ENGL 1100.01, 1100.04, and 1100.09: Composition: Composition, Rhetoric, and Media

Stephanie Graves

1100.01: TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM

1100.04: TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

1100.09: TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM 

We live in a media-rich world; one might say we are inundated with media on all fronts. Marshall McLuhan famously stated that “the medium is the message”; as a theoretical approach, this idea underscores the simultaneous importance of both the content of a message and the context in which it is delivered. This course will help you develop your academic writing and research skills while engaging with the cultural functions and practices of media by considering the social, economic, and political significance of different mediums and developing an awareness of the rhetorical strengths and weaknesses inherent across multiple media. The class will emphasize the development of a critical analysis framework through which students will consider the broad implications of not only the media we encounter but also of themselves as consumers and producers of culture. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.05, 1100.06, and 1100.12: Composition: Research Writing and Rhetoric

Payam Rahmati

1100.05: MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

1100.06: MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM 

1100.07: MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM  

Composition: Research Writing and Rhetoric is an introduction to expository, analytical, and research-based academic writing. The course involves three major assignments, including (1) writing to reflect, (2) writing to analyze, and (3) writing to persuade. For writing to reflect, students are prompted to offer a critical analysis reflecting on their own literacy journey, research aspects of that literacy, and cite credible peer-reviewed sources about that literacy context. Writing to analyze involves reading, interpreting, and analyzing news articles for rhetorical features. Writing to persuade asks students to create an argument in which they address a question they are interested in and use close-reading skills they have developed while working on the rhetorical analysis essay. The course addresses the following five learning outcomes: (1) Rhetorical knowledge, the ability to analyze contexts and audiences to understand situations and communicate effectively; (2) Critical thinking, the ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information, situations, and texts; (3) Processes, the ability to use multiple composing processes, independently and in collaboration with others, to imagine, develop, and revise projects; (4) Conventions, knowledge of formal rules and informal guidelines that define genres and shape perceptions of correctness; and (5) Reflective learning, the ability to practice metacognition, or thinking about one’s own thinking and learning. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.07, 1100.08, and 1100.10: Composition: Writing, Research, and Storytelling

Mark Wisniewski

1100.07: MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM

1100.08: MWF 11:15 - 12:05 PM 

1100.10: MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM  

Humans are unique in that we understand the world through stories. When we stop to think about it, almost everything we do is a form of storytelling. Advertisements tell us stories about how our lives would be better with different products and services. Novels, movies, television, and videogames entertain us, but also affect the way we view the world around us. What, then, about research? Is academic work another form of storytelling? This course will start from the assumption that it is. Over the course of the semester, we will engage in writing projects that explore how advertising, entertainment media, and research are all forms of storytelling, each of which raises ethical questions about how we define ourselves and others. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1111.71, 1111.72, and 1111.73: First-Year Writing Seminar: Unruly Women; from Medea to The Crucible

Jordan Ivie

1111.71: TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

1111.72: TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

1111.73: TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM  

“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” So cries Lady Macbeth as she sleepwalks through Dunsinane castle, scrubbing phantom blood from her hands shortly before killing herself offstage. While the deranged and murderous Lady Macbeth is perhaps the most iconic troublesome woman of the stage, she is by no means an isolated case. This class will explore a range of plays containing women who similarly step outside of their accepted social roles, becoming insane, villainous, promiscuous, or all three. This course will examine texts from the classical period to the present, seeking out the women who murder, deceive, lose their minds, and sleep around. We will situate each play within its historical context, considering how these troublesome women are reflections or critiques of contemporary anxieties and debates, and explore how these stories have been adapted and translated for the modern age. Students will engage with these texts through writing assignments, workshops, performance activities, and discussion. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1111.81, 1111.82, and 1111.83: First-Year Writing Seminar: Now You See Me: The Mark of the Writer

Jared Harvey

1111.81: MWF 8:00 - 8:50 AM

1111.82: MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM 

1111.83: MWF 11:15 - 12:05 PM  

Does writing reveal me or conceal me? How much do I use language and how much does language use me? I might be a Gemini, but is my style giving Taurus? Can I tweet the whole truth and nothing but the truth in 280 characters? If Big Brother is watching me, is it reading me, too? Why did Martin Luther King have to resort to newspaper and toilet paper to write “Letters from a Birmingham Jail”? If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, was it censorship?

In this first year writing seminar we will explore the differing propensities for authorial visibilities between textual genres and media forms, from autobiography (“this is my story”) to translation (“this is someone else’s story”) to Instagram (“this is my Close Friend's story”). We’ll study the ways writers leave marks that, deliberately and/or unintentionally, reveal their identities and values; on the other hand, we’ll study the ways writers of marginalized identities seek to make their voices heard in societies that seek to silence them. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1210W.01 and 1210W.02: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques: Monsters in Fiction 

Justin Quarry 

1210W.01: TR 1:15- 2:30 PM 

1210W.02: TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

What, or who, is a monster? What makes such a being simultaneously horrifying and fascinating? What might monsters represent? In exploring these questions, we’ll analyze portrayals of so-called monsters in mostly contemporary novels, graphic novels, and short stories, and we’ll examine the elements of fiction used to illuminate these beings, and in turn the societal anxieties and desires among which they appear. More broadly, the aim of this course is to teach you to think critically about literature. Therefore, through three informal reading responses, three formal essays, in-class writing, and class discussions, you’ll hone close-reading skills as well as better develop analytic writing skills. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.03: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques: Living with Aliens 

Vera Kutzinski

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM  

Who, or what, is an Alien? What fears, anxieties, and desires do Aliens inspire and why? How might we live with so-called Aliens in an imaged future? To understand and appreciate the literary methods authors use to create such imaginary beings, we will analyze portrayals of Aliens both human, humanoid, and non-human in recent novels and short stories. Through class discussions, informal reading responses, and short formal essays, you will learn to think critically and write effectively about literature. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1220W.01: Drama: Forms and Techniques

Bridget Orr

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM 

What is drama for?  In tragedy, we collectively confront mortality and injustice; in watching comedy, we witness the questioning and celebration of social and sexual reproduction and change.  These ancient forms, invented in Europe by the Greeks, have morphed over time and been reshaped by other theatrical traditions but remain recognizable.  In this course we shall be reading Greek comedy and tragedy, Shakespearean plays, the classic Chinese play Snow in Midsummer, modern drama by Ibsen, Shaw and Beckett and plays by August Wilson, Wole Soyinka, David Henry Hwang and Caryl Churchill.  In addition to writing essays about the texts, you will have two creative assignments.  You will decide on their format but they might consist of performance, scene or wardrobe design, or script writing adaptation. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1220W.71, 1220W.72, and 1220W.73: Drama: Forms and Techniques: Unruly Women; from Medea to The Crucible

Jordan Ivie

1220W.02: TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

1220W.03: TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

1220W.04: TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM  

“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” So cries Lady Macbeth as she sleepwalks through Dunsinane castle, scrubbing phantom blood from her hands shortly before killing herself offstage. While the deranged and murderous Lady Macbeth is perhaps the most iconic troublesome woman of the stage, she is by no means an isolated case. This class will explore a range of plays containing women who similarly step outside of their accepted social roles, becoming insane, villainous, promiscuous, or all three. This course will examine texts from the classical period to the present, seeking out the women who murder, deceive, lose their minds, and sleep around. We will situate each play within its historical context, considering how these troublesome women are reflections or critiques of contemporary anxieties and debates, and explore how these stories have been adapted and translated for the modern age. Students will engage with these texts through writing assignments, workshops, performance activities, and discussion. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.01: Introduction to Poetry 

Lisa Dordal

TR 8:00 - 9:15 AM 

In our increasingly fast-paced lives, reading poetry can be a great way to slow down and pay meaningful attention to the world around us and to our inner landscapes. Although the main objectives of this course are to help you become close readers of poetry and to help you develop your critical writing skills, the poems that we read might very well deepen your understanding of your own life and who you understand yourself to be. The first part of this course will be organized around formal considerations (diction, tone, imagery, figures of speech, sound, etc.). In the second half of the course, we will read the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes, Marie Howe, Mark Doty, Natasha Trethewey, and Li-Young Lee. Requirements include two papers (plus revisions), short response papers and homework assignments, a written response to an in-person poetry reading, written responses to select poems from The Slowdown podcast, and participation in class discussions. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.02: Introduction to Poetry 

Judy Klass

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM 

In this course students will develop their skills at writing persuasive essays of literary analysis, as they gain more understanding of subtext and more appreciation for the techniques that poets use. We will read the work of great poets: some ancient, some from several centuries ago, some modern, and discuss eras, movements and evolving traditions in this long, ongoing conversation. We will look at poetry that is rhymed, at blank verse and free verse. We will look at how different poets approach certain topics and themes, look at some writers in depth, discuss genres and modes, consider sound, alliteration, symbolism, metaphor and other aspects of writing. The main focus of this writing course will be engaging with the works we read, in the essays you write and in class discussions, and discovering some wonderful writers. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.03: Introduction to Poetry: The Atmosphere of Romantic Poetry

Jeong Oh Kim

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM 

What is atmosphere? Is it air and weather? Or is it the in-between—effect, matter, immaterial, space, ephemera? By examining contemporary concepts of atmosphere in the context of Green-Eco-Environmental-and Geo-Romanticism, we will investigate the landscapes of poetic imagination that inform the Romantic conditions of atmosphere. We are both part of atmosphere and part of different atmospheres— climatic, spatial, psychical, emotional, and material. We will articulate the ways in which we can speak of the “Atmosphere of British Romantic poetry” when we consider the 3 Ms—Message (agents), Method (sources), and Medium (conditions) of atmosphere. We will explore this topic by considering poetic works across a swath of long- Romanticism from Anne Finch to the late Wordsworth. This course is a combination of survey and special topics from which to consider a poem: form, theme, cultural context, an individual poet, although, of course, any full reading of a poem will involve all these perspectives. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.04: Introduction to Poetry

Roger Moore

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

This course will give you the skills to read poetry thoughtfully and well. We will read a variety of English and American poems organized by major themes—love, loss, and nature, among others—and will look closely at a couple of poetic forms, such as the sonnet or the dramatic monologue. We will examine at least one poet in depth. Because this is a writing-intensive course, you will write and revise several papers, and we will devote class time to discussion of writing strategies. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.01 and 1260W.03: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Radiant Intertextuality - with a Special Topic of the Ethics of (Neuro)Science 

Jeong Oh Kim 

1260W.01: TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM 

1260W.03: TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

“Radiant Intertextuality” is based on the premise that in a complex world, problems must be approached from many different angles. The current focus on cross-inter-trans-disciplinarity reflects this premise. Yet all too often, interdisciplinarity is treated more as a rhetorical slogan than as an actual practice. Its transformative challenge is reduced to an additive list without clear motivation: philosophy plus literature, anthropology plus history . . . a principle of X Plus Y. We will take the challenge of interdisciplinarity seriously to ask how it changes the way we do things: the questions we ask, the materials we work with and what we do with those materials, the forms in which we present our findings. My course is open to students interested in scholarly practices that cut across established fields of inquiry. Organized in thematic sections, this course investigates the ways in which disciplines respond to and modify each other—how they become mutually weaving “Radiant Intertextuality.” This course is also updated about cognitive studies, helping students engage in a critical reading of (neuro)science ethics for the end of the semester event, NeuroCulture Symposium. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.02, 1260W.04, and 1260W.10: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: The Art of Style 

Gabriel Briggs 

1260W.02: TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM 

1260W.04: TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

1260W.10: TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM

Ernest Hemingway's influence on American Literature is profound and enduring. From his Nick Adams stories to his cross-continental reporting and award-winning novels, he transformed the way readers see, hear, and understand prose fiction. Despite his legacy, Hemingway remains an enigma. Often overlooked in contemporary classrooms and commonly misunderstood by a mythology that lingers about his public persona, Hemingway's writing comments on critical periods in our nation's past and captures critical insights on American expatriate existence. We will interrogate literary moments of war, romance and alienation and the vivid style that left an indelible imprint on the face of American Literature to constantly explore and examine. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.05: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Ecological Memory 

Anna Hill

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

How do environments remember? How do more-than-human ecologies shape our memories as individuals and as participants in collective histories? And how might literature help us express, critique, and preserve place-based memories in times of rapid socioenvironmental change? In this course, we will think critically about ecologies as dynamic sites of memory, where ideas about history, home, and belonging are continually made and remade. Reading twentieth- and twenty-first-century Anglophone literature alongside scholarship by cultural theorists, critical geographers, environmental historians, activists, and artists, we will explore how place-based memories can productively complicate dominant historical narratives, and we will consider works that illuminate how ongoing legacies of empire, settler colonialism, and extractive capitalism continue to shape ecologies today. Engaging with a range of materials – novels, poetry, essays, film, visual art, and digital mapping projects – we will investigate how writers and artists mobilize ecological memory as a generative tool with which to navigate the present and imagine more just paths forward. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.06: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Curses, Fortunes, and Destinies

Helen Makhdoumian

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

Written in the stars. What is written on one’s forehead. Kismet. For authors we read in this class, those all become more than just cultural expressions about fate. This course looks at how authors of Anglophone world literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries reappropriate the notion of a curse, or destiny, or fortune to address imperialism, colonialism, and independence, as well as their aftermaths. In creatively remediating histories which took place in the Middle East (SWANA) and Africa, authors whose works we will look at address themes such as subjugation and agency, displacement and homemaking, and rupture and healing. Art, film, or television may also be included. Students will complete critical, reflective, and discussion-based assignments designed to improve their skills in writing, research, and literary analysis. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.07 and 1260W.11: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: The Graphic Novel 

Rachel Teukolsky 

MWF 3:35 - 4:25 PM 

Graphic novels combine words and images to tell stories in innovative ways. This course will study some of the most influential graphic novels to learn how sequential storytelling works. We’ll draw on the disciplines of both literary and visual studies, with a significant theory component. Why has the graphic novel emerged as a pre-eminent medium for the early twenty-first century? And why has it been an especially powerful platform for voices from marginalized communities? Texts may include: Art Speigelman, Maus I & II; Lynda Barry, One Hundred Demons; Shaun Tan, The Arrival; Marjorie Satrapis, Persepolis; Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics; and Richard McGuire, Here; among others. The class will emphasize analytical writing, with units on aspects of the college essay. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.08: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Climate Fiction at the End of the World

Kristin Rose

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

In our current epoch of anthropogenic climate change (often termed the “Anthropocene” for humanity’s dominant impact on the environment and climate), apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic climate fiction has become increasingly popular. Some critics have disparaged such “cli-fi” as “doomer lit”: melancholic and resigned if not nihilistic. Others have more critically engaged with this new wave of literature to reflect upon the conditions and possible solutions to our planetary crisis. Tracing apocalyptic imaginations across contemporary climate fiction, this course asks: How does apocalyptic fiction help us understand our present climate crisis…and how we got here? Moreso, what can we learn about humanity, civilization, colonialism, capitalism, and environmental inequality through the creation of apocalyptic “wastelands” in fact and fiction? How does the very notion of “apocalypse” affect different communities differently across time and space? We will analyze the art and politics of apocalyptic imaginations in the Anthropocene through the works of Jeanette Winterson, Lydia Millet, N.K. Jemison, Omar El Akkad, Cherie Dimaline, and more. Our readings will engage with literary theory, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, climate studies, indigenous studies, and climate justice. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.09: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: The Politics of Self Care

Jennifer Gutman 

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM 

Bed-rotting. Quiet-quitting. The Everything Shower. Self-care trends are sweeping our news feeds. But can the discourse of self-care be misleading? This class explores a genealogy for the rise in public discourse around self-care amid unprecedented national stress levels and planetary crisis. Over the course of the semester, we will situate contemporary mobilizations of self-care within longer traditions of self-reliance and cultivation in American society. Through examining literature and media by Black feminist thinkers, we will also consider how self-care has been re-claimed as a mode of resistance to structural racism and institutional violence. This course will end with an examination of the more recent phenomenon of eco-grief, which refers to the mental health effects of accelerated planetary crisis. Students will develop a final project that re-imagines the work of self-care as a practice of noticing and caring for the world around us. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.12: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Prison Writing

Ajay Batra

MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM 

Nearly two million people currently reside in prisons, jails, and immigrant detention centers across the United States. In this course, we will examine the different forms and genres of writing created in these spaces of confinement, both in our present and across American literary history. Reading essays, letters, poems, memoirs, manifestos, and more, we will discuss how incarcerated people have turned to the written word in order to meditate on their experiences of captivity, remain close to loved ones on the outside, build community with fellow detainees, and articulate strong, incisive critiques of systemic injustice. Additionally, we will consider how the highly restrictive, oppressive conditions of prisons and other carceral institutions have tended to shape the practices of literary expression developed by imprisoned writers across time and space. Throughout the term, students in this course will complete critical, creative, and collaborative assignments designed to improve their skills in writing, research, and literary analysis, as well as their fluency in discussing issues of race, class, gender, and inequality. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 1260W.13: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Contemporary Art and Science Communication

Clara Wilch

TR 1:15PM - 2:30 PM 

Art and science are often thought of as separate domains of knowledge, but these approaches to understanding the world overlap and influence one another in important ways. This course will consider how visual art, film, theater, literature, music, and social media have helped to shape our understandings of the natural sciences and vice versa. We will survey examples from the mid-1900s until today (e.g. climate plays, popular sci-fi films, bio-art, and the visual and creative dimensions of scientific research and communication.) We'll experiment with different methods of producing and representing knowledge about the natural world.  No prior advanced knowledge of art or science is required. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 2320.01: Southern Literature: African American Literature

Anthony Reed

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM 

The Great Migration, which saw thousands of African Americans relocate from rural to urban spaces and from the South to the West and North, was among the most consequential transformations to US life and society in the twentieth century. For those who stayed, remained, or returned, the South lingers in daily life like an unclaimed or unwanted inheritance. In this course, we will read works by Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Natasha Trethewey, Kiese Laymon and others to consider the ways African Americans have figured the South as at once ancestral and modern, regional and paradigmatic of the nation, while grappling with the intertwined racial and sexual legacies of chattel slavery and Emancipation. [3] (Diverse Perspective, HCA)

ENGL 3314.01: Chaucer

Shoshana Adler

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM 

We have in this course a straightforward task: to read as much of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as will reasonably fit into a semester. The tales, with their wild diversity of genres, glittering array of personalities, and streaks of comedy, obscenity, cruelty, and irony, are part of the very bones of English poetry. And Chaucer, so often called the “father of English literature,” leaves us as vexed, rich, and ambivalent a legacy as any other father might. The tales will take us on a pilgrimage, to the courts of King Arthur and Ghengis Khan, to the ancient Mediterranean, to a squabble between barnyard animals, and through problems of monogamy, misogyny, class war, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and literary character. We will learn to read in Middle English, and to respond to the Canterbury Tales as both scholars and artists. [3] (Pre-1800, HCA) 

ENGL 3337.01: Shakespeare: Tragedies and Romances

Kathryn Schwartz

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM 

On the one hand, Shakespeare’s works have often been used as reference points for social hierarchies, categories, and norms. On the other hand, these same works provide rich resources for challenging orthodox systems and structures. This course will engage the plays’ complex, often contentious representations of social experience: constructions of identity in relation to gender, sexuality, and erotic attachment; representations of cultural authority and cultural conflict; crises produced through mistake, transformation, and disguise; and tensions surrounding ethnicity, religion, and race. Throughout the semester, we’ll take various angles on what might broadly be termed politics: the politics of nationalism, gender, history, violence, identity, and community. Discussions will consider both early histories of production and more recent readings, stagings, and adaptations for new media. Course requirements include a group presentation, analytic essays, research assignments, and regular participation. [3] (Pre-1800, HCA) 

ENGL 3343.01: Race and Early Modernity (Honors Seminar)

Shoshana Adler

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM 

Monsters that live on the margins of maps; libels about Jewish neighbors; King Arthur’s questing knights; fantastical tales of unknown islands; Shakespearean stage productions; cannibals, crusaders, and Muslim princesses: the foundational elements of much of English literature are inseparable from the history of race. This course examines some of the earliest incarnations of race-making in medieval and early modern English literature, in all their vast strangeness and discomfiting familiarity. What about our contemporary assumptions about race might shift when we consider its earliest discourses? How might the racial ideologies of the past help us to imagine our present differently? We will also read theorists of comparative racial critique. No prior knowledge or expertise in early English literature required. [3] (Pre-1800 or Diverse Perspectives, HCA, cumulative 3.4 G.P.A. is required) 

ENGL 3361.01: Restoration and the Late Eighteenth Century: The Irrational in the Age of Reason

Scott Juengel

MWF 11:15 - 12:05 PM 

The 18th century is often called the ‘Age of Reason’ due to a reputation for advancing the virtues of progress, tolerance, order, and rational decision-making.  So why is so much of the literature of the period between 1660-1820 lurid and sensationalistic, murderous and irrational?  If this is a secular age striving to create a habitable future, how do we explain the popularity of the gothic, with its obsession with a shadowy and unreconciled past?  Why are early novels so often tales of criminality and scandal, prostitution and beggary?  What happens when rationality turns instrumental, bloodless, inhuman; or when reason can no longer reign in impulsivity?  This is a course focused on the other side of the Enlightenment: it is still designed as a survey of Restoration and eighteenth-century British literature—i.e. we’ll read a range of literary genres; acquire a working knowledge of the period, etc.—but it will cut a scandalous path through that history.  We will be exploring the ways in which Enlightenment over-confidence revealed its blind-spots, and the moral imagination discovered its limits.  Think of it as a history of shock (and thus also, a history of standards of taste and probability; of shock’s opposite, rational self-composure). [3] (Pre-1800, HCA) 

ENGL 3364.01: Eighteenth-Century English Novel

Roger Moore

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM 

From libidinous lords and saucy servant girls to tearful travelers and manipulative monks, the eighteenth-century novel has a little something for everyone.  In this course, we will read a selection of the greatest novels of the century, paying special attention to the economic, political, social, and religious issues that animate them.  What does it mean for a servant girl to marry her employer?  Why do tears play such a role in novels written in the second half of the century?  Why do ruined or haunted abbeys appear so frequently in these stories?  How do these novels explore the opportunities and challenges faced by women?  We will address these questions and many more.  Texts include:  Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, Henry Fielding’s Shamela, Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, Matthew Lewis’ The Monk, and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. [3] (Pre-1800, HCA) 

ENGL 3610.01: The Romantic Period: Reading Jane Austen

Bridget Orr

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM 

In this course we shall read all of Jane Austen’s six novels, along with some juvenilia and Sanditon.  The focus will be on close engagement with her texts, exploring her representation of women’s circumstances, family relationships and the constraints and challenges informing both male and female conduct in courtship and marriage.  However, while Austen famously said she limited herself to writing on “a little bit (two inches wide) of ivory’”, scholars have shown that her novels did engage in what Marilyn Butler famously called the late eighteenth-century ‘war of ideas’.  So we shall read some landmark Austen criticism, on topics ranging from class conflict, feminism and the slave trade, beginning with D. W. Harding’s celebrated essay on ‘Regulated Hatred’ in her novels. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3618.01: The Nineteenth-Century English Novel: Science and Science Fiction (Honors Seminar)

Mezzanine with ENGL 8410.01

Jay Clayton

M 12:20 - 3:20 PM 

Twice during the nineteenth century, scientific discoveries galvanized creative changes in the novel, giving rise to the genre we call science fiction. Everyone knows about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), often regarded as the first true SF novel. But were you aware of how voyages of discovery by Darwin and others sparked revolutionary speculative fictions like Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838)? At the other end of the century, a plethora of utopian tales, science fiction novels, horror stories, and imperial romances thrilled readers with their controversial speculations. These fictional works were often more influential than the scientific discoveries that they referenced, fueling some of the most disturbing social movements of the fin de siècle: so-called “racial science,” eugenics, and imperialism.

The first part of the course will juxtapose two novels published in the same year, Frankenstein and Jane Austen’s Persuasion, to highlight the major differences between SF and realist fiction. After reading Darwin and Poe, we will fast-forward to the second half of the century to sample science fiction and horror stories such as Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey (1890), H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897); and an imperial romance, H. Ryder Haggard’s She (1887), as well as Pauline Hopkins’s African American inversion of colonial romance, Of One Blood (1903). We will conclude with Octavia Butler’s harrowing Neo-Victorian novel, Kindred (1979), and Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad (2016). [3] (HCA, cumulative 3.4 G.P.A. is required) 

ENGL 3620W.01: Nineteenth-Century American Literature: Labor in American Literature

Ajay Batra

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM 

Why are Americans obsessed with work? How did our productivity become a measure of our worth as human beings? Is there anything we can do to change this state of affairs? In search of answers to these questions, this seminar will examine the emergence of labor as a central, defining theme in U.S. literature and culture during the nineteenth century. Reading poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction (such as autobiographies and manifestos), we will assess the formal and aesthetic strategies that early American writers used to portray and to comprehend the effects of capitalist expansion, racism, and sexism on the diverse constituents of a burgeoning working class: sailors, servants, enslaved laborers, sex workers, factory girls, hustlers, and more. In the process, we will consider how social norms and power relations that first arose during this formative period in U.S. history continue to influence our lives as overworked participants in the modern economy. Throughout the semester, students in this course will complete critical, creative, and collaborative assignments designed to improve their skills in writing, research, and literary analysis, as well as their fluency in discussing issues of race, class, gender, and inequality. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3630W.01: Modern British Novel: The Novel and the Nation from Imperial Britain to Brexit

Scott Juengel

MWF 3:35 - 4:25 PM 

This is a course about Britain and the end of its empire, a story of retrenchment and shrinking influence: which is to say, this is a course about national psychopathology.  In a century in which the island nation was forced to give up its imperial reign, endured two catastrophic World Wars, expanded its welfare state, experienced waves of social unrest, and eventually withdraw from the E.U., the novel form functioned as a sensitive instrument registering Britain’s shifting identity.  Tracing a path from roughly 1916 to 2016, this course will begin in High Modernism experimentation and will end in our contemporary moment, as the novel form tries to find its purpose in an era of media acceleration and diffusion.  Among the authors under consideration for the syllabus: Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, George Orwell, Graham Greene, Elizabeth Bowen, Muriel Spark, J.G. Ballard, Kazuo Ishiguro, Andrea Levy, Ali and Zadie Smith, and Rachel Cusk, among others. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3644W.01: Twentieth-Century American Novel

ZZ Packer

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

The Atlantic magazine recently published an article titled, simply, "Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books." The article maintained that many college students--even those at elite colleges and universities such as Vanderbilt--found it difficult to read an entire book. In this class you will be reading not one, but several entire novels--roughly a novel every two weeks. A few of the books: Beloved, Blood Meridian, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Sound and the Fury, Go Tell it On the Mountain, Housekeeping, and A House Made of Dawn. These are some of the most-widely read and critically-acclaimed American novels of the twentieth century, and we'll be reading them, analyzing them, journaling about them, and discussing them in this writing-intensive literature class. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3645W.01: Twentieth-Century American Novel: Major Native American Writers - Louise Erdrich, James Welch

Dana Nelson

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM 

This course will consider Native American literature since the 1960s, focusing on the conditions of its emergence in the literary marketplace, as well as its growing scholarly pursuit in academia, concentrating our study on the developing careers of two key (and storied) writers, Louise Erdrich and James Welch.  For each, we will read novels that span their careers, studying their developing aesthetic/artistic techniques and project, and how their work responds to socio-political and economic imperatives in the marketing of Native American fiction, the institutionalization of Native American studies, and ongoing debates about Native sovereignty and life in the United States. This class will study Erdrich’s and Welch’s novels as literature, and we will develop our understanding of these two writers as artists, without ignoring but also without substituting questions of culture and politics for questions of artistic achievement, of craft.  Along these same lines, this course is designed to help you develop your understanding of close reading, and the craft and art of the novel.  To that end, you will actively, daily participate in discussions and activities that help you develop in these skills and understandings. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, HCA) 

ENGL 3654W.01: African American Literature: James Baldwin, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde - The Art of Confession

Emily Lordi

MWF 11:15 - 12:05 PM 

In this course, we will examine the work of three major 20th century African American writers who are linked through their artful and political approaches to the act of confession: James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Lucille Clifton. Reading a broad selection of these writers’ fiction (in Baldwin’s case), as well as their poetry, essays, and memoirs, we will see how these writers express personal, familial, and broader group secrets in the service of personal healing as well as social justice. How, when, and with whom should silences be broken? Which secrets might be better kept? These issues, which were at the heart of mid-century Black writing, are no less urgent for writers and readers today. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, US) 

ENGL 3662.01: Asian American Literature

Huan He 

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

What is “Asian American” about Asian American literature and culture? Is it the identity of an author, the representation of a character, a familiar narrative trope, a political orientation, an aesthetic or style, or perhaps something else entirely unseen? This question will guide us through the limitations and possibilities of cohering a set of works through racial identity and identification. The punchline is that there is no neat answer to this question, and we’ll see that Asian American writers (as well as artists and filmmakers) draw from a rich aesthetic repertoire, one that reflects recognizable forms and traditions but also pushes the boundaries of these established ways of writing about the world and its pressing issues. So, along the way, we’ll look at how these writers and artists have creatively and urgently responded to larger questions about identity, migration, war, capitalism, colonialism, and solidarity. In our discussion seminar, we may read works by Maxine Hong Kingston, Theresa H.K. Cha, Ocean Vuong, David Henry Hwang, Shani Mootoo, Charles Yu, and others, plus theoretical essays scattered throughout. In addition to a midterm essay and regular discussion posts, students will have the opportunity to propose a critical or creative research project as a final assignment. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, P) 

ENGL 3728.01: Science Fiction: Speculative Fictions from the African Diaspora

Vera Kutzinski

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM 

Marginalized in academic literary scholarship, science fiction—now better known as speculative fiction or simply SF—can be characterized as a literary laboratory for examining closely theories and practices of cultural difference. In this laboratory, differences between humans and non-humans, as well as among non-humans, become meditations on the ways in which certain cultural differences in our societies—race, gender, and sexuality foremost among them—have resulted, and continue to result, in socio-economic hierarchies, physical violence, and political strife. In this seminar, we focus on speculative fiction by African American writers from the USA, the Caribbean, and Canada to explore how the otherworldly scenarios they construct in their novels and short fiction take on issues of violence, oppression, and exploitation—topics that have acquired new urgency in the twenty-first century. Writers include Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Jewelle Gomez, Nalo Hopkinson, Nnedi Okorafor, and N.K. Jemisin. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, HCA) 

ENGL 3740.01: Critical Theory: Reading Marx

Ajay Batra

MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM 

Today, it is no secret that capitalism is an economic system which generates profit for some, and misery for others. It breeds innovation, promotes productivity, and creates opportunity; but, at the same time, it can leave us feeling underpaid, overworked, and deeply uncertain about our futures. Why does capitalism work this way? And what, if anything, can we do about it? In this seminar, we will search for answers to these questions by reading the work of capitalism's toughest, but fairest critic: Karl Marx. First, to become acquainted with Marx's signature method of critical analysis and his unique voice as a writer, we will read some of his early critical essays on the topics of freedom, democracy, and religion. Then, we will read excerpts from his extensive writings on capitalism and its problems, focusing, specifically, on his theories of value, inequality, and exploitation. Finally, we will read selected works of social and cultural criticism belonging to the vast intellectual tradition that Marx's writings spawned: Marxism. These more recent readings will shed light on the connections between capitalism, colonialism, racism, and sexism, as well anti-capitalist politics. Throughout the semester, we will read critical theory alongside diverse works of literature and film that illustrate the enduring significance of Marx's ideas across time and space and into our present. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3742.01: Feminist Theory

Candice Amich

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM 

An introduction to feminist theory, this course is designed to provide you with the basic skills necessary to use gender as a tool of cultural analysis. We will read theory from and about twentieth-century “second-wave” feminism, as well as explore more recent queer and transgender engagements with feminism. Our global reader will remind us that feminism is a transnational phenomenon with multiple histories and definitions. We will consider the representation of feminism in popular culture and the role of feminist politics in diverse social movements. Research projects derived from students’ individual interests will be an important part of understanding the theory. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, HCA) 

ENGL 3890.01: Movements in Literature: Early Modern Women's Writing

Jessie Hock

MW 2:30 - 3:45 PM 

Women played a crucial role in the flourishing textual culture of early modern England as writers, readers, printers, editors, and patrons. This course introduces students to a wide range of writing by early modern Englishwomen (and some of their continental peers), including poetry, letters, drama, translation, diaries, prose nonfiction, biography, and more. Situating this diverse body of writing within its cultural and theoretical contexts, students will learn about early modern literature, history, and culture, and will also read some of the most influential criticism of the past several decades on early modern women and women’s writing. Particular attention will be paid to feminist criticism. Key topics of discussion will include literacy, domesticity, constructions of the self, sexuality, politics, religious and racial difference, print vs. manuscript culture, and scientific culture. Readings will include work by authors such as Elizabeth I, Wroth, Sidney, Lanyer, Behn, Hutchinson, Cavendish, and many more. Requirements include active class participation, short writing responses and other homework, and two major assignments. [3] (Pre-1800 or Diverse Perspectives, HCA) 

ENGL 3894.02: Major Figures in Literature: Whitney Houston and Her World

Emily Lordi

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM 

A study of the cultural root system that helped to create and was generated by one of the greatest performers in American history. We’ll begin in Newark, NJ in the 1960s, examining Whitney’s key musical, political, and religious influences—those phenomena that made a Black Jersey girl with a big voice believe she could be a star. Moving into the 1980s, we’ll track her emergence and unprecedented pop crossover success, then follow her star turns in 1990s films such as The Bodyguard and Waiting to Exhale, as well as her advocacy for and collaborations with Black artists across the entertainment industry. This is an experiment in bringing an icon to life, as well as a cultural history of American music and media from the sixties to the present focalized through one Black woman visionary and vocal genius. We will read essays about Houston, as well as memoirs by her family and friends; watch documentaries about her and films she produced and starred in; and listen to lots of music. Assignments include two short papers, a final essay, and a presentation. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, HCA) 

ENGL 4999.01: Honors Thesis

Teresa Goddu

W 2:45 - 5:15 PM 

For students who have successfully been admitted to the honors program and completed the Honors Colloquium course. In this course, students develop their individual honors thesis, working with advisors, the Writing Studio, and their cohort. The thesis experience concludes with an oral examination on the thesis topic. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1102.01: Creative Writing Tutorial: Poetry    

Instructor TBD

TBD  

This poetry tutorial is designed to assist students in the development of independent writing projects. This is a self-directed course, meaning students are expected to bring personal work to be reviewed and discussed with the instructor on a weekly basis. Each session is an opportunity for revision, guidance for new material, and receiving any form of feedback or recommendation that may contribute to the student’s intent. Students of any skill level or discipline are encouraged to apply. [1] (No AXLE credit) 

ENGL 1280.01: Beginning Fiction Workshop 

Amirah Iman Saleem

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM

This workshop is for reading, writing and talking — in that order. We will read a combination of novel extracts and short stories, write our own, and discuss and critique both of the aforementioned. Some questions we will try to answer: What does writing have to be, besides just ‘good’? Why? How does certain writing make you feel and think the way it does? What do we ask of the fiction that we read and write? And how does it answer? [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.02: Beginning Fiction Workshop 

Michael Carlson

TR 8:00 - 9:15 AM

In this course, we will read, write, and study short story fiction together, as a community. This course will foster a safe and encouraging environment for students from all backgrounds to be vulnerable and flourish in their artistry. Students will read both classic and contemporary short stories, learn fiction writing fundamentals such as plot, style, and characterization, and engage in writing exercises and group discussions. The heart of this course is the workshop. Students will receive generous support and feedback from their peers to help them continue writing fiction they can be proud of. By course completion, students will have submitted two short stories, including one revision as their final portfolio. A central hope of this course is to inspire students to believe their thoughts and experiences are full of significance and worth exploring through the composition of fiction. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.03: Beginning Fiction Workshop 

Lela Ni

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM

In this workshop, students will be introduced to the elements of fiction writing and begin to develop their own writing practices. We will begin the course by reading published short stories and by exploring craft elements such as plot, point of view, setting, and characterization. We will develop a definition of each term and complete weekly writing exercises related to each element. Over the course of the semester, students will write two (2) short stories and participate in workshops in which we discuss student work through constructive feedback. Students will have the option of writing a third short story or revising a previously written story for their final. Students are also expected to participate in Vanderbilt’s literary community by attending a reading of a visiting writer. Be prepared to share work often. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.04: Beginning Fiction Workshop 

Justin Quarry

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM

This workshop is designed for students to produce their first original literary short stories and to receive thoughtful, constructive feedback on these from their fellow writers.  We’ll read published contemporary stories, in conjunction with craft essays, to analyze and explore the basic elements of fiction writing, so students can begin to understand how to wield storytelling techniques in their own writing.  The primary texts for the class, however, will be approximately 24 original stories written by workshop members.  The final will consist of significant revisions of both stories a student writes. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.01: Beginning Poetry Workshop 

Carson Colenbaugh

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

The forms that poems inhabit today are more dynamic and diverse than ever before, and they are constantly evolving. In this introductory workshop, we will explore elements of inherited and emerging forms to both better understand poetic lineages and expand the range of student work. We will learn rules and break them, rediscover the past and write beyond it, and build an appreciation for the various species thriving in our contemporary poetic biosphere. Students will cultivate a supportive literary community in and outside of the classroom and will respond to weekly themes with original poems, which will be shared in a constructive, discussion-based workshop. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3220.01: Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: The Art and Craft of Opinion Writing

Amanda Little

W 4:00 - 7:00 PM

This advanced nonfiction writing workshop explores the landscape of contemporary opinion and op-ed writing. We'll read and critique newspaper op-ed pages, contemporary manifestoes, blogs and social media. Students will craft opinion pieces on topics ranging from celebrity culture to social justice and climate change. Taught by an investigative writer and a columnist for Bloomberg covering the environment, culture, and politics, students will explore the lines that divide reporting and subjective writing, and examine the tactics and techniques at the core of persuasive writing. Students will discuss current events, write their own op-eds throughout the semester, and connect via Zoom with top editors and writers in American news media. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3220.02: Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Writing Literary Essays

ZZ Packer

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM

Would you like to write for The New York Times Magazine? The Atlantic? The New Yorker? Every staff writer or contributor to these publications learns their craft by constant and consistent immersion in the world of ideas made manifest in prose. In this Advanced Nonfiction Writing course we will read and write nonfiction as well as creative nonfiction, concentrating on the craft and aesthetics of essays. 

We’ll examine the sub-genres of memoir, literary journalism, personal essays, lyric essays, zuihitsu, literary criticism and social commentary to develop our sense of how each form works. Students will submit exercises in each form, eventually revising works to be included in a portfolio that will serve as the final project of the semester. Intermediate Nonfiction is a prerequisite, otherwise, permission from the instructor is required. [3] (HCA)

Students who wish to enroll in this course must join the waitlist on YES and fill out this application by November 15th. 

ENGL 3230.01: Intermediate Fiction Workshop 

Lorrie Moore

W 3:35 - 6:35 PM

A hands-on seminar for people with some previous experience writing short stories.  We will read and discuss the work of your classmates as well as the work of published writers.  What is a short story?  What should it contain?  How is it made?  We will try to come up with a few answers and much writing. [3] (HCA)

In order to enroll in this course, it is required that you either a) have already taken the Beginning Fiction Workshop class, or b) have permission from the instructor. You can contact Professor Moore here.  

ENGL 3230.02: Intermediate Fiction Workshop 

Sheba Karim

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM

Great writing requires dedication, imagination and…revision! In this course, you’ll learn what it means to rework, reimagine, and revise a short story. During the course of the semester, you will hone your writing and revision skills. You will also read published stories and essays on craft, read and critique original narratives by peers, and complete writing exercises. This class is for fiction writers looking to further develop, explore and refine their craft and narrative techniques. The heart of this course is the workshop, the development and discussion of your own creative work. The final for the course will consist of a final revision of a short story. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3230] (HCA)

In order to enroll in this course, it is required that you either a) have already taken the Beginning Fiction Workshop class, or b) have permission from the instructor. You can contact Professor Karim here. 

ENGL 3240.01: Advanced Fiction Workshop

Lorrie Moore

M 3:35 - 6:35 PM

A seminar for those with previous workshop experience.  You will be expected to write stories, not just exercises, and we will also read the work of other practitioners in the genre, emphasizing short stories from this century. [3] (HCA)

Students who wish to enroll in this course must join the waitlist on YES and fill out this application by November 15th. 

ENGL 3260.01: Advanced Poetry Workshop

Didi Jackson

R 2:45 - 5:45 PM

In this advanced poetry workshop, it is my hope that you will deepen your already robust relationship to poetry. I will encourage you to think about how and where you find inspiration for your creativity and what it truly means to dedicate yourself to the art and craft of poetry now that you are in an advanced writing workshop. I will also ask you to engage in the critical necessity of ample radical revision. You will complete 8 – 10 new poems and workshop many of them in class. By reading both contemporary and historically important poems, as well as work from the poets featured this semester in Vanderbilt’s Visiting Writer’s Series, you will be even more prepared to discuss what makes a poem “good” and to offer suggestions to how to make a “good” poem even better. We will not ignore craft elements, reminding ourselves of the balance between emotional content and poetic technique. [3] (HCA)

Students who wish to enroll in this course must join the waitlist on YES and fill out this application by November 15th. 

ENGL 3343.01: Race and Early Modernity (Honors Seminar)

Shoshana Adler

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM 

Monsters that live on the margins of maps; libels about Jewish neighbors; King Arthur’s questing knights; fantastical tales of unknown islands; Shakespearean stage productions; cannibals, crusaders, and Muslim princesses: the foundational elements of much of English literature are inseparable from the history of race. This course examines some of the earliest incarnations of race-making in medieval and early modern English literature, in all their vast strangeness and discomfiting familiarity. What about our contemporary assumptions about race might shift when we consider its earliest discourses? How might the racial ideologies of the past help us to imagine our present differently? We will also read theorists of comparative racial critique. No prior knowledge or expertise in early English literature required. [3] (Pre-1800 or Diverse Perspectives, HCA, cumulative 3.4 G.P.A. is required) 

ENGL 3618.01: The Nineteenth-Century English Novel: Science and Science Fiction (Honors Seminar)

Mezzanine with ENGL 8410.01

Jay Clayton

M 12:20 - 3:20 PM 

Twice during the nineteenth century, scientific discoveries galvanized creative changes in the novel, giving rise to the genre we call science fiction. Everyone knows about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), often regarded as the first true SF novel. But were you aware of how voyages of discovery by Darwin and others sparked revolutionary speculative fictions like Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838)? At the other end of the century, a plethora of utopian tales, science fiction novels, horror stories, and imperial romances thrilled readers with their controversial speculations. These fictional works were often more influential than the scientific discoveries that they referenced, fueling some of the most disturbing social movements of the fin de siècle: so-called “racial science,” eugenics, and imperialism.

