Spring 2016

Spring 2016

2905 ENGL 202-01 Introduction to Creative Writing: MWF 9-9:50am TBA (Professor Mozer)

 

2906 ENGL 202-02 Introduction to Creative Writing: MWF 2:00-2:50pm TBA (Professor TBA)

 


3154 ENGL 202-03 Introduction to Creative Writing: T/Th 2:30-3:45pm TBA (Professor TBA)


 

5802 ENGL 202-75 Introduction to Creative Writing: T/Th 5:30 pm-6:45pm TBA (Professor TBA)

 

3774 ENGL 250-01 Introduction to Literature –H: T/Th 11:00am-12:15pm DA308 (Professor Ridley)

Why study literature? What can reading and writing about literature teach us? And what counts as “literature” anyway? The class with work with Schlib and Clifford’s anthology, Making Literature Matter, which will introduce concepts in the analysis of written and visual texts. We’ll look at some famous – and less famous – writers, and we’ll read poetry and prose. At the end of the course, you will have seen how discussing the structure, symbolism, and themes in a range of writing might begin to answer the question, why does literature – and the study of literature – matter?

4331 ENGL 300-01 Introduction to English Studies-WR: MWF 11-11:50am HM207 (Professor Mattes)

This introduction to the English major will cover a range of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama while introducing students to central terms and methods of literary criticism and history. 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 disciplinary 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.

4332 ENGL 300-02 Introduction to English Studies-WR: MWF  1-1:50pm SK209 (Professor Peck)

In this course we will develop the skills needed to write about English literature in a sophisticated, academic manner.  This education will begin with basic literary terms as well as some of the schools of thought, such as New Criticism or Cultural Studies, which can govern how we approach texts.  The course will be structured around three units: fiction, poetry and drama.  For each unit students can expect to write an analytical paper based on close reading that we will take through the stages of the writing process, from brainstorming and first drafts to final revisions.  Daily class will involve close reading practice, active discussion and writing exercises.  Students can also expect a formal test on literary terms and generic conventions.

4819ENGL 300-03 Introduction to English Studies-WR: T/Th 11am-12:15pm DA205 (Professor Heryford)
In the closing paragraph to his seminal text, The Order of Things, Michel Foucault writes, “as the
archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps
nearing its end.” If Foucault is correct, and our conception of ‘humanity’ is indeed a social and
historical construct, how have the ideas of ‘culture’ and ‘literature’ helped to facilitate and encourage
our belief in this construct? And what does Foucault mean when he suggests that this construct is
nearing its end? The narrative of this course will explore the means and methods by which literature
continually invents and reinvents ‘the human,’ and vice versa. In addition to a survey of theoretical
essays grounded in literary and cultural studies, this course will analyze plays, poetry, short stories, the
novel, creative nonfiction, film, visual arts, and performance pieces that reinforce or question our
understanding of what it means to be a part of ‘humanity’. We will encounter texts from a range of
different historical periods, geographic regions, and epistemological traditions. Additionally, we
explore a breadth of critical theory and secondary analysis, observing and employing different tools
and tactics for writing about literature and culture. Student should leave this course with a basic
understanding of cultural studies, literary analysis, and critical theory, as well as sufficient experience
in reflecting on cultural texts through in-class discussion, oral presentations, and written assignments.

7938 ENGL 300-75 Introduction to English Studies-WR: T/Th 5:30-6:45pm HM103 (Professor Heryford)
In the closing paragraph to his seminal text, The Order of Things, Michel Foucault writes, “as the
archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps
nearing its end.” If Foucault is correct, and our conception of ‘humanity’ is indeed a social and
historical construct, how have the ideas of ‘culture’ and ‘literature’ helped to facilitate and encourage
our belief in this construct? And what does Foucault mean when he suggests that this construct is
nearing its end? The narrative of this course will explore the means and methods by which literature
continually invents and reinvents ‘the human,’ and vice versa. In addition to a survey of theoretical
essays grounded in literary and cultural studies, this course will analyze plays, poetry, short stories, the
novel, creative nonfiction, film, visual arts, and performance pieces that reinforce or question our
understanding of what it means to be a part of ‘humanity’. We will encounter texts from a range of
different historical periods, geographic regions, and epistemological traditions. Additionally, we
explore a breadth of critical theory and secondary analysis, observing and employing different tools
and tactics for writing about literature and culture. Student should leave this course with a basic
understanding of cultural studies, literary analysis, and critical theory, as well as sufficient experience
in reflecting on cultural texts through in-class discussion, oral presentations, and written assignments.


