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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

245.002: 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 (!)

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. To enable a collegial and productive class setting, all sections of 307 are capped at 16 students.
English 307 satisfies a workshop requirement for the emphasis in creative writing.
English 307 satisfies a Comm B requirement

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

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.

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

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.

420.002: 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)

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.

533.001: 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.

Fall 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 & Dramatic Literature
Jennifer Plants
MW 12:05pm-12:55pm Psychology 105
Cross-Listed with Theatre and Drama

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

140: Comm B Topics in English Literature
Topic: Literature as Equipment for Living
Anja Jovic-Humphrey
TR 12:00pm-12:50pm Soc Sci 5206

Have you ever heard a song that you haven’t listened to in a long time, but which instantaneously took you back to the time and place when you had heard it before? If you were in the “matrix,” would you choose the blue or the red pill? Do you mostly think in images or words – or both? What is the strangest place where you’ve fallen asleep? How intelligent is AI? Do you feel that you are defined not only by how you see yourself, but also by how you are perceived by others?

In this course, we will read well-known authors and ask philosophical questions about life. We will read stories to become better communicators, more successful job applicants, and better citizens, as well as to gain a better understanding of ourselves, and our communities – and ultimately lead richer, more meaningful, and fulfilling lives.

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: TBA
TBA
MW 11:00am-11:50am Birge 145
Cross-Listed with Gender & Women’s Studies

Course Catalog Description: An introduction to literature in English written by women in various periods and places; specific topics will vary.

153.001: Literature and the Environment
Topic: Calling Planet Earth: Our Planetary Environment
Frederic Neyrat
MW 9:55am-10:45am Humanities 3650
Cross-Listed with Environmental Studies

The goal of this course is to reveal that planet Earth is both a global ecosystem in which nature and technologies are entangled and a cosmological entity belonging to our solar system. Drawing on literature, music, cinema, philosophy, science, and anthropology, this class investigates the crucial issues of our terrestrial condition.

153.002: Literature and the Environment
Topic: Introduction to Environmental Humanities
Sarah Ensor
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Babcock 121
Cross-Listed with Environmental Studies

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 about 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?

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

160: Truth and Crime
Ralph Grunewald
MW 12:05pm-12:55pm Humanities 3650
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.

162: Shakespeare
Joshua Calhoun
TR 11:00am-11:50am Chamberlin 2103

Why Shakespeare? is an entry-level English course designed to introduce students from a variety of social, cultural, and disciplinary backgrounds to Shakespearean literature. Toward this end, the course also questions Shakespeare’s prominence in literature and culture. Is he really that good? Does our ongoing fascination with Shakespeare say more about his writing or about us, about our preferences, about our values? Major assessments will likely include two writing assignments, memorization of one sonnet, a midterm exam, and a final exam. Students will end the semester with a working understanding of Shakespearean language and themes that appear everywhere in literature and media (including graphic novels, film, music, children’s literature, etc.). Please note: this course has a strict attendance policy.

168.001: Modern Literature
Topic: Anglophone Modernism, 1900 to the Present
Aparna Dharwadker
R 2:30pm-5:00pm 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: Modern and Contemporary Irish Theatre
Mary Trotter
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Humanities 2653

Since the 1890s, Irish playwrights and theatre companies have used drama as a laboratory for discussing changes in Irish identity and culture. This course will discuss significant plays in the Irish theatre tradition by playwrights such as Yeats, Lady Gregory, Sean O’Casey, Samuel Beckett, Martin McDonagh and Marina Carr. We will also discuss the Irish dramatic movement’s relationship to other modern theatre and cultural traditions, such as the Harlem Renaissance in the United States, and contemporary Irish drama’s exploration of exciting, rapid changes in Irish identity and culture around race, religion and sexuality.

172.001: Literatures of Native America
TBA
TR 9:30pm-10:45am Humanities 1221
Cross-Listed with American Indian Studies

Course Guide Description: Introduction to the oral and written literatures of the peoples of native North America. An engagement with texts across historical periods, tribal groups, and regions to examine forms such as oratory, sermon, testimony, autobiography, and contemporary poetry and novels.