The first part of the course will juxtapose two novels published in the same year, Frankenstein and Jane Austen’s Persuasion, to highlight the major differences between SF and realist fiction. After reading Darwin and Poe, we will fast-forward to the second half of the century to sample science fiction and horror stories such as Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey (1890), H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897); and an imperial romance, H. Ryder Haggard’s She (1887), as well as Pauline Hopkins’s African American inversion of colonial romance, Of One Blood (1903). We will conclude with Octavia Butler’s harrowing Neo-Victorian novel, Kindred (1979), and Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad (2016). [3] (HCA, cumulative 3.4 G.P.A. is required) 

ENGL 4999.01: Honors Thesis

Teresa Goddu 

W 2:45 - 5:15 PM 

For students who have successfully been admitted to the honors program and completed the Honors Colloquium course. In this course, students develop their individual honors thesis, working with advisors, the Writing Studio, and their cohort. The thesis experience concludes with an oral examination on the thesis topic. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 7430.01: Graduate Fiction Workshop 

Lydi Conklin

T 4:15 - 7:15 PM 

This course takes up the study of fiction writing at the graduate level. Each student will workshop three stories, the third being an optional exercise or a third complete story. Students will engage in workshop in an open, safe environment, critiquing elements of craft, theme, and content at a high level. We will engage in in-depth readings of published works that reflect the interests of the cohort, reading one or two short novels and handful of short stories. [4]  

ENGL 7440.01: Graduate Poetry Workshop 

Didi Jackson

T 1:15 - 4:15 PM 

The aim of this workshop is to encourage a regular writing routine by crafting and workshopping a new poem each week for class. Writing prompts will be given and emphasis will be placed on each student’s independent approach to these prompts. Students will keep in mind themes and methods that already infuse their poems yet will be granted as much freedom as possible to explore ways in which to improve and develop their writing. Strengths and weaknesses of each poem will be identified. There will be an emphasis and attention paid to voice, diction, figuration, sound, imagery, and structure. Readings used for discussion in class will come from various literary periods of both early and contemporary poets. This will encourage ways of expanding various influences on student work and will enforce an understanding of the means and techniques of previous generations of poets. By the end of the course, students will have a collection of at least ten new and revised poems, a poetic statement, and a small anthology of poets/poems of influence. [4]

ENGL 7450.01: Graduate Nonfiction Workshop: Adventures in Creative Nonfiction

Major Jackson

M 4:40 - 7:40 PM 

This course is designed for the writer of fiction or poetry who wishes to enhance their practice in their proclaimed genre or to test its boundaries through the reading and writing of creative nonfiction. We will examine literary style, voice, structure, and form by reading and discussing personal essays, autobiographies, literary memoir, nature writing, cultural criticism, and hybridized forms. We will read an exciting cross-section of diverse authors whose works offer insight into the process and ethics of telling a story, yet also profoundly underscore the human journey. Our aim is to observe and learn advanced strategies of lyric composition, narrative, and research-based storytelling and to consider the multiple functions of literary devices deeply in the service of fact as well as the writers’ imagination and authority. [4]

ENGL 7997.01: Creative Writing Pedagogy Seminar: Teaching Creative Writing

Kate Daniels

W 12:20 - 3:20 PM 

This is a course for first year MFA students in the pedagogy of creative writing at the university level.  It is intended as preparation for the teaching of the undergraduate introductory creative writing workshops during the second year of MFA studies.  We will begin by taking a look at some general pedagogical theories of creative writing, as well as the challenges of teaching it.  Then we will focus on practical issues, relating to the teaching that you will be doing here at Vanderbilt.  These will include the development of your own fully-articulated pedagogy of how to teach CW; CW textbook review; syllabus preparation; evaluation and grading; technology support; classroom management; psychological issues in CW courses; and identity and authority in the classroom.  The class will be very interactive.  Students will be working in groups in and out of class, making presentations, and responding to guest lecturers.  The semester will conclude with a live teaching demonstration by each class member.  There will be plenty of reading.  The final project is the preparation of a final portfolio of the semester’s work that includes a comprehensive Teaching or Pedagogy Statement, and the working copy of the syllabus for that each student will actually use for their course. [4]

ENGL 8112.01: Project Publish

Jay Clayton

R 1:15 - 4:15 PM 

Project Publish is 2-credit graduate seminar designed to help each student produce an academic article ready to submit for publication by the end of the semester. The course will combine analysis of exemplary critical articles, practical advice about the mechanics of publishing, and writing workshop sessions in which we read one another’s drafts. You should come to the first meeting having identified one of your best papers from a previous seminar to spend the semester revising for publication, and you should expect to produce multiple drafts over the course of the term. [4]

ENGL 8138.01: Seminar in Critical Theory: Literature and Philosophy

Jessie Hock

W 10:30 - 1:30 PM 

In What is Philosophy? (1991), Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari distinguish between philosophy, art, and science. These three disciplines do different things: philosophy creates concepts, the arts create percepts (i.e. sensual perceptions), and science creates functions (that is, predicts the behavior of systems). This class examines the relation between the literary arts and philosophy, with a focus on questions such as: how has the relation between literature and philosophy been articulated differently at different moments in the western literary tradition? What are the theoretical overlaps and methodological differences between literature and philosophy, and how do our methods for reading literary and philosophical texts differ or overlap? How can we bring literature to bear on philosophy, and vice versa, and is it possible to think their relation with greater complexity than a simple back and forth?

Obviously, “philosophy and literature” is an enormous topic, and the course will be tailored to the interests of its students in terms of genres, philosophical schools, and historical periods. Selected authors might include (in no particular order): Plato, Lucretius, Alain de Lille, William Wordsworth, Toni Morrison, Emily Dickinson, Anne Carson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Luce Irigaray, Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Lydia Davis. [4]  

ENGL 8138.02: Seminar in Critical Theory: Modernity and the Question of Political Theology

Alex Dubilet

T 4:15 - 7:15 PM 

Through an engagement with classical and contemporary texts in critical theory, this class explores a set of interlocking questions about theological presuppositions underwriting political modernity and the ongoing planetary catastrophe. It traces how theological conceptions, grammars, and operations have surprising afterlives and continue to structure putatively secular realities such as sovereignty, subjection, law, history, and violence, as well more insurgent imaginaries. Engaging the lively interdisciplinary field of political theology, this class explores the conceptual and narrative (dis)continuities that bind histories of monotheism to modernity. In the process, it also introduces students to critical perspectives on the status of secularity and secularism. Authors may include Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Jacob Taubes, Sylvia Wynter, Tomoko Masuzawa, Gil Anidjar, Saba Mahmood, Jan Assmann, and Giorgio Agamben. [4]  

ENGL 8410.01: Studies in Romantic and Victorian Literature: Science and Science Fiction in Nineteenth Century Literature

Mezzanine with ENGL 3618.01 (Honors Seminar)

Jay Clayton

M 12:20 - 3:20 PM 

Twice during the nineteenth century, scientific discoveries galvanized creative changes in the novel, giving rise to the genre we call science fiction. Everyone knows about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), often regarded as the first true SF novel. But were you aware of how voyages of discovery by Darwin and others sparked revolutionary speculative fictions like Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838)? At the other end of the century, a plethora of utopian tales, science fiction novels, horror stories, and imperial romances thrilled readers with their controversial speculations. These fictional works were often more influential than the scientific discoveries that they referenced, fueling some of the most disturbing social movements of the fin de siècle: so-called “racial science,” eugenics, and imperialism.

The first part of the course will juxtapose two novels published in the same year, Frankenstein and Jane Austen’s Persuasion, to highlight the major differences between SF and realist fiction. After reading Darwin and Poe, we will fast-forward to the second half of the century to sample science fiction and horror stories such as Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey (1890), H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897); and an imperial romance, H. Ryder Haggard’s She (1887), as well as Pauline Hopkins’s African American inversion of colonial romance, Of One Blood (1903). We will conclude with Octavia Butler’s harrowing Neo-Victorian novel, Kindred (1979), and Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad (2016). [4]  

AADS 4264.01: Black Diaspora Women Writers

David Ikard

MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM 

Comparative fiction by women from Francophone and Anglophone Africa , the Caribbean, and the United States. Novels of awakening (bildungsroman), themes of exile, home and alienation, identity as well as sexuality, class and color, slavery and colonialism. [3] (HCA)

ASIA 2206.01: War and the Environment in Southeast Asia

Ben Tran

MW 2:30 - 3:45 PM 

Southeast Asia's economic rise in the 21st century in relationship to the region's past wars and environmental damage. Imperialism, rubber plantations, waste, trauma, postwar aesthetics, war technology. Course materials in English. [3] (HCA)

ASIA 2214W.01: Food of Southeast Asia and the Diaspora

Ben Tran

MW 4:00 - 5:15 PM 

Pad Thai, pho, Sriracha, Spam. History and complexities of Southeast Asia through food, ingredients, and history of spices. Identity, migration, authenticity, appropriation, colonialism, and globalization. Food as historical process, politics, and environmental transformation. Course materials in English. [3] (INT)

GSS 2242.01: Women Who Kill

Kathryn Schwarz

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

Examination of classical and contemporary representations of women who kill. [3] (P)

GSS 2271.01: Gender, Space, and Climate Imaginaries

Julie Gamble and Kristin Rose

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM 

Climate Crises; Systems of Power and Privilege in the Global Contemporary Landscapes; Ecofeminism; Resource Inequality; Urban Geography; Analysis of Interlocking Systems of Oppression; Climate Imaginaries. [3]

MHS 3890.01: Bringing Death Home

Dana Nelson

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM 

This new course is a deep dive into a broad movement that some call Death Positivity, a movement that aims to refamiliarize us with the lifework and rituals of dying and death. Its starting point is an assessment of the communal, familial and ancestral costs of this past century’s medicalization of dying and death. Death Positivity aims to take death back from hospitals, long-term care and nursing homes and to bring our dying home, where those we love can be celebrated and supported in this culminating passage of our shared life.

This class will help you explore grief and think about how more compassionately to support others in their grieving. It will take you to the flourishing of rituals of support for end of life and death care and mourning—and developing relationships with—ancestors. You’ll look at the home wake and funeral movement. You’ll consider the developing and vibrant array of alternatives to traditional burial. You’ll think about hospice and palliative care, and investigate the idea of conscious dying, as well as the growing death doula movement. You’ll reconceptualizes death as a communal and familial event, as the last of life’s great transitions, as the culmination of a human life, and as an event that can be (if supported and celebrated) fully and vibrantly life-affirming. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 1100.01, 1100.02, and 1100.03: Composition: Individuals and Communities 

Jordan Ivie

1100.01: MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM

1100.02: MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM   

1100.03: MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM 

In the 1982 sci-fi film Star Trek; the Wrath of Khan, Spock famously proclaims, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” In a divided America, it is more important than ever to genuinely consider this dynamic and explore the responsibilities of the individual to the larger community and the responsibilities of the community to the individuals that make it up. Where do individual rights end for the sake of the larger community? When does the community sacrifice in order to maintain the individual rights of its citizens? What happens when the individual comes into conflict with the community? This course explores these questions through a wide variety of genres, media, and time periods, with the ultimate goal of encouraging students to consider their own places within larger communities. Through a series of readings, essays, workshops, and other projects exploring this topic, students will also consider questions of structure, clarity, and credibility, ultimately producing a persuasive research paper on a topic of their choice. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.04: Composition: Rhetoric in Popular Culture    

Stephanie Graves

MW 1:25 - 2:15 PM 

This course is designed to help you develop your skills in expository and persuasive writing within an academic context, as well as building your skills as a researcher within a scholarly setting—all through the lens of contemporary popular culture. Using popular texts—from film, television, and music to podcasts, Youtube, and more—we will explore how popular culture encodes and influences rhetorical discourse while developing and putting into practice the skillsets of researching and writing within the context of the academy. In this course, you will develop your own critical awareness of cultural contexts and learn strategies for engaging critically with popular texts, as well as understanding research and analysis as the means of participating in scholarly conversations. This course will increase your confidence as both a writer and scholar and equip you with the skills you need as you pursue your academic courses of study. [3] (No AXLE credit)  

ENGL 1100.05, 1100.06, and 1100.07: Composition: Research Writing and Rhetoric

Payam Rahmati

1100.05: TR 8:00 - 9:15 AM

1100.06: TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM 

1100.07: TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM  

Composition: Research Writing and Rhetorics is an introduction to expository, analytical, and research-based academic writing. The course involves three major assignments, including (1) writing to reflect, (2) writing to analyze, and (3) writing to persuade. For writing to reflect, students are prompted to offer a critical analysis reflecting on their own literacy journey, research aspects of that literacy, and cite credible peer-reviewed sources about that literacy context. Writing to analyze involves reading, interpreting, and analyzing news articles for rhetorical features. Writing to persuade asks students to create an argument in which they address a question they are interested in and use close-reading skills they have developed while working on the rhetorical analysis essay. The course addresses the following five learning outcomes: (1) Rhetorical knowledge, the ability to analyze contexts and audiences to understand situations and communicate effectively; (2) Critical thinking, the ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information, situations, and texts; (3) Processes, the ability to use multiple composing processes, independently and in collaboration with others, to imagine, develop, and revise projects; (4) Conventions, knowledge of formal rules and informal guidelines that define genres and shape perceptions of correctness; and (5) Reflective learning, the ability to practice metacognition, or thinking about one’s own thinking and learning. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.08: Composition: Writing, Research, and Storytelling   

Mark Wisniewski 

1100.11: TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

Humans are unique in that we understand the world through stories. When we stop to think about it, almost everything we do is a form of storytelling. Advertisements tell us stories about how our lives would be better with different products and services. Novels, movies, television, and videogames entertain us, but also affect the way we view the world around us. What, then, about research? Is academic work another form of storytelling? This course will start from the assumption that it is. Over the course of the semester, we will engage in writing projects that explore how advertising, entertainment media, and research are all forms of storytelling, each of which raises ethical questions about how we define ourselves and others. [3] (No AXLE credit)  

ENGL 1100.09 and 1100.10: Composition: Rhetoric in/of Humanity    

Stephanie Graves

1100.09: MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM 

1100.10: MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM    

Reserved for students co-enrolling in any sections of CORE 1010.

With all their contention and bombast, contemporary social and political discourse foregrounds the myriad of ways in which persuasion manifests. Long defined as the art and study of persuasion, rhetoric is a powerful lens through which we can better understand the mechanisms of influence—and through which we can then more effectively employ it in our own writing. Because rhetorical analysis is a tool that renders information and its context understandable, accessible, and meaningful, it acts as a key to unlocking how human form structures our world—and how our world then structures our humanity. Designed in tandem with CORE 1010: Being Human, this course focuses on analyzing, constructing, and defending rhetorical arguments within the academic writing context. In this course, you will develop your own critical awareness of cultural contexts and learn strategies for engaging critically with texts, as well as understanding research and analysis as the means of participating in scholarly conversation and discourse. [3] (No AXLE credit)  

ENGL 1100.11 and 1100.12: Composition: Narrative and the Human Experience   

Mark Wisniewski 

1100.11: TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM 

1100.12: TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM   

This section of ENGL 1100 is open only to first-year students who are simultaneously enrolled in a section of CORE: Being Human.  Like any skill, academic writing is a craft in which all writers continually develop their knowledge and abilities.  Our emphasis in ENGL 1100 will be to continue developing our technical writing skills and academic writing voices, while also deepening your engagement with the central ideas you will explore in your section of CORE: Being Human.  We will do all of this by thinking about storytelling as a foundational aspect of the human experience.  All written assignments in this section of ENGL 1100 are designed to encourage you to think more thoroughly about topics raised in your CORE: Being Human course, to look at these topics from a different perspective, or to prepare materials (such as an annotated bibliography) to facilitate your CORE: Being Human assignments. [3] (No AXLE credit)  

ENGL 1100.13, 1100.14, and 1100.15: Composition: The Autobiographical Author

Jared Harvey

1100.13: TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM 

1100.14: TR 11:00 - 12:51 PM   

1100.14: TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM   

This course will examine the relationship between the living self and the written self, and how the writer negotiates between the two in order to author the autobiographical gesture. What level of craft is required to communicate sincerity, and by what story-telling methods does the writer communicate “true” events? Is the self constructed or excavated? How do different texts present different selves; who am I in different discourse communities (Does my Instagram handle get along with my driver’s license ID?)? Why do we seek out traces of the autobiographical in fictional texts; on the other hand, are all autobiographical texts fictive? In this course we will consider these and related questions by analyzing texts of myriad form and media, from the poetry of Ariana Reines to the essays of James Baldwin; from the tweets of Donald Trump to Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Students will employ and develop close-reading skills as well as analytical and creative writing. The course will culminate in students writing their own “autobiographies,” with a short critical supplement adjoined.  Because “I” is an author. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1210W.01 and 1210W.02: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques: Monsters in Fiction 

Justin Quarry 

1210W.01: MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM 

1210W.02: MWF 3:35 - 4:25 PM 

What, or who, is a monster?  What makes such a being simultaneously horrifying and fascinating? What might monsters represent?  In exploring these questions, we’ll analyze portrayals of so-called monsters in mostly contemporary novels, graphic novels, and short stories, and we’ll examine the elements of fiction used to illuminate these beings, and in turn the societal anxieties and desires among which they appear.  More broadly, the aim of this course is to teach you to think critically about literature.  Therefore, through three informal reading responses, three formal essays, in-class writing, and class discussions, you’ll hone close-reading skills as well as better develop analytic writing skills.  [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.03: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques: McCarthy and Morrison Doing Violence 

Nicholas Reich 

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM 

Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison are two of the most acclaimed American novelists of the last century. And yet they’re rarely discussed together—perhaps in part because McCarthy was a White man, and Morrison a Black woman. Their work has more in common than just acclaim, though, including a deep and abiding fascination with violence. In this course, we will read a selection of their novels and shorter prose to help us think through some important questions about the nature of violence and its deployment in the American context, especially by way of gender and race. We will investigate whether writing stands a chance at diminishing the widespread violence that sustains social and environmental injustice, and how we can become better writers by practicing non-violent methods of active listening and revision.

ENGL 1220W.01: Drama: Forms and Techniques 

Judith Klass

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM   

This course looks at plays from the Golden Age of ancient Athens to the present. We consider Aristotle’s ideas about how tragedy should lead to catharsis in the audience, and how a tragic hero should have a fatal flaw. We consider theatrical devices tied to moments in history, like a Greek chorus or an Elizabethan soliloquy. The course focuses on plays about families: volatile, funny, vindictive, forgiving, loving, hating – sometimes cruel in their actions and sometimes painfully honest in their words to each other. Theater can feel claustrophobic, with few sets: but this can fill family plays with energy, as people trapped at home together confront problems. We’ll explore how family plays have changed over time, and make connections between some very different works. Playwrights include Sophocles, Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Chekhov, O’Neill, Odets, Kaufman and Hart, Miller, Williams, Hansberry, Norman, Shepard, Vogel, Hwang, Auburn, Parks and Durang. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 1230W.02: Literature and Analytical Thinking: Salvaging Literature 

Jeong-Oh Kim

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM  

This course declares two purposes. Grammatically speaking, as an adjective, salvaging describes a kind of literature, one that saves what is lost, or fragile, or endangered. By studying the forms and techniques of such literature, we will explore the problems that literature has set in motion by its response to the world—to society, economy, gender, race, geography, culture, suffering, and human rights.  At the same time, Salvaging Literature concerns how to save literature, how to salvage its various forms, through considering and writing about our connections to literature as citizens of the university and of wider communities. We will explore these two ways of articulating Salvaging Literature by considering texts such as Edgar Allan Poe, Selected Tales; Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Richard Hughes’s High Wind in Jamaica; Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia; John Jay’s The Beggar’s Opera; George Lillo’s Fatal Curiosity; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; and Romantic poetry. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.03: Literature and Analytical Thinking: Oceans and Literature 

Jeong-Oh Kim 

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM 

This course examines the cultural meaning of the sea in British literature and history, from early modern times to the present. Interdisciplinary in conception, it charts metaphorical and material links between the idea of the sea in the cultural imagination and its significance for the social and political history of Britain, offering a fresh analysis of the impact of the ocean on the formation of British cultural identities. Writers to be discussed include William Shakespeare, John Milton, Samuel Coleridge, Walter Scott, Robert Stevenson, Mark Twain, and Rachel Carson, among others. By combining the interests of three related but distinct areas of study—the analysis of sea fiction, critical maritime history, and cultural studies—to highlight the historical meaning of the sea in relation to its textual and cultural representation, my course will offer a new perspective on the nexus between the ocean and literature. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.04: Literature and Analytical Thinking: The Art of Myth

Grace LaFrentz

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM  

What do statues that come to life, prosthetic wings fashioned together with wax, and music so powerful it can move stones have in common? These are all myths of artistic creation drawn from the Metamorphoses, a sweeping epic poem by the Roman author, Ovid. The Metamorphoses had a profound impact on Western culture, and countless authors have taken inspiration from Ovid’s complex and controversial myths, adapting these stories to speak to their own cultural moments and to raise pressing questions about issues as wide-ranging as gender, race, and the power of art. In this course, we will examine five Ovidian myths of artistic creation alongside their literary adaptations in a variety of genres from different historical periods, by authors from William Shakespeare to Toni Morrison. Through a series of academic and creative assignments, students will learn how to engage critically with primary sources, write persuasive arguments, and revise their writing based on feedback. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.01: Introduction to Poetry

Jessie Hock 

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

What is a poem? And how to read it? This class takes poetry lovers and novices alike through the joys and intricacies of reading, feeling, thinking, and every once in a while writing, poetry. Taking the Renaissance, the Romantic period, the mid-nineteenth century, and the twenty-first century as historical touchstones, we will focus on some of the most important poetic forms of the anglophone tradition: the sonnet, the ballad, the psalm, and free verse. In order to understand poetry from the inside out, we will write our own imitations of the poems we read for class. This writing practice complements the second goal of the class, which is to acquaint students with the skills necessary for writing academic papers. The contention of this class is that academic writing, as poetry, can be learned through imitation. Students will learn about poetic form and poetic history while practicing the art of literary close reading and developing critical writing skills. Requirements will include poetic imitations, response papers, short writing exercises, quizzes, homework assignments, essays (plus revisions), and active participation in class. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.02 and 1250W.03: Introduction to Poetry 

Lisa Dordal

1250W.02: MWF 8:00 - 8:50 AM

1250W.03: MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM 

In our increasingly fast-paced lives, reading poetry can be a great way to slow down and pay meaningful attention to the world around us and to our inner landscapes. Although the main objectives of this course are to help you become close readers of poetry and to help you develop your critical writing skills, the poems that we read might very well deepen your understanding of your own life and who you understand yourself to be. The first part of this course will be organized around formal considerations (diction, tone, imagery, figures of speech, sound, etc.). In the second half of the course, we will read the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes, Marie Howe, Mark Doty, Natasha Trethewey, and Li-Young Lee. Requirements include two papers (plus revisions), short response papers and homework assignments, participation in class discussions, and a written response to a poetry reading. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.04: Introduction to Poetry: Poetics of Memory 

Paige Oliver

MW 2:30 - 3:45 PM  

How does language shape our memories? How do memories, in turn, give meaning to our lives? Does the act of remembering have to mean looking backward, or can articulating memories in language be oriented toward the future? And how can poetry help us answer these questions? In this course, we will survey a wide range of poets and poetic traditions, ranging from the Romantic poet William Wordsworth to the first National Youth Poet Laurette, Amanda Gorman. We will also tackle the poetics of memory from a variety of angles, including personal memory, national memory, geologic memory, monuments, and even forgetting. This is a writing intensive course, so throughout the semester, you will learn to implement a variety of writing styles: close reading, personal narrative, argumentative writing, and even poetry itself. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.05: Introduction to Poetry

Anthony Reed

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM 

The question of what makes a good poem and good poetry has haunted readers at least since it became possible to be a professional poet. Answers inevitably reflect not just critics’ opinions of poetry but a host of related concerns regarding reading, culture, and society. In this course, as we explore poems that sought to influence the values and even behaviors of their readers, we will engage some key debates and pronouncements on what (good) poetry is from the 18th century to the present. Looking carefully at what writers at different moments have wanted poetry to be will guide us as we develop our own sense of what poetry is and does and may do for the future. Poets and critics will include Alexander Pope, Matthew Arnold, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Rita Dove. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.01: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Prison Writing 

Ajay Batra

TR 8:00 - 9:15 AM 

Nearly two million people currently reside in prisons, jails, and immigrant detention centers across the United States. In this course, we will examine the different forms and genres of writing created in these spaces of confinement, both in our present and across American literary history. Reading essays, letters, poems, memoirs, manifestos, and more, we will discuss how incarcerated people have turned to the written word in order to meditate on their experiences of captivity, remain close to loved ones on the outside, build community with fellow detainees, and articulate strong, incisive critiques of systemic injustice. Additionally, we will consider how the highly restrictive, oppressive conditions of prisons and other carceral institutions have tended to shape the practices of literary expression developed by imprisoned writers across time and space. Throughout the term, students in this course will complete critical, creative, and collaborative assignments designed to improve their skills in writing, research, and literary analysis, as well as their fluency in discussing issues of race, class, gender, and inequality. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 1260W.02, 1260W.03, and 1260W.04: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis

Gabriel Briggs

1260W.02: MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM

1260W.03: MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM 

1260W.04: MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM 

This course examines the depth and breadth of the cultural phenomenon known as the Harlem Renaissance. However, rather than view this episode as an isolated period of African-American expression, we will see how Renaissance era artistry extended an earlier “New Negro” tradition, and how it encapsulated African-American cultural responses to early twentieth-century social, political, and economic stimuli. As such, students will work toward developing strategies for positioning authors and texts within specific cultural, historical, and theoretical contexts. Within this diverse landscape we will investigate artists, essayists, poets, musicians, and novelists that include: W. E. B Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Countee Cullen, Louis Armstrong, Claude McKay, Nella Larsen, Wallace Thurman and George Schuyler. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.05: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: The Environmental Humanities

Savannah DiGregorio 

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM 

Many scholars agree that we are now living in a new geological epoch —the Anthropocene—a name chosen to encapsulate an irreversibly transformed planet due to the expansion of human populations, exploitation of animals and natural resources, and pervasive pollution. The effects of the Anthropocene have been caused by only 25% of the world’s population, yet those in the US South, Caribbean, and African continent disproportionally suffer the consequences. The Anthropocene, then, is as much a social problem as it is an ecological issue.

Our class will think about environmental problems, including climate, through a variety of lenses—the environmental sciences, philosophy, literary studies, law, history, multispecies ethnography, and Indigenous ways of knowing.

Our discussions will be guided by books, articles, films, art, and games. Assignments include essays, fieldwork conducted in our community, and a final project demonstrating your skills in writing, cultural and ethical inquiry, and creativity. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.06: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Revival: Making and Unmaking the American Renaissance 

David Brandt

MWF 11:15 - 12:05 PM 

What makes an old book come alive? In the case of a handful of books from the 1850s, we have an unusually convincing answer. In 1941, a young Harvard professor named F.O. Matthiessen published a doorstopper of a book of literary criticism. Measuring some 650 pages, American Renaissance examines nineteenth-century American literature exclusively through the works of five authors: Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman. The result? A new canon of American literature that has enthralled and provoked generations of subsequent readers. In this class, we will use the so-called “American Renaissance” as a jumping-off point for the critical analysis of cultural revival and canon formation—reading the famous books, investigating contexts around revival, and taking up other works that were later, or never, canonized. A final project will require you to select a work of literature and, using your own cultural and historical contexts, make a case for its revival. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.07: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Women Writers and the Global Nineteenth Century 

Kelsey Rall  

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM 

When we think of nineteenth-century women’s literature, we might imagine the quaint English neighborhoods of Jane Austen’s novels or the domestic lives of Louisa May Alcott’s “little women.” Alternatively, we may think of Harriet Jacobs’ or Mary Prince’s harrowing escapes from slavery in the Southern US and Caribbean. But what we do not always consider is that these texts are speaking with, against, and to each other from across genres, national borders, and decades. In this course, we will analyze how the same systems of slavery, colonialism, and gender ideology undergird geographically distant texts. And, crucially, we will discuss how women have always been central to the conception of an expansive global community, despite the assumption that proper nineteenth-century women were not meant to stray beyond the domestic sphere. Students will learn how to engage critically with primary sources, write persuasive arguments, and structure feedback into revisions of their written work. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.08: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Gender and Feminism in African Literature 

Justine Waluvengo

MWF 11:15 - 12:05 PM 

This course invites students to explore the diverse social and cultural realities that shape the identity of the African woman. Inspired by Chimamanda Adichie’s TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” it challenges single-dimensional cultural narratives, especially about African womanhood. Through various narratives written by African women, we will examine African perspectives on feminist discourse, foregrounding the lived experiences of women of African descent. From Mariama Ba’s 1970s classic So Long a Letter to Yaa Gyasi’s contemporary Homegoing, the texts under consideration intervene in the evolving social understandings of Black identity, feminism, gender, and sexuality in Africa and the African diaspora. Students will critically explore themes of representation, Afro-feminism, postcolonial identity, Otherness, and intersectionality. A variety of assignments, including mapping family lineages, local color presentations, ABC close reading, and creative exercises, are included to help students develop critical and persuasive writing skills. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.09: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: The Politics of Self-Care

Jennifer Gutman

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM 

Bed-rotting. Quiet-quitting. The Everything Shower. Self-care trends are sweeping our news feeds. But can the discourse of self-care be misleading? This class explores a genealogy for the rise in public discourse around self-care amid unprecedented national stress levels and planetary crisis. Over the course of the semester, we will situate contemporary mobilizations of self-care within longer traditions of self-reliance and cultivation in American society. Through examining literature and media by Black feminist thinkers, we will also consider how self-care has been re-claimed as a mode of resistance to structural racism and institutional violence. This course will end with an examination of the more recent phenomenon of eco-grief, which refers to the mental health effects of accelerated planetary crisis. Students will develop a final project that re-imagines the work of self-care as a practice of noticing and caring for the world around us. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1270W.01: Introduction to Literary Criticism: Mapping Literary Criticism 

Jeong-oh Kim 

MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM 

This course is designed to help students develop their analytical skills while exploring and examining relations between literary criticism/ theory and literature. By developing a critical framework, a theoretical optics, a new perspective for the reading of literature, we will examine the ways in which major strands of literary criticism—deconstruction, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, feminism, and cognitive studies—draw upon literature. When we map the geographies of literary criticism, I aim to help students grasp those problems that literary criticism has set in motion by its response to the world: social justice, peace, human dignity, and the ethics of theory, to name just a few. We will approach literary criticism as an inquiry and as a practice. What can we do and what shall we do with literary criticism?   [3] (HCA)

ENGL 2311.01: Representative British Writers

Elizabeth Covington

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM 

Want to take a rollicking ride through more than three hundred years of British literature? This course is a survey of British Literature from 1660 to the present. We will read works from many of the influential and significant writers from five literary periods: Restoration/18th Century, the Romantics, the Victorians, the Modernists, and the 20th Century and Beyond. In addition to a sweeping view of British literature, this course will challenge the traditional canon of British culture. We will explore texts by authors who were disregarded because of their gender, race, class, sexuality, and other factors. Ultimately, we will develop broad but robust vision of the development of British literature since 1660. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 2318.01: World Literature, Classical

Jessie Hock 

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM 

Gods, monsters, enchanters, sorceresses, cross-dressers, knights errant, a hippogryph, discontented wives, tricksters, outcasts and the devil: such is the cast of fictional characters we meet in this course, which surveys some of the most influential texts from the Greco-Roman, Italian, and English speaking worlds.  The course will familiarize students with a variety of ancient genres—tragedy, epic, romance, and lyric—that continue to influence literary invention.  And we will inquire into the shifting definitions of heroism, the family, religious belief, taboo, race, gender, love and identity—all of which vary widely across time and culture—as we analyze stories that still resonate today. [3] (Pre-1800, HCA)

ENGL 2319.01: World Literature, Modern: Magical Realism 

Vera Kutzinski

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM 

Magical realism is a type of Speculative Fiction that has enjoyed remarkable popularity since the mid-20th century. Before taking hold as a global phenomenon, magical realism was associated primarily with Latin America and the Caribbean Rim. This seminar explores how novels and short stories in this category from various parts of the Global South play at and with the limits of reason and rationality, suggesting different ways of understanding and ordering our worlds. Our discussions will focus on the following questions, among others: What precisely are the differences between realism and magical realism? Is magical realism a discourse of escape and of consolation, or of revolutionary change? What are the politics of magic realism when it comes to gender, sexuality, and race? Readings include fiction by Erna Brodber, Alejo Carpentier, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Vandana Singh. [3] (Diverse Perspective, HCA)

ENGL 2740W.01: Topics in Literature and Philosophy: Genres of Insurrection 

Aleksey Dubilet

MW 2:30 - 3:45 PM  

What are insurrections? What is their significance, their temporality, and their desire? Are they merely political or do they generate disorder on social, historical, and even ontological levels? What modes of conceptualization, narration, and representation can be faithful to the insurgent force constitutive of insurrections? This course will pursue these questions by investigating key theoretical frameworks for the study of insurrection, uprising, and revolt. Studying a variety of textual genres (e.g., critical theory, philosophy, manifesto, novel, history, and film), this course will introduce students to insurrectionary moments spanning from the 16th-century Peasants’ War and 18th-century slave revolts to the 19th-century Paris Commune and contemporary forms of rebellion. Readings may include Benjamin, Blanqui, Fanon, Federici, Foucault, Hartman, Marx, Moten, Ross, Tomba, and Trouillot. Students will learn advanced critical writing in the humanities. First day attendance is imperative. [3] (Diverse Perspective, HCA)

ENGL 3312W.01: The Medieval World  

Shoshana Adler

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM  

Chauvinistic heroes and cannibal monsters; the sexual politics of courtly love; the fire and blood of medieval Christian mythology; lepers, nuns, knights, heretics, and demons: this course is an introduction to the motley array populating medieval literature. We will survey some of the most persistent themes of the period, including the romance of travel, the art of death and dying, the horror of the divine, and the crusades and the writing of history. We will learn to read texts in the original Middle English. No prior knowledge required.  [3] (Pre-1800, HCA)

ENGL 3336.01: Shakespeare: "Problematic" Shakespeare

Pavneet Aulakh 

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM 

This course focuses on the first half of Shakespeare’s career, typically defined by his comedies and histories. If we associate tragedy, romance, and the taxonomic challenges posed by his “problem” plays with the more mature craft of his later works, “Problematic Shakespeare” explores the generic experimentation/messiness exemplified by his earlier stage productions. Thinking through the ways his early works are also “problematic”—in terms of their alteration from comic to tragic effect on audiences across history (as in The Merchant of Venice), the doubts they cast on his literary “genius” (Titus Andronicus being a really bad play for some equally canonized critics), or the problems posed by their characters (the potential attraction of either the affable but duplicitous “Hall” or his morally bankrupt but transparent compatriot, Falstaff)—we will approach early Shakespeare from multiple angles and interpretive modes to challenge our preconceptions as well as our understanding of this author. [3] (Pre-1800, HCA)

ENGL 3360.01: Restoration and the 18th Century 

Bridget Orr

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM 

[3] (Pre-1800, HCA)

ENGL 3370.01: The Bible in Literature 

Roger Moore

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM  

Knowledge of the Bible is indispensable for understanding English and American literature. This course examines the ways that writers from the medieval period to the present engage Biblical stories, images, and characters. How does Chaucer retell the story of Noah and the Flood? How do the Beatitudes help Margaret Atwood critique fanatical religion in The Handmaid’s Tale? How does the conversion of the Apostle Paul inform Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back”? This course is valuable for English majors seeking a better understanding of the sources and backgrounds of English and American literature, as well as the general student who wishes to learn about the role of Christian themes in shaping canonical works of the English tradition. Students will take an in-class midterm essay exam and complete a final research paper, among other short assignments. While deep knowledge of the Bible is not required, some familiarity with basic Biblical themes and narratives would be helpful. [3] (Pre-1800, HCA)

ENGL 3645.01: The American Novel Since 1945

Anna Hill

MWF 12:20 - 1:20 PM  

This course explores formal and thematic developments in the American novel from 1945 to the present. Reading a wide range of works, we will consider: What is the relationship between literature and culture in the postwar United States? How is the novel constructed and reimagined during this period in relation to decolonization, the Cold War, feminist movements, racial justice movements, the rise of neoliberalism, globalization, and the acceleration of climate crisis? Why is there such an obsession with “the great American novel”? How is the novel transformed by the rise of new technologies and new media cultures? Ultimately, we will approach novels as aesthetic objects while also situating them within their social, political, environmental, and historical contexts. Readings for this course may include novels by Toni Morrison, Helena María Viramontes, Don DeLillo, Linda Hogan, Chris Ware, Jack Kerouac, Marilynne Robinson, and Maxine Hong Kingston. [3] (Diverse Perspective, HCA)

ENGL 3654W.01: African American Literature: Literatures of Slavery and Emancipation 

Ajay Batra

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

African American literature first emerged against a backdrop of captivity, forced migration, and enslavement. Across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Black writers transcended strict prohibitions against reading and writing to craft complex literary works that reflected powerfully on their diverse experiences of displacement, oppression, and spiritual awakening, as well as their practices of survival and their collective pursuit of liberation. In this course, we will attend closely to both major and minor works from this foundational period in African American literary history. Reading a combination of poems, essays, autobiographies, sermons, plays, and prose fiction, we will examine how Black writers creatively repurposed conventional forms and genres in order to tell their stories, construct their identities, create beauty, and speak truth to power. In addition, we will read a small selection of historical documents that chronicle the efforts of Black communities to resist conditions of bondage and to define freedom on their own terms. Major authors discussed in this course may include Phillis Wheatley (Peters), David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Harriet E. Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, and W. E. B. Du Bois. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, US)

ENGL 3720.01: Literature, Science and Technology: Science, Race, and Early Modernity

Pavneet Aulakh 

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM   

Examining the relationship between science, the establishment and expansion of European empires in the “new world,” and race-making during the early stages of the scientific revolution, the three areas of focus organizing this course are rooted in the period’s consistent framing of the project for scientific advancement as a mastering of Nature aimed at “enlarging the bounds of Human Empire.” Motivated by the celebratory declarations of early scientists that the “newfound world” discovered by a microscope “must be conquered,” like Mexico, “by a Cortesian army” and that “There is an America of secrets, and unknown Peru of Nature” awaiting domination, we will explore how the cataloguing, collecting, and representation of the peoples, flora, and fauna of the new world in both contemporary ethnographies and literary works evidence not only a taxonomizing impulse, but also a formative moment in the history of science’s application to the fictional construction of racial difference. [3] (Pre-1800, HCA) 

ENGL 3726.01: New Media: Race and Digital Culture

Huan He

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM    

Can virtual reality automate empathy with others? How do video games make race and racism playable? Who labors to make our digital worlds possible? How does AI reproduce an imaginary of the human that reinforces whiteness? This course examines the dreams and nightmares that make up our collectively experienced “digital age,” which has a long history before the Internet and social media. We will think with theory, literature, art, and media to understand the embodied stakes of digitality and address questions of race and identity in online and virtual spaces. We will study how technologies perpetuate new and old forms of domination, and we will learn from writers and artists who imagine alternative digital futures. Certain days will be dedicated to hands-on activities with new media technologies such as VR and ChatGPT. No technical knowledge is required. In addition to written assignments, students will propose a final research or multimedia project based on individual interest. (DP) [3] (Diverse Perspective, HCA) 

ENGL 3730.01: Literature and the Environment: What is Nature? 

Rachel Teukolsky 

MW 4:40 - 5:55 PM  

What is nature? Is it found in a park, where you wander among trees and cute forest animals? Is it an untouched, pristine wilderness? Are some of us closer to nature than others? This course examines the ways that artists and writers have constructed “nature” as an idealized place or set of qualities, partly imaginary, partly concrete. We will consider a broad range of literature, art, philosophy, and film, including Steven Spielberg’s shark-shocker, Jaws; science fiction/eco-fiction by Octavia Butler (Dawn) and Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake); Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; romantic nature poetry by William Wordsworth; Henry David Thoreau, Walden (“Why I Went into the Woods”); Charles Darwin, Origin of Species; H. G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau; Tommy Pico’s subversive Native-American, queer perspective in Nature Poem; and James Cameron’s film Avatar. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3740.01: Critical Theory: Introduction to Queer and Trans Theory 

Shoshana Adler

TR 8:00 - 9:15 AM 

What is the relationship between deviance and political radicalism? Is there a proper way to do the history of homosexuality? What methods do social, sexual, and gender deviants use to imagine and practice alternate forms of community? What is the relation between queer and trans studies, and between trans studies and feminism? This course is an introduction to the intellectual tradition of queer and trans theory, and to some of the historical forces that led to the emergence of queer theory as a distinct field of inquiry. We will study identity politics, sexual analytics, queer historiography, and LGBTQ organizing, exploring both foundational and contemporary debates in the field over gender, sexuality, race, activism, social norms, and historiography. The class is primarily focused on theory, but our readings will be punctuated with queer films. [3] (Diverse Perspective, HCA)

ENGL 3740W.01: Critical Theory: Revolutions, Abolition, Modernity 

Aleksey Dubilet 

MW 4:40 - 5:55 PM  

What is a revolution? How does it define modernity and its political horizon? What visions of freedom, equality, and justice motivate revolutionary action? What senses of time, future, and possibility emerge out of revolutionary experience? This course will pursue these questions by studying the most radical modern political sequence: the mass self-emancipation of the enslaved that occurred in the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), an event seen as the only successful slave revolt in history and the founding moment of postcolonialism. Using the Haitian Revolution as prism, this course will cover key concepts and theoretical frameworks, including: the human and its others; universal history and revolutionary untimeliness; law, possession, and the state; the entwinement of capitalism and colonialism; and plantation slavery and its afterlives. Reading may include Buck-Morss, Fischer, James, Koselleck, Nesbitt, Trouillot, Scott, and Wynter. Students will learn advanced critical writing in the humanities. First day attendance is imperative. [3] (Diverse Perspective, HCA) 

ENGL 3890.01: Movements in Literature: Contemporary Native American Literature  

Helen Makhdoumian

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM   

Google search “Native American literature” and you likely won’t get a definition emphasizing what the title of a recent anthology does: “Living Nations, Living Words.” This course explores what those two phrases mean for the canon by focusing on the multi-narrative novel, a form often associated with Louise Erdrich. She’s not alone, though. We’ll look at how this genre and structure has been taken up by Indigenous authors in the US and Canada, especially in the last five years. We’ll read Brandon Hobson’s The Removed, Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians, and Mona Simpson Power’s A Council of Dolls, among others. You’ll come away knowing not only literary history but also having developed critical language to discuss how Native authors revisit social and political history through literary production. We will attend to canon construction, authorial craft, and contextual topics: indigeneity, sovereignty, federal Indian policy, settler colonialism, and Indigenous transnationalism, to name a few. [3] (Diverse Perspective, HCA)  

ENGL 3890.02: Movements in Literature: Global Modernism (Honors Seminar) 

Rachel Teukolsky 

MW 2:30 - 3:45 PM   

The modernist movement aimed to “make it new” by rejecting traditional art styles in favor of bold art experiments. Artists and writers were responding to earth-shaking historical transformations in the early twentieth century, including devastating world war, imperial unrest, the rise of new technologies, and confounding scientific discoveries. This course will study modernist innovations in novels, short stories, and poetry, as well as in film, visual art, and philosophy. Our globe-spanning author list will likely include Chinua Achebe, Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Rhys, and Virginia Woolf, among others. (HCA, cumulative 3.4 G.P.A. is required)

ENGL 3894W.01: Major Figures in Literature: William Faulkner  

Vera Kutzinski

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM    

How have different audiences read and re-read Faulkner, by turns celebrating and detesting his work? We begin by looking at the 1949 Nobel laureate as one of the centerpieces of the post-WWII American literary canon and ask, for instance, which of his novels the New Critics, who dominated that US academy at the time, privileged and why. What aesthetic, cultural, and political values did the canonical Faulkner represent to them? Which specific aspects of Faulkner’s writing did they emphasize, which did they prefer to ignore? From a sampling of mid-century commentaries on Faulkner, we will proceed to examine how African American writers such as Toni Morrison and Edouard Glissant have revised Faulkner’s fictions. Texts include The Sound and The Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, Intruder in the Dust, and films based on his novels. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3898.01: Special Topics in English and American Literature: Pop Music and its Meanings    

Emily Lordi

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM    

In this class, we’ll treat pop songs not as mere entertainment but as texts we can decode to better understand our world. We’ll hone this way of listening in part by reading the work of America’s finest, most influential music historians and critics. These writers will teach us to read song lyrics as poetry, and to assess how other aspects of music contribute to—and complicate—a song’s overall meaning. We’ll also explore what makes certain artists such celebrated, insightful and controversial interpreters of contemporary life. How do they capture fleeting feelings, nuanced identities, and new realties? Assignments will include several short essays, longer papers, a presentation, and lots of close listening. No prior musical expertise is necessary, although a love of music will enhance students’ experience of this course. [3] (Diverse Perspective, HCA) 

ENGL 3898.03: Special Topics in English and American Literatures: Aesthetics and Politics (Honors Seminar)    

Mezzanine with ENGL 8351.01

Candice Amich 

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM  

What happens when the line between art and life becomes blurred? When bodies in the street become aestheticized or poems become acts of political protest? In this course we will study the relationship between poetics, politics, and performance across the 20/21 century Americas. We’ll begin with a survey of foundational debates in Marxist criticism in literature and art, which later theoretical readings will build upon. Aesthetic-political touchstones will include Black Surrealism, Conceptualism in Latin American Art, Brechtian theater, postcolonial poetics, and the performance of witness. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3899.01: Special Topics in Film: Art in the Age of Malaise: Film and Literature in the 1970s   

Scott Juengel

MW 2:30 - 3:45 PM    

What might the America of the 1970s teach us about our contemporary condition? What are the keys to overcoming wide-spread cultural unease? Despite the profound sense of social fragmentation, paranoia, and cratered idealism, the 70s produced a renaissance in American cinema with the ‘New Hollywood’ (e.g. The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon, Saturday Night Fever, Dawn of the Dead), the birth of the summer blockbuster (Jaws, Star Wars), and transcendent new literary and political voices like Toni Morrison, Don DeLillo, Angela Davis, E.L. Doctorow, Hunter S. Thompson, and Adrienne Rich. This course explores the possibility of making art and entertainment out of cultural malaise by revisiting the decade that gave us disco and punk rock, reality tv, video games, Roots, earth art and modern environmentalism, personal computers, gonzo journalism, and more. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 4998.01: Honors Colloquium

Teresa Goddu 

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

The Honors Colloquium prepares students to write their Honors Thesis in the spring (Engl. 4999). Through shared readings, students explore critical, theoretical, and creative approaches to literary texts and methodologies. Students learn research methods, effective modes of argumentation, and creative techniques. Over the course of the semester, students develop their thesis topics, both critical and creative, as they work collaboratively together in writing groups. The colloquium is reserved for students who have applied and been admitted to the English Honors Program; for more information on the honors program, please contact your advisor or Mark Schoenfield, the Director of Undergraduate Studies. [3] (No AXLE credit)  

ENGL 1101.01: Creative Writing Tutorial: Fiction    

Michael Carlson 

TBD  

Are you looking for a reprieve from courses that demand rigorous self-discipline without offering you the lifelong benefits of artistic growth through creative self-expression? This is the class for you! The instructor will help students read, write, and think about fiction in critical ways that will hopefully inspire each student to experience moments of artistic intrigue and self-discovery.

