Courses

In addition, information about the undergraduate catalogue for English courses can be found in MyCourseGuide (NetID log-in required). Non-UW students can contact the Undergraduate Advisor for information about courses.

While we work hard to ensure the information here presented is correct and current, course offerings are subject to change at any time. Therefore, students should consult MyCourseGuide for the most up-to-date information regarding specific course offerings, meeting locations, meetings times, and program outcomes.

Please be sure to check the class notes in the Course Search and Enroll application for additional information.

Summer 2025 Course Descriptions

100 level courses

100: Intro to College Composition
Instructors Vary per Section
June 16 to August 10 (DHH, 8-week session)
Online
Prereq: Students required to take the MSN ESLAT cannot enroll until the ESL 118 requirement is satisfied

English 100 is an introduction to college composition that begins to prepare students for the demands of writing in the university and for a variety of contexts beyond the classroom. Students will compose several shorter and longer essays totaling 25-30 pages of revised writing, develop critical reading and thinking skills and information literacy, and practice oral communication.

Summer sections of English 100 are offered in an online asynchronous format. Required work includes weekly writing assignments, readings, discussion forums, writing workshops, conferences with the instructor, and other low-stakes writing activities. This course requires consistent engagement with Canvas, course resources, and other campus technologies; this is not a self-paced course and required work will be due weekly.

120: Introduction to Theatre & Dramatic Literature
Rebecca Schmitt
June 16 to August 10 (DHH, 8-week session)
Online
Cross-Listed with Theatre and Drama

Reading important plays, students will be watching recordings of stage productions, writing, and thinking critically about theatre and drama. Emphasis on developing analytic skills in dramatic literature and theatre production.

160: Truth and Crime
Ralph Grunewald
May 19 to June 29 (ZFF, 6-week session)
Online

Course Catalog Description: Examines the development, scope, and effects of the “True Crime” genre in the United States. Using literary analysis and legal studies methods, explore various areas of the genre (written, podcasts, documentaries, etc.) and try to find answer as to why we are so compelled by true crime narratives and what true crime’s “truth” is. Untangle the complex relationship between law and narrative (background on each will be provided) and the various epistemological systems it combines, including the role of science and technology. Gain a detailed understanding of what our culture’s relationship to “real life” crime narratives tells us about the fundamental and complex role criminality plays in defining us as a society.

173: Ethnic and Multicultural Literature
Sarah Wood
July 14 to August 10 (HDD, 4-week session)
Online

Course Catalog Description: Introduction to literature that reflects the writing and experience of minority and ethnic groups. Texts will focus on a theme or problem.

176.001: Topics in Literature and Film
Topic: TBA
Joseph Bowling
June 16 to July 13 (DDD, 4-week session)
Online

The office occupies a paradoxical place in the American cultural imagination. On the one hand, landing an office job represents success and upward social mobility. On the other, portrayals of offices in literature and film depict its physical space as drearily uniform and associate office work itself with mindless, repetitive tasks. The office, then, elicits both desire for success and the experience of alienation. In this class, we will study literary and cinematic representations of office jobs to explore the contradictory values and meanings writers and directors attach to so-called “white-collar” work.

176.001: Topics in Literature and Film
Topic: Feeling Real
Amanda Shubert
July 14 to August 10 (HDD, 4-week session)
Online

What makes a work of art feel real? Why are we so drawn to the illusion of reality, whether it is Real Housewives, first-person shooter video games, or the latest prestige documentary film? What is “realism” in literature and film, and why does it matter? This course explores the sense of reality in media—that experience when what you are reading or watching feels more like life than art. From the novel to the memoir, film to video games, painting to photography, we will closely analyze realist media, asking how authors, filmmakers, and other media creators construct an illusion of reality. Expect to study a wide range of literary, visual, and playful media, including the work of authors including Jane Austen, Zara Chowdhary, and Edwidge Danticat and filmmakers including Barry Jenkins, Andrea Arnold, and Bo Burnham.

178: Digital Media, Literature, and Culture
Topic: Social Media Writing
Ainehi Edoro
June 16 to August 10 (DHH, 8-week session)
Online

Explore the literary universe of digital culture! Why are social media users hooked on emojis? Why is #love the most used hashtag on Instagram? What does cancel culture teach us about emotion, imagination, and writing?

This course focuses on the dynamics of social media platforms as spaces for writing and communication. Social media can seem like pointless babble, but it is not. There is logic to how we

write on social media. Emojis, typos, misspellings, hashtags, abbreviations, all-caps, and memes are part of a complex language system with quite a few rules and lots of interesting patterns.

Our objective is to find the language to talk about what we love but also find unsettling about social media while exploring its creative possibilities.

179: Introduction to Language and Ideology
Iman Sheydaei Baghdadeh
June 16 to July 13 (DDD, 4-week session)
Online

Course Catalog Description: Explores myths and ideologies about English language usage in the US (present and past) from a linguistic perspective. Discusses how common perceptions towards language use and language varieties, especially those associated with ethnic or racial minorities, are socially (not linguistically) constructed. Addresses questions like: Where do linguistic myths, especially those regarding varieties of American English used by persistently marginalized groups, come from and how does one check if there is a factual basis for them? Who gets to decide which words are entered into a dictionary or what constitutes ‘proper’ English? What perceptions do people have about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ dialects and accents? Who benefits and who is harmed by such perceptions? Approaches these and related questions within an anti-racist framework, showing that perceptions towards certain English varieties are often not grounded in linguistic facts but rather in bias against certain demographic groups.

300 level courses

319: Language, Race, and Identity
Topic: Structure of English
Tom Purnell
May 19 to June 15 (ZDD, 4-week session)
Online
Requisites: Sophomore standing

[English Language and Linguistics] (Undergrad and grad) This course examines the role of language in the social construction of racial identity in the US. Combining research and theory from anthropology, biology, psychology, sociology, and linguistics, this course emphasizes the essential relations between language, culture, and our genetic endowment specific to humans.

Learning outcomes: At the end of this semester, students are expected to:

1. Distinguish the measurable language-biology relation from the perceived race-biology relation.

2. Differentiate nature and nurture arguments when talking about language and race.

3. Critique historical arguments of the language and race relation.

4. Understand factors contributing to the language and identity relation, including how language reflects culture.

5. List shared and unique aspects of racially-affiliated dialects of American English and understand how speech communities reflect regular patterns of varieties.

350.001: Special Topics in Gender & Literature
Topic: Transnational Queer & Trans Literature in the Americas
TBA
June 16 to August 10 (DHH, 8-week session)
Online
Prereqs: GEN&WS 101, 102, 103, or GEN&WS/SOC 200
Cross-Listed with Gender & Womens Studies

Course Catalog Description: Investigation of some specific topic in gender and women’s studies related to gender and literature. Topic differs each semester.

361: Modern and Contemporary US Literature
Topic: Subversive Laughter
Anja Jovic-Humphrey
June 16 to August 10 (DHH, 8-week session)
Requisites: Sophomore standing

Why do we laugh? What do we find funny? Do comedians such as Dave Chappelle and Stephen Colbert or Trevor Noah give us a pertinent and serious commentary of our society? Does comedy – a genre that has (arguably) been considered as inferior to tragedy or drama since Aristotle’s Poetics – actually carry a subversive potential? Is laughter often politically and socially charged?

In this course, we will examine the form and power of humor and comedy. We will examine comedy in different forms – short story, essay, joke, fake news, stand-up, cartoon, memes – to find out what makes them funny and what allows them to convey serious messages about politics, gender, religion, and race.

368: Chicana/o and Latina/o Literatures
Megan Bailon
June 16 to July 13 (DDD, 4-week session)
Online
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

In this course we will read selections of Chicanx and Latinx literature from the nineteenth century to the present to gain an understanding of the aesthetic and cultural dimensions of the imagined worlds this literature presents, the varied literary forms that Chicanxs and Latinxs have employed or innovated to tell Chicanx and Latinx stories, the venues in which they circulate, and the ways this literature engages historical and contemporary topics and events. We will read from a wide variety of literary forms, including novels, short stories, corridos, non-fiction essays, testimonios, memoir, autobiography, poetry, and plays.

375: Literatures of Migration and Diaspora
Topic: Travelling Identities and Border Crossings
Anja Jovic-Humphrey
May 19 to June 15 (ZDD, 4-week session)
Online
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Have you ever crossed borders, or do you have friends and family who have lived in more than one country? Have you wondered what and how to think about the “migrant crisis” covered in the news? Have you been curious about the origins of your last name and its history? What does a passport mean to you? In this course, we will examine the literature and politics of crossing borders, our travelling identities, immigration, and emigration. We will read texts that tackle both the difficulties and beauties of human movement across the globe. Writers include acclaimed contemporary authors such as Jamaica Kincaid, Jhumpa Lahiri, Salmon Rushdie, and Aleksandar Hemon.

400 level courses

408: Creative Writing: Fiction Workshop
Ron Kuka
June 16 to August 10 (DHH, 8-week session)
TR 6:00pm-8:30pm White 7109
Requisites: Completion of one of the following with a 3.0 or higher: English 207 or 307 taken Fall 2014 or later
Students who do not meet the prerequisite may submit a writing sample to the program director on Monday of the last week of classes.
Accelerated Honors (!)

This class helps students apply lessons from published fiction (both classic and contemporary) to their own creative work. Class typically begins with a lecture concerning some aspect of craft and is followed by “workshop.” This entails a discussion of story shape, word choice, character development etc. using the creative work of the student as the text. Classes are small (15), and students are expected to read the work of their peers carefully and participate during class discussions.

422: Outstanding Figure(s) in Literature before 1800
Topic: TBA
Monique Allewaert
June 16 to July 13 (DDD, 4-week session)
Online
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Course Catalog Description: Study of major figure or figures in literature written before 1800.

Fall 2025-26 Course Descriptions

100 level courses

100: Intro to College Composition
TA taught courses
Times & Places Vary
Prereq: Students required to take the MSN ESLAT cannot enroll until the ESL 118 requirement is satisfied

120: Introduction to Theatre & Dramatic Literature
Jennifer Plants
MW 12:05pm-12:55pm Humanities 3650
Cross-Listed with Theatre and Drama

An introduction to theatre and dramatic literature, considering classical, modern and contemporary texts, genres and styles.

141: Science Fiction and Fantasy
Topic: A Discovery of Witches
Ron Harris
MWF 1:20-2:10pm Education L185
Prereq: Class is reserved for FIG students in Magic, Adventure, and Romance in the Age of Science

How does magic influence our knowledge of the natural world? What happens when you hold beliefs that run counter to the authority of prevailing wisdom? How do you learn and accept who you are?

Reading science fiction alongside pre-modern science, we take up big questions through the lens of Deborah Harkness’s Discovery of Witches trilogy. Harkness’s protagonist is a historian of science who happens to be a witch living among other magical creatures. In addition to Harkness’s novels, students will read excerpts from alchemical manuals, premodern mathematics and astronomy, and other scientific and magical texts.

144.001: Women’s Writing
Topic: The Art of African Feminist Writing
Ainehi Edoro
MW 9:55am-10:45am Nolan 132
Cross-Listed with Gender & Women’s Studies

What does it take to speak your truth in a world that often demands silence or simplification?
In this course, we turn to African feminist writers who have done some of the hardest things writing can do: expose systems of power and give language to pain, beauty, and survival. Their work gives us powerful models for writing with clarity and courage.

Some of the text we’ll look at includes Mona Eltahway’s Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, Nnedi Okorafor’s Broken Places and Outer Spaces, Akwaeke Emezi’s Dear Senthuran, Panache Chigumadzi’s These Bones Will Rise Again, Warsan Shire’s Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head, and others.

Along the way, you’ll craft your own feminist writing rooted in your experiences but informed by global Black feminist strategies.
By the end of the course, you’ll leave with a powerful toolkit on the art of impactful writing.

153.001: Literature and the Environment
Topic: Climate Crisis Literature
Sarah Wood
TR 9:30am-10:45am White 7111
Cross-Listed with Environmental Studies
Prereq: Class is reserved for FIG students

Climate Change is upon us, and this course will consider contemporary literature and artnavigating the realities and considering the possible futures of our world. We will do more thanfocus on the existential dread found in post-apocalyptic fiction but will consider work thatembraces the complexity of relationships impacted by the climate crisis: relationships to nature,to each other, and to ourselves. Our syllabus will include poetry, fiction (aka Cli-Fi!), non-fiction,and podcasts. My goal is for this course to perform the work that writers, artists and activistsencourage: build community, provide language around important issues, and invite yourcreativity. Assignments will include a semester-long Analysis Notebook, presentations ofinterdisciplinary creators, unique writing assignments and a final creative project of your owndesign. The course is a discussion-based seminar with required participation.

