Fall 2024: Undergraduate English Courses
ENG 201 001 INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE
Instructor: Jonathan Walker
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 204 001 SURVEY OF BRITISH LIT I
Instructor: John Smyth
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
ENG 260 001 INTRO TO WOMEN'S LIT
Instructor: Susan Reese
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 299 001 SPST: INTRO CREATVE INDUSTRIES
Instructor: Rachel Noorda
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 300 001 LIT FORM AND ANALYSIS
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
A required course for PSU English majors, ENG 300 focuses on skills of literary analysis. Students in this class will learn methods of interpreting the complex relationships between form and content: what a text has to say, and how the text is put together. In studying texts of varying genres (poetry, drama, fiction, and film) and through both formal and informal writing exercises, students will gain confidence and ability in asking hard questions of a literary text, exploring its formal and thematic intricacies, and using writing as a tool for developing complex interpretations supported with evidence. We will consider the craft of writing, paying close attention to meaning, language, style, and structure. The idea is not to analyze the life out of the works we read, but to appreciate them more fully by understanding how they work.
ENG 300 002 LIT FORM AND ANALYSIS
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
A required course for PSU English majors, ENG 300 focuses on skills of literary analysis. Students in this class will learn methods of interpreting the complex relationships between form and content: what a text has to say, and how the text is put together. In studying texts of varying genres (poetry, drama, fiction, and film) and through both formal and informal writing exercises, students will gain confidence and ability in asking hard questions of a literary text, exploring its formal and thematic intricacies, and using writing as a tool for developing complex interpretations supported with evidence. We will consider the craft of writing, paying close attention to meaning, language, style, and structure. The idea is not to analyze the life out of the works we read, but to appreciate them more fully by understanding how they work.
ENG 300 003 LIT FORM AND ANALYSIS
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
Students in this class will explore the complex relationships between form and content: how texts of all kinds work (their structure) and the multiple ways that such elements create meaning. Using texts taken from genres including poetry, drama, fiction, and film, and working individually and collaboratively, students will develop the ability to ask and answer questions of texts. In addition to studying writing, students will also work on their own writing, developing new skills in critical analysis and argumentation.
ENG 304 001 CRITICAL THEORY OF CINEMA
Instructor: Matthew Ellis
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 305U 001 TOP IN FLM: HITCHCOCK
Instructor: Michael Clark
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 305U 002 TOP: CINEMA OF US/MEX BORDER
Instructor: Marcel Brousseau
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
ENG 306U 001 TOP: LATINX COMICS
Instructor: Marcel Brousseau
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
ENG 306U 003 TOP: THE AMERICAN MUSICAL
Instructor: Daniel Pollack-Pelzner
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
Musical theater is one of America’s chief contributions to the world of culture. It’s also been one of America’s chief stages for defining itself. This course will discuss key musicals over the last eighty years, from Oklahoma to Hamilton, to explore shifting ideas of American identity and community, along with changing musical and theatrical forms for representing those ideas. Students will analyze elements of musicals, research their cultural contexts, and even propose new musicals of their own.
ENG 309U 001 INDIGENOUS NATIONS LITERATURE
Instructor: Marcel Brousseau
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 310U 001 TOP: CHILD/YOUNG ADULT LIT
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 326 001 LIT, COMMUNITY, DIFFERENCE
Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
What is literature? What makes it different from other forms of writing? How should we view the relation between a work of literature and the identity of its author? How does one describe what a work of literature is “about”? What makes us interpret a work of literature in one way rather than another?
We will address these questions through a careful study of four novels. In an era in which we’re constantly incentivized to talk and write about ourselves (e.g., our identities, our experience, our personal traumas), we will explore fiction’s capacity to imagine the world through the eyes of others. In an era in which one’s identity is commonly assumed to be the key to understanding the self, we will explore fiction’s concern with what Zadie Smith calls “the mystery that lies at the heart of all selfhood.” And in a world possessed by what Susan Sontag referred to as the philistine habit of “reducing the work of art to its content,” our goal will be to enlarge the possibilities of the literature we encounter by expanding our own capacities as readers.
