English Graduate Current Courses

2025 - 2026 Graduate Courses

For English Website

All English graduate courses are held on the Rose Hill campus unless otherwise specified. Undergraduate English Majors in their senior year are welcome to request admission to the 5000-level graduate courses listed below.

If you’d like to take one of these courses, please include the specific course(s) in which you are interested and email gradenglish@Fordham.edu. 

Fall 2025

ENGL 5029:  The Invention of Nature (Fridays, 11:30 - 2:00 PM, at Lincoln Center)
Lawrence Kramer
The idea of nature as the autonomous realm of nonhuman life is essentially literary in origin, dating from the early modern era and extending to the present.  Nature has come into being in writing, and its elements--animal, vegetable, and mineral--have been brought together under a changing series of rubrics including landscape, wilderness, environment, world, and ecosystem.  This course will trace the writing of nature from the early-modern representations of Shakespeare and Montaigne through the pre- and post-Darwinian writings of the nineteenth century (Wordsworth, Poe, Thoreau, and Darwin himself) to modern representations of nature in relation to civilization, race, migration, and ecological crisis (D. H. Lawrence, Elizabeth Bishop, Annie Dillard, Anne Carson).  Topics include the aesthetics of nature, the boundaries between the human and nonhuman worlds, and the relationship between the human and the animal.
CRN 53469
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Fulfills H2, H3

ENGL 5189:  Birdsong (Wednesdays 11:30 - 2:00 PM at Lincoln Center)
Sarah Zimmerman
The close association of poetry and birdsong is ancient and global. We explore that endlessly renewable connection with a special emphasis on Romantic-era poetry. Writers have long listened closely to birds and been inspired by their singing to experiment with literary innovation. Yet the question of how we listen to birds takes on new urgency in our own era of climate crisis, marked by declining bird populations and extinction. Our wide range of readings features birds alternately sounding warnings as canaries in the coal mine and figuring hope as “the thing with feathers.” We take an interdisciplinary approach to the topic of birds inspired by environmental and sound studies in reading literature and non-fiction prose, including essays and memoirs. We put our learning into practice by birdwatching in local parks, taking advantage of NYC’s location on the Atlantic flyway. Readings include works by Phillis Wheatley Peters, William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and John Clare.
CRN 53470
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Fulfills H2

ENGL 5196: Master Class: Dragons, Daggers, and Dukes: Writing Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Romance/Mystery (Wednesdays 5:30 - 8:00 PM, at Lincoln Center)
Mary Bly
Genre fiction is, by definition, writing that bows to limitation: Conventions shape the parameters of a story. Yet, in excellent genre fiction, the imaginary world is doubly creative despite constraints or conventions. In this class, we’ll tackle bestsellers—pop fiction that engages and enthralls readers. We will study and experiment before setting into a final manuscript in the genre of your choice.
CRN 53471
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Fulfills CVWG

ENGL 5223:  Embodied Research in Medieval Drama (Mondays 2:30 - 5:00 PM)
Andrew Albin
What did it feel like to hammer nails into Jesus’s hands or to intone judgements at Doomsday or to dance with the Deadly Sins on an open-air stage in the late Middle Ages? How far can we go in reconstructing, practicing, and sharing medieval performance styles today? What kind of knowledge might the evidence of our own bodies afford us in support of our study of the medieval past? In this course, we will tug at this knot of questions through careful reading, writing, discussion, and experimentation across an uncommon collection of sources, including medieval English playtexts and documents; scholarship on medieval drama and its reenactment; theoretical texts in performance studies, theater-making, and embodied technique; and the witness of our own embodied and reflective experience. Relevant research areas include medieval drama, history of the body, history of experience, history of spirituality, critical temporality studies, non-discursive epistemology, affect studies. Primary source readings will include much of the corpus of surviving Middle English drama supplemented by the Records of Early English Drama project; further readings include Sharon Aronson-Lehavi, Augusto Boal, Rob Boddice, Jerzy Grotowski, Andre Lepecki, Lauren Mancia, Mary Overlie, Rebecca Schneider, Matthew Sergi, Mark Smith, Ben Spatz, and others. Course assignments will center close reading, scholarly research, and academic writing, with options for digital humanities and performance-driven research, undertaken independently or collaboratively. Students may also opt into a parallel laboratory in Mary Overlie’s Six Viewpoints and/or a public performance of medieval drama at the Cloisters Museum in Spring 2026. While helpful, no prior knowledge of Middle English or Latin is expected or required.
CRN 53721
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Fulfills H1

