Classes You Won’t See Every Semester
ENGL 341.001 Literature & Medicine | MW 2:20 - 3:35 | Davis
According to Dr. Rita Charon, a pioneer in the field of narrative medicine, the “effective practice of medicine requires narrative competence, that is, the ability to acknowledge, absorb, interpret, and act on the stories and plights of others.” This course is designed to help students develop that narrative competence regardless of their career plans. The assigned readings will offer a range of literary and medical interpretations of sickness and health, suffering and recovery, and death and loss. Some works will address the treatment and portrayal of patients by medical practitioners while others will give voice to often-neglected patients’ and caregivers’ perspectives on illness and medical care. Together the readings will demonstrate the ways in which disease is lived in narrative terms while also demystifying the practice of medicine, revealing every physician to be, as the poet Anne Sexton observed, “a human / trying to fix up a human.” The course will focus primarily on American literary and medical works, including a selection of essays, poems, short stories, novellas, autobiographical works, a graphic novel, and a one-act play. Although this course should appeal to students interested in pursuing careers in medicine and health-related fields, any student interested in how literature can help us make sense of human suffering in all its variety is encouraged to register; no medical or scientific knowledge is required.
ENGL 386.001 Impossible Cities: Architectures of Postmodernism | MW 2:20 - 3:35 | Vanderborg
This class explores exciting new hybrid genres and media in post-World War II literature focused on the city. What communal histories or futures do these texts create, what public spaces do they imagine, and who inhabits these postmodern cities? The international selection of readings features experimental novels on architecture and place (Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves and chapters from Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here), cities in an artist's book (Tom Phillips's A Humument), a “generative travelog” based on Google Street View, city vignettes in comics poems, cities as interactive games, a digital elegy for a city (Porpentine’s All Your Time-Tossed Selves), pandemic cityscapes, coded and code-switching communities (Lillian-Yvonne Bertram's Travesty Generator and Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's This Is How You Lose the Time War) and neighborhoods portrayed in metafictional children's books. Assignments include a midterm, a paper, a final exam, in-class writing exercises, and brief class preparation assignments.
ENGL 439.001 Literature and Community Service | TTh 4:25 - 5:40 | Stern
This class will explore the themes of community and service through literary works and our city. We will read books that highlight the significance of community and care. In addition, we will hear from some of Columbia’s service leaders and visit sites across the city. Students enrolled in this class are expected to perform roughly 20 hours of community service during the semester (that’s a mere 1-2 hours a week). There will be a wide range of opportunities and plenty of support along the way. Assignments include reflective journal entries, two short essays, a final project, and a presentation. Questions? Feel free to get in touch.
ENGL 439.002 Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Literature | TTh 10:05 - 11:20 | Gulick
What are human rights? Where do those rights come from? What are the ethics and politics of projects designed to help people—through material aid, political solidarity, education—across regional and national borders? These are questions that can (and do) get posed from any number of disciplinary perspectives. In this class, we’ll pose them through the lens of world literature. Reading from a wide variety of genres and disciplines—novels, poems and films primarily, but also journalism, political theory, philosophy, and anthropology—we will examine the language in which human rights are articulated and critiqued; the political and aesthetic problems that arise when one tries to represent humanitarian crisis through language, narrative and image; and the complexity of seemingly straightforward words such as “rights,” “universalism,” “justice,” and “human.” Literary texts that are likely to be on the syllabus include Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (excerpts at least); Frantz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”; Art Spiegelman’s Maus; Joe Sacco’s Palestine; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun; and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People. Films might include Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers and Mati Diop’s Atlantiques. We’ll turn to some not-quite-literary texts such as the Haitian Declaration of Independence of 1804, The History of Mary Prince, and Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, as well as political theory by Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, and Samuel Moyn, to deepen our understanding of how human rights and humanitarianism have been imagined as part of other kinds of liberatory (and sometimes not so liberatory) projects over the past 250 years.
This course welcomes English majors, future justice seekers, and students who just want to read some fantastic books and think capaciously about important global issues. No prior knowledge of the topic is expected or assumed. You won’t be assessed based on what you already know or can do but on what and how much you learn over the course of our fourteen weeks together. Students can expect to read voraciously, participate regularly in candid, dynamic discussions, and undertake writing assignments that align with their particular interests.
ENGL 439.003/WGST 398.001 Audre Lorde and the Black Arts Movement | TTh 2:50 - 4:05 | Benton
This course examines the feminist and queer theoretical contributions and cultural impact of 'black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet' Audre Lorde. We will begin by reading Lorde's 1982 biomythography Zami: A New Spelling of My Name and discussing topics such as mother-daughter relationships, abortion, and youth activism. We will then locate Lorde's poetry and activism alongside her creative contemporaries in the Black Arts Movement and discuss how poetry and prose can be considered acts of resistance in social movements. We will also study the intellectual branches and genealogies of Audre Lorde's theoretical writings. For example, we will read Lorde's 1978 essay "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power" and then consider how scholars have engaged the idea of the erotic as an organizing theoretical framework to think about the pornographic, desire and pleasure, the interior, spirituality, affect and theories of the everyday. And finally, we will read Lorde's account of her experiences with breast cancer and mastectomy in the context of and ethical expectations around gendered embodiment, self-care, and palliative care. Students will complete writing assignments and participate in dynamic classroom discussions throughout the semester that examine Lorde's writings in the context of gendered racism, homophobia, ableism, classism, and imperialism. And by the end of the course, students should be able to connect Audre Lorde's life and legacy to important and ongoing discourses relating to Black feminist activism, queer theory, and intersectionality.