This course fulfills the “Culture, Difference, and Representation” component of the PSU English Major.
Required Texts:
- Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
- Nella Larsen, Passing
- Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley
ENG 327 001 CULTURE, IMPER, GLOBALIZATION
Instructor: Sarah Lincoln
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 330U 001 JEWISH & ISRAELI LITERATURE
Instructor: Michael Weingrad
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
ENG 331U 001 INTRO RHETORIC & COMP
Instructor: Dan DeWeese
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 332U 001 HST CINEMA & NARRATIVE MEDIA I
Instructor: Matthew Ellis
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
ENG 335U 001 TOP: AFTERLIVES OF SLAVERY
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 340U 001 MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 342U 001 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE
Instructor: Bill Knight
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 351U 001 AFRICAN AMERICAN LIT I
Instructor: Anoop Mirpuri
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
Slavery has never been represented, slavery can never be represented.
–William Wells Brown (1847)
This course is part one of a three-part survey of African American literature. We will cover the origins of the black literary tradition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Our specific focus will be the genre of the slave narrative.
It’s common to read slave narratives as simple testimony to the experience of enslavement by formerly enslaved people. However, in this course we will examine the slave narrative as a literary genre—that is, a group of texts that share a number of common features. Our aim will be to identify these common features and to get a sense of the historical conditions that gave rise to them. In doing so, we will consider how slave narratives were shaped not only by their author, but also by the editors who published them and the audience for which they were written.
More specifically, how should we understand the relation between the authors of slave narratives and the editors who sponsored them? How did authors and editors, in turn, understand the audience to which these narratives were marketed? How did this audience (i.e., their beliefs, assumptions, and expectations) shape how slave narratives were written and what it was possible to write? In what ways did specific slave narratives meet their audiences’ expectations? And in what ways did slave narratives diverge from those expectations?
Addressing these questions will require us to develop the skill of reading autobiographies as works of literature, rather than as a direct expressions of an author’s perspective or experience. It will require us to think carefully and historically about the invention of categories that we generally assume to be natural (i.e., white and black); and about the formation of concepts whose definition we generally assume to be stable (i.e., freedom and slavery). Along the way, we will challenge common ways of thinking about the history of slavery and the experiences of enslaved people, but also those of slaveholders, free non-slaveholding people, and abolitionists.
ENG 367U 001 TOP: GHOSTS AND HAUNTINGS
Instructor: Michael Clark
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 369U 001 ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Instructor: Marie Lo
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 371 001 THE NOVEL
Instructor: John Smyth
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
ENG 372U 001 TOP: LESBIAN&WOMXN IDS IN LIT
Instructor: Sally McWilliams
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 383U 001 TOP: GIANTS IN COMICS & MANGA
Instructor: Jon Holt
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 385U 001 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Instructor: Susan Reese
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 399 001 SPST: INTERACTIVE FICTION
Instructor: Kathi Berens; Bart Massey
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 413 001 TEACHING & TUTORING WRITING
Instructor: Hildy Miller
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings
Are you planning on teaching writing at either the college or K12 level? Most English or Arts and Letters grads who teach English actually spend a large amount of their time teaching writing. This course introduces you to the theory and practice of teaching and tutoring writing. We’ll focus on writing processes (invention, revision, editing, formal and informal writing, and writing groups); teaching strategies (responding to writing, developing your teaching ethos, working with non-native speakers, handling plagiarism, teaching critical reading, and developing a teaching philosophy); and look at specific issues (how tutorial sessions work, what writing in the disciplines means), and you’ll create such teaching staples as a syllabus, a writing assignment, a unit plan, and a lesson plan.
So, in short, this won’t be your average lecture class. Instead, you’ll be reading and researching materials and thinking of applications to your own teaching practice, doing practice teaching and tutoring sessions, and producing formal and informal writing. At the end of the course, if all goes as promised, you should possess both the tools and the confidence to teach writing in any context. And, more than that, since I believe that no two teachers are alike and that each teacher has your own gift to give your students, you will have had a chance to think through what likely works best for you and how you want to shape your unique gift.
