Postgraduate Courses
M.A. IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH STUDIES (SANDWICH)
Admission Requirements
The minimum entry requirement for admission into the MA Sandwich programme is any good bachelor’s degree (at least a second class lower) from a recognized university. Interviews may be conducted to arrive at a short list of successful applicants.
Programme Duration
The Sandwich MA in English is a two semester programme to be run between June and July. Each semester will last eight weeks, as stipulated in the University of Ghana Handbook for Graduate Studies.
Graduation Requirements
Course work 30-36 credits
Seminar 3 credits
Independent study 6 credits
TOTAL 39- 45 credits
GENERAL CORE COURSE (To be taken either in the first semester or in the second semester)
Course Code and Title Credits
General Core Courses
MCES 600 Independent Study 6
MCES 601 Seminar 3
First Semester Core Courses
Course Code and Title
MCES 603 Contemporary Grammar and Usage 3
MCES 605 Phonetics and Phonology of English 3
MCES 607 Literature for Critical Thinking and Analysis 3
Second Semester Core Courses
MCES 602 Culture and Arts Criticism 3
MCES 604 Meaning in English 3
MCES 606 Popular Genres 3
Elective course(s)
First Semester Elective Courses: Business/Communication/Media Track
(Students must take at least 2 Elective courses offered in the semester)
MCES 609 Language and Advertising 3
MCES 611 Proposal Writing 3
MCES 613 The English Language and the Social Media 3
MCES 615 The English Language and Religion 3
MCES 617 Public Speaking and Speech Writing 3
MCES 619 Pidgins and Creoles of the Atlantic 3
First Semester Elective Courses: Arts/Criticism/Pedagogy Track
(Students must take at least 2 Elective courses offered in the semester)
MCES 621 The Film in West Africa 3
MCES 623 Reading Literature: The Novel 3
MCES 625 Responding to Drama 3
Second Semester Elective Courses: Business/Communication/Media Track
(Students must take at least 2 Elective courses offered in the semester)
MCES 608 Business Communication 3
MCES 612 Editing 3
MCES 614 Oral Communication in the Mass Media 3
MCES 616 Language in Performance 3
MCES 618 Pragmatics 3
MCES 622 Registers and Varieties of English 3
MCES 624 English in Ghana 3
Second Semester Elective Courses: Arts/Criticism/Pedagogy Track
(Students must take at least 2 Elective courses offered in the semester)
MCES 626 Reading Literature: Poetry 3
MCES 628 Special Topics in Literature 3
COURSES CREDIT
MCES 600 Independent Study 6
MCES 601 Seminar 3
MCES 602 Culture and Arts Criticism 3
MCES 603 Contemporary Grammar and Usage 3
MCES 604 Meaning in English 3
MCES 605 Phonetics and Phonology of English 3
MCES 606 Popular Genres 3
MCES 607 Literature for Critical Thinking and Analysis 3
MCES 608 Business Communication 3
MCES 609 Language and Advertising 3
MCES 611 Proposal Writing 3
MCES 612 Editing 3
MCES 613 The English Language and the Social Media 3
MCES 614 Oral Communication in the Mass Media 3
MCES 615 The English Language and Religion 3
MCES 616 Language in Performance 3
MCES 617 Public Speaking and Speech Writing 3
MCES 618 Pragmatics 3
MCES 619 Pidgins and Creoles of the Atlantic 3
MCES 621 The Film in West Africa 3
MCES 622 Registers and Varieties of English 3
MCES 623 Reading Literature: The Novel 3
MCES 624 English in Ghana 3
MCES 625 Responding to Drama 3
MCES 626 Reading Literature: Poetry 3
MCES 628 Special Topics in Literature 3
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
MCES 600 INDEPENDENT STUDY
This will be a required 6 credit project for all students on this programme, to be carried out either in the first or in the second semester. In this course, the students will be exposed to research methodology to strengthen their skills in doing research. They can then work as individuals or in groups on projects ranging from scholarly writing to creative performance oriented work, but each independent study must have a research component. The burden is on the student to show how the course has been applied to the problem being investigated. This study could be tied to one of the other courses (e.g., Culture and Arts Criticism, Editing).
MCES 601 SEMINAR
Each student will present work from his/her research by the end of the first semester. The topic for the seminar will be arrived at by the student in consultation with a supervisor who will be assigned for this purpose. The presentation can take the form of a scholarly article, a conference paper, a research proposal, or the results of research conducted.
MCES 602 CULTURE AND ARTS CRITICISM
This course is dedicated to focused practice in culture and arts criticism, a very significant gap in both scholarship and media practice in Ghana. Students will examine various essential features of Ghanaian and African cultural institutions, traditions, and principles, especially as manifested in such expressive artistic forms as rituals, festivals, the performance genres of music, dance, and drama, dance-drama, traditions of verbal/oral art and popular culture. They will also study interrelations between these various ancestrally/indigenously rooted forms and various contemporary forms associated with written and electronically driven traditions borrowed from elsewhere.
MCES 603 CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND USAGE
This course deals with the recognition and usage of acceptable English structure and usage. It will examine grammar and the recognition of acceptable idiomatic usage of English. It will guide students through the analysis of the English sentence and its components. In usage the emphasis will be on areas that appear problematic for second language users of English.
MCES 604 MEANING IN ENGLISH
This course will deal with meaning at different levels. It will begin with a distinction between lexical and grammatical meaning at the level of the morpheme and the word. It will also examine sentence meaning as a product of the linguistic system, the contextual or utterance and the metaphorical levels. What happens to the meaning of utterances in English in a second language situation will also be probed, focussing on the expression of ideas and sentiments alien to the English language, but germane in a first language. Contextual meaning will be particularly examined as it is the basis of pragmatics and usage in normal interactive situations. Meaning in formal situations will also be discussed to highlight the differences that registers make in the determination of meaning.
MCES 605 PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY OF ENGLISH
The course will aim at acquainting students with work done on English pronunciation in Ghana and demonstrate how these studies can be applied to the teaching of English pronunciation and oral English in the Ghanaian schools, as well as in the media. The students will be made familiar with Received Pronunciation as a reference point, but the emphasis of this course will be on how the Ghanaian accent phonologically marks itself as distinct from other varieties of English.
MCES 606 STUDIES IN POPULAR GENRES
The course will consider the alleged disparity between the classic or ‘highbrow’ and ‘popular’ genres and themes in contemporary literature and performance traditions. It will focus on Ghanaian forms such as the concert party, highlife/hiplife and other forms of popular music, ‘home video’ movies, and popular novels with their often romantic and/or moralistic slant. The course will also look at popular international literature and performance genres such as song texts (reggae, country music, blues etc.), soap operas, the romantic novel, horror, the ‘who-done-it’ novel, the superman action novel etc.