ENGL/SPCH 472.001 Rhetoric and Popular Culture | MWF 9:40 - 10:30 | Fenske
This course explores the idea that popular culture—the everyday messages that we are exposed to through media and during cultural events and practices—is perhaps the most persuasive, rhetorical influence in many people’s lives. Using a variety of rhetorical, cultural, and performance methods, we will examine how popular cultural texts create meanings and then evaluate the positive and negative effects of those messages. Specific popular culture topics may include music (e.g. concerts, styles, genres), sports (e.g. movies, streaming tv, sporting events), physical culture (e.g. exercise, diet, health, body modification), and natural and made environments (e.g. parks, museums, zoos, historical monuments). Some of the platforms for messages may include social media, popular programs on various streaming platforms, movies, and in-person participation in cultural events.
Courses that Satisfy Core AIU &/or VSR Requirements
ENGL 200.001 Creative Writing, Voice, and Community | MWF 1:10 - 2:00
| STAFF
ENGL 200.002 Creative Writing, Voice, and Community | MW 2:20 - 3:35 | STAFF
ENGL 200.003 Creative Writing, Voice, and Community | MW 3:55 - 5:10 | STAFF
ENGL 200.004 Creative Writing, Voice, and Community | TTh 11:40 - 12:55 | STAFF
ENGL 200.005 Creative Writing, Voice, and Community | TTh 2:50 - 4:05 | STAFF
Workshop course on creative writing with a focus on values, ethics, and social responsibility.
Satisfies AIU and VSR Requirements
ENGL 200.006 Creative Writing, Voice, and Community | TTh 1:15 - 2:30 | Powell
Once upon a time, a young novelist said to the Ohio Arts Council, “Writing to me is an advanced and slow form of reading. If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Within a few years of those remarks, Toni Morrison won a Pulitzer for writing just such a book. Writing what one cares about is difficult labor, because it means there are stakes—whether it’s a novel about unresolved intergenerational trauma of human enslavement, a cutting contribution to the comment section, or a love letter to make all the difference. What do you want to read that hasn’t been written? What are the stakes? What does Morrison mean by “must write”? What is “responsibility” in the context of imaginative writing? To whom can imaginative writing matter? Can it matter at all? These are the central questions of this section of English 200. Students will explore the stakes and challenges of writing what they care about here and now through a combination of selected exemplary readings from (mostly) South Carolina writers and completing a series of imaginative writing assignments about timely community issues they care about. Expect 3-4 unit writing projects (poetry, memoir, fiction), each supported by several shorter writing exercises and drafts and one or more peer workshops per unit. Evaluation will depend on (1) satisfactory participation in required class activities, including but not limited to workshops and discussion of course readings; (2) completion of the required writing exercises and drafts in support of each unit project; and (3) completion and timely submission of unit projects that demonstrate attention to feedback on drafts and progress on course learning outcomes.
ENGL 240.001 Film and Media Analysis | TTh 10:05 - 11:20 | Ozselcuk
This course introduces students to the critical study of film and television. It focuses on developing skills to analyze formal elements (such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound and narrative) of audiovisual media.
The course requires careful viewing and reading of all assigned materials and regular engagement in class as well as successful completion of written work (such as viewing notes, a shot chart, and an analytical essay). Some of the films and TV productions we will cover are The Sixth Sense, Rear Window, Do The Right Thing, Fight Club, Mad Men, and America's Next Top Model.
Satisfies AIU requirement
ENGL 280.001 Literature and Society: Climate | TTh 11:40 - 12:55 | Forter
This course asks what literature can teach us about the most pressing social issue of our time: the issue of global climate change. We’ll read a series of novels from around the world in which the effects of such change are explored with great complexity and power. These books link the climate crisis to a range of other urgent concerns: capitalism and globalization; the relations of human to non-human animals and nature; family life, especially the relations between parents and children; the peculiar temporality of global warming, in which our present is charged with the particulates of past emissions whose effects will not be fully felt till the future; the difficulty of depicting global processes in a genre (the novel) that has conventionally focused on individual (local) experience; and the uneven distribution of climate change’s effects, especially along lines of race, gender, and social class. Finally, we’ll ask what this type of literature “knows” that journalistic and scientific discourse does not. This question will be key to grappling with the dystopian setting of so much cli-fi, which often (paradoxically) throws into relief what a non-dystopian future might look like.
Satisfies AIU and VSR requirements
ENGL 280.J10 Literature and Society | ONLINE ASCYNCHRONOUS | Trafton
Fiction, poetry, drama and other cultural texts engaged with questions of values, ethics and social responsibility.
