Spring 2024 Class Schedule: Department of English

Spring 2024 Class Schedule

**Meeting days and times may be subject to change.**

Click on a course title to view the description.

Course	Title	Instructor	Day/Time
English 200	Literary Histories: Far From Home: Journeys, Exile, Migration, and Hope (Historical Breadth Post-1830)	Wall	MW 12:30-1:50
English 200 Literary Histories: Far From Home: Journeys, Exile, Migration, and Hope (Historical Breadth Post-1830) Course Description: How does longing for home–– a place of belonging–– shape our sense of identity and community? How do writers as different as Homer and Octavia Bulter meditate on the experience of displacement as well as possibilities for new kinds of citizenship? Our goal in this class will be to see how literature can offer different theories of what home and humanity can mean. Beginning with the classical epic hero Odysseus who desperately battles monsters, seductive women, and vengeful gods to get home from the Trojan war, we turn to more modern stories where travelers are not traditional heroes but figures who feel vulnerable or alienated even within their home spaces. Even as their journeys share themes of violence and renewal—and fantasy and realism—these different works steer us to contemplate strikingly different problems such as immigration, racial inequities, and climate change. Texts will likely include Margaret Atwood’s feminist recentering of The Odyssey in the domestic space (The Penelopiad); Shakespeare’s tragic story of lovers’ journeying to war on a Mediterranean island where danger resides where they least expect it (Othello); Octavia Butler’s apocalyptic cli-fi story about a young Black woman’s attempt to refound a world utterly destroyed (The Parable of the Sower); Maurice Sendak’s children’s book about punishment, nourishment, and fantasy (Where the Wild Things Are); creative nonfictional narratives of detainees in the UK (Refugee Tales); Mohsin Hamid’s poignant tale of Middle Eastern exiled lovers who find a magic portal to lands where outcasts band together for survival (Exit West); and Yuri Herrera’s stunning rewriting of Odysseus as a young Mexican woman undertaking a hazardous borderland crossing to the US to reconnect her family (Signs Preceding the End of the World). This course will introduce students skills—how to interpret literature, situate fictional writing in historical contexts, and craft strong arguments in writing. Required texts: Homer, The Odyssey, ed. Emily Wilson ISBN: 978-0393356250 Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Barbara Mowat (Folger edition) ISBN 978-0743477550 Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad ISBN: 978-1786892485 Octavia Bulter, The Parable of the Sower ISBN ‎ 978-1538732182 Mohsin Hamid, Exit West; ISBN ‎ 978-0735212206 Yuri Herrera, Signs Preceding the End of the World, trans. Dillman ISBN ‏ 978-1908276421 Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are ISBN ‎ 978-1782955030
English 202	Introduction to Creative Writing	Happe	WF 11-12:20
English 202 Introduction to Creative Writing Course Description: This course will introduce students to the major elements and tools of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction writing. Through exercises and projects, you’ll practice using these tools to produce original, exciting works of literary art. Along the way, you’ll sharpen your ability to track these elements both in published texts and in the work of your classmates, and further develop how you measure aesthetic value. You’ll be encouraged to see yourself as an active member of a community of artists, and to establish a regular discipline as a working writer. Writing and reading will be due in nearly every class, and peer workshop will play an important role in learning to see your work more objectively. Teaching Methods: Discussion. Evaluation Methods: Evaluation of a final portfolio. Texts include: A course reader.
English 202	Introduction to Creative Writing	Hirsi	WF 12:30-1:50
English 202 Introduction to Creative Writing Course Description: This course will introduce students to the major elements and tools of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction writing. Through exercises and projects, you’ll practice using these tools to produce original, exciting works of literary art. Along the way, you’ll sharpen your ability to track these elements both in published texts and in the work of your classmates, and further develop how you measure aesthetic value. You’ll be encouraged to see yourself as an active member of a community of artists, and to establish a regular discipline as a working writer. Writing and reading will be due in nearly every class, and peer workshop will play an important role in learning to see your work more objectively. Teaching Methods: Discussion. Evaluation Methods: Evaluation of a final portfolio. Texts include: A course reader.
English 206	Reading and Writing Poetry	Smith	MW 9:30-10:50
English 206 Reading and Writing Poetry [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Prerequisites: All students interested in the Creative Writing Major must take two introductory writing courses--poetry (ENG 206), fiction (207), or creative nonfiction (208)--before applying to the major. Be sure to enroll in 207 or 208 if you have not already done so. No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor.
English 206	Reading and Writing Poetry	Webster	MW 12:30-1:50
English 206 Reading and Writing Poetry [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Prerequisites: All students interested in the Creative Writing Major must take two introductory writing courses--poetry (ENG 206), fiction (207), or creative nonfiction (208)--before applying to the major. Be sure to enroll in 207 or 208 if you have not already done so. No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor.
English 206	Reading and Writing Poetry	Shanahan	TTh 11-12:20
English 206 Reading and Writing Poetry [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Prerequisites: All students interested in the Creative Writing Major must take two introductory writing courses--poetry (ENG 206), fiction (207), or creative nonfiction (208)--before applying to the major. Be sure to enroll in 207 or 208 if you have not already done so. No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor.
English 206	Reading and Writing Poetry	Shanahan	TTh 3:30-4:50
English 206 Reading and Writing Poetry [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Prerequisites: All students interested in the Creative Writing Major must take two introductory writing courses--poetry (ENG 206), fiction (207), or creative nonfiction (208)--before applying to the major. Be sure to enroll in 207 or 208 if you have not already done so. No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor.
English 207	Reading and Writing Fiction	Seliy	MW 2-3:20
English 207 Reading and Writing Fiction Course Description: A reading and writing course in short fiction. Students will read widely in traditional as well as experimental short stories, seeing how writers of different culture and temperament use conventions such as plot, character, and techniques of voice and distance to shape their art. Students will also receive intensive practice in the craft of the short story, writing at least one story, along with revisions, short exercises, and a critical study of at least one work of fiction, concentrating on technique. Teaching Method: Discussion of readings and principles; workshop of student drafts. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ growing understanding of fiction; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: Selected short stories, essays on craft, and the work of the other students. Prerequisites: All students interested in the Creative Writing Major must take two introductory writing courses--poetry (ENG 206), fiction (207), or creative nonfiction (208)--before applying to the major. Be sure to enroll in 206 or 208 if you have not already done so. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors.
English 207	Reading and Writing Fiction	Scanlon	MW 3:30-4:50
English 207 Reading and Writing Fiction Course Description: A reading and writing course in short fiction. Students will read widely in traditional as well as experimental short stories, seeing how writers of different culture and temperament use conventions such as plot, character, and techniques of voice and distance to shape their art. Students will also receive intensive practice in the craft of the short story, writing at least one story, along with revisions, short exercises, and a critical study of at least one work of fiction, concentrating on technique. Teaching Method: Discussion of readings and principles; workshop of student drafts. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ growing understanding of fiction; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: Selected short stories, essays on craft, and the work of the other students. Prerequisites: All students interested in the Creative Writing Major must take two introductory writing courses--poetry (ENG 206), fiction (207), or creative nonfiction (208)--before applying to the major. Be sure to enroll in 206 or 208 if you have not already done so. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors.
English 207	Reading and Writing Fiction	Bouldrey	TTh 9:30-10:50
English 207 Reading and Writing Fiction Course Description: A reading and writing course in short fiction. Students will read widely in traditional as well as experimental short stories, seeing how writers of different culture and temperament use conventions such as plot, character, and techniques of voice and distance to shape their art. Students will also receive intensive practice in the craft of the short story, writing at least one story, along with revisions, short exercises, and a critical study of at least one work of fiction, concentrating on technique. Teaching Method: Discussion of readings and principles; workshop of student drafts. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ growing understanding of fiction; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: Selected short stories, essays on craft, and the work of the other students. Prerequisites: All students interested in the Creative Writing Major must take two introductory writing courses--poetry (ENG 206), fiction (207), or creative nonfiction (208)--before applying to the major. Be sure to enroll in 206 or 208 if you have not already done so. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors.
