Fall 2017

1128 ENGL 202-01 Introduction to Creative Writing:
MWF 9-9:50am  (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.

1537 ENGL 202-02 Introduction to Creative Writing:
MWF 1:00-1:50pm (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.

 


5093 ENGL 202-03 Introduction to Creative Writing:
T/Th 1:00-2:15pm (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.

 
 

4718 ENGL 202-04 Introduction to Creative Writing:
T/Th 11:00-12:15pm (Professor Taylor)

 

 
7059 ENGL 250-01 Introduction of Literature:
T/Th 11am-12:15pm (Professor Turner)
This course will introduce students to reading literary texts, including traditional forms such as poetry, novels, and drama, but also important visual media such as film and graphic novels.  As a student in English 250, you will learn strategies for reading closely and effectively, and these skills will help to deepen your engagement with readings for other courses.  These skills will also enhance your appreciation of books, movies, and shows you watch outside of the university.  Course texts will likely include: Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  We will also consider film adaptations of these written texts.

 
 

5094 ENGL 300-01 Introduction to English Studies-WR:
MWF 10:00-10:50am (Professor Anderson)
 This writing-intensive course, which serves as an introduction to the English major, will require students to develop and practice reading, discussing, and writing about literature. We will discuss key terms for poetry, fiction, and drama, practice close reading, and develop writing skills and argumentation skills that you can use in your other classes. Grades are based on essays, revisions, and teacher conferences, peer review of drafts, in-class writing, class discussion, and class reports.

 

3919 ENGL 300-02 Introduction to English Studies-WR:
MWF 11:00-11:50am (Professor Mattes)
This course will cover a range of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama while introducing students to central terms and methods of literary criticism and history. In addition to giving close attention to the “internal,” aesthetic elements of texts, we will consider the social contexts in which such texts are written and read. These contexts include broader social, economic, and cultural currents in which our readings are embedded and to which they speak; changing attitudes regarding issues of art, genre, canon, and more generally, the politics of literary study; and the contributions literary studies make to conversations across disciplines.

 

6483 ENGL 300-03 Introduction to English Studies-WR:
 MW 3:30-4:45pm (Professor Lutz)
This course will explore literature as a complex symbolic structure. We will unravel this structure through close reading, class discussion, and then writing, but we will always keep in mind the parts of the text best left unrevealed and mysterious. Our primary concern will be on close readings of the assigned texts, but through this particular and intricate understanding we will trace the movement of varying ideas about race, gender, and class. We will read works by William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Samuel Beckett, John Keats, Virginia Woolf, and others. You will write three formal essays—one a research paper—and different sorts of informal work. Exams and quizzes will test that you complete the reading.

 


9084 ENGL 300-75 Introduction to English Studies-WR:
T/Th 5:30pm-6:45pm (Professor Clukey)
This course is designed to help you read, think, talk, and write like an English major. It is designed as a sort of boot camp for literary analysis that will help you develop the skills necessary to tackle even the most obfuscating verse and prose. The goals of this class are twofold. The first is to hone your literary-interpretative skills on a microcosmic level (through attention to word choice, sound, and language) and on a macrocosmic level (through attention to generic conventions, literary form, and narrative theory). The second goal is to teach you to effectively communicate your newly honed interpretative abilities by using scholarly research to turn observations into compelling arguments and participate in critical discussions. Because the best way to learn to write well is to write often, you’ll try your hand at several different kinds of academic writing throughout the semester. This term the course will have a science fiction theme.

 


3927 ENGL 301-01 British Literature I
T/Th 2:30-3:45pm (Professor Dietrich)
We will read a selection of the writings of English-speaking peoples from 660 to the Restoration. We will focus on the ways they constructed their views of the world and on the role of writing in that construction, paying particular attention to changes and continuities in cultural values.
We will read a selection of the writings of English-speaking peoples from 660 to the Restoration. We will focus on the ways they constructed their views of the world and on the role of writing in that construction, paying particular attention to changes and continuities in cultural values.