Satisfies AIU and VSR requirements
ENGL 283.001 Tolkien’s Legendarium | TTh 11:40 - 12:55 | Gwara
Nations often have culture heroes from a pseudo-medieval past. The Celts of Wales, Cornwall and Brittany esteemed King Arthur, “quondam rex et futurus.” Americans admire Luke Skywalker, a “knight” from “a long time ago.” The French revere the fictional Roland more than the historical Charlemagne. Tolkien’s characters from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are transatlantic culture heroes of comparable preeminence. For many they are literary heroes of our time. Surveys of “favorite books” in Britain and the US usually include LOTR alongside novels assigned in school. But no one ever assigned LOTR in a classroom. It’s 1,000 pages of epic fantasy full of dense language, mythic histories and inscrutable characters with ethnic identities of granular verisimilitude. Tolkien clearly spent decades living in his head, imagining the world of Middle Earth. His construct was inevitably suffused with his deeply held views of human nature. The subject of this course will be the grand themes suffusing Tolkien’s complex legendarium. In this course we will read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings alongside some relevant minor works, especially “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon,” Farmer Giles of Ham, and The Father Christmas Letters. You’ll appreciate that the reading load is very heavy. Students in this course will be expected to have read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings in advance, i.e., before the first class. We will re-read the content as we advance through the novels. Grading will be based on class participation, occasional quizzes, take-home mid-term and final exam.
Satisfies AIU requirement
Major Gateway Courses
ENGL 287.001 American Literature | MW 3:55 - 5:10 | Davis
This course swiftly surveys a number of representative American writings from the colonial period to the present moment by focusing on the intertwined themes of love and loss. All required readings can be accessed on Blackboard; no purchases are necessary for this course.
Satisfies AIU requirement
ENGL 287.002 American Literature | TTh 10:05 - 11:20 | Jelly-Schapiro
In this course, we will consider contemporary American novels that represent the history, present, and future of the United States, and the global order to which it belongs. We will pay especially close attention to how the novels we read register the interlocking phenomena of capitalism and imperialism—two historical forces that have decisively shaped the present. Throughout, as we meditate on literary mediations of the current conjuncture and its history, we will simultaneously consider how novels imagine alternatives to seemingly intractable social and political realities or crises—by adumbrating possible futures, or by making vivid the other worlds that are already emergent within this one.
Satisfies AIU requirement
ENGL 287.003 American Literature | TTh 11:40 - 12:55 | Jackson
This class offers a survey of American Literature from its colonial beginnings in the Fifteenth Century to present. We’ll focus on texts that cluster around recurrent thematic questions. These include: What is America? Who are Americans? Is there one fixed definition? Are humans fundamentally flawed, basically neutral, or inherently good? What defines us best: our souls, our heads, or our hearts? How do we come to terms with human suffering and the prospect of death? What is literature, and what is it good for? What is reality, and how can it best be depicted? Other themes will emerge through class discussion. Our class will have three goals: to introduce you to the sweep of American literary history and suggest something of its power and significance, especially by understanding what various works meant in their historical context; to encourage you to read closely and carefully, understanding how those works worked as art; and to help you develop as writers of critical academic prose, through a series of creative assignments.
Satisfies AIU requirement
ENGL 288.001 English Literature | TTh 1:15 - 2:30 | Stern
This section will situate works from the Romantic through the Modern periods in their respective historical contexts. We’ll read Wordsworth and Shelley, Austen and Brontë, Eliot and Woolf. No AI. No tech. Just great works of literature, engaged conversations, and lots of learning. Assignments include reading journals, two short papers, a midterm, a final, and a creative project.
Satisfies AIU requirement
ENGL 288.002 English Literature | MW 2:20 - 3:35 | STAFF
An introduction to English 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. Designed for English majors.
Satisfies AIU requirement
Communication and Culture
ENGL 240.001 Film and Media Analysis | TTh 10:05 - 11:20 | Ozselcuk
This course introduces students to the critical study of film and television. It focuses on developing skills to analyze formal elements (such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound and narrative) of audiovisual media.
The course requires careful viewing and reading of all assigned materials and regular engagement in class as well as successful completion of written work (such as viewing notes, a shot chart, and an analytical essay). Some of the films and TV productions we will cover are The Sixth Sense, Rear Window, Do The Right Thing, Fight Club, Mad Men, and America's Next Top Model.
Satisfies AIU requirement
ENGL/SPCH 472.001 Rhetoric and Popular Culture | MWF 9:40 - 10:30 | Fenske
This course explores the idea that popular culture—the everyday messages that we are exposed to through media and during cultural events and practices—is perhaps the most persuasive, rhetorical influence in many people’s lives. Using a variety of rhetorical, cultural, and performance methods, we will examine how popular cultural texts create meanings and then evaluate the positive and negative effects of those messages. Specific popular culture topics may include music (e.g. concerts, styles, genres), sports (e.g. movies, streaming tv, sporting events), physical culture (e.g. exercise, diet, health, body modification), and natural and made environments (e.g. parks, museums, zoos, historical monuments). Some of the platforms for messages may include social media, popular programs on various streaming platforms, movies, and in-person participation in cultural events.
Creative Writing
ENGL 360.001 Creative Writing | TTh 1:15 - 2:30 | Dings
This is an introduction to writing short fiction and poetry. Students will read model stories and poems before writing their own original work. Focus will be on the core aspects and techniques of each genre which students will then practice in creating their own original work.
ENGL 360.002 Creative Writing | TTh 2:50 - 4:05 | Countryman
This course is an introduction to the practice and methods of poetry and fiction writing. In this class, students will work toward the completion of a final portfolio, due at the end of the semester. As a class, we’ll respond to student work as it is created and develop a vocabulary for describing what we see happening in one another’s stories and poems. We’ll think of writing as an ongoing process and a mode of “serious play.” The class will also read works by a spectrum of outside writers, which we’ll examine alongside and in conversation with students’ work.
