Gannon University

Director: Mike Tkach, M.A.

INTRODUCTION
The Department of English offers the Master of Arts degree. Its inception in 1964 makes it the oldest Master's program at Gannon. The program is characterized by its range of offerings and flexibility of requirements.

The Department has five graduate teaching assistantships. Competition for these positions is intense and applications must be completed by mid February. Contact the Center for Adult Learning or the Chair of the English department for more information.

OBJECTIVES
The Graduate Program in English is designed for the professional student of letters seeking preparation for doctoral study in the discipline, for teachers of English who desire increased general competency, and for those in business and industry seeking professional growth or personal enrichment. The program is intended to expand the student's knowledge of linguistic and critical theory, composition and rhetoric, literary history, the development of literary genres, and major and minor writers of all periods. Additionally, the program is designed to refine students' responses to literature and language in use, sharpen their critical judgment, and develop their extended knowledge and expanded abilities into more effective writing, speaking, and teaching.

ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS
Satisfactory completion of an undergraduate degree in English is the normal prerequisite. However, students who do not meet this norm may be admitted to the program, dependent on their background (e.g. literature and writing courses, job experience, independent study, etc.). The Program Director, based on a conference with the applicant, may determine that some additional coursework is necessary. All students must arrange an interview with the Program Director before registering.

  CURRICULUM
Master of Arts Program

• Thirty graduate hours are required. Candidates may elect to take all thirty graduate hours within the English department, or they may elect to take six hours of other graduate level courses approved by the Graduate English Program Director. Students are required to take nine graduate hours in English and American literature and nine graduate hours in language studies courses. Of the graduate hours required in English and American literature, three must be in British literature before 1700 (excluding Shakespeare), three in British literature between 1700 and the present, and three in American literature. Of the graduate hours required in language studies, three must be in theory, three in writing, and three in linguistics. If students have not taken Shakespeare and literary criticism as undergraduates, they must take them as part of their graduate curriculum.
• The candidate must take GENGL 796 as part of the required 30 hours and after completion of 27 hours.

  COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Graduate courses may be taken by select senior undergraduates with the consent of the Chair of the Department of English

GENGL 501 The Structure of English
3 credits
A descriptive study of the structure of modern American English. Emphasis is placed on the special characteristics of the English language.

GENGL 504 Sociolinguistics
3 credits
This course introduces students to the general theory and concepts which define the field of soiolinguistics. Students explore the dynamic interaction between language and socio-cultural influences, including the relation of language variation to such social factors as gender, ethnicity, social class, and geographic region.

GENGL 512 Chaucer
3 credits
A detailed study of The Canterbury Tales, to develop an understanding of the work within its social, philosophical, and literary frames of reference, along with a brief look at other major works of the author.

GENGL 513 Non-Chaucerian English Medieval Literature
3 credits
An examination of the variety of genres in the Middle English period, both prose and verse, including Arthurian romance, lyrics and mystery plays.

GENGL 521 Shakespeare: Comedies and Histories
3 credits
A study of the dramatist's handling of the two forms, with a detailed analysis of major representative works.

GENGL 522 Shakespeare: Tragedies
3 credits
A study of the dramatist's handling of the form, with close analysis of all the tragedies.

GENGL 580 Mythology and Literature
3 credits
A study of the principal mythologies of the Western world at the root of much of Western literary traditions. The study is based on the principal mythic literature in Greek and Roman cultures; it also includes principal theoretical interpretations of myth.

GENGL 601 Explorations in Rhetorical Theory:
3 credits
Examination of theories of communication and persuasion. Topics may include the historical evolution of rhetoric as a discipline, methods of rhetorical criticism, material and /or visual rhetoric, rhetoric and gender, cross-cultural rhetorics, and the application of rhetorical principles to teaching or other professions,

GENGL 602 Creative Writing
3 credits
A writing workshop in fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Students may compose in the creative genre(s) of their choice, but will critique the submitted works of their peers in all genres. Selected readings in contemporary literature will also provide opportunity for analysis and discussion.

