Graduate Courses

We offer between 8 and 11 graduate courses each semester. We have two types of courses: Readings courses and Topics courses. Topics courses are offered on a 3-semester rotation, and cover the major literary areas of English study. The majority of our courses each semester will be Topics courses, which are more focused or specialized courses designed by faculty members, often in their area of current research. Topics courses can be repeated three times for credit, as the content of these courses changes each semester.

For a full listing of graduate-level English courses and brief descriptions, visit the university’s graduate catalog.

Spring Courses 2026

ENGL 603: Bibliography and Literary Research

ENGL 603 (Bibliography and Literary Research)

Professor Kevin O’Sullivan

Tue/Thurs 11:10 -12:25, LAAH 326

This course will introduce the foundational theories and methodologies of modern textual criticism. Beginning with a consideration of the textual condition across periods and media, we will critique both traditional approaches to bibliography (broadly defined) as well as more recent work that exists on the vanguard of our field. These theoretical readings will be complemented by a series of scaffolded exercises designed to be practically useful to the MA or early PhD student. The course will be broadly organized around three questions: 1.) What sources are used in literary research? 2.) Where are these sources located? and 3.) How are these sources discovered and studied? In the process of answering these questions, students will cultivate an understanding of the major trends animating textual scholarship relevant to their specific subdiscipline. They will also develop robust research skills in the location, use, and responsible citation of both analog and digital sources. Finally, students will gain an awareness of the labor and politics underlying the work of the libraries and archival collections most relevant to their anticipated course of study.

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ENGL 603 (Bibliography and Literary Research)

Professor Kevin O’Sullivan

Tue/Thurs 11:10 -12:25, LAAH 326

This course will introduce the foundational theories and methodologies of modern textual criticism. Beginning with a consideration of the textual condition across periods and media, we will critique both traditional approaches to bibliography (broadly defined) as well as more recent work that exists on the vanguard of our field. These theoretical readings will be complemented by a series of scaffolded exercises designed to be practically useful to the MA or early PhD student. The course will be broadly organized around three questions: 1.) What sources are used in literary research? 2.) Where are these sources located? and 3.) How are these sources discovered and studied? In the process of answering these questions, students will cultivate an understanding of the major trends animating textual scholarship relevant to their specific subdiscipline. They will also develop robust research skills in the location, use, and responsible citation of both analog and digital sources. Finally, students will gain an awareness of the labor and politics underlying the work of the libraries and archival collections most relevant to their anticipated course of study.

ENGL 604: Topics in Digital Research: Visualizing Knowledge

Professor Laura Mandell

Tue 6-9 pm. LAAH 535

In this class, we will examine the explosion of “big data” and explore techniques for understanding it. We will discern the most important components of data literacy as well as techniques for visualizing data. We will ask, what is the relationship between elements of our cultural heritage (literatures of the past and present) and “data”? Might the study of Art History help us discover the effects of financial incentives on knowledge visualization? What are the best techniques for exploring and understanding massive amounts of data?

Readings include Donna Haraway, Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein, Johanna Drucker, Sofiya Noble, Ruha Benjamin, Timnit Gebru, and more. Assignments will include responses to the readings and data visualizations (no prior training needed). Graduate students will write a seminar paper that involves creating a means for visualizing knowledge within their interests / specializations, analyzing their creation in relation to other data visualizations, and then describing the process and effects of their labors: did visualization actually “augment” cognition within their disciplines?

(No previous experience with coding / programming is necessary nor expected for the course work.)

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ENGL 604: Topics in Digital Research: Visualizing Knowledge

Professor Laura Mandell

Tue 6-9 pm. LAAH 535

In this class, we will examine the explosion of “big data” and explore techniques for understanding it. We will discern the most important components of data literacy as well as techniques for visualizing data. We will ask, what is the relationship between elements of our cultural heritage (literatures of the past and present) and “data”? Might the study of Art History help us discover the effects of financial incentives on knowledge visualization? What are the best techniques for exploring and understanding massive amounts of data?

Readings include Donna Haraway, Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein, Johanna Drucker, Sofiya Noble, Ruha Benjamin, Timnit Gebru, and more. Assignments will include responses to the readings and data visualizations (no prior training needed). Graduate students will write a seminar paper that involves creating a means for visualizing knowledge within their interests / specializations, analyzing their creation in relation to other data visualizations, and then describing the process and effects of their labors: did visualization actually “augment” cognition within their disciplines?

(No previous experience with coding / programming is necessary nor expected for the course work.)

ENGL 608: Reading in Medieval Pre- 1800

Professor Nancy Warren

MW 4:10 - 5:25 pm. LAAH 535

This class focuses on texts written in Middle English from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries, which we will read for the most part in the original language. We will consider a wide range of genres, from religious didactic literature to saints' lives to lyric poetry to visionary texts to romance to drama. Authors under consideration will include the Gawain-poet, Julian of Norwich, Geoffrey Chaucer, Willism Langland, and Margery Kempe as well as many anonymous writers.

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ENGL 611: Literature, Science, and Scale in the Early British Empire

611: Literature, Science, and Scale in the Early British Empire

Professor Whitney Sperrazza

M 6-9 pm. LAAH 463

This course offers a theoretical, literary, and scientific investigation of the miniature and the gigantic, with particular focus on early colonial England. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, England’s borders were rapidly expanding (think maps of the unexplored terra incognita and John Gerard’s encyclopedic Herbal) even as natural philosophers and poets were increasingly entranced by the microscopic (Robert Hooke’s Micrographia) and the atomistic (Lucy Hutchinson’s Order and Disorder). How does the concept of scale - both in its early modern and contemporary theorizations - help us better understand the resulting intimacies and tensions among things large and small in the early modern period?

