The English Department's main office is in Muenzinger D110.

Spring 2020 Undergraduate Courses

Content List: Spring 2020 First Year Seminars

ENGL 1001: Freshman Writing Seminar (Spring 2020)

Provides training and practice in writing and critical thinking. Focuses on the writing process, the fundamentals of composition, and the structure of argument. Provides numerous and varied assignments with opportunity for revision. Requisites:聽Restricted to students with 0-56 credits (Freshmen or Sophomore) College of Arts and Sciences majors only. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Core Curr: Written Communication Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Arts Sci Gen Ed: Written Communication-Lower...

Content List: Spring 2020 General Literature and Language

ENGL 1220: From Gothic to Horror (CORE) (Spring 2020)

Explores literature in the Gothic mode and aesthetic and critical theories related to modern "horror" genres or their precursors. Introduces literary-critical concepts (such as notions of abjection, repression and anxiety) that developed alongside this branch of literature. Students read canonical works in British and American traditions while reflecting on notions of popular or marginalized literature. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Core Curr: Literature and the Arts Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts ...

ENGL 1230: Environmental Literature (Spring 2020)

Introduces students to the tradition of nature writing dating from Romanticism through realist and experimental contemporary literary texts. Students will study key terms and concepts related to the environment such as anthropocentrism, bioregionalism, eco-cosmopolitanism, environmental justice, deep ecology, and posthumanism. They will apply them to different literary genres toward developing critical analyses and environmental readings. Grading Basis:聽Letter Grade Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Core Cur...

ENGL 1240: Planetarity (Spring 2020)

Focuses of post-WWII American writing and thought about the planet and humanity. We explore how postwar efforts to transform the terrestrial environmental and conquer outer space raise questions about humanity, technology, and nature. We also study how earth and space serve novelists, artists, and film-makers as environments to confront large-scale questions about culture, identity, and power. Taught by Jason Gladstone. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities

ENGL 1250: Intro to Global Women's Literature (Spring 2020)

Introduces global literature by women. Covers both poetry and fiction and varying historical periods. Acquaints students with the contribution of women writers to the literary tradition and investigates the nature of this contribution.聽 Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted:聽WGST聽1250聽 Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Core Curr: Human Diversity Arts Sci Gen Ed: Diversity-Global Perspective Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: General Literature and Language

ENGL 1270: Intro to American Women's Literature (Spring 2020)

Introduces literature by women in America. Covers both poetry and fiction and varying historical periods. Acquaints students with the contribution of women writers to the literary tradition and investigates the nature of this contribution.聽 Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted:聽WGST聽1270聽 Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Core Curr: Human Diversity Arts Sci Gen Ed: Diversity-U.S. Perspective Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: General Literature and Language

ENGL 1420: Poetry (Spring 2020)

Introduces students to how to read a poem by examining the great variety of poems written and composed in English from the very beginning of the English language until recently. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Core Curr: Literature and the Arts Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: General Literature and Language Section 001: How do poets write about America and the American experience?聽聽We will answer this question by reading the work of Walt Whitman, America's most inf...

ENGL 1500: Introduction to British Literature (Spring 2020)

Introduces students to the British literary tradition through intensive study of centrally significant texts and genres. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Core Curr: Literature and the Arts Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: General Literature and Language

ENGL 1600: Introduction to American Literature (Spring 2020)

Introduces students to the American literary tradition through intensive study of centrally significant texts and genres. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Core Curr: Literature and the Arts Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: General Literature and Language

ENGL 1800: American Ethnic Literatures - Hip Hop Cultures (CORE) (Spring 2020)

This course explores the evolution of hip hop from its roots in the South Bronx to its worldwide influence in the present day--from Kendrick Lamar to Cardi B, Drake to Megan Thee Stallion. We鈥檒l use the tools of close reading and literary analysis to study hip hop鈥檚 many forms and themes. Our primary focus will be on rap鈥檚 lyric craft, but we鈥檒l also consider rap within the broader context of hip hop鈥檚 other basic elements鈥擠J-ing, breaking, and graffiti. Hip hop鈥檚 aesthetic culture is a means to confront ra...

ENGL 3000: Shakespeare for Nonmajors (Spring 2020)

Introduction to Shakespeare. Introduces students to 6-10 of Shakespeare's major plays. Comedies, histories, and tragedies will be studied. Some non-dramatic poetry may be included. Viewing of Shakespeare in performance is often required. Requisites:聽Restricted to students with 27-180 credits (Sophomores, Juniors or Seniors) only. English (ENGL) and Humanities (HUMN) majors are excluded from taking this class. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Core Curr: Literature and the Arts Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution...