2907 ENGL 301-01 British Literature I: MWF 9-9:50am TBA (Professor Stanev)
This course will survey a representative selection of Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Medieval, and Renaissance texts that not only reflect a variety of cultural and historical experiences in England from about 700 to 1675, but that have also exerted considerable influence on British life and thought. We will blend lecture and creative dialogue in order to deepen our understanding of the early modern canon of British literature, and recognize and respond to specific historical changes in values and cultural ideas. Discussions will investigate the language and significance of a profoundly dynamic body of works, which emerge from the domains of the fabliaux, erotic and pastoral poetry, allegory, heroic epic, romance, and liturgical, as well as secular, drama.
As a result, the student learning outcomes of this survey are:
1) to recover the significance of early modern writings in their original setting
2) to recognize the chronological and stylistic pattern of change in the literary canon of the British Isles over a millennium
3) to place some of the most widely acclaimed masters of the pen, such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, among the writings and ideas of their contemporaries. These outcomes will be assessed through quizzes, midterm examination, two analytical essays with elements of research, and class discussion.
2908 ENGL 302-01 British Literature II: MWF 1-1:50pm DA308 (Professor Hadley)

This course will address literary texts and genres of the late eighteenth, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  We will explore the literary culture that developed in the context of a society coming to terms with both the French and Industrial Revolutions, and with what Wollstonecraft called the "revolution in female manners".  As the period witnesses the development of a distinctively modern consciousness, we will also address topics such as the construction of the modern individual and the evolution of lyric, poetic expression.  We will conclude with attention to British imperialism and to post-colonialism. This course will consider as much the intrinsically textual as it will the socio-historical. To this end, students are expected to bring the assigned text to class each day to follow and participate in the presentation of the materials.  Through readings, discussions, quizzes, and exams, students in this course should a working familiarity with the materials and—more importantly—the ability to analyze these materials thoughtfully.

 

2909 ENGL 303-01 Scientific and Technical Writing-WR: MWF 1-1:50pm HM204 (TBA)

 

2910 ENGL 303-02 Scientific and Technical Writing-WR: T/Th 2:30-3:45pm HM015 (Professor TBA)

 

2911 ENGL 305-01 Intermediate Creative Writing: Poetry: MWF 10-10:50am EH215  (Professor Adams)

This course will allow poets to develop their skills as writers, readers, and critics. Participants will engage in regular writing exercises and experiments, have multiple opportunities to share their own work and to receive feedback from peers, as well as the chance to read, discuss, and review a few books of contemporary poetry.

4363 ENGL 305-02 Intermediate Creative Writing:Fiction: MW 4-5:15pm  HM219 (Professor Ridge)
This intermediate workshop is essentially an investigation into how fiction (and the short story in particular) works, or, in some cases, doesn’t. It is designed to provide not only a valuable community in which to produce original fiction, but also a “practice space” to fine tune our approaches to writing, reading, and revising short stories. In addition to workshopping original stories, students will engage in critical reading with an eye towards craft. One of the primary objectives is to immerse students in the nuances of fiction by learning to read closely and carefully so that we can artfully dissect the architecture of a particular piece of writing.

3773 ENGL 306-01 Business Writing-WR: T/Th 8-9:15am TBA (TBA)


2912 ENGL 306-02 Business Writing-WR: MWF 11-11:50am TBA (TBA)


2913 ENGL 306-03 Business Writing-WR: MW 4-5:15pm TBA (TBA)

2914 ENGL 306-04 Business Writing-WR: T/Th 9:30-10:45pm TBA (TBA)


2915 ENGL 306-05  Business Writing-WR:  T/Th 11:00am-12:15pm TBA (TBA)


2916 ENGL 306-06 Business Writing-WR: T/Th 1-2:15pm TBA (Professor TBA)


4832 ENGL 306-50 Business Writing-WR: Distance Ed. (Professor Chamberlain)


4833 ENGL 306-53 Business Writing-WR: Distance Ed. (Professor Tanner)

English 306 is designed for advance business students and Arts and Sciences students (juniors and seniors) anticipating careers in law, business, or government.  This course assumes that the better prepared you are to communicate effectively and persuasively using customary business forms, the more readily will you achieve your personal goals.  We will compose and present work in modes, both written and visual, expected in business and government.  We will also practice composing processes, research relevant business questions, and practice professional problem-solving.  As an integral part of these activities, we will examine the rhetorical nature of professional discourse in addressing diverse audiences, sometimes with multiple purposes.

4834 ENGL 306-54 Business Writing-WR: Distance Ed. (Professor Tanner)

English 306 is designed for advance business students and Arts and Sciences students (juniors and seniors) anticipating careers in law, business, or government.  This course assumes that the better prepared you are to communicate effectively and persuasively using customary business forms, the more readily will you achieve your personal goals.  We will compose and present work in modes, both written and visual, expected in business and government.  We will also practice composing processes, research relevant business questions, and practice professional problem-solving.  As an integral part of these activities, we will examine the rhetorical nature of professional discourse in addressing diverse audiences, sometimes with multiple purposes.

4835 ENGL 306-55 Business Writing-WR: Distance Ed. (Professor Tanner)

English 306 is designed for advance business students and Arts and Sciences students (juniors and seniors) anticipating careers in law, business, or government.  This course assumes that the better prepared you are to communicate effectively and persuasively using customary business forms, the more readily will you achieve your personal goals.  We will compose and present work in modes, both written and visual, expected in business and government.  We will also practice composing processes, research relevant business questions, and practice professional problem-solving.  As an integral part of these activities, we will examine the rhetorical nature of professional discourse in addressing diverse audiences, sometimes with multiple purposes.

