Courses

Fall 2022-23 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.

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.

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 & Dramatic Literature
Mary Trotter
MW 12:05pm-12:55pm Humanities 3650
Cross-Listed with Theatre and Drama

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

140: Comm B Topics in English Literature
Topic: The Figure of the Outsider: Writing from the Margins
Anja Jovic-Humphrey
TR 12:05pm-12:55pm Science 180

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 cell phones to help them stay in touch. Sylvia Plath’s character Esther Greenwood wonders whether she is unwomanly because she is not sure whether she wants to get married and have a baby. 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: Science Fiction and Fantasy
Topic: Global Science Fiction
Sarah Wells
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 159

Science fiction (SF) has become a key genre for experiencing and interpreting contemporary problems on a global scale. This course moves between literature and cinema from different geographic and historical contexts to question the tendency to read SF produced in the U.S. as somehow speaking for the planet. Throughout, we will explore the genre as a unique lens into global issues — including immigration and borders, environmental destruction, surveillance and artificial intelligence, exploitation and the economy, and the role of race and gender in the creation of utopian or dystopian worlds.

144.001: Women’s Writing
Topic: African Feminisms
Ainehi Edoro
MW 11:00am-11:50am Humanities 2340
Cross-Listed with Gender & Women’s Studies

Though this course is focused on African feminist writing, it is great for anyone interested in global perspectives on current debates about gender, sexuality, and storytelling. Feminism has exploded in African literature within the last 5 years. From the radical vision of Mona Elthanawy’s Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls (2019) to the sex-positive philosophy in Nana Sekyiamah’s The Sex Lives of African Women (2021), African writers are addressing the complexities of women’s lives. Through a rich collection of texts that includes romance fiction, fantasy, as well as memoirs and poetry, we will explore the key debates and issues driving conversations about feminism in African literature today. More importantly, the course will teach you how to channel your passion for writing into honest, beautiful, and impactful essays inspired by feminist ideas.

144.002: Women’s Writing
Topic: TBA
Jennifer Plants
M 4:00pm-6:30pm Van Vleck B215
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.

150: Literature & Culture of Asian America
Timothy Yu
TR 1:20pm-2:10pm Humanities 3650
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.

English/Asian American Studies 462: Asian Americans and Science Fiction
(Asian American Studies is primary on this one so I don’t know if you’ll be able to access it.)

Is the future Asian? From Jack London’s visions of the yellow peril to Blade Runner’s 1980s “techno-orientalism,” we’ll see how American science fiction projects its fantasies and fears about the future onto Asia. We’ll also see how Asian American writers like Charles Yu, Cynthia Kadohata, and Ken Liu have responded.

153.001: Literature and the Environment
Topic: Planetary Humanities
Frederic Neyrat
MW 9:55am-10:45am Humanities 2340
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: Climate Crisis Literature
Sarah Wood
TR 9:30am-10:45am Education L159
Cross-Listed with Environmental Studies
Prereqs: First Year Interest Group 208 authorization required to enroll

This FIG approaches the crisis of Climate Change from different academic disciplines to provide an array of ideas, perspectives, approaches, and solutions. Our work together will perform the goals that writers, artists, scientists and activists encourage—build community, provide language around important issues, and invite your creativity. The core class is in English Language and Literature, with two linked classes in Environmental Studies and Geography. English 153: Climate Crisis Literature will do more than focus on the existential dread found in post-apocalyptic fiction but will consider work that embraces the complexity of relationships impacted by the climate crisis: relationships to nature, to each other, and to ourselves. Our syllabus will include poetry, fiction (aka Cli-Fi!), non-fiction, podcasts and music largely from historically marginalized voices and those most impacted by changes in the world climate. Assignments will include a semester-long Analysis Notebook, presentations of interdisciplinary creators, unique writing assignments and a final creative project of your own design. The course is a discussion-based seminar with required participation. See the full description at: https://figs.wisc.edu/

153.003: Literature and the Environment
Topic: Water, Water Everywhere
M. Ty
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Humanities 2637
Cross-Listed with Environmental Studies

