Spring 2022 — Department of English

Spring 2022

ENGL 202-01 Intro Creative Writng-AH Prof. Smart

In this course, we will explore three major genres of creative writing, including poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction. Conversations around the pieces we read for class will be tailored towards understanding the broader conventions and craft elements associated with each genre so that we may effectively produce strong creative works of our own. We will also learn how to most effectively participate in creative writing workshops, where we’ll engage in constructive criticism of each other’s work and gather what it means to be a part of a supportive writerly community. By the end of the course, students will have produced a solid portfolio of creative work that demonstrates an understanding of the three major genres of craft we explored throughout the semester.

ENGL 202-02 Intro Creative Writing-AH Prof. 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.

ENGL 202-03 Intro Creative Writing-AH Prof. Strickley

ENGL 202-50 Intro Creative Writing-AH (DE) Prof. Weinberg

ENGL 300-01 Intro to Literature-WR Prof. Anderson

This course will help students to develop and practice their skills for reading, discussing, and writing about literature. We will discuss key terms for poetry, fiction, and drama, and develop strategies for writing argumentative papers. Finally, students will explore the nuances of particular literary works, as well as the cultural traditions in which the writing was produced. Outcomes will be assessed through short interpretive exercises, expository essays, peer review of drafts, class discussion, and possibly class reports.

ENGL 300-02 Intro to Literature-WR Prof. Willey

ENGL 300-50 Intro to Literature-WR (DE) Prof. Mattes

This distance education course will cover a range of fiction, poetry, and drama while introducing students to central terms and methods of literary analysis. In addition to giving close attention to the linguistic forms of texts, we will consider the social contexts in which such works are written and read. These contexts may include the political, economic, and cultural currents in which our readings are embedded and to which they speak; changing attitudes regarding the importance of art and the politics of literary study; and the contributions that literary studies make to conversations across disciplines.

In addition to reading some really beautiful and thought-provoking works of literature, you will receive guidance and feedback on your writing that will be tailored to your own situation and skill set. Some of you will be English majors and minors; others will not. In all cases, you should see me as your personal writing coach this semester. My feedback on your writing will provide guidance on how to take advantage of your existing interests and strengths and help you identify ways to advance your skills in analysis and academic writing.

ENGL 301-01 Literature Before 1800 Prof. Rabin

What does it mean to “invent” literature? What does it say about those who invented it—their beliefs and desires, their culture and imagination? And what happens when it all goes horribly, horribly wrong? In this class, we will trace the history of English literature—its success and failures—from its beginnings through the eighteenth century. We’ll encounter man-eating dragons and baby-eating men, unrequited love and overly requited lust, saintly monsters and monstrous saints, and, most of all, some of the greatest literature ever written. In doing so, we will see how the “invention” of English literature led to the invention, not only of English culture, but ours as well.

ENGL 302-75 Literature After 1800 Prof. Golding

The goals of this survey-style course are to provide you with an overview of significant issues, movements, writers, and texts in US literature written between the Civil War and the modern period (up to the 1930s) and to place that literature in its social and historical contexts. We'll read a range of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction prose from this period, approaching it through a combination of lecture, small group work, and open-class discussion. Writers and movements covered will likely include Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, Gilman, Chopin, Chesnutt, Washington, Du Bois, modernist poetry, the Harlem Renaissance, Faulkner.

Your grade will be based on some combination of the following: frequent pop quizzes on assigned reading; three in-class exams (including a non-cumulative final); final paper (5-7 double-spaced typed pages); active participation.

ENGL 303-01 Sci & Tech Writing-WR TBA

ENGL 303-50 Sci & Tech Writing-WR (DE) TBA

ENGL 305-01 Int Creative Writing: Fiction Prof. Griner

ENGL 305-03 Int Creative Writing: Poetry Prof. Adams

This course offers students the chance to sharpen their skills as writers, readers, and critics of poetry. Although we will spend time discussing original work by the students in the class, we will spend as much time discussing important formal features of poetry (including diction, line, meter & rhyme, syntax, use of the page, image, metaphor), as well as some genres of poetry (dramatic monologue, ekphrasis, prose poetry). We will read a combination of canonical and contemporary poetry with an eye to what it can teach us about poetic form, and we will perform various writing exercises and experiments, both to put what we have learned from other poets into action, and to explore new poetic possibilities.