ENGL 360.003 Creative Writing | MWF 10:50 - 11:40 | STAFF
Workshop course on writing original fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction.
ENGL 360.006 Creative Writing | TTh 10:05 - 11:20 | STAFF
Workshop course on writing original fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction.
ENGL 465.001 Fiction Workshop | MW 2:20 - 3:35 | Blackwell
This will be a workshop in two senses: a place where art gets made (like a studio art class for stories) and a place where original writing is discussed. Most meetings will include some combination of guided writing exercises, group analysis of original student work, mini-lectures on craft, and/or group discussion of the art and craft of fiction writing.
ENGL 491.001 Advanced Poetry Workshop | TTh 11:40 - 12:55 | Countryman
The focus of this course will be writing and revising new poems. Students will refine their ability to articulate their own poetic aims and style, while also expanding their view of what a poem can be and do through readings of contemporary poetry and writing exercises tied to those readings. Peer response will factor heavily into the final grade. The final goal of this course is a portfolio of original creative work. Students should have taken ENGL 360 previously, but those with experience writing poetry or taking creative writing workshops are welcome.
Pre-1800 Literature
ENGL/CPLT 380.001 Epic to Romance | TTh 2:50 - 4:05 | Gwara
A study of genres, characterization, and salient themes in five major texts: Homer’s Iliad, Virgil’s Aeneid, Beowulf, Marie’s Lais, and Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.
ENGL/CPLT 381.001 The Renaissance | TTh 10:05 - 11:20 | Shifflett
Study of major authors of the European Renaissance including Baldesar Castiglione, Marguerite de Navarre, Philip Sidney, Michel de Montaigne, William Shakespeare, and Miguel de Cervantes. Requirements are likely to include daily quizzes, two in-class exams during classes, and an in-class final exam during finals week.
ENGL 405.001 Shakespeare’s Tragedies | TTh 1:15 - 2:30 | Harris
In this course, we will read six plays by William Shakespeare that could be designated “tragedies”. Our exploration of Shakespeare’s Tragedies will move on three fronts: analysis of Shakespeare’s use of language and his engagement with the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, analysis of Shakespeare’s use of theatrical effects and the interpretation of those effects by today’s theatre artists, and contemporary critical discourse surrounding Shakespeare studies and Shakespeare productions.
Post-1800 Literature
ENGL 341.001 Literature & Medicine | MW 2:20 - 3:35 | Davis
According to Dr. Rita Charon, a pioneer in the field of narrative medicine, the “effective practice of medicine requires narrative competence, that is, the ability to acknowledge, absorb, interpret, and act on the stories and plights of others.” This course is designed to help students develop that narrative competence, regardless of their career plans. The assigned readings offer a range of literary and medical takes on sickness, health, suffering, recovery, death, and loss. Some works address medical practitioners’ treatment and portrayal of patients, while others provide often-neglected patients’ and caregivers’ perspectives on illness and health care. Together our readings will demonstrate the ways in which disease is lived in narrative terms while also demystifying the practice of medicine by recognizing that every health care professional is first and foremost (to quote the poet Anne Sexton) “a human / trying to fix up a human.” The course will focus primarily on U.S. literary and medical works, including a selection of essays, poems, short stories, novellas, autobiographical works, a graphic novel, a one-act play, and excerpts from The Pitt, an award-winning televised medical drama. Although this course should appeal to students interested in pursuing careers in medicine and health-related fields, any student interested in how literature can help us make sense of human suffering in all its variety is encouraged to register; no medical or scientific knowledge is required.
ENGL 385.001 Modernism | TTh 1:15 - 2:30 | Keyser
“On or about December 1910,” Virginia Woolf famously pronounced, “human nature changed.” In this course, we will read British and U.S. literature published between 1890 and 1945 with an eye to the radical feeling of cultural change at the start of the twentieth century. Revolutions in transportation, media, and industry sped up the pace of daily life, and modernist writers variously embraced and reviled this new velocity. Modernists famously wanted to make literature “new,” but they also mourned the passage of the old. We will discuss how their experimental works capture this tension between novelty and nostalgia. Authors studied may include Djuna Barnes, Elizabeth Bowen, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Mina Loy, Claude McKay, Gertrude Stein, Jean Toomer, and Virginia Woolf.
ENGL 386.001 Impossible Cities: Architectures of Postmodernism | MW 2:20 - 3:35 | Vanderborg
This class explores exciting new hybrid genres and media in post-World War II literature focused on the city. What communal histories or futures do these texts create, what public spaces do they imagine, and who inhabits these postmodern cities? The international selection of readings features experimental novels on architecture and place (Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves and chapters from Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here), cities in an artist's book (Tom Phillips's A Humument), a “generative travelog” based on Google Street View, city vignettes in comics poems, cities as interactive games, a digital elegy for a city (Porpentine’s All Your Time-Tossed Selves), pandemic cityscapes, coded and code-switching communities (Lillian-Yvonne Bertram's Travesty Generator and Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's This Is How You Lose the Time War) and neighborhoods portrayed in metafictional children's books. Assignments include a midterm, a paper, a final exam, in-class writing exercises, and brief class preparation assignments.