 

1593 ENGL 303-01 Scientific and Technical Writing-WR:
T/Th 2:30-3:45pm  (TBA)

 

 

1378 ENGL 303-02 Scientific and Technical Writing-WR:
MWF 1:00-1:50pm (Professor)

 

 

5180 ENGL 303-03 Scientific and Technical Writing-WR:
T/Th 11:00am-12:15pm (Professor)

 

 

9085 ENGL 304-01 Creative Nonfiction Survey & Wkshp
MWF 10-10:50am (Professor Mozer)
Creative nonfiction applies the creative techniques  typically assigned to fiction—setting, narrative structure, character development, dialogue—to true stories, making our tales of real life more interesting and compelling. Some subgenres of creative nonfiction include memoir, personal essay, and some forms of journalism like food and travel writing.
In this class, we will get to know the genre by reading the work of both published and student writers; both longer works of memoir and lots and lots of shorter essay. We will talk about bending and blurring genre lines. We will talk about craft. We will read a lot, write a lot, and talk--a lot. Students will do a series of short writing assignments across the semester.
Our textbooks will be: Best American Travel Writing 2016 (ed. Bryson) and Million Little Pieces (Frey), along with lots and lots of essays posted to Blackboard. This is a reading class as much as it is a writing class.
We will workshop at least one piece from each student at some point in the term--if you're shy about sharing your work with others, this might not be the class for you. But I hope it is. We all have stories to tell. Come craft and hone the telling of yours.
(Prerequisite note: Students must have completed a basic, introduction to creative writing course similar to UofL's ENGL202 in order to take 304. This is a 300-level creative writing course. We will build upon a foundation that 202 has already put in place.)

 

4003 ENGL 305-01 Intermediate Creative Writing:WKP Playwrite
 MWF 10:00-10:50am  (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.

 

1129 ENGL 305-02 Intermediate Creative Writing: WKP: Fiction
 T/Th 2:30-3:45pm (Professor Stansel)
This course offers students an opportunity to expand on knowledge gained in introductory creative writing courses and to focus their concentration more intensively on fiction writing. Week by week the class will examine different elements of storytelling: point-of-view, dialogue, character development, plot, setting, etc. Students will read and view stories by established and emerging writers, all the while working on their own work. The class will approach writing as a process of discovery, wherein students experiment with styles and forms in order to understand their own aesthetic interests. This is a discussion-based class and students should be ready to voice their thoughts and ideas. As with most courses, students will get the most from the class when they come to texts and discussions with energy and open-minded curiosity.

 
    


3748 ENGL 309-01 Inquiries in Writing-WR
T/Th 8:00-9:15am (Professor TBA)

 
 

 
1138 ENGL 309-02 Inquiries in Writing-WR:
T 4:00-6:45pm (Professor Rogers)
This section requires permission from the instructor

 

 

5095 ENGL 310-01 Writing About Literature-NonmajorWR:
MWF 11-11:50am (Professor Sheridan)
The question of this class is what is contemporary literature? We’ll spend the semester reading and writing about acclaimed contemporary novels, memoir, short stories, and poetry.  Although our focus will be on literature written since you’ve been born, we will discuss canonical literature as well as expanded understandings of texts, from spoken word poetry to graphic novels.  
Texts will likely include longer works, such as Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (graphic novel), Mary Karr, Liars Club (memoir), Emily St. John Mandel, Stations Eleven (dystopian fiction), and lots of shorter works, such as Angela Carter’s fractured fairy tales, Junot Diaz’s short stories, Naomi Shihab Nye and Sonia Sanchez’s poetry.
 You will share how you are making sense of these works through class discussion, multiple short compositions for a general audience, a collaborative class presentation, and a longer academic paper.

 


4719 ENGL 310-02 Writing About Literature Nonmajor-WR:
T/Th 11:00am-12:15pm  (Professor Hadley)
This course is an introduction to the field of English literary studies for non-majors
We will read, discuss, and write about literature from a number of different genres such as fiction, poetry, drama, and conclude with a summary unit on critical approaches to literature. We will address as topics the central components of the course, "writing" and "literature," and the relation of one to the other, and raise questions about the value of reading literature and what is gained by analyzing and writing about it. Quizzes, brief writing exercises and several essays will be assigned in exploring these issues and in the interest of developing students' skills in thinking and writing about literature. A central premise will be that good writing is produced by means of revision and collaboration; writing for the course, then, will be designed and implemented around these principles.

