IMPORTANT PROGRAM DATES
• February 18–March 14 – Revere Beach Stories: Photographs and Poems by Stephenie Young, Jennifer Martelli, and Kevin Carey, Winfisky Gallery, ECC
• March 1 – Masters in English Regional Conference, Bridgewater State University
• March 5 – Language Exam
• March 10 – Writer’s Series: Shanyang Fang and MP Carver, 7:30 pm, MLK Room, ECC
• March 15 – Graduation applications due (through Navigator)
• March 31 – Faculty Reading, 11 am, MLK Room, ECC
• April 7 – Intention to complete a thesis or manuscript in Summer or Fall 2025 due
• April 7 – Summer and Fall 2025 Registration Opens for current students
APRIL
MAY
• April 14 – Summer and Fall 2025 Registration Opens for all students
• April 15 – Thesis and manuscript proposals and application for thesis and manuscript registration for Summer and Fall 2025 due
• April 23 – Graduate Student Reading, 7:30 pm, MLK Room, ECC
• May 1 – Final theses and manuscripts, with all signed paperwork, due for spring graduation
• May 1 – Intention to complete a portfolio in Summer or Fall 2025 and application for portfolio registration due
• May 2 – Research Day, Classroom Building, Bertolon School of Business (Harrington/Central Campus)
• May 9 – Last day of Spring classes
• June 13 – Application for July Language Exam due to School of Graduate Studies
• July 12 – Language Exam
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
SUMMER I 2025: May 19–June 28
ENG 715 Topics in Digital Studies: Scholarly Digital Editing
Professor Cindy Damon-Bach
Thursdays, 4–6:20 pm, Online Blended
This course offers an intensive examination and practice of scholarly digital editing. ENG 715 is fully online and requires regular engagement with synchronous class meetings asynchronous course discussions. This digital studies course also counts for literary studies electives.
ENG 822A Nonfiction Workshop
Professor Jonathan Fitzgerald
Online Asynchronous Nonfiction is so much more than just not fiction! Encompassing genres ranging from reporting to memoir to essays not to mention hybrid forms like creative nonfiction and literary journalism and multimedia modes like podcasts and video essays nonfiction is better described as, “true stories, well told,” as reads the tagline of the magazine Creative Nonfiction. In Nonfiction Workshop, students will have the opportunity to explore this diverse genre, reading model works and composing their own. The format is an asynchronous online workshop in a casual and supportive environment, students will read and critique each other’s work, sharpening their skills as both readers and writers, responsive and affirming teaching to forge family and/or community relations. Three lecture hours per week. Field-based assignments are required.
Summer II 2025: July 7–August 16
ENG 708 Native American Literature
Professor Keja Valens Online Asynchronous
This course explores Native American literature and the historical, literary, and cultural influences shaping Native American writers. The course will open with a selection of Native New England myths and archival material that we will read in the context of the recent re-emergence of Native New England writing. We will then read a selection of works by twenty-first century Native American writers—such as N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, and Joseph Bruchac. Toward the end of the course, we will turn to contemporary Native American literature—such as that by Tommy Orange, Morgan Talty, and Cherie Dimeline. Along with literary texts, we will read critical and theoretical work in Native American studies from Paula Gunn Allen’s Studies in American Indian Literature to Qwo Li Driskill’s Queer Indigenous Studies . Assignments will include digital projects. For the final project for the course, students may write an essay in literary studies, create a unit plan for a selected text, or create a digital project. This literary studies course also qualifies as an elective for the Certificate in Digital Studies.
ENG 745 Writing and Rhetoric
Professor Al DeCiccio
Tuesdays, 4:30–6:50 pm, Online Blended; Asynchronous discussions Thursdays
Welcome to ENG 745: Writing and Rhetoric. Studying writing and rhetoric is intrinsically interdisciplinary. Understanding writing and rhetoric can help us to determine what’s real and what’s fake. Practicing writing and rhetoric allows us to contribute to what Michael Oakeshott calls the ongoing conversation of humankind. This course introduces students to the discipline of writing and rhetoric, its formation, histories, theories, and methodologies. Students will study key concepts, theories, and practices as well as trace and explore historical and ongoing conversations in the discipline. ENG 745 is fully online and requires regular engagement with synchronous class meetings and asynchronous course discussions.
ENG 707 19th Century American Novel
Professor Cindy Damon-Bach Tuesdays, 4:30–6:50 pm, in-person
A study of the development in the early American novel. Some of the writers considered are Brown, Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, Alcott, Jewett, and Melville.