English 207	Reading and Writing Fiction	Bouldrey	TTh 11-12:20
English 207 Reading and Writing Fiction Course Description: A reading and writing course in short fiction. Students will read widely in traditional as well as experimental short stories, seeing how writers of different culture and temperament use conventions such as plot, character, and techniques of voice and distance to shape their art. Students will also receive intensive practice in the craft of the short story, writing at least one story, along with revisions, short exercises, and a critical study of at least one work of fiction, concentrating on technique. Teaching Method: Discussion of readings and principles; workshop of student drafts. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ growing understanding of fiction; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: Selected short stories, essays on craft, and the work of the other students. Prerequisites: All students interested in the Creative Writing Major must take two introductory writing courses--poetry (ENG 206), fiction (207), or creative nonfiction (208)--before applying to the major. Be sure to enroll in 206 or 208 if you have not already done so. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors.
English 208	Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction	Bresland	TTh 11-12:20
English 208 Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction Course Description: An introduction to some of the many possible voices, styles, and structures of the creative essay. Students will read from the full aesthetic breadth of the essay, including memoir, meditation, lyric essay, and literary journalism. Discussions will address how the essay creates an artistic space distinct from the worlds of poetry and fiction, and how truth and fact function within creative nonfiction. Students will be asked to analyze the readings closely, and to write six short essays based on imitations of the style, structure, syntax, and narrative devices found in the readings. Students can also expect to do some brief writing exercises and at least one revision. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student work. Prerequisites: All students interested in the Creative Writing Major must take two introductory writing courses--poetry (ENG 206), fiction (207), or creative nonfiction (208)--before applying to the major. Be sure to enroll in 206 or 207 if you have not already done so. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors.
English 208	Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction	Johnson	TTh 12:30-1:50
English 208 Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction Course Description: An introduction to some of the many possible voices, styles, and structures of the creative essay. Students will read from the full aesthetic breadth of the essay, including memoir, meditation, lyric essay, and literary journalism. Discussions will address how the essay creates an artistic space distinct from the worlds of poetry and fiction, and how truth and fact function within creative nonfiction. Students will be asked to analyze the readings closely, and to write six short essays based on imitations of the style, structure, syntax, and narrative devices found in the readings. Students can also expect to do some brief writing exercises and at least one revision. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student work. Prerequisites: All students interested in the Creative Writing Major must take two introductory writing courses--poetry (ENG 206), fiction (207), or creative nonfiction (208)--before applying to the major. Be sure to enroll in 206 or 207 if you have not already done so. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors.
English 210-2	British Literary Traditions, Part 2 (Historical Breadth Post-1830)	Froula	TTh 11-12:20, plus discussion section
English 210-2 British Literary Traditions, Part 2 (Historical Breadth Post-1830) Course Description: This lecture-and-discussion course surveys landmark works of anglophone literature by major authors across two dynamic centuries, from the Romantic poets through the Modernist' radical innovations to Postcolonial writers. Authors include Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Tennyson, Robert Browning, Rossetti, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, Derek Walcott, and Salman Rushdie. We'll study selected poems, fiction, plays, essays, letters, and journals of this turbulent and transformative period, in themselves and in light of historical developments: the industrial revolution, urbanization, scientific breakthroughs; the French revolution, democratization, rising literacy, transportation and media technologies; human, workers', and women's rights; imperialism, racialized slavery, colonialism, postcolonial conditions; and the global adventures of the English language. Teaching Method: lecture and discussion. Evaluation Method: Attendance and participation in discussion section (20%); weekly quizzes (potential extra credit); weekly posts (these count as midterm and final) (25%) ; a short analytic study (20%); a final paper and self-evaluation (35%). Steady work, heart, and improvement all count.
English 213	Introduction to Fiction: Coming of Age	Law	MW 9:30-10:50, plus discussion section
English 213 Introduction to Fiction: Coming of Age Course Description: A monster, a basement, a storm, a prayer. What scenes haunt a child's mental landscape? Coming of age is a process of wrestling with scenes of the past, and coming-of-age novels present us with identities that are paradoxically both formed and in the process of being formed. Such novels probe our sense of origins and identity, and moreover they reveal a complex relationship between language and the body. The four groundbreaking novels we'll read span 200 years and multiple continents, and explore a striving for belonging that is complicated by issues of ethnic, racial and sexual identity. Note: Representations and opinions of gender and race in Frankenstein will not align fully with our own notions, and the casual and unreflective nature of its prejudices may be dismaying. We will certainly discuss these issues. Two of the contemporary texts on our course contain frank depictions of juvenile sexuality. Teaching Method: Two lectures per week; one required discussion-section per week. Evaluation Methods: Midterm paper (25%); final paper (35%); final exam (20%); quizzes and class participation (20%). Texts include: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (Broadview 3^rd Edition, 2012), ISBN 9781554811038. Justin Torres, We the Animals (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), ISBN 9780547844190. Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury), ISBN 978-1-60819-626-5. Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom (Vintage), ISBN 978-1-9848-9976-7 Texts will be available at: Norris Bookstore.
English 234	Introduction to Shakespeare	Masten	MW 12:30-1:50, plus discussion section
English 234 Introduction to Shakespeare Course Description: We'll read a range of Shakespeare's plays: comedies, histories, tragedies, and tragicomedies, from early in his career to his final works. The course will introduce the plays by introducing them back into the context of the theatre, literary world, and culture in which Shakespeare originally wrote them. We will think about Shakespeare's contexts and how they matter: a theatre on the outskirts of ever-expanding Renaissance London; a financially successful acting company in which he played the simultaneous and often overlapping roles of writer, actor, and co-owner; a world of reading and writing in which words, plots, and texts were constantly being re-circulated into new plays; the rich possibilities of the English language around 1600. We will centrally consider the ways in which these theatrical, literary, and cultural questions register within the plays themselves. What do words, plays, stories do—how do they work—in Shakespeare's plays? Who or what is an audience or an actor in these plays? How do Shakespeare's plays stage issues such as gender, race, religion, sexuality, social class, entertainment and the media -- and how does his approach to these issues continue to speak to our own era? Teaching Method: Lectures with discussion; required weekly discussion section. Evaluation Method: Papers, midterm, final, discussion participation. Texts include: We'll use the high-quality, inexpensive Folger Library annotated paperback editions of the following plays, ed. Mowat and Werstine (these editions only): A Midsummer Night's Dream (978-1501146213); The Merchant of Venice (978-1439191163); Henry V (978-0743484879); As You Like It (978-0743484862); Hamlet, Updated edition (978-1451669411); The Tempest, Updated edition (978-1501130014); The Two Noble Kinsmen (978-1982170165); additional critical readings on Canvas. Texts will be available at: Norris Bookstore.
English 266	Introduction to African American Literature: African American Literature from the Beginning to the Present (Historical Breadth Post-1830)	Wilson	TTh 9:30-10:50, plus discussion section
English 266 Introduction to African American Literature: African American Literature from the Beginning to the Present (Historical Breadth Post-1830) Course Description: This lecture course attends to the ways that African-American writers have, by virtue of trying to inhabit the creative space of the speculative, not only used literature as a counter valence to the socio-political world but have aesthetically extended the very idea of what was formerly identified as “literature” proper. Thus, the focus of our discussion will examine the conventions and experimentations with literary production through writings that grapple with U.S. racial formation as well as the novel forms of invention, play, and performance latent within imagination. While the course will gloss the major literary histories, the early 20th century to the present will be accentuated. Writers will include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Teju Cole, Roxane Gay, Kendrick Lamar, Claudia Rankine, Jean Toomer, and Colson Whitehead.
English 275	Introduction to Asian American Literature	Huang	MW 11-12:20, plus discussion section
English 275 Introduction to Asian American Literature Course Description: Asian American, Asian-American, Asian/American: from Chinese Americans to Hmong Americans to mixed race Asian Americans, from fourth-generation Californians to cosmopolitan college students, from desert internment camps to New York City office buildings, what do the many subjects and locations of Asian American literature tell us about the capaciousness of the category itself? This class has two goals—first, providing an overview of literature written by Asian Americans in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries and placing these texts in conversation with key concepts from Asian American culture and history. Second, interrogating the constructed, pan-ethnic nature of Asian American identity, a category that came into use only in the 1960s as a coalitional entity defined by shared histories of labor, discrimination, and national and cultural unbelonging. Teaching Method(s): Lecture, Discussion Evaluation Method(s): Regular reading responses; two short essays; one long essay; active class participation Texts (subject to change; please confirm final text list on Canvas before purchasing): Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker (ISBN 978-157322531) Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior (ISBN 978-0679721888) Texts will be available at: Primary texts will be available at the Norris Bookstore and on reserve in the library. Other texts will be available on Canvas and in a reader at Quartet Copies.