This course is held between two shores: on one side, Derek Walcott’s proposition that “the sea is history,” and on the other, Mahmoud Darwish’s understanding that “who has no land has no sea.” Throughout the semester, we will consider works of poetry, film, contemporary art, and theory that emerge from historical confrontation with an overabundance of water. How does colonial modernity work the differential between swimming and drowning? In what ways are rising waters saturated with the force of racial capitalism’s past? How do we read the European archive of oceanic feelings and its corresponding investment on the sure ground of rationality? How does environmental precarity exert pressure on artistic praxis? How to write, not just about a flood but from within it? What acts of image-making are possible for the experience of being adrift or potentially washed away? Our inquiry will be diasporic, with the transatlantic slave trade and the black Mediterranean as our primary sites of return.

Works by Etel Adnan, Amel Alzakout, Fady Joudah, John Akomfrah, Tiffany Lethabo King, M. NourbeSe Philip, Roni Horn, Eduardo Galeano, Éduoard Glissant, Ana Mendieta, Kamau Braithwaite, Lorrine Niedecker, Desiree Bailey, the Ottolith Group, Valerie Martinez, Rinaldo Walcott, Stephanie Smallwood, and Sigmund Freud.

155-Myth & Literature
Topic: Classical Myth and Modern Literature
Ronald Harris
MWF 1:20pm-2:10pm Education L185
Prereqs: First Year Interest Group 207 authorization required to enroll

At its core, history is a collection of ancient stories with themes that often appear over and over again. It’s no wonder, then, that ancient myths find their way into modern lives every day. So, a central question explored by this FIG is: How do myths find their ways into our lives—into our poetry, our literature, our popular culture? To answer this question, we will dive into studies of classical literature as well as contemporary artistic and literary adaptations to examine the continuing presence of myth in society today.
We will investigate puzzles: How do the lost fragments of an ancient Greek poem travel from archeologists, to translators, to us, speaking across time of love and desire? And these questions lead to other explorations:

What do our campus tall-tales tell us about UW–Madison’s history and values?
When we enter into these stories through creative retelling, how do we become a more integral part of our campus?
What do the stories of diverse American traditions—the Gullah people of South Carolina, whose language resonates with African rhythms—tell us about how African storytelling traditions connect to the Br’er Rabbit stories of the American South?
And what is the Mississippi Blues music tradition doing in an American Indian novel from the Pacific Northwest?

The main seminar in this FIG, English 155: “Classical Myth and Modern Literature,” explores ways that modern American culture interprets, adopts, and adapts classical myth in order to address contemporary social, aesthetic, and political concerns. Each course in the FIG deals primarily with the classical worlds of Greece and Rome, but by tracing these adaptations and the transmission of stories from one culture, time, and place to another, you will also study other ancient civilizations from the Middle East, Africa, and Native America. The historical, archaeological, and literary approaches to the legacy of the classical world will take you out of the classroom, to the museum, the library, the laboratory, and the green spaces across campus—each with its own story to tell.

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.

162: Shakespeare
Topic: Why Shakespeare?
Joshua Calhoun
TR 11:00am-11:50am Humanities 2340

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.).

172.001: Literatures of Native America
Susan Dominguez
TR 9:30pm-10:45am Van Hise 494
Cross-Listed with American Indian Studies
Comm B Writing Intensive class

Designated as a Comm-B (writing intensive) class, this course introduces students to oral and written literatures of the peoples of native North America. Students will engage Native voices from historical periods to today’s popular writers. Genres include: mythology, poetry, short story, graphics, and three award winning novels.

172.002: Literatures of Native America
Susan Dominguez
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 582
Cross-Listed with American Indian Studies
Comm B Writing Intensive class

173.001: Ethnic and Multicultural Literature
Topic: TBA
Raquel Kennon
TR 9:30am-10:45am Room Pending

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.

174.001: Literature and Social Justice
Topic: Black Life Narratives
Laila Amine
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 595
Prereqs: First Year Interest Group 201 authorization required to enroll

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.

174.002: Literature and Social Justice
Topic: Staging Environmental Justice
Jennifer Plants
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Vleck B223

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.