This course is online synchronous, which means TTh 10-12:50 am on zoom. All readings are online so it is no-cost.
ENG 422 001 AFRICAN FICTION
Instructor: Sarah Lincoln
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 497 001 COMICS HISTORY
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
Back to Top
Fall 2024: Graduate English Courses
ENG 500 001 PROBLEMS AND METHODS
Instructor: Jonathan Walker
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 507 001 SEM: COSMOPOLITANISM
Instructor: Bill Knight
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
A course on cosmopolitanism, genre, identity, and questions of the universal:
Like so-called “first-world problems,” Cosmopolitan Problems might imply a kind of luxury, a surplus, or an excess. After all, bare life doesn’t demand that we become cosmopolitans or “citizens of the world”— our immediate or local duties and attachments are absolutely sufficient for survival or what we might call a full life. Our various identifications situate us, give us grounding, and help us articulate demands that can seem more urgent and meaningful than any universalist or global perspective. So why add cosmopolitan problems to our immediate concerns? Why think of our place in humanity in general? Why get mixed up with cosmopolitanism?
This course will try to answer that question. We’ll start by asking what Cosmopolitan Problems are, looking back to some Greek and Roman sources and traversing cosmopolitanism’s place in Enlightenment writing before engaging several contemporary theoretical and literary works. Above all we will attend to genre and literary form as fundamental questions of cosmopolitanism. Can a cosmopolitan writing exist, and under what conditions? What are the formal qualities of cosmopolitan writing? What kinds of histories, events, and characters can it depict or narrate? We’ll examine a history of the cross-connections between genres and cosmopolitanism, considering utopian thinking, the tale (both “oriental” and philosophical), translation-as-genre, abolitionist narrative, the literary modes of sympathy and sensibility, and travel writing. We’ll engage two contemporary novels (Cole, Tawada) and ask questions about the destination of cosmopolitan values, intentions, theories, and lives in the writing of our time.
Throughout, we’ll preserve the question of cosmopolitanism as a problem– there is no pat, naive solution to the questions we’ll be asking together, and there is no naive or simple universalism or cosmopolitan perspective that could serve as an antidote to pure identity, localism, romantic authenticity, or nationalism. What we’ll seek is the articulation of a critical, dialectical cosmopolitanism that can integrate and preserve the relations of and distinctions between the global and local, self and other, identity and difference. In our efforts, I think we’ll see that the real problems of cosmopolitanism are anything but luxuries or frivolities– they are a necessary counterpart to the persistent demands and trials of modernity.
Required Texts:
- Anonymous. The Woman of Colour. Broadview, 2008.
- Cole, Teju. Open City. Random House, 2011.
- Johnson, Samuel. The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. Penguin, 2007.
- Tawada, Yoko. Scattered All Over the Earth. New Directions, 2022.
ENG 513 001 TEACHING & TUTORING WRITING
Instructor: Hildy Miller
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings
Are you planning on teaching writing at either the college or K12 level? Most English or Arts and Letters grads who teach English actually spend a large amount of their time teaching writing. This course introduces you to the theory and practice of teaching and tutoring writing. We’ll focus on writing processes (invention, revision, editing, formal and informal writing, and writing groups); teaching strategies (responding to writing, developing your teaching ethos, working with non-native speakers, handling plagiarism, teaching critical reading, and developing a teaching philosophy); and look at specific issues (how tutorial sessions work, what writing in the disciplines means), and you’ll create such teaching staples as a syllabus, a writing assignment, a unit plan, and a lesson plan.
So, in short, this won’t be your average lecture class. Instead, you’ll be reading and researching materials and thinking of applications to your own teaching practice, doing practice teaching and tutoring sessions, and producing formal and informal writing. At the end of the course, if all goes as promised, you should possess both the tools and the confidence to teach writing in any context. And, more than that, since I believe that no two teachers are alike and that each teacher has your own gift to give your students, you will have had a chance to think through what likely works best for you and how you want to shape your unique gift.