MCES 607 LITERATURE FOR CRITICAL THINKING AND ANALYSIS
This course is designed to sharpen fundamental intellectual skills for analyzing literary texts in ways that cultivate critical thinking. At one level, it is a study of literature as a storehouse of enduring human values and reflections on complexities of various life situations and on the nature of the universe. But above all, the course looks at these values and complex life situations as portrayed in a wide range of classic and popular literary texts, with language as the ultimate miracle tool for encoding and elucidating critical insight.
MCES 608 BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
In the fast-paced business environment, the ability to communicate effectively is essential to both the individual and the organization. This course is designed to sensitize learners to the effective communication skills necessary in accomplishing assigned tasks within an organization, and in maintaining good working relations among employees, customers and business associates. It aims at taking learners through executive summary writing, minute taking, business correspondence, speech writing, oral presentations, position papers, memos, CVs and résumés and expository writing.
MCES 609 LANGUAGE AND ADVERTISING
This course examines the language of print, broadcast and web advertising. It will primarily focus on the sociolinguistic and stylistic strategies employed in the construction of advertising texts. It will also explore the multilingual realities in contemporary African societies, addressing topics such as code-switching, pidgin and street language in advertising.
MCES 611 PROPOSAL WRITING
This course is designed to build skills on how to write both academic and non-academic research proposals. It introduces students to the key elements of proposal writing such as formulation of research questions and objectives, reviewing of relevant literature as well as the procedure to be used to complete the proposed study/project. It will particularly focus on hands-on practices in developing proposals in order to offer students the opportunity to conceptualize and write their own proposals.
MCES 612 EDITING
This course targets the processes involved in sanitising and refining written text. It examines texts from the conceptual point – i.e., the raison d’être for the text and the material, the organisation – the logical development of ideas and paragraphs -- the expression – the felicities and infelicities in patterning sentences and the mechanical inaccuracies consequent on a lack of knowledge in the writer and/or typos, as well as editing symbols used in proofreading. It also looks at the place of the computer in all the processes. The course will to a large extent be practical.
MCES 613 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND THE SOCIAL MEDIA
The course will examine how the English language is shaped by social media. Using data drawn from new media contexts such as WhatsApp, twitter, facebook, SMS, email, instant messaging and personal blogs, the course discusses the impact of these web-based social media platforms on the development of the English language. Students will examine the features that characterize these different media genres or ‘medialects’. The aim of the course is to analyze the structure and features of these social media discourses.
MCES 614 ORAL COMMUNICATION IN THE MASS MEDIA
This course is designed to provide study and practice in conversational English in Ghana with specific emphasis on the processes by which ideas are exchanged orally in the audio visual media. The course shall cover such topics as: panel discussions, programme presentations, debates, and public speaking.
MCES 615 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND RELIGION
The course focuses on the perlocutionary function of language in religion. Thus it examines what speakers do with language and targets the methods associated with homiletics and the persuasive thrust of the language used. It will look at rhetoric as a means to an end, and examine the methods of delivery that enhance the message. It explores both linguistic and rhetorical devices that support the delivery of sermons. It also examines the place of logic, if any, in belief systems. Many of the concepts to be discussed will be supported by a critical examination of sermons, religious tracts, etc.
MCES 616 LANGUAGE IN PERFORMANCE
This course explores how language is used to perform in specific contexts that are contemporary, live, involve audience participation and exist outside the conventional traditions of theatre, storytelling, music, dance and poetry (performance poetry – rap, hiplife, soap box oratory, the pulpit, political speeches, street theatre events, storytelling dance forms, stand-up comedy etc). A key issue will be the features of language at the lexical, phonological and grammatical, and sentence fragment levels which these forms call for. Another important issue will be creativity as a key element which these forms involve. The peculiar linguistic characteristics that include the non-verbal will be addressed.
MCES 617 PUBLIC SPEAKING AND SPEECH WRITING
This course will deal with the theory and practice of the art and craft of persuasion, specifically as they pertain to public speaking and speech writing. It will deepen students’ analytical and critical thinking skills, their persuasive writing skills, and their oral presentation skills. Students will adopt the position of speaker/writer and that of critic. They will examine the rhetorical concepts that are fundamental to the study and practice of ethical and effective oral and written communication, and methods of development, practice and delivery for a variety of speeches, including topic selection, speech outlines, audience analysis and visual aids.
MCES 618 PRAGMATICS
This course deals with meaning in the context of usage. Pragmatics emphasizes the place of context in the delimitation of meaning, particularly in interactive situations, which is the norm in natural languages. Semantics and pragmatics deal with meaning at different levels but they complement each other. Both of them will be discussed and the difference between system sentences and utterances highlighted. The course will refer to the Speech Act theory and Grice’s Maxims, among others, to explain what we do with language and how we interpret it in its natural state. Attention will also be paid to understanding, interpreting and using the insights of pragmatics in identifying the meaning of what we and others say both in First and Second Language situations.
MCES 619 PIDGINS AND CREOLES OF THE AFRO-ATLANTIC
Atlantic pidgins and creoles have their origin in West Africa. This course will begin by exploring the various theories proposed to explain the traces of their beginnings. It will further investigate how the basic pidgins developed in the various slave castles along the coast and how this code crossed the Atlantic to develop into the various creoles of the Caribbean region. The focus will then shift to pidgin in Ghana, with particular attention to the Ghanaian phenomenon: Student Pidgin (SP), a relatively new code that is spoken widely by especially boys in most of the southern high schools, universities and beyond. We will trace SP’s antecedents in GhaPE (Ghanaian Pidgin English) – back to Kru Brofo and the various influences from Nigerian Pidgin.
MCES 621 THE FILM IN WEST AFRICA
This course explores the development of film in West Africa and the issues posed by this development. The course will focus on the contexts of technology, culture, politics and economics in West Africa within which the tradition of film making took root. Particular attention will be paid to various national traditions of film emerging in the Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone parts of the sub-region in the wake of independence. The course will also study the audio-visual work enabled by more recent (i.e., digital) technology and media (Nollywood, Ghallywood).
MCES 622 REGISTERS AND VARIETIES OF ENGLISH
This course will look at the registers and the varieties of English in Ghana. The focus will in the first instance be on making the students aware of the various registers in English: from the frozen formal registers to the slangy colloquial registers. The course will encourage the students to pay attention to the new varieties and speech modes in especially urban Ghana: Student Pidgin, LAFA (locally acquired foreign accent), code switching.
MCES 623 READING LITERATURE: THE NOVEL
This course is intended to deepen students’ competence in discussing novels through the application of several theoretical concepts. It will revise some of the basic ideas about the novel which have come to us from E.M. Forster and Percy Lubbock as plot versus story, point of view, characterization, etc., and review the functions of these aspects of the novel. It will also introduce Marxist ideas about literature taken from Georg Lukacs, and explore views of the relationship between the novel and social reality. Finally, the course will look at a selection of some more recent structuralist theories on the novel such as Greimas’ ideas on character and Role, or Genette’s concepts of Focalization and Anachrony, and examine the ways in which these ideas reveal the basic patterns which form the structure of the novel.