174.003: Literature and Social Justice
Topic: Law and Literature
Ralph Grunewald
MW 11:00am-12:15pm White 4275
Prereqs: First Year Interest Group 231 authorization required to enroll

This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of Law and Literature. In the first part, we will address “Law in Literature,” the field that focuses on the depiction and reflection of law and legal questions in works of literature as a way to understand law in its social, philosophical, and cultural context. Literary texts often address ideas of law and justice outside technical and doctrinal paradigms.

We will then look at “Law as Literature,” the area that examines legal writings through the lens of literary analysis. We will explore the semantic, linguistic, and narrative similarities and differences between law and literature, and how, for example, the literary analysis of the “story” that underlies a criminal case contribute to a more refined understanding of the law and justice. As we will discuss, a “literary” analysis introduces a different perspective revealing insights about the law that are not immediately obvious to the eyes of a lawyer.

The main objective of this course is to develop an understanding of how much the disciplines of law and literature can benefit from each other. I will demonstrate that law is subject to human, social, and literary construction—not only in a theoretical sense but also in actual cases. The assigned readings are chosen from the canon of works on law and literature. They are all connected by themes which invite comparisons on many levels.

This class does not require any background in law or legal studies. Legal themes and ideas will be explained in class.

175: Literature and the Other Disciplines
Topic: Literature & Marx
Joseph Bowling
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm Psychology 134
Prereqs: First Year Interest Group 233 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.

176: Topics in Literature and Film
Topic: Work and Its Meanings in American Literature and Film
Joseph Bowling
TR 9:55am-10:45am Soc Sci 5208

In this course we will study American literature and film that depict work, from office jobs to food delivery, and explore what meaning and values our culture assigns to different forms of employment.

178: Digital Media, Literature, and Culture
Topic: Human Memory, Big Data, and the Digital Age
Mark Vareschi
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Psychology 115
Prereqs: First Year Interest Group 230 authorization required to enroll
Honors Optional (%)

The course will begin by considering the relationship between memory and human identity. In many ways, we are who we are because we remember who we are day to day.

However, human memory is fragile. We forget things; we misremember events.

By contrast, any and all online activity leaves a trace that can be collected to form a version of the user. This version is not identical to the human user and yet is often a frighteningly accurate image of the user whose behaviors may be tracked and predicted.

Importantly, this digital version of the user is produced by a form of memory (or more precisely a storage of information) that does not forget. You may not remember “liking” that photo on Instagram at 3 am, but Instagram does.

182.001: Introduction to Literature for Honors
Topic: TBA
TBA
TR 9:30am-10:45am Van Hise 587
Prereqs: Declared in an Honors program

Course Catalog Description: Introductory honors course in discussion format. Topic and materials will vary.

182.002: Introduction to Literature for Honors
Topic: Witches & Wizards: Hecate to Harry Potter
Karen Britland
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Vilas 4008
Prereqs: Declared in an Honors program

In this class, we’ll consider tales of witchcraft and wizardry in the early modern and modern periods, comparing older representations of magic and the supernatural with contemporary depictions in children’s stories and young-adult fiction. Class discussions will focus on issues concerning religion, gender, science and the nature of “reality.” Texts will include Dr Faustus, The Witch of Edmonton, The Wizard of Earthsea, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

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

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
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
Jacee Cho
MW 12:05pm-12:55pm Science 180
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

[English Language & Linguistics] (Undergraduate)

English 214 provides an overview of the structure, use, and development of the English language and its varieties. As such, the course examines the English language from the perspective of a linguist, using linguistic methods and terminology. You will learn how the building blocks of language (such as sounds, words and phrases) are used to express meaning and to create community.

223: Vladimir Nabokov: Russian & American Writings
S. A. Karpukhin
MWF 11:00am-11:50am Van Hise 104
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.

236:002 Bascom Course
Topic: TBA
TBA
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Van Hise 394
Prereqs: Satisfied Communications A requirement

Course Catalog Description: A low-enrollment course developing skills in critical reading, logical thinking, use of evidence, and use of library resources. Emphasis on writing in the conventions of specific fields.