Assignments will include: weekly writing experiments, written responses to peer manuscripts, two book reviews of contemporary poetry collections, and a final portfolio of 10–12 original poems with an introductory essay.

ENGL 305-50 Int Creative Writing: Screenwriting (DE) Prof. Stansel

In this course we will study and practice the art of writing for the screen. We will read various texts on the craft of screenwriting, look at examples from different genres, and try to understand how different screenwriters deal with plot, character, setting, time, and other aspects of the craft. For their main projects, students will try their hand at a television pilot script and the start of a feature script (synopsis, outline, and first act). As a class, we will “workshop” these student projects, offering honest and supportive feedback. Through the semester, students will also write short analyses of films and TV episodes, some assigned and some of their choosing, in an effort to push their appreciation of these forms past passive entertainment and into a deeper understanding.

ENGL 309-01 Inquiries in Writing-WR Prof. Rogers

English 309, Inquiries in Writing, is a course focused on nonfiction narrative and research writing. In addition to reading Ballenger's Crafting Truth and looking at creative nonfiction genres such as essays, memoirs, and literary journalism, the class will work on research projects focused on the academic interests of each student. The class will share work and discuss readings, and each student will finish with a final portfolio that includes twenty or more pages of writing.

ENGL 310-01 Intro to Prof. Writing Prof. Schneider

ENGL 310-50 Intro to Prof. Writing (DE) Prof. Schneider

ENGL 315-50 Work Sucks: Labor in Media (DE) Prof. Wilson

Work ranks foremost among the many contradictions of U.S. culture and society. On the one hand, the famous Puritan Work Ethic championed by seventeenth-century Puritan settlers layed the ideological grounds of the U.S.’s dominance in global capitalism. On the other hand, we have the familiar slogan that gives this course it’s title: work sucks! In this course, we will explore this tension through films, advertisements, poetry, and memoir. We will see the contemporary workplace satirized in the film Sorry to Bother You. We will explore coal mining in the documentary film Harlan County U.S.A. and the poetry of Muriel Rukeyser. We will explore working at an Amazon fulfillment center in the memoir Seasonal Associate and discover how the Puritan Work Ethic has been repackaged in slick advertisements by companies such as Fiverr. Through these studies we will discover that, if once working was imagined as the virtuous pathway to the Good Life, in the present so many of our formerly external work activities—leisure, consumption, creativity, exercise, and even sleep—have become integral parts of the labor process.

ENGL 325-01 Intro to Linguistics Prof. Stewart

Linguistics is the study of the Forms and Functions of human language. On the Form side, we study both units of sound and units of meaning, as well as how these can be combined into complex units such as words and sentences. The study of language Functions includes the analysis of dialects and language variation, language change over time, language and the mind, and language acquisition.

(Cross-listed with LING 325. Counts as a required Core course within the Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics.)

ENGL 330-01 Language and Culture-AHD1 Prof. Cruz

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 through research into language use in their own lives and by helping advance research of indigenous languages of the Americas.

This course has a particular focus on linguistic diversity in the U.S, addressing linguistic diversity across lines of class, race, and gender. This course also fulfills Arts and Humanities (AH) requirements for the Cardinal Core program (assignment alignment with outcomes bolded in descriptions and attached in rubrics below on pages 7 and 8).