Together we will engage closely with literature, science, and critical theory. Our primary texts will center on early modern colonial encounters as a way of focusing our investigation of scale. In addition to those referenced above, possible texts might include: poetry by John Donne and Margaret Cavendish; Thomas More’s Utopia; early printed maps and cartographic collections; Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania; catalogues of 17th-century curiosity cabinets; Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space; and Susan Stewart’s On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. The class will be taught in a seminar format, with active student participation through discussions and presentations.

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611: Literature, Science, and Scale in the Early British Empire

Professor Whitney Sperrazza

M 6-9 pm. LAAH 463

This course offers a theoretical, literary, and scientific investigation of the miniature and the gigantic, with particular focus on early colonial England. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, England’s borders were rapidly expanding (think maps of the unexplored terra incognita and John Gerard’s encyclopedic Herbal) even as natural philosophers and poets were increasingly entranced by the microscopic (Robert Hooke’s Micrographia) and the atomistic (Lucy Hutchinson’s Order and Disorder). How does the concept of scale - both in its early modern and contemporary theorizations - help us better understand the resulting intimacies and tensions among things large and small in the early modern period?

Together we will engage closely with literature, science, and critical theory. Our primary texts will center on early modern colonial encounters as a way of focusing our investigation of scale. In addition to those referenced above, possible texts might include: poetry by John Donne and Margaret Cavendish; Thomas More’s Utopia; early printed maps and cartographic collections; Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania; catalogues of 17th-century curiosity cabinets; Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space; and Susan Stewart’s On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. The class will be taught in a seminar format, with active student participation through discussions and presentations.

ENGL 638: Topics in 18/19th c British Literature New Approaches to the Brontës

Dr. Shawna Ross

M 12:45 -3:45 pm. LAAH 326

In the first half of the class, we will conduct extensive studies of the primary trio of novels upon which the family’s reputation rests: Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. This will build a broad base for our knowledge of Brontë criticism (and allow students the opportunity to develop substantial projects around one of these canonical texts). At the same time, we will be introduced to three of the most current methodological approach to their works, which can be roughly characterized as highlighting narrative techniques of transmitting materiality and embodiment that reveal the Brontës as grappling with race, the environment, and gender in previously unrecognized ways. This new approach not only reflects and generates methods applicable beyond the Brontës but also renews structuralist interrogations of narrative and genre that may have seem unfashionable or uninteresting until very recently. Students will not only grapple with the necessary concepts for generating these kinds of scholarly readings, but also will think about the cyclicality of scholarly trends and how they impact our decision-making as writers who (possibly) want to become published. We will discuss how to enter a scholarly conversation and position oneself vis-à-vis other scholar in mature and collaborative ways.

Whereas the first half of the course takes “new approaches” as a matter of methodology—of using and developing concepts that can be applied to any text—the second half of the class will focus on a new approach peculiar to Brontë Studies: the expansion of the family’s canon. In accordance with recent trends in editing the family’s works and considering their individual trajectories as artists in concert with their intertextual conversations, we will read the family’s less-studied works and turn our attention to publication history, cultural history, and authorial development. We will consider their poetry and visual art, as well as texts by their ill-fated brother Branwell and their father, who as a parson was much given to penning moralizing fables as an extension of his spiritual duties. We will also dip our toes into the family’s voluminous and strange juvenilia—the barely legible records of a dizzyingly complex and violent fantasy world based on the Napoleonic war games they played on the moors. These include Charlotte’s Shirley (a condition-of-England novel) and Villette (a prickly Gothic chronicle of mental health), Anne’s Agnes Grey (an all-too-polite fairy tale of governess martyrdom).

Students will complete weekly short response papers, write and present a literature review, and imagine and execute a final project. The response papers will propose a research agenda based on the reading. The literature review will characterize the past twenty years of scholarship on a given Brontë text and explain the trends that have emerged. Students may select among multiple formats for their final projects (traditional argumentative article, reference article, conference paper, digital project, or book proposal) and have the option to work collaboratively. For this project, they are encouraged, though not required, to use at least one text from the course’s second unit—that is, one of the lesser-studied works—so they are less likely to fall into the old patterns of criticism that this class eschews.

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ENGL 638: Topics in 18/19th c British Literature New Approaches to the Brontës

Dr. Shawna Ross

M 12:45 -3:45 pm. LAAH 326

In the first half of the class, we will conduct extensive studies of the primary trio of novels upon which the family’s reputation rests: Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. This will build a broad base for our knowledge of Brontë criticism (and allow students the opportunity to develop substantial projects around one of these canonical texts). At the same time, we will be introduced to three of the most current methodological approach to their works, which can be roughly characterized as highlighting narrative techniques of transmitting materiality and embodiment that reveal the Brontës as grappling with race, the environment, and gender in previously unrecognized ways. This new approach not only reflects and generates methods applicable beyond the Brontës but also renews structuralist interrogations of narrative and genre that may have seem unfashionable or uninteresting until very recently. Students will not only grapple with the necessary concepts for generating these kinds of scholarly readings, but also will think about the cyclicality of scholarly trends and how they impact our decision-making as writers who (possibly) want to become published. We will discuss how to enter a scholarly conversation and position oneself vis-à-vis other scholar in mature and collaborative ways.

