ENGL 439.001       TOPICS: WORLD LITERATURE AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE       T Th 4:25 PM - 5:40 PM     FORTER

This course asks what literatures from across the globe can teach us about the causes, effects, and potential solutions to global climate change. We’ll discuss a series of novels in which the disasters of such change are explored with great complexity and power. These are mostly works of speculative/science fiction, often referred to as “cli-fi.” Their liberation from conventional realism permits them to raise a number of questions that realistic depictions have trouble compassing: How does one tell a story about climate that can grasp the interplay between global transformations and the always intimate (local) experience of such change? What formal or stylistic resources are necessary for such depiction? Which effects of global warming (drought, flood, “climate migration,” etc.) are most central to a given work, and why? How are these devastations unevenly distributed across both human and non-human populations? What, finally, does this literature’s emphasis on dystopian futures reveal about the task of imagining alternatives to our current order? Possible texts: M. Hamid, Exit West; K. Walker, The Dreamers; N. Okorafor, Who Fears Death; N. K. Jemesen, The Fifth Season; N. Booth, Sealed; J. Robson, Savanah 2116 AD; M. Lunde, A History of Bees; L. Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God; A. Ghosh, The Hungry Tide; L. Ma, Severance. Assignments: short paper; bi-weekly imaginative/response papers; longer paper.

ENGL 439.003       TOPICS: LITERATURE, ARCHITECTURE, AND CARTOGRAPHY: GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI AND 19C EUROPEAN LITERATURE       T Th 1:15 PM - 2:30 PM       BRITTON

(Crosslisted with CPLT 415 and ARTH 390)

The University of South Carolina is one of about ten institutions worldwide to own the complete works of the architectural illustrator Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778). He is known for his engravings of Roman architecture, ancient and modern, his “imaginary prisons,” and his inventive maps. In his engravings, lush vines hang over classical ruins, antiquarians peek into the shadows of long-hidden family crypts, faceless prisoners climb endless staircases past skulls and bones, and maps pack tremendous amounts of information and visual detail into single images. Piranesi’s works inspired authors including Charles Baudelaire, Thomas de Quincey, and Edgar Allan Poe. This course, which meets in Rare Books and Special Collections, will situate Piranesi’s works in a number of contexts—European culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, graphic design, architecture, art history, the history of the book, and the digital humanities. In conjunction with the current exhibit “Piranesi’s Worlds: Mapping the Architectural Imagination” in Hollings Library, students will study original and rare print materials along with their digital renditions at digitalpiranesi.org. Concepts such as form, interiority, and vision will be traced across different disciplines, national literary traditions, and media. All texts will be taught in English.

ENGL 200.001     CREATIVE WRITING, VOICE, AND COMMUNITY     MW 3:55 PM - 5:10 PM    COUNTRYMAN

(AIU/VSR)
Creative Writing, Voice, and Community is an introduction to writing as a form of social engagement. By examining creative work by established writers, we will discover formal strategies we can put to use in creative assignments. Both the outside texts and writing assignments are geared toward helping us to explore and assert our own identities and aesthetic values. In addition to reading and analyzing outside texts and creating poems and stories of our own, we will become accustomed to describing and helping further the development of our classmates’ writing, the ultimate goal being the creation of a workshop community in which everyone feels able to take risks in their writing.

ENGL 200.002       CREATIVE WRITING, VOICE, AND COMMUNITY       T Th  10:05 AM - 11:20 AM     AMADON

(AIU/VSR)
Creative Writing, Voice, and Community is an introduction to writing as a form of social engagement. By examining creative work by established writers, we will discover formal strategies we can put to use in creative assignments. Both the outside texts and writing assignments are geared toward helping us to explore and assert our own identities and aesthetic values. In addition to reading and analyzing outside texts and creating poems and stories of our own, we will become accustomed to describing and helping further the development of our classmates’ writing, the ultimate goal being the creation of a workshop community in which everyone feels able to take risks in their writing.

ENGL 200.003       CREATIVE WRITING, VOICE, AND COMMUNITY      T Th 11:40 AM - 12:55 PM    MADDEN

(AIU/VSR)
Creative Writing, Voice, and Community is an introduction to writing as a form of social engagement with a focus on values, ethics, and social responsibility. This section will also include a service learning component. We will explore possibilities for creative writing as community engagement and public art. We will look at arts and grassroots organizations, we will examine identity-based and community-based projects, and together we will develop community writing projects. In collaboration with the Columbia poet laureate and the office of One Columbia for Arts & History, students will also create “guerrilla poetry” projects to put creative writing into daily life. Both reading and writing assignments will emphasize the exploration of identity and community. We will focus in particular on poetry and creative nonfiction (memoir).

ENGL 200.002        CREATIVE WRITING, VOICE, AND COMMUNITY       T Th  4:25 PM – 5:40 PM       TBA

(AIU/VSR)
Workshop course on creative writing with a focus on values, ethics, and social responsibility.