ENG 725 Graduate Studies in Literature
Professor Keja Valens
Tuesdays, 7–8:30 pm, Hybrid Blended (in-person, online synchronous, and online asynchronous)
This course introduces students to literary study, creative writing, and English pedagogy in the context of literary theory. It considers big questions such as: what is literature and what does it do? What is language and how does it function? Who writes and how? Students develop methods of participating in debates and relevant to the field, engaging literary theory and criticism, and writing for a variety of audiences. The hybrid-blended nature of this course is to meet 7–8:30 pm, face-to-face and online on alternating weeks, with one additional asynchronous online contact hour every week. This is a required course for all programs of study.
ENG 770N Context and Culture in Teaching
English
to Speakers of Other Languages
Professor: TBA
Asynchronous Online
This course provides a foundation for understanding the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages. Local, national, and international contexts are examined and used in investigating various historical and current approaches to teaching English learners. Topics include law and language policies, cultural identity, language diversity, and culturally responsive teaching to forge family and or community relations. Field-based assignments are required.
ENG 820 Workshop in Fiction and Narrative Forms
Professor Alexandria Peary
Wednesdays, 4:30–6:50 pm, in-person
A writing course that gives you time to hone your narrative technique through workshop, feedback, and readings in creative nonfiction and fiction. Emphasis in this course is placed on best practices for sustaining writing, including mindful writing, to find new material and reduce perfectionism and self-doubt. We’ll highlight the whole writing process (not just feedback on drafts near the finishing line), from prewriting to final edits, using a range of feedback techniques to complement traditional workshop methods. Through exercises and readings, we’ll explore narrative tension, timeline, point-of-view, and character development, both in fiction and creative nonfiction, as well as flash fiction and creative nonfiction forms. You’ll leave the class with at least one new polished short story, essay, or book chapter ready for submitting for publication with much new work well underway. This course is useful for writers who want to give their narrative projects a creative reboot as well as writers wrestling with structural questions.
ENG 832 Topics in British Literature and Criticism:
Reading
and Re-Writing Defoe
Professor Scott Nowka
Mondays, 4:30–6:50 pm, in-person
This course will explore the writings of eighteenth-century English novelist Daniel Defoe and in particular the work that he is best known for, Robinson Crusoe (1719). John Bender proposed that Crusoe is one of three well-known novels (the other two being Frankenstein and Dracula) that transcend their authors and even their novelistic particulars to become modern myths—stories that are re-told and re-envisioned again and again. Crusoe itself was endlessly retold by imitators that created what are called “Robinsonades,” stories where the heroes are cut off from civilization like The Swiss Family Robinson . Our class will investigate how and why this tale has been revisited over the centuries by reading works like the anonymous novel The Female American ; or, The Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield (1767), Derek Walcott’s play Pantomime (1978), Julio Cortázar’s radio play ”Adios, Robinson” (1984), and J.M. Coetzee’s novel Foe (1986), as well as relevant criticism. In doing so, we will see how later authors have used this mythic touchstone to explore the concepts of slavery, race, colonialism, gender, and sexuality.
ENG 833 Topics in Writing Scriptwriting
Professor Brooke Delp
Thursdays, 7–9:20 pm, in-person
This course will focus on the principles and practices of modern dramaturgy as it relates to the writing of film scripts. Characters, story, plot structure, and dialogue will be discussed and analyzed in contemporary and classic film scripts and in developing works of students. Scriptwriting is a rigorous craft and, at its best, a fine art. It involves practical analysis of short and feature film scripts as well as writing assignments which are tailored to help students master the basics of the art. This course can help students to polish up that script idea and get it ready to pitch. Students will complete 2-3 acts of a feature film script during the semester.
ENG 870 Writing Center Graduate Practicum
Professor Al DeCiccio
Wednesdays, 1:40–3:30 pm, in-person
Welcome to ENG 870: Writing Center Graduate Practicum! In this course, we will examine the ways in which writing interventions can benefit writers by exploring a range of strategies for tutoring writers. We’ll explore everything from what makes a successful writing center session to new media and online tutoring, working with writers in the disciplines, working with multilingual writers, working with graduate student writers and faculty members, and investigating how different identities surface and play out in the Writing Center. In addition to attending and participating in our Wednesday meetings, you will be required to tutor (in person or remotely) in the Mary G. Walsh Writing Center for three hours each week. Your work in the Center will be the basis for the rest of our course. As you read, write, think, discuss, and research, you will always be reflecting on your tutoring sessions, using your experiences in the Center to push back on the texts we read and theorizing how to build new knowledge about writing centers. Anyone interested in working at the Mary G. Walsh Writing Center as a tutor must successfully complete this course. Invitations to tutor will be based on a comprehensive assessment of your work, your professionalism, and your enthusiasm for working with others.
