Graduate Courses

We offer between 8 and 11 graduate courses each semester. We have two kinds 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 2025

603: Bibliography and Literary Research

ENGL 603: Bibliography and Literary Research

Dr. Kevin M. O’Sullivan

TR 11:10am – 12:25pm

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.

This course may fulfill 3 hours of coursework toward the Digital Humanities (DHUM) certificate, provided the majority of a student’s deliverables are sufficiently focused on digital humanities content. Interested students should consult with the instructor early in the semester.

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ENGL 603: Bibliography and Literary Research

Dr. Kevin M. O’Sullivan

TR 11:10am – 12:25pm

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.

This course may fulfill 3 hours of coursework toward the Digital Humanities (DHUM) certificate, provided the majority of a student’s deliverables are sufficiently focused on digital humanities content. Interested students should consult with the instructor early in the semester.

610: Topics in the History of the English Language: Old English II, Beowulf - Distribution requirement fulfilled: pre-1800 literature

ENGL/LING 610, Topics in the History of the English Language: Old English II, Beowulf -

Distribution requirement fulfilled: pre-1800 literature

Friday 1-4 PM

Professor Dr. Britt Mize

Continued study of the Old English language at the intermediate level. The class will read and translate the 3182-line poem Beowulf in its entirety, with attention to the work as literature through supplementary readings and class discussion. Because students are not starting from scratch with the language in this course, a critical essay is required along with graded translation exercises. This course follows another language-study course that also includes the reading of Old English literature, so completing the second semester with Beowulf is counted, in total, as fulfilling the pre-1800 literature requirement. Prerequisite: ENGL/LING 610 (Old English I) or equivalent.

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

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

Monday 6-9pm

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

This class offers an eclectic introduction to some of the traditions in which art and philosophy, in the United States and beyond, have developed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Our readings will be loosely framed around the question of “the aesthetic,” in all possible conceptual senses, as a response of sorts to the problematic of “rationalization” that Max Weber famously identified as the main characteristic of late modernity. On our journey, we may cross paths with literary naturalism, modernist temporalities, Deleuzean film theory, Black surrealism, existentialism, queer temporalities . . .

Throughout the semester, we will be thinking about pedagogical questions. Rather than the traditional research paper, the assignments include 4 substantial response papers and, as the final work, a sample syllabus that gathers materials from 20th- and 21st-century texts around a concept or theme chosen by the student.

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653: Topics in 20th and 21st Century Literature and Culture

ENGL 653: Topics in 20th and 21st Century Literature and Culture

Dr. Jessica Howell

Monday, 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Age and Memory Studies in the Health Humanities

This course builds on a growing scholarly focus in the interdisciplinary field of Health Humanities on age and memory studies. Specifically, this course will examine scholarship regarding dementia narratives, memory and autobiography, and aging in literature. Our conversations will be anchored by consideration of literary form, with a focus on poetry, drama, essays, and short fiction: selections include The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit; literary re-imaginings of King Lear, such as We That Are Young by Preti Taneja; and haikus written by dementia patients. Class participants will be encouraged to think critically about the ethics of storytelling in the context of aging and dementia, and the role of Health Humanities scholarship. Further, we will examine recent Health Humanities grant-funded projects in aging and dementia narratives, considering how these contribute to the public Humanities. Time allowing, we will have virtual visits from Health Humanities scholars practicing in this area.

