Spring 2026 Class Schedule: Department of English

Spring 2026 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, Exiles, and Refugees (Historical Breadth Pre 1830)	Wall	MW 11-12:20
English 200 Literary Histories: Far From Home: Journeys, Exiles, and Refugees (Historical Breadth Pre 1830) Course Description: How does longing for home–– a place of belonging–– shape our sense of identity and community? In this course, we will discuss ways that writers for centuries have used fantasy to contemplate home and exile. Beginning with the classical epic veteran Odysseus who battles monsters, sirens, and vengeful gods to return from the Trojan war, we turn to modern stories where travelers are not traditional heroes but figures who feel profoundly vulnerable in their home spaces. Even as the journeys in these texts share themes of violence and renewal, they steer us to contemplate strikingly different issues, including generational conflict, immigration, race, gender, childhood, love, and climate change. Our classroom journey will involve learning how to analyze literature, contextualize fiction in historical frameworks, and craft strong arguments in writing. Texts will likely include Homer’s Odyssey; Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (a feminist recentering of The Odyssey); Octavia Butler’s apocalyptic cli-fi novel, Parable of the Sower; Yuri Herrera’s rewriting of The Odyssey in the borderlands, Signs Preceding the End of the World; Mohsin Hamid’s refugee fantasy fiction tale, Exit West; Maurice Sendak’s children’s tale, Where the Wild Things Are; and the fantasy-drama film set in Louisiana’s eroding coastline, Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. Required texts: Homer, The Odyssey, ed. Emily Wilson, ISBN 978-0393356250 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	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 202	Introduction to Creative Writing	Staff	TTh 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	Staff	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	Curdy	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	Curdy	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	Bouldrey	MW 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	Seliy	TTh 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	Seliy	TTh 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 208	Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction	Staff	MW 2-3:20
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	TTh 9:30-10:50
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 213	Introduction to Fiction (Historical Breadth Post 1830)	Law	MW 12:30-1:50, plus discussion section
English 213 Introduction to Fiction (Historical Breadth Post 1830) Course Description: A monster, a basement, a storm, a prayer—what images shape a child’s inner world? Coming-of-age novels return us to these charged moments, showing how identity is formed through memory, language, and the body. In this course, we’ll read four powerful novels that portray growing up not as a straight line, but as a series of looping encounters with the past. These works explore the physical and emotional experience of embodiment: what it means to live in a body that can feel monstrous or comforting, alien or intimate. At the same time, they ask what it might mean to transcend the body. But this course is also about how we read. We’ll ask how literary language works—how it differs from everyday speech, how structure shapes meaning, and how novels speak through what they leave unsaid. We’ll develop our own interpretations, learning how to read closely, write persuasively, and argue with precision and care. 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: 2 lectures, 1 required discussion-section per week. Method of Evaluation: midterm paper (25%); final paper (35%); final exam (20%); quizzes and class participation (20%). Texts (available at Norris bookstore): Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (Penguin Classics), ISBN 9780141439471. 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.
English 266	Introduction to African American Literature (Post 1830)	Mann	MW 11-12:20, plus discussion section
English 266 Introduction to African American Literature (Post 1830) Course Description: In this survey of African American literature, students will read across three centuries of literary and cultural production to examine and assess the relationship between Black culture and freedom struggle. Students will engage topics in Black study—including questions of freedom, fugitivity, nationalism, and racial justice—as well as literary and cultural history to analyze and explain the development of Black literature and culture in the U.S. Our course will survey the following periods in Black literature and cultural production to analyze the evolution of Black cultural expression and its relationship to the historical transformations enveloping black people in each specific period: enslavement, Emancipation, and Reconstruction, Jim Crow and segregation, Civil Rights and the Black Arts Movement, and multiculturalism and the “post-blackness.” Throughout, will read a range of sources including poetry and prose, and long- and short-form works to characterize the ideas and imaginaries that inhere in Black literature. We will also listen to Black music, including, the Blues, jazz, and Hip Hop and view television and films that have been important entries in the cultural history of Black life. Texts include: The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (ebook).