241: Literature and Culture 1: to the 18th Century
Jordan Zweck
TR 11:00am-11:50am Humanities 3650
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Not open to students who took ENGL 215 prior to Fall 2014

This course provides an introduction to literature in English from the Middle Ages to the early eighteenth century. Together with English 242, it provides an introduction to British literary history, and its primary goals include familiarizing students with the canon of English literature and preparing students for more specialized study in advanced courses in the major. The course spans roughly 1000 years, from the origins of English literature to the rise of the novel. Along the way, we will examine how literature engaged with topics as disparate as love, religion, and science, and we will read everything from elegant descriptions of angelic beings to six-hundred-year-old fart jokes. To focus our discussions, we will concentrate on questions of form and genre, including the epic, fabliau, romance, sonnet, lyric, and novel. Emphasis will be on close reading and literary analysis, but we will also pay close attention to the social, cultural, and political contexts from which each text emerged.

Texts may include Beowulf; Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; Paradise Lost; Oroonoko; and poetry by Shakespeare, Spenser, and Donne.

242: Literature and Culture II: from the 18th Century to the Present
Topic: Literature in Perspective
Mario Ortiz-Robles
TR 9:55am-10:45am Humanities 3650
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: Friendship
Ramzi Fawaz
M 2:30pm-5:00pm Humanities 2251
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)

This course will explore how US writers, artists, and filmmakers have depicted one of the most foundational forms of human relation: the bond of friendship. As a deep emotional tie to others built on trust, shared experience, and open dialogue, friendship has often been at odds with the US-American values of individualism, acquisitiveness, and ownership. Against these latter ideals, creative producers working across many mediums have recurrently depicted friendship as a bedrock part of democratic life, as a basis for mutually transformative exchanges across difference, as sanctuary from social marginalization or exclusion, and as a highly unpredictable or volatile social form that can produce entirely new types of community. In the digital age, however, friendship has diffused into the elaborate algorithmic interface of social media, stretched to its thinnest possible expression until it potentially has no meaning. Moreover, while US-Americans are experiencing a massive mental health crisis brought on by the manifold stresses of the digital revolution, climate change, a global pandemic and increasing economic precarity, statistics show that deep and sustained friendships are declining, thus exacerbating alienation and loneliness at the very moment that people need connectivity, investment, and engagement with others. This class will ask how imaginative and artistic representations of friendship might provide tools for reclaiming the most life-affirming aspects of this necessary social relation. We will spend a significant amount of time tracking how novelists, filmmakers, and playwrights have used innovative formal tools to represent friendship as a site for negotiating meaningful human differences, not only of race, gender, sexuality, class and ability but temperament, personality, and spiritual worldview.

Alongside literary and political theories of friendship, we will view some of the following films: Thelma & Louise (Scott, 1991), Fried Green Tomatoes (Avnet, 1991), Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016), Booksmart (Wilde, 2019); and read some of the following literature: Carson McCuller’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Toni Morrison’s Sula, Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance, Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.

245.002: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Writing and Money
Eileen Lagman
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 587
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

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: TBA
TBA
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Social Wrk 110
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)

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.

245.004: Seminar in the Major
Topic: Empire of Senses
Yanie Fecu
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Social Wrk 114
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

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: Literary Architectures: Making Space in American Literature
Sarah Ensor
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm Educ Sci 218
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)

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

245.006: Seminar in the Major
Topic: TBA
Raquel Kennon
Day/Time TBA Van Hise 595
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

300 level courses

304: Composition & Rhetoric In and Beyond the University
Angela Zito
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 487
Prereqs: Satisfied Communications A requirement and sophomore standing

How is it that writing—as both a practice and a field of study—can shape so much of what we know and how we relate to one another? This course will help you draft your own answer to this question by introducing major theories, research methods, and teaching practices in the field of writing studies (also known as “composition and rhetoric”). You might find this course particularly engaging if you plan to pursue a career in education, public service, writing and publishing, or graduate study in English.

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

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

314: Structure of English
Tom Purnell
TR 9:30am-10:45am Ingraham 222
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

This course provides a general introduction to the study of English grammar from a linguistic perspective. In English 314, we discuss that grammar is not something external that is written down in a book to be memorized by speakers of a specific language; rather, it is something that is part of every speaker’s implicit knowledge about their language. In this course, students will learn to apply linguistic terminology and methods to describe the structure of English words and sentences, both verbally and visually.