This fiction tutorial is designed to help students develop independent creative writing projects. To foster a dynamic space for each student’s artistry to flourish, the instructor will meet with students every week to encourage and assist their self-directed creative pursuits. Weekly meetings are opportunities for the instructor to enthusiastically review new student material and offer guidance while also facilitating conversation and student feedback to ensure the student’s goals and expectations for their work are being met. The instructor will continually offer reading material and writing suggestions catered to each student’s creative desires. Students of any skill level or discipline are encouraged to apply. [1] (No AXLE credit) 

ENGL 1102.01: Creative Writing Tutorial: Poetry    

Anika Potluri 

TBD  

This poetry tutorial is designed to assist students in the development of independent writing projects. This is a self-directed course, meaning students are expected to bring personal work to be reviewed and discussed with the instructor on a weekly basis. Each session is an opportunity for revision, guidance for new material, and receiving any form of feedback or recommendation that may contribute to the student’s intent. Students of any skill level or discipline are encouraged to apply. [1] (No AXLE credit) 

ENGL 1280.01: Beginning Fiction Workshop 

Langston Cotman 

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

When it comes to writing fiction, everyone has good taste—it’s your taste so it must be good. You probably have an idea of what you want your work to sound like, in that you have all read fiction you find “good” or resonant, pieces you aspire to emulate. Many of you even have precious story ideas stored away in our brains for a rainy day. Well, look up—it’s drizzling!! In this class you will work to unlock your voice and platform your instincts in the service of telling your stories. Along the way, you will familiarize yourselves with the craft elements of storytelling and explore the works of a diverse range of writers. Throughout the semester, you will write two short stories to be workshopped in-class, along with shorter generative exercises. You will have the option of writing a third short story or revising a previously written story for your final. Be prepared to speak often and share work aloud. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.02: Beginning Fiction Workshop 

Kumari Devarajan

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM 

Writing fiction is an act of deep discovery. You don’t know what you’re going to find until you begin. The goal of this course is to create a safe environment where beginning writers feel comfortable taking risks. A range of in-class exercises will spark creativity and allow you to dive into your inner world. You will study short stories by a diverse set of writers and break them apart into their building blocks to discover where stories get their heart and pulse. During the semester, you will unearth your inherent strengths, develop your unique voice, and attempt to convey the strange, difficult truths that govern our lives. A big part of a healthy workshop is learning to give and receive feedback with goodwill and grace. By the end of the semester, you will have written and revised two short stories. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.03: Beginning Fiction Workshop 

Nathan Blum

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM  

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow

In this course, we will seek to answer an unanswerable question: What makes a good story? First, by closely examining a range of published short fiction, we will break down stories into accessible parts: voice, perspective, point of view, character, plot, scene, and structure. As we develop our own definitions of these craft elements, we will experiment with writing exercises—literary weight-lifting—to build writerly strength, form positive artistic habits, and unearth our unique subject interests. Throughout our early discussions, we will model the collaborative, thoughtful methods of the effective workshop, knowing that, before the end of the course, each student will write and offer up two full-length stories to our class community for a workshop of their own. Finally, using the thoughtful, detailed feedback from our workshops, students will revise and reincarnate a first draft into a fully-formed, fire-breathing work of fiction. No prior experience is necessary. This course prepares students for intermediate-level fiction workshops. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.04: Beginning Fiction Workshop 

Tony Earley

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

Writing fiction—making up characters who seem real, living in worlds a reader can see—is a kind of magic. Not magic as in the supernatural or uncanny, but magic like that practiced by onstage a good magician, tricks so precisely performed they don’t seem like tricks. In this class, we’re going to violate the first rule of magic and talk about how the tricks are done, how to take the basic mechanical devices of fiction—plot, characterization, point-of-view, etc.—and conjure up stories seemingly out of the air. We’ll learn how to both put the rabbit into the hat and pull it out. The class will be taught in a workshop format. Students will produce most of the text (three to four stories of five to eight pages) discussed by the class. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.01 Beginning Poetry Workshop  

Alissa Barr 

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM       

What knowledge haunts each body, what history, what phantom ache? —Natasha Trethewey

In this introductory workshop, we will take creative risks, question archival knowledge, build an appreciation of language as a tool, and expand our vision of poetry as an art form. Workshop members will dissect the works of contemporary and past poetic voices, study craft elements, and become active members of the literary community by attending readings. This course uses discussion-based workshops and generative writing assignments to introduce students to poem-making, from research to creative output to feedback and finally to the editing process. By the end of this course, students will have a radically revised portfolio of poems and experience with the practice of poetry.  [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.02 Beginning Poetry Workshop  

Ajla Dizdarevic

MWF 11:15 - 12:05 PM      

In this class, you'll become acquainted with a vast array of poets from across the world and across time. Our reading list will include Russian poets like Marina Tsvetaeva, contemporary American writers like Patricia Smith, Balkan poets like Miljenko Jergović, Victorian-era writers like Thomas Hardy, and more. You will develop the vocabulary needed to analyze and discuss poetry. Additionally, you'll be writing your own poems, which will be workshopped throughout the semester by peers with the intention of refining your literary aesthetics. Assignments for this class will consist of weekly readings, workshop critiques on poems written by you and your peers, a semester-long personal anthology, a close analysis of a poem from one of the assigned poetry collections, a group project, and a final portfolio. Additionally, you’ll be encouraged to immerse yourself in the vibrant literary scene on campus by attending at least one of the readings affiliated with the Gertrude C. and Harold S. Visiting Writers Series, subsequently writing an essay about what you witnessed and learned about poetics and how they can be verbalized to an audience. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.03 Beginning Poetry Workshop  

Athena Nassar

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM        

In Spider-Man 3, when fugitive Flint Marko falls into a particle accelerator, he becomes one of Spider-Man’s most powerful enemies: Sandman. It takes a moment for Flint to learn how to put his sand molecules together, but once he becomes solid, he is invincible. In this course, you will learn how to analyze the molecules that make up a contemporary poem, pulling them apart and putting them together again. You will learn to ask these questions of your poems, borrowed from the poet Jane Hirshfield: “What is being said? Is there joy, depth, and muscle in the music of its saying? Does it feel? Does it follow its own deepest impulses?” New and experienced poets are welcome. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.04 Beginning Poetry Workshop  

Sydney Mayes 

TR 8:00 - 9:15 AM       

In this beginning poetry workshop we will explore all the possibilities of what poetry can do—for us as individuals and as a community. Students will engage with and write poems modeled after the works of diverse poets, including Hanif Abdurraqib, Donika Kelly, José Olivarez and Danez Smith. These poems will then be workshopped. This class will be a rigorous introduction to craft and the contemporary poetic landscape. With a heavy focus on form, we will be exploring constraint as a tool to develop students’ poetic capabilities and knowledge of what a poem is, has been and can be. No prior experience needed.  [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3210.01: Intermediate Nonfiction Workshop

ZZ Packer 

W 4:15 - 7: 15 PM  

Would you like to write for The New York Times Magazine? The Atlantic? The New Yorker? Every staff writer or contributor to these publications learns their craft by constant and consistent immersion in the world of ideas made manifest in prose. In this Intermediate Nonfiction Writing course we will read and write nonfiction as well as creative nonfiction, concentrating on the craft and aesthetics of essays. 

We’ll examine the sub-genres of memoir, literary journalism, personal essays, lyric essays, zuihitsu, literary criticism, social commentary, and satire to develop our sense of how each form works. Students will submit exercises in each form, eventually revising works to be included in a portfolio that will serve as the final project of the semester. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3215W.01 / CSET 3215W.01: The Art of Blogging: Learning How to Think and Write in the Age of Online Journalism

Amanda Little 

W 4:00 - 7:00 PM 

Are blogs dead? On the rise? Have they supplanted journalism? Transformed it? Students will explore how blogging began, what it is today, and why it still matters.They'll track and analyze influential blogs and online journalism and examine the roots of self-published manifestoes that date back to 17th-century pamphleteers. They'll look to the future, exploring podcasting, vlogging, and the micro-blogging phenomena of Twitter and Instagram. Students will create and regularly update their own blogs for this course. A 500-1000 word writing sample on a topic of the student's choosing is required for enrollment into this course. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3230.01: Intermediate Fiction Workshop: Historical Fiction Writing 

Justin Quarry 

M 4:40 - 7:40 PM 

How can a narrative’s time and place drive its plot and characters?  How do writers incorporate research into their writing without bringing its pace to halt?  To explore these questions, this workshop is geared toward those who already have some experience writing short stories, with the intentions of broadening students’ knowledge of the elements of craft, particularly as it pertains to the imaginative reconstruction of historical settings and events in literary fiction.  In addition, it will place an intense focus on the revision process.  Throughout the semester students will read and examine a craft book and contemporary American short fiction in order to better understand how to apply what they learn to their own writing.  However, the primary texts for the course will be twelve stories students write and revise multiple times over the course of the semester.  After writing initial drafts of original stories, students will interpret “revision” literally, employing a number of techniques learned in the workshop to “re-see” or “re-imagine” these fictions in order to significantly alter them for their improvement. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3230.02: Intermediate Fiction Workshop

Tony Earley

T 4:15 - 7:15 PM  

We’ll start with the hypothesis that all cultures tell ghost stories and then ask ourselves why. Either ghosts are real, leading people to tell stories about them, or telling ghost stories fulfills some universal human need. Supposing for a moment that ghosts aren’t real, what important truths are we trying to tell when we make the spirits of the dead walk the earth in our fiction? If ghosts are metaphors, then metaphors for what? We’ll approach the answers to these big questions by focusing on smaller questions of craft—how we use this (character, plot, proportion, point-of-view, etc.) to make that. Students will write three to four short stories of five+ pages, in addition to reading, critiquing and discussing the stories of their peers. And who knows? We might manage to scare ourselves a time or two. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3250.01: Intermediate Poetry Workshop 

Didi Jackson

M 3:35 - 6:35 PM  

How do we move freely around an imagined confined space? How do we think of poetic forms as keys opening doors rather than locks closing up a room? Eavan Boland calls the form of poetry “a truth teller and intercessor from history itself, making structures of language, making music of feeling.” And that is the goal of this class: to learn about form, to experiment within the parameters of various forms, and to deepen your knowledge of the craft of poetry. The workshop is for those with a background in poetry. You will share and critique your original work while maintaining an emphasis on revision. This is a class of both control and risk taking, of historical parameters and contemporary amplitude, of anticipated know-how and surprise.

For the Intermediate level poetry workshop, instructor permission is required. Writers interested in the class should register for the waitlist.  Permission will be based primarily on a brief writing sample. Once the course selection is made, guidelines will be sent to everyone on the wait-list, along with a short questionnaire. Previous poetry workshop experience strongly recommended. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3250.02: Intermediate Poetry Workshop 

Kate Daniels

M 3:35 - 6:35 PM  

In this poetry writing workshop, we will think about how our poems come into being, developing from a feeling, a sound, a character, or a thought, et al to take form in language that others – somehow – recognize as a poem.  We’ll explore this mysterious process by considering the poems that students will write over the course of the semester, accompanied by process notes about their composition.

Requirements include six poems, presented for workshop discussion, critiqued in class and revised; process reports on each of the six poems; brief response papers to the poets reading in the Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series in the fall; two 1:1 Conferences with the instructor; the keeping of a journal; and a final portfolio of the semester’s work due at end of term.

To register for the class, register for the wait list, and also email the instructor at kate.daniels@vanderbilt.edu

ENGL 3440W.01 / CSET 3240W.01 

Amanda Little 

W 12:20 - 3:20 PM 

This advanced writing course explores influential and popular science writing. Students will read some of the bestselling science non-fiction books of the past half-century and today’s most exciting and controversial science journalism. We'll dive into science blogs, podcasts and TED talks, and touch on science-focused novels and poetry. Along the way, we'll learn and critique the fundamentals of great science writing and communication. Students will develop their own blogs throughout the course with a focus on science, technology and/or the environment, and interact via Zoom with top science writers and editors. This is an immersive education in how to convey fact-based scientific research with accessible writing that educates, inspires and resonates with lay readers. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3891.01: Special Topics in Creative Writing: Graphic Fiction and Nonfiction Workshop 

Lydia Conklin

R 3:35 - 6:35 PM    

Come enter the charming, dark, and enthralling world of the graphic novel. This class requires no drawing skill; in fact, some of the greatest graphic novels of all time were drawn by an untrained hand. Whether you have a writing background, a drawing background, both, or neither, you will find a path into the work of this course. Together we will study and practice the craft of sequential narrative art. We will read thrilling and engaging graphic memoirs, studying the work of Marjane Satrapi, Michael DeForge, Alison Bechdel, Darrin Bell, and many others, exploring the relationship between text and image and how the two create frisson and come together to make a form of literature that’s wholly fresh. Alongside our reading we will build, through exercises and small assignments, toward crafting a piece of graphic fiction or nonfiction, working in stages so revision is possible. By the end of the class, students will have a better grasp of visual analysis and a strong foothold in the craft of graphic novel creation. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3890.02: Movements in Literature: Global Modernism (Honors Seminar) 

Rachel Teukolsky 

MW 2:30 - 3:45 PM   

The modernist movement aimed to “make it new” by rejecting traditional art styles in favor of bold art experiments. Artists and writers were responding to earth-shaking historical transformations in the early twentieth century, including devastating world war, imperial unrest, the rise of new technologies, and confounding scientific discoveries. This course will study modernist innovations in novels, short stories, and poetry, as well as in film, visual art, and philosophy. Our globe-spanning author list will likely include Chinua Achebe, Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Rhys, and Virginia Woolf, among others. (HCA, cumulative 3.4 G.P.A. is required)

ENGL 8351.01: Studies in 20th and 21st Century American Literatures: Aesthetics and Politics (Honors Seminar)

Mezzanine with ENGL 3898.03

Candice Amich

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM

What happens when the line between art and life becomes blurred? When bodies in the street become aestheticized or poems become acts of political protest? In this course we will study the relationship between poetics, politics, and performance across the 20/21 century Americas. We’ll begin with a survey of foundational debates in Marxist criticism in literature and art, which later theoretical readings will build upon. Aesthetic-political touchstones will include Black Surrealism, Conceptualism in Latin American Art, Brechtian theater, postcolonial poetics, and the performance of witness. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 4998.01: Honors Colloquium

Teresa Goddu 

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM 

The Honors Colloquium prepares students to write their Honors Thesis in the spring (Engl. 4999). Through shared readings, students explore critical, theoretical, and creative approaches to literary texts and methodologies. Students learn research methods, effective modes of argumentation, and creative techniques. Over the course of the semester, students develop their thesis topics, both critical and creative, as they work collaboratively together in writing groups. The colloquium is reserved for students who have applied and been admitted to the English Honors Program; for more information on the honors program, please contact your advisor or Mark Schoenfield, the Director of Undergraduate Studies. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 7430.01: Graduate Fiction Workshop 

Nancy Reisman

M 3:35 - 6:35 PM

This workshop is a central creative meeting space for MFA fiction writers, a place to develop new work and continue existing long projects.  My hope is for a collaborative and flexible workshop in which writers will take part in shaping process and will contribute to recommended readings.  Along with the group’s original fiction, we’ll read  published stories, essays, and two or three novels (one path to discussion of novel-writing and structure).  I’ll ask writers to submit to the group twice with ‘full’ submissions of stories, novel chapters, or related forms; and a third time with either a similar submission or with our one assignment, a short-form piece taking on material or approaches new to the individual writer.  The Graduate Fiction Workshop is reserved for and required of first and second -year fiction MFAs. Third years fiction writers are eligible; MFA poets with advanced fiction background may apply. [4]

ENGL 7440.01: Graduate Poetry Workshop 

Major Jackson

W 3:35 - 6:35 PM 

This graduate workshop is designed to enhance your development and growth as a writer of poetry, to increase your creativity and fluency in composing verse. Together, we will engage in a search for literary excellence.  Our task is to generate poems but to also read, listen, debate and exchange ideas about what constitutes a perceptive and evocative work of art in our time. What historical, social, and political forces impinge upon or animate our efforts as writers of poetry? What formal, linguistic, and rhetorical powers can we enact to potentially increase the reception of our poems. Your weekly poems will trigger much of this dialogue, but we will include in our conversations, poems written by compelling voices of yesterday and today. In addition to reading model poems, we will listen to podcasts, read critical essays, visit museums, take walks, engage in any activity that enhances our perceptions of the world, that activates our imagination. Ultimately, our aim is to acquire the artistic discipline and professional attitude requisite to creating new works of literary merit but to also cultivate curiosity, risk, uncertainty, and openness as essentials to the act of creation. [4]

ENGL 7460.01: Literature and the Craft of Writing: Our Poetry Ancestors 

Didi Jackson

T 1:15 - 4:15 PM

W.S. Merwin said “poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.” By studying the poetic movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, we can discover what ignited and motivated the generations of poets before us. By doing so, we enrich our own poetic practice and discover how we might contribute to the evolution of our craft. We can better understand how our poetry ancestors saw the world and what informed their work. Some influences were political, some environmental, others personal, and some purely aesthetic. The movements and schools we will look at in this course include but are not limited to Harlem Renaissance, Beat Poetry, The New York School, Imagism, Black Mountain, Confessional Poetry, Black Arts Movement, Cave Canem, Dark Room Collective, Feminist, Objectivists, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry, Ecopoetics, etc.. By reading our poetic ancestors, we gain inspiration, an understanding of tradition, and a potential for dialogue across time. [4]

ENGL 7460.03: Literature and the Craft of Writing

ZZ Packer

T 4:15 - 7:15 PM

One hallmark of literary fiction is the preponderance of a singular style--often one that invites multiple readings to simply savor the pleasure of how a writer’s sentences unfold.

In this graduate-level fiction course we will concentrate on style, syntax, and sentences. We will read the works of a variety of prose stylists to examine how style works on the level of the sentence and its underlying syntax. We will also explore how rhythm and syntax undergird imagery and trace the lineage of images and symbolism in prose to their roots in lyric poetry. 

Above all, we will collect stunning sentences, and attempt to write our own. [4]  

ENGL 8138.01: Seminar in Critical Theory: Dispossession, the Environment, and Capitalism's Endgame 

Ben Tran 

R 12:30 - 3:30 PM 

This graduate seminar examines how literary works address the territorialization and enclosure of land, sea, and atmosphere. How do literary works convey, manifest, and critique the interconnections between 1) a history of ideas enacted through imperial and state forces; 2) the violence of racial capitalism; and 3) the destruction of the environment. Our three primary literary texts will be: Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People, Mai Der Vang’s Yellow Rain, and Siddhartha Deb’s Light at the End of the World.

After reading these works and considering various historical contexts, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks, we will interrogate the possible endgames of capitalism’s dispossession. Has capitalism yielded something worse, if not ended? Why has the atmosphere eluded thorough theorization and territorialization, yet it is now, more than ever, an imperative medium and resource of dispossession, from chemical warfare and drones to air pollution and wireless networking technology (such as 5G) extracting the data of our personal lives? How have global geopolitics and empires been reconfigured, such as the rising tension between China and the US as a potential new Cold War or competing infrastructure and economic systems?

Our readings and discussion will consider how scholars have approached this development in the humanities and social sciences. By engaging with interdisciplinary scholarship across literary studies, critical theory, black studies, history, environmental humanities, and settler colonial and postcolonial studies, this seminar will introduce students to some of the most significant concepts of modern theoretical discourse, useful for research across different time periods, genres, and subdisciplines. [4]  

GSS 2246: Banned Books

Rory Dicker

MW 2:30 - 3:45 PM 

This course examines novels that are among those most frequently challenged, censored, or banned from schools, colleges, and libraries in the United States. Many of these books are considered modern literary classics, and several of them have won prestigious awards. But these books also contain language and ideas that have sometimes been considered politically subversive, socially disruptive, sexually explicit, or offensive. We will study the historical, cultural, and political context for such texts and consider why they have been found offensive by certain individuals. Throughout the course, we will discuss intellectual freedom, censorship, and advocacy in relation to banned books. [3] (HCA)

GSS 2256: Literary Lesbians 

Kristin Rose 

MWF 3:35 - 4:25 PM 

From the nineteenth century to the present, this class explores how girls’ and women’s intimacies are monitored, policed, and represented in literature and culture. Examining a variety of fictional texts and films, we will consider the impact of race, class, religion, and disability on expression and reception of lesbian relationships. In doing so, we will also give careful study to literary form, history, and the poetics of queer womanhood. [3] (HCA)

GSS 2259W: Reading and Writing Lives

Nancy Reisman 

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM 

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” This was the poet Muriel Rukeyser’s view, and our course takes on significant ways of telling, illuminating truths, bearing witness to other lives, using language and image to convey one’s own vision. This course is a hybrid of textual readings, artist conversations, discussion of craft, and original writing. It’s a sampler of works, possibilities, and explorations of our own. We’ll consider fiction, poetry, essays, graphic novel, and personal documentary from a wide range of artists, some of whom will visit our class. Your writing will include short response papers, a related longer analytical piece; we’ll focus on process, paths to your strongest work. We’ll also delve into your own storytelling with short creative fiction and nonfiction (flash forms), and discuss other creative options. [3] (HCA)

GSS 2260: Histories of Drag Performance

Christin Essin

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM 

Cultural analysis of drag performance and histories of drag practice in ancient Greece, Elizabethan and Restoration England, Japan’s Edo period, British and American stages 17th-21st centuries. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.01: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques

Gabriel Briggs - Online Synchronous

MTWRF 1:10 - 4:00 PM

This course will provide a close study of short stories and novels and written explication of these forms. In particular, it examines one of the most influential writers in twentieth-century American Literature. To understand Ernest Hemingway’s enduring cultural presence, students will read a number of short stories, novels, and non-fiction prose he produced between 1924 and 1951. Students will also develop strategies for positioning the author and his work within specific historical and theoretical contexts. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1100.01: Composition

Elizabeth Covington - In Person

MTWRF 9:10 - 11:00 AM

The primary objectives of this course are to demystify the college-level essay and to develop your writing skills so that you will be able to write quality essays during and after your time at Vanderbilt. In addition to thinking about questions of style, we will conduct in-depth investigations of the three fundamental elements of an excellent essay: analysis, argumentation, and explication. I will ask you to think critically and to craft subtle, persuasive, well-reasoned essays. The analytical and argumentative skills developed in this class will help you to articulate your ideas clearly and convincingly. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1250W.01: Fourteen Poems: Introduction to Poetry 

Kate Daniels - Online Synchronous

MTWRF 11:10 AM - 1:00 PM

In this class, we will study the forms and history of English-language poetry by undertaking a close reading of fourteen poems – one for each week of the regular academic year semester – that were chosen to illustrate the essential elements and principles of poetry across time, all the way up to our present moment with its flourishing of Spoken Word verse and its electronic dissemination via twitter and online readings.  Most of the poems we read will be American or British, but there may be an occasional foray into poems written in English by poets emanating from other regions.  This is a contemporary revision of a popular English course that was long taught at Vanderbilt that focused on one poem per week throughout an academic semester.  

Requirements include: four short critical papers (lengthy assignment sheets will be provided); two oral presentations (on zoom); virtual attendance at two poetry readings; response papers (brief and informal) to assigned readings and to poetry readings; and occasional other assignments.  For those with an interest in creative writing, there will be an opportunity (strictly optional) to write poetry. Students registering for the course should be prepared to share a poem they particularly admire for the first class. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.02: The Art of Style

Gabriel Briggs - Online Synchronous

MTWRF 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Ernest Hemingway's influence on American Literature is profound and enduring. From his Nick Adams stories to his cross-continental reporting and award-winning novels, he transformed the way readers see, hear, and understand prose fiction. Despite his legacy, Hemingway remains an enigma. Often overlooked in contemporary classrooms and commonly misunderstood by a mythology that lingers about his public persona, Hemingway's writing comments on critical periods in our nation's past and captures critical insights on American expatriate existence. We will interrogate literary moments of war, romance and alienation and the vivid style that left an indelible imprint on the face of American Literature to constantly explore and examine. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1100.03 and 1100.11: Composition: Storytelling and Storytellers   

Jordan Ivie 

1100.03:  MWF 10:10 – 11:00 AM  

1100.11: MWF 11:15 – 12:05 PM   

From the earliest recorded human texts to the TikTok you watched this morning, humans have always expressed themselves through story. We all connect through shared narrative, transforming our own mundane experiences into structured tales of which we are invariably the protagonists. This class investigates the phenomena of storytelling and storytellers through a wide variety of genres, media, and time periods, with the ultimate goal of encouraging students to consider how they consume narratives and how they present themselves as credible sources of information. Through a series of readings, essays, workshops, and other projects, students will consider questions of structure, clarity, and credibility, ultimately producing a persuasive research paper on a topic of their choice. [3] (No AXLE credit) 

ENGL 1100.01, 1100.04, and 1100.09: Composition: Rhetoric in Popular Culture   

Stephanie Graves  

1100.01: MWF 8:00 – 8:50 AM   

1100.04: MWF 12:20 – 1:10 PM   

1100.09: MWF 9:05 – 9:55 AM   

Rhetoric in Popular Culture is designed to help you develop your skills in expository and persuasive writing within an academic context, as well as to build your skills as a researcher within a scholarly setting—all through the lens of contemporary popular culture. Using film, television, music, podcasts, Youtube, and more, we will explore how popular culture encodes and influences rhetorical discourse while developing and practicing the skillsets of researching and writing. In this course, you will expand your own critical awareness and learn strategies for engaging critically with popular texts, as well as understand research and analysis as the means of participating in scholarly conversations. This course is also intended to increase your confidence as both a writer and scholar and to equip you with the skills you will need as you pursue your academic courses of study. [3] (No AXLE credit) 

ENGL 1100.05, 06, 12: Composition: Composition in Four Songs 

Brittany Ackerman 

Section 05: TR 8:00 - 9:15 AM 

Section 06: TR 9:30 – 10:45 AM 

Section 12: TR 11:00 – 12:15 PM  

Is resilience something you’re born with, or a skill that can be taught?  Have you ever considered the ethics of space exploration?  Do you feel overwhelmed by the digital world, or have you found a way to harness the Internet as a tool in your everyday life?  In this course, we will use four modules to ask larger questions about life and the world we live in:  The Song of Resilience, The Ballad of Cosmic Exploration, An Interlude on the Anthropocene, and an Internet Fugue.  Writers will work toward a personal narrative essay, exploring their past, present, and future experiences with overcoming obstacles and adversity.  Writers will also develop academic research practices relevant to their own line of inquiry for an argumentative research paper by positioning their ideas in conversation with public writing.  The writing in this course engages in regular self-reflection, articulating what you know, what you can do, and how to apply your knowledge and skills within an academic community.  Students will write with purpose, audience, and context by engaging with both personal and social issues prevalent in our current societal climate. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.07, 08, 10: Composition: Writing, Research, and Storytelling   

Mark Wisniewski 

Section 07: TR 11:00 – 12:15 PM 

Section 08: TR 1:15 – 2:30 PM  

Section 10: TR 2:45 – 4:00 PM  

Humans are unique in that we understand the world through stories. When we stop to think about it, almost everything we do is a form of storytelling. Advertisements tell us stories about how our lives would be better with different products and services. Novels, movies, television, and videogames entertain us, but also affect the way we view the world around us. What, then, about research? Is academic work another form of storytelling? This course will start from the assumption that it is. Over the course of the semester, we will engage in writing projects that explore how advertising, entertainment media, and research are all forms of storytelling, each of which raises ethical questions about how we define ourselves and others. [3] (No AXLE credit)  

ENGL 1111.03: FYWS: Representations of Asian Americans  

Huan He 

MWF 12:20 – 1:10 PM     

Asian Americans are everywhere: studying, eating, working, writing, singing, playing, and acting. We will take the title of The Daniels’ Everything, Everywhere, All at Once as a lens to understand the proliferation of Asian American representation across cultural texts, including fiction, memoir, poetry, music, film, and video games. We’ll think of Asian American culture as a maximalist project—pervasive, experimental, excessive, too much, and spilling over neat categories of identity, nation, genre, and media form. Focusing on writing and discussion, this first-year seminar will introduce students to the importance of race when asking larger questions about history, power, and culture though close-reading diverse media. Cultural texts may include writing by Maxine Hong Kingston, Ted Chiang, Bharati Mukherjee, Cathy Park Hong, and Thi Bui; art by Nam June Paik; music by No-No Boy; film and games such as Try Harder!, EEAAO, and All Our Asias. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (P)

ENGL 1111.16: FYWS: Toni Morrison   

Teresa Goddu  

MW 8:40 – 9:55 AM  

This course examines the works of Toni Morrison, beginning with The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon and ending with her Nobel-prize winning work, Beloved. We will develop arguments about issues and problems that reoccur in her work: race, gender, class, and sexuality; geography and migration; history, trauma, and memory; kinship and community; nation and region; oppression and freedom; language and the artist’s role. Most importantly, we will locate Morrison’s works at the center of contemporary discussions about race and nation. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (P)

ENGL 1111.64: FYWS: The Repair Work of Righting and Writing  

Helen Makhdoumian   

TR 2:45 – 4:00 PM  

Humans often have a desire to fix things, from broken objects, to relationships that need mending, to taking action against wrongdoing. Doesn’t that reaction occur on a collective level, too? It does, and this course looks at what literary, social, and personal acts of “repair,” “reparation,” “reconciliation,” and “resiliency” can do and might mean. What do they reveal about power dynamics and ask of people? We’ll read selections from Patty Krawec’s Becoming Kin, Nadia Owusu’s Aftershocks, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Nothing Ever Dies, and Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans, among others. We’ll also listen to testimonies in online archives and view art on campus. In studying forms of aesthetic representation in relation, students will conceptualize texts as constructions (not just end products). Students will also reflect upon their own craft as writers, all while telling a good story in analytical and argumentative papers and responding to timely conversations unfolding inside and outside of the classroom. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (HCA)

ENGL 1111.65: FYWS: Imagining Climate Crisis  

Anna Hill  

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM 

How does global climate change challenge our powers of imagination, representation, and historical understanding? How might literature and the arts help us think critically about the environmental crises of the present, and conceive of futures beyond them? This course explores how twentieth- and twenty-first-century authors and artists grapple with the climate crisis. Through a comparative, transnational approach, we will examine novels, poetry, art, film, and digital mapping projects, as well as critical writings by literary scholars, environmental historians, postcolonial theorists, and activists. We will discuss how questions of race, gender, class, and region inform and complicate these representational experiments, and we will investigate problems of scale, perspective, and narrative agency. Interrogating the limits of representation in the Anthropocene, we also will consider how expressive media can provide means with which to imagine more just, sustainable paths forward.  [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (HCA)   

ENGL 1111: FYWS: Monsters  

Shoshana Adler  

MW 8:40 – 9:55 AM    

Medieval cannibals, botched science experiments, gothic vampires, human-animal hybrids, beasts, demons, and freaks of all kinds: this course explores our continued fascination with the monstrous in literature and film. Monsters are born out of cultural necessity, out of the desire to explore perversion, as an embodiment of popular fears and fantasies, as a practice of representing the unknown and of sublimating deep-seated anxieties of contamination and invasion. We will explore questions of gender, genre, race, capitalism, terror, cuteness, sexuality, disease, difference, and the boundaries of the human. This course will introduce students to the basics of seminar participation and academic writing and research.  [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)  

ENGL 1210W.01: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques: How to Make a Story 

Tony Earley 

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM  

If every short story is an assemblage of literary devices, the most successful stories make us forget that fact. This course will be a survey of modern and contemporary short fiction with an emphasis on how writers use the mechanical elements of fiction, from the micro (the choice of an individual word) to the macro (structure, plot, etc.), to make us know the things we know and feel the things we feel. What make a story move? What makes a world believable, or a character stand up and walk off the page? If one thinks of the writer as magician, we’re going to see what’s in the bag of tricks.

ENGL 1250W.04: Introduction to Poetry 

Rick Hilles

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM  

This course will enrich your understanding and enhance your appreciation and love of poetry by introducing you to—and asking you to meaningfully engage with—a wide range of influential poems in English. To this end, we will focus on major poems written from the Renaissance to the present time. We will examine how poems achieve their power both formally (through a close examination of their prosodic elements) and through close readings, primarily in the form of class discussions, but also in the form of your own written explorations and discoveries. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1220W.01: Drama: Forms and Techniques: Unruly Women; from Medea to The Crucible 

Jordan Ivie 

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM 

“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” So cries Lady Macbeth as she sleepwalks through Dunsinane castle, scrubbing phantom blood from her hands shortly before killing herself offstage. While the deranged and murderous Lady Macbeth is perhaps the most iconic troublesome woman of the stage, she is by no means an isolated case. This class will explore a range of plays containing women who similarly step outside of their accepted social roles, becoming insane, villainous, promiscuous, or all three. This course will examine texts from the classical period to the present, seeking out the women who murder, deceive, lose their minds, and sleep around. We will situate each play within its historical context, considering how these troublesome women are reflections or critiques of contemporary anxieties and debates, and explore how these stories have been adapted and translated for the modern age. Students will engage with these texts through writing assignments, workshops, performance activities, and discussion. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 1220W.02: Drama: Forms and Techniques

Judith Klass 

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM 

This course looks at plays from the Golden Age of ancient Athens to the present. We consider Aristotle’s ideas about how tragedy should lead to catharsis in the audience, and how a tragic hero should have a fatal flaw. We consider theatrical devices tied to moments in history, like a Greek chorus or an Elizabethan soliloquy. The course focuses on plays about families: volatile, funny, vindictive, forgiving, loving, hating – sometimes cruel in their actions and sometimes painfully honest in their words to each other. Theater can feel claustrophobic, with few sets: but this can fill family plays with energy, as people trapped at home together confront problems. We’ll explore how family plays have changed over time, and make connections between some very different works. Playwrights include Sophocles, Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Chekhov, O’Neill, Odets, Kaufman and Hart, Miller, Williams, Hansberry, Norman, Shepard, Vogel, Hwang, Auburn, Parks and Durang. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 1220W.03: Drama: Forms and Techniques   

Bridget Orr 

TR 11:00 – 12:15 PM 

What is drama for?  In tragedy, we collectively confront mortality and injustice; in watching comedy, we witness the questioning and celebration of social and sexual reproduction and change.  These ancient forms, invented in Europe by the Greeks, have morphed over time and been reshaped by other theatrical traditions but remain recognizable.  In this course we shall be reading Greek comedy and tragedy, Shakespearean plays, the classic Chinese play Snow in Midsummer, modern drama by Ibsen, Shaw and Beckett and plays by August Wilson, Wole Soyinka, David Henry Hwang and Caryl Churchill.  In addition to writing essays about the texts, you will have two creative assignments.  You will decide on their format but they might consist of performance, scene or wardrobe design, or script writing adaptation. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1220.04: Drama: Forms and Techniques    

Bridget Orr 

TR 2:45 – 4:00 PM 

What is drama for?  In tragedy, we collectively confront mortality and injustice; in watching comedy, we witness the questioning and celebration of social and sexual reproduction and change.  These ancient forms, invented in Europe by the Greeks, have morphed over time and been reshaped by other theatrical traditions but remain recognizable.  In this course we shall be reading Greek comedy and tragedy, Shakespearean plays, the classic Chinese play Snow in Midsummer, modern drama by Ibsen, Shaw and Beckett and plays by August Wilson, Wole Soyinka, David Henry Hwang and Caryl Churchill.  In addition to writing essays about the texts, you will have two creative assignments.  You will decide on their format but they might consist of performance, scene or wardrobe design, or script writing adaptation. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.01: Literature and Analytical Thinking: Moby Dick (Yep, that’s it.)    