ENGL 270.001  WORLD LITERATURE       M W F  2:20 PM - 3:10 PM      PATTERSON

(AIU)
Selected masterpieces of world literature from antiquity to present.

ENGL 280.001       LITERATURE AND SOCIETY       T Th 1:15 PM - 2:30 PM       JARRELLS

(AIU & VSR)
Money. It makes the world go round. It changes everything. It’s a gas. Money is a terrible master, the bond of all bonds, it often costs too much, and supposedly is a matter of belief. What better topic to explore then in a course designed to introduce students to the ways that literature engages with society? We will go back a bit for our starting point. As the twenty-first-century economist, Thomas Piketty, recently explained, “in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels, money was everywhere, not only as an abstract force but above all as a palpable, concrete magnitude.” So we will read some Adam Smith (just a little), some Jane Austen, and some Adventures of a Shilling, among other works. But we will move quickly from there to our present moment, in part to see how money – as both an abstract force and palpable, concrete magnitude – continues to feature in recent novels by Mohsin Hamid, Emily St. John Mandel, and John Lanchester, and in part to compare these literary assessments with more general, essayistic accounts of our global economic moment.

English 282.001       TOPICS IN FICTION: THE SOUTHERN NOVEL TODAY       T Th 10:05 AM - 11:20 AM       POWELL

(AIU)
English 282 is an introductory course in reading fiction designed for underclassmen pursuing majors other than English. Students will become familiar with basic formal techniques useful in reading contemporary fiction and practice expository writing skills through analyses of literary texts. This section of English 282 explores the intersection of fact, fantasy, and ideologies about regional experience in selected recent southern fiction to consider the purposes and possibilities of novel-reading in the twenty-first century. Examples of authors whose work could be included are Elise Blackwell, Pam Durban, Clyde Edgerton, Wiley Cash, Percival Everett, LeAnne Howe, Randall Kenan, and Jesmyn Ward. In addition to completing course readings and attending and participating in class, students should expect to complete two 5-page writing assignments and demonstrate mastery of course materials on quizzes, one or more midterms, and a cumulative final exam.

ENGL 285.001     TOPICS IN AMERICAN LIT: ALL WORK, SOME PLAY: LABOR AND LEISURE IN AMERICAN LITERATURE     T Th 2:50 PM – 4:05 PM     DOWDY

(Designed for Non-English majors) (AIU)

“It is not possible while watching children to make a distinction between play and work,” the American poet Muriel Rukeyser once wrote. In adulthood, for the vast majority of us, the distinction is stark. This introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. literature explores the lines between play and work, leisure and labor, sports and business. We will read fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and more, as we follow the nation’s obsessions with working and playing. Assignments will include reading quizzes, a midterm, and a final.

ENGL 286.001       POETRY       T Th  2:50 PM - 4:05 PM       FELDMAN

(Designed for Non-English majors) (AIU)

We will feast on some of the most astonishing poetic works in the English language while enhancing our understanding of the technical elements that make poems so enjoyable and so intellectually challenging. No previous background or knowledge about poetry is required--just plenty of curiosity and imagination. Aspiring songwriters, poets, novelists, or wordsmiths will feel right at home, but so will anyone wanting to learn to write more effectively, read with greater comprehension, and understand the meaning of life. The analytical aspects of this course will help improve your LSAT, MCAT, or GRE score. The professor has published eleven books, many of them about poetry. Grades are based on several short essays, an occasional quiz, a mid-term exam, a final exam, and class participation. Classes are taught through lecture and discussion.

ENGL 287.001       AMERICAN LITERATURE        T Th 2:50 PM – 4:05 PM       GLAVEY

(Designed for English majors)

This course surveys approximately 150 years of American literary history, running from the middle of the eighteenth century until the early twenty–first, and is organized around the poetry and complicated legacy of Walt Whitman. Throughout the semester we will pay particular notice to the role of the imagination in constructing national ideals and in addressing tensions that arise when those ideals are revealed to be unrealized. Our goal will be to attend to the ways that writers respond to those tensions with their art and to think about what such responses can teach us about America, its history, and its literature. Our guiding questions will be: What stories does America tell about itself? How do particular ideas about America and American–ness shape these stories? How do these stories shape in turn what it means to be an American?

ENGL 287.003       AMERICAN LITERATURE       T Th 1:15 PM - 2:30 PM       FORTER

(Designed for English majors)

This course traces the history of literature in the U.S., focusing especially on the years from 1850 to around 1990. We will discuss major literary movements and their relationship to the historical moment at which each emerged. At the same time, the course will emphasize the persistence of certain concerns across the periods under study: the meaning of “freedom” and its relationship to the idea of America; the legacy of chattel slavery and the place of race in the imagination of white and black authors; the persistent attempts by women and minority writers to develop literary forms adequate to their experience; and the role of capitalism (industrial and consumer) in the literary imagination of writers from all backgrounds. TEXTS: F. Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; N. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance; N. Larsen, Passing; K. Chopin, The Awakening; A. Spiegelman, Maus I and Maus II; additional readings on Blackboard; REQUIREMENTS: 1 paper; take-home midterm; final exam.