This course is online synchronous, which means TTh 10-12:50 am on zoom. All readings are online so it is no-cost.
ENG 518 001 TEACHING COLLEGE COMPOSITION
Instructor: Kate Comer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 522 001 AFRICAN FICTION
Instructor: Sarah Lincoln
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
ENG 531 001 TOP: THE FIELD OF ENGLISH
Instructor: Josh Epstein
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This one-credit course is designed to support first-year graduate students as they adjust to graduate-level work. Our meetings and assignments will buttress your development as a critical reader, thinker, writer, and researcher in the field of English. We will meet every other week to discuss your progress and review some core skills in support of your work for other classes, particularly ENG 500.
(Students in or beyond their second year in the program should sign up for 531-002: Colloquium.)
ENG 531 002 COLLOQUIUM
Instructor: Josh Epstein
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This one-credit class is designed to support returning M.A. in English students as they continue and complete their program. Our meetings and assignments will provide opportunities for you to continue honing your critical writing and researching skills, building upon strengths and addressing gaps and challenges. The course intends to support both your current term's coursework and your preparation for the field exam (the supplementary written notes and oral exam), the M.A. essay (if you are choosing that option), or other goals that you have for your intellectual and professional development.
(Students in their first year of the program should enroll instead in ENG 531-001: The Field of English.)
ENG 561 001 TOP: FAMILIES AND KINSHIP
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
Back to Top
Fall 2024: Undergraduate Writing Courses
WR 121Z 001 COMPOSITION I
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 121Z 002 COMPOSITION I
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 121Z 003 COMPOSITION I
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 121Z 004 COMPOSITION I
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 199 001 SPST: INTRO CREATIVE WRITING
Instructor: Paul Collins
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
An introduction to writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, as well as to the community of writing events and literary quarterlies. Majors and non-majors alike are welcome; no prior experience is required.
Texts:
- Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott (978-0385480017)
WR 210 001 GRAMMAR REFRESHER
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
WR 212 001 INTRO FICTION WRITING
Instructor: Janice Lee
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
If writing is language and language is desire and longing and suffering, and it is capable of great passion and also great nuances of passion- the passion of the mind, the passion of the body- and if syntax reflects state of desire, is hope, is love, is sadness, is fury … if the motion of line is about desire and longing and want; then why when we write, when we make shapes on paper, why then does it so often look like the traditional straight models?
–Carole Maso
In this class we will explore the practice of writing fiction as an experience that not only includes putting words to page and telling stories, but also listening, observing, giving attention, feeling, moving, walking, meditating, and sensing. The course will work as a creative laboratory, giving the students the opportunity to experiment and investigate within the realm of fiction. Our work will be guided by writing exercises, readings by diverse contemporary authors, and discussions of core craft elements such as point of view, character, plot, and setting. There will also be some discussion of student work. Throughout, we will explore what it means to articulate via language, to be challenged by language, to recreate intimacy with language, and to see differently because of and via language.
WR 212 002 INTRO FICTION WRITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 213 001 INTRO POETRY WRITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 213 002 INTRO POETRY WRITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 214 001 INTRO NONFICTION WRITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 222 001 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 222 002 WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
WR 227Z 001 TECHNICAL WRITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 227Z 002 TECHNICAL WRITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 227Z 003 TECHNICAL WRITING
Instructor: Sidouane Patcha
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
WR 227Z 004 TECHNICAL WRITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
WR 228 001 MEDIA WRITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 301 001 WIC: CRITICAL WRTING ENGLISH
Instructor: Kate Comer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 301 002 WIC: CRITICAL WRTING ENGLISH
Instructor: Hildy Miller
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
As English majors, you're probably already familiar with much of what we do in our courses. This class is designed to stretch that knowledge further and prepare you to succeed in upper division work. We'll consider strategies for writing and conducting secondary research. And we'll practice reading and interpreting texts through the lenses of varied critical theories. Includes formal and informal writing, responding to a variety of readings, sharing work with other students, and reflecting on writing. Our class will run as a workshop in which you’ll be collaborating with other students throughout phases of both your and their writing processes. And we’ll cover how to research both teaching and non-teaching careers. If all goes as promised, you should emerge from the course with a renewed sense of how to produce knowledge in English Studies.
