Close reading and analysis of poetry and other literary texts. Introduction to argumentative strategies for writing about poetry. Addresses prosody, poetic language (diction, metaphor, image, tone), and major verse forms (the sonnet, elegy, ode, ballad, dramatic monologue, free verse). Students also study poems from a range of literary periods and movements to learn how formal qualities change and develop over time and are relevant to everyday life.
An introduction to the study of literature and literary history at the university level. Explores such topics as: the historical role and place of fictional narratives, the idea of genre, relationships between context and meaning in fictional works. Student will develop a critical vocabulary for interpreting and analyzing narrative strategies. Credit is not given for both ENGL 103 and ENGL 109.
Thoughtful viewing of diverse films (in required weekly screenings), along with ample discussion and critical reading and writing, to gain understanding of cinematic expression and of film's capacity to entertain and to exert artistic and social influence. Same as MACS 104.
Introduction to critical analysis of prose fiction. Explores a wide range of short and long fiction across historical periods; examines narrative strategies such as plot, character, and point of view. Special emphasis placed on good literary critical writing. Course is similar to ENGL 103 except for the additional writing component. Credit is not given for both ENGL 109 and ENGL 103. Prerequisite: Completion of campus Composition I general education requirement.
Acquaints students with the rich diversity of British prose, poetry, and drama. As a basic introduction to English literature, the course explores a series of literary texts, often thematically related, which appeal to modern readers and at the same time provide interesting insights into the cultural attitudes and values of the periods which produced them.
American literature speaks in distinctive dialects that pre-date the arrival of European explorers in the Renaissance, range across centuries and continents, and intermingle a rich variety of racial, ethnic, and gendered perspectives. Genres examined in this course might include lyric poems, dystopian novels, horror stories, seduction narratives, slave narratives, political speeches, or postmodern plays. Writers studied might include Walt Whitman, Columbus, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Junot Díaz, Harriet Beecher Stowe, David Foster Wallace, Martin Luther King, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Explores the ongoing reinterpretation and appropriation of Shakespeare plays in twentieth- and twenty-first century film. Expect to read around five plays and analyze two productions of each play, and to consider how Shakespeare can be transformed to meet different cultural and contextual demands of the screen. Lecture and discussion. Same as MACS 117.
Introduction to the rich traditions of fantasy writing in world literature. While the commercial category of fantasy post-Tolkien will often be the focal point, individual instructors may choose to focus on alternate definitions of the genre: literatures of the fantastic, the uncanny, and the weird; fantasy before the Enlightenment and the advent of realism; fantasy for young adult or child readers; and so on. Same as CWL 119.
Topics course that varies each semester and by section. The topics offered each semester will be listed in the Class Schedule. Approved for letter and S/U grading. May be repeated.
Introduction to the study of literature in the twenty-first century. This course will expand your sense of what literature is and where it happens, including discussion of old and new literary forms (from novels, poems, and plays to comic books, video games, and films). Along the way, students will explore some of the literary and cultural opportunities (such as author readings, scholarly talks, and performances) available to them on a large public university campus, with two goals in mind: to develop your critical interpretive skills and to acquaint you with the discipline of literary studies as it is being practiced all around us today, both inside and outside the conventional classroom.
Introduction to the diverse literatures and cultures of the global Middle Ages (approximately 500-1500 CE). Students will read works by medieval authors in Modern English translation, with particular attention to placing works in their historical and material contexts. Same as CWL 253 and MDVL 201. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
Readings in English and continental literary masterpieces with attention to significant cultural influences. Same as CWL 255. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
Study in Anglophone and global texts from the period 1600 to 1800, with attention to cultural and historical contexts. Same as CWL 257. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
While Queen Victoria was on the throne (1837-1901), Britain became a world power, but often looked backwards to the lovely worlds of the past. Many of the era’s great literary works reflect this tension between realism and romance: between the realism of being a poor governess and the romance of finding true love in Jane Eyre; the tragedy of losing your best friend and the hope of emotional survival in In Memoriam; the practical work of building a useful device and the fantasy of visiting the dystopian future in The Time Machine. Literature studied in this class will include poetry, prose, drama, and fiction, possibly including works by Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Seacole, Thomas Carlyle, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, H.G. Wells, Olive Schreiner, or George Bernard Shaw. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
This course surveys more than a thousand years of British literature from the early Middle Ages through the Renaissance and well into the eighteenth century. But what does "British literature" really mean, especially in the context of an island archipelago populated by multiple nations (England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales) and repeatedly subjected to foreign rule (either by violent invasion or dynastic succession)? The range of texts we thus characterize as "early British literature" is staggering, and part of our goal in this course will simply be to appreciate the sheer volume and breadth of written work created in Britain and Ireland between the sixth and eighteenth centuries. We will do this through a necessarily selective sampling of historical periods, languages, and genres. Our authors will range from the famous (e.g., Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton) to the lesser-known (e.g., Marie de France, Lady Mary Wroth, and Eliza Haywood) to the unknown (e.g., the anonymous Beowulf-poet). Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement and ENGL 200.
Same as AFST 210 and CWL 210. See AFST 210.
