School of Writing, Literature, and Film

ENG 545

Studies in Nonfiction: Essays on Film

Section: 1

CRN: 56055

W 17:00-19:50

Craft/Hybrid

Passarello, Elena

This course explores the myriad essayistic implications of the 1983 music video for Duran Duran's hit song "Girls on Film."  Just kidding. In this nonfiction craft class, we'll cover literary essays in both short and long form that use feature-length movies as the launchpads of their inquiries. We'll watch the films that inspired the essays, discuss the relationships between the two art forms, and practice our own essayistic film writing in the process. Texts include essays by Geoff Dyer, Ander Monson, Nathalie Léger, and Salman Rushdie, writing about films including Predator, Jennifer's Body, and Wanda.

ENG 570

Studies in Poetry: Archive Fever

Section: 1

CRN: 60520

M,W 12:00-13:50

Ward, Megan

Working intimately with the 101 copies that OSU holds of Edmund Fitzgerald’s 1859 translated poem, “The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam,” this class will build a virtual exhibit that includes images, original research, and public writing. Along the way, we’ll examine the very nature of archival research through theoretical exposition and literary representation. What is archival research so romanticized? What can it help us discover and what will always remain elusive in our search to understand the past?

ENG 580

Studies in Literature, Culture and Society: Premodern Sexualities

Section: 1

CRN: 59564

Pre-1700s

T,R 8:00-9:50

Bude, Tekla

We in the 21st-century are heirs to intersecting frameworks of gender, sexuality, race, and class that grew out of Enlightenment-era (18th- and 19th-century) imperialism and capitalism. These frameworks include the gender binary, the tokenization and hypersexualization of black and Asian people, and the marginalization and criminalization of sex workers, among others – all things that gender and sexuality scholars today seek to critique and dismantle. In this class, we will look to the period BEFORE the Enlightenment for a better understanding of how these frameworks came to be, but also to understand other, alternative ways of understanding sex, gender, and sexuality. What models for gender and sexuality – and their intersections with race and class – do the medieval and early modern periods offer? The answers might surprise you: from queer nuns to cross-dressing sex workers, from female Jesuses to black Madonnas, and from trans heroes of medieval fiction to the all-male casts of Shakespearean drama, premodern literature provides us with some startling counterpoints to our received notions of gender, sex, and sexuality.

ENG 582

Studies in American Lit, Culture, and Environment: Global Science Fiction

Section: 2

CRN: 60392

MA Experience

M,W 10:00-11:50

Frelik, Paweł 

While science fiction has long been considered a primarily Anglo-American genre, speculative narratives have been produced globally. Growing out of diverse cultural and political contexts, non-Anglophone texts across media demonstrate vastly disparate conceptions of the fantastic as well as a spectrum of aesthetic qualities and thematic preoccupations that differ substantially from their Western counterparts. We will focus on selected global texts, including an anime from Japan, a film from Benin, a short from Kenya, and a novel from China, and will look at how non-Western creators engage, through speculative scenarios, a range of economic, social, ecological, and political issues.

ENG 588

Literature and Pedagogy

Section: 1

CRN: 57992

T,R 14:00-15:50

Olson, Rebecca

Practices, approaches, histories, and theories of teaching literature appropriate for secondary through college settings. Considers text selection, assignments, and evaluation.This section will apply up-to-the-minute strategies for decolonizing the English literature / language arts curriculum and crafting accessible assignments.

FILM 552

Animation

Section: 1

CRN: 60451

T,R/M 12:00-13:20/18:00-21:50

Lewis, Jon   

Early experiments in cine-animation coincide with the earliest movies; the very idea of motion pictures was itself a mode or version of animation (of still images into movement, of stationery objects into seeming action). This class will provide an in-depth look at animation history from the early experiments by Lotte Reninger and Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland) and ventures into silent-era narrative (Otto Messmer and Pat Sullivan’s Felix the Cat) through the several golden ages at Disney (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Silly Symphonies, Snow White, Pinocchio), the jazz-age cartoons made by the Fleischer brothers (Betty Boop, Popeye, Gulliver’s Travels), and the 35mm short subjects made at Warner Bros. (“starring” Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Daffy Duck). More modern works to include: the hand-painted experiments of Portland, Oregon’s Joanna Priestly and Japan’s Studio Ghibli’s epic watercolors (Princess Mononoke), modern stop-action (Tim Burton and Henry Selick) and puppetry (Trey Parker and Matt Stone), and computer animation (Pixar). Students can opt out of the final paper and instead produce their own animated videos.

WR521 Teaching Practicum: Fiction Writing

Section: 1

CRN: 51560

R 17:00-17:50

Dybek, Nicholas

This course is restricted to GTAs enrolled in the MFA Program in Creative Writing (in fiction) in advance of teaching WR 224 in their second year. We’ll meet once a week over spring term to build syllabi, discuss teaching strategies and potential ethical issues, and prepare in every way we can for the pleasures and challenges of teaching introductory fiction writing.