ENGL 425A.001 The American Novel to 1914 | MW 3:55 - 5:10 | Greven
"Who in the world reads an American book?" asked one 1820 commentator. By the end of the decade, American authors were being widely read around the world. This course examines the rise and development of the American novel from its early embrace of the sensation novel to its Romantic flowering in the 1850s to its embrace of postbellum realism. Assigned texts will include Poe's only novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Alcott's Little Women, and Wharton's The House of Mirth. Grading will be based on weekly journal writings, in-class exams, quizzes, and a term paper drawn from your journals.
ENGL 428B.001 African American Literature 1903-Present | TTh 2:50 - 4:05 | Lee
Our course surveys African American literature from 1903 onward, beginning with W. E. B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk. We will cover some major authors, themes, and movements from this period, as well as a range of literary genres, including poetry, essay, short story, and novel. We will also delve into Black cultural theory and Black intellectual history. Through our wide-ranging texts and figures, we will consider persistent and intractable questions in Black literary and cultural studies regarding race, being, voice, labor, community, sexuality, gender, aesthetics, and history.
ENGL 432.001 Young Adult Literature: Coming of Age in the 21st Century | TTh 11:40 - 12:55 | Viswanath
This is a survey course in which we will read contemporary literature for young adults that will help us challenge and reimagine the literary canon. We will explore a variety of genres including fiction, poetry, television, and graphic novels. Most importantly, we will work together to better understand the concept of adolescence, discuss the characteristics of young adult texts and literary criticism, and use that criticism to analyze the texts we read. Please note that this is a reading intensive course, and includes weekly assignments, discussions, and essay writing.
ENGL 437.001 Women Writers | TTh 10:05 - 11:20 | Powell
This section of English 437 will consider how selected U.S. southern women writers have explored their experience of formal education in imaginative writing since the mid-twentieth century. Some of the questions to consider are what a cross-section of southern women writers have suggested that it may mean to learn or teach, what it may mean to learn or teach in the U. S. South in particular, and what it may mean for a woman to learn or teach. Possible course texts include but are not limited to poems, nonfiction, and fiction by authors such as Dorothy Allison, Doris Betts, Tracy Deonn, Claudia Emerson, Gail Godwin, Joy Harjo, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Flannery O’Connor, Janisse Ray, Mab Segrest, Lillian Smith, Monique Truong, Alice Walker, and Jesmyn Ward. In addition to completing course readings in poetry and prose and satisfactory regular participation in required class activities, students will demonstrate progress toward course learning outcomes by completing 2-3 unit writing assignments, an assortment of writing exercises and quizzes, and a cumulative final exam.
Satisfies AIU requirement
ENGL 439.001 Literature and Community Service | TTh 4:25 - 5:40 | Stern
This class will explore the themes of community and service through literary works and our city. We will read books that highlight the significance of community and care. In addition, we will hear from some of Columbia’s service leaders and visit sites across the city. Students enrolled in this class are expected to perform roughly 20 hours of community service during the semester (that’s a mere 1-2 hours a week). There will be a wide range of opportunities and plenty of support along the way. Assignments include reflective journal entries, two short essays, a final project, and a presentation. Questions? Feel free to get in touch.
ENGL 439.002 Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Literature | TTh 10:05 - 11:20 | Gulick
What are human rights? Where do those rights come from? What are the ethics and politics of projects designed to help people—through material aid, political solidarity, education—across regional and national borders? These are questions that can (and do) get posed from any number of disciplinary perspectives. In this class, we’ll pose them through the lens of world literature. Reading from a wide variety of genres and disciplines—novels, poems and films primarily, but also journalism, political theory, philosophy, and anthropology—we will examine the language in which human rights are articulated and critiqued; the political and aesthetic problems that arise when one tries to represent humanitarian crisis through language, narrative and image; and the complexity of seemingly straightforward words such as “rights,” “universalism,” “justice,” and “human.” Literary texts that are likely to be on the syllabus include Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (excerpts at least); Frantz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”; Art Spiegelman’s Maus; Joe Sacco’s Palestine; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun; and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People. Films might include Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers and Mati Diop’s Atlantiques. We’ll turn to some not-quite-literary texts such as the Haitian Declaration of Independence of 1804, The History of Mary Prince, and Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, as well as political theory by Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, and Samuel Moyn, to deepen our understanding of how human rights and humanitarianism have been imagined as part of other kinds of liberatory (and sometimes not so liberatory) projects over the past 250 years.
This course welcomes English majors, future justice seekers, and students who just want to read some fantastic books and think capaciously about important global issues. No prior knowledge of the topic is expected or assumed. You won’t be assessed based on what you already know or can do but on what and how much you learn over the course of our fourteen weeks together. Students can expect to read voraciously, participate regularly in candid, dynamic discussions, and undertake writing assignments that align with their particular interests.
ENGL 439.003/WGST 398.001 Audre Lorde and the Black Arts Movement | TTh 2:50 - 4:05 | Benton
This course examines the feminist and queer theoretical contributions and cultural impact of 'black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet' Audre Lorde. We will begin by reading Lorde's 1982 biomythography Zami: A New Spelling of My Name and discussing topics such as mother-daughter relationships, abortion, and youth activism. We will then locate Lorde's poetry and activism alongside her creative contemporaries in the Black Arts Movement and discuss how poetry and prose can be considered acts of resistance in social movements. We will also study the intellectual branches and genealogies of Audre Lorde's theoretical writings. For example, we will read Lorde's 1978 essay "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power" and then consider how scholars have engaged the idea of the erotic as an organizing theoretical framework to think about the pornographic, desire and pleasure, the interior, spirituality, affect and theories of the everyday. And finally, we will read Lorde's account of her experiences with breast cancer and mastectomy in the context of and ethical expectations around gendered embodiment, self-care, and palliative care. Students will complete writing assignments and participate in dynamic classroom discussions throughout the semester that examine Lorde's writings in the context of gendered racism, homophobia, ableism, classism, and imperialism. And by the end of the course, students should be able to connect Audre Lorde's life and legacy to important and ongoing discourses relating to Black feminist activism, queer theory, and intersectionality.
