Spring 2018 — Department of English

2763 ENGL 202-01 Introduction to Creative Writing: MWF 9:00-9:50am (Professor Weinberg)

This course gives you the opportunity to explore the genres of fiction, poetry, and drama; think of them as vast nations you’ll visit only briefly, but long enough to decide if you want to return in future semesters. Your main projects will be a short story, a series of poems, and a ten-minute play. The first month will be a primer in four areas of craft applicable to all three genres: detail/image, voice/point-of-view, character, and setting. You’ll experiment with these foundation elements in writing exercises and discuss how published writers apply them. 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 exchange constructive criticism of your fiction and poetry.

2764 ENGL 202-02 Introduction to Creative Writing: MWF 2:00-2:50pm (Professor Stansel)

This course introduces students to three genres of creative writing: poetry, drama, and fiction. Students will read a variety of works in each, analyzing and discussing the texts from a writerly perspective (discovering along the way just what that means). Students will examine the works using particular aspects of the writing craft (image, point of view, dialogue, etc.) as foundations for understanding. Then the class members will try their own hands at the creation of poems, plays, and stories. The class will discuss methods of invention and development and practice the art of revision. This is a discussion-based class and students should be ready to voice their thoughts and ideas using a developing workshop vocabulary.

2989 ENGL 202-03 Introduction to Creative Writing: T/Th 9:30-10:45am (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.

5174 ENGL 202-04 Introduction to Creative Writing: T/Th 2:30-3:45pm (Professor Strickley)

8471 ENGL 202-75 Introduction to Creative Writing: T/Th 5:30-6:45pm (Professor Bailey)

In this course, students will read and discuss a combination of classic and contemporary fiction, poetry, and drama. These readings and discussions will always be geared towards giving students a broad overview of the conventions and craft elements associated with each genre so that students may effectively produce literary work of their own. By understanding how past and current writers have operated, students will learn how to emulate and creatively deviate from “the masters.” Student work will be treated as art-in-progress and will be reviewed during workshop sessions. During these sessions, students will engage in constructive criticism of each other’s work. By the end of the course, students will have produced a portfolio consisting of 3-5 poems, 8-10 pages of fiction, and a one-act play.

9288 ENGL 250-01 Introduction to Literature - H: MW 2:00-4:30pm (Professor Weinberg)

Welcome to Introduction to Literature, a course that offers you a sampler platter of literary genres for close inspection, including short stories, poetry, a novel, a memoir, as well as two film adaptations. Our goal will be to develop the central skill of literary analysis, or ‘close reading,’ and apply close reading to course texts through a series of writing assignments, both scholarly and creative. We will analyze the content of the pieces we read and their structure, symbolism, and themes, with emphasis on the latter. By the end, you should have a multifaceted lens through which to enjoy works of narrative art, and a confidence going forward in any future English courses, whether they are literature or creative writing.

Probable Texts:

The Beautiful Struggle, Ta-Nehisi Coates

Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

4000 ENGL 300-01 Introduction to English Studies-WR: MWF 2:00-2:50pm (Professor Adams)

This course will serve as an introduction to literary genres, including lyric poetry, drama, short fiction, and the novel. Though we will read texts from various historical periods, most of our readings will center on the relationship between the individual and the community. The class will be discussion-based and, although it will provide a foundation for future English majors, no familiarity with literature will be assumed. Requirements will include careful reading, regular participation, a class presentation, and a few short papers.

4001 ENGL 300-02 Introduction to English Studies-WR: MWF 12:00-12:50pm (Professor Adams)

4420 ENGL 300-03 Introduction to English Studies-WR: T/Th 9:30-10:45am (Professor Ryan)

6243 ENGL 300-04 Introduction to English Studies-WR: MW 3:30-4:45pm (Professor Chandler)

This course will examine fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, and film, while exploring important methods and terms for analyzing and understanding texts. In addition to closely examining the internal dynamics of literature and film, we will consider the social contexts in which they were created and are read or viewed. Required work for the course may include short response papers, quizzes, reports, and a longer essay.