MCES 624 ENGLISH IN GHANA
This course will consider the implications of multilingualism on English in Ghana. Issues to be considered will include standardization of English in Ghana, examination of real usage and the problems of nativization. Attention will be given to the semantic, phonological, structural, pragmatic and lexical peculiarities of English in Ghana.
MCES 625 RESPONDING TO DRAMA
The aim of this course is to train students to respond to drama as a literary form whilst being aware of its status as performance. The first part will look at key concepts in dramatic theory using a keywords approach, e.g., drama, ritual, theatre, performance, spectacle, audience, play-text etc. A second part will address how one may respond to drama as literature whilst being sensitive to its visual medium dimension. Finally, it will introduce the terminology used in literary discussions of drama, e.g., plot, rising action, climax, falling action, conflict, protagonist, antagonist, theme as intellectual and emotional impact of a play, visual aspects crucial to a literary approach to drama, etc.
MCES 626 READING LITERATURE: POETRY
This course seeks to guide students to become more competent readers of poetry by teaching them to make insightful readings through the application of a major theory. Two essays from the New Criticism will provide the intellectual foundation for this study of poetry, namely, Cleanth Brooks’ “The Language of Paradox” and Wimsatt and Beardsley’s “The Intentional Fallacy”. The first essay, in particular, supplemented by knowledge of the appropriate technical terminology for describing elements of poetry, will provide the approach to our analysis of specific poems.
MCES 628 SPECIAL TOPICS IN LITERATURE
This course is designed to enable faculty and students explore special topics of interest in literary studies that are not covered in the available course offerings on this programme. Such areas will include special genres such as detective fiction or non-fiction prose; the literature of particular cultures, e.g., Hispanic literature; literary trends such as utopian literature or science fiction; or areas of professional interest such as literature and psychology or literary editing. In short, the course offers an important outlet for fresh or new areas of literary study.
MA/MPHIL IN ENGLISH PROGRAMME
Admission Requirements
The minimum entry requirement for admission into the M.A. or MPhil. programme is a good first degree in English (i.e., at least a second class lower), either as a single or a combined major, with at least 30 credits in English. Admission will also be based on creditable performance in a written examination and an oral interview.
All applicants with a B.A. degree will be admitted into the M.A. in English programme. To be allowed to enroll in the MPhil. programme, a candidate in the M.A. programme must have obtained a B+ average in the course work and must have demonstrated potential to carry out thesis research.
A candidate holding an M.A. in English degree may be admitted into the MPhil. programme if such a candidate obtained a B+ average.
Duration of Programme
M.A.2 semesters (12 months)
MPhil.4 semesters (24 months)
Graduation Requirements
M.A
Course work 12-18 credits per semester, 24-36 credits per year
Dissertation 12 credits
Seminar Presentation 3 credits
TOTAL 39-51 credits
MPHIL
Course work 12-18 credits per semester, 24-36 credits per year
Thesis 30 credits
Two Seminar Presentations 6 credits
TOTAL 60-72 credits
Structure of Programme
M.A.
GENERAL CORE COURSES CREDITS
ENGL 600 Dissertation 12
ENGL 630 Seminar I 3
FIRST SEMESTER
- LANGUAGE OPTION
CORE COURSES
ENGL 601 English Syntax 3
ENGL 627 Lexico-Semantics 3
ENGL 605 Language and Literature 3
ELECTIVE COURSES (a minimum of 3 credits and a maximum of 9
credits to be taken per semester)
ENGL 609 History of the English Language 3
ENGL 611 Applied Linguistics 3
ENGL 613 Topics in English Studies 3
ENGL 629 The English Language in Ghana 3
ENGL 639 Discourse and Communication 3
#Students in the language option will be required to offer one of the literature courses by the end of the academic year.
B. LITERATURE OPTION
CORE COURSES
ENGL 605 Language and Literature 3
ENGL 637 Advanced Seminar in African Literature 3
ENGL 650 Literary Theory and Criticism 3
ELECTIVE COURSES (a minimum of 3 credits and a maximum of 9
credits to be taken per semester)
ENGL 613 Topics in English Studies 3
ENGL 615 Postcolonial Literature 3
ENGL 617 Women and Literature 3
ENGL 623 Film and Society 3
ENGL 625 Earlier Literature 3
ENGL 631 Chaucer and His Age 3
ENGL 633 Text and Context in the Renaissance 3
ENGL 635 Nineteenth Century American Poetry and Prose 3
ENGL 641 Studies in Oral Literature 3
#Students in the literature option will be required to offer one of the language courses by the end of the academic year.
SECOND SEMESTER
- LANGUAGE OPTION
CORE COURSES
ENGL 602 English Phonology 3
ENGL 632 Linguistic Models in Language Analysis 3
ENGL 642 Research Methods Seminar 3
ELECTIVE COURSES (a minimum of 3 credits and a maximum of 9
credits to be taken per semester)
ENGL 626 Sociolinguistics of English 3
ENGL 634 Pidgin and Creole Studies 3
ENGL 636 Corpus Linguistics 3
ENGL 638 Bilingualism 3
- LITERATURE OPTION
CORE COURSES
ENGL 618 The Novel 3
ENGL 642 Research Methods Seminar 3
ENGL 650 Literary Theory and Criticism 3
ELECTIVE COURSES (a minimum of 3 credits and a maximum of 9
credits to be taken per semester)
ENGL 614 Studies in Poetry 3
ENGL 624 Studies in Non-Fiction Writing 3
ENGL 644 English Literature of the Neoclassical Period 3
ENGL 646 English Literature of the Romantic Period 3
ENGL 648 Auto/Biographical Writing 3
ENGL 652 American Literature of the 20th Century & Beyond 3
ENGL 654 Modern Drama from Ibsen to the Present 3
ENGL 656 Writer in Focus 3
MPHIL
GENERAL CORE COURSES
ENGL 630 Seminar I 3
ENGL 640 Seminar II 3
ENGL 660 Thesis 30
FIRST SEMESTER
- LANGUAGE OPTION
CORE COURSES
ENGL 601 English Syntax 3
ENGL 627 Lexico-Semantics 3
ENGL 605 Language and Literature 3
ELECTIVE COURSES (a minimum of 3 credits and a maximum of 9
credits to be taken per semester)
ENGL 609 History of the English Language 3
ENGL 611 Applied Linguistics 3
ENGL 613 Topics in English Studies 3
ENGL 629 The English Language in Ghana 3
ENGL 639 Discourse and Communication 3
#Students in the language option will be required to offer one of the literature courses by the end of the academic year.
