1194 Spring 2018-19 Course Descriptions
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.
100: Introduction to College Composition
TA taught courses
Times & Places Vary
Prereqs: Freshman or sophomore standing only. 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 and Dramatic Literature
Steffen Silvis
MoWe 11:00-11:50am Humanities 3650
Open to freshman, 4 cr sections meet Com B requirement
English/Theatre and Drama 120 is an introductory course offered in two formats: a 3-credit option and a 4-credit Comm-B (writing-intensive) option. In both formats we read plays, attend performances, and think, talk, and write about theatre.
This semester we will read about one play per week along with supplemental materials, covering a wide range of historical periods, cultural traditions, aesthetic theories and dramatic genres. You will also attend and write about at least one live performance. Playwrights will most likely include Beckett, Glaspell, Hwang, Moliere, Parks, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Soyinka, Treadwell, Wilson and Zeami.
Our course goals include:
- To think about plays and performance in terms of the questions they pose about our identities and our world
- To analyze selected dramatic texts as shaped by and shaping specific cultural, dramatic, and theatrical conditions
- To investigate elements of performance in both theory and practice
- To articulate informed responses to text and performance in both oral and written forms
140: Comm B Topics in English Literature
Anja Jovic-Humphrey
MoWe 1:20-2:10pm Science 180
Orhan Pamuk once said that when he writes about love, readers call it “Turkish love,” whereas when Proust writes about love, it is “just love.” Sylvia Plath’s character Esther Greenwood wonders whether she is unwomanly because she is not sure if she wants to get married and have a baby. Jack Kerouac and his friends go on road trips across America, crossing each other’s paths and making the continent seem small at the time when there are no cellphones to help them stay in touch. Ralph Ellison’s narrator addresses us from a basement, saying: “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”
In this course, we will look at various kinds of outsiders, nonconformists, and “marginal” characters in the broad sense of the term. When does sanity turn into madness? How can race, gender, or ethnicity make us “invisible” – or too visible? To which extent is conformity a positive force, and to which extent it can stifle our sense of self?
We will examine the nature of sanity/madness, gender, race, ethnicity, and lifestyle, and try to understand what and why the society at large labels as “normal” or “abnormal.”
141.001: Science Fiction and Fantasy
Ainehi Edoro
TuTh 9:30-10:45am Humanities 2261
Topic: Female Futures
This course is about feminist utopias. We are interested in the question: what happens when feminist ideals inspire the imagination of futuristic fictional worlds? If, as Beyonce imagines in one of her hit songs, girls really do get the chance to run the world, how would this change the nature of power and the form of collective life? Would this female world order undo or reproduce patriarchal ideologies? What issues and questions might it raise regarding the link between technology and the body, sexuality and gender politics, aesthetic form and language?
We will begin with feminist sci-fi classic James Tiptree’s Houston, Houston Do You Read Me and Ursula K. Leguin’s “Sur” and move on to contemporary texts like Naomi Alderman’s The Power, Jennifer Egan’s Twitter story “Black Box,” Nalo Hopkinson’s “The Habit of Waste,” and Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Bitch Planet. Also on the reading list are Beyonce’s Lemonade, Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, Spike Lee’s Chiraq, and Waniu Kahuri’s Pumzi. Our examination of feminist theory will rely on selections from Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex, Chimamanda Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists, Helene Cixous’ “Laugh of the Medusa,” and Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider.”
141.002: Science Fiction and Fantasy
Yanie Fecu
TuTh 1:00-2:15pm Humanities 2261
Topic: Postcolonial Futures
This course examines the legacy of colonialism in science fiction by authors like Octavia Butler, Vandana Singh, Nnedi Okorafor, and Usman Malik. We’ll consider questions such as: how does speculative fiction critique racism and imperialism? What kinds of scientific discoveries and technologies appear in these texts and how do they shape imagined societies? How have authors of color from the Americas, Africa, and Asia transformed the science fiction genre?
150: Literature and Culture of Asian America
Timothy Yu
MoWe 9:55-10:45am Noland 132
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: Literature and the Environment
Heather Swan
MoWe 8:50-9:40am Humanities 2650
Course Catalog Description: An introduction to literature in English about the natural world and humankind’s relationship with it; specific topics will vary.
155: Myth and Literature
Ronald Harris
MoWeFr 1:20-2:10pm Education L185
Course Catalog Description: Introduction to concepts of myth and mythology, myth-making and the modern study of myth in relation to myths and legends common in English and American literature.
162.001: Shakespeare
Joshua Calhoun
TuTh 9:55-10:45am Ingraham 19
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?