2765 ENGL 302-01 British Literature II MWF 9:00-9:50am (Professor Hadley)

This course will address texts and genres of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth and twentieth century’s, fiction and non-fiction. We will explore the culture and literature that developed in the context of a society coming to terms with both the French and Industrial Revolutions, with the slave trade, 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 evolution of modern identity and the development of lyric, poetic expression. We will conclude with attention to British imperialism and to post-colonialism. As the course is conducted seminar-style, students will be expected to follow and participate in the presentation of the materials. Course objectives are for students to gain both a working familiarity with the materials and practice in critical thinking, including thoughtful analysis of literature in its thematic and cultural-historical contexts.

2766 ENGL 303-01 Scientific and Technical Writing-WR: MWF 1:00-1:50pm (Professor Johnson)

The focus of English 303 is recognizing and responding in writing to different rhetorical situations in scientific and technical discourse communities. A student in English 303 should expect to create and revise documents in multiple genres. Each document should establish a clear purpose, sense of audience awareness, and sense of the writer’s presence and position. In this course, we approach writing as a “contact zone”—a point where an individual scientist addresses his/her field, a field as it addresses and works with another community of scholars, and institutions speaking to the public. Mediating between all of these exchanges is a heap (to use the technical term) of communication—reports, articles, grants, conference presentations, general correspondence, articles in popular periodicals, etc. As a young aspiring scholar in STEM fields, learning to navigate these many folds will be crucial for your ability to achieve your goals and work through the challenges facing STEM fields in the near (and far) future. This course is approved for the Arts and Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR).

2767 ENGL 303-02 Scientific and Technical Writing-WR: T/Th 2:30-3:45pm (Professor Gordon)

The focus of English 303 is recognizing and responding in writing to different rhetorical situations in scientific and technical discourse communities. A student in English 303 should expect to create and revise documents in multiple genres. Each document should establish a clear purpose, sense of audience awareness, and sense of the writer’s presence and position. This specific section of English 303 will emphasize “design thinking” as a way to frame the exigencies, processes, and applications of science and technical writing. In addition to design thinking operating as a frame for the major work of the class, we will also explore this concept in readings, class discussions, and informal writing. Students in this class can expect to complete 4-6 major writing projects, both individually and collaboratively, in a variety of genres under the broad umbrella of “science and technical writing” including: grant proposals, literature reviews and research abstracts, and public science articles. This course is approved for the Arts and Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR).

2768 ENGL 305-01 Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction: MW 4-5:15pm (Professor Griner)

Welcome to English 305, fiction. This course is designed to help fiction writers and students interested in fiction 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.

4029 ENGL 305-02 Intermediate Creative Writing: Poetry: T/Th 11:00am-12:15pm (Professor Maxwell)

This course is designed to help poets and students interested in poetry hone their craft, expand their bank of compositional strategies, and experiment with language and content. 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 poets, which will include Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds, and Morgan Parker’s There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce. We will also practice literary citizenship by reviewing a set number of books and attending a set number of readings. The class will culminate in a chapbook (~15-20 pages of poems) and an optional bookmaking session for those interested in binding and distributing their work

4921 ENGL 309-01 Writing Across Media: T/Th 1:00-2:15pm (Professor Olinger)

How often do you stop to think about the medium in which you are communicating? How does a specific medium change the way you write? What does it mean to “read” an image? How does our use of technology shape the way we communicate? What theories inform our relationships with media?

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, audience, and process. By integrating practical activities with theoretical discussions, you will develop effective strategies for designing multimedia texts that integrate text, images, video, and sound.