English 300	Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Detective Fiction	Evans	MW 9:30-10:50
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Detective Fiction Course Description: Detective novels have often been classed dismissively as mere “genre fiction” unsuitable for academic study. But the “close reading” that we prize so highly as literary scholars might be understood as a linguistic form of detection: the ability to notice and interpret small linguistic clues that can help to unlock a “solution”—that is to say, a full and nuanced understanding—of a narrative. This course will survey influential works of detective fiction as literary artifacts in their own right, but also as potential handbooks for what Eve Sedgwick calls the “paranoid reading” that so often propels literary analysis. In other words, we will consider detective fiction as meta-literary commentary on the challenges of reading and interpretation. Reading assignments will include weekly novels, literary criticism and theory of detective fiction, and meta-theory about the theory and practice of literary analysis as a field and as a set of interpretive habits and skills. Teaching Method(s): Seminar discussion, brief introductory lectures (often as Canvas videos to be viewed before class), group discussion and peer review. Evaluation Method(s): Participation (online and in class); frequent short writing assignments; final essay; peer evaluation and self evaluation. Texts include: John Hodgman, ed., Sherlock Holmes: The Major Stories with Contemporary Critical Essay ISBN: 0312089457 Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep ISBN: 0804168881 Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins ISBN: 0393925358 Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night ISBN: 0062196537 Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express ISBN: 0062073494 Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train ISBN: 0393351939 Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress ISBN: 1982150343 Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 ISBN: 006091307X Henning Mankell, Faceless Killers ISBN:1400031575 Additional readings will be available on Canvas. Students are welcome to use alternate editions. Texts will be available at: Norris bookstore.
English 300	Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Westerns	Jackson	MW 11-12:20
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Westerns Course Description: Well over a century after the West was won—or rather, seized—and narratives of the wild, wild West continue to pervade mass media in the U.S. and beyond. Musical artists such as Lil Nas X, Megan Thee Stallion, Orville Peck, and Kasey Musgraves have been credited with ushering in a “yeehaw agenda” return to cowboy aesthetics and Yellowstone, a cable drama with modern-day cowboying and gunslinging is the one of the most watched shows on television. This course is an introduction to the genre of the western as it has appeared throughout literature and visual media from James Fenimore Cooper to Cowboy Bebop. We will begin in the 19th century, when narratives of the West manifested notions of expansion in advance of its reality and helped repair its deepest ideological fissure, slavery, after a war that tore it apart. In the 20th century, we will consider the role of cinema in ushering in visions of the West and invention of the Spaghetti Western (and why we called them that). Lastly, we will turn to contemporary mutations of the western to think about how westerns persist and remain lively to issues of race, sexuality, and the nation.
English 300	Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Magic, Monsters, and Dystopias: Young Adult Speculative Fiction	Larkin	TTh 2-3:20
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Magic, Monsters, and Dystopias: Young Adult Speculative Fiction Course Description: We live in a moment on the brink of change. From political uncertainty and looming climate catastrophe to long overdue calls for racial justice and an understanding of gender beyond the binary, our future is taking shape in ways we couldn't have imagined. Or, could we? How do the monsters, ghosts, werewolves, and rebels who fill the pages of young adult speculative fiction help us reflect on our world today? How does YA speculative fiction, with its interest in utopian and dystopian societies, think through the moral dilemmas and new possibilities that await us? Focusing particularly on speculative fiction by queer and BIPOC authors, this class will ask how these texts respond to questions of fascism and governmental control, climate change, technology, gender and sexuality, disability, and race. We will investigate speculative YA fiction through the lenses of childhood studies, queer theory, Afrofuturism, environmentalism, and disability studies, to name only a few. In so doing, we will ask: how does speculative fiction help us imagine new possible futures? And why are young adult characters–and readers–the prime site for exploring these concerns? Teaching Method(s): Seminar discussion. Evaluation Method(s): Presentation, participation, short papers. Texts include: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (ISBN: 9780439023528), Legendborn by Tracy Deonn (ISBN: 1534441611), Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger (ISBN: 1646142764), Lobizona by Romina Garber (ISBN: 1250239133), Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (ISBN: 0593175441). Texts will be available at: Bookends and Beginnings.
English 309	Advanced Creative Cross-Genre Writing: Spoken Word and the Radiophonic Imagination	Bresland	TTh 3:30-4:50
English 309 Advanced Creative Cross-Genre Writing: Spoken Word and the Radiophonic Imagination Course Description: Students write and produce multiple prose and poetic works, layering the spoken word with evocative sonic textures, instrumentation and environmental sounds as we investigate what it means to write primarily for the ear. We will wear multiple hats: writing, performing, producing. We will use field mics and studio mics as we harness our unique voices and the voices of others. And we will be on computers, learning to use audio editing software to craft polished, multilayered soundscapes. Our goal is to become more practiced writers and performers, more accomplished multimedia producers, and to possess a greater range of artistic expression. Open to writers of all genres and skill levels. Texts include: Audio works by Steve Reich, Sandra Tsing Loh, Janine Jackson, Joe Frank, Axel Kacoutié, Gil Scott-Heron, Tom Waits, Laurie Anderson, Ken Nordine, Delia Derbyshire and Miranda July.
English 312	Studies in Drama: The Drama of Homosexuality (Pre 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)	Masten	MW 3:30-4:50
English 312 Studies in Drama: The Drama of Homosexuality (Pre 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) Course Description: Our focus will be the homosexuality in drama, and the drama of homosexuality, in Anglo-American theatre and culture, from Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare through Angels in America. This course surveys that drama, but it also thinks theoretically about homosexuality's "drama"--that is, the connections the culture has made (at least at certain moments, at least in certain contexts) between male homosexuality and the category of "the dramatic." The course examines the emergence of "homosexual" and "gay" as historical categories and analyzes the connection between these categories and theatrically related terms such as: "flamboyance," "the closet," "outing," “gender trouble," "drag," "playing," "camp," "acts," "identities," "identification," and "performativity." We will also be interested in the identificatory connections between gay men and particular theatrical genres and figures such as opera, the musical, and the diva. Teaching Methods: mini-lectures; guided analysis and discussion. Evaluation Method(s): Based on preparation and participation in discussion, papers, final paper/project. Books: Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Philaster, ed. Suzanne Gossett, Arden Early Modern Drama series, published by Arden Shakespeare/AC Black, 2009. ISBN-10: 1904271731; ISBN-13: 978-1904271734. Mart Crowley, The Boys in the Band: A Play in Two Acts; Paperback (June 1968), Samuel French Inc; ISBN: 0573640041. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction, Vintage Books, ISBN 0679724699. Tony Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (Parts 1 & 2), Revised and Complete edition, ISBN-13: ‎978-1559363846 Christopher Marlowe, Edward the Second, New Mermaids Series, ed. Martin Wiggins and Stephen Guy-Bray, ISBN-13: 9781472520524. John Fletcher and William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen, ed. Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine. Folger Shakespeare Library (Simon & Schuster), ISBN-10: 1982170166; ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1982170165 Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, Richard Allen Cave, Penguin Classics, new edition (February 27, 2001), ISBN 0140436065. Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, New American Library; ISBN 0451167783. Critical, theoretical, and historical readings; films. Books available at: Norris Bookstore.