153.002: Literature and the Environment
Topic: Climate Crisis Literature
Sarah Wood
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm Van Vleck B215
Cross-Listed with Environmental Studies

156.001: Literature and Medicine
Topic: Writing and the Body
Jennifer Conrad
MWF 12:05pm-12:55pm White 4208

Course Guide Description: Exploration of literature as both a source of knowledge about medicine and as a catalyst for reflection about medical concepts and practices, including health, illness, dying, and disability. Students will consider ways that literature can serve as a resource for patients and healthcare practitioners.

156.002: Literature and Medicine
Topic: The Art of Healing
Colin Gillis
T 6:00pm-8:30pm Humanities 2637

160: Truth and Crime
Ralph Grunewald
MW 9:55am-10:45am Bascom 272
Cross-listed with Legal Studies

Course Guide Description: Examines the development, scope, and effects of the “True Crime” genre in the United States. Using literary analysis and legal studies methods, explore various areas of the genre (written, podcasts, documentaries, etc.) and try to find answer as to why we are so compelled by true crime narratives and what true crime’s “truth” is. Untangle the complex relationship between law and narrative (background on each will be provided) and the various epistemological systems it combines, including the role of science and technology. Gain a detailed understanding of what our culture’s relationship to “real life” crime narratives tells us about the fundamental and complex role criminality plays in defining us as a society.

168.001: Modern Literature
Topic: Anglophone Modernism, 1900 to the Present
Aparna Dharwadker
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm White 4208

English 168 is an introduction to twentieth and twenty-first century writing in English. This version of the course will introduce students to works of fiction, poetry, and drama written by major modernist authors from the US, Britain, Ireland, India, Africa, and the Caribbean.

168.002: Modern Literature
Topic: Tragedy Then and Now
Mary Trotter
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Humanities 1131

Course Catalog Description: A thematic introduction to literary works in a variety of genres written in English from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day. Emphasis may vary between writers from the U.S., Britain, Ireland, and other Anglophone nations.

169.001: Modern American Literature
Topic: Literature as Equipment for Living
Anja Jovic-Humphrey
TR 12:05pm-12:55pm Humanities 3650

In this course, we will read well-known authors to ask questions that can help us lead better and more fulfilling lives. What makes you happy? What do relationships with others mean to you? Do you consider yourself a good person? What makes you laugh? To which extent do you worry about money and becoming rich? Should you choose a lucrative profession – or a profession that brings you joy? Could you do both?

Through stories, we will explore life, love, finances, jobs, and relationships in all their forms: familial and romantic relationships; friendships; our relationships to objects, memories, nature, places, and experiences – as well as our relationship to our own self. The authors include Sylvia Plath and David Foster Wallace.

169.002: Modern American Literature
Topic: Living Writers
Porter Shreve
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm Bardeen 140

An introduction to the craft of poetry, fiction and nonfiction featuring regular in person appearances by published guest authors.

169.003: Modern American Literature
Topic: Writers in the World
Sean Bishop
TR 11:00pm-12:15pm Humanities 2637

Course Catalog Description: An introduction to selected fiction, prose, drama, and poetry written by Americans from the early twentieth century to the present day.

169.004: Modern American Literature
Topic: Poetic Forms
Amy Quan Barry
M 4:00pm-6:30pm Van Vleck B215

Each week we will be studying a selection of received poetic forms, such as the sonnet and the villanelle, as well as more contemporary forms like the golden shovel and the duplex. Students will be expected to write one poem per week in addition to two group presentations, weekly reading assignments and discussion questions, and attending two outside poetry readings.

172: Literatures of Native America
Lena Remy
MWF 9:55am-10:45am Ingraham 222
Cross-Listed with American Indian Studies

Literatures of Native America provides an overview of the oral and written literatures of Indigenous peoples of North America. Students will explore a range of texts, including creation stories, poetry, short stories, theater, graphic novels, and novels, from foundational oral traditions to contemporary works. Through close reading and analysis, students will develop critical thinking and communication skills while gaining insight into the diverse cultural and historical contexts reflected in these literatures. The course also introduces research methodologies relevant to the study of Indigenous narratives.

173: Ethnic and Multicultural Literature
Topic: Strai(gh)t Country
Caroline Druschke/Sarah Ensor
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Noland 168

An exploration of American culture – including questions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, community, and geography – through the lens of country music.

174: Literature and Social Justice
Topic: Literatures of Decolonization
Kirk Sides
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Vleck B309

This course is a literary and cultural introduction to decolonization, the process by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country. The course ranges chronologically across much of the twentieth century up to the present and geographically from the Caribbean, to North America, to the SWANA region, and the African continent. We will look at a variety of texts and movies, including documentaries, and ask questions about media, art, and history in relation to the political and social forces surrounding moments of decolonization. We will also explore expressions of cultural nationalism, ideas of racial and ethnic solidarities, migration, freedom, as well as some of the current debates around institutional decolonization, including within higher education.

175.001: Literature and the Other Disciplines
Topic: Literature and Animal Studies
Mario Ortiz-Robles
TR 2:25pm-3:15pm Microbial Sciences Bldg. 1220

Representing Animals: Organized around important aspects of human-animal relations — domestication, captivity, classification, anthropomorphism, animal rights, animal experimentation, etc. — this course will examine the representation of animals in modern literature. We will explore two types of animal representation — representation as depiction (the description or portrayal of animals in literature) and representation as advocacy (literature’s attempt to speak or act on behalf of animals) — in order to give an account of the cultural history of our relation to animals and, in doing so, to reflect upon the social, political, and environmental stakes involved in representing animals as we approach the Sixth Extinction.

175.002: Literature and the Other Disciplines
Topic: Revolutionary Critique: Karl Marx and the Study of Culture
Joseph Bowling
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm Van Hise 486
Prereqs: First Year Interest Group 229 authorization required to enroll

This FIG will offer an introduction to the ideas of Karl Marx with an emphasis on the meaning and practice of critique, Marx’s method of employing critique in his analysis of capitalist society, and the ways we might use Marxist critique in the study literature and film to better understand the conditions and crises of late capitalism.

175.003: Literature and the Other Disciplines
Topic: Creativity: An Investigation
Heather Swan
T 3:30pm-6:00pm Van Vleck B313

Creativity is understood to be important to the arts, but it is also the basis of scientific discovery, creating a community center, building a wildlife restoration space, and creating a new video game. Where does it come from? Can we harness it? Students will examine ideas of the imagination, the muse, the innovator, and the spontaneous in many disciplines as well as investigating their own minds through creative experiments.

175.004: Literature and the Other Disciplines
Topic: Poetics and Practices of Collective Space
Sarah Wells
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Engr Hall 3444
Prereqs: First Year Interest Group 243 authorization required to enroll

In the wake of the global pandemic, the question of how people share space and collaborate has become increasingly urgent for artists, activists, and thinkers across a variety of disciplines and practices. This course brings together literary, cinematic, and photographic works with reflections by scholars and philosophers to analyze the problem of collective space. How do people inhabit space as a group? What kinds of emotions, practices, and politics come into play with collective space – including virtual space? This course explores practices of space through reading and viewing assignments, group work and collaborative projects and presentations, as well as site-specific trips to spaces in and around the UW-campus (the hill or square, the street, the museum, the library) to analyze and reflect on space in a hands-on way. We will pay close attention to the way that artists (writers, filmmakers, musicians, and more) from the 20th century to the present shape the experience of collectivity.

175.005: Literature and the Other Disciplines
Topic: Marketing Global Englishes
Tom Purnell
MWF 9:55am-10:45am Engr Hall 2540

The number of English speakers worldwide is tremendous, with hundreds of millions of people using some variant of English every day. English serves as the primary means of communication in air and sea traffic, diplomacy, academia, science, and business. This widespread use of English creates an intriguing paradox: while it remains a stable global lingua franca, it also varies significantly across different regions, leading to the term: ‘Global Englishes.’ In this version of English 176, we explore the role of individual, organizational, and national agency in global advertising that involves English in order to better understand our own relationship to the language. We start by discussing foundational aspects of Global English, including its history and development, the influence of cultural and political actors and independence movements, as well as strategies in public and educational policy. Our examination centers on two main areas: (a) global marketing campaigns that incorporate English, often alongside other languages, and (b) the marketing strategies of the English language itself. The online presence of English and its significant role in global cinema is of keen importance, such as how English is integrated into international film industries and films marketed to international audiences. Additionally, we explore how English-inclusive marketing extends to products like Dunkin’ Donuts and with the strategic use of English in business signage. This course encourages critical thinking about the dynamics of cross-cultural marketing of language.

176.001: Topics in Literature and Film
Topic: Visual Storytelling
Amanda Shubert
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Science 180

An introduction to visual storytelling across media, from comic books and anime to short stories and video games. Readings from Marjane Satrapi, Toni Morrison, Weike Wang, and others; filmmakers include Barry Jenkins, Mati Diop, and Hayao Miyazaki.

176.002: Topics in Literature and Film
Topic: Getting Real: Contemporary Culture and the Aesthetics of Reality
Joseph Bowling
TR 4:00pm-5:15pm Humanities 2637

In the age of the digital, the real is in high demand. Beginning with reality television as a paradigmatic example, this course will the real as a formal and historical aesthetic effect, considering how text and image produce verisimilitude, the feeling of getting real, across literature and film.

177.001: Literature and Popular Culture
Topic: Archival Information & Artificial Intelligence
Joshua Calhoun
TR 1:20pm-2:10pm Humanities 3650

This course explores the ways that information and data become accepted facts and knowledge. Two questions will spur our conversations: How does information become intelligence? How do we record and share our knowledge across space and time? Two seemingly distinct systems of information management—dusty library archives and digital AI chatbots—will give our conversations focus and cohesion. Active attendance and participation are crucial to success in this hands-on course, and some class sessions will be held in alternate locations on campus.

177.002: Literature and Popular Culture
Topic: Weird Literature
Frederic Neyrat
MW 8:50am-9:40am Humanities 3650

This class will focus on the singular forms of being that people literature: humans and also non-humans, a vast category including animals, insects, plants, cyborgs, and robots. We will work on novels, graphic novels, short stories, poems, and films.

177.003: Literature and Popular Culture
Topic: Narco-narratives in the Americas
Oscar Useche
MWF 9:55am-10:45am Humanities 2637

This course explores the global genre of narco-narratives—in the context of literature, film, and television—and studies the different social, racial, and cultural constructions of illegality and violence that emerge around it.

182.001: Introduction to Literature for Honors
Topic: Doing Time: Race-Labor-Incarceration in America
Ingrid Diran
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm White 7115
Prereqs: Declared in an Honors program

In the eighteenth century, the phrase “doing time” for the first time came to apply both to work and crime. Both became measurable in terms of time: prison, once understood as a waiting place for public punishment, became the private space of punishment itself, while labor, once understood as a skill or craft, became the working day. In this class, we will read works of literature and social criticism to examine how the idea of “doing time” in the U.S. has been formative for, and shaped by, histories of race, labor, and punishment.

182.002: Introduction to Literature for Honors
Topic: Stories, Poems, and Critical Thinking
Vinay Dharwadker
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm White 7115
Prereqs: Declared in an Honors program

This course introduces Honors students, from different majors across campus, to critical thinking about literature. We will use poems and short stories from different historical periods and cultures to explore: (1) how imaginative writers represent important real-life issues; and (2) how we, as readers, can use our capacity for critical thinking to respond to them with insight and understanding. A principal goal will be to strengthen and expand practical skills in critical writing. Our readings in English and in English translation will include classics such as William Shakespeare and modern Nobel laureates such as Rabindranath Tagore, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, and Toni Morrison. We will combine short lectures with open classroom discussion, individual and group assignments, and short and medium-length papers. All our course materials, including digital texts and any audiovisual supplements, will be made available on Canvas.

182.003: Introduction to Literature for Honors
Topic: Satire and the Politics of Laughter
Kristina Huang
MW 6:00pm-7:15pm White 7111
Prereqs: Declared in an Honors program

Laughter’s seeming triviality and ephemerality can mystify its sources, contexts, and vital role in human experiences. Through a transhistorical and multi-generic approach, this course is aimed at exploring aesthetic styles that inspire laughter as a mode of critique and expression of ambivalence. While exploring the aesthetics of satire, irony, parody, and absurdity, we’ll explore historical contexts for these aesthetic modes as constitutive of culturally-specific rituals of social connection and transgression. This course is not about analyzing performance practices; rather, this course is aimed at cultivating sensitivity for the contexts for laughter, formal (genre-specific) literacies, and their social implications.

