Winter 2027 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: TBA | Staff | TBA | |
English 200 Literary Histories: TBA | ||||
| English 200 | Literary Histories: TBA | Staff | TBA | |
English 200 Literary Histories: TBA | ||||
| English 202 | Introduction to Creative Writing | Staff | TTh 12:30-1:50 | |
English 202 Introduction to Creative WritingCourse 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 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:
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| English 206 | Reading and Writing Poetry | Shanahan | TTh 11-12:20 | |
English 206 Reading and Writing Poetry[Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Prerequisites:
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| 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:
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| English 207 | Reading and Writing Fiction | Staff | MW 9:30-10:50 | |
English 207 Reading and Writing FictionCourse 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:
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| English 207 | Reading and Writing Fiction | Seliy | TTh 11-12:20 | |
English 207 Reading and Writing FictionCourse 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:
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| English 207 | Reading and Writing Fiction | Staff | TTh 3:30-4:50 | |
English 207 Reading and Writing FictionCourse 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:
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| English 208 | Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction | Staff | MW 11-12:20 | |
English 208 Reading and Writing Creative NonfictionCourse 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:
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| English 208 | Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction | Staff | MW 3:30-4:50 | |
English 208 Reading and Writing Creative NonfictionCourse 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:
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| English 208 | Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction | Bresland | TTh 9:30-10:50 | |
English 208 Reading and Writing Creative NonfictionCourse 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:
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| English 208 | Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction | Bresland | TTh 2-3:20 | |
English 208 Reading and Writing Creative NonfictionCourse 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:
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| English 210-2 | British Literary Traditions, Part 2 (Historical Breadth Post 1830) | Thompson | MWF 10-10:50 | |
English 210-2 British Literary Traditions, Part 2 (Historical Breadth Post 1830)Course Description: TBA | ||||
| English 214 | Introduction to Film and Its Literatures | Hodge | TTh 11-12:20, plus discussion section | |
English 214 Introduction to Film and Its LiteraturesCourse Description: This course introduces students to the study of cinema with an emphasis on the various “literatures” it engages, including fiction, criticism, and theory across media. It has two primary objectives: 1) to acquaint students with vocabularies and frameworks of analysis required to study cinema in terms specific to that medium; and 2) to familiarize students with a broad range of texts crucial to the study of cinema, enabling them to render persuasive interpretations. Techniques of close analysis will be the paramount skills developed in the course, hopefully leading to deeper appreciation of film and its literatures. Teaching Method: Lecture, Discussion Section. Evaluation Method: Attendance, Exams, Quizzes, Analytical Projects. Texts Include: Printed Course Reader. | ||||
| English 220 | The Bible as Literature | Evans | MW 11-12:20, plus discussion section | |
English 220 The Bible as LiteratureCourse Description: This course will familiarize students of literature with the most influential text in Western culture from the perspective of secular literary studies. No prior knowledge of the Bible is presupposed. Among other topics, the course will explore the range of literary genres in the Bible; its narrative techniques; the historical circumstances of its composition; recurrent themes and motifs; the "typology" framing the New Testament as a reinterpretation of the Hebrew Bible; and the overall narrative as a plot with beginning, middle, and end. Since we lack time to read the Bible in full, we we will concentrate on books with the most concentrated literary influence from the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, and parts of Deuteronomy); the Prophets (Amos, Jonah, Second Isaiah, and Daniel); and the Writings (Judges, Ruth, Psalms, Song of Songs, and the saga of King David). In the New Testament, we will read selections from the Gospels and the book of Revelation. Teaching Method: Lecture, discussion. Evaluation Method: Participation, reading quizzes, in-class presentation, in-class midterm and final essay. Texts Include: Harper-Collins Study Bible NRSV, ISBN 0062969420. Other readings will be posted on Canvas. | ||||
| English 265 | Introduction to Postcolonial Literature: Humor and Resistance (Historical Breadth Post 1830) | Mwangi | MW 9:30-10:50 | |
