PH.D. Courses
ENGL 6488 The Literature, Language, and Culture of the English-speaking
Caribbean
Credit hours: 3
Description: The leading contemporary poets and novelists with special attention to their use of English Creole languages and with reference to their socioeconomic and historical backgrounds. (6488, or a professor’s authorization, is a prerequisite for all doctoral courses).
ENGL 8005 Pidgin and Creole Languages
Credit hours: 3
Prerequisites: ENGL 6469
Description: A diachronic and synchronic analysis of English-based Caribbean creoles; current theories of the process of pidginization, creolization, and decreolization.
ENGL 8006 The Encounter between Africa and the West
Credit hours: 3
Description: This course places Africa as its geographical center, and the relationship between Africa and the West during the last five hundred years as its thematic focus.
ENGL 8007 Language Birth and Language Death
Credit hours: 3
Description: Analyzes the “life cycle” of languages, beginning with birth and proceeding through change, spread, maintenance, shift, death, and revival.
ENGL 8008 The Art of Derek Walcott
Credit hours: 3
Prerequisites: ENGL 6410
Description: The examination of Walcott’s artistic maturation through the four decades in which he has been the leading Caribbean poet and playwright writing in English.
ENGL 8009 Language Acquisition and Creoles
Credit hours: 3
Description: The unique gestation of creole languages viewed as test cases for questions in the field of language acquisition posed from the perspective of two frameworks: Bickerton’s Language Bioprogram Hypothesis and Chomsky’s Universal Grammar.
ENGL 8010 Caribbean Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Theory
Credit hours: 3
Description: This course explores the development of the literature addressed to a specific audience (schoolchildren) within the context of nations developing independently both politically and imaginatively, especially Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Antigua and St. Lucia.
ENGL 8015 V.S. Naipaul
Credit hours: 3
Description: The study of one of the most prolific Caribbean writers who has excelled in the novel, the short story, the travel book, and the essay.
ENGL 8016 Oral and Scribal Traditions of Caribbean Verse
Credit hours: 3
Description: The history and development of anglophone Caribbean poetry and poetic oral expression, and the emergence of the impressive body of formal poetry written over the past fifty years.
ENGL 8017 Phonological Aspects of Caribbean Creoles
Credit hours: 3
Description: A study of the major phonological aspects of (primarily) English-derived Caribbean creoles, though reference to other European-language-derived creoles will also be made, e.g. to Haitian Creole and to Dutch Antillean Papiamento.
ENGL 8018 Caribbean Drama and Performance
Credit hours: 3
Description: A close examination of the development of 20th century Caribbean drama and performance as a cultural mosaic that reflects (1) syncretic folk festivals, plays, masquerades, and spectacles, (2) the formal theater, and (3) the social milieu of the postcolonial Caribbean.
ENGL 8019 Fieldwork in Caribbean Languages: Methodology and Analysis
Credit hours: 3
Description: The problems and principles of studying language in its social and cultural context. It focuses on fieldwork methodology, particularly collection of data, the analysis and interpretation of data, and their interrelationships.
ENGL 8020 Caribbean Women’s Fiction
Credit hours: 3
Description: Analysis of fiction by Caribbean women writers in the context of recent critical approaches, such as narrative, feminist/womanist, postcolonial, historical, and socio-political theories.
ENGL 8026 Caribbean Literature in Metropolitan Contexts
Credit hours: 3
Description: A study of the experience of migration, from primarily the Anglophone Caribbean, to Europe and North America as recorded in fiction, screenplays, travel writings, memoirs, and testimonies by Caribbean authors writing in metropolitan centers.
8027 Language Typology and Creole Languages
Credit hours: 3 ENGL
Description: A study of the typological relations between Creoles, substrata, lexifiers, and other languages.
ENGL 8035 Postcolonial Theory and Caribbean Literature
Credit hours: 3
Description: A study of the major approaches, texts, and critiques of colonial discourse analysis and postcolonial literary theory and their connection to Caribbean issues and literary texts.
ENGL 8045: Independent Study
Credit hours: 3
Description: Students who would like to focus on a topic not covered by any existing (or
regularly offered) course in the Doctoral degree program in English can propose a 3-credit independent study to pursue their interests. Students can take a maximum of two independent study courses. More details at [link to info under Doctoral Degree
ENGL 8046 Seminar in Language and Identity in the Caribbean
Credit hours: 3
Description: In this course, we will look at the development of identity in the Caribbean
through a close reading of texts extracted for their historical, sociological, cultural, linguistic, and literary relevance in order to ascertain the role of multiple factors and contexts in the construction of the various identities in the Caribbean world. The role of social interaction in the construction of identity will also be made evident.
ENGL 8080 Caribbean Literatures and Languages in a Global Context
Credit hours: 3
Description: The exploration of different contemporary (global) issues of literary form, cultural theory, and/or linguistic analysis as they affect the student of the literature, language, and culture of the Anglophone Caribbean. This umbrella course has different manifestations depending on the professor offering it in a given semester and can be repeated up to three times under different subtitles.
ENGL 8099 Research in Caribbean Literature and Linguistics
Credit hours: 0
Enrollment: For one semester only.
Description: Study and development of the research methods and sources necessary for the successful writing of a Ph.D. dissertation proposal.
ENGL 8105 Tense, Mood, and Aspect in Caribbean Creoles
Credit hours: 3
Description: A synchronic and diachronic analysis of the verbal systems of English-based Caribbean creoles
ENGL 8106 Language and Power: The Construction of Socio-Political Discourse
in the Caribbean and Beyond
Credit Hours: 3
Description: This course is a survey of the growing body of academic work that focuses
on the role of language in the construction of socio-political discourses and systems.
ENGL 8107 Imagining Caliban: The Presence of the Caribbean in the American
Imaginary
Credit hours: 3
Description: The exploration of the Caribbean (its region and its people) as a presence
that informs the texture of the American imaginary in the formulation of an identity and
in the production of a definition of aesthetics that affect literature, cinema, and popular
culture.
ENGL 8109 The Political Novel
Credit hours: 3
Description: Study and analysis of the Caribbean novel using critical and cultural
theories centered on ideology as developed by R. Williams, F. Jameson, L. Hutcheon,
T. Eagleton, E. Said, and S. Hall.
ENGL 8201 Seminar on Fieldwork on the Languages and Cultures of the
Anglophone Afro-Caribbean
Credit hours: 3
Description: This course prepares students to do effective linguistic fieldwork. Students
survey scholarly work on the language and literature of their target group, then go into
the field in the Anglophone Afro-Caribbean to collect data from native speakers, and
finally do linguistic and cultural analysis of the data.
ENGL 8301 Literature from the Hispanophone Caribbean in Diaspora
Credit hours: 3
Description: A comprehensive and critical study of literary works by authors from the Hispanophone Caribbean in diaspora, written or translated into English. Texts may include code-switching. The course will focus on authors from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic who experienced a migration process to the United States or authors born in the US to island émigrés.
ENGL 8890 Writing of Doctoral Critical Essays (Comprehensive Exams)
Credit hours: 0
Enrollment: For three semesters only.
ENGL 8891 Dissertation I
Credit hours: 0
Enrollment: For one semester only.
ENGL 8892 Dissertation II
Credit hours: 0
Enrollment: Continuation in subsequent semesters