- LITERATURE OPTION
CORE COURSES
ENGL 605 Language and Literature 3
ENGL 637 Advanced Seminar in African Literature 3
ENGL 650 Literary Theory and Criticism 3
ELECTIVE COURSES (a minimum of 3 credits and a maximum of 9
credits to be taken per semester)
ENGL 613 Topics in English Studies 3
ENGL 615 Postcolonial Literature 3
ENGL 617 Women and Literature 3
ENGL 623 Film and Society 3
ENGL 625 Earlier Literature 3
ENGL 631 Chaucer and His Age 3
ENGL 633 Text and Context in the Renaissance 3
ENGL 635 Nineteenth Century American Poetry and Prose 3
ENGL 641 Studies in Oral Literature 3
#Students in the literature option will be required to offer one of the language courses by the end of the academic year.
SECOND SEMESTER
- LANGUAGE OPTION
CORE COURSES
ENGL 602 English Phonology 3
ENGL 632 Linguistic Models in Language Analysis 3
ENGL 642 Research Methods Seminar 3
ELECTIVE COURSES (a minimum of 3 credits and a maximum of 9
credits to be taken per semester)
ENGL 626 Sociolinguistics of English 3
ENGL 634 Pidgin and Creole Studies 3
ENGL 636 Corpus Linguistics 3
ENGL 638 Bilingualism 3
- LITERATURE OPTION
CORE COURSES
ENGL 618 The Novel 3
ENGL 642 Research Methods Seminar 3
ENGL 650 Literary Theory and Criticism 3
ELECTIVE COURSES (a minimum of 3 credits and a maximum of 9
credits to be taken per semester)
ENGL 614 Studies in Poetry 3
ENGL 624 Studies in Non-Fiction Writing 3
ENGL 644 English Literature of the Neoclassical Period 3
ENGL 646 English Literature of the Romantic Period 3
ENGL 648 Auto/Biographical Writing 3
ENGL 652 American Literature of the 20th Century & Beyond 3
ENGL 654 Modern Drama from Ibsen to the Present 3
ENGL 656 Writer in Focus 3
COURSES CREDIT
ENGL 600 Dissertation 12
ENGL 601 English Syntax 3
ENGL 602 English Phonology 3
ENGL 605 Language and Literature 3
ENGL 609 History of the English Language 3
ENGL 611 Applied Linguistics 3
ENGL 613 Topics in English Studies 3
ENGL 614 Studies in Poetry 3
ENGL 615 Postcolonial Literature 3
ENGL 617 Women and Literature 3
ENGL 618 The Novel 3
ENGL 623 Film and Society 3
ENGL 624 Studies in Non-Fiction Writing 3
ENGL 625 Earlier Literature 3
ENGL 626 Sociolinguistics of English 3
ENGL 627 Lexico-Semantics 3
ENGL 629 The English Language in Ghana 3
ENGL 630 Seminar I 3
ENGL 631 Chaucer and His Age 3
ENGL 632 Linguistic Models in Language Analysis 3
ENGL 633 Text and Context in the Renaissance 3
ENGL 634 Pidgin and Creole Studies 3
ENGL 635 Nineteenth Century American Poetry and Prose 3
ENGL 636 Corpus Linguistics 3
ENGL 637 Advanced Seminar in African Literature 3
ENGL 638 Bilingualism 3
ENGL 639 Discourse and Communication 3
ENGL 640 Seminar II 3
ENGL 641 Studies in Oral Literature 3
ENGL 642 Research Methods Seminar 3
ENGL 644 English Literature of the Neoclassical Period 3
ENGL 646 English Literature of the Romantic Period 3
ENGL 648 Auto/Biographical Writing 3
ENGL 650 Literary Theory and Criticism 3
ENGL 652 American Literature of the 20th Century & Beyond 3
ENGL 654 Modern Drama from Ibsen to the Present 3
ENGL 656 Writer in Focus 3
ENGL 660 Thesis 30
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ENGL 601 ENGLISH SYNTAX
This course offers students of English a comprehensive discussion of specific selected theoretical approaches, such as the generative, the functional, the systemic or genre methods of linguistic analysis. It is aimed at providing students with a detailed appreciation of the structure of the English Language within the selected theoretical approach.
ENGL 602 ENGLISH PHONOLOGY
Deals with the various modern approaches to the discipline. An in-depth analysis of issues in English Phonology and the influence of the various schools on the phonology of English will be highlighted. Emphasis will be placed on the application of such theories to the varieties of English spoken in West Africa.
ENGL 605 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
This course looks at literature from the point of view of linguistics and seeks to equip the graduate student with the skills for linguistic analysis of literary texts. The course is in two parts: theory and practice. The theory part begins with and introduction to the concept of the Rhetoric of the Text using pioneering works by critics such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Wimsatt and Beardsley and I.A. Richards. It then examines the distinction between what a text means and how a text means, i.e., the distinction between formalist and deconstructionist approaches to texts. The second part deals with practice in criticism with a focus on literature and language.
ENGL 609 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
This course will identify English as a Germanic language of the Indo-European language family. It will analyse the development of English through its inner history - how it changed - and explore its outer history - why it changed. It will discuss where English came from and how it transformed itself into the language it is today. The history of English in America will also be discussed, as will the impact of America on the English language today.
ENGL 611 APPLIED LINGUISTICS
The course will cover the application of linguistic theories - syntax, phonology and semantics - to language learning and language teaching. It will explore teaching of English as a second language and as a foreign language, comparative and contrastive methods, the learning of English as a first, second and foreign language, behaviourist, structuralist and cognitive approaches to psycholinguistics.
ENGL 613 TOPICS IN ENGLISH STUDIES
This course will enable faculty and visiting lectures to explore a special Area of expertise that is not covered by the available course offering, be it a special genre course such as the Epic or an cultural grouping such as Asian Literature, etc. Such a course offers an important outlet for fresh or newly research areas of literary study.
ENGL 614 STUDIES IN POETRY: THE ELEGY AND THE DIRGE
The course will study the elegy and the dirge, poetic forms representing a formalized verbal response to the occurrence of death. The course will examine the origins of the two genres and the relationship between them, and will follow their development from ancient times to the present day, attempting to discern changing social attitudes to the fact of death. Particular attention will be paid to the manifestation of these genres, particularly the dirge, in Ghana.
ENGL 615 POST-COLONIAL LITERATURE
The course focuses on the cultural self-determination that has developed in response to colonialism and its discourses and culminated in the ongoing (re)configuring of the discipline of English. It aims explore the major themes of colonial discourse and postcolonial theorisation. An important objective of the course would be to study the literary expression of this development using a representative selection of writers and paying particular attention to a number of key literary questions: the problem of the representation of non-Western subjects and cultures; the debates about ‘Englishness’ and multiculturalism; and the changing status of non-Western genres and modes of literary, artistic and cultural production.
ENGL 617 WOMEN AND LITERATURE
This course will aim at paying special attention to literature created by women and may include discussion of images of women in works by male authors. It may take the form of a general survey or it may be limited to special topics/area such as African/Afro-American Women Writers, Poetry in English by Women, Women in Socio-Economic Change, Women and Revolution, etc.
