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Graduate Course Proposal Form Submission Detail - ENG6009
Tracking Number - 1535

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Current Status: Approved, Permanent Archive - 2010-04-06
Campus: Tampa
Submission Type: Change
Course Change Information (for course changes only): Change title from Bibliography for English Studies to Introduction to Graduate Study; New Abbreviated title: Intro to Grad Study Change Description to: New graduate students will read about the discipline, learn the methods of scholarly research and inquiry, and adjust their academic skills for graduate-level work. The course will also introduce them to some key research databases and resources
Comments: Approved by GC 10/19/09; Sent to USF SCNS Office 11/23/09; SCNS approved 12/14/09, effective 1/2010; posted in banner 12/14/09


Detail Information

  1. Date & Time Submitted: 2009-09-18
  2. Department: English
  3. College: AS
  4. Budget Account Number: 122300
  5. Contact Person: Nicole Guenther Discenza
  6. Phone: 41887
  7. Email: ndiscenz@cas.usf.edu
  8. Prefix: ENG
  9. Number: 6009
  10. Full Title: Bibliography for English Studies
  11. Credit Hours: 3
  12. Section Type: C - Class Lecture (Primarily)
  13. Is the course title variable?: N
  14. Is a permit required for registration?: N
  15. Are the credit hours variable?: N
  16. Is this course repeatable?:
  17. If repeatable, how many times?: 0
  18. Abbreviated Title (30 characters maximum): Biblio for Eng Studies
  19. Course Online?: C - Face-to-face (0% online)
  20. Percentage Online: 0
  21. Grading Option: R - Regular
  22. Prerequisites: none
  23. Corequisites: none
  24. Course Description: Detailed study of bibliographies of cultural milieus, genres, periods, and authors…

  25. Please briefly explain why it is necessary and/or desirable to add this course: Needed for program/concentration/certificate change
  26. What is the need or demand for this course? (Indicate if this course is part of a required sequence in the major.) What other programs would this course service? This course would be required of all students beginning the M.A. in English Literature or Rhetoric and Composition and beginning MFA students. The course currently offered as ENG 6009 is titled "Bibliography" and offered to both master's and Ph.D. students; the new course will be offered only to new master's students, and its focus will be more explicitly on the issues of adjusting to graduate study, the culture of the English Department, and the state of the discipline as well as the current focus of bibliographical study.
  27. Has this course been offered as Selected Topics/Experimental Topics course? If yes, how many times? No
  28. What qualifications for training and/or experience are necessary to teach this course? (List minimum qualifications for the instructor.) In addition to a terminal degree, instructors must maintain an active research program.
  29. Objectives: Students will be taught: how to read scholarly articles critically, how to research and write papers in formats required by the discipline, how to use quotation and citation properly, how to use key research databases and resources, and what the current debates are within the discipline.
  30. Learning Outcomes: By the end of the class, students will know how to read and evaluate scholarly articles critically, how to research and write papers at the graduate level, how to use proper quotation and citation in formats appropriate to their field, how to utilize crucial databases and resources for research, and how to situate themselves within the discipline.
  31. Major Topics: The culture of English departments and graduate programs; producing graduate-level work in English; the history and current state of the discipline of English; research databases and related resources; evaluating research sources and scholarship; the canon; fields of study; the scholarly process: from research to writing; the academic support network; the dissertation and the job market
  32. Textbooks: Michael Bérubé, The Employment of English: Theory, Jobs, and the Future of Literary Studies (New York U P, 1998).

    Gerald Graff, Professing Literature: An Institutional History (U of Chicago P, 2007).

    Robert Scholes, The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline (Yale U P, 1998 ).

    Gregory Colón Semenza, Graduate Study for the 21st Century (Palgrave, 2005).

    MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (Third Edition, 2008) (for students in literature or creative writing) OR The Publication Manual of the APA (for students in rhetoric and composition).

  33. Course Readings, Online Resources, and Other Purchases: coursepack from Pro-Copy; online databases available through the USF Library
  34. Student Expectations/Requirements and Grading Policy: All students will make substantial and sustained contributions to the weekly meetings, actively contributing to discussions of the primary texts, presenting secondary research to the group, and reporting on their individual research projects. The success of the course depends largely on the commitment of its members to the common enterprise. As with any graduate course, “Introduction to Graduate Study” requires regular attendance and active participation. Frequent absences, whatever the reason, will lower your attendance grade significantly.

