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FALL 2019


ENGL 202-02: Introduction to Creative Writing (Professor Strickley) 

In this class, we’ll experiment in three forms—poems, short stories, and ten-minute plays—while searching for the most potent mode of expression for our talents and ideas. The aim is not necessarily to decide (once and for all) what kind of writers we are, but rather to discover the range of literary tools at our disposal as writers. The course will be comprised of three major components: the craftshop (wherein we’ll read published work and discuss the elements of craft); the workshop (wherein we’ll write poems, stories, and plays and respond to the work of our peers); and the portfolio (wherein we’ll use what we’ve learned in the course to draft and revise a highly polished work of literary art). Students who invest fully in all three portions of the course will emerge from the class with an enhanced understanding of the art forms at hand; a fluency in the language of constructive (and artful) criticism; and a body of creative work about which they can (and should!) be proud.

  • Designations: Cardinal Core Arts & Humanities (AH)
  • Prerequisites:  English 102 or 105

 

ENGL 202-04: Introduction to Creative Writing (Professor Strickley)

In this class, we’ll experiment in three forms—poems, short stories, and ten-minute plays—while searching for the most potent mode of expression for our talents and ideas. The aim is not necessarily to decide (once and for all) what kind of writers we are, but rather to discover the range of literary tools at our disposal as writers. The course will be comprised of three major components: the craftshop (wherein we’ll read published work and discuss the elements of craft); the workshop (wherein we’ll write poems, stories, and plays and respond to the work of our peers); and the portfolio (wherein we’ll use what we’ve learned in the course to draft and revise a highly polished work of literary art). Students who invest fully in all three portions of the course will emerge from the class with an enhanced understanding of the art forms at hand; a fluency in the language of constructive (and artful) criticism; and a body of creative work about which they can (and should!) be proud.

  • Designations: Cardinal Core Arts & Humanities (AH)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105  


ENGL 202-50: Introduction to Creative Writing (Professor Strickley) ONLINE  

Welcome to the English Department’s online version of ENGL 202: Intro to Creative Writing.  Participants will have the opportunity to explore the genres of fiction, poetry, and drama, learning the nuts and bolts of craft.  The first part of the semester will be a primer in four areas of craft: detail/image, voice/point-of-view, character, and setting. You’ll experiment with these foundational elements in writing exercises, and discuss how published writers apply them in their stories, poems, and plays. For the remainder of the semester, you’ll take a closer look at each genre in mini-units, and you’ll be introduced to the creative writing workshop, in which you’ll read the writing of your classmates and exchange constructive criticism on a discussion board, with your instructor closely guiding the discussion.  For your final project, you’ll choose between a full-length short story, a series of poems, or a ten-minute play.  This course is a special offering from the English Department for the fall 2019 semester.

  • Designations: Cardinal Core Arts & Humanities (AH)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105 


ENGL 250-50: Exploring Literature (Professor Kelderman) WINTER TERM ONLINE

Are you looking to become a better reader of literature and to improve your skills in critical thinking? This course is an introduction to literary and cultural analysis, with attention to all the major genres: novels, short stories, drama, poetry, graphic novels, and film. As you read some of the most beautiful and thought-provoking works of literature in English, you will develop the vocabulary, interpretive methods, and writing skills necessary for literary analysis. In the process, you will find new ways to appreciate the literary works of major writers, from James Joyce and Zora Neale Hurston to Margaret Atwood and Raymond Carver. This course will be fully online, which means that you will receive guidance and feedback on your work that will be tailored to your own situation and skill set. The requirements are weekly quizzes and discussion board participation, take-home exams, and a research paper. 

  • Designations: Cardinal Core Arts & Humanities (AH)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105 


ENGL 290-01: Exploring Rhetoric, Writing, and Society (Professor Sheridan)

In this course, we’re going to learn about digital storytelling, analyze others’ stories, and produce our own digital stories. As we come to understand the craft that goes into a digital story, we’ll continue to investigate how authors convey their ideas and why they choose particular ways. We’ll do this through three major assignments. The first is a This I Believe audio essay about your personal credo.  The second is a “public service campaign” that includes both a visual and a collaborative multimodal story (e.g., webpage, video).  The final is a public service campaign (determined in class) of various digital stories. There are no technology pre-requisites, but we will be expected to learn the programs needed to compose digital stories. This learning by making and/or doing (techne) is central to this course, and we will many workshops to support you in this work. 

  • Designations: Cardinal Core Arts & Humanities (AH)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105   


ENGL 300-01: Introduction to English Studies (Professor TBA) 

Check back for more information about this course.

  • Designations: Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR) 


 ENGL 300-02: Introduction to English Studies (Professor Adams)

For more information about this course, contact the instructor. 


ENGL 300-04: Introduction to English Studies (Professor Wise)

English 300 is an introduction to the academic study of literature and to the English major.  Thus, we will study the three major genres in a variety of contexts and voices, examining the terminology and applying the interpretive strategies that pertain, including performance.  Text:  Norton Introduction to Literature, Portable 12th Edition.  