We will begin the semester with readings from Shakespeare’s Sonnets, then set off on a journey into the various worlds Shakespeare conjured in his plays. We’ll start in Ancient Greece with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, then it’s on to Macbeth’s medieval Scotland, then to fourteenth-century England for Henry IV, Part One. In this first unit, we will focus on “Form & Function as we seek to better understand the language of Shakespeare’s plays and poems and how it works.
Our second unit, “Lives & Afterlives considers two of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays: Hamlet & The Tempest. Reading these plays, we’ll explore Shakespeare’s unique staying power in the popular imagination.
Assessments include weekly quizzes, two writing assignments, memorization of one sonnet, and a midterm and final exam. Attendance is mandatory for lectures and discussion sections. If we succeed as a class, students will finish 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.).
162.002: Shakespeare
Joseph Bowling
MoWeFr 12:05-12:55pm Education L150
Shakespeare holds significant sway over American culture and public discourse. Political pundits decry his removal from English department’s required courses for majors. Across the US, cities host free performances of his plays in public spaces. Shakespeare’s life, about which we know little, nevertheless fascinates filmmakers and television writers, from John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love (1999) to Roland Emmerich’s skeptical Anonymous (2011) and TNT’s recent punk-inspired Will (2017). In this class, we’ll start from our present and look backward to ask how Shakespeare became Shakespeare, a global icon of literary genius and cultural authority. We’ll answer this question by reading the poems and plays that made the poet a luminary of the early modern page and stage, and then turn to how England remembered and remade Shakespeare in subsequent centuries. We’ll consider, for example, how England used the poet to define itself as a nation in the eighteenth century and then to legitimize and enact its imperial project in the nineteenth century. Through this literary and historical inquiry, we’ll take up key terms and practices of literary and cultural study by reflecting on authorship, reception, adaptation, memory, and identity. Through this course, you will acquire a familiarity with Shakespeare’s language, the poetic and dramatic genres in which he wrote, and the basic tools of literary and cultural analysis.
168: Modern Literature
Emily Auerbach
We 6:00-9:00pm TBA
Prereqs: Open to Odyssey Project students only
Course Catalog Description: A thematic introduction to literary works in a variety of genres written in English from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day. Emphasis may vary between writers from the U.S., Britain, Ireland, and other Anglophone nations.
172: Literatures of Native America
TBA
MoWe 4:00-5:15pm Van Vleck B135
Course Catalog 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.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series were the books that launched the modern fantasy genre. But Tolkien was also a brilliant Oxford scholar of medieval literature, and used medieval literature as the foundation for all of his fantasy creations.
This class will first explore Beowulf, the Old English epic poem of heroes, feuds and monsters, using Tolkien’s own modern translation and others. We will also study the legacy of Beowulf today, through comic book, film and video game adaptations, as well as some other examples of medieval literature that inspired Tolkien (like chivalric romance).
We will then study the rise of modern fantasy through Tolkien’s own theories of fantasy, looking at Victorian fantasy (Alice in Wonderland), the fantasy of Tolkien and his time, (The Hobbit, Narnia Chronicles), before ending with thinking about the state of popular fantasy today in books, film and television (Peter Jackson’s films, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, and G.R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series). During the course, we will tie our explorations to culturally relevant issues of past and present including: nationalism, the power of religion, effects of media and technology, social constructions of race and gender, the nostalgic production of the past, and the transformative nature of language.
182: Introduction to Literature for Honors
Kristina Huang
TuTh 9:30-10:45am Van Hise 374
Topic: The University and the Good Life
Prereqs: Declared in honors program
Honors Only (H)
We will begin this seminar by nuancing the assumption that the university is a meaningful space that produces the conditions for “the good life. What is “the good life, and what are the necessary conditions for it to be realized? How are fantasies and individual pursuits of “the good life represented through narratives, representations, and aspirations that crowd around the university? As we read across genres (film, novels, essays, law) we’ll examine how the university mediates value, structures desire, and organizes life, both public and private. We’ll study how the history and cultures of the modern US university are often connected to issues of racialization, gender, sex, and accessibility, both in terms of physical ability and economic opportunity.
200: Writing Studio
Emily Bancroft Hall
We 5:30-7:00pm Chadbourne 126
Prereqs: Concurrent enrollment in another course where academic writing is assigned, Consent of instructor
Course Catalog Description: The focus is on students’ own writing in this workshop-oriented course for writers in any discipline. Theoretical and practical foundations for drafting, revising, and reviewing a range of academic genres and approaches.
