Fall 2025 Class Schedule: Department of English

Fall 2025 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: American Nightmare: Literature and Race Science from the 18th Century to the Present (Historical Breadth Post 1830)	Bergh	TTh 11-12:20
English 200 Literary Histories: American Nightmare: Literature and Race Science from the 18th Century to the Present (Historical Breadth Post 1830) Course Description: Is the American dream only a white dream, even a fantasy? Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning 2017 horror film Get Out, in which a white liberal family systematically transplants the brains of their aging family members into the bodies of Black people, satirizes the postracial fantasy of colorblindness. White wealth and flourishing (and eternal youth) are based on a horrifying technofix: the exploitation and extraction of Black life, the production of a living nightmare. Peele’s film raises unsettling questions about the American conception of race—questions with deep histories—which this class aims to explore: How has race been mobilized as a structure of white supremacist social control? What has racialization meant for those being racialized? Centralizing the work of Black and Indigenous thinkers, our goal will be to interrogate what race has meant in American culture over time. We will read a selection of excerpts and short texts from the 18th and 19th centuries to learn about the development of “race science” as a logic underpinning violently imposed social hierarchies. We will then analyze Peele’s film and two contemporary novels with historical roots: Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys (2019), the story of a young Black man in a “reform school” in 1960s Florida, and Tommy Orange’s Wandering Stars (2024), which traces the experience of two Indigenous boys at the Carlisle Indian School, an institution designed to destroy Native culture. In doing so, we will aim to investigate the question: What are our contemporary inheritances of these histories?
English 202	Introduction to Creative Writing	Staff	MW 9:30-10:50
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	Curdy	MW 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	Staff	TTh 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 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	Hernández	MW 12:30-1:50
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	Webster	MW 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	Bresland	MW 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 208	Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction	Staff	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 211	Introduction to Poetry (Historical Breadth Post 1830)	Gottlieb	TTh 11-12:20, plus discussion section
English 211 Introduction to Poetry (Historical Breadth Post 1830) Course Description: The experience of poetry can be understood in it at least two radically different ways: as a raw encounter with something unfamiliar or as a methodically constructed mode of access to the unknown. Theories of poetry from antiquity to the present day have grappled with these two dimensions of the poetic experience. In order to understand a poem, a reader must, in some sense, enter into its unique and complex logic, while nevertheless remaining open to the sometimes unsettling ways it can surprise us. In this class, we will read some of the greatest lyric poems written in English, as we systematically develop an understanding of the formal techniques of poetic composition, including diction, syntax, image, trope, and rhythm. Students should come prepared to encounter poems as new and unfamiliar terrain (even if you've read a particular poem before), as we methodically work through the formal elements of the poetic process. Teaching Method: Lectures and required weekly discussion sections. Evaluation Method: Weekly (w)reading exercises; one 5-7 page paper; final project; final exam. Required Texts: Course packet available at Quartet Copies and on Canvas.
English 214	Introduction to Film and Its Literatures	Hodge	TTh 3:30-4:50, plus discussion section
English 214 Introduction to Film and Its Literatures Course Description: This course harbors two primary objectives: 1) to acquaint students with vocabularies and frameworks of argument required to analyze film in terms specific to that medium; and 2) to familiarize students with a broad range of written texts crucial to the study of cinema, enabling them to render persuasive interpretations of those texts, as well. d politics of written work get preserved but also transformed on screen, in blatant and subtle ways. Cultivating techniques of close analysis—whether breaking down a film sequence, parsing a scholar’s arguments, or negotiating between two versions of the “same” story—will be the paramount skill developed in the course, hopefully leading to deeper appreciations of several kinds of texts. Assignments will presume no prior coursework in film studies, but they will require quick, studious absorption of terms and concepts that might be new. Moreover, the course requires a willingness to put movies and other assigned materials under close observation and interpretive pressure, while hopefully retaining the joy of watching, reading, and evaluating them. Teaching Method: Lectures and discussion sections. Evaluation Method: Exams; short in-class writing. Required Texts: None.
English 270-1	American Literary Traditions, Part 1 (Historical Breadth Pre 1830)	Grossman	MW 11-12:20, plus discussion section
English 270-1 American Literary Traditions, Part 1 (Historical Breadth Pre 1830) Course Description: This is part one of a two-quarter survey that explores writings produced in North America between the time Native peoples encountered Europeans for the first time and the turn of the twentieth century. (Students are welcome to take one or both parts of English 270.) In the first quarter we’ll explore the history of North American literature from its indigenous beginnings—including the migration by Europeans to what they imagined as a “new world”—through the crisis of slavery in the mid-1850’s. We will be centrally engaged with a set of related questions: What is American literature? Who counts as an American? Who shall be allowed to tell their stories, and on whose behalf? We embark on this literary journey at a moment of questioning the relations between the present and our “literary traditions”: various organizations are debating how to commemorate the four hundredth anniversaries of the years 1619 (the year the first ship bearing enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia) and 1620 (the year of the Plymouth settlers’ landing in what is now Massachusetts); at the same time, people are calling for the removal of monuments to Christopher Columbus and to the Confederacy. We will be reading authors that canonical literary histories have usually included—Mary Rowlandson, Anne Bradstreet, Frederick Douglass, and Nathaniel Hawthorne—alongside Native American authors who told stories of European encounter and African American accounts that radically contest the meanings of some of the key terms of U.S. literature, history, and culture: discovery, citizenship, representation, nation, freedom. Teaching Method: Two lectures per week, plus a required discussion section. Evaluation Method: Evaluation will be based on two short (3-page) essays, in which students will perform a close reading of a literary passage from one of the texts on the syllabus; a final examination, involving short answers and essays; and active participation in section and lecture. Attendance at all sections is required. Some of the authors whose works we will read include: Mary Rowlandson, Anne Bradstreet, Christopher Columbus, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley, Powhatan.