  • Designations: Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR) 
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105

 

ENGL 301-01: British Literature I (Professor Billingsley)

This course surveys British literature from the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries through the reading and interpretation (both written and oral) of representative works, some of the best writing in English that we can enjoy today.  The course focuses on works that are read and cited by informed, well-educated readers in English, regardless of their academic or professional training; it includes writing from hands outside the old canon.   Lectures and secondary readings provide historical and cultural background for understanding the works within the milieu of their creation, and class discussion highlights the evolving tradition of interpretation and new dimensions of understanding since the works were written. If this course is successful, at its end students will be able to meet the following Learning Outcomes:

  • read and understand representative works in the context of their original creation and as received in critical study, and demonstrate that understanding in your own brief close readings and critical commentary;
  • demonstrate basic familiarity with the works’ prosody and rhetoric;
  • place these works in their historical, social and cultural context, and explicate that context in critical discussion of the works and authors;
  • participate in and synthesize other readers' perceptions in oral and written discussion; and
  • comprehend and express an informed historical-critical understanding of class, gender and literary culture issues in clearly organized, competently argued and well-supported academic prose.

Texts: Stephen Greenblatt, et al., Norton Anthology of English LiteratureMajor Authors, Volume 1, tenth edition (ISBN: 978-0-393-60308-8). The publisher’s price is $66.25 (new). The ninth edition contains most readings for the term. Other course material will be available on Blackboard.

Graded work and grade scale. This course is plus/minus graded. The term grade will be based on these assignments:

  • Daily work in the form of postings on the course discussion board, intended to prepare participants for class discussion, and in-class assignments, usually impromptu (35%);
  • Two half-term examinations (25% each);
  • A comprehensive final essay (15%) on a set question drawn by lot at the final examination. The set questions are posted on Blackboard from the beginning of term.

 

  • Designations: Historical period pre-1700
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105

 

ENGL 303-03: Science and Technical Writing (Professor Schneider)

In this course, we’ll look at the various activities that constitute technical writing.  We’ll specifically focus on how scientific specialists communication with broader non-scientific audience, but we’ll also look more broadly at the kinds of writing habits and conventions that technical communicators draw upon.  We’ll look at common genres of technical writing (from memos and letters to formal reports), theories of document design and visual communication, editing principles, and audience accommodation and usability testing. 

Course materials will be made available on Blackboard.  Students can expect to complete 4-5 major assignments, including a formal report.

  • DesignationsArts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR) 
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105

 

ENGL 304-01: Creative Nonfiction (Professor Mozer)

For more information about this course, contact the instructor.  


ENGL 305-02: Introduction to Creative Writing: Intermediate Fiction Writing (Professor Stansel)

For more information about this course, contact the instructor.  

 

ENGL 309-02: Inquiries in Writing (Professor Olinger)

This section requires permission from the department

The ability to communicate effectively in multiple types of media is a crucial part of literacy in our society.  In this class, you will compose in different media—including images, sound, video, and print—while identifying (and perhaps even challenging) their implicit conventions. You will also read about how “new media” helps us reimagine traditional understandings of concepts like authorship and audience. By integrating practical activities with theoretical discussions, you will develop effective strategies for designing multimedia texts that integrate text, images, video, and sound.

  • DesignationsArts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR) 
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105

 

ENGL 310-01: Writing About Literature for Nonmajors (Professor Chandler)

This writing-intensive course will enable students to develop and practice their skills at reading, discussing, and researching poetry, fiction, and drama, as well as writing about them. ENG 310 will call on you to use discipline-specific vocabulary in analyzing literature, explore and adopt strategies for writing argumentative papers, and gain practice in doing literary research. The course will call on students to explore the nuances of the literature, as well as the artistic and cultural contexts in which the texts were produced. Readings will include poems, short and long fiction, and drama by twentieth- and twenty-first century U.S. authors.

  • Designations: Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)  
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105


ENGL 310-02: Writing About Literature for Nonmajors (Professor Adams)

For more information about this course, contact the instructor. 

  • Designations: Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)  
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105

 

ENGL 310-03: Writing About Literature for Nonmajors (Professor Mattes)

This course will cover a diverse range of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. In addition to giving close attention to the “internal,” aesthetic elements of texts, we will consider the social contexts in which such texts are written and read. These contexts include broader social, economic, and cultural currents in which our readings are embedded and to which they speak; changing attitudes regarding issues of art, genre, canon, and more generally, the politics of literary study; and the contributions literary studies make to conversations across disciplines.

  • Designations: Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisite: English 102 or 105

 

ENGL 310-50: Writing About Literature for Nonmajors (Professor Kelderman) ONLINE 

Are you looking to become a better and more careful reader of literature? And would you like to find new ways to improve your writing in the meantime? This course is an introduction to reading literature and writing about it, with attention to all the major genres: novels, short stories, drama, and poetry. As you read some of the most beautiful and thought-provoking works of literature in English, you will develop the vocabulary, interpretive methods, and writing skills necessary for literary analysis—and find new ways to appreciate the literary works of major writers from William Blake and Virginia Woolf to James Baldwin and Zadie Smith. This course will be fully online, which means that you will receive guidance and feedback on your writing that will be tailored to your own situation and skill set. The requirements are weekly quizzes and discussion board participation and a sequence of writing assignments that practice different analytical skills.

  • Designations: Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105.