ENGL 287.004       AMERICAN LITERATURE       T Th 11:40 AM - 12:55 PM       TRAFTON

(Designed for English majors)

An introduction to American literary history, emphasizing the analysis of literary texts, the development of literary traditions over time, the emergence of new genres and forms, and the writing of successful essays about literature.

ENGL 287. 005       AMERICAN LITERATURE       T Th 10:05 AM - 11:20 AM       KEYSER

(Designed for English majors)

This class, designed for English majors, provides an introduction to U.S. literature from the early nineteenth-century to the present day. We will read poetry, short stories, essays, and autobiography by some of the best-known writers of the past two centuries. During the course of the semester, we will ask how artistic choices (genre, form, setting, characterization, diction, and tone) reflect the aspirations, philosophies, and politics of these writers. We will also consider the ways that historical and cultural forces (industrialization, the Civil War, the suffrage movement, slavery and emancipation, the Harlem Renaissance, urbanization and mass mediation, etc.) shape the literary movements and ideals of their times.

ENGL 390.001       GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD I       T Th 2:50 PM – 4:05 PM       TBA

(Cross-listed with CPLT 301)

European masterpieces from antiquity to the beginning of the Renaissance.

ENGL 405.001       SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGEDIES       T Th 11:40 AM - 12:55 PM       GIESKES           

We will read eight plays this semester—plays generally labeled as tragedies, along with one that occupies a slightly different generic niche—deriving from almost the whole span of Shakespeare’s dramatic career.  We will also read one play not by Shakespeare (Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy) to provide some context for Shakespeare’s tragic practice. Our goal will be to read the plays closely as literature—objects of verbal art—and as playtexts—scripts for theatrical production.  In addition we will attempt to situate Shakespeare’s plays in the context in which they were produced:  early modern London.  Shakespeare’s plays are intimately involved with that context and our reading will be enriched by an understanding of his times.

ENGL 439.003       TOPICS: GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI AND 19C EUROPEAN LITERATURE, ARCHITECTURE, AND CARTOGRAPHY       T Th 1:15 PM - 2:30 PM       BRITTON

(Crosslisted with CPLT 415 and ARTH 390)

The University of South Carolina is one of about ten institutions worldwide to own the complete works of the architectural illustrator Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778). He is known for his engravings of Roman architecture, ancient and modern, his “imaginary prisons,” and his inventive maps. In his engravings, lush vines hang over classical ruins, antiquarians peek into the shadows of long-hidden family crypts, faceless prisoners climb endless staircases past skulls and bones, and maps pack tremendous amounts of information and visual detail into single images. Piranesi’s works inspired authors including Charles Baudelaire, Thomas de Quincey, and Edgar Allan Poe. This course, which meets in Rare Books and Special Collections, will situate Piranesi’s works in a number of contexts—European culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, graphic design, architecture, art history, the history of the book, and the digital humanities. In conjunction with the current exhibit “Piranesi’s Worlds: Mapping the Architectural Imagination” in Hollings Library, students will study original and rare print materials along with their digital renditions at digitalpiranesi.org. Concepts such as form, interiority, and vision will be traced across different disciplines, national literary traditions, and media. All texts will be taught in English.

ENGL 350.001       INTRO TO COMICS STUDIES       T Th 1:15 PM - 2:30 PM       MINETT

Tackles questions of storytelling, industry, history, culture, legitimation, and audiences. Readings range from Donald Duck to Maus, from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns to Fun Home, from Archie to The Avengers, from Persepolis to Lumberjanes, and from Tales from the Crypt to Young Romance.

ENGL 384.001       REALISM       MW 2:20 PM - 3:35 PM       WOERTENDYKE

Realism is deceptively simple: corresponding with the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century, realist novels employ familiar surroundings, recognizable (though unique) plots, and concrete details of everyday existence. In its pretentions to truth, faith in language, preoccupation with character development over time, and tension between the individual and society, realism can seem naïve to contemporary readers; however, its ubiquity and versatility, across history, nation, language, culture, suggests a sophisticated genre. In this course, we will attend to the philosophical, aesthetic, political, and economic origins of realism and ask how and why it surfaced in modernity. We will read the novels that have formed the theoretical basis of realism in literary criticism, move on to examples of realism at the peak of its critical power, and, finally, turn to works that simultaneously rely upon—and subvert—its formal conventions and philosophical pretentions. At base, we will investigate the capacity of language and narrative to represent the world in different historical moments, including our own.

ENGL 412.J10       VICTORIAN LITERATURE       WEB SYNC       T Th 10:05 AM – 11:20AM       CORIALE

This course covers British literature from 1837 to 1901, the period of Queen Victoria’s reign. We will read works by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Lewis Carroll, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Oscar Wilde, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and many others. Along the way, we will discuss gender, marriage, and courtship; social class and inequality; race and imperialism; science and evolutionary theory; and photography and visual culture.