In this course, we will also learn to identify linguistic constructions (such as relative clauses, passive constructions, nominalizations) and to analyze how they are employed in different text types or genres. To this end, your final project paper will use the terminology that you will learn in class to compare different texts and discourses in terms of their structure.

315: English Phonology
Eric Raimy
MWF 11:00am-11:50am Ingraham 22
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Meets with Linguistics 310

English Phonology introduces students to the sound system of English, including phonetics and elementary phonology. Phonetics is the study of sounds (phones), while phonology examines how minimally critical sounds work together with other minimally critical sounds. Course topics include acoustic phonetics, articulatory phonetic descriptions of consonants and vowels, classic phonemic theory, the nature of phonological processes, linguistic change, and the acquisition of phonological systems. By the end of the course, students will be able to describe and transcribe the speech sounds of English, recognize and describe phonemic and phonotactic patterns, and account for basic phonological processes.

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 Vleck B231
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

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

353: British Literature since 1900
Topic: Modern British and Irish Literature
Richard Begam
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 475
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional %

This course surveys a number of the principal works of twentieth-century British, Irish and Commonwealth literature. Issues to be considered include the “inward turn” of modernism, its fascination with myth and archetype, England’s changing social and economic conditions, and the encounter between Western and non-Western cultures resulting from British colonialism.

359: Visionary and Speculative Fiction: Social Justice Approaches
Sami Schalk
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Sterling 1339
Prereqs: Sophomore standing, previous GWS course, or permission of instructor
Cross-Listed with Gender & Women’s Studies

“All organizing is science fiction” –Walidah Imarisha Explores the genre of visionary fiction—speculative fiction written for social justice purposes—as a means to create, build and maintain new worlds. Examines the political potential of literature and multiple examples of visionary fiction. Requires independent research on a chosen social justice issue and the creation of a visionary fiction short story at the end of the semester.

360: The Anglo-Saxons
Jordan Zweck
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with History & Religious Studies

Who were the people who lived in what is now England over 1000 years ago? This class explores the history, literature, religion, art, and culture of the early medieval English. We explore a wide range of texts that include fights with monsters, heartbreaking elegies, dirty riddles, bombastic sermons, and medical treatises. We’ll also discuss debates in the field regarding the name once given to the people of early medieval England: “The Anglo-Saxons,” and we will consider how Old English and Anglo-Latin literature has been adapted by modern writers, and why this early medieval culture continues to appeal to people today. No previous experience with medieval literature and culture required! All readings in translation.

368: Chicana/o & Latina/o Literature
Theresa Delgadillo
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 394
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.

400 level courses

401: Race, Sex, and Texts (How to do things with writing)
Morris Young
M 2:30pm-5:00pm Education L159
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Gender & Women’s Studies
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 citizenship, exclusion, identity, and language have often been used to argue about who we are, who belongs, and who is American.

Writing Projects will likely include: a shorter essay (5-7 pages), a longer essay (10-15 pages), a remediated text (a multimodal reimagination of one of your projects), and weekly short texts to use in class.

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

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

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

407: Creative Writing: Nonfiction Workshop
Beth Nguyen
T 1:20pm-3:15pm White 7109
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
TBA
M 1:20pm-3:15pm White 6108
Prereqs: Completion of one of the following with a 3.0 or higher: English 207 or 307 taken Fall 2014 or later
Students who do not meet the prerequisite may submit a writing sample to the program director on Monday of the last week of classes.
Accelerated Honors (!)

This class will attempt to provide you with a vocabulary for discussing creative work (that of established writers as well as your peers) and help you apply learned techniques to your own writing, so that you may begin to determine your own aesthetic. Some topics you can expect to explore include: point of view, the construction of good dialogue, navigating scene and exposition, and the sound and rhythm of constructing a sentence.

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. In return, I’ll expect the cooperative fostering of a safe and conducive environment for yourself and your peers to learn in. Though writing is often a solitary practice, it is necessary to create a writing community that allows its members to share and discuss work and ideas in a way that benefits the development of both the writer and the reader. At times, this class will seem to move quickly, and require you to really engage with your writing, the writing of your peers, and all of the assigned readings.