 

ENGL 311-01: American Literature I: Afterlives of Early American Literature (Professor Mattes)

This course tracks the creative, cultural, and material transmissions of early American literature over time in order to explore how later-day authors register the powerful resonances of earlier cultures of writing. Students will develop an awareness of how past ideas about art, representation, culture, community, and identity are crucial to historical and modern artists and theorists. This course gives special attention to the generic and media transformations often entailed by the afterlives of early American literature – transformations that refigure our semester’s central works in sometimes unexpected ways. Pairings may include Louise Erdrich’s (Ojibwe) and Sherman Alexie’s (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene) poetic ripostes to Mary Rowlandson’s seventeenth-century captivity narrative; Laila Lalami’s novelistic illumination of the multiethnic dimensions of colonial encounter in Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s sixteenth-century Relación; Mat Johnson’s rethinking of the racial politics in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym; Kyle Baker’s use of graphic narrative to tackle the cultural erasures shot through The Confessions of Nat Turner; and film adaptations of John Rollin Ridge’s (Cherokee) Joaquin Murrieta and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

  • Designations: Historical period 1700-1900
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105

 

ENGL 312-01: American Literature II (Professor Anderson)

In this course, we will discuss American literature from the Civil War to the present. Besides reading major writers such as Whitman, Dickinson, Eliot, Hemingway, Hughes, and Morrison, we will connect literature to important historical and cultural changes in American social and cultural history, including rapid urbanization and industrialization, the expansion of American political, military, and economic power, immigration and migration, increasing cultural diversity within the United States, two world wars, the Great Depression, and so on. Similar to other 300-level English courses, this course will also help students learn the basic terms, conventions, and scholarly methods for studying literature. Grades will be determined by exams, homework, in-class writing, and class participation.

  • Designations: Historical period post-1900
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105.

 

ENGL 325-01: Introduction to Linguistics (Professor Kostakis)

Linguistics is the study of the forms and functions of human language. The study of language forms includes the description and analysis of phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic units. The study of language functions includes the analysis of the role of dialects and registers in society. Other topics to be covered include language variation, language change, and language acquisition and development.

 The course is designed to help students: (1) think and speak about language in a nuanced, sophisticated way, using objective, descriptive concepts and terms; (2) identify the components and dynamics of the individual/psychological and social/institutional ways in which language shapes and is shaped by human abilities and experiences; and (3) distinguish between plausible claims about language, on the one hand, and folk-legends or myths about language, on the other hand, that are cited as “common sense,” but that have no basis in fact.

  • Designations
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105

 

ENGL 325-02: Introduction to Linguistics (Professor Stewart, Jr.)

Description: Linguistics is the study of the forms and functions of human language. The study of language forms includes the description and analysis of phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic units. The study of language functions includes the analysis of the role of dialects and registers in society. Other topics to be covered include language variation, language change, and language acquisition and development.

Note: This course can count as a required Core course for the Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics. For more information, see http://bit.ly/UG_lingminor.

Student Learning Objectives: By the end of this course, a student will be able to:

  • think and speak about language in a nuanced, sophisticated way, using objective, descriptive concepts and terms;
  • identify the components and dynamics of the individual/psychological and social/institutional ways in which language shapes and is shaped by human abilities and experiences; and
  • distinguish between plausible claims about language, on the one hand, and folk-legends or myths about language, on the other hand, that are cited as “common sense,” but that have no basis in fact.

 

  • Designations
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105

     

     

     

     

     

     

 

ENGL 333-01: Shakespeare I (Professor Biberman)

In this survey of Shakespeare's works, we will concentrate on the plays, though we will also spend some time with the poetry, particularly the sonnets.  Our survey will include drama representing all of Shakespeare's preferred genres: Comedy, Tragedy, Romance and History. The final two plays of the semester will be chosen by the students. Typically, I will include the following titles: Two Gentlemen of Verona, Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Richard III, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest, among others.  Students can expect brief in-class writing exercises, a take home midterm and a short take home final that is combined with a seminar project (either a research paper or a creative project) that requires both a submitted work and a brief class presentation.

  • Designations: Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105.

 

ENGL 369-01 Minority Traditions in American Literature (Professor Kelderman)

This course is an introduction to some of the best and most groundbreaking works of fiction by American minority writers. The guiding theme for this course will be “American Cities, American Lives.” By exploring works of fiction and poetry set in different U.S. cities, we will consider urban landscapes as sites of migration, diaspora, indigenous identity, and transnational connections. We will focus on the works of Native American, African American, and Latinx authors and we will ask how questions of gender and LGBTQ identity inflect their works. The novels we will read include Chris Abani’s The Secret History of Las VegasErika Sánchez's I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (Chicago), Louise Erdrich’s The Antelope Wife (Minneapolis), Angela Flournoy's The Turner House (Detroit), and Tommy Orange’s There, There (San Francisco). Besides analyzing the aesthetic and thematic dimensions of these works, we will examine how the cultural image of different American cities shape our understanding of the text. Finally, we will trace these themes in TV/film adaptations of two dramatic works: Anna Deveare Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 and Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight (Miami). Course requirements will include take-home exams and two substantial papers.