    Class Participation (including attendance) 15%

    Discussion Questions Assignment 5%

    Assignment 1: Intellectual Autobiography 10%

    Assignment 2: Journals Review 15%

    Assignment 3: Report on Electronic Database 15%

    Assignment 4: Annotated Bibliography 20%

    Assignment 5: Paper on Issue Related to Graduate Study 20%

  35. Assignments, Exams and Tests: Assignments:

    Discussion Questions Assignment

    Each member of the seminar will assume responsibility for crafting one set of discussion questions related to the readings assigned for one of our meetings. Class members will stake their claim to a particular day ahead of time. Questions must address the reading for that day and should be designed to help spur our discussion by highlighting important issues in the readings. The questions should be designed to help initiate and shape the evening’s discussion.

    There should be 3-5 well-constructed, interesting, provocative, eloquent, discussion-oriented questions in each set. Because these are questions meant to elicit discussions, students will need to post their questions to Blackboard the day (or night) before our class meeting. All members of the seminar will be expected to read and begin thinking about the questions in advance of our meeting.

    Assignment 1: Intellectual Autobiography

    Your first assignment for the semester will be to write a brief (2-4 pages) intellectual autobiography. Think of this as an opportunity to explore your academic and professional goals and to take an inventory of yourself: Where are you headed? Why do you want to go there? What will you need to get there? What do you already have? What do you need to acquire? Among the topics you should explore:

    • Key figures in your intellectual development

    • What led you the study of literature?

    • Your primary areas of interest

    • Areas of particular strength and weakness

    • Your plan of study

    • Your long-term academic goals (dissertation, career)

    Consult the Scholes book (29-36) for additional ideas. Your completed autobiography—carefully revised, elegantly written, and error-free—will be due in Week 5.

    Assignment 2: Journals Review

    For this assignment, you will conduct a review of six scholarly journals related to your primary area(s) of academic interest. This assignment is a good opportunity for you to begin exploring the contours of your field and to get a sense for the sorts of scholarship being produced at this very moment. I have outlined below the steps you’ll want to follow as you prepare your review. The final review—carefully revised and error-free—will be due in Week 9.

    Step I. Identify Journals

    Identify seven (6) academic journals whose focus reflects your primary area(s) of interest. Of the six journals you select,

    • At least one must focus on your chosen historical period or field (e.g. Shakespeare Quarterly, American Literature, or Composition Studies)

    • At least one must focus on a particular genre or theoretical orientation (e.g. Studies in the Novel, Victorian Poetry, or Currents in Electronic Literacy)

    • At least one must be an online publication (e.g. Literature Compass, Early Modern Literary Studies, or Kairos)

    • At least one must be broadly inclusive in its scholarly profile (e.g. SEL, PMLA, ELH)

    Step II. Review Journals

    Once you have identified your six journals, review the most recent (published within the past 3-4 years) issues of each. You needn’t read every article closely: attentive skimming is reasonable. Your task is to get a feel for each of the journals, enough so that you can (1) compile a profile for each of them and (2) identify some of the current scholarly trends in your chosen field.

    Step III. Report on Journals

    Having reviewed the journals, you are ready to write up a short report on each of them. Begin by identifying your chosen field, and briefly describe your method for journal selection: how did you identify which journals were connected with your area of interest? what criteria did you use in deciding which journals to review?

    Following this general introduction, you will write a brief report on each journal individually. Your report should begin by identifying the journal, its place of publication (the institution in which it is housed), and its general editor. Identify how frequently it is published, and whether it is available electronically. Next, identify the journal’s mission (in terms of its stated range of scholarly interests): what sorts of scholarship does this journal publish? how long are the articles? what sort of audience are the articles pitched to (interdisciplinary, specialists, students, etc).

    Conclude your report with a general summative statement, in which you discuss your sense of the scholarly trends that your reviews of these journals has revealed. What sorts of patterns do you notice in the scholarship? What sorts of topics are getting a lot of play in recent issues of these journals (e.g. studies of material culture, single author studies)? Which theoretical frameworks or methodologies seem to prevail in the various journals you reviewed (e.g. formalism, Foucault)? Most importantly, having sampled a bit of the recent scholarship, what is your sense of your chosen field? What’s “hot,” “exciting,” “sexy,” “now”? Where are the top scholars publishing their work? As a person exploring the contours of a new field, developing a personal scholarly profile, and working towards full participation in ongoing critical discourse, which journals will you read regularly and eventually contribute to?