 

 

3749 ENGL 310-03 Writing About Literature-Nonmajor-WR:
MW 2:00-3:15pm (Professor Mattes)
This course will cover a range of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama while introducing students to central terms and methods of literary criticism and history. In addition to giving close attention to the “internal,” aesthetic elements of texts, we will consider the social contexts in which such texts are written and read. These contexts include broader social, economic, and cultural currents in which our readings are embedded and to which they speak; changing attitudes regarding issues of art, genre, canon, and more generally, the politics of literary study; and the contributions literary studies make to conversations across disciplines.

 
 

1139 ENGL 311-01 American Literature I:
MWF 1:00-1:50pm (Professor Anderson)
This literature survey will introduce you to American literature prior to the Civil War, ranging from Native American materials and writings during early European settlement (Columbus, etc.) to important writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. The course will help you to relate these texts to their socio-historical contexts, such as Puritan theology and patterns of settlement, the Enlightenment, slavery, the American Revolution, Jacksonian democracy, the Abolitionist movement, and the Civil War itself.  The course will help you develop skills for analyzing, discussing, and writing about challenging poetry and prose, and the many perspectives they convey. Grades are based on three exams, a class presentation, a paper, and regular class participation.

 


1141 ENGL 312-01 American Literature II:
MW 3:30-4:45pm (Professor Adams)
This course surveys major texts of American poetry and prose from (roughly) 1860 to 1940. We will pay particular attention to how writers articulated ideas of “self” and “other,” how they appealed to these notions to reflect or critique rapidly changing historical and cultural conditions, and how these texts shaped (and continue to shape) our conception of what counts as “American.” Authors will include (among others) Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, James, Chopin, Washington, DuBois, Hughes, Hurston, and Faulkner.

 

9099 ENGL 325-01 Introduction to Linguistics:
MWF 10-10:50am (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.

 
 

9086 ENGL 368-01 Minority Trads Engl Lits-CD2:
MWF 1-1:50pm (Professor Mattes)
This course explores the powerful resonances that early American texts have had for later generations of minority readers and writers. Starting with what early American studies scholar Matt Cohen calls “the publication event” of particular works, we will track the creative, cultural, and material transmissions of early American literature over time to illuminate the continuities, breaks, and revisions of past ideas about representation, culture, community, and identity–ideas that still hold purchase for current-day readers. More specifically, we will explore how early American literatures are made and remade, imagined and reimagined via contemporary Native American and Indigenous literatures, African American and African Diasporic literatures, and Latin-x and Latin-x American literatures. In one unit, for example, students read Laila Lalami’s recent novel, The Moor’s Account, alongside Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación. They consider how the sixteenth-century basis for Lalami’s narrator, an African slave named Estevanico, understood the terms upon which Native communities in the early American South and Southwest incorporated survivors of the failed Narváez Expedition. In doing so, students discover how the multiethnic dimensions of colonial encounters are critical resources for artists and theorists.
This course also gives special attention to the generic and media transformations often entailed by the afterlives of early American literature – transformations that refigure our semester’s central works in sometimes unexpected ways. For example, students will not only develop comparative approaches via more traditional pairings such as Louise Erdrich’s (Ojibwe) and Sherman Alexie’s (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene) poetic ripostes to Mary Rowlandson’s seventeenth-century captivity narrative, but across a wider range of expressive forms. Works might include Tanya Tagag’s (Inuit) eco-feminist soundtrack to the early documentary film, Nanook of the North, or the 20th- and 21st-century historical novels, graphic novels, films that tackle the cultural erasures and racial elisions shot through The Confessions of Nat Turner.

 

6831 ENGL 369-01 Native American Autobiography:
T/Th 11:00am-12:15pm  (Professor Kelderman)
Since the founding of the United States, literatures of dissent and protest have been a continuing thread in American culture. This course presents American minority literatures in historical context, tracing dissenting voices in American culture, from the Pequot author William Apess’s “Eulogy on King Philip” and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, to the political writings of the Ojibwe activist Winona LaDuke and Tony Kushner’s AIDS drama Angels in America. We will explore a central tension: while these texts offer (sometimes radical) challenges to social and political institutions, they also worked within literary and rhetorical traditions that made their critiques legible to the general public. In the course of the semester, we will consider various historical moments and movements, including the anti-slavery movement, Chinese exclusion and Japanese internment, the Civil Rights Movement, and the American Indian Movement. In addition, we will reflect on our current moment, when issues of race, sexuality, immigration, and American Indian sovereignty continue to be at the forefront of literary, cultural, and social debates. Other authors read will include D’Arcy McNickle, Zitkala-Sa, W.E.B. DuBois, and Claudia Rankine. Requirements will include short response papers and two longer essays, and regular class participation.