Whereas the first half of the course takes “new approaches” as a matter of methodology—of using and developing concepts that can be applied to any text—the second half of the class will focus on a new approach peculiar to Brontë Studies: the expansion of the family’s canon. In accordance with recent trends in editing the family’s works and considering their individual trajectories as artists in concert with their intertextual conversations, we will read the family’s less-studied works and turn our attention to publication history, cultural history, and authorial development. We will consider their poetry and visual art, as well as texts by their ill-fated brother Branwell and their father, who as a parson was much given to penning moralizing fables as an extension of his spiritual duties. We will also dip our toes into the family’s voluminous and strange juvenilia—the barely legible records of a dizzyingly complex and violent fantasy world based on the Napoleonic war games they played on the moors. These include Charlotte’s Shirley (a condition-of-England novel) and Villette (a prickly Gothic chronicle of mental health), Anne’s Agnes Grey (an all-too-polite fairy tale of governess martyrdom).

Students will complete weekly short response papers, write and present a literature review, and imagine and execute a final project. The response papers will propose a research agenda based on the reading. The literature review will characterize the past twenty years of scholarship on a given Brontë text and explain the trends that have emerged. Students may select among multiple formats for their final projects (traditional argumentative article, reference article, conference paper, digital project, or book proposal) and have the option to work collaboratively. For this project, they are encouraged, though not required, to use at least one text from the course’s second unit—that is, one of the lesser-studied works—so they are less likely to fall into the old patterns of criticism that this class eschews.

ENGL 645: Women Writing Nature

Dr. Susan Egenolf (s-egenolf@tamu.edu)

MW 11:10 a.m.-12:25 p.m. LAAH 326

“Women Writing Nature” is designed as a survey of women’s representations of human interactions with the more-than-human world from the late 18th century to the present. The course will feature essays, memoirs, poetry, theory and novels from a range of women writers, including biologists, creative writers, anthropologists, philosophers, botanists, activists and travelers (in many cases, these categories will overlap in a single being). The historical breadth will allow us to track approaches to the natural world across two and a half centuries. For instance, when the Scottish traveler and amateur botanist Maria Calcott Graham visited Chile in 1824, she was both an agent of the British incursion in South America and an early proponent of Traditional Ecological/Indigenous Knowledge, learning many plant names and their uses from native Chileans. Like the Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, Graham valued indigenous knowledge alongside her understanding of Linnaean botany. Similarly, discussions of human cultivation of the natural world could run through Andrea Wulf’s work on the gardens of the revolutionary period that shaped American national identity, to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Secret Garden, Louisa May Alcott’s Transcendental Wild Oats, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, Becky Chamber’s futuristic Psalm for the Wild-Built and Camille Dungy’s Soil. The readings and critical articles will give us a wide-ranging foundation in ecofeminism, animism, environmental justice, decolonial trajectories, and the stakes of our own entanglements with the natural world.

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ENGL 645: Women Writing Nature

Dr. Susan Egenolf (s-egenolf@tamu.edu)

MW 11:10 a.m.-12:25 p.m. LAAH 326

“Women Writing Nature” is designed as a survey of women’s representations of human interactions with the more-than-human world from the late 18th century to the present. The course will feature essays, memoirs, poetry, theory and novels from a range of women writers, including biologists, creative writers, anthropologists, philosophers, botanists, activists and travelers (in many cases, these categories will overlap in a single being). The historical breadth will allow us to track approaches to the natural world across two and a half centuries. For instance, when the Scottish traveler and amateur botanist Maria Calcott Graham visited Chile in 1824, she was both an agent of the British incursion in South America and an early proponent of Traditional Ecological/Indigenous Knowledge, learning many plant names and their uses from native Chileans. Like the Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, Graham valued indigenous knowledge alongside her understanding of Linnaean botany. Similarly, discussions of human cultivation of the natural world could run through Andrea Wulf’s work on the gardens of the revolutionary period that shaped American national identity, to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Secret Garden, Louisa May Alcott’s Transcendental Wild Oats, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, Becky Chamber’s futuristic Psalm for the Wild-Built and Camille Dungy’s Soil. The readings and critical articles will give us a wide-ranging foundation in ecofeminism, animism, environmental justice, decolonial trajectories, and the stakes of our own entanglements with the natural world.

ENGL 650: Readings in 20th and 21st Century Literature and Culture

ENGL 650—Readings in 20th and 21st Century Literature and Culture

Dr. Juan Alonzo

Thurs. 12:45 - 3:45 pm. LAAH 463

For spring 2026, ENGL 650—Readings in 20th and 21st Century Literature and Culture will offer a “remix” of the last 125 years of literary history. This is not a “greatest hits” course, but a collection of texts that, according to my experiences as a reader, offers a peek into the forms, themes, and currents of this period’s literature. Hopefully, my perspective on the literature is unique and idiosyncratic to my view of the world (I am an Americanist, focused on Latinx culture, allied with ethnic literatures, fascinated by modernist and postmodernist texts, in love with film). Thus, this readings course will offer MY reading list of some of the major subjects and authors of 20th and 21st century literature.

