UMKC Graduate Course Descriptions
Spring 2016
English 5500: Graduate Study in English (16734)
Joan Dean
M 5:30pm-8:15pm
This course provides an introduction to methods of research and scholarship related to English
studies. The course explores a wide spectrum of print and digital materials, library facilities
(including archives and Special Collections), databases, and other resources such as manuscripts
and microfilm.
Students will develop two research projects of their own choice (although they can be neither
in the same century nor the same “national literature”). The class will visit local archives and
Special Collections, including the Marr Sound Archive and the Kenneth J. LaBudde Special
Collections at UMKC, and the Linda Hall Library. Students are encouraged to pursue original
research in other facilities such as the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, the Kenneth
Spencer Special Collections at the University of Kansas, the World War I Museum, etc.
Over the course of the semester, students identify academic conferences at which they might
present their work, prepare a CV and paper proposal (or abstract), conduct research and
develop a bibliography, present their research formally in class, and revise their work for
publication. The course is not focused on literary theory but, rather, intends to begin the
process of professionalization.
English 5512: Chaucer (16733)
Virginia Blanton
MW 4:00pm-5:15pm
John Dryden dubbed Chaucer “the father of English poetry,” an appellation that would make
Chaucer laugh, for his poetry shows him to be both very serious about his work and incredibly
adept at self-critique. This label, however, is important, because it is Dryden and others who
made Chaucer’s works central to the English literary canon. This course, which is framed to
support the Manuscript, Print Culture, and Editing track, offers an investigation of Chaucer’s
production of a wide range of Middle English poetry in its cultural and historical milieu and it
will also focus great attention on the reception of Chaucer’s works, both in his own time and
later. Thus, we will examine manuscript copies and discern their differences, even as we will
study how later writers framed Chaucer as the first in a very long tradition of English poetry.
Chaucer has a very large place in print culture, including being the focus of some of William
Morris’ work in the nineteenth century.
This course is also designed for us to study the generic structure of the poems (lyrics, dream
visions, fabliaux, narratives) to consider not only the thematic issues embedded within them
but also their form and execution. In addition to a larger number of The Canterbury Tales, we
will read Troilus and Criseyde, The Book of the Duchess, and several of Chaucer’s lyrics. To gain a
fuller appreciation of Chaucer’s abilities (most especially his humor), we will read the poems in
Middle English. Most people are intimidated by this requirement, but students need not fear;
initial course readings are short so that we can study the language carefully and develop
comprehension skills before engaging the larger poems. The course does have the pre-requisite
of ENG 317, British Literature I.
Undergraduates can expect reading quizzes, two papers, and an oral presentation, in addition
to some short in-class writing assignments. Graduate students can expect a series of short
papers, in-class writing assignments, a book review, and a semester-long project that will
require an annotated bibliography, a review of current scholarship, an oral presentation, and a
substantial piece of literary analysis.
This course counts as:
- a pre-1900 requirement in the English Major;
- an elective in the Manuscript, Print Culture, and Editing Emphasis or minor;
- a medieval requirement in the Medieval and Early Modern Studies minor & Graduate
Certificate.
English 5527: Contemporary Poetry (16728)
Hadara Bar-Nadav
TuTh 7:00pm-8:15pm
I heard words
and words full
of holes
aching.
—from Robert Creeley’s “The Language”
It begins with the root of the tongue
It begins with the root of the heart
there is a spinal cord of wind
singing & moaning in empty space
—from Anne Waldman’s “Makeup on Empty Space”
Contemporary Poetry is an advanced, senior-level/graduate course designed to help you
become active and analytical readers of poetry. Through the study of poetry by diverse authors
this course will consider what and how various aesthetic ideas and influences have shaped
recent poetries--pluralized to indicate the vast array of creative approaches to this
heterogeneous category. We will consider strategies of writing and reading postmodern,
experimental/avant-garde, lyric, formal, narrative, and visual-poetic texts. Course texts may
include an anthology, individual collections of poetry, a literary journal, and essays on poetics.