  • Designations: Cardinal Core Arts & Humanities and Diversity 1 (AH and D1)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105. 
  • Cross-listed with WGST 390


ENGL 373-02: Women & Global Literature (Professor Ryan)

This course will consider works by women authors from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, with particular attention to interactions and tensions among Anglo, African, African diaspora, and Caribbean cultures. Topics will include antislavery writings (including an early Caribbean slave narrative); British colonialism and imperialism; and immigration, migration, and citizenship.

Designations: Cardinal Core Arts & Humanities and Diversity 2 (AH and D2)

Prerequisites: English 102 or 105, or WGST 199 or equivalent.

 

ENGL 373-50: Women & Global Literature (Professor Hadley) WINTER TERM

Following Victorian gender conventions, the 20th century witnessed the birth of the “New Woman.” Celebrated and reviled, women in the period were pushing boundaries in a number of spheres, with the suffragist movement and suffrage (1920), the freedom to travel alone, the increasing numbers of women receiving university education and degrees, and the exercise of new sexual freedom with accompanying birth control and childcare movements. And, as soldiers departed to serve in WWI, women were entering the workplace as never before. Reflecting more literary and intellectual trends, the modernist woman writer challenged inherited conventions as well, where she sought to discover a new “woman’s sentence” of her own, one more accurately defining and reflecting women’s experience. From the 1960s through the century’s final decades, women began to experience an increasing sense of “difference,” particularly regarding the rapidly expanding fields of lesbian literary studies, and of African-American, ethnic, and postcolonial literary traditions. This semester, we will explore these various permutations of the 20th century woman’s experience in selected poems and short stories. 3 exams and a series of worksheets will be assigned, along with regular reading quizzes.

  • Designations: Cardinal Core Arts & Humanities and Diversity 2 (AH and D2)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105, or WGST 199 or equivalent.
  • Cross-listed with WGST325 


ENGL 373-51: Women & Global Literature (Professor Hadley) ONLINE

Following Victorian gender conventions, the 20th century witnessed the birth of the “New Woman.” Celebrated and reviled, women in the period were pushing boundaries in a number of spheres, with the suffragist movement and suffrage (1920), the freedom to travel alone, the increasing numbers of women receiving university education and degrees, and the exercise of new sexual freedom with accompanying birth control and childcare movements. And, as soldiers departed to serve in WWI, women were entering the workplace as never before. Reflecting more literary and intellectual trends, the modernist woman writer challenged inherited conventions as well, where she sought to discover a new “woman’s sentence” of her own, one more accurately defining and reflecting women’s experience. From the 1960s through the century’s final decades, women began to experience an increasing sense of “difference,” particularly regarding the rapidly expanding fields of lesbian literary studies, and of African-American, ethnic, and postcolonial literary traditions. This semester, we will explore these various permutations of the 20th century woman’s experience in selected poems and short stories. 3 exams and a series of worksheets will be assigned, along with regular reading quizzes.

  • Designations: Cardinal Core Arts & Humanities and Diversity 2 (AH and D2)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105, or WGST 199 or equivalent.
  • Cross-listed with WGST325  


ENGL 374-50 Gender & Children’s Literature (Professor White) ONLINE 

Gender and Children's Literature: This course examines the representation of gender, race, multiculturalism, and sexuality in children’s and young adult literature through close readings of a range of texts published in the U.S. and Britain after 1900. Through an exploration of classic and modern texts, we will trace the evolution of ideologies at work in children’s and young adult literature.

  • Designations: Historical period post-1900; Cardinal Core Arts & Humanities and Diversity 1 (AH and D1)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105, or WGST 199 or equivalent.

 

ENGL 381-01: Modern Poetry in English (Professor Golding)

The main objective of this course is to have you develop as full and complex sense as possible of what's meant by the terms "modernism" and "modernist" as applied to US American poetry—although given the range of work that we will cover, and given recent scholarly trends in the field, the plural terms “modernisms” and “poetries” are more appropriate. The course surveys US American poetry from the 19-teens up to about 1950, exploring the implications of Ezra Pound’s famous call to “make it new” via attention both to individual poets and to movements and tendencies such as Imagism, the Harlem Renaissance, feminist modernism, and workers’ poetry of the 1930s.  Focusing heavily—though not exclusively—on what one might call experimental modernism, we will consider what lay behind this ideal of newness and look at the various forms that the “new” took during this period. 

Related goals are:

 --to introduce you to recent ways of thinking about poetry, and to some of the issues and themes that recur in writers’ and critics’ conversation about modernist work

--to develop your abilities to place poems in social and historical context

--to sharpen your abilities to read, respond to, discuss and write about poetry by helping you develop a vocabulary for doing so

--to continue to familiarize you with the basic terms, conventions, and scholarly methods of studying literature, including developing an argument with a thesis statement, appropriate terminology of the field, and close reading skills.

We’ll approach this work via a combination of lecture, small group work, and open-class discussion.

Course requirements will likely be as follows: Midterm in-class exam, part essay and part testing use of poetic terms; 2-3-page close reading paper, later in the semester (though it can be completed earlier if you choose); 5-7-page final paper; regular attendance and participation.

Probable course texts: Cary Nelson, ed., An Anthology of Modern American Poetry, an excellent and inclusive (in all senses) anthology; and William Carlos Williams, Spring and All.