201: Intermediate Composition
TA Taught courses
Times & Places Vary
Prereqs: Satisfied Communications A requirement and sophomore standing
English 201 is a small, topic-driven writing course that fulfills part B of the University’s Communication requirement. Sections of 201 offer hands-on practice with writing and revision, building on skills developed in earlier writing courses and providing new opportunities for students to grow as writers. Though topics vary by section and semester, this class consistently provides experience writing in multiple genres and for diverse audiences.
204: Studies in Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy
Christa Olson
MoWe 1:20-2:10pm White 3250
Prereqs: Satisfied Communications A requirement and sophomore standing
Some of the best human traits come out when we speak or write passionately for a cause. Some of the worst, too. In words and pictures and collective action, we can call one another to do what is right, and we can justify terrible acts. This class invites you to read about, discuss, and then engage with what’s good and evil about “rhetoric about all the different ways we communicate in order to influence each other. We’ll learn about horrific acts and the individuals and communities that stood in their way. We’ll look at propaganda pictures, muckraking journalism, and activist photography. We’ll listen to speeches that aim to stir our souls for better or for worse. Along the way, we’ll develop tools for analyzing the arguments we see and hear and strategies for producing our own effective arguments (aiming, of course, for good not evil). This class will be held in the College Library WisCEL space and will encourage active, project-based learning.
207: Introduction to Creative Writing: Fiction & Poetry Workshop
TA taught courses
Times & Places Vary
Prereqs: 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 eighteen students.
241: Literature and Culture 1: to the 18th Century
Jordan Zweck
TuTh 9:55-10:45am Soc Sci 5208
Prereqs: Sophomore Standing
Course Catalog 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
Monique Allewaert
MoWe 9:55-10:45am Science 180
Prereqs: Sophomore Standing
Course Catalog Description: This course 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. We will explore enduring traditions of poetry and drama and think about experiments in the new, globally popular genre of the novel. This course develops skills of critical reading and writing that are essential to majors and non-majors alike.
245: Seminar in the Major
Lecture 001 – Hyonbin Choi
TuTh 2:30-3:45pm Education 151
Topic: TBA
Prereqs: Sophomore Standing
Honors Option (%)
What is the uncanny? When a situation or event is creepy, unsettling, disquieting, yet also strange and extraordinary, we call it “uncanny.” This course investigates how representations of the uncanny have evolved in literature and film over two centuries. We will study texts and films with haunting specters, bizarre coincidences, disturbing taboos, terrifying systems, monstrous schemes, and other kinds of cognitively unsettling oddness. We will also ask: Does the uncanny reveal what we secretly covet, or what repels us the most? Traversing science fiction, ghost stories, haunting poetry, eerie plays, and other genres, this course will examine how the uncanny is shaped and unshaped by the philosophical, historical, and cultural currents of the times. Course texts may include Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us, Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw,” Sigmund Freud’s “The Uncanny,” Samuel T. Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, James Joyce’s “The Dead,” Samuel Beckett’s “Film” and “Krapp’s Last Tape,” and Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.
245: Seminar in the Major
Lecture 002 – Martin Foys
TuTh 11:00-12:15pm Education L151
Topic: Literature, Media & Technology in the Middle Ages
Prereqs: Sophomore Standing
Honors Option (%)
Course Catalog Description: Offers close instruction in the principles and practices of informed, engaged, critical reading and writing. While the texts and topics vary, each seminar will reinforce fundamental skills taught across the English major, strengthening students’ capacities to write and speak powerfully and to build convincing, original, well-organized arguments that persuade audiences of their significance.
245: Seminar in the Major
Lecture 003 – Laila Amine
TuTh 1:00-2:15pm Education 345
Topic: The Interacial Romance
Prereqs: Sophomore Standing
Honors Option (%)
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 wed 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 new millennium. We’ll read stories by Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, and Danzy Senna, and discuss classic films such as Pinky, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and Jungle Fever. We’ll re-enter the court rooms of the Rhinelander and Loving cases and revisit historical landmarks. Equipped with the legal and historical perspectives, we will consider how authors deploy the interracial theme to address larger concerns about citizenship, race, and power. One key goal of the course is to develop your analytical and interpretation skills of cultural productions in daily discussions and written essays.
245: Seminar in the Major
Lecture 004 – Yanie Fecu
TuTh 9:30-10:45am Education L177
Topic: Empire of Senses
Prereqs: Sophomore Standing
Honors Option (%)
This course examines racial identity and the five senses in modern Caribbean literature. We’ll consider questions such as: how are assumptions and anxieties about race superimposed onto our senses? In what ways have racialized bodies been cast as sensual creatures rather than rational humans? How do writers like Jamaica Kincaid, Junot Diaz, and Edwidge Danticat represent sensory experience in relation to cultural assimilation and political resistance?