    Assignment 3: Report on Electronic Database

    For this assignment, you are to select and report on one electronic research database that you might find particularly useful in your area of interest. You may want to use this opportunity to begin exploring the electronic resources that you’ll be using to research one or more of the papers you will be working on in other classes this semester.

    Your report should run 2-4 pages in length and should serve as an introductory overview of the database you have selected. It should identify the database, its location and availability (Who can access it? How is it accessed?). It should also identify the persons or institutions responsible for the content of the database. The main body of the report should explain very clearly what the database covers, how best to search its contents, and why database might be of use to scholars working in particular areas or investigating particular issues.

    The final report will be due in Week 11. I have set aside time in class that day for presentations of your database discoveries. We’ll have a computer in class, so you will be able to demonstrate your database to the rest of us. Your final reports will be also posted to Blackboard, so that everyone in class can reap the benefits of your discovery.

    Assignment 4: Annotated Bibliography

    For your fourth assignment, you will produce an annotated bibliography representing the research you have conducted in preparation for writing a paper in one of the other classes you are taking this semester. Your annotated bibliography should contain 3-5 articles, book chapters, and/or books. The scholarship you include should be relatively recent (published within the last 15-20 years). Encyclopedias, Wikipedia, and Spark Notes do not constitute acceptable scholarly research sources for the purposes of this assignment. Neither do The Explicator or Notes and Queries. You should select full-length, scholarly essays or book chapters of the highest quality for this project. Begin each entry with an MLA- or APA-style bibliographic entry (in grading your bibliography I’ll consider how closely you follow MLA or APA guidelines). Below the bibliographic entry, begin your annotation. Each annotation should run to no more than 500 words. Your annotation should record the central thesis of the article as well as the key points of the author’s argument. It should convey a sense of the methodology employed as well as your sense of the argument’s validity and usefulness. Use parenthetical citations to link your annotation to specific pages in the article (use page numbers only, and be sure to follow MLA or APA rules for citations). I will evaluate your annotations according to their clarity, accuracy, and completeness. This assignment will be due in Week 14.

    Assignment 5: Paper on Issue Related to Graduate Study

    Your final project for the semester will be to write a short research paper (5-7 pages) on an issue related to graduate education (funding, the job market, community colleges, teaching, publication, etc). You may make use of any of the common readings for the course, but you will also need to consult at least three outside sources. We’ll talk more about this assignment in class. Your completed paper—carefully edited, error-free, and fully compliant with MLA or APA guidelines—will be due in Week 16.

  36. Attendance Policy: As with any graduate course, “Introduction to Graduate Study” requires regular attendance and active participation. Frequent absences, whatever the reason, will lower your attendance grade significantly.

    Students who anticipate the necessity of being absent from class due to a major religious observance must provide notice of the dates to the instructor, in writing, by the second class meeting.

  37. Policy on Make-up Work: All students are expected to adhere to the University’s policy on academic honesty. Although students are encouraged to share their ideas with classmates and peers and to incorporate research into their work, all students are expected to do their own work and to give full and appropriate credit to the source of any language or ideas they borrow from others. Copying the work of others or trying to pass off someone else’s work as your own is a clear violation of this policy. Plagiarism also occurs when you “borrow” someone else’s ideas without appropriately citing your source. If you have questions about what constitutes plagiarism, ask me. Students are directed to the University’s official policy on academic honesty, which can be found online at http://www.ugs.usf.edu/catalogs/0708/adadap.htm.

    This course requires you to submit your paper to a plagiarism detection site that will be identified by your instructor. In order to comply with federal (FERPA) and state privacy laws, you (students) are not required to include personal identifying information such as your name, SSN, and/or U# in the body of the work (text) or use such information in the file naming convention prior to submitting Please follow carefully your instructor’s instructions regarding what identifying information to include. Your submission will be placed in the course grade center in your account that can be accessed by the instructor and attributed to you.

    Penalties for plagiarism may include a zero for the assignment, a failing grade for the course (FF), and administrative action up to and including expulsion from the University.

    There are no incompletes in this course. If conflicting activities or other concerns will prevent you from completing the work for this class on time, drop it.

  38. Program This Course Supports: English M.A. in Literature and M.A. in Rhetoric and Composition; and MFA
  39. Course Concurrence Information: none


- if you have questions about any of these fields, please contact chinescobb@grad.usf.edu or joe@grad.usf.edu.