Poets studied will include more established contemporary writers such as Claudia Rankine and
Dean Young in addition to lesser known authors with only one or two books.
Requirements include rigorous reading of course texts, energized class participation, response
papers, presentations, and a final scholarly paper.
English 5536: Poetic Forms (16738)
Michelle Boisseau
W 5:30pm-8:15pm
“Most arts attain their effect by using a fixed element and a variable,” Ezra Pound
“Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free,” Robert Hass
Intensive study and practice in the various poetic forms which English language poets have used
and adapted from other languages. We will study a wide variety of poems in English, examples
from both the tradition and from the 20th and 21st century, as representatives of how poets
manipulate a set or fixed form to create responsive variations. We will make a particular study
of the sonnet, its rhetorical underpinning, and its metaphorical effects. Required print texts
(only Hirsch may be electronic edition) to include Paul Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form,
(revised edition), McGraw Hill; Hirsch, A Poet’s Glossary; Finch and Varnes, An Exaltation of
Forms; Burt and Mikics, The Art of the Sonnet; Larkin, Collected Poems, ed. Twaite; Ye Chun,
Lantern Puzzle. Electronic resources to include
https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/one_word/line/
English 5537: Prose Forms (16727)
Michael Pritchett
T TH 4:00pm-5:15pm
The making of a long work of prose requires expertise with the structure of the form and an
understanding of relationships between form and content. This class will focus on techniques for
planning and drafting the major prose form in literature: the novel. We will explore how these prose
forms are created and how novelists use content as a guide to inventing new forms. We will study
examples of newly invented prose forms that have evolved out of the novel.
From a historical perspective, we will examine the tradition of the novel as it has been handed down to
us from previous generations of writers to determine what parts of the tradition seem to be most
useful to writers in the here and now.
Works and authors studied will include some of the following: In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, Go
Down, Moses by William Faulkner, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, The
Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor, Voyage In The Dark by Jean Rhys, The Disinherited, by Jack
Conroy, The Ambassadors, by Henry James, We The Living, by Ayn Rand, Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick, The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolf, Invisible Man by R Ralph Ellison,
Second Skin by John Hawkes, The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas, Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas
Wolfe, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Day Of The Locust by
Nathaniel West, and Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion.
English 5550K: Graduate Seminar: Creative Writing Prose (16730)
Whitney Terrell
M 7:00pm-9:45pm
This course will focus on writing and publishing short fiction and novels. Students interested in
submitting creative non-fiction are also welcome. All students are required to have taken
English 312 or its equivalent. The class will be arranged in the “workshop format.” Three times
during the semester, you’ll submit a short story, novel excerpt, or non-fiction piece to me and
that piece will be read and discussed by the entire class. I’ll also line-edit your submissions and
discuss them with you individually.
This course will focus heavily on craft and revision. But craft will only get you so far, and so the
hope here will be to create an environment that allows us to investigate what other tools we
can beg, borrow, or steal to create fiction that is, as John Gardner puts it, “intellectually and
emotionally significant.”
Aside from doing your own writing, you must read, edit, and submit a written comment on your
fellow classmates’ work. As for the readings, we will try a new approach. It’s important for
graduate students to know what their contemporaries are writing and what kinds of new voices
are finding a place in the literary world. So the reading list will focus on new fiction, selected
from recent finalists for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, which is given to
fiction writers under the age of 35. The list will include authors who are just breaking onto the
scene like Jesse Ball, Katherine Faw Morris, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Anthony Marra.
Much is made of the difficulty and pain of fiction writing, but, on the side of optimism, I’ll quote
Gardner again: “Almost no one mentions that for a certain kind of person, nothing is more
joyful or satisfying than the life of a novelist.”
English 5550: Special Readings: Civil Rights Movement in Literature (16218)
Veronica Wilson-Tagoe
Th 5:30pm-8:15 pm
This course examines how African American literature shaped ideas about freedom, rights,
citizenship, and race in the civil rights movement. It draws on a variety of literary forms—
speeches, essays, autobiographies, fiction, drama, poetry and film—to explore the movement’s
impact on communities and cultures as well as its various debates and competing visions.