182.004: Introduction to Literature for Honors
Topic: AI and the Idea of Writing
Ainehi Edoro
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm White 6110
Prereqs: Declared in an Honors program

What is writing when anyone—or anything—can do it? In a time when AI tools like ChatGPT can produce essays in seconds, what becomes of writing as a meaningful act? What does it mean to write when texts can be endlessly generated and revised?

Through hands-on experiments with gen AI, students will generate multiple versions of their work, test different styles, and reflect on how writing feels when the boundaries between human and machine blur.

We’ll explore excerpts from a wide range of texts, including Jennifer Egan’s “Black Box” and Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, alongside philosophical readings from Ferdinand de Saussure and Matthew Kirschenbaum.

This course is a laboratory for thinking about writing in the age of AI. We want to ask how technology informs what we imagine writing to be, what we ask of it, and how we understand it as an expression of human creativity and thinking.

200 level courses

200: Writing Studio
Emily Hall
T 5:00pm-6:30pm White 6162
Prereqs: Declared in an Honors program

This version of English 200 is for students completing the first semester of a senior Honors thesis. The course will support you in making steady progress on your thesis without adding too much to your plate. You’ll complement the work you’re doing in your department-specific thesis credits by honing essential research, writing, and revision strategies essential to crafting a longer academic paper. Through weekly class meetings, you’ll find a built-in structure of accountability, an opportunity to write in community, and a supportive group of peers who are navigating the same process. This course also offers a unique opportunity to engage with and gain insights from the work of peers in other disciplines, enriching your own approach to research and writing.

201: Intermediate Composition
TA taught courses
Times & Places Vary
Prereqs: Satisfied Communications A requirement and sophomore standing; not open to special students

English 201 is a small, topic-driven writing course that fulfills part B of the University’s Communication requirement. Sections of 201 offer hands-on practice with writing and revision, building on skills developed in earlier writing courses and providing new opportunities for students to grow as writers. Though topics vary by section and semester, this class consistently provides experience writing in multiple genres and for diverse audiences.

204.001: Introduction to Rhetoric and Writing Studies
Topic: Writing Technologies
Eileen Lagman
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm White 4208
Prereqs: Satisfied Communications A requirement and sophomore standing; not open to special students

Course Catalog Description: What does writing do? How? For whom? How and why do writers and readers compose texts that have an impact? Approaches these enduring questions of English studies from the perspective of Composition & Rhetoric, one of English’s subfields. Emphasizing critical reading and writing and built around a central theme that varies by semester, the course prepares students to analyze historical and/or contemporary examples of how writing creates communities, influences beliefs, and shapes knowledge.

207: Introduction to Creative Writing
TA taught courses
Times & Places Vary
Prereqs: First Year, freshman or sophomore standing only
Satisfies a Comm B requirement

In this course, students are taught the fundamental elements of craft in both fiction (plot, point of view, dialogue, and setting, etc.) and poetry (the image, the line, sound and meter, etc.). This class is taught as a workshop, which means class discussion will focus on fiction and poetry written by each student as well as on a range of published stories, poems, and essays. The instructor will lead a mindful discussion and critique of student work. Students should expect to read and comment on two or three published works per week as well as the work of their peers.

214: The English Language
Tom Purnell
MW 12:05pm-12:55pm Science 180
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

English 214 provides a comprehensive review of the structure, use, and development of the English language and its variations. Using linguistic methods and terminology, we explore the fundamental components of language, including sounds, words, and phrases, and how they are used to communicate meaning and establish a sense of community. Additionally, the course delves into different varieties of English, encompassing historical and contemporary developments in English grammar and vocabulary.

223: Vladimir Nabokov: Russian & American Writings
S. A. Karpukhin
MWF 11:00am-11:50am Soc Sci 6203
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-listed with Literature in Translation
Honors Optional (%)

In this course you will get to know the Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977). You will discover the “Nabokov effect,” the writer’s love of pattern, and the system of cognitive challenges and rewards in his Russian and American fiction. You will read Nabokov’s major works from the perspective of history and politics, ethics and art: learn about the “nightmare of history” in 20th-century Europe as well as the writer’s experience as a refugee from ideology and racial hatred in post-war America.

241: Literature and Culture 1: to the 18th Century
Jordan Zweck
MW 11:00am-11:50am Science 180
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Not open to students who took ENGL 215 prior to Fall 2014

This course provides an introduction to literature in English from the Middle Ages to the early eighteenth century. Its primary goals include familiarizing students with the canon of English literature and preparing students for more specialized study in advanced courses in the major. We will examine how literature engaged with topics as disparate as love, religion, and science, and we will read everything from elegant descriptions of angelic beings to six-hundred-year-old fart jokes.

242: Literature and Culture II: from the 18th Century to the Present
Monique Allewaert
W 6:00pm-8:30pm Science 180
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Not open to students who took ENGL 216 prior to Fall 2014

Course Catalog Description: Considers a period of unparalleled tumult: a time of vast world empires and startling new technologies, revolutions that radically redefined self and community, two cataclysmic world wars, the emergence of ideas of human rights, and the first truly global feelings of interconnectedness. How has literature captured and contributed to these dramatic upheavals? Some writers worldwide have struggled to invent new forms, new words, and new genres to do justice to a world in crisis, while others have reached back in time, seeking continuity with the past. Explore enduring traditions of poetry and drama and think about experiments in the new, globally popular genre of the novel. Develops skills of critical reading and writing that are essential to majors and non-majors alike.

245.001: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Literary Architectures: Making Space in American Literature
Sarah Ensor
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm White 7111
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)

In this class, we will consider “literary architectures,” broadly conceived, and analyze the social configurations that these structures make space for. As we move back and forth between discussing the structures depicted in American literature and the structures (forms, genres, traditions) of that literature itself, we will ask questions like the following: How do gender, sexuality, race, and class shape our inhabitation of space, and vice versa? How does our built environment affect our relationships to each other – including, importantly, whom we care for and how? When literary characters inhabit, dismantle, or remake physical structures, what can that teach us about how we might inhabit, dismantle, or remake social structures? And how has authors’ play with literary form – including the space of the page and the dimensions of reading itself – been a way to make new relational possibilities legible, and effect social change?

245.002: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Writing and Money
Eileen Lagman
M 4:00pm-5:15pm White 4208
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)
Hybrid in-person/online class

This course asks students to explore the intersections of writing and money in everyday life. If we accept the narrative that modern society has moved from an industrial economy to an information economy, what does that mean for writers? What is writing for? How is it valued? How do economics systems determine what is “good” writing? And what does it mean to write for money? Alongside developing skills in critical reading and writing that are fundamental to the English major, the course will engage texts from across different disciplines, including economics, literacy studies, rhetorical theory, and political science and will address such topics as: authorship, open-source writing, economic inequality, and writing as labor.

245.003: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Climate Crisis Literature
Sarah Wood
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Engr Hall 2341
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)

245.005: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Understanding Technology: Reviving the Autonomy of the Mind
Frederic Neyrat
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Engr Hall 2321
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)

As AI and social networks redefine the entire scope of existence, it’s critical to understand what technology is. We will study, amongst others, M. Heidegger, P. K. Dick, and D. Cronenberg. We will strive to imagine individual and collective ways of regaining autonomy of the mind and claiming cognitive and sensory independence.

300 level courses

307: Creative Writing: Fiction & Poetry Workshop
TA taught courses
Days & Times Vary Online
Prereqs: Junior standing or ENGL 207. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 407, 408, 409, 410, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Satisfies a Comm B requirement
Satisfies a workshop requirement for the emphasis in creative writing
Accelerated Honors (!)

This class is similar to English 207 (see above) but with greater emphasis on craft (narrative control, poetic form) and the writing process. Like 207, this class is taught as a workshop, which means class discussion will focus on both craft (published stories, poems, and essays) and, perhaps more importantly, the fiction and poetry written by each student. That is, the student writing becomes the text, and the instructor leads a sympathetic, but critical, discussion of the particular work at hand. Students should expect to read and comment on two or three published works per week as well as the work of their peers.

314: Structure of English
Anja Wanner
TR 9:30am-10:45am Engr Hall 2355
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

This course introduces students to the study of English grammar from a linguistic perspective. You will learn that grammar is not something external that is written down in a book to be memorized; rather, it is something that is part of every speaker’s implicit knowledge about language, something that enables us to use language creatively and with precision to express our thoughts. We will make some of that knowledge – also known as “linguistic competence” – visible. To that end, you will learn to apply linguistic terminology (such as “subject”, “direct object”, “auxiliary”, “relative clause”, “preposition”) and methods to describe the structure of English words and sentences, both verbally and visually (in so-called “tree diagrams”).

315: English Phonology
Eric Raimy
MWF 11:00am-11:50am Comp Sci 1325
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Meets with Linguistics 310

Survey and introduction to the sound system of English, including phonetics and elementary phonology. Phonetics is the study of sounds (phones), while phonology examines how phones are mentally represented and form a contrastive network of phonemes. Course topics include acoustic phonetics, articulatory phonetic descriptions of consonants and vowels, classic phonemic theory, the nature of phonological processes, linguistic change, and the acquisition of phonological systems.

316: English Language Variation in the U.S.
Juliet Huynh
MWF 9:55am-10:45am Sterling 1333
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

The course examines the relationships of the different geographical varieties of English in the United States in relation to the social identities that are associated with these varieties. While no variety is more important than another, this course will explore how these various dialects of English stand in relation to standard language ideology.

318.001: Second Language Acquisition
Juliet Huynh
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Vleck B223
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

This course will introduce the field of second language acquisition. The course will cover research topics including the differences between first and second language acquisition, language perception and production and how the first and second language are affected, and what the second language teaching implications are.

318.002: Second Language Acquisition
TBA
MWF 8:50am-9:40am Sterling 1335
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Course Catalog Description: Systematic study of how people learn ESL and other second languages. An interdisciplinary survey emphasizing research in linguistics, psychology, education, and sociology into the phenomenon of second language acquisition.

340: Romantic Literature and Culture
Mark Vareschi
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 394
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

This course will consider the Literature of the Romantic age, roughly 1789 to 1850, and its relationship to the scientific and political movements of the period. Romanticism was fundamentally a radical reaction to the Enlightenment and its commitments to rationality and empiricism. In this course, we will work to understand the ways that Romantic poetry and prose seek to understand the world anew.

350.002: Special Topics in Gender & Literature
Topic: Human Rights & Global Literatures
Hanan Al Alawi
TR 1:00am-2:15pm Sterling 2301
Prereqs: GEN&WS 101, 102, 103, or GEN&WS/SOC 200
Cross-Listed with Gender & Women’s Studies

This course explores the connection between human rights discourse and global literature through an intersectional understanding of identity and power structures. Across different literary and visual genres, the course comparatively examines representations of human rights and questions standardized meanings of what it means to be human in different contexts. Scrutinizing the complex relationship between aesthetics and politics, and victim and perpetrator, provides a better understanding of how cultural forms narrativize violence. The course ultimately offers tools to analyze global literature and recognize the ethical stakes of engaging historical documentation and fictional accounts of human rights violations.

352: Modernist Poetry
Vinay Dharwadker
R 4:00pm-6:30pm education L185
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Course Guide Description: Exploration of British, Irish, and Anglophone poets working in the early twentieth century, such as W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound.

353: British Literature since 1900
Richard Begam
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Vleck B223
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

This course surveys a number of the principal works of twentieth-century British, Irish and Commonwealth literature. We will spend some time considering the function and scope of the term “modernism” (e.g. does it designate a period, a movement, or a critical perspective?), as well as examining its practical utility. Discussions will focus on the analysis of individual texts and the situation of those texts within related contexts (aesthetic, philosophical, historical, cultural). Issues to be considered include the “inward turn” of modernism (its interest in subjectivity and epistemology); the fascination with myth and archetype inspired by the emerging discipline of anthropology; England’s changing social and economic conditions and the accompanying crisis in liberalism; the encounter between Western and non-Western cultures resulting from British colonialism; and, finally, the erosion of philosophical foundations and attending transformation of cultural norms.

361: Modern and Contemporary American Literature
Anja Jovic-Humphrey
TR 9:30am-10:45am Van Vleck B309
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Why do we laugh? What do we find funny? Do comedians such as John Mulaney, Jon Stewart or Ali Wong give us a pertinent and serious commentary of our society? Does comedy – a genre that has (arguably) been considered as inferior to tragedy or drama since Aristotle’s Poetics – actually carry a subversive potential? Is laughter often politically and socially charged?

In this course, we will examine the form and power of humor and comedy. We will examine comedy in different forms – short story, essay, joke, sketch fake news, stand-up, cartoon, meme – to find out what makes them funny and what allows them to convey serious messages about politics, gender, religion, and race.