174.002: Literature and Social Justice
Topic: Black Life Narratives
Laila Amine
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Vleck B223

Through the examination of contemporary black life narratives, this course provides an understanding of the multi-faceted genre of life writing, which includes many forms (the personal essay, the diary, the memoir, the travelogue, etc.). You will learn about major theoretical issues in autobiographical criticism. A second goal of the class is to interpret and compare how authors address race politics.

173: Ethnic and Multicultural Literature
Topic: Going Home: Departures, Arrivals, and Transformations in Latinx Literature
Theresa Delgadillo
TuThu 2:30 – 3:45 pm Van Vleck B223

Latinx literature is rich with scenes of leaving a country, a neighborhood, a job, a relationship, a community as well as scenes of returning to each of these sites and communities – sometimes physically and sometimes emotionally. University students inevitably have to navigate both leaving and returning throughout their education in higher education. We will engage with literary strategies for reading and interpreting texts in literature that addresses leaving and returning, enduring connections, transient affiliations, structural impediments to mobility, and change and transformation. You will read and study Latinx short stories, poems, novels, and graphic novels. Assignments will include quizzes, short papers, and presentations.

174.003: Literature and Social Justice
Topic: Protest Literature
Sarah Wood
TR 9:30am-10:45am White 4208

This course will consider protest literature in the United States from the last few years. How do writers respond to the social and political issues of their time? You will read mostly poetry and some short stories while we explore the rhetorical and literary strategies of the authors. We will read mostly from brand new poetry anthologies published within the last three years so that we can hear what poets are saying in response to our particular historical moment, such as Who Will Speak for America?, New Native Poets, Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump’s America, Women of Resistance, and Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems for Now. We will also read Citizen by Claudia Rankine.

174.004: Literature and Social Justice
Topic: Literatures of Decolonization
Kirk Sides
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Van Vleck B215

Course Guide Description: An introduction to the multiple ways writers have used literary texts to engage with pressing questions about class, race, gender, equality, immigration, and other issues of social justice. Specific topics will vary.

175.001: Literature and the Other Disciplines
Topic: Laboring for Revolution: Introduction to Kari Marx
Joseph Bowling
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm White 7115
Prereqs: First Year Interest Group 229 authorization required to enroll
Honors Optional (%)

The nineteenth-century German philosopher Karl Marx is among the most referenced yet least understood thinkers. This FIG introduces students to Marx and his writings by reading selections of his most important works, by situating those works in their historical context, and by tracing the legacy of those works in the revolutions of the twentieth century. This course will be organized around the key ideas Marx developed across his life: alienation, historical materialism, and capitalist production. We will read and discuss Marx in seminar-style meetings in which students will be expected to actively contribute. Students will also complete regular informal writing assignments, present and lead discussion on an excerpt from Marx’s writings, and write a research paper. The goal of the course is to train students in the careful analytical practices required to apprehend and develop a nuanced understanding of Marx’s philosophy. To aid in our study, we will turn to works of literature and film, putting into practice Marx’s method of critique, in order to elucidate the difficulties of his thought. Throughout, we’ll consider the relevance of Marx to our present moment.

175.002: Literature and the Other Disciplines
Topic: Creativity: An Investigation
Heather Swan
T 3:30pm-6:00pm Van Vleck B215

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.

175.003: Literature and the Other Disciplines
Topic: Poetics and Practices of Collective Space
Sarah Ann Wells
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm White 7115
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.

177.001: Literature and Popular Culture
Topic: Beowulf, Tolkien, and the Birth of Modern Fantasy
Martin Foys
TR 8:50am-9:40am Humanities 3650

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, books that helped launch modern fantasy, but was also an important scholar of the Old English epic poem Beowulf. This course first explores Beowulf through its many versions: translations, films, comics, video games, rock operas, and more. Then it studies modern fantasy through Tolkien’s own Beowulf-fueled theories of fantasy and then some of the most popular examples today – Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and others.