ENGL 428B.001       AFRICAN AMERICAN LIT II: 1903 – PRESENT       T Th 11:40 AM - 12:55 PM       TRAFTON

(Crosslisted with AFAM 428B)

Representative works of African-American writers from 1903 to the present.

ENGL 431A.001       CHILDREN’S LITERATURE       T Th 10:05 AM - 11:20 AM      JOHNSON-FEELINGS

This course introduces students to the field of contemporary children’s literature, encompassing picture books as well as short novels written for audiences of young people. Topics of exploration include (but are not limited to) the history of children’s literature, the world of children’s book prizing, the legacy of Dr. Seuss, the disturbing image in children’s books, and literary/artistic excellence in children’s literature. In some ways, this is an American Studies course; students will consider ways in which children’s literature infuses our culture. Students will leave the course with an understanding of central issues and controversies in the industry of children’s book publishing and the literary criticism of children’s books. Most importantly, students will explore the relationship between children’s literature and the idea of social justice.

ENGL 432.001       YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE       T Th 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM       JOHNSON-FEELINGS

The subject matter of this course is contemporary American young adult (YA) literature. Students will examine texts that are in some way related to central ideas about America and Americans of various backgrounds and experiences. Discussion topics will include the meanings of literary excellence in the young adult literature world, the politics of the children’s book publishing industry, and current issues and controversies in the field, including awards, censorship, gender, authorship, race, and more. Most importantly, students will give attention to the relationship between literature and social justice.

ENGL 437.001       WOMEN WRITERS       MW 8:05 AM - 9:20 AM       WEB SYNCH     COHEN

(Crosslisted with WGST 437)

New Women/New Writing

This course will focus on the problems and issues faced by modern women in the early part of the 20th century (suffrage, war, sexuality, citizenship) and the new modes of writing that helped them explore unconventional ideas. We will read a number of modern and modernist women's fictions, paying special attention to the way such works negotiate with different historical and linguistic spaces (traditional domestic spaces, politicized public spaces, bodily spaces, the spaces of exile) and with the masculine rhetorics of history, religion and canon.

ENGL 439.001      TOPICS: WORLD LITERATURE AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE       T Th 4:25 PM - 5:40 PM       FORTER

This course asks what literatures from across the globe can teach us about the causes, effects, and potential solutions to global climate change. We’ll discuss a series of novels in which the disasters of such change are explored with great complexity and power. These are mostly works of speculative/science fiction, often referred to as “cli-fi.” Their liberation from conventional realism permits them to raise a number of questions that realistic depictions have trouble compassing: How does one tell a story about climate that can grasp the interplay between global transformations and the always intimate (local) experience of such change? What formal or stylistic resources are necessary for such depiction? Which effects of global warming (drought, flood, “climate migration,” etc.) are most central to a given work, and why? How are these devastations unevenly distributed across both human and non-human populations? What, finally, does this literature’s emphasis on dystopian futures reveal about the task of imagining alternatives to our current order? Possible texts: M. Hamid, Exit West; K. Walker, The Dreamers; N. Okorafor, Who Fears Death; N. K. Jemesen, The Fifth Season; N. Booth, Sealed; J. Robson, Savanah 2116 AD; M. Lunde, A History of Bees; L. Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God; A. Ghosh, The Hungry Tide; L. Ma, Severance. Assignments: short paper; bi-weekly imaginative/response papers; longer paper.

ENGL 360.001       CREATIVE WRITING       T Th 11:40 AM - 12:55 PM       DINGS

This course is an introduction to creative writing which while focus on short fiction and poetry, one-half semester for each genre. Students will learn fundamental techniques and concepts by reading professional stories and poems as models; students then will write their own original stories and poems to be discussed in a workshop format by their peers and instructor. All work will be revised before grading by portfolio. Students will be required to use Blackboard for certain readings, video viewings, and assignment submissions.

ENGL 360.002       CREATIVE WRITING       T Th  1:15 PM - 2:30 PM       BARILLA

This course will explore strategies for producing compelling creative work in different genres. At the beginning of the course, we will work with elements of short fiction, and move in more experimental directions as the course proceeds. The course will function primarily as a workshop, in which students will share work in progress and help create a supportive community of writers. The course will also involve reading and discussing published models, as well as numerous writing exercises. Students will produce a portfolio of original creative work, which they will turn in at the end of the course for a final grade.

ENGL 360.004       CREATIVE WRITING       T Th  4:25 PM - 5:40 PM       TBA

Workshop course on writing original fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction.

ENGL 360.005       CREATIVE WRITING       M W F  10:50 AM - 11:40 AM       TBA

Workshop course on writing original fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction.

ENGL 464.001       POETRY WORKSHOP       T Th 10:05 AM - 11:20 AM       DINGS

This course is designed for students who have already taken Engl 360 (a pre-requisite). Students will spend the entire semester on poetry; they will read professional poetry, complete specific assignments that focus on core aspects of poetry, and write their own original poems to be discussed in a workshop format by their peers and instructor. Specifically, students should expect to work on image, figurative language, rhythm, and sonic texture. Grading will be done by portfolio. Students will be required to use Blackboard for certain readings, video viewings, and assignment submissions.