400 level courses

400: Advanced Composition
Lindsay Jacoby
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Sterling 1339
Prereqs: Satisfied Communications A requirement and junior standing

This advanced humanities course puts the environment at the center of our writing, with attention to the interactions of its natural, built, and social elements. We will let environments spark our writing, from our campus to the city of Madison, to beloved familiar landscapes, to places facing crises. The course combines analysis and research with observation and reflection, encouraging students to explore their relationship to their environment through immersive experiences. Students will develop flexibility in their writing skills by working in genres such as nature writing, audio postcards, travel essays, exhibit curation, and literary nonfiction, with attention to style, audience, context, and convention. Readings include scholarship on environmental rhetoric, as well as nature writers and environmental essayists like Robin Wall Kimmerer, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Naomi Klein. This version of English 400 is designed for students who are interested in the environment and students who have a desire to read, compose, and revise their work in a community of writers.

401: Race, Sex, and Texts (How to Do Things with Writing)
Morris Young
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Vleck B313
Cross-listed with Gender & Womens Studies
Requisites: Sophomore standing
(Fulfills the ELL/CR requirement for English Majors)

In this course, we’ll examine how writing shapes our ideas about race, gender, sexuality, disability, culture, and other categories of identity and their intersections. We’ll read broadly to understand how bodies, belonging, identity, and language as rhetorical commonplaces are used to argue about who we are, who belongs, and how we imagine community.

403.001: Seminar on Tutoring Writing Across the Curriculum
Emily Hall
TR 9:30am-10:45am White 6176
Prereqs: Consent of instructor and acceptance into the Writing Fellows Program. Students who completed English 316 prior to fall semester 2014 may not receive credit for English 403
Accelerated Honors (!)

Explores current theory and research on the writing process and analyzes disciplinary genres and conventions. Teaches strategies for helping writers revise their work. Explores the teaching of writing from multiple perspectives including that of race, disability, and social justice. As Undergraduate Writing Fellows, students will help their peers improve their writing in courses across the curriculum.

403.002: Seminar on Tutoring Writing Across the Curriculum
Emily Hall
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm White 6176
Prereqs: Consent of instructor and acceptance into the Writing Fellows Program. Students who completed English 316 prior to fall semester 2014 may not receive credit for English 403
Accelerated Honors (!)

407: Creative Writing: Nonfiction Workshop
Alison Rollins
R 1:20pm-3:15pm White 6108
Prereqs: ENGL 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, or graduate/professional standing. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 307, 408, 409, 410, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)
Enrollment preference to declared English majors through the end of Junior registration.

Course Catalog Description: Explores a variety of non-fictional prose writing forms including (at the instructor’s discretion) personal essay, memoir, travel writing, opinion pieces, investigative journalism, public science writing, and natural history writing. Covers theory and technique, reading the work of established writers and some short writing exercises. Focuses on student writing, both in the classroom and in individual conferences.

408.001: Creative Writing: Fiction Workshop
Ron Kuka
R 5:40pm-7:35pm White 6108
Prereqs: ENGL 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, or graduate/professional standing. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 307, 407, 409, 410, 411, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)
Enrollment preference to declared English majors through the end of Junior registration.

408.002: Creative Writing: Fiction Workshop
Dantiel Moniz
T 2:30pm-4:25pm White 7109
Prereqs: ENGL 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, or graduate/professional standing. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 307, 407, 409, 410, 411, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)
Enrollment preference to declared English majors through the end of Junior registration.

Course Catalog Description: Writing literary fiction.

409.001: Creative Writing: Poetry Workshop
Erika Meitner
M 11:00am-12:55pm White 7109
Prereqs: ENGL 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, or graduate/professional standing. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 307, 407, 408, 410, 411, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)
Enrollment preference to declared English majors through the end of Junior registration.

This poetry workshop is for students who have taken ENGL 207 or 307, have a specific interest in writing poetry, and are open to receiving feedback on their poems. Class will focus on workshopping student writing, and students will also read a significant amount of contemporary poetry. Other requirements include: writing new poems weekly, regular class participation, written responses to assigned texts, attendance at public poetry readings, and a short final paper.

409.002: Creative Writing: Poetry Workshop
TBA
F 11:00am-12:55pm White 7109
Prereq: ENGL 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, or graduate/professional standing. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 307, 407, 408, 410, 411, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)
Enrollment preference to declared English majors through the end of Junior registration.

Course Catalog Description: Writing literary poetry.

410: Creative Writing: Playwriting Workshop
Jennifer Plants
M 1:30pm-3:25pm White 7105
Prereqs: English 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, or graduate/professional standing. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 307, 407, 408, 409, 411, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)
Enrollment preference to declared English majors through the end of Junior registration.

Course Guide Description: Explores the art and craft of writing for the stage. Examines strategies that writers can use to tell stories and communicate ideas both theatrically and dramatically. Covers theory and technique, reading the work of established writers and some short writing exercises. Focuses on student writing, both in the classroom and in individual conferences.

412: Bad Grammar and Metalinguistic Awareness
Anja Wanner
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

In this mixed undergrad/grad class we will explore the vexed relationship between descriptive and prescriptive grammar. While the field of linguistics has long rejected prescriptive approaches to grammar writing as irrelevant and damaging, the broader culture is fascinated with such accounts (e.g., the “correct” use of prepositions). We will discuss different forms of prescriptivism and the harm such approaches can cause. Central to the discussion will be case studies of constructions often criticized by prescriptivists, including so-called ‘split infinitives,’ the use of ‘less’ vs. ‘fewer,’ and sentences ending on a preposition.

415: Introduction to TESOL Methods
Joseph Nosek
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm Van Hise 475
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Thinking about teaching ESL or English abroad in the future? English 415 is an introduction to the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. The course explores the contexts in which English is taught, and the methods and materials used to teach it. We explore how people learn languages and research-backed strategies for effective language teaching. You will observe ESL classes and tutor a language learner throughout the semester. Eng 415 will provide you with foundational knowledge in language teaching and some of the essential skills and practical insights to succeed as English language instructors across diverse teaching contexts. This course also serves as the introductory course for the 15-credit TESOL Certificate.

420.001: Topics in English Language and Linguistics
Topic: Experimental Linguistics
Jacee Cho
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Sterling 3425
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

This course provides an introduction to conducting linguistic experiments to address theoretical questions in the study of syntax. We will discuss how to design linguistic experiments, collect and analyze data, and make generalizations beyond the data you have collected. This is a hands-on course which requires your active participation. By the end of this course, you will have the knowledge and skills necessary to do your own linguistic experiments to explore theoretical issues in linguistics.

422.001: Outstanding Figure(s) in Literature before 1800
Topic: Phillis Wheatley
Monique Allewaert
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Vleck B309
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Course Catalog Description: Study of major figure or figures in literature written before 1800.

423: Topic in Medieval Literature and Culture
Topic: Medieval Senses
Jordan Zweck
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Vleck B309
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Medieval Studies

How does medieval literature represent sounds, noise, and silence? How can we listen to sounds from the past, especially before the invention of sound recording technologies? Is it even possible to “know” what the past sounds like? In this course we will examine the representation of the medieval senses, but especially sound, in literary texts in medieval England. No previous experience with premodern literature, music, or sound studies is required.

427: Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Martin Foys
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Van Vleck B313
Cross-Listed with Medieval Studies
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Study of the most famous and influential medieval English poet through his best-known work and its playful, profound and at times problematic responses to some of the most pressing literary, social, political, and spiritual issues of his time. Chaucer’s writings are some of the funniest, raunchiest, most socially scathing and radically experimental literature ever written in English. You would be surprised. You will be surprised. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is also one of the best literary bridges we have to understand how and why our modern world remains vitally connected to its own medieval past. Through a slow and careful reading and discussion that allows us to take our time with each work we study, the literary, cultural and political issues important to Chaucer will be revealed, as will his medieval wit, humor, and literary avant-gardism– along with a few seriously NSFW passages. We’ll also explore how Chaucer became a literary superstar (complete with his own fan fiction) after he died, and screen the modern film A Knight’s Tale (2001), to figure out why Chaucer, surprisingly and alarmingly, shows up as a wandering and naked gambling addict. Readings will be in modernized Middle English – but no prior experience with the language is required (it’s easier than you think – and will also teach you a lot about modern English along the way!).

431.001: Early Works of Shakespeare
Topic: Shakespeare’s Generic Passions
Joseph Bowling
MW 4:00pm-5:15pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

In this course we will draw from affect theory and Marxist literary theory to study Shakespeare’s early comedies, histories, and tragedies, approaching genre as the patterning into literary form what Marxist literary scholar Raymond Williams names “structures of feeling.” We will consider how Shakespeare locates in each genre a motivating affective drive: comic need, historic craving, and tragic desire.

431.002: Early Works of Shakespeare
Elizabeth Bearden
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm white 4208
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Course Catalog Description: Study of four Shakespeare plays through 1600, with the reading of several others.

453: Topic in British Literature and Culture since 1900
Topic: Backgrounds to Modernism
Richard Begam
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Van Vleck B309
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

This course charts the intersection between the broad cultural phenomenon we call modernity and the narrower literary and aesthetic phenomenon we call modernism. Drawing on work in philosophy, psychology, ethics and aesthetics, we will examine how a number of the central texts of modernist literature grappled with a number of the defining issues of twentieth-century thought. Among the ideas we shall consider are the “transvaluation of all values” (the reassessment of altruism and morality), the critique of modern forms of social association (anomie and alienation), and the redefinition of truth and knowledge (perspectivism and constructivism)

460: Black and Latinx in Literature and Visual Culture
Theresa Delgadillo
TR 9:30am-10:45am Van Vleck B231
Cross-Listed with Chican@ & Latin@ Studies
Prereqs: Declared in Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies (major or certificate) or English major, and sophomore standing

This course puts together two terms often thought in opposition to or exclusion of each other — Black and Latinx. However, Black Latinx and Afro-Latin American literature, culture, and arts form an integral part of the Americas. We will explore Black Latinidades in the U.S. through the study of literature and film, as well as readings in theory/philosophy, history, cultural studies, and visual studies. We will spend some time on the hemispheric dimensions of Black Latinidades as well, with some readings in translation. Assignments will include active discussion and participation in every class, an in-class presentation, biweekly one-page response papers, two short essays, an in-class presentation and a midterm and final exam. Literature we will read includes texts by Elizabeth Acevedo, Daniel Alarcón, Junot Diaz, Sandra Cisneros, Evelio Grillo, and Gayl Jones. We will also view two films.

461.001: Topics in Ethnic & Multicultural Literature
Topic: Figuring Out Social Change
Ingrid Diran
TR 9:30am-10:45am Van Vleck B313
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

In this course, we ask how various writers and critics have creatively refigured the terms of social problems so as to creatively configure their solutions. By focusing on the notion of relational arrangements, we ask how the form of a critique shapes the problems it can (or cannot) address. We spend considerable time exploring how arrangements can be visualized or otherwise made tangible for the sake both of understanding and reimagining them. Consequently, this course involves conceptual mapping and visual analysis, although no prior artistic experience is expected.

461.002: Topics in Ethnic & Multicultural Literature
Topic: Early African American Literature
Russ Castronovo
MW 8:00am-9:15am Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

English 461 (Early African American Literature) examines narratives, novels, poetry, and pamphlets by Black writers from the 1800s to the early 20th century, including Frederick Douglass, David Walker, Harriet Wilson, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Pauline Hopkins, Sutton Griggs, Charles Chesnutt, and Claude McKay.

462: Topic in Asian American Literature
Topic: Asian American Graphic Novels and Comics
Timothy Yu
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Education L185
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Asian American Studies

The past two decades have seen an explosion of comics, graphic novels, and graphic memoirs from Asian American creators. We’ll survey this growing body of work, beginning with the question of what comics and graphic novels are and how they differ from other forms of art and literature. We’ll then examine the distinctive contributions Asian Americans are making to the form, considering how Asian Americans use the medium of comics to narrate history, respond to stereotypes, and tell new stories.

477: Diaspora and Theatre
Aparna Dharwadker
TR 11:00am-12:15pm White 4208
Cross-Listed with Theatre
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

This course deals with the drama and theatre of African, Caribbean, Asian, and Chicanx immigrant communities in Britain, the United States, and Canada. Our focus is on the special challenges faced by drama and theatre as diasporic forms, and the generative conditions of writing, performance, and reception that make them possible.

500 level courses

508: Creative Writing: Advanced Fiction Workshop
Dantiel Moniz
M 11:00am-12:55pm White 6108
Prereqs: ENGL 408 or graduate/professional standing. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 307, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, 469, 509, or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)
Enrollment preference to declared English majors through the end of Junior registration.