WR 522 Teaching Practicum: Poetry Writing

Section: 1

CRN: 54476

T 17:00-17:50

Richter, Jen

WR 522 is the Poetry Teaching Practicum for graduate students who have been accepted into Oregon State University’s Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing and who want to teach poetry writing (WR 241) in their second year.

WR 523

Teaching Practicum: Nonfiction

Section: 1

CRN: 55429

F 15:00-15:50

Passarello, Elena

This course instructs graduate students in the best practices for teaching creative nonfiction. It covers topics such as text selection, assignment structure, course design, classroom management, and grading. Students will design their own WR 240 courses over the course of the quarter.

WR 524

Advanced Fiction Writing

Section: 1

CRN: 50453  

R 140:0-16:50

Hybrid

Larison, John

In this graduate level fiction-writing workshop, students will be expected to produce two full-length stories or novel chapters. Students will also be graded on the quality of their written and oral critiques and class participation. We will, in addition, be reading and discussing professional short stories, selected by students, as the term progresses. These stories will constitute the course text.

WR 540

Advanced Nonfiction Writing

Section: 1

CRN: 55484

T 18:00-20:50

Hybrid

Estreich, George

We'll spend most of our time in workshop, with the remainder devoted to discussing published essays. The class has two main goals: giving you specific, practical help with your own writing projects, and providing a space in which to develop your ideas about literary nonfiction. Requirements include two submissions to workshop, weekly readings (distributed through Canvas), active participation, and a short oral presentation on craft.

WR 541

Advanced Poetry Writing

Section: 1

CRN: 51121

T 14:00-16:50

Hybrid

Richter, Jen

MFA graduate poetry workshop: a course focused on rigorous discussions of student work and in-depth studies of published work as models and inspiration for the thesis and subsequent collections. Note: enrollment in this course is limited to graduate students who have been accepted into OSU's MFA Program in poetry; other MFA students wishing to enroll must have instructor approval in advance.

WR 562

Environmental Writing

Section: 1

CRN: 56383

T,R 12:00-13:20

WIC/Hybrid

Pflugfelder, Ehren 

There are few issues as significant or overwhelming as the environmental problems that humanity faces. Has it always been this way, and how have we reacted to these concerns? Environmental Writing is a course that asks these questions and more. The course focuses on a range of writing and theory on the environment, examining scholars, concepts, documents, and methodologies that are central to the evolution of American environmental theory, while also touching on popular theorists who has explored specific issues in ecology, nature writing, wilderness, environmental communication, and the emergence of the anthropocene. The aim of this course is to provide students a background in environmental writing techniques and concepts, as a means of enabling us to perform critical thinking and analytical writing about the environment. Students will be able to recognize concepts in the history of environmental writing in America, as well as be able to articulate ongoing and currently unfolding debates in environmental topics in their own writing.

WR 573

Special Topics: Dissertation Writing

CRN: 60470

T,R 14:00-15:20

Bennett, Dennis

If you’d like to alleviate some of the drama and mystery associated with writing your thesis or dissertation, then look no further. This course will assist students who are in the writing stage of their thesis or dissertation (or who might be writing the proposal for this work). We will first identify the expectations of a quality thesis/dissertation in your respective fields, analyze the ways they are met through writing, and execute an achievable plan to meet—and ideally, exceed—those expectations.

WR 585

Contemporary Rhetoric Theory

Section: 1

CRN: 59561

F 10:00-13:50

MA Experience

Pflugfelder, Ehren

Is rhetoric an evolutionary trait? Can rhetoric be feral? How do forests think? Is an antelope a document? Do glaciers listen? How is a clam bed like a rhetorical network? In Contemporary Rhetorical Theory, you’ll learn about theories that have significantly contributed to or influenced modern rhetorical thinking. The course examines scholars, concepts, and methodologies that are central to recent rhetorical theory, while also touching on key critical theorists who, although may be outside the field of rhetoric studies, impact the ways in which language, persuasion, and communication are currently understood. In this version of WR 585, we’ll focus on a few interrelated areas: animal rhetorics, environmental rhetorics, and rhetorical ecologies. 

WR 595

Introduction to Literacy Studies

Section: 1

CRN: 59562

TR 10:00-11:50

Pedagogy

Ribero, Ana

This course introduces students to the field of literacy studies. The class approaches literacy from a critical perspective, looking to question dominant narratives about literacy and to unveil the ways such narratives are implicated in colonization and oppression. We will read, write about, and discuss texts in literacy studies, critical race theory, ethnic studies, and feminist theory to explore definitions of literacy and their implications across historical and cultural contexts.