Fall 2026 Course Descriptions - CSUN English Graduate Program

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Below are course descriptions submitted by instructors for Fall 2026 graduate courses and certain 400-level English classes likely to be of interest to grad students. More descriptions will be added as they are received by the Graduate Adviser.

Note that course titles here may differ from the catalogue descriptions; they are intended to give a better impression of the course subject matter. Different sections of ENGL525 will generally fulfil the same requirements, regardless of the letter suffixes.

ENGL 507: Introduction to Graduate Studies -- Hatfield¶

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ENGL 507: Introduction to Graduate Studies -- Lee¶

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ENGL 513: Introduction to Graduate Studies -- Clark, I¶

English 513 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 525CF: Childhood and the Fantastic -- Stallcup¶

The fantastic — an umbrella term for fantasy, science fiction and everything in between — has often been constructed as a "lesser" literary form: as "popular" literature, and/or as "merely escapist." Children's literature is also often dismissed in similarly cavalier ways. Yet both forms enact a fascinating and complex variety of cultural tasks in their broad appeal to diverse audiences. Drawing from feminist and post-colonial criticism and from criticism of the fantastic, we will examine how childhood functions at the confluence of these two forms, focusing on fantasy and science fiction texts written for or about children. Among the issues we will consider are: standard generic conventions (and how we go about analyzing them), gender and genre, unconventional narrative structures, narrative treatments of technology and magic, and the ideological implications of secondary world creation.

ENGL 525PDI: Pop Poets, Stage Divas, and Novel Icons -- Spratt¶

This course will consider the history of popular media culture through the lens of poets, singers, performers, and writers from across the 17^th-21^st centuries, focusing on figures ranging from Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, Nell Gwynn, Sarah Siddons, and Jane Austen to Beyoncé, Stevie Nicks, Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter. Balancing poetics, close reading, and presentist historicist readings, we will analyze how changing media technologies and sociopolitics influence these figures' reception and their ability to conform to and/or resist prevailing cultural norms.

ENGL 525PH: The Principle of Hope in Modern U.S. Literatures of Social Protest -- Dawahare¶

We will study a significant body of U.S. literature that depicts the struggles and hopes of socially marginalized and oppressed people in the U.S. We will explore its depictions of class, race, and gender-based suffering, but, equally, the ways in which it is forward-looking, locating hope in crisis and even imagining a society without the injuries suffered from social injustices. Several of these texts depict characters who are “strong with the not yet in the now,” as Tillie Olsen writes in one of her stories. We will address the literary strategies writers employed to depict hope amidst suffering, including their borrowings from contemporaneous literary genres and movements, such as utopian literature, realism, modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Depression-era Proletarian Literary Movement. Authors include Walt Whitman, Edward Bellamy, Upton Sinclair, W.E.B. Du Bois, Muriel Rukeyser, Langston Hughes, Tillie Olsen, Mary Heaton Vorse, James Agee, and Richard Wright.

ENGL 608: Seminar in Narrative Writing -- Staff¶

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ENGL 609: Seminar in Poetry Writing -- Hall¶

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 623: Mystery! Nineteenth-Century Narratives of Detection, Death, and Denial -- Byler¶

This class will focus on mystery and detective fiction by Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and Arthur Conan Doyle. We will study the conventions and social impacts of these genres and their investigations of violence, justice, sensationalism, gender, sexuality, race, class, and imperialism.

A centerpiece of the class will be Dickens’s unfinished final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), which Dickens died before completing. The absence of any definitive evidence about the way Dickens intended to conclude this mystery has generated dozens of sequels and continuations, including a 1985 Tony Award-winning musical that allows its audience to vote on the way the story ends. We will explore some of these spin-offs that are part of the Harry Stone Collection Archive of Dickens materials at the CSUN Library, along with other items in this collection, including first edition novels, Dickens tchotchkes, and creepy dolls. Students in the class will have the opportunity to contribute critical and creative work to the 2028-2029 CSUN Library Exhibition of materials from the Stone Collection.

ENGL 638: Critical Approaches to Literature -- Carassai¶

ENGL 638 – Reading Through Digital Complexity exposes students to advanced forms of interdisciplinary literary criticism. Rather than based on standardized methodologies, interdisciplinary research in literary studies is increasingly becoming a habit of mind worth cultivating in humanities research carried on in the 21^st century. Over the course of the semester, students will become familiar with combining multiple academic disciplines and different schools of thought as encouraged by digital textuality. Through class discussions and assignments students will (a) recognize the constraints of disciplinary boundaries in the application of literary theory and (b) proactively create disciplinary connections and integrate different perspectives to adequately address digital/digitized literary texts. Work in the class will be guided by two main approaches: literary criticism as multi-disciplinarity and literary criticism as trans-disciplinarity. To explore these two research models, we are going to focus on the transformative impact brought by digital technologies on the traditional discipline of English and literary studies at large. This course will guide students through the exploration of born-digital “Electronic Literature” as an object of analysis that requires multi-disciplinary approaches and of current practices in “Digital Humanities” as a representative example of a research methodology based on trans-disciplinary approaches.

ENGL 652: Creative Writing Theory -- Higgs¶

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