Texts are all available electronically. Course is fully online asynchronous.
Questions? Contact milleh@pdx.edu.
WR 312 001 INTERMED FICTION WR
Instructor: Justin Hocking
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
What new and vibrant species of narrative emerges when writers cross-pollinate a short story with a poem or an essay, or realistic fiction with a fairy tale? What happens when we dress up “high literature” in clothing usually reserved for horror or speculative fiction? Or accessorize flash fiction with visual art? What connections might we draw between the terms genre and gender, and what part does genre-crossing play in queering the literary cannon? While exploring the freedoms that exist beyond genre, how might we also rethink conventional notions about plot, character, point of view and setting? This intermediate course will examine these and other questions, along with generative writing exercises, weekly student workshops, and a strong emphasis on writing as a process rather than a product.
WR 312 002 INTERMED FICTION WR
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 312 003 INTERMED FICTION WR
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 313 001 INTERMEDIATE POETRY WRITING
Instructor: Consuelo Wise
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 323 001 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 323 002 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 323 004 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 323 005 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Hybrid
WR 323 006 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
WR 323 007 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
WR 323 008 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
WR 323 009 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
WR 323 010 WRITING AS CRITICAL INQUIRY
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
WR 327 001 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING
Instructor: Sidouane Patcha
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 327 002 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING
Instructor: W. Tracy Dillon
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
This course prepares students for writing as professionals in engineering, scientific and other technical disciplines. Topics covered include technical and workplace genres of writing, such as proposals and reports, oral presentation, writing about and with data, effective language practices, writing collaboratively and ethics. Emphasis (and the ultimate end-product) will be a short but formal technical report based on your own personal interests and experience. The report will propose a solution to a problem to decision makers who have the authority to act on your recommendations.
What about textbooks? Due to the cross-disciplinary nature of students taking this course for their program requirements or electives, no one-size-fits-all textbook will work for us. Course lectures should be sufficient to help you complete assignments. In short, no textbook is required. However, if you want to purchase a textbook, the course materials identify options for each major.
Should be fun!
Any questions? Ask: dillont@pdx.edu
WR 327 003 TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING
Instructor: W. Tracy Dillon
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
This course prepares students for writing as professionals in engineering, scientific and other technical disciplines. Topics covered include technical and workplace genres of writing, such as proposals and reports, oral presentation, writing about and with data, effective language practices, writing collaboratively and ethics. Emphasis (and the ultimate end-product) will be a short but formal technical report based on your own personal interests and experience. The report will propose a solution to a problem to decision makers who have the authority to act on your recommendations.
What about textbooks? Due to the cross-disciplinary nature of students taking this course for their program requirements or electives, no one-size-fits-all textbook will work for us. Course lectures should be sufficient to help you complete assignments. In short, no textbook is required. However, if you want to purchase a textbook, the course materials identify options for each major.
Should be fun!
Any questions? Ask: dillont@pdx.edu
WR 331 001 BOOK PUBLISHING FOR WRITERS
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 398 001 WRITING COMICS
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 410 001 TOP: LITERARY MAGAZINES
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This course introduces students to the local and national world of literary magazines. By analyzing various submission, editing, and publishing processes, this class will promote critical thinking and insight regarding the practices of literary magazines. Students will also gain industry experience by reading and discussing Portland Review’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and mixed-genre submissions, as well as write reviews and essays with the goal of publication. Students interested in creative writing and publishing, whether they are new or experienced in these fields, are welcome.
During this class, students will...