English 312	Studies in Drama: Bodies in Motion (Post 1830)	Manning	F 10-12:50
English 312 Studies in Drama: Bodies in Motion (Post 1830) Course Description: This course surveys methods and theories for dance research, drawing case studies from theatrical and social dance in varied times and places. Students will gain broad and deep familiarity with foundational methods for critical dance studies, including analysis of movement style and choreography, ethnographic “thick description,” historical approaches to embodiment and spectatorship, and theories of corporeality. Intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
English 313	Studies in Fiction: On the Edges of American Empire (Post 1830/Transnational & Texual Circulation/Post-colonial & Comparative Literatures)	Law	TTh 9:30-10:50
English 313 Studies in Fiction: On the Edges of American Empire (Post 1830/Transnational & Texual Circulation/Post-colonial & Comparative Literatures) Course Description: Poised in different ways on the peripheries of American cultural influence, Taiwan, Jamaica and Mexico provide uncanny and critical mirrors of the United States. In this course we will look at three brilliant novels which begin outside the United States but follow the tracks of characters compelled for various reasons to pursue dangerous journeys to it. As borders unravel and underworlds emerge, these novels raise profound questions about the relationship between experience, language and place, and examine in depth the permeable nature of both national and personal identity. Teaching Method: Seminar discussion. Evaluation Methods: Two brief seminar reports (10% each); weekly posts (27% total); contribution to seminar discussion (20%); final paper (33%). Texts include: Shawna Yang Ryan, Green Island (Vintage), ISBN 978-1101872369. Yuri Herrera, Signs Preceding the End of the World, trans. Lisa Dillman (And Other Stories Press), ISBN 9781908276421. Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Riverhead/Penguin), ISBN 978-1594633942. Texts will be available at: Norris Bookstore.
English 324	Studies in Medieval Literature: Global Middle Ages (Pre 1830/Transnational & Textual Circulation/Post-colonial & Comparative Literatures)	Newman	MWF 1-1:50
English 324 Studies in Medieval Literature: Global Middle Ages (Pre 1830/Transnational & Textual Circulation/Post-colonial & Comparative Literatures) Course Description: The term “Middle Ages”—the period “in the middle” between classical antiquity and the Renaissance—derives from European history, and it’s problematic even there. But the global turn in medieval studies enables us to go beyond the field’s traditional focus on Europe alone to explore its ties with the rest of the known world. In this course we’ll do that in three ways. Our first unit will consider court ladies as authors from two island nations, England and Japan, as we read the fashionable Lais of Marie de France (12^th century) alongside excerpts from “the world’s first novel”—The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (11^th century). Our second unit will focus on travel literature. We’ll read the Mission of Friar William of Rubruck (1255), one of the first Europeans to visit the court of the Great Khan in the Mongol Empire, beside the best-selling Book of John Mandeville (1360s), an armchair traveler whose open-minded curiosity and scholarship make him a model of premodern ethnography. Finally, we will explore the versatile genre of the framed story collection, which came to Europe from India via Persia and Arabia, as we read selections from The Arabian Nights, Boccaccio’s Decameron, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
English 331	Renaissance Poetry: John Milton’s Poetry in Context (Pre 1830)	Schwartz	MW 11-12:20
English 331 Renaissance Poetry: John Milton’s Poetry in Context (Pre 1830) Course Description: We will study John Milton’s poetry and prose in context, with sustained attention to the complexities of his art, the crisis of his times, the subtlety of his thought, and the extent of his influence. Milton’s defenses of political, personal, and religious liberty, his self-presentation, and his grappling with key ethical questions involving free will, gender definitions, crime, authority, rebellion, and redemption will be among the many concerns that arise as we explore his work in the context of the raging political and theological controversies of his time. Teaching Method: Discussion. Evaluation Method: based on class participation, an oral report, a short paper, and a longer paper.
English 338	Studies in Renaissance Literature: Rethinking Revenge (Pre 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Transnationalism and Textual Circulation/Postcolonial and Comparative Literatures)	Evans	MW 2-3:20
English 338 Studies in Renaissance Literature: Rethinking Revenge (Pre 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Transnationalism and Textual Circulation/Postcolonial and Comparative Literatures) Course Description: This course will survey dramatic revenge tragedy: a genre of plays that surged in popularity during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in England (and elsewhere in Europe). Drawing on conventions established by Senecan tragedy—itself an adaptation of Greek tragedies by Euripedes, Sophocles, and Aeschylus—the Renaissance genre chronicles the inevitable spiraling of individual vows of revenge into widespread and spectacular violence. Often featuring ghosts and other supernatural agents, onstage depictions of madness, and outlandishly gory scenes of assassination, revenge tragedy might be framed as an early precursor of slasher/gore subgenres of horror. The first two-thirds of the course will immerse us in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drama, while the final third will rush headlong toward the present, examining stories, novels, and films that adapt various elements of the early modern genre and examine the continuing fascination with the ethics and consequences of revenge. (N.B.: to count this course as a pre-1830 requirement for the English major, students must focus on an early modern text for the final project.) Teaching Methods: Seminar discussion, brief introductory lectures (often as Canvas videos to be viewed before class), group discussion and peer review. Evaluation Methods: Participation (online and in class); online annotation using Hypothes.is; frequent short writing assignments; final essay or project; peer evaluation and self evaluation. Texts include: William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Arden Shakespeare ISBN: 9781472518385 Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Arden Shakespeare ISBN: 9781350030916 Katharine Eisaman Maus, ed., Four Revenge Tragedies ISBN: 0199540535 Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 ISBN: 006091307X Additional readings will be available on Canvas. Students are welcome to use alternate editions but should be aware that different editorial approaches can generate significant differences, especially in early modern dramatic texts—from different lineation to the deletion/addition of whole scenes. Texts will be available at: Norris bookstore
English 357	19th-Century British Fiction: Madwomen in the Attic: Insanity, Gender, and Authorship in British and American Fiction (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality, & Embodiment/Identities, Communities, and Social Practices)	Cogswell	TTh 12:30-1:50
English 357 19th-Century British Fiction: Madwomen in the Attic: Insanity, Gender, and Authorship in British and American Fiction (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality, & Embodiment/Identities, Communities, and Social Practices) Course Description: The climax of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre hinges on a shocking revelation that other writers have been rereading and even rewriting ever since. Brontë’s iconic Gothic tale of “madness,” and that concept’s inflection by gender, race, and nationality, has become central to our ideas about difference and power. Tracing the afterlives of Brontë’s confined madwoman through twentieth-century reimaginations of the trope, including Shirley Jackson’s Haunting of Hill House, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, and recent films such as Hereditary, this course will examine how madness has been seen as a category useful for regaining (and sometimes blocking) political and literary agency. Putting these texts and films in dialogue with critical responses by Michel Foucault, Gayatri Spivak, and others, we will explore the knotty question of how the twin states of “going mad” and “being mad” shape our culture’s narratives about gender and authority. Teaching method: Seminar discussion. Evaluation method: Essays and class participation. Texts include: Brontë, Jane Eyre (978-0141441146); Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (978-0143134770); Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (978-0393352566); Rankine, Citizen (978-1555976903). Texts will be available at: Norris Bookstore.
English 366	Studies in African American Literature: The Black Novel (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity)	Mann	MW 9:30-10:50
English 366 Studies in African American Literature: The Black Novel (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity) Course Description: In this course, students will consider the role the novel plays in the development of Black literature and life. Through our engagement with three key works—James Baldwin’s Another Country, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Colson Whitehead’s, The Intuitionist—student’s will exmaine how long-form narrative articulates ideas about Black freedom and struggle during and after the Civil Rights Movement. In addition to fiction, students will also read theories of narrative written by black and non-black authors to better understand how narrative works. Teaching Method(s): Seminar style discussion. Evaluation Method(s): Weekly assignments, presentation, final project. Texts include: James Baldwin, Another Country Toni Morrison, Beloved Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist Course Reader Texts will be available at: Campus Bookstore.
English 366	Studies in African American Literature: Black Speculative Fiction (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity)	Mann	MW 12:30-1:50
English 366 Studies in African American Literature: Black Speculative Fiction (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity) Course Description: In this course, students will engage the archive of contemporary black speculative fiction, including works by Samuel Delany, Octavia E. Butler, Victor LaValle, Colson Whitehead, and N.K. Jemisin, to interrogate the possibilities and limits of the Black radical imagination as it appears in fantasy, horror, graphic fiction, and other genres. Students will read narrative fiction written after the Black Arts Movement to investigate what the speculative offers in terms of thinking about black life, worlds, and futures. The course argues that speculative works—both narrative fiction and theoretical writing—invite readers to think beyond the boundaries of known realities to see new modes of being in the world. Our study will concern texts written in the contemporary, but students will be invited to consider how contemporary manifestations of the speculative and radical necessarily speak across time and space into both past and future manifestations/imaginaries of black experiences, embodiments, and identities. Teaching Method(s): Seminar style discussion. Evaluation Method(s): Weekly assignments, presentation, final project. Texts include: Octavia E. Butler, Bloodchild and Other Stories Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist Morales and Baker, Truth: Red, White, and Black (comiXology recommended); N.K Jemisin, The Fifth Season Victor LaValle, Destroyer (comiXology recommended) Texts will be available at: Campus Bookstore.