408.002: Creative Writing: Fiction Workshop
Ron Kuka
R 5:40pm-7:40pm White 7105
Prereqs: Completion of one of the following with a 3.0 or higher: English 207 or 307 taken Fall 2014 or later
Students who do not meet the prerequisite may submit a writing sample to the program director on Monday of the last week of classes.
Accelerated Honors (!)

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

409.001: Creative Writing: Poetry Workshop
TBA
T 11:00am-12:55pm White 7109
Prereqs: English 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, or 410 in Fall 2014 or later
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.

409.002: Creative Writing: Poetry Workshop
TBA
M 3:30pm-5:25pm White 6108
Prereq: English 207, 307, 407, 408, 409, or 410 in Fall 2014 or later
Accelerated Honors (!)

411.001: Creative Writing: Special Topics Workshop
Topic: Literary Publishing
Sean Bishop
T 1:20pm-3:15pm White 6110
Prereqs: 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.

411.002: Creative Writing: Special Topics Workshop
Topic: Environmental Writing
Noreen McAuliffe
M 11:00am-12:55pm White 7109
Prereqs: 207, 307,407,408,409,410, 411, or graduate/professional standing
Accelerated Honors (!)

Given the accelerating language of environmental disaster—airpocalypse, ecocide, climate emergency—is optimism still required or desirable in environmental writing? In this course, we will examine the range of rhetorical strategies that environmental writers have used to create a sense of urgency, and students will practice their own prose and poetry through an environmental lens.

Class will include field excursions to practice site-specific writing exercises on campus.

414: Global Spread of English
Tom Purnell
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Education L185
Prereqs: Sophomore Standing

English 414 examines the linguistic, social, and political impact of the spread of English around the world. Through readings, lectures and discussions, we will critically consider questions such as: why and how is English spreading? Does English spread tend to perpetuate elites, or does it increase opportunity for the non-elites? What are some characteristics of new varieties of English? What are the issues surrounding standardization? Who “owns” English? What happens to local languages in circumstances of English spread? What is happening regarding English and other languages in such geographical contexts as Singapore? Japan? Tanzania? Peru? And transcending geography, we’ll also consider how English is an agent in the spread of American popular culture, the Internet, etc. We’ll see that the topics in this course will be very relevant for the national discussion on decolonizing the United States.
English 414 is an Intermediate level course and counts towards Breadth requirements for Humanities, as Liberal Arts & Science credit in L&S. For graduate students, English 414 counts toward 50% graduate coursework requirement. The instructional mode is remote with synchronous meeting times (we all gather at the same time over the internet). The one credit hour designation assumes approximately fifty minutes of remote/synchronous interaction with the instructor and a minimum of two hours out of class student work, three times per week for approximately 15 weeks. Some engagement for the one credit will include student-to-student interaction and project-based activities in and out of class in lieu of direct instruction.

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

English 415 is an introduction to the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. In this course, we will explore the contexts in which English is taught, and the methods and materials used to teach it. Students will read about, respond to and discuss the methods for teaching English as a second or foreign language, with a focus on theory and rationale, and techniques and materials. Students will also observe ESL classes and document their observations as well as tutor a language learner throughout the semester.

425: Medieval Romance
Lisa Cooper
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Babcock 119
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Medieval Studies

Knights, tournaments, adventures; damsels in distress; star-crossed lovers; talking animals; forests, wastelands, tempestuous seas; magical potions; elaborate feasts and even more elaborate clothing; King Arthur, Lancelot, Gawain, Guinevere, and, of course, Merlin and a curious object called the Grail. All this and so much more come together in the genre known as romance, one of the major literary forms of the Middle Ages. This course will read across the “best-seller” stories of the era, from the late twelfth century in France to the end of the fifteenth century in England. No previous knowledge of medieval literature or culture required.

