Graduate Courses

Following the establishment of the United States, authors wrote to create literature that was characteristically “American” or to contest the meaning of that national identity. Readings of literary engagement with topics in philosophy, politics, history, morality, art, nature, industry, medicine, and war.

Readings in late twentieth- and twenty-first century literature, both in original English and/or translation. May focus on a single genre, or include multiple genres.

Course Descriptions

ENG 507: Graduate Fiction Workshop

Prerequisites: English M.A. candidate, writing sample, faculty permission.

A graduate seminar for students concentrating in creative writing, which focuses on workshopping in-progress writing by peers, analyzing published creative works, reading and discussing essays on narrative theory and writing as a craft. May be repeated once for credit.

Credits: 3

ENG 508: Graduate Poetry Workshop

Prerequisite(s): English M.A. candidate, writing sample, faculty permission.

*Required to complete the concentration in Poetry & Poetics

An innovative approach to the traditional workshop for poets and those who think and write about poetry form a scholarly perspective, this course facilitates creative approaches to the writing of both poetry and poetics. Due consideration will be given to historical models, as well as to critical and theoretical writings. The principle object will be the students own writing as it unfolds across the semester.

Credits: 3

ENG 515: Approaches to Collaborative Writing

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing or permission

This course focuses on theoretical and practical approaches to writing collaboratively in academic, professional, and community-based settings. Students will learn how to be the lead writer/project manager on documents such as reports, proposals, and grants that are often written as part of a team. This course is appropriate for graduate students who want to improve their own written work and for students who want to learn how to manage collaborative writing projects.

Credits: 3

ENG 516: Perspectives on Information Design

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing or permission

This course focuses on theoretical and practical approaches to information design through topics such as visual rhetoric, usability, technical editing, social justice, ethics, digital rhetoric, and information literacy. Projects may include working with a client to design or edit a document and building a personal portfolio of professional and technical writing. This course is appropriate for graduate students who want to expand their skills in communicating information effectively and ethically to various audiences.

Credits: 3

ENG 518: Topics in Professional and Technical Writing

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing or permission

*May be repeated for credit when topic varies

Topics vary according to changes in the field, expertise of the faculty, and needs of the students. Possible topics include scientific communication, rhetoric of health and medicine, organizational communication, digital rhetoric, usability, and social justice.

Credits: 3

ENG 529: Studies in Language, Literature, and Writing

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

Intended to supplement and allow experiments within the existing curriculum at the 500 level. Please see examples of recent seminar offerings below.

Credits: 3

ENG 536: Studies in Canadian Literature

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

In-depth study of Canadian literature, focusing on a particular period, group, movement, issue or major author: e.g. pre-Confederation literature, the TISH poets, the McGill Movement, novels by writer of color, Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje.

Credits: 3

ENG 541: Colonial and Early North American Literature

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

A graduate seminar in literatures from the beginnings of European exploration and colonization of North America through early attempts to define and create American literature in the early Republic

Credits: 3

ENG 542: Studies in North American Literatures

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

In-depth study of works by American writers focusing on a particular period, cultural group, movement, issue or individual(s); e.g. Contemporary Native American Writers, African American Literary Tradition and Theory, Literature of Mixed Blood Experience, Jewish American Literature, or Maine Literary History Franco-American and Wabanaki. Topics vary per semester.

Credits: 3

ENG 545: Literature at the Fin-de-Siecle

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

Readings will be drawn from the period encompassing Reconstruction and the First World War. During this period of rapid nationalist expansion, the New England dominance of American letters was challenged by writers from many other places and ethnicities. The seminar will examine tensions central to the period, such as modernism vs. anti-modernism, civilization vs. nature, and nostalgia for the rural past in the face of the new mass urban culture.

Credits: 3

ENG 546: Modernisms

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

Seminar examining the transnational movements known as modernism from a variety of perspectives and through a range of texts-both in original English and translation-and artworks. Specific focus will vary depending on the instructor.

Credits: 3

ENG 549: Studies in Gender and Literature

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

Intensive study of the workings of gender in language and literature. Topics will vary widely, and may include studies of women writer and/or of specific literary periods or schools, as well as studies of specific theoretical questions such as the gendered nature of language, modern and contemporary feminist theory, gender theory, queer theory, and identity studies.

Credits: 3 *May be repeated for credit if topics differ

ENG 551: Medieval Literature

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

This class examines the literature and language of the medieval period. Readings vary but may include selections from the British, Continental, and/or Global Middle Ages.