3267 ENGL 306-75 Business Writing-WR: MW 5:30-6:45pm TBA (TBA)


2917 ENGL 306-76 Business Writing-WR: MW 7:00-8:15pm TBA (TBA)


4349 ENGL 306-77 Business Writing-WR: T/Th 4-5:15pm TBA (TBA)


3268ENGL 306-78 Business Writing-WR: T/Th 7:00-8:15pm TBA (TBA)


5484 ENGL 309-01 Inquiries in Writing-WR: T/Th 2:30-3:45pm TBA (Professor TBA)


2918 ENGL 309-02 Inquiries in Writing-WR: T 1-3:45pm HM119 (Professor Rogers)
This section requires permission from the instructor

English 309, Inquiries in Writing, is a course that focuses on nonfiction narratives and research writing.  The class will read and discuss the text Crafting Truth, which focuses on creative nonfiction genres such as essays, memoirs, and literary journalism; we will also work on research projects focused on the academic interests of each student.  The final portfolio for this course will include about twenty pages of revised writing and a number of journal entries.

2919 ENGL 310-01 Writing About Literature-WR: MWF 11:00-11:50am TBA (Professor TBA)


2920 ENGL 310-02 Writing About Literature Nonmajor-WR: MWF 12-12:50pm DA103 (Professor Turner)

In this course, you will learn to write about many major genres of literary texts: poetry, drama, novels, short stories, and film. Course texts may include Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. We will also write about film adaptations of these texts.

 


4821 ENGL 310-03 Writing About Literature-Nonmajor-WR: T/Th 4-5:15pm HM121 (Professor Bell, Jr.)


3775 ENGL 311-01 American Literature I: T/Th 9:30-10:45am DA308 (Professor Mattes)

Our course surveys texts in American literature from the pre-colonial period up to 1865—texts that were composed and interpreted by people hailing from numerous ethnicities, including Anglo-Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, and Europeans. We will pay especially close attention to the expressions of women, Natives, and people of African descent who lived, worked, and wrote during European and American quests for empire and social control. In addition to exploring the multicultural and intercultural aspects of early American literature, we will also focus on the media, formats, and practices used to constitute literature across a wide array of genres. So, along with assigned readings from our anthology and on the course website, we will spend time considering the mediation of our semester’s readings—in the past and in our own time. Yoking literary and cultural study to this media-aware approach will help us account for our reliance upon acts of translation, transmission, and transcription that make these diverse works available to us.

 

2922 ENGL 312-01 American Literature II: MW 2-3:15pm DA104 (Professor Adams)

This course will introduce you to some of the major figures of American poetry, prose, and drama from the period of the Civil War until about 1950. Over the semester, we will pay close attention to the way these writers explored the idea of a private, inner self, and we also examine how these writers responded to a period of incredibly rapid social, cultural, economic, and political change in the external, public world. Authors will include Whitman, Dickinson, James, Wharton, Chopin, Washington, DuBois, Eliot, Hughes, Hurston, Faulkner, Williams, and others.

2921 ENGL 312-02 ENGL American Literature II: T/Th 9:30-10:45am DA104  (Professor Millar)
In this section of English 312, we will survey the significant issues, movements, writers, and texts of American literature written between the Civil War and the present and place that literature in its social and historical contexts.  We will discuss major literary movements such as naturalism, realism, modernism, and postmodernism. The course will introduce students to the basic terms, conventions, and scholarly methods of studying literature, including developing an argument with a thesis statement, utilizing appropriate terminology of the field, and practicing close reading skills.  The assigned reading will include a range of fiction, poetry, and prose from this period.

6761 ENGL 325-01 Introduction to Linguistics: MWF 10-10:50am HM103 (Professor Soldat-Jaffe)
Linguists believe that language is a complex social phenomenon – not an autonomous entity -, which occurs exclusively in social settings, and that these two factors (i.e. language and its social settings) influence each other. In this understanding, language is a form of social behavior and therefore fundamental for the speaker’s identification with its environment. Moreover, language and its social setting interact, language influences social settings and social settings influence language.
This class is an introductory course into the science of language, also known as linguistics. We will look at how language "works": what is the internal structure of language (the description of language) and the usage of it (the analysis of language)? We will investigate in this course what it means when we say that "language is more than just a language". We will find answers to questions such as "what is language?", "how do we use language?", "how do children learn language?", "are there other forms of language?", or "what happens when we lose language due to an accident e.g.?"
2923 ENGL 334-75 Shakespeare II: T/Th 7-8:15pm  SK111  (Professor Billingsley)

Course content and student learning outcomes:  We will read and study eight plays--Taming of the Shrew, Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Richard II, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, and Winter's Tale--placing them in their historical and social context and attempting to understand their sources, composition and original reception as well as the tradition(s) of interpretation that they have received.  Students will work toward competence in the discipline by:

  • developing skills for analyzing individual texts;
  • developing an understanding of the literary traditions;
  • relating texts to the social,  cultural, and historical contexts in which they were produced;
  • extending, deepening, and refining writing skills under the usual conventions of the discipline; and
  • developing an understanding of the nuances of language in both reading and expression.

Graded work for the term includes the following elements:

  • Daily work (30% total) includes Blackboard forum contributions, prepared in advance to get you ready for each class meeting, and other work prepared in advance or completed in class;
  • Two hourly examinations (35% each, 90 minutes in class) with objective and quotation ID/short-answer sections and a brief essay (for which prompts will be provided in advance with the expectation that you will work from a prepared outline or prior draft).

This course is plus/minus graded, and all assignments are tracked and recorded in the Blackboard gradebook.