ENGL 3060: Modern and Contemporary Literature for Nonmajors (Spring 2020)

Close study of significant 20th-century poetry, drama, and prose works. Readings range from 1920s to the present. Requisites:聽Restricted to students with 27-180 credits (Sophomores, Juniors or Seniors) only. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Core Curr: Literature and the Arts Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: General Literature and Language Section 004: Writers and artists of the last 100 years questioned everything: What is the self?聽 What is time?聽 What is literature...

ENGL 3930: Internship (Spring 2020)

Provides academically supervised opportunity for upper-division students to work in public or private organizations on projects related to students' career goals and to relate classroom theory to practice. Department enforced prerequisite: 3.0 GPA and faculty supervision. Taught by Dr. Rachael Deagman Simonetta. Repeatable:聽Repeatable for up to 6.00 total credit hours.聽 Requisites:聽Restricted to students with 57-180 credits (Juniors or Seniors). Additional Information:聽Departmental Category: General Literat...

Content List: Spring 2020 Introductory English Requirements

ENGL 2102: Literary Analysis (Spring 2020)

Provides a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose. Requisites:聽Restricted to English (ENGL) majors and minors only. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: General Literature and Language Section 001 and 002: This course teaches how to analyze poetry and prose. It assum...

ENGL 2112: Intro to Literary Theory (Spring 2020)

Introduces students to a wide range of critical theories that English majors need to know. Covers major movements in modern literary/critical theory, from Matthew Arnold through new criticism to contemporary postmodern frameworks. Required for all English majors. Requisites:聽Restricted to English (ENGL) majors and minors only. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: General Literature and Language Section 001: This course will examine the major literar...

Content List: Spring 2020 British Literature to 1660

ENGL 2503: British Literary History to 1660 (Spring 2020)

Provides a chronological study of great figures and forces in English literature from Beowulf to 1660. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: British Literature to 1660

ENGL 3523: The Early English Renaissance (Spring 2020)

The term 鈥淩enaissance鈥 means 鈥渞ebirth.鈥 But rebirth of what? In this class, we鈥檒l look at the new ways in which English writers began to explore familiar questions about the nature of desire, the limits of power, and the relation of individuals to structures of community, family and faith. How might emergent forms like the public stage play or the epyllion - an imitation of sexy Classical myths - allow writers to work through these questions, while simultaneously reinventing what literature is and does? Rea...

ENGL 3583: Milton (Spring 2020)

One of England鈥檚 greatest writers and most radical thinkers, Milton wrote during a turbulent time. His writing speaks to crises of personal and political liberty that can feel oddly familiar - and equally divisive - in our own moment. Reading and working together, we'll try to get to grips with Milton's innovative forms, including an epic poem - Paradise Lost - that rejects the bondage of rhyme. Along the way, we'll ask some of the big questions: Do we have free will? What is the nature of evil? And how do ...

ENGL 4023/5023: Intermediate Old English II - Beowulf (Spring 2020)

Beowulf聽is much stranger, sadder, and more timely than you think. Experience the poem in its original language, using the skills built in Introduction to Old English (Engl 4003/5003)! Students will produce daily translations, and seminar-style class discussions will involve both linguistic and literary aspects of this enigmatic poem. Reading List: Beowulf Taught by Dr. Tiffany Beechy. 聽

Spring 2020 British Literature 1660-1900

ENGL 2504: British Literary History After 1660 (Spring 2020)

Marc Bousquet, an English Professor at Emory University, lit a powder keg with his 2014 Chronicle of Higher Education jeremiad, 鈥淭he Moral Panic in Literary Studies.鈥 Bousquet warned: 鈥淐ombined with evidence of lowered public interest in reading traditional literature and plummeting enrollment in traditional English majors, many faculty members in traditional literary studies have engaged in a backlash discourse against the new or renascent fields, a 鈥榤oral panic鈥 in defense of traditional literary studies....

ENGL 3164: History and Literature of Georgian Britain (A&S Core) (Spring 2020)

Provides an interdisciplinary study of England in one of its most vibrant cultural and historical periods. Topics include politics, religion, family life, and the ways contemporary authors understood their world. Taught by Dr. Jillian Heydt-Stevenson. Requisites:聽Restricted to students with 27-180 credits (Sophomores, Juniors or Seniors) only. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Core Curr: Historical Context Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: British Literature after 1660

ENGL 3544: The Long Eighteenth Century - Satire, Sense, and Sentiment (Spring 2020)

The period of English history that runs from 1660 into the early 19th century was a period of extraordinary change. Great Britain became by 1800 the most powerful nation in the world. During the period we will study, it experienced a revolution that brought in a new ruling family; it gained and lost an empire; its cities, especially London, grew explosively; the industrial revolution began: the novel as a literary genre is born; women and the working classes begin to assert their rights, and much else besid...