English 277	Introduction to Latinx Literature	Rodríguez Pliego	MW 12:30-1:50, plus discussion section
English 277 Introduction to Latinx Literature Course Description: In the United States, we often talk about Latinx people using blurry labels. We discuss the Latino vote and the Hispanic population, we move from Latino/a to Latinx to Latine and finally reject the very possibility of a category that can encompass a continuously expanding number of national identities, ethnicities, and languages. Our course readings and discussions will interrogate terms like Latinx, Chicano, and Nuyorican by tracing their emergence in the 1960s and following their evolution since then. This class will provide an overview of literature written by Latinx authors in the last six decades. Our readings will alternate between short stories, poetry, essays, and one novel. A nine-week course cannot do justice to the rich genealogy of Latinx writing. This course aims to provide students with a historical, political, and literary foundation for further exploration of Latinx literature. Teaching Method(s): Lecture and discussion-based course, with discussion sections Evaluation Method(s): Midterm and final papers, personal essay, attendance and participation Texts include: We the Animals by Justin Torres (9780547844190). Short stories, poetry and excerpts from Carmen Maria Machado, Sandra Cisneros, Manuel Muñoz, Javier Zamora, Helena Maria Viramontes, and others. Texts will be available at: We the Animals by Justin Torres will be available at the Northwestern bookstore. All other materials will be available on Canvas.
English 280	Topics in Multiethnic Literature: Multiracial Identities (Historical Breadth Post 1830)	Comerford	TTh 12:30-1:50
English 280 Topics in Multiethnic Literature: Multiracial Identities (Historical Breadth Post 1830) Course Description: When half-British, half-Malaysian actor Henry Golding was cast in Crazy Rich Asians (2018), controversy abounded over whether Golding was “Asian enough” to play the role. While some accused Hollywood of whitewashing, Golding responded that he was “Asian through and through.” Political figures including Barack Obama and Kamala Harris have likewise been subject to queries around how they represent their racial identities. These debates raise questions about how those who are multiracial or multiethnic are allowed to claim and perform their racial identities when simultaneously characterized as too much and not enough. At the same time, these conflicts also highlight the complicated combination of racism and privilege that mixed-race individuals (and especially those who are white passing) experience. Through novels, essays, and short stories, we will explore the mixed feelings and experiences of being mixed race in America from the nineteenth century to the present. We will consider how the legacy of slavery and the one-drop rule continues to influence racial politics today while contradictory policies imposed on Indigenous communities have been leveraged to reduce Indigenous sovereignty. Other topics we will discuss include racial fluidity and ambiguity, performance, and intergenerational tension. Texts May Include: The Woman of Colour (1808), Sui Sin Far, “Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian” (1909), Nella Larsen, Passing (1929), Justin Torres, We the Animals (2018), Kyle Lucia Wu, Win Me Something (2021), Samira Mehta, The Racism of People Who Love You (2024).
English 288	Topics in Literature and Ethics: Ideas of Justice (Historical Breadth Pre 1830/Ethics & Values Foundational Discipline)	Schwartz	TTh 9:30-10:50
English 288 Topics in Literature and Ethics: Ideas of Justice (Historical Breadth Pre 1830/Ethics & Values Foundational Discipline) Course Description: What is the right thing to do? This course will examine ideas of justice in western cultural and literary traditions. Biblical ideas of justice, utilitarianism, rights theory, and more justice theories will be explored. We will read literature alongside these theories, following how such ideas of justice 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. Class participation is required. Texts: Bible (can use online) Paradise Lost excerpts (online) Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare (Arden Edition) ISBN 1903436915 Saint Joan by Bernard Shaw (Penguin Edition) ISBN 0140437916 The Case for Reparations by 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) ISBN 0374532508
English 300	Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Witches	Evans	MW 12:30-1:50
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Witches Course Description: In modern usage, we use the term “witch hunt” to describe politically motivated persecution. As in McCarthyism, when the term spiked in popularity, a “witch hunt” targets a rival or enemy by cynically manufacturing wild accusations, appealing to irrational fears of the credulous mob. In medieval and Renaissance Europe and in colonial America, on the contrary, we think of witch hunts as tragic symptoms of ignorance: a desperate attempt to assign blame for unexplained misfortune. In both cases, the term conveys more about the persecutors than about the targets. In this course, we will explore anglophone literature of witchcraft from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, inquiring into what “witches” reveal about those who fear them. Who are the witch hunters? Who are the witches? What can these narratives reveal about gender, power, and community? We will consider drama, from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible; modern fiction from Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba to Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate; and films from Robert Eggers (The Witch, 2005) and Luca Guadagnino (Suspiria, 2018) to achieve a broad view of the beliefs, ideologies, and politics of witchcraft accusations. As we consider arguments and evidence invoked to scapegoat witches, we will also build our understanding of how arguments and evidence work in literary studies—distinguishing fact from opinion, interrogating assumptions, and improving writerly clarity and precision. Books: William Shakespeare, Macbeth 1904271413 Thomas Dekker et al., The Witch of Edmonton 1554814162 Arthur Miller, The Crucible 0142437339 Maryse Condé, I, Tituba 0813927676 Jeanette Winterson, The Daylight Gate 0802122833 Rivka Galchen, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch 1250849314
English 300	Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Reading Reading	Masten	MW 3:30-4:50
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Reading Reading Course Description: We will read a range of texts that are themselves focused on acts of reading, in order to think about the methods of reading and interpretation central to studying literature and language. Our texts include classic pieces of literature about literature: Henry James’s novella about a narrator obsessed with an author’s hidden papers; Oscar Wilde’s tale of a man similarly driven to prove the identity of the tantalizing figure behind Shakespeare’s Sonnets (which we will also read); Virginia Woolf’s genre-bending story/memoir/polemical essay about her search for earlier women’s writing; among other texts. Throughout, we will zero in on what’s involved in the crucial act of interpreting language and literature. Where are the boundaries between reading a text, drawing meaning “out of” a text, and “reading into” a text? Where does meaning come from or reside? What is the relation of authors to meaning? What is “close reading” and what are the alternatives? What work can reading and interpretation do for us? Our literary and critical texts in the course will also help us ask other related questions: what’s a feminist or a queer reading? What aspects of culture can be read besides (or beside) literature? Through active seminar discussion, the course will prepare students for the conceptual and theoretical questions that are central to studying literature — and reading and writing in the larger world. Teaching Methods: Seminar discussion. Evaluation Methods: essays. Texts include: Henry James, The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers, ISBN: 9780141439907; William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets, ed. Stephen Booth, ISBN: 9780300085068; Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Mr. W. H., (Hesperus Press edition), ISBN: 9781843910312; Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, ISBN: 9780156030410; others TBA. Books available at: Norris Bookstore. Notes: English 300 fulfills a foundational requirement in the English Literature major and minor. The course may not be repeated for major or minor credit.