177.002: Literature and Popular Culture
Topic: TBA
Amina El-Annan
MWF 11:00am-11:50am Humanities 2637

Course Catalog Description: A selected topic studying the intersection of literature and popular culture in various forms and media.

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

177.004: Literature and Popular Culture
Topic: Audiotopia: Reading Race and Music
Yanie Fecu
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Mech Engr 2108

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 Paule Marshall, 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 about narratives that present black American culture as a monolith and instead recognize the diversity of African diasporic experience.

178: Digital Media, Literature, and Culture
Topic: AI in Literature and Culture
Mark Vareschi
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm White 7115
Prereqs: First Year Interest Group 228 authorization required to enroll
Honors Optional (%)

Enrollment in this course is open only to first-year students. Eligible students will enroll during the SOAR program.

181.001: First Year Honors Seminar
Topic: Reading Literature in the Archives
Joshua Calhoun
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm Van Vleck B215
Prereqs: First Year Students Only and Declared in Honors program

Ever felt jealous while watching a movie in which the characters unfurl ancient scrolls or turn the pages of centuries-old books? This course is your chance for hands-on exploration in UW-Madison’s amazing and varied archives. By exploring university archives and conducting hands-on research we’ll discover the hidden histories of the texts (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, etc.) that we read together in class.

Students need not have any familiarity with archival research to take this class, but should have a desire to spend time with old books and historical objects in various libraries and museums on campus. Class sessions will meet in alternate locations such as campus libraries, archives, and museums. Course assignments will also require students to work independently in some of these locations.

182.001: Introduction to Literature for Honors
Topic: Satire and the Politics of Laughter
Kristina Huang
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 595
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.

182.002: Introduction to Literature for Honors
Topic: Stories, Poems, and Critical Thinking
Vinay Dharwadker
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm White 7111
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.

200 level courses

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

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 Humanities 2650
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 Van Hise 114
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.

236:001 Bascom Course
Topic: Writing (and) the Holocaust
Michael Bernard-Donals
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 587
Prereqs: Satisfied Communications A Requirement

In this course we will explore how the Holocaust has been written, and written about, since its occurrence. In addition to reading and writing about testimonies, historical accounts, and fiction about the Holocaust, we will also take up how the Holocaust has been used as a paradigm of atrocity and genocide over the last fifty years.

241: Literature and Culture 1: to the 18th Century
TBA
MW 9:55am-10:45am Science 180
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Not open to students who took ENGL 215 prior to Fall 2014

Course Guide Description: 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, from epic and romance to drama and the sonnet. Develops 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
Topic: Literature in Perspective
Mario Ortiz-Robles
TR 8:50am-9:40am Grainger 2080
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Not open to students who took ENGL 216 prior to Fall 2014

This course is organized around one simple but very important aspect of literature: its ability to make us see the world from different points of view. In some sense, all literature is an exercise in perspective since it is written by different people living in different places in different time periods, but the texts we will be reading in this class are self-conscious explorations of how we represent the world to ourselves as we try to make sense of our place within it and to imagine how it might be otherwise. We will be reading classic works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, R. L. Stevenson, William Faulkner, Jamaica Kincaid, and Julian Barnes. In reading and writing about literary perspective, we will also be endeavoring to learn something about the narrative techniques and formal devices writers employ to represent the historical, social, and cultural world they inhabit.

245.001: Seminar in the Major
Topic: TBA
Kristina Huang
W 6:00pm-8:30pm White 7111
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)

245.002: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Writing and Money
Eileen Lagman
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 579
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)

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: Literary Architectures: Making Space in American Literature
Sarah Ensor
TR 11:00am-12:15pm White 7111
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

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?

245.004: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Empire of Senses
Yanie Fecu
R 2:30pm-5:00pm Education L173
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)

This course focuses on two key senses seeing and hearing to investigate representations of racialized experience in global Black literature and music. Students will analyze short stories, novels, and poetry alongside song lyrics, music videos, and documentaries by African American and Caribbean artists. We’ll consider questions such as:

How are assumptions and anxieties about race superimposed onto our five senses?
How can text and sound capture the lived experience of marginalized people?
And how do authors and performers like Claudia Rankine, Beyoncé, Paule Marshall, and Elizabeth Acevedo explore cultural assimilation, political resistance, and social justice?