ENGL 618 THE NOVEL
This course offers graduate students the opportunity to study the genre at an advanced level. Students will be expected to familiarize themselves with Ian Watts’ discussion of the factors leading to the rise of the novel in England, also with the Marxist ideas of Lukacs and the structural concepts of Genette and Greimas, and to apply these ideas to their own discussion of novels drawn from diverse regions of the world including Europe, West Africa, South America, North America including Canada, Afghanistan, etc. Weekly seminars will involve presentations in which students will bring the critical concepts acquired to bear on the novel under discussion. At the end of the semester, students will produce a term paper in which they demonstrate the relationship between major structural features of a novel of their choice and the socio/historical world in which it is set.
ENGL 623 FILM AND SOCIETY
This course will trace the history of the medium especially in relation of Africa. It will include a survey of the theoretical ideas about the medium and some important approaches to its study.
ENGL 624 STUDIES IN NON-FICTION WRITING
This course will explore the range of non-fiction writing such as biography, autobiography, the essay, reportage and journalism. The course may seek to familiarize students with general principles of this kind of writing and models for achieving a good style. It may also focus on a critical deconstruction of non-fiction writing.
ENGL 625 EARLIER LITERATURE
This course which seeks to give an important historical foundation to the modern era of literature covers European literature from ancient times to the Renaissance with a spicing of late 18th century to early 19th century European Literature. It also covers earlier African Oral texts. The course is situated in the context of time and genre, that is, earlier time and earlier genres. The periods in European literature one may consider as ‘earlier’ are ancient, medieval and Renaissance times; and the ‘earlier genres are the epic, classical tragedy, classical comedy, the medieval epic, the novella (medieval) and the sonnet (Renaissance). The Early Prose Narrative is another earlier genre which belongs to the periods stretching from medieval times to the late 18th century.
ENGL 626 SOCIOLINGUISTICS OF ENGLISH
This course examines language in relation to society, with particular reference to the linguistic situation in Ghana, and investigates the correlations between linguistic variables and non-linguistic variables such as gender, age and social class. Generally, the course is intended to examine issues of language use in social context. It will discuss the theoretical foundations of sociolinguistics, as well as discovery procedures, methods and results of research on the relationship between language and society in several English speaking communities around the world and especially in Ghana.
ENGL 627 LEXICO-SEMANTICS
This course will concentrate on lexicology and theories of semantics as they apply to the English language. The distinction between the lexicon and the dictionary will be highlighted taking into consideration how each one is organized. It will also examine the various semantic theories from word to sentence meaning, including the Firthian, Transformational and Austinian positions on these issues.
ENGL 629 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN GHANA
This course will discuss the concept Ghanaian English, how it can be categorised as a New English, as a member of the Outer Circle and as in a process of nativization, according to Schneider’s Dynamic Model. The course will also consider the structural, phonological, semantic, pragmatic and lexical indices of the variety. In addition, the history of English in Ghana from the 16th century till today, English in education and educational policies over the years are topics that will be dealt with.
ENGL 631 CHAUCER AND HIS AGE
This course focuses on a study of a representative selection of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and those of the most famous writers of late fourteenth century England: William Langland, the anonymous author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Thomas Malory. The course will explore the variety of medieval literary genres: the chronicle, dream vision, realistic tale, comic tale, beast fable, romance, satire and debate. The course ultimately seeks to help students consider some of the useful parallels that could be drawn between medieval culture and our contemporary African reality: the centrality of the dream vision to the medieval imagination, the relationship of books to life, orality and writing etc.
ENGL 632 LINGUISTIC MODELS IN LANGUAGE ANALYSIS
There are several models of linguistic analysis. This course will discuss the English language from the point of view of traditional grammar through immediate constituent grammar to transformational Post-Generative grammar etc. The strong points and weaknesses of each model will be highlighted to present students with a comprehensive view of how language has been analyzed over the centuries.
ENGL 633 TEXT AND CONTEXT IN THE RENAISSANCE
The course offers the graduate student the opportunity to read a selection of Renaissance writing within the context of the social, political and religious developments of the period such as the revival of classical learning, the reformation, the reign of Elizabeth I and the Puritan revolution in England leading to the execution of Charles I. Some of these historical changes were extremely violent and not unlike the turbulent regime changes of our own recent history. The authors will include Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, Ben Jonson, Herbert, Marvell, Milton, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke.
ENGL 634 PIDGIN AND CREOLE STUDIES
This course discusses the various theories behind the concepts of pidgin and creole languages and the conditions necessary for their emergence. Their linguistic characteristics - phonological, syntactic, semantic and sociolinguistic - will be explored. Special attention will be given to WAP (West African Pidgins) and the Atlantic Creoles. The course further focuses on varieties of pidgin as realised in Ghana, making the distinction between GhPE (Ghana Pidgin English) as described by Huber and SP (Student Pidgin) as described by, for instance, Forson. Both varieties of pidgin will be analysed both structurally and sociolinguistically.
ENGL 635 NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE
The course offers an overview of American Literature of the 19th century beginning with the poetry and prose of the New England Renaissance and extending through the Realism and Naturalism of 19th century American Novel, finally ending with the Black-American slave narratives of the century. New England transcendentalists to be studied include poets Whitman and Dickinson, essayists Emerson and Thoreau, and novelists Hawthorne and Melville, together with Longfellow and Poe. Studies in American realism and naturalism focus primarily on Twain. The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass is the major text for Black-American Literature of the period.
ENGL 636 CORPUS LINGUISTICS OF ENGLISH
This course will explore how corpora are analysed. Because modern technology enables us to collect very comprehensive data of a language and/or varieties of a language, this course will guide students to analyse language using the possibilities the computer offers. It will compare corpora, analyse qualitatively the nature of the language by going into the details of texts, patterns and qualities, and analyse quantitatively the information in the data in terms of patterns of frequency.
ENGL 637 ADVANCED SEMINAR IN AFRICAN LITERATURE
The course focuses on the encounter between African writing and the modern era, the latter being arguably both a consequence and a cause of modernity as it has participated effectively in the thought and opinion of the modern era. The course will explore how this particular form of modernity has reflected African peoples’ experience of the political, cultural and existential dimensions of modernity. Readings will be organized around some of the compelling questions and issues brought to the fore by this experience: history and heritage, nation and imagined community, self and identity. Particular attention will be paid to the narrative strategies by which some of Africa’s foremost writers have sought to express this experience, and an overview of relevant concepts of modernity and postmodernity and a training in how these may be used to read African literature.
ENGL 638 BILINGUALISM
The course will focus primarily on bilingualism as observed in Ghana and the impact of having English as the official language. Who the bilingual in Ghana is will also be considered, as will the dominant patterns of bilingualism in the country, the factors leading to its emergence, its features and their effects on language acquisition. The course will further look at attitudes towards different languages in the country, how language is used in interpersonal interactions, as well as motivations for lexical borrowing and code switching. It will also consider the identities assumed by a bilingual speaker, the multilingual reality of Ghana and how languages in contact influence each other.