Katelyn Sheehan  

MWF 8:00 – 8:50 AM  

We will read one thing and one thing only: Herman Melville’s 1851 epic novel, Moby-Dick. Over the course of the semester, we will turn our attention both inward to “grope the depths” of Melville’s beautifully, maddeningly complex prose and outward to chase the White Whale out into the watery expanse of the “real world.” In nearly every class, we will encounter extra-literary engagements with the novel that range in form from paintings and other visual artworks; to film and television adaptations; to a mobile game, a rotary phone of book reviews, and an emoji-based translation. Our exploration of Moby-Dick as literature and phenomenon will take place through regular class discussions; individual, paired, and small group activities; and formal writing assignments. As we develop our analytical and interpretive skills, we will use them to investigate how a work of literature acquires life beyond its book covers and inquire into the complex relationship between a novel and the broader cultural narratives to which it is referred. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.02: Literature and Analytical Thinking: The Art of Myth 

Grace LaFrentz

MWF 11:15 - 12:05 PM

What do statues that come to life, prosthetic wings fashioned together with wax, and music so powerful it can move stones have in common? These are all myths of artistic creation drawn from the Metamorphoses, a sweeping epic poem by the Roman author, Ovid. The Metamorphoses had a profound impact on Western culture, and countless authors have taken inspiration from Ovid’s complex and controversial myths, adapting these stories to speak to their own cultural moments and to raise pressing questions about issues as wide-ranging as gender, race, and the power of art. In this course, we will examine five Ovidian myths of artistic creation alongside their literary adaptations in a variety of genres from different historical periods, by authors from William Shakespeare to Toni Morrison. Through a series of academic and creative assignments, students will learn how to engage critically with primary sources, write persuasive arguments, and revise their writing based on feedback. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 1230W.03 and 1230W.04: Literature and Analytical Thinking: The Art of Style  

Gabriel Briggs 

1230W.03: TR 9:30 – 10:45 AM 

1230W.04: TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM 

Ernest Hemingway's influence on American Literature is profound and enduring. From his Nick Adams stories to his cross-continental reporting and award-winning novels, he transformed the way readers see, hear and understand prose fiction. Despite his legacy, Hemingway remains an enigma. Often overlooked in contemporary classrooms and commonly misunderstood by a mythology that lingers about his public persona, Hemingway's writing comments on critical periods in our nation's past and captures critical insights on American expatriate existence. We will interrogate literary moments of war, romance and alienation and the vivid style that left an indelible imprint on the face of American Literature to constantly explore and examine. [3;] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.01: Introduction to Poetry

Lisa Dordal  

MW 8:40 – 9:55 AM 

In our increasingly fast-paced lives, reading poetry can be a great way to slow down and pay meaningful attention to the world around us and to our inner landscapes. Although the main objectives of this course are to help you become close readers of poetry and to help you develop your critical writing skills, the poems that we read might very well deepen your understanding of your own life and who you understand yourself to be. The first part of this course will be organized around formal considerations (diction, tone, imagery, figures of speech, sound, etc.). In the second half of the course, we will read the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes, Marie Howe, Mark Doty, Natasha Trethewey, and Li-Young Lee. Requirements include two papers (plus revisions), short response papers and homework assignments, participation in class discussions, and a written response to a poetry reading. [3] (HCA)   

ENGL 1250W.02: Introduction to Poetry: The Atmosphere of Romantic Poetry  

Jeong-oh Kim   

TR 8:00 – 9:15 AM  

What is atmosphere? Is it air and weather? Or is it the in-between—effect, matter, immaterial, space, ephemera? By examining contemporary concepts of atmosphere in the context of Green-Eco-Environmental-and Geo-Romanticism, we will investigate the landscapes of poetic imagination that inform the Romantic conditions of atmosphere. We are both part of atmosphere and part of different atmospheres— climatic, spatial, psychical, emotional, and material. We will articulate the ways in which we can speak of the “Atmosphere of British Romantic poetry” when we consider the 3 Ms—Message (agents), Method (sources), and Medium (conditions) of atmosphere. We will explore this topic by considering poetic works across a swath of long- Romanticism from Anne Finch to the late Wordsworth. This course is a combination of survey and special topics from which to consider a poem: form, theme, cultural context, an individual poet, although, of course, any full reading of a poem will involve all these perspectives. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.03: Introduction to Poetry: The Long Romanticism (with a special topic of William Wordsworth and his Contemporaries)      

Jeong-oh Kim   

TR 9:30 – 10:45 AM  

Wordsworth, the Romantic poet, often sought in nature the music of humanity. This course, in a sense, reverses the process. By considering a range of poems in a variety of ways, we will seek in this verbal music of humanity, not to define “beauty,” “truth,” “nature,” and other such large terms, but to explore how such concepts pose mysterious problems poets engage. This course conceives of British Romanticism, a high-water mark of English poetics, as both contested and shifting. The aim is to read Wordsworth not simply with and/ or against Samuel T. Coleridge, but also to position his work against that of the popular narrative poems of Walter Scott and Lord Byron as well as of Shelley and Keats, and against other genres (the essayists and reviewers). This course is a series of different perspectives from which to consider a poem: form, theme, cultural context, an individual poet, although, of course, any full reading of a poem will involve all these perspectives. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.01: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Radiant Intertextuality (with a special topic of Romantic Science Culture)  

Jeong-oh Kim   

TR 11:00 – 12:15 PM   

“Radiant Intertextuality” is based on the premise that in a complex world, problems must be approached from many different angles. The current focus on cross-inter-trans-disciplinarity reflects this premise. Yet all too often, interdisciplinarity is treated more as a rhetorical slogan than as an actual practice. Its transformative challenge is reduced to an additive list without clear motivation: philosophy plus literature, anthropology plus history . . . a principle of X Plus Y. We will take the challenge of interdisciplinarity seriously to ask how it changes the questions we ask, the materials we work with and what we do with those materials, the forms in which we present our findings. Focused on Romantic science and medicine, texts that have increasingly come to define our postmodern culture and its related ethical issues, this course uses multiple disciplines to explore crucial problems. Organized in thematic sections, this course investigates the ways in which disciplines respond to and modify each other—how they mutually weave “Radiant Intertextuality.” [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.02: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Prison Writing    

Ajay Batra  

MW 2:30 – 3:45 PM  

Nearly two million people currently reside in prisons, jails, and immigrant detention centers across the United States. In this course, we will examine the different forms and genres of writing created in these spaces of confinement, both in our present and across American literary history. Reading essays, letters, poems, memoirs, manifestos, and more, we will discuss how incarcerated people have turned to the written word in order to meditate on their experiences of captivity, remain close to loved ones on the outside, build community with fellow detainees, and articulate strong, incisive critiques of systemic injustice. Additionally, we will consider how the highly restrictive, oppressive conditions of prisons and other carceral institutions have tended to shape the practices of literary expression developed by imprisoned writers across time and space. Throughout the term, students in this course will complete critical, creative, and collaborative assignments designed to improve their skills in writing, research, and literary analysis, as well as their fluency in discussing issues of race, class, gender, and inequality. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.03: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Children’s Literature  

Rachel Teukolsky   

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM  

How did the modern idea of the child come to be? This class will study representations of childhood in literature, art, film, and philosophy. We’ll focus especially on the “golden age” of children’s literature in the nineteenth century. Many of the classics are surprisingly dark, weird, and pleasure-seeking. Why is children’s literature so often transgressive? And what do these works say about adulthood, maturity, and growing up? Texts will likely include: William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience; Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island; J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan; Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden; illustrated fairy tales, such as Beauty and the Beast; Neil Gaiman, Coraline; Helen Oyeyemi, The Icarus Girl; selected film adaptations; and philosophy by John Locke and Sigmund Freud, among others. This course will be writing-intensive, requiring you to hone your writing skills by making analytical arguments about the course materials. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.04: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: African Women Writers     

Justine Waluvengo  

MWF 9:05 – 9:55 AM  

Matriarchy, ancestry, polygamy, bride price, domesticity, silence, resilience: what is the story of the African woman across generations and nations? Inspired by Chimamanda Adichie’s TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” this course challenges single-dimensional cultural narratives. By foregrounding the lived experiences of women of African descent, African women writers bring diverse perspectives to the narrative of African womanhood. Spanning from Mariama Ba’s late 1970s classic So Long a Letter, to Yaa Gyasi’s contemporary Homegoing, this course is grounded within African women’s literary traditions. The texts under consideration intervene in the evolving social understandings of Black identity, feminism, and gender, both in Africa and the African diaspora. Students will critically explore themes of representation, African feminism, postcolonial identity, otherness, and intersectionality. A variety of assignments including mapping family lineages, local color presentations, close reading, and creative exercises are included to help students develop critical and persuasive writing skills. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.05: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Reading Whiteness and the US Racial Imagination    

Matthew Milbourne  

TR 8:00 – 9:15 AM   

How has Whiteness been central not only to the formation of the US nation-state but to its literary and cultural imagination? And how are these seemingly separate formations entangled in how we think and feel about ourselves and the world around us? In this seminar we will trace the construction of whiteness in America as it cuts through issues of settler colonialism, racial slavery, and gender and sexuality. Participating students will explore ways to critically rethink whiteness as a racial category via the tools of literary and cultural analysis, as well as the methodologies of Black Studies and Critical Whiteness Studies. Progressing through a wide range of texts (including popular novels, films, theoretical essays, and captivity narratives), participants will rigorously develop their writing and presentation skills while defamiliarizing contemporary discourses around identity, race, and racialization.  [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.06: Talking Trash 

Jennifer Gutman

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM   

Waste, trash, garbage, rubbish: that category of things we would like to be rid of, but which remain omnipresent in our everyday lives. It fills our garbage cans until the weekly trash pick-up comes; it lines the streets we walk on in the form of candy wrappers and plastic bottles; it fills our landfills, oceans, and even the orbital pathways of space. In this class, we will consider the meaning of garbage through a number of social, cultural, and political lenses. What does trash reveal about the lives of individual people or, more broadly, the conditions of life in a globalized world?  What new values might we find in discarded things through practices of reclamation and salvaging? We will engage literature and media that investigate the role of waste in contexts as varied as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to e-waste in Asia to the trash crisis occurring right here in Tennessee. Assignments will range from it-narratives of discarded objects to literary analyses to creating media that imagines solutions to the multifaceted problem of waste. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 2310.01: Representative British Writers  

Shoshana Adler  

MW 2:30 – 3:45 PM    

This course offers a sampling of both the magnificent triumphs and astonishing duds of early English literature. Reading acknowledged masterpieces alongside the obscure, the obscene, and the downright strange, we will explore important aspects of premodern culture, including disorderly sexualities, intense religious piety and discrimination, early colonialism, the warrior culture of chivalry, gendered authorship, and a taste for the grotesque. What are the rules and techniques by which writers in the Medieval and Renaissance periods shaped reality, negotiated their own historical context, and affected their audience? Familiarizing ourselves with past genres, tropes, and feelings, this course will equip students to seriously engage with early literary history. No prior knowledge required. [3] (Pre-1800, HCA) 

ENGL 2311.01: Representative British Writers 

Andrea Hearn

TR 8:00 - 9:15 AM 

This course will introduce students to the foundations of British literature over the last five hundred years: from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, we will read representative works covering major (and many minor) writers, movements, genres, and techniques across a variety of genres, with an emphasis on poetry and drama.  In addition to vigorous class discussion, the course will require a variety of writing assignments, including short essays and take-home exams, and a group dramatic presentation. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3215W.01: The Art of Blogging

Amanda Little

W 3:35 – 6:35 PM

Conventions of the rapidly evolving literary form of blogging. Creation and maintenance of a personal blog. Critique of online journalism across many genres, including activism, politics, science, and arts and culture. Interaction with professional bloggers. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3348.01: Milton        

Pavneet Aulakh 

MWF 11:15 – 12:05 PM  

Considered by some to be the greatest poem in the English language, John Milton’s Paradise Lost begins by audaciously announcing his intention to “justify the ways of God to man.” Milton’s expansion of Genesis’s opening chapters is, however, far from a moralizing, Christian epic dramatizing humanity’s tragic fall from Edenic bliss. Rather, it is a work that meditates on subjects that continue to concern us: from environmentalism and the dangers of populist rhetoric to the value of free inquiry and the (heroic?) sacrifices to which love might compel us. Enriching our study of Paradise Lost with readings from his ambitious first poetry collection as well as the radical defenses of divorce, regicide, and a free press he waged in his politic pamphlets, we will explore: how and why Milton continues to matter; and how he used print to fashion a canonical authority that made him matter in the first place. [3] (Pre-1800, HCA)     

ENGL 3361.01: Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (Honors Seminar) 

Roger Moore  

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM 

In this course, we will read representative samples of the literature written during one of the most exciting periods of British history, the century between the Glorious Revolution (1688) and the French Revolution (1789). As Britain developed into a true imperial power, it experienced tension and conflict on every level—religious, sexual, social, and economic. We will explore these tensions as they manifest in the imaginative writing of the time, and we will consider a variety of questions: What roles become available to women? Why do graveyards and ruined buildings play such a major role in the literature of this period? Was this truly an age of “enlightenment”? Why did the eighteenth century produce some of the world’s most famous satires? Authors will include Swift, Pope, Gray, Johnson, Burke, and Austen, among others. (Pre-1800, HCA, cumulative 3.4 G.P.A. is required) 

ENGL 3614.01: The Victorian Period: Children’s Literature   

Rachel Teukolsky 

TR 2:45 – 4:00 PM  

How did the modern idea of the child come to be? This class will study representations of childhood in literature, art, film, and philosophy. We’ll focus especially on the “golden age” of children’s literature in the nineteenth century. Many of the classics are surprisingly dark, weird, and pleasure-seeking. Why is children’s literature so often transgressive? And what do these works say about adulthood, maturity, and growing up? Texts will likely include: William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience; Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island; J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan; Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden; illustrated fairy tales, such as Beauty and the Beast; Neil Gaiman, Coraline; Helen Oyeyemi, The Icarus Girl; selected film adaptations; and philosophy by John Locke and Sigmund Freud, among others. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3620W.01: Nineteenth-Century American Literature: Labor in American Literature  

Ajay Batra  

MW 8:40 – 9:55 AM 

Why are Americans obsessed with work? How did our productivity become a measure of our worth as human beings? Is there anything we can do to change this state of affairs? In search of answers to these questions, this seminar will examine the emergence of labor as a central, defining theme in U.S. literature and culture during the nineteenth century. Reading poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction (such as autobiographies and manifestos), we will assess the formal and aesthetic strategies that early American writers used to portray and to comprehend the effects of capitalist expansion, racism, and sexism on the diverse constituents of a burgeoning working class: sailors, servants, enslaved laborers, sex workers, factory girls, hustlers, and more. In the process, we will consider how social norms and power relations that first arose during this formative period in U.S. history continue to influence our lives as overworked participants in the modern economy. Throughout the semester, students in this course will complete critical, creative, and collaborative assignments designed to improve their skills in writing, research, and literary analysis, as well as their fluency in discussing issues of race, class, gender, and inequality. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3630.01: The Modern British Novel    

Elizabeth Covington  

MWF 10:10 – 11:00 AM 

What do anarchists, gaslighting, Venetian boatmen, and a lighthouse have in common? They all figure prominently in modern British novels! In this course, we will read a selection of British novels spanning from 1907 to 2019, and we will explore various issues including gender, race, sexuality, colonialism, and war. The course will also address urgent contemporary issues related to human rights, late capitalism, race relations, and gendered violence. You will hone your critical thinking and writing skills by engaging with some of the most celebrated and exciting texts in British literary history. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3654.01: African American Literature   

Gabriel Briggs 

TR 11:00 – 12:15 PM 

This course examines the depth and breadth of the cultural phenomenon known as the Harlem Renaissance. However, rather than view this episode as an isolated period of African-American expression, we will see how Renaissance era artistry extended an earlier “New Negro” tradition, and how it encapsulated African-American cultural responses to early twentieth-century social, political, and economic stimuli. As such, students will work toward developing strategies for positioning authors and texts within specific cultural, historical, and theoretical contexts. Within this diverse landscape we will investigate artists, essayists, poets, musicians, and novelists that include: W. E. B Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Countee Cullen, Louis Armstrong, Claude McKay, Nella Larsen, Wallace Thurman and George Schuyler. (US; Diverse Perspective) 

ENGL 3654W.01: African American Literature (Honors Seminar)   

Anthony Reed 

TR 2:45 – 4:00 PM 

Among the most consequential transformations to US life and society is the migration, early in the twentieth century, of thousands of African Americans from rural to urban locals, and from South to North. Since then, the South holds a special allure in African American literary and cultural imaginations. For those who stayed, remained, or returned, the South lingers in daily life like a ghost or unwanted inheritance. “Homeboy,” for instance, initially referred to someone who was also from the South. In this course, we will read works by Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Natasha Trethewey, Kiese Laymon and others to consider the ways African Americans have figured the South as at once ancestral and modern, regional and paradigmatic of the nation, while grappling with the intertwined racial and sexual legacies of chattel slavery and Emancipation. (Diverse Perspective, HCA, cumulative 3.4 G.P.A. is required) 

ENGL 3658.01: Latino-American Literature  

Gretchen Selcke 

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM 

Texts and theory relevant to understanding constructs of Latino identity, including race, class, gender, and basis for immigration, in the context of American culture. The course focuses on the examination of literature by Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, and Latin American writers in the United States. Serves as repeat credit for ENGL 3658W. [3] (P, Diverse Perspective) 

ENGL 3726.01: New Media: Game Studies 

Jay Clayton  

TR 1:15 – 2:30 PM   

This course explores the impact of new media on narrative through a focus on digital games.  Beginning with Lord of the Rings Online, a massively multiplayer role-playing game, and indie games such as Braid, Gone Home, and Portal, the course introduces students to the literary and artistic challenges of constructing narratives in a digital environment and the implications of social media for concepts of self and society. In addition to the novels and films of Tolkien, the course looks at a variety of films and novels about gaming. Students will create a blog and use social media platforms to learn how to convey complex arguments in visual, spatial, and audio formats. No background in gaming or digital technology is required.  Students will learn the theory and practice of new media through demonstrations and hands-on workshops. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3726.02: New Media: Race and the Technological Imagination  

Huan He 

MWF 2:30 – 3:20 PM    

Digital technologies are emerging or developing all around us, from generative AI to new gaming worlds to virtual reality machines. In this course, we will begin from the premise that conversations about digital technologies are not simply the arena of technical experts but also the domain of literary and cultural critics. Technological innovation emerges from the cultural imagination, which has often grappled with ideas of race and social difference (including gender, sexuality, and disability). We will track how digital cultures and technologies shift how we talk about and imagine “race,” often with real-world consequences. To do so, we will engage theory, literature, and media art in order to follow a series of conceptual arguments about race and digital technology. Topics may include technological labor, artificial intelligence, surveillance, gaming, virtual reality, and more. Certain days will be dedicated to hands-on activities with technologies such as VR and ChatGPT. In addition to written assignments, students will propose a research or critical-creative final project based on individual interest. [3] (HCA, Diverse Perspective)

ENGL 3891.02: Special Topics in Creative Writing: A Twentieth Century Poetry of Renewal and Resistance       

Rick Hilles  

T 2:45 – 5:35 PM  

This course focuses on six major poets who wrote from World War II to the near present. We’ll begin with W. H. Auden, whose poetics of anxiety defined a new global modernism that persists today, and Philip Larkin, considered by many the preeminent poet in English when he died (in 1985). We’ll also read 1995 Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney (born a British subject in Northern Ireland), whose poetry addresses the conflict in Ireland and the U.K. We’ll also study three American poets: Robert Lowell, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Sylvia Plath. Lowell brought highly personal subject matter to poetry and positioned himself as a national voice, frequently confronting the political issues of his time. Gwendolyn Brooks, whose poems are often set in her neighborhood, Bronzeville (on Chicago’s south side), also grapples with national issues. Sylvia Plath, perhaps most famous for the legend that has sprung up around her short life, offers poignant and still relevant images of renewal and resistance. Though these poets possess distinct voices, they share a strong sense of singular style and vision and offer uniquely memorable work that I hope will uniquely challenge us and inspire our own. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3891.03 Special Topics in Creative Writing: Writing Emotional Stakes    

Lydia Conklin  

M 3:35 – 6:25 PM   

In this course we will study how to build emotional stakes in a story by focusing on texts that make readers cry, and figuring out how authors build those emotional stakes to invoke emotions in the reader. We will read tear-jerker texts. such as “Open Throat” by Henry Hoke, “I Want to Live!” by Thom Jones, parts of “A Little Life” By Hanya Yanagihara, “Dance in America” by Lorrie Moore, and “Where the Red Fern Grows” by Wilson Rawls, deciding in what way earned craft elements are at play. We will also look at poems, comics, and songs. Students will bring in works that have made them cry for us to close read and deconstruct. The last element of the course will be writing our own work that specifically focuses on eliciting emotions from the reader. May be eligible as an honors seminar credit; please consult with the DUS, Mark Schoenfield. [3] (HCA)  

ENGL 3891.04 Special Topics in Creative Writing: Character and Consciousness    

ZZ Packer 

MW 10:00 – 11:15 AM  

This intensive Special Topics Course in fiction will concentrate on characterization, specifically how artful characterization works to create a psychological portrait that mimics human consciousness. While we will review common craft elements such as imagery, dialogue and scene, our concentration on characterization will allow us to explore deeper questions of subjectivity, consciousness, will, agency and morality. We will read fiction and criticism to discover how character informs nearly every element of storytelling craft, yet our main goal will be incorporating what we’ve gleaned from our readings into our own writing. Short weekly assignments, in-class exercises, and character studies will form the core of our practice, culminating in one complete story and revision that will be workshopped by peers. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3892.01: Problems in Literature: Literature and Public Policy   

Jay Clayton  

TR 9:30 – 10:45 AM  

Pick an issue from climate change to AI to gene editing to data privacy—there are great works of literature and film that speak to it. This course offers a new model for Public Humanities and proposes an innovative career path that will give humanities majors more of a voice in our public life. Through paired novels and films from recent decades and readings in how culture influences society, we will explore the steps it takes to become a policy analyst trained in the humanities. We focus on recent works that bring controversial scientific issues and culture into conversation. Then the students will choose an additional issue to study, drawn from other pressing social concerns like racial injustice, poverty, immigration, or sexual harassment. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3894.02: Major Figures in Literature: Toni Morrison  

Teresa Goddu  

MW 2:30 – 3:45 PM  

This seminar surveys the works and career of Toni Morrison. Beginning with Morrison’s earliest novel, The Bluest Eye, the class moves chronologically through Morrison’s oeuvre, ending with her trilogy Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise. We will also read her short fiction, children’s literature, and non-fiction. We will develop arguments about issues and problems that reoccur in her works: race, gender, sexuality, and class; geography and migration; history, trauma, and memory; kinship and community; nation and region; oppression and freedom; language and the role of the artist. Most importantly, we will locate Morrison’s works at the center of contemporary discussions about race and nation. [3] (HCA, Diverse Perspective) 

ENGL 3894W.01: Major Figures in Literature: Langston Hughes 

Vera Kutzinski  

MW 4:40 – 5:55 PM  

Why does Langston Hughes (1902-1967) still matter to us today? Since publishing his first poems in the early 1920s, he was widely admired for his innovative blues poetry and quickly became an international celebrity. Audiences outside of the U.S. also applauded his revolutionary politics, but at home he was later persecuted as a “communist.” A lifelong traveler and advocate of social and racial justice on a global scale, Hughes spent time in Mexico, Europe, the Caribbean, the former Soviet Union, and Asia and built an extensive artistic and political network. In this seminar, we explore the afterlives of Hughes voluminous writings in America and elsewhere by first focusing on his poetry, then adding his autobiographies as well as selections from his non-fiction and short fiction, perhaps even a play or two. You will be asked to write and revised short and longer essays, as well as differently creative works of your own choosing. [3] (HCA, Diverse Perspective) 

ENGL 3898.01: Special Topics in English/American Literature: The Divided Metropolis: Design and Culture in the City 

Elizabeth Meadows

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM  

Cultures create cities; cities transform cultures. The city is one of humanity’s great inventions, revolutionizing technology, health care, and finance. Yet cities are often represented as sites of corruption and danger. This course unites English and Engineering in exploring the evolution of urban environments and the roles of literature and culture in that evolution. We will examine the landscape of urban infrastructure and representations of cities in books, movies, and works of art to unearth how and why cities create opportunity and innovation while simultaneously restricting access to such benefits. Students will examine urban designs from antiquity to the present and their relationship to culture and geography; read literary works covering cities in the ancient world, in the 19th-century Industrial Revolution, and in the 20th-century flight to suburbia; design an urban slum; participate in local field trips; and develop a final project uniting storytelling and design in an urban setting. Combined capacity of ES 3890-02 and ENGL 3891-02 is 24. [3] (Diverse Perspective) 

ENGL 1102.01: Creative Writing Tutorial: Poetry    

Alexandria Peterson  

TBD  

This poetry tutorial is designed to assist students in the development of independent writing projects. This is a self-directed course, meaning students are expected to bring personal work to be reviewed and discussed with the instructor on a weekly basis. Each session is an opportunity for revision, guidance for new material, and receiving any form of feedback or recommendation that may contribute to the student’s intent. Students of any skill level or discipline are encouraged to apply. [1] (No AXLE credit) 

ENGL 1240.01: Beginning Nonfiction Workshop  

Justin Quarry  

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM 

What is creative nonfiction?  If you're asking yourself that question—well, you're certainly not the only one. In this workshop, novice writers will explore this ever-evolving genre, which includes, among others, personal essay and literary journalism—and they'll try their hands at storytelling in each of these categories, producing two pieces to be read and critiqued by the class in a workshop setting. To help writers draft and revise their work, they'll simultaneously examine the ways in which authors and critics have defined and redefined the genre, and study factual accuracy, point of view, tone, and the incorporation of literary techniques more often seen in fiction. No previous creative writing experience is necessary for this class. [3] (HCA)  

ENGL 1280.01: Beginning Fiction Workshop 

Michael Carlson

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM  

In this course, we will read, write, and study short story fiction together, as a community. This course will foster a safe and encouraging environment for students from all backgrounds to be vulnerable and flourish in their own artistry. Students will read both classic and contemporary short stories, learn fiction writing fundamentals such as plot, style, and characterization, and engage in writing exercises and group discussions. The heart of this course is the workshop. Students will receive generous support and feedback from their peers to help them continue writing fiction they can be proud of. By course completion, students will have submitted two short stories, including one revision as their final portfolio. A central hope of this course is to inspire students–every student from every background–to believe that their life is full of rich complexity and significance, and worth writing about through the profound practice of composing fiction. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280:02: Beginning Fiction Workshop  

Jessica Sumalpong  

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM    

"Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth." -Albert Camus  

Stories make us have real reactions to fictional scenarios, but how do writers so thoroughly convince us of the worlds and people they create? How can we do the same in our own stories? In this class, we will study both the technical and creative processes behind fiction writing. We will identify and practice craft elements (e.g., character, plot, setting,), learn to read like writers, and discuss what makes for a memorable story. Throughout the semester, you will write two short stories to be workshopped in-class, along with shorter generative exercises. You will also provide verbal and written feedback on your classmates' stories. Students will read a range of short stories, novel excerpts, and craft essays. No prior experience is necessary for this workshop. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.03: Beginning Fiction Workshop 

Kanak Kapur

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM 

“Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.” — Virginia Woolf

So much of what we know comes from stories. How do we make meaning of the texts we read? How do we hope a reader might make meaning of the texts we write? In this workshop students will read, write, revise and study short-form literary fiction. We will study elements of craft such as plot, character, pacing, narration, and workshop our own stories with these tools, pushing them into new territories. Students will write two short stories along with other shorter generative exercises. Students will also read a range of short stories and craft essays on writing. No prior experience is necessary for this workshop. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.04: Beginning Fiction Workshop  

Tony Early  

TR 1:15 – 2:30 PM     

This will be a course about how to make things. How do we assemble people out of atoms? How do we build houses that no amount of huffing and puffing will blow down? How do we construct whole worlds out of a bagful of mismatched pieces? We’ll take stories apart and put them back together. We’ll read and write. We’ll talk about physics and architecture and pop songs. Workshop format. Everybody talks. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.01: Beginning Poetry Workshop 

Anika Potluri 

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM 

“Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.” - Paul Engle 

In this course, students will be invited to engage with the practice of poetry, and further, to explore the function of poetry in a world where ordinary language does not seem to suffice. This is primarily a workshop course in which students will write and receive feedback on their work. We will function as a writing community, and careful reading of and engagement with peers' work is an important component of this class. In addition to the workshop, students will gain an appraisal of craft elements of poetry, will survey the landscape of contemporary poetry through a diverse array of readings, and will critically engage with the history and dimensions of the practice through readings and craft essays. At the end of the semester, students will have developed a language appropriate to critical discussion of poetry, a revised portfolio of their own work, and a broader understanding of the function of poetry in literature and public life. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290:02: Beginning Poetry Workshop 

Tandria Fireall  

TR 9:30 – 10:45 AM  

In this poetry workshop, we will explore formally innovative verses from a range of poets, including Ovid, Aphra Behn, Jane Kenyon, Carl Phillips, and Sonia Sanchez. This generative workshop is designed to give writers the opportunity to explore craft elements like syntax, rhyme, meter, imagery, and the intensity of the line. As you read, write, and discuss the work of poets within the canon, you will also receive constructive feedback from peers!  [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.03 Beginning Poetry Workshop  

Emma Palughi 

TR 11:00 – 12:15 PM      

Why is a stone not the same as a rock? Are metaphors like volcanoes? How is writing a poem like designing a video game? What is poetry anyway, and what does it have to do with me? 

In this class, you will get answers to all these questions as you write a portfolio of five poems. These poems will be workshopped by your peers and instructor in a supportive space that encourages risk taking and making mistakes. Designed to be demystifying and generative, this course can benefit both new and experienced poets. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3210.01: Intermediate Nonfiction Workshop: The Short Personal Essay   

Justin Quarry  

R 2:45 - 5:45 PM 

How do you tell a personal story in a short space, for a wide audience?  How do you shape your experiences into art?  In this workshop, students identify the parts of their lives rich with resonance and discovery—from day-to-day happenings to landmark moments—and craft them for the page with the goal of compelling readers.  In studying, they read two texts on the art of the personal essay as well as a diverse selection of essays by contemporary writers; in practicing, they write four essays of varying lengths (two of 100 words, two of 1500-1750 words), all of which are then workshopped by their professor and peers.  The final project consists of revisions of all essays.  Of particular emphasis in students’ reading and writing is the broad topic of relationships—familial, platonic, romantic, etc.—to produce potential (but not required) submissions for, among others, the college contest editions of the “Tiny Love Stories” and “Modern Love” columns in The New York Times. Enrollment by instructor based on submission. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3230.01: Intermediate Fiction Workshop   

ZZ Packer 

W 3:35 – 6:35 PM  

In this Fiction Workshop you will write and revise two short stories as well as write in-class and take-home exercises. The goal is to build upon what you learned in previous fiction workshops by deepening your analyses of your peers' work, published contemporary short stories, and craft elements such as perspective, voice, tone, psychic distance, character interiority and imagery. All of this is to create the "vivid and continuous dream" John Gardner spoke of in The Art of Fiction. To do so, we will pay special attention to style on the sentence level. Enrollment by instructor based on submission.  [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3230] (HCA)

ENGL 3230.03: Intermediate Fiction Workshop  

Sheba Karim  

R 12:30 – 3:30 PM 

Great writing requires dedication, imagination and…revision! In this course, you’ll learn what it means to rethink, rework and revise a story. During the course of the semester, you will write one story and revise it several times. You will also read published stories and essays on craft, read and critique original narratives by your peers, and complete writing exercises. The heart of this course is the workshop, the development and discussion of your own creative work.  The final for the course will consist of a revision of the story written for this class. Enrollment by instructor based on submission.  [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3230] (HCA)

ENGL 3240.01: Advanced Fiction Workshop  

Lydia Conklin   

MWF 2:30 – 3:20 PM  

This course advances the study of the craft of writing fiction. The material will focus on the honing of craft around the crucial elements of creating affecting and compelling literary short stories, such as plot, setting, character, voice, dialogue, authority, and detail. Students will read from the best published stories of the past year, close reading the texts from a craft perspective. Students will workshop two complete short stories in an open, safe environment. The students will use the careful, thoughtful critiques of the professor and their peers and their own discoveries about their material to produce a radical revision of either one of their two stories. The course builds on craft elements learned in Intermediate Fiction and deepens understandings of the mechanics and magic of fiction writing. The course prepares students for continued graduate study in fiction or the continuation of a writing career. Enrollment by instructor based on submission.  [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3240] (HCA)

ENGL 3240.02: Advanced Fiction Workshop  

Nancy Reisman  

TR 11:00 – 12:15 PM 

Time to open your fiction in new directions, or deepen and layer the forms you’ve been working with?  This Advanced Fiction Workshop is a forum for experienced fiction writers to experiment with new possibilities, delve more deeply into ongoing directions, and consider a range of options for shaping your material. We’ll consider questions about traditional and non-traditional story architecture, time, perception, spatial relationships and scale, and revisit other areas of craft as we discuss how you might develop and layer your work. The reading and writing for the course will be literary fiction mainly based in realism and extending to work with speculative elements (surrealism, fabulism, magical realism, etc.). We’ll regularly read and discuss published stories and essays on craft.  The heart of this course is the development and discussion of your work-in-progress, and the building of creative community. Immersion-adaptable workshop. Prior Intermediate fiction workshop strongly recommended. Please note: this is not a course for large scale inventive world-building. We’ll primarily focus on shorter forms. Interested writers should register for the wait list, as instructor permission is required.  Permission will be based primarily on a brief writing sample, and I will send guidelines for the sample at the end of course selection, along with a short questionnaire. Enrollment by instructor based on submission.  [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3240] (HCA) 

ENGL 3250.01: Intermediate Poetry Workshop      

Didi Jackson 

W 3:35 – 6:35 PM   

How do we move freely around an imagined confined space? How do we think of poetic forms as keys opening doors rather than locks closing up a room? Eavan Boland calls the form of poetry “a truth teller and intercessor from history itself, making structures of language, making music of feeling.” And that is the goal of this class: to learn about form, to experiment within the parameters of various forms, and to deepen your knowledge of the craft of poetry. The workshop is for those with a background in poetry. You will share and critique your original work while maintaining an emphasis on revision. This is a class of both control and risk taking, of historical parameters and contemporary amplitude, of anticipated know-how and surprise.   

For the Intermediate level poetry workshop, instructor permission is required. Writers interested in the class should register for the waitlist.  Permission will be based primarily on a brief writing sample. Once the course selection is made, guidelines will be sent to everyone on the wait-list, along with a short questionnaire. Previous poetry workshop experience strongly recommended. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3250] (HCA) 

ENGL 3260.01: Advanced Poetry Workshop     

Sandy Solomon  

T 3:35 - 6:35 PM 

This class will emphasize developing each student’s distinctive poetic voice. We’ll do so through the writing and the (sometimes radical) revision of poems. And we’ll do so through close consideration of how poems are made: we will discuss, among other questions, word choice, metrical and linguistic patterns and variations, syntax (the play and turns of meaning and rhythm), the way sentences coincide with and/or escape stanzas, the construction of lines and the uses of enjambment to discover how the poems we read together deliver their meaning and feeling to the reader. In revision, good poets make conscious decisions about almost every aspect of their work. This class will attempt to give students ideas about craft that they can then apply to their own work. Enrollment by instructor based on submission. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3260] (HCA)

ENGL 3260.02: Advanced Poetry Workshop      

Rick Hilles  

M 3:35 – 6:35 PM    

This is an advanced poetry workshop, and, as such, an opportunity for deepening your relationship in the practice of poetry. To facilitate this deepening, the class periods will be rigorous and packed with what I hope will be lively and insightful discussions. You will be encouraged to experiment with many different forms and styles of poetry, reading extensively the work of both your peers and published poets, while offering your best insights in discussions. The main focus will be the writing workshop, where we will discuss your poems and those of your peers, seeking the most helpful and fruitful ways to approach all creative work. Poetry is an immensely fulfilling and challenging art form, requiring effort and patience. By the end of the semester, I hope you will have exceeded your own expectations for yourself and will discover some new favorite poems and poets in the process. Enrollment by instructor based on submission. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3260] (HCA) 

ENGL 3891.03 Special Topics in Creative Writing: Writing Emotional Stakes    

Lydia Conklin  

M 3:35 – 6:25 PM   

In this course we will study how to build emotional stakes in a story by focusing on texts that make readers cry, and figuring out how authors build those emotional stakes to invoke emotions in the reader. We will read tear-jerker texts. such as “Open Throat” by Henry Hoke, “I Want to Live!” by Thom Jones, parts of “A Little Life” By Hanya Yanagihara, “Dance in America” by Lorrie Moore, and “Where the Red Fern Grows” by Wilson Rawls, deciding in what way earned craft elements are at play. We will also look at poems, comics, and songs. Students will bring in works that have made them cry for us to close read and deconstruct. The last element of the course will be writing our own work that specifically focuses on eliciting emotions from the reader. May be eligible as an honors seminar credit; please consult with the DUS, Mark Schoenfield. [3] (HCA)  

ENGL 3891.04 Special Topics in Creative Writing: Character and Consciousness    

ZZ Packer 

MW 10:00 – 11:15 AM  

This intensive Special Topics Course in fiction will concentrate on characterization, specifically how artful characterization works to create a psychological portrait that mimics human consciousness. While we will review common craft elements such as imagery, dialogue and scene, our concentration on characterization will allow us to explore deeper questions of subjectivity, consciousness, will, agency and morality. We will read fiction and criticism to discover how character informs nearly every element of storytelling craft, yet our main goal will be incorporating what we’ve gleaned from our readings into our own writing. Short weekly assignments, in-class exercises, and character studies will form the core of our practice, culminating in one complete story and revision that will be workshopped by peers. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 3896W.01: Special Topics in Investigative Writing in America: Investigating Climate Change  

Amanda Little 

W 12:20 - 3:20 PM   

Course will be taught by a distinguished visiting journalist from a major U.S. newspaper or magazine. May be repeated for credit once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. [1-3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3896] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 3361.01: Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (Honors Seminar)

Roger Moore 

TR 9:30-10:45

In this course, we will read representative samples of the literature written during one of the most exciting periods of British history, the century between the Glorious Revolution (1688) and the French Revolution (1789). As Britain developed into a true imperial power, it experienced tension and conflict on every level—religious, sexual, social, and economic. We will explore these tensions as they manifest in the imaginative writing of the time, and we will consider a variety of questions: What roles become available to women? Why do graveyards and ruined buildings play such a major role in the literature of this period? Was this truly an age of “enlightenment”? Why did the eighteenth century produce some of the world’s most famous satires? Authors will include Swift, Pope, Gray, Johnson, Burke, and Austen, among others. (Pre-1800, HCA, cumulative 3.4 G.P.A. is required) 

ENGL 3654W.01: African American Literature (Honors Seminar)

Anthony Reed

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

Among the most consequential transformations to US life and society is the migration, early in the twentieth century, of thousands of African Americans from rural to urban locals, and from South to North. Since then, the South holds a special allure in African American literary and cultural imaginations. For those who stayed, remained, or returned, the South lingers in daily life like a ghost or unwanted inheritance. “Homeboy,” for instance, initially referred to someone who was also from the South. In this course, we will read works by Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Natasha Trethewey, Kiese Laymon and others to consider the ways African Americans have figured the South as at once ancestral and modern, regional and paradigmatic of the nation, while grappling with the intertwined racial and sexual legacies of chattel slavery and Emancipation. (Pre-1800, HCA, cumulative 3.4 G.P.A. is required) 

ENGL 4999.01: Honors Thesis  

Mark Schoenfield 

T 12:20 - 3:20 PM 

For students who have successfully been admitted to the honors program and completed the Honors Colloquium course. In this course, students develop their individual honors thesis, working with advisors, the Writing Studio, and their cohort. The thesis experience concludes with an oral examination on the thesis topic. [3] (No AXLE credit) 

ENGL 7430.01: Graduate Fiction Workshop 

Lorrie Moore

T 3:35 - 6:35 PM 

May be repeated for credit. [4]

ENGL 7440.01: Graduate Fiction Workshop 

Didi Jackson 

T 1:15 - 4:15 PM 

In this graduate poetry workshop, students will be encouraged to adopt and maintain a regular writing and reading routine. They will be expected to craft and workshop a poem each week for class. And although prompts will be given, emphasis will be placed on each student’s independent approach to these prompts. Strengths and weaknesses will be identified. Students will examine and expand upon social, historical, political, and environmental influences that inform and shape their work but not at the expense of craft. As Helen Vendler states, poems “spring from moments of disequilibrium: something has happened to disturb the status quo. Hope has come to rebuke despair; love has come to thaw coldness; envy has come to upset happiness; shame has come to interfere with self-esteem.” It will be our job to identify and amplify the piece of life in each poem. [4]   

ENGL 7450.01: Graduate Nonfiction Workshop: Adventures in Creative Nonfiction 

Major Jackson

TR 11:00 - 12:15 PM

This course is designed for the writer of fiction or poetry who wishes to enhance their practice in their proclaimed genre or to test its boundaries through the reading and writing of creative nonfiction. We will examine literary style, voice, structure, and form by reading and discussing personal essays, autobiographies, literary memoir, nature writing, cultural criticism, and hybridized forms. We will read an exciting cross-section of diverse authors whose works offer insight into the process and ethics of telling a story, yet also profoundly underscore the human journey. Our aim is to observe and learn advanced strategies of lyric composition, narrative, and research-based storytelling and to consider the multiple functions of literary devices deeply in the service of fact as well as the writers’ imagination and authority. [4]

ENGL 7997.01: Teaching Creative Writing  

Nancy Reisman 

W 12:20 - 3:20 PM 

Graduate level instruction in the pedagogy of creative writing. [4]

ENGL 8138.01 Seminar in Critical Theory and Methodology: Postcolonial Methods 

(Graduate Course Eligible for Honors Enrollment for Undergraduates) 

Akshya Saxena 

T 2:45 – 5:45 PM  

This course introduces the broad field and methodologies of postcolonial studies. It asks: What is the relationship between anti-colonialism, decolonialization, and postcolonialism? How have these theoretical and political positions shaped contemporary academic debates about postcoloniality? 

While postcolonial studies is not a unified field of theoretical inquiry, we begin by tracing key moments, thinkers, and texts in its academic disciplinarization. We examine the emergence, institutionalization, and enduring “crisis” of postcolonial studies today. Along the way, we develop frameworks to think broadly about the cultural production in the Global South by those subjects whose identities and histories have been shaped by colonial encounters. How might we stage a conversation between postcolonial studies (historically focused on modern colonization in South Asia and Africa) with American, Hemispheric, and Ethnic Studies? Centering “method” as a question, we will explore the overlaps and disjunctures between postcolonial theory, globalization studies, and theories from the margins that draw on the Black radical tradition, Marxist critiques of imperialism, and indigenous critiques of settler colonialism. 