English 465.001       FICTION WORKSHOP       T Th  2:50 PM - 4:05 PM       BAJO

This will be a workshop for students writing short fiction, stories or chapters. I will provide guidance on the primary aspects of fiction, assign exercises designed to facilitate story composition, and mediate workshop discussion for the class as a whole. All of the assigned exercises will contribute directly to the students’ story composition. Students will read one another's fiction and discuss merits and possibilities in workshop discussion.

ENGL 492.001       ADVANCED FICTION       M W  3:55 PM - 5:10 PM       BLACKWELL

Want to tell better stories, create richer characters, and develop a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between form and content? Designed for students with previous writing experience, this workshop class will focus on your original fiction, though we’ll start by reading some published fiction and occasionally break to tackle a craft exercise, argue about writing as an art form, or discuss publishing and other aspects of writing as a way of life and a profession.

ENGL 363.001       INTRO TO PROFESSIONAL WRITING       T Th 2:50 PM - 4:05 PM       RULE

Overview of concepts, contexts, and genres used in professional communication. Intensive practice in analyzing, emulating, and creating textual and multimedia documents for a variety of professional, nonacademic purposes (including commercial, informative, persuasive, and technical).

ENGL 387.001       INTRODUCTION TO RHETORIC       T Th  11:40 AM - 12:55 PM       EDWARDS

This course offers an introduction to the theory and practice of rhetoric. What is rhetoric? Is it deceptive or empty speech? Is it a heuristic to uncover truth? Is it a means through which we create understanding and find moments of agreement in situations where truth is an unattainable ideal? Is it speech or action? Is it art or science? What is its object? What is its status? What, in the end, does it mean for us? 

During this semester, we will search for answers to these and other questions. By engaging with the course readings and your own rhetorical analysis, we will develop a working understanding of rhetorical theory and a variety of critical methods emerging from that theory, each of which sheds light on how we might better differentiate between communication that sponsors violence or closes down dissent and communication that opens opportunities for understanding, productive disagreement, and collective action.

ENGL 388.001       HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM & THEORY        T Th 2:50 PM - 4:05 PM       MUCKELBAUER

Representative theories of literature from Plato through the 20th century.

ENGL 460.001       ADVANCED WRITING       M W 3:55 PM – 5:10 PM       HOLCOMB

This course approaches advanced writing through genre and style. Genre is traditionally defined in terms of the subject matter and, more usually, form or structure, but we’ll adopt a more recent (and useful) approach and think of genres as modes of social action that writers perform in response to typified or recurrent situations. Defined as such—that is, as social action—genre invites us to think of writing, not as simply the transcription of thought (for instance) or the representation of some “reality,” but as behavior. Within this new framework, generic labels (such as novel, research report, course syllabus, shopping list) serve as a shorthand for different ensembles or repertoires of behavior that writers orchestrate to answer (or alter) the situations in which they write.

We’ll approach style along similar lines—that is, as a vehicle for social interaction. Style is not some decorative overlay that we apply after generating the content of our writing, nor is it simply a matter of grammar and mechanics. Rather, it is a medium through which writers present themselves and orchestrate relationships with their readers, their subject matter, and the broader contexts in which their texts appear.

ENGL 461.001       THE TEACHING OF WRITING       T Th  11:40 AM - 12:55 PM        RULE

"Writing is . . ."

This course explores theories and practices of writing, which in turn inform methods for the teaching of writing in middle and secondary school contexts. The course will be of particular interest to those in Secondary Education English, Education, as well English majors and minors in all tracks; it will appeal to both the teaching-curious or those already on the teaching path; it will be of interest to any writer who is interested in thinking about what writing is and how we make our lives through it. We will explore important issues and philosophies of writing and its teaching and students will the chance to evaluate and extend those issues toward building their own approach, not only as a future teacher of English but also as a writer and critical thinker.

ENGL 463       BUSINESS WRITING       (7 available sections)

Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.

ENGL 370.001       LANGUAGE IN THE USA       T Th 11:40 AM - 12:55 PM        CROSBY

(Crosslisted with LING 345)

Linguistic examination of the structure, history, and use of language varieties in the U.S., with a particular focus on regional and sociocultural variation and relevant sociolinguistic issues.

ENGL 389.001       THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE       M W F  1:10 PM - 2:00 PM       PINKSTON

(Crosslisted with LING 301)

Introduction to the field of linguistics with an emphasis on English. Covers the English sound system, word structure, and grammar. Explores history of English, American dialects, social registers, and style.

ENGL 389.002       THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE       M W F  2:20 PM - 3:10 PM       HACKWORTH

(Crosslisted with LING 301)

Introduction to the field of linguistics with an emphasis on English. Covers the English sound system, word structure, and grammar. Explores history of English, American dialects, social registers, and style.