English 306	Advanced Poetry Writing	Shanahan	TTh 11-12:20
English 306 Advanced Poetry Writing Course Description: A combination of seminar and workshop. In this advanced poetry workshop, we will read deeply and write frequently, focusing on the fundamental elements of poetic craft, including imagery, metaphor and simile, line, stanza, music, rhythm, diction, and tone. The course reading will consist primarily of work by contemporary poets exploring the intersections of cultural identity, nationhood, race, gender, and sexuality. As we study how their poems are built, we will also consider the ways in which, and the reasons why, these poets are indebted and/or resistant to the poetry of the past, paying special attention to the ways in which poets are in dialogue, through their work, over time and space, shaping their poems in response to those of others. Our meetings will consist alternately of performing close readings of selected poems and of workshopping student writing. In the process, we will read as writers, clarifying our sense of what a poem is and where ours might come from; deepening our comprehension of poetic craft and tradition; and further developing the critical language with which to discuss your poems and the poems of others, in service of writing your strongest, most fully realized poems. Teaching Methods: A mixture of workshop and discussion of assigned reading. Texts include: PDFs of poems prepared by the instructor, critical guides/handouts, craft essays, and the creative work of other students, all distributed via Canvas. Students will be responsible for presenting one full-length collection by a contemporary poet that they obtain on their own. Evaluation Methods: Process Essay drafts/weekly poem assignments – 20% Ability to Critique/Class Participation – 20% Presentation/Leading Discussion – 20% Final Portfolio: journal, 6-8 poems, final essay – 40% (Reading Journal – 20%) (Poems and final craft/process essay – 20%)
English 307	Advanced Creative Writing	Abani	MW 3:30-4:50
English 307 Advanced Creative Writing Course Description: TBA
English 313	Studies in Fiction: Desire and Danger in the 19th C British Novel (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)	Law	TTh 2-3:20
English 313 Studies in Fiction: Desire and Danger in the 19th C British Novel (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) Course Description: Desire is the field in which we put our very identity, autonomy and independence at risk. At the same time, romantic and erotic desire are the motors not only of social relations but of narratives and fiction. In novels, we as readers hang as much on the outcome of romantic entanglements as we do on the solution of crimes. This course explores how our own desires and those of fictional characters become entangled in what we might call "narrative desire." The refraction of desire through language presses us to ask: What are the lines that distinguish desire from pleasure, pain, instinct, identification and dis-identification? What are the principal metaphors by which desire is represented, and what ambiguities do such metaphors involve? Is desire defined more by its object or its form? And what are the dangers of identifying with the characters and outcomes of a supremely "plotted" world? We will look at three classic novels in which the dangers of desire are figured, variously, as perversity, faith, sexual violence, betrayal, blood, and addiction. Note: 19^th-century England was an intensely hierarchical society. Representations of, and attitudes toward, gender and race in the 19^th century will not conform to our own notions, and we may find the casual and unreflective way in which their prejudices are expressed to be highly dismaying. We may legitimately want to assess how this literature continues to find relevance for our own culture. One of the novels, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, alludes to an episode of sexual assault. I don’t take this lightly or without awareness of the fact that this may be a traumatic or triggering topic for you. The novel is nonetheless important for our historical and conceptual understanding of the relationship between sexual violence and aesthetics. We will consider the relationship between sexual violence then and now, and I will provide information about the support resources available here on campus. Accommodations will certainly be made for students who need to work around particular classes or assignments. Teaching Method: this is a unique course in that it is organized something more like a graduate seminar. There will be a substantial final paper, but the bulk of your work in this course will consist in your regular contribution to the seminar discussions, and in the two formal seminar presentations that you will make to the class. If you are not willing to prepare in a concentrated way for class meetings, this is not the course for you. You can check the CTECs to see if students find this a rewarding way to learn! Method of Evaluation: 2 seminar papers (20% each), seminar contribution (20%), final paper (40%). Texts (available at Norris bookstore): Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Penguin, 9780141441146) Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Broadview Press 2^nd ed, 9781551117515) Bram Stoker, Dracula (Oxford, 9780199564095). Please note that it is IMPORTANT to acquire the specific editions listed OR to have an edited digital version of the novels, so we can all "be on the same page." The ideal solution would be to have both a hard copy of the recommended edition, and to consult a free digital edition for search purposes. Tess of the D'Urbervilles is a special case. It was published in several conflicting editions during Hardy's lifetime. If you don't acquire the edition ordered for the class, there will be some important passages and episodes missing from your edition. Rudimentary digital versions of all three novels are available at gutenberg.org and on the university library’s “Nineteenth Century Fiction” database. Since these are not highly edited version (they do not have explanatory notes, etc), they are best for word searches rather than for your primary reading. Here is the URL for the library site: http://philologic.northwestern.edu.turing.library.northwestern.edu/philologic/ncf.whizbang.form.html
English 323-1	Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (Pre 1830)	Phillips	MW 9:30-10:50
English 323-1 Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (Pre 1830) Course Description: As we follow along the road to Canterbury, we not only hear a compendium of stories-both pious and irreverent-but we also meet a collection of characters whose diversity spans the spectrum of medieval society: a noble knight and a manly monk, a drunken miller and a virtuous priest, a dainty nun and a domineering wife, who compete with one other, trading insults as well as tales. Over the course of the quarter, we will explore the ways in which Chaucer experiments with late medieval literary genres, from chivalric romances to bawdy fabliaux, frustrating and playing upon the expectations of his audience. Against and alongside this literary context, we will consider the dramatic context of the pilgrimage itself, asking questions about how the character of an individual pilgrim, or the interaction between pilgrims, further shapes our perceptions and expectations of the tales: How is a romance different, for example, when it is told by a knight, by a social climber, or by a renegade wife? We will be reading Chaucer's poem in the original Middle English. At the end of the quarter, we will give an in-class performance of one of the tales. Teaching Method: Discussion and some lectures. Evaluation Method: class attendance and participation required; discussion board posts; language quizzes; an oral presentation; and three short papers. Texts include: The Canterbury Tales, ed. Jill Mann ISBN 978-0140422344 (approximate cost: $25) (The Canterbury Tales, ed. Larry D. Benson or The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson are also acceptable editions). Textbooks available at: Norris Center Bookstore.