English 275	Introduction to Asian American Literature (Post 1830)	Huang	TTh 11-12:20, plus discussion section
English 275 Introduction to Asian American Literature (Post 1830) 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: Lecture, discussion, discussion section, writing assignments. Evaluation Method: Attendance, class participation, writing assignments, quizzes, readings, papers. Texts include: Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker (ISBN 978-157322531) Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior (ISBN 978-0679721888) Texts will be available at: Norris Bookstore and on reserve in the library. Other texts will be available on Canvas.
English 300	Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Seduced and Abandoned: Narratives and Films	Froula	MW 12:30-1:50
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Seduced and Abandoned: Narratives and Films Course Description: This version of English 300 will examine the following works of fiction: Charlotte Temple; The Coquette; Our N--; The Scarlet Letter; and Broken Blossoms, Way Down East; and Madame X; narratives of seduction and abandonment span the era of the nation’s founding through the turn of the 20^th century, as the virtuous woman ruined by the worldly libertine has served as political allegory.
English 300	Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Imaginary Homelands	Stern	TTh 11-12:20
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Imaginary Homelands Course Description: South Asian writers win prizes. Ever since Salman Rushdie catapulted to international fame with the Booker Prize in 1981, writers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have become the mainstay of not only literary prize cultures and the festival circuit but also U.S. university campuses. What has made South Asian literature so popular, especially when it deals with somber questions of anticolonial resistance, postcolonial nation-building, violence, and loss? This course will introduce students to twentieth and twenty-first century South Asian Literatures in English characterized by exciting stylistic innovations in magical realism, modernist language games, lyrical prose, and biting satire. By examining novels, short stories, poems, political writing, and films, we will ask, how has literature shaped both the promise and failure of the postcolonial nation-state? What might South Asian writing teach us about the global project of democratic world-making? Topics of discussion will include gender, caste, empire, globalization, migrancy, and environmentalism.
English 309	Advanced Creative Cross-Genre Writing	Webster	MW 11-12:20
English 309 Advanced Creative Cross-Genre Writing Course Description: TBA
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: Dancing the Post-1945 Avant-Garde (Post 1830)	Manning	F 9:30a-11:50a
English 312 Studies in Drama: Dancing the Post-1945 Avant-Garde (Post 1830) Course Description: This course surveys experimental movement-based performance from the 1950s to the present in the U.S., Europe, Japan, India, and West Africa. The course looks at Butoh, Tanztheater, Judson Dance Theatre, conceptual dance, Black postmodernism, and contemporary dance in Asia and Africa. After situating each movement within the time and place of its initial formation, we’ll follow its ideas and practices across national borders. Along the way, we’ll discover surprising alliances—Katherine Dunham’s impact on Tatsumi Hijikata, the interrelations between Judson and conceptual dance, and the mutual influences of Pina Bausch and Chandralekha. At issue is how to account for the power differentials between the Global North and Global South while also acknowledging the multidimensionality of global circulation.
English 313	Studies in Fiction: Feelings, Moods, Atmospheres (Post 1830)	Jackson	TTh 2-3:20
English 313 Studies in Fiction: Feelings, Moods, Atmospheres (Post 1830) Course Description: TBA
English 324	Studies in Medieval Literature: The Medieval Beast (Pre 1830)	Newman	MW 9:30-10:50
English 324 Studies in Medieval Literature: The Medieval Beast (Pre 1830) Course Description: Animals were everywhere in the medieval world—cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens for the table; mighty horses for war; oxen for the plow; dogs and falcons for the hunt (with deer, fox, and wild boar among their prey); lambs and calves for fine vellum; lions, monkeys, and other exotics for the aristocratic menagerie; bees to give sweetness and light; “harmless necessary cats” to control mice; dragons to challenge heroes; unicorns to be caught by virgins; and even criminal beasts to be tried in court. In this class we will learn how to think with animals (or beasts, as they were normally called) in a wide range of medieval genres and discourses, including lyric poetry, illuminated bestiaries, fables, beast epic, saints’ lives, debate poems, and romance. Teaching Method: Discussion with occasional lectures. Evaluation Method: Lively and informed discussion (25%); three 5- to 7-page papers, of which at least one must be analytical and one must be creative (25% each). Texts include: Readings will include the Bestiary, a gorgeously illustrated book that describes the properties of animals and assigns them allegorical meanings; lyric poems about an Irish monk and his cat, a captive unicorn, and the lament of a roasted swan; the famous satire Renard the Fox; Wholly Animals: A Book of Beastly Tales; Chrétien de Troyes’ romance Yvain, about a knight who wins battles with the help of his pet lion; Marie de France’s Bisclavret, a werewolf tale; medieval fables such as “Belling the Cat” and “City Mouse and Country Mouse”; the tale of Mélusine, a royal lady who is part woman, part serpent; Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale about the adventures of a prideful rooster; Lydgate’s “Debate of the Horse, the Sheep, and the Goat”; and the romance of Sir Gowther, a murderer who has to do penance by eating all his food under the table with dogs. We will also do some historical and theoretical readings.