ENGL 450.001       ENGLISH GRAMMAR       T Th  1:15 PM - 2:30 PM       LIU

(Crosslisted with LING 421)

This course focuses on English grammar for future educators in both English and Linguistics. We’ll begin by examining the scholarly debate over grammar’s role in the classroom, while developing some potentially fresh perspectives on the subject. We’ll then move on to our main focus: a deep dive into the particularities of English grammar, from word classes to phrases and clauses. Along the way, we’ll develop strategies for presenting (at least) some of this material to students. We’ll end with a unit on stylistics and explore ways in which we can reinforce instruction in grammar by using its terms and categories as a vocabulary for analyzing literary and non-fiction texts.

ENGL 453.001       DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE       T Th 2:50 PM - 4:05 PM       MURPHY

(Crosslisted with LING 431)

History of English from the earliest Old English texts through Middle English to Contemporary English. No previous knowledge of Old or Middle English is required.

ENGL 455.001       LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY       T Th  1:15 PM - 2:30 PM       TBA

(Crosslisted with LING 440)

Patterns in language use as a reflection of social group memberships or the negotiation of interpersonal relationships; special attention to social dialects and stylistic differences in American English.

ENGL 200.H01       CREATIVE WRITING, VOICE  AND COMMUNITY       MW 2:20 PM - 3:35 PM       BLACKWELL

This course considers writing as a form of engagement with the world. Taught by a fiction writer, this section will comprise reading and writing short stories that explore identity and community, values and valuation. The semester will begin with discussion of contemporary fiction that poses questions around the course’s themes—or that raises issues about the interplay of ethics and aesthetics. We’ll also experiment in class with some of the literary techniques we encounter on the page, both to launch a creative writing practice and to develop specific skills. Next we’ll segue into workshops in which students will give and receive feedback on an original story that reflects course concerns. (An interest in reading and writing fiction will be helpful in this class, but no previous experience or talent is required or assumed.) This course fulfills both VSR and AIU requirements.

ENGL 200.H02       CREATIVE WRITING, VOICE  AND COMMUNITY       T Th 11:40 AM - 12:55 PM       BARILLA

Creative Writing, Voice, and Community is an introduction to writing as a form of social engagement, in which we will consider the ways our own aesthetic choices engage with the world. The course assignments will explore questions of self-discovery and community and reflect on the development of a personal aesthetic or artistic style. In addition to creating work of our own through exercises and assignments, we will read and analyze outside texts as models. We will also become accustomed to describing and helping further the development of our classmates’ writing, the ultimate goal being the creation of a workshop community in which everyone feels able to take risks in their writing. This course fulfills both VSR and AIU requirements.

ENGL 280.H01       LITERATURE AND SOCIETY       T Th 10:05 AM - 11:20 AM      JARRELLS

Money. It makes the world go round. It changes everything. It’s a gas. Money is a terrible master, the bond of all bonds, it often costs too much, and supposedly is a matter of belief. What better topic to explore then in a course designed to introduce students to the ways that literature engages with society? We will go back a bit for our starting point. As the twenty-first-century economist, Thomas Piketty, recently explained, “in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels, money was everywhere, not only as an abstract force but above all as a palpable, concrete magnitude.” So we will read some Adam Smith (just a little), some Jane Austen, and some Adventures of a Shilling, among other works. But we will move quickly from there to our present moment, in part to see how money – as both an abstract force and palpable, concrete magnitude – continues to feature in recent novels by Mohsin Hamid, Emily St. John Mandel, and John Lanchester, and in part to compare these literary assessments with more general, essayistic accounts of our global economic moment.

ENGL 285.H01       TOPICS: ALL WORK, SOME PLAY: LABOR AND LEISURE IN AMERICAN LITERATURE      T Th 11:40 AM – 12:55 PM       DOWDY

(Designed for Non-English Majors) 

“It is not possible while watching children to make a distinction between play and work,” the American poet Muriel Rukeyser once wrote. In adulthood, for the vast majority of us, the distinction is stark. This introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. literature explores the lines between play and work, leisure and labor, sports and business. We will read fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and more, as we follow the nation’s obsessions with working and playing. Assignments will include reading quizzes, a midterm, and a final.

ENGL 286.H01       POETRY       MW 2:20PM - 3:35PM        VANDERBORG

What new, interdisciplinary poetry forms and media are available for contemporary readers and what reading practices and poetic politics do they generate? This class explores collage poems, electronic poetry, interactive poetic games, search engine poems, cyborg poetry, multi-media poetry, erasure and palimpsest poetry that selectively excerpts a source text, poetic sculptures and installations, altered books, concrete and visual poetry, a children’s book poetry unit, conceptual poetry, comics poetry, eco-poetry, and biopoetry involving living organisms. Possible authors include Eve L. Ewing, Claudia Rankine (Citizen: An American Lyric), Eduardo Kac (Genesis, The Eighth Day, “Biopoetry”), Robert Grenier (Sentences), Tom Phillips (A Humument), Jason Nelson (game game game and again game), Joy Priest, Sun Yung Shin (Unbearable Splendor), Margaret Rhee, Darren Wershler (the tapeworm foundry), Porpentine, and Paisley Rekdal (West: A Translation). We’ll read selected poems as well as several poetry books.    