The course consists of three units: 1) Mapping the field—key thinkers (January) 2) Postcolonial vs Decolonial, settler colonialism/Indigenous studies (February) 3) a series of guest lectures by faculty members (mid-March-mid-April). The last two weeks focus on developing your final research paper. [4]

ENGL 8370.01: From the Polis to the Planetary (Graduate Course Eligible for Honors Enrollment for Undergraduates)

Scott Juengel 

M 3:00 – 6:00 PM  

The novel is frequently cast as the quintessential bourgeois form, complicit with liberal norms, capitalist striving, and imperial planning.  That story is certainly familiar and true, but this seminar opens the conceptual aperture wider to consider how the novel participates in modern ideas about historical time and historical consciousness.  To what degree is the novel hero a historical subject, and how does the ‘prose of the world’ advance a sense of history’s emplotment?  In a contemporary moment when certain reactionary forces are attempting to ban our histories, and discount our futures, why is historical fiction flourishing?  To be clear, this is not a course on historicism as a method, or the historical novel as a genre; instead, it focuses on literary works that function as meditations on historical time (e.g. deep time, conjectural history, insurgent futurities, catastrophe, genealogical archives, collective memory, etc.).  The seminar will be anchored by 6-8 works of fiction stretching from Defoe to our contemporary moment, but our week-to-week deliberations will be quickened by short readings in narrative/novel theory, and modern philosophy of history from Vico to Arendt and beyond. [4]

ENGL 8440.01 Studies in Comparative Literature: Literature in Dark Times (Graduate Course Eligible for Honors Enrollment for Undergraduates)

Allison Schachter 

TH 12:00 – 3:00 PM   

What does it mean to create literature in dark times? How do we know when we are living in such times? What does living mean and for whom? These are pressing concerns for our own historical moment. In this class we will examine how writers register the rise of authoritarian regimes, the varieties of state violence, and the breakdown of everyday life that ensues. We will read theoretical works written during and in the aftermath of the rise of fascism and totalitarianism in the twentieth century by writers such as Hannah Arendt, Lorraine Hansberry, Zora Neale Husrton, and Svetlana Alexievich. We’ll consider experimental attempts to document state violence and its effects on everyday life. We’ll also read twenty-first century works navigate the complex boundaries between aesthetics and politics; representation and documentation; and realism and experimental form. Much of the writing about midcentury state violence has focused on male intellectuals and writers, so for the purpose of this class we’ll give special attention to women writers and intellectuals to consider the ways that they approached these historical and aesthetic concerns. [4]  

AMER 3890.03: Topics in American Studies – Society, Tech, Safety, Freedom 

Dana Nelson 

TR 2:45 – 4:00 PM    

This class will take up study structures of individual, communal, corporate and technological freedom. What is the relation of individual to society, the citizen to the polity? What does it mean to be a free modern individual, a free modern citizen, a free modern country, a free market society? How have structures for and ideas about freedom changed from the early nineteenth-century to now? What are the ideas, aims and techniques or technologies ordering those changes? [3] (SBS) 

JS 2230W.01: American Southern Jews in Life and Literature  

Adam Meyer 

MWF 1:25 – 2:15 PM   

From colonial times to the present. Interactions between Southern Jews and other Southerners, and between Southern and Northern Jews. The Civil War, Jewish economic activities, and the civil rights movement. [3] (US) 

JS 2240W.01: Black-Jewish Relations in Post-War American Literature and Culture  

Adam Meyer 

MWF 12:20 – 1:10 PM    

The historical relationship between African Americans and Jewish Americans and its portrayal in novels, short stories, and films by artists from both communities. [3] (US) 

JS 2255.01: Creative Writing with Jewish Perspecitives 

Judy Klass

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM 

Students will try writing memoir, short stories with first-person and third-person narrators, dialogue-driven stories, diary/letter stories, science fiction stories, stage play scenes for two characters, and for many characters, flirtation scenes, family scenes, screenplays telling a story visually, and intercutting between locations, fixed form and free verse poems, songwriting… and in each case, we’ll read works by great writers demonstrating genres, techniques and options that students explore. Some works we read will have a Jewish context; many will not. No student has to write about the “Jewish experience” in this class, or about their own religious or ethnic background, though they certainly can; hopefully, students will challenge themselves with new possibilities in this multi-genre creative writing course and discover work by some cool famous writers. [3] (HCA)

LATS 2201.01: Introduction to Latino and Latina Studies 

Gretchen Selcke 

MW 8:15 – 9:30 AM     

Foundational course for interdisciplinary study of Americans of Hispanic heritage and their communities. History and cultural production. Interconnections and differences among diverse Hispanic communities. [3] (P) 

MHS 3050W.01, 3050W.02: Medicine and Literature  

Fatima Kola 

3050W.01: TR 4:15 – 5:30 PM  

3050W.02: TR 2:45 – 4:00 PM      

Narrative analysis, and other humanistic, interpretative practices of relevance to medicine and health. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 1100.01: Composition: Composition in Four Songs

Brittany Ackerman

MW 8:40 - 9:55 AM

Is resilience something you’re born with, or a skill that can be taught?  Have you ever considered the ethics of space exploration?  Do you feel overwhelmed by the digital world, or have you found a way to harness the Internet as a tool in your everyday life?  In this course, we will use four modules to ask larger questions about life and the world we live in:  The Song of Resilience, The Ballad of Cosmic Exploration, An Interlude on the Anthropocene, and an Internet Fugue.  Writers will work toward a personal narrative essay, exploring their past, present, and future experiences with overcoming obstacles and adversity.  Writers will also develop academic research practices relevant to their own line of inquiry for an argumentative research paper by positioning their ideas in conversation with public writing.  The writing in this course engages in regular self-reflection, articulating what you know, what you can do, and how to apply your knowledge and skills within an academic community.  Students will write with purpose, audience, and context by engaging with both personal and social issues prevalent in our current societal climate. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.02: Composition

Brittany Ackerman

MW 2:30 - 3:45 PM

Is resilience something you’re born with, or a skill that can be taught?  Have you ever considered the ethics of space exploration?  Do you feel overwhelmed by the digital world, or have you found a way to harness the Internet as a tool in your everyday life?  In this course, we will use four modules to ask larger questions about life and the world we live in:  The Song of Resilience, The Ballad of Cosmic Exploration, An Interlude on the Anthropocene, and an Internet Fugue.  Writers will work toward a personal narrative essay, exploring their past, present, and future experiences with overcoming obstacles and adversity.  Writers will also develop academic research practices relevant to their own line of inquiry for an argumentative research paper by positioning their ideas in conversation with public writing.  The writing in this course engages in regular self-reflection, articulating what you know, what you can do, and how to apply your knowledge and skills within an academic community.  Students will write with purpose, audience, and context by engaging with both personal and social issues prevalent in our current societal climate. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.03: Composition

Mark Wisniewski

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM

For students looking to deepen their understanding of argument structures, the research process, and academic writing conventions.  Students will produce four polished essays that focus on rhetorical analysis, ethical storytelling, the research process, and framing research as a form of ethical storytelling.  Readings cover a range of eras and geographies.  [3] (No AXLE credit) 

ENGL 1100.04: Composition

Mark Wisniewski

MWF 3:35 - 4:25 PM

For students looking to deepen their understanding of argument structures, the research process, and academic writing conventions.  Students will produce four polished essays that focus on rhetorical analysis, ethical storytelling, the research process, and framing research as a form of ethical storytelling.  Readings cover a range of eras and geographies.  [3] (No AXLE credit) 

ENGL 1100.05: Composition: Storytelling and Storytellers

Jordan Ivie

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

From the earliest recorded human texts to the TikTok you watched this morning, humans have always expressed themselves through story. We all connect through shared narrative, transforming our own mundane experiences into structured tales of which we are invariably the protagonists. This class investigates the phenomena of storytelling and storytellers through a wide variety of genres, media, and time periods, with the ultimate goal of encouraging students to consider how they consume narratives and how they present themselves as credible sources of information. Through a series of readings, essays, workshops, and other projects, students will consider questions of structure, clarity, and credibility, ultimately producing a persuasive research paper on a topic of their choice. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.06: Composition

Jordan Ivie

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM

From the earliest recorded human texts to the TikTok you watched this morning, humans have always expressed themselves through story. We all connect through shared narrative, transforming our own mundane experiences into structured tales of which we are invariably the protagonists. This class investigates the phenomena of storytelling and storytellers through a wide variety of genres, media, and time periods, with the ultimate goal of encouraging students to consider how they consume narratives and how they present themselves as credible sources of information. Through a series of readings, essays, workshops, and other projects, students will consider questions of structure, clarity, and credibility, ultimately producing a persuasive research paper on a topic of their choice. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.07: Composition

Stephanie Graves

TR 8:00 - 9:15 AM

We live in a media-rich world; one might say we are inundated with media on all fronts. Marshall McLuhan famously stated that “the medium is the message”; as a theoretical approach, this idea underscores the simultaneous importance of both the content of a message and the medium in which it is delivered. This course is designed to engage with the cultural functions and practices of media by considering the social, economic, and political significance of different mediums and developing an awareness of the rhetorical strengths and weaknesses inherent across multiple media. The class will emphasize the development of a critical analysis framework through which students will consider the broad implications of not only the media we encounter but also of themselves as consumers and producers of culture. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.08: Composition

Stephanie Graves

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM

We live in a media-rich world; one might say we are inundated with media on all fronts. Marshall McLuhan famously stated that “the medium is the message”; as a theoretical approach, this idea underscores the simultaneous importance of both the content of a message and the medium in which it is delivered. This course is designed to engage with the cultural functions and practices of media by considering the social, economic, and political significance of different mediums and developing an awareness of the rhetorical strengths and weaknesses inherent across multiple media. The class will emphasize the development of a critical analysis framework through which students will consider the broad implications of not only the media we encounter but also of themselves as consumers and producers of culture. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1111.07: FYWS: Women Poets in America

Didi Jackson

TR 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

In this course we will pay exclusive attention to the poetry of women in America writing in the 20th and 21st centuries. Our discussion will center around critical ideas of gender, the construction of female identity, sexism, and gender discrepancies women poets face. What do we mean by “woman?” How does the medium of poetry establish a voice for those historically silenced and marginalized? How are contemporary American women poets in conversation with those who wrote before them? How have women shaped American poetry? This course will combine both literary and creative approaches in an attempt to answer these questions. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1111.25: FYWS: Frost to Dove: Storytelling in American Verse

Rick Hilles

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM

From Frost to Dove: Storytelling in American Poetry. There is a great tradition of storytelling in American poetry that extends from the 20th century into the 21st. Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, Robinson Jeffers, Robert Penn Warren, Gwendolyn Brooks and Rita Dove all make use of narrative in their poetry in innovative ways. The central events of modern American history are also reflected in their poems, from the Great Depression, World Wars I and II, migrations west and north, and the Civil Rights Movement. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1111.39: FYWS: Formations of American Identity: The Rise of the Novel

Gabriel Briggs

MWF 11:15 AM - 12:05 PM

This course will cover the rise of the novel in the United States from the end of the revolutionary period to the 1850s. We will read the work of authors who dominate American literary history, such as Lydia Maria Child, James Fenimore Cooper, and Herman Melville, but we will also study additional writers who challenge conventional wisdom, and help us to imagine alternative literary histories in the U.S.  In our reading, we will focus on two related questions: how does the novel capture the social and political pressures of a particular historical moment? Where is the line between fiction and history, dreams and reality? The novels we will examine cut across several literary genres, including the Sentimental Novel, the American Gothic, and the Historical Romance, and we will attempt both to understand and to theorize the relationship between literary and historical writing. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1111.62: FYWS: Finding a Life of Meaning in a World of Likes and Retweets

Dana Nelson

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM

Our internet-organized world promises us endless freedom:  access to information, goods and, ultimately, happiness.  Our social networks promise us friendship, support and contact.  But we’re feeling (as people attest and studies confirm) more trapped, more devoid of agency and purpose, more lonely, unfocused and isolated, and, perhaps worst, more confused about truth and unmoored from any sense of meaning.  This freshman year writing seminar, “Finding a Life of Meaning in a World of Likes and Retweets” will help you situate these problems not just in our own moment but also historically, and then will turn to literature as—in Kenneth Burke’s resonant characterization—“equipment for living.”  By reading about others searching for meaning, we’ll experiment with and enhance our own self-worth and integrity.  We’ll explore our own belief and values as we read about others finding and developing theirs.  We’ll cultivate a self-understanding that doesn’t depend on what others think about us.  We will advance our own answers to the questions life asks of, and the demands it make on us.  In so doing we will strengthen our personal congruence through learning and practice.  We’ll develop and exercise social trust and responsibility in our classroom community to create a setting where we can hazard and share our noble experiments of living in truth, and in finding and experiencing meaning! [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1111.63: FYWS: Graphic Novel

Lydia Conklin

MW 2:30 - 3:45 PM

Visual literacy is a rare skill, though people are currently inundated in more imagery than in any previous time in history. In this course we will read a selection of literary graphic novels and memoirs and discuss the ways the text and images play off each other to create startling, powerful, and moving narratives. During the course, students will analyze and write about the visual elements of our texts and produce graphic narratives of their own. No drawing skills whatsoever are required to take this course. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1210W.01: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques: Monsters in Fiction

Justin Quarry

MW 8:40 - 9:55 AM

What, or who, is a monster?  What makes such a being simultaneously horrifying and fascinating? What might monsters represent?  In exploring these questions, we’ll analyze portrayals of so-called monsters in mostly contemporary novels, graphic novels, and short stories, and we’ll examine the elements of fiction used to illuminate these beings, and in turn the societal anxieties and desires among which they appear.  More broadly, the aim of this course is to teach you to think critically about literature.  Therefore, through three informal reading responses, three formal essays, in-class writing, and class discussions, you’ll hone close-reading skills as well as better develop analytic writing skills. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.02: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques: Monsters in Fiction

Justin Quarry

MW 10 - 11:15 AM

What, or who, is a monster?  What makes such a being simultaneously horrifying and fascinating? What might monsters represent?  In exploring these questions, we’ll analyze portrayals of so-called monsters in mostly contemporary novels, graphic novels, and short stories, and we’ll examine the elements of fiction used to illuminate these beings, and in turn the societal anxieties and desires among which they appear.  More broadly, the aim of this course is to teach you to think critically about literature.  Therefore, through three informal reading responses, three formal essays, in-class writing, and class discussions, you’ll hone close-reading skills as well as better develop analytic writing skills. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.03: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques

ZZ Packer

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

*Course description coming soon

ENGL 1220W.01: Drama: Forms and Techniques

Judy Klass

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM

We will look at how plays have changed in the last 2,500 years: including concepts/modes we inherit from the ancient Greeks and from Shakespeare’s time (plot arcs for comedy and tragedy, Aristotle’s Unities in the Poetics, the “fatal flaw,” the Greek Chorus, the soliloquy, deus ex machina); we will read plays about families, which can turn the claustrophobia/confined space on stage into a means of enhancing drama and tension as people are trapped together in houses and apartments; scenes involving complicated bonds and confrontations. Authors include: Sophocles, Chekhov, O’Neill, Glaspell, Odets, Miller, Williams, Kaufman and Hart, Hansberry, Albee, Bologna and Taylor, Norman, Hwang, Cruz, Auburn, Vogel, Letts, Durang. Students write essays analyzing works that interest them, with the option to revise every paper; we will read some scenes aloud in class, with students encouraged to do a bit of acting; lots of reading and writing. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1220W.02: Drama: Forms and Techniqes: Unruly Women; from Medea to The Crucible

Jordan Ivie

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” So cries Lady Macbeth as she sleepwalks through Dunsinane castle, scrubbing phantom blood from her hands shortly before killing herself offstage. While the deranged and murderous Lady Macbeth is perhaps the most iconic troublesome woman of the stage, she is by no means an isolated case. This class will explore a range of plays containing women who similarly step outside of their accepted social roles, becoming insane, villainous, promiscuous, or all three. This course will examine texts from the classical period to the present, seeking out the women who murder, deceive, lose their minds, and sleep around. We will situate each play within its historical context, considering how these troublesome women are reflections or critiques of contemporary anxieties and debates, and explore how these stories have been adapted and translated for the modern age. Students will engage with these texts through writing assignments, workshops, performance activities, and discussion. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.01: Literature and Analytical Thinking: Moby Dick (Yep, that's it.)

Katelyn Sheehan

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

We will read one thing and one thing only: Herman Melville’s 1851 epic novel, Moby-Dick. Over the course of the semester, we will turn our attention both inward to “grope the depths” of Melville’s beautifully, maddeningly complex prose and outward to chase the White Whale out into the watery expanse of the “real world.” In nearly every class, we will encounter extra-literary engagements with the novel that range in form from paintings and other visual artworks; to film and television adaptations; to a mobile game, a rotary phone of book reviews, and an emoji-based translation. Our exploration of Moby-Dick as literature and phenomenon will take place through regular class discussions; individual, paired, and small group activities; and formal writing assignments. As we develop our analytical and interpretive skills, we will use them to investigate how a work of literature acquires life beyond its book covers and inquire into the complex relationship between a novel and the broader cultural narratives to which it is referred. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.02: Literature and Analytical Thinking: Salvaging Literature

Jeong Oh Kim

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM

“Salvaging Literature” declares two purposes. Grammatically speaking, as an adjective, salvaging describes a kind of literature, one that saves what is lost, or fragile, or endangered. By studying the forms and techniques of such literature, we will explore the problems that literature has set in motion by its response to the world—to society, economy, gender, race, geography, culture, suffering, and human rights.  At the same time, Salvaging Literature concerns how to save literature, how to salvage its various forms, through considering and writing about our connections to literature as citizens of the university and of wider communities. We will explore these two ways of articulating Salvaging Literature by considering texts such as Edgar Allan Poe, Selected Tales; Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Richard Hughes’s High Wind in Jamaica; Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia; John Jay’s The Beggar’s Opera; George Lillo’s Fatal Curiosity; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; and Romantic poetry. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.03: Literature and Analytical Thinking: Oceans and Literature

Jeong Oh Kim

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM

“Oceans and Literature” examines the cultural meaning of the sea in British literature and history, from early modern times to the present. Interdisciplinary in conception, it charts metaphorical and material links between the idea of the sea in the cultural imagination and its significance for the social and political history of Britain, offering a fresh analysis of the impact of the ocean on the formation of British cultural identities. Writers to be discussed include William Shakespeare, John Milton, Samuel Coleridge, Walter Scott, Robert Stevenson, Mark Twain, and Rachel Carson, among others. By combining the interests of three related but distinct areas of study—the analysis of sea fiction, critical maritime history, and cultural studies—to highlight the historical meaning of the sea in relation to its textual and cultural representation, my course will offer a new perspective on the nexus between the ocean and literature. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.04: Literature and Analytical Thinking: Ralph Ellison in Context

Ben Schwartz

TR 8:00 - 9:15 AM

"Who knows but that on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" So writes Ralph Ellison in his 1952 novel Invisible Man. Together, we will consider Ellison's provocation and ask if he still has the power to speak for—or even to--his readers in the contemporary United States. Through an interdisciplinary study of music and writing by Ellison and his contemporaries, we will explore key questions at the heart of American and African American fiction, including the meaning of freedom, the price of justice, and the potential of American democracy itself. This course fulfills part of the AXLE writing requirement. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.01: Introduction to Poetry

Lisa Dordal

MW 8:40 - 9:55 AM

In our increasingly fast-paced lives, reading poetry can be a great way to slow down and pay meaningful attention to the world around us and to our inner landscapes. Although the main objectives of this course are to help you become close readers of poetry and to help you develop your critical writing skills, the poems that we read might very well deepen your understanding of your own life and who you understand yourself to be. The first part of this course will be organized around formal considerations (diction, tone, imagery, figures of speech, sound, etc.). In the second half of the course, we will read the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes, Marie Howe, Mark Doty, Natasha Trethewey, and Li-Young Lee. Requirements include two papers (plus revisions), short response papers and homework assignments, participation in class discussions, and a written response to a poetry reading. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.02: Introduction to Poetry

Lisa Dordal

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM

In our increasingly fast-paced lives, reading poetry can be a great way to slow down and pay meaningful attention to the world around us and to our inner landscapes. Although the main objectives of this course are to help you become close readers of poetry and to help you develop your critical writing skills, the poems that we read might very well deepen your understanding of your own life and who you understand yourself to be. The first part of this course will be organized around formal considerations (diction, tone, imagery, figures of speech, sound, etc.). In the second half of the course, we will read the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes, Marie Howe, Mark Doty, Natasha Trethewey, and Li-Young Lee. Requirements include two papers (plus revisions), short response papers and homework assignments, participation in class discussions, and a written response to a poetry reading. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.01: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis

Mark Wisniewski

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM

From the oldest surviving cuneiform tablets to the New York Times Best Sellers list, authors have imagined and reimagined life after death.  In the Ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome, literary depictions of the afterlife leave hope of an eternal existence in paradise. In this course, we will critically investigate how and why depictions of the Underworld have evolved from these ancient origins.  By examining ancient, early modern, and twentieth century texts, this course places particular emphasis on how literary depictions of the Underworld reflect the values and norms of the societies in which the course texts were produced and how authors use the afterlife to support or subvert the status quo.  Assignments will emphasize literary genealogy, social-historical contexts, and intertextual analysis. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.02: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Adaptation

Stephanie Graves

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

Adaptation—the translation of a text from one form to another—is deeply prevalent throughout our culture. How do narratives change when transposed from one medium to another? What is lost—and what might be gained—when a text undergoes adaptation? From page to screen, short story to graphic novel, or video game to TV show, what are the significant shifts required for an adaptation to be considered successful? This course will consider the importance of adaptation as a cultural practice from transmedial, intermedial, and intertextual perspectives through analysis of literary, musical, film, and TV adaptations alongside their antecedent texts. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.03: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Monsters, Magic, Madness, and Mischief: Reading Orlando Furioso

Cole Polglaze

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM

Heroes losing their wits which must be retrieved from the Moon. Princesses donning armor to defeat monsters. Magical rings turning their bearer invisible when held in their mouth. Hippogriffs circumnavigating the globe in mere hours. No wonder Ludovico Ariosto’s 1516 romantic epic, Orlando Furioso, has captured readers’ imaginations for generations and has inspired some of our greatest literary and artistic works—from plays by Shakespeare to paintings by Eugène Delacroix. In this course, we will read Orlando Furioso, engage with some of the texts that it inspired, and view the art that depicts it. We will use this story to shine a light on historical and modern discussions of colonialism, race, gender, sexuality, and identity. Through a variety of academic and creative assignments, students will learn how to engage critically with primary sources, write persuasive arguments, and incorporate feedback in their revisions. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.04: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Prison Writing

Ajay Batra

MW 2:30 - 3:45 PM

Nearly two million people currently reside in prisons, jails, and immigrant detention centers across the United States. In this course, we will examine the different forms and genres of writing created in these spaces of confinement, both in our present and across American literary history. Reading essays, letters, poems, memoirs, manifestos, and more, we will discuss how incarcerated people have turned to the written word in order to meditate on their experiences of captivity, remain close to loved ones on the outside, build community with fellow detainees, and articulate strong, incisive critiques of systemic injustice. Additionally, we will consider how the highly restrictive, oppressive conditions of prisons and other carceral institutions have tended to shape the practices of literary expression developed by imprisoned writers across time and space. Throughout the term, students in this course will complete critical, creative, and collaborative assignments designed to improve their skills in writing, research, and literary analysis, as well as their fluency in discussing issues of race, class, gender, and inequality. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1270W.01: Introduction to Literary Criticism: Mapping Literary Criticism

Jeong Oh Kim

MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM

“Mapping Literary Criticism” is designed to help students develop their analytical skills while exploring and examining relations between literary criticism/ theory and literature. By developing a critical framework, a theoretical optics, a new perspective for the reading of literature, we will examine the ways in which major strands of literary criticism—deconstruction, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, feminism, and cognitive studies—draw upon literature. When we map the geographies of literary criticism, I aim to help students grasp those problems that literary criticism has set in motion by its response to the world: social justice, peace, human dignity, and the ethics of theory, to name just a few. We will approach literary criticism as an inquiry and as a practice. What can we do and what shall we do with literary criticism? [3] (HCA)

ENGL 2310.01: Representative British Writers

Roger Moore

TR 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

This course begins and ends with moments of cultural collapse:  the destruction of Roman civilization in Britain in the fifth century, and the English Civil War in the seventeenth century. We will examine literary responses to these apocalyptic moments, from the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf to John Milton’s Paradise Lost.  In between, we will encounter a host of memorable characters, from Chaucer’s Wife of Bath to Spenser’s Redcrosse Knight to Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, who reflect the social, political, and religious tensions of the late-medieval and Renaissance periods.  This course will be of interest to English majors and minors as well as non-majors who want a broad introduction to representative masterpieces. [3] (Pre-1800, HCA)

ENGL 2311.01: Representative British Writers

Elizabeth Covington

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

Want to take a rollicking ride through more than three hundred years of British literature? This course is a survey of British Literature from 1660 to the present. We will read works from many of the influential and significant writers from five literary periods: Restoration/18th Century, the Romantics, the Victorians, the Modernists, and the 20th Century and Beyond. In addition to a sweeping view of British literature, this course will challenge the traditional canon of British culture. We will explore texts by authors who were disregarded because of their gender, race, class, sexuality, and other factors. Ultimately, we will develop broad but robust vision of the development of British literature since 1660. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 2330W.01: Introduction to Environmental Humanities

Teresa Goddu

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

Do you want to learn about the world from the point of view of trees? In this interdisciplinary, place-based course, we will bring the trees that surround us on campus into conversation with Richard Powers’ environmental epic, The Overstory (2018). We will study trees from an array of perspectives—scientific, artistic, historical, social—as we investigate such topics as how trees communicate and form communities, how they shape and are shaped by human environments, whether they should have rights, and how they are represented in art and literature. We will keep a tree journal and do a collaborative tree project as we study how stories can teach humans to better understand their relationship to the more-than-human world. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3340.01: Shakespeare: Representative Selections

Kathryn Schwarz

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM

On the one hand, Shakespeare’s works have often been used as reference points for social hierarchies, categories, and norms. On the other hand, these same works provide rich resources for challenging orthodox systems and structures. This course will engage the plays’ complex, often contentious representations of social experience: constructions of identity in relation to gender, sexuality, and erotic attachment; representations of cultural authority and cultural conflict; crises produced through mistake, transformation, and disguise; and tensions surrounding ethnicity, religion, and race. Throughout the semester, we’ll take various angles on what might broadly be termed politics: the politics of nationalism, gender, history, violence, identity, and community. 

Discussions will consider both early histories of production and more recent readings, stagings, and adaptations for new media. Course requirements include a group presentation, analytic essays, research assignments, and regular participation. [3] (Pre-1800, HCA)

ENGL 3343.01: Race and Early Modernity

Shoshana Adler

TR 8:00 - 9:15 AM

Monsters that live on the margins of maps; libels about Jewish neighbors; King Arthur’s questing knights; fantastical tales of unknown islands; Shakespearean stage productions; cannibals, crusaders, and Muslim princesses: the foundational elements of much of English literature are inseparable from the history of race. Moving through chivalric romances, travel narratives, and drama, this course examines some of the earliest incarnations of race-making in medieval and early modern English literature, in all their vast strangeness and discomfiting familiarity. What about our contemporary assumptions about race might shift when we consider its earliest discourses? How might the racial ideologies of the past help us to imagine our present differently? No prior knowledge or expertise in early literature required. [3] (Pre-1800 or Diverse Perspectives, HCA)

ENGL 3654.01: African American Literature: Literature of Slavery and Emancipation

Ajay Batra

MW 8:40 - 9:55 AM

African American literature first emerged against a backdrop of captivity, forced migration, and enslavement. Across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Black writers transcended strict prohibitions against reading and writing to craft complex literary works that reflected powerfully on their diverse experiences of displacement, oppression, and spiritual awakening, as well as their practices of survival and their collective pursuit of liberation. In this course, we will attend closely to both major and minor works from this foundational period in African American literary history. Reading a combination of poems, essays, autobiographies, sermons, plays, and prose fiction, we will examine how Black writers creatively repurposed conventional forms and genres in order to tell their stories, construct their identities, create beauty, and speak truth to power. In addition, we will read a small selection of historical documents that chronicle the efforts of Black communities to resist conditions of bondage and to define freedom on their own terms. Major authors discussed in this course may include Phillis Wheatley (Peters), David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Harriet E. Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, and Charles Chesnutt. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, US)

ENGL 3662.01: Asian American Literature

Huan He

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

What is “Asian American” about Asian American literature and culture? Is it the identity of an author, the representation of a character, a familiar narrative trope, a political orientation, an aesthetic or style, or perhaps something else entirely unseen? This question will guide us through the limitations and possibilities of cohering a set of works through racial identity and identification. We’ll look at how Asian American writers and artists have wrestled with these contradictions and how they have used race as a creative source for discussing larger issues of identity, migration, colonialism, and capitalism. In our discussion-based course, we may engage primary readings by Maxine Hong Kingston, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, David Henry Hwang, Rea Tajiri, Ocean Vuong, Craig Santos Perez, Shani Mootoo, among others, plus theoretical and historical texts. In addition to written essays, students will have the opportunity to propose a critical-creative project as a final assignment. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, P)

ENGL 3670.01: Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature

Akshya Saxena

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM

This course offers an introduction to postcolonial literature and theory. Reading literary works from Africa, India, the Caribbean, and Britain, it asks: what does it mean to be “postcolonial”? Does the term indicate a historical fact or an ideological position? When does a text or an author become “postcolonial”? Through a mix of literary and theoretical texts, the course explores how writers through history have sought to decolonize both politically and psychologically. What is the difference between anticolonial, postcolonial, and decolonial thought? What is the relation between literary form and histories of colonization, decolonization, nationalism, and migration? Along the way, we will examine the emergence, institutionalization, and crisis of postcolonial studies as a field of study today. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3720.01: Literature, Science, and Technology

Pavneet Aulakh

MW 4:40 - 5:55

The christening of “Curiosity,” the fourth Mars rover, speaks to an essential element of scientific experimentation and discovery. As Einstein put it: “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” Curiosity, however, was not always thought a productive habit of thought. Deemed a vice, it had to be legitimized over the course of what has been called the Scientific Revolution. Through a reading of early modern scientific treatises and literary texts, we will historicize the evolution of curiosity and study the responses this transformation occasioned. Our study of seventeenth-century science will equally be animated by a similar curiosity and extend to an examination of the strangeness and heterogeneity of early experimental practice, the variety of literary forms it engaged with, and how experimental practitioners communicated their discoveries and projects to a skeptical audience. [3] (Pre-1800 or Diverse Perspectives, P)

ENGL 3726.01: New Media

Huan He

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM

In digital culture, we are constantly engaging in acts of the imagination: “users” we assume to be on the other side of the screen, AI “persons,” grand myths of innovation progress, utopic and dystopic technological futures, and so forth. Drawing from literature, art, and theory, we will look at how technologies and technological worlds are produced through imaginative techniques, often with real-world consequences. We’ll examine how ideas of race and social difference (including gender, sexuality, and disability) reflect how we imagine information technologies, shaping how technical systems are embedded within human worlds. How is the history of the digital also a history of race? What is the relevance of literature and art for future technologists? Topics may include Silicon Valley history, artificial intelligence, robots, surveillance cultures, digital gaming, and more. In addition to written essays, students will propose a research or critical-creative final project based on individual interest. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, HCA)

ENGL 3731.01: Climate and Literature: Contemporary US Climate Fiction

Teresa Goddu

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

This course surveys contemporary fiction that addresses the climate crisis. What do contemporary writers have to tell us about the natural, social, political, psychological, and cultural changes that we are currently experiencing? How does literature help us imagine a world shaped by climate change and offer ways to approach its challenges and possibilities? As we read, we will ask—how can fiction help us understand the world that’s already here and prepare us for the one that has yet to come? 

Texts may include: Ben Lerner, 10:04; Cormac McCarthy, The Road; Karen Thompson Walker, The Age of Miracles; Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation; Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones; as well as an array of short stories and films. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3740.01: Critical Theory: Queer Theory

Shoshana Adler

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

What is the relationship between deviance and political radicalism? Is there a proper way to do the history of homosexuality? What methods do social, sexual, and gender deviants use to imagine and practice alternate forms of community? What is the relation between queer and trans studies, and between trans studies and feminism? This course is an introduction to the intellectual tradition of queer and trans theory, and to some of the historical and intellectual forces that led to the emergence of queer theory as a distinct field of inquiry. We will study identity politics, sexual analytics, queer historiography, and LGBTQ organizing, exploring both foundational and contemporary debates in the field over gender, sexuality, race, activism, social norms, and historiography. The class is primarily focused on theory, but our readings will be punctuated with queer films. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, HCA)

ENGL 3890W.01: Movements in Literature: The Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Andrea Hearn

MW 8:40 - 9:55 AM

In his 1944 essay, “The Simple Art of Murder,” Raymond Chandler wrote of detective fiction, “it is one of the qualities of this kind of writing that the thing that makes people read it never goes out of style.”  Certainly detective fiction itself has not gone out of style since its first appearances in the nineteenth century, but there is a particular kind of detective fiction whose style seems hopelessly tied to its time: the so-called “Golden Age” of detective fiction from between the two World Wars.  Associated with English country houses, glamorous international travel, and quirky amateur detectives, the novels of this period nevertheless continue to enjoy a long after-life in film and television adaptations, frequent re-issues, and a resurgence of their tropes and techniques in contemporary detective stories.  After reviewing the major authors of its pre-history (e.g., Poe, Conan Doyle, Chesterton, Orczy), we will read representative works from the Golden Age (e.g., Christie, Sayers, Tey, Berkeley, Crispin) and conclude with a reader’s choice among contemporary revivals (e.g., Elly Griffiths, Richard Osman, Anthony Horowitz).  Assignments will include close reading, critical engagement, synthesis, parody, and class presentations. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3892.01: Problems in Literature: Bad Mothers

Elizabeth Meadows and Sophie Bjork-James

MW 10:00 - 11:15 AM

Bad mothers–even if we have not had one, we recognize one when we see her. But, how has it become so much easier to be a bad mother than any other kind? Where does the “bad mother” come from, and what purposes does she serve for her culture–both now and in the past? We will examine how the concept of bad mothers is created, expressed, “solved” or otherwise addressed in cultural production (books, movies, television, music) and institutional policy (parental leave, health guidelines, abortion access) across a range of times and places, approaching these questions from the disciplinary perspectives of English and Anthropology. Assignments will include a group podcast on a parenting manual, a final research paper, book club on maternal dystopias, and journaling to reflect on how individual experiences connect to themes/issues in the class and the culture around us. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, HCA)

ENGL 3894.01: Major Figures in Literature: Ernest Hemingway

Gabriel Briggs

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

This course examines one of the most influential writers in twentieth-century American Literature. To better understand Hemingway’s enduring cultural and literary presence, students will read a number of short stories, novels, and non-fiction prose he produced between 1924 and 1951. Students will also develop strategies for positioning the author and his work within specific historical and theoretical contexts. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3894.02: Major Figures in Literature: Oscar Wilde: Art Rebel

Rachel Teukolsky

MW 4:40 - 5:55 AM

How did Oscar Wilde, the most popular writer of his age, end up confined to a prison cell? Wilde was beloved for his sparkling wit and outrageous persona, but these qualities couldn’t save him from persecution by an oppressive legal system. This course will study Wilde’s life and writings, tracking his meteoric rise and tragic downfall. We’ll explore his roots in Ireland, his ascent in London society as a celebrated playwright, and his stunning arrest and imprisonment for “acts of gross indecency” with other men. Wilde was more than a gay martyr: he was also a philosopher and member of a radical counterculture devoted to art and beauty. The course will use Wilde’s texts to consider broader, urgent issues of sexuality, masculinity, celebrity, art, conformity, counterculture, and criminality—issues still very much with us today. We’ll read a selection of his essays, plays, fairy tales, and his Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. We’ll also explore a range of other related texts, images, movies and media, from contemporary Black dandies to the gay cowboys of Brokeback Mountain. What happens when an artist breaks the rules governing his world, and how do those rebellions appear to us today? [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3898.01: Special Topics in English and American Literature: Modern Conversations in Black and White

Gabriel Briggs

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM

This course examines Ernest Hemingway’s influence on prominent Black 20th C writers and the intertextual exchange among these artists that transformed American Modernism. In addition to elements of style and use of dialogue, it examines the themes of war, violence, and social alienation that permeate the works of these authors and redefined America’s literary landscape.  In addition to prominent Hemingway selections, we will read works by Claude McKay, Wallace Thurman, Langston. Hughes, and Jean Toomer. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, HCA)

ENGL 1101.01: Creative Writing Tutorial: Fiction

Kanak Kapur

Individual instruction in writing fiction. Offered on a pass/fail basis only. Not open to students who have earned credit for ENGL 3851 section 07 without permission. Total credit hours for this course and ENGL 3851 section 7 will not exceed 1 credit hour. Credit hours reduced from most recent course taken (or from test or transfer credit) as appropriate. [1] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1102.01: Creative Writing Tutorial: Poetry

Tandria Fireall

Individual instruction in writing poetry. Offered on a pass/fail basis only. Not open to students who have earned credit for ENGL 3851 section 07 without permission. Total credit hours for this course and ENGL 3851 section 7 will not exceed 1 credit hour. Credit hours reduced from most recent course taken (or from test or transfer credit) as appropriate. [1] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1240.01: Beginning Nonfiction Workshop

Justin Quarry

MW 2:30 - 3:45 PM

What is creative nonfiction?  If you're asking yourself that question—well, you're certainly not the only one.  In this workshop, novice writers will explore this ever-evolving genre, which includes, among others, personal essay and literary journalism—and they'll try their hands at storytelling in each of these categories, producing two pieces to be read and critiqued by the class in a workshop setting.  To help writers draft and revise their work, they'll simultaneously examine the ways in which authors and critics have defined and redefined the genre, and study factual accuracy, point of view, tone, and the incorporation of literary techniques more often seen in fiction.  No previous creative writing experience is necessary for this class. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.01: Beginning Fiction Workshop

Lela Ni

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

In this workshop, students will be introduced to the elements of fiction writing and begin to develop their own writing practices. We will begin the course by reading published short stories and by exploring craft elements such as plot, point of view, setting, and characterization. We will develop a definition of each term and complete weekly writing exercises related to each craft element. Over the course of the semester, students will write two (2) short stories and participate in workshops in which we discuss student work through constructive feedback. Students will have the option of writing a third short story or revising a previously written story for their final. Students are also expected to participate in Vanderbilt’s literary community by attending a reading of a visiting writer. Be prepared to share work often. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.02: Beginning Fiction Workshop

Nathan Blum

MWF 3:35 - 4:25 PM

"Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."—E.L. Doctorow

In this course, we will seek to answer an unanswerable question: What makes a good story? First, by closely examining a range of published short fiction, we will break down stories into accessible parts, including voice, perspective, point of view, character, plot, scene, and structure. As we develop our own definitions of these craft elements, we will experiment with writing exercises—literary weight-lifting—to build writerly strength, form positive artistic habits, and unearth our personal interests. Throughout our early discussions, we will model the collaborative, thoughtful methods of the effective workshop, knowing that, in the second half of the course, each student will write and offer up two full-length stories to our class community for workshops of their own. The course will culminate with a dive into radical revision. Utilizing the thoughtful, detailed feedback from workshop, students will work to reincarnate a first draft into a fully formed, fire-breathing work of short fiction. No prior experience is necessary. This course prepares students for intermediate-level fiction workshops. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.03: Beginning Fiction Workshop

Jess Sumalpong

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM

"Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth." -Albert Camus 

Stories make us have real reactions to fictional scenarios, but how do writers so thoroughly convince us of the worlds and people they create? How can we do the same in our own stories? In this class, we will study both the technical and creative processes behind fiction writing. We will identify and practice craft elements (e.g., character, plot, setting,), learn to read like writers, and discuss what makes for a memorable story. Throughout the semester, you will write two short stories to be workshopped in-class, along with shorter generative exercises. You will also provide verbal and written feedback on your classmates' stories. Students will read a range of short stories, novel excerpts, and craft essays. No prior experience is necessary for this workshop. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.01: Beginning Poetry Workshop

Carson Colenbaugh

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

The forms that poems inhabit today are more dynamic and diverse than ever before, and they are constantly evolving. In this introductory workshop, we will explore elements of inherited and emerging forms to both better understand poetic lineages and expand the range of student work. We will learn rules and break them, rediscover the past and write beyond it, and build an appreciation for the various species thriving in our contemporary poetic biosphere. Classmates will respond to weekly themes by drafting original poems, which will be shared in a constructive, discussion-based workshop, and will cultivate a supportive literary community in and outside of the classroom ecosystem. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.02: Beginning Poetry Workshop

Alissa Morgan Barr

MWF 11:15 - 12:05

“The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is—it’s to imagine what is possible.”― bell hooks

This workshop will expand our understanding of what is possible in poetry. We will engage with contemporary and past poetic voices through close readings to dissect poetry line by line. We will study craft elements, develop a critical vocabulary, learn to give, and receive feedback, and generate original poems together. By the end of this course, students will have a radically revised packet of poems and a broadened understanding of poetry as an art form. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.03: Beginning Poetry Workshop

Alexandria Peterson

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM

This course is designed to challenge pre-existing notions of what makes a “good poem,” how language can be utilized as an extension of self and that “mistakes” are essential to the creative process. Students will develop a vocabulary for poetic elements as well as be able to identify and replicate these techniques in their own poetry. We will discuss the works of contemporary poets through a critical lens while considering the journey of our own poetic voice. Students are expected to provide craft-driven critique for each other’s work within a collaborative workshop setting. By the end of the semester, each will have created a portfolio with instructor and peer reviewed guidance. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.04: Beginning Poetry Workshop

Em Palughi

TR 8:00 - 9:15 AM

“A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.” –William Carlos Williams

In this course, you will be given the basic tools needed to construct your own machines of language. After engaging with a few craft concepts, you will write poems, receive feedback from your instructor and peers, and provide thoughtful feedback in return. Poetry is often an alienating genre, with poems treated like complex locks only solvable by those with special knowledge. This course is designed to be a demystifying, generative experience that is helpful both to new writers and experienced poets. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3210.01: Intermediate Nonfiction Writing

Sandy Solomon

W 3:35 - 6:35 PM

Writers of good memoirs transform the raw material of their lives into a story that readers can recognize as relevant to them.  The memoirist’s medium is time; memoirists weigh what they know now against what they knew then to create a complex understanding of what happened and why. In so doing, they often create in their reader a sense of discovery that parallels their own.  The course will emphasize not just writing, but also revision, the re-vision necessary to enrich a narrative—give prose more punch, clarity, and interest. Writing sample required for admission; see English Department listing. [3] (HCA)

This course requires instructor approval to be enrolled. Interested students should sign up for the waitlist and the instructor will reach out to the students and tell them what they need to submit.

ENGL 3230.01: Intermediate Fiction Workshop

Lydia Conklin

M 4:00 - 7:00 PM

Storytelling is at the core of all of our lives, and this course deepens the study of the craft of writing fiction. The materialis built around the crucial elements of crafting affecting and compelling literary short stories, such as plot, setting, character, voice, dialogue, authority, and detail. Students will read published stories, complete writing exercises, and workshop two complete short stories and a short short in an open, safe environment. The students will use the careful, thoughtful critiques of the professor and their peers and their own discoveries about their material to produce a radical revision of either one of their two stories. The course builds on craft elements learned in Beginning Fiction—though the prerequisite is not necessary to take the course—and deepens understandings of the mechanics and magic of fiction writing. The course prepares students for advanced-level workshops in fiction. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3230] (HCA)

This course requires instructor approval to be enrolled. Interested students should sign up for the waitlist and the instructor will reach out to the students and tell them what they need to submit. 

ENGL 3230.02: Intermediate Fiction Workshop

Sheba Karim

T 2:45 - 5:45

Great writing requires dedication, imagination and…revision! In this course, you’ll learn what it means to rework a story. During the course of the semester, you will write one story and revise it several times. You will also read published stories and essays on craft, read and critique original narratives by peers, and complete writing exercises.  This class is for fiction writers looking to further develop, explore and refine their craft and narrative techniques. The heart of this course is the workshop, the development and discussion of your own creative work.  The final for the course will consist of a final revision of the story written for this class. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3230] (HCA)

Writers need instructor permission to enroll. Interested writers should sign up for the waitlist and will be asked to submit a writing sample and a brief application. 

ENGL 3250.01: Intermediate Poetry Workshop

Rick Hilles

M 3:35 - 6:35 PM

This course is a discussion- and a workshop-based course in which we will study the craft of poetry writing. This semester we will concentrate on traditional elements of poetry—meter, rhyme, and form.  In other words, this will be a class in verse as much as poetry. Each week, we will discuss an aspect of what is called prosody: metrical feet, rhyme schemes, stanzas, and forms like the sonnet, the villanelle, and the sestina. You will discover that there is a wide latitude within the limitations of form, which is not surprising considering that most poetry in English is written in formal rather than free verse, the latter being a relatively young and largely American innovation. But we will talk about free verse, too, and you will have the opportunity to write it, as well. In addition to weekly assigned readings (designed to educate and inspire you with our weekly writing assignments), I will ask you to attend the poetry readings in the VU Visiting Writers Series and to write a brief (3 page, double spaced) listener’s response for each one, which you may submit to me with your final portfolio. To apply for admission to this course, after joining the waitlist: please me an email with the following (and please attach the poems all in one word document—no multiple attachments, please) three poems plus a brief letter, telling me a bit about yourself, your relationship with poetry, along with the poetry courses you’ve taken so far to me at: rick.hilles@vanderbilt.edu  [Subject to change.] [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3250] (HCA)

ENGL 3260.01: Advanced Poetry Workshop

Didi Jackson

M 3:35 - 6:35 PM

In this advanced poetry workshop, it is my hope that you will deepen your already robust relationship to poetry. I will encourage you to think about how and where you find inspiration for your creativity and what it truly means to dedicate yourself to the art and craft of poetry now that you are in an advanced writing workshop. I will also ask you to engage in the critical necessity of ample radical revision. You will complete 8 – 10 new poems and workshop many of them in class. By reading both contemporary and historically important poems, as well as work from the poets featured this semester in Vanderbilt’s Visiting Writer’s Series, you will be even more prepared to discuss what makes a poem “good” and to offer suggestions to how to make a “good” poem even better. We will not ignore craft elements, reminding ourselves of the balance between emotional content and poetic technique. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3260] (HCA)

This course requires instructor approval to be enrolled. Interested students should sign up for the waitlist and the instructor will reach out to the students and let them know what they need to submit.

ENGL 3314.01: Chaucer (Honors Seminar)

Pav Aulakh

MW 2:30 - 3:45 PM

Called "the well of English undefiled" by Edmund Spenser and the "father of English poetry" by John Dryden, Geoffrey Chaucer will be our guide as we make a pilgrimage into the fourteenth century. In our journey, we will familiarize ourselves not only with medieval England and its culture but also the linguistic and poetic roots of the language he helped to make our own. Engaging with his funny and often troubling cohort of pious, promiscuous, predatory, and generally problematic pilgrims as well as their anachronistic retellings of Greek myth and stories of resilient women and charlatan friars, we will discover that it is not just Chaucer’s language that is our poetic and linguistic inheritance. Rather, we will explore how The Canterbury Tales and their interrogation of gender dynamics, religious faith, authorship, and interpretation unsettle our own sense of historical difference and distance from the world he so vividly brought to life. [3] (Pre-1800, HCA)

ENGL 3618.01: The Nineteenth-Century English Novel: Victorian Novel (Honors Seminar)

Jay Clayton

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

Twice during the nineteenth century, scientific discoveries galvanized creative changes in the novel, giving rise to the genre we call science fiction. Everyone knows about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), often regarded as the first true SF novel. But were you aware of how voyages of discovery by Darwin and others sparked revolutionary speculative fictions like Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838)? At the other end of the century, a plethora of utopian tales, science fiction novels, horror stories, and imperial romances thrilled readers with their controversial speculations. These fictional works were often more influential than the scientific discoveries that they referenced, fueling some of the most disturbing social movements of fin de siècle: so-called “racial science,” eugenics, and imperialism.

The first part of the course will juxtapose two novels published in the same year, Frankenstein and Jane Austen's Persuasion, to highlight the major differences between SF and realist fiction. After reading Darwin and Poe, we will fast-forward to the second half of the century to sample science fiction and horror stories such as Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey (1890), H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897); and an imperial romance, H. Ryder Haggard’s She (1887), as well as Pauline Hopkins’s African American inversion of colonial romance, Of One Blood (1903). We will conclude with Octavia Butler’s harrowing Neo-Victorian novel, Kindred (1979) and Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad (2016).

As a final project, students will have the choice of writing a research paper, a magazine feature article, creating digital projects or digital games, and other activities, including trying their hand at writing their own science fiction story. [3] (HCA) 

ENGL 4998.01: Honors Colloquium

Mark Schoenfield

R 2:45 - 5:45 PM

The Honors Colloquium prepares students to write their Honors Thesis in the spring (Engl. 4999). Through shared readings, students explore critical, theoretical, and creative approaches to literary texts and methodologies. Students learn research methods, effective modes of argumentation, and creative techniques. Over the course of the semester, students develop their thesis topics, both critical and creative, as they work collaboratively together in writing groups. The colloquium is reserved for students who have applied and been admitted to the English Honors Program; for more information on the honors program, please contact your advisor or Jay Clayton, the Director of Undergraduate Studies. [3] (No AXLE credit)  

Gender and Sexuality Studies

GSS 2242: Women Who Kill

Kathryn Schwarz

TR 2:30 - 3:45 PM

Western cultural history is shaped by acts of violence. What then does it mean to define violence in gendered terms, and to focus on violent women? Classical writers tell stories about murderous mothers and Amazon warriors; Renaissance writers warn men that their wives could kill them in their beds; Victorian writers accuse ‘hysterical’ women of homicidal tendencies; contemporary novels and films recycle plots about lesbian serial killers; modern political discourse tethers clichés about feminine emotions to the threat of global war. How does the capacity for lethal acts give women access to power? How does a fixation on that capacity license masculine oppression? This course will connect the fascination with deadly women to what might broadly be termed politics: the politics of agency, misogyny, history, identity, and community.