ENGL 639 DISCOURSE AND COMMUNICATION
This course is in two parts. The first part provides an insight into the relationship between discourse and communication in everyday interaction, the mass media and other institutional settings. Theories and methodologies for this first part are drawn from pragmatics, conversational analysis and critical discourse analysis. The second part explores meaning creation in different contexts of communication and how linguistic resources may be used to reflect socio-cognitive processes in discourse.
ENGL 641 STUDIES IN ORAL LITERATURE
A survey course covering the nature of oral literature; oral composition, performance and dissemination; field recording transcription; approaches to oral literature: style and forms of oral literature.
ENGL 642 RESEARCH METHODS SEMINAR
This is a required course for all first year M.Phil. students. It treats (inter)disciplinary research methods used in English language and literary studies. These methods include archival, case study, ethnographic, historiographic, and teacher research. It also offers students intensive practice in the processes of conducting research and scholarly writing. Specific topics include: basic concepts and tools of research and scholarly investigation, library research and the internet, scholarly writing and documentation, field research, transcription, analysis and interpretation of data, ethical issues in research, preparing a thesis proposal, literature reviews, seminar presentation, conference papers, etc.
ENGL 644 ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE NEOCLASSICAL PERIOD
The course will study English writing of the period 1660 to 1785, i.e, from the Restoration in England to the onset of Romanticism in English Letters. This was a period of great diversity in form and subject matter and the genres and authors to be studied will include satire (Dryden, Pope, Swift); the essay (Johnson, Addison, Steele); Literary Criticism (Dryden, Pope, Johnson); the Novel (Defoe, Fielding, Sterne); (auto)biography (Boswell, Equiano) the philosophical fable (Johnson, Voltaire), Drama (Goldsmith); religious allegory (Bunyan); the diary(Pepys).
ENGL 646 ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE ROMANTIC PERIOD
This course is an intensive study of a selection of major works by British Romantic authors that represent the central preoccupations and concerns of the period. The texts will be explored against the background of the great upheavals of this era, including the industrial and the French revolutions, the economic cycles of inflation and depression, constant threats to British social structure from imported revolutionary ideologies that caused the ruling classes to repress civil liberties, etc. Emphasis will be placed on theories of literary art, the concept of the self, nature and other relevant theoretical concepts.
ENGL 648 AUTO/BIOGRAPHICAL WRITING
This course will take as its focus the life of the self as well as the life of another. Whilst being aware of the conventional distinction between autobiography and biography and its relevance, the course will also work with a sense of the overlap and continuity in the processes involving the two and seek to explore it in order to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of life-writing. It will be organized in two parts. The first part will examine some classic examples of memoir and life-writing to see the modes classic life-writing has employed. The second part will use examples from different times and places to examine how the tradition has transcended and evolved beyond these classic modes of life-writing.
ENGL 650 LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM
The is a year-long course. The first semester deals with the major concepts of Western literary theory from Plato to the end of the nineteenth century. Beginning with Aristotle and Plato as the founders of the Classical tradition, the course will examine the contribution of early thinkers such as Horace and Longinus in the first century AD, consider the ideas of Boccaccio and Dante in the Medieval Period, before moving to Renaissance, Neoclassical and Romantic views on literature, and concluding with some of the critical writings of Matthew Arnold and Leo Tolstoy. The second semester surveys some of the major literary theories of the twentieth century and includes Russian Formalism, New Criticism, Reader-oriented Criticism, Marxist Theories, Structuralist Criticism, Postructuralist Criticism with emphasis on Deconstruction, Feminist Theories and Postcolonial Criticism.
ENGL 652 AMERICAN LITERATURE OF THE 20TH CENTURY AND BEYOND
The course investigates the practice of all three major genres in 20th century American Literature, especially during the early years of the century, and examines the major movements and ideas that shaped the course of modern American poetics. Studies in poetry are on the ‘New Poetry’ (Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams) and the Harlem Renaissance (especially the poems of Langston Hughes). Prose studies involve the novels of Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and Black-American writers James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Richard Wright. Drama focuses on Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Black-American playwright Lorraine Hansberry.
ENGL 654 MODERN DRAMA FROM IBSEN TO THE PRESENT
This course studies drama from Henrik Ibsen up to the present. The focus will be on the ‘moral’ impulse and the technical innovation that has characterised the genre since Ibsen’s ground breaking publication, A Doll’s House. Representative works from European, American and African drama will be selected for close study. The aim would be to explore the commitment of drama since Ibsen to stimulate, probe, vitalize, shock and unite (the ‘moral’impulse) as well as its commitment to continuous, formal renewal and innovation.
PHD PROGRAMME IN ENGLISH
- ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS
The entry requirement for admission into the PhD programme is a good relevant Bachelor’s or Master’s degree. All students applying to enter the PhD. programme shall:
- Take an entrance examination (written and/or oral), and
- Attend an interview to be organized by the Department’s Graduate Committee.
- Present a good research idea, developed either independently or in consultation with a potential supervisor, to be developed into a proposal by the end of the first semester in Year 2 of the PhD. programme.
- Demonstrate ability to carry out research (publications, e.g., from a Master’s thesis, would be an advantage).
- PROGRESSION IN THE PHD PROGRAMME
- Applicants with a good first degree:
- May apply into the MPhil. or PhD. programme.
- Shall take prescribed Level 600 courses in the first year.
- May progress into the MPhil. or PhD. programme depending on their performance on the Level 600 courses.
- Shall, if they progress into the PhD. programme, take level 700 courses in Year 2 and continue to fulfill the requirements for the PhD.
- Shall, if they are unable to meet the criteria for progressing into the PhD., be offered the option to do an MPhil., in which case they shall proceed to do their MPhil. theses research.
- Applicants with a Master’s degree shall:
- take prescribed Level 700 courses in Year 1 as well as fulfill any other course requirements, as necessary, in Years 1 and 2.
- after successfully completing the course work, take and pass examinations (both oral and written) in the courses taken, and may progress to the PhD. upon obtaining the required grades.
- upon progressing to the PhD., take and pass a comprehensive examination (a doctoral qualifying examination) within six weeks of the first semester of PhD. Year 2 to be confirmed as PhD. students and to proceed to the internship/research years.
- Shall, if unable to meet the criteria for progressing to the PhD., be offered the option to proceed to MPhil. thesis research.
- PROGRAMME DURATION
The PhD in English is a 4 year programme for full time students and a six year programme for part-time students.
