Monthly Archives: December 2020

Course Information

Books For Spring 2021 Courses

Below is the current book info for the spring 2021 courses. I will update this as more information comes in from professors over the next few weeks.

ENGL 507 Narrative Strategies in the Novel
  • Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. ISBN 9780486424491
  • Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. ISBN 9780486404271
  • Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. ISBN 9781982149482
  • Gold, Michael. Jews Without Money. ISBN 9780786703708
  • Harper, Frances. Iola Leroy. ISBN 9781554813858
  • James, Henry. Daisy Miller. ISBN 9780156907392
  • Mbue, Imbolo. Behold the Dreamers. ISBN 9780525510116
  • Rowson, Susannah. Charlotte Temple. ISBN 9780199770281
  • Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. ISBN 9780486282114
  • Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. ISBN 9780199536610
ENGL 514 Hemingway/Modern Cryptography

Additional readings will be provided as PDFs or links within the course. Students are not required to purchase the specific editions listed below, and can read from any volume or edition out there. But these are the ones from which the instructor will be teaching, and to which the course lectures will refer:

  • Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. ISBN: 0684801469
  • —. The Garden of Eden. ISBN: 0684804522
  • —. A Moveable Feast. ISBN:  068482499X
  • —. The Short Stories: The First Forty-Nine Stories with a Brief Introduction by the Author. ISBN: 0684803348
  • —. The Sun Also Rises. ISBN: 0743297334
ENGL 515 Fairy Tales

Additional readings will be provided as PDFs or links within the course. Students may have to rent, stream, or otherwise on their own view films assigned during the semester. The following two books are required:

  • Hallett, Martin and Barbara Karasek, eds., Folk and Fairy Tales, 5th ed. (Broadview Press, 2018). ISBN: 978155481350.
  • Tatar, Maria, ed. and trans., The Annotated Brothers Grimm (Norton, 2012), ISBN: 978-0393088861
ENGL 540 Irish Literature
  • Edgeworth, Maria. Castle Rackrent. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. 978-0199537556
  • Enright, Ann. The Gathering. New York: Black Cat. 2007. 978-1615553372
  • Friel, Brian. Dancing at Lughnasa. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. 978-0571144792
  • Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York: Dover Publications. 1991. Print 978-04862-68705
  • Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Dover Press, 2000. 9780486454016
  • Swift, Jonathan. A Modest Proposal. New York Dover Thrift. 978-0486287591
  • Synge, J. M. Playboy of the Western World. New York: Penguin. 1997. Print. 978-0-140-18878-
ENGL 546 Working Women in the USA 1865-Present

Chapters from the collection Working Women in American Literature (ISBN 978-1498546805) will be provided by Dr. Gogol as PDFs, so purchasing the book is not required. Other readings will be provided in the class in the form of PDFs as well. The one required book is:

  • Alexander, Shana. Very Much a Lady. ISBN 9781416509592.
Recommended but not required texts are:
  • Ware, Susan.  Modern American Women: A Documentary History.  Second Edition.   New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.
  • Baxandall, Rosalyn, and Linda Gordon. America’s Working Women: A Documentary History,  1600 to the Present (1976), Revised  and updated. New York: Norton, 1995.
ENGL 560 Latino Literature

Additional readings will be provided as PDFs or links within the course. The following two books are required:

  • Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima.  ISBN-13: 978-0446600255
  • Garcia, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. ISBN-13: 978-0345381439
Course Schedules

Tentative Course Schedules for Summer and Fall 2021

[Updated 12/20] I thought it might be useful to share with everyone the tentative plans for summer and fall 2021 MA English schedules. These schedules are subject to change [and already have since this was first posted]. We now plan to run three summer courses from the start and see how the demand turns out. The third summer course has changed from what it was originally. Full descriptions of courses will be forthcoming here in January or February, along with information about the summer+fall registration date. For now, here’s how it’s shaping up:

Summer 2021 [updated 12/20]:

  • 514: Intro to the History of Textual Transmission (Dr. Ward)
  • 515: Mastering the Past: Literature & National Myths
  • 525: Victorian Age in Literature (Dr. Dugan)

Fall 2021:

  • 500: Theory (Dr. Kilpatrick)
  • 509: Perspectives on the Essay (Dr. Keckler)
  • 515: Magic in Literature (Dr. Sax)
  • 540: From Vice to Virtue: The Seven Deadly Sins Then & Now (a Medieval Literature course) (Dr. Ward)
  • 545: Literature of the Left Bank, Paris (Dr. Loots)
  • 560: Hip Hop Literature & Culture (Dr. Horton)
The Incomplete "I"

Reminder about incomplete “I” marks (Deadline Approaching)

As we approach the end of the fall 2020 semester let me remind (or inform) everyone about the situation surrounding the “incomplete” or “I” mark a student might request/receive in place of an actual grade. This post repeats information from earlier blog posts on this same subject, but this is critical information for graduate students to know so please make sure you’re all aware of this.

First off an incomplete might be granted by a professor to students who have completed most of the required work for a course and who have met attendance requirements. The incomplete is intended for emergency situations, for students who experience an unexpected crisis (such as a debilitating illness) at a specific point during the term which unexpectedly interrupts their ability to complete all required work for a course. Each professor has the right to not grant an incomplete and instead grant some other grade, including an F, based on whatever work the student completed during the regular term.

Students who find themselves in a situation which might warrant an incomplete must request it of the professor. Even if the professor agrees, she or he might still require you to complete a form to initiate the incomplete.

Sometimes an incomplete can be a life-saver for students who experience sudden crisis, but in just about all cases students should avoid incurring an incomplete if at all possible. Many students who take an incomplete never resolve it: because life goes on, new responsibilities and coursework come along, and it just becomes very difficult to find time to go back and do work on past requirements. It is also difficult for your professors to deal with incompletes because their work, responsibilities, and lives move forward, but the incomplete forces them to have to accommodate, tend to, assess, and sometimes even just remember what this work is that a student left untended in the past. It is a big deal for everyone when a student takes an incomplete, which is one reason why a professor simply might not grant it.

If a student is granted an incomplete, the student should work to complete the missed work and so remedy the incomplete as soon as possible – and ideally prior to the start of the next semester. At the maximum, students have one year in which to remedy the incomplete. After one year, the potential credits for the course and tuition for the course are lost, and the incomplete cannot be changed into any real letter grade.

So for example students who received an incomplete in fall 2019 have only until the end of this current fall 2020 semester to remedy the incomplete. Once this semester ends, all fall 2019 incompletes are locked in and cannot be fixed. And please note: professors are not obligated to drop everything to prioritize late work. Your professors will at any point in the year but especially at the end of each semester have tons of new work to tend to, which is another reason why you should not be waiting until the last minute or even the last few weeks of the year’s window before tending to your incomplete. So, anyone still seeking to correct fall 2019 incompletes should be working to resolve them now, since time is almost up. Anyone with incompletes from spring or summer 2020 should also be working to resolve those asap.