2775 ENGL 309-02 Inquiries in Writing-WR: T 1:00-3:45pm (Professor Rogers )
This section requires permission from the instructor

2776 ENGL 310-01 Writing About Literature-NonmajorWR: MWF 10:00-10:50am (Professor Adams)

This course will serve as an introduction to writing about literature for non-English majors. The goal of the course is to allow students to develop methods and skills for writing essays on literature, including poetry, drama, and fiction. The class will be discussion-based and no familiarity with literature or with writing about literature will be assumed. Requirements will include careful reading, regular participation, and a few short papers and revisions.

2777 ENGL 310-02 Writing About Literature Nonmajor-WR: T/Th 1:00-2:15pm (Professor Mozer)

4422 ENGL 310-03 Writing About Literature-Nonmajor-WR: T/Th 9:30-10:45am (Professor Mozer)

3522 ENGL 311-01 American Literature I: Begin to 1865; T/Th 11:00am-12:15pm (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. We will also focus on the media, formats, and practices used to constitute literature across a wide array of genres. So, in addition to 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 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.

2778 ENGL 312-01 American Literature II: MWF 10:00-10:50am (Professor Chandler)

This survey course will explore American literature produced since 1865, as well as the social contexts in which it was produced and read. This period was very important, with the development of literary realism, naturalism, regionalism and the writing of ethnic and racial minority authors, as well as the emergence of modernism and postmodernism. Required work for the course will include careful reading, quizzes, short response papers, and exams.

8085 ENGL 325-01 Introduction to Linguistics: T/Th 1-2:15pm (Professor Stewart)
Cross-listed with LING 325

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.

6835 ENGL 330-01 Language & Culture MW 2-3:15pm (Professor Swinehart)
Cross-listed with LING 330-01 & ANTH 362-03

Language allows us to connect with others on scales both large and small--from groups of friends to entire societies and global networks. We need language for culture, but language is itself a cultural inheritance, so how are language and culture tied up in one another? Do linguistic structures shape our perception of reality? What is language and how does it differ from other sign systems? What is the relationship between writing and language? How do people’s views about language maintain social inequalities? Can inequalities be subverted through language? Students in this course address these questions and more through readings in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and philosophy and also through research into language use in their own lives.

8090 ENGL 333-01 Shakespeare I MWF 10-10:50am (Professor Wise)

6340 ENGL 368-01 Intro to African Lit written in Eng: CD2: MWF 11:00-11:50am (Professor Willey)

We will be asking the question of how English as a language changes in the context of Empire and how African authors use different kinds of englishes to express their own particular world view. As a CD2 class, we will be particularly interested in thinking about how language can be used "encourage an appreciation of the realities of a racially and culturally diverse world." (General Education Cultural Diversity Learning Outcomes)

Outcomes explicitly for this section of 368.01, Spring 2018:

1) Identify key authors in development of African authors writing in English

2) Understand the main tensions in using English in African literature as they affect:

Language

Representations of Africa

Telling of history

3) Discuss the possible impact of gender on the question of using English as a medium for African literature

4) Be able to define postcolonial

8092 ENGL 371-01 Africa in the Black Atlantic Imagination MW 2:30-3:45pm (Professor Logan)
Cross-listed with PAS 300-01

The historical and traumatic events of the Atlantic Slave Trade and slavery have never ceased to preoccupy and shape the literary imagination of writers of the African Diaspora. This course seeks to examine the literary representations of Africa by these writers with specific reference to selected works (autobiography, prose fiction, poetry, drama, and criticism) from the USA and the Caribbean. We will pay particular attention to themes and concepts such as: middle passage, displacement, memory, alienation, identity, gender, diaspora, Black Atlantic, and Pan-Africanism.

8094 ENGL 371-02 Special Topics: Graphic Novel MWF 12-12:50pm (Professor Turner)

In this course, we will read representative works in graphic narrative (an umbrella term for comics and graphic novels) to investigate how graphic narrative plays an important role in depictions of race, gender, and politics. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in comics, as the film industry has embraced superhero stories (not to mention Netflix hits such as Luke Cage). One can even find superhero T-shirts at Target. What accounts for the relatively sudden rise in popularity of graphic storytelling? Course texts may include Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona’s Ms. Marvel, and screen adaptations such as Jessica Jones and Daredevil (among others, and the final course text will be selected by the class). The course assignments will include a series of interpretative essays, which will be workshopped in class (and no exams).