English 368	Studies in 20th- and 21st-Century Literature: Women, Writing, Worldliness (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Transnational & Textual Circulation/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)	Froula	TTh 3:30-4:50
English 368 Studies in 20th- and 21st-Century Literature: Women, Writing, Worldliness (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Transnational & Textual Circulation/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) Course Description: We’ll study selected works by border-crossing, internationally famous twentieth- and twenty-first century women writers who address an array of issues in women’s lives in genres, forms, and media ranging across essays, fiction, poetry, drama, graphic narrative, cinema, and theory. Authors to be chosen from Virginia Woolf (England), Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand), Jean Rhys (Dominica/England), Toni Morrison (USA), Gloria Anzaldúa (USA), Marjane Satrapi (Iran), Annie Ernaux (France), Anna Burns (Northern Ireland), Elena Ferrante (Italy), Arundhati Roy (India), Kate Hamill (USA), and Lili Elbe (Denmark), with supplementary texts by authors such as Simone de Beauvoir, Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Monique Wittig, bell hooks, Audre Lorde.
English 374	Studies in Native American and Indigenous Literatures: Protest Indigenous Literature: From Red Power to Standing Rock (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity)	Wisecup	TTh 11-12:20
English 374 Studies in Native American and Indigenous Literatures: Protest Indigenous Literature: From Red Power to Standing Rock (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity) Course Description: The Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko wrote in 1977 that stories are “all we have to fight off illness and death.” 40 years later, in 2017, Orion Magazine published a cluster of poems written by Native writers “for the Water Protectors at Standing Rock.” How, this course asks, have stories and poems been part of Indigenous protest movements and decolonial resistance? How have Indigenous writers used novels, newspapers, and films to document, critique, and refuse what Nick Estes calls settler colonial common sense? This course examines the interrelated stories of Native American literatures & resistance movements from the Red Power activism of the 1960s-1970s to the water protectors at Standing Rock. We’ll examine how writers like Louise Erdrich have used fiction to intervene in legal protections and policies for Indigenous women. We’ll examine how speculative fiction and visual art imagine beyond a world shaped by colonialism and climate change. By pairing these literary texts with Indigenous Studies scholarship, we’ll examine the different approaches Indigenous writers have taken to questions of sovereignty, environmental justice, legal jurisdiction, and political recognition. Teaching Method(s): discussion; short lectures; hands-on archive workshops. Evaluation Method(s): papers or presentations; preparation for and participation in discussion. Please purchase the following texts. Additional readings will be available on Canvas. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done (978-1-5179-0387-9) Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (9780143104919) Deborah Miranda, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir (9781597142014) Louise Erdrich, The Round House (9780062065254) Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves (9781770864870) Texts will be available at: University Bookstore. Many used editions of these books are available for purchase online; any of these are great. Bookshop.org supports local bookstores and is a good alternative to Amazon. Native-owned and independent bookstores also carry these books. See Louise Erdrich’s store Birchbark Books, which will ship books (be sure to order well in advance): https://birchbarkbooks.com/ or for Evanston/Chicago bookstores, check out Bookends & Beginnings (Evanston); Women and Children First (Andersonville); or Unabridged (Lakeview).
English 375	Studies in Asian American Literature: Memory & Identity in Asian American Literature (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity)	Huang	MW 3:30-4:50
English 375 Studies in Asian American Literature: Memory & Identity in Asian American Literature (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity) Course Description: How can writers represent inaccessible stories, ones lost to the passage of history? This class explores how literature functions as repositories of minority histories and memories, as meditations on the process of assembling and collecting stories, and as imaginings of alternative histories and futures. Given the difficulty of assembling a coherent Asian American identity, our examinations will be defined as much by the absences, gaps, and contradictions of Asian America’s collective memory as by what is found within it. Teaching Method(s): Seminar-based discussion Evaluation Method(s): Regular reading responses; two short essays; one long essay; active class participation Texts (subject to change; please confirm final text list on Canvas before purchasing): Miné Okubo, Citizen 13660 (978-0295993546) Monique Truong, Bitter in the Mouth (978-0812981322) Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (978-0525562047) Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee (978-0520390485) Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost (978-0375724374) Texts will be available at: Primary texts will be available at the Norris Bookstore and on reserve in the library. Other texts will be available in a reader at Quartet Copies.
English 378	Studies in American Literature: Walt Whitman: Lives and Afterlives (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)	Grossman	MW 11-12:20
English 378 Studies in American Literature: Walt Whitman: Lives and Afterlives (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) Course Description: How is it that a minimally-educated Brooklyn carpenter and journeyman printer became an indispensable figure in US literary history and poetics? This question is the point of departure for a sweeping seminar on Walt Whitman’s writings, early, middle and late. Extending from virtually one end of the nineteenth century to the other, Whitman’s career also provides an opportunity to engage with crucial events in US history, not least slavery, the Civil War, and its aftermath, especially as he treated these events in poetry (Drum-Taps), and in prose (Specimen Days). Starting with Whitman’s journalism, novels, and short stories, we’ll then turn to his magnum opus, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, and the focus of his career for the next forty years. Wherever possible, we’ll read Whitman’s writings in facsimile--that is, as reprints of the forms in which they first circulated, which is an especially appropriate way to study the writings of this poet who was also a printer, and who took a hands-on approach to the publication of his works. Finally, at course’s end we’ll survey the voluminous number of poets, artists, writers, and free thinkers of all stripes for whom Whitman has figured as spiritual inspiration. Teaching Method: Mostly discussion. Evaluation Method: Two essays, 8 pages each. Possible in-class quizzes; probably no exams. Texts Include: Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose. Textbooks available at: Norris Book Center.
English 378	Studies in American Literature: Westerns (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice)	Jackson	MW 2-3:20
English 378 Studies in American Literature: Westerns (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice) Course Description: Well over a century after the West was won—or rather, seized—and narratives of the wild, wild West continue to pervade mass media in the U.S. and beyond. Musical artists such as Lil Nas X, Megan Thee Stallion, Orville Peck, and Kasey Musgraves have been credited with ushering in a “yeehaw agenda” return to cowboy aesthetics and Yellowstone, a cable drama with modern-day cowboying and gunslinging is the one of the most watched shows on television. This course is an introduction to the genre of the western as it has appeared throughout literature and visual media from James Fenimore Cooper to Cowboy Bebop. We will begin in the 19th century, when narratives of the West manifested notions of expansion in advance of its reality and helped repair its deepest ideological fissure, slavery, after a war that tore it apart. In the 20th century, we will consider the role of cinema in ushering in visions of the West and invention of the Spaghetti Western (and why we call them that). Lastly, we will turn to contemporary mutations of the western to think about how westerns persist and remain lively to issues of race, sexuality, and the nation.
English 378	Studies in American Literature: "The Chicago Way": Urban Spaces and American Literature (Post 1830)	Savage	TTh 2-3:20
English 378 Studies in American Literature: "The Chicago Way": Urban Spaces and American Literature (Post 1830) Course Description: Urbanologist Yi Fu Tuan writes, "What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place when we get to know it better and endow it with values." In The Untouchables, Sean Connery tells Kevin Costner, "You want to get Capone? Here's how you get Capone. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He puts one of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue. That's the Chicago way." In this class, we will examine "the Chicago way" from many different angles in order to interrogate the values with which various artists have endowed Chicago. We will read in a broad range of media: journalism, poetry, song, fiction, film, and sequential art to see how a sense of Chicago as a place works over time. We will pay close attention to depictions of the construction of American identity, and to the role of the artist and intellectual in the city. Teaching Method: Discussion, brief lectures, guest speakers, and an optional urban tour. Evaluation Method: Class participation; brief written responses to each text; several options for papers of various lengths. Texts Include: Nelson Algren's Chicago: City on the Make and The Neon Wilderness; Richard Wright's Native Son; Stuart Dybek's The Coast of Chicago; journalism by Ben Hecht, Mike Royko and others; short fiction by Sandra Cisneros, James T. Farrell and others; poetry by Carl Sandburg, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tony Fitzpatrick and others; the films The Untouchables, The Blues Brothers, Call Northside 777, and Barbershop; the graphic novel 100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call. Note: Texts will be available at Comix Revolution, 606 Davis Street.