English 331	Renaissance Poetry: John Milton's Work in Context (Pre 1830)	Schwartz	TTh 9:30-10:50
English 331 Renaissance Poetry: John Milton's Work 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. “There are three reasons for Milton’s remaining a controversial figure: he gave such eloquent answers to questions that still divide mankind; he made his own character an issue in the public causes for which he fought; and as a poet he did not detach himself from his imaginative creation.” James Holly Hanford Texts will include either: The Complete Poetry and Major Prose of John Milton, ed John Rumrich, Stephen Fallon and William Kerrigan (Modern Library) 0679642536 OR Paradise Lost, ed Gordon Teskey 0393617084
English 339	Studies in Shakespeare: Enchanted Bodies: Magic and Gender in Shakespeare (Pre 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)	Wall	MW 2-3:20
English 339 Studies in Shakespeare: Enchanted Bodies: Magic and Gender in Shakespeare (Pre 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) Course Description: From the androgynous witches of Macbeth to the airy spirits of The Tempest––from the gender-bending disguise of As You Like It to the magical woods of A Midsummer Night’s Dream––Shakespeare’s works brim with supernatural forces and fluid identities. These plays transport us to to worlds where reality constantly blurs into illusions, with housewives concocting fake magic to put pompous suitors in their place, and ambitious husbands wrestling with suffocating ideals of masculinity. This course explores the rich intersections of magic and gender across Shakespeare’s work. We will read a selection of plays alongside historical sources and criticism to understand how spells, disguises, fantasies and transformations shape—and challenge—understandings of gender. Plays will likely include Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Merry Wives of Windsor, Macbeth, and The Tempest. Required texts will be Folger Editions of Shakespeare: Merry Wives of Windsor, ISBN-13: 978-0671722784 Macbeth, ISBN-13: 978-1451694727 As You Like It, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0743484862 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ISBN-13: ‎978-0743482813 The Tempest, ISBN-13: ‎978-0743482837 Romeo and Julie,: ISBN-13: 978145162170
English 366	Studies in African American Literature: Black Feminist Worldmaking (Post 1830/Race & Ethnicity/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/US Overlay)	Mann	MW 2-3:20
English 366 Studies in African American Literature: Black Feminist Worldmaking (Post 1830/Race & Ethnicity/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/US Overlay) Course Description: What might the world like if it were made in the image of black feminist visionaries? How and why should we invite those imagined futures into our political and social realities? In this course, students will survey a range of writing in Black feminist and queer-of-color theory, paying special attention to the world-making potential of radical thinking. Students will read foundational texts including those by Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, and Kimberlé Crenshaw, alongside more recent contributions from scholars including Jennifer C. Nash, Kevin Quashie, and Nicole Fleetwood to understand the shape and contour of contemporary black feminist world-making. Additionally, students will examine the veil between literature and theory and consider the ways in which these two genres of writing bleed into and reinforce one another. This course is reading intensive with weekly writing assignments and a large summative writing assignment. Texts include: Ntozake Shange, for colored girls 978-0684843261 Toni Morrison, Sula 978-1400033430
English 368	Studies in 20th- and 21st-Century Literature: Virginia Woolf, Bloomsbury, and the Arts of Life (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment)	Froula	MW 3:30-4:50
English 368 Studies in 20th- and 21st-Century Literature: Virginia Woolf, Bloomsbury, and the Arts of Life (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment) Course Description: TBA
English 369	Studies in African Literature: Ubuntu and Ecology (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Transnational & Textual Circulation)	Mwangi	TTh 11-12:20
English 369 Studies in African Literature: Ubuntu and Ecology (Post 1830/Identities, Communities, and Social Practice/Transnational & Textual Circulation) Course Description: TBA