  • Designations: 
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105

 

ENGL 401-01: Speculative Souths (Professor Clukey) HONORS 

In the early years of science fiction, space frequently figured as the American West writ large—the final frontier. In the genre’s darker, grittier reboot era, however, it often looks more like the final plantation, from Blade Runner’s updated slavecatchers to the exploited Appalachians of William Gibson’s The Peripheral.  And even as some white writers, in the twilight of American empire, set their dystopian survivalist fantasies in the region (The RoadThe Walking Dead), self-consciously “southern” varieties of Afrofuturism and speculative blackness, ranging from OutKast to novels such as Kiese Laymon’s Long Division and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, represent it as a site of vibrant black futurity contesting and sometimes transcending both the nation’s plantation past and its carceral present. Meanwhile, climate change fiction and ecological fiction set in the South, from Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior to Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, is on the rise as the region’s coasts begin to sink. This collection seeks to make sense of these and other “southern turns” in speculative fiction, broadly defined across multiple media and subgenres. This course considers how the U.S. South has been imagined in speculative fiction—broadly defined—from the nineteenth century to the present. We will read texts that imagine alternate histories of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, as well as those that map imaginary Souths onto fictional worlds. Topics may include Afrofuturism, science fictions of the global South, utopias/dystopias, horror and the gothic, surrealism/absurdism, and graphic narratives.

  • Designations: Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; membership in English Honors Program. 


ENGL 401-02: #MeToo and the Literature of Power (Professor Petrosino) HONORS 

In this seminar, we'll examine new writing--short stories, essays, poems, social media commentary, and other texts--emerging from the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault. Through a combination of reading and writing, we'll attempt to describe and critically evaluate this growing body of language and explore where specific writers' goals may converge with, and depart from, one another. Our work will begin by contextualizing the "#MeToostory" within an existing tradition of literary texts that contend, in various ways, with the problems of patriarchy and the institutional disempowerment of vulnerable groups. The reading list invites students to revisit familiar masterworks, like Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, and discover seldom-discussed pieces, like Marilyn Monroe's 1953 essay, "Wolves I Have Known," before arriving at newer works, such as Kristen Roupenian's short story, "Cat Person." Students will complete brief critical writing assignments throughout the semester, as well as a final project with options for scholarly or creative focus.

  • Designations: Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; membership in English Honors Program.  

 

ENGL 403-01: Advanced Creative Writing (Professor Griner)

Welcome to English 403.  This course is designed to help writers hone their craft. I expect to see all of you improve as writers, readers and critics.  That doesn’t necessarily mean I expect you to become more polished writers; in some cases it may mean you’re more willing to take risks, while in others it may mean you’ll gain greater expertise in things you already do well.  Class participants will also be expected to deepen their reading practices and to provide thoughtful feedback on their peers’ work and insight into the work of published fiction writers. Beyond that, the most important goals are probably the ones you discover and define.  The focus of the course is student work.  We’ll read published pieces, and have various exercises, designed to help improve writing, generate ideas, etc., but the majority of class periods will be taken up with workshops. Please keep in mind that this is a multi-genre course.  While there is no requirement that you write in more than one genre (though you are free to do so), you will be asked to read and critique poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and perhaps drama, and you should be prepared to do so.

  • Designations: 
  • Prerequisites: English 305 and instructor permission

 

ENGL 413-01: British Literature from Beginnings to Shakespeare (Professor Turner)

This course is configured around humor in the literature of early Britain (c800 through 1623). As with English 301 (British Literature One), we are embarking on what literary critics have traditionally called literary history: a survey and explanation of the major genres, literary movements, and tropes that shape what we now call "English Literature." Much as today, we are undergoing a fundamental transformation of our writing technologies courtesy of the Web and allied technologies, so over the eight hundred years we will cover, “writing” and story-telling went through successive transformations, as texts were disseminated first in hand-written manuscripts and then in printed books. Over the semester, we will map how different genres or kinds of writing were read and provided a kind of “social cement” that generated communities, taught readers how to feel, or which engaged them in discussions of what and how it meant to love, believe, be. Central to the course are questions of authorship: who wrote, how they had access to knowledge, and how their texts circulated. Related to questions of authorship will also be questions of readership.

  • Designations: Historical period pre-1700; Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; English 300 or 310

 

ENGL 414-01: British Literature from Shakespeare through the Neoclassical Period (Professor Biberman)

In this course we will survey a range of exciting and engaging literature beginning with Shakespeare and Ending with Jane Austen. We will study the evolution of drama (including the emergence of the musical), the rise of the novel, and development of lyric poetry in England from roughly 1600 to 1800. Other authors to be assigned include Margaret Cavendish, Eliza Heywood and John Gay. Requirements include occasional in-class and at home journal exercises, as well as a take home written essays (midterm/ final) as well as a seminar paper (or creative project).

  • Designations: Historical period 1700-1900; Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; English 300 or 310

 

ENGL 423-01: African American Literature from 1845 to the Present (Professor Chandler)

This intermediate survey of African American literature will focus on realist and fantastic modes of African American writing produced from about 1845 to the present. Realism, a literary mode that emphasizes true-to-life or verifiable experiences, has been central to African American literary history. Yet fantasy has been an important, under-studied, feature of much African American literature, including early representations of conjure or magic and experiments in science and speculative fiction. In this course we will explore texts that use the realist and fantastic modes, along with criticism on African American realism and fantasy.