ENGL 334-50 Shakespeare II (DE) Prof. Stanev

Shakespeare lived in an age of exploration, fantasy, and imagination, but also in a time of widespread fears of the new and different. For his contemporaries, the visible and the invisible worlds often clashed. The Bard was interested in studying clashes with the strange, the monstrous, and the supernatural, and his plays often examined the capacity of such encounters to reflect and challenge the world of cultural, social, and political change that the Renaissance is famous for. Shakespeare’s plays also actively imagined the Other by transforming racial, cultural, or gendered differences into notions of strangeness and unease. This course will study plays that problematize and examine supernatural elements, as well as forms of “othering,” set in the context of warfare, colonial conquest, visions and fantasies of self and others, gender, sexuality, social taboos, ritual, sport, and games. From the archetypal monster Caliban in The Tempest tothe deformed protagonist of Richard III, from the witches of Macbeth and the goblins and preternatural storms of KingLear, to the monstrous sin of Pericles, and to the diverse cast of fairy folk in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we will survey Shakespeare’s interest in the odd and the unusual. In addition, we will watch selected scenes from adaptations of the plays under discussion, as well as musical or animated adaptations of Shakespearean material, and consider how the visual and aural staging of supernatural/othered elements works to channel specific ideas about the social and cultural relevance of the fantastical in the past and in the present. The course learning outcomes will allow you to 1) develop broader awareness of Shakespeare’s dramatic works within the rich social and cultural currents of late Tudor and early Stuart England; and 2) learn in depth about Shakespeare’s interest in the invisible and odd, especially in connection to significant early modern ideas, such as dynastic continuity, opportunism, alienation, sexuality, scepticism, scientific thought, exploration, and colonial enterprise. The learning outcomes will be assessed through several weekly Discussion Board posts, a brief position paper, and a final research essay.

ENGL 342-01 Black Women Novelists-WRAHD2 Prof. Logan

Black women writers, as vital contributors to the world of letters, have not always been recognized by world literary establishments. This course is designed to provide that space within which to acknowledge, discuss, and critique their contribution to black (and world) literature. We will explore, comparatively, selected texts (from slave narratives to contemporary novels) by African, African American, and Caribbean women, and focus on issues/concepts such as: identity (gender, cultural, racial, sexual, class), resistance, voice, patriarchy, subaltern status, slavery, and colonialism, and diaspora. Equal attention will be paid to the theoretical assumptions, as well as the historical, social, political, and cultural forces that undergird the creative works of these continental African and Diasporic women novelists.

ENGL 368-02 The Empire Writes Back: The African Novel Prof. Wilson

At the dawn of the 20th century, Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness gave British literature an influential “image of Africa,” in the words of Chinua Achebe. Starting in the 1950s, African novelists such as the Nigerian Achebe, the Kenyan Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and the Sudanese Talib Salih began “writing back” to the British Empire that had colonized their homelands. Contesting Conrad’s image, they took up the novel both in response to European colonialism, but also to forge a new literary tradition. Starting with the writers mentioned above, we will move through the latter half of the twentieth century to discovered how other novelists such as Ghanian Ama Ata Aidoo and the Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga continued to harness the Western novel form to explore the postcolonial situation.

ENGL 368-50 Min Trads ENGL LITS-AHD2 (DE) Prof. Clukey

ENGL 372-01 Fairy Tales Prof. Adams

Fairy tales (as they have come to be called) describe places and people that appear to be very different than the ones we find in our demystified modern world. Animals talk. People use magic. People magically turn into animals; animals magically turn into people. There are kings and queens, princes and princesses, evil stepmothers, fairy godmothers, witches, giants, mermaids, White Rabbits and Cheshire Cats. What distinguishes these stories from other sorts of literature? What gives them their power? Are these stories for children or adults? Why do many of us keep coming back to these stories again and again, even though we know that the world they describe does not exist? Can fairy tales teach us anything about our culture or ourselves?

This course will introduce students to the analysis of fairy tales in an attempt to understand their origins and generic features as well as their continued relevance to the present. We will read familiar or “classic” stories drawn from (sometimes unfamiliar) European sources like Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, but also older tales from around the world, and newer retellings as well by distinguished 20^th century writers. Students will be introduced to various methods for studying these texts, including approaches drawn from comparative folklore, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, Marxism, and gender studies. We’ll consider, too, the political and cultural significance of fairy tales and their modern adaptations, and the aesthetic strategies used by artists who have adapted these narratives to different media. Work will include several short responses and two exams.