ENGL 441.001 Global Contemporary Literature | TTh 11:40 - 12:55 | Jelly-Schapiro
This course will examine how contemporary literary texts both register and are themselves implicated in global forces and histories. We will read works that strive to apprehend the world at large, as well as works that illuminate the ways in which global culture is produced and experienced in local places. Reading novels from across the world, our inquiry will focus on the literary representation of several interrelated phenomena: capitalism, imperialism, and climate change. We will devote especial attention to the question of how contemporary literature reckons with the longer history of the interlocking crises—economic, political, cultural, and environmental—that define our current planetary predicament. Thinking about the history of the present, we will simultaneously consider how literary texts bring into view alternative futures, other possible worlds within this one.Rhetoric, Theory, and Writing
ENGL 363.001 Introduction to Professional Writing | TTh 11:40 - 12:55 | Jordan
This course takes a rhetorical approach to professional writing. We will learn about and practice creating various kinds of work-related writing and visual communication. Professional writing is focused on praxis (or action), and this course takes on a wide definition of what "work" and "professional" may mean. We'll learn about analyzing and making writing and design choices based on purpose, audience, and design in multiple projects that take on a range of workplace writing genres. Students will gain skills in problem solving and decision making, persuasion, argumentation, and more. Professional writing is communication that "gets stuff done" and, ultimately, makes change in the world. Projects offer students choice in researching and producing documents within their own areas of expertise and interest within the assignment parameters.
ENGL 388.01 History of Literary Criticism and Theory | MW 3:55 - 5:10 | Muckelbauer
This course is designed to introduce you to some of the central questions associated with literary and cultural theory. Upon successful completion, you will be conversant with the many divergent strains of contemporary theoretical discourse (feminism, marxism, reader-response theory, etc). You will be able to respond to such fundamental questions as “What and/or how to texts and other artifacts mean?” “What are the roles of the author and the reader in the production of meaning?” or “How are social roles involved in this process?” You will also be able to distinguish different theoretical perspectives - from formalism to postmodernism. More fundamentally though, this education in theory is intended to encourage you to challenge commonplace ways of thinking (about reading, writing, learning, education, sociality, your life, etc.). Therefore, the true “learning outcome” is that you will learn to pay closer attention to the world.
ENGL/SPCH 472.001 Rhetoric and Popular Culture | MWF 9:40 - 10:30 | Fenske
This course explores the idea that popular culture—the everyday messages that we are exposed to through media and during cultural events and practices—is perhaps the most persuasive, rhetorical influence in many people’s lives. Using a variety of rhetorical, cultural, and performance methods, we will examine how popular cultural texts create meanings and then evaluate the positive and negative effects of those messages. Specific popular culture topics may include music (e.g. concerts, styles, genres), sports (e.g. movies, streaming tv, sporting events), physical culture (e.g. exercise, diet, health, body modification), and natural and made environments (e.g. parks, museums, zoos, historical monuments). Some of the platforms for messages may include social media, popular programs on various streaming platforms, movies, and in-person participation in cultural events.
ENGL 460.001 Voice in Writing | MW 2:20 - 3:35 | Rule
How do writers stand out? What about a writer's syntactic and semantic choices help make us feel like we're experiencing their “voice”? How do writers shape language to convey their perspectives, presence, personality, and identity? This course focuses on these questions, as we explore together what it means to say that writing has “voice” and experiment with how to bring out such force in our own writing. Students can expect to write and read a lot. Students will practice rhetorical style, sentence-craft, copia and other concepts and exercises; analyze a range of personal essays and other first-person genres; curate and practice writing in a term-long commonplace book; and develop composing projects in writer's workshops and a portfolio, including a multimodal project in which a piece of their writing is literally voiced. Focusing neither on academic nor creative genres alone, this course will speak to any student interested in improving their comfort and efficacy in writing and expression.
ENGL 463.002 Business Writing | TTh 10:05 - 11:20 | Anderson
Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.
GLD: Research
ENGL 463.003 Business Writing | TTh 1:15 - 2:30 | Anderson
Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.
GLD: Research
ENGL 463.004 Business Writing | TTh 2:50 - 4:05 | Anderson
Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.
GLD: Research
ENGL 463.005 Business Writing | TTh 4:25 - 5:40 | Anderson
Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.
GLD: Research
ENGL 463.006 Business Writing | MWF 9:40 - 10:30 | STAFF
Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.
GLD: Research
ENGL 463.007 Business Writing | MW 2:20 - 3:35 | STAFF
Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.
GLD: Research
ENGL 463.008 Business Writing | MWF 10:50 - 11:40 | STAFF
Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.
GLD: Research
ENGL 463.H01 Business Writing | TBA | STAFF
Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.
GLD: Research
ENGL 463.J10 Business Writing | TBA | STAFF
Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.