English 338	Renaissance Drama: Shakespeare's Contemporaries (Pre 1830)	Masten	MW 12:30-1:50
English 338 Renaissance Drama: Shakespeare's Contemporaries (Pre 1830) Course Description: We will read and analyze some of the extraordinary plays written by Shakespeare's prolific contemporaries between the beginnings of the professional London theatres around 1580 to their forced closing in 1642. We will approach these plays from literary, theatrical, cultural, and book-history perspectives; please be prepared to think across categories. We'll read: a revenge tragedy more popular in its time than Hamlet; a history play about a king and his lower-class, immigrant boyfriend; a shockingly incestuous rewrite of Romeo and Juliet; two very different tragedies with women at their center (one the first original play by an English woman); a marriage anti-comedy with multiple trans resonances; and a prematurely postmodern play where the audience seizes control of the script. These plays will help us think about theatrical genres, about how plays were written, performed and printed, about modes of social organization (marriage, family, sexuality, reproduction, social class, race and ethnicity, monarchy, dynasty, nation, to name a few), about periodization ("Renaissance" or "early modern"?), and about canonicity (for example, the distinction between Shakespeare and "his contemporaries" implied by our curriculum and this course description). Teaching Methods: Mini-lectures; guided analysis and discussion of the plays. Evaluation Method(s): Based on participation in discussion, weekly in-class writing, papers, and a final exam. Plays include: The Spanish Tragedy (Thomas Kyd), Edward II (Christopher Marlowe), Epicoene, or The Silent Woman (Ben Jonson), The Tragedy of Mariam, Fair Queen of Jewry (Elizabeth Cary), The Duchess of Malfi (John Webster), ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (John Ford), The Knight of the Burning Pestle (Francis Beaumont et al.), together with some historical and critical essays. Text: English Renaissance Drama, ed. David Bevington, Lars Engle, Katherine Eisaman Maus, and Eric Rasmussen (W.W. Norton). ISBN: 0-393-97655-6. [This anthology contains all the plays we will read and is available new, used, for rent and will be on reserve.] All editions of Renaissance plays differ, often significantly; use this edition only. Text available at: Norris Bookstore.
English 344	18th Century Fiction: Radical Jane Austen: Reading Austen at 250 (Pre 1830/Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment/Identities, Communities, and Social Practices)	Comerford	TTh 3:30-4:50
English 344 18th Century Fiction: Radical Jane Austen: Reading Austen at 250 (Pre 1830/Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment/Identities, Communities, and Social Practices) Course Description: 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth (December 16th, 1775), and at 250, she seems more alive than ever. Lurking just beneath the seemingly placid surface of Austen’s writing is a messy range of bad feelings, scathing wit, vicious cruelty, suppressed rage, and unsparing critique. How are these feelings oriented, where can they find expression, and at what point do they burst through the delicate veneer of social etiquette? What are the political stakes embedded in such moments? In this course, we will examine the persistence of Austen’s radical edge across her juvenilia, major novels, and final, unfinished work. We will also consider the ways in which Austen’s writing engages with eighteenth-century concerns and discourses around sensibility, race and empire, gender and marriage, and class and social mobility. How does Austen play with form and genre, from the first-person epistolary correspondence of her early work to her tyrannical third-person narrator? What are the limits of parody and satire as modes of critique? And how do film adaptations frame Austen’s subversiveness 250 years later? Possible texts may include Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion as well as selected juvenilia and shorter works. Austen’s novels may be paired with excerpts from Mary Wollstonecraft, Phillis Wheatley Peters, Ann Radcliffe, and Mary Prince. Possible films and shows include Mansfield Park (1999), Persuasion (2022), and selected episodes of Sanditon (2019) or Bridgerton (2020). This course may also include archive visits and a virtual tour of Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, England.
English 365	Studies in Postcolonial Literature: Speculative Fiction (Post 1830/Postcolonial & Comparative Literatures/Transnationalism and Textual Circulation/Global Overlay)	Mwangi	MW 2-3:20
English 365 Studies in Postcolonial Literature: Speculative Fiction (Post 1830/Postcolonial & Comparative Literatures/Transnationalism and Textual Circulation/Global Overlay) Course Description: While attending to the major debates and keywords in postcolonial studies, this course will read speculative fiction from formerly colonized regions of the world. How can we account for the explosion of speculative fiction from the Global South in the 21^st century? How do these texts compare with their Western counterparts? In what ways have foundational mimetic texts from the Global South incorporated aspects of speculative fiction? As we answer these questions, we will also respond to the debates about literature in the Global South, especially its intimacies with folklore. Primary texts will include works by Nnedi Okorafor, Kojo Laing, Lauren Beukes, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Indrapramit Das, etc. We will put these texts in conversation with much more conventional postcolonial genres and speculative fictions from other parts of the world. Topics will include how writers use speculative fiction to present a wide range of topics (e.g., the universal human condition; technology and culture; environmental crisis; expressions of gender/sexual identities; racial politics; political power; people with disabilities; and human/non-human relations). Experimenting with different ways of reading a text (e.g., close reading, distant reading, surface reading, etc.), we will attempt to critically write about materials read in class using ideas by such literary and narrative theorists as Aristotle, Judith Merril, Pierre Bourdieu, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Diana Waggoner, Kathryn Hume, Tzvetan Todorov, Fredric Jameson, and Robert Scholes. At the end of the class, the student should be able to appreciate the nature and function of artistic production in the Global South. Teaching Methods: Interactive lectures, debates, role play, one-on-one meetings with professor, and small group discussions, library visits. Evaluation Method: Two 6-page papers, weekly Canvas postings, regular self-evaluation, peer critiques, class participation, pop quizzes (ungraded), and 1-minute papers (ungraded). Texts include: Nnedi Okorafor, Tordotcom (2015). ISBN-10: 0765385252; ISBN-13‏: ‎ 978-0765385253 Nalo Hopkinson, Midnight Robber. Grand Central Publishing; (2000) ISBN-10‏: ‎ 0446675601 ISBN-13‏: ‎ 978-0446675604 Wu Ming-Yi, The Man with the Compound Eyes. ‎Pantheon (2014). ISBN-10‏: ‎ 9780307907967; ISBN-13‏: ‎ 978-0307907967 Chen Qiufan, Waste Tide. Tor Books. (2019 English translation) ISBN-10‏: ‎ 0765389312 ISBN-13‏: ‎ 978-0765389312