ENGL 373-01 Women & Global Lit-AHD2 Prof. Mozer

ENGL 373-02 Women & Global Lit-AHD2 Prof. Mozer

ENGL 373-50 Women & Global Lit-AHD2 (DE) Prof. White

ENGL 373-51 Women & Global Lit-AHD2 (DE) Prof. Wilson

In the 1960s, when many assumed she had long ago died, the white West Indian novelist Jean Rhys re-emerged with a bold re-imagining of the story of Bertha, the “madwoman in the attic” in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. This new novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, created a new way of looking at gender, power, and madness in the emerging “global” novel. As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, women novelists across the globe have continued to build and expand upon Rhys’ now-canonical work. In this course, we will trace the continuation of Rhys’ themes in the work of writers such as Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, Zadie Smith, Helen Oyeyemi, Akwaeke Emezi, and others, discovering in the process that the questions raised by Rhys echo on into our present moment.

ENGL 375-01 LGBTQ Lit in US: The Not So Distant Past-AHD1 (DE) Prof. Kopelson

This section of LGBTQ Literature takes a deep dive into four 20th century US novels, three of which are expressly autobiographical, that help us examine literary representations of racialized, classed, national “LGBTQ” identities and experiences in the century before such an inclusive and yet deeply specified abbreviation became possible. Thus, the course aims to remind you of, or perhaps acquaint you with, recent queer histories and experiences in and of the US (as represented literarily). In fact, the character of the U.S. as nation, and of “American-ness” as ideal, figures prominently in all novels.

In addition to the four novels, we will read (and write about) literary criticism of each text under study in order to 1) deepen our understanding of the novels’ meanings and 2) deepen our understanding of the conventions of analyzing and writing about literature.

Other course requirements include written responses to the primary texts, regular discussion board participation, and two essay examinations (with an option to write a critical paper of your own invention instead).

ENGL 381-01 Mod Poetry in ENGL Prof. Golding

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

Related goals are

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

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

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

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

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

Course requirements will likely be as follows: Midterm in-class exam, part essay and part testing use of poetic terms; 2-3-page close reading paper; 5-7-page final paper; regular attendance and participation.

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

The course fulfils the post-1900 historical distribution requirement in the English major.

ENGL 402-01 HON: Frankenstein, the Villa Diodati & the 'Ghost Story Challenge'-WR Prof. Hadley

In the summer of 1816, the so-called “Year without a Summer,” the celebrated Romantic poets Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and their entourage gathered at the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva. Their conversations, which ranged widely among contemporary scientific topics such as alchemy, galvanism the principles of animation and the “spark of life,” among literary tales of ghosts and vampires. One evening, Lord Byron read the Fantasmagoriana, an anthology of German ghost stories (with titles such as “The Death Bride” and “The Black Chamber”) and – amongst the candlelight inside and the lightening flashing over Alpine scenery outside, challenged those present each to write a ghost story. The challenged resulted in literary fragments and poems, most notably Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein and Polidori’s novel The Vampyre, forerunner of Stoker’s Dracula, and modern vampire fantasy fiction.

This course will explore the lives of these exemplary individuals, the contemporary contexts informing this fateful night, and the texts generated in response to Byron’s “ghost story challenge,” among them Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. In reading the novel, we will place special emphasis on her identity as a woman writer: her role as “silent auditor” during those conversations, her experience of the sexual tensions among those staying at the village, and the feminist understanding of Victor Frankenstein’s “monster” as a figure for Mary herself.

ENGL 402-02 HON: Comics, Emotns & Sens-WR Prof. Turner

Art often makes us feel something, and every form works differently. This course examines how comics, as a hybrid medium that combines images and text, tugs at our emotions in ways that traditional print novels or even films cannot. Drawing on biology, cognitive science, visual art, literary studies, and philosophy, we will ask: how do comics uniquely engage our senses and, as a result, make us feel? To do so, we will of course spend time with primary texts: the dreamscapes of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (the comics and the recent audiobook adaptation), Julie Maroh’s crisp and evocative inking in Blue is the Warmest Color, the violent charcoal sketches of Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner, and others, some of which will be chosen by students. We will also draw on secondary research from a variety of disciplines to develop a critical vocabulary for analyzing comics and their images: for example, we’ll read recent research from cognitive science on images and memory alongside of philosophy of emotions and aesthetics. We’ll develop our understanding of comics through a series of short essays and a multimedia presentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATj_rGaprl4&ab_channel=JoeTurner