430: Topic in Early Modern Literature and Culture
Topic: Shakespeare, Sort Of
Josh Calhoun
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm Ingraham 122
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

As 2023 approaches, scholarly institutions around the world are busily preparing events, books, and exhibits to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623). Such celebrations will echo the 2016 “deathiversary of Shakespeare and its nationwide exhibits of “First Folio! The Book That Made Shakespeare. It might be fitting to offer a course that explores the authentic brilliance of Shakespeare’s First Folio, but this is not that course. Instead, this course will revel in much of the supposedly inauthentic Shakespeareana that has long swirled around Shakespeare and his printed works. Throughout the course, we will consider forgeries and fakes, misguided biographies, media piracy, authorship debates, historical fiction, YA and graphic novels, and other expansions of the “Shakesverse.” Questions about literary authenticity, literary style, artistic license, and originality will be at the heart of the course. If our approach flirts with bardoclasm, it is purposeful: acknowledging the cultural institution that Shakespeare has become and exploring divergences from the official tradition will allow new kinds of conversations about representation and reality, about literature versus Literature, and about the importance of the humanities as we look ahead to 2023.

432: Later Works of Shakespeare
Joseph Bowling
TR 4:00pm-5:15pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

What is justice, and how is it achieved? These two questions will inform our study of Shakespeare’s late plays.

444: Topic Romantic or Victorian Literature and Culture
Topic: Women’s Writing & Global Nineteenth Century
Amanda Shubert
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Van Hise 159
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

What does it mean for women to be free? This course looks at how 19th-century women writers in Britain, the U.S., the Caribbean, and South Asia answered this question in their novels, poems, memoirs, and essays. We will read works by authors including Charlotte Bronte, Mary Prince, Pandita Ramabai, and Frances Harper.

453: Topic in British Literature and Culture since 1900
Topic: Backgrounds to Modernism
Richard Begam
TR 11:00am-12:15pm White 4208
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Honors Optional (%)

This course charts the intersection between the cultural phenomenon we call modernity and the literary and aesthetic phenomenon we call modernism. Drawing on works in philosophy, psychology, ethics, and aesthetics, we examine how the central texts of modernist literature grappled with a number of the defining issues of twentieth-century thought.

457.001: Topic in American Literature and Culture since 1900
Topic: Psychedelic Imaginaries
Ramzi Fawaz
T 6:00pm-8:30pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Jewish Studies

Today’s media landscape explodes with infinitely branching multiverses, stunning animated dreamscapes, hyper-saturated hallucinations, and mind-bending fantasy worlds. Superheroes jump between multiple dimensions while switching costumes, identities, and powers. Scientists enter alien environments and transform into trees. Laundromat owners meet countless versions of themselves across time and space. And space travelers ingest hallucinogenic substances to navigate the cosmos. How do we make sense of these dazzling, surreal, and sometimes terrifying images of life turned inside out? And how do we explain our popular craving for such psychedelic flights of the imagination?

This advanced seminar will explore recent US-American popular culture that grapples with psychedelic experience. Psychedelics, like LSD (or “acid”) and psilocybin (or “magic mushrooms”), 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 with the crisis of our time. In addition to reading about the history, aesthetics, and cultural politics of psychedelics, we may watch some of the following films: Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, 2015), Waves (Shults, 2019), Spider-Man: Into The Spider-verse (Persichetti, 2018), Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (Daniels, 2022); view select episodes of the HBO television series Lovecraft Country and Station Eleven; and read some of the following literature: Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves.

457.002: Topic in American Literature and Culture since 1900
Topic: Jewish Humor
Sunny Yudkoff
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Soc Sci 5231
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Meets With Jewish Studies 430

What is humor? Why and when do people tell jokes? Why has a certain form of humor come to be labeled “Jewish”? In this course, we examine the notion of “Jewish humor” by reading theoretical texts and creative texts (short stories, films, comedy sets), from Europe and the United States.

461.001: Topics in Ethnic & Multicultural Literature
Topic: Travel in African Diaspora Literature
Laila Amine
M 4:00pm-6:30pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

This course examines contemporary travel accounts by authors of the African diaspora with an emphasis on encounters across geographical, social, and ethnic differences. Reading can include fiction and non-fiction by African American, Caribbean, and African writers. Through a wide range of forms, you will be introduced to recent theories and concepts in the field of postcolonial travel writing.