Credits: 3

ENG 553: Early Modern Drama

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

A seminar that considers the dynamic role of theatrical performance in the changing political, religious, and cultural landscapes of sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. Readings represent a cross-section of dramatic writers, forms, genres, and conditions. The course’s primary thematic focus will vary from year to year.

Credits: 3

ENG 554: Early Modern Prose and Poetry

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

Explores innovations in sixteenth and seventeenth century Anglophone poetry and prose, with attention to cultural, political, and global contexts. Readings will draw from canonical and lesser-known texts, and will represent the works of female and male writers. The course may be organized around a specific theme.

Credits: 3

ENG 555: Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

The Restoration and Eighteenth Century is a watershed period that marks the transition from Renaissance to Modern. This seminar considers literature against the background of this historical change and focuses on gender, culture, genre, individualism, representation, and post colonialism. May include works by Pope, Behn, Cavendish, Finch, Congreve, Dryden, Swift, Defoe, Richardson, Johnson, and Radcliffe, among others.

Credits: 3

ENG 556: British Romanticism

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

An exploration of both poetry and prose of the Romantic period, by male and female writers, canonical and lesser known. Particular attention is paid to questions of gender and genre as an influence on canonical Romantic poetics.

Credits: 3

ENG 558: British Modernist Literature

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

Readings in British Modernist literature, including poetry, prose, fiction, and drama. Time frame may vary, with a focus on either early or late modernism (1890s to 1920s-1940s or 1930-1960s).

Credits: 3

ENG 570: Critical Theory

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

Readings in the theoretical traditions that have determined the possibilities for scholarship and interpretation in literary criticism, and a consideration of significant contemporary experiments that have redefined these possibilities.

Credits: 3

ENG 579: Theorizing and Researching Composing

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

Equips students with an overview of dominant theoretical frameworks for conceptualizing writing as both an activity and as a product of that activity. The course introduces several empirical methods for testing hypothesis about composing processes and composed artifacts.

Credits: 3

*Note: This course is identical to COM 579

ENG 580: Topics in Poetry and Poetics

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

Intensive study of literary language and practice focusing primarily but not exclusively on poetry. Topics will vary widely but fit one or more of the following general areas of emphasis: theories of poetry and poetic production; surveys focusing on work from more than one historical period or national literature; studies of the critical and other prose writings of poets; courses on critical theory in which poetry plays a key role; narratology and genre theory.

Credits: 3

*May be repeated for credit.

ENG 596: Graduate Internship Experience

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English, Permission required; ENG 515 or 516 or by faculty recommendation

Supervised professional work applying skills cultivated in the MA in English program. Graduate students may work with businesses, professionals, or organizations approved by the department. Work may include editing, developing content, reporting, indexing, researching, analyzing, designing communication, and professional/technical writing, among other activities related to students’ professional goals. Students must apply for this course before the semester of enrollment. Students are expected to work approximately 12 to 15 hours per week per 3 hours credit. May be repeated for credit up to 6 credit hours.

Credits: 1 – 6

ENG 600: Introduction to Graduate Studies in English

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

This course offers an overview of graduate studies in English. It introduces students to the scholarly resources, graduate faculty, and academic writing and publishing, ethics and professional development in academia, and the responsible conduct of research.

Credits: 1

ENG 606: Rhetorical Theory: Critical Tradition

Prerequisite(s): Permission

Survey of basic issues in and the contributions of major theorists in the critical tradition of the philosophy of rhetoric. (This course is identical to CMJ 606.)

Credits: 3

ENG 693: Principled Practices in the Teaching of Writing

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English or permission

A study of empirical research, theoretical insights, and ethical issues about the teaching of language and writing to students at the University of Maine. Students will develop a theoretically-informed, empirically grounded assignment sequence for the future teaching of English 101: College Composition, as well as conduct action research, participate in department culture, and prepare a proposal for conference presentation or publication. Required of all teaching assistants in the department of English during their first teaching semester.

Credits: 3

ENG 697: Independent Reading/Writing

Prerequisite(s): 6 hours of graduate study in English and permission of the graduate coordinator.

*By arrangement only

Credits: 1 – 3

ENG 698: Independent Study

Prerequisite(s):  Graduate standing in English and permission

Designates an out-of-load independent study with a member of the graduate faculty that contributes to a Program of Study approved by the Chair and Graduate Coordinator.