We will focus on the conceptual and historical pre- and the post- moments of the last century: modernism and postmodernism, the idea of the nation (in a postcolonial sense), the importance of social movements, and the challenge of defining literature in the digital age. The list of texts on offer in not yet finalized, but possible authors include:

Zora Neal Hurston, William Faulkner, Wallace Stevens, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Cormac McCarthy, Rolando Hinojosa, Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Valeria Luiselli, Colson Whitehead, Hernan Diaz, Ada Limón, Juan Felipe Herrera

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ENGL 650—Readings in 20th and 21st Century Literature and Culture

Dr. Juan Alonzo

Thurs. 12:45 - 3:45 pm. LAAH 463

For spring 2026, ENGL 650—Readings in 20th and 21st Century Literature and Culture will offer a “remix” of the last 125 years of literary history. This is not a “greatest hits” course, but a collection of texts that, according to my experiences as a reader, offers a peek into the forms, themes, and currents of this period’s literature. Hopefully, my perspective on the literature is unique and idiosyncratic to my view of the world (I am an Americanist, focused on Latinx culture, allied with ethnic literatures, fascinated by modernist and postmodernist texts, in love with film). Thus, this readings course will offer MY reading list of some of the major subjects and authors of 20th and 21st century literature.

We will focus on the conceptual and historical pre- and the post- moments of the last century: modernism and postmodernism, the idea of the nation (in a postcolonial sense), the importance of social movements, and the challenge of defining literature in the digital age. The list of texts on offer in not yet finalized, but possible authors include:

Zora Neal Hurston, William Faulkner, Wallace Stevens, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Cormac McCarthy, Rolando Hinojosa, Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Valeria Luiselli, Colson Whitehead, Hernan Diaz, Ada Limón, Juan Felipe Herrera

ENGL 665: Topics in Cultural Studies--Pandemics

ENGL 665: Topics in Cultural Studies--Pandemics

Professor Sara Dicaglio

W 12:45 - 3:45 pm. LAAH 326

March 2025 marked five years since Covid was declared a global pandemic. In conversation with the gravity of this moment, this course examines pandemics as cultural, rhetorical, scientific, and literary objects. The course will focus on both real pandemics, such as the Spanish Flu, HIV/AIDS, and Covid, as well as fictional representations of pandemics. In so doing, the course will encourage students to think about the intersection of cultural narratives, science, and lived experiences. How do narratives about patient zeroes, asymptomatic carriers, illness as invasion, and other cultural discourse about epidemics impact how we think and talk about actual pandemics (and about the actual human beings affected by these illnesses)? By connecting narratives written from and about these actual events to fictionalized narratives, including science fiction films and texts, zombie outbreak narratives, and even epidemic-themed board games, we will consider how epidemics connect with broader cultural themes and understandings, as well as what approaching epidemics through a cultural perspective can help us to understand in our current moment. Though the course’s primary focus will be US representations of pandemics, it will also invite a global health humanities lens to think broadly about different understandings and experiences of pandemics.

The course will likely ask students to complete a series of written reading responses, a book review that will be workshopped in class, and a final project that can take the form of a more traditional paper or a more expansive multi-modal or public humanities project. In order to trace cultural narratives of pandemics from a variety of perspectives, the course will draw from an interdisciplinary array of thinkers and disciplinary fields, including health humanities, graphic medicine, rhetoric of health and medicine, disability studies, science studies, and more. Some selected authors may include Paula Treichler, Priscilla Wald, Ling Ma, Margaret Atwood, Megan Glick, Susan Sontag, Blake Scott, Hsuan Hsu, Eli Clare, Arundhati Roy, MK Czerwiec, Tony Kushner, and Alondra Nelson. This course can fulfill the distribution requirement for theory or topics courses.

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ENGL 665: Topics in Cultural Studies--Pandemics

Professor Sara Dicaglio

W 12:45 - 3:45 pm. LAAH 326

March 2025 marked five years since Covid was declared a global pandemic. In conversation with the gravity of this moment, this course examines pandemics as cultural, rhetorical, scientific, and literary objects. The course will focus on both real pandemics, such as the Spanish Flu, HIV/AIDS, and Covid, as well as fictional representations of pandemics. In so doing, the course will encourage students to think about the intersection of cultural narratives, science, and lived experiences. How do narratives about patient zeroes, asymptomatic carriers, illness as invasion, and other cultural discourse about epidemics impact how we think and talk about actual pandemics (and about the actual human beings affected by these illnesses)? By connecting narratives written from and about these actual events to fictionalized narratives, including science fiction films and texts, zombie outbreak narratives, and even epidemic-themed board games, we will consider how epidemics connect with broader cultural themes and understandings, as well as what approaching epidemics through a cultural perspective can help us to understand in our current moment. Though the course’s primary focus will be US representations of pandemics, it will also invite a global health humanities lens to think broadly about different understandings and experiences of pandemics.

The course will likely ask students to complete a series of written reading responses, a book review that will be workshopped in class, and a final project that can take the form of a more traditional paper or a more expansive multi-modal or public humanities project. In order to trace cultural narratives of pandemics from a variety of perspectives, the course will draw from an interdisciplinary array of thinkers and disciplinary fields, including health humanities, graphic medicine, rhetoric of health and medicine, disability studies, science studies, and more. Some selected authors may include Paula Treichler, Priscilla Wald, Ling Ma, Margaret Atwood, Megan Glick, Susan Sontag, Blake Scott, Hsuan Hsu, Eli Clare, Arundhati Roy, MK Czerwiec, Tony Kushner, and Alondra Nelson. This course can fulfill the distribution requirement for theory or topics courses.

