Virtually all courses in the English Department are open to all students, majors and non-majors alike. 100-level courses have no prerequisites. 200-level courses have Writing 120 (Writing and Rhetoric) or its equivalent as a prerequisite. 300-level courses ordinarily build upon prior work in the English Department. 300-level creative writing courses generally require prior completion of a relevant 200-level creative writing course as a prerequisite. 300-level courses in literary studies (English courses other than those in creative writing), generally require as prerequisites English 185 and two 200-level English courses. Any course offered in the English department can count as an elective in any of our majors (English, English with CAL, and Creative Writing).
Please note that these classes are subject to change.
100-Level/Level I
English 150 The Craft of Creative Writing – C Bucciglia
Reserved seating available for Creative Writing majors and English majors pursuing CAL Licensure
This course introduces the craft of creative writing through contemporary readings and writing exercises in three genres: poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Students explore the fundamentals of reading and writing literature with attention to how a literary work is made. Emphasis on the elements of craft and revision also provide preparation for discussing literature from a writer’s perspective in a workshop environment should students pursue more comprehensive single genre study in the future. Prerequisite: None. GE: WRI. OLE Core: CRE.
English 185 Literary Studies – S Ward
Reserved seating available for English majors, Creative Writing majors, and English majors pursuing CAL Licensure
The foundation course of the English major, English 185 introduces students to poetic and dramatic form, narrative structure, and critical theory. In addition, students engage with literature as a living practice and address its role in a culture by attending dramatic performance and readings by visiting writers and critics. Although texts vary with the instructor, all sections explore the contemporary vitality of literature in English and their strong connections to the past. Prerequisite: None. GE: ALS-L. [Note: This course previously carried WRI. It will not carry WRI in 2023-2024]
200-Level/Level II
English 200 -Section A – Hip Hop Literature – D Horton
Old Major Reqs: Cross-Cultural, Post 1800
New Major Reqs: American or Antiracism Requirement
This course introduces students to Hip Hop Literature, a genre that utilizes the five elements of Hip Hop (MCing, DJing, Graffiti, Breaking, and Knowledge) to explore complex issues. We will read texts by Sister Souljah, Donald Goines, Lauryn Hill, Gucci Mane, Jay-Z, and others to examine some of the major concepts and political issues that shape the culture. We will explore Hip Hop’s rhetorical power and trace the origins of phrases such as “bling bling,” “cheese,” “beef,” “crunk,” etc. Through reading novels, listening to music, watching music videos, and completing creative multimodal assignments, students will critically examine hip hop’s literary impact and legacy. Prerequisite: WRR or equivalent. GE: ALS-L, MCD. OLE CORE: PAR.
English 200 – Section B – Latinx Literature – F J Sepulveda Ortiz
Old Major Reqs: Cross-Cultural, Post 1800
New Major Reqs: American or Antiracism Requirement
This course explores the central issues and intellectual approaches that found the interdisciplinary field of Latina/o/x Studies. We will begin with an understanding of how the terms Latino and Hispanic (latinoaméricano and hispano) emerged and evolved as pan-ethnic categories that reveal political and social contestation as well as cultural affirmation. Reviewing key canonical texts of the largest sub-groups of Latinx people, the course focuses on narratives after the 1960s: it includes Mexican American (or Chicanx) Puerto Rican/ Nuyorican, Dominican, Cuban, and other Hispanic Caribbean and Latin American writers. Throughout the course, students will explore how Latinx writers conceive of and contest national, racial/ ethnic, and sexual communities. The course will concentrate on colonialism and nationalism; borderlands and migration; “la raza” and race; hybridity and mestizaje; Blackness and Latinidad; as well as queer Latinx sexualities and genders. Lastly, students will also be encouraged to do research on other and more recent Latinx communities arriving to the US, especially in the last decades. Prerequisite: WRR or equivalent. GE: ALS-L, MCD. OLE CORE: PAR.