- MINIMUM CREDITS REQUIRED FOR GRADUATION
Course work: 18-24 credits
Seminars (4): 12 credits
Thesis: 45 credits
Total: 75-81 credits
- STRUCTURE OF THE PROGRAMME
YEAR 1
- LANGUAGE OPTION
FIRST SEMESTER
CORE COURSES
ARTS 701 Philosophical Foundations of the Humanities 3
ENGL 701 Research Methods in Language 3
ENGL 705 Linguistic Models of Language Analysis II 3
ELECTIVE COURSES (3 credits to be taken in this semester)
ENGL 709 Second Language Acquisition 3
ENGL 713 Stylistics 3
SECOND SEMESTER
CORE COURSES
ENGL 702 Philosophy of Language 3
ELECTIVE COURSES (A minimum of 6 credits to be taken in this
semester unless student is taking ENGL 624 and ENGL 618)
ENGL 706 Discourse Analysis 3
ENGL 714 Early English Literature 3
- LITERATURE OPTION
FIRST SEMESTER
CORE COURSES
ARTS 701 Philosophical Foundations of the Humanities 3
ENGL 703 Research Methods in Literature 3
ENGL 707 Contemporary African Thought and Opinion 3
ELECTIVE COURSES (3 credits to be taken in this semester)
ENGL 711 The Epic in World Literature 3
ENGL 715 The Ghanaian Novel: Form and Function 3
ENGL 717 Studies in Comparative Literature 3
ENGL 719 Literature and Gender 3
SECOND SEMESTER
CORE COURSES
ENGL 704 Writing and Representation 3
ELECTIVE COURSES (A minimum of 6 credits to be taken in this semester)
ENGL 708 Imperial/Colonial Discourse & Discourse of
Decolonization 3
ENGL 712 Auto/Biographical Writing 3
ENGL 714 Early English Literature 3
ENGL 716 Poetic Traditions of the African World 3
ENGL 718 Tagore, Neruda, Cesaire: Literary Visions of a
Reconciled Universal 3
YEAR 2
ENGL 700 Thesis
ENGL 710 Seminar 1 3
ENGL 720 Seminar 2 3
In addition to these activities, in Year 2 of the PhD. programme students shall carry out any of the following tasks as prescribed by the Department:
- Draw up a research proposal, properly set out.
- Collection data.
- Participate in conferences, seminars and colloquia.
- Carry out pilot studies to test feasibility of thesis project.
- Visit partner universities to participate in selected programmes/research (where applicable).
- Work on ongoing projects (where applicable).
- Carry out any other academic project adopted by the Department from time to time.
YEAR 3
ENGL 700: Thesis
ENGL 730: Seminar 3 3
YEAR 4
ENGL 700: Thesis
ENGL 740: Seminar 4 3
COURSES CREDIT
ARTS 701 Philosophical Foundations of the Humanities 3
ENGL 700 Thesis
ENGL 701 Research Methods in Language 3
ENGL 702 Philosophy of Language 3
ENGL 703 Research Methods in Literature 3
ENGL 704 Writing and Representation 3
ENGL 705 Linguistic Models of Language Analysis II 3
ENGL 706 Discourse Analysis 3
ENGL 707 Contemporary African Thought and Opinion 3
ENGL 708 Imperial/Colonial Discourse & Discourse of Decolonization 3
ENGL 709 Second Language Acquisition 3
ENGL 710 Seminar 1 3
ENGL 711 The Epic in World Literature 3
ENGL 712 Auto/Biographical Writing 3
ENGL 713 Stylistics 3
ENGL 714 Early English Literature 3
ENGL 715 The Ghanaian Novel: Form and Function 3
ENGL 716 Poetic Traditions of the African World 3
ENGL 717 Studies in Comparative Literature 3
ENGL 718 Tagore, Neruda, Cesaire: Literary Visions of a Reconciled
Universal 3
ENGL 719 Literature and Gender 3
ENGL 720 Seminar 2 3
ENGL 730 Seminar 3 3
ENGL 740 Seminar 4 3
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ARTS 701 PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE HUMANITIES
This course addresses the kinds of questions raised in the humanities, the characteristic methodologies used to pursue answers and the range of criteria applied in their assessment. The hermeneutic focus upon interpretation and understanding in the humanities will be contrasted with the objectivity and neutrality of hypothesis-testing in the social and natural sciences. Students will reflect upon the nature of human experience as subject matter for different kinds of qualitative inquiry. Other areas to be covered include oral and written knowledge traditions, post-colonial African critical social theories, historiography, and relativist versus universalist modes of assessing human values.
ENGL 701 RESEARCH METHODS IN LANGUAGE
This is a core course for students who will do their research and data collection on an aspect of language. The students will be taken through the ethics of research and data collection, discuss the various approaches to data collection and sampling, such as: the focus group, the interview, the questionnaire. The students will further be expected to acquire the skills needed to transcribe data that has been acquired by the means of modern electronic recording equipment: phonetically/ phonemically as well as sociolinguistically. The merits/ demerits of statistical presentations will also be discussed.
ENGL 702 PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
This course discusses the philosophy underlying the various theories on language that have been formulated, especially in the last century. It will start with an overview of the history of theories of language from ancient Greek times. Foundational and conceptual questions in linguistics, quintessentially philosophical problems about the connections between mind, language and the world, and issues about philosophical methodology will be examined.
ENGL 703 RESEARCH METHODS IN LITERATURE AND LITERARY STUDIES
This course will consolidate, broaden and deepen students’ knowledge and experience in research in literature and literary studies. While exploring the relatively “fixed” methods in literary studies (e.g., theory focused approaches, genre and area studies), in formulating their individual research projects students will be guided to appreciate the current era of rapidly diffusing academic boundaries and to look beyond traditional structures and strictures in designing their research methodology. Students will subject conventional scholarly methods and fixed knowledge systems to critical scrutiny in order to construct knowledge on a firm foundation of original thought. In addition to challenging authoritarian perspectives, students will be encouraged to combine and reformulate existing methods into more integrated studies.
ENGL 704 WRITING AND REPRESENTATION
This course will explore the history of the idea from its origins in classical literary and artistic theory through the modern era. It will culminate with the post-modernist sense of the limits of representation i.e how the very strategies and media of representation are implicated in moral, political and ideological discourses which lock us back into particular socially constructed ways of understanding the world.
ENGL 705 LINGUISTIC MODELS OF LANGUAGE ANALYSIS
This course will be offered to students who wish to write a PhD in theoretical linguistics or comparative linguistics. It will deal with pertinent questions in depth on various grammatical theories of English starting with traditional grammar of the Greeco-Roman tradition. It will then look at structuralist, generative, systemic, construction, functional and cognitive grammar.
ENGL 706 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
This course will examine the broader academic context in which Discourse Analysis (DA) and Conversation Analysis (CA) emerged. It will start with Zellig Harris (1952) who coined the term Discourse Analysis in his work on linear ‘strings’ of utterances. DA and CA both look at communication as central to the social sciences. Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis thus combine methods for analysing spoken and written language using linguistic as well as sociological methods. The Course will look at various theories pertaining to the analysis of speech and discourse.