Texts:  The bookstore has ordered the Norton Shakespeare:  Essential Plays and the Sonnets (paperback ISBN  9780393933130, publisher’s list price $75, campus store $80), which contains the eight plays we will read and abundant secondary material for your own use and reference (since such material will not be addressed in the course).  You may use your own “complete Shakespeare” as long as it has notes and glosses to help you deal with language or contextual difficulties; or you may purchase single copies of the plays (Folger Library editions are available at about $6 each from a retail Barnes & Noble store; Amazon prices vary $3-10).  Online texts are free or cheap, but unless they can be easily paged through, marked up and annotated, they will not serve you well in the course.

Questions can be directed to the instructor by e-mail.

8146 ENGL 368-01 Minority Trads Engl Lits – CD2: T/Th 2:30-3:45pm DA204 (Professor Brueggemann)
The condition of the human body—its “suffering”, its representation, and its physical, sensory, and cognitive differences and abilities—grounds much of our literature (around the globe) “in English.”  The new lens of the field of Disability Studies has offered a way to “see” this ground.  In this course we will use a few key critical texts from that field to guide us in a reading of disability and illness in English literatures across 400 years and in multiple genres (the essay, fiction, poetry, drama).  We will also repeatedly share conversations about how such reading and understanding can shape one’s work in many other fields (healthcare, social work, the social sciences, justice work, global and local economic development, etc). There will be short critical and creative exercises “in response” to this reading and our discussions each week;  rather than a final paper (one option) a final project —taking multiple kinds of forms and perhaps addressing one’s planned major or profession —will be shared among class members.
3967 ENGL 369-01 Minority Trads Amer Lit – CD1: MWF 9-9:50am HM114  (Professor Chandler)
In this course we will examine U.S. literature about immigration, which will afford a fuller understanding of issues of identity, culture, home, language, and nationality that the literature engenders. The semester will begin with recent debates about immigration, as well as eighteenth- and nineteenth- century writing that foreshadows these debates and that sets guidelines for those who have immigrated to the U.S. Much of the semester will focus on our study of fiction that explores the complicated experience of persons who have immigrated to the United States. Questions this literature raises are many; those we will explore will include: what (and how) does the literature emphasize about the process of making a new home in the U.S.? What are the gains and losses in this process? How does what has been left behind affect immigrant characters’ new lives? How does illicit migration shape the immigration narrative? How is the literature informed by its specific socio-cultural and aesthetic contexts? Required readings will draw from the large body of literature for adults and children and may include Junot Diaz’s Drown, Francisco Jimenez’s The Circuit, Julia Alvarez’s Return to Sender, Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation, Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone, Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese,and Dinaw Mingestu’s All Our Names.