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656: Topics in Writing Studies - Writing as Emerging Technology

ENGL 656: Topics in Writing Studies - Writing as Emerging Technology

Dr. Jason Crider

Spring 2025, W 12:45-3:45, LAAH 535

This seminar considers the impact of emerging technologies through the lens of writing studies. In doing so, this class explores both “canonical” 21st-century theory in writing studies and the history of writing’s consideration as a technology. In the wake of the recent proliferation of “automatic” and augmented writing technologies (including, but not limited to, LLMs), writing itself is increasingly viewed as a proving ground for not only higher education, but human authenticity more broadly. This seminar contends that one potential approach to the emerging cultural panic around AI might be a deep and critical consideration of writing qua writing. While this is NOT a composition pedagogy class, readings and class discussions will occasionally touch on composition theory, as well as drawing from media studies and digital rhetoric. Whereas compositional approaches typically consider writing in relation to a subject (typically the administration of a student subject), writing studies more often emphasize writing as an inscriptive expression of such subjectivity, a disciplinary formulation that helps us ask: what does writing do? Writers likely to be discussed include: Dennis Baron, Stafford Beer, Sharon Crowley, Jacques Derrida, Sidney Dobrin, Vilém Flusser, Donna Haraway, Walter Ong, Plato, Raúl Sánchez, Gregory Ulmer, and Annette Vee.

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ENGL 656: Topics in Writing Studies - Writing as Emerging Technology

Dr. Jason Crider

Spring 2025, W 12:45-3:45, LAAH 535

This seminar considers the impact of emerging technologies through the lens of writing studies. In doing so, this class explores both “canonical” 21st-century theory in writing studies and the history of writing’s consideration as a technology. In the wake of the recent proliferation of “automatic” and augmented writing technologies (including, but not limited to, LLMs), writing itself is increasingly viewed as a proving ground for not only higher education, but human authenticity more broadly. This seminar contends that one potential approach to the emerging cultural panic around AI might be a deep and critical consideration of writing qua writing. While this is NOT a composition pedagogy class, readings and class discussions will occasionally touch on composition theory, as well as drawing from media studies and digital rhetoric. Whereas compositional approaches typically consider writing in relation to a subject (typically the administration of a student subject), writing studies more often emphasize writing as an inscriptive expression of such subjectivity, a disciplinary formulation that helps us ask: what does writing do? Writers likely to be discussed include: Dennis Baron, Stafford Beer, Sharon Crowley, Jacques Derrida, Sidney Dobrin, Vilém Flusser, Donna Haraway, Walter Ong, Plato, Raúl Sánchez, Gregory Ulmer, and Annette Vee.

666: Book History: Early Modern Social Media and Authorship Practices, from Donne to Austen

ENGL 666: Book History: Early Modern Social Media and Authorship Practices, from Donne to Austen

Thursdays 1-4

Dr. Margaret Ezell

This course would satisfy the distribution requirements for both literature, pre-1800

This seminar explores what we might notice in and about early modern books during times of media shifts—oral/ handwritten/ print--if we examine them using the critical lens being developed to study the emergence of contemporary social media cultures. We will revisit terms used to describe early modern authorship practices such as coterie, social, and scribal publication, alongside twenty-first century formulations of media ecology/ media archeology, participatory culture, spreadable media, and residual media, as well as terms such as content creators, active audiences, and fan fiction. In the primary materials we will be studying, we will be looking for traces of the intersections of different media practices using case studies of literary forms/media—the letter, the miscellany, and the periodical—as they were used by English writers and experienced by English readers in the late sixteenth through the (very) early nineteenth centuries, during the expansion of commercial print publication.

The seminar will be divided into three sections:

Oral to manuscript: manuscript circulation, social authorship, and sociability
- Epistolary culture, networks, and sociable reading; recipe volumes and domestic miscellanies
Manuscript to print: participatory culture, active audiences, encounters with new media technologies and platforms, periodicals and miscellanies
Print to manuscript: return to coterie practices, gift books, personal anthologies, fan fiction

Students will be working with digital surrogates of manuscript collections held at the British Library, the Folger, and the Bodleian, data bases including EEBO and ECCO, the Manuscript Verse Miscellanies, 1700-1820, and material books and manuscript materials held at the Cushing Library. Some of the authors whose writings we will/ may consider probably will / might well include John Donne, Lucy Rusell, the Countess of Bedford and the Twickenham circle; Andrew Marvell and Thomas Stanley and the Inns of Court; periodicals including the Athenian Mercury, the Gentleman’s Journal/ the Ladies Journal, the British Apollo, and the Female Tatler; Jacob Tonson’s Miscellanies; Phillis Wheatley, Thomas Gray, Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Lennox, and Jane Austen’s juvenilia.