The course will enable students to practice and develop their skills at analyzing, discussing, writing about literature and its cultural contexts. Students will also practice incorporating relevant secondary sources into their own interpretive writing and develop a familiarity with theoretical approaches to African American literature and its cultural contexts.

  • Designations: Historical period post-1900; Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; English 300 or 310

ENGL 450-01: Cooperative Internship in English (Professor Chandler)

This coop course is designed to accompany an internship that has been approved for three hours of credit. The course requires descriptive and reflective writing about the internship, in the form of weekly reports, as well as a final research project, a portfolio and evaluation by the intern’s site supervisor. 

  • Prerequisites: Declared English major; minimum 3.0 GPA; Junior standing; at least 6 hours of English after ENGL 101 and ENGL 102; permission of instructor.

 

ENGL 460-01: Studies in Authors: William S. Burroughs (Professor McDonald)

This course will focus intensively on the literary works and cultural legacy of the iconic American author, William S. Burroughs. Hailed alternately as the theorist” of the Beat Generation, a progenitor of postmodernism, and the Godfather of Punk,” Burroughs holds an iconic place in postwar American culture. Beginning with his first novel, Junkie (1953), we will read across Burroughs’s eclectic oeuvre to gain a nuanced understanding of what we might call the “Burroughsesque”—the distinctive aesthetic and political qualities of his work. In so doing, we will ask how the recurring themes of violence, torture, and drug abuse in Burroughs’s work relate to his deep anxieties about global capitalism, social control, and addiction. We will consider the value of his formally innovative techniques as strategies of social resistance, and we will ourselves experiment with some of these methods: the cut-up, the fold-in, the tape-loop, and “time travel,” to name a few. Throughout the semester, we will engage with an assortment of writings, film, art, and music in order to trace Burroughs’s sizeable impact on postmodern art and culture, particularly in the realm of punk feminism, cyberpunk, and performance art. Students should expect to produce 2-3 short papers, an annotated bibliography, and a final research paper. No exams.

  • Designations: Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; English 300 or 310 


ENGL 470-01: Digital Publishing (Professor Strickley)

In its history as a publisher of innovative literary and visual art, Miracle Monocle has produced twelve high-impact, digital issues. This course will offer students a front-row seat to the process of selecting and editing work for publication in the journal. In addition to addressing many of the challenges specific to digital publishing—web design, social media integration, online submission management—students will also earn hands-on experience in maintaining an editorial calendar, corresponding with contributors, and building editorial consensus—skills that are directly translatable to a career in print or digital publishing. Students will also address many of the ethical and technical issues still problematizing the global shift to a digital media environment. The course will culminate in the publication of the thirteenth issue of Miracle Monocle. 

  • Designations: Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; English 300 or 310

 

ENGL 491-02: Introduction to Theory from New Criticism to the Present (Professor Adams)

This course introduces students to some major issues in literary and cultural theory from the late 19th century to the present. The course will fall roughly into two halves, each of which will address a set of problems that theorists have attempted to address. The first half focuses on interpretation and related questions, including the morality of art, aesthetic judgment, intention, affect, language, and the unconscious. The second half focuses on problems related to the practice of representation, including realism, history, ideology, gender, sexuality, race, and empire.

  • Designations
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; English 300 or 310

 

ENGL 492-50: Special Topics in Interpretive Theory (Professor Schneider) ONLINE 

This course will look at major schools of interpretation, with particular attention paid to how these schools have impacted literary criticism.  To that end, we’ll focus on two key questions: what counts as a “text”? And what terms do we need to describe the various ways we might interpret a text?  We’ll try to develop some provisional answers to these questions by looking at how schools such as new criticism, structuralism, Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies have addressed what it means to interpret literary texts.

This course will be offered online, and will fulfill the theory requirement for the undergraduate major.

  • Designations
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; English 300 or 310; Junior Standing

 

ENGL 501-01: Independent Study (TBA)

Check back for more information on this course. 


ENGL 504-01: Advanced Creative Writing II: Fiction (Professor Griner)

Welcome to 504, Advanced Creative Writing, fiction. We'll be reading a lot of published work and doing some in and out of class exercises, but the heart of the class will be workshops, devoted to your work. I hope to help all of you improve and expand your craft.

  • Designations
  • Prerequisites: English 305 or 403 or instructor permission

 

ENGL 506-01: Teaching of Writing (Professor Johnson)

The Teaching of Writing is an introduction to the theories, research, and practice that informs the effective teaching of writing. Beginning with theories and research that examine what writing is, why it is important to teach writing, and how best to teach writing, the course will then move on to applying these concepts to practical applications (syllabi, assignment trajectories, paper comments) for teaching writing at the secondary and post-secondary levels. Guided by the common assumption that teaching is theory in practice, and that one must be reflective about one’s practice (continually examining and revising) to be an effective teacher, we will interrogate popular theories of writing with the goal of developing our own theories and approaches to teaching writing. Students should leave the course with the ability to draw connections between theories of writing, learning, teaching, and classroom practice as well as strategies for curricular, syllabus, and assignment design.

  • Designations: Cumulative Undergraduate Experience (CUE); Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 300, or English 309, or English 310, or instructor permission.