7939 ENGL 371-01 Jungle Narr-Conrad to the Peace Corps Novel: MWF 2-2:50pm NS112 (Professor Weinberg)
A hybrid theory and craft course, our goal will be to codify the largely unexplored subgenre of jungle narrative, and figure out how (or how not) to write a good literary jungle/adventure book.  We will begin with some early narratives set in the jungle and the existing theory that can be applied to the works, beginning with “state of nature” of the 17th century and romantic primitivism of the 18th.  The class will engage with the evolving role of the “noble savage” as a stock character in the earlier works, and how the uses of “savage,” “fascination with the abomination,” “explorer/missionary/activist,” and “jungle as setting” have changed over time as the jungle has come to be viewed as an endangered resource.  On the level of craft, we will look at elements such as structure, plotting, character motivation, style of narration, the treatment of narrative time, and the uses of indigenous myth/spirituality, humor/satire, and illustration/maps.  Writing assignments will be both scholarly and creative.
Primary Texts:
State of Wonder, Ann Patchett, 2011
Whiteman, Tony D’Souza, 2006
The Storyteller, Mario Vargas Llosa, 1989
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1899
Essays and Excerpted Fiction will be chosen from:
Michel de Montaigne, Thomas Hobbes, Daniel Defoe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jonathan Swift, John Lloyd Stephens, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin, Earl of Shaftesbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alejo Carpentier, Claude Levi-Strauss, Peter Matthiessen, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Paul Theroux, Barbara Kingsolver, David Grann
Films by:
Werner Herzog, Les Blank
2839 ENGL 373-01/WGST 325 Women in Literature-CD2: MWF 10-10:50am HM114 (Professor Heryford)
In this course, we will look at the way in which nature writing, environmentalism, and environmental
justice movements have been influenced, critiqued and re-constructed by cultural texts documenting
forms of ecological engagement and environmental activism that attend to questions of gender and
sexuality. Focusing on a transnational range of contemporary women writers and cultural producers,
including June Jordan, Marilynn Robinson, Ruth Ozeki, Linda Hogan, Wangetchi Mutu, and Bhanu
Kapil, we will explore issues of the environment as they are linked to gender politics. This course will
be concerned with the historical waves of feminist activism and situate itself within an intersectional
reading of literature that considers these texts as mutually constituted by questions concerning
gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and class. We will encounter terms and fields of study such as
environmental justice, eco-feminism, environmental sexism, and queer eco-theory. Additionally, we will be
concerned with how different feminist cultural producers are able to articulate intersections between
ecological politics and other state-sanctioned and extra-legal attempts to control women’s voice,
mobility, and bodies. Ultimately, in charting these different historical and cultural shifts, this course
will work toward a definition of ecofeminism in which the fight against environmental injustice
cannot be separated from the struggle against patriarchy, and visions of ecological sustainability aredirectly tied to women’s liberation and gender justice.
3407 ENGL 373-02/WGST 325 Women in Literature-CD2: T/TH 11am-12:15pm HM114 (Professor Rabin)
The Middle Ages (ca. 500-1500) are often depicted as a “dark age” for women during which rigid gender roles were rigorously enforced, traditional heterosexual relationships were the norm, and oppressive religious authority stymied all possibility of non-conformity or rebellion. The reality, however, was far more complicated.  In this course, we will examine the various ways in which medieval authors, both male and female, treated issues of gender and female identity in their works.  As we shall see, not only was the understanding of female identity more complex than the traditional view admits, but narratives centered on gender also offered a lens through which authors could consider larger problems of authority, selfhood, and ethical psychology.  The texts we will read each approach these themes from very different perspectives, and I encourage you to bring your own ideas and interests into class as well.
7940 ENGL 382-01 Cont Poetry in English: T/Th 1-2:15pm LF101 (Professor Adams)
A survey of major poets writing in English since 1945, with attention to continuities, breaks, and experiments with literary modernism. Writers will include Bishop, Olson, Larkin, Hughes, Ginsberg, O’Hara, Hill, Plath, Brooks, Heaney, Baraka, Ashbery, Walcott, Murray, Howe, and others.
6184 ENGL 402-01 HON 436/446-01: Superhero in Pop Culture – WR: MWF 10-10:50am HR204 (Professor Turner)
In this course, we'll ask why Batman and Superman are suddenly so popular, and why the figure of the superhero has captivated humans from the beginning of written memory. By considering graphic novels alongside traditional literature, we'll trace the cultural history of the superhero and examine how new comics--such as Thor and Ms. Marvel, which reconceptualize women superheroes--might change the superhero forever.
6487 ENGL 402-02 HON: Wonderlands & Underworlds – WR: MW 2-3:15pm TH132 (Professor Petrosino)
Note: This section is restricted to students eligible for the Honors Program. Please call Honors at 502-852-6293 for more information.
Course Description:
In this seminar, students will examine works of verse and prose that create an immersive "world" for the reader to experience. Discussions will focus on the craft techniques necessary for speculative "world-building" in literature and examine how these tools vary across genres. Coursework will incorporate a mix of critical (i.e., scholarly) and creative writing assignments. The reading list will include selections from "classic" literary wonderlands and underworlds, alongside new explorations by contemporary authors.
4998 ENGL 403-01 Advanced Creative Writing: T/Th 2:00-3:45pm SK208A (Professor Ridge)
This multi-genre workshop focuses on poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and drama. Since it is an advanced course students will already have an active critical vocabulary which will be deepened by workshopping student work as well as by analyzing published work by a wide-variety of poets and writers. Throughout the semester students will assemble a comprehensive writing portfolio.
6739 ENGL 414-01 British Literature Skakespeare Neocl – WR: MWF 10-10:50am EH110 (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, the rise of the novel, and development of lyric poetry in England from roughly 1600 to 1800.  Other authors to be assigned include William Blake, Thomas Otway, John Dryden and John Milton.Requirements include occasional in-class and at home journal exercises, as well as a take home midterm and a final.

7941 ENGL 419-01 American Literature, 1830-1865-WR: T/Th 11-12:15 DA207 (Professor Ryan)
This writing-intensive course will take up a range of questions related to mid-nineteenth-century American poetry. We’ll investigate the roles that poetry reading and writing played in Americans’ lives, with particular attention to the materialities of the form (periodical publication, volume publication, poems within letters or copied into blank books, etc.) and the social and cultural practices with which it was associated (courtship, mourning, etc.). Featured poets will include Dickinson, Whitman, and Poe—all widely read in our own time—as well as figures who were considered important in their own moment, but less so in ours (e.g., Lydia Sigourney, Frances Osgood, Longfellow, and Whittier). We’ll also read the works of African American poets (Frances Harper, George Moses Horton) whose work has come increasingly into focus via recent scholarship.
6742 ENGL 420-01 American Literature 1865-1910-WR: T/Th 1-2:15pm SH103 (Professor Anderson)


5740 ENGL 422-01 American Literature 1960-Present – WR: MWF 1-1:50pm DA204 (Professor Golding)
Divided about 50-50 into fiction and poetry, with supplementary theoretical, critical, and historical readings, the course offers an overview of major tendencies and developments in US American literature since the early 1960s. Exact thematic focus and choice of texts still TBA, but the course requirements will be more or less as follows: one 5-7-page paper involving research and appropriate documentation that we will take through the full writing process (pre-writing, first draft, peer and instructor revision, final draft); in-class mid-term essay; final exam that will take the format of a group presentation; 2-page response paper on a literary or art event of your choice; regular attendance and participation, including regular discussion board entries on Blackboard.
Prerequisites: ENGL 102 or 105; ENGL 300 or 310. The course is approved for WR credit.
3385 ENGL 423-01 African/American Literature 1845-Present-WR: CD1 T/Th 9:30-10:45am HM101
(Professor Anderson)
This literature survey will introduce you to African American literature, but will also discuss ways that this literature relates to a broader American literary tradition (as well as other traditions), and even ways that bodies of literature are conceived and debated.
We’ll cover a larger range of literature, from the 18th century to the present, and discuss the complex relationships of African American literature to its historical contexts, such as the importance of literacy, and the uses of literature for social representation and moral suasion. We will also discuss the relationship of literature to such to abolitionism, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the Civil Rights movement. Outcomes will be assessed through essay examinations, essays (including a research paper), summaries of scholarship, in-class writing, and class discussion.
2924 ENGL 450-01 Cooperative Internship in English Studies: Internship-(Professor Chandler)
This section requires permission from the instructor