Credits: 3

ENG 699: Graduate Thesis/Research

Prerequisite(s): Students who have not yet completed a “Responsible Conduct of Research” course approved by the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs and the Graduate School  must receive permission to enroll in thesis/ research credits. Students must enroll in an RCR course before or concurrent with their third credit of thesis/research.

Graduate thesis or research conducted under the supervision of student’s advisor.

Credits: Arranged

Recent seminar offerings

ENG 529: Studies in Language, Literature, and Writing

Policing Englishes (Fall 2018, Dryer)

This seminar will focus on the cultural phenomenon of prescriptivism – a general term we’ll use to describe efforts by institutionally or self-appointed guardians of English to monitor, shape, constrain, discourage, or ‘repair’ others’ uses of  the language.  Although the balance of linguistic research and sound pedagogy in the teaching of language has firmly shifted from the prescriptive to the descriptive, we will take Anne Curzan’s point (2016) that prescriptivism is alive and well as a force shaping language use and language change, and so needs to be understood.

Thus we will seek to understand the many forms and contexts in which we encounter linguistic prescriptivism, but we also want to understand what motivates these behaviors—what’s at stake for us in others’ language practices? What provokes or necessitates these sorts of everyday interventions, and why are these interventions so often accompanied by a rhetoric of disgust, shame, horror, or violence? What accounts for the routine conflation of, for instance, an infelicity of usage and the character of its writer?

We’ll begin with some basic linguistic concepts to give us a shared basis for discussion (e.g., the distinction between ‘grammar’ and ‘usage’) and then work to develop a coherent theoretical framework for understanding the phenomenon, building on scholarship by Bourdieu (1982), Bakhtin (1986), Milroy & Milroy (1991), Crowley (1989), and Spolsky (2009). We will interrogate the feasibility of this framework by putting it into conversation with work emerging from global englishes, including Blommaert (2010), Kramsch (2009), Giltrow (2003; 2014), Pennycook (2010), and Canagarajah (ed., 2013). We will consistently go to ‘ground-level,’ putting these theoretical perspectives in conversation with primary source documents.

In the final third of the term, students will conduct secondary- and primary-source research of their own to interrogate competing theories of ‘the standard’; fieldwork applications of these interrogations will include site visits, interviews, focus groups, corpus-building, and/or quasi-experimental design or usability testing to generate a unique contribution to our understanding of this topic.

Documentary Impluse in Literature (Spring 2017, Billitteri)

The impulse to document reality, to give a testimony to one’s moment in history and culture, has been one of the most characteristic features of literary production, evident in documentary poetics, historical theater, and the novel’s fictionalized reportage. Indeed, we could locate this impulse at the very beginning of the Western canon, with Homer, whose Iliadrelates the history of the Trojan war, and follow it forward through Dante, whose “Inferno” is populated with historical figures, and the Shakespeare of the history plays. In more recent times, the documentary impulse guides such diverse writers as Claudia Rankine, whose book of lyric prose, Citizen, explores the hidden racism in contemporary Western societies; Mark Nowak, whose poetry documents the harsh conditions of miners’ lives and communities; Rob Halpern, whose prose-poetry hybrid Common Placeexplores the embodied response to unending militarization and economic exploitation; and Susan Somers-Willett, whose Women of Troy, an intermedia collaboration with photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally and radio producer Lu Olkowski,narrates the hidden lives of women in poverty.This class will explore ten of the most significant examples of the documentary impulse in twentieth-and twenty-first-century American literature, encompassing works of fiction and poetry along with hybrid texts that bring the two genres together along with photography, journalism, memoir, and factual data. Though much of our reading will be in prose I place this work under the general heading of “documentary poetics” as the critical literature on our poetic examples has best theorized this impulse.Our readings begin in the early twentieth century, when documentary poetics, under the pressure of the Great Depression and in response to the rapid transformation of society, acquired a more insistently political orientation, illuminating the marginalized experience of the poor, the working class, emigrants, and others. Since the early decades of the twentieth-century, the political and ethical consequences of economic crisis, labor tension, and ethnic and racial conflict have been central concerns for writers in this tradition. Moreover, while the subject matter of these writers brings particular livesand historicalmoments into sharper focus, there are ethical and theoretical implications to this work as well. This course will attend to those implications as well as to the historical and political dimensions of our readings.