There will be two in-class exams on vocabulary terms and close reading passages, as well as critical and creative quizzes, and a final creative/critical project responding to one of the course texts.  

ENGL 287.H01       AMERICAN LITERATURE       T Th  10:05 AM - 11:20 AM       JACKSON

(Designed for English majors)

English 287 provides an introduction to American literary history, emphasizing the analysis of literary texts, the development of literary traditions over time, the emergence of new genres and forms, and the writing of successful essays about literature. This reading-intensive honors section presents several competing narratives of U.S. literary history by pairing representative writers from selected 19th century traditions with counterparts in the 20th. (For example, what may studying the 19th century poems of Walt Whitman make legible in the 20th century work of Allen Ginsberg and Julia Alvarez, among others?) These conversation clusters will support the exploration of both the advantages and limitations of thinking about literary history in terms of traditions, what narratives about literary history may reveal about literary influence and innovation, and what they may also obscure. This section is specifically designed to prepare students for further reading in American literature from multiple genres and time periods. In addition to completing course readings and attending and participating in class, students should expect to complete two 5-page writing assignments and to demonstrate mastery of course materials on quizzes, one or more midterms, and a cumulative final exam.

ENGL 360.H01       CREATIVE WRITING       T Th  1:15 PM - 2:30 PM       AMADON

This course is an introduction to the writing of poetry and fiction. We will learn, as a class, ways of responding to creative work and use our discussions as a means of defining our own aims and values as writers and poets. The final goal of this course is a portfolio of original creative work, but peer response is fundamental; both will factor heavily in the final grade. The class will read works by contemporary and canonical writers as a way of expanding our view of what our writing can do. However, this course is designed as a creative writing workshop, and the majority of class time will be devoted to discussing new writing from students.

ENGL 462.H01       TECHNICAL WRITING       M W 2:20 PM - 3:35 PM       BROCK

Preparation for, critical examination of, and extensive practice in types of writing important to technical communicators. Genres explored include brief memos, instructions and procedural documentation, formal proposals, reports, and usability tests.

SCHC 350.H01       HNRS: FREEDOM TRAINS       T Th  2:50 PM – 4:05 PM       TRAFTON

This course explores more than three hundred years of African American writing on the concept of freedom. From slave spirituals to postmodern poetry, from the earliest published volumes of black verse to some of the most recent, from slave narratives and calls for revolution to domestic fiction and landmarks in queer black writing, “freedom” has meant many different things to many different people, and in this course we will read a wide range of texts that investigate these meanings.

SCHC 350.H01       HNRS: FICTION AND MENTAL HEALTH       T Th 1:15 PM – 2:30 PM       JACKSON

Attending school can be stressful for all of us, but according to a 2019 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, America's colleges are currently witnessing a "student mental health-crisis." In the last decade, the number of students visiting campus counseling services for depression and anxiety has grown by forty percent. Our lives have only become more stressful with the advent of Covid-19. What can fiction possibly teach us about mental health, and how might fiction, and stories more generally, help us achieve and maintain it? In this course, we'll find out. We'll read a variety of contemporary novels and short stories, and a few historical ones, about anxiety, depression, dissociation, and isolation but also consider fictions about healing, happiness, and wellness. We'll probe the boundaries of what counts as fiction by reading clinical case histories and memoirs, and we'll investigate how fiction has operated in therapeutic practices such as Bibliotherapy, Psychoanalysis, and Narrative and Cognitive Behavioral Therapies. We'll also investigate the value of traditional wellness practices including mindfulness and yoga. We'll cover a wide range of approaches to interpreting and analyzing fiction and along the way learn about some basic concepts in mental health and wellness. Assessment will be by a variety of essays and short take home assignments. This class is not a substitute for attending counseling, but our emphasis will be on reading fiction in ways that are not only perceptive but also helpful and hopeful.

SCHC 353.H01       HNRS: TEXTUAL CHIMERAS: GENRE-CROSSING BOOK ART AFTER WORLD WAR 11       M W 3:55 PM – 5:10 PM        VANDERBORG

A chimera in Greek mythology is an awe-inspiring monster composed of hybrid parts from different animals. This class will explore chimerical books that take their own parts from two or more genres—a technique postmodern literature is famous for. We’ll look at theories about monstrous modern chimeras from Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” and Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, and read comic book fusions, hypertexts, transformable books, “differential” books that exist in multiple media simultaneously, artists’ books, altered books, palimpsests, photojournals, eco-texts, and many more! 

The Latin root for monster is “monstrum,” which can be translated as “a sign, portent, wonder, warning, monstrosity, marvel.” What new sign systems, warnings, and revelations do these books offer contemporary readers?