 
    

9097 ENGL 371-01 America’s Wars-Fiction &Mem
T/Th 1-2:15pm (Professor Griner)
In this course we’ll read fiction and memoirs from the Vietnam war and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Among the questions the course will investigate are: How have depictions of war changed during/across these three wars?  Which gives us a more powerful picture of war, fiction or nonfiction?  Which seems more trustworthy and why?
It will be hybrid course, both literature and creative writing, so that students, for a final project, can turn in creative work (poetry, fiction, CNF) or a critical paper.  It can also be used to fulfill requirements the CW minor.
 The books we read will most likely include some of the following:
They Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen
Dispatches Michael Herr
The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien
The Lotus Eaters: Tatiana Soli
The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam Bảo Ninh
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk Ben Fountain
The Watch Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya
No Good Men Among the Living, the War through Afghan Eyes Anand Gopal
Love My Rifle More Than You Kayla Williams
The Reluctant Fundamentalist Mohsin Hamid
The Yellow Birds Kevin Powers
The Forever War Dexter Filkins

 

1143 ENGL 373-01 Women in Literature-CD2:
MW 2:00-3:15pm (Professor Millar)
Cross-listed course WGST 325-01

 

 

1608 ENGL 373-02 Women in Literature-CD2:
T/Th 9:30-10:45am (Professor Mattes)
Cross-listed course WGST 325-02
This course explores American and English women writers from the seventeenth century to the present day. It emphasizes works that critically investigate gendered constructions of authorship, artistry, and intellectualism in light of such social contexts such as literary and critical canon-making; the literary marketplace; and political advocacy and reform movements. Authors may include Anne Bradstreet; George Eliot; Fanny Fern; Louisa May Alcott; Willa Cather; Virginia Woolf; Alice Munro; Alice Walker; and/or Zadie Smith.

 

 
9103 ENGL 373-50 Women in Literature-CD2:
Distance Ed class (Professor White)
Cross-listed course WGST 325-50

 

 

6056 ENGL 401-01: The Pedestrian Canon:Walking, Writing & Embod Knwng
MW 2:00-3:15pm (Professor Maxwell)
Restricted for Honors program students
This course will use the act of walking to explore embodied writing practices, the interrelationship of mind and body more broadly, and the role (and metaphor) of stimulation—physical and intellectual—to knowledge-production. The topic will allow us to think about the types of bodies to which the practice of walking is most readily available, and we will consider issues of mobility through the lenses of critical race theory, feminist and queer theory, disability theory, and urban design. Activities will include two organized walks (one in the city and one in nature) with accompanying writing projects, one self-designed walk (which may include--but is not limited to--a nature hike, protest march, or pilgrimage) with an accompanying project (essay or podcast), and short writing responses to assigned readings, which include Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: The History of Walking, Anne Carson’s “Kinds of Water,” Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting: A London Adventure,” and excerpts from Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project.

 

 
4106 ENGL 403-01 Advanced Creative Writing:
Th 4:00-5:15pm (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.

 

 

5097 ENGL 413-01 Brit Lit Medieval Arth Lit:
T/Th 9:30-10:45am (Professor Wise)

 

 
9087 ENGL 419-01 American Literature, 1830-1865:WR
MWF 11-11:50am (Professor Ryan)
This writing-intensive course will look at mid-nineteenth-century American culture through the lens of authorship studies. Topics will include the widespread practices of reprinting, anonymous publication, and plagiarism; the interdependence of magazine and book publishing; the rise of celebrity authorship; and the persistent tensions between popular appeal and artistic aspiration. We’ll read some literary works that specifically address authorship (e.g., Emily Dickinson’s poetry) alongside scholarship and primary documents that speak to particular forms of literary production. Archival research using digital databases will be a significant part of the course.