English 381	Literature and Medicine: Medicine, Race, and Gender (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Race & Ethnicity)	Larkin	TTh 11-12:20
English 381 Literature and Medicine: Medicine, Race, and Gender (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Race & Ethnicity) Course Description: We often think of the humanities and sciences as opposite pursuits. While the humanities seem to focus on subjectivity and feeling, we see the sciences as objective and fact-based. Yet, attending to the history of medicine demands a troubled acknowledgement that medical inquiry both shapes and is itself shaped by cultural assumptions about race and gender. Indeed, critics have pointed time and again to how the seeming impartiality of medical fact reveals biases about which kinds of bodies feel pain and who is prone to certain diseases, distinctions that have been assigned moral and social meaning. In this class, we will read literature about medical encounters in order to investigate how ideas about race and gender shape medical experiences. How do these individual accounts reflect larger structural injustices? What kinds of barriers and assumptions do women and people of color face when they attempt to receive treatment? What about people seeking gender affirming care? Beginning with the nineteenth century and moving towards the present day, we will examine the surprising history of how medical knowledge often depended on the exploitation of racialized bodies, grapple with the tangled enmeshment of femininity and illness, and explore how claims about medicalized bodies became a metric for citizenship. Teaching Method(s): Seminar discussion. Evaluation Method(s): Presentation, short papers, participation. Texts include: “The Yellow Wall-paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (ISBN: 0061148512), The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde (ISBN: 0143135201), Lakewood by Megan Giddings (ISBN: 0062913204), The Last Time I Wore a Dress by Dylan Scholinkski (ISBN: 9781573226967). Other readings and films available on Canvas. Texts will be available at: Norris.
English 382	Literature and Law (Pre 1830)	Schwartz	MW 9:30-10:50
English 382 Literature and Law (Pre 1830) Course Description: This course will examine ideas of justice in western cultural and literary traditions. The focus will be the classical tradition, the biblical tradition, and Shakespeare who inherited both and reworked them in the early modern period. The trial of Socrates, the trial of Jesus, biblical prophecy, tragedy in Shakespeare, and a modern work by Melville will be included. Our exploration will be done in the context of theories of justice, and we will read those theories alongside the literature. But we will also heed how literature itself offers elaborations of theories of justice, following their consequences both within legal frameworks and beyond, as they shape the public and intimate lives of people. We will ask how religious ideas of justice inform and depart from secular ideas of justice, how retributive and distributive ideas of justice are imagined and critiqued, and how the relation between justice and law has been conceived. Texts include: Bible excerpts (can use online) The Last Days of Socrates(Penguin) Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare (Arden Edition) Saint Joan by Bernard Shaw (Penguin Edition) Billy Budd (TOR) The Case for Reparationsby Ta-Nehisi Coates (I will send you the online link) Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do by Michael Sandel (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
English 383	Special Topics in Theory: Black Feminist Theory (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Race & Ethnicity)	Bey	MW 11-12:20
English 383 Special Topics in Theory: Black Feminist Theory (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Race & Ethnicity) Course Description: This course begins not from the premise, necessarily, of an intellectual and political genealogy of black women. Though also not to the exclusion of this. But rather, this course is one that thinks black feminist—not black “women’s”—theory and theorizing; this course chronicles the ways that the political, intellectual, ethical, and social resound radically and progressively and names that resonance—and all its vibrations and textures—black feminist theory. Thus, we will, of course, be reading a variety of black women along the jagged gendered spectrum between and beyond “cis” and “trans,” but more specifically we will, in this course, be tracing the ways radical politics and ethics arise in such a way as to interrogate the established parameters of race and gender normativity, of our social world. To do this, we will be reading the work of people like bell hooks and Patricia Hill Collins, Toni Morrison and Toni Cade Bambara, Jennifer Nash and Hortense Spillers, and more. Teaching Method(s): Discussion. Evaluation Method(s): Paper/essay. Texts include: Sula, Toni Morrison. ISBN: 978-0-307-38813-1. All other texts are articles and available online. Texts will be available at: On Canvas.
English 383	Special Topics in Theory: Black Vernacular as Theory (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity)	Bey	MW 2-3:20
English 383 Special Topics in Theory: Black Vernacular as Theory (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity) Course Description: This course will take as fundamental that black vernacular—the dialects and slang and folk language and indeed robust language found in black communities—is a form of theory and theorizing. This theory, though different from the capital-T Theory of notable philosophers, will be shown to also possess intellectual sophistication, simply in, as Barbara Christian has said, “the form of the hieroglyph.” If we assume, rightly, that black people have always theorized, only in different and alternative ways, how might we examine the nuances of that theory? What does it look like? Where, and in what forms, can it be found? “Black Vernacular as Theory” will traverse myriad discursive genres—from essays to poems to music to social media to personal lives. It will put, say, the conversations between black women in the kitchen on par with the intellectual status of literary theorists, dismantling implicit hierarchies between “high” and “low” theory. Students will read the work of Barbara Christian, Geneva Smitherman, Toni Morrison, June Jordan, and others; listen to the albums of Canibus and Big L; and reflect on community conversations from family reunions and barbershops. Ultimately, we will begin to rethink what “counts” as theory, and how we might come to understand various marginalized communities within black cultural production as doing substantive work in terms of knowledge production. Teaching Method(s): Discussion. Evaluation Method(s): Paper/essay. Texts include: Martin Heidegger Saved My Life, Grant Farred. ISBN: 9780816699360 The Sobbing School, Joshua Bennett. ISBN: 9780143111863 All other texts are articles and available online Texts will be available at: On Canvas
English 386	Studies in Literature and Film: Devastating Beauty: Reading Gender and Genre across Poetry, Novels, and Film Adaptations (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Identities, Communities & Social Practices)	Cogswell	MW 12:30-1:50
English 386 Studies in Literature and Film: Devastating Beauty: Reading Gender and Genre across Poetry, Novels, and Film Adaptations (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Identities, Communities & Social Practices) Course Description: This course tracks some of the best—and most heart-rending—writing by novelist-poets of the 20th and 21st centuries. Analyzing the operation of sentiment in such works, we start with Thomas Hardy’s shattering novel The Woodlanders, a harbinger of contemporary forms of tragedy, before turning to James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and Sylvia Plath’s stunning The Bell Jar. In conjunction with our interest in affect, students will consider the range of masculinities and femininities that emerge from these texts, reading a selection of each author’s poems alongside their novels to examine the bending of gender across genres. Readings will be supplemented with film and TV adaptations, including The Handmaid’s Tale. We conclude with On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, the fictional debut of twenty-first-century poet Ocean Vuong. Across these varied works, we will analyze the mutual refraction of tragic affect and gender in some of the most brilliant fiction of the last century. Teaching method: Seminar discussion. Evaluation method: Essays and class participation. Readings will include Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale; Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room; Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous; Hardy, The Woodlanders; Plath, The Bell Jar. Books will be available at: Norris Bookstore.