Though similar to English 408, this class goes into greater detail to help students with experience in fiction writing refine their skills with readings and lectures that address in detail narrative arch, scene development, realistic dialogue, experimental form, etc. Reading and discussions will vary somewhat depending upon the instructor. This is a “workshop,” so students will be expected to complete weekly writing assignments as well as (at a minimum) two complete short stories. They will also be expected to comment on the work of their classmates and participate in class discussions. Classes are small, typically under 15 students.

515: Techniques & Materials for TESOL
Karen Best
TR 9:30am-10:45am White 6144
Prereqs: ENGL 415

Course Guide Description: Supervised practice in the use of current techniques and materials in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages, including peer and community teaching with videotaped sessions.

520: Old English
Martin Foys
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Medieval Studies
Accelerated Honors (!)
(Mixed UG/Grad)

Old English is the earliest form of English – over 1,000 years old, it is the language of Beowulf and Grendel, of saints and sinners, of farmers, seafarers, and a surprising number of animals and objects that can talk. It is a language that is uncannily strange, alien, yet at the same time the backbone, the muscle, of modern English. This course will teach you an awful lot about the language we use every day: in the first half of the semester, we will study basic pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, with short translation exercises due in most class meetings; in the second half, we will put the skills you’ve learned to work, reading Old English texts and poems in the original — a rare opportunity. Because this is a principally a language class, no research papers will be required. Instead, there will be translation exercises, quizzes, a midterm exam, and final translation projects. No previous experience required, though some familiarity with studying another language at any level can be helpful.

533: Topic in Literature and the Environment
Topic: ECOPOETRY in the Anthropocene
Heather Swan
W 2:30pm-5:00pm Van Vleck B231
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Environmental Studies

Students in this class will explore how poets interrogate the concept of “nature” in the Anthropocene and explore representations of nonhumans and interconnection as well as of environmental destruction (climate change, resource depletion, extinction, and toxicity). Attention will be paid to the ways in which different identities affect our relationships with the natural world due to cultural, geographical, and historical situatedness.

543: Discourses of Disability, Antiquity to 1800
Elizabeth Bearden
R 4:00pm-6:30pm White 4208
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Course Guide Description: Concepts of physical disability from antiquity to the Renaissance. Literary theory, philosophy, and history will help frame thinking about how disability is produced. Along with considering how canonical texts represent disabled figures, class will investigate the generic, social, and spatial contexts from which these representations arise.

600 level courses

651: Special Topics in Theatre and Performance Studies Research
Topic: Contemporary Feminist Theatre and Criticism
Michael Peterson
TR 9:30am-10:45am Humanities 6321
Prereqs: Junior standing
Meets With: GWS 415 and Theatre 415

In theatre and performance, we can study how gender and sexuality are embodied — constructed, contested, and revised — through the actions of real bodies. Feminist playwrights, performers, and critics engage in a multitude of ways with the intersections of gender, sexuality, race and class, and our plays and critical texts range across contemporary culture and identity. This class is about the power–and pleasure–generated by feminist work in theatre and performance: feminist criticism, feminist theorizing, feminist practice.

Spring 2024-25 Course Descriptions

100 level courses

100: Intro to College Composition
TA taught courses
Times & Places Vary
Prereq: Students required to take the MSN ESLAT cannot enroll until the ESL 118 requirement is satisfied

120: Introduction to Theatre & Drama Literature
Jen Plants
MW 11:00-11:50am Microbial Sci Bldg 1220
Discussion Section Times Vary
Cross-Listed with Theatre & Drama

English/Theatre and Drama 120 is a face-to-face 3-credit course. We read plays, attend performances, and think, talk, and write about play scripts and performances. This course’s activities include reading important plays, attending stage productions, and writing and thinking critically about theatre and drama. Emphasis is placed on developing analytic skills in dramatic literature and theatre production.

144: Women’s Writing
Topic: Women’s Writing Beyond Boundaries
Kate Merz
MW 2:25-3:15pm Soc Sci 6210
Discussion Section Times Vary
Cross-Listed with Gender & Womens Studies

How have women writers challenged the bounds of gender to tackle deeply human questions? How do they rethink other categories in the process—such as race, faith, or sexuality—and even what it means to be human? When are boundaries limiting, and when might they be empowering? What does it mean to be an outsider, to cross a border, to break a taboo, or to be haunted?

150: Literature & Culture of Asian America
Timothy Yu
TR 11:00-11:50am Humanities 2340
Discussion Section Times Vary
Cross-Listed with Asian American Studies

Since the 19th century, “America” has often been defined by its relationship with “Asia,” through cultural influence, immigration, imperialism, and war. This course traces the role of Asia and Asians in American literature and culture, from the Chinese and Japanese cultural influences that helped shape literary modernism to the rise of a distinctive culture produced by Asian immigrants to America and their descendants.

153.001: Literature and the Environment
Topic: Representing Nature
Heather Swan
MW 1:20-2:10pm Humanities 3650
Discussion Section Times Vary
Cross-Listed with Environmental Studies

During this course, “Literature and the Environment,” you will practice identifying and analyzing the ways in which writers have represented “nature” and the environment in works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and film. The course will be divided up into three units of inquiry on the following topics: 1) Wilderness and Resource Depletion, 2) Human/Nonhuman Relationships in the Age of Extinction, and 3) Resilience in the Anthropocene. At the outset of the course, we will be introduced to some more traditional concepts of nature, the romantic sublime, the wild, etc. in order to interrogate their evolving meanings in this contemporary moment. We will also examine the ways in which these ideas intersect with issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and social and economic mobility. Lecture, discussion, writing assignments, and experiential projects will all be important components of the class.

153.002: Literature and the Environment
Topic: Introduction to Environmental Humanities
Sarah Ensor
TR 2:30-3:45pm Van Vleck B231
Cross-Listed with Environmental Studies

In the face of the very real challenges facing our planet, why read literature, make art, watch film, or study history? This course is built on the premise that, far from being a distraction from (or simply a form of pleasure amidst) environmental degradation, such practices can, in fact, enable us to be more attentive, imaginative, ethical, and effective environmental stewards and activists.

Over the course of the semester, we’ll consider the habits of attention that various written, artistic, and conceptual modes demand – and consider how engaging carefully with work in these genres can help us think of environmental crisis anew. Along the way, we will find ourselves asking questions like the following: How might turning to the humanities not only offer us new answers to the questions that various environmental challenges pose, but also alter the terms in which we define such questions and challenges themselves? How can the seeming indirectness of literature (its tendency, say, to speak in symbol or metaphor) help us rethink our belief that successful activism is necessarily “direct”? How might the pace and scale of literary and historical narrative help attune us to environmental problems that unfold slowly, beneath notice, or at a geological rate? How can the “human” focus of the “humanities” give us the language with which to articulate the strange intimacies between human bodies, nonhuman others, and the material environments that surround (and constitute) us all? How can insights from various fields in the humanities help us to understand the relationship between environmental activism and various social justice projects – or, more fundamentally, to understand the way in which the human relationship to the environment is so often already itself gendered and racialized?

155: Myth and Literature
Topic: Myth and Modern Literature
Ron Harris
MWF 1:20-2:10pm Education L185

The class will consider Margaret Atwood’s claim:
Strong myths never die. Sometimes they die down, but they don’t die out. In many ways, myths cannot really be translated with any accuracy from their native soil–from their own place and time. We will never know exactly what they meant to their ancient audiences. But myths can be used–as they have been, so frequently–as the foundation stones for new renderings that find their meanings within their own times and places.

In addition to reading Atwood’s Penelopiad, we will read other literary and artistic reworking of classical myth. We will also write and make our own literary and artistic reworking of myth. As Romaire Bearden explained, “art is made from other art.”

Books and Materials
1. Homer, The Odyssey. Trans Emily R Wilson. Norton, ISBN 9780393356250
2. Madeline Miller, Circe. Little Brown, ISBN 9780316556347
3. Margaret Atwood,The Penelopiad. Canongate, ISBN 9781841957982
4. Reserve readings. See Canvas course page
5. Composition Notebook (9 3/4″ x 7 1/2″), 200pp.

156.001: Literature and Medicine
Topic: The Art of Healing
Colin Gillis
T 6:00-8:30pm Education L185

This course introduces the basic skills of literary analysis, examines literature as a source of knowledge about medicine and a catalyst for critical reflection about its organizing concepts and practices, and considers the value of art and beauty in health care. We will also explore how and why literature might serve as a social and psychological resource for patients and healthcare practitioners.

156.002: Literature and Medicine
Topic: “Embodied Writing.”
Caroline Hensley
TR 4:00-5:15pm Van Hise 594

Exploration of literature as both a source of knowledge about medicine and as a catalyst for reflection about medical concepts and practices, including health, illness, dying, and disability. Students will consider ways that literature can serve as a resource for patients and healthcare practitioners.

169.001: Modern American Literature
Topic: TBA
Anja Jovic-Humphrey
TR 9:55-10:45am Birge 145
Discussion Section Times Vary

Course Catalog Description: An introduction to selected fiction, prose, drama and poetry written by Americans from the early twentieth century to the present day.

169.002: Modern American Literature
Topic: Contemporary Poetry
Sarah Wood
MW 2:30-3:45pm Van Vleck B223

In this course we will explore selections and full books of poetry by various contemporary poets. We will consider the topics and approaches they take. The course will provide an overview of poetic elements, so no experience with poetry is required. In my experience, many students enjoy poetry but have not had an opportunity to study it or learn much about it. This course will provide that chance as you read entire books by wonderful poets. We will read: Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, Claudia Emerson’s Secure the Shadow, Danez Smith’s Don’t Call Us Dead, among others. The course will be a participation heavy, discussion-based seminar with an ongoing reading notebook assignment and creative final project.

173.001: Ethnic and Multicultural Literature
Topic: Storytellers of Midwestern Ethnic Experience
Walton Mulom Muyumba-Nkongola
TR 2:30-3:45pm Van Hise 495

Course Catalog Description: Introduction to literature that reflects the writing and experience of minority and ethnic groups. Texts will focus on a theme or problem.

173.002: Ethnic and Multicultural Literature
Topic: Literature in the Age of Hip-Hop
Nate Marshall
MW 2:30-3:45pm Van Vleck B139

This course will consider literature that is shaped by and documenting the cultural forms and aesthetic traditions of hip-hop. We will consider how hip-hop cultural practices and artistic outputs have influenced and been influenced by contemporary literature, especially from the 1990s to the present.

174.001: Literature and Social Justice
Topic: Staging Environmental Justice
Jennifer Plants
MW 2:30-3:45pm Van Vleck B115

From toxic drinking water and floods to rising temperatures and raging wildfires, environmental risks rarely come with a choice to opt out. This course will focus on how theatre and performance are used as tools in the struggle for environmental justice. What can we learn from Shakespeare and Lin-Manuel Miranda when we examine how their work relates to the natural world? Can a play about Hurricane Katrina do anything to protect those vulnerable to flooding in the future? Can you write a play about climate change or is it too big for the scale of the stage? Course texts will include plays, multi-media performances, and environmental criticism, supplemented by guest artists and mini-field trips.

174.002: Literature and Social Justice
Topic: Literatures of Decolonization
Kirk Sides
TR 9:30-10:45am Vilas 4008

This course is a literary and cultural introduction to decolonization, the process by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country. The course ranges chronologically across much of the twentieth century up to the present and geographically from the Caribbean to South Asia. We will look at a variety of texts and movies, including documentaries, and ask questions about media, art, and history in relation to the political and social forces surrounding moments of decolonization. We will also explore expressions of cultural nationalism, ideas of racial and ethnic solidarities, migration, freedom, as well as some of the current debates around institutional decolonization, including within higher education.

174.003: Literature and Social Justice
Topic: Black Life Narratives
Laila Amine
M 4:15-6:45pm Ingraham 120

Through the examination of contemporary black life narratives, this course provides an understanding of the multi-faceted genre of life writing, which includes the personal essay, the autobiography, the memoir, and the travelogue. We will read some of the most significant twentieth century authors, such as James Baldwin, Natasha Trethewey, and James McBride as well as exciting new voices, such as Amandine Gay and Trevor Noah. A second goal of the class is to interpret the significance of race in life writing by deploying various literary lenses and theories. After learning fundamentals on various genres of black life narratives, you will explore life writing through its intersection with new media platforms, literary traditions, social movements, and other research interests you have.

174.004: Literature and Social Justice
Topic: Literature, Work, and American Identity
Seth Umbaugh
MWF 11:00-11:50am Van Hise 394

This course explores how work and literary representations of work have shaped conceptions of American identity in the United States throughout the last century. Topics for consideration will be work and racial formation, work and gender identity, and the evolution of ideas about workers’ rights in a shifting workplace landscape.