 

 
ENGL 515-01: Introduction to Old English (Professor Rabin)

Full of saints and heroes, monsters and dragons, Old English literature offers a vital and exciting entry into the culture of medieval England. It has inspired contemporary writers from J.R.R. Tolkien to Michael Crichton and Kazuo Ishiguro. And perhaps most importantly, Old English itself is the basis for the language we speak today, providing us with roughly eighty percent of the thousand most common words in modern English. This course is designed to teach students the necessary skills to read Old English in the original, thus enabling us to explore the fascinating world of the early Middle Ages.

  • Designations: Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; junior standing.

 

ENGL 522-01: Structure of Modern English (Professor Stewart, Jr.)

Course Description (from UofL Catalog): Examination of the structure of modern English language; emphasis on grammatical terminology and systems of classification. Students collect and analyze linguistic examples, spoken and written. Recommended for prospective English teachers.

Note: This course can count in the Theoretical Track concentration or as an Elective for the Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics. For more information, see http://bit.ly/UG_lingminor.

Course Goals:

  1. Transform perceptions of the grammar of Modern English from intimidating and mysterious into a concrete, describable system.
  2. Build a repertoire of concepts, terms, and analytical skills for thinking, analyzing, and communicating about the linguistic structure of English.

Course-level Student Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

  1. distinguish between language issues that are fundamental to the construction of English sentences and those that constitute “pet peeves” and “complaint triggers”;
  2. identify and collect examples of specified structure-types encountered in everyday English language use;
  3. describe English sentence structures in detail, through the rigorous application of the concepts, categories, and methods of descriptive linguistics; and
  4. produce original English examples of said concepts, categories, and methods.
  • Prerequisites: ENGL 102 or 105; junior standing. 

 

ENGL 522-02: Structure of Modern English (Professor Stewart, Jr.) 

Course Description (from UofL Catalog): Examination of the structure of modern English language; emphasis on grammatical terminology and systems of classification. Students collect and analyze linguistic examples, spoken and written. Recommended for prospective English teachers.

Format: This course is delivered substantially through the Blackboard system, with seven (7) face-to-face class meetings on campus. Dates approximately every other week during the semester (TBA). This is not a fully on-line course, and cannot be taken as such.

Note: This course can count in the Theoretical Track concentration or as an Elective for the Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics. For more information, see http://bit.ly/UG_lingminor.

Course Goals:

  1. Transform perceptions of the grammar of Modern English from intimidating and mysterious into a concrete, describable system.
  2. Build a repertoire of concepts, terms, and analytical skills for thinking, analyzing, and communicating about the linguistic structure of English.

Course-level Student Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

  1. distinguish between language issues that are fundamental to the construction of English sentences and those that constitute “pet peeves” and “complaint triggers”;
  2. identify and collect examples of specified structure-types encountered in everyday English language use;
  3. describe English sentence structures in detail, through the rigorous application of the concepts, categories, and methods of descriptive linguistics; and
  4. produce original English examples of said concepts, categories, and methods.
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; junior standing. 

 

ENGL 543-75: Studies in Stuart & Commonwealth Literature (Professor Billingsley)

In-depth study of selected move­ments, genres, topics or groupings of writers from the Stuart and/or Commonwealth periods.  Students earn graduate or undergraduate credit depending upon their registration status. By university policy, graduate credit requires additional work.

This offering of the course will be based upon intensive readings of the work of John Donne and his contemporaries, both in poetry and in prose, as reflections or refractions of the various continuities and disjunctions of seventeenth-century England.  The course is designed to take advantage of the active-learning environment of the Belknap Academic Building and Blackboard, but no special tech expertise or access is necessary for success.

Course objectives:  By department decision, any 500-level course in English should help students do the following: 

  • develop their own voice in argumentative source-based writing
  • exhibit flexibility and complexity of thought in analyzing literature and cultural studies
  • be comfortable with a variety of theoretical approaches, scholarly methods, types of evidence and modes of presentation
  • conceive, design, and finish an extended research project that demonstrates the features of “Ideas to Action” outcomes in effective communication, critical thinking and appreciation of cultural diversity.  To this end, 500-level classes should require one sustained, longer project (for example, a 10-page essay) among other modes of assessment.

In addition, by the end of this course, students should achieve reasonable competence in or familiarity with these areas of study:

  • A basic understanding of 17th-century English prosody and prose style;
  • Improved skills as a reader of poetry and prose, both in public (oral) presentation and in private;
  • General familiarity with the biography and literary output of the major figures;
  • Specific, detailed knowledge of at least one aspect of the cultural context in which the writers worked and wrote; and
  • Improved ability to organize and present a persuasive argument supported by literary-historical, critical and cultural evidence.

Texts:  John Donne: The Major WorksEd. with an introduction by John Carey.  Oxford World’s Classics, 2008.  ISBN: 978-0-199-53794-5.  Amazon list price, $15.35 new. 

  • Designations: Cumulative Undergraduate Experience (CUE)
  • Prerequisites: ENGL 102 or 105; junior standing.

 

ENGL 555-01: Cooperative Internship (Professor Chandler) 

This coop course is designed to accompany an internship that has approved for three hours of credit. The course requires descriptive and reflective writing about the internship, in the form of weekly reports, as well as a substantial final research project, a portfolio and evaluation by the intern’s site supervisor.