 


1589 ENGL 423-01 African/Amer Lit 1845-Pres:WR: CD1
T/Th 1:00-2:15pm  (Professor Chandler)
This course will focus on realism, as well as alternatives to it, such as fantasy.  Realism is a literary mode that emphasizes true-to-life or verifiable experiences, and it is central to many African American texts, from the 18th- and 19th-century autobiographies to novels, short stories, drama, and even poetry. Yet fantasy and related genres and modes have been important features of African American literature, too, including early representations of conjure or magic, as well as important experiments in science and speculative fiction. In this course we will explore key realist and non-realist fictional narratives. Assigned writers may include Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Martin Delaney, Charles Chesnutt, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Pauline Hopkins, George Schuyler, Octavia Butler, Walter Mosley, Toni Morrison, and Colson Whitehead. Required work will include exams, short essays, a final paper, and informal oral reports.

 

 
1144 ENGL 450-01 Cooperative Internship in English Studies: Internship
(Professor Chandler)
This section requires permission from the instructor

 

 

9088 ENGL 460-01: Arthur Conan Doyle-WR
MWF 12-12:50pm (Professor Rosner)
Most of us link Arthur Conan Doyle to his wonderful creations, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson.  Those characters, and the puzzles they solved, fascinate many readers.  But Doyle wrote other kinds of texts as well, including social/cultural commentaries, analyses of ‘true crimes,’ romances, science fiction, defenses of spiritualism, etc.  In this class, we’ll read a range of Doyle’s texts not only for what they say to us but for what they say about the Victorians.  In a sense we’ll be reading-detectives, working to determine some of the interests, values, and assumptions that made Doyle so popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  And since this is also a WR course, we’ll be writing and thinking/talking about academic writing and its values, assumptions, and moves.

 

9089 ENGL 470-01 End Times Narratives
T/Th 9:30-10:45am (Professor Weinberg)
A hybrid craft and theory course, our goal will be to gain a more advanced understanding of a long-existing subgenre of narrative about The End of the World as We Know It, from myth and religious texts to dystopian, speculative fiction, which has never been “hotter” in publishing and film.  What are the hallmarks or tropes of the best work, aside from calamity?  We’ll determine how (or how not) to write a good literary work dealing with End Times (or New Times), focusing on craft elements such as structure, plotting, character motivation, style of narration, the treatment of narrative time.  We’ll also theorize as to why readers are drawn to such harrowing works of art, with the help of supporting literary criticism and recent journalism, such as Evan Osnos’ New Yorker piece, “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich.”  Writing assignments will be both scholarly and creative.  Novels will be culled from a long list of possibilities, with length being a factor (many could take all semester to read). Writing assignments will be both scholarly and creative.

 

 

9090 ENGL 470-02 Whitman, Dickinson & Poets
MWF 1-1:50pm (Professor Golding)
This course will focus intensively on the work of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson—for many readers, the two greatest poets that the U.S. has produced—and on the extension of their influence into the recent past and present. While also reading their essays and correspondence, we will concentrate on Whitman’s and Dickinson’s poetry—on the development of their manuscripts, on their stylistic experiments, on such shared themes as the Civil War, sex/gender politics, and spirituality or religion, and on their reception. In the last few weeks of the semester, we’ll look at their influence on the work of more recent poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, and Susan Howe, among others.
Likely Requirements (subject to change): In-class mid-term essay; an annotated bibliography that will help you prepare your final paper; 7-8-page final paper involving research and appropriate documentation. Participation in online discussion via Blackboard, consisting of about 8-10 (i.e., not-quite-weekly) ungraded reading responses, is also required.




3388 ENGL 491-01 Interpretive Theory:New Criticism-Present:
MWF 10:00-10:50am  (Professor Adams)
This course introduces students to central texts and movements in literary and cultural theory in the 20th Century. We will organize our readings around three large topics: 1) the distinctiveness (or lack thereof) of literary art, 2) interpretation and its related problems (among them intention, affect, meaning, and the unconscious), and 3) issues in representation (including history, ideology, gender, race, and sexuality).

 


4017 ENGL 491-02 Interpretive Theory: New Criticism-Present
T/Th 2:30-3:45pm (Professor McDonald)
This course is an undergraduate introduction to theories of literature, criticism, and interpretation. Over the course of the semester, you will: 1) learn the basic terms, concepts, and approaches of major schools of 20C interpretative theory; 2) gain an understanding of how interpretative theory has developed over time; 3) practice different critical methods through in-class work. As we read, historicize, evaluate, and practice critical theory, we will participate in debates that lie at the very heart of the humanities. What is literature? How do we read it? How should we read it? Who “authors” a text’s meaning? And why does it matter? Students will be responsible for one short paper, a midterm exam, and a final exam.