- Gain practical, vocational experience in the fields of editing and publishing
- Identify crafted effects in published and unpublished creative prose and poetry
- Build familiarity with Portland Review's editors, as well as publishers and art organizations in the Portland community and beyond
- Analyze and reflect on ethical practices in literary publishing
- Pursue personal goals related to literary magazines
About Portland Review:
Founded in 1956, Portland Review publishes prose, poetry, art, and translations reflecting a wide spectrum of aesthetic styles and voices. Produced by the graduate students in Portland State University’s Department of English, Portland Review is proud to publish both established and emerging writers, as well as showcase a diverse spectrum of literary and artistic engagement across genres and disciplines. To learn more, visit portlandreview.org.
WR 412 001 ADVANCED FICTION WRITING
Instructor: Laura Scott
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 412 002 ADV FICTION WRITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 416 001 SCREENWRITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
WR 425 001 ADVANCED TECHNICAL WRITING
Instructor: Sarah Read
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 426 001 DOCUMENT DESIGN
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 434 001 SCIENCE WRITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 457 001 PERSONAL ESSAY WRITING
Instructor: Justin Hocking
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
Transforming my secrets into art has transformed me. And I believe that stories like these have the power to transform the world.
–Melissa Febos
The word “essay” derives from the French “essai,” meaning “to attempt, try, or experiment.” In this workshop we will subvert formulaic approaches to writing, and instead embrace the personal essay as a dynamic art form that allows us to meditate on a subject without necessarily arriving at any pat conclusions. Together we’ll explore various purposes for “essaying,” from attempting to heal past traumas, to enacting political or cultural change, to simply expressing delight. We will experiment with lyrical flights of fancy, poetic moves, and fictional technique—all of which are all admissible within the bounds of a single essay. You will also learn to choreograph various levels of narrative intimacy and distance by engaging with works that dive deep into personal and emotionally charged material, while also expanding outward, well beyond the self, to weave in news from the wider world.
WR 460 001 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING
Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
Course Description:
This course offers an introduction to the book publishing industry. Students will be introduced to the history and current state of the agents and processes that constitute the book publishing industries in the US. Students will work together as mock publishing houses to produce a portfolio.
Course Objectives:
- Converse intelligently about the book publishing industry
- Deliver engaging oral presentations
- Work effectively and professionally in a group
- Write in various formats (from marketing material to research papers)
WR 461 001 BOOK EDITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 462 001 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 466 001 DIGITAL SKILLS
Instructor: Kathi Berens
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 474 001 PUBLISHING STUDIO
Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
Publishing Studio & Lab are crosslisted and split listed courses, which means they run concurrently and enrollment depends on whether you need a one-credit or four-credit course as an undergraduate or graduate student for your individual degree requirements. There are no prerequsites.
Publishing Studio & Lab are the courses for hands-on learning at Ooligan Press. Designed to give students the freedom and responsibility of running a real-world trade publishing house, students are assigned to projects where they will work on a variety of publishing tasks. Project teams will work collaboratively to assess, plan, and execute editorial, design, digital content, marketing, and sales tasks throughout the term.
Publishing Studio: Graduate students in Publishing Studio should expect assignments to take approximately 12 hours per week; undergraduate students in Publishing Studio should expect 9 hours per week.
Publishing Lab: Graduate students in Publishing Lab should expect assignments to take approximately 4 hours per week; undergraduate students in Publishing Lab should expect 3 hours per week.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- explain and understand the book production cycle;
- competently use industry-standard terminology;
- analyze disruptions to their project as they arise and actively problem-solve to address issues;
- track, maintain, and update project management software, in the form of Trello;
- communicate efficiently through email and face-to-face meetings;
- complete assigned tasks efficiently as an individual and within a group; and
- perform various tasks at a professional level, as assigned by a team manager.
WR 475 001 PUBLISHING LAB
Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
Publishing Studio & Lab are crosslisted and split listed courses, which means they run concurrently and enrollment depends on whether you need a one-credit or four-credit course as an undergraduate or graduate student for your individual degree requirements. There are no prerequsites.
Publishing Studio & Lab are the courses for hands-on learning at Ooligan Press. Designed to give students the freedom and responsibility of running a real-world trade publishing house, students are assigned to projects where they will work on a variety of publishing tasks. Project teams will work collaboratively to assess, plan, and execute editorial, design, digital content, marketing, and sales tasks throughout the term.