English 366	Studies in African American Literature: The Metropolis and Contemporary African American Culture (Post 1830/Race & Ethnicity/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/US Overlay)	Wilson	TTh 9:30-10:50
English 366 Studies in African American Literature: The Metropolis and Contemporary African American Culture (Post 1830/Race & Ethnicity/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/US Overlay) Course Description: Throughout the twentieth century, the terms “urban” and “black America” became so intimately connected that they are often used as synonyms. By tracing different representations of urban life, this course examines the signification of the metropolis in African American cultural production. Although our focus will primarily center on cultural texts, we will address a number of the “push and pull” factors that prompted the Great Migration and the social forces that have subsequently kept many African Americans in the city. In focusing on a set of cultural texts, we will consider the ways in which African Americans have imagined both the allure and dangers of life in the city. Literature may include work by Nella Larsen, Ralph Ellison, and LeRoi Jones; artists may include the photographers Wayne Miller and Camilo José Vergara as well as the painter Jacob Lawrence; film media may include Coolie High and Good Times; music may include hip hop artists from Public Enemy to Common. Critics may include W.E.B. DuBois, St. Clare Drake, Raymond Williams, Mike Davis, and Mary Pattillo. Teaching Methods: Lecture. Evaluation Methods: 2 essays; in-class Final Examination. Texts include: James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk Teju Cole, Open City Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun James Weldon Johnson, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man Nella Larsen, Passing Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones Texts will be available at: TBA
English 374	Topics in Native American and Indigenous Literatures: Hemispheric Indigeneities (Post-1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity/US Overlay)	Rodriguez Pliego	MW 3:30-4:50
English 374 Topics in Native American and Indigenous Literatures: Hemispheric Indigeneities (Post-1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity/US Overlay) Course Description: The hemisphere we sometimes call the Americas has Indigenous names that supersede this title, namely Abiayala and Turtle Island. This course learns from literature by Indigenous authors who remap the lands we inhabit, whether by tracing hemispheric Indigenous connections, interrogating borders, or blurring boundaries between human and non-human worlds. We will consider José Martí’s late nineteenth-century articulation of “Our America” alongside the circulation of the Guna word “Abiayala” among Indigenous activists and “Turtle Island” as the name that Native American creation stories give to our continent. Our discussions will trace connections between the storytelling traditions of Native American and Indigenous authors across Abiayala/Turtle Island. This course will provide an illustrative and non-exhaustive sample of writings by Indigenous authors from what today we call Guatemala, Mexico, Brazil, the United States, and Chile. Following calls by Indigenous authors to understand colonialism’s five-hundred-year history, will move between sixteenth-century manuscripts and contemporary literature. Teaching Method(s): Lecture and discussion-based course. Evaluation Method(s): Midterm and final papers, personal essay, attendance and participation. Texts include: Excerpts from Popol Vuh and Florentine Codex as well as writing by Ailton Krenak, Natalie Diaz, and Yásnaya Aguilar Gil. Texts will be available at: Materials will be available on Canvas.
English 375	Studies in Asian American Literature: Memory + Identity in Asian American Literature (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity/US Overlay)	Huang	TTh 11-12:20
English 375 Studies in Asian American Literature: Memory + Identity in Asian American Literature (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Race & Ethnicity/US Overlay) 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: Seminar-based discussion. Evaluation Method: 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) Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee (978-0520390485) Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost (978-0375724374)
English 381	Studies in Literature & Medicine: The Literature of Plague and Pandemic	Evans	MW 3:30-4:50
English 381 Studies in Literature & Medicine: The Literature of Plague and Pandemic Course Description: On May 11, 2023, the World Health Organization officially declared the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this milestone, the effects of COVID linger as we mourn people and opportunities we lost and reassess the strategies of public health advocacy and communication. Now that the epidemiological emergency has subsided, humanistic scholarship allows us to consider not so much what, exactly, happened, but why and how it has affected our attitudes, ideologies, and values. How has COVID-19 affected our civic and political participation, our social relations, and our intellectual culture? How does the cultural aftermath of COVID-19 compare to responses of plague and pandemic from earlier periods? What prejudices and biases emerge during pandemics, and with what consequences? How does literature help us to assign meaning to collective experiences of disease? Course readings are organized into three units: the bubonic plague in medieval and early modern Europe, the AIDS epidemic in the US in the late-twentieth century, and the emerging literature of COVID-19 by contemporary Anglophone writers. Assignments include collaborative annotations on Canvas, a podcast episode to be completed in small groups, short weekly writing assignments, and a final essay or creative project. Texts include: Eula Biss. (2015). On Immunity: An Inoculation. ISBN 978–1555977207. Ling Ma. (2018). Severance. ISBN 978–1250214997. Sapphire. (2021). Push. (Original pub. 1996). ISBN 978–0593314609. Michael Cunningham. (2024). Day. ISBN 978–0399591365. Mark Doty. (1995). Atlantis. ISBN 978–0060951061. Pamela Sneed. (2020). Funeral Diva. ISBN 978–0872868113.
