for students who have not developed a substantial writing portfolio, this course offers an introduction to the theoretical and practical elements involved in writing poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Readings will include theoretical and creative texts.
GENG 506 Introduction to Linguistics: English Language (3 credits)
The systematic study of present-day English sounds through phonetics and phonology, words through morphology, sentences through syntax, as well as the contexts of language production through the history of English, sociolinguistics, and social interaction in discourse. Special attention will be given to the use of language study as an approach to English literature and the teaching of English.
GENG 508 Introduction to Composition Theory (3 credits)
An introduction to the major issues in composition theory, practice, and pedagogy
GENG 513 Issues in Criticism (3 credits)
An introduction to the principal theoretical issues and questions in the discipline of literary studies. The course explores the major contemporary approaches to literary studies in the context of various traditions of literary theory and criticism. It encourages students to assess constructively some of the key controversies in contemporary critical theory and apply their learning to the interpretation of literary texts. This required course must be taken as one of the first three courses in the program.
GENG 514 Genre Studies (3 credits)
An examination of a particular subject within one of the four major genre categories of fiction, nonfiction prose, drama, or poetry. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits).
GENG 521 Medieval Literature (3 credits)
The study of English literature from its beginning to 1485. Readings may include Beowulf, selections from Old English poetry, The Pearl poet, medieval drama, William Langland, Marie de France, Sir Thomas Malory, and Geoffrey Chaucer. This course satisfies the pre-1800 British Literature distribution requirement.
GENG 522 The English Renaissance (3 credits)
The study of English drama, poetry, and prose of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in relationship to the major themes and developments of the Continental Renaissance. Potential authors studied include Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. This course satisfies the pre-1800 British Literature distribution requirement.
GENG 523 17th-Century British Literature (3 credits)
A study of English prose and poetry from 1603 to 1660. Readings may include such individual authors as Ben Jonson, John Donne, and/or John Milton, and such groupings as the metaphysical or Cavalier poets, and such prose writers as Francis Bacon, Robert Burton, and Sir Thomas Browne, with emphasis on the major developments of prose style. This course satisfies the pre-1800 British Literature distribution requirement.
GENG 528 Restoration/18th-Century British Literature (3 credits)
The study of British drama, poetry, fiction, and non-fiction prose from 1660 to 1830. This may include exploration of literary developments such as the rise and fall of Restoration drama, the origins of the periodical, the rise of the novel and female authorship, the popularity of the scandalous memoir and its offspring, biography, and the tradition of the Gothic. Authors covered may include Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, Eliza Haywood, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Oliver Goldsmith, Frances Burney, Elizabeth Inchbald, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Ann Radcliffe, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen. This course satisfies the pre-1800 British Literature distribution requirement.
GENG 529 The Romantic Age in Britain (3 credits)
A study of British poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fiction prose from 1789 to 1850. This includes explorations of topics such as literary innovation, the Romantic self and imagination, Romantic ecology, the Gothic, the historical novel, and science fiction. Also examined are the relationship between literature and key social developments, such as the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, the equality of the sexes, the anti-slave trade movement, industrialization, and the scientific revolution. Authors covered may include William Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft, Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, William Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, John Keats, Jane Austen, and Felicia Hemans.
GENG 530 The Victorian Age in Britain (3 credits)
The study of British poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fiction prose from 1837 to 1901. This includes exploration of the relationship between literature and key cultural developments, including industrialization, Darwinism, Pre-Raphaelitism, aestheticism, and the Woman Question. Authors covered may include Alfred Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Charlotte Bronte, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Oscar Wilde.
GENG 532 20th-Century British Literature (3 credits)
This course will focus on canonical texts of 20th-century British literature while also drawing attention to texts written by British writers of color and writers born outside of the United Kingdom. Potential authors may include T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Jean Rhys, D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Thomas Beckett, and Harold Pinter.
GENG 542 Colonial/Early American Literature (3 credits)
The study of American literature from European exploration through about 1800. The origins and development of fiction, poetry, and autobiography will be explored, with attention given to such uniquely American literary forms as the Jeremiad, the captivity narrative, and the slave narrative. Authors covered may include Christopher Columbus, Cabeza de Vaca, Anne Bradstreet, William Bradford, Olaudah Equiano, Mary Rowlandson, Benjamin Franklin, Samson Occom, Phyllis Wheatley, Philip Freneau, Washington Irving, Charles Brockden Brown, Susanna Rowson, and Native American orators. This course satisfies the pre-1900 American Literature distribution requirement.
GENG 547 19th-Century American Literature (3 credits)
The study of the rich and varied strands of 19th-century American writing, beginning in about 1800 and culminating in turn-of-the-century literature. This course will explore intersections between literature and key intellectual, historical, and cultural events of the period. Potential authors studied include James Fenimore Cooper, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, William Fuller, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman. This course satisfies the pre-1900 American Literature distribution requirement.