ENGL 680: Theories of Gender

Dr. Sally Robinson sallyr@tamu.edu

Tue/Thur. 4:10 - 5:25 pm. LAAH 535

This course is designed for students who want to get a broad understanding of the questions that have animated interdisciplinary gender theory from the last decades of the 20th century into the present. We will begin with deep reading of a selection of foundational texts (Rich, Rubin, Crenshaw, Mohanty, Garland-Thompson, Butler, e.g.). The remainder of the semester reading will be organized around the following broad topics: Bodies, Sexualities, Genders; Gender, Work, Labor, Economy; and Feminisms, Post-Feminisms, Popular Feminisms. The bulk of the reading after the foundations section will be drawn from feminist journal articles and book chapters published within the last few years, which will give us a good sense of what issues are most compelling for gender theorists in the current moment. All readings will be posted on Canvas. Course requirements will include response papers to be presented to the class, a “follow the footnotes” assignment that will allow students to pursue a topic broached in one of our readings, an assignment on gender theory in non-academic spaces, and a final project.

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ENGL 680: Theories of Gender

Dr. Sally Robinson sallyr@tamu.edu

Tue/Thur. 4:10 - 5:25 pm. LAAH 535

This course is designed for students who want to get a broad understanding of the questions that have animated interdisciplinary gender theory from the last decades of the 20th century into the present. We will begin with deep reading of a selection of foundational texts (Rich, Rubin, Crenshaw, Mohanty, Garland-Thompson, Butler, e.g.). The remainder of the semester reading will be organized around the following broad topics: Bodies, Sexualities, Genders; Gender, Work, Labor, Economy; and Feminisms, Post-Feminisms, Popular Feminisms. The bulk of the reading after the foundations section will be drawn from feminist journal articles and book chapters published within the last few years, which will give us a good sense of what issues are most compelling for gender theorists in the current moment. All readings will be posted on Canvas. Course requirements will include response papers to be presented to the class, a “follow the footnotes” assignment that will allow students to pursue a topic broached in one of our readings, an assignment on gender theory in non-academic spaces, and a final project.

ENG 683: Topics in Theory: Introduction to Contemporary Literary Theory

ENG 683: Topics in Theory: Introduction to Contemporary Literary Theory

Professor: Mikko Tuhkanen (mikko.tuhkanen@tamu.edu)

W 6-9 pm, TBD

This class introduces students to various discourses of contemporary (20th- and 21st-century) literary theory (structuralism, poststructuralism, Cultural Studies, queer theory, afropessimism . . . ) and their philosophical contexts (dialectics, materialism, linguistics, phenomenology, existentialism . . . ). The texts will be difficult and plentiful, but with the help of lectures and discussions we are able to explore aspects of contemporary thought that, for various reasons, have become important for the work that we do in literature departments. No previous knowledge of the fields is required.

Meets the following distribution requirement:

One course in theory (of any kind, including linguistics and rhetoric)

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Fall Courses 2025

ENGL 601: DHUM (Digital Humanities)

DHUM (Digital Humanities) 601

Katayoun Torabi

MW 4:10 - 5:25 PM, LAAH 503

Digital Humanities (DH) is a field with considerable breadth of research methodologies and platforms. This course provides a graduate-level introduction to the methods and technologies used in the field of Digital Humanities, focusing especially on the history of digital approaches to the humanities and the use of digital technologies for humanities research, publishing, teaching, and communication. The first part of the course is dedicated to introducing students to DH tools, platforms, and methods--digitizing and encoding texts, data mining, computational analysis, network analysis, mapping, and visualization--by completing guided digital assignments. The second part of the course will focus on guiding students as they develop a final project proposal or paper centered around a topic of their choosing. This segment will emphasize refining the student's area of interest, formulating research questions, and constructing a well-organized proposal or paper. There is no disciplinary prerequisite, no extensive technical skills are required for the course, and no one disciplinary approach will be favored. DHUM 601 is cross listed with English 433, History 433, and DHUM 433. DHUM 601 is a graduate-level course on the list of approved classes for the Digital Humanities Certificate.

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DHUM (Digital Humanities) 601

Katayoun Torabi

MW 4:10 - 5:25 PM, LAAH 503

Digital Humanities (DH) is a field with considerable breadth of research methodologies and platforms. This course provides a graduate-level introduction to the methods and technologies used in the field of Digital Humanities, focusing especially on the history of digital approaches to the humanities and the use of digital technologies for humanities research, publishing, teaching, and communication. The first part of the course is dedicated to introducing students to DH tools, platforms, and methods--digitizing and encoding texts, data mining, computational analysis, network analysis, mapping, and visualization--by completing guided digital assignments. The second part of the course will focus on guiding students as they develop a final project proposal or paper centered around a topic of their choosing. This segment will emphasize refining the student's area of interest, formulating research questions, and constructing a well-organized proposal or paper. There is no disciplinary prerequisite, no extensive technical skills are required for the course, and no one disciplinary approach will be favored. DHUM 601 is cross listed with English 433, History 433, and DHUM 433. DHUM 601 is a graduate-level course on the list of approved classes for the Digital Humanities Certificate.

ENGL 602: First Year Seminar

Marian Eide

MW 11:10 -12:25 PM, LAAH 504

This course is designed as an immersion in the academic practices of English studies, its theory and methodology, the motivations and responsibilities of English teacher-scholars, and the practices of humanities research. The primary goal of this semester is to conceptualize research and writing in the field and to formulate approaches to developing original scholarship. In other words, what do we do in English and why and how do we do it? Primarily designed to guide students in their work as scholars and researchers, the course will also have a practicum component that familiarizes students with the expectations, requirements, and goals of this particular doctoral program.

The readings might be described as meta-critical; these texts consider the kind of knowledge English seeks to create and the methods for attaining such knowledge. The readings also present a number of different approaches to the field. The expectation is not that you will embrace each approach, but that you will understand its motivations and be capable of pursuing its practices in the pursuit of intellectual training. Class meetings will be devoted both to discussion of the readings and their implications and also to workshops in academic and professional expectations, genres, and writing practices.