245: Seminar in the Major
Lecture 005 – Joseph Bowling
MoWeFr 8:50-9:40am Education L159
Topic: Translating Empire
Prereqs: Sophomore Standing
Honors Option (%)
The poet and historian share an intimate, and entwined history. In pre- and early modern periods, the difference between the two vanishes. In this course, we will reflect on this connection between poetry and history through the literature of the Trojan War, a myth as central to Western literature as it is to the West’s understanding of itself and its imperialist project. Literary accounts of the myth established the tradition known as the translation of empire, which retells world history in stages marked by instances of empire translating from East to West. The myth became useful for poets and the kingdoms and empires to which they belonged. Ancient and medieval writers used the Trojan War as part of the invention of a European identity distinct from Asia and Africa, and early modern writers found in the Trojan myth the justification for the colonization of the New World. We will also take up texts that retell the Trojan War for anti-imperial ends. Throughout the course, we’ll think through questions such as what is the meaning of translation, political and literary? How is a past invented, used, and subverted? How does the literary interact with the political? What difference does genre make? We’ll begin with accounts of the Trojan War and its aftermath in the epics of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid; then turn to medieval tales of Troy in the romances tradition; and end with Marlowe’s, Spenser’s, and Shakespeare’s accounts of Troy on the early modern page and theatrical stage.
245: Seminar in the Major
Lecture 006 – Sarah Wood
TuTh 9:30-10:45am Grainger 2195
Topic: American Identity: 20-21st Century Literature
Prereqs: Sophomore Standing
Honors Option (%)
In this course, we will read novels and poetry produced by (mostly) writers of color to consider the notion of citizenship from the lens of non-majority cultures within the United States. How do these writings articulate concerns with citizenship, identity, home, nation, truth, power and spaces? We will examine the authors’ different time-spaces, different goals to understand how they are informed by the specificities of gender, race, sexuality, and nationality. (Possible books include: Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, Danez Smith’s Don’t Call us Dead, Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands, Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, Linda Hogan’s Power, Adichie’s Americana and more)
248.001: Women in Ethnic American Literature
Leslie Bow
Online
This is a modular section that meets January 2, 2019 thru January 20, 2019 (Session Code XCC, 3 weeks of instruction)
Prereqs: Sophomore Standing
This online course explores the intersections among race, ethnicity, gender, class, nationality, and sexuality in fiction, poetry, memoir, and visual texts by African American, Asian American, American Indian, Latina, and multiracial women 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 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, 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. Students should be prepared to complete all reading and course assignments on time; twice daily posts are required in lieu of embodied class meetings. Each of the 14 days (modules) represents a week of a traditional 14-week semester. Internet access for twice daily posting and a Skype meeting is required for successful completion of the course. One in-person meeting in Fall 18 is required.
248.002: Women in Ethnic American Literature
Cherene Sherrard-Johnson
TuTh 11:00-12:15pm White 4208
Prereqs: Sophomore Standing
What is particular about the experience of an Afro-Caribbean girl coming of age in Brooklyn, a Nuyorican mother in the Bronx, or a transplanted Cubana housewife in Miami? Is there a collective sense of Caribbean identity within and without the U.S.? The linguistic, economic and social culture of the Caribbean is as diverse as its islands. Through reading, discussing and writing about fiction, short stories, essays and poetry by writers who define their experience through the lens of the Caribbean, we will chart literal and figurative journeys between the United States and the region of isles, cities and coasts collectively categorized as part of a Caribbean dyaspora. Caribbean literature is simultaneously speculative and realist: mermaids, zombies, and brujas co-exist in an aqueous landscape with fugitive slaves, revolutionaries, and dictators. The archipelago’s extreme beauty often masks deep trauma. The nature of this course is somewhat comparative in that many of the novels we study might also considered part of African American or U.S. Latina literary canons. One of the goals of this course will be to develop close reading and interpretive skills while considering each work in its social, historical, political, cultural context. This is also a writing intensive course designed to strengthen your analytical and argumentative skills. Students will also gain an understanding of the diverse art and cultural geography of the Caribbean and the region’s complex relationship to the United States. Jamaica Kincaid, Roxane Gay, Edwidge Danticat, Safiya Sinclair, and Julia Alvarez are just a few of the authors we will read this semester. We will also watch films and integrate visual art and culture into our discussion of the literature.