English 381	Literature & Medicine: Disability Lifeworlds	Nadiminti	MW 12:30-1:50
English 381 Literature & Medicine: Disability Lifeworlds Course Description: How does literature work through the structural and social struggle of disability to create discrete, sustainable worlds? How night the language of disability mobilize not just an identity category but a robust aesthetic apparatus of thought and feeling? This course works through Anglophone writing from India, South Africa, Britain, and the US to ask how disability remaps collectivity care, and personhood by querying vocabularies of cripness, capacity, debility, and illness. We will examine how disability challenge assumed categories of exceptionality and capitalist productivity, while also asking significant questions about civil rights and human rights. In addition, the course also tracks how disability studies has evolved beyond a narrow Anglo-American focus to understand complex Global South realities. Reading disability theorists like Rosemarie Garland Thompson, Eve Sedgwick, Jasbir Puar, and Eli Clare, we will think about the frictional registers of belonging and alienation represented in novels, autobiographies, short stories, and art. Evaluation Method: Assignments will comprise presentations, weekly discussion posts, and a final group video project. Texts include: Ved Mehtq’s Face to Face, Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting, Georgina Kleege's Blind Rage, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, IM Coetzee’s Slow Man, and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People.
English 384	Studies in Literature and the Environment: Writing Nature	Shannon	MW 11-12:20
English 384 Studies in Literature and the Environment: Writing Nature Course Description: TBA
English 388	Studies in Literature and Ethics: Advanced Bible as Literature (Pre 1830)	Schwartz	TTh 11-12:20
English 388 Studies in Literature and Ethics: Advanced Bible as Literature (Pre 1830) Course Description: TBA
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: 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: Divas of Classical Hollywood	Stern	MW 11-12:20
English 397 Research Seminar: Divas of Classical Hollywood Course Description: This course explores the life and work of five classical Hollywood Divas: Greta Garbo, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, and Hattie McDaniel and argues for their ongoing cultural significance to American thinking about race, gender, embodiment, and class. Students will choose an actress to work on and view at least five of her major pictures. To introduce us to the methodology and vocabulary of film analysis, we will read David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson’s compendious Film Art: An Introduction; we will also examine works of feminist film theory, like Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” star studies work by Richard Dyer, James Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work, and classic and recent essays on individual films. Students will write a 15-page research paper on the star and film of their choice, arguing for the ongoing cultural significance of their chosen figure and her oeuvre. Mode of evaluation: oral presentation, annotated bibliography, and fifteen-page final paper.
English 434	Studies in Shakespeare & Early Drama	Shannon	M 2-4:50
English 434 Studies in Shakespeare & Early Drama Course Description: TBA
English 461	Studies in Contemporary Literature: The Planetary in Contemporary Art	Mwangi	Th 2-4:50
English 461 Studies in Contemporary Literature: The Planetary in Contemporary Art Course Description: TBA
English 461	Studies in Contemporary Literature: Hannah Arendt	Gottlieb	T 2-4:50
English 461 Studies in Contemporary Literature: Hannah Arendt Course Description: TBA
English 465	Studies in Colonial & Postcolonial Literature	Nadiminti	W 2-4:50
English 465 Studies in Colonial & Postcolonial Literature Course Description: TBA
English 471	Studies in American Literature: The American Modernist Novel, Black and White	Stern	T 2-4:50
English 471 Studies in American Literature: The American Modernist Novel, Black and White Course Description: TBA
English 481	Studies in Literary Theory and Criticism: TBA	Jackson	M 2-4:50
English 481 Studies in Literary Theory and Criticism: TBA Course Description: TBA
English 498	MFA Creative Nonfiction Workshop	Hernández	T 2-4:50
English 498 MFA Creative Nonfiction Workshop Course Description: TBA