English 206 African Literature – J Mbele
Old Major Reqs: Cross-Cultural, Post 1800
New Major Reqs: Anglophone Literature
Africa, the cradle of humanity, is where storytelling started, as an oral tradition. Over time, the tradition evolved and diversified, incorporating such forms as songs, folktales and epics. The invention of writing enabled the textualization of the oral traditions and the creation of literature as written expression. The oldest evidence of such texts comes from ancient Egypt, in the form of folktales, songs, and sayings. With the advent of literacy African storytelling incorporated fiction, poetry and drama in written form. With time, written literature emerged, in languages such as Geertz, Hausa, Swahili and Zulu. With the coming of colonialism, writing in European languages, especially English, French and Portuguese emerged, influenced, from the beginning, by European literature. The medium might change, now embracing film, for example, but the tradition of storytelling persists. African literature draws from several main sources, including indigenous oral traditions, such as the folktale and the epic, and foreign—especially western–literatures. Shakespeare, Defoe, Bunyan, T.S. Eliot, and the Bible have always played a role in the evolution of African literature. On the other hand, major African writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o influence other African writers. We will draw attention to these issues as we explore a number works of drama and fiction. Prerequisite: WRR or equivalent. GE: ALS-L, MCG. OLE Core: GHS.
English 219 – Anglophone Literature and Global Ethics – E Alderks
Old Major Reqs: Cross-Cultural, Post 1800
New Major Reqs: Anglophone Literature
In this course, students analyze globalization and its consequences through two related lenses: the ethical and the literary. First, students explore this phenomenon historically and philosophically, and consider different ethical responses to globalization’s consequences. Then, students read and analyze works of Anglophone literature (English-language literature from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean) that engage these very issues. This approach both reorients understandings of the ethics of globalization and emphasizes the role of literature in ethical inquiry. Prerequisite: WRR or its equivalent. GE: EIN. OLE Core: Ethical Reasoning in Context.
English 220 – The Queer Renaissance – N Simpson-Younger
Old Major Reqs: Literary History, Pre 1800
New Major Reqs: British Literature, Pre 1800
How did early modern texts approach questions of sexuality, and how did these approaches engage with perspectives on human identity? In this course, we will investigate this question by reading plays and poems by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Using drama will allow us to ask how stage conventions (like using an all-male cast) could affect portrayals of desire, and how performances could both reflect and forge cultural responses to queer encounters. We will also be reading and reflecting on short excerpts from the work of queer theorists, including Judith Butler, Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick, Valerie Traub, and others. By the end of the course, students should be able to describe a range of early modern perspectives on sexuality and identity, and to explore how these perspectives undergird and interact with more recent ideas. Prerequisite: WRR or equivalent.
English 242 Children’s and Young Adult Literature – K Marsalek
Reserved seating available for English majors pursuing CAL Licensure
Old Major Reqs: Genre, Post 1800
New Major Reqs: Elective
Beginning with the backgrounds to children’s literature in books of manners and religious instruction and in the “fairy tale,” this course then traces the history of literature in English written for children from the nineteenth century to the present. We explore the importance of book illustrations from the golden age at the turn of the 19th-20th century to the wonderful rise of the picture book in the mid 20th. We read a wide variety of books for children and young adults, including representative works of fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and the popular and controversial genre we call “contemporary young adult realism.” Prerequisite: WRR or equivalent. GE: ALS-L.
English 277 Reading and Writing the Spiritual Memoir – K Schwehn
Old Major Reqs: Genre
New Major Reqs: Elective
In this course, students read a series of memoirs to investigate the way Christianity has shaped individual people. From snake-handling to baptism, from icon-kissing to communion, from creeds to purity promises, Christian beliefs and practices can, by turns, prove to be life-giving, oppressive, disturbing, and salvific. How does emphasizing differing aspects of theology result in differing attitudes toward sexuality, gender, race, and the environment? In addition to approaching the memoirs from a critical perspective, students also identify and practice craft techniques as they write their own personal religious (or areligious) narratives. Prerequisite: WRR or equivalent. GE: ALS-L. OLE Core: RFV, WAC.
English 280 – Section A – History the British Novel – S Ward
Old Major Reqs: Genre
New Major Reqs: British Literature
This course will study a small but representative sample of British novels from the eighteenth century to the present. We will focus on the various genres and styles that British writers have used to depict human experience in England and abroad, and how genre and style have changed over time. To that end, we will explore a diverse set of novelists who refine or challenge or refuse conventional notions of subjectivity, social relations, citizenship, historical processes, and even life itself within a global empire and its aftermath. Possible authors include Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Charlotte or Emily Brontë, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Sam Selvon, and Zadie Smith. Prerequisite: WRR or equivalent. GE: ALS-L.