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ENGL 602: First Year Seminar

Marian Eide

MW 11:10 -12:25 PM, LAAH 504

This course is designed as an immersion in the academic practices of English studies, its theory and methodology, the motivations and responsibilities of English teacher-scholars, and the practices of humanities research. The primary goal of this semester is to conceptualize research and writing in the field and to formulate approaches to developing original scholarship. In other words, what do we do in English and why and how do we do it? Primarily designed to guide students in their work as scholars and researchers, the course will also have a practicum component that familiarizes students with the expectations, requirements, and goals of this particular doctoral program.

The readings might be described as meta-critical; these texts consider the kind of knowledge English seeks to create and the methods for attaining such knowledge. The readings also present a number of different approaches to the field. The expectation is not that you will embrace each approach, but that you will understand its motivations and be capable of pursuing its practices in the pursuit of intellectual training. Class meetings will be devoted both to discussion of the readings and their implications and also to workshops in academic and professional expectations, genres, and writing practices.

ENGL: 607 Topics in Medieval Literature and Culture: Early English Drama

English 607: Topics in Medieval Literature and Culture: Early English Drama

Britt Mize

T 12:45 - 3:45, LAAH 463

Major topics this course will address include the nature and extent of the evidence pertaining to medieval English drama; the vexed relationship between that textual evidence and actual performance; auspices and staging; audience participation and reception; medieval plays as an instrument of social critique; and vernacular drama as a site of negotiation between sacred and profane language, transgression and discipline, religious and civic institutions, and theological and worldly concerns. Once studied almost solely in the service of a teleological narrative leading inexorably to Shakespeare, Middle English plays are now appreciated both for their aesthetic interest—some are masterpieces of dramatic construction—and for the kinds of analysis they are uniquely positioned to invite concerning late medieval civic, religious, and popular culture.

The course will be organized into two units. The first half of the semester will be dedicated to surveying the range and types of dramatic materials that exist from the Middle English period. In the second half of the semester, the class will study the entirety of the N-Town “cycle” of plays, a set of 42 playtexts organized and performed in the 15th century, on which I have been doing intensive manuscript work over the past several years.

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English 607: Topics in Medieval Literature and Culture: Early English Drama

Britt Mize

T 12:45 - 3:45, LAAH 463

Major topics this course will address include the nature and extent of the evidence pertaining to medieval English drama; the vexed relationship between that textual evidence and actual performance; auspices and staging; audience participation and reception; medieval plays as an instrument of social critique; and vernacular drama as a site of negotiation between sacred and profane language, transgression and discipline, religious and civic institutions, and theological and worldly concerns. Once studied almost solely in the service of a teleological narrative leading inexorably to Shakespeare, Middle English plays are now appreciated both for their aesthetic interest—some are masterpieces of dramatic construction—and for the kinds of analysis they are uniquely positioned to invite concerning late medieval civic, religious, and popular culture.

The course will be organized into two units. The first half of the semester will be dedicated to surveying the range and types of dramatic materials that exist from the Middle English period. In the second half of the semester, the class will study the entirety of the N-Town “cycle” of plays, a set of 42 playtexts organized and performed in the 15th century, on which I have been doing intensive manuscript work over the past several years.

ENGL 613: Readings in Early Modern Literature

Robert Stagg

TR 11:10 - 12:25, LAAH 535

This course will introduce you to English literature (and literature in English) of the early modern period, at an advanced level. We will read widely, from canonical figures like Shakespeare and Marlowe and Sidney through to less well-known authors of the period such as Richard Barnfield and Elizabeth Cary. We'll consider some of the historical, theological and art-historical developments in the period alongside its literature and will pay attention to some of the latest developments in literary criticism by today's early modernists.

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ENGL 634: 19th-century British Literature

19th-century British Literature/ENGL 634/Fall 2025

Nandini Bhattacharya

M 1-4 LAAH 504

This course examines major literary movements and figures in 19th-century British literature. We will explore key themes such as nature and the sublime, industrialization and social change, gender and class dynamics, imperialism, and the aesthetic movement. Readings will include poetry, novels, essays, and critical texts that engage with the literary and cultural shifts of the period.

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

Analyze major texts of the 19th century in their historical and cultural contexts.
Evaluate key literary movements and their defining characteristics.
Develop critical arguments using close reading and theoretical frameworks.
Engage in scholarly discussions and present original research on 19th-century British literature.

Readings many include but are not limited to:

William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (1798, 1802)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
John Keats, Selected Poems
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Selected Poems
Jane Austen, Persuasion (1817)
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)
Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Selected Poems
The Brownings, Selected Poems
Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (Selections)
George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871-72)
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891)
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Selections)

This course fulfills the requirement of One course in any literature, 1800-the present.

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19th-century British Literature/ENGL 634/Fall 2025

Nandini Bhattacharya

M 1-4 LAAH 504

This course examines major literary movements and figures in 19th-century British literature. We will explore key themes such as nature and the sublime, industrialization and social change, gender and class dynamics, imperialism, and the aesthetic movement. Readings will include poetry, novels, essays, and critical texts that engage with the literary and cultural shifts of the period.

