Fall 2018

Fall 2018

English Major Course Descriptions

ENGL 201 Introduction to English Studies I (Smith)

An introduction to the study of English for first-year English majors. This course, along with ENGL 202 Introduction to English Studies II, prepares students for upper-level English courses in both writing and literature. Our readings for this course reflect English major curricular requirements in American, British, and World literature, as well as a variety of genres for writing: fiction, drama, poetry, and essay (literary nonfiction).

ENGL 203 Introduction to Creative Writing (Roth)

This course is a multi-genre introduction to creative writing. In general, the purpose of the course is two-fold: to examine the craft of writing across a broad spectrum, and to inspire students to produce satisfying creative works of their own. In the end, students should feel that they are not only better writers but better readers, as well. The course will be divided into two units: poetry and fiction. Students will be asked to produce and to share with others work in both of these genres. This course is a pre-requisite for all ENGL 305 Writing Workshop courses 

ENGL 305B Newswriting (Arke)

ENGL 305J Writing: Literary Nonfiction (Perrin) 

This class will consider the non-fiction essay in several forms.  Students will subscribe to and read a magazine targeting an audience of serious national readers (such as The Atlantic, First Things, Touchstone, The New Yorker, National Criterion, National Geographic, Mother Jones, etc…) in order to write an article in like fashion. This process will, naturally, involve a great deal of rhetorical analysis—thinking about purpose, audience, argument, style, and context. But it will also provide content from writers who have taken time to digest current issues and construct an informed and conversational argument.  Secondly, students will write in the tradition of the personal essay using Phillip Lopate’s anthology The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. In both cases, we will be thinking about form and content and following where these models lead us.  We will workshop the essays produced in the class, read carefully and deeply, and converse broadly on the concerns that attend these genres. Fulfills English-Writing and Genre (Non-Lit) requirements.

ENGL 305O Writing for Social Change (Corey) 

This class will consider the ways in which citizens, activists, and scholars use writing to address injustices, collaborate, and advocate for social change. As a class, we will examine the different strategies and tools of a diverse range of activists and public intellectuals who are using writing to work for social change.  You will have the opportunity to sharpen your writing, research and communication skills through your work on a social justice writing project relevant to your interests.

ENGL 310/360 Shakespeare Survey: (Smith)

Twelve Shakespeare plays enable us to survey both Shakespeare’s career as a dramatist and his deployment of multiple genres in highly genre-conscious early modern England. We learn so much about life—humanity, ethics, language—from Shakespeare, and many writers in all traditions have learned much from his plays, frequently engaging them in multiple and surprising ways. Today Shakespeare also offers a kind of cultural capital, but we will read him primarily for insight and pleasure. Students will select half of the plays to be read via an end of Spring term survey. Requirements: TBD (this will be a contract-graded course).

ENGL 350A Postcolonial/World Literature: Selected World Authors (Dzaka) 

This class will introduce you to selected prize-winning authors from around the world. The authors involved are Shusaku Endo (Japanese), Arundhati Roy (Indian), Ngugi wa Thiong’o (African), Tsao Hsueh-Chin (Chinese), and Naguib Mahfouz (Arab). We will consider some of their best writing and how they fit into, depart from, revise, or signify upon the tradition of the English novel. History and theory of the novel, as well as postcolonial theory, will be important backdrops to the discussion in this class. Meets Postcolonial Literature requirement. 

ENGL 360A Genre: Young Adult Literature (Hasler-Brooks) 

In this course, we will enter the world of young adult literature by looking closely at two classic young adult texts and their contemporary reinventions. Paying special attention to the ongoing creative remaking of young adult literature, with a particular emphasis on race and gender, we will begin by reading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) with Walter Dean Myers' novel-screenplay hybrid Monster (1999), Jacqueline Woodson's narrative poem Brown Girl Dreaming (2014), Kathryn Erskine's tragic Mockingbird (2010); and Sherman Alexie's time travel tale Flight (2007). We will also explore literary adaptations of The Odyssey epic in Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief (2005), Margaret Atwood's feminist retelling The Penelopiad (2005), and Guadalupe Garcia McCall's Chicana novel Summer of the Mariposas (2012). Course requirements will allow each student to work with these texts as a future teacher, emerging literary scholar, or creative writer and will include ongoing journal entries, several short response papers, and a final research project contributing to a pedagogical or scholarly conversation in the field of young adult literature.

ENGL 494 Literature Seminar (Smith)

This course will run on two parallel tracks: each student will complete a substantial research project of their choosing (with approval from the professor), while the class community will read and discuss a theoretical text followed by an applied reading of selected literary texts (to be determined) for the first two-thirds of the semester. Students will present and peer review individual projects during the final third of the semester.

Planning Ahead

Spring 2019:

ENGL 202 Introduction to English Studies II

ENGL 203 Introduction to Creative Writing

ENGL 230 Linguistics

ENGL 305 Writing Workshop: Free Verse Poetry

ENGL 305 Business Writing

ENGL 320 British Literature after 1800: Victorian Literature

ENGL 340 American Literature after 1900

ENGL 370 Nabokov

ENGL 407 Secondary English Curriculum and Instruction

ENGL 496 Writing Seminar