English 265 Introduction to Postcolonial Literature: Humor and Resistance (Historical Breadth Post 1830)Course Description: Colonialism was not funny—but postcolonial writers have repeatedly turned humor into one of their most effective forms of resistance. This course introduces students to postcolonial literature through comedy, irony, satire, parody, and laughter. Focusing on fiction, drama, and memoir from Africa, the Caribbean, and the postcolonial diaspora, the course examines how writers use humor to expose the absurdities of empire, undermine authority, survive violence, and critique the uneven legacies of colonial rule. Humor in this course is treated not as comic relief but as a serious political and aesthetic practice. Students will explore why power fears laughter, how satire destabilizes hierarchy, and when humor becomes double‑edged, unsettling, or offensive. Literary texts are paired with accessible theoretical readings on laughter, ridicule, mimicry, and performance by thinkers such as Plato (laughter, order, aesthetics, tragedy hierarchy), Sigmund Freud (jokes, repression, psychic release, economy), Frantz Fanon (racial laughter, masking, colonial psyche), Mikhail Bakhtin (carnival, grotesque, popular subversive laughter), Homi Bhabha (mimicry, irony, colonial ambivalence), Terry Eagleton (humor, aggression, politics, ambivalence), and feminist theorists of humor and affect such as Gloria Anzaldúa (border laughter, survival, hybridity), Hélène Cixous (feminist laughter, subversion, excess), and Sara Ahmed (affect, feminist killjoys, unruly emotions). Designed as a gateway to postcolonial studies, ENGLISH 265 emphasizes close reading, historical context, and discussion rather than specialized theoretical mastery. Students will develop skills in literary analysis while considering how humor travels across cultures, languages, and systems of power. Teaching Methods: Interactive lectures, guided class discussion, close‑reading workshops, small‑group activities, short contextual presentations, and occasional low‑stakes creative or analytical exercises. Emphasis is placed on discussion‑based learning and sustained engagement with primary texts. Evaluation Methods:
Primary Literary Texts (May Change):
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| English 277 | Introduction to Latinx Literature | Rodríguez Pliego | MW 12:30-1:50, plus discussion section | |
English 277 Introduction to Latinx LiteratureTeaching Method: Lecture. Evaluation Method: Attendance and participation, papers, creative assignment. Texts Include:
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| English 300 | Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Millennial and Zoomer Fictions | Jackson | MW 12:30-1:50 | |
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Millennial and Zoomer FictionsCourse Description: What makes a work of fiction categorically, recognizably “millennial”? What does, could, or ought the Gen-Z literary tradition look like? With these questions in mind, this course introduces theories and approaches to the study of cultural texts (novels, short stories, film, music, visual art). How do we get from reading to interpretation? What are the historical, social, and cultural contexts that shape a text and its meanings? How should our interpretations be informed by formations such as race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, class, and nationhood? We will practice and develop our ways of reading in a concentrated survey of post-2010s literature and media. Teaching Method(s): Lecture-discussion. Evaluation Method(s): Class participation, weekly quiz, essays (2). Texts include: Sally Rooney, Ottessa Moshfegh, Ling Ma, Bryan Washington, Chantal V. Johnson, Honor Levy, Girls and Insecure, The Sweet East, Bodies Bodies Bodies. Texts will be available at: Norris | ||||
| English 300 | Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Frankenstein and Friends | Froula | TTh 11-12:20 | |
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Frankenstein and FriendsCourse Description: When eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley opened her eyes with “a thrill of fear” at her first idea of Frankenstein, she felt that “what terrified me would terrify others.” But never did she foresee that her contribution to her friend Lord Byron’s ghost story contest on Lake Geneva that stormy summer of 1816 would launch two centuries--and counting--of vibrant reading, interpretation, and creative adaptation. What enduring questions, insights, and understandings has her story inspired in its long global reception across countries, cultures, languages, and media? How do the extraordinary conditions and influences surrounding its creation—the French Revolution, Mary’s intellectual legacies from her parents William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, myths of Prometheus, Genesis, and the Ancient Mariner, scientific experiments in “animal electricity” or Galvanism--shape the ways it speaks to the preoccupations of readers, thinkers, and artists in particular historical and cultural moments? As for Frankenstein’s friends: what were Mary’s friends and ghost story rivals—Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Polidori, Claire Clairmont--writing? How does the genius loci or “spirit of place”—of the sublime locales of Lake Geneva and the Alps, rich in geological, human, and cultural history—infuse their imaginative works: Byron’s and Polidori’s “vampyre” stories (Dracula’s precursors), Byron’s “Darkness,” “The Prisoner of Chillon,” Manfred, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” “Mont