English 382	Literature and Law: Ideas of Justice (Pre 1830/Ethics & Values Foundational Discipline)	Schwartz	TTh 11-12:20
English 382 Literature and Law: Ideas of Justice (Pre 1830/Ethics & Values Foundational Discipline) 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) ISBN 0-14-044582-X Ursula La Guin, The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare (Arden Edition) ISBN 1903436915 Saint Joan by Bernard Shaw (Penguin Edition) ISBN 0140437916 Billy Budd (TOR) ISBN 0143107607 The Case for Reparations by 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) ISBN 0374532508
English 384	Studies in Literature and the Environment: Toxic Rhetoric (Post 1830)	Dimick	MW 11-12:20
English 384 Studies in Literature and the Environment: Toxic Rhetoric (Post 1830) Course Description: Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, and Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farmworkers Union, both campaigned against toxic exposures in the mid-20^th-century United States and yet are rarely considered in tandem. This course puts the writings and activism of these two women in conversation, ranging through feminist, queer, and Latinx environmental writing to build connections between environmentalism and labor rights. Our study focuses on the craft of environmental nonfiction writing, examining contemporary practitioners working in the vein of Carson and Huerta. Students will also compose environmental nonfiction, employing the literary techniques analyzed in this course to craft a narrative addressing exposure, toxins, or the state of public health. Teaching Method: Seminar-based discussions. Texts may include: Rachel Carson. Silent Spring. 1962. Sandra Steingraber. Living Downstream. 1997. Helena María Viramontes. Under the Feet of Jesus. 1995. Cherríe Moraga. Heroes and Saints and Other Plays. 1994. Karen Zacarías. Native Gardens. 2019. 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.
English 385	Studies in Literature and Culture: Material Girls: Excess, Gender, and Commercialism in Pop Culture (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)	Godfrey	TTh 9:30-10:50
English 385 Studies in Literature and Culture: Material Girls: Excess, Gender, and Commercialism in Pop Culture (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) Course Description: As cultural critic Ariana Grande once said, “I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it!” Some hundred years before, Karl Marx warned about consumerism and alienation: “Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.” Taking the iconic makeover scene as its guiding trope, this course considers the preoccupation with gender, sex, and the performance of femininity that lies at the heart of modern consumer culture. How are racial and gender boundaries constructed and enforced through consumerism? Can one truly purchase empowerment? Are there, in fact, some ways in which consumerism offers key avenues for self-fashioning, and the subversion of heteronormative gender performance? While this course begins in 1725 with Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina and a brief survey of antecedents, the majority of texts are literature, film, and pop culture ephemera from the 1990s through today. Texts include Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, Bong Joon-ho’s best picture winning Parasite, and Greta Gerwig’s latest satire Barbie. Students will engage with Marxism, feminism, gender theory, and sociological thought to construct a modern pop canon of consumption. According to interest, students will also be expected to track a vlogger/influencer of their choice in a pop culture journal. Teaching Methods: Short lectures, seminar discussion, collaborative group exercises. Evaluation Methods: Participation, pop culture journals, final project. Texts Include: Agnes Varda, Cleo from 5-7 (1961), Amy Heckerling, Clueless (1995), Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep (2005), Sakaya Murata, Convenience Store Woman (2016), Bong Joon-ho, Parasite (2019), Lorene Scafaria, Hustlers (2019), Channing Godfrey People, Miss Juneteenth (2020), and Greta Gerwig, Barbie (2023). Texts will be available at: Prep (ISBN 9780812972351) and Convenience Store Woman (ISBN 9780802129628) at Norris, all others on Canvas.
English 385	Studies in Literature and Culture: Romantic Obsession, Colonial Possession: Romancing 19th and 20th-Century Colonial Literature (Post 1830/Postcolonial & Comparative Literatures/Transnational & Textual Circulation)	Godfrey	TTh 12:30-1:50
English 385 Studies in Literature and Culture: Romantic Obsession, Colonial Possession: Romancing 19th and 20th-Century Colonial Literature (Post 1830/Postcolonial & Comparative Literatures/Transnational & Textual Circulation) Course Description: Pocahontas and John Smith are making goofy, animated eyes at each other as British colonials push further into the New England interior. Outlander's Claire and Jamie steal passionate moments during the fight for Scottish independence. And when he died, David Ochterlony—British Resident to the Mughal Court in the early 1800s—left behind thirteen Indian wives. This course asks: how and why are the tropes of possessive romance so often refigured in the colonial context? What can tracing these affects, fetishes, and motifs allow us to uncover about the emotional resonances of imperialist discourse and resistance? After grounding ourselves in classic tales of romantic obsession, we will map these romantic forms onto larger concepts of empire. Edward Said described the Orientalist impulse as "fatally tend[ing] toward the systematic accumulation of human beings and territories." To trace these fatal, obsessive drives to possess, we will move from the classic novels like Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and George Orwell’s Burmese Days to shorter texts such as Marguerite Duras’s The Lover and Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Sexy.” We will contextualize our readings with postcolonial theory. Teaching Methods: Seminar discussion, group exercises. Evaluation Methods: Participation, discussion posts, short analytical paper, final project. Texts include: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847); George Orwell’s Burmese Days (1934); Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” (1973); Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993); Jhumpa Lahiri, “Sexy” (1998); Pocahontas (1995); Park Chan-wook, Decision to Leave (2022).
English 386	Studies in Literature & Film: The Horror Film (Post 1830)	Hodge	TTh 2-3:20
English 386 Studies in Literature & Film: The Horror Film (Post 1830) Course Description: This course introduces students to the study of the modern American horror film. The course will focus on one major feature-length film per week proceeding roughly chronologically while studying powerful and often influential examples of various subgenres of horror from the slasher film to the supernatural and more. We will analyze films textually; and we will also focus on acquiring critical vocabularies for discussing horror cinema. Our prevailing concern will be with bodies -- bodies onscreen and the body of spectators. Horror cinema may arguably be defined by its ability to impact and affect the body of the film spectator through various conventions of portraying the body. With this in mind we'll be asking what the relation is exactly between the images onscreen and the experience of horror cinema in the theater/living room couch/etc. A focus on bodies naturally lends itself to a range of approaches scholarship across disciplines to studying the body, e.g. as racialized, gendered, sexualized, but also, specifically in horror, bodies as gasping, violated, screaming, tense, mutilated, incapacitated, nauseated or otherwise rendered abject, or existing perilously on the edge of humanity. To catalyze discussion we will read a variety of secondary sources from academic film studies and popular journalism and other sources. There will be a few lectures but we will mainly proceed via short lecture and guided group discussion. Teaching Method: Discussion; short lecture; writing assignments. Required Texts: None.
