Fall 2025 Course Descriptions - CSUN English Graduate Program
Below are course descriptions submitted by instructors for Fall 2025 graduate courses and certain 400-level English classes likely to be of interest to grad students. More descriptions/flyers will be added as they are received by the Graduate Adviser.
ENGL 507: Introduction to Graduate Studies -- Pandey¶
No description yet.
ENGL 507: Introduction to Graduate Studies -- Stallcup¶
The goal of this course is to introduce all incoming graduate students to the procedures and protocols of graduate English studies across three core sub-fields of the profession: Literature, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric & Composition. To this end, this course will a) provide an overview of the state of the field for each of the three sub-fields; b) expose students to research and writing methodologies that will allow them to make original contributions to each sub-field, including how to perform effective secondary and archival research; and c) understand the ways in which their studies can translate into myriad intellectual and professional opportunities during and beyond the MA program.
ENGL 513: Composition Studies -- Clark, I¶
English 513-CS is concerned with the many fascinating topics that are addressed in the field of Writing Studies, and their application to college-level writing instruction. Some of the concepts addressed in this course include genre, process, invention, revision, argument, critical thinking, language difference, agency/authorship, student identity, assessment and reflection. A key component of this course is the idea of connection: connection between composition theory and pedagogical practice, connection between writing and reading, connection between print and new media texts, and connection among students in the class. If you are interested in teaching, either at the high school or college level, this course will be very helpful for you.
ENGL 525CWA: Cross-Writing, Activism, and Youth Literature -- Howard¶
This course focuses on contemporary activist youth literature and cross-writing (writing intended for both youth and adult audiences in either the same work or in different venues). We will examine the ways that contemporary authors of color use poetry to inspire activism in young readers and to represent marginalized groups who have experienced trauma or had their voices silenced. We will read works by Marilyn Nelson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Elizabeth Acevedo, Jacqueline Woodson, and Safia Elhillo, among others.
ENGL 525GS: Graphic Self -- Hatfield¶
A comic book, Tessa Hulls’ Feeding Ghosts, just won the Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography (2025). The last time something like this happened, Art Spiegelman’s comic Maus, again a memoir, won a special Pulitzer (1992). In the thirty-plus years in between, graphic memoir, or autographics, has become the most respected and academically analyzed genre in comics studies. Why? Comics enable new and different approaches to autobiography: they blur the lines between mass appeal and the handmade power of zines and other homegrown media; they present unusual challenges when it comes to graphic self-representation; they use multimodal strategies that evoke the workings of memory. Comics have both gut appeal and a capacity for reflection, metacognition, and metanarrative. They make the struggles of self-depiction manifest in their very surfaces, and capture the complexities of self-concept and social identity, including intersections among race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. Thus, they have become a powerful form of life writing and testimony.
This graduate seminar will place graphic memoir in the contexts of autobiography studies and of comics in general. It will provide a brief introduction to autobiography theory, an entryway to the burgeoning critical literature on autographics, and an intensive reading experience including both classic (Spiegelman, Bechdel, Nakazawa) and contemporary autobio comics. Students will share reading responses during most weeks, take turns leading discussion, craft an autobiographical zine or minicomic of their own (no drawing skill is required!), and write a final seminar paper engaging with the critical literature.
Questions? Reach out to Prof. Hatfield at charles.hatfield@csun.edu!
ENGL 608: Seminar in Narrative Writing -- Higgs¶
No description yet.
ENGL 609: Seminar in Poetry Writing -- Hall¶
I’ve been thinking about the word “strange” in Susan Browne’s poem "Becoming a Poet." She writes, “My parents didn’t know death like I did. / Or the fish, their strange beauty / my secret.” The word “strange” here doesn’t just mean unfamiliar. Rather, to become a poet, the speaker lays claim to a knowledge that is both outside of and inside of herself. It is both unfamiliar and intimate. This knowledge, this secret work of her imagination (read the poem in its entirety), is “strange,” a word that derives from the Latin root extra, meaning "outside, beyond the boundaries of." In other words, the work of the imagination moves beyond boundaries. I, too, am thinking of boundaries and expectations and risk.
This coming fall in English 609, I invite you to the land of the strange. Where are the boundaries in language? How or when does the familiar become unfamiliar? Even in employing the mundane, what resonates beneath your word choice? Have you ever used an etymology dictionary? Charles Simic reminds us that the poem is “a kind of magnet for complex historical, literary and psychological forces.” This semester, as we focus on your poetry against the backdrop of the assigned course texts, you will learn to examine the forces at work on poems, down to layers of meaning in each word. Additionally, we will consider various choices and effects typical of the poetic process, such as titles, beginnings, metaphor, imagery, form, line breaks, syntax, closure, etc., so that we may learn more about the effects of our current (and potential!) choices on our poems and our readers. In this advanced-read workshop (i.e. no cold readings), we will practice both close reading, as well as make connections to literary and theoretical texts outside of your work. Based on the work you produce, I will offer specific techniques to support that work.
Along the way, you will keep track of your practice in a craft reflection journal, culminating in a craft essay that will preface your portfolio of 8-10 poems. The reading list includes poetry by Franny Choi, John Gallaher, Ama Codjoe, Sara Rivera, and CSUN alum I.S. Jones, among others, as well as craft theory by Douglas Kearney, Gregory Orr, Li Young Lee, Lyn Hejinian, Jane Hirschfield, and Harryette Mullen, among others. Our meetings will usually rely on the full-class workshop, although we may shift to small groups in the last 2-3 weeks of the semester. Do expect to meet with me one-on-one to discuss your poetry outside of class. I look forward to working with you.
Questions? Contact leilani.hall@csun.edu.
ENGL 630WWT: Walt Whitman and Transcendentalism -- Dawahare¶
This course will focus on one of the most important U.S. literary movements of the nineteenth century. The Transcendentalists were free-thinking, abolitionist, feminist, egalitarian writers motivated by the prospect of creating a truly democratic society and culture based on the mutual recognition of people’s inherent dignity and divinity. They were countercultural, dabbling in radical German philosophy, mysticism, utopianism, environmentalism, and communal living. We will especially focus on Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, the flowering of the movement, which is transgressive of sexual, gender, race, class, and national boundaries and barriers in an effort to unify a divided nation. Other writers studied include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Peabody, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller.
ENGL 638: Critical Approaches to Literature -- Dawahare¶
No description yet.
ENGL 652: Creative Writing Studies -- Staff¶
No description yet.