7009 ENGL 372-01 Literature of the American West : MWF 2:00-2:50pm (Professor Kelderman)

This course explores the literatures of the US West, from the early nineteenth century to the present. It will pay substantial attention to the perspectives of Native American, Chicano/a, and women writers. In addition to novels, poems, and short stories, we will also critically analyze several film westerns. Requirements include position papers and a substantial research paper.

8096 ENGL 373-01 Women in Literature-CD2 T/Th 1-2:15pm (Professor Ryan)
Cross-listed with WGST 325-01

This course uses the work of selected American women writers from the early national period to the twentieth century to explore two overlapping literary modes—sentimentalism and sensationalism—that have figured prominently in the gendering of literary production, reception, and analysis. In the process, we will address matters of literary value/status; reform & activism via literature; and the interdependence of literary and cultural histories. The course will fulfill a 1700-1900 period requirement for English majors and a cultural diversity (CD2) requirement for all students.

8099 ENGL 373-02 Women in Literature-CD2 MWF 9-9:50am (Professor Newman)
Cross-listed with WGST 325-02

In this course, we will investigate contemporary literature that asks the question of what it means to be a woman. Students will examine these texts from both analytic and creative standpoints. Possible readings include literary and critical texts by Alison Bechdel, Judith Butler, Maggie Nelson, Alice Notley, Roxane Gay, Graham Rawle, Doug Rice and Jeanette Winterson.

8867 ENGL 373-03 Women in Literature:CD2 T/Th 9:30am-10:45am (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. Our readings will cover both well-known figures, such Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, and those lesser known, such as the transvestite saints Eugenia and Euphrosyne. We will focus especially on the life and career of Joan of Arc, with readings drawn both from texts produced during her lifetime and from those composed later, up through and including the twenty-first century. 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.

8101 ENGL 402-01 HON: Segregated Cities MW 2-3:15pm (Professor Clukey)
Cross-listed with HON 436-01/HON 446-01
Restricted to students enrolled in HONORS program

This course will take a comparative approach to the history, literature, and culture of segregation. Americans tend to think of segregation as essentially regional—a product of an exceptionally aberrant South—but, in fact, it is a global phenomenon. The class will begin by looking at Jim Crow segregation in the United States, before shifting focus to late twentieth- and twenty-first century segregation in cities as varied as Belfast, Johannesburg, Jerusalem, speculative cities, and, most importantly, contemporary Louisville. Topics of discussion will likely include: redlining, gentrification, apartheid, the so-called "9th street divide," busing, identity, inequality, and social justice.

We will read Carl Nightingale’s Segregation: a Global History of Divided Cities, and we’ll also read widely in sociology and urban studies, alongside literary and cinematic texts. Texts may include: the television series Atlanta, the film District 9, China Mieville’s The City and The City, Ciaran Carson’s Belfast Confetti, Catherine Fosl’s Subversive Southerner, Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi, Nella Larsen's Quicksand, Ta-Nehesi Coates's Between the World and Me, among others. We’ll also take a Civil Rights tour of Louisville and visit historical sites within the city, such as the Western Branch Library.

8102 ENGL 402-02 HON: Poetics of Time and Memory Cross-listed with HON 436-02/HON446-02
T/Th 2:30-3:45 (Professor Lutz)

In this course we consider the ways that time can work magically: loop, repeat, fall away in sublimity. Our memories carve out time and seem also to link to spaces in the past. What does it mean for memories to be revised or erased? Do our memories constitute who we are? Is it worth dwelling in the past, living an examined life? In this class we will muse about what it means to live, as we all must, embedded in time. Our “texts” will include Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (volume one), Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, La Jetee, Donnie Darko, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and many other films, essays, and literary works.