GENG 549 20th-Century American Literature (3 credits)
The study of American fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction prose from 1900 to the present. The relationship between literature and key cultural developments will be explored, including immigration and Americanization, industrialization and mechanization, modernism, and the civil rights and feminist movements. Authors covered may include Edith Wharton, Eugene O'Neill, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, William Carlos Williams, Zora Neale Hurston, Jack Kerouac, Adrienne Rich, Louise Erdrich, and Toni Morrison.
GENG 558 Multicultural Literature (3 credits)
This course focuses on postcolonial writers, as well as writers from American communities of color. The course emphasis may be on the literature of one nation or ethnic community, on one geographic area, or on a group of authors who deal with a similar topic. Authors will vary, and may include Chinua Achebe, Julia Alvarez, Junot Diaz, Bessie Head, Jamaica Kincaid, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, or Derek Walcott. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). This course satisfies the Multicultural Literature distribution requirement.
GENG 559 Native American Literature (3 credits)
The study of the literature of various Native American groups from its origins in such traditional forms as creation myths and the trickster cycle through literary responses to treaty, reservation, and the boarding school eras into contemporary fiction, poetry, and autobiography. Authors covered may include William Apess, Sarah Winnemucca, Zitkala-Sa, Charles Eastman, James Welch, Louise Erdrich, and Leslie Marmon Silko. This course satisfies the Multicultural Literature distribution requirement.
GENG 560 African-American Literature (3 credits)
The study of the heritage of African-American literature, beginning with the vernacular tradition, colonial poetry, and the slave narrative; proceeding through the Harlem Renaissance, the modern period, and the Black Arts Movement; and culminating in contemporary fiction, poetry, drama, and other genres. Authors covered may include Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Phyllis Wheatley, William Chesnutt, W. E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, and Toni Morrison. This course satisfies the Multicultural Literature distribution requirement.
GENG 562 Modern European Traditions (3 credits)
Reading in translation of representative masterpieces in the European tradition from the Renaissance through the 20th century, including such writers as Miguel de Cervantes, Jean Racine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gustave Flaubert, George Sand, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, and Thomas Mann. Areas of inquiry may also include the mutual interactions of the European tradition with modern African, Latin American, or Eastern literatures.
GENG 572/573 Thematic/Special Topics (3 credits)
Potential topics may include literature and film, the Bible and literature, the memoir, ecology and literature, literatures of the Holocaust, and literary biography. Credit may be earned more than once under these numbers for different emphases (max: 6 credits).
GENG 577 Literature by Women (3 credits)
This course will offer a survey of literature by women. It will concentrate on some tradition of British, American (including American communities of color), and/or post-colonial women's writing. It may address issues of placement of women in the literary canon, the role of gender in the composition and criticism of literary texts, thematic issues in writing by women, along with relevant elements of women's history and feminist theory. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits).
GENG 598/599 Undergraduate Cross-list (3 credits)
The graduate course numbers for 300 and 400-level undergraduate courses taken for graduate credit. Please consult the graduate program coordinator for more information about registering for GENG 598/599.
The following courses all count towards the 600-level course requirement unless otherwise noted:
GENG 601 Writing Poetry (3 credits)
A workshop experience involving the ongoing exploration of subject matter and technique. Readings will include theoretical and creative texts. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 602 Writing Fiction (3 credits)
A workshop experience involving the ongoing exploration of subject matter and technique. Readings will include theoretical and creative texts. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 604 Writing Literary Nonfiction (3 credits)
A workshop experience involving the ongoing exploration of subject matter and technique. Readings will include theoretical and creative texts. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 608 Topics in Composition Theory (3 credits)
Potential topics may include writing theory, writing pedagogy, writing center theory and administration, reading and writing, writing across the curriculum, basic/remedial writing, technology and writing, and writing and the affective domain. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 609 The Rhetorical Tradition (3 credits)
An examination of an issue in rhetorical theory, a period in the history of rhetoric, or the work of a major rhetorical figure. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 613 Topics in Literary Theory (3 credits)
An advanced examination of the major developments and debates in contemporary literary theory. Topics may include Marxism, psychological criticism, reader-response theories, hermeneutics, deconstruction, feminist criticism, and new historicism. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 618 Issues on Canon (3 credits)
An examination of theoretical debates over how literary works are or should be selected as worthy of academic scholarship and teaching. Includes such practical issues as forming a curriculum, developing new critical assumptions and methods, and assessing scholarship. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 621 Topics/Figures in Medieval Literature (3 credits)
Potential topics may include Geoffrey Chaucer, Tolkien: Middle Ages/Middle Earth, and Arthurian Literature. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). This course satisfies the pre-1800 British Literature distribution requirement. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 622 Topics/Figures in the English Renaissance (3 credits)