Some of the print or e-books we may cover: Shelley Jackson’s hypertext narrative of body parts in my body: a Wunderkammer; Sophie Calle’s photographic detective chase in Suite vénitienne; Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese, a coming of age graphic novel spliced with legendary monsters and a Transformer toy; the metafictional children’s book Chloe and the Lion, whose illustrations come from a range of animation styles and whose “monster” keeps getting rewritten; Rosmarie Waldrop’s A Key into the Language of America, a modern palimpsest of traumatic history adapting Roger Williams’s 1643 book of the same title; Claudia Rankine’s prose poetry, photos, and artwork in Citizen: An American Lyric, Giovanni Singleton’s concrete poetry explosion in American Letters, and R. Sikoryak’s Constitution Illustrated, where every article of the Constitution is illustrated by a different comics scene modeled on famous pages from Golden Age superhero comics to Dilbert, Bugs Bunny, Lumberjanes, Phoebe and Her Unicorn, and lots of others. 

Assignments: There will be two papers and a creative assignment in the class, as well as required discussion posts for each new book.

SCHC 388.H01       HNRS:  WOMEN AND THE HOLOCAUST       T Th 4:25 PM – 5:40 PM         SCHOEMAN

(Crosslisted with JSTU 491)

Men and women experience history differently. This course explores the way in which this difference operates and can be located in literature, art, and film. 

In our case, the historical event at the heart of our study is the Holocaust. Some of the questions we’ll tackle include: How do women represent their personal experiences of trauma (and inherited trauma) in literature? How do films about the war and genocide portray women (victims and victimizers)? Do monuments and museums do justice (can they?) to the specificity of the female historical experience? Are there differences in the way in which female and male documentary filmmakers construct their films to retell history?  

We will study the representation of the Holocaust through a variety of media and genres: documentaries, feature films, museum exhibits, oral histories and some of the classics of Holocaust literature—memoirs, fictions, and graphic novels.  

SCHC 450.H01       HNRS: IMPOSTER SYNDROME: THE MODERN NOVEL AND UNCERTAIN IDENTITY       T Th 8:30 AM – 9:45 AM       KEYSER

This seminar will explore the theme of uncertain identity in modern and contemporary U.S. novels. Why do so many famous literary characters--from the Great Gatsby to the suspected androids in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?--doubt who they are or pretend to be someone else? The phrase “imposter syndrome” captures the anxiety, the competition, and the fear of being found out that many of us feel when we’re asked to perform a particular role that we’re not sure that we’re suited for. Characters with uncertain identities blur social categories that many think of as concrete, such as class, race, ethnicity, nationality, even humanity, so they make us ask questions about what these categories mean and how they relate to one another. Novels will include Quicksand, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Bitter in the Mouth, and The Nickel Boys. We will also look at film adaptations of some of these works to think about the theme of performance on the page and on the screen. Assignments will include personal reflections on imposture and identity as well as analytical essays interpreting the novels and their use of shady characters to ask us just who we think we are.

SCHC 452.H01       HNRS: UTOPIAN LITERATURE IN PRECARIOUS TIMES       T Th 11:40 AM – 12:55 PM       CROCKER

This course gives students the opportunity to explore utopian writing, a historical genre of prose fiction that continues to influence popular culture and politics. We will begin our studies with More’s Utopia, but we will investigate changes in the form across the so-called scientific, industrial, and cultural revolutions. Since utopian narratives also illustrate how certain literary forms reflect, influence, and revolutionize cultural identity, politics, and technology, some of the texts we will read are not literary “classics.” Nevertheless, these texts demonstrate the correspondent link between society and its creative production. Our central question for the course will be: what difference does it make to imagine a better world? This question will lead to several others: can a utopia show us a better way of organizing society and its governing institutions, why do writers continue to develop this genre, and how might this form of writing influence different conceptions of what constitutes a desirable future?

SCHC 452.H02       HNRS: THROUGH THE STREETS OF LONDON: LITERATURE AND THE CITY 1880- PRESENT       M W 2:20 PM – 3:35 PM       COHEN

The London of the 1880s was the largest city in the world, with four million inhabitants; the archetypal modern city, it was the nerve center of nation and empire. Yet even as Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee was marked in London by processions of imperial trips in an orchestrated celebration of unity and might, the increasing attention paid to “Outcast London” revealed the city itself as a nexus of contradictions. Indeed, from that period onward, London in literature is a contested space, its streets the real and metaphoric venues for mingling and struggle among classes, genders, and cultures. This course will trace the way writers and filmmakers depicted the battles for literal and figurative control of the streets of London--from late-Victorian "social explorers" and their trips into the "darkest East End," through modernist transformation and the violent changes wrought by war, to the multicultural ferment, artificial “tradition,” and historical negotiations of the London of today. Readings may include Stevenson, Eliot, Woolf, Bowen, Selvon, MacInnes, Kureishi, Lively, Evaristo.