ENGL 3564: Romanticism (Spring 2020)

Vast and icy oceans, fields of daffodils, dark satanic mills.聽The Romantic period (roughly 1789-1832) was fraught with contradictions: country and city, nature and art, beauty and sublimity, revolution and reaction.聽Authors of the period used their writing to make sense of these and other seemingly irresolvable splits in their world: Coleridge鈥檚 Kubla Kahn has constructed an ordered pleasure garden atop a sublime ice cave; William Blake suggested the marriage of Heaven and Hell.聽Debates about the nature of ...

ENGL 4368-001: Modern Drama (Spring 2020)

We will explore the astonishing range of dramatic experimentation that redefined the theater in the past one hundred fifty years.聽聽After getting a feel for the forms behind modern drama such as the well-made play, historical tragedy, and the melodrama, we will read plays that define realism and naturalism, symbolism and expressionism, various forms of avant-garde performance, modernism and post-modernism.聽聽We will work together to tackle such authors as Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, Eugene O鈥橬eill, Sam...

Content List: Spring 2020 American Literature

ENGL 3005: The Literature of New World Encounters

This course explores American literature as a site of cultural intersection between European settlers and indigenous peoples.聽聽聽We will read early American texts in conversation with films portraying those encounters, bringing a critical and historical lens to both.聽聽For example, we will read Jacques Cartier with聽Hochelaga: Land of Souls聽(2017), the Jesuit聽Relations聽with聽Black Robe聽(1991) Guaman Pomo de Ayala, Hernan Cort茅s, and Mayan codices with聽Apocalypto聽(2006).聽聽The course requires standard English rea...

ENGL 3245: American Poetry (Spring 2020)

For this semester the subtitle of American Poetry will be 鈥淭he Visionary Tradition.鈥 And so it was I entered the broken world To trace the visionary company of love, its voice An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled) But not for long to hold each desperate choice. 鈥擧art Crane There鈥檚 one great vein of religious feeling that expresses contempt for the world and pity for mortal man; it stresses the transience and tragedy of life and the constraints of the human condition. It counsels stoicis...

Content List: Spring 2020 Literatures in English, 1900 to the Present

ENGL 2058: Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature (Spring 2020)

A hybrid form, graphic narrative combines the innovative visual/verbal framework of the cartoon and the longer storytelling form of fiction and nonfiction. A term first coined in the US in 1978, graphic narratives have become a mainstay popular genre. This course will examine its popular appeal and also how this form allows for the grappling of difficult topics, whether it be the Holocaust, the Islamic Revolution in Iran, climate change, gay and queer topics, racism, and the Palestinian occupation. Requirem...

ENGL 3088: Major Authors of Post-1900 Literature in English - T.S. Eliot and Company (Spring 2020)

T.S. Eliot wrote several of the most important poems of the twentieth century. He was also a major critic, a playwright, and a publisher. His work remains a troubling mix of brilliantly subversive 鈥渞aids on the unconscious鈥 and deeply conservative reactions against modernity. To read Eliot is to encounter other writers鈥攎ajor modernists whom he influenced and published (among them Ezra Pound, H.D., James Joyce, and Djuna Barnes), writers he venerated and ransacked (鈥渕ature poets steal,鈥 Eliot wrote), and oth...

ENGL 4098: Special Topics in the Novel, Post-1900 - Afro-diasporic Novels (Spring 2020)

This course considers how the legacy of slavery, including the Middle Passage, is rewritten in 20th and 21st century novels in English.聽 We will consider not only how that history is remembered, but how its legacy lives on.聽 We鈥檒l begin with slave narratives to consider the narrative form and content: exile and natal alienation, social death, education and coming to consciousness, the journey to freedom, and yearning for Jubilee. We will also situate these novels within the broader contexts of racial justic...

ENGL 4468: Modern Poetry (Spring 2020)

This course will begin with some central figures behind and within English language 20th-century poetry and then split up into interest groups according to the students鈥 own enthusiasms and desires to explore.聽 The central figures will include Whitman, Dickinson, Pater, Hopkins, Yeats, Frost, William Carlos Williams, H. D., Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Langston Hughes.聽 The primary medium will be close and joyous attention to the poems themselves as well as the kinds of activities that can bring us imaginat...