307: Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction & Poetry Workshop
TA Taught Courses
Times & Places Vary
Prereqs: Junior standing or completion of one of the following: English 207 taken Fall 2014 or later; or English 203 taken prior to Fall 2014
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. Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 407, 408, 409, 410, 469, 508, 509, or 695
314: Structure of English
Maggie Shuo Feng
MoWeFr 11:00am-11:50am White 4281
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
An introduction to linguistic methods of analysis and description of English syntax and morphology. In this course we discuss the fundamentals of the syntactic structure of English sentences. Students who have taken English 324 prior to fall 2014 may not enroll in this course.
319: Language, Race, and Identity
Thomas Purnell
MoWeFr 12:05-12:55pm White 4281
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
[English Language and Linguistics] (Mixed Grad/Undergrad) Combining research and theory from biological and social sciences, we examine language’s relation to human culture and genetic endowment. Students demonstrate—through quizzes, compositions—their ability to evaluate historical and contemporary claims about race and language. We begin with genetics, followed by the language faculty and social construction of race, concluding with language issues facing US racially-affiliated speech communities.
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 restored public theatres in London, and began a complex new period in British theatre history. Innovations with far-reaching consequences included the patent monopoly system of theatre management, the introduction of actresses, proscenium staging, and serious advances in the arts of acting, movement, scenic design, and stage music. Under aristocratic patronage, theatre became intensely political and, in comparison with Shakespeare’s times, more limited in terms of its audience. The genres of comedy and tragedy moved decisively away from Shakespearean models, while new genres such as the heroic play, Spanish romance, split-plot tragicomedy, farce, burlesque, and ballad opera expanded the theatrical repertoire considerably. On the stage and in print, this array of plays participated fully in the historical shift within British society from royal absolutism to constitutional monarchy, from aristocratic (“Tory”) to bourgeois (Whig”) cultural values, and from relative political isolation within Europe to imperialist expansion and
the full-scale race for colonial markets. 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.
336: Eighteenth-Century Novel
Mark Vareschi
TuTh 11:00-12:15pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Option (%)
Where did the novel in English come from? How did the novel come to be the dominant literary form in modern culture? What is so “novel” about the novel? This course will explore the central questions surrounding the rise of the English novel in the eighteenth century through authors such as: Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Horace Walpole, Frances Burney, and Jane Austen. The novel of this period was fundamentally an experimental, adventurous, and innovative form that was subject to interrogation by both readers and writers. We will seek to understand how these novels variously work to represent truth, consciousness, history, and everyday life. Further, we will attend to the novels on a formal level to examine the questions they raise about the generic conventions of narrative fiction in order to understand how the novel came to resemble its current form in contemporary culture.
350: Special Topics in Gender & Literature
TBA
TuTh 2:30-3:45pm Van Vleck B223
Prereqs: GEN&WS 101, 102, 103, or GEN & WS/SOC 200
Crosslisted with GEN&WS
Honors Option (%)
Course Catalog Description: Investigation of some specific topic in gender and women’s studies related to gender and literature. Topic differs each semester.
375: Literatures of Migration and Disapora
Laila Amine
TuTh 9:30-10:45am Van Hise 155
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
How do Africa Diaspora writers represent their mobility and that of their protagonists in the 20th and 21st centuries? What is the relationship between mobility and subjectivity? Through the examination of African-American, African, and Caribbean writing, we will explore these questions along with major conceptualizations of migration, including diaspora, exile, cosmopolitanism, return migration, and heritage tourism. Starting the journey in the slave dungeons of west Africa with Saidiya Hartman’s memoir Lose Your Mother, we will travel to the Caribbean with Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby and Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven, then to Paris with James Baldwin and William Smith, and finally to Nigeria, Cameroon, and Ghana alongside Teju Cole, Imbolo Mbue, and Taiye Selasi. These selected readings will introduce you to major voices in African diaspora studies as well as provide the basis for discussion and your analytical essays.
400: Advanced Composition
Mary Fiorenza
Th 2:30-5:00pm White 4281
Prereqs: Satisfied Communications A requirement and junior standing
What motivates you as a writer? How do writers take into account the practical, creative, stylistic, and ethical dimensions of their work? What resources do strong writers use when developing essays as well as work that incorporates images and/or sound? This course explores these and other questions as it provides a workspace for practice in the broad category of nonfiction. Students’ own writing will be central to the course.
407: Creative Writing: Nonfiction Workshop
Ellen Samuels
We 5:30-7:25pm White 7105
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 explores a variety of non-fictional prose writing forms including (at the instructor’s discretion) personal essay, memoir, travel writing, opinion pieces, investigative journalism, public science writing, and natural history writing. Some time is spent on theory and technique; some time is spent reading the work of established writers; some short writing exercises may be assigned. The major focus of the course is on student writing, both in the classroom and in individual conferences.