This seminar will help students engage critically with ideas that present Black diasporic culture as a monolith. Close readings and listening’s will deepen their understanding of racial formation in the U.S. and abroad.

245.005: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Afterlives of Slavery
Raquel Kennon
TR 9:30am-10:45am Van Vleck B215
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

How do contemporary writers and artists transfigure the generic conventions of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century slave narratives through historical realism, the supernatural, melodrama, or satire? How might certain texts compel us to think about the idea of reconstruction as a U.S. historical period and narrative process? This course explores how twentieth and twenty-first century narratives of slavery recount, reimagine, reshape, and remember, or forget, slavery’s past. Although we will focus primarily on U.S. contemporary narratives of enslavement, or neo-slave narratives, we will also consider some examples from the Americas in translation while paying particular attention to how contemporary fictions of enslavement engage concepts of emancipation, freedom, and abolition. In tracing the proliferating literary and cultural afterlives of slavery, we will consider how race, gender, place, and time in particular, representations of Black women come to bear on these textual and artistic transformations. We will draw from a body of work that crosses multiple genres: fiction, poetry, visual and popular culture.

248: Women in Ethnic American Literature
Anja Jovic-Humphrey
OAH Session Sept 4 to Oct 27 (8 week session)
Online Only
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Gender & Women’s Studies

How do we construct the narratives of our lives? What is the role of our cultural backgrounds – whether we are considered as “the majority” or as “a minority” – in the formation of our identity? How is our sense of self influenced by how others perceive us? How are our professions and finances affected by our gender, ethnicity, or identity? Why did Sylvia Plath feel that she had to choose between career and motherhood? What does Toni Morrison’s telling of history tell us about our present? What does it mean to be a “woman”? We will ask these questions while reading American writers from various cultural backgrounds in order to illuminate aspects of our multicultural society, as well as facets of our own lives.

In this course, we will read modern and contemporary American literature written by authors with various cultural backgrounds.

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 (!)

314: Structure of English
Anja Wanner
TR 9:30am-10:45am Vilas 4008
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

This course introduces students to the study of English grammar from a linguistic perspective. Studying syntax enables us to step back and take a look at the intricate structure of something one normally takes for granted: the structure and interpretation of words and sentences. You will learn that grammar is not something external that is written down in a book to be memorized by speakers; rather, it is something that is part of every speaker’s implicit knowledge about language, something that enables us to use language to express our thoughts. We will try to 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 Education L196
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Meets with Linguistics 310

[English Language and Linguistics] This course is designed to introduce students to the basic principles of phonetics and phonology as applied to the description of English and other languages. As part of this students will learn about the acoustic features of the phones of English and other languages, learn the articulatory description of the phones of English and other languages, learn how to discover and describe the distribution of phonemes in English and other languages, and learn about multiple levels of representation in the speech chain.

316: English Language Variation in the U.S.
Juliet Huynh
MWF 9:55am-10:45am Education L185
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: Second Language Acquisition
Juliet Huynh
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 383
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

345: Nineteenth-Century Novel
Amanda Shubert
TR 9:30am-10:45am Van Hise 478
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

A survey of nineteenth-century British novels written by women. We cover topics like the marriage plot, empire and colonialism, monsters and the gothic, and race and racial difference. Authors include Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, and Amy Levy.

350: Special Topics in Gender & Literature
Topic: TBA
TBA
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Sterling 1313
Cross-Listed with Gender & Women’s Studies

Course Guide 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 American Literature
Anja Jovic-Humphrey
TR 4:00pm-5:15pm Van Hise 394
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Why do we laugh? What do we find funny? Do comedians such as Stephen Colbert or John Mullaney give us a pertinent and serious commentary of our society? Does comedy – a genre that has (arguably) been considered 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 stories, essays, jokes, fake news, stand-up, and cartoons – to find out what makes them funny and what allows them to convey serious messages about politics, gender, identity, and society.