Publishing Studio: Graduate students in Publishing Studio should expect assignments to take approximately 12 hours per week; undergraduate students in Publishing Studio should expect 9 hours per week.
Publishing Lab: Graduate students in Publishing Lab should expect assignments to take approximately 4 hours per week; undergraduate students in Publishing Lab should expect 3 hours per week.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- explain and understand the book production cycle;
- competently use industry-standard terminology;
- analyze disruptions to their project as they arise and actively problem-solve to address issues;
- track, maintain, and update project management software, in the form of Trello;
- communicate efficiently through email and face-to-face meetings;
- complete assigned tasks efficiently as an individual and within a group; and
- perform various tasks at a professional level, as assigned by a team manager.
Back to Top
Fall 2024: Graduate Writing Courses
WR 507 001 SEM: DOCUMENTARY POETRY/PROSE
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 507 002 SEM: FICTION
Instructor: Gabriel Urza
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
Radical Immersion:
The work of the writer is not limited to those better-known practices of composition and revision. It’s been my experience that by immersing ourselves in the realities of our subjects and characters—their language, history, and physicality—we better understand the full depths of their experience. This process often leads to new ideas and possibilities, new ways of thinking about the work at hand and future projects.
“Radical Immersion” is a generative seminar that invites writers to inhabit their subjects and stories through several different entry points—enacting the physical actions of our characters, researching the historical and geographical contexts of our stories, and spending time with the craftspeople or professionals that occupy our work.
This is intended to be a class about process. Borrowing techniques from traditionally research-heavy genres such as Literary Journalism and Historical Fiction, assignments for this course incorporate guided research projects intended to defamiliarize us and deepen our writing processes.
*A note on genre: while this course description mentions “characters” and “stories,” these terms are used in the broadest sense. Our mode of inquiry isn’t limited to genre—the class is primarily designed with fiction, speculative fiction, and nonfiction students in mind, but is easily adaptable and useful to poets as well.
WR 521 001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP FICTION
Instructor: Janice Lee
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
If writing is language and language is desire and longing and suffering, and it is capable of great passion and also great nuances of passion- the passion of the mind, the passion of the body- and if syntax reflects state of desire, is hope, is love, is sadness, is fury … if the motion of line is about desire and longing and want; then why when we write, when we make shapes on paper, why then does it so often look like the traditional straight models?
–Carole Maso
[T]he disassociation of voice from language is not just a philosophical choice. It is also political. The voice is not always a freeing form of self-expression. It can prove to be a difficult transaction, a construction of fragments, as much conflicted demurral as actual communication, as much about what is unspeakable as about what is speakable.
–Cathy Park Hong
In this workshop we will examine the entire spectrum of the writing process, exploring the relationship between our own expectations of fiction, story, and narrative and the values we weave into our own writing. We will read various essays on craft, writing, language, and ways of engaging with the world, and also work on our own definitions & reconceptions of major craft concepts, training ourselves to read and “listen” more deeply to form and language as expression. This workshop will be a generative workshop, meaning we will work on generating new writing, as well as collaborating on generative revision exercises where we will apply a variety of of revision procedures to our work while re-envisioning the structural frameworks that shape not only our stories, but also our language at the micro-level of sentence and paragraph. Finally we will think critically about writing as a unique and collaborative process of becoming, and engage in critical analyses and discussions of peers’ work. This term, we’ll focus on rethinking the cultural values of craft alongside the core text for the class: Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses.
WR 522 001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP POETRY
Instructor: Consuelo Wise
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 523 001 MFA CORE WORKSHOP NONFICTION
Instructor: Paul Collins
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
This core workshop in nonfiction will be themed around Locality. We'll develop and workshop writing that focuses on the use of setting and community, with readings that explore the interplay of residents and unusual and little-noticed urban, domestic, and wild spaces.