ENGL 403-01 Advanced CW Prof. Griner

ENGL 405-01 Edit, Design, Advocate Prof. Poole

How we edit documents and how we design our writing for the page and for the screen determines whether public audiences will listen to our message. In this class, students will learn how to write, edit, and design with the skills needed to advocate for others in public and professional settings. Working with social justice-oriented community organizations, students will create, edit, and publish written material for local audiences.

Instructor can waive course prerequisite for interested students—contact megan.poole@louisville.edu for more information.

ENGL 407-50 Writing Social Change-WR (DE) Prof. Clukey

ENGL 413-01 Robin Hood and Other Medieval Outlaws-WR Prof. Rabin

Controversial during the Middle Ages for their depictions of disenfranchised and rebellious elements of medieval society, outlaw narratives provide some of the earliest examples of ‘popular’ English literature. This course will trace the development of these narratives as a social phenomenon from the Old English period through the proliferation of Robin Hood tales in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Some of the themes addressed may include: how the outlaw as a popular or anti-establishment figure both expresses a notion of English national identity and functions as a form of social criticism calling into question the coherence of that identity, how the notion of the “greenwood” communicates and challenges the social and moral norms of medieval England, how the figure of the outlaw functions as a projection of an idealized masculinity, and how more recent authors appropriate these narratives in order to project their own perspectives and desires concerning both medieval and modern society.

ENGL 417-01 After the Empire Falls: British Literature into the 21^st Century Prof. Wilson

Facing unparalleled destruction to its infrastructure and economy after the end of the Second World War, Great Britain opened itself up to immigrants from its colonies. Initially hoping to replenish the workforce and economy, Britain inadvertently created a modern multicultural society that represented incredible artistic and creative flourishing. At the same time, right-wing politicians exploited inflamed racial and ethnic tensions that continue to reverberate in British society. In this course, we will read authors from across the British Commonwealth such as Sam Selvon, Una Marston, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Zadie Smith, and Helen Oyeyemi to discover how British literature responded to crises at home while transforming itself into a global artistic phenomenon.

ENGL 420-01 Amer Lit 1865-1910-WR Prof. Anderson

This literature survey will introduce American literature from 1865-1910, which was a period notable for distinctly American forms of literary realism and naturalism, the development of mass-marketed books and periodicals, keen interest in ethnic and regional writing, and the opening of publishing opportunities for women writers. The course will also provide information about the historical, social, and cultural contexts of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century America (including the effects of the Civil War, Reconstruction, rapid urbanization and industrialization, sweeping economic changes, and large-scale immigration).

Grading will be based on essay examinations, a research paper, summaries of scholarship, in-class writing and quizzes, and class participation.

ENGL 450-01 Coop Intern in ENGL Prof. Mozer

ENGL 460-01 The Brontes-WR Prof. Lutz CANCELED

In this course we will immerse ourselves in the lives and works of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë. We will begin with the imaginary worlds of Angria and Gondal, created by all four siblings (including their brother Branwell) when they were children. We will then read some of their poetry and all of their major novels in the order they were written: Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey, Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Shirley, and Villette. We will consider how these young writers drew on late Romantic and early Victorian literature and culture, but we will also be attentive to their utterly anomalous qualities. Gender roles, early feminism, race, and queer identities will be central to our discussions, as will such themes as madness, outcasts, dangerous lovers, incest, the gothic, and reading and writing as ways of forming the self. Another focus will be the material culture of the time and its place in the Brontës’ lives and literature. We will explore (and look at pictures of) needlework, letters, jewelry made of human hair, boxes, portable desks, and other domestic ephemera that gave texture to everyday life. Important to our understanding of their work will be our study of their manuscripts as material objects: they recorded their early tales in miniature booklets they made by hand; they kept notebooks; and Emily composed her poetry on tiny snippets of paper, often recycled.

