[IAI Code: F2908] Thoughtful viewing of diverse films, 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.
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.
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.
Introduction to graphic narratives---comic books, comic strips, graphic novels, manga, webcomics, and so on---from a diverse panoply of cultural, formal, and historical traditions.
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.
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.
An introduction to the literature, philosophy, fine arts, and social criticism of the Romantic era, with attention to broader cultural and historical issues. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
[IAI Code: H3912] 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.
[IAI Code: H3905] 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.
Studies poetry in English during the first half of the twentieth century, including Modernist experimentalism and its aftermath. Class time focuses on close readings of poems by major figures such as W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, H.D., Hart Crane, Claude McKay, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, W. H. Auden, and Langston Hughes. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
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.
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.
Critical study of selected American novels from the twentieth century. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
[IAI Code: H3914] 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.
[IAI Code: H3910D] 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.
Studies a variable selection of popular film genres produced and circulated in Asia (e.g., martial arts, horror, musicals, anime, melodramas, science fiction, monster movies, comedy) that have an impact across the region, with emphasis on East and Southeast Asia, and beyond. Takes a historical and transnational comparative approach to analyzing shifting narrative and visual and other cinematic realizations of each genre across different contexts, including Western reception and cross-cultural adaptations. Same as CWL 276 and EALC 276.
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.
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-level work in the field of Writing Studies. Building upon a traditional disciplinary understanding of writing as rhetoric, this course invites students to call upon sociological, anthropological, and/or ideological approaches to the study of writing in order to understand the myriad ways that writing makes meaning(s). See Class Schedule for topics. May be repeated in separate terms to a maximum of 6 hours. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
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.
This course will examine British and Irish modernism, one of the most dynamic, provocative, and experimental periods in literary history. The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed the rapid introduction of new technologies, the upheaval of global politics, the radical transformation of gender roles, and the traumatic fallout from two world wars. The period's literature and art processed these turbulent cultural experiences through extreme formal experimentation, and this course will consider many of the key works emerging from the modernist and avant-garde movements. Among the authors we'll study are Joseph Conrad, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Charlie Chaplin, and Samuel Beckett. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.
After the Civil War the United States entered a period of accelerating modernization and change. This course addresses how the nation's writers helped build modern America in response to a host of exciting and daunting developments in economics, science, and politics, including the enfranchisement of African Americans, Jim Crow segregation laws, growing income inequality, the rise of unions and anarchist movements, the invention of the automobile and the department store, new sciences such as including Darwinism and psychoanalysis, and American empire-building in places like Hawai'i and the Philippines. Writers studied might include Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Zitkala-Sa, Stephen Crane, William Dean Howells, and Edith Wharton. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.
Advanced topics seminar exploring literary expressions of minority experience in America. 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. Graduate students may repeat as topics vary. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.
This advanced literature and science seminar examines the role of narrative in the production, distribution, and uptake of scientific knowledge. Students will explore a range of contemporary and historical topics such as climate change, genetics, and artificial intelligence. Texts and other media will be drawn from literary fiction, scientific articles, journalism and popular culture. The course will focus on marginalized voices and the interdisciplinary methods of literature and science and science studies. 3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of the 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.
Same as AAS 496, FAA 496, GWS 496, and THEA 486. See FAA 496.