408: Creative Writing: Fiction Workshop
Instructors, Times & Places Vary
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 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. Students who do not meet the prerequisite may submit a writing sample to the program director on Monday of the last week of classes.
409: Creative Writing: Poetry Workshop
Amy Quan Barry
Mo 1:20-3:15pm 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, 408, 410, 411, 469, 508, 509, or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)
Course Catalog Description: Writing literary poetry.
410: Creative Writing: Playwriting Workshop
Jennifer Plants
Mo 2:30-5:00pm White 7105
Prereqs: ENGL 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
What is a play? Why do writers choose such a form? What differentiates the language of action required by the stage from other narrative forms? What role do playwrights play in the art of theatrical collaboration? We’ll start with the most basic questions and examine them by experimenting all semester with our own writing for the stage in realistic, autobiographical and experimental forms. Guest artists, attendance at local theatrical events, in-class exercises and readings of student work will be integral to the class structure. Learn more about what forms and writers are popular on the American stage and why, all the while creating short works of your own that will lay the groundwork for further writing and exploration.
411: Creative Writing: Special Topics Workshop
Sean Bishop
Tu 12:05-2:00pm White 6108
Topics: TBA
Prereqs: ENGL 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, or graduate/professional standing
Accelerated Honors (!)
Course Catalog Description: Variable topics including: the informal essay, the long poem, the novel, the novella, genre fiction (detective, juvenile, humor, science fiction, etc.), experimental prose and poetry, etc. Students will read models and write their own exercise and full-length pieces.
413: English Words: Grammar, Culture, Mind
Anja Wanner
TuTh 1:00-2:15pm Education L159
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
This course deals with the structure, history, and processing of English words. Topics include the linguistic analysis of words and patterns of word formation, historical and current influences on English vocabulary, the history and standardizing force of dictionaries, and the acquisition of word meaning by children. No prerequisite.
415: Introduction to TESOL Methods
TBA
TuTh 1:00-2:15pm Education 151
Prereqs: Sophomore standing & consent of instructor
Course Catalog Description: Teaching of English to speakers of other languages. Exploration of the contexts in which English is taught, and methods and materials used to teach it.
420: Topics in English Language and Linguistics
Jacee Cho
TuTh 2:30-3:45pm Humanities 1217
Topic: Universal Grammar and Child Language Acquisition
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
[English Language and Linguistics] (Mixed Grad/Undergrad)
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 the basic concepts of the generative theory and learn to apply them to the study of child language.
There is no required textbook. All reading materials will be available electronically on the course website
427: Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Jordan Zweck
TuTh 11:00-12:15pm Humanities 1131
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Crosslisted with Medieval
Honors Option (%)
Course Catalog Description: Study of the most famous and influential medieval English poet through his best-known work and its playful and profound responses to some of the most pressing literary, social, political, and spiritual issues of his time. Readings will be in the original Middle English; no prior experience with the language is required.
431: Early Works of Shakespeare
Joshua Calhoun
Tu 5:30-8:00pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Course Catalog Description: Study of four Shakespeare plays through 1600, with the reading of several others.
432: Later Works of Shakespeare
Karen Britland
Th 2:30-5:00pm Van Vleck B231
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Course Catalog Description: Study of four Shakespeare plays after 1600 with the reading of several others.
454: James Joyce
Richard Begam
TuTh 2:30-3:45pm Humanities 2653
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Option (%)
This course focuses on the major writings of James Joyce, excluding Finnegans Wake. Most of our attention will be devoted to an in-depth examination of Ulysses conducted over the course of nine weeks. By way of preparation, we shall read two earlier works by Joyce, Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist, as well as Joyce’s principal source text, Homer’s Odyssey. Among the larger questions we shall address: Where does Joyce position himself in relation to the conflicting demands of nationalism, individualism and aesthetics? What is the significance of the “odyssey of styles” in Ulysses, and how does it affect the novel’s mimetic aspirations? Finally, how does Ulysses reconceive such fundamental ideas as time and place, love and marriage, truth and language, art and morality?