GLD: Research
ENGL 463.J11 Business Writing | TBA | STAFF
Extensive practice in different types of business writing, from brief letters to formal articles and reports.
GLD: Research
ENGL 492.001 Advanced Fiction Workshop | TTh 2:50 - 4:05 | Bajo
This will be a course in the writing of the contemporary literary short story (novel chapters possible). We will expand on those aspects of fiction examined and experimented with in English 465. We will begin by studying stories and innovations of fiction writing in order to explore the aim and possibilities of contemporary literature. However, the course will primarily be a workshop for students’ own stories.
Basically, the course will have a three-part structure comprised of writing fiction, workshop discussion, and fiction writing assignments. The assignments are designed to add dimension to the stories students will be composing, to make their work richer and more attuned to contemporary literature.
Language and Linguistics (all fulfill the Linguistics overlay requirement)
LING 301/ENGL 389.001 The English Language | MW 2:20 - 3:35 | Dubinsky
This course is a linguistic introduction to the English language which will unpack all its major facets, to derive a deeper understanding of English and of human language in general. We will compare human language and animal communication, the sounds of human speech (acoustic and articulatory phonetics), the organization of language in the mind (phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics), and language variation and change. Much of the data and examples examined in the course will come from English, but we will also compare English with other typologically diverse languages. We will also examine the organization of language in the brain, child language acquisition, and adult sentence processing.
ENGL 450/LING 421.001 English Grammar| | TTh 1:15 - 2:30 | Manetta
Major structures of English morphology and syntax; role of language history and social and regional variation in understanding contemporary English.
Honors College Courses (restricted to students in the Honors College)
ENGL 200.H01 Creative Writing, Voice, and Community | TTh 11:40 - 12:55 | Johnson-Feelings
This section is an introduction to creative writing, emphasizing writing for young readers. We will read books written for that audience, ranging from picture books to middle grade novels, in various forms including prose, poetry, novels in verse, or even song lyrics. Readings and writing assignments will be centered around explorations of ideas related to identity, voice, and community. Workshop members will offer thoughtful feedback to each other, together creating a writing community in which everyone is able to take risks and grow as writers
ENGL 240.H01/FAME 240.H01 Film & Media Analysis | TTh 1:15 - 2:30 | Ozselcuk
(Cross listed with FAME 240.H01 )
This course introduces students to the critical study of film and television. It focuses on developing skills to analyze formal elements (such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound and narrative) of audiovisual media.
The course requires careful viewing and reading of all assigned materials and regular engagement in class as well as successful completion of written work (such as viewing notes, a shot chart, and an analytical essay). Some of the films and TV productions we will cover are The Sixth Sense, Rear Window, Do The Right Thing, Fight Club, Mad Men, and America's Next Top Model.
ENGL 282.H01 Speculative Fiction for Young Readers | TTh 2:50 - 4:05 | Viswanath
Speculative fiction is often used as an umbrella term to encapsulate a variety of genres that, in the words of Marek Oziewicz, “deliberately depart from imitating ‘consensus reality’ of everyday experience” (“Speculative Fiction”). It has therefore come to refer to a number of genres including but not restricted to fantasy, dystopia, science fiction, supernatural fiction, magic realism, and horror fiction. Despite their fantastical settings and/or otherworldly elements, speculative fiction often revolves around larger ethical, philosophical, and/or moral questions about what it means to live in our world. For instance, what does it mean to be human, and what separates us from other non-humans, be they animal or machine? What do words like "equality" and "justice" actually entail?
In this course, we will focus on American fantasy and dystopia, with an emphasis on literatures written for young audiences. In addition to reading children’s and young adult literature, we will discuss scholarly works that examine the different aspects of speculative fiction. Please note that this is a reading intensive course, and includes weekly assignments, discussions, and exams.
ENGL 285.H01 Homelands in American Media | MW 3:55 - 5:10 | Vanderborg
This class examines a range of American texts in which authors remember or create homelands: records of Native American communities, colonists challenging their ties to Britain, immigrant histories in the new republic, and the violent loss of homelands in slavery, as well as speculative American homelands, dystopian or hopeful, that authors have imagined for the future. We’ll explore the impact of the medium in which each text appeared, diving into the original page formats of Roger Williams’s A Key into the Language of America, Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts, contemporary children’s picture books, Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel origin story for a Golden Age superhero, a sci-fi film on American immigration, and a multimedia archival poem on the transcontinental railroad. The readings often pair period texts with modern responses.
Assignments include a research essay, a final exam, quizzes, in-class writing exercises, and a creative project in which you respond to a class text in its own medium (e.g., write your own Dickinson-style poem in a sewn fascicle) or remediate a class text, translating it into a different medium for new audiences, such an educational comic or a desktop or digital game.