Study of literature, philosophy, visual and performing arts, social criticism, and popular sciences of the Anglo-American modernist period (approximately 1900-1950), with attention to broad cultural issues. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
Representative readings of Shakespeare's drama and poetry in the context of his age, with emphasis on major plays; selections vary from section to section. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
Introduces majors and non-majors to several important conversations arising from the expansive genre of speculative fiction. In this course students will explore some of the most profound, disturbing, and downright bizarre imaginings of the future that human beings have generated. Climate change, ageing, fascist regimes, reproductive rights, technological failures, scientific advancements, and apocalypse are just a few of the possible topics for this class. Course materials will be drawn from literary works, contemporary and historical scientific developments, and cultural theory to explore how and why speculative futures are linked to specific cultural contexts, technologies, and social schemes.
Historical and critical study of the short story (American and European) from the early nineteenth century to the present. Same as CWL 267. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
A study of some of the more noteworthy and influential writers of the last two hundred and fifty years. The course traces the development of the novel as a genre that both celebrated and critiqued Britain and British nationalism. Examines how the novel has been important culturally over time. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
Nineteenth-century fiction gave us some of the most iconic images in American culture--the scarlet letter, the white whale--and some of the most captivating works about American life and society. This course will explore how fictional texts articulated the problems of nineteenth-century democracy, including the crises over slavery leading to the Civil War, and the rise of large-scale capitalism and urban modernity later in the century. We will look at such literary movements as sentimentalism, sensationalism, realism, and naturalism, among others. Writers studied might include Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry James, Charles Chesnutt, Mark Twain, Pauline Hopkins, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and many others. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
This large-scale survey course offers students background in a wide range of genres, authors, and texts, focusing on "early American literature," which ranges from pre-Columbian indigenous narratives to nineteenth century novels, poems, and plays. The material studied ranges across multiple centuries and continents, and includes a wide variety of racial, ethnic, and gendered perspectives. Writers may include Christopher Columbus, Anne Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley, William Apess, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Harriet Jacobs, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement and ENGL 200.
An introduction to the study of early African American literary and cultural production, ranging from the earliest writings by African descended people in British North America in the eighteenth century to the end of World War I. At each turn, we will situate texts in their cultural and historical contexts, attending not only to the specificity of a particular text's moment, but also to the forces of contingency and tradition at play in the construction of literary, cultural, and political communities. Throughout our discussions we will think about both the "African-ness" and "American-ness" of African American literature as collective and imaginative processes. Early African Americans wrote for a variety of reasons—philosophical, political, pleasurable, instrumental—and protesting slavery and racism was just one (albeit an important one) among many of those reasons. We will read letters, poems, sermons, songs, constitutions and bylaws for religious and civic organizations, stories, and texts that defy easy categorization. Writers may include Phillis Wheatley, David Walker, Maria Stewart, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Frances E.W. Harper, William Wells Brown, W.E.B. Du Bois, Pauline Hopkins, Charles Chesnutt, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Alice Dunbar Nelson, and Ida B. Wells. Same as AFRO 259 and CWL 259. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
Historical and critical study of African American literature in its social and cultural context between 1915 and 1980. Same as AFRO 260 and CWL 260. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
Explores key issues in America cinema during the second half of the twentieth century, connecting central problems of film studies (e.g., authorship, genre, narratology, style, gender analysis, and the spectacle of violence) to moments of major transition in the American film industry (e.g., the Red Scare and the end of the Production Code in the 1950s; the emergence of the New Hollywood and the breakdown of the studio system in the 1960s; and the rise of the mega-blockbuster in the 1970s). Same as MACS 273. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
Examination of selected postcolonial literature, theory, and film as texts that "write back" to dominant European representations of power, identity, gender and the Other. Postcolonial writers, critics and filmmakers studied may include Franz Fanon, Edward Said, Aime Cesaire, Ousmane Sembene, Chinua Achebe, Michelle Cliff, Mahesweta Devi, Buchi Emecheta, Derek Walcott and Marlene Nourbese-Philip. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
Introduction to Asian American literary studies and culture through the reading of major works of literature selected from but not limited to the following American ethnic subgroups: Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Pakistani, and Vietnamese. Same as AAS 286. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
Study of selected topics. Approved for both letter and S/U grading. May be repeated to a maximum of 6 hours. Students may register in more than one section per term. Prerequisite: Consent of instructor.
Introduction to the critical frameworks and methods that have had the greatest impact on the field of literary studies. Students will read, discuss, and write about numerous theoretical approaches, which might include (but are not limited to) critical race studies, environmental theory, feminism, Marxism, postcolonialism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, queer theory, and structuralism. No previous background with theory is required. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement; one year of college literature or consent of instructor. Restricted to English majors.
Language variation and change from the earliest forms of English to the present day, with emphasis on the rise of Standard English and the social, geographic, and cultural aspects of linguistic change in English. Credit is not given for both ENGL 310 and ENGL 311.
Explores topics on representations of non-heteronormative sexuality in canonical and recovered historical texts and in contemporary literature, on literature by LGBT authors, and on theories of sexuality that pertain to systems of textual and cultural meaning. May be repeated in separate terms to a maximum of 6 hours, if topics vary.