456: Topic in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture
Russ Castronovo
Online
This is a modular section that meets January 2, 2018 thru January 21, 2018 (Session Code XCC, 3 weeks of instruction)
Topic: Rebels and American Literature
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
How does literature intersect with rebellion and revolution? Literature promotes values commonly associated with the social order, which is why we learn about literature in school. But literary works often seem to have proximity to political violence and social unrest. As we move from Revolutionary-era Boston to Zuccotti Park and Occupy Wall Street, we will explore the relationship between literature and social and political movements associated with the radicalism of slave resistance, anti-capitalist demonstrators, turn-of-the-century feminism, and other conflicts. As we do so we’ll also think about different literary modes and forms, including manifestos, satire, short stories, poetry, and the novel. Note: This is an intensive 3-week online course that runs during winter break.
457: Topic in American Literature and Culture since 1900
Sarah Wood
MoWeFr 9:55-10:45am Humanities 2637
Topic: American Identity: Contemporary Fiction
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Option (%)
In this course, we will read novels produced by (mostly) women writers of color from the 1940s-present to consider the notion of citizenship from the lens of non-majority cultures within the United States. How do these writings articulate concerns with citizenship, identity, home, nation, truth, power and spaces? We will examine the authors’ different time-spaces, different goals to understand how they are informed by the specificities of gender, race, sexuality, and nationality. We will consider the form of the novel itself, and how that form is constantly being reimagined. We will look at “traditional novels as well as graphic and experimental novels. How does the aesthetic work of the novel engage the politics of these varied and haunting stories? While no attempt to understand national identity can be complete, these novels will provide excellent grounding for wider discussions. (Reading List: The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros, Power, Linda Hogan, The Street, Ann Petry, Kindred, Octavia Butler, Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine, Strong Female Protagonist, Brennan Lee Mulligan; Molly Ostertag, Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
459: Three American Novelists
Sarah Wood
MoWe 2:30-3:45pm Humanities 2637
Topic: Hemingway, Faulkner, and Cather
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Option (%)
This class will cover several of Willa Cather’s, Ernest Hemingway’s and William Faulkner’s finest and most important works. In it, you will develop an understanding of historical and cultural contexts (how did “missing out on WWI affect both Hemingway and Faulkner? How did America’s changing landscape affect Cather’s prose structure?), biographical information (was Hemingway really a macho hunter? Did Cather reject femininity a century ago? Were Faulkner and Hemingway really rivals?), and key features of the novels (what led Cather and Hemingway to pare down their style while Faulkner’s prose ballooned?). We will study ex-patriots, Southern literature, gender, sexuality, class and more. You will have opportunities to read critical responses, informing both your study of the texts and your writing as well. This course is a discussion-based seminar with some lecturing that requires your daily participation. You can expect writing assignments, a reading journal, and a great deal of participation.
461.001: Topic in Ethnic and Multicultural Literature
Kristina Huang
TuTh 1:00-2:15pm White 4281
Topic: Black Life & Thought in the 18th Century
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
The presence of Black subjects traversing and inhabiting the Anglo-Atlantic world ignited the social and political imagination of eighteenth-century writers. How did this presence materialize and contribute to the period’s literary production? This course is a survey of Black Anglophone works in the eighteenth century and their afterlives. We’ll work through a heterogeneous archive of texts (portraits, illustrations, letters, novels, and plays) and examine how Black Anglophone subjects, across the spectrum of enslavement and freedom, engaged with the social, aesthetic, and philosophical discourses of their time.
461.002: Topic in Ethnic and Multicultural Literature
Christine Goding-Doty
TuTh 11:00-12:15pm Education L159
Topic: Social Media & eColonialism
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Course Catalog Description: Literature in English by authors whose work reflects the experience of ethnic and minority groups.
464: Asian American Women Writers
Leslie Bow
TuTh 11:00-12:15pm Ingraham 224
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Crosslisted with Asian Am & GEN&WS
This course examines contemporary Asian American women’s literature in a discussion based, task-oriented classroom. How do women 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—experimental and lyric poetry, realist memoir, or the graphic novel—provide the vehicle of 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 and ethnic pluralism.
469: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Arts
Natasha Oladokun
Tu 6:00-8:00pm White 7109
Prereqs: Consent of instructor; Students may not be concurrently enrolled with ENGL 307, 407, 409, 408, 410, 411, 508, 509, or 695
Accelerated Honors (!)
What is the importance of creative work in the midst of social crisis, whether domestic or abroad? In this course, we’ll examine our own lives as creative beings, studying a number of writers whose art has aimed to reflect injustices in the world—both as a mirror and diagnostic. We’ll read poetry and prose essays, watch documentaries, and engage with visual art. Course will include creative writing responses, and a final creative project approved by the instructor.