368: Chicana/o & Latina/o Literature
Theresa Delgadillo
TR 11:00pm-12:15pm Van Vleck B223
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Chican@ & Latin@ Studies

While Chicanx and Latinx literature has flourished in the contemporary period, it has a much longer history in the U.S. – one that corresponds to Chicanx and Latinx incorporation into the U.S. in the nineteenth century. In this course we will read selections of Chicanx and Latinx 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 employed or innovated to tell Chicanx and Latinx stories and the venues in which they circulated, 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. Assignments will include discussion and dialogue, short critical essays, quizzes, and presentations.

374: African and African Diaspora Literature and Culture
Topic: Havana Meets Washington: Tracing the Intertwined Narratives of Two Nations
Laila Amine
R 4:00pm-6:30pm Soc Sci 4308
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

This interdisciplinary course explores the complex and often tumultuous relationship between Cuba and the United States from the era of slavery to the present. The course format combines lectures, discussions, and student-led presentations. We will analyze a variety of primary and secondary sources, including historical documents, literary works, and contemporary media. Students will be expected to engage actively in class discussions, complete regular writing assignments, and undertake a final research project on a topic of their choice related to the course material.

379: Postcolonial and World Literature
Topic: Literature of Decolonization
Kirk Sides
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 579
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Course Guide Description: English language literatures of former colonies, primarily in Africa and South Asia. While scrutinizing the concept of the “postcolonial” and evaluating its many meanings, class will read some of the significant writers of the postcolonial world and attend to the literary traditions that produced them.

400 level courses

407: Creative Writing: Nonfiction Workshop
Porter Shreve
T 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 (!)

This course will focus on creative nonfiction, with an emphasis on personal essays and memoirs. Students will read and discuss a range of published works, learn key craft concepts, and write their own nonfiction. This class is taught as a workshop, and the instructor will lead mindful discussions of student work.

408.001: Creative Writing: Fiction Workshop
Beth Nguyen
W 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, 407, 409, 410, 411, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)

In this class you will gain a vocabulary for discussing creative work (that of established writers as well as peers) and apply learned techniques to your own fiction writing, so that you may begin to determine your own aesthetic. Topics for exploration include narrative arc, characterization, point of view, scene and exposition, and voice. Whether or not you go on to write professionally, reading and writing are fundamental tools you’ll use for the rest of your life, and you can only benefit from refining these skills. Course expectations include writing and sharing original creative work, reading and discussing assigned work, and the cooperative fostering of a safe and conducive environment for yourself and your peers.

408.002: Creative Writing: Fiction Workshop
Ron Kuka
R 5:40pm-7:35pm 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 (!)

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.

409.001: Creative Writing: Poetry Workshop
Alison Rollins
T 11:00am-12:55pm 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, 408, 410, 411, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)

409.002: Creative Writing: Poetry Workshop
Paul Tran
M 3:30pm-5:25pm White 6108
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 (!)

410: Creative Writing: Playwriting Workshop
Jennifer Plants
W 1:20pm-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

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.

411.001: Creative Writing: Special Topics Workshop
Topic: Literary Publishing
Sean Bishop
T 1:20pm-3:15pm White 6108
Prereqs: English 207, 307,407,408,409,410, 411, or graduate/professional standing
Accelerated Honors (!)

This is a course for creative writing students who would like to be published, and/or students who are interested in the editorial side of the publishing world. Half of this course will teach students how to prepare and submit their own poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction for publication in literary journals. And the other half of this course will teach the ins and outs of literary editing: students will solicit and put together an anthology by UW alumni, which will be published next year. Students will also help pick the finalists for this year’s Wisconsin Poetry Series, which publishes seven single-author books of poetry each year. By the end of this course, students will have all the tools they need to begin publishing their work in top-tier literary journals and will gain real-world experience as a literary editor.