Blanc,” Prometheus Unbound—along with letters, journals, and memoirs? As we join this openended, myriadminded conversation—historical and contemporary, scholarly and popular, critical and creative—we’ll aim to formulate and debate our own questions, deepen our literary historical understanding, practice and hone our interpretative, analytic, and writing tools and skills, and have fun. Evaluation Method: Prompt attendance, good preparation, active participation, written and oral exercises (25%); Friday Posts (15%); class presentation (15%); short analytic essay (15%); course project proposal and the project (25%); self-evaluation (5%). Texts Include: Third (3rd) Norton Critical Edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, ed. J. Paul Hunter (2022). Other required and supplementary readings will be available in Canvas Course Reserves, Canvas Files, Web, &c. | ||||
| English 307 | Advanced Creative Writing: Plotting and Scheming | Martinez | MW 12:30-1:50 | |
English 307 Advanced Creative Writing: Plotting and SchemingCourse Description: We all read for plot to one degree or another, and we all turn to this particular aspect of narrative in quite a bit of our entertainment: we want to know what happens next. But some of us--maybe quite a few of us--struggle with plot when it comes to our own writing. This course is designed to help you think through the structure of plot in narrative form. We'll cover the history of plot, try to figure out why we like it and need, and we'll also trouble and contest this necessity. You'll learn a series of tricks, but you'll also discover which ones may work best for the type of fiction you like to write. And we'll do it all through a mix of cool theories and writers, weird diagrams and acronyms, plus a lot of our own work: we'll generate a bunch of pieces, including at least one full story, with those two essential narrative questions in mind: What happens next? And what happens after that? Teaching Method: Lecture, discussion, seminar. Evaluation Method: Attendance, participation, workshops, short stories. Texts Include:
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| English 308 | Advanced Nonfiction Writing | Hernández | TTh 3:30-4:50 | |
English 308 Advanced Nonfiction WritingCourse Description: TBA | ||||
| English 310 | Studies in Literary Genres: The English Country and Far Beyond (Pre 1830) | Thompson | MW 3:30-4:50 | |
English 310 Studies in Literary Genres: The English Country and Far Beyond (Pre 1830)Course Description: TBA | ||||
| English 324 | Studies in Medieval Literature: Pagan and Christian in Medieval Literature (Pre 1830) | Newman | MWF 1-1:50 | |
English 324 Studies in Medieval Literature: Pagan and Christian in Medieval Literature (Pre 1830)Course Description: Medieval culture was overwhelmingly Christian, but it was heir to several pre-Christian religions. Germanic paganism brought monsters, defiant heroism, and expectation of a coming “twilight of the gods,” while Celtic paganism supplied magical objects and mysterious Otherworld visitors. Contrary to popular belief, the Church did not suppress the use of pagan sources, but medieval writers transformed the materials they inherited, producing sophisticated texts that present a Christian point of view layered above tantalizing and elusive pagan subtexts. In this multimedia class, we’ll look at (1) the Old English world of Beowulf along with a recent apocalyptic novel based on it, Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife; (2) four tales about magical shape-shifting characters: Marie de France’s Yonec and Bisclavret, The Wife of Bath’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; and (3) the romance of the Holy Grail—a Celtic magical cauldron that evolved into a prized Christian relic. The class will include a performance of Beowulf in Old English, sung to the Anglo-Saxon harp; websites on key archaeological finds; and three film adaptations by Éric Rohmer, David Lowery, and the unforgettable British comedy team, Monty Python. Teaching Method: Discussion; some lectures; film viewing. Evaluation Method: Oral presentations; five very short assignments; three 5-7 page papers. Texts Include:
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| English 338 | Studies in Renaissance Literature: Early Modern Horror (Pre 1830) | Evans | MW 2-3:20 | |
English 338 Studies in Renaissance Literature: Early Modern Horror (Pre 1830)Course Description: This course will bring together English Renaissance literature, classical and Renaissance theories of spectatorship, and academic writing on horror as a genre. Building on canonical thinkers from Aristotle to Kristeva, we will consider how early modern theater anticipated conventions of the Gothic novel, the genre more traditionally cited as the birthplace of horror. Across three units—focused on revenge tragedy, witches, and monsters—we will consider the psychological, cultural, and civic functions of this horror or proto-horror literature. We will think critically about the potential, the inevitability, and the risks of approaching early literature through anachronistic frames of reference. Teaching Method: Two 80-minute meetings, brief lectures and discussion. Evaluation Method: Attendance & participation, reading quizzes, in-class presentations, midterm and final papers written in class. Texts Include:
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| English 353 | Studies in Romantic Literature: Austen and Irony (Pre 1830) | Wolff | TTh 2-3:20 | |
English 353 Studies in Romantic Literature: Austen and Irony (Pre 1830)Course Description: This class is a reading-intensive study of a selection of Jane Austen's novels, with strong emphasis on close reading the innovative language of her prose. Though best known for her contributions to the popular genres of romance, Austen has always been a writer's writer, meticulous in composition and renowned as a stylist. Our focus will be on the satirical edges of her work, and on understanding how irony works in her novels. We'll read some 18th century precursors and some recent criticism as help, but most of the class will be spent with Austen herself. In addition to the novels listed, we'll read from her early writings, letters, and the epistolary novella Lady Susan. Teaching Method: Short lectures and seminar discussion. Evaluation Method: Attendance & participation; quizzes; short writings assignments; midterm; longer final writing assignment. Texts Include:
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| English 365 | Studies in Postcolonial Literature: Ecologies of Resistance (Post 1830/Postcolonial & Comparative Literatures) | Mwangi | MW 12:30-1:50 | |
English 365 Studies in Postcolonial Literature: Ecologies of Resistance (Post 1830/Postcolonial & Comparative Literatures)Course Description: This course explores how postcolonial writers engage the environment not as passive backdrop but as a contested site of struggle, survival, and resistance. Students examine how colonialism and global capitalism have reshaped relationships to land, water, animals, and climate, and how literature responds to environmental violence, dispossession, and ecological crisis while imagining alternative modes of care, belonging, and sustainability. Teaching Method: Interactive lectures, guided discussion, close reading workshops, small group activities, short contextual presentations, comparative analysis across genres, and occasional low stakes reflective or creative exercises. Emphasis is placed on discussion based learning and sustained engagement with primary texts. Evaluation Method: Short response papers or reading reflections, one midterm analytical essay, one final essay or project; participation, including discussion and in class writing. Texts Include:
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| English 366 | Studies in African American Literature: Toni Morrison (Post 1830/Race & Ethnicity/US Overlay) | Jackson | MW 2-3:20 | |
English 366 Studies in African American Literature: Toni Morrison (Post 1830/Race & Ethnicity/US Overlay) | ||||
| English 368 | Studies in 20th- and 21st-Century Literature: Reading James Joyce's Ulysses (Post 1830) | Froula | TTh 3:30-4:50 | |
English 368 Studies in 20th- and 21st-Century Literature: Reading James Joyce's Ulysses (Post 1830)Course Description: An encyclopedic epic that tracks three Dubliners’ criss-crossing adventures on 16 June 1904, James Joyce's landmark Ulysses (1922) captures a day in the life of a semicolonial city in a wealth of analytic--in his word, vivisective--detail. Proposing that Ulysses has much to teach us about how to read our own everyday worlds, we'll study the book's eighteen episodes alongside Homer’s Odyssey and other sources, notes, and commentaries. In thinking about the fictional Dubliners who populate Ulysses, we’ll consider: Joyce’s transmutation of Homer’s Odyssey into a modern epic quest; Ireland's long colonial history and its struggle to throw off British rule; characters’ conflicting dreams of a subject or sovereign Ireland; conditions of home, exile, and homecoming; psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious and the psychopathology of everyday life (Freud); scapegoat dynamics in theory and everyday practice; bodies, sensation, food, peristalsis, hunger, sex, birth, death; desire, the gaze, gender, gesture, dress, and social power; performance and theatricality, both studied and unconscious; the pain and mourning of loss; the power of love; the scalpel of wit; the social life—and political bite--of jokes, comedy, satire, humor; the socio-economic sex/gender system, including marriage and prostitution, as key to political authority in light of Joyce’s reported remark that women's emancipation is “the greatest revolution of our time in the most important relationship there is”; intersubjective dynamics, human and animal, dead and alive; history, time, memory, monuments; the burdens, powers, and pleasures of language; the play of voices: narrative voice, interior monologue, dialogue, colloquy, reported speech, telling silences, omniscient authority, poetry, news, advertising, jokes, parody, obfuscation, song, music, play script, letters, catechism, allusion, citation; noises and soundscapes from the cat’s “mrkgnao” to a screeching tram and characters’ inner, speaking, and singing voices; the worldly diction of Joyce’s beyond-English; and more. We’ll approach this challenging, maddening, amazing, exhilarating, funny, moving, deeply rewarding, often life-changing book in ways playful and critical, jocoserious and analytic; and we’ll seek revelation by reading, thinking, and discussing it together with serious purpose and imaginative freedom. Requirements and evaluation: Attendance, preparation, participation (20%); Weekly Close Readings and After-Class Comments, collected as Midterm and Final (25%); Presentation with 1-2 page handout (15%); option of two shorter or one longer paper or project (35%); Self-Evaluation (5%). Required Texts Include:
Recommended Texts:
Supplementary readings, recordings, and films via Canvas Course Reserves and Library Media. | ||||
| English 378 | Savage | TTh 2-3:20 | ||
English 378 | ||||
| English 380 | Studies in Multiethnic American Literature: Race and the American Musical (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Race & Ethnicity) | Mann | TTh 9:30-10:50 | |
English 380 Studies in Multiethnic American Literature: Race and the American Musical (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Race & Ethnicity)Course Description: In this seminar, students will analyze how race has worked in relation to the Broadway musical from the early days of the form through to the contemporary. Students will consider how transformations in American race relations, immigration policy, geopolitics, and social policy have influenced when and how race manifests in the genre. Teaching Method: Discussion. Evaluation Method: Papers and projects. Texts Include: Materials online. | ||||
| English 381 | Literature and Medicine: Disability Lifeworlds (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Postcolonial & Comparative Literatures/Race & Ethnicity) | Nadiminti | MW 3:30-4:50 | |
English 381 Literature and Medicine: Disability Lifeworlds (Post 1830/Gender, Sexuality & Embodiment/Postcolonial & Comparative Literatures/Race & Ethnicity)Course Description: How does literature represent the social struggle of disability? This course examines how disability literatures mobilize not just identity categories, but, in fact, robust models of thought and feeling. We will read Anglophone writing from India, South Africa, Japan, 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. Panning back from textual representations, 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, David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, we will think about the frictional registers of belonging and alienation represented in novels, autobiographies, novellas, and art. Texts include Ved Mehtq’s Face to Face, Georgina Kleege's Sight Unseen, Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, IM Coetzee’s The Life and Times of Michael K, Eli Clare’s Brilliant Imperfection, and Sauo Ichikawa’s Hunchback. Teaching Method: Discussion/seminar. Evaluation Method: Assignments will comprise in-class presentations, a short close reading paper, and a final visual and tactile zine. Texts Include:
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| 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, beginning with Psycho in 1960 and continuing to the present. There are many possible versions of this course, and this one concentrates on a number of films widely regarded as classics of the genre in addition to more recent efforts. The course will study 1-2 feature-length films per week proceeding chronologically. Along the way we will analyze influential examples of various horror sub-genres, e.g. the slasher, found footage, body horror, supernatural possession, etc. Our prevailing concern will be with bodies – bodies represented onscreen as well as the bodies of the audience – and asking how horror cinema puts these bodies into relation. We will read essays in film theory and history to think about this question and more. The class will proceed mainly via short lecture and guided discussion. Students will pursue and develop a final research project with opportunity for analytical and creative expression. Teaching Method: Discussion, Short Lecture. Evaluation Method: Research Project, Attendance. Texts Include: Printed Course Reader. | ||||
| English 392 | Situation of Writing | Curdy | MW 12:30-1:50 | |
English 392 Situation of WritingCourse Description: The situation of writing requires that we create literature, as well as the contexts in which literature is shared, appreciated, and understood. We are the inheritors, perpetuators and innovators of literary culture, and in this class, we will position our inquiries on the present and future, even as we acknowledge the enduring humanistic values of creative writing. We will begin with a discussion of ideas about shaping the literary traditions of the United States and move quickly to those who have led or lead in shaping that tradition by engaging it or walking away from it. Finally, we’ll interrogate the impact of the evolving technology of AI on both our writing and the public’s engagement with literary works. We will build on these ideas practically with a service-learning assignment and a creative work that reaches a new public, coordinates new media, or engenders community. The intention is to have a conversation that will unfold in real-time between us all, evolving into a learning experience that is both pragmatically useful and philosophically illuminating. My hope is that this class will help us to become more conscious of our motives and processes as writers; that it will allow us to more lucidly defend creative writing as an art form and a vital contribution to society; and that it will acquaint us with the productions of literary culture, including their changing technological platforms and their relationship to social structures. As part of this program, we will investigate literature and culture through the lens of social inequalities and diversities. Teaching Method: Seminar. Evaluation Method: Attendance, Participation, final portfolio and project. Texts Include: TBA | ||||