481: Junior Honors Seminar in the Major
Elizabeth Bearden
Mo 4:00-6:30pm White 4281
Prereqs: Sophomore standing and declared in honors program
Honors Only (H)
This Honors course focuses on close reading, theoretical approaches, and research methods that will prepare Honors students to write the Honors thesis. An emphasis on rhetoric, prosody, and formalism will help students to enhance their skills of textual analysis. Exposure to the history of literary criticism and theory will aid the student in thinking about the broader implications of their thesis topic. Practical exercises in writing style and the methods of literary research will prepare the student to conduct responsible research and scholarship. Students need not have started thesis research to enroll. Students who have already started their thesis are welcome. Indeed, the course is intended to help anyone who wishes to conduct serious independent research in literary studies, regardless of their Honors or thesis status. That said, one of the goals of the course is to facilitate the search for a substantial topic and appropriate thesis advisor.
The acquisition of skills and methods will be organized around a selection of primary texts including but not limited to Greek and Renaissance drama, poetry ancient and modern, medieval romance and the novel, and exemplary works of theory from poetics and narratology to postcolonial, critical race, gender and sexuality, and disability studies approaches. Assignments will include 3 short essays, a take-home midterm, and the creation of an abstract and annotated bibliography for a current or possible thesis.
514: English Syntax
Anja Wanner
TuTh 11:00-12:15pm Sterling 3425
Prereqs: English 314 or graduate/professional standing
This course is an introduction to the analysis of English sentences within a generative framework. Topics include sentences with ‘gaps’ (such as imperatives and infinitives), sentences with ‘movement’ (such as passives and relative clauses), and sentences with complement alternations (particle verbs, ditransitive verbs).
515: Techniques and Materials for TESOL
TBA
TuTh 9:30-10:45am Van Hise 201
Prereqs: English 415
Course Catalog 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.
532: Literature and Animal Studies
Mario Ortiz-Robles
TuTh 9:30-10:45am Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Option (%)
Organized around familiar animal categories — dogs, cats, horses, apes, birds, insects — this course will examine the representation of animals in modern literature as a way to give an account of the cultural history of human-animal relations and, in doing so, to make us reflect upon the social, political, and environmental consequences of this history at a time when animal species are disappearing at an alarming rate.
543: Discourses of Disability, Antiquity to 1800
Elizabeth Bearden
MoWe 2:30-3:45pm White 4208
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
This course centers on concepts of disability from antiquity to the Renaissance. Literary theory, philosophy, and history will help us frame our thinking about how disability is produced. Along with considering how texts like Shakespeare’s Richard III or Milton’s Samson Agonistes represent disabled figures, we will investigate the generic, social, and spatial contexts from which these representations arise.
559: Topic in Literary or Cultural Theory
Ramzi Fawaz
We 5:30-8:00pm Humanities 2637
Topic: Queer Popular Culture Studies
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Meets with GEN&WS 642
Honors Option (%)
This course will explore the politics and popular culture of women’s and gay liberation in the 1970s. In this period, radical feminist and LGBT activism helped circulate new ideas about gender and sexual freedom to the American public. We will study how this activism influenced a variety of artists, writers, and filmmakers to tell new stories about gender and sexual non-conformity, thereby expanding public perceptions of what gender and sexuality could be.
613: TESOL: Pedagogical Grammar
TBA
This is a modular section that meets January 22, 2019 thru February 17, 2019(Session Code ADD, 4 weeks of instruction)
Prereqs: English 415
Course Catalog Description: A focus on understanding English grammar from a pedagogical perspective for the purpose of teaching English as a second or foreign language.
615: TESOL: Teaching Listening and Speaking
TBA
TuTh 1:00-2:15pm White 4290
This is a modular section that meets April 1, 2019 thru May 3, 2019 (Session Code KEE, 5 weeks of instruction)
Prereqs: English 415
Course Catalog Description: An overview of listening and speaking skills and how to teach them.
616: TESOL: Teaching of Reading
TBA
TuTh 1:00-2:15pm Education L151
This is a modular section that meets January 22, 2019 thru February 17, 2019 (Session Code ADD, 4 weeks of instruction)
Prereqs: English 415
Course Catalog Description: An overview of reading and vocabulary skills and how to teach them.
617: TESOL: Teaching of Writing
TBA
TuTh 1:00-2:15pm Education L151
This is a modular section that meets February 18, 2019 thru March 31, 2019 (Session Code EFE, 5 weeks of instruction)
Prereqs: English 415
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
TuTh 1:00-2:15pm Education L151
This is a modular section that meets April 1, 2019 thru May 3, 2019 (Session Code KEE, 5 weeks of instruction)
Prereqs: English 415
Course Catalog Description: An overview of the features of English pronunciation and how to teach them.