Course Description
A seminar-style course whose topic is chosen by the professor and taught with an emphasis on research skills, culminating in a research paper of significant length (twenty pages with bibliography).
Athena Title
Advanced Seminar
Non-Traditional Format
This version of the course will be taught as writing intensive, which means that the course will include substantial and ongoing writing assignments that a) relate clearly to course learning; b) teach the communication values of a discipline—for example, its practices of argument, evidence, credibility, and format; and c) prepare students for further writing in their academic work, in graduate school, and in professional life. The written assignments will result in a significant and diverse body of written work (the equivalent of 6000 words or 25 pages) and the instructor (and/or the teaching assistant assigned to the course) will be closely involved in student writing, providing opportunities for feedback and substantive revision.
Prerequisite
Two 2000-level ENGL courses or (one 2000-level ENGL course and one 3000-level ENGL course) or (one 2000-level ENGL course and one 2000-level CMLT course)
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall and spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Senior seminars are focused courses designed by professors, offering students a graduate-seminar kind of experience as a capstone course to their studies and as potential preparation for post-graduate education. Students will learn about research methods and will demonstrate and describe how systematic and in-depth inquiry into a research problem contributes to the discovery or interpretation of knowledge significant to the field of study. Under the guidance of the course's instructor, and in keeping with the topic of the seminar, students will produce a research paper of significant length (twenty pages with bibliography), or a project that entails a similar amount of writing and research (for instance, a print or online edition or exhibit).
Topical Outline
The focus of the course will vary by semester and instructor, but subjects of study might include: --specific literary movements or schools of thought --a focused look at an author or authors --specific research issues or problems in English studies --research problems pertaining to a particular body of texts In keeping with its focus on research, the course will include substantial attention to research methods appropriate to its subject, as well as consideration of the research process and to the process of writing a research paper. *** Sample focus: "Senior Seminar: Victorian Literature and Industrialism." Units: -- An "Industrial Revolution"? Contexts and Debates -- Machinery as Idea and Practice -- Workers and Masters -- Women and Industrialism -- Industry, Trade, and Empire -- Industry, Aesthetics, and Representation -- Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy -- The Craft of Literary Research and Research Writing Primary readings: --Thomas Carlyle, "Chartism," "Signs of the Times" --Friedrich Engels, "The Condition of the Working Classes" --Charles Kingsley, "Alton Locke" --Thomas Cooper, Chartist poetry --Elizabeth Gaskell, "North and South" --Charles Dickens on the Great Exhibition, "Hard Times" --George Eliot, "Middlemarch" --Andrew Ure, from "The Philosophy of Manufactures" --John Stuart Mill, from "Political Economy" --Karl Marx, from "Capital" --John Ruskin, "The Nature of Gothic," "Unto this Last," "The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century" --H. G. Wells, "The Time Machine" --William Morris, "News from Nowhere" Secondary readings: --articles and chapters by D. C. Coleman, Martin Weiner, W. R. Rubinstein, Raymond Williams, Catherine Gallagher, Susan Zlotnick, Joseph Bizup, Tamara Ketabgian --Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb, and Joseph Williams, "The Craft of Research" Main assignments: --Weekly blog entries, response papers, or reflective analyses --Annotated bibliography --Research proposal --Research paper (draft) --Oral class presentation based on research --Research paper (revision)