 

 

1354 ENGL 501-01 Independent Study
TBA
This section requires permission from the instructor

 

 

5096 ENGL 504-01 Advanced Creative Writing II – Poetry:
T/Th 9:30-10:45am  (Professor Stansel)
This upper-division fiction course offers students who have already completed introductory and intermediate workshops the opportunity to further refine their craft. The discussion-based class will focus on the craft of short story writing, with a secondary and simultaneous examination of linked, or connected, stories. Through this we will begin to examine strategies for longer narratives, while still practicing the short form. We will read several collections of linked stories. Week-by-week, the class will examine different aspects of the storytelling craft, including scene-building, plot and sub-plot development, writing voice, among others. In addition to creating and workshopping short stories, students will work on developing story ideas and structuring approaches for a longer piece of writing.

 

 
9098 ENGL 508-01 Literacy Tutoring Across Contexts and Cultures: WR;CUE
MWF 11-11:50am (Professor Olinger)
This course will focus on the theory and practice of teaching writing one-on-one and in small groups in academic, professional, and community settings. We will discuss the theoretical foundations of teaching and tutoring writing, reading scholarship from composition and literacy studies and writing center research, and we will explore pedagogical strategies for working with writers from a variety of backgrounds. Students completing this course will be eligible for internships in community-based settings such as Family Scholar House and the Louisville Free Public Library.

 

 

3928 ENGL 510-01 Graduate Coop Internship-MA Level
TBA (Professor Schneider)
This section requires permission from the instructor

 

 

9104 ENGL 518-01 Foundations of Language:
T/Th 9:30-10:45 (Professor TBA)
Cross-listed with LING 518-01

 

 

9106 ENGL 522-01 Structure of Modern English:
Cross-listed with LING 522
(Professor Stewart)
Examination of the structure of modern English language; emphasis on grammatical terminology and systems of classification. Students collect and analyze linguistic examples, spoken and written. Recommended for prospective English teachers.
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.
Course Goals:
Transform perceptions of the grammar of Modern English from intimidating and mysterious into a concrete, describable system.
Build a repertoire of concepts, terms, and analytical skills for thinking, analyzing, and communicating about the linguistic structure of English.
Course-level Student Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:
    distinguish between language issues that are fundamental to the construction of English sentences and those that constitute “pet peeves” and “complaint triggers”;
    identify and collect examples of specified structure-types encountered in everyday English language use;
    describe English sentence structures in detail, through the rigorous application of the concepts, categories, and methods of descriptive linguistics; and
    produce original English examples of said concepts, categories, and methods.

 

9091 ENGL 541-01 RobinHood & Other Med. Outlaw
T/Th 1-2:15pm (Professor 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 eleventh century Life of Hereward through the proliferation of Robin Hood tales in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  In particular, we will investigate 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. In doing so, we will examine also how the notion of the “greenwood” communicates and challenges the social and moral norms of medieval England.  Likewise, we will question how the figure of the outlaw functions as a projection of an idealized masculinity.  Finally, we will consider how more recent authors appropriate these narratives in order to project their own perspectives and desires concerning both medieval and modern society.

 

9092 ENGL 544-01 Stud Rest & 18th C Brit Lit-CUE:
MWF 10-10:50 (Professor Biberman)
"Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage." Was there ever a time when the logic in this Sinatra song did not make perfect sense? Some critics would claim so, asserting that marriage once existed to promote procreation, not monogamous love. This evolution in the concept of marriage is often said to begin in earnest during the late seventeenth and the early 18th century. In our class we will read a range of texts in order to evaluate this thesis. While arriving at an understanding of how the idea of marriage functioned in England during this time, we will also focus on a range of concepts
which might define marriage by serving as its opposite. In a society working to elevate the roles of "husband" and "wife," prostitutes, pimps, and illegitimate children, for example, might become demonized. With this hypothesis in mind, we will study the representation of these two sets of characters--the sacred couple vs. the villains--in plays, poetry, and prose. We will test out possible links connecting all these "others" in order to answer the following question: How might the promotion of monogamous love encourage fear of foreigners, the cultivation of rationalism, and the eradication of magic within early modern culture?  Texts include Paradise Lost, The Way of the World, The Blazing World, All for Love, Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Fielding’s Joseph Andrews.   Requirements: Take home midterm, final seminar paper, presentation