English 389	Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment: Queer of Color Fantasy (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)	Mann	MW 12:30-1:50
English 389 Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment: Queer of Color Fantasy (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) Course Description: What is fantasy and how do queer people of color mobilize fantasy to imagine freedom. In this advanced seminar, students will read across a range of Queer of Color scholarship to analyze key texts from artists including James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Samuel Delany, Octavia E. Butler, Joel Kim Booster, and others. Students will also read standards from the Queer of Color critical canon, including works by José E. Muñoz, Roderick Ferguson, Robert Reid Pharr, and E. Patrick Johnson. Some guiding questions will include 1). What is fantasy and how does make and unmake a queer world? 2) How do scholars imagine in the presence of racist and cisheteropatriarchal structures? Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name 978-0895941220 N.K. Jemisin, Far Sector 978-1779512055 Juliet Takes a Breath, Gabby Rivera 978-0593108192
English 393-1	Theory and Practice of Poetry	Curdy	MW 3:30-4:50
English 393-1 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 394-1	Theory and Practice of Fiction	Seliy	MW 3:30-4:50
English 394-1 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 395-1	Theory and Practice of Creative Nonfiction	Bresland	MW 3:30-4:50
English 395-1 Theory and Practice of Creative Nonfiction Course Description: An advanced year-long course in reading for writers, critical analysis of techniques of creative nonfiction, and intensive creative writing. Reading of primary works will concentrate on longer creative nonfiction works, and the creative project for the latter part of the sequence is a work of creative nonfiction of approximately 15,000 words. A guest non-fiction writer will visit in May as writer-in-residence. 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: Appropriation, Adaptation, Reinvention: 20^th- and 21^st-century artists ––working in different media across the globe––engage in these acts when they use Shakespeare’s plays as a vital cultural resource. From Renaissance London to contemporary India, from apartheid-era South Africa to modern U.S. teen culture, Shakespeare’s work has boldly been positioned to engage with timely issues: colonialism, war, same-sex desire, racial and ethnic tensions, gender instability, school violence, and legal injustice. In this seminar, we’ll examine the global transformations of Shakespearean drama across cultures and media (print, theater, and film). We’ll focus on The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet, alongside creative reworkings such as Toni Morrison’s Desdemona, Shishir Kurup’s Merchant on Venice (a play about Hindu, Muslim, and Latina/o cultures in modern Los Angeles), James Lujan’s Kino and Teresa (a play about star-crossed love in colonial New Mexico), the teen flick O, and Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti (The Māori Merchant of Venice). All assignments will be geared toward building the skills needed to undertake research in the humanities, with attention to designing a viable research project, identifying and treating valid sources responsibly, and developing a sustained argument. For their final projects, students may choose to investigate any afterlife of any Shakespearean play (afterlives might take the form of a play, YA book, graphic novel, translation, ballet, puppet performance, film, or literary adaptation). Required texts: Toni Morrison, Desdemona, ISBN: 135027027X Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, ed. Halio, Oxford World Classics 1st ed, ISBN: 019953585X Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Thompson, Honigmann, The Arden 3rd series, 2nd ed, ISBN: 1472571762 Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Norton Critical Edition, ed. Gordon McMullan. ISBN-13:‎ 978-0393926262
English 398-1	Honors Seminar	Soni
English 398-1 Honors Seminar Course Description: Part of a two-quarter sequence for seniors pursuing honors in the English Literature major, consisting of a seminar in the fall quarter and an independent study with an honors adviser in the winter quarter. Prerequisites: Seniors only. Permission of department required. Attendance at first class mandatory. No P/N registration.
English 410	Introduction to Graduate Study	Mann	W 10a-12:50p
English 410 Introduction to Graduate Study Course Description: This course will offer students an introduction to current theories and methods in literary studies. Students will grapple with key questions and debates that guide research and teaching in the humanities in the twenty-first century. The course begins with an inquiry into the history of the institution, the field(s) of literary studies, broadly conceived, and the questions of center and periphery that remain central to our work. We will then shift to an investigation of contemporary keywords guiding literary studies in the present. Foregrounding the disorienting effects of the literary, the course begins by examining the history of the discipline and its institutions, including shifting definitions of our objects of study; the histories of exclusion and inclusion that accompany these shifts; and, issues of canonicity, especially as they relate to empire building both within and outside the academy. Then, we will explore the methods of literary critique, thinking about what is at stake in the objects we study and the ways we choose to read them. Finally, we will engage with challenges to the traditional organizing principles of our field, including its archives, geographies, periodization. Texts include: Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish 978-0241386019 Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark 978-0679745426 Chris Eng, Extravagant Camp 978-1479834662 Faith Barter, Black Pro Se 978-1469685977 Sarah Dimick, Unseasonable 978-0231209250 Maia Gil’Adí, Doom Patterns 978-1478031208 Noémie Ndiaye, Scripts of Blackness 978-1512826074
English 422	Studies in Medieval Literature: The Canterbury Tales	Phillips	M 2-4:50
English 422 Studies in Medieval Literature: The Canterbury Tales Course Description: From the fifteenth-century glossators to twenty-first century critics, readers of the Canterbury Tales have sought to interpret and contain Chaucer’s constantly shifting, experimental poem. The text poses numerous interpretative puzzles—the myriad objects of the poem’s irony, the cultural politics of its author, the “identities” of its characters, and the demographics and ideologies of its intended audiences, to name a few—puzzles that have been “solved” in strikingly different ways at different historical moments. This course takes as its subject the Canterbury Tales and its reception history, exploring of both the poem’s multiple interpretative contexts and the hermeneutic conundrums it poses to them. As we read the Tales, we will consider the narratives (and narrative conventions) that Chaucer translates and transforms and the contemporary voices with whom he is in dialogue—both in the fourteenth century and the twenty-first. We will investigate the ways in which the tales circulated both individually and as a collection (which tales were the most popular? how and by whom were they published? with which other texts did they travel?) and analyze the various paratexts that accompanied them (glosses, prologues, illustrations, and “spurious” links and tales). Alongside this early publication context, we will explore current conversations in Chaucer criticism and the scholarly history and contemporary publics debates to which it responds. Analyzing the Tales through a wide array of methodological lenses, we will use Chaucer’s experimental poem as methodological and interpretative testing ground, placing its multivalent narratives in dialogue with feminist and queer theory, critical race studies, disability studies, animal studies, and the Global Middle Ages, in addition to new and old materialities and historicisms. Seminar members are encouraged to treat the course as an interpretative lab, bringing their own methodological interests and questions to bear on the Tales in both seminar discussion and their final projects. Texts include: The Canterbury Tales, ed. Jill Mann ISBN 978-0140422344 (approximate cost: $25) (The Canterbury Tales, ed. Larry D. Benson or The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson are also acceptable editions). Textbooks available at: Norris Center Bookstore.