413: English Words: Grammar, Culture, and Mind
Anja Wanner
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm Van Vleck B223
Prereqs: Sophomore Standing

Course Guide Description: Words and rules of combination (grammar) are the two basic building blocks of language. Looks at English words from different linguistic perspectives: As objects of grammar, words follow certain rules of combination (you wouldn’t say “these dog ), but they also have internal structure. For example, a word like “hopefulness is fine, while “hopenessful” does not exist. From a psycholinguistic perspective examine how children learn these formal properties as well as the meaning of words. Study how words are stored in the mind and what one can learn from situations in which one cannot access the mental dictionary properly (for example, when one feels a word is on “the tip of one’s tongue ). From a sociolinguistic perspective, look at historical and current influences on English vocabulary, including the role of dictionaries and spelling as a source of standardization. Does not require previous knowledge of linguistics.

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

420.001: Topics in English Language and Linguistics
Topic: Third Language Acquisition
Jacee Cho
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Until recently, third language (L3) acquisition was studied primarily as an extension of L2 acquisition. However, recent research on bi/multilingualism has shown that there are differences in the language acquisition process and language use between L2 and L3 speakers. In this course, we will discuss some of the current theories of L3 acquisition from (psycho) linguistic perspectives.

420.002: Topics in English Language and Linguistics
Topic: Quantitative Methods for Linguists 2: Regression Methods
Eric Raimy
MWF 1:20pm-2:10pm Ingraham 120
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

[English Language and Linguistics] This course is a continuation of “Quantitative Methods for Linguists” and explores regression methods as a statistical tool for linguistic data. We will start with simple linear regression and move towards full mixed effects models. Different regression models (i.e. logistic regression, ordinal logistic regression) for specific types of linguistic data (i.e. categorical decisions, Likert type survey data) will also be explored.

431.001: Early Works of Shakespeare
Joseph Bowling
TR 9:30am-10:45am Van Vleck B223
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

What is Shakespearean comedy? This seminar seeks to answer this question by studying Shakespeare’s early comedies in relation to the traditions of comedy from which Shakespeare borrowed and innovated. We will aim toward a provisional, working theory of what distinguishes Shakespeare as a comic dramatist. As we progress through Shakespeare’s plays as well as his sources and analogues, we will reflect on disciplinary questions of genre and convention; the relationship between text, form, and context; and the legacy of Shakespearean comedy in contemporary culture.

431.002: Early Works of Shakespeare
Joseph Bowling
MW 4:00pm-5:15pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

443: Outstanding Figure(s) in Literature since 1800
Topic: The Global Short Story
Vinay Dharwadker
R 4:00pm-6:30pm Van Vleck B223
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

This course focuses on the modern short story in its broad global settings, with close attention to specific authors and narratives. Historically, we will range from the 1880s to the present, to see how the short story has evolved into one of the most important genres of today’s world literature. We will study its development in English in several national and international contexts: James Joyce (Ireland); Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand/UK); Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Updike, Toni Morrison (USA); Mavis Gallant (Canada); and Jamaica Kincaid (the Caribbean/USA). For a comparative perspective, we will also study three exemplary figures from other continental settings in translation: Rabindranath Tagore and Mahasweta Devi (Asia) and Isabelle Allende (South America). The selection of texts, and especially the emphasis on women writers, will give us an exceptional opportunity to explore the story’s rich thematic and formal variety, its social and cultural contexts, and its relation to such widespread literary phenomena as modernism, realism, postcolonialism, and experimental writing.

444: Topic Romantic or Victorian Literature and Culture
Topic: Fairies to Steampunk
Nancy Marshall
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Elvehjem L140
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Meets with Art History 407

Course Guide Description: Study of a topic in 19th-Century British literature.

457.001: Topic in American Literature and Culture since 1900
Topic: Arab American Literature and Popular Culture
Ramzi Fawaz
T 6:00pm-8:30pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

In this advanced seminar, we will study Arab American literature and popular culture since the 1950s. Though once considered among the statistically smallest and least understood immigrant populations in US history, following WWII, Arab Americans (a heterogenous ethnic group composed of people from countries and territories including Egypt, Jordon, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia among others) came to loom large in the nation’s cultural and political imagination. This happened first, because of the US’s strategic interest in the Middle East as a region crucial to the Cold War struggle against the spread of Russian Communism; second, the nation’s increasing reliance on oil to fuel nearly every aspect of post-war modernization (a fossil fuel found in abundance throughout the Middle Eastern world); and third, a fast-developing spiritual investment in the Middle East as the birthplace of various transformative religious traditions. In the decades since, countless events—from the establishment of the state of Israel to the late 1970s oil crisis, from the first Iraq war to 9/11—have brought the Middle East to the center of national and global politics while placing extraordinary pressure on Arab Americans to negotiate their multiple national, cultural, religious and linguistic identities in face of resurgent white supremacy and Islamophobia.