Content List: Spring 2020 Undergraduate Creative Writing

ENGL 1191: Intro to Creative Writing (Spring 2020)

Introduces techniques of fiction and poetry. Student work is scrutinized by the instructor and may be discussed in a workshop atmosphere with other students. May not be taken concurrently with聽ENGL聽2021聽or聽ENGL聽2051. May not be repeated. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: Undergraduate Writing 聽

ENGL 2021: Introductory Poetry Workshop (Spring 2020)

Introductory course in poetry writing.聽 Repeatable:聽Repeatable for up to 9.00 total credit hours.聽 Requisites:聽Requires prerequisite course of聽ENGL聽1191聽(minimum grade B). Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: Undergraduate Writing

ENGL 2051: Introductory Fiction Workshop (Spring 2020)

Introductory course in fiction writing.聽 Repeatable:聽Repeatable for up to 9.00 total credit hours.聽 Requisites:聽Requires prerequisite course of聽ENGL聽1191聽(mimimum grade B). Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: Undergraduate Writing

ENGL 3021: Intermediate Poetry Workshop (Spring 2020)

Intermediate course in poetry writing.聽 Repeatable:聽Repeatable for up to 9.00 total credit hours.聽 Requisites:聽Requires prerequisite course of聽ENGL聽2021聽(minimum grade B). Restricted to Creative Writing minor students or students with a sub plan of Creative Writing. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: Undergraduate Writing

ENGL 3041: Studies in Fiction and Poetry (Spring 2020)

Examines literary forms and themes with special emphasis on issues related to the craft of poetry and fiction. This course is taught in conjunction with visiting lectures by practicing writers. Does not count as Creative Writing workshop credit. Requisites:聽Requires prerequisite course of聽ENGL聽1191聽(minimum grade B). Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: Undergraduate Writing

ENGL 3051: Intermediate Fiction Workshop (Spring 2020)

Intermediate course in fiction writing.聽 Repeatable:聽Repeatable for up to 9.00 total credit hours.聽 Requisites:聽Requires prerequisite course聽ENGL聽2051聽(minimum grade B). Restricted to Creative Writing minor students or students with a sub plan of Creative Writing. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: Undergraduate Writing

ENGL 4021: Advanced Poetry Workshop (Spring 2020)

Advanced course in poetry writing.聽 Repeatable:聽Repeatable for up to 9.00 total credit hours.聽 Requisites:聽Requires prerequisite course聽ENGL聽3021聽(minimum grade B). Restricted to Creative Writing minor students or students with a sub plan of Creative Writing. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: Undergraduate Writing

ENGL 4051: Advanced Fiction Workshop (Spring 2020)

Advanced course in fiction writing.聽 Repeatable:聽Repeatable for up to 9.00 total credit hours.聽 Requisites:聽Requires prerequisite course of聽ENGL聽3051聽(minimum grade B). Restricted to Creative Writing minor students or students with a sub plan of Creative Writing. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: Undergraduate Writing

ENGL 4071: Screenwriting Workshop (Spring 2020)

Designed to give students practical criticism of their script writing and technical format requirements. Either stage plays or screenplays are studied, as announced.聽 Repeatable:聽Repeatable for up to 9.00 total credit hours.聽 Requisites:聽Requires prerequisite course of聽ENGL聽3021聽or聽ENGL聽3051聽(minimum grade B). Restricted to Creative Writing minor students or students with a sub plan of Creative Writing. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities Departmental Category: Undergradu...

Content List: Spring 2020 Critical Studies in English

ENGL 4039: Critical Thinking in English Studies (Spring 2020)

Concerned with developments in the study of literature that have significantly influenced our conception of the theoretical bases for study and expanded our understanding of appropriate subject matter.聽 Repeatable:聽Repeatable for up to 9.00 total credit hours.聽 Requisites:聽Requires prerequisite courses of聽ENGL聽2102聽and聽ENGL聽2112聽(all minimum grade C-). Restricted to students with 57-180 credits (Junior or Senior) English (ENGL) or Humnanities (HUMN) majors and minors only. Additional Information:聽Arts Sci G...

Content List: Spring 2020 Genre, Media, and Advanced Writing

ENGL 3026: Syntax, Citation, Analysis - Writing 麻豆影院 Literature (Spring 2020)

Sections 001 and 002: Students hone their writing skills in this course by learning how to analyze sentence structure in several literary texts. They will also practice writing about literature for both academic and general audiences, while using their refined knowledge of syntax to craft their own sentences. At the same time, students will build their research skills, learning how to evaluate academic literary criticism. Two shorter writing assignments, a formal analysis of a poem, and a scholarly literatu...