Potential topics may include the rise of the theater or developments in lyric poetry; potential figures include Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). This course satisfies the pre-1800 British Literature distribution requirement. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 623 Topics/Figures in 17th-Century British Literature (3 credits)
Potential topics may include religious literature, women's writing, or the new subjectivity in poetry; potential figures include John Donne, George Herbert, and John Milton. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). This course satisfies the pre-1800 British Literature distribution requirement. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 628 Topics/Figures in Restoration/18th-Century British Literature (3 credits)
Potential topics may include the women playwrights of the Restoration Period; the literature of the West Indies; Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and their circle; and Jane Austen on Film. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). This course satisfies the pre-1800 British Literature distribution requirement. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 629 Topics/Figures in the Romantic Age in Britain (3 credits)
Potential topics may include literature after the French Revolution, the first- or the second-generation Romantics, Blake and his composite art, Byron and his legacy, the Shelleys and their circle, Romanticism and myth, Romantic ecology, Romantic Philhellenism, and women writers of the Long Romantic period. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 630 Topics/Figures in the Victorian Age in Britain (3 credits)
Potential topics may include Charles Dickens, the Gothic novel, the Victorian sensation novel, detective fiction of the Victorian Period, and Victorian literature in the fin de siècle. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 632 Topics/Figures in 20th-Century British Literature (3 credits)
Potential topics may include Britain between the wars, British Modernism, the Bloomsbury Group, T.S. Eliot's influence on Modernism, and post-World War II British literature. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 637 Topics/Figures in Irish Literature (3 credits)
Potential topics may include James Joyce., W. B. Yeats, modern and contemporary Irish drama, and the poetry of Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 642 Topics/Figures in Colonial/Early American Literature (3 credits)
Potential topics may include Early American women writers, race in Colonial/Early American literature, dissenting voices in Colonial/Early American Literature, and the Early American novel. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). This course satisfies the pre-1900 American Literature distribution requirement. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 647 Topics/Figures in 19th-Century American Literature (3 credits)
Potential topics may include Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Mark Twain, literature of the Civil War, the rise of the woman novelist, and Transcendental writing. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). This course satisfies the pre-1900 American Literature distribution requirement. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 649 Topics/Figures in 20th-Century American Literature (3 credits)
Potential authors may include such figures as Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Willa Cather. Potential topics may include the rise of American theater, the Beats, and contemporary American literature. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 658 Topics/Figures in Multicultural Literature (3 credits)
Potential topics may include Third World cinema, writing and resistance in the global age, and Mexican-American literature. Potential authors may include Ama Ata Aidoo, Assia Djebar, Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, or Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). This course satisfies the Multicultural Literature distribution requirement. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 659 Topics/Figures in Native American Literature (3 credits)
Potential topics may include Ojibway and Dakota literature, contemporary Native American literature, and Literature of Native American women. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). This course satisfies the Multicultural Literature distribution requirement. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 660 Topics/Figures in African-American Literature (3 credits)
Potential topics may include such figures as James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, or Zora Neale Hurston; race, gender, and sexualality in the black novel; the Harlem Renaissance; and trauma and the 19th-century American slave narrative. Credit may be earned more than once under this number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). This course satisfies the Multicultural Literature distribution requirement. Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 672 Special/Thematic Topics (3 credits)
Potential topics may include the dialogue of self and other, the public intellectual and civic education, and discourse analysis. Credit may be earned more than once under number for different emphases (max: 6 credits). Prerequisite: GENG 513 or permission of the instructor.
GENG 680 Writer's Tutorial (3 credits)
Opportunity for study at an advanced level with the writing faculty. The focus is on developing a portfolio of polished work or a book-length manuscript. Prerequisite: advanced creative writing skills and consent of the instructor. GENG 680 is excluded from the two 600-level courses requirement.
GENG 698 Independent Reading/Study (3 credits)
Consent of the instructor and Director of Graduate Studies required after completion of the Independent Study Proposal Form. Students may take up to two independent study courses (max: 6 credits). GENG 698 is excluded from the two 600-level courses requirement.
GENG 699 Master’s Essay (3 credits)
Preparation of the master’s essay under the supervision of a faculty member. A Master's Essay Proposal form must be filled out and approved by the faculty advisor and Director of Graduate Studies before work on the essay can begin. This required course is excluded from the two 600-level courses requirement.
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Previous Course Catalog
Fall 1993 - Spring 2011 Catalog
Informational Item:
The University of St. Thomas is registered as a private institution with the Minnesota Office of Higher Education pursuant to sections 136A.61 to 136A.71. Registration is not an endorsement of the institution. Credits earned at the institution may not transfer to all other institutions.