175.001: Literature and the Other Disciplines
Topic: Audiotopia: Reading Race and Music
Yanie Fecu
MW 2:30-3:45pm Van Vleck B231

This course is an introduction to global black literature and music that focuses on links between the U.S. and the Caribbean. From Beyoncé and Jamaica Kincaid to Kanye West and Elizabeth Acevedo, students will analyze novels, poetry, music videos, films, and documentaries alongside different musical traditions. The seminar will highlight key historical moments like the Harlem Renaissance as well as more recent events, like rapper Kendrick Lamar’s historic Pulitzer Prize win. We will consider questions such as:

How can literature and music capture the lived experience of marginalized people?
How do authors explore the social and political impact of black music?
How can we understand the relationship between fans and musical artists?

Ultimately, this class will enable students to think critically and recognize the diversity of African diasporic experience.

175.002: Literature and the Other Disciplines
Topic: Laboring for Revolution: Introduction to Karl Marx
Joseph Bowling
MW 4:00-5:15pm Van Hise 587

Beginning with Ling Ma’s novel Severance and ending with William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, this class will explore how Karl Marx’s critique of political economy and materialist conception of history offers ways of reading and studying literature against the compounding crises—political, economic, and ecological—of our late capitalist present.

176.001: Topics in Literature and Film
Topic: Black Literature on Film
Raquel Kennon
TR 11:00-12:15pm Van Vleck B115

What does watching Black literature on film offer us? How does the medium affect how we consume stories about African American life? This course explores classic 19th and 20th century African American literature that has been adapted into film and visual culture. How do literary and visual texts complement and contest each other in their attempt to capture the complexities of African American life in the U.S.? Students will study canonical works of the African American literary tradition (novels and drama) and major motion picture adaptations, documentaries, archival footage, and popular culture and gain tools to read, view, and critically evaluate written and visual artistic expression. The selected texts in this course compel us to think about the possibilities and limitations of literary and cinematic depictions of Black life, and specifically how race, representation, power, and history are encoded in words and images. The course also considers how storytelling, setting, character, thematic structure, and narrative develop in these works. Course materials may include the work of Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, Simone Leigh, Glenn Ligon, Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk, Nella Larsen’s Passing, Richard Wright’s Native Son, August Wilson’s Fences, and Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust.

176.002: Topics in Literature and Film
Topic: Visual Storytelling
Amanda Shubert
TR 4:00-5:15pm Humanities 1131

How do pictures tell stories? How do stories make us see pictures in our mind? How do films weave narratives that combine words and images? In this course, we will ask these questions together of a variety of works of art that tell stories visually—from comic books and novels to films and video games. Readings will be drawn from authors such as Marjane Satrapi, Alison Bechdel, and H.G. Wells, and films from directors including Barry Jenkins and Chris Marker.

177.001: Literature and Popular Culture
Topic: Archival Information & Artificial Intelligence
Josh Calhoun
TR 9:55-10:45am Humanities 2340
Discussion Section Times Vary

This course is designed to give students a chance to productively confront their frustrations with information overload and to think about how to effectively navigate a range of information sources. We are drowning in data, and it can sometimes feel like our own voices our own ways of synthesizing information and sharing knowledge are becoming irrelevant. One key component of this course is that, by the end of the semester, each student will develop a forward-facing, individualized personal knowledge management plan that they can use to gather information and inspire insight during college and beyond. Please note that attendance is mandatory is weighs heavily toward the course grade.

177.002: Literature and Popular Culture
Topic: Narco-Narratives in the Americas
Oscar Useche
MWF 9:55-10:45am Humanities 2637

177.004: Literature and Popular Culture
Topic: AI: Reimagining Communication
Frederic Neyrat
MW 8:00-9:15am Humanities 1651

Do you want to know if you’re an AI or a human being? Are you unsure whether social networks are really social? Do you like media studies and films (The Matrix, A.I., Metropolis, Ghost in the Shell, Ex Machina, Her)? This cinema-oriented class on AI and communication is for you (whatever you are).

178.001: Digital Media, Literature, and Culture
Topic: Social Media Writing
Ainehi Edoro
MW 11:00-11:50am Educ Sci 204
Honors Optional (%)
Discussion Section Times Vary

Explore the creative world of digital culture! Why do social media users love emojis? What can cancel culture teach us about emotion and writing? In this course, we’ll explore how TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook shape how we write and communicate. From emojis to memes and photo dumps, we’ll uncover the patterns that make social media a unique form of expression. Expect hands-on experience analyzing trends, creating content, and finding your voice. Got questions? Email me at aedoro@wisc.edu.

179: Introduction to Language and Ideology
Iman Sheydaei
TR 9:30-10:45am EDUC SCI 204

Course Catalog Description: ENG 179 explores myths and ideologies about English language usage in the United States and analyzes the power of language, good and bad, from a linguistic perspective. In doing so, students in this course will see how perceptions toward certain English varieties in the United States are often grounded in socially-constructed biases. This course will also take an anti-racist framework and will show how racist and biased perceptions towards certain American English varieties are linguistically wrong.

182.001: Introduction to Literature for Honors
Topic: Doing Time-Labor-Incarceration in America
Ingrid Diran
TR 2:30-3:45pm Van Vleck B131
Requisite: Declared in Honors program (H)

In the eighteenth century, the phrase “doing time” first came to describe both work and crime as matters of duration. Prison, once understood as the waiting space for public punishment, became the private space of punishment itself, while labor, once understood as a skill or craft, became a timed, waged shift. In this class, we examine how the idea of “doing time” in the U.S. context has shaped and been shaped by ideas of race, gender, nation, ability, and class. Assignments include two essays, periodic response papers, weekly discussion questions, and final presentations.

200 level courses

200: Writing Studio
Emily Hall
W 5:30-7:00pm Chadbourne 126
Requisite: Consent of instructor required

In this workshop-oriented course, designed for students in all disciplines, students receive support and peer mentoring on writing projects for other classes. We’ll give you the tools you need to become a better drafter, reviewer, and reviser of different types of academic writing. It’s important to note that this workshop does not require you to complete additional formal writing assignments; instead, it’s about enhancing your skills for your other courses. It’s also a chance to meet other student writers and form a close community. (We recommend that you enroll in another course that includes writing assignments while taking this course.). Priority for enrollment is given to Chadbourne Residential College students.

201: Intermediate Composition
TA taught courses
Section Times Vary
Requisite: Consent of instructor; Satisfied Communications A requirement and sophomore standing; not open to special students

207: Introduction to Creative Writing
TA taught courses
Section Times Vary
Requisite: First Year, freshman or sophomore standing only

In this course, students are taught the fundamental elements of craft in both fiction (plot, point of view, dialogue, and setting, etc.) and poetry (the image, the line, sound and meter, etc.). This class is taught as a workshop, which means class discussion will focus on both craft (published stories, poems, and essays) and, perhaps more importantly, the fiction and poetry written by each student. That is, the student writing becomes the text, and the instructor leads a sympathetic, but critical, discussion of the particular work at hand. Students should expect to read and comment on two or three published works per week as well as the work of their peers. To enable a collegial and productive class setting, all sections of 207 are capped at seventeen students.
English 207 satisfies a Comm B requirement.

224: Introduction to Poetry
Vinay Dharwadker
TR 1:00-2:15pm Van Hise 394
Requisite: Sophomore Standing; Satisfied Communications A requirement

This course will introduce undergraduate students to poetry on a wide canvas. We will focus our attention on specific poems by 10-12 poets as our primary examples, drawing on work from different historical periods (classical to modern); various genres, styles, and themes (such as love poems, satire, political poetry, metrical writing, free verse, women’s poetry, ecological poetry); different societies and nations (e.g., British, Irish, American); and even several languages (most poems in English, but some in English translation). We will also look at definitions of poetry and understand the basic rules of meter, rhyme, imagery, figurative language, sonnets, etc. Our readings will range from Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, and W. H. Auden to Li Bo (Chinese), Louise Labe (French), Elizabeth Bishop, and Naomi Shihab Nye. Assignments will include two class quizzes and two medium-length papers.

241: Literature and Culture 1: to the 18th Century
Joseph Bowling
MW 9:55-10:45am Humanities 2650
Discussion Section Times Vary
Requisite: Sophomore standing
Not open to students who took ENGL 215 prior to Fall 2014

What is a person, a home, a nation, a world? What we now call “English literature” begins with these questions, imagining a cosmos filled with gods and heroes, liars and thieves, angels and demons, dragons and dungeons, whores and witches, drunken stupor and religious ecstasy. Authors crafted answers to these questions using technologies of writing from parchment to the printing press, and genres old and new. In our study of literary traditions from the early Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, we will reflect on the meanings and uses of the literary. Along the way, we will practice the skills of critical reading and writing that are essential to majors and non-majors alike.

242: Literature and Culture II: from the 18th Century to the Present
TBA
MW 11:00-11:50am Soc Sci 5208
Discussion Section Times Vary
Requisite: Sophomore standing
Not open to students who took ENGL 216 prior to Fall 2014

245.002: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Writing Money
Eileen Lagman
W 2:30-3:45pm White 7109/Online
Requisite: Sophomore standing
Hybrid Course
Honors Optional (%)

The purpose of this course is to understand the intersections of writing and money—or more specifically how writing systems and economic systems work together in everyday life. We’ll examine both how writing and writers have participated in systems of commercial exchange as well as how money shapes the value, contexts, and exigencies for writing. If we accept the narrative that modern society has moved from an industrial economy to an information economy or even an attention economy, what does that mean for writers? What is writing for? How is it valued? How do economics systems determine what is “good” writing? What writing skills are needed for economic success? And what does it mean to write for money? We’ll read texts from across different disciplines, including economics, sociology, literacy studies, rhetorical theory, and political science, and address issues such as: authorship and ownership, open source writing, writing as labor, and media peer production and information sharing. Student projects will include an analysis essay, a local research project, and a multi-genre project on “writing for money.”

245.003: Seminar in the Major
Topic: The Interracial Romance
Laila Amine
MW 2:30-3:45pm White 6110
Requisite: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)

Why was the interracial romance a popular theme in American literature and cinema even during the period in which no African American and white individuals could legally marry in most states? Why does the black and white romance remain a fascination? The course will look for answers by examining multiple facets of the interracial romance from the 1920s to the present. We’ll re-enter the court rooms of the Rhinelander and Loving cases and revisit other historical landmarks. Equipped with legal and historical perspectives, we will consider how authors deploy the interracial theme to address larger concerns about freedom, equality, and collective identity. We’ll read classic stories by African American authors Nella Larsen, Dorothy West, James Baldwin, as well as more recent works. We’ll also discuss films like Pinky, A Bronx Tale, and Mississippi Masala.

245.004: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Plot & Plantation: Materials of Resistance in Novel
Kristina Huang
W 6:00-8:30pm Education 345
Requisite: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)

In the English-speaking world during the eighteenth century, enslaved people’s access to the tools of reading and writing were surveilled and made punishable by their captors. How does this contextualize the ways contemporary readers and writers study representations and testimonies of the enslaved in early English literature? Who read and interpreted these images and narratives in the eighteenth century? How do contemporary artists counter-write and/or break from representations violently structured by colonialism, imperialism, and racism? We will study literature at the intersection of contemporary art, literature, and history.

245.005: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Crossing the Apocalypse: Cinema and the End of the World
Frederic Neyrat
R 2:30-5:00pm Humanities 2261
Requisite: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)

We’ll explore the functions of cinema in an age of planetary warfare, environmental disaster, and deep psychological turmoil. Films studied: F. F. Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, P. Finn’s Smile, C. Marker’s La Jetée, etc. Texts studied: C. Colebrook’s Who Would You Kill to Save the World? S. Freud’s “Psycho-analytic Notes,” etc.

246: Literature by American Indian Women
Susan Dominguez
MW 12:00-12:50pm Ingraham 120
Cross-Listed with American Indian Studies

This course presents a broad range of literatures from diverse Native traditions and eras. Students are introduced to written literatures of indigenous women of native North America. Students will hear, read and engage Indigenous voices from antiquity to historical periods to today’s popular writers. Genres include poetry, autobiography, and three award-winning novels: Five Little Indians, People of the Whale and Fire Keeper’s Daughter. In addition to literature, students will read historical documents, view select films, as well as conduct and share individual and group research–articulated both orally in class and through written assignments.