| English 393-2 | Theory and Practice of Poetry | Curdy | MW 3:30-4:50 | |
English 393-2 Theory and Practice of PoetryCourse Description: This selective-enrollment, yearlong "Sequence" is designed to make students 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 394-2 | Theory and Practice of Fiction | Martinez | MW 3:30-4:50 | |
English 394-2 Theory and Practice of FictionTeaching Method: Discussion, workshop. Evaluation Method: Attendance, Participation, Short Story Drafts, Final Revision Texts Include: Published short stories. Note: No P/N registration. Attendance at first class mandatory. Admission by application only. | ||||
| English 395-2 | Theory and Practice of Creative Nonfiction | Webster | MW 3:30-4:50 | |
English 395-2 Theory and Practice of Creative NonfictionTeaching 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: TBA | Dimick | TTh 11-12:20 | |
English 397 Research Seminar: TBACourse Description: TBA | ||||
| English 398-2 | Honors Seminar | Soni | F 10a-11:50a | |
English 398-2 Honors SeminarCourse Description: This seminar is designed to guide you through the many steps required to complete a research project in English. Your own research and that of your classmates will be the focus of the seminar. You will be expected to complete weekly written assignments, each of which will contribute in some way to the research and writing required for your Senior Thesis. You will craft a proposal/abstract for the project, construct an annotated bibliography of sources essential for the thesis, produce a “State of the Field” analysis, attempt close readings relevant to your arguments, and finally, write a draft introduction and chapter for the thesis. Even if none of these pieces make it into the final thesis, regular writing is an essential part of exploring and developing your ideas. ----- Since the seminar is focused on the independent research of you and your classmates, its success depends on the work you put into researching and revising, and the care and attention with which you engage the work of others in the seminar. A key goal of the seminar is to foster a collaborative scholarly community, in which you help each other hone your ideas, refine your writing and find new paths to explore. Research never happens in isolation. Although I will be guiding you through the steps of research, you should think of the seminar as a workshop space to explore and develop ideas, work through frustrations with your writing and solicit the advice of others. A central part of the seminar will be reading and commenting on the work of your peers, as well as receiving and incorporating constructive criticism from them. It is never easy to share work publicly, particular in its early stages when ideas seem unfinished and still in need of work. I hope we can create an environment in the seminar that is open, respectful, constructive and supportive. Being open to constructive criticism is the only way to improve your writing and advance your ideas. The skills you develop through the regular practices of writing and workshopping – precise analytic writing, giving constructive feedback, incorporating editorial advice – will improve your senior thesis. But these skills will also serve you well in many contexts beyond academia where you will be asked to undertake independent research. Teaching Method: Seminar, intensive workshopping Evaluation Method(s): Weekly writing assignments Texts include:
Texts will be available at: Norris Prerequisites: Seniors only. Permission of department required. Attendance at first class mandatory. No P/N registration. | ||||
| English 455 | Studies in Victorian Literature: The Nahda | Johnson | Th 2-4:50 | |
English 455 Studies in Victorian Literature: The NahdaCourse Description: This course is an introduction to Arabic literary production of the long nineteenth century as it engages the “nahḍa” (awakening), understood variously as a discourse on modernity, a utopian social project, and an epistemological rupture wrought by colonialism and capitalism. With special emphasis on the genealogies, practices, and problematics of Arabic literary modernity, this course will introduce students to the major works of Arabic literature produced in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and to the major debates, social changes, and material developments that attend the period, including (but not limited to) language reform, migration, print capitalism, imperialism, and nationalism. In short, we will try to understand how these authors, through their texts, both produced and theorized modernity for their readers in the localized contexts of Imperial influence and control on the one hand, and the global–though uneven–nineteenth-century processes of social, political, economic, and technological change. Primary texts will all be available in English translation, but those able are encouraged to follow in Arabic. A separate section can be arranged for discussing the Arabic-language versions. Teaching Method: Seminar. Evaluation Method: Short paper, seminar paper. Texts Include:
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| English 471 | Studies in American Literature: Sovereignties Across the Americas | Rodríguez Pliego | M 2-4:50 | |