Writing-intensive, variable-topic course designed to improve English majors' ability to produce clear, well-organized, analytically sound and persuasively argued essays relevant to English studies. Introduces students to research techniques through the examination of critical texts appropriate to the course topic. Credit is not given for ENGL 300 and ENGL 350. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement; one year of college literature or consent of instructor. For majors only.
Same as AAS 357, AIS 357, GWS 357, and LLS 357. See LLS 357.
Same as CWL 320, JS 320, REL 320, and YDSH 320. See CWL 320.
Extended investigation of major subjects and issues in cinema and other media; topics vary and typically include studies of author/directors, genres, historical movements, critical approaches, and themes. Same as MACS 373. May be repeated with permission of English advising office to a maximum of 6 hours if topics vary. Prerequisite: One college-level course in film studies or literature.
Advanced study of selected topics. Approved for both letter and S/U grading. May be repeated in the same or separate terms to a maximum of 6 hours. Prerequisite: Consent of instructor.
Study of selected topics. Restricted to English and English education majors with a 3.33 average who are working towards the degree with distinction in English or in English education. May be repeated to a maximum of 6 hours. Prerequisite: Enroll in undergraduate advising office.
An open-topic, discussion-oriented seminar aimed at majors who have shown high skill and intensive interest in the area of English studies. May be repeated up to 6 hours in the same term to a maximum of 12 hours. Prerequisite: A 3.33 grade point average or consent of the English Department's Director of Undergraduate Studies. Restricted to English majors.
An introduction to English linguistics with emphasis on the phonetic, syntactic, and semantic structures of English; language variation, standardization, and change; language legislation and linguistic rights; English as a world language; and the study of language in American schools. Same as BTW 402. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours.
Survey of the plays and poems of William Shakespeare. Reading assignments will reflect the generic diversity and historical breadth of Shakespeare's work. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.
Focused study of British and Anglophone fiction in the eighteenth century. Authors may include Defoe, Swift, Haywood, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Burney, Walpole, Radcliffe, and others. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.
Focused study of British literature between roughly 1785 and 1832. Authors may include Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, Austen and others. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.
This course considers how the unresolved problems of the past continue to haunt the literature of contemporary Britain, Ireland, and the postcolonial Anglophone world. These "returns of the repressed" range from personal traumas and difficult truths that have not been fully processed to groups of people who have suffered systematic inequality and violence. The texts we will read in ENGL 442 address the traumatic collapse of the post-war British empire, focusing not only on Britain's uneasy relationship to immigrants and postcolonial subjects but also on shifting gender roles, changing conceptions of sexual identity, and anxieties about literature's continued relevance in the context of new media. Readings may include works by Pat Barker, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith, Tom McCarthy, Angela Carter, and Jeanette Winterson. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.
American literature in the age of Modernism includes some of the most influential and provocative writing in the nation's history. American writers responded to a series of upheavals including changing gender and race relations, World War I, the "Roaring Twenties," and the Great Depression by pursuing both boundary-breaking themes and revolutionary experiments in form. Readings will include a generous selection from such writers as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Frost, Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Dorothy Parker, Anita Loos, William Faulkner, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Dashiell Hammett, D'Arcy McNickle, Carson McCullers, and many others. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.
Advanced seminar on any of a variety of topics in literature and culture, including those that bridge traditional historical periods, focus on themes or movements, and cross disciplinary boundaries. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. May be repeated with permission of English advising office to a maximum of 6 undergraduate hours if topics vary; Graduate students may repeat if topics vary. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.
Advanced seminar devoted to topics in British, American, and Anglophone fiction from approximately 1800 to the present day. Continental fiction in English translation may occasionally be considered. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. May be repeated with permission of English advising office to a maximum of 6 undergraduate hours if topics vary. May be repeated for graduate credit if topics vary. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.
Advanced topics seminar exploring the intersection of literary study and other scholarly disciplines. The disciplines students study vary each term, but past courses have examined connections between literature and psychology, forensic science, environmental studies, and the law. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. May be repeated with permission of English advising office to a maximum of 6 undergraduate hours if topics vary; Graduate students may repeat if topics vary. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.
From the developing field of "ecocriticism" to new historical examinations of canonical writers such as Thomson, Thoreau, or the "nature poets", to the new field of Science Studies, this advanced seminar examines a range of specialized topics related to literature and the environment. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. May be repeated in separate semesters for graduate credit if topics vary; for undergraduates to a maximum of 6 undergraduate hours if topics vary with permission of the English advising office. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.
Study of the history and theory of written composition. This course explores basic rhetorical principles, various theoretical perspectives in the field of composition/rhetoric, and helps students form practical approaches to the guidance of, response to, and structuring of student writing. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.
Examines the relationship of computer technology to the larger field of writing studies. Topics include a historical overview of computers and other writing technologies; current instructional practices and their relation to various writing theories; research on word processing, computer-mediated communication, and hypermedia; and the computer as a research tool. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: Junior standing and consent of instructor. Students must have a basic knowledge of word processing.
Same as AAS 495, FAA 495, GWS 425, and THEA 468. See FAA 495.