248.001: Women in Ethnic American Literature
Leslie Bow
Online Asynchronous
Requisite: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Gender and Women Studies. Open to English and GWS majors.
This is a modular section during intersession that meets December 30, 2024 thru January 19, 2025 (Session Code XCC, 3 weeks of instruction)

Women in Ethnic American Literature explores the intersections among race, ethnicity, gender, class, nationality, and sexuality in fiction, poetry, memoir, and visual texts by Asian American, American Indian, Latina, Black, and multiracial woman-identified individuals in the U.S. The course is structured thematically around overlapping social issues within a cross-cultural framework, focusing on four themes in particular: racial authenticity and ethnic belonging; coming of age and externalizing the gender role; activism and radical consciousness; and disembodied racial meaning. One of our goals will be to understand the ways in which girls and self-identified women from diverse backgrounds negotiate competing affiliations and loyalties amid differing notions of home, place, and community. We will pay particular attention to issues of childhood, narrative voice, and sexual awareness. The course reader includes work by Pat Parker, Cherríe Moraga, Rebecca Roanhorse, Alice Walker, Janice Gould, Toni Cade Bambara, Hisaye Yamamoto, Inés Hernandez Tovar, Chrystos, and Toni Morrison among others, with secondary reading by Immanuel Wallerstein, Hazel Carby, Sunaina Maira, and bell hooks.

NOTE: This is an intensive, online course to be completed during the intersession of winter break. It is designed to be self-directed. Students should be prepared to complete all reading and course assignments on time; twice daily posts are required in lieu of in-person class meetings. Each of the 15 days (modules) represents a week of a traditional semester. Internet access for twice daily posting as well as one group and one individual Zoom meeting are required.

Books to purchase prior to the first day of class:

The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog
Skim, Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
Bitter in the Mouth, Monique Truong
Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre, Lois Ann Yamanaka [also available on Canvas]
Reader on Canvas

Requirements: Daily posting and replying; 2 papers; 1 exam; 2 zoom meetings

248.002: Women in Ethnic American Literature
Anja Jovic-Humphrey
Online
Requisite: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Gender and Women Studies
This is a modular section during intersession that meets December 30, 2024 thru January 19, 2025 (Session Code XCC, 3 weeks of instruction)

Course Catalog Description: American literature by and about women, written by authors from ethnic groups.

300 level courses

307: Creative Writing: Fiction & Poetry Workshop
Instructors and Section Times Vary
Requisites: Junior standing or ENGL 207. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 407, 408, 409, 410, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Satisfies a Comm B requirement
Satisfies a workshop requirement for the emphasis in creative writing
Accelerated Honors (!)

314: Structure of English
Anja Wanner
TR 9:30-10:45am White 7105
Requisite: Sophomore standing

Here’s your chance to learn about English grammar from the perspective of a linguist. Grammar is not a corset, but a system of internalized rules that enables us to interpret sequences of words as sentences. We’ll make those rules visible, learning syntactic vocab on the way and comparing the grammar of different text types.

318: Second Language Acquisition
Juliet Huynh
MWF 9:55-10:45am Education L185
Requisite: Sophomore standing

319: Language, Race, and Identity
Tom Purnell
Online, asynchronous
Requisite: Sophomore standing
This is a modular section that meets December 30, 2024 thru January 19, 2025
(Session Code XCC, 3 weeks of instruction)
[English Language and Linguistics] (Mixed Grad/Undergrad)

English 319 explores the relationship between language and racial identity in the US. The course draws on research from multiple fields to highlight the connections between language, culture, and genetics. Essential questions include: how is language related to race through biology and culture? How do language rules limit the expression of racial identity? How do speakers of ethnically-affiliated dialects signal their locality?

320: Linguistic Theory and Child Language
Jacee Cho
TR 11:00-12:15pm Humanities 2637
Requisite: Sophomore standing
*Students who have taken English 420 Universal Grammar and Child Language Acquisition prior to Spring 2020 may not enroll in this course.

This course provides an introduction to the linguistic study of child language within the generative theory. According to this theory, humans are born with genetically determined linguistic knowledge called Universal Grammar, which guides children in learning language. Students will learn basic concepts of the generative theory and learn to apply them to the study of child language.

328: The Sixteenth Century
Elizabeth Bearden
TR 2:30-3:45pm White 4275
Requisite: Sophomore standing

Course catalog Description: Literature and culture of Britain in the sixteenth century.

334: Eighteenth Century Literature and Culture
Kristina Huang
MW 2:30-3:45pm Microbial Sci Bldg 1510
Requisite: Sophomore standing

This course focuses on Black life in London and the wider English-speaking, eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Through the letters of Ignatius Sancho – an African diasporic writer and literary celebrity in the late eighteenth century – we will focus on the creative, everyday lives of people living in the wake of imperial wars, colonialism, and commercial capitalism. We’ll examine epistolary writings, poetry, prose, and novels that center people who imagined living otherwise, beyond the economic and racialized “realities” imposed on their everyday lives.

335: Stage and Page in the Long Eighteenth Century
Aparna Dharwadker
TR 11:00-12:15pm White 4208
Requisite: Sophomore standing

In university classrooms, British theatre of the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries is routinely overshadowed by the Shakespearean period (circa 1590-1630) and the ever-expanding field of modern drama/theatre (1870 to the present). But King Charles II’s restoration to the English throne in 1660, after nearly two decades of civil war and revolution, was an event that also restored public theatres in London after an eighteen-year disruption, and began a complex new period in British theatre history. This course will use a selection of plays from the 1660-1750 period to chart the interlinked trajectories of Restoration and eighteenth-century drama, theatre, politics, and culture. Our principal focus will be on the genres of satiric sex comedy, tragicomedy, the history play, sentimental comedy, “irregular” drama, and bourgeois tragedy. The discussion of the plays will draw on relevant theatrical and historical contexts, and also include audio-visual materials.

350.001: Special Topics in Gender & Literature
Topic: Trans and Nonbinary Lit/Culture
Jess Waggoner
TR 1:00-2:15pm Sterling 1333
Requisites: GEN&WS 101, 102, 103, or GEN&WS/SOC 200
Cross-Listed with Gender & Women’s Studies

This course explores concepts in trans/nonbinary literature and culture, with attention to trans cultural production as a worldmaking practice. Themes include foundational texts by Sandy Stone and Susan Stryker, the gender binary as a tool of colonial domination, trans activist histories, trans disability studies, and trans of color critique.

351: Modernist Novel
Richard Begam
TR 11:00-12:15pm Soc Sci 6232
Requisite: Sophomore standing

This course surveys a selection of twentieth-century fiction from England, Ireland and the British Commonwealth. While background information will be supplied as a means of contextualizing our readings, classes will largely consist of discussion in which we attempt to make sense out of the assigned texts. At the same time, we will seek to understand what is distinctive about the modern and contemporary novel, as we consider how religious influence diminished in the twentieth century, social and moral norms became more fluid and individual freedom and choice increased. We will also explore in broad historical terms how writers inside and outside England reacted to both the British empire and its aftermath. Readings include Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Samuel Beckett’s Molloy, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, J. M. Coetzee’s Foe and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.

373.001: Contemporary Poetry
Sarah Wood
TR 9:30-10:45am Van Vleck B231
Requisite: Sophomore standing

373.002: Contemporary Poetry
Sarah Wood
TR 1:00-2:15pm Van Vleck B215
Requisite: Sophomore standing

375: Literatures of Migration and Diaspora
Aparna Dharwadker
TR 2:30-3:45pm White 4208
Requisite: Sophomore standing

This course focuses on major Anglophone fiction and cinema produced by authors/auteurs who belong originally to a country in the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka), but have emigrated to or grown up in the West (Britain, Canada, and the US). The work of novelists such as Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Rohinton Mistry, Shyam Selvadurai, Monica Ali, and Jhumpa Lahiri, and filmmakers such as Hanif Kureishi, Gurinder Chadha, and Mira Nair has focused an entirely new kind of attention on their respective cultures of origin, while also addressing the experiences of displacement, acculturation, and marginalization that are traditionally associated with migration and exile. This course is concerned, therefore, with the emerging thematics of diaspora literature and film, the relation of geography to language and form, the interrelations between diasporic literary and visual genres, and the instrumental conditions of writing and reception.

400 level courses

400: Advanced Composition
Sara Kelm
TR 1:00-2:15pm Van Vleck B231
Requisite: Satisfied Communications A requirement and junior standing

This class will focus on the use of nonfiction (especially literary and creative nonfiction) rhetorically and ethically for varied audiences. Students will develop advanced writing skills through a range of genres–such as personal essays, profiles, ethnographies, nature/place writing, narrative journalism, audio essays, etc.–with attention to style, context, and conventions. We will read work by contemporary essayists and memoirists (e.g., Roxane Gay, Alison Bechdel, Trevor Noah, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Tina Fey, etc.). Designed for students with a strong interest in writing, as students will write and revise extensively.

401: Race, Sex, and Texts (How to Do Things with Writing)
Morris Young
MW 2:30-3:45pm Noland Hall 119
Cross-listed with Gender & Womens Studies
Requisites: Sophomore standing
(Fulfills the ELL/CR requirement for English Majors)

We often think of writing as a mode and means of creating worlds, exploring questions, and identifying possibilities that shape the human experience. But writing may also construct, define, and limit those worlds, questions, possibilities, and shape experiences in very different ways that may harm, injure, or deny humanity. In this course, we’ll examine “how to do things with writing,” especially in understanding how writing may shape our ideas about race, gender, sexuality, disability, culture, and other categories of identity and their intersections. Focusing on four commonplaces (ideas or concepts that have shaped our cultural discourse), we’ll read broadly to examine how and why bodies, belonging, identity, and language have often been used to argue about who we are, who belongs, and how we imagine community.

Writing Projects will likely include: a shorter essay (5-7 pages), a longer project (10-15 pages), and weekly short texts to use in class.

407: Creative Writing: Nonfiction Workshop
Alison Rollins
T 11:00-12:55pm White 6108
Requisites: Completion of one of the following with a 3.0 or higher: English 207 or 307 taken Fall 2014 or later; or English 203 taken prior to Fall 2014
Students who do not meet the prerequisite may submit a writing sample to the program director on Monday of the last week of classes.
Accelerated Honors (!)

This workshop class will focus on introducing students to creative nonfiction, with an emphasis on memoir and personal essays (not journalism). We will read and discuss examples of creative nonfiction that include perspectives on craft, context, audience, narrative, and more. Students will be expected to write original works of creative nonfiction and share and discuss them with the rest of the class in an open workshop format. Requisites: Completion of one of the following with a 3.0 or higher: English 207 or 307 taken Fall 2014 or later; or English 203 taken prior to Fall 2014. Students who do not meet the prerequisite may submit a writing sample to the program director on Monday of the last week of classes.

408.001: Creative Writing: Fiction Workshop
Rickey Fayne
W 1:20-3:15pm White 6108
Requisites: Completion of one of the following with a 3.0 or higher: English 207 or 307 taken Fall 2014 or later; or English 203 taken prior to Fall 2014
Students who do not meet the prerequisite may submit a writing sample to the program director on Monday of the last week of classes.
Accelerated Honors (!)

Course Catalog Description: Writing literary fiction.

408.003: Creative Writing: Fiction Workshop
Dantiel Moniz
M 11:00-12:55pm White 6108
Requisites: Completion of one of the following with a 3.0 or higher: English 207 or 307 taken Fall 2014 or later; or English 203 taken prior to Fall 2014
Students who do not meet the prerequisite may submit a writing sample to the program director on Monday of the last week of classes.
Accelerated Honors (!)

This course is a workshop in which intermediate undergraduate writers are given the opportunity to write original fiction and see it through the various stages of creation from draft to revision; read and give detailed feedback on the original work of their peers; and study published fiction to determine craft elements they might use in the evolution of their own work. Students are expected to have at least some understanding of craft elements and vocabulary.

409.002: Creative Writing: Poetry Workshop
Amy Barry
M 3:30-5:25pm White 6108
Requisites: ENGL 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, or graduate/professional standing. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 307, 407, 408, 410, 411, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)

Course Catalog Description: ENGL 409, formally known as “Creative Writing: Poetry Workshop,” focuses on the art and craft of poetry writing. It is typically run as a workshop in which discussion focuses on craft issues, assigned published work, and original student poetry.

409.003: Creative Writing: Poetry Workshop
Alison Rollins
W 1:20-3:15pm White 7105
Requisites: ENGL 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, or graduate/professional standing. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 307, 407, 408, 410, 411, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)

In this weekly workshop we’ll read, write, and learn strategies for revising poetry in a variety of 21st-century styles. Each student will be workshopped 3 or 4 times, submitting poems in any style they want. Additionally, students will write brief weekly exercises to develop their skills in each of the poetic styles we’ll explore. Students will submit a final portfolio of revisions at the end of the course.

414.002: Global Spread of English
Tom Purnell
MWF 12:05-12:55pm Humanities 2637
Requisites: Sophomore standing
[English Language and Linguistics] (Mixed Grad/Undergrad)

In English 414, we delve into the worldwide influence of the English language through the lenses of linguistics, social dynamics, and politics. Through critical analysis, we seek to address probing questions such as the means and motives behind the proliferation of English, the matter of language ownership, and the repercussions for indigenous languages. Moreover, we explore the significance of English in the dissemination of American culture and the Internet.