Discussions will range from classical texts to modern novels, films, cultural theories, and new media. Course requirements will include a group presentation, a midterm paper, research projects, thematic meditations, and regular class participation. [3] (P)

ENGL 1210W.01: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques

Gabriel Briggs - Online Synchronous

MTWRF 1:10 - 4:00 PM

This course will provide a close study of short stories and novels and written explication of these forms. In particular, it examines one of the most influential writers in twentieth-century American Literature. To understand Ernest Hemingway’s enduring cultural presence, students will read a number of short stories, novels, and non-fiction prose he produced between 1924 and 1951. Students will also develop strategies for positioning the author and his work within specific historical and theoretical contexts. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1100.01: Composition

Elizabeth Covington - In Person

MTWRF 9:10 - 11:00 AM

The primary objectives of this course are to demystify the college-level essay and to develop your writing skills so that you will be able to write quality essays during and after your time at Vanderbilt. In addition to thinking about questions of style, we will conduct in-depth investigations of the three fundamental elements of an excellent essay: analysis, argumentation, and explication. I will ask you to think critically and to craft subtle, persuasive, well-reasoned essays. The analytical and argumentative skills developed in this class will help you to articulate your ideas clearly and convincingly. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1210W.02: Prose Fiction: Forms and Technieques

Gabriel Briggs - Online Synchronous

MTWRF 10:10 AM - 12:00 PM

This course will provide a close study of short stories and novels and written explication of these forms. In particular, it examines one of the most influential writers in twentieth-century American Literature. To understand Ernest Hemingway’s enduring cultural presence, students will read a number of short stories, novels, and non-fiction prose he produced between 1924 and 1951. Students will also develop strategies for positioning the author and his work within specific historical and theoretical contexts. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1100.02: Composition

Judy Klass - Online Synchronous

MTWRF 1:10 - 3:00 PM

This course is designed to help students get more comfortable and confident when it comes to writing essays. Students will read, and write, essays of various kinds: narrative essays, descriptive essays, cause and effect essays, essays that compare and contrast things, and essays that define things and essays that build a strong argument to support a thesis that is stated up front. We will also read some short fiction throughout the term, and students will end the term by writing essays of literary criticism: looking at a short story in depth. We will review subjects like grammar, punctuation and verb tense, as needed, and discuss strategies for better reading comprehension, proofreading and revision, and constructing essays that avoid repetition – even in the conclusion. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.01: Composition

Sarah Hagaman

MWF 8:00 - 8:50 PM

For students who need to improve their writing. Emphasis on writing skills, with some analysis of modern nonfiction writing. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.02: Composition

Lisa Dordal

MWF 11:15 AM - 12:05 PM

The main objective of this course is to help students develop their critical writing skills. Students will learn how to gather evidence from primary and secondary sources, how to craft a thesis statement, how to develop an argument, and how to write a well-organized essay. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.03: Composition

Sam Stover

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM

For students who need to improve their writing. Emphasis on writing skills, with some analysis of modern nonfiction writing. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.04: Composition

Sam Stover

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM

For students who need to improve their writing. Emphasis on writing skills, with some analysis of modern nonfiction writing. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.05: Composition

Luke Vines

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

For students who need to improve their writing. Emphasis on writing skills, with some analysis of modern nonfiction writing. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.06: Composition

Lauren Mitchell

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM

For students who need to improve their writing. Emphasis on writing skills, with some analysis of modern nonfiction writing. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.07: Composition

Lauren Mitchell

MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM

For students who need to improve their writing. Emphasis on writing skills, with some analysis of modern nonfiction writing. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.08: Composition

Lauren Mitchell

MWF 3:35 - 4:25 PM

For students who need to improve their writing. Emphasis on writing skills, with some analysis of modern nonfiction writing. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.09: Composition

Mark Wisniewski

MWF 8 - 8:50 AM

The primary objectives of this course are to examine and execute strategies for producing college-level papers and develop composition skills that will help you write quality essays. To reach these objectives, the course is divided into four units focusing on: (1) the analysis of rhetorical strategies, (2) the ethics of storytelling, (3) the academic research process, and (4) the ways in which the academic research process uses rhetorical strategies as a form of ethical storytelling. Each unit will culminate in an essay related to the listed theme. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.10: Composition

Mark Wisniewski

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

The primary objectives of this course are to examine and execute strategies for producing college-level papers and develop composition skills that will help you write quality essays. To reach these objectives, the course is divided into four units focusing on: (1) the analysis of rhetorical strategies, (2) the ethics of storytelling, (3) the academic research process, and (4) the ways in which the academic research process uses rhetorical strategies as a form of ethical storytelling. Each unit will culminate in an essay related to the listed theme. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.11: Composition

Mark Wisniewski

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 

The primary objectives of this course are to examine and execute strategies for producing college-level papers and develop composition skills that will help you write quality essays. To reach these objectives, the course is divided into four units focusing on: (1) the analysis of rhetorical strategies, (2) the ethics of storytelling, (3) the academic research process, and (4) the ways in which the academic research process uses rhetorical strategies as a form of ethical storytelling. Each unit will culminate in an essay related to the listed theme. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.12: Composition

Brittany Ackerman

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

The main objectives of this course are to help students develop their critical writing skills and become close readers of literature. Students will garner an understanding and appreciation of the writing process and develop a more nuanced comprehension of one’s own writing process. This course aims to enhance one’s own writing ability as well as one’s confidence as a writer. We will critically read, approach, describe, summarize, and analyze formal and stylistic elements through a variety of diverse texts and genres. Mediums used to generate essay will involve: personal reflection, proposal, rhetorical analysis, explication, literary and or media analysis, op ed, etc. Together, we will learn the fundamentals of successful academic arguments as well as how to plan and conduct academic research. Students will learn how to gather evidence from primary and secondary sources, how to craft a thesis statement, and how to develop an argument. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.13: Composition

Brittany Ackerman

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM

The main objectives of this course are to help students develop their critical writing skills and become close readers of literature. Students will garner an understanding and appreciation of the writing process and develop a more nuanced comprehension of one’s own writing process. This course aims to enhance one’s own writing ability as well as one’s confidence as a writer. We will critically read, approach, describe, summarize, and analyze formal and stylistic elements through a variety of diverse texts and genres. Mediums used to generate essay will involve: personal reflection, proposal, rhetorical analysis, explication, literary and or media analysis, op ed, etc. Together, we will learn the fundamentals of successful academic arguments as well as how to plan and conduct academic research. Students will learn how to gather evidence from primary and secondary sources, how to craft a thesis statement, and how to develop an argument. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.14: Composition

Brittany Ackerman

MWF 11:15 AM - 12:05 PM

The main objectives of this course are to help students develop their critical writing skills and become close readers of literature. Students will garner an understanding and appreciation of the writing process and develop a more nuanced comprehension of one’s own writing process. This course aims to enhance one’s own writing ability as well as one’s confidence as a writer. We will critically read, approach, describe, summarize, and analyze formal and stylistic elements through a variety of diverse texts and genres. Mediums used to generate essay will involve: personal reflection, proposal, rhetorical analysis, explication, literary and or media analysis, op ed, etc. Together, we will learn the fundamentals of successful academic arguments as well as how to plan and conduct academic research. Students will learn how to gather evidence from primary and secondary sources, how to craft a thesis statement, and how to develop an argument. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.15: Composition

Stephanie Graves

TR 8:00 - 9:15 AM

For students who need to improve their writing. Emphasis on writing skills, with some analysis of modern nonfiction writing. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.16: Composition

Stephanie Graves

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM

For students who need to improve their writing. Emphasis on writing skills, with some analysis of modern nonfiction writing. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.17: Composition

Stephanie Graves

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

For students who need to improve their writing. Emphasis on writing skills, with some analysis of modern nonfiction writing. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.18: Composition

Jordan Ivie

TR 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

The main objectives of this course are to help students develop their critical writing skills and become close readers of literature. Students will garner an understanding and appreciation of the writing process and develop a more nuanced comprehension of one’s own writing process. This course aims to enhance one’s own writing ability as well as one’s confidence as a writer. We will critically read, approach, describe, summarize, and analyze formal and stylistic elements through a variety of diverse texts and genres. Mediums used to generate essay will involve: personal reflection, proposal, rhetorical analysis, explication, literary and or media analysis, op ed, etc. Together, we will learn the fundamentals of successful academic arguments as well as how to plan and conduct academic research. Students will learn how to gather evidence from primary and secondary sources, how to craft a thesis statement, and how to develop an argument. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.19 Composition

Jordan Ivie

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

The main objectives of this course are to help students develop their critical writing skills and become close readers of literature. Students will garner an understanding and appreciation of the writing process and develop a more nuanced comprehension of one’s own writing process. This course aims to enhance one’s own writing ability as well as one’s confidence as a writer. We will critically read, approach, describe, summarize, and analyze formal and stylistic elements through a variety of diverse texts and genres. Mediums used to generate essay will involve: personal reflection, proposal, rhetorical analysis, explication, literary and or media analysis, op ed, etc. Together, we will learn the fundamentals of successful academic arguments as well as how to plan and conduct academic research. Students will learn how to gather evidence from primary and secondary sources, how to craft a thesis statement, and how to develop an argument. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.20: Composition

Jordan Ivie

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

The main objectives of this course are to help students develop their critical writing skills and become close readers of literature. Students will garner an understanding and appreciation of the writing process and develop a more nuanced comprehension of one’s own writing process. This course aims to enhance one’s own writing ability as well as one’s confidence as a writer. We will critically read, approach, describe, summarize, and analyze formal and stylistic elements through a variety of diverse texts and genres. Mediums used to generate essay will involve: personal reflection, proposal, rhetorical analysis, explication, literary and or media analysis, op ed, etc. Together, we will learn the fundamentals of successful academic arguments as well as how to plan and conduct academic research. Students will learn how to gather evidence from primary and secondary sources, how to craft a thesis statement, and how to develop an argument. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1111.07 FYWS: Women Poets in America

Didi Jackson

TR 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

In this course we will pay exclusive attention to the poetry of women in America. Our focus will begin with the work of the earliest American poets such as Phillis Wheatley and Emily Dickinson and then swiftly move through the decades culminating in works by contemporary poets. Among other issues, our discussion will center around critical ideas of gender, the construction of female identity, sexism, and gender discrepancies. What do we mean by “woman?” How does the medium of poetry establish a voice for those historically silenced and marginalized? How are contemporary American women poets in conversation with those who wrote before them? How have women shaped American poetry? This course will combine both literary and creative approaches in an attempt to answer these questions. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1111.08 FYWS: The Simple Art of Murder

Elizabeth Covington

MWF 8:00 - 8:50 AM

This literature and writing course is designed to facilitate critical thinking by exploring the way that texts and films shape and are shaped by the culture in which they were produced and consumed.  In this course, we will read conventional "page-turners," view films, view television shows, and ask philosophical and historical context questions about what we find there in order to think in more nuanced ways about concepts like justice, witnessing, retribution, probability, guilt and innocence, and the human condition. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1111.22 FYWS: More than Mr. Darcy: The Life and Works of Jane Austen

Scott Juengel

MWF 4:40 - 5:30 PM

This FYWS will focus on the literary works of Jane Austen, spanning from her early writings as a precocious teenager to her final posthumous works.  While this will be an immersive study of a single extraordinary writer and thinker from the early nineteenth century, we will frequently ask what it means to read Austen now, in 2022.  Is there a therapeutic role for reading in a time of isolation and fragmentation?  How might we contest Austen's reputation for political withdrawal and reorient her for our partisan and fractured age?  What can we learn from an age so staggeringly different from our own?  Students should be prepared to read at least five of Austen’s six major novels during the semester (as well as supplementary materials), and write regularly. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1111.39 FYWS: Formations of American Identity

Gabriel Briggs

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM

This course will cover the rise of the novel in the United States from the end of the revolutionary period to the 1850s. We will read the work of authors who dominate American literary history, such as Lydia Maria Child, James Fenimore Cooper, and Herman Melville, but we will also study additional writers who challenge conventional wisdom, and help us to imagine alternative literary histories in the U.S.  In our reading, we will focus on two related questions: how does the novel capture the social and political pressures of a particular historical moment? Where is the line between fiction and history, dreams and reality? The novels we will examine cut across several literary genres, including the Sentimental Novel, the American Gothic, and the Historical Romance, and we will attempt both to understand and to theorize the relationship between literary and historical writing. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1111.45 FYWS: World War I: A Hundred Years Later

Andrea Hearn

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM

This course will explore the cultural legacy of the “War to End All Wars” (1914-1918) in three broad phases: we will study texts produced during, shortly after, and well after the conflict to discover what the Great War meant to those who experienced it firsthand, to those who came later, and to us now.  We will engage a range of texts: poems, novels, diaries, letters, films, posters, history, criticism, and possibly a play.  In addition to a variety of formal academic writing assignments in response to our texts and a small group presentation on a selected vignette of the war, students will produce an annotated bibliography on a war memoir of their choosing. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1111.61 FYWS: Nature, Race, and Indigeneity in the U.S.

Carlos Nugent

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM

“Nature” is one of the weirdest words in the English language—it can refer to human trait (“it is in her nature”), a nonhuman environment (“we walked in nature”), a divine power (“mother nature”), or a biological process (“nature calls”). Despite—and indeed, because of—these ambiguities, nature has played pivotal roles in the territory that has come to be known as the United States. In various guises, nature has inspired pilgrims, pioneers, and tourists. At the same time, nature has staged struggles between settlers and Natives, whites and racialized peoples, upper classes and working classes. In this course, we will learn how nature has brought us together and torn us apart. By engaging with literature, art, and other media, we will recover conflicting ideas of nature. And by reading in anthropology, history, and the rest of the environmental humanities, we will discover how these ideas have impacted more-than-human worlds. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1210W.01: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques

Justin Quarry

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM

This course explores portrayals of so-called monsters in narratives ranging from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries and analyzes the elements of fiction used to illuminate these beings, and in turn the societal anxieties and desires among which they appear.  Students will attempt to define, and redefine, what exactly a “monster” is and what makes such a creature simultaneously horrifying and fascinating.   In this process, they will examine novels, graphic novels, and short stories in order to determine the terms by which "monsters" are understood and described, and what beyond the norm these creatures represent, both literally and metaphorically. More broadly, the aim of this course is to teach you to think critically about literature.  Therefore, through three informal reading responses, three formal essays, in-class writing, and class discussions, students will hone close-reading skills as well as develop their analytic writing skills. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.02: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques

Justin Quarry

MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM

This course explores portrayals of so-called monsters in narratives ranging from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries and analyzes the elements of fiction used to illuminate these beings, and in turn the societal anxieties and desires among which they appear.  Students will attempt to define, and redefine, what exactly a “monster” is and what makes such a creature simultaneously horrifying and fascinating.   In this process, they will examine novels, graphic novels, and short stories in order to determine the terms by which "monsters" are understood and described, and what beyond the norm these creatures represent, both literally and metaphorically. More broadly, the aim of this course is to teach you to think critically about literature.  Therefore, through three informal reading responses, three formal essays, in-class writing, and class discussions, students will hone close-reading skills as well as develop their analytic writing skills. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.03: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques

Sam Stover

MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM

In “The Future of the Novel,” Henry James writes, “The novel is of all pictures the most comprehensive and elastic. It will stretch anywhere—it will take in almost anything. All it needs is a subject and a painter. But for its subject, magnificently, it has the whole human consciousness.” How do authors create the effect of a living consciousness in their work? How does memory—or forgetting—shape identity?  In this course, students will explore the depictions of consciousness and memory in literature through the works of Henry James, W.G. Sebald, Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro, Elena Ferrante, James Baldwin, and Virginia Woolf. Students will develop their close-reading skills through analyses of the techniques these authors use to render thought on the page. Students will also examine how explorations of memory inform our understanding of individual identity as well as our broader cultural reckonings with trauma. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.04: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques

Djenanway Se-Gahon

MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM

Prose Fiction: Forms and techniques. Empathy and Environment(s): Literature by Women of Color. In this course, we will examine short stories and novels by women of color. We will address questions around the central theme of empathy such as: "How does reading literature by women of color, through an environmental or ecological lens, complicate our understandings of empathy?" In this class, you will develop skills in close-reading, and building an argument, identifying supporting evidence, critiquing personal writing and published texts, and understanding formal and stylistic concerns in relation to content matter. Texts will include Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones, Frank Ocean's song "Pink+White", Toni Morrisons novel Tar Baby, Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower and Alice Walker's short story, "Am I blue?". [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.05: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques: Haunting Domesticity

Kelsey Rall

MWF 3:35 - 4:25 PM

Why are haunted houses so terrifying to us – and yet so popular? How does the image of the haunted house emerge in fiction, even beyond the genre of horror? And what are the “ghosts” – of gender, normativity, status, trauma – that we live alongside in our own homes? In this course, we will consider these questions as we examine the role of haunted (and haunting) domesticity in the social imagination. The texts we will read span decades and genres, and together, we will develop arguments about how the very idea of the domestic, of the private, of the home, is a concept haunted by madwomen in the attic, creeping figures in the wallpaper, and ghosts behind every closed door. In this course, students will learn how to engage critically with primary sources, write persuasive arguments, and structure feedback into revisions of their written work. We will work through a variety of academic and creative genres of writing in order to hone the skills of creating, voicing, and sharing ideas through written work. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.06: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques

Paige Oliver

MWF 4:40 - 5:30 PM

Close study of short stories and novels and written explication of these forms. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1220W.01: Drama: Forms and Techniques

Judy Klass

TR 4:30 - 5:45 PM

We will look at how plays have changed in the last 2,500 years: including concepts/modes we inherit from the ancient Greeks and from Shakespeare’s time (plot arcs for comedy and tragedy, Aristotle’s Unities in the Poetics, the “fatal flaw,” the Greek Chorus, the soliloquy, deus ex machina); we will read plays about families, which can turn the claustrophobia/confined space on stage into a means of enhancing drama and tension as people are trapped together in houses and apartments; scenes involving complicated bonds and confrontations. Authors include: Sophocles, Chekhov, O’Neill, Glaspell, Odets, Miller, Williams, Kaufman and Hart, Hansberry, Albee, Bologna and Taylor, Norman, Hwang, Cruz, Auburn, Vogel, Letts, Durang. Students write essays analyzing works that interest them, with the option to revise every paper; we will read some scenes aloud in class, with students encouraged to do a bit of acting; lots of reading and writing. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.01: Literature and Analytical Thinking

Jeong-Oh Kim

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM

We will examine the cultural meaning of the sea in British literature and history, from early modern times to the present. In this interdisciplinary course, we will chart metaphorical and material links between the idea of the sea in the cultural imagination and its significance for the social and political history of Britain, as well as the impact the ocean has had on the formation of British cultural identities. Writers to be discussed include William Shakespeare, John Milton, Samuel Coleridge, Walter Scott, Robert Stevenson, Mark Twain, and Rachel Carson, among others. By combining the interests of three related but distinct areas of study—the analysis of sea fiction, critical maritime history, and cultural studies—this course highlights the historical meaning of the sea in relation to its textual and cultural representation. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.02: Literature and Analytical Thinking

Akshya Saxena

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM

Close reading and writing in a variety of genres drawn from several periods. Productive dialogue, persuasive argument, and effective prose style. Offered on a graded basis only. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.03: Literature and Analytical Thinking

Gabriel Briggs

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

This course examines prominent 19th & 20th Century African American writers whose work ranges from Slave Narratives to issues addressing Contemporary Thought. As much as the seminar will provide students with an overview of the prominent periods in African-American Literature, it is also a seminar in developing the students’ general critical skills. To that end, the seminar will introduce students to contemporary theoretical and critical models that have been instrumental in revising African-American literary history. Among the authors we will read are Harriet Wilson, Sutton Griggs, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Nella Larsen. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.01: Introduction to Poetry: 

Pavneet Aulakh

MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM

Poetry and Science seem to make strange bed-fellows. Though they both utilize creativity and imagination, science ultimately concerns itself with nature and the laws that govern creation; whereas, poets, according to Sir Philip Sidney, transcend the rigor of those laws to make “things either better than nature bringeth forth or … forms such as never were in nature.” Nonetheless, as we shall discover, the poetic tradition consists of many works that directly engage with scientific knowledge. In this course, we will study several poets in this tradition who respond to the broad field of science in different ways and demonstrate poetry’s long-running fascination with the scientific. In drawing on the etymological roots of the word science (scientia: knowledge, understanding, learning), we will also examine how poetry is a form and instrument of knowing, a technology and craft in its own right, and one governed by its own particular methodologies and skill-set. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.02: Introduction to Poetry

Lisa Dordal

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM

In our increasingly fast-paced lives, reading poetry can be a great way to slow down and pay meaningful attention to the world around us and to our own inner landscapes. Although the main objectives of this course are to help you become close readers of poetry and to help you develop your critical writing skills, the poems that we read might very well deepen your understanding of your own life and who you understand yourself to be. The first part of this course will be organized around formal considerations (diction, tone, imagery, figures of speech, sound, etc.). In the second half of the course, we will focus on the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes, Marie Howe, Mark Doty, Natasha Trethewey, and Li-Young Lee. Requirements include two papers (plus revisions), short response papers and homework assignments, participation in class discussions, and a written response to a poetry reading. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.01: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis

Ben Schwartz

MWF 8:00 - 8:50 AM

Why do we laugh? What does it say about who we are and what we believe? And who is “we,” anyway? Throughout American history, humorists have used wit and folly to explore important questions about race, gender, and national belonging. By examining questions of what is funny, why, when, and to whom, comedians and critics have tried to understand Americans’ fears, values, desires, and attitudes about issues of politics and identity. In this class, we will read, watch, and listen to influential examples of American humor from the 20th century in order to understand American culture, to understand ourselves, and to laugh from time to time while doing so. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.02: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis

Emily Lordi

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM

This course will focus on issues of contemporary authorship and literary celebrity: Who are the people “behind” the works we study? What do they say about and for themselves, and should our sense of them as people shape our reception of their work? These questions are especially pressing now, at a moment when most writers need a strong public presence (at least an Instagram account, if not an endorsement by Oprah) to succeed in the literary marketplace, and when many promote their work by giving public readings and interviews and publishing personal essays. How do these different acts of self-representation help us to read writers’ fiction and poetry? How does unflattering news about them complicate our interpretation of their work? Authors whose texts and personae we will study—through class discussion, close readings, and other short writing assignments—include Rupi Kaur, Danez Smith, Junot Diaz, and Kiese Laymon. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.03: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Sport as Civil Society

David Brandt

MWF 3:35 - 4:25 PM

Why do sports movies make us cry? How do goals and crowds and heart-in-your-mouth moments manifest as shared identities? In this course, we’ll peer through the lens of civil society—the sphere of collective life based on voluntary acts of association and interdependence—to locate some answers to these questions and many others. Looking to sport as both reflective and constitutive of civil society, we’ll consider how phenomena like teamwork, fandom, segregation, integration, and masculinity shape and problematize American collective life. You’ll develop your own understanding of “sport as civil society” through critical analysis of primary texts as well creative reflection on your own life in sport. Course texts include films like Breaking Away (cycling) and Minding the Gap (skateboarding), novels like End Zone (football) and Indian Horse (hockey), and a wide range of cultural criticism, including Claudia Rankine’s Citizen and Grant Farred’s In Motion, at Rest. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.04: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis

Maren Loveland

MWF 3:35 - 4:25 PM

The United States is an environment shaped and defined by a vast network of roads. Therefore, for those living in and across U.S. borders, the method of journeying known as the “roadtrip” is a culturally significant practice imbued with a variety of meanings. This writing-intensive course seeks to understand the extent to which roadtrips are embedded in the cultural landscape of the United States, and why these journeys are taken. In our study of literature, films, music, and other kinds of media, we will consider the following questions: how does the roadtrip facilitate relationships between humans and environments? In what ways does roadtripping challenge borders, realities, and identities? Can roadtrips help us better understand ourselves? In an attempt to answer these questions, this course will draw from a variety of experiences and backgrounds, which will help us observe the rapidly-changing landscapes around us, and learn how these landscapes are interpreted across space, time, and a range of identities. In our study of roadtrips, environments, and media, we will develop critical ways of reading, studying, and observing—skills which help make us active audience members and creators, as well as better inhabitants of all kinds of environments. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.05: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Narratives of Migration and Global Belonging

Ethan Calof

MWF 4:40 - 5:30 PM

Migration has been a fundamental part of the human experience since before recorded human history. However, the rise of globalization, the invention of faster international travelling methods, and the many global conflicts of the 20th and 21st century have exponentially expanded the number of migrants. A 2015 estimate said that 244 million people, or 3.3% of the global population, reside in a country other than the one of their birth, a number that includes this course’s instructor. Traveling from one culture into another forces migrants into a set of questions, many of which have no clear answer. How much of your old culture do you retain in your new home? What do you take with you, and what do you leave behind? How can you create a sense of community when you’re the only one like you in your new home? How do you respond to a new community that might not value the skills, values, and people from your old one? And if you have children or any other family members, what do they take with them into the future?

This course will use multiple forms of media, from books to plays to movies to shows, to understand the questions of migrants. We will examine migrants with journeys as large as changing continents and languages, such as in Anzia Yezerska’s Salome of the Tenements, or as small as moving from one neighbourhood to another, such as in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. We will dig into the differences between fully voluntary and traumatic forced migrations, with Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing using the trans-Atlantic slave trade to explore these nuances. We will look at stories from living, breathing migrants such as Naïm Kattan, or totally imagined ones such as the aliens from District 9. Above all, we will use these texts, our assignments and our class discussions to address the same fundamental questions: how do you create and preserve an identity, and what does it truly mean to “belong”? [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.07: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Earthly Bodies, Mystical Selves: Magic, Religion, and Witchcraft

Savannah DiGregorio

TR 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

Our class will be an exploration of the supernatural—religion, magic, spirits, witchcraft, ritual, and sacrifice—in contemporary novels, television, and film. What are the boundaries between the everyday and the otherworldly? What happens when those boundaries are broken? We will attempt to define the mystical by considering its place within sociocultural, economic, and political histories and will think about how those histories continue to be reflected in our own time. How might the supernatural express and mediate relationships of power, especially those concerning race, gender, and species? Students will learn to engage critically with primary and secondary sources, write meaningful arguments, and cultivate a writing style that is unique to them through in-class workshops, writing assignments, and discussion. Some of the works we will review include Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Misha Green’s Lovecraft Country, Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, Frankétienne’s Dézafi, and Thoby-Marcelin’s The Beast of the Haitian Hills. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.09: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Future Bodies in Dystopian Fiction

Elizabeth Meadows

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM

What makes a body human, and what rights do human bodies have? How do fictional representations shape our perceptions of human bodies? How do we reproduce and perpetuate our cultural norms along with our DNA? The recent wave of television shows and movies exploring these questions attests to their enduring urgency in our culture, and we will explore them through the genre of dystopic fiction as we develop critical thinking and analytical writing skills. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1270W.01: Intro to Literary Criticism

Jeong-Oh Kim

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 PM

This course is designed to help students develop their analytical skills while exploring relations between literary criticism, literary theory, and literature. Our objective is to articulate what is meant by literary theory and criticism, to read a wide range of contemporary theorists and critics who have addressed this issue directly or indirectly, and to explore how theoretical concepts are appropriate for the reading of literary texts. By developing a critical framework, a theoretical optics, and a new perspective for the reading of literature, we will examine the ways in which major strands of criticism—deconstruction, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, feminism, ecocriticism, and cognitive studies—draw upon literature. Students will learn to grasp those problems that literary criticism has set in motion by its response to the world: social justice, peace, human dignity, atmosphere, and the ethics of theory, to name just a few. We will approach literary criticism as an inquiry and as a practice. What can we do and what shall we do with literary criticism? [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1270W.02: Intro to Literary Criticism

Jeong-Oh Kim

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM

This course is designed to help students develop their analytical skills while exploring relations between literary criticism, literary theory, and literature. Our objective is to articulate what is meant by literary theory and criticism, to read a wide range of contemporary theorists and critics who have addressed this issue directly or indirectly, and to explore how theoretical concepts are appropriate for the reading of literary texts. By developing a critical framework, a theoretical optics, and a new perspective for the reading of literature, we will examine the ways in which major strands of criticism—deconstruction, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, feminism, ecocriticism, and cognitive studies—draw upon literature. Students will learn to grasp those problems that literary criticism has set in motion by its response to the world: social justice, peace, human dignity, atmosphere, and the ethics of theory, to name just a few. We will approach literary criticism as an inquiry and as a practice. What can we do and what shall we do with literary criticism? [3] (HCA)

ENGL 2310.01: Representative British Writers to 1660

Roger Moore

TR 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

This course will serve as an introduction to some of the major works of English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to the Restoration.  Our readings will include Anglo-Saxon poems, selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Book of Margery Kempe, and a Shakespeare play.  We will also read selections from the poetry of Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Donne, Herbert, Marvell, and Milton.  Works will be read in light of contemporary cultural, philosophical, and religious contexts.  Requirements include essay examinations and one or two papers.  This course will be of interest to English majors an minors as well as non-majors who want a broad introduction to representative masterpieces. [3] (Pre-1800 Requirement, HCA)

ENGL 2311.01: Representative British Writers

Elizabeth Covington

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

This course is a survey of British Literature from 1660 to the present. We will read works from many of the influential and significant writers from five literary periods: Restoration/18th Century, the Romantics, the Victorians, the Modernists, and the 20th Century and Beyond. In addition to a sweeping view of British literature, this course will challenge the traditional canon of British culture. We will explore texts by authors who were disregarded because of their gender, race, class, sexuality, and other factors. Ultimately, we will develop broad but robust vision of the development of British literature over the past three hundred years. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 2318.01: World Literature, Classical

Lynn Enterline

TR 4:30 - 5:45 PM

Gods, monsters, enchanters, sorceresses, cross-dressers, knights errant, a hippogryph, discontented wives, tricksters, outcasts and the devil: such is the cast of fictional characters we meet in this course, which surveys some of the most influential texts from the Greco-Roman, Italian, and English-speaking worlds.  The course will familiarize students with a variety of ancient genres—tragedy, epic, romance, satire, and lyric—that continue to influence literary invention.  And we will inquire into the shifting definitions of heroism, the family, religious belief, taboo, race, gender, love, and identity—all of which vary widely across time and culture—as we analyze stories and forms that still resonate today. [3] (Pre-1800 Requirement, HCA)

ENGL 2330W.01: Introduction to Environmental Humanities

Teresa Goddu

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

Do you want to learn about the world from the point of view of trees? In this interdisciplinary, place-based course, we will bring the trees that surround us on campus into conversation with Richard Powers’ environmental epic, The Overstory (2018). We will study trees from an array of perspectives—scientific, artistic, historical, social—as we investigate such topics as how trees communicate and form communities, how they shape and are shaped by human environments, whether they should have rights, and how they are represented in art and literature. We will keep a tree journal and do a collaborative tree project as we study how stories can teach humans to better understand their relationship to the more-than-human world. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3215W.01: The Art of Blogging

Amanda Little

W 3:35 - 6:35 PM

Are blogs dead? On the rise? Have they supplanted journalism? Transformed it? Students will explore how blogging began, what it is today, and why it still matters. They'll track and analyze influential blogs and online journalism and examine the roots of self-published manifestoes that date back to 17th-century pamphleteers. They'll look to the future, exploring podcasting and micro-blogging platforms including Twitter and Instagram. Students will create and regularly update their own blogs for this course. A 500-1000 word writing sample on a topic of the student's choosing is required for enrollment into this course. Please submit by May 10 to amanda.g.little@vanderbilt.edu . [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3343.01: Race and Early Modernity

Pavneet Aulakh

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

While the conception of a biologically-grounded, “scientific” racism originates in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, early modernity witnessed the emergence of the transatlantic slave trade and the expansion of European colonialism (from Ireland, for example, to the new world). How did the encounters between “self” and “other” intensified by these institutions foster or reinforce early modern forms of race-making? And how does this history, haunting a surprising range of texts and contexts (from popular drama to amatory poems to polemics about cross-dressing and the appropriate direction for English poetry) continue to inform our present? Reading sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts that engage with questions of race alongside modern literary and theoretical works, we will examine not only how early moderns imagined race but also how their literary creations have inspired more recent critical re-imaginings, ones that subvert the whiteness of early modern texts and reposition Black and other marginalized characters of color. [3] (Pre-1800 Requirement & Diverse Perspectives, HCA)

ENGL 3360W.01: Restoration and the Eighteenth Century

Scott Juengel

MWF 11:15 AM - 12:05 PM

The eighteenth century is often called the ‘Age of Reason,’ and it gained a reputation for advancing the virtues of progress, tolerance, order, and rational decision-making.  So why is so much of the literature of the period between 1660-1820 lurid and sensationalistic, murderous and irrational?  If this is a secular age striving to create a habitable future, how do we explain the popularity of the gothic, with its obsession with a shadowy and unreconciled past?  Why are early novels so often tales of criminality and scandal?  What happens when rationality turns instrumental, bloodless, inhuman?  This is a course focused on the other side of the Enlightenment: it is still designed as a survey of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century—i.e. it will cover a range of literary genres; provide a working knowledge of the period, etc.—but it will cut a scandalous path through that history. [3] (Pre-1800 Requirement, HCA)

ENGL 3440W.01 Pop Science: The Art and Impact of Popular Science Writing

Amanda Little

W 12:20 - 3:20 

This advanced writing course explores bestselling science non-fiction and today’s most exciting and controversial science journalism. Students will also critique science blogs, podcasts and TED talks, and dip into science-focused novels and poetry. Along the way, they'll learn and critique the fundamentals of great science writing and communication. Students will develop and publish their own blogs throughout the course and interact via Skype with top science writers. An immersive education in how to convey fact-based scientific research with accessible writing that educates, inspires and resonates with lay readers. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3654W.01: African American Literature

Emily Lordi

MWF 11:15 AM - 12:05 PM

In this course, we will examine in depth the work of three major 20th century African American writers who are linked through their artful and political approaches to the act of confession: James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Lucille Clifton. Reading a broad selection of these writers’ fiction (in Baldwin’s case), as well as their poetry, essays, and memoirs, we will see how these writers express personal, familial, and broader group secrets in the service of personal healing as well as social justice. How, when, and with whom should silences be broken? Which secrets might be better kept? These issues, which were at the heart of mid-century Black writing, are no less urgent for writers and readers today. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, US)

ENGL 3659W.01: Cultures of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Carlos Nugent

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM

In recent years, the U.S. has built a multi-billion-dollar wall along the Mexican border. While the wall may appear to be an anomaly, it rests on longstanding legacies of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. In this seminar, we will look at these legacies through the eyes of the Natives, Latinxs, whites, and others who have lived in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. Within the confines of literature, we will read novelists like Willa Cather, essayists like Valeria Luiselli, and poets like Simon Ortiz. Meanwhile, across the more capacious category of culture, we will engage with promoters, periodistas, and other little-known (but no less important) figures. From these concrete contexts, we will ask abstract questions: Are borders physical boundaries, or are they psychosocial conditions? Are nations stable and homogeneous groups, or are they flexible and diverse communities? Ultimately, can human beings be branded as illegal aliens, or do they have inalienable rights? [3] (Diverse Perspectives, HCA)

ENGL 3720.01: Literaure, Science, and Technology

Jay Clayton

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

How do the futures literature and film imagine shape public attitudes toward science and technology? What is the human in an age of artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, and synthetic biology? How do science fiction and films influence public policy concerning scientific research? This course focuses on fictions and films about artificial life from Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and James Whale’s iconic 1931 film of that novel, through Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), to classic robot stories by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and others, to twenty-first century dystopias such as Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004). Films will include adaptations of many of these novels, as well as Blade Runner (1982), A.I. (2001), Her (2013), and Ex Machina (2015). [3] (P)

ENGL 3730.01: Literature and the Environment: Contemporary U.S. Climate Fiction

Teresa Goddu

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

This course surveys contemporary fiction that addresses the climate crisis. What do contemporary writers have to tell us about the natural, social, political, psychological, and cultural changes that we are currently experiencing? How does literature help us imagine a world shaped by climate change and offer ways to approach its challenges and possibilities? As we read, we will ask—how can fiction help us understand the world that’s already here and prepare us for the one that has yet to come? 

Texts may include: Ben Lerner, 10:04; Cormac McCarthy, The Road; Karen Thompson Walker, The Age of Miracles; Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation; Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones; as well as an array of short stories and films. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3740W.01: Critical Theory

Alex Dubilet

MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM

The stories modernity tells about itself often stress the importance of the advent of democracy and liberalism, the development of economy and technology, and the proliferation of freedom. However, modernity has also been the time of immeasurable violence: it is the epoch of colonialism, slavery, state violence, and capital accumulation. By analyzing these varied violences constitutive of modernity, this course will expose students to major critical theoretical approaches for the study of modern cultural, historical, psychic, and political life. Some of the questions we will ask during the semester include: How do modern understandings of history work to justify violence — and what forms of thinking may refuse such justification? How does the violence of modernity indicate not only physical destruction, but suffuses forms of knowledge and narration, including those of history? How might we conceptualize the status of revolutionary, liberational, or anti-colonial violence in modernity? [3] (Diverse Perspectives, HCA)

ENGL 3890.01: Movements in Literature: The New Negro Movement

Gabriel Briggs

TR 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

This course examines the literary and cultural factors that influence the development of a modern African American identity by reconstructing the emergence of the “New Negro.” In the 1920s, the term New Negro entered general parlance to denote a modern form of African-American racial representation. The emergence of this African-American identity is distinctly different from the compliant, rural and under-educated African American who preceded the New Negro and, as well, from the negative racial stereotypes created by whites or drawn from the romantic racialism of white fiction writers. New Negroes self-identified as progressive, urban figures with cultural and intellectual sensibilities generally connected to the period between World War I and World War II. Our analysis will trace the evolution of New Negro thought from its political origins in the late nineteenth-century through its radicalization in the World War I era,and will conclude with its more conservative, cultural transformation during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Among the numerous selections we will read are works by Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Du Bois, Fannie Barrier Williams, Booker T. Washington, Elise McDougald, Sutton Griggs, Nella Larsen, and Langston Hughes. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, HCA)

ENGL 1101.01: Creative Writing Tutorial: Fiction

Jess Silfa

Individual instruction in writing fiction. Offered on a pass/fail basis only. Not open to students who have earned credit for ENGL 3851 section 07 without permission. Total credit hours for this course and ENGL 3851 section 7 will not exceed 1 credit hour. Credit hours reduced from most recent course taken (or from test or transfer credit) as appropriate. [1] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1102.01: Creative Writing Tutorial: Poetry

John Mulcare

Individual instruction in writing poetry. Offered on a pass/fail basis only. Not open to students who have earned credit for ENGL 3851 section 07 without permission. Total credit hours for this course and ENGL 3851 section 7 will not exceed 1 credit hour. Credit hours reduced from most recent course taken (or from test or transfer credit) as appropriate. [1] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1240.01: Beginning Nonfiction Workshop

Justin Quarry

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM

What is creative nonfiction?  If you're asking yourself that question--well, you're certainly not the only one.  In this workshop, beginning writers will explore this exciting and ever-evolving genre, which includes, among others, personal essay, memoir, and literary journalism--and they'll try their hands at storytelling in two of these categories, producing one personal essay and one profile to be read and critiqued by the class in a workshop setting.  To help writers draft and revise their work, they'll simultaneously examine the ways in which authors and critics have defined and redefined the genre, and study factual accuracy, point of view, tone, and the incorporation of literary techniques more often seen in fiction.  No previous creative writing experience is necessary for this class. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.01: Beginning Fiction Workshop

Kanak Kapur

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

“Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.” — Virginia Woolf 

So much of what we know comes from stories. How do we make meaning of the texts we read? How do we hope a reader might make meaning of the texts we write? In this workshop students will read, write, revise and study short-form literary fiction. We will study elements of craft such as plot, character, pacing, narration, and workshop our own stories with these tools, pushing them into new territories. Students will write two short stories along with other shorter generative exercises. Students will also read a range of short stories and craft essays on writing. No prior experience is necessary for this workshop. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.03: Beginning Fiction Workshop

Danny Lang-Perez

MWF 1:25 - 2:15 PM

“The aim of literature… is the creation of a strange object covered in fur which breaks your heart.”

—Donald Barthelme

Fiction is brain hacking. The writer offers words on a page. If they are the right words conveyed compellingly, they conjure whole lives and worlds to speak deep truths, touching both head and heart. But writing stories is also a craft, with mechanical parts that can be learned, practiced, and artfully deployed. In this class we will investigate and discuss collectively the art of fiction through the workshop model of peer discussion and analysis. You will write two short stories to be discussed by your peers (one of which you will revise and resubmit) along with smaller generative and critical assignments. You will also read a range of contemporary short stories and craft essays on the vocabulary of the writer’s toolbox (e.g., characterization, plot, setting, etc.). [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.04: Beginning Fiction Workshop

Sam Marshall

T 3:35 - 6:35 PM

In this workshop we will read, write, and discuss short-form literary fiction. We will delve into the mystery of enabling readers to enter the world of a short story by focusing our attention on the nuts and bolts of fiction such as characterization, point of view, setting, and other craft elements that give stories their shape and pulse. Each student will submit two original stories, respond to peer writing, and develop a final portfolio. This is an interactive, discussion-based course where students will read and comment upon one another’s writing. No experience necessary, just a willingness to engage with your classmates and the course material. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.01: Beginning Poetry Workshop

Tandria Fireall

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

Award-winning poet Carl Phillips once confessed that he does not “write to transcribe experience, but to translate it.” Poetry sings when language is rendered as an experience itself on the page. Together, we will learn to translate our lives in poetry. We will begin by studying and demystifying the elements of poetry. We will read and discuss both earliest works of poetry as well as contemporary poems as models that will offer guidance. We will share our poems and offer each other constructive feedback. We will complete in-class writing exercises in composition notebook. Together, we will explore the possibilities of poetry to leave us with a better of ourselunderstanding of ourselves as well as the art of poetry. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.02: Beginning Poetry Workshop

Caroline Stevens

MWF 11:15 AM - 12:05 PM

In this introductory workshop, we will reach toward the questions posed by Audre Lorde: “What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say?” Workshop members will take creative risks, develop their aesthetic preferences, and build a love for language through the poems that they read and write. Throughout the semester, students will read a diverse array of published poems and craft essays, develop a critical vocabulary to discuss poems, and become active participants in the literary community by attending poetry readings. Class members will exchange verbal and written feedback on each other’s poems on a weekly basis in addition to strengthening their poetic muscles through weekly generative assignments. By the end of the semester, students will have developed a portfolio of revised poems and a written reflection on their growth as poets. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.03: Beginning Poetry Workshop

Alexandria Peterson

TR 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

This course is designed to challenge pre-existing notions of what makes a “good poem,” how language can be utilized as an extension of self and that “mistakes” are essential to the creative process. Students will develop a vocabulary for poetic elements as well as identify and replicate these techniques in their own poetry. We will discuss the works of contemporary poets through a critical lens while considering the journey of our own poetic voice. Students are expected to provide craft-driven critiques for each other’s work within a collaborative workshop setting. By the end of the semester, each will have created a portfolio with both instructor and peer reviewed guidance. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3210.01: Intermediate Nonfiction Writing

Sandy Solomon

W 3:35 - 6:35 PM

Writers of good memoirs transform the raw material of their lives into a story that readers can recognize as relevant to them.  For memoirists, the medium is time, the method is pursuit of the truth about what happened; memoirists weigh what they know to be true now against what they knew then to create a complex understanding of what happened and why. In so doing, they often create in their reader a sense of discovery that parallels their own.  This course will emphasize not just writing, but also revision, the re-vision necessary to enrich a narrative—to give prose more punch, clarity, and interest. Class numbers are limited. Submit a writing sample—a short memoir about another person (250 words maximum)—in an email to Solomon by August 10; enrollment will be set before the semester starts. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3230.01: Intermediate Fiction Workshop

Nancy Reisman

M 3:35 - 6:35 PM

What images, characters, situations, dynamics, and mysteries have captured your attention, or haunted you? What material, style, and methods of storytelling interest you the most: flash fiction? Stories? Longer forms? Hybrid work? A mix?  What pathways help you access your material –or might? This workshop is a place for writers with some fiction writing background to delve into the sources of your work, deepen your knowledge of craft and technique, expand your understanding of fiction’s possibilities and take some new creative risks. We’ll consider fiction’s necessary mysteries, a broad range of approaches to form, and how clear representation of time, dramatic space/place, and perspective shape reader experience. Early on, we’ll focus on flash fiction, and throughout the semester consider mainly character-based literary short stories from varied approaches, (realist, magical realist/fabulist/surrealist, meta-fiction, etc). We’ll also consider connections to other artistic and literary forms. The core of the workshop will be your original work and the work of your peers, including individual and group responses to workshop fiction. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3230] (HCA)

This workshop is Immersion-adaptable. For the Intermediate level workshop, interested writers should register for the wait-list, as instructor permission is required.