 

9093 ENGL 549-01 Stud Post-Col/Eth Lit-CUE:
Afrofuturism and African Science Fiction
T/Th 9:30-10:45am (Professor Willey)
In this course, we will examine key texts in the development of Afrofuturism in the American diaspora and African Science Fiction from the continent.  To what extent are the two discourses linked or different?  Our work will take us from early stories by WEB DuBois through to Sun Ra and Amiri Baraka and Octavia Butler.  We will then turn to examine how futurism has taken shape on the African continent through examining such authors as Dongala and Okorafor and films such as “Pumzi.”  Of special interest will be the connections between Futurist and Ecological discourses.

 


7493 ENGL 551-01 Popular Nature Writing:
T/Th 11:00am-12:15pm (Professor Ridley)
The course will examine the ever-growing market for trade non-fiction nature writing, that is, writing about nature, or aspects of nature, designed to appeal to a general audience.
It has become commonplace among reviewers of nature-themed books to say that we live in a golden age of nature writing. This is typically explained by way of comparing nature writing following the worldwide financial crisis of 2008 to nature writing in the decade following the conclusion of the First World War: in both cases, readers living in uncertain times seem to take comfort in nature writers’ evocation of the unchanging rhythms of the natural world. But if we really are living at the beginning of what has been termed the Anthropocene (an age of mass extinctions caused by man), then the rhythms of the natural world are being disrupted and changing as never before.
Early weeks of the course will introduce a range of classic Anglo-American nature writing in excerpt form, including selections from Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selborne (1789) and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854) before moving to consider leading twentieth-century exponents of nature writing. David Quammen’s writing evolution from popular nature features in Outside magazine to the multi-award winning The Song of the Dodo (1996) will be examined, and the course will come up to the present with consideration of two surprise international best-sellers: Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk (2015) and Peter  Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees (2015). What makes good nature writing and what does the current popularity of nature writing say about our culture more widely?
Students interested in taking this course should note that our reading will consist almost entirely of non-fictional prose about the natural world. If you prefer your texts to be fictions, this is probably not the course for you. If you have questions, please feel free to email me: glynis.ridley@louisville.edu

 

ENGL 563-75 Milton
T/Th 7:00-9:45pm (Professor Billingsley)

 

 
 

9107 ENGL 567-75 Post Colonial Voices:
Th 5:30-8:15pm (Professor Logan)

 

 

ENGL 571-01 Dissolving Boundaries: Am. Lit in Transntl & Oceanic Contexts
(Professor Ryan)
Some of the most intriguing works in early and  nineteenth-century American literature either take place elsewhere—that is, not on American soil—or meditate at length on some notion of foreignness or cultural hybridity. In reading and analyzing these encounters with the nation’s many exteriors or others, participants in the course will develop a keener sense of how American national consciousness has always been both under formation and under pressure. Possible texts include Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, in which she moves from the Massachusetts Bay Colony through “Indian country”; Royall Tyler’s The Algerine Captive (a novel about North African piracy and captivity); Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative; Mary Prince’s slave narrative (set in the West Indies and England, but commenting on matters of keen interest to Americans); Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick or Benito Cereno; Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady.

 

7494 ENGL 574-75 Global Indigenous Literature:
T/Th 5:30-6:45pm (Professor Kelderman)
This course examines anglophone indigenous literatures from the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia since the 1960s.  It will focus on how indigenous literatures are shaped by, and reflect on, globalization and transnationalism. Rather than assuming a global indigenous “sameness,” we will use what Chadwick Allen calls “purposeful indigenous juxtapositions” to consider the following questions: what global events, legal contexts, and cultural forces have shaped the production of indigenous literatures around the world? And how have global indigenous literatures reflected and influenced cultural and political movements around the world? Assigned readings will include short stories, poetry, and novels, and will cover various genres, including creative non-fiction, science fiction, detective stories, and several films. The novels that we will read include Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, Patricia Grace’s Tu, and Kim Scott’s That Deadman’s Dance. The requirements are active class participation, several short writing assignments, one oral presentation, and a final research paper.