By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Analyze major texts of the 19th century in their historical and cultural contexts.
- Evaluate key literary movements and their defining characteristics.
- Develop critical arguments using close reading and theoretical frameworks.
- Engage in scholarly discussions and present original research on 19th-century British literature.
Readings many include but are not limited to:
- William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (1798, 1802)
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
- John Keats, Selected Poems
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Selected Poems
- Jane Austen, Persuasion (1817)
- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)
- Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854)
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Selected Poems
- The Brownings, Selected Poems
- Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (Selections)
- George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871-72)
- Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891)
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
- Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Selections)
This course fulfills the requirement of One course in any literature, 1800-the present.

ENGL 642: Topics in Genre Poetry and Poetics of the 20th and 21st Centuries

642: Topics in Genre: Poetry and Poetics of the 20th and 21st Centuries:

Michael Collins

R 6 - 9 PM LAAH 535

This course will explore the relationship between poetry, poetics and theory. Specifically, it will explore aspects of the impact that poetry, poetics, literary theory and related philosophy have on each other. We will read landmark works of primarily American, primarily 20th and 21st century, poetry and the poetics (including modernist, New Critical, Beat, Black Arts, feminist, confessional, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, new formalist). Likely readings include works by T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Joseph Brodsky, Allen Ginsberg, Lyn Hejinian, Kamau Brathwaite, Gloria Anzaldua, Joy Harjo, Jacques Derrida, Marjorie Perloff, and Marilyn Chin, among others.

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ENGL 654: Ancient Rhetoric: The Pursuit of Eloquence and Wisdom

Curry Kennedy

Friday, 1-4 PM

LAAH 504

This course explores the major texts and interpretations of Greek and Roman rhetoric from about the 8th Century BCE to about the 5th Century CE, with close attention to Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and Augustine of Hippo. Two special focuses will mark this course.

First, we will approach rhetoric not as a body of theory but as a way of life, that is, as a life-project that begins with a commitment to speak well and wisely and proceeds by participation in formative practices. Theories play a role in such a project, of course, but as habits of thinking rather than static representations. We will spend time each class period practicing the methods described in our readings and pondering their uses for today.

Second, heeding the constant connection between eloquence and wisdom in these writers, we will closely explore rhetoric’s relation to ethics. Each rhetorical text will be paired with an ethical text. For example, we will read Aristotle’s Rhetoric alongside his Nicomachean Ethics.

This course fulfills the distribution requirements for literature pre-1800 and theory (rhetoric).

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ENGL 654: Ancient Rhetoric: The Pursuit of Eloquence and Wisdom

Curry Kennedy

Friday, 1-4 PM

LAAH 504

This course explores the major texts and interpretations of Greek and Roman rhetoric from about the 8th Century BCE to about the 5th Century CE, with close attention to Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and Augustine of Hippo. Two special focuses will mark this course.

First, we will approach rhetoric not as a body of theory but as a way of life, that is, as a life-project that begins with a commitment to speak well and wisely and proceeds by participation in formative practices. Theories play a role in such a project, of course, but as habits of thinking rather than static representations. We will spend time each class period practicing the methods described in our readings and pondering their uses for today.

Second, heeding the constant connection between eloquence and wisdom in these writers, we will closely explore rhetoric’s relation to ethics. Each rhetorical text will be paired with an ethical text. For example, we will read Aristotle’s Rhetoric alongside his Nicomachean Ethics.

This course fulfills the distribution requirements for literature pre-1800 and theory (rhetoric).

ENGL 667: Topics in the History and Theory of Rhetoric: The Rhetoric of Sustainability

667: Topics in the History and Theory of Rhetoric: The Rhetoric of Sustainability

Josh Dicaglio

Wednesday 1-4 PM LAAH 504

This course will examine the articulation and appeals of various manifestations of “sustainability.” It will be organized around the tensions in the idea of sustainability itself, in relation to environmental, economic, political, scientific, and technological discourses. Environmental crisis signals some limit point for whether or not certain ideas and assumptions of modernity, capital, development, and technology can be sustained and what those alternatives or transformations in these systems might be. While this course will focus primarily on contemporary aspects of this tension as seen in various non-literary texts, it will also be designed to be accessible for any student interested in environment, economics, technology, or the problems of modernity. The course will be organized around key organizing discourses related to Sustainability and its critiques: the Anthropocene, Degrowth, Climate Change, Energy Transition, Critical Minerals, Extractivism, Planetarily, Environmental Justice, Accountability Metrics, Environmental Economics, Environmental regulation and management, Recycling and circularity, Ecology as mode of thought, etc. Each of these discourses, while themselves extensive conversations, provides one way of framing the mounting limits of modernity in relation to our collective effect on the planet and our attempt to adjust in response. For each discourse we will select a few representative primary texts as well as secondary analyses of or within this discourse. The task will be to analyze each as a rhetorical framework that sets us in relation to the planet, technology, humans, and non-humans in particular ways.

This course fulfills the distribution requirements for the theory (rhetoric) and topics courses.

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667: Topics in the History and Theory of Rhetoric: The Rhetoric of Sustainability

Josh Dicaglio

Wednesday 1-4 PM LAAH 504

This course will examine the articulation and appeals of various manifestations of “sustainability.” It will be organized around the tensions in the idea of sustainability itself, in relation to environmental, economic, political, scientific, and technological discourses. Environmental crisis signals some limit point for whether or not certain ideas and assumptions of modernity, capital, development, and technology can be sustained and what those alternatives or transformations in these systems might be. While this course will focus primarily on contemporary aspects of this tension as seen in various non-literary texts, it will also be designed to be accessible for any student interested in environment, economics, technology, or the problems of modernity. The course will be organized around key organizing discourses related to Sustainability and its critiques: the Anthropocene, Degrowth, Climate Change, Energy Transition, Critical Minerals, Extractivism, Planetarily, Environmental Justice, Accountability Metrics, Environmental Economics, Environmental regulation and management, Recycling and circularity, Ecology as mode of thought, etc. Each of these discourses, while themselves extensive conversations, provides one way of framing the mounting limits of modernity in relation to our collective effect on the planet and our attempt to adjust in response. For each discourse we will select a few representative primary texts as well as secondary analyses of or within this discourse. The task will be to analyze each as a rhetorical framework that sets us in relation to the planet, technology, humans, and non-humans in particular ways.