7060 ENGL 455-01 Cooperative Internship in English Studies: Internship-(Professor Chandler)
This section requires permission from the instructor


7041 ENGL 470-01 Renaissance Comedy - WR: MWF 11-11:50am TBA (Professor Stanev)
From romance, magic, song, and empathy with Nature to bitingly satirical fantasies about the magnetic, yet perilous realities and fictions of metropolitan life, the Renaissance gave birth to a rich and diverse body of dramatic comedies. In this course, we will explore some of the intriguing ways in which the late Elizabethan and Jacobean playhouses amused their spectators: from farce and parody to satire, ambiguity, cross-dressing, sexual deviance, and comical monstrosity. We will examine further some of the essential forces behind the proliferation of comedies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as the conversion of urban space into dramatic and meta-dramatic media. In so doing, we will investigate a complex set of relationships between stage, street, and ideas of navigation, fashion, expression, commerce, sexuality, and performance. Adopting at times a historicist approach, we will also explore closely the material and cultural conditions of play-acting and play-going in the age of Shakespeare. Since the course is approved for the Arts and Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR), you will be expected to formulate, refine, and analyze arguments and their assumptions in several writing projects. Our student learning outcomes are thus to understand better how Renaissance comedy infused with vigor  and unprecedented social commentary the late Tudor and early Stuart stage, as well as to hone research, rhetorical, and argumentative skills in developing strong written responses to the assigned readings. These outcomes will be assessed through response papers and class discussion.
2925 ENGL 491-01 Interpretive Theory:New Criticism-Present: MWF 12:00am-12:50pm HM108 (Professor Biberman)


3386 ENGL 504-01 Advanced Creative Writing II – Fiction: MWF 1–1:50pm HM114 (Professor Stansel)
This upper-division fiction course offers students who have already completed introductory and intermediate workshops the opportunity to further refine their craft. The discussion-based class will focus on longer works, with students reading and responding to short story collections and novels, and discussing strategies for sustained engagement with the reader. Week-by-week, the class will examine different aspects of the storytelling craft, including scene-building, plot and sub-plot development, writing voice, among others. In addition to creating and workshopping short stories, students will work on developing story ideas and structuring approaches for a longer piece of writing.
2926 ENGL 506-01 Teaching of Writing-WR;CUE: T/Th 4–5:15pm DA204 (Professor Olinger)
English 506 is an introduction to theories, research, and practices of teaching writing. We’ll examine perspectives on what writing is; how people develop as writers throughout their lives; and how writing can be taught. We’ll also explore various approaches to teacher and peer response, assessment, and other aspects of writing pedagogy. Ultimately, students will leave the course with the ability to connect theory and practice, a deeper understanding of their own philosophy of writing and writing pedagogy and their own literacy experiences, and materials to use in future classroom settings.
7942 ENGL 507-01 Teach Creative Writing-WR;CUE MW 4-5:15pm DA208B (Professor Stansel)
This course offers students an opportunity to investigate the methods of teaching creative writing. Students will read, discuss, and respond to a variety of texts on critical, theoretical, and practical approaches to the teaching of creative writing, as well as on the history of creative writing in the classroom. Though written assignments and in-class presentations, successful students will come away from the course with a solid foundation of understanding on how to design and lead a creative writing workshop.
7269 ENGL 518-01 Foundation of Language: M 4 –6:45pm HM210 (Professor TBA)


7934 ENGL 520-01 World Englishes: MWF 1:00-1:50pm HM210 (Professor Soldat-Jaffe)
English has rapidly spread throughout the world over the last few decades; it has replaced other (national) languages or taken the function of "the other" (additional) national language –a so-called intranational language. Why English? Is it just a historical accident? How can we understand the role of English in a foreign country if a (national) language is generally been used as a tool for unifying a nation, for establishing political boundaries, and for creating dissent. What do the different World English varieties have in common and how do they differ? We will explore how English varieties have their own sociological, linguistic, and literary manifestations in different countries, and we will investigate what the motivations and attitudes favoring the spread of English are. What is the perceived status of English? Is it an institutionalized or just a performance variety? And, last but not least, what is the difference between an international and a global language? Is it World Englishes or World English? This is a sociolinguistic course exploring the above questions in an interdisciplinary manner by using critical thinking.
4036 ENGL 522-01 Structure of Modern English: T/Th 4:00-5:15pm HM217 (Professor T. Stewart)
Course description and objectives:
This course is designed as a linguistic exploration of the various forms and combinations of words, phrases, and sentences that contemporary speakers of English typically recognize as belonging to that language.
To help in this exploration, students will:
  • examine both popular and technical conceptions of “grammar”
  • examine that variety of English referred to as Standard American English (SAE)
  • consider some of the ways in which one can vary from SAE and still be speaking English
  • consider the role of situation, audience, etc., in determining “appropriate use”
  • acquire terminology and methods that permit clear description of English grammar
  • collect real-life examples of actual English usage for detailed description
  • identify and monitor trends in English usage to evaluate “changes in progress”
    • 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
    Student learning outcomes:
    Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:
  • distinguish between language issues that are fundamental to the construction of English sentences and those that constitute “pet peeves” and “complaint triggers”;
  • identify English examples in terms of grammatical categories, inflectional forms, clausal functions, and syntactic constructions;
  • produce original examples of each of the types listed in (2) above; and