English 471 Studies in American Literature: Sovereignties Across the AmericasCourse Description: The terms “sovereignties” and “Americas” in the title of this course stand at the crossroads of old and new dialogues about their meanings. This course considers Indigenous and Native American notions of sovereignty that imagine nationhood outside of the nation-state framework. It reads these theorizations of sovereignty and nationhood alongside Latin American and Latinx anti-imperial writing. We will consider José Martí’s late nineteenth-century articulation of “Our America” alongside the rise of the Guna word “Abiayala” and its use by Indigenous activists from Latin America, 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, Indigenous, and Latinx authors across the hemisphere. We will study the narrative forms that authors take up as they construct or critique nationhood: essays, short stories, novels and poetry. We will also examine how authors break down these forms by taking up communal authorship, orality, visual media, and multilingualism as narrative strategies that provide aesthetic and ideological challenges to canonical articulation of nation-state sovereignties. Teaching Method: Seminar. Evaluation Method: Attendance and participation, paper abstract, presentation, paper. Texts Include:
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| English 471 | Studies in American Literature: Black Feminism and Bio-Politics | Mann | T 2-4:50 | |
English 471 Studies in American Literature: Black Feminism and Bio-PoliticsCourse Description: In this graduate seminar, students will read Black feminist literature and analyze it for its relationship to theories of biopolitics. Teaching Method: Seminar Evaluation Method: Papers, teaching demonstration. Texts Include:
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| English 481 | Studies in Literary Theory and Criticism: Green Materialisms | Wolff | W 2-4:50 | |
English 481 Studies in Literary Theory and Criticism: Green MaterialismsCourse Description: This course introduces students to a sequence of "materialisms" worked out from the (long) 18th century to the present. While readings and discussions will gravitate toward contemporary Marxist and post-Marxist ecological thought (including the afterlives of ideas like "primitive accumulation" and "metabolic rift" in recent feminist, anti-colonial, and environmental frameworks), we will also spend substantial time looking at the writings and influence of earlier thinkers whose controversial materialisms have returned to critical attention in recent decades (e.g. Spinoza, Herder). A guiding aim of the course is to assemble a fuller sense of the historical and conceptual underpinnings of first-world environmentalism; so we will ask what "matters," and to whom, in large part by putting the nature of "greenness" under scrutiny as a critical category. Readings will emphasize theory and philosophy, but please note there is a strong and central emphasis on poetry throughout, as well. Your grade for this course will be based on your attendance and regular participation, a shorter midterm essay, and a longer final essay in the form of a 10pp “conference paper.” Assignment structure and expectations will be circulated separately for each. All readings will be made available through Canvas. I will recommend editions of Spinoza's Ethics and Marx's early writings. Teaching Method: Short lectures and seminar discussions. Evaluation Method: Attendance & participation; short midterm essay; longer final essay. Texts Include:
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| English 497 | MFA Fiction Workshop | Schulman | T 9:30a-12:20p | |
English 497 MFA Fiction WorkshopCourse Description: A craft and imagination oriented approach to fiction writing. Students will workshop each other's work with an eye towards narrative drive, emotional resonance, and grappling with something that matters. Teaching Method: Discussion based Workshop. Evaluation Method: Attendance, Handing work in on time, collegial generosity, taking chances. Texts Include: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (0811229076) | ||||
| English 498 | MFA Creative Nonfiction Workshop | Hernández | Th 9:30a-12:20p | |
English 498 MFA Creative Nonfiction WorkshopCourse Description: TBA | ||||
| English 520 | Professionalization Workshop | Wisecup | Th 2-4:50 | |
English 520 Professionalization WorkshopCourse Description: ENGLISH 520 is the Professionalization Seminar students are required to take once before they graduate, ideally in the third year. We’ll discuss professional norms and expectations in academic, alt-ac, and nonacademic jobs, keyed to students’ particular interests, fields, and questions. Topics may range from article submission and revision; grant writing and project management; collaboration in research groups and with extra-university partners; best practices for a sustainable writing schedule; and job market preparation. English 520 is graded P/NP and requires minimal preparation outside of class. Teaching Method: Seminar. | ||||
| English 571 | Teaching Creative Writing | Seliy | M 9:30a-12:20p | |
English 571 Teaching Creative WritingIn the second half of the course we will move into the practical work of designing creative writing courses that have a beginning, middle, and end, and also a clear set of achievable learning objectives. You will do the practical work of drafting syllabi, generating exercises, and selecting reading material for introductory courses in poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. | ||||