English 5550: Special Readings: African American Migrations (16219)
Veronica Wilson-Tagoe
TuTh 1:00pm-2:15pm
This course examines representations of two different trajectories of migration in African
American literature: African American journeys from the south to northern and mid-western
regions of the United States, and concurrent migrations of Caribbean people to the US in the
early twentieth century. How do writers negotiate such relocations in literature? How do
interactions of past and present worlds shape new perspectives and values? How have such
representations shaped African American literature and culture?
English 5550: Special Readings: Life Stories: Autobiography, Memoir and Testimonio in Latin
Literature (17838)
Norma Cantú
Tu 5:30pm-8:15pm
This course focuses on what Gloria Anzaldúa called “autohistoria,” or life writing. Our approach
will be a cultural studies one that will deploy a number of strategies including but not limited to
decolonial/postcolonial and feminist/Marxist approaches to cultural and literary production.
We will explore issues of genre, memory and textual analysis. The readings include a selected
number of texts, both critical essays as well as autobiographies, memoirs, and testimonios, to
ground our analysis.
Requirements: two papers (conference length due at mid-term and developed into an article
length paper due at the end of the semester)
Readings:
Across a Hundred Mountains, Reyna Grande
A Place to Stand, Jimmy Santiago Baca
Canícula, Norma Elia Cantú
Borderlands/la Frontera, Gloria Anzaldúa
When I Was Puerto Rican, Esmeralda Santiago
Mariposa Boy, Rigoberto Gonzalez
And one other to be selected by the student
English 5560: From Field Shout to Hip Hop: African American Poetry Traditions (17883)
Jacqueline Wood
TuTh 2:30pm-3:45pm
In this course we will study African American political, social, and literary traditions as they
relate to African American poetry; analyze American racial dynamics in relation to African
American poetry; identify early stages of African American poetry; discuss the flowering of
Black poetry in the Harlem Renaissance Period; illustrate an understanding of Black poetry in
relation to the civil rights period and contemporary poetry; examine the works of black male
and female poets in relation to race conflict, inter-racial and intra-racial gender oppression, and
questions of class in America. Students will also demonstrate competency in writing and critical
thinking skills requiring a synthesis of interactive and individual effort through being able to
complete successfully written and oral assignments.
English 5560: Special Offerings: Intro to Caribbean Literature and Film (15413)
Veronica Wilson-Tagoe
TuTh 11:30am-12:45pm
This course focuses on a selection of music, literary works, and films to introduce students to
the variety of expressive forms and creative literature in the Caribbean. It demonstrates the
impact of slavery, colonialism, and globalization on culture and literature in the region while
exploring the influence of cultural forms like Carnival and Calypso on literature and film. The
course also examines various genres of written literature in the Caribbean, focusing on the
short story, the novel, and film, and on works by Earl Lovelace, Jean Rhys, VS Naipaul, and Sam
Selvon.
English 5575: Advanced Creative Writing: Creative Nonfiction (T TH 5:30pm-6:45pm)
Christie Hodgen
T TH 5:30pm-6:45pm
This course is devoted to the study and crafting of creative nonfiction. Together we will explore
– and practice – many different varieties of this diverse form. Whether in the guise of cultural
critique, reportage, personal history, graphic memoir, or historical portraiture, these works are
first and foremost personal narratives, both troubled and enriched by their subjectivity (the
essay’s “I”). We will discuss the many challenges particular to this form (which often concern
notions of truth and its rendering) and strive to master them as we create vivid personal
narratives of our own. Course requirements include weekly critical and creative responses to
our readings. Coursework will include weekly Blackboard responses to our reading, as well as
two essays (a minimum of 8 pages per essay for undergraduates, 12 pages per essay for
graduate students). Texts may include James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, Alison Bechdel’s
Fun Home, Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Wayne Koestenbaum’s Humiliation,
Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Edouard Leve’s Autoportrait, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, W.G.
Sebald’s The Emigrants. We will also examine the creative nonfiction “market”, and consider a
number of essays on craft and creative nonfiction theory.