    • describe, compare, and contrast example English structures in detail through the rigorous application of the concepts, categories, and methods of descriptive linguistics.

    7221 ENGL 522-50 Structure of Modern English:Distance Ed-online (Professor T. Stewart)
    Course description and objectives:
    This course is designed as a linguistic exploration of the various forms and combinations of words, phrases, and sentences that contemporary speakers of English typically recognize as belonging to that language.
    To help in this exploration, students will:
  • examine both popular and technical conceptions of “grammar”
  • examine that variety of English referred to as Standard American English (SAE)
  • consider some of the ways in which one can vary from SAE and still be speaking English
  • consider the role of situation, audience, etc., in determining “appropriate use”
  • acquire terminology and methods that permit clear description of English grammar
  • collect real-life examples of actual English usage for detailed description
  • identify and monitor trends in English usage to evaluate “changes in progress”
    • 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
    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”;
  • identify English examples in terms of grammatical categories, inflectional forms, clausal functions, and syntactic constructions;
  • produce original examples of each of the types listed in (2) above; and

    • describe, compare, and contrast example English structures in detail through the rigorous application of the concepts, categories, and methods of descriptive linguistics.

    7233 ENGL 522-51 Structure of Modern English: Distance Ed-online (Professor T. Stewart)
    Course description and objectives:
    This course is designed as a linguistic exploration of the various forms and combinations of words, phrases, and sentences that contemporary speakers of English typically recognize as belonging to that language.
    To help in this exploration, students will:
  • examine both popular and technical conceptions of “grammar”
  • examine that variety of English referred to as Standard American English (SAE)
  • consider some of the ways in which one can vary from SAE and still be speaking English
  • consider the role of situation, audience, etc., in determining “appropriate use”
  • acquire terminology and methods that permit clear description of English grammar
  • collect real-life examples of actual English usage for detailed description
  • identify and monitor trends in English usage to evaluate “changes in progress”
    • 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
    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”;
  • identify English examples in terms of grammatical categories, inflectional forms, clausal functions, and syntactic constructions;
  • produce original examples of each of the types listed in (2) above; and

    • describe, compare, and contrast example English structures in detail through the rigorous application of the concepts, categories, and methods of descriptive linguistics.