461.002: Topics in Ethnic & Multicultural Literature
Topic: Black and Latinx in Literature and Visual Culture
Theresa Delgadillo
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Van Vleck B215
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Chican@ & Latin@ Studies

Chicanx and Latinx are frequently imagined as descendants of European and Native American peoples, erasing the history, presence, and influence of significant Chicanx and Latinx African diaspora peoples. In this course we will study literature and visual cultures that address the intersection of Black and Latinx, considering how these texts re-define both terms. In this interdisciplinary course we will consider racial paradigms and African diaspora in the Americas, study literature and visual texts that address the intersection of Black and Latinx and explore texts about African American and Latinx networks and relations. Readings will include novels, short stories, poetry, and research articles or chapters. Assignments will include discussion and dialogue with weekly critical responses, group presentations, annotated bibliography and twelve-page page research paper.

462.001: Topic in Asian American Literature
Topic: Asian Americans and Science Fiction
Timothy Yu
TR 11:00am-12:15pm Ingraham 224
Prereqs: Sophomore standing
Cross-Listed with Asian American Studies

Course Guide Description: Topics will vary. All topics will emphasize the following learning outcomes: awareness of history’s impact on the present, ability to recognize and question assumptions, development of critical thinking skills, awareness of relations between self and others, and effective participation in a multicultural society.

474.001: Topic in Contemporary Literature
Topic: Climate Crisis Literature
Sarah Wood
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 491
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

Climate Change is upon us, and this course will consider contemporary literature and art navigating the realities and considering the possible futures of our world. We will do more than focus on the existential dread found in post-apocalyptic fiction but will consider work that embraces the complexity of relationships impacted by the climate crisis: relationships to nature, to each other, and to ourselves. Our syllabus will include poetry, fiction (aka Cli-Fi!), non-fiction, podcasts and music largely from historically marginalized voices and those most impacted by changes in the world climate. My goal is for this course to perform the work that writers, artists and activists encourage: build community, provide language around important issues, and invite your creativity. Assignments will include a semester-long Analysis Notebook, presentations of interdisciplinary creators, unique writing assignments and a final creative project of your own design. The course is a discussion-based seminar with required participation.

474.002: Topic in Contemporary Literature
Topic: Climate Crisis Literature
Sarah Wood
TR 1:00pm-2:15pm White 4208
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

500 level courses

508: Creative Writing: Advanced Fiction Workshop
Dantiel Moniz
T 1:20pm-3:15pm White 7109
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 Ingraham 224
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.

533.002: Topic in Literature and Environment
Topic: Gender, Sexuality, and Environment
Sarah Ensor
TR 9:30am-10:45pm Van Vleck B215
Prereqs: 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.

559.001: Topic in Literary or Cultural Theory
Topic: Communication Breakdown: Media, Technology, Subjectivity
Frederic Neyrat
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm Van Hise 394
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

The goal of this course is to answer these questions: What does it mean to communicate? Do we now communicate too much, too frequently? Do social media, contemporary technology, A.I., algorithmic governance, facilitate or hinder communication? Amongst others, we will read Friedrich Kittler, Alexander Galloway, Jackie Wang, Legacy Russell, Yuk Hui, Jean Baudrillard, and Marshall McLuhan.

559.002: Topic in Literary or Cultural Theory
Topic: Fungibility
M. Ty
TR 2:30pm-3:45pm Humanities 2637
Prereqs: Sophomore standing

In this seminar, we will study how racial and sexual difference are articulated in relation to fungibility. Derived from the Latin word meaning “to perform,” fungibility refers to the capacity to be exchanged or replaced. Fungibles, in other words, are things that can be substituted for one another, presumably without loss: oil for oil, slave for slave. This writing-intensive seminar will reflect on cultural and economic logics of equivalence. What are the (colonial) laws that govern when something can be felicitously swapped out for something else? What happens when distinct bodies get handled as if they were the essentially same? In what ways does the singularity of white humanity depend on maintaining a contrast with the fungible commodity? In what senses might fungibility generate pleasure? What happens to narration and the lyric subject when the I cannot easily distinguish itself from a thing that might as well be another? How can fungibility be refused? Throughout the semester, we will engage with various accounts of fungibility—primarily in the literature of black studies; we will also examine how the term circulates in political theory, visual arts, law, and psychoanalysis.