Written assignments will be brief presentations on secondary readings, case studies using primary materials, and a final conference length paper.

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  ENGL 666: Book History: Early Modern Social Media and Authorship Practices, from Donne to Austen

   Thursdays 1-4

Dr. Margaret Ezell

This course would satisfy the distribution requirements for both literature, pre-1800

This seminar explores what we might notice in and about early modern books during times of media shifts—oral/ handwritten/ print--if we examine them using the critical lens being developed to study the emergence of contemporary social media cultures. We will revisit terms used to describe early modern authorship practices such as coterie, social, and scribal publication, alongside twenty-first century formulations of media ecology/ media archeology, participatory culture, spreadable media, and residual media, as well as terms such as content creators, active audiences, and fan fiction. In the primary materials we will be studying, we will be looking for traces of the intersections of different media practices using case studies of literary forms/media—the letter, the miscellany, and the periodical—as they were used by English writers and experienced by English readers in the late sixteenth through the (very) early nineteenth centuries, during the expansion of commercial print publication.

The seminar will be divided into three sections:
- Oral to manuscript: manuscript circulation, social authorship, and sociability
  - Epistolary culture, networks, and sociable reading; recipe volumes and domestic miscellanies
- Manuscript to print: participatory culture, active audiences, encounters with new media technologies and platforms, periodicals and miscellanies
- Print to manuscript: return to coterie practices, gift books, personal anthologies, fan fiction
Students will be working with digital surrogates of manuscript collections held at the British Library, the Folger, and the Bodleian, data bases including EEBO and ECCO, the Manuscript Verse Miscellanies, 1700-1820, and material books and manuscript materials held at the Cushing Library. Some of the authors whose writings we will/ may consider probably will / might well include John Donne, Lucy Rusell, the Countess of Bedford and the Twickenham circle; Andrew Marvell and Thomas Stanley and the Inns of Court; periodicals including the Athenian Mercury, the Gentleman’s Journal/ the Ladies Journal, the British Apollo, and the Female Tatler; Jacob Tonson’s Miscellanies; Phillis Wheatley, Thomas Gray, Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Lennox, and Jane Austen’s juvenilia.

Written assignments will be brief presentations on secondary readings, case studies using primary materials, and a final conference length paper.

671: Readings in American Literature

ENGL 671 Readings in American Literature

Monday & Wednesday, 11:10 - 12:25 PM

Dr. Amy Earhart

Wide reading in American literature from its beginnings through the 19th Century; introduction of major figures, genres, and issues in the period; introduction to current critical conversations in pre-1900 American literary studies, including historical and social contexts. The focus will be on literary interpretation, material culture, genre, race and gender studies, and research methods.

Readings will be drawn from the Broadview Anthology of American Literature.

This course will fulfill the following distribution requirements:

One course in any literature, pre-1800
One course in any literature, 1800-the present

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698: Topics in Digital Pedagogy – Teaching with Open Educational Resources

ENGL 698: Topics in Digital Pedagogy – Teaching with Open Educational Resources

Tuesday: 1-4 PM

Professor Sarah LeMire

Open Educational Resources (OER) are becoming increasingly popular as a transformative pedagogical strategy in higher education. OER are a powerful instrument for student success, eliminating financial barriers and ensuring equitable access to course materials for all students. This course is designed to empower graduate students within the OER movement. It engages with OER from a pedagogical lens, exploring the theory of open in relation to teaching and learning. What does it mean to license your work openly? How can OER support equitable access to learning? This course also provides students with hands-on knowledge and skills to support their own work with OER. Students will create OER work throughout the course, culminating in their OER portfolio project.

Distribution: One course organized around concepts, issues, or themes (as opposed to courses organized primarily according to chronological period

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