In this course, we will study how a variety of Arab American writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians, and political activists have given shape to the many dimensions of the Arab immigrant experience. This includes how creative producers use Arab foodways, music, and spiritual traditions to confront the many forms of antisemitism (including Islamophobia); celebrate aspects of Arab family and communal bonds while carving space for queer, feminist, and trans Arab voices within both US and Middle Eastern societies; and use art and culture to build bonds between Arab Americans and other marginalized populations in an increasingly xenophobic world. Ultimately, our aim will be to better grasp the rich diversity of Arab Americans, a heterogenous category of people who practice numerous religious and spiritual traditions (Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Sikh and more), have cultivated one of the world’s most beloved and socially unifying cuisines, and have played an integral role in shaping US-American literature, media, and visual culture.

461.001: Topics in Ethnic & Multicultural Literature
Topic: The Literary World of Gwendolyn Brooks
Nate Marshall
M 2:30pm-5:00pm Van Vleck B223
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

This course will explore the life and work of one of the most renowned poets of the 20th Century. Brooks was the first Black person to win a Pulitzer Prize. We will use Brooks as a portal through which to observe the trajectories of 20th Century American Poetry.

462.001: Topic in Asian American Literature
Topic: Asian American Happiness
Paul Tran
T 1:20pm-3:15pm Biochem 1116
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Asian American Studies

What is happiness? Are we allowed to be happy? How do we know if the feeling is real? From Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club to Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do, this project-based class will use novels, comics, poetry, comedy, music, and drag performance to study pleasure, delight, joy, and fulfillment in Asian American literature and life.

474.001: Topic in Contemporary Literature
Topic: Protest Literature
Sarah Wood
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Vleck B231
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

474.002: Topic in Contemporary Literature
Topic: Protest Literature
Sarah Wood
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

500 level courses

505: Topics in Composition and Rhetoric
Topic: Rhetoric of Wellness & Self-Care
Abigail Letak
TR 9:30am-10:45am Soc Sci 6116
Prereqs: Satisfied Communications A requirement and Junior standing

How and why have “wellness” and “self-care” become cultural buzzwords? In this class, we’ll explore rhetorical and theoretical lineages for these terms and consider how neoliberal and capitalist ideologies shape our current discourse around health and wellbeing. Through analyses of a variety of texts and cultural artifacts, we will also consider how rhetorics of wellness and self-care can create exclusion along the lines of race, gender, and class.

508: Creative Writing: Advanced Fiction Workshop
Dantiel Moniz
R 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 (!)

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
Andrea Poulos
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.

533.001: Topic in Literature and the Environment
Topic: ECOPOETRY in the Anthropocene
Heather Swan
W 2:30pm-5:00pm Van Hise 155
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
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm White 4281
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.

559.002: Topic in Literary or Cultural Theory
Topic: Why War? Conflicts, Peace, and Non-Violence
Frederic Neyrat
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Vleck B215

This course examines how literature, film and philosophy approach war and destructive impulses, and how to achieve peace and non-violence. Authors and texts studied will include: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Judith Butler, Sigmund Freud, Frantz Fanon, Monique Wittig, the Bhagavat Gita, Starship Troopers, Inglourious Basterds, etc.