415: Introduction to TESOL Methods
Joseph Nosek
TR 1:00-2:15pm White 6144
Requisites: Sophomore standing

420.002: Topics-English Language & Linguistics
Topic: Quantitative Methods for Linguists I
Eric Raimy
MWF 1:20-2:10pm Ingraham 120
Open to students (both undergraduate and graduate) with prior linguistics coursework with instructor approval.
Requisites: Sophomore standing

Survey and introduction to descriptive statistics, visualization, and hypothesis testing for linguistic data with RStudio. Organization, manipulation, classification, and visualization of continuous and discrete data are the main focus. Identifying appropriate statistical approaches to both types of data will be developed. Example data are drawn from phonetics and sociolinguistics. Topics of fundamental statistical methods, null hypothesis significance testing, and others facilitate future acquisition of more sophisticated statistical methods.

434: Milton
Joseph Bowling
TR 9:30-10:45am Van Vleck B215
Cross-listed with Religious Studies
Requisites: Sophomore standing

John Milton is best remembered for creating one of English literature’s most devilishly captivating villains in his biblical epic Paradise Lost, a character who emerged from the contradictions of early modern England. In this class, we will study the poetry and prose of Milton, one whom William Blake suggestively described as “of the devil’s party without knowing it.” We will read Milton through his place in literary and political history and situate him and his work amid the social upheavals that shook the seventeenth century.

444: Topic in Romantic or Victorian Literature and Culture
Topic: India & Victorian Imagination
Amanda Shubert
TR 1:00-2:15pm Humanities 2637
Requisites: Sophomore standing

This course explores representations of British India, or “the Raj,” in Victorian literature, visual culture, and media. How did Victorians imagine India in novels, paintings, photography, and film? How did these portrayals of India and Indian people influence British national and cultural identity? How have Indian writers, artists, and filmmakers challenged British colonialism through their work? From the Victorian novel to the postcolonial novel and from Hollywood to Bollywood, we will study the cultural history of the Raj through the work of British and Indian creators.

461.001: Topic in Ethnic & Multicultural Literature
Topic: Figuring Social Change
Ingrid Diran
TR 11:00-12:15pm Vilas 4008
Requisites: Sophomore standing

In this course, we will ask how various writers and critics from marginalized communities have creatively reimagined the terms of social problems so as to creatively configure their solutions. By focusing on their uses of figuration (images, metaphors, allusions, etc.), we will ask about the role that literary language plays in non-literary works of social theory and critique. We will take also take figuration literally, with course work requiring a fair amount of drawing and mind mapping (no artistic background expected or required!). Some questions we’ll pose include: how does the form that an argument takes determine how the problems being addressed—and their solutions—are imagined? In what ways do authors, thinkers, and activists respond to each other by modifying one another’s key metaphors and images? How can attention to rhetorical devices familiar to us from literature unlock different ways of reading theories and practices of social change (or stasis)?

461.002: Topic in Ethnic & Multicultural Literature
Topic: Zora Neale Hurston
Raquel Kennon
TR 9:30-10:45am Van Vleck B223
Requisites: Sophomore standing

This course explores multidisciplinary works by Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960). Reading across genre and time, we will consider how Hurston chronicles Black life and takes up questions of imagination, invention, humor, self-fashioning, and language. We will also examine how biographies, documentaries, and critical reassessments contribute to our understanding of “cosmic Zora.”

464: Asian American Women Writers
Leslie Bow
M 2:30-5:00pm Grainger 2167
Requisites: Sophomore Standing
Cross-listed with Asian American and Gender & Womens Studies

This course examines contemporary Asian American women’s literature in a discussion based, task-oriented classroom. How do women and women-identified individuals negotiate multiple affiliations, whether ethnic, familial, or national? We will focus on issues such as coming of age, the policing of women’s sexuality, and the formation of collective political consciousness. In addition to looking at works that engage issues of immigration and acculturation in the U.S., we will explore the legacies of colonialism in Asia and the literary portrayal of geopolitics. The course will investigate the ways in which literature can be a forum for interventionist critique of both domestic race relations and international politics. How does literary form—poetry, realist memoir, performance art, or the graphic novel—provide the vehicle for such critique? We will situate literature not as a site for “learning” culture, but for understanding the gendered rhetoric of political movements, Cold War nationalism, racial segregation, sexual disciplining.

Required Books: (purchase editions noted below)

Fifth Chinese Daughter, Jade Snow Wong (U. Washington Press edition, 2020)
Jasmine, Bharati Mukherjee (Grove, 1989)
Bitter in the Mouth, Monique Truong
Dogeaters, Jessica Hagedorn (the novel, NOT the play)
Skim, Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
Scent of the Gods, Fiona Cheong (U. Illinois Press edition, 2010)
Grapefruit, Yoko Ono
Soft Science, Franny Choi

Requirements: Attendance, two papers, exam, in-class presentation

500 level courses

509.002: Advanced Poetry Workshop
Erika Meitner
M 11:00-12:55pm White 7109
Requisites: ENGL 409 or graduate/professional standing. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 307, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, 469, 508 or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)

ENGL 509 is an intensive poetry workshop open to undergraduate students who have taken ENGL 409, or graduate students. Students will write original poetry and see it through drafting and revision to final form; read and give detailed feedback on the work of their peers; and study full collections of published poetry to analyze craft elements for use in original work. Class will also feature author visits and poetry-related field trips. Students will attend poetry readings outside of class, write a book review of a contemporary poetry collection published in the last year, learn about the poetry publishing process via literary journals, and create a chapbook of their work.

515: Techniques & Materials for TESOL
TBA
TR 9:30-10:45am White 6144
Requisites: English 415

Supervised practice in the use of current techniques and materials in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages, including peer and community teaching with videotaped sessions.

516: English Grammar in Use
Anja Wanner
TR 1:00-2:15pm Van Vleck B223
Requisites: ENGL 314 or graduate/professional standing

Course Catalog Description: Functions of English grammar, covering use in a variety of contexts and text types. Involves analysis of spoken and written English across genres and settings.

520: Old English
Topic: Really Old English
Martin Foys
TR 9:30-10:45am Van Vleck B139
Requisites: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Medieval Studies
Accelerated Honors (!)
(Mixed UG/Grad)

This course will teach you an awful lot about the language we use every day: in the first half of the semester, we will study basic pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, with short translation exercises due in most class meetings; in the second half, we will put the skills you’ve learned to work, reading Old English texts and poems in the original — a rare opportunity. Because this is a principally a language class, no research papers will be required. Instead, there will be translation exercises, quizzes, a midterm exam, and final translation projects. No previous experience required, though some familiarity with studying another language at any level can be helpful.

533.001: Topic in Literature and the Environment
Topic: Gender Sexuality & Environment
Sarah Ensor
TR 11:00-12:15pm Van Vleck B231
Requisites: Sophomore standing
Cross-listed with Environmental Studies

When contemporary environmentalism urges us to become planetary stewards, it often does so in fairly familiar (and familial) terms, asking us to “love the planet,” to save “Mother Earth,” to embody the chaste restraint implicit in mottos like “leave no trace or “take only pictures, leave only footprints.” And yet American environmental literature, broadly conceived, is also full of more surprising paradigms of relation: queer forms of love burgeoning in natural spaces, human bodies exposed to — and ultimately consubstantial with — environmental toxins, characters whose primary attachments are to grizzly bears or trees or the lingering ghosts of the dead. Through close readings of such texts’ content and form alike, we will see if we might envision a new approach to environmental care, one inspired by queer and gender theory’s openness to non-normative affects, temporalities, desires, relational patterns, and practices of embodiment.

Likely texts include Jan Zita Grover’s North Enough: AIDS & Other Clear-Cuts, Rick Bass’s The Lives of Rocks, Todd Haynes’s [Safe], Oliver Baez Bendorf’s The Spectral Wilderness, Callum Angus’s A Natural History of Transition, Joshua Whitehead’s Making Love With the Land, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals.

533.002: Topic in Literature and the Environment
Topic: African Literary Ecologies
Kirk Sides
TR 2:30-3:45pm Humanities 2637
Requisites: Sophomore standing
Cross-listed with Environmental Studies

From anti-colonial writers of the early-20th century to Afrofuturist and speculative fiction, we will focus on how land, the environment, and local ecosystems are imagined in writings, films, and arts from the African continent. How has colonialism impacted the ways land is portrayed by African authors? What is the place of the non-human within notions of ecological justice? How are climate change and environmental futures imagined

546: Topic in Travel Writing before 1800
Topic: TBA
Elizabeth Bearden
R 4:00-6:30pm White 4208
Requisites: Sophomore standing

Course Catalog Description: Examination of aspects of travel literature before 1800. It will pay attention to texts written by travelers of many stripes – pilgrims, missionaries, crusaders, counselors, merchants, and dreamers. It will explore how writers narrate relations between the familiar and the strange, the near and far. And it will ask students to consider the relationship of geography to conceptions of personal and collective identity. How do travel writers represent “us” and “them,” “self” and “other”? Who claims space, who characterizes it, and on what grounds?

600 level courses

616: TESOL: Teaching of Reading
TBA
TR 1:00-2:15pm Humanities 2261
Requisites: English 415
This is a modular section that meets January 21, 2025 thru February 16, 2025 (Session ADD, 4 weeks of instruction)

Course Catalog Description: An overview of reading and vocabulary skills and how to teach them.

617: TESOL: Teaching of Writing
TBA
TR 1:00-2:15pm Humanities 2261
Requisites: English 415
This is a modular section that meets February 17, 2025 thru March 23, 2025 (Session EEE, 5 weeks of instruction)

Course Catalog Description: Practical modular workshop on key aspects of language teaching, stressing the application of techniques and theory to classroom needs.

618: TESOL: Teaching Pronunciation
TBA
TR 1:00-2:15pm Humanities 2261
Requisites: English 415
This is a modular section that meets March 31, 2025 thru May 2, 2025 (Session KEE, 5 weeks of instruction)

Course Catalog Description: An overview of the features of English pronunciation and how to teach them.

651.001: Special Topics in Theatre and Performance Studies Research
Topic: US Drama
Michael Peterson
TR 9:30-10:45am White 7111
Requisites: Junior standing

Course Catalog Description: An overview of listening and speaking skills and how to teach them.

651.002: Special Topics in Theatre and Performance Studies Research
Topic: Irish Drama
Mary Trotter
R 2:30-5:00pm White 7109
Requisites: Junior standing

Gender and Sexuality in Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama:
This course explores the ways theatre in Ireland has recorded, addressed and inspired significant changes in perceptions of gender and sexuality in Ireland since 1900. We will consider how particular social and political events, such as the repealing of the law banishing abortion in 2018; the decriminalization of homosexuality in the 1980s, the gender restrictions embedded in the Irish constitution in the 1930s, the movement toward women’s suffrage in the 1910s, and other events have influenced the kinds of theatre work being created in Ireland. We will examine that work’s impact both in Ireland and internationally. We are focusing on Ireland to 1)get a sense of Irish theatre history and its relationship to the construction and perception of the Irish nation-state and, 2) see how Irish performance is in conversation with other feminist and queer theatre movements in other locations and traditions.
We will read at least one or two plays and several critical, historical and/or theoretical essays every week.

Playwrights and artists considered include, Oscar Wilde, Lady Gregory, Constance Markievicz, Teresa Deevy, the Charabanc Theatre Company, Emma Donoghue, Tom Kilroy, Panti Bliss and more!

672: Selected Topics: Afro-American Literature
Topic: Traditions in African American Humor
Brittney Edmonds
M 2:25-5:25pm Engr Hall 1213
Requisites: Junior standing
Cross-listed with Afro-American Studies

This course will rigorously introduce students to works of literary satire in the African American tradition. Because de jure social and political subordination of Black people offered the first contexts for Black literary expression and artistic ambition, Black authors were understandably reluctant to fully embrace satire or to adopt narrative personas and voices that might too closely resemble widely circulated caricatures of Black people as foolish, unlettered, and unserious. This cultural backdrop energized Black artists to reimagine the form and to use satire as not only a source for expressing political critique but also a means for uniquely capturing Black thought and feeling in an antagonistic world. Students will follow the development of African American humor, from its roots in oral traditions in Africa to its convoluted imbrications in blackface minstrelsy to its breakthrough insurgency in 1960s stand-up to its pop cultural manifestations in the stereotypes and stock characters of crossover blockbusters and finally, to the category-defying hijinks of new millennium satire. We will read texts, watch films, and listen to stand-up to fully consider the tremendous output of this rich tradition.