ENGL 5252:  Exhibiting Latinidad: Curation/Display/Intervention (Fridays, 2:30 - 5:00 PM, at Lincoln Center)
Robb Hernández
Museums have played critical roles in defining Latinidad for mass publics in the U.S. and abroad. In particular, curators and their exhibits can assume great power over our understandings of authenticity, cultural authority, and the historical “truth” about Latinx cultures. By retracing exhibition histories from classic shows like Cuba-USA and the Decade Show to the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time LA/LA initiative, we will confront the different material, textual, and visual dilemmas provoked by museums. We will also ponder alternative exhibition practices for Latinidad’s representation and remembrance in the future.
CRN 53473
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Fulfills H3, DI

ENGL 5651:  Writing Center Theory and Praxis (RW) (Tuesdays 5:30 - 8:00 PM)
Elisabeth Buck
This course will explore what it means to be a writing center practitioner through empirical, practical, and theoretical experiences. Working one-on-one with another student—while ostensibly a straightforward process—can instead reveal the many complexities of language, education, and culture. As such, the Writing Center is the ideal site through which to explore nuances of speech, conversational dynamics, ways to dismantle hegemonic language practices, and, critically, strategies for communicating knowledge. No prior writing center experience is required for this class, but this course will be useful to anyone who has an interest in teaching and/or tutoring writing.
CRN 53474
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Fulfills Rhetoric & Writing Adv Cert

         
ENGL 5001: Research Methods (Tuesdays, 2:30 - 5:00 PM)
Julie Kim
An introduction to English studies at the graduate level, emphasizing bibliography, scholarly writing, and critical intervention. Although the emphasis of the course will vary according to the aims of the instructor, areas covered may also include book history, textual editing, historical research, and other issues of professional concern to graduate students.
CRN 13250
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Required for all incoming PhD students.

ENGL 5115: Internship Seminar (Tutorial) TBA
This seminar is open to graduate students pursuing internships in publishing, museum management, or arts administration during the spring 2021 semester. Please contact the Director of Graduate Studies to make sure that your internship qualifies for course credit.
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ENGL 5998 Master’s Capstone (Tuesdays, 12:00 PM – 2:30 PM)
Leonard Cassuto
Seminar for MA students who wish to fulfill the Capstone requirement (note: the Capstone requirement may also be fulfilled, as an independent study, during the spring or summer semesters. Please contact the DGS if you are unsure about which semester would be best for your Capstone completion.
CRN 45455
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ENGL 6004: Colloquium: Pedagogy Theory Practicum (Thursdays, 11:30 AM - 2:00 PM)
Catherine Chaput
This course introduces students to central histories, issues, and debates in writing and rhetorical studies. By highlighting key theoretical and terminological developments, this course lays the way for informed self-reflective practice based in awareness of the most current scholarly work in rhetoric and composition, thereby helping participants start to define their own identities as teachers of first-year composition as well as literature and other courses.
CRN 13269
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ENGL 8935: Dissertation Seminar (Mondays, 5:30 - 8:00 PM)
Maria Farland
This 0-credit seminar is designed as a resource for all doctoral students who have passed the comprehensive exam. Students working on the dissertation proposal are encouraged to take this class. During each meeting students will present and respond to work in progress. Across the semester, the seminar will treat challenges of bibliographic research and strategies of effective writing specific to large projects.
CRN 40212
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Required for all PhD students preparing the dissertation prospectus.

ENGL 8936: Issues in Scholarship and Academia (Mondays 11:30 AM - 2:00 PM) 
Maria Farland
This 0-credit seminar, open to all doctoral students, provides a forum in which to discuss the issues that shape the pursuit of a career professing literature as well as the pursuit of a career outside of the academy. The semester will provide opportunities for workshopping writing-in-process in a collaborative and supportive environment, and for directed conversation on varied aspects of the academic professionalization.
CRN 14025
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