English 386	Studies in Literature and Film: Besties and Frenemies: Representations of Female Friendship in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literature and Film (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment/Identities, Communities & Social Practices))	Godfrey	TTh 3:30-4:50
English 386 Studies in Literature and Film: Besties and Frenemies: Representations of Female Friendship in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literature and Film (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment/Identities, Communities & Social Practices)) Course Description: What won’t girls do for each other? Slumber parties—revenge plots—kissing practice—makeovers—hiding bodies—shoplifting—exorcisms! This class reclaims modern “woman’s fiction,” a broad and dismissive publishing term, to unpack the strong, consuming, and sometimes combative relationships between best friends on the page and screen. In these texts, queer desire erodes the borders of “just friends,” and emotion and attachment dissolve the boundaries of personhood between besties. How do strong female attachments subvert hetero-patriarchal norms through history? How do mimicry, identification, and desire blend together? To explore these questions of identity and attachment, we will begin with twentieth-century short fiction and film, including Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929), Dorothy Baker’s Cassandra at the Wedding (1962), and Peter Weir’s film Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975). Later texts include cult classics Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997) and Jennifer’s Body (2009), Sarah Ahmed’s blog feministkilljoys, Brit Bennett’s historical novel The Vanishing Half (2020), and selected episodes from Insecure (2016-2021) and Yellowjackets (2021). Students will approach these texts through a critical background in the history of emotion and affect theory. Teaching Methods: seminar discussion, collaborative group exercises. Evaluation Methods: Participation, presentation, short analytical paper, final project. Texts Include: Willa Cather, My Mortal Enemy (1926); Nella Larsen, Passing (1929); Dorothy Baker, Cassandra at the Wedding (1962); Peter Weir, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975); Joyce Carol Oates, Foxfire (1993); David Mirkin, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997); Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half (2020); selected episodes from Insecure (2016-2021) and Yellowjackets (2021). Texts will be available at: Passing (ISBN 9780593437841) and The Vanishing Half (ISBN 9780525536963) at Norris, all others on Canvas.
English 393-3	Theory and Practice of Poetry	Webster	MW 3:30-4:50
English 393-3 Theory and Practice of Poetry Course Description: This selective-enrollment, yearlong "Sequence" is designed to make students 64 Return to Calendar increasingly informed readers and self-sustaining apprentices of poetry. The Fall portion of the course begins with summer reading and intensive study in which poets learn to identify operative modes in poetry -- including description, rhetoric, story and song -- and begin connecting contemporary participants with root systems in the tradition. We support our studies with reading exercises and "imitation" assignments, in which students convert close reading into fodder for original writing. Students will write at least four papers and will write, workshop and revise four poems during the Fall term. They also will lead presentations on one chosen poet and one classmate during workshop. In the Winter term, students will continue to read and complete close reading assignments and will stretch their skills as they complete a week of "Daily Poems," thereby drawing on original energy and stamina to bring their work to the next level of accomplishment. Finally, in the Spring term, students will focus entirely on their own work, drafting, revising, workshopping and completing one long poem of at least 120 lines that combines autobiographical material with writing from research. Throughout the year, our close reading assignments hone skills in sensitive and critical thinking; our imitation poems challenge existing habits as they introduce new strategies; our Daily Poems exercise agility and confidence; and our workshops cultivate the openness and humility necessary to serious writing and lifelong learning. Through this intensive and nurturing Sequence, students become careful readers of each others -- work and complete a polished portfolio of original writing. Note: No P/N registration. Attendance at first class mandatory. Admission by application only.
English 394-3	Theory and Practice of Fiction	Donohue	MW 3:30-4:50
English 394-3 Theory and Practice of Fiction Course Description: This course will allow you to explore how fiction works. We’ll be looking at, discussing, writing about, commenting on, and researching the elements of fiction, but mostly what we’ll be doing is writing buckets (you will be turning in a completed piece every other week during the Fall quarter), so we’ll be reading mostly to steal: we’ll figure out what works and we’ll use it for our own material. We’ll be engaged in the reading of a concise, funny book on the craft of fiction, and we’ll also be reading a wide and varied array of short stories. Again, though, this work is geared to do one simple thing: to find out what means and modes of expression you best respond to, and to figure out ways to approach this question: Given all the other potentially more awesome forms of entertainment out there, what is the role of sitting around scribbling things and reading other people’s scribblings? Why do it? Just so you know, what we’re doing in class closely replicates what all successful fiction writers do on a daily basis: reading the work of their peers and those of established and emerging authors with care, attention, and greed, and writing copious amounts to see what sticks. The more you do both of these activities, the better and more confident you’ll get. Teaching Method: Lectures, discussion, small- and large-peer workshops. Evaluation Method: This is a portfolio- and participation-based course. Grade based on timely delivery of all assigned work, with equal weight placed on your own stories and revisions and on your peer feedback. Texts Include: TBA Note: No P/N registration. Attendance at first class mandatory. Admission by application only.
English 395-3	Theory and Practice of Creative Nonfiction	Hernández	MW 3:30-4:50
English 395-3 Theory and Practice of Creative Nonfiction Course Description: This quarter is the culmination of the year-long sequence in creative nonfiction, and so we will work closely with this observation from the author Marina Budhos: ”One can always fiddle at the edges, improve. But if the central drive, the core, is somehow muted, a more radical approach at revision—really re-envisioning—is what’s needed.” Where in your work are you ready to revise? Where do you need to re-envision? Through workshop exercises and one-on-one feedback, you will consider the central drive of the nonfiction work you generated in the first two quarters and then work in this quarter toward the culmination of a longer work of nonfiction. Keep in mind that while writers write alone, writing is not a lonely business. Our compassionate workshops will give you an opportunity to share your writing with peers as an entire class and in small groups, generating connections and insights. Teaching Method: Discussion. Evaluation Method: Based on creative and critical work; class presentations and participation. Texts Include: Varies each quarter. Texts will be available at Norris Center Bookstore and Quartet Copies. Note: No P/N registration. Attendance at first class mandatory. Admission by application only.
English 397	Research Seminar: Global Shakespeare	Wall	MW 9:30-10:50
English 397 Research Seminar: Global Shakespeare Course Description: How do 20^th and 21^st century artists ––working in different media across the globe–– use Shakespeare’s drama as a resource for exploring colonialism, war, same-sex desire, race, non-binary gender, school violence, urban ethnic tension, legal injustices, and anti-Semitism? From Renaissance London to 21st-century India–– from apartheid South Africa to US teen culture–– readers have appropriated, adapted and reinvented Shakespeare’s plays to create new art forms. In this research seminar, we will reflect on the transformations of Shakespearean drama in cultures of the world, through a range of media (print, theater, musical concert, and film), with a focus on The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and The Tempest and their afterlives: Toni Morrison’s Desdemona, Shishir Kurup’s Merchant on Venice (a play about Hindu, Muslim, and Latina/o cultures in modern LA), Aimé Cesaire’s A Tempest, the prison documentary Shakespeare Behind Bars, the film O, and the Māori Merchant of Venice). All assignments will be geared toward building the specific skills needed to undertake research in the humanities and to become a knowledge maker, with attention to designing a viable research project, identifying and treating historical and interpretative sources responsibly, and developing a sustained argument with strong evidence. Students may choose to investigate any afterlife of any Shakespearean play in their final research project; this afterlife might take the form of play, YA book, graphic novel, translation, ballet, puppet performance, film, or literary adaptation. Required Texts: Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest (trans. Richard Miller) ISBN: 1559362103 William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, ed. Halio, Oxford World Classics 1^st edition, ISBN: 019953585X William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Thompson, Honigmann, The Arden 3^rd series, 2^nd edition, ISBN: 1472571762 William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. Vaughan, The Arden 3^rd series, ISBN: 1408133474 •Toni Morrison, Desdemona, ISBN: 135027027X
English 403	Writers Studies in Literature: The First Book of Poetry	Shanahan	M 2-4:50
English 403 Writers Studies in Literature: The First Book of Poetry Course Description: Over the last eighty or so years, the proliferation of MFA programs and first-book contests has come to mean that more first books are being published now than ever. This development has generated both cultural and aesthetic questions—and a fair amount of skepticism—about the nature of first books and their inception. Surveying a sample of recent first books, in 2015, William Doreski, for example, argued that the first book (and indeed the poetry) of our era too often depends on “an autobiographical mode that has evolved from what was once called confessional poetry…[and] underscores a particular social allegiance,” wherein “identity is the issue,” rather than poetic experimentation and imaginative discovery. In this hybrid literature-creative writing course, we will study four first books by contemporary poets, exploring the ways in which these collections have announced themselves as “first books” and/or resisted the above cultural expectations of first books. Together we will consider these questions: What is the “concept” of the book (e.g., is it a “project” book or an arrangement of discrete poems?)? Which formal and aesthetic strategies are deployed in it, both at the poem-level and across the collection? To what end? And how might you bring those conceptual, aesthetic and formal strategies to your own first-book projects? Deep and engaged close reading will be at the center of our discussions. In all cases, the poets will have gone on to publish at least a second book. In alternate weeks, students will present an excerpt of the poet’s second (or later) book to the class, focusing on the ways in which that book serves as a departure from and/or an extension of the first. After each presentation, we will have a class visit from the poet. Weekly assignments will include critical responses to each of the books, including close-readings of individual poems, presentations, and the drafting of original poetry (or in another genre), using the tools provided by the collections we read. The final project will consist of original creative work, accompanied by a critical statement about your book project, informed by your study of the four first books we will read together. Teaching Methods: A mixture of discussion of assigned reading and presentations. Evaluation Methods: Written critical responses to readings/poem assignments – 20% Ability to Critique/Class Participation – 20% Presentations – 20% Final Portfolio: Poems (15 pages), critical statement (5-7 pages) – 40% (Poems/creative work – 20%) (Critical essay to accompany creative work – 20%) Texts may include: Catherine Barnett, Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced; Chen Chen, When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities; Eduardo Corral, Slow Lightning; Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus; Richard Siken, Crush Note: While this course is designed for poets, organized around first books of poetry, creative writers of other genres are welcome to attend. For those students, modified assignments will be discussed and determined at the beginning of and throughout the quarter.