559.003: Topic in Literary or Cultural Theory
Topic: Psychedelic Imaginaries
Ramzi Fawaz
M 2:30pm-5:00pm Babcock 121

This advanced seminar will explore recent US-American popular culture that grapples with psychedelic experience. Psychedelics, like LSD (or “acid”), psilocybin (or “magic mushrooms”), and MDMA (or “ecstasy”), are a class of drugs, which create mind-altering and consciousness-expanding effects. The signal feature of psychedelics is their ability to stimulate a radical tuning up of the senses, which is experienced as a hallucinogenic state but lived differently by each person. In the 1960s, US-American countercultural youth turned on to psychedelics as a way to access a broader range of human sensory capabilities; many also claimed that psychedelic experience expanded their understanding of categories like race, gender, sexuality and other forms of human difference by giving them a broader felt sense of connection with the human species. Today, medical researchers are studying psychedelics as an effective treatment for a vast range of mental health crises like depression, anxiety, addiction, and trauma, thereby inaugurating what many consider a new psychedelic renaissance. In this class, we will ask what role art and culture can play in harnessing the best aspects of psychedelic experience in aesthetic or creative form. This includes studying how hallucinatory, kaleidoscopic, and viscerally intense film and literature can shake us out of habituated ways of thinking, expand how we grasp human diversity, and provide ways of better responding to the political crises of our time. In addition to reading about the history, aesthetics, and cultural politics of psychedelics since the 1960s, we will watch the following films: Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, 2015), Spider-Man: Into The Spider-verse (Persichetti, 2018), and Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (Daniels, 2022); view select episodes of the television series Undone and Scavenger’s Reign; and read Jeff VanderMeer’s visionary science fiction trilogy The Southern Reach.

577: Postcolonial Theatre: Drama, Theory, and Performance in the Global South
Aparna Dharwadker
TR 11:00am-12:15pm White 4208
Prereqs: Junior standing
Cross-Listed with Theatre and Drama

English 577 is an advanced introduction to major drama produced since the mid-twentieth century in former British or French colonies such as India, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Trinidad, Jamaica, and Martinique. It considers how the processes of playwriting and performance in different geographical locations offer critiques of colonialism, but also address problems encountered by postcolonial citizens after their nations achieve political independence.

Summer 2024 Course Descriptions

100 level courses

100: Intro to College Composition
June 17 to August 11 (8 week session)
Times & Places Vary
Prereq: Students required to take the MSN ESLAT cannot enroll until the ESL 118 requirement is satisfied

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
TBA
June 17 to August 11 (8 week session)
Online
Cross-Listed with Theatre and Drama

Course Catalog Description: Reading important plays, attending stage productions, writing and thinking critically about theatre and drama. Emphasis on developing analytic skills in dramatic literature and theatre production.

176: Topics in Literature and Film
Topic: TBA
Joseph Bowling
June 17 to July 14 (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.

178: Digital Media, Literature, and Culture
Topic: TBA
TBA
June 17 to August 11 (8 week session)
Online

Course Guide Description: An introduction to the intersection of ever-evolving digital technologies with the production and reception of literature. Examine the role of digital media in structuring the knowledge and experience of literary works; and provides an opportunity for critical and potentially creative practice.

200 level courses

245: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Plot and Plantation
Kristina Huang
May 20 to June 16 (4 week session)
Online
Requisites: Sophomore standing

300 level courses

319: Language, Race, and Identity
Topic: Structure of English
Tom Purnell
May 20 to June 16 (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:

Distinguish the measurable language-biology relation from the perceived race-biology relation.
Differentiate nature and nurture arguments when talking about language and race.
Critique historical arguments of the language and race relation.
Understand factors contributing to the language and identity relation, including how language reflects culture.
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: TBA
TBA
June 17 to August 11 (8 week session)
Online
Requisites: 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.

350.002: Special Topics in Gender & Literature
Topic: TBA
TBA
June 17 to August 11 (8 week session)
Online
Requisites: 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.

350.003: Special Topics in Gender & Literature
Topic: Gender, Health & Waiting Rooms
Jess Waggoner
July 15 to August 11 (4 week session)
Online
Requisites: 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 17 to August 11 (8 week session)
Online
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.

375: Literatures of Migration and Diaspora
Topic: Travelling Identities and Border Crossings
Anja Jovic-Humphrey
May 20 to June 16 (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 17 to August 11 (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 (!)