4556 ENGL 403-01 Advanced Creative Writing: MWF 1:00-1:50pm (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.

7010 ENGL 413-01 Brit Lit Beg to Shks-WR: T/Th 9:30-10:45am (Professor Stanev)

This course will investigate a selection of Old English, Medieval and Renaissance texts that explore the cultural, social, gendered, and aesthetic dimensions of the early modern fascination with the invisible world and its inhabitants – particularly with demons, monsters, and spirits. We will look at literary embodiment of unnatural power, monstrous shape, witchcraft, gender or racial ambiguity, and psychological horror during encounters with natural and supernatural antagonists or phenomena. We will further investigate social rituals and discourses related to the study and practice of magic, alchemy, and spiritualism, as well as focus on specific interpretations of the occult and its agents.

In addition, this course will offer the opportunity to study a dynamic body of works, which emerge from the domains of folk play, allegory, epic, romance, travel narrative, and secular drama. Our student learning outcomes will aim to provide an engaging and diverse entry into the literary world of England from the ninth to the late seventeenth century, and investigate in the process a curious and provocative literary niche. The invisible world has frequently been the subject of recent media franchises and literary works, and we will look for parallels, while also noting the differences from the literary imagination of early modern England.

ENGL 414-75 English Literature Skakespeare Neocl – WR: Th 7:00-9:45pm (Professor Billingsley)

Prerequisite: ENGL 102 or 105; ENGL 300 or 310. Note: Approved for the Arts and Sciences upper-level requirement in written communication (WR). Formerly ENGL-314; credit may not be earned for this course by students with credit for ENGL-314. Study of selected works, in a variety of genres, from Shakespeare through the eighteenth century to Blake. Taught with attention to historical and cultural context. Historical period: 1700-1900.

This course will cover select major works of English authors from Shakespeare to the death of Christopher Smart (1771). The set text for the course is the Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors, vol. 1 (9th ed., 2013, ISBN: 978-0-393-91964-6).

Graded work for the course includes weekly forum postings published online through Blackboard, two exams (multiple choice, short answer and brief essay) and one edited, revised paper of 2500 words.

8103 ENGL 419-01 Culture, Arts, and Media in Antebellum America: MW 4:00-5:15pm (Professor Kelderman)

This course will explore the relationship between new media, popular culture, and American literature from 1830-1865. Authors read will include Herman Melville, Fanny Fern, Frederick Douglass, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Louisa May Alcott. Requirements include several position papers and one substantial research paper.

8104 ENGL 420-01 American Lit. 1865-1910-WR: T/Th 2:30-3:45 (Professor Anderson)

This course covers literature from the Civil War ear to the early twentieth century. We cover important writers such as Whitman, Dickinson, Stowe, Twain, James, Chesnutt, London, and Wharton up to the eve of modernist literature. This is a historical period notable for remarkable social change (the effects of the Civil War, Reconstruction, rapid urbanization and industrialization, sweeping economic changes, large-scale immigration, and population growth) that coincided with the growth of mass-marketed books and periodical, uniquely American forms of literary realism and naturalism, a keen interest in ethnic and regional writing, and the opening of publishing opportunities for women writers. Grading is based on exams, participation, two essays (including a research paper) and a class report.

5125 ENGL 422-01 American Literature 1960-Present – WR: T/Th 5:30-6:45pm (Professor Adams)

This course will survey some major texts of American poetry, prose, and drama since 1960, tied together by a loose thematic focus on their investigations and criticisms of the self — by which I mean an individual’s sense of him or herself as an individual, with a particular history and particular thoughts and feelings — and the way in which these investigations and criticisms responded to shifting cultural and historical contexts that both promoted but also put pressure on the coherence of individuality.