ENGL 707 CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN THOUGHT AND OPINION
This course explores contemporary African thought and opinion crucial in the shaping of the modern African world view. It will begin with an exploration of thought and opinion in sample West African coastal elite writing in an age of African anxiety and agitation over the spread of modern European ideas. It will examine how that gave way to belief in a renascent Africa especially in the vibrant press of the day; how the belief in a local ethos sought to strengthen itself with diaspora ideas and also how belief in a renascent Africa sought to strengthen itself through links with usable traditions of modern European thought and opinion.
ENGL 708 IMPERIAL/COLONIAL DISCOURSE & DISCOURSE OF DECOLONIZATION
This course is devoted to an interrogation of the assumptions and presumptions that underlie much of canonical thinking, especially as revealed in various master texts of European imperial and colonial supremacist inscription. The course is also focused on canon revision, canon reformation, and de-canonical thinking, especially as seen in the counter discourse of de-colonization. It is formulated as an advanced graduate seminar in Comparative Literature under which students will be encouraged to read/re-read various ‘canonical’ texts from both the English/European literary tradition and the literary traditions of the colonial and so-called post-colonial world. Primary literary texts as well as theoretical texts will be engaged in a carefully structured series of close textual and inter-textual readings. Each student will be expected to undertake a focused and carefully researched project involving a major writer or text representing the tradition of imperial/colonial discourse, read against a major writer or text representing the discourse of decolonization.
ENGL 709 SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
This course will discuss the Ghanaian language situation in detail, consider how Ghanaians acquire English and then consider the classification of English in Ghana as a second language and as a distinct variety of English. The course will then discuss the various theories that attempt to explain the New Englishes of which Ghanaian English is one.
ENGL 711 THE EPIC TRADITION IN WORLD LITERATURE
This is a reading of selected epic texts from various traditions around the world, representing both the oral epic and the written epic. A reading of the primary texts will be complemented by readings of selected theoretical/critical texts. Discussions of these texts shall focus on such issues as defining characteristics of the epic, distinctions and overlaps between the oral and written epic, multi-generic features of the epic, the epic hero, the historical/cultural/literary significance of the epic, theories of composition and the oral epic, the epic poet, etc.
ENGL 712 AUTO/BIOGRAPHICAL WRITING
This course seeks to meet the demand for greater scholarly attention for the genre from those of us in a cultural setting in which this particular kind of story continues to show a strong presence in the local literary market place. Whilst being aware of the conventional distinction between autobiography and biography and its relevance, the course will aim to work with a sense of the overlap and continuity in the processes involving the two so as to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of life-writing. It will be organized in two parts. The first part will examine some of the classic modes of life-writing. The second part will use examples from different times and places to examine how the tradition has transcended and evolved beyond these classic modes of life-writing.
ENGL 713 STYLISTICS
The course, which deals with how stylistics is perceived today, builds on what in earlier times used to be called elocution in rhetoric. It will essentially look at and critique the concept Stylistics based on three typological theories of analysis: rhetorical dualism (as dress of thought), individualism (expression of personality), and Crocean aesthetic monism (form and content cannot be separated). The course will also look at more recent theories such as the relevance theory, discourse stylistics, feminist stylistics
ENGL 714 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE
This course looks at early English literature from the Old English period and the Middle English period: from Beowulf to the Renaissance. The Old English period will include poetry that reflects the Germanic influence in the early poetry and some Old English prose texts. The Middle English period will look at the various influences in poetry after the Norman Conquest. Prose texts will include excerpts from the Peterborough Chronicle and The Ancrene Wisse. This is a course that may be taught to either literature students or to language students. For the literature students, the texts chosen will have been translated and the emphasis will be on genre, cultural influence and structure. For the language students the chosen texts will be in the original language, and the emphasis will be on grammar and lexis.
ENGL 715 THE GHANAIAN NOVEL: FORM AND FUNCTION
The course offers the graduate student the opportunity to investigate the social concerns and formal elements of the Ghanaian novel in English from its beginnings with the nationalist writings of J.E.Casely Hayford (which, several decades before Achebe took up the mission, sought to defend the culture of the African against the onslaught of European practices) to the less overtly political but profoundly introspective work of contemporary writers like Amma Darko and Benjamin Kwakye.
ENGL 716 POETIC TRADITIONS OF THE AFRICAN WORLD
This is an advanced graduate course on selected traditions and forms of poetry from continental Africa and the African Diaspora. It begins with a study of various genres of oral poetry as foundation texts in African cultural heritage, dwelling on orality and performance as primary features of African intellectual and artistic expression. Selections from the written tradition cover a wide range of representative forms and texts: scripted/written poetry from the dawn of human civilization, especially as found in Ancient Egypt; poetry written in African languages; poetry in colonial-heritage languages, especially English, but also French, Portuguese & Spanish, and from demotic languages of the African Diaspora, etc. Special attention is paid to the persistence of orality and performance aesthetics in much of written poetry in the African World.
ENGL 717 STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
This course is structured around a standard definition of Comparative Literature as a study of literary texts and traditions across linguistic, disciplinary, historical and geographical boundaries. There are two sections to the course: Section One proposes a theory of Comparative Literature and includes a study of the history, origins, definitions, dimensions, categories and approaches to Comparative Literature as an academic discipline. It also investigates the role of language and translation in the study and practice of the discipline. Section Two presents the practice of Comparative Literature with studies of actual literary texts through intertextuality with a focus on generic, thematic, linguistic, critical, periodic and interrelational comparatism.
ENGL 718 TAGORE, NERUDA, CESAIRE: LITERARY VISIONS OF A RECONCILED UNIVERSAL
This is a special graduate course devoted to the exploration of a new humanism enshrined in the poetic, ideological and philosophical visions of three of the greatest poets of the 20th Century: Rabindrânâth Tagore of India/Bangladesh, Pablo Neruda of Chile and Aimé Césaire of Martinique. The seminar aims to seek inspiration in the words, works and lives of these three authors in order to provide answers to the multiple challenges faced by the world today. The course will examine the universalist ideals of the three poets in order to extract from their individual efforts and creative vision, a united voice against the excesses of humanity.
ENGL 719 LITERATURE AND GENDER
This course will explore gender as both a historical category and a contemporary issue in the theory and practice of literature. It will look at the history of how gender is constructed by political, economic and cultural discourses, and how these gendered categories impinge upon identity and agency, aesthetics, the canon, etc., as portrayed in cultural representations (literature, criticism, drama, film, visual and popular culture). Theories of gender-based social inequality, oppression and sexism will be examined in relation to assigned readings, as well as ideologies about gender across the axes of race, class, ethnicity, nationality, language, religious identification and other forms of identity.
SEMINARS
ENGL 710 Seminar I
Students will present their theses proposals for assessment.
ENGL 720 Seminar II
Students will present their experiential research reports.
ENGL 730 Seminar III
Students will present progress reports on their theses research.
ENGL 740 Seminar IV
Students will present their research findings.