For up-to-date information on class times, see the University Schedule of Classes.
MFA in Creative Writing
26:200:550 MFA Fiction Workshop I
In this course students work as a group to improve their short stories. Each week three stories written by class members will be discussed. Assigned readings offer another angle on how fiction works.
26:200:552 MFA Fiction Workshop III
26:200:554 MFA Poetry Workshop I
26:200:556 MFA Poetry Workshop III
26:200:562 MFA Craft of Poetry - Syllabus
26:200:563 MFA Craft of Fiction
This course offers a solid grounding in craft techniques and terms that will be relevant to both creative and critical work in the MFA. Methods include close readings of recently published short stories, a textbook, and exercises.
26:200:567 Writers at Newark
Literature
26:350:503 Intro to Grad Literary Studies
26:350:521 Topics in Literature
Topics vary each semester.
Senses of Brown - Syllabus
26:350:533 Chaucer
The course will focus on “intertextuality”: the relationship between the Tales of Canterbury themselves and their dialogue with texts outside of Chaucer, especially analogues in Boccaccio’s Decameron. Consideration will also be given to non-Canterbury Chaucer.
26:350:559 The Eighteenth Century: Gothic Fiction
An exploration of Gothic fiction, from its eighteenth-century beginnings to the present, in Britain and America. Readings will include well-known works like Frankenstein, "Fall of the House of Usher," and Dracula, as well as less familiar examples of the genre. Topics for discussion will include psychoanalytic, postcolonial, feminist, and queer takes on horror fiction.
26:350:563 Womanist Work: Black Women Preachers and Social Justice
This seminar is designed to give students a profound examination of writing through the voices of Black writers themselves, and involve students in the kinds of research that the discipline of literary studies currently demands, including: working with primary sources and archival materials; reviewing the critical literature; using online databases of historical newspapers, periodicals, and other cultural materials; exploring relevant contexts in literary, linguistic, and cultural history; studying the etymological history and changing meanings of words; experimenting with new methods of computational analysis of texts; and other methodologies. This course typically involves several main texts that are studied intensively from a variety of approaches. Research exercises throughout the semester will enable and culminate in a final paper project (a scholarly essay of 15-20 pages double-
spaced), coupled with a creative, digital in-class presentation: The final project must emerge out of each student's intensive, independent research agenda. At the end of the semester, students will also present their final paper project idea in a creative form (i.e. Power Point/Prezi presentation, et al.). Make this presentation creative! Womanist Work can be cross-listed with English, African American Studies, Music, Religion, and Women/Gender/Sexuality Studies.
26:350:580 Studies in Poetry: Poetry in Translation
Translation has always had many cultural and political ramifications and implications. What exactly does literary translation entail?What are some of the choices and dilemmas facing translators of poetry in particular? Many of the texts high school and college students and teachers of literature read and teach are translations, yet such questions are often glossed over. In this course we move between theory and practice, studying what some notable theorists and practitioners of translation from the recent and not so recent past have said on this subject. In addition, students will be working all semester on their own individual translation projects (preferably but not necessarily poetry). This way we all get to experience the translator's dilemma firsthand. In addition, several distinguished poet/translators will be visiting our seminar. Course is open to both MFA and MA students. Working knowledge of a foreign language is desirable but not absolutely required.
We also have Undergraduate Course Descriptions.