2780 ENGL 450-01 Cooperative Internship in English Studies: Internship (Professor Chandler)

8105 ENGL 470-01 History of the Book MWF 10-10:50am (Professor Mattes)

Disciplines across the academy have taken a sharp turn toward theories and methods that attend to the material, historical, and social aspects of media. During this “medial turn,” scholars in book history, art history and design, digital humanities, material culture studies, communications, sound studies, and information and library sciences have been engaging in new, productive conversations with traditionally “text-based” disciplines. Our course explores readings in American literature from the colonial period through the nineteenth century alongside the fruits of this multidisciplinary collaboration. Understanding, to quote media and literature scholar Andrew Piper, “how individuals express themselves and interact with one another by using a variety of different media, modes of speech, and languages,” is a crucial horizon of interpretation for modern-day readers. In the rigorously historicist spirit of the medial turn, then, we will study three central works from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, respectively, alongside an expansive archival base comprised of both traditional and nontraditional writing and media genres. In doing so, we will discover how the media ecologies contemporaneous with our central texts’ writing and publication shaped past readers’ interpretations and continue to influence their reception in the present day. Central works may include Rowlandson or Bradstreet (17C); Bartram, Franklin or Jefferson (18C); Poe, Melville, Douglass, Dickinson, or Whitman (19C).

2781 ENGL 491-75 Interpretive Theory:New Criticism-Present: MW 5:30-6:45pm (Professor Kopelson)

English 491 will involve you in the intensive study of the various interpretive practices, guiding principles, and intellectual frameworks that literary and other theorists, such as philosophers and linguists, have developed to analyze literature, language, reading, writing, and other related cultural phenomena during, roughly, the past century.

To elaborate: this course is primarily an inquiry into the relatively recent modes and strategies of scholarly inquiry that have developed to take up the interpretation of literature and other cultural-linguistic practices. Thus, we will be studying theory itself here at the abstract, conceptual level, as a body of knowledge in itself, rather than applying theory to or using theory to study particular literary texts. (In other words, this is not a literature class; we read no literary texts.) As a result, I expect, and so should you, that this course will prove especially challenging in at least two ways: One, the language and concepts you will be encountering here will be difficult, complex, and probably unfamiliar (translation: the reading will be very hard work); and two, the theories that we read and discuss will often disrupt some of our most cherished, common-sense assumptions —and not only about literature, reading, and writing, but about how we think and learn and live, about “truth” and meaning and “selfhood” itself. The attributes and attitudes you will most need to succeed in this class are thus 1) sophisticated, thorough, and patient reading strategies, and 2) an equally sophisticated openness of mind and readiness for new knowledge.

4833 ENGL 501-01 Independent Study TBA
This section requires permission from the Instructor

3199 ENGL 504-01 Advanced Creative Writing II – Poetry: T/Th 2:30-3:45pm (Professor Maxwell)

This upper-division poetry workshop will center on the serial (or series) poem and extended poetic inquiry. Class members will read and comment on published work and writing by peers and will generate new work in response to reading material, prompts, and writing experiments provided by the instructor. Readings include poems by Jack Spicer, Anne Carson, George Oppen, Inger Christensen, C.S. Giscombe, Lynn Xu, Frank O'Hara, and Christine Hume, among others.

2782 ENGL 506-01 Teaching of Writing-WR;CUE: MW 4:00-5:15pm (Professor Olinger)

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.

4002 ENGL 510-01 Graduate Coop Internship-MA Level TBA (Professor Schneider)
This section requires permission from the Instructor

4259 ENGL 523-01 History of the English Language: T/Th 9:30am-10:45am Cross-listed with LING 523
(Professor Stewart)

This course traces the development of English from Old English (AngloSaxon) 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 9^th 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.

Prerequisite: ENGL 102 or 105; junior standing.

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 Objectives: 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.