This course fulfills the 1700-1900 historical distribution requirement.

ENGL 480-01 Digital Storytelling Prof. Poole

Stories are not bound to the page—and in the era of social media, stories circulate more rapidly than ever before. In this class, students will learn to use visual and digital tools to tell stories that capture the attention of local public audiences. What counts as “writing” will extend to images, data visualizations, podcasts, and videos. Because we want our stories to matter, we will learn how to tell the same story in different ways to different audiences through different digital mediums.

Instructor can waive course prerequisite for interested students—contact megan.poole@louisville.edu for more information.

ENGL 492-75 Special Topics Queer Theory Prof. Kopelson

This course introduces advanced undergraduate students to queer theory (broadly, critical theories of gender and sexuality that disrupt normativity). We begin by working to understand queer theory in its historical/theoretical contexts and founding moments, study some of its most celebrated interventions and influential theorists, and work our way into the more recent past and present, as queer theory begins to intersect with other productively disruptive theoretical lenses such as disability studies, queer of color critique, post-and declonial theories, transgender theory, and more. In short, this course offers a broad survey of developments in and of the subfield or mode of critical theory known as queer theory.

Though the course does not assume previous exposure to queer theory, prior exposure to other forms of critical theory, and/or philosophy, and/or gender studies will prove immensely helpful for students. The course will be reading intensive. In addition to careful and astute reading practices, the course will require regular writings on the readings to ensure comprehension, rigorous participation in class discussion (both in the classroom and on the course discussion board), and two comprehensive essay exams, one at midterm and one at semester’s end.

Required Course Text:

Queer Theory Now: From Foundations to Futures, by Hannah McCann & Whitney Monaghan

Primary theoretical texts will be provided on Bb.

ENGL 501-01 Independent Study

ENGL 502-01 Independent Study

ENGL 504-01 Adv CW II: Poetry Prof. Maxwell

This creative writing course will revolve around writing poems, developing confidence about reading and discussing poetry, and providing feedback on peers’ work. Our reading will focus on poems of place and being, exploring the work of poets interested in how sites affect selfhood and poetics, be it the Alaska of Christine Hume’s Alaskaphrenia, the New York of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems, the Southern rurality of C.D. Wright’s Deepstep Come Shining, the imagined resort town of Cathy Park Hong’s Dance Dance Revolution, the volcanic terrain of Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, or the Virginia of Kiki Petrosino’s White Blood. Participants will submit poems for workshop; produce new work in response to experiment-based prompts; and read and discuss published work. You’ll leave the class with a short book of poems (also known as a chapbook) and insight into submitting your work, should you be interested in pursuing publication.

ENGL 504-02 Adv CW II: Fiction Prof. 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 the study and creation of linked stories, with students reading and responding to stories from linked collections and discussing strategies for both short-term and sustained engagement with the reader. 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 storytelling.

ENGL 506-51 Teaching of Writing-WR;CUE (DE) Prof. Horner

This 100% online asynchronous version of English 506 will be devoted to making useful sense of scholarship on the teaching of writing. We will examine the terms, concepts, assumptions, and concerns that seem to be key in some of the literature constituting that scholarship, such as writing processes, writing assignments, reading in the learning and teaching of writing, evaluation of student writing, errors, language difference, and modality in composition. This is not a “how to teach writing” course but a course in which we try to make sense of the subject of teaching writing: what writing might entail, how it is learned, what and how conceptions of these have and might shape writing pedagogies.

For this course, I have selected readings that represent a small network of past and recent scholarship addressing writing pedagogy from the perspective of the teaching of college writing—something about which all of you will by now have had some experience. You should approach the readings as representing ongoing scholarly conversations and debates that, as students advanced in your college careers and therefore with some experience with college writing, you are in a position to begin to engage and to contribute to. Your contributions will include but are not limited to frequent short response essays, discussion board forum postings, and position papers. Students enrolling in the graduate section of this course will be asked to prepare a 20-25 page research project in addition to contributing response essays, discussion board forums, and position papers.