ENGL 3230.02: Intermediate Fiction Workshop

Lorrie Moore

T 12:20 - 3:20

An "advanced intermediate" fiction workshop for those who have already successfully completed at least one intermediate class.  Focus will be on short stories.  Although the main text for weekly discussion will be student work, we will also read stories by Alice Munro, ZZ Packer, and others. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3230] (HCA)

ENGL 3230.03: Intermediate Fiction Workshop

Lydia Conklin

M 3:35 - 6:35 PM

This course continues the study of the craft of writing fiction. The material is built around the crucial elements of crafting affecting and compelling literary short stories, such as plot, setting, character, voice, dialogue, authority, and detail. Students will read published stories, complete writing exercises, and workshop two complete short stories in an open, safe environment. Additionally, the students are expected to use the careful critiques of their professor, their peers, and their own discoveries about their material to produce a radical revision of either one of their two stories. The course builds on craft elements learned in Beginning Fiction and deepens understandings of the mechanics and magic of fiction writing. The course prepares students for advanced-level workshops in fiction. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3230] (HCA)

ENGL 3250.01: Intermediate Poetry Workshop

Rick Hilles

R 12:20 - 3:20 PM

Instruction in poetry writing. Supplementary readings illustrating traditional aspects of poetry. Admission by consent of instructor. May be repeated for credit once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course per semester. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3250] (HCA)

ENGL 3314.01: Chaucer (Honors Seminar)

Pavneet Aulakh

MWF 10:10 - 11:00 AM

Called "the well of English undefiled" by Edmund Spenser and the "father of English poetry" by John Dryden, Geoffrey Chaucer will be our guide as we make a pilgrimage into the fourteenth century. In our journey, we  will familiarize ourselves not only with medieval England and its culture but also the linguistic and poetic roots of the language he helped to make our own. Engaging with his funny and often troubling cohort of pious, promiscuous, predatory, and generally problematic pilgrims as well as their anachronistic retellings of Greek myth and stories of resilient women and charlatan friars, we will discover that it is not just Chaucer’s language that is our poetic and linguistic inheritance. Rather, we will explore how The Canterbury Tales and their interrogation of gender dynamics, religious faith, authorship, and interpretation unsettle our own sense of historical difference and distance from the world he so vividly brought to life. [3] (Pre-1800 Requirement, HCA)

ENGL 3654.01: African American Literature: Caribbean Poetry (Honors Seminar)

Anthony Reed

TR 9:30 - 10:45 AM

This honors seminar will survey some major poets from the Caribbean and its diaspora, and introduce students to a representative sample of the debates and concerns that have shaped the development of traditions of Anglophone and Francophone poetry in the Caribbean. We will consider these poets in the intersecting contexts of Twentieth Century literary, colonial, and postcolonial histories, the relationship writers in the Caribbean have to colonial languages, important movements such as surrealism and Négritude, and lingering debates about the legacies of slavery and colonialism and its aftermath. Our primary questions will revolve around the ways these poets imagine and reconstitute history, and how their work speaks to and beyond its present, with special attention to both thematic and formal concerns. Students with prior knowledge are welcome, but the course assumes no such knowledge. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, US)

ENGL 4998.01: Honors Colloquium

Jessie Hock

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

This colloquium prepares honors students to write their honors thesis/project next semester. To help students develop the projects that will form the basis for next semester’s work, we will explore critical approaches to literature (broadly conceived) and methods of exploration in ways designed to help both creative writers and critic-scholars. [3] (No AXLE credit) 

Asian Studies

ASIA 3151: The Third World and Literature

Ben Tran

TR 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

This course examines “Third World” literature and culture in multiple socio-historical contexts.  We will begin by studying the early use of “Third World” at the Asian-African Conference (1955) in Bandung, Indonesia, where the term was employed by decolonizing nations to oppose emerging, nuclear superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union.  The class will then trace the term’s shifting meanings and connotations from their decolonizing and nationalistic contexts to our present moment of globalization that has rendered the category of “Third World” anachronistic. [3] (INT)

Gender and Sexuality Studies

GSS 2242: Women Who Kill

Kathryn Schwarz

TR 1:15 - 2:30 PM

Western cultural history is shaped by acts of violence. What then does it mean to define violence in gendered terms, and to focus on violent women? Classical writers tell stories about murderous mothers and Amazon warriors; Renaissance writers warn men that their wives could kill them in their beds; Victorian writers accuse ‘hysterical’ women of homicidal tendencies; contemporary novels and films recycle plots about lesbian serial killers; modern political discourse tethers clichés about feminine emotions to the threat of global war. How does the capacity for lethal acts give women access to power? How does a fixation on that capacity license masculine oppression? This course will connect the fascination with deadly women to what might broadly be termed politics: the politics of agency, misogyny, history, identity, and community.

Discussions will range from classical texts to modern novels, films, cultural theories, and new media. Course requirements will include a group presentation, a midterm paper, research projects, thematic meditations, and regular class participation. [3] (P)

Jewish Studies

JS 2250W: Witnesses Who Were Not There: Literature of the Children of Holocaust Survivors

Adam S. Meyer

MWF 11:15 AM - 12:05 PM

Fiction and non-fiction produced by children of Holocaust survivors. [3] (HCA)

Medicine, Health, and Society

MHS 3050W: Medicine and Literature

Odie A. Lindsey

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

TR 4:30 - 5:45 PM

Narrative analysis, and other humanistic, interpretative practices of relevance to medicine and health. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1100.01: Composition

Stephanie Graves

MWF 8:00-8:50 AM

This course focuses on the development of writing, research, and critical thinking skills through engagement with popular culture texts such as music, podcasts, film and television, and other contemporary media. The course emphasizes expository and persuasive writing in academic contexts as well as research skills within a scholarly setting. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.02: Composition

Mark Wisniewski

MWF 9:05-9:55 PM

For students looking to deepen their understanding of argument structures, the research process, and academic writing conventions.  Students will produce four polished essays that focus on rhetorical analysis, ethical storytelling, the research process, and framing research as a form of ethical storytelling.  Readings cover a range of eras and geographies. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.03: Composition

Stephanie Graves

MWF 9:05-9:55 PM

This course focuses on the development of writing, research, and critical thinking skills through engagement with popular culture texts such as music, podcasts, film and television, and other contemporary media. The course emphasizes expository and persuasive writing in academic contexts as well as research skills within a scholarly setting. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.04: Composition

Lauren Mitchell

MWF 11:15 AM-12:05 PM

This is a place to sharpen your writing skills and analytical thinking skills in preparation for the rest of your coursework at Vanderbilt.  It has been famously said that, "History is written by the victors."  Everywhere we look, from written texts to internet articles to visual and audio media, we’re guided by narratives—and, therefore we are also guided by narrators.  This course will help students answer the question, what are the rhetorical moves that reinforce these narratives?  How can we learn to adopt these moves and integrate them into our own writing voice and style? How do our authors present themselves in their writing, whether they are supposed to or not and who are the “victors” who get to claim what becomes a fact?  And how do we responsibly engage with the world around us in the way that we learn and share written perspectives, stories, and research?  

Our prerogative is to practice good writing in a supportive, hands-on environment, with special attention to the structure of academic essays, good argumentation, rhetorical strategies, textual analysis, and productive peer review (with some review of grammar/syntax as necessary).   Students will have four major writing assignments to complete throughout the semester, which include two formal academic essays, a multi-media “essay,” and a creative final project. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.05: Composition: Visions of the Future

Jordan Ivie

MWF 12:20-1:10 PM

For centuries, writers and artists have registered their concerns about their present world by thinking about the future. Utopian worlds, dystopian worlds, and worlds that lie somewhere in the middle are some of our most useful vehicles for critiquing oppressiveng power structures, bringing attention to societal threats, and imagining more desirable futures. This class explores these visions of the future through a wide range of time periods and genres, including short story, novel, film, television, and graphic novel. Through a series of readings, essays, workshops, and other writing projects, students will both develop their academic writing skills and learn how to thoughtfully engage with speculative fiction as a legitimate avenue of social critique. The class will culminate in a project that asks students to write a research paper about the contemporary debates surrounding one of the social issues presented in our course texts. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.07: Composition

David Brandt

MWF 4:40-5:30 PM

For students who need to improve their writing. Emphasis on writing skills, with some analysis of modern nonfiction writing. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.08: Composition

Brittany Ackerman

TR 9:30-10:45 AM

The main objectives of this course are to help students develop their critical writing skills and become close readers of literature. Students will garner an understanding and appreciation of the writing process and develop a more nuanced comprehension of one’s own writing process. This course aims to enhance one’s own writing ability as well as one’s confidence as a writer. We will critically read, approach, describe, summarize, and analyze formal and stylistic elements through a variety of diverse texts and genres. Mediums used to generate essay will involve: personal reflection, proposal, rhetorical analysis, explication, literary and or media analysis, op ed, etc. Together, we will learn the fundamentals of successful academic arguments as well as how to plan and conduct academic research. Students will learn how to gather evidence from primary and secondary sources, how to craft a thesis statement, and how to develop an argument. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.09: Composition

Brittany Ackerman

TR 11:00-12:15 PM

The main objectives of this course are to help students develop their critical writing skills and become close readers of literature. Students will garner an understanding and appreciation of the writing process and develop a more nuanced comprehension of one’s own writing process. This course aims to enhance one’s own writing ability as well as one’s confidence as a writer. We will critically read, approach, describe, summarize, and analyze formal and stylistic elements through a variety of diverse texts and genres. Mediums used to generate essay will involve: personal reflection, proposal, rhetorical analysis, explication, literary and or media analysis, op ed, etc. Together, we will learn the fundamentals of successful academic arguments as well as how to plan and conduct academic research. Students will learn how to gather evidence from primary and secondary sources, how to craft a thesis statement, and how to develop an argument. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1100.10: Composition

Maren Loveland

MWF 8:00-8:50 AM

In our practice of writing and reading, we will study themes of race, gender, and the environment throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century. [3] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1111.08 FYWS: The Simple Art of Murder

Elizabeth Covington

MWF 8:00 - 8:50 AM

This literature and writing course is designed to facilitate critical thinking by exploring the way that texts and films shape and are shaped by the culture in which they were produced and consumed.  In this course, we will read conventional "page-turners," view films, view television shows, and ask philosophical and historical context questions about what we find there in order to think in more nuanced ways about concepts like justice, witnessing, retribution, probability, guilt and innocence, and the human condition. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1111.16 FYWS: Toni Morrison

Teresa Goddu

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM

This course examines the works of Toni Morrison, beginning with The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon and ending with her Nobel-prize winning work, Beloved. We will develop arguments about issues and problems that reoccur in her work: race, gender, class, and sexuality; geography and migration; history, trauma, and memory; kinship and community; nation and region; oppression and freedom; language and the artist’s role. Most importantly, we will locate Morrison’s works at the center of contemporary discussions about race and nation. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)

ENGL 1111.19 FYWS: Growing Up Latino and Latina

Candice Amich

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

What does it mean to “grow up Latino/a/x” in the multicultural United States? In this course we will survey a broad range of cultural texts that provocatively and poignantly address the issues of language, education, race, migration, class and gender that influence the development of Latino/a/x children and adolescents. We will pay special attention to coming-of-age stories that explore the psychological and political dimensions of encountering cultural difference and responding to the pressures of assimilation. The short stories, memoirs, and essays we will examine together challenge their readers to recognize the rich differences that define the Latinx community in the United States. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section, Diverse Perspectives)

ENGL 1111.51 FYWS: Poetics of Science

Pavneet Aulakh

TR 4:15 - 5:30 PM

For some, poetry and science may seem to lie on opposite ends of the academic spectrum: one makes, or discovers, knowledge, while the other deals in fictions. Though it is true that many modern universities differentiate between art and science, a survey of ancient and early modern texts reveals a surprising, and mutually catalyzing, sympathy between the two disciplines. Through a close study of the “scientific” poetry and “poetic” science of some of the Western tradition's most prominent poets and natural philosophers, we will explore the ethics, aesthetics, and explanatory powers of poetry and science alike. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section, Pre-1800 Requirement)

ENGL 1210W.01: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques

Sam Stover

MWF 11:15 AM - 12:05 PM

In “The Future of the Novel,” Henry James writes, “The novel is of all pictures the most comprehensive and elastic. It will stretch anywhere—it will take in almost anything. All it needs is a subject and a painter. But for its subject, magnificently, it has the whole human consciousness.” How do authors create the effect of a living consciousness in their work? How does memory—or forgetting—shape identity?  In this course, students will explore the depictions of consciousness and memory in literature through the works of Henry James, W.G. Sebald, Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro, James Baldwin, and Virginia Woolf. Students will develop their close-reading skills through analyses of the techniques these authors use to render thought on the page. Students will also examine how explorations of memory inform our understanding of individual identity as well as our broader cultural reckonings with trauma. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.02: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques

Sam Stover

MWF 10:10-11:00 AM

In “The Future of the Novel,” Henry James writes, “The novel is of all pictures the most comprehensive and elastic. It will stretch anywhere—it will take in almost anything. All it needs is a subject and a painter. But for its subject, magnificently, it has the whole human consciousness.” How do authors create the effect of a living consciousness in their work? How does memory—or forgetting—shape identity?  In this course, students will explore the depictions of consciousness and memory in literature through the works of Henry James, W.G. Sebald, Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro, James Baldwin, and Virginia Woolf. Students will develop their close-reading skills through analyses of the techniques these authors use to render thought on the page. Students will also examine how explorations of memory inform our understanding of individual identity as well as our broader cultural reckonings with trauma. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.03: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques

Lauren Mitchell

MWF 2:30-3:20 PM

[3] (HCA)

ENGL 1210W.04: Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques: Nineteenth-Century Time Travel

Kelsey Rall

MWF 3:35-4:25 PM

When we hear the phrase “time travel,” we often picture someone clambering into a machine and instantly transporting deep into the past or far into the future. But, we don’t need mechanical assistance to accomplish this feat. Indeed, we are traveling through time just by living: plodding forward through seconds, minutes, and days, bringing past experiences to bear on present concerns, and projecting our hopes and aspirations into a distant future. This type of “time travel” destabilizes the idea that there is a correct way to measure temporality, one singular answer to the way we inhabit time – or, rather, the way time inhabits us. In the nineteenth century in particular, the way that time was measured and experienced transformed and multiplied to account for time-saving inventions, the regulated schedules of railways, and the discovery of new fossils and the deep biological time they unlocked. In this course, we will therefore think through the way nineteenth-century texts imagine our relationship with time by dramatizing the process of growing up, the stalling of decay, and yes, the act of climbing into a time machine and traveling to the future. By working through a variety of academic and creative genres, students will learn how to engage critically with primary sources, write persuasive arguments, and structure feedback into revisions of their writing. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1220W.01: Drama: Forms and Techniques: Unruly Women; from Medea to The Crucible 

Jordan Ivie

MWF 1:25-2:15 PM

“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” So cries Lady Macbeth as she sleepwalks through Dunsinane castle, scrubbing phantom blood from her hands shortly before killing herself offstage. While the deranged and murderous Lady Macbeth is perhaps the most iconic troublesome woman of the stage, she is by no means an isolated case. This class will explore a range of plays containing women who similarly step outside of their accepted social roles, becoming insane, villainous, promiscuous, or all three. This course will examine texts from the classical period to the present, seeking out the women who murder, deceive, lose their minds, and sleep around. We will situate each play within its historical context, considering how these troublesome women are reflections or critiques of contemporary anxieties and debates, and explore how these stories have been adapted and translated for the modern age. Students will engage with these texts through writing assignments, workshops, performance activities, and discussion. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1220W.02: Drama: Forms and Techniques: Unruly Women; from Medea to The Crucible 

Jordan Ivie

MWF 2:30-3:20 PM

“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” So cries Lady Macbeth as she sleepwalks through Dunsinane castle, scrubbing phantom blood from her hands shortly before killing herself offstage. While the deranged and murderous Lady Macbeth is perhaps the most iconic troublesome woman of the stage, she is by no means an isolated case. This class will explore a range of plays containing women who similarly step outside of their accepted social roles, becoming insane, villainous, promiscuous, or all three. This course will examine texts from the classical period to the present, seeking out the women who murder, deceive, lose their minds, and sleep around. We will situate each play within its historical context, considering how these troublesome women are reflections or critiques of contemporary anxieties and debates, and explore how these stories have been adapted and translated for the modern age. Students will engage with these texts through writing assignments, workshops, performance activities, and discussion. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1220W.03: Drama: Forms and Techniques: Comedy and the Politics of Love

Paige Oliver

MWF 10:10-11:00 AM

When we imagine political plays, we think of weighty dramas like Shakespeare’s King Lear or Aaron Sorkin’s staging of To Kill a Mockingbird. We imagine plots of contentious succession or thwarted justice. What we don’t often deem political, however, are those plays that comically romp through the trials and tribulation of romantic love. Yet, if the personal is political, then what could be weightier than love? In this course, we will turn to comedic plays about love to question the political pitfalls and possibilities these playwrights find in romantic relationships. This course will not focus on a single era but will instead survey the comedic tradition, moving from Elizabethan to modern theater. Plays may include Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1601), Susan Centlivre’s A Bold Stroke for A Wife (1718), Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Bernard Slade’s Romantic Comedy (1979), and Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone (2017). Throughout the semester, you will grow your skills in writing, learning to implement a variety of writing styles: close reading, creative/speculative fiction, argumentative writing, and (as our culminating assignment) even drama. By exploring the discrete stages of the writing process, you will leave this course not only with a fuller knowledge of how to effectively voice your ideas through writing but with an understanding of what strategies work for you as a writer. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.01: Literature and Analytical Thinking: Salvaging Literature

Jeong-Oh Kim

MWF 9:30-10:45 AM

Grammatically speaking, as an adjective, salvaging describes a kind of literature, one that saves what is lost, or fragile, or endangered. By studying the forms and techniques of such texts, we will explore the problems that literature has set in motion by its response to the world—to society, economy, gender, race, geography, culture, suffering, and human rights.  At the same time, “salvaging literature” concerns how to save literature, how to salvage its various forms, by writing about our connections to literature as citizens of the university and of wider communities. We will explore texts such as Edgar Allen Poe, Selected Tales; Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Richard Hughes’s High Wind in Jamaica; Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia; W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; and Romantic poetry. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.02: Literature and Analytical Thinking

Gabriel Briggs

MWF 1:15-2:30 PM

This course will provide a close study of short stories and novels and written explication of these forms. In particular, it examines one of the most influential writers in twentieth-century American Literature. To better understand Ernest Hemingway’s enduring cultural presence, students will read a number of short stories, novels, and non-fiction prose he produced between 1924 and 1951. Students will also develop strategies for positioning the author and his work within specific historical and theoretical contexts. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.03: Literature and Analytical Thinking: Phrases of the Moon: Lunacy and Lunar Exploration in Literature

Cole Polglaze

MWF 12:20-1:10 PM

For centuries, we have been enthralled by the Moon and the people whom we thought might populate it. It has had an impact on mythology, medicine, literature, and even our lexicon. The texts we will read in this course span centuries and genres, but will focus on lunar exploration, our desire to travel to the Moon and meet its imagined inhabitants. We will use these journeys and encounters to shine a light on historical and modern discussions of colonialism, race, gender, sexuality, and the environment. Through a variety of academic and creative assignments, students will learn how to engage critically with primary sources, write persuasive arguments, and incorporate feedback in their revisions. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.04: Literature and Analytical Thinking: Critical Approaches to Horror

Stephanie Graves

MWF 11:15 AM-12:05 PM

This course focuses on literary conceptions of Horror and the genre's cultural engagement with structures of gender, race, class, and sexuality. We will consider multiple approaches to the critical analysis of horror texts across a diverse range of media, including poetry, short fiction, novels, podcasts, film, and television. The class will emphasize theoretical frameworks, critical methods, and analytic response to the texts in question; students will develop transferable skills of close reading, literary analysis, and persuasive argumentation within the context of expository writing. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.05: Literature and Analytical Thinking

Mark Wisniewski

MWF 10:10-11:00 AM

In this course we will investigate the nineteenth-century origins of science fiction.  While reading the works of authors including Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells, we will analyze the ways these authors use science and literature to create a dichotomy between nature and technology, depict scientists as literary heroes, and measure the risks associated with new technologies.  Assignments will emphasize close reading strategies, literary analysis of primary sources, and understanding the development of science fiction as a genre. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1230W.06: Literature and Analytical Thinking

Mark Wisniewski

MWF 12:20-1:10 PM

In this course we will investigate the nineteenth-century origins of science fiction.  While reading the works of authors including Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells, we will analyze the ways these authors use science and literature to create a dichotomy between nature and technology, depict scientists as literary heroes, and measure the risks associated with new technologies.  Assignments will emphasize close reading strategies, literary analysis of primary sources, and understanding the development of science fiction as a genre. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.01: Intro to Poetry: Whose Line Is It Anyway: Defining the Self in English Renaissance Poetry

Wesley Boyko

MWF 9:05 - 9:55 AM

Due to a variety of cultural, political, and religious upsets, the pressure to construct a definitive national identity in early modern England grew exponentially. And it was the poets who frequently found themselves at the forefront of this endeavor—from Sir Philip Sidney, who balked at the popular fads of Italian poetry, to John Milton, who sought to compose the great English epic, Renaissance poetry marks a distinctive shift to a more self-reflective tone that questions the role of authorial voice and identity. In this class, we will examine the historical circumstances that led to this shift as well as the manner in which early modern poets situated themselves both within and against these circumstances. More broadly though, we will discuss how the act of self-fashioning takes place, extrapolating from the texts we read our own conceptions of identity and self. At the heart of this class is the question of the literary “I” which seems so essential to defining who we are yet seems equally intersected by an assortment of social and political prefigurations. This class is also a W class, which means each student will have several opportunities to develop their critical writing and reading proficiency throughout the semester with both shorter and longer papers. The course is designed to encourage students to exercise and refine these skills for use in their future work and careers, beyond the Renaissance poetry that we will read from week to week. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.02: Intro to Poetry

Jeong oh Kim

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

What is atmosphere? Is it air and weather? Or is it the in-between—effect, matter, immaterial, space, ephemera? By examining contemporary concepts of atmosphere in the context of Green-Eco-Environmental-and Geo-Romanticism, we will investigate the landscapes of poetic imagination that inform the Romantic conditions of atmosphere. We are both part of atmosphere and part of different atmospheres— climatic, spatial, psychical, emotional, and material. We will articulate the ways in which we can speak of the “Atmosphere of British Romantic poetry” when we consider the 3 Ms—Message (agents), Method (sources), and Medium (conditions) of atmosphere. We will explore this topic by considering poetic works across a swath of long- Romanticism from Anne Finch to the late Wordsworth. This course is a combination of survey and special topics from which to consider a poem. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.03: Intro to Poetry

Lisa Dordal

TR 2:45 - 4:00 PM

In our increasingly fast-paced lives, reading poetry can be a great way to slow down and pay meaningful attention to the world around us and to our inner landscapes. Although the main objectives of this course are to help you become close readers of poetry and to help you develop your critical writing skills, the poems that we read might very well deepen your understanding of your own life and who you understand yourself to be. The first part of this course will be organized around formal considerations (diction, tone, imagery, figures of speech, sound, etc.). In the second half of the course, we will read the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes, Marie Howe, Mark Doty, Natasha Trethewey, and Li-Young Lee. Requirements include two papers (plus revisions), short response papers and homework assignments, participation in class discussions, and a written response to a poetry reading. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1250W.04: Intro to Poetry

Djenanway Se-Gahon

MWF 4:40-5:30 PM

In this course, we will analyze poetry by authors including Donika Kelly, Audre Lorde, Aimé Césaire, Alice Walker, Robin Coste Lewis, Ntozake Shange and Dionne Brand. We will address questions around the central theme of "empathy" and develop close-reading skills, argument building skills, and we will address the formal and stylistic concerns of our course texts. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.01: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis

Ben Schwartz

MWF 8:00 - 8:50 AM

Why do we laugh? What does it say about who we are and what we believe? And who is “we,” anyway? Throughout American history, humorists have used wit and folly to explore important social questions. By studying what is funny, why, when, and to whom, comedians and critics have tried to better understand Americans’ fears, values, desires, and attitudes about issues of politics and identity. In this class, we will read, watch, and listen to influential examples of American humor from the 20th century in order to better understand American culture, to better understand ourselves, and (hopefully) to laugh from time to time while doing so. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.02: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis

Sam Stover

MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM

In this course, students will explore how literary conceptions of the gothic provide a lens onto broader social and cultural issues of gender, class, race, and status. Using Edmund Burke’s concept of the sublime and Freud’s explication of the uncanny, we will trace the intellectual and aesthetic evolution of the gothic from the Romantic movement to its manifestations in contemporary literature and culture. Some of the authors whose works we will explore include Henry James, Shirley Jackson, Toni Morrison, Daphne du Maurier, and Laura van den Berg. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.03: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis: The Southern Gothic

Tori Hoover

MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM

Those of us who live and learn in the South are constantly surrounded by monuments to a complex and contentious history. This course considers literature in the tradition of the Southern Gothic. Students will explore the tropes and characteristics of the genre in a variety of forms, ranging from the short stories of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor to the novels of Toni Morrison, the music of Rhiannon Giddens, and even Donald Glover’s “Atlanta.” What does the Southern Gothic look like today, in Nashville and more broadly? How are artists nuancing and diversifying the image of the genre? And how have “lost cause” narratives contributed to our present national discourse? [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.04: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis: The Black South(s): Regional Identity, Culture, & Aesthetic

Savannah DiGregorio

MWF 4:40 - 5:30 PM

In 1995 Outkast won Best New Rap Group at the BET Source Awards. As they took the stage, East and West Coast artists alike booed, prompting André 3000 to utter the now famous line: “The South got something to say.” Decades later, however, as Zandria F. Robinson puts it, many would argue that even today, “the South still got something to say.” Following Robinson, our class will consider what it means to be Black in the contemporary South, as well as the relationship between region and Black identity. We will read writers such as Jesmyn Ward, Attica Locke, and Regina N. Bradley, learn about southern food in High on the Hog and our own community, listen to hip hop, and review local spoken word performances. Students will learn to engage critically with sources, write meaningful arguments, and cultivate a unique writing style through in-class workshops, writing assignments, and discussion. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.05: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis

Emily Lordi

TR 11:00 AM-12:15 PM

This course will focus on issues of contemporary authorship and literary celebrity. Who are the people “behind” the works we study? What do they say about themselves, and should our sense of them as people shape our readings of their work? These questions are especially pressing now, at a moment when most writers need a strong public presence to succeed in the literary marketplace, and many promote their work by giving public readings and interviews and publishing personal essays. How do these acts of self-representation help us to read writers’ fiction and poetry? How does unflattering news about them complicate our interpretation of their work? Authors whose works we will study—through class discussion, close readings, and other short writing assignments—include Rupi Kaur, Danez Smith, Junot Diaz, Jia Tolentino, Kiese Laymon, and Ocean Vuong. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.06: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Radiant Intertextuality

Jeong-Oh Kim

TR 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

This course is based on the premise that in a complex world, we must approach problems from many different angles. The current focus on cross-inter-trans-disciplinarity reflects this premise. Yet all too often, interdisciplinarity is treated more as a rhetorical slogan than as an actual practice. Its transformative challenge is reduced to an additive list without clear motivation: philosophy plus literature, anthropology plus history, etc. We will take the challenge of interdisciplinarity seriously to ask how it changes the way we do things: the questions we ask, the materials we work with and what we do with those materials, the forms in which we present our findings. My course is open to students interested in scholarly practices that cut across established fields of inquiry. Organized in thematic sections, this course investigates the ways in which disciplines respond to and modify each other—how they become mutually weaving “Radiant Intertextuality.” This course engages with cognitive studies, helping students read neuroscience ethics critically. We will also trace the origin of contemporary cognitive studies to British Romantic science. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.07: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Love and Oil

Nick Reich

MWF 11:15 AM-12:05 PM

Energy historian Heidi C. M. Scott explains that “a culture’s material fuel source opens a landscape of possibility for the kinds of ideas, ambitions, and progress in which that culture can engage.” If this is true, we might wonder how many contemporary ideas about gender, race, and sexuality are beholden to fossil fuels. After all, these identity categories often make the difference between who gets to have ambitions and who gets to make progress here in the United States. To help us think through these concerns, we’ll turn to the cinema and its enduring fascination with oil, machinery, big vehicles and spectacular chases, the roughneck and his femme foil—oily love as the world’s riskiest spectacle. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1260W.08: Intro to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Art and Archive, or What Does Cultural Preservation Look Like

Ethan Calof

TR 4:15-5:30 PM

What exactly is an archive? What goes in one? Why are they important? How can they help us understand our world today? And how do writers, filmmakers, playwrights, and other content creators use the materials and concepts of archives to make their art? The concept is much broader than dusty windowless rooms with boxes, encompassing everything from libraries to museums to fanfiction websites to all sorts of other forms of collections - all of which aim to contextualize our past and identify the importance of our present. The 21st century has seen the "archival turn" in academia and society, or a rise in the use of archival materials in art and culture, as we react to various twenty first century crises and the potential brought on by contemporary technology. It has also been a time for increased theories about the nature of these new archives, including Maura Finkelstein's spatial, Mumbai-based archives of loss, Abigail de Kosnik's queer and feminist rogue archives, and Gil Z. Hochberg's Palestinian archives of the future. This course will encourage students to examine their own conceptions of these sources of historical preservation and material, engage with theorists, examine media that exhibits their archival principles, and have a hand in making their own archives to gain a hands-on understanding of the process of creating memory. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1270W.01: Intro to Literary Criticism 

Sarah Hagaman

MWF 2:30 - 3:20 PM

This course is designed to develop analytical thinking and writing skills while charting the relationship between literary criticism, literary theory, and literature. We will examine the ways in which major strands of criticism—deconstruction, structuralism, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, feminism, ecocriticism, and cognitive criticism, among others—interact with literature. Our objective is to define and understand theory, its limitations, and how contemporary theorists and critics engage with real-world issues (social justice, bioethics, human dignity, politics, among others) and apply theory while reading and writing about literary texts. We will approach literary criticism as inquiry and practice. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 2316.01: Representative American Writers

Gabriel Briggs

TR 9:30-10:45 AM

TR 11:00 AM-12:15 PM

This course will cover the rise of the novel in the United States from the end of the revolutionary period to the 1850s. We will read the work of authors who dominate American literary history, such as Lydia Maria Child, James Fenimore Cooper, and Herman Melville, but we will also study additional writers who challenge conventional wisdom, and help us to imagine alternative literary histories in the U.S.  In our reading, we will focus on two related questions: how does the novel capture the social and political pressures of a particular historical moment? Where is the line between fiction and history, dreams and reality? The novels we will examine cut across several literary genres, including the Sentimental Novel, the American Gothic, and the Historical Romance, and we will attempt both to understand and to theorize the relationship between literary and historical writing. [3] (US)

ENGL 2319.01: World Literature, Modern

Akshya Saxena

TR 11:00 AM-12:00 PM

This course is neither greatest hits, nor world tour, nor Norton Anthology. It is also not comprehensive. Instead, it is an attempt to interrogate the conceptual and material category of “modern world literature” itself. It is an invitation to situate our literary habits and institutional rubrics in, well, the world we live in, the world of economic forces, human displacements, and natural disasters. “World literature” remains an enduring idea in literary studies because it brings together some of our most fundamental concerns of humankind—concerns about the world we inhabit, others who we live with, and the ways in which we represent ourselves. World literature as a set of texts and as a methodology for reading literature is often posited against the narrowness of national literatures. There have been many different conceptions of world literature, some of which we will encounter in this course. As we read these, it is hard not to wonder what is included and excluded in the name of world literature. Do different place-based imaginations produce starkly different world literatures? Does world literature have a class character? Is it restricted to a time in history or to a handful of national literatures? Does writing in a particular language guarantee inclusion in the category? What do we mean by world literature when the world itself is, literally, burning? Readings by Kamila Shamsie, Sulaiman Addonia, Amitav Ghosh, Rabindranath Tagore, and Frantz Fanon among others. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 2330W.01: Intro to Environmental Humanities

Carlos Nugent

TR 1:15-2:30 PM

Climate scientists have come to a consensus that the planet has passed into the Anthropocene—a geological epoch in which human societies have a dominant and even determining influence on their nonhuman environments. Although these scientists still disagree about the Anthropocene’s starting date, they all see the significance of 1492, when Europeans began both a genocide against Native North and South Americans and a trade in enslaved Africans, which together fueled the rise of carbon-intensive capitalism. As these scientists analyze the Anthropocene’s material traces, humanists are studying its cultural causes. To draw on and develop these efforts, this course takes up the emerging field known as “the environmental humanities.” Bringing anthropology, history, and other disciplines to bear on literature, visual art, and other media, the course reconsiders the complex pasts of the territories now claimed by the United States—and reflects on the precarious futures confronting everyone on our planet. [3] (Diverse Perspectives, HCA)

ENGL 3312.01: The Medieval World

Pavneet Aulakh

TR 11:00 AM-12:15 PM

We’ve never been more medieval. From politics to pop culture, yearnings for, and fears of, a return to a Western medieval past saturate the present. To understand our historical moment, this course returns to medieval England and examines what it meant to be English, particularly in light of England’s complex relation to continental Europe and the East. At the forefront of the Brexit debate, these questions go back to the stories medieval English people constructed about their origins. Studying these narratives, we will consider the foreignness at the heart of England’s founding myths and also the role of religious and racial discrimination in the forging of English national identity. To flesh out our understanding of the medieval world, we will enlarge our study of English literature with readings from Continental and Middle Eastern texts, including Jewish accounts of the first crusades and Muslim narratives of their own encounters with Europeans. [3] (Pre-1800 Requirement or Diverse Perspecitves, P)

ENGL 3340.01: Shakespeare: Representative Selections

Kathryn Schwarz

TR 4:15-5:30 PM

On the one hand, Shakespeare’s works have often been used as reference points for social hierarchies, categories, and norms. On the other hand, these same works provide rich resources for challenging orthodox systems and structures. This course will engage the plays’ complex, often contentious representations of social experience: constructions of identity in relation to gender, sexuality, and erotic attachment; representations of cultural authority and cultural conflict; crises produced through mistake, transformation, and disguise; and tensions surrounding ethnicity, religion, and race. Throughout the semester, we’ll take various angles on what might broadly be termed politics: the politics of nationalism, gender, history, violence, identity, and community. 

Discussions will consider both early histories of production and more recent readings, stagings, and adaptations for new media. Course requirements include a group presentation, analytic essays, research assignments, and regular participation. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3364W.01: The Eighteenth-Century English Novel

Andrea Hearn

TR 2:45-4:00 PM

The novel is a genre with which any literature student is familiar; however, there was a time when the novel was just that: new, still forming, still finding its place.  As a genre it was amorphous, self-referential, suspect.  That time was the eighteenth century, where we will begin our study of a form that has come to dominate literature in a mere two centuries, displacing poetry and drama. 

Likely texts will include Haywood’s Fantomina, Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Richardson’s Pamela, Fielding’s Shamela, Burney’s Evelina, and Austen’s Northanger Abbey.  In addition to four essays, students will offer small-group presentations on various theories of the origin and/or rise of the novel. My hope is that you will read the novel with new eyes when you read it at its beginnings: by understanding where the novel began and where it came from, you can see where it goes and what it is doing now. [3] (Pre-1800 Requirement, HCA)

ENGL 3370.01: The Bible in Literature 

Roger Moore

TR 9:30-10:45 AM

Knowledge of the Bible is indispensable for understanding English and American literature.  This course examines the ways that writers from the medieval period to the present engage Biblical stories, images, and characters.  How does Chaucer retell the story of Noah and the Flood?  How do the Beatitudes help Margaret Atwood critique fanatical religion in The Handmaid’s Tale?   How does the conversion of the Apostle Paul inform Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back”?  We will examine these questions and many others during the term. We will also pay close attention to the historical, political, and religious circumstances of the authors and their works.  This course is valuable for English majors seeking a better understanding of the sources and backgrounds of English and American literature, as well as the general student who wishes to learn about the role of Christian themes in shaping canonical works of the English tradition.  Students will take an in-class midterm essay exam and complete a final research paper.  No prior knowledge of or expertise in the Bible is required. (Pre-1800 requirement) HCA 

ENGL 3630.01: The Modern British Novel

Scott Juengel

TR 4:15-5:30 PM

This course focuses on two modern British novelists who were also friends, E.M. Forster (1879-1970) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).  Together they represent two distinct strands of modernist narrative: where Forster improvised upon and updated existing novelistic forms (e.g. the realist novel; social problem novel; Jamesian modernism), Woolf experimented more intensively with stream-of-consciousness and lyricism.  Each was an important member of what was known as the Bloomsbury Group, a loose collective of writers, philosophers, and artists living in that area of London in the first half of the 20th century, and each left behind a wealth of valuable criticism, as well as early entrants in a queer literary canon (Orlando, Maurice).  Primary readings might also include A Room of One’s Own, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room with a View, Howards End, Passage to India, among others. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3654.01: African American Literature: Southern African American Literature

Anthony Reed

TR 11:00 AM-12:15 PM

The history is familiar: during the twentieth century, African Americans migrated from rural to urban locales, and from South to North. In popular thought, Northeastern, Midwestern, or Western urban spaces are the principal locations of African American culture. But these are not the only places where black life or art has happened, and neglecting the region skews and overgeneralizes the African American experience. Despite the Great Migration, many African Americans make their homes in the South. Those who moved away often draw upon it as a source of ancestral and contemporary inspiration. This course, spanning much of the twentieth century, engages African American literature (poetry and prose) and its relationship to the South to see what different stories might emerge about the region and its people. [3] (US)

ENGL 3654W.01: African American Literature: Black Memoir

Emily Lordi

TR 1:15-2:30 PM

Ever since the authors of slave narratives helped to inaugurate the African American literary tradition, the genre of the memoir has held a privileged place among Black American writers. Writers have used the genre to communicate realities that the dominant culture has ignored or suppressed, as well as to create community through artful testimony to shared experience. In this class, we will read first-person accounts by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, Janet Mock, and Kiese Laymon. In addition to content, we will examine the language, style, and strategy of these urgent, honest, often evasive, and consistently innovative accounts. In so doing, we will explore the differences and continuities among representations of black life from the 19th century to the present. This discussion-based course will include several writing assignments and one short presentation. [3] (US)

ENGL 3670.01 Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature

Akshya Saxena

TR 1:15-2:30 PM

This course offers an introduction to postcolonial literature and theory. Reading literary works from Africa, India, the Caribbean, and Britain, it asks: what does it mean to be “postcolonial”? Does the term indicate a historical fact or an ideological position? When does a text or an author become “postcolonial”? Through a mix of literary, filmic, and historical texts, the course explores how writers through history have sought to decolonize both politically and psychologically. What is the difference between anticolonial, postcolonial, and decolonial thought? What is the relation between literary form and histories of colonization, decolonization, nationalism, and migration? Along the way, we will examine the emergence, institutionalization, and crisis of postcolonial studies as a field of study today. Readings by BR Ambedkar, Frantz Fanon, Shakespeare, Aime Cesaire, Jamaica Kincaid, and Edward Said among others. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3720.01: Literature, Science, and Technology

Pavneet Aulakh

TR 2:45-4:00 PM

The christening of “Curiosity,” the fourth Mars rover, speaks to an essential element of scientific experimentation and discovery. As Einstein put it: “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” Curiosity, however, was not always thought a productive habit of thought. Deemed a vice, it had to be legitimized over the course of what has been called the Scientific Revolution. Through a reading of early modern scientific treatises and literary texts, we will historicize the evolution of curiosity and study the responses this transformation occasioned. Our study of seventeenth-century science will equally be animated by a similar curiosity and extend to an examination of the strangeness and heterogeneity of early experimental practice, the variety of literary forms it engaged with, and how experimental practitioners communicated their discoveries and projects to a skeptical audience. [3] (Pre-1800 Requirement, P)

ENGL 3726.01: New Media: Game Studies

Jay Clayton

MWF 9:05-9:55 AM

This course explores the impact of new media on narrative through a focus on digital games.  Beginning with Lord of the Rings Online, a massively multiplayer role playing game (MMO), and indie games such as Braid, Gone Home, and Portal, the course introduces students to the literary and artistic challenges of constructing narratives in a digital environment and the implications of social media for concepts of self and society. In addition to the novels and films of Tolkien, the course looks at a variety of new media, films, and novels about gaming. 

Here is a trailer for a virtual reality environment based on Ready Player One that students produced for an earlier version of this class: https://youtu.be/StVIVT0FUZM. 