ENGL 3116: Topics in Advanced Theory - Literature and Data Science (Spring 2020)

We all know that computers do not have feelings. Yet how might we leverage technology to think about what it is to be human; to identify the emotional state of a speaker; to anticipate the affective response a text aims to produce in a reader or audience member? Or what kinds of questions can you ask about 100 novels that you can鈥檛 ask when reading a single book? What insights about human creativity arise from taking advantage of computer programs capable of working with very large data sets? These are just...

ENGL 3246: Topics in Popular Culture - American Film Comedy (Spring 2020)

This class will engage in close readings of thirteen or fourteen American feature films and a number of shorts that best typify distinctly American genres like screwball comedy, or American treatments of standard genres like slapstick comedy, farce, satire, and black comedy.聽 We will trace several motifs - the romantic couple, acceleration of movement, the team, the outcast - through several films.聽 Using classical, traditional and contemporary theory and criticism, we will attempt to arrive at general and ...

ENGL 3856-001: Topics in Genre Studies - Trashy Books (Spring 2020)

Why do people find trashy books so delicious?聽聽This course will take up one of the most popular kinds of trashy books 鈥 the romance 鈥 and investigate how and why it emerged.聽聽We will explore what romances are about聽聽-- lovers, quests, overcoming obstacles, lost children returned to their parents, fantastical beings, and magical objects 鈥 and what they do for their readers 鈥 satisfy fantasies, act as propaganda, and conceal reality.聽聽Our readings will include Arthurian romances, such as the聽Lais聽of Marie de ...

ENGL 3856-002: Topics in Genre Studies - Comic Books (Spring 2020)

Our world is undergoing exponential change. No one knows what is coming ahead, but we all know it is coming fast. We live in what Yuval Noah Harari calls 鈥渁n age of bewilderment.鈥 Art is one way of understanding our situation. Overwhelmingly, the art of the moment is comics. Comics are a deeply ambivalent artform. Not that long ago, if you were over six years old, being seen in public with a comic signaled a certain idiocy. Teaching and studying comics, even reading them, were activities best marked by scar...

ENGL 4026: Special Topics in Genre, Media, and Advanced Writing - Millennial Ecofictions (Spring 2020)

This course considers a selection of recent American ecofictions in the context of posthuman and postnatural theory. These ecofictions rework the category of 鈥渘ature鈥 outside of a realist narrative framework but still take their bearings from notions of environmental degradation and sustainability. In the wake of the new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene (in which the divisions between nature and culture, human and extra-human scales have been destabilized) these fictions depict 鈥減ostnature鈥濃攁 cate...

Content List: Spring 2020 Studies of Ethnicity, Race, Disability, Gender, and Sexuality

ENGL 3267: Women Writers - Romantic-Era Women Writers (Spring 2020)

In this course we will read a variety of women writers from the 18th and 19th centuries. Romanticism (1750-1832) is often called the Age of Revolution because it overturned all kinds of traditional, conformist thinking as well as sparking revolutions in America and France. During this dynamic era, writers challenged established social hierarchies, slavery, and tyranny and capitalism. Most specifically this era defied conventional gender and other social constructions and advocated for the rights of women fo...

ENGL 4697: Special Topics in Multicultural and Ethnic American Literature - Postcolonial Studies and the Middle East (Spring 2020)

This course explores European and American discourses, ideologies, and representations of the Middle East from the 19th century to the present. How, we ask, was a region as ethnically, religiously, culturally, and linguistically diverse as it is vast rendered amenable to the European imperial enterprise and its more recent, American incarnation? Taking our cue from Edward Said鈥檚 Orientalism (1978), and drawing on a range of historical case studies from the Napoleonic Invasion of Egypt and Syria (1798-1801) ...

ENGL 4717: Native American and Indigenous Studies Capstone Seminar (Spring 2020)

This seminar provides a selective overview of historic and contemporary trends in Native American and Indigenous Studies academic scholarship as well as contemporary Indigenous methodologies and theory.聽聽The readings cover a range of Eurowestern disciplines and Indigenous epistemic practices, allowing the course to be accessible to students from a range of majors.聽聽The course鈥檚 primary goal is to teach students Native American and Indigenous Studies methods and to ensure mastery of implementing these approa...