GENGL 603 Research on Composing
3 credits
A detailed examination of current theory and research in composition studies with a dual emphasis on applying the results of such studies to teaching at all educational levels and on designing and conducting classroom-centered research.

GENGL 611 Writing Project Summer Institute
3-6 credits
An intensive five-week workshop, with emphasis on improving writing skills and methods of using writing in the classroom.

GENGL 613 A Literacy Framework: Reading, Writing and Talking Across the Curriculum
3 credits
Designed to help develop teaching competencies through a regular pattern of activities that embody learning and language linkages.

GENGL 621 The English Renaissance
3 credits
A study of the important literature of the English Renaissance, including prose and poetical works of More, Sidney, Shakespeare, Lyly, with special stress on Spenser.

GENGL 623 Tudor and Stuart Drama
3 credits
A survey of Shakespeare's earlier and later contemporaries in the finest dramatic era England has ever experienced: Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, and other tragic and comic playwrights are studied.

GENGL 631 Seventeenth Century English Literature: Donne to Milton
3 credits
A study of significant figures and movements in English poetry from the beginning of the seventeenth century through the final poems of John Milton; emphasis is on the Metaphysicals, the Cavaliers, and the neo-classical influence of Ben Jonson.

GENGL 642 Topics in the Eighteenth Century
3 credits
Example topics include: The Eighteenth Century Marketplace; The Rise of the Gothic; The Trans-Atlantic Eighteenth Century; Fielding and Richardson; Restoration Drama; Literary Coteries of the Eighteenth Century.

GENGL 651 The British Romantics
3 credits
A study of the characteristics of Romanticism and why it has been such a significant movement, The course involves reading selected works by writers from the period 1790-1830.

GENGL 661 Studies in Victorian Literature
3 credits
This course will focus on two or more of the following key issues of the period: Cultural Imperialism, Industrialization, The Woman Question, and Religion and the Rise of Science.

GENGL 671 The American Renaissance
3 credits
A study of the most important figures and trends in American literature in the mid-nineteenth century. Emphasis is placed on the works of Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville.

GENGL 672 The American Realist Movement
3 credits
A study of the most important trends encompassing the notion of realism in American literature. Emphasis is placed on the work of Crane, Twain, Howells, and James.

GENGL 675 The American Novel Post WWII
3 credits
A survey of significant authors and movements in the American novel from the 1940's through the 1990's.

GENGL 678 Minority Literature
3 credits
A study of the literature written by and about selected minorities, such as groups distinguished by race, ethnicity, gender and/or sexual orientation. Emphasis is on literary and cultural analyses, including application of relevant critical theories.

GENGL 681 Literary Criticism: Contemporary Critical Problems
3 credits
A study of the main trends of contemporary literary criticism. Beginning with the New Criticism, course content at various times might include the approaches of such theories as structuralism, deconstruction, reader response, new historicism, Marxism, or book history. The course explores the intersections of these theories with culture, education, and literary history.

GENGL 682 Studies in Twentieth Century British and American Poetry
3 credits
The course will study the founding fathers of modern poetry (Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot, Stevens) and contemporary practitioners of the art (Wilbur, Lowell, Sexton, Merwin, Dickey).

GENGL 683 Joyce and Yeats
3 credits
A detailed analysis of the work of two dominant figures in modern English literature, James Joyce and William Butler Yeats, focusing on the prose works of James Joyce, primarily Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (or alternately, Ulysses), and the poetry and three one-act plays of William Butler Yeats.

GENGL 685 Major Continental Writers
3 credits
A selection of major continental writers, with emphasis on the fiction of Voltaire, Flaubert, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Kafka, Mann, and Camus.

GENGL 686 Modern/Contemporary Drama
3 credits
An examination of the modern dramatists from Ibsen to the present.

GENGL 690 - 694 Special Topics
3 credits
An intensive study of the works of one or more authors, a type of literature, an area of criticism, or an area of language studies.

GENGL 796 Directed Research
3 credits
Each student will complete a written project that involves conducting primary and/or secondary research, or writing original prose or poetry. The project is to be completed within one academic year of the student's registering for GENGL 796.

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