Because this section of English 506 is taught entirely online as asynchronous, all classwork and class communication will take the form of digital written texts. Accordingly, all students should have access to reliable internet and be able to check the course Blackboard website daily, and all students should expect to contribute some form of writing—even if only a discussion board forum posting—every few days—and to receive frequent responses from me to their written contributions. One benefit of this course is that it will provide you with experience useful for imagining what is entailed in the teaching of writing in an entirely online environment—a growing phenomenon in the US and abroad.

Please note that the teaching of creative writing is taught in a different course offered by the UofL English department—English 507. We do not address creative writing in English 506.

ENGL 522-01 Structur of Mod ENGL Prof. Stewart

Examination of the structure of modern English language. The emphasis is on grammatical terminology and systems of classification for words, phrases, and sentences. Students collect and analyze real, natural linguistic examples, both spoken and written. Recommended for prospective English teachers.

(Cross-listed with LING 522. Counts as an Upper-level concentration course or as an Elective course within the Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics.)

ENGL 543-50 Stuart & Commonwealth Lit: Reading Milton; Reading Shakespeare DE;CUE Prof. Biberman

In the fall of 2019, literary scholars were stunned to learn of a new discovery. Handwriting experts had identified the marginalia in the Philadelphia's Public Library's copy of Shakespeare First Folio (1623) to be from the hand of John Milton. In this seminar we will examine Milton's annotations in order to get a better sense of what the author of Paradise Lost thought of Shakespeare. Milton's folio suggests that he was particularly interested in the following plays: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Tempest, Henry IV, As You Like It and King Lear. In addition to the first four of these plays, we will read Paradise Lost.

Requirements: Weekly brief critical writings, forum engagement, final project.

This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement and is a CUE course.

ENGL 544-51 Studies in Restoration and 18^th Century British Literature-CUE (DE) Prof. Ridley

Anglo-American scholars refer to a “long eighteenth century” (c.1660-1830) encompassing everything from the Restoration of the British monarchy in 1660 through to the late Romantic period. Trying to find a way through the best part of two centuries, the course will focus on a single theme - the idea of scientific and geographic discovery – for this is the period during which the Pacific was finally mapped, Australia was colonized by Europeans and circumnavigated, and the modern map of the world was drawn. The class will look at a variety of fictional and non-fictional works from the period which show British men and women of different classes writing about their encounters with a range of others, all of whom have their own cultures and beliefs. Texts studied will represent the well-known and less well-known, fiction and non-fiction, written and graphic works, and will include Margaret Cavendish, The Description of a New World, called The Blazing World (1668); Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719); Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726); Joseph Banks, excerpts from The Endeavor Journal (1768-71); and Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, Denmark (1796). We’ll also look at maps of the real and imaginary; illustrations of flora and fauna; considerations of new worlds opened up by both the microscope and telescope, by ballooning and cave exploration, and realms revealed by the new sciences of meteorology and geology. By the end of the course, we’ll hopefully have gained an overview of the socio-political issues driving exploration during the period, and of the range of literary forms and material culture to which exploration gave rise.

Please note that this is a DE course i.e. asynchronous online. The instructor will be available for anyone wishing to discuss anything face-to-face via Microsoft Teams, but there will be no scheduled synchronous group discussions.

ENGL 551-50 Special Topics:Writing from Life (DE) Prof. Strickley

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

ENGL 551-51 Special Topics: Writing from Life (DE) Prof. Strickley

ENGL 551-75 Special Topics Lit in ENGL Prof. Logan

This seminar 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 essentially 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.

ENGL 555-01 Coop Internship-CUE Prof. Mozer

ENGL 564-01 Sel Figures Amer Lit: Douglass, Melville, Stowe-CUE Prof. Ryan (CANCELLED)

Instructor: Susan Ryan

Tu/Th 4-5:15

CUE; Fulfills a 1700-1900 period requirement

This course will put three of the most influential nineteenth-century American writers—Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, and Harriet Beecher Stowe—into conversation with one another, exploring such themes as slavery and racial justice; violence, faith, and social change; modes of persuasion; and narrative form. In addition to works of fiction by each author (Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Douglass’s Heroic Slave, Melville’s Benito Cereno and Moby-Dick), we’ll consider a range of other genres, including autobiography, polemic, and poetry. The course will include hands-on training in digital archival research, leading toward a substantial final writing project.