6244 ENGL 546-01 Jane Austen: MWF 11:00-11:50am (Professor Hadley)

This course will focus on the recent (1990s) obsession with bringing Jane Austen’s works to the screen. We will begin by reading several of her novels and considering issues central to them, issues such as passion, romance, wealth, manners, social commentary and historical context. In viewing corresponding film versions, we will then consider the creative, collaborative, process of translating literature to the medium of film, and the consequent increased attention to details such as scenery, fashion, and physical beauty. Why is it, we will ask with one Austen critic, that translations too faithful to the books cannot achieve broad enough appeal for the movie industry? Course goals include students refining their abilities to analyze texts: literary, critical, and filmic.

Students will familiarize themselves with the basics of research in literature and film, including the consideration of theoretical approaches to literary and cultural studies, and the incorporation of secondary sources into their own argumentative writing.

8097 ENGL 551-75 Studies in Afr-Amer. Lit Th 5:30-8:15pm (Professor Logan)
Cross-listed with PAS 551-75

This course is an in-depth study of African American literature through a representative sampling of primary texts (fiction, drama, poetry), from Phillis Wheatley to Charles Johnson. It seeks to acquaint students with the thematic and aesthetic concerns of African American writers, as it outlines the theoretical and critical underpinnings that address, among other things, the Middle Passage, plantation slavery, Emancipation, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights movement. We will examine how socio-historical, cultural, and political dynamics enabled the creation and growth of this literature, with particular focus on issues of race, gender, sexuality, and class.

8072 ENGL 552-01 Detective Fiction MW 2-3:15pm (Professor Schneider)

In this course, we’ll take a broad look at detective fiction in the twentieth century. Not only will we look at different genres of detective fiction—including the country manor mystery, the locked-room mystery, the hardboiled detective novel, the inverted detective story, and the postmodern detective tale—we’ll also look at the figure of the detective in some detail. Literary detectives aren’t simply highly intelligent private eyes, but also characters that examine our beliefs about narrative, society, and knowledge. They encourage us to examine how we know what we know, and what we know about justice, truth, and guilt. But just as importantly, detectives wrestle not only with crime and mystery, but also with gender, race, disability, and addiction. This course will ask as a secondary question what it means to insist on balancing superhuman investigative skills with an all-too-human body.

Possible authors will include Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Jonathan Lethem, Mark Haddon, Sue Grafton, Sara Gran, Walter Mosley, and Colson Whitehead. Assessment will comprise weekly reading responses, class discussion, and a larger critical paper on detective fiction.

8073 ENGL 552-02 Vict Travel Stories: Nonfic & Fiction T/Th 11:00am-12:15pm (Professor Rosner)

How did specific Victorians construct versions of Africa and their places in it? To find answers to that question, we’ll read and discuss several examples of Victorian travel/exploration stories (fiction and non-fiction).

Tentative texts

Nonfiction: Sections of David Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa as well as Amelia Edwards’ A Thousand Miles Up the Nile.

Fiction: Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mine or She, Doyle’s The Tragedy of the Korosko, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, some short stories.

Expect reading quizzes, written homework, participation in class and in the discussion list, and critical reading of several academic essays. Since this 500-level course is a CUE course, you will also have to write a 8-10 page paper (with MLA Works Cited). Any graduate students enrolled will also be responsible for a research project as well as for teaching part of a class.

8821 ENGL 552-03 Youth in Jewish American Fiction: T/Th 1:00-2:15 (Professor Sherman)

Jewish writers in Israel and North America have produced many provocative and lively narratives addressing issues and themes such as the experience of immigration and the ordeal of transition, the struggle between individuality and collective loyalty, as well as Holocaust trauma, often memorably told about, or from, the child's or adolescent's perspective. In Israel, the writer often seems to ling the adolescence of the young state to the child's own journey into individuality and adulthood. Confronting a variety of upheavals, transitions, adjustments, as well as the nostalgic impulse of looking back (and the intoxicating dream of imagining a future), the young protagonists created by writers are among the most memorable characters of the modern Jewish literary canon. In the end, childhood and coming-of-age narratives may well provide the most inspiring creative source for Jewish writers. Our readings will include short stories, graphic novels, and other fiction. We will also examine a number of films made by Jewish directors living in Israel and the United States. Assignments will include midterm and final essay exams as well as brief informal response papers.