This course fulfills the distribution requirements for the theory (rhetoric) and topics courses.

ENGL 669: Topics in African American Literature

Portia Owusu

T 6 - 9 PM LAAH 535

This course offers an in-depth examination of seminal works by women from Africa and the African diaspora. We will begin with slave narratives by women such as Harriet Jacobs and progress to contemporary voices like Jamaica Kincaid and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Focusing on the intersection of race, gender, and identity, we will then explore how Black women’s writing challenges societal norms and provides new insights into their lived experiences. Alongside literary texts, course will also include critical discussions of cultural and literary theories, particularly the works of influential thinkers such as Angela Davis, bell hooks, and Patricia Hill Collins. Students will analyze these texts through political, artistic, and ideological lenses, engaging deeply with the social, cultural, and political experiences of Black women, both historically and in the present.

The class will be taught in a seminar format, with active student participation through discussions and presentations. Though not exhaustive, the course will include works by authors such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Toni Morrison, Nella Larsen, Ama Ata Aidoo, and Jamaica Kincaid.

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ENGL 669: Topics in African American Literature

Portia Owusu

T 6 - 9 PM LAAH 535

This course offers an in-depth examination of seminal works by women from Africa and the African diaspora. We will begin with slave narratives by women such as Harriet Jacobs and progress to contemporary voices like Jamaica Kincaid and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Focusing on the intersection of race, gender, and identity, we will then explore how Black women’s writing challenges societal norms and provides new insights into their lived experiences. Alongside literary texts, course will also include critical discussions of cultural and literary theories, particularly the works of influential thinkers such as Angela Davis, bell hooks, and Patricia Hill Collins. Students will analyze these texts through political, artistic, and ideological lenses, engaging deeply with the social, cultural, and political experiences of Black women, both historically and in the present.

The class will be taught in a seminar format, with active student participation through discussions and presentations. Though not exhaustive, the course will include works by authors such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Toni Morrison, Nella Larsen, Ama Ata Aidoo, and Jamaica Kincaid.

ENGL 681: Seminar in English: Placement Seminar

ENGL 681.600: Seminar in English: Placement Seminar

Wednesdays 2-3pm

LAAH 326

Ira Dworkin

idworkin@tamu.edu

This one-hour course will provide orientation to students who plan to begin seeking employment in fall 2026 or fall 2027 (i.e. Ph.D. students entering their fourth or fifth year in the program). Students will become familiar with the kinds of documents typically required for academic and other professional job searches and will begin producing drafts of those documents in a workshop environment. This is a pass/fail course.

Please note that this course is offered in alternating years and is not scheduled to be offered again until fall 2027.

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ENGL 697: Pedagogy

English 697: Pedagogy

Writing Class

Sara DiCaglio

R 12:45 - 3:45 PM, LAAH 463

English 697 provides an introduction to the practical and theoretical aspects that surround

teaching at the college level, particularly within the writing classroom. The course has three

major goals:

To provide a practical support mechanism for new or future instructors of composition

and writing. A portion of each class will be spent directly reflecting on students’

ongoing teaching experience by sharing lesson plans and discussing questions that arise

from within classrooms.

To develop an understanding of the theoretical background that surrounds the

teaching of writing by examining important historical and contemporary work in

composition and writing studies as well as related pedagogical fields.

To work to put these two sometimes disparate elements together. How can

pedagogical theory help inform your teaching on the ground? How can your teaching on

the ground help inform your interactions with pedagogical theory? How can this study

remain ongoing even as you move on to teaching different courses and sub-disciplines?

And how does any of this relate to your role as a graduate student?

By the end of this course, students will have developed confidence as instructors, an understanding of how to build pedagogical communities, a working knowledge of the field of composition and writing studies, and a toolkit to help develop their future pedagogy. And hopefully we’ll have had some fun along the way.

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English 697: Pedagogy

Writing Class

Sara DiCaglio

R 12:45 - 3:45 PM, LAAH 463

English 697 provides an introduction to the practical and theoretical aspects that surround

teaching at the college level, particularly within the writing classroom. The course has three

major goals:
1. To provide a practical support mechanism for new or future instructors of composition
and writing. A portion of each class will be spent directly reflecting on students’

ongoing teaching experience by sharing lesson plans and discussing questions that arise

from within classrooms.
1. To develop an understanding of the theoretical background that surrounds the
teaching of writing by examining important historical and contemporary work in

composition and writing studies as well as related pedagogical fields.
1. To work to put these two sometimes disparate elements together. How can
pedagogical theory help inform your teaching on the ground? How can your teaching on

the ground help inform your interactions with pedagogical theory? How can this study

remain ongoing even as you move on to teaching different courses and sub-disciplines?

And how does any of this relate to your role as a graduate student?

By the end of this course, students will have developed confidence as instructors, an understanding of how to build pedagogical communities, a working knowledge of the field of composition and writing studies, and a toolkit to help develop their future pedagogy. And hopefully we’ll have had some fun along the way.