ENGL 570-01 Language & Social Identity Prof. Cruz

This course explores how an individual or a group of individuals use language in the construction, projection, and interpretation of social identity. As speakers, we choose among the language resources available to us (e.g., languages, dialects, register, styles) in presenting differing identities in different contexts. Consequently, our language performances trigger the judgments of others, who make assumptions about our socioeconomic standing, personal and professional attributes, and group memberships. We will discuss how language mediates, and is mediated by, these social constructions, as well as how language exists, to both challenge and uphold systems of power.

ENGL 572-01 CUE“Let’s talk about love”: Affective experience in American literature, 1865-1910 Prof. Chandler

The course will explore a variety of literature about familial, romantic and other kinds of love (e.g. self-love, love for nature). U.S. literature from 1865 to 1910 examines a range of weighty societal changes, including the after-effects of the Civil War and the prevalence of urbanization, mass immigration, technological advances, and the demand by African Americans, indigenous persons, and white women for justice. Love is an important force within much of this literature, a force that helps define character and shape thematic conflicts over power and subjection, creativity and conformity. This section of English 572 will consider how genre and audience influenced the representation of love and how love stories related to changes and continuities in American society. Required readings will include poetry by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Edward Arlington Robinson; prose by Sarah Orne Jewett, Sui Sin Far, Henry James, W. E. B. Du Bois, W. D. Howells, Mark Twain, Kate Chopin, Charles Chesnutt, Edith Wharton, Abraham Cahan, and Zitkala-Sa; and drama by Dion Boucicault or Israel Zangwill. The course will also rely on relevant scholarly studies of period literature. Work requirements will include consistent engagement, tests, and essays.

https://www.loom.com/share/c0a4c647bd1b40acbecda84861f32aa4

ENGL 599-01 "The Future of Writing" (Text Technologies)-WR;CUE Prof. Mattes

The reintroduction of cursive into elementary classrooms; the persistence of “authorship” and alphabetic literacy in digital reading practices and technologies; the dependence in law and history on written documentary evidence; the changing modes through which consent is inscribed and recorded in official documents and elsewhere; the presence of the “handwritten” in poems, artists’ books and digital typeface plugins; the adoption of writing practices by recovery communities; the declarations of nostalgia for personal connection signified by the epistle. These are just a few of the uses of writing that mark our time of digital media shift. But what is new or transformative regarding this “old” media practice?

“The Future of Writing” explores this question not only for the present day, but as a query that has been posed over time. Surveying a range of past and current-day artists, historians, and theorists on the significance of writing, this course addresses four interrelated questions. The first entails a theorizing of the medium itself: what are the futures of writing’s meanings and affordances? The second pertains to lived experience: how do writing practices contribute to the futures and/or foreclosures of various peoples and communities? The third is a matter of our own literacies: how does writing figure within larger media ecologies, and relatedly, what is the place of written culture for establishing other communicative forms, from books and screens, to language, literature, and even the very idea of “writing”? The final question is a meta-commentary on the class itself: how does writing and allied forms of expression shape our sense of time and the “historicisms” by which we tell stories?

While each of these questions are posed in the present tense, this course seeks to establish connections between present and past experiences of the “newness” and the “possibility” of writing. Thus, in addition to current studies of the possible futures for written forms and formats, this course features historical research into past written futures, which have marked contexts as varied as the rise of middle-class epistolary culture and the novel; the birth and death of the author; the adoption of printing, telecommunications, and phonography; the networking of Enlightenment science; previous and ongoing scenes of colonial encounter and contestation; the invention of the news; and the formation of scholarly disciplines. By developing a history of the future of writing, this course explores how a vital media practice has been and remains crucial to our understandings of art, communication, cultural difference, and social order