    4623 ENGL 523-01 Hist-English Language: T/Th 9:30-10:45am HM210 (Professor T. Stewart)
    Description: This course traces the development of English from Old English (Anglo-Saxon) origins, through the Middle English (e.g., Chaucer) and Early Modern English (e.g., Shakespeare) periods, to Present-Day English. The course has a double emphasis:
  • internal history (diachronic change), or how grammar and vocabulary change with use over time and space, and
  • external history (language and dialect contact), including influences such as the 9th century settlement of Vikings in Britain and the 11th century Norman-French conquest of Britain.
    • Because English hasn’t been “perfected” (whatever that would mean), it hasn’t stopped changing and it won’t, as long as people use it as a living language. In order to speculate as to how English might change in the future, this course will also consider regional dialects, and both current and post-colonial English vernaculars around the world.
    Successful completion of this course will provide the student with:
  • greater appreciation for the fluidity of language usage,
  • broader understanding of the socio-political contexts for language change, and
  • increased ability to describe language phenomena objectively.
    • Required textbook:
    Jan Svartvik & Geoffrey Leech. 2006. English: One Tongue, Many Voices. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
    Recommended textbook:
    David Crystal. 2003. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
    8186 ENGL 535-75 Applied Ling for ENGL Teachers W 7-9:45pm HM109 (Professor Stewart, Jr.)
    With all that is known about how languages work and how human beings use their languages, what can be done to put that abstract knowledge to work, developing and implementing concrete solutions to practical problems? This course, Applied Linguistics, presents an approach to language study designed to address real-world language issues encountered in teaching, learning, translation, public policy, medical and legal contexts, and more.
    Topics for this course include the following:
  • Language in everyday use
    • Language variation
    • Discourse analysis
    • Language policy & planning
  • Language, learning, and education
    • Literacy
    • Bilingual & multilingual education
    • Language instruction
  • Language and Expert Uses
    • Translation
    • Lexicography (dictionary-making)
    • Language and the law
    By participating in this course, students will:
  • engage in discussions of contemporary language controversies,
  • experience specialist methods in language analysis, and
  • address practical language-related problems with an eye toward generating realizable solutions.
    • This course is particularly recommended for language teachers, speech-language professionals, translators, linguaphiles, and problem-solvers.
    Required textbook:
  • C. J. Hall, P. H. Smith, & R. Wicaksono (2011). Mapping Applied Linguistics. London/New York: Routledge. ISBN-13: 978-0-415-55913-3.
    • Prerequisites for enrollment:
  • Junior standing & LING 325 or ENGL 325“Introduction to Linguistics” for undergraduates.
    • Notes:
  • Cross-listed with LING 535.75.
    • Provides Track-B (Applied) or Elective credit for undergraduate Linguistics Minor.
    7946 ENGL 546-01 Vict Story: Crim & Insanity-CUE: MW 2-3:15pm HM217 (Professor Rosner)
    Victorian readers were fascinated by crime and its causes, with some of those causes traced to different kinds of madness likely to affect "weak" individuals. In this 500-level course designed for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students, we will read Victorian non-fiction and fiction related to Victorian crime and insanity.  Some readings will involve crime in part; some will involve madness in part, some will involve both.  We will also read and discuss work done by the students and by critics.
    7943 ENGL 547 Easter 1916: Literature and Revolution: MWF 10-10:50am GH303 (Professor Clukey)
    Easter weekend 1916: a ragtag group of Irish intellectuals and rebels declared Ireland a free republic and occupied several buildings in downtown Dublin. Although the rebels were quickly captured and executed by the British army, their deaths ignited a revolution that divided Ireland and ended hundreds of years of brutal British occupation on much of the island. As W.B. Yeats put it, Ireland was “changed, changed utterly: a terrible beauty is born.”
    This course will examine the literature and culture of the Irish revolution. Course discussions will focus on the history of British colonization in Ireland, Irish nationalism, the Celtic revival, and divides within the Irish rebellion that eventually led to brutal civil war. Readings may include writing by revolutionaries, W.B. Yeats, Frank O’Connor, Michael McLaverty, Roddy Doyle, Sean O’Casey, among others.
    7944 ENGL 575-01 African American Novel - CUE: MWF 12:-12:50pm HM106 (Professor Chandler)
    In this course we will explore African American writers’ use of the novel form from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. One objective of the course will be carefully examining how black novelists have used the form for common preoccupations in fiction—representing being, time, and place. Also important will be exploring how aesthetic and larger cultural contexts have affected African American novel-writing. To facilitate this line of inquiry, we will read a selection of relevant criticism.
    Do the syllabus’ novels represent a tradition of African American literature? If so, in what ways? How do they make us think about conventional ways of categorizing literature by genre, expressive mode, and the authors’ race? What ideas about identity, society, history, language, and art do the novels inspire? How are novels for adults distinct from those for young readers?
    Required books may include: Harriet Wilson, Our Nig; James Weldon Johnson, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha; Percival Everett, God’s Country; Virginia Hamilton, Zeely; June Jordan, His Own Where;Toni Morrison, A Mercy; Dinaw Mingestu, All Our Names.

    7945 ENGL 591-01 Hist Crit: Plato-New Crit – CUE: T/Th 1-2:15pm EH215 (Professor Dietrich)
    We will study in some depth a number of key texts in literary theory from the classical era to the mid-twentieth century. We will focus on their different ways of answering these questions:  how do literary texts construct meaning? What makes a work good? What is the appropriate relationship of art to society? We will also consider the relationship of theory to practical criticism.  Students will be prepared to engage in contemporary debates about literary criticism by developing their skills in analysis and evidence-based argument and through examination of various historical perspectives on central issues in the field. Graduate students will be asked also to examine the wider cultural contexts of particular texts and to develop their pedagogical skills by teaching the material to the class in a thirty-minute period.
    6750 ENGL 599-01 Visual Rhetoric-WR;CUE: T/Th 4:00 – 5:15pm DA301 (Professor Johnson, T.)
    During any given day, countless individuals wake up in rooms with walls covered in images they value, dress in clothes covered with symbols that signify all sorts of messages, drive to school and work on roads flanked by billboards, fill the time between studying Powerpoint slides with videos (of the news, or people dumping ice water on themselves, or of cats), memes, and photos of friends, and go to bed streaming movies and television shows. There is little doubt that we are living in the age of the visual. Amidst these countless visual messages circulating about, understandings of the self, interpersonal relationships, bodies, marketplaces, nature and the natural, knowledge, and culture are all being shaped and reshaped. In this course we will work to make sense of the rhetorical power and narrative complexities of visual culture in the twenty-first century.
    7223 599-02 Advanced Acad Writ Across Discp-WR: T/Th 2:30 – 3:45pm HM122 (Professor A. Olinger)
    This course is designed for graduate and professional students in any department, as well as for advanced undergraduates in any department who are considering graduate school or conducting research and writing theses. Students who speak English as a second, third, or fourth language are especially welcome.
    In this course, students will:
  • Investigate best practices for research, writing, and publishing in their discipline
  • Reflect on their literacy and language background, habits, and goals
  • Analyze articles in their discipline for particular linguistic and rhetorical patterns
  • Apply what they’ve learned to an extended writing project of their design
  • Improve their ability to edit for grammar, word choice, and punctuation and to craft more incisive prose
  • Participate in a community of peers who share their work
    • Feel free to contact the instructor, Dr. Andrea Olinger (arolin01@louisville.edu), if you have any questions about the class.