ENGL 288.H01 English Literature | TTh 10:05 - 11:20 | Harris
Whether discussing vivid sci-fi and fantasy settings or the narrative and design elements that make for immersive play in video games, “worldbuilding” has become a common way of evaluating narrative media. In this class, we will explore the concept of worldbuilding and its implementation in poetry, drama, and prose. Students will have the chance to read British narratives from the Middle Ages to the present that show versions of the world. Rather than read chronologically, we will make a study of readings clustered around pillars of worldbuilding: creation narratives, myths and lore, and the apocalypse. Through these and additional critical readings and archival exploration, we will question how British writers have imagined their cultural history as part of the world’s history. Students can expect engaging discussions facilitated through gaming, roleplaying, and collaborative storytelling. Short analytical essays will challenge students to identify and critique worldbuilding elements. Students will then get to turn that critique into their own worldbuilding experiments, gaining an insider perspective on the craft of storytelling. Course readings will include major works by William Shakespeare, John Milton, Christopher Marlowe, Lewis Carroll, George Orwell, and Zadie Smith
SCHC 350.H01 Mothers, Myth, and Memory in Toni Morrison’s Fiction | MW 2:20 - 3:35 | Whitted
As an indispensable voice in American literature, Toni Morrison invites us to explore the lessons of history and humanity through transformative language. Her books are especially rewarding for readers who are given ample time to study and reflect. This course aims to provide a slower pace to analyze four of Morrison’s award-winning novels - Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, and Jazz - with an eye towards a few of her recurring themes and fascinations. We will consider the shifting meanings of love and sacrifice between mothers and their children; the storytelling structures of ancient and contemporary myth that set the stage for conflict; and the pivotal role of memory and remembering in her representation of Black culture and thought. We will also engage with critical scholarship on Morrison’s work in literary studies and African American studies. Assignments will include close reading activities, small group discussions, and short essays that begin as in-class writing.
SCHC 350.H02 American Life Stories | TTh 11:40 - 12:55 | Johnson-Feelings
The focus of this course is American life stories, whether told through traditional autobiography/memoir or through song lyrics, children’s literature, visual art, or some other genre or medium. In particular, seminar participants will look at the intersection between conceptions of childhood and the idea of the “American Dream” as Americans craft and live their lives. Readings will be representative of a cross-section of American experiences in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, region, religion, language of origin, and more. Readings will include texts such as Tara Westover’s Educated, Kal Penn’s You Can’t Be Serious, and Melba Patillo Beals’s Warriors Don’t Cry.
ENGL360.H01 Creative Writing | MW 3:55 - 5:10 | 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 then 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.
SCHC 450.H01 Climate Fiction and Animal Life | TTh 2:50 - 4:05 | Forter
This course explores the recent flowering of climate fiction in the US (and around the world), with special attention to how the genre depicts what scholars call “creatureliness.” This term refers to the mortality, corporeality, and exposure to bodily harm that link nonhuman animals with the human as animal. The fictions we’ll read suggest that learning to embrace such creatureliness is central to cultivating a non-destructive relation to the Earth’s resources. The novels also connect this issue to a range of other concerns: capitalism and globalization; colonialism; the concept of the “Anthropocene”; the peculiar temporality of global warming, in which our present is charged with the particulates of past emissions whose effects will not be fully felt till the future; the difficulty of depicting global processes in a genre (the novel) that has conventionally focused on individual (local) experience; and the uneven distribution of climate change’s effects, especially along lines of race, gender, and social class. Finally, in the case of the science- and speculative-fictional works on our list, we’ll ask what this type of literature “knows” that more realistic fiction does not. This question will be key to grappling with the dystopian setting of so much cli-fi, which often (paradoxically) throws into relief what a non-dystopian future might look like.
SCHC 455.H01 Forgiveness, Theory, Practice, Literature | TTh 1:15 - 2:30 | Shifflett
No doubt all of us know what forgiveness is, but far fewer are likely to agree entirely about its meaning or about how the process works (if it really is a "process") and what it is for (if it really is "for" anything). Ancient, early modern, and modern theory (philosophy) can help us better understand forgiveness, while reading historical accounts of forgiveness in action and talking about our own real-world experiences of it can give us a fuller sense of the virtue's practical range. And then there is literature (prose, poetry, and drama), which imagines the potentials (comic, tragic, religious, etc.) of forgiveness without being tied ultimately to either theory or practice. This course will explore all of these things. Requirements are likely to include daily discussion and quizzes, in-class exams, and student presentations.
SCHC 457.H01 Resisting Authority in African Literature | TTh 11:40 - 12:55 | Gulick
This is a seminar about how poets, novelists, dramatists, and filmmakers from Africa have responded to authoritarianism in their work. Through twentieth-century classics such by authors such as Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’, Wole Soyinka, J.M. Coetzee, and Tsitsi Dangarembga—and filmmakers such as Gillo Pontecorvo, Ousmane Sembene, and Raoul Peck—we’ll explore the ways in which fiction and film represented the continent’s anticolonial struggles as well as the ways in which colonialism set the stage for various forms of violence that took shape in the wake of political independence. We’ll look at short stories by writers such as Nadine Gordimer and Alex La Guma, who negotiated speaking truth to power amidst onerous apartheid-era censorship laws in late-twentieth-century South Africa. More recent work by Helon Habila, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Aminatta Forna, and NoViolet Bulawayo will help us set contemporary literary responses to authoritarianism in a global frame. We’ll punctuate our exploration of literary and cultural texts with short readings in political theory by Hannah Arendt, Frantz Fanon, Giorgio Agamben, Achille Mbembe, and others.
Anyone interested in exploring world literature—and/or exploring big political and philosophical ideas through literature—will have a great experience in this course. You don’t have to be an English major, and no prior knowledge of African literature or political theory is expected or assumed. You won’t be assessed based on what you already know or can do but on what and how much you learn over the course of our fourteen weeks together. You should be prepared to read voraciously, encounter new ideas, and regularly participate in thoughtful, generous discussions with your classmates.