Texts:
- Soil -- Camille Dungy (978-1982195311)
- Gone to New York -- Ian Frazier (978-0312425043)
- Two Trees Make a Forest -- Jessica J. Lee (978-1646220007)
- Flight Path -- Hannah Palmer (978-1938235283)
WR 525 001 ADVANCED TECHNICAL WRITING
Instructor: Sarah Read
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 526 001 DOCUMENT DESIGN
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 534 001 SCIENCE WRITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 550 001/002 PORTLAND REVIEW
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: Online - No Scheduled Meetings
May be taken for 1 or 2 credit(s).
WR 560 001 INTRO TO BOOK PUBLISHING
Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
Course Description:
This course offers an introduction to the book publishing industry. Students will be introduced to the history and current state of the agents and processes that constitute the book publishing industries in the US. Students will work together as mock publishing houses to produce a portfolio.
Course Objectives:
- Converse intelligently about the book publishing industry
- Deliver engaging oral presentations
- Work effectively and professionally in a group
- Write in various formats (from marketing material to research papers)
WR 561 001 BOOK EDITING
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 562 001 BOOK DESIGN SOFTWARE
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 566 001 DIGITAL SKILLS
Instructor: Kathi Berens
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 574 001 PUBLISHING STUDIO
Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings
Publishing Studio & Lab are crosslisted and split listed courses, which means they run concurrently and enrollment depends on whether you need a one-credit or four-credit course as an undergraduate or graduate student for your individual degree requirements. There are no prerequsites.
Publishing Studio & Lab are the courses for hands-on learning at Ooligan Press. Designed to give students the freedom and responsibility of running a real-world trade publishing house, students are assigned to projects where they will work on a variety of publishing tasks. Project teams will work collaboratively to assess, plan, and execute editorial, design, digital content, marketing, and sales tasks throughout the term.
Publishing Studio: Graduate students in Publishing Studio should expect assignments to take approximately 12 hours per week; undergraduate students in Publishing Studio should expect 9 hours per week.
Publishing Lab: Graduate students in Publishing Lab should expect assignments to take approximately 4 hours per week; undergraduate students in Publishing Lab should expect 3 hours per week.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- explain and understand the book production cycle;
- competently use industry-standard terminology;
- analyze disruptions to their project as they arise and actively problem-solve to address issues;
- track, maintain, and update project management software, in the form of Trello;
- communicate efficiently through email and face-to-face meetings;
- complete assigned tasks efficiently as an individual and within a group; and
- perform various tasks at a professional level, as assigned by a team manager.
WR 575 001 PUBLISHING LAB
Instructor: Robyn Crummer
Instructional Method: Online - Scheduled Meetings
Publishing Studio & Lab are crosslisted and split listed courses, which means they run concurrently and enrollment depends on whether you need a one-credit or four-credit course as an undergraduate or graduate student for your individual degree requirements. There are no prerequsites.
Publishing Studio & Lab are the courses for hands-on learning at Ooligan Press. Designed to give students the freedom and responsibility of running a real-world trade publishing house, students are assigned to projects where they will work on a variety of publishing tasks. Project teams will work collaboratively to assess, plan, and execute editorial, design, digital content, marketing, and sales tasks throughout the term.
Publishing Studio: Graduate students in Publishing Studio should expect assignments to take approximately 12 hours per week; undergraduate students in Publishing Studio should expect 9 hours per week.
Publishing Lab: Graduate students in Publishing Lab should expect assignments to take approximately 4 hours per week; undergraduate students in Publishing Lab should expect 3 hours per week.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- explain and understand the book production cycle;
- competently use industry-standard terminology;
- analyze disruptions to their project as they arise and actively problem-solve to address issues;
- track, maintain, and update project management software, in the form of Trello;
- communicate efficiently through email and face-to-face meetings;
- complete assigned tasks efficiently as an individual and within a group; and
- perform various tasks at a professional level, as assigned by a team manager.
WR 579 001 RESEARCHING BOOK PUBLISHING
Instructor: Rachel Noorda
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
WR 582 001 LIT AGENTS AND ACQUISITIONS
Instructor: STAFF
Instructional Method: In-Person Meeting
Back to Top