8074 ENGL 561-01 Chaucer-CUE MWF 10-10:50am (Professor Turner)

George RR Martin has admitted surprise to the great success of the Game of Thrones HBO show, which began as the A Song of Ice and Fire series of books nearly 20 years ago. One explanation for the widespread interest in a Game of Thrones is a continued cultural fascination with all things medieval—the “dark ages” that, when we take time to look closer, were where many of our modern attitudes and social institutions developed. In this course we will read Chaucer’s unfinished masterpiece the Canterbury Tales, a text that upends common stereotypes of the “dark” Middle Ages. Instead of an era of uniformly oppressive political, social, and religious institutions, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales reveal individuals struggling against repressive social forces. Our readings will be in modern and Middle English, but no knowledge of Middle English is necessary to enroll. The course assignments will include a series of interpretative essays, which will be workshopped in class (and no exams).

8075 ENGL 562-01 Shakespeare & Modernism T/Th 2:30-3:45pm (Professor Dietrich)

This course will focus on Shakespeare's plays in relation to Early, High, Late, and Post-Modernity. We will read six to eight of the plays and research production history. Students will have a good deal of choice about the direction of their research, and their findings will guide our hypotheses about Shakespeare and Modernity. Students can expect to write short responses to the daily reading assignments and do short research reports in preparation to write a ten-page paper. This course is designed to help students build skills in writing, research, interpretation, and the construction of an argument from literary and historical evidence.

8736 ENGL 567-01 Post Colonial Voices-WR;CUE: W 4:00-6:45pm (Professor Logan)

This seminar will address some major trends in the development of postcolonial African literature, delineate, and explore the historical, socio-political, aesthetic, and cultural conditions/forces that occasioned its advent, production, and dissemination. Participants will read, discuss, and critique selected primary texts (prose fiction) produced by writers from across the continent, as well as diverse theoretical and critical reflections that contextualize related key issues/topics the course seeks to address: imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, decolonization, post-colonialism, apartheid, orature, hybridity, gender and identity politics, tradition and modernity.

8584 ENGL 575-01 Chicago Renaissance-CUE: T/Th 9:30-10:45 (Professor Anderson)

The course would focus on African American literature, art, and music in Chicago the 1930's, 40's, and 50's. As the Harlem Renaissance was winding down in the early 1930's, an even larger and more vibrant arts movement was starting up in Chicago, which was an important destination for African Americans leaving the South during the Great Migration. Chicago became a center of blues, jazz, and gospel music, as well as a center for visual artists (such as Archibald Motley) and such varied writers as Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, Frank Marshall Davis, and Dorothy West. The course might end with Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun in the 1950's, but might even take a peek at the Black Arts Movement in the 1960's. But the class is a good opportunity to study mid-century music, visual art, and literature, as well as race relations and housing practices that have profoundly influenced American life in the 21st century.

5959 ENGL 599-01 Literature of Lewis & Clark-WR;CUE: T/Th 1:00-2:15pm (Professor Petrosino)

In this interdisciplinary seminar, students will study literary and historical materials related to the 1803-1806 journey of the Corps of Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson. Students will begin by examining texts authored by Jefferson, which describe his expansive vision of democracy as emblematized, for him, by his own estate at Monticello and the natural environment of Virginia (a landscape that included Kentucky until 1792). Further readings will include the journals and letters of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and others close to the expedition. Students will explore contemporary works of literature that contemplate the historical, linguistic, and cultural impact of the opening of the West, with particular attention to the contributions of women, indigenous peoples, and African Americans. Coursework, including local field trips, will give students the opportunity to produce research-based texts in scholarly and creative modes. This course is local and national in scope, as several members of the Corps of Discovery hailed from Kentucky.