No background in gaming or digital technology is required.  Students will learn the theory and practice of new media through demonstrations and hands-on workshops. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3742.01: Feminist Theory

Candice Amich

TR 4:15-5:30 PM

An introduction to feminist theory, this course is designed to provide you with the basic skills necessary to use gender as a tool of cultural analysis. We will read theory from and about twentieth-century “second-wave” feminism, as well as explore more recent queer and transgender engagements with feminism. Our global reader will remind us that feminism is a transnational phenomenon with multiple histories and definitions. We will consider the representation of feminism in popular culture and the role of feminist politics in diverse social movements. Research projects derived from students’ individual interests will be an important part of understanding the theory. [3] (Diverse Perspecives, P)

ENGL 3892W.01: Problems in Literature: Literature in Dark Times

Allison Schachter

TR 9:30-10:45 AM

What does literature have to tell us about historical moments of political crisis and catastrophe? In this course, we will read twentieth and twenty-first century literature that depicts the rise of authoritarian regimes including Nazism and Stalinism, the varieties of state violence, and the breakdown of everyday life that ensues. We will ask what are dark times and how can we recognize them? What special role does literature play in capturing these experiences and what we can we learn from literary texts? We’ll examine how writers and artists navigate the complex boundaries between aesthetics and politics; representation and documentation; and realism and experimental form. Authors include: Hannah Arendt, Lorraine Hansberry, Jenny Erpenbeck, Svetlana Alexeivich, Georges Perec, W. G. Sebald, and Margaret Atwood. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3896W.01: Special Topics in Investigative Writing in America: Environmental Journalism

Amanda Little

W 12:20-3:20 PM

This environmental journalism course explores the science, the solutions, the players, the politics, the history, and the local impacts of climate change. Students will pursue their own local reporting, investigating the effects of climate change and the emerging green economy in Nashville. You'll learn the rudiments of good environmental journalism and are welcome to join with or without previous journalism experience. This course aims to change the way you think about the importance and impact of storytelling, the way you write about complex topics with accessible and engaging prose, and the way you participate in the time of crisis and progress we live in. [1-3; maximum of 6 credits total] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1101.01 Creative Writing Tutorial: Fiction

Danny Perez

Individual instruction in writing fiction. Offered on a pass/fail basis only. Not open to students who have earned credit for ENGL 3851 section 07 without permission. Total credit hours for this course and ENGL 3851 section 7 will not exceed 1 credit hour. Credit hours reduced from most recent course taken (or from test or transfer credit) as appropriate. [1] (No AXLE credit)

ENGL 1240.01 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop

Justin Quarry

TR 1:15-2:30 PM

What is creative nonfiction?  If you're asking yourself that question—well, you're certainly not the only one.  In this workshop, novice writers will explore this ever-evolving genre, which includes, among others, personal essay and literary journalism—and they'll try their hands at storytelling in each of these categories, producing two pieces to be read and critiqued by the class in a workshop setting.  To help writers draft and revise their work, they'll simultaneously examine the ways in which authors and critics have defined and redefined the genre, and study factual accuracy, point of view, tone, and the incorporation of literary techniques more often seen in fiction.  No previous creative writing experience is necessary for this class. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.01 Beginning Fiction Workshop

Jess Sumalpong

MWF 9:05-9:55 AM

"Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth." -Albert Camus  

Stories make us have real reactions to fictional scenarios. How do writers so thoroughly convince us of the worlds and people they create? How can we do the same with our own stories? In this class, we will study both the technical and creative processes behind fiction writing. We will identify and practice craft elements (character, plot, setting, etc.), learn to read like writers, and discuss what makes for a memorable story. Throughout the semester, you will write two short stories to be workshopped in-class, along with shorter generative exercises. You will also provide verbal and written feedback on your classmates' stories. Students will read a range of short stories, novel excerpts, and craft essays. No prior experience is necessary for this workshop. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.02 Beginning Fiction Workshop

Lydia Conklin

MWF 1:25-2:15 PM

This course introduces students to the exciting world of fiction writing. Opening with exploratory, low-stakes exercises, craft discussions, the close reading and discussion of published literary short stories, and best workshop practices, the opening of the course will move toward the completion of a work of flash fiction. Later, students will hone their writing muscles working on different craft elements, through the examples found in published fiction and through craft lessons and craft-based exercises. In the latter half of the course, the students will each write a complete short story, which then will be workshopped in a safe, open environment. For the final work of the course, the students will use the careful, thoughtful critiques of their peers and their discoveries in their own material to produce a radical revision of their story. This course prepares students for intermediate-level workshops in fiction. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.03 Beginning Fiction Workshop

Lydia Peelle

MWF 1:25-2:15

What are the elements of story? How do we go about bringing a concept out of our imagination and onto the page? This course will introduce students to various approaches to writing fiction, with an emphasis on creativity, process, and the art of revision. The semester begins with close reading and discussions of published short fiction, as well as in-class exercises and short writing assignments. We build toward each student producing one complete short story, which we will then carefully discuss in our story workshop. Finally, gathering all we have learned, students will use this peer feedback as well as one-on-one instructor discussion to complete a revised and polished version of their original story. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.04 Beginning Fiction Workshop

Sam Marshall

MWF 3:35-4:25 PM

In this workshop we will read, write, and discuss short-form literary fiction. We will delve into the mystery of enabling readers to enter the world of a short story by focusing our attention on the nuts and bolts of fiction such as characterization, point of view, setting, and other craft elements that give stories their shape and pulse. Each student will submit two original stories, respond to peer writing, and develop a final portfolio. This is an interactive, discussion-based course where students will read and comment upon one another’s writing. No experience necessary, just a willingness to engage with your classmates and the course material. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1280.05 Beginning Fiction Workshop

Jess Silfa

TR 8:00-9:15 AM

“It is a happy talent to know how to play.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson 

In this introductory workshop, you will play and tinker with stories, and in doing so, learn to recognize what makes a story work. You will begin the semester by reading a variety of published pieces—including magical realism, soft sci-fi, queer fiction, and so on—to identify and familiarize yourselves with the craft elements that make them tick. Then you will write your own stories using the tools you’ve acquired. Each student will submit two stories to the workshop, take part in ten-minute in-class writing exercises, and submit a final portfolio of revised writing at the end of the semester. Be prepared to share your work often. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.01 Beginning Poetry Workshop

Em Palughi

MWF 8:00-8:50 AM

“A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.” –William Carlos Williams 

In this course, you will be given the basic tools needed to construct your own machines of language. After engaging with a few craft concepts, you will write poems, receive feedback from your instructor and peers, and provide thoughtful feedback in return. Poetry is often an alienating genre, with poems treated like complex locks only solvable by those with special knowledge. This is not the case.! This class is designed to be a demystifying, generative experience that is helpful both to new writers and experienced poets. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.02 Beginning Poetry Workshop

John Mulcare

TR 8:00-9:15 AM

In this course, students will discover why they are drawn to specific poems, and conversely, why they are propelled away from others; why some poems engage an individual’s personality and intellect more than others. By closely reading a diverse range of contemporary and canonical poems, students will learn to understand and identify certain craft elements that make poems tick beside their content matter. The course will be guided by a textbook and additional author interviews and craft essays. Students will generate original poems through various writing exercises and assignments, which will be the primary texts of the class’s workshop. Students will be expected to share their work with the class for a constructive, peer-led, and discussion-based workshop. As much as we will be reading and writing poems in the course, we will also be cultivating a rich and supportive literary community in a safe and accommodating space. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 1290.03 Beginning Poetry Workshop

Caroline Stevens

TR 9:30-10:45 AM

In this introductory workshop, we will reach toward the questions posed by Audre Lorde: “What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say?” Workshop members will take creative risks, develop their aesthetic preferences, and build a love for language through the poems that they read and write. Throughout the semester, students will read a diverse array of published poems and craft essays, develop a critical vocabulary to discuss poems, and become active participants in the literary community by attending poetry readings. Class members will exchange verbal and written feedback on each other’s poems on a weekly basis in addition to strengthening their poetic muscles through weekly generative assignments. By the end of the semester, students will have developed a portfolio of revised poems and a written reflection on their growth as poets. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3210.01 Intermediate Nonfiction Workshop: The Short Personal Essay

Justin Quarry

R 2:45-5:45 PM

How do you tell a personal story in a short space, for a wide audience?  How do you shape your experiences into art?  In this workshop, students identify the parts of their lives rich with resonance and discovery—from day-to-day happenings to landmark moments—and craft them for the page with the goal of compelling readers.  In studying, they read two texts on the art of the personal essay as well as a diverse selection of essays by contemporary writers; in practicing, they write four essays of varying lengths (two of 100 words, two of 1500-1750 words), all of which are then workshopped by their professor and peers.  The final project consists of revisions of all essays.  Of particular emphasis in students’ reading and writing is the broad topic of relationships—familial, platonic, romantic, etc.—to produce potential (but not required) submissions for, among others, the college contest editions of the “Tiny Love Stories” and “Modern Love” columns in The New York Times. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3220.01 Advanced Nonfiction Writing

Amanda Little

W 3:35-6:35 PM

This advanced creative writing workshop explores the landscape of contemporary opinion and op-ed writing. We'll read and critique newspaper op-ed pages, contemporary manifestoes, blogs and social media. Students will craft opinion pieces on topics ranging from celebrity culture to social justice and climate change. Taught by an investigative writer and a columnist for Bloomberg covering the environment and politics, students will explore the lines that divide "objective" reporting and subjective opining, and examine the tactics and techniques at the core of persuasive writing. Students will be encouraged to comment on current events, publish their own blogs throughout the semester, and submit their best work for publication in print and on online platforms. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3220] (HCA)

ENGL 3220.02 Advanced Nonfiction Writing

ZZ Packer

R 2:45-5:45 PM

This Advanced Nonfiction Writing workshop aims to provide students with the craft essentials for writing the literary nonfiction one might find in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Oxford American, or The New Yorker. 

We’ll examine the sub-genres of memoir, journalism, personal essays, travelogue, literary criticism, commentary, and satire to develop our sense of how each form works. Students will submit exercises in each form, eventually revising works to be included in a portfolio that will serve as the final project of the semester. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3220] (HCA)

ENGL 3230.01 Intermediate Fiction Workshop

Lydia Conklin

M 3:35-6:35 PM

This course continues the study of the craft of writing fiction. The material is built around the crucial elements of crafting affecting and compelling literary short stories, such as plot, setting, character, voice, dialogue, authority, and detail. Students will read published stories, complete writing exercises, and workshop two complete short stories in an open, safe environment. The students will use the careful, thoughtful critiques of the professor and their peers and their own discoveries about their material to produce a radical revision of either one of their two stories. The course builds on craft elements learned in Beginning Fiction and deepens understandings of the mechanics and magic of fiction writing. The course prepares students for advanced-level workshops in fiction. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3230] (HCA)

ENGL 3230.02 Intermediate Fiction Workshop

Tony Earley

R 3:35-6:35 PM

Start with this supposition: the answer to every question in fiction is a craft answer. How do we assemble worlds out of component parts? How do stories function on a cellular level? How do we make people out of atoms? We’ll take stories apart and put them back together. We’ll see if our work answers the questions it asks. We’ll read and write. Workshop format. Everybody talks. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3230] (HCA)

ENGL 3240.01 Advanced Fiction Workshop

Nancy Reisman

M 12:20-3:20 PM

The Advanced Fiction Workshop is a forum for experienced fiction writers to experiment with new directions, delve more deeply into ongoing aesthetic directions, and consider questions about form. What questions and material are most vital to you? What formal possibilities might open up as you shape that material? We’ll consider questions about story architecture, time, perception, spatial relationships and scale, and revisit other areas of craft as we discuss how best to draw forth the nuances in your work. The reading and writing for the course will be literary fiction mainly based in realism and extending to work with speculative elements (surrealism, fabulism, magical realism, etc.). We’ll read and discuss several published stories and essays on craft. Please note: this is not a course for invented realms or worldbuilding. The heart of this course is the development and discussion of your work-in-progress.  Immersion-adaptable workshop. Prior Intermediate fiction workshop strongly recommended.

Interested writers should register for the wait list, as instructor permission is required.  Permission will be based primarily on a brief writing sample. At the end of course selection, I’ll send guidelines to everyone on the wait list, along with a short questionnaire. Writers are welcome to apply for admission to more than one fiction writing workshop but may enroll in only one fiction workshop per semester. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3240] (HCA)

ENGL 3250.01 Intermediate Poetry Workshop

Cara Dees

W 3:35-6:35

In this class students will read a selection of poetry by contemporary writers in order both to appreciate their poetry and learn from it. Students will also write their own poems and engage in workshop discussions about possible revisions to, additions to, or omissions from the early drafts. Good poems are usually a function of both inspiration and hard work. We'll discuss ways to make a poem more accessible or inviting to the reader, ways to deepen a poem's intensity of feeling, and ways to include more compelling imagery and language. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3250] (HCA) 

ENGL 3260.01 Advanced Poetry Workshop

Rick Hilles

M 12:20-3:20 PM

This is an advanced poetry workshop, and, as such, I envision it as an opportunity for a deepening of your relationship to the practice of poetry. To facilitate this deepening, the class periods will be rigorous and packed with what I hope will be lively and insightful discussions. You will be encouraged to experiment with many different forms and styles of poetry, reading extensively the work of both your peers and published poets, while also offering your best insights in open discussions. The main focus for our class will be the writing workshop, where we will discuss your poems and those of your peers, all the while seeking the most helpful and fruitful ways to approach all creative work put before us. Thus, it will be essential for you to keep up with all of the reading. (Besides, you never know how new poems will open you up to other creative possibilities.) Poetry, as you know, is an immensely challenging and a uniquely fulfilling art form, requiring at times Herculean effort and the patience of Job. By the end of the semester, I hope you will have exceeded your own expectations for yourself and will discover some new favorite poems and poets in the process. To apply to be admitted to the course, please send me, ASAP, 3 recent poems (in one attachment) plus a few paragraphs about yourself, the courses you’ve taken thus far in poetry, as well as your relationship with poetry at this moment in your life. Please email the above to me at: rick.hilles@vanderbilt.edu (Subject to change.) [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3260] (HCA)

ENGL 3891.01/5290 Special Topics in Creative Writing: The Achievement of Contemporary Women Poets

Didi Jackson

T 12:20-3:20

As Carolyn Forché said, “poetry is the voice of the soul, whispering, celebrating, singing even.” In this class we will closely examine the work that has emerged into such songs of several extraordinary contemporary women who faithfully make exceptional contributions to American poetry and literary culture. Our list of poets will include women such as Carolyn Forché, Natasha Trethewey, Ada Limon, Sharon Olds, Tracy K. Smith, and Joy Harjo among others. By exploring seminal works, listening to and reading interviews, and studying available memoirs, we will identify original approaches to the art of poetry that amplify the unique joys and challenges of living as a woman in the 21st century. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3891.02/5290 Special Topics in Creative Writing: Verve and Vision: Writing Creative Nonfiction

ZZ Packer

T 2:45-5:45

In this course we will read and write both fiction and creative non-fiction, concentrating on the craft and aesthetics of stories and essays. Our goal is to discover how  writers transform words into works, and how literary prose seeks to encompass the wealth and range of human emotion, cognition and consciousness. 

A few topics we'll explore: Incipits and Beginnings, The Reader-Writer Arc, Imagery, Event vs. Experience, Plot vs. Story, Point of View vs. Perspective, Mimesis and Diegesis, Time and Temporality, Transcendent Structure, Voice, and Theory of Mind.

We'll read from books such as: Craft in the Real World (Matthew Salesses),  What Stories Are (Thomas Leitch), Artful Sentences (Virginia Tufte), The 3 A.M Epiphany (Brian Kiteley), Several Short Sentences about Writing (Verlyn Klinkenborg) and Steering the Craft (Ursula LeGuin).

The first component of the class will require students to analyze how stories and essays function thematically, metaphorically, and stylistically. We’ll do this by means of close readings, critical responses, and classroom discussions. The second component will involve students completing assigned short exercises (one page or less each per class). [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3710.01 Literature and Intellectual History (Honors Seminar)

Scott Juengel

TR 1:15-2:30 PM

This seminar tells the story of the novel, and how it became the literary delivery system for representations of modern life.  Why was realism the genre’s principal aesthetic program, and what is the relationship between the novel’s fictional status and its claims to the real?  How does a novel build a convincing and immersive world?  What is the relationship between literary representation and visual arts of the “real,” such as realist schools of painting from Vermeer to Courbet, the invention of photography in 1839 and cinema in 1895?  The syllabus will be built around four literary works: Cervantes’ Don Quixote (Part 1), Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Austen’s Emma and a nineteenth-century novel to be determined (perhaps Flaubert, Brontë, or Eliot).  Short supplementary readings will introduce students to narrative theory, genre criticism, theories of literary worldmaking, and critical dialogues between literature and other art forms. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 3894.01 Major Figures in Literature: Toni Morrison (Honors Seminar)

Teresa Goddu

MWF 1:25-2:15 PM

This honors seminar surveys the works and career of Toni Morrison. Beginning with Morrison’s earliest novel, The Bluest Eye, the class moves chronologically through Morrison’s oeuvre, ending with her trilogy Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise. We will also read her short fiction, children’s literature, and non-fiction. We will develop arguments about issues and problems that reoccur in her works: race, gender, sexuality, and class; geography and migration; history, trauma, and memory; kinship and community; nation and region; oppression and freedom; language and the role of the artist. Most importantly, we will locate Morrison’s works at the center of contemporary discussions about race and nation. [3] (HCA)

ENGL 4999.01 Honors Thesis

Alex Dubilet

MWF 1:25-2:15 PM

For students who have successfully been admitted to the honors program and completed the Honors Colloquium course. In this course, students develop their individual honors thesis, working with advisors, the Writing Studio, and their cohort. The thesis experience concludes with an oral examination on the thesis topic. [3] (No AXLE credit)

GSS 3304: Gender, Power, and Justice

Kathryn Schwarz

W 1:00-3:30 PM

What is the relationship between theory and practice? It’s an old question; still, as I write a course description amidst our current cultural dynamics, it strikes me with new force. We invest much energy to create theoretical paradigms for social experiences: theories of gendered, racial, economic, and sexual inequities; of discipline and ideology; of separatism, coalition, and community; of vulnerability, interdependence, oppression, and resistance. At what points do theory and practice meet to produce effective action, and to facilitate the pursuit of social justice?

As we consider the complicated nexus of gender, justice, and power, we’ll engage thinkers who interweave the conceptual with the experiential: feminists of color; queer activists; radical separatists; advocates for interrelation and coalition; creators of manifestoes and polemics. I’ll set some of these texts, but our archive will be a collaborative project. Each of you will have opportunities to share resources, drawn from your own disciplines, from contemporary popular discourses, and from other contexts that add depth and vitality to our conversations. We’ll work together to bring individual insights and experiences into conversation with one another. And we’ll approach theories of social justice not only on their terms but also on our own, with a degree of enthusiasm, a measure of skepticism, and at least a flicker of hope. [3]

GSS 2259W: Reading and Writing Lives

Nancy Reisman

TR 9:30-10:45 AM

Interdisciplinary exploration of life-stories as narratives. Strategies of self-representation and interpretation, with particular attention to women. Includes fiction, biography, autobiography, history, ethnography, and the writing of life-story narratives. Repeat credit for students who have completed 2259. [3] (HCA)

RPW 2610W: A Hands On History of the American Research University

Elizabeth Meadows/Chris Loss

TR 9:30-10:45 AM

What role have our institutions of higher education played in our national history? How has the rise of the United States research university impacted the sweeping cultural, technological, and demographic transformations of the past 150 years? What role do literature and the arts play in the large sweep of public events that make up our history? How do writers’ and artists’ representations of who we are shape who we become? In this course on the history of the university in the United States, we will examine United States history through the lens of the rise of the research university, paying particular attention to how literary works and larger intellectual movements have shaped the major cultural shifts that have defined our national history since the Civil War. [3] (US)

Students may elect to count one of the following 1000-level courses toward their major: ENGL 1111, 1210W, 1220W, 1230W, 1240, 1250W, 1260W, 1270W, 1280, 1290. 

• ENGL 1100 Composition: For students who need to improve their writing. Emphasis on writing skills, with some analysis of modern nonfiction writing. [3] (No AXLE credit)
• ENGL 1111 First Year Writing Seminar: Independent learning and inquiry in an environment in which students can express knowledge and defend opinions through intensive class discussion, oral presentations, and written expression. May be repeated for credit once if there is no duplication of topic, but students may earn only up to 3 credits in any 1111 course per semester of enrollment. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of 1111] (AXLE credit category varies by section)
• ENGL 1210W Prose Fiction: Forms and Techniques: Close study of short stories and novels and written explication of these forms. [3] (AXLE: 1000-level W course, HCA)
• ENGL 1220W Drama: Forms and Techniques: Close study of representative plays of the major periods and of the main formal categories (tragedy, comedy) and written explication of these forms. [3] (AXLE: 1000-level W course, HCA)
• ENGL 1230W Literature and Analytical Thinking: Close reading and writing in a variety of genres drawn from several periods. Productive dialogue, persuasive argument, and effective prose style. Offered on a graded basis only. [3] (AXLE: 1000-level W course, HCA)
• ENGL 1240 Beginning Nonfiction Workshop: Writing various forms of prose nonfiction. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 1250W Introduction to Poetry: Close study and criticism of poems. The nature of poetry, and the process of literary explication. [3] (AXLE: 1000-level W course, HCA)
• ENGL 1260W Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis: Analysis of a range of texts in social, political, and aesthetic contexts. Interdisciplinary study of cultural forms as diverse as poetry, advertisement, and film. [3] (AXLE: 1000-level W course, HCA)
• ENGL 1270W Introduction to Literary Criticism: Selected critical approaches to literature. [3] (AXLE: 1000-level W course, HCA)
• ENGL 1280 Beginning Fiction Workshop: Introduction to the art of writing prose fiction. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 1290 Beginning Poetry Workshop: Introduction to the art of poetry writing. [3] (HCA)

• ENGL 2200 Foundation of Literary Study: Fundamentals of literary study: close reading; analytic writing; historical context; abstract reasoning in theory; creative expression. [3] (HCA). *2200 may count as an elective in any program. Please consult your adviser.
• ENGL 2310 Representative British Writers (to 1660): Selections from British literature with attention to contexts and literary periods. From the beginnings to 1660. Provides a broad background for more specialized courses and is especially useful for students considering advanced studies in literature. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 2311 Representative British Writers (from 1660): Selections from British literature with attention to contexts and literary periods. From 1660 to the present. Provides a broad background for more specialized courses and is especially useful for students considering advanced studies in literature. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 2316 Representative American Writers: Selections from the entire body of American literature with attention to contexts and literary periods. Provides a broad background for more specialized courses and is especially useful for students considering advanced studies in literature. Repeat credit for students who have completed 2316W. [3] (US)
• ENGL 2316W Representative American Writers: Selections from the entire body of American literature with attention to contexts and literary periods. Provides a broad background for more specialized courses and is especially useful for students considering advanced studies in literature. Repeat credit for students who have completed 2316. [3] (US)
• ENGL 2318 World Literature, Classical: Great Books from the points of view of literary expression and changing ideologies: Classical Greece through the Renaissance. Repeat credit for students who have completed 2318W. [3] (HCA)
• ENG: 2318W World Literature, Classical: Great Books from the points of view of literary expression and changing ideologies: Classical Greece through the Renaissance. Repeat credit for students who have completed 2318. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 2319 World Literature, Modern: Great Books from the points of view of literary expression and changing ideologies: The 17th century to the contemporary period. Repeat credit for students who have completed 2319W. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 2319W World Literature, Modern: Great Books from the points of view of literary expression and changing ideologies: The 17th century to the contemporary period. Repeat credit for students who have completed 2319. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 2320 Southern Literature: The works of Southern writers from Captain Smith to the present. Topics such as the Plantation Myth, slavery and civil war, Agrarianism, and "post-southernism." Authors may include Poe, Twain, Cable, Faulkner, Welty, Percy, Wright. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 2330 Introduction to Environmental Humanities: Interdisciplinary study of human beings' relationship to the environment. Literary, artistic, historical, and philosophical perspectives. Cultural understandings of the environment. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 2330W Introduction to Environmental Humanities: Interdisciplinary study of human beings' relationship to the environment. Literary, artistic, historical, and philosophical perspectives. Cultural understandings of the environment. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 2740 Topics in Literature and Philosophy: Literary, philosophical, and cultural texts on varied philosophical topics. May be repeated for credit if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course per semester. [3] (HCA)

For Creative Writing workshops, Pre-1800 and Diverse Perspective courses, please view their corresponding sections. 

• ENGL 3215 The Art of Blogging: Conventions of the rapidly evolving literary form of blogging. Creation and maintenance of a personal blog. Critique of online journalism across many genres, including activism, politics, science, and arts and culture. Interaction with professional bloggers. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3215W The Art of Blogging: Conventions of the rapidly evolving literary form of blogging. Creation and maintenance of a personal blog. Critique of online journalism across many genres, including activism, politics, science, and arts and culture. Interaction with professional bloggers. Serves as repeat credit for students who have completed 3215. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3240W Pop Science: The Art and Impact of Popular Science Writing: Mechanics and influence of popular science writing in the 21st century. Students will critique bestselling books and award-winning journalism; develop and publish their own blogs with a focus on science, technology, and the environment; and interact with top science writers, editors, and podcasters. Not open to students who have earned credit for CSET 3890 section 01 offered fall Fall 2019. [3] (SBS)
• ENGL 3280 Literature and the Craft of Writing: The forms and techniques of creative writing. Contemporary practices in fiction and poetry in historical context. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3610 The Romantic Period: Prose and poetry of the Wordsworths, the Shelleys, Byron, Keats, and others. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3610W The Romantic Period: Prose and poetry of the Wordsworths, the Shelleys, Byron, Keats, and others. Serves as repeat credit for ENGL 3610W. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3611 The Romantic Period: Continuation of 3610. Prose and poetry of the Wordsworths, the Shelleys, Byron, Keats, and others. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3614 The Victorian Period: Works of Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Hardy, and others. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3614W The Victorian Period: Works of Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Hardy, and others. Serves as repeat credit for ENGL 3614. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3618 The Nighteenth-Century English Novel: The study of selected novels of Dickens, Thackeray, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, and other major novelists of the period. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3620 Nighteenth-Century American Literature: Explorations of themes, forms, and social and cultural issues shaping the works of American writers. Authors may include Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Douglass, Jacobs, Stowe, Melville, Dickinson, Alcott, Whitman, and Twain. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3622 Nighteenth-Century American Women Writers: Themes and forms of American women's prose and poetry, with the emphasis on alternative visions of the frontier, progress, class, race, and self-definition. Authors include Child, Kirkland, Fern, Jacobs, Harper, Dickinson, and Chopin. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3624W Literature of the American Civil War: Origins and impact of the war as depicted in short stories, novels, poems, and films. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Stephen Crane, Margaret Mitchell, William Faulkner, and Margaret Walker. [3] (US)
• ENGL 3630 The Modern British Novel: The British novel from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Forster, and other novelists varying at the discretion of instructor. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3634 Modern Irish Literature: Major works from the Irish literary revival to the present, with special attention to the works of Yeats, Synge, Joyce, O'Casey, and Beckett. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3640 Modern British and American Poetry: Yeats to Auden: A course in the interpretation and criticism of selected modern masters of poetry, British and American, with the emphasis on poetry as an art. Poets selected may vary at discretion of instructor. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3642 Film and Modernism: Film in the context of the major themes of literary modernism: the divided self, language and realism, nihilism and belief, and spatialization of time. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3644 Twentieth Century American Novel: Explorations of themes, forms, and social cultural issues shaping the works of American novelists. Authors may include Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway, Hurston, Ellison, McCarthy, Bellow, Kingston, Morrison, Pynchon. Emphasizes writers before 1945. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3645 Twentieth Century American Novel: Explorations of themes, forms, and social cultural issues shaping the works of American novelists. Authors may include Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway, Hurston, Ellison, McCarthy, Bellow, Kingston, Morrison, Pynchon. Emphasizes writers after 1945. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3646 Poetry Since World War II: Poets studied vary at discretion of instructor. Offered on a graded basis only. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3680 Twentieth Century Drama: Topics in twentieth century drama drawn from the American, British, and/or world traditions. Formal structures of dramatic literature studied within contexts of performance, theatrical production, and specific dramatic careers. Authors may include O'Neill, Albee, Hansberry, Hellman, Stoppard, Wilson, and Churchill. Emphasizes American drama. [3] (US)
• ENGL 3681 Twentieth Century Drama: Topics in twentieth century drama drawn from the American, British, and/or world traditions. Formal structures of dramatic literature studied within contexts of performance, theatrical production, and specific dramatic careers. Authors may include O'Neill, Albee, Hansberry, Hellman, Stoppard, Wilson, and Churchill. Emphasizes British and world drama. [3] (US)
• ENGL 3683 Contemporary British Literature: The novel, short story, and verse in Great Britain since World War II. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3692 Desire in America: Literature, Cinema and History: The influence of desire and repression in shaping American culture and character from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. [3] (US)
• ENGL 3694 America on Film: Art and Ideology: American culture and character through film, film theory, and literature. [3] (US)
• ENGL 3695 America on Film: Performance and Culture: Film performance in the construction of identity and gender, social meaning and narrative, public image and influence in America. [3] (US)
• ENGL 3710 Literature and Intellectual History: Fiction, poetry, and prose writings that represent overarching themes in English and/or American literature across conventional historical periods in order to define and trace their genealogy and evolution. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3711 Literature and Intellectual History: The emergence of modern consciousness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3711 Literature and Intellectual History: The emergence of modern consciousness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Serves as repeat credit for ENGL 3711. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3720 Literature, Science and Technology: The relationship of science and technology to literature, film, and popular media. Focus on such topics as digital technology, genetics, and the representation of science in particular periods, genres, movements, and critical theories. Repeat credit for students who have completed 3720W. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3720W Literature, Science and Technology:The relationship of science and technology to literature, film, and popular media. Focus on such topics as digital technology, genetics, and the representation of science in particular periods, genres, movements, and critical theories. Repeat credit for students who have completed 3720. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3726 New Media: History, theory, and design of digital media. Literature, video, film, online games, and other interactive narratives. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3726W New Media: History, theory, and design of digital media. Literature, video, film, online games, and other interactive narratives. Serves as repeat credit for 3726. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3728 Science Fiction: Social and historical developments within the genre. Works from the late nineteenth century to the present. Cultural issues, including race, gender, sexuality, violence, and the representation of science. Repeat credit for students who have completed 3728W. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3728W Science Fiction: Social and historical developments within the genre. Works from the late nineteenth century to the present. Cultural issues, including race, gender, sexuality, violence, and the representation of science. Repeat credit for students who have completed 3728. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3730 Literature and the Environment: Environmental issues from British, American, and global perspectives. Methodological approaches such as ecocriticism, environmental and social justice, ethics, and activism. The role of literature and the imagination in responding to ecological problems and shaping environmental values. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3734 Literature and Law: Study of the relationship between the discourses of law and literature. Focus on such topics as legal narratives, metaphor in the courts, representations of justice on the social stage. Repeat credit for students who have completed 3734W. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3734W Literature and Law: Study of the relationship between the discourses of law and literature. Focus on such topics as legal narratives, metaphor in the courts, representations of justice on the social stage. Repeat credit for students who have completed 3734. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3736 Words and Music: An investigation of works of literature that have inspired musical settings and the musical settings themselves. Emphasis on literary and musical analysis and interpretation. No musical background assumed. Repeat credit for students who have completed MUSL 2330. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3740 Critical Theory: Major theoretical approaches that have shaped critical discourse, the practices of reading, and the relation of literature and culture. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3742 Feminist Theory: An introduction to feminist theory. Topics include cross-cultural gender identities; the development of "masculinity" and "femininity"; racial, ethnic, class, and national differences; sexual orientations; the function of ideology; strategies of resistance; visual and textual representations; the nature of power. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3744 Advanced Poetry: Formal analysis and close reading of major poems in the extended canon of British and American poetry. Related examples of historical, theoretical, and applied criticism. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3746 Workshop in English and History: Team-taught by a historian and an interdisciplinary scholar. Explores intersection of disciplines through close examination of texts in historical context. Preference to students majoring in the English-History program. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. [3] (No AXLE credit)
• ENGL 3748 Introduction to English Linguistics: Systematic study of present-day English sounds, words, sentences, and the contexts of language production. Contemporary varieties of English. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3890 Movements in Literature: Studies in intellectual currents that create a group or school of writers within a historical period. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3890W Movements in Literature: Studies in intellectual currents that create a group or school of writers within a historical period. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3891 Special Topics in Creative Writing: Advanced instruction in creative writing in emerging modes and hybrid genres. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3892 Problems in Literature: Studies in common themes, issues, or motifs across several historical periods. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3892W Problems in Literature: Studies in common themes, issues, or motifs across several historical periods. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3894 Major Figures in Literature: Studies in the works of one or two writers with attention to the development of a writer's individual canon, the biographical dimension of this work, and critical responses to it. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3894W Major Figures in Literature: Studies in the works of one or two writers with attention to the development of a writer's individual canon, the biographical dimension of this work, and critical responses to it. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3896 Special Topics in Investigative Writing in America: Course will be taught by a distinguished visiting journalist from a major U.S. newspaper or magazine. May be repeated for credit once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. [1-3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 287] (No AXLE credit)
• ENGL 3897 Special Topics in Critical Theory: Diverse range of literary, philosophical, cultural, and political texts. May be repeated for credit if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course per semester. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3898 Special Topics in English and American Literature: Topics vary. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3898W Special Topics in English and American Literature: Topics vary. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3899 Special Topics in Film: Theory and practice of cinema as an aesthetic and cultural form. May be repeated for credit once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course per semester. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3899] (HCA)

• ENGL 2310 Representative British Writers (to 1660): Selections from British literature with attention to contexts and literary periods. From the beginnings to 1660. Provides a broad background for more specialized courses and is especially useful for students considering advanced studies in literature. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 2318 World Literature, Classical: Great Books from the points of view of literary expression and changing ideologies: Classical Greece through the Renaissance. Repeat credit for students who have completed 2318W. [3] (HCA)
• ENG: 2318W World Literature, Classical: Great Books from the points of view of literary expression and changing ideologies: Classical Greece through the Renaissance. Repeat credit for students who have completed 2318. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3310 Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature: The study of the Old English language. Selected historical and literary prose. Short heroic poems. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3312 The Medieval World: English literature and culture in relation to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Cross-cultural exchange, national and religious identity, and race. Not open to students who have completed ENGL 3316. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3312W The Medieval World: English literature and culture in relation to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Cross-cultural exchange, national and religious identity, and race. Not open to students who have completed ENGL 3316. Serves as repeat credit for ENGL 3312. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3314 Chaucer: Study of The Canterbury Tales and Chaucer's world. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3316 Medieval Literature: The drama, lyrics, romance, allegory, and satire of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, studied in the context of the period's intellectual climate and social change. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3318 The History of the English Language: The development of English syntax. History of the English vocabulary: word formation, borrowing, semantic change, and meter. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3330 Sixteenth Century: Prose and poetry of the sixteenth century. Emphasis on Spenser and his contemporaries. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3332 English Renaissance: Drama: English drama, exclusive of Shakespeare, from 1550-1642: Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, and others. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3332W English Renaissance: Drama: English drama, exclusive of Shakespeare, from 1550-1642: Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, and others. Serves as repeat credit for 3332. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3335 English Renaissance: Poetry: Development of the English poetic tradition from 1500-1700. Repeat credit for students who have earned credit for 3335W. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3335W English Renaissance: Poetry: Development of the English poetic tradition from 1500-1700. Repeat credit for students who have earned credit for 3335. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3336 Shakespeare: About twenty of the major plays considered in chronological order over two terms, with emphasis on Shakespeare's development as a dramatic artist. Primarily comedies and histories. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3336W Shakespeare: Comedies and Histories: About twenty of the major plays considered in chronological order over two terms, with emphasis on Shakespeare's development as a dramatic artist. Primarily comedies and histories. Serves as repeat credit for ENGL 3336. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3337 Shakespeare: About twenty of the major plays considered in chronological order over two terms, with emphasis on Shakespeare's development as a dramatic artist. Primarily tragedies and romances. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3337W Shakespeare: Tragedies and Romaces: About twenty of the major plays considered in chronological order over two terms, with emphasis on Shakespeare's development as a dramatic artist. Primarily tragedies and romances. Serves as repeat credit for ENGL 3337. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3340 Shakespeare: Representative Selections: A representative selection of plays, including histories, tragedies, comedies, and romances, designed to give the student a sense of the full range of Shakespeare's work in one semester. Repeat credit for students who have completed 3340W. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3340W Shakespeare: Representative Selections: A representative selection of plays, including histories, tragedies, comedies, and romances, designed to give the student a sense of the full range of Shakespeare's work in one semester. Repeat credit for students who have completed 3340. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3346 Seventeenth Century Literature: Poetry and prose from 1600 to the English Civil War, such as Metaphysical and Cavalier poetry, essays, romances, and satires. Authors may include Bacon, Cavendish, Donne, Herbert, Jonson, Lanier, Marvell, and Wroth. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3348 Milton: The early English poems; Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes; the major prose. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3348W Milton: The early English poems; Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes; the major prose. Serves as repeat credit for ENGL 3348. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3360 Restoration and the Eighteenth Century: Explorations of the aesthetic and social world of letters from the English Civil War to the French Revolution. Drama, poetry, and prose, including Restoration plays, political poetry, satire, travel narratives, and tales. Authors may include Behn, Dryden, Congreve, Addison, Swift, Finch, Pope, Fielding, Burney, Johnson, and Inchbald. Earlier writers. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3361 Restoration and the Eighteenth Century: Explorations of the aesthetic and social world of letters from the English Civil War to the French Revolution. Drama, poetry, and prose, including Restoration plays, political poetry, satire, travel narratives, and tales. Authors may include Behn, Dryden, Congreve, Addison, Swift, Finch, Pope, Fielding, Burney, Johnson, and Inchbald. Later writers. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3364 The Eighteenth Century English Novel: The English novel from its beginning through Jane Austen. Development of the novel as a literary form, and study of selected works of Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, and other novelists of the period. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3370 The Bible in Literature: An examination of ways in which the Bible and biblical imagery have functioned in literature and fine arts, in both "high culture" and popular culture, from Old English poems to modern poetry, drama, fiction, cartoons, and political rhetoric. Readings include influential biblical texts and a broad selection of literary texts drawn from all genres and periods of English literature. [3] (HCA)

Other 3000-level English electives may also fulfill the Diverse Perspectives Requirement based on the instructor's syllabus for that course. If so, this will be indicated in the course schedule. Additionally, courses from other departments may also fulfill the Diverse Perspectives Requirement per approval by the Director of Undergraduate Studies. 

• ENGL 3650 Ethnic American Literature: Texts and theory relevant to understanding race, culture, and ethnicity in the formation of American culture. Literature from at least three of the following groups: African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Chicano/Latino Americans, Caribbean Americans, and European Americans. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3650W Ethnic American Literature: Texts and theory relevant to understanding race, culture, and ethnicity in the formation of American culture. Literature from at least three of the following groups: African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Chicano/Latino Americans, Caribbean Americans, and European Americans. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3654 African American Literature: Examination of the literature produced by African Americans. May include literary movements, vernacular traditions, social discourses, material culture, and critical theories. Repeat credit for students who have completed 3654W. [3] (US)
• ENGL 3654W African American Literature: Examination of the literature produced by African Americans. May include literary movements, vernacular traditions, social discourses, material culture, and critical theories. Repeat credit for students who have completed 3654. [3] (US)
• ENGL 3658 Latino-American Literature: Texts and theory relevant to understanding constructs of Latino identity, including race, class, gender, and basis for immigration, in the context of American culture. The course focuses on the examination of literature by Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, and Latin American writers in the United States. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3658W Latino-American Literature: Texts and theory relevant to understanding constructs of Latino identity, including race, class, gender, and basis for immigration, in the context of American culture. The course focuses on the examination of literature by Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, and Latin American writers in the United States. Serves as repeat credit for ENGL 3658. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3662 Asian American Literature: Diversity of Asian American literary production with specific attention to works after 1965. Topics such as gender and sexuality, memory and desire, and diaspora and panethnicity in the context of aesthetics and politics of Asian American experience. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3662W Asian American Literature: Diversity of Asian American literary production with specific attention to works after 1965. Topics such as gender and sexuality, memory and desire, and diaspora and panethnicity in the context of aesthetics and politics of Asian American experience. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3664 Jewish American Literature: Nineteenth century to the present. Issues of race, gender, ethnicity, immigration, and diaspora. Offered on a graded basis only. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3670 Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature: Literature exploring European colonialism and its aftermath from the eighteenth century to the present: language, gender, and agency in the colonial encounter; anti-colonial resistance movements; and postcolonial cultures. Topics may vary; course may be taken more than once with permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3670W Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature: Literature exploring European colonialism and its aftermath from the eighteenth century to the present: language, gender, and agency in the colonial encounter; anti-colonial resistance movements; and postcolonial cultures. Topics may vary; course may be taken more than once with permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3674 Caribbean Literature: Caribbean literature from 1902 to the present. Emphasis on writing since 1952, which marks the beginning of West Indian nationalism and the rise of the West Indian novel. [3] (INT)
• ENGL 3678 Anglophone African Literature: From the Sundiata Epic to the present with emphasis on the novel. Attention to issues of identity, post coloniality, nationalism, race, and ethnicity in both SubSaharan and Mahgrib literatures. Such authors as Achebe, Ngugi, Gordimer, Awoonor, and El Saadaw. [3] (INT)
• ENGL 3678W Anglophone African Literature: From the Sundiata Epic to the present with emphasis on the novel. Attention to issues of identity, post coloniality, nationalism, race, and ethnicity in both SubSaharan and Mahgrib literatures. Such authors as Achebe, Ngugi, Gordimer, Awoonor, and El Saadaw. Serves as repeat credit for ENGL 3678. [3] (INT)
• ENGL 3742 Feminist Theory: An introduction to feminist theory. Topics include cross-cultural gender identities; the development of "masculinity" and "femininity"; racial, ethnic, class, and national differences; sexual orientations; the function of ideology; strategies of resistance; visual and textual representations; the nature of power. [3] (P)
• ENGL 3742W Feminist Theory: An introduction to feminist theory. Topics include cross-cultural gender identities; the development of "masculinity" and "femininity"; racial, ethnic, class, and national differences; sexual orientations; the function of ideology; strategies of resistance; visual and textual representations; the nature of power. Serves as repeat credit for ENGL 3742. [3] (P)

Admission to these courses is by consent of the instructor.

• ENGL 3210 Intermediate Nonfiction Writing: Instruction in the forms and techniques of nonfiction writing. Admission by consent of instructor. May be repeated once for credit. [3] (HCA)
• ENGL 3220 Advanced Nonfiction Writing: Further instruction in the form and techniques of nonfiction writing. Admission by consent of instructor. May be repeated for credit once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course per semester. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3220] (HCA)
• ENGL 3230 Intermediate Fiction Workshop: Instruction in fiction writing. Supplementary readings that illustrate traditional aspects of prose fiction. Admission by consent of instructor. May be repeated for credit once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course per semester. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3230] (HCA)
• ENGL 3240 Advanced Fiction Workshop: Continuing instruction in fiction writing. Admission by consent of instructor. May be repeated for credit once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course per semester. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3240] (HCA)
• ENGL 3250 Intermediate Poetry Workshop: Instruction in poetry writing. Supplementary readings illustrating traditional aspects of poetry. Admission by consent of instructor. May be repeated for credit once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course per semester. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3250] (HCA)
• ENGL 3260 Advanced Poetry Workshop: Continuing instruction in poetry writing. Admission by consent of instructor. May be repeated for credit once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course per semester. [3; maximum of 6 credits total for all semesters of ENGL 3260] (HCA)

• ENGL 4998 Honors Colloquium: Background for writing the honors thesis. Emphasis on research methods, critical approaches, and the students' own projects. Limited to seniors admitted to the English Honors Program. [3] (No AXLE credit)
• ENGL 4999: Honors Thesis: Prerequisite: 4998. [3] (No AXLE credit)
• Honors Seminars: The Department of English offers two Honors seminars each semester (3000-level course with a pre-requisite of 3.4 GPA). 

ENGL 3851 & 3852 Independent Study

Independent study and directed study courses are primarily intended for majors in their junior and senior years. Exceptions may be made for well-qualified sophomores. To enroll in an independent study course, please complete the following steps:

1. Obtain permission to enroll from the instructor of your choice and Director of Undergraduate Studies prior to the opening of your enrollment window for the semester in which you wish to complete the independent study course.
2. Complete the Contract for Registration in Independent Study Course. The form requires details regarding the nature of the project and the amount of credit to be earned. It must be signed by your instructor and the DUS or Department Chair prior to the tenth day of classes. 
3. Submit your contract for Independent study to Rachel Mace before the end of the change period (the first week of classes). You will then be manually registered in YES.

This elective may be repeated for a total of 6 credits in 3851 and 3852 combined if there is no duplication in topic. Students may earn only up to 3 credits per semester of enrollment. (No AXLE credit)