English 431	Studies in 16th-Century Literature: Political Thought in Shakespearean Contexts	Shannon	W 2-4:50
English 431 Studies in 16th-Century Literature: Political Thought in Shakespearean Contexts Course Description: A Tudor idiom frames the now commonplace phrase, “the body politic.” What mythographies, theologies, theories, and ideologies built this conception of socio-political organization? While social contract theory would soon reach new predominance (ie with Thomas Hobbes in the 17thC and rising 18thC claims about the foundational role of consent to government), what models preceded it? What claims and values justified the apparent organicism of a faith or reliance on the human body as an allegory for political authority? How do these approaches manage qualities like gender, age, or illness that might trouble the allegory? This seminar will consider some key texts in early English political thought, beginning with the Tudor court case from which the phrase “the body politic” is mainly cited, and proceeding then to materials from the unsettling events of the English Reformation that address the question of obedience to the secular power (ie Thomas More’s Utopia, William Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man, Thomas Cranmer’s homilies from the first decade of the English church) and to anatomical and medical materials (like Thomas Elyot’s Castel of Helthe and Helkiah Crooke’s Microcosmographia). From this groundwork, we will move on consider early modern English debates about royal authority, including the ideological disarray triggered by the historical facts of a female monarch and of rebellion as treason (ie John Knox’s First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, selected speeches given by Elizabeth I, James I’s The Law of Free Monarchy, and John Milton’s Tenure of Kings and Magistrates). To explore these dynamics in the context of theater (then the largest assemblages of people into “bodies”), the seminar will delve into several Shakespeare plays (from among Henry IV 1&2, Richard II, Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, and most particularly Measure for Measure) to assess the proposition that Shakespeare — among his other forms of attention — was also a political theorist.
English 461	Studies in Contemporary Literature: Ecologies of the Global South	Mwangi	T 2-4:50
English 461 Studies in Contemporary Literature: Ecologies of the Global South Course Description: This course examines the interface of ecology and literary form in literatures of the global south within the larger contexts of post-1945 global literary production. These literatures are rarely examined from either ecocritical or stylistic/narratological perspectives. Yet legacies of and globalization continue to alter local environments, and contemporary literary artists have used unique formal techniques to capture these changes and activate political consciousness toward ecological conservation. As we discuss what constitutes the “contemporary” in literature today from thematic and stylistic perspectives, we will particularly examine the legacies of modernism and post-modernism in literatures of the present that thematize ecologies of the global south and the impact of climate crisis on non-Western societies. The class will also discuss the perils and thrills of studying texts and themes that might be considered too contemporary and non-canonical. What are the best methodologies of studying and teaching these texts, most of which are comparatively not well known? We will study and comment on the various techniques individual contemporary texts (or sets of such texts) use to represent contemporary ethical and political concerns, including their allusion to older texts. We will also discuss the invocation of ecological metaphors in the various texts of postcolonial theory (e.g., the comparison of the preservation of indigenous languages and cultures with conservation of biodiversity). The course’s primary premise is that formalist analysis of texts (ala Robert Langhaum) is where all good criticism begins, not where it ends. While avoiding the shortfalls of purely functionalist/instrumentalist approaches to literature that drive much of criticism of non-Western literatures about the environment by attending to the literary techniques that artists use, we will discuss the interventionist imperatives in contemporary writing and criticism about the environment and climate crisis.
English 471	Studies in American Literature: Indigenous Archives and Public Humanities	Wisecup	Th 2-4:50
English 471 Studies in American Literature: Indigenous Archives and Public Humanities Co-taught by Kelly Wisecup (English/CNAIR) and Rose Miron (Director, D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Newberry Library and CNAIR) Course Description: This interdisciplinary, co-taught course introduces students to the texts, theories, and methods of Indigenous archives, while considering and practicing what it means to do interdisciplinary, publicly- and community-engaged humanities scholarship. We begin with these questions: how do writers, communities, scholars, and others use Indigenous archival materials? What are the genres, practices, and ethics necessary to work in and create scholarship from archives that contain Indigenous materials? We are especially excited to model collaboration in the classroom and the archives and to introduce students to collaborative public humanities research. We welcome students working in a range of disciplines and with broad interests in archival theory and practice and in the public humanities (prior knowledge of Indigenous studies is helpful but not required; we will provide that training). Students will obtain hands-on experience with archival methods and have the opportunity to design their own archival final projects, and we welcome students interested in integrating archival research and practice into performance, fiction/nonfiction/poetry, historical research, and more. The course readings and conversations foreground Native American & Indigenous Studies methods for archival research in literary studies, American studies, and history (among other fields). We will pair readings of NAIS scholarship with Indigenous texts, material culture objects, and archives created across several centuries, in order to understand the history of Indigenous archival creation, their critiques, uses, and representations in a range of media. We will also investigate the various public humanities pathways and projects possible for scholars trained in archival methods, with opportunities for students to gain skills in archivally-based projects. These may include digital projects, museums, film, walking tours, workshops, podcasts, and community programming. The course will include regular hands-on work in archives and with archival materials located in Chicago, designed to help students develop their own archival practice. By the end of the course, students should be able to apply NAIS methods and perspectives to a primary text and its contexts; should be able to utilize public humanities best practices and critical perspectives in a range of contexts; and should be able to identify and implement core elements of community engaged research. Teaching Method(s): Discussion; collaborative project; public humanities scholarship with local archives. Evaluation Method(s): Discussion; collaborative project; public humanities scholarship with local archives. Readings in NAIS methods; Indigenous archival theory; and public humanities to include: Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies, ed. Chris Andersen and Jean M. O’Brien (New York: Routledge, 2017) Dian Million, “Felt Theory: An Indigenous Feminist Approach to Affect and History” Jennifer O’Neal, “The Right to Know: Decolonizing Native American Archives” Tiya Miles, House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story Deborah Miranda, Bad Indians All additional texts will be available on Canvas. Texts will be available at: The University bookstore. If you’d like to purchase the book from a Native-owned or independent bookstore, see Louise Erdrich’s store Birchbark Books, which will ship books (be sure to order well in advance): https://birchbarkbooks.com/ or for Evanston/Chicago independent bookstores, check out Bookends & Beginnings (Evanston); Women and Children First (Andersonville); and Unabridged (Lakeview).
English 498	MFA Creative Nonfiction Workshop	Hernández	T 2-4:50
English 498 MFA Creative Nonfiction Workshop Course Description: Research constitutes the corazón, or heart, of almost every book of creative nonfiction. This is true even with memoirs for which writers often trek into the archives of family photographs, forgotten emails, and Google Maps. How then do we create a research plan for a creative project? How do we begin research when we don’t know yet precisely what we are writing? How do we manage the linear process often required for research and the much more circular journey of writing? Once we have started on our research, how and when do we know it’s time to bring it to a close? We will consider these questions as we discuss your creative work during workshop and also as we read contemporary nonfiction texts. Very short writing assignments called “Sketches” will help you to generate the start of new works of nonfiction, and the final assignment for this course will give you flexibility with your creative work.
English 520	Writing for Publication	Mwangi	M 2-4:50
English 520 Writing for Publication Course Description: TBA
English 571	Teaching Creative Writing	Seliy	M 10a-12:50p
English 571 Teaching Creative Writing Course Description: TBA