English 434	Studies in Shakespeare & Early Drama: Global Shakespeares	Wall	T 2-4:50
English 434 Studies in Shakespeare & Early Drama: Global Shakespeares Course Description: Appropriation, Adaptation, Reinvention: scholars have deployed these terms to theorize ways that 20^th- and 21^st-century artists ––working in different media across the globe–– use Shakespeare’s plays as a vital cultural and creative resource. These artists’ acts of cultural translation offer sites for exploring complex social and political issues, including colonialism and postcolonialism, racial and ethnic tensions, gender fluidity, same-sex desire, structural violence, and legal inequities. In this course, we will focus on The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet to explore transformations of Shakespearean drama through a range of media (print, theater, and film). We’ll attend to creative reworkings such as Toni Morrison’s Desdemona, Shishir Kurup’s Merchant on Venice (a play about Hindu, Muslim, and Latina/o cultures in modern Los Angeles), James Lujan’s Kino and Teresa (a play about star-crossed love in colonial New Mexico), the teen flick O, and Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti (The Māori Merchant of Venice). All course assignments are structured to support the development of foundational research competencies in the humanities, with emphasis on formulating viable research questions, engaging responsibly with sources, and constructing evidence-based arguments. The final project invites students to undertake an original research inquiry into any global adaptation or afterlife of any Shakespearean play. Required texts: Toni Morrison, Desdemona, ISBN: 135027027X Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, ed. Halio, Oxford World Classics 1st ed, ISBN: 019953585X Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Thompson, Honigmann, The Arden 3rd series, 2nd ed, ISBN: 1472571762 Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Norton Critical Edition, ed. Gordon McMullan. ISBN-13:‎ 978-0393926262
English 451	Studies in Romantic Literature: Lyric Environments	Wolff	Th 2-4:50
English 451 Studies in Romantic Literature: Lyric Environments Course Description: This course serves as an introduction to the "greater romantic lyric," as well as an abbreviated survey of lyric theory. While tracking the sequence and dialogue of a handful of key critical paradigms from the last half century, we will investigate how lyric poetry situates its reader in a universe of discourse through rhetorical address, affective cues, and social disposition. The "environments" in question do connote familiar romantic scholarship on "nature poetry," and the relations of language to nature; but we’ll be thinking about “nature” here bearing in mind that for the romantics and their newer interlocutors, natural “environments” implicate social space and psychic geographies as well. Relevant critical work will be drawn from romantic studies, phenomenology, critical race theory, feminist standpoint theory, affect studies, critical geography, and linguistic anthropology. As time allows, we’ll refer as well to work by living poets that distinctively (and sometimes self-consciously) reconfigures conventions for lyric space and scenes of address laid down in the romantic era. Teaching Method: Brief lectures, seminar discussion. All readings available on Canvas. Readings: Poetry includes readings by Wheatley, Coleridge, Robinson, Wordsworth, Clare, Smith, Barbauld, Keats, Hemans, Shelley, Yearsley. Theory and criticism includes readings by G. W. F. Hegel, J. S. Mill, Frantz Fanon, Roman Jakobson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Raymond Williams, V. N. Voloshinov, Denise Riley, Lauren Berlant, Stanley Cavell, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, Donna Haraway, Erving Goffman, Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed, Doreen Massey, Bakary Diaby, Susan Stewart, Nate Mackey, Camille Dungy, Geoffrey Hartman, Erica Hunt, Barbara Johnson, William Wimsatt, Rei Terada, Paul de Man, Virginia Jackson, M Ty.
English 461	Studies in Contemporary Literature: Asian American Literature	Huang	W 2-4:50
English 461 Studies in Contemporary Literature: Asian American Literature Course Description: This graduate seminar serves as an introduction to the field of Asian American literature, with a twin focus on classic texts and core debates. In addition to highlighting the richness and complexity of this literary tradition, the class will pressure key critical terms and paradigms such as representation, authenticity, genre & form, voice & lyric, history & archive, and of course, race. Participants will be exposed to a range of methodologies for close reading for racial formation as a formal feature of textual composition, as well as gain proficiency with Asian American literature’s relationship to central and emergent debates within American literary studies. Some questions for consideration include the following: What do the many subjects and locations of Asian American literature tell us about the capaciousness of the category itself? What tensions and resonances arise when critical race and ethnic studies meet theories of representation? How are conventional modes of understanding racial identity in literature transformed when put in relation with theories of migration, imperialism, economics, and the environment? Teaching Method: Discussion-based seminar. Evaluation Method: Conference paper, discussion posts, presentation, and participation in discussions. Texts include: Assigned texts will likely include primary texts by Maxine Hong Kingston, Chang-rae Lee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Karen Tei Yamashita, Monique Truong, Frank Chin, Lesley Tenorio, lê thị diễm thúy, Ruth Ozeki, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. Secondary texts will include work by Lisa Lowe, David Eng, Kandice Chuh, Colleen Lye, Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Rachel Lee, among others. Please verify before purchasing texts. Texts will be available at: Primary texts will be available at Norris bookstore, and all secondary materials will be uploaded to Canvas.
English 496	MFA Poetry Workshop	Abani	M 10-12:50
English 496 MFA Poetry Workshop Course Description: TBA
English 497	MFA Fiction Workshop	Martinez	T 2-4:50
English 497 MFA Fiction Workshop Course Description: TBA
English 498	MFA Creative Nonfiction Workshop	Schulman	Th 2-4:50
English 498 MFA Creative Nonfiction Workshop Course Description: TBA