  • Designations: Cumulative Undergraduate Experience (CUE)
  • Prerequisites: 90 hours; 3.0 GPA; declared English major; permission of instructor 

 

ENGL 567-01: Postcolonial Voices (Professor Willey)

In this course, we will examine key texts in the development of Afrofuturism in the American diaspora and African Science Fiction from the continent.  To what extent are the two discourses linked or different?  Our work will take us from early stories by WEB DuBois through to Sun Ra and Amiri Baraka.  We will then turn to examine how futurism has taken shape on the African continent through examining such authors as Dongala and Okorafor and films such as “Pumzi.”  Of special interest will be the connections between Futurist and Ecological discourses.

  • Designations: Cumulative Undergraduate Experience (CUE); Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; Junior Standing

 

ENGL 570-01: Language & Social Identity (Professor Swinehart)

Do men and women speak differently? What are we asking when we ask this question? Are we speaking of acts of phonation, protocols of interaction, cultural norms, biological difference? How do we hear gender in someone’s voice? This course addresses these questions and more through an introduction to the large body of literature on language, gender and sexuality within sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and studies of language in social context more generally. We will investigate how language-in-use mediates, and is mediated by, social constructions of gender and sexuality. We will examine how gender intersects with other axes of social difference like class, race, and sexuality. Students are introduced to key linguistic anthropological concepts such as indexicality, performativity, and language ideology.

  • Prerequisites: Junior standing; LING 325 or ENGL 325 for undergraduates.
  • Cross-listed with LING570. 


ENGL 572-01 Studies in American Literature, 1865-191 (Professor Ryan)

Recent controversies over Confederate monuments (most dramatically, in Charlottesville, VA and Chapel Hill, NC) have sparked renewed interest in the American Civil War and its long afterlife. This course will focus not on generals and battles, but rather on cultural production during and after the war, with particular attention to questions of race, mourning, reunion, and memory. Primary materials will include a range of texts that are in various ways commenting on or haunted by the war, including, for example, Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus tales, Charles Chesnutt's short stories, Frances Harper’s reconstruction novel (Iola Leroy), magazine features that recount the war and its aftermath, and poetry by Whitman, Melville, Dickinson, and others.  I plan to use texts that are obviously about the war as well as those that reference it more obliquely, with attention in the last 20% of the course to the ways in which 21st-century cultural and political life continue to address and appropriate the war. Secondary texts will include historical and literary analyses. Students will do original archival work (no travel required) as part of this course.

  • Designations: Historical period 1700-1900; Cumulative Undergraduate Experience (CUE)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; Junior Standing.  

 

ENGL 577-75: Harlem Renaissance (Professor Logan)

This seminar is an in-depth study of the literature of the Harlem Renaissance in relation to other literary and artistic productions of the period (i.e. modernist) and to salient cultural and historical contexts (i.e. the Great Migration, WWI, Women's Suffrage). Through a careful examination and critique of selected primary and critical texts, the course will examine the Harlem Renaissance primarily as a landmark literary, intellectual, and cultural movement/phenomenon of the 1920s whose main objective was, in the words of Cheryl Wall, to “achieve through art the equality that black Americans had been denied in the social, political, and economic realms.” Our discussions will focus on related issues such as literary/artistic representations, national and cultural identity, “race,” gender, and class.

  • Designations: Cumulative Undergraduate Experience (CUE)
  • Prerequisites: English 102 or 105; Junior Standing

 

ENGL 599-50: Writing From Life (Professor Strickley) ONLINE 

Have you ever wondered if the stories you’ve grown up hearing about your family would make for a powerful written work? Have you ever considered bringing the story of your own life to the page? If so, this online creative writing workshop might be right for you. Students will learn the difference between an engaging anecdote and a compelling work of art by experimenting in a variety of forms: short stories, literary essays, and poems. Close readings of published work and regular writing exercises will draw forth the matters of craft at hand and workshop sessions with peers will help participants shape the raw materials of life into persuasive works of prose or poetry. Undergraduates, graduates, and non-degree students are welcome to enroll in this unique online offering. Benefits include rolling deadlines designed to accommodate any schedule and the option of learning and writing from the comfort of your own home. GRADUATE STUDENTS

  • Designations: Cumulative Undergraduate Experience (CUE); Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 310; Junior Standing  

 

ENGL 599-51: Writing From Life (Professor Strickley) ONLINE 

Have you ever wondered if the stories you’ve grown up hearing about your family would make for a powerful written work? Have you ever considered bringing the story of your own life to the page? If so, this online creative writing workshop might be right for you. Students will learn the difference between an engaging anecdote and a compelling work of art by experimenting in a variety of forms: short stories, literary essays, and poems. Close readings of published work and regular writing exercises will draw forth the matters of craft at hand and workshop sessions with peers will help participants shape the raw materials of life into persuasive works of prose or poetry. Undergraduates, graduates, and non-degree students are welcome to enroll in this unique online offering. Benefits include rolling deadlines designed to accommodate any schedule and the option of learning and writing from the comfort of your own home. UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

  • Designations: Cumulative Undergraduate Experience (CUE); Arts & Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR)
  • Prerequisites: English 310; Junior Standing