English 280 – Section B – Folklore and Epic – J Mbele
Old Major Reqs: Genre
New Major Reqs: Elective
Course description coming soon.
English 280 – Section C – Afro-Caribbean Literature – F J Sepulveda Ortiz
Old Major Reqs: Genre
New Major Reqs: Anglophone Literature or Antiracism Requirement
This course explores Afro-Caribbean literature through a relational framework made possible by the region’s subjection to Western colonialism and worldviews, the genocide of indigenous populations, the transportation of enslaved Africans, slavery, and nationalist struggles against European and North American imperialism. We will explore the Caribbean’s centrality to modernity/ coloniality, the political liberation of Caribbean people, and the region’s contribution to ongoing discussions about the afterlife of slavery and colonialism after the formal end of both. Particular centrality will be given to queer and postcolonial literature by women writers who explore dissident sexual/gender practices and desires, and women’s use of Afro-Caribbean spirituality to imagine queer resistance and survival; as well as the imaginative work across literary genres (novels, memoirs, essays, short stories) that unites Caribbean authors. Potential writers to be covered include Michelle Cliff and Marlon James (Jamaica), Frantz Fanon (Martinique), Marie Chauvet (Haiti), Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua), Mayra Santos-Febres (Puerto Rico), Rita Indiana (Dominican Republic), and Earl Lovelace (Trinidad and Tobago). Prerequisite: WRR or equivalent. GE: ALS-L.
English 280 – Section D – Global Graphic Narratives – E Alderks
Old Major Reqs: Genre, Post 1800
New Major Reqs: Elective
In this course, students will analyze graphic novels and other visual narratives (graphic memoirs, journalism, and history, for example) through a literary lens to interrogate the possibilities, and limitations, of visual storytelling. In addition to examining the form of the assigned works, students will consider questions of audience and global representation in crafting graphic narratives. Which creators can, or should, represent whose stories, both visually and textually? Do images make graphic novels more widely understood than a strictly textual work? This course equips students with the requisite analytical skills to raise these questions and others about graphic narratives in global contexts. Prerequisite: WRR or equivalent. GE: ALS-L.
English 285 Digital Rhetorics and New Media Literacies – R Eichberger
Old Major Reqs: Genre, Post 1800
New Major Reqs: Elective
Students explore what it means to be literate in an age of new media by reading critical scholarship and comparing the ways they read, interpret, and learn from digital texts, such as fan fiction websites, social media, and video games, to ways they read, interpret, and learn from printed media (e.g., books, poems, or plays). In their final, digital project, students critically examine the use of new media to make humanities scholarship more “public.” Offered periodically. Also counts toward media studies concentration. Prerequisite: WRR, FYS, or equivalent. GE: WRI. OLE Core: WAC. [Note: Whether this course will carry WRI and WAC in 2023-2024 is still under discussion.]
English 290 Exploring Literary Publishing – S Nagamatsu
Old Major Reqs: Elective
New Major Reqs: Elective
This course explores the inner workings of the publishing world from literary magazines to book publishers. Students explore the modern history and trends of publishing in America, as well as engage with hands-on projects that both illuminate readings and offer insight into the daily practices of writers and literary gatekeepers. Projects may include the drafting of a proposal for a hypothetical literary magazine, reading submissions for a magazine, and conducting a podcast interview. Offered annually. Prerequisite: WRR, FYS, or equivalent. GE: WRI. OLE Core: WAC.
English 292 Poetry Writing – J Patterson
Reserved seating available for Creative Writing Majors
Old Major Reqs: Genre, Post 1800
New Major Reqs: Elective
In this course we will immerse ourselves in the process and practice of poetry. We will use book length collections from individual poets to practice deep attention and to think concretely about craft. We’ll consider the influence of poetic movements, biography and philosophy, and social/environmental issues like climate change and racial justice on each poet’s work. Students will do a wide variety of in-class and out-of-class writing activities, often rooted in the poems we’re reading, but also using songs and art and nature and headlines as creative fodder. Generative writing will be coupled with revision practices, from small group workshops to conferences to radical experiments. We will also discuss poetry as a way of engaging with others: from reviews to interviews to communal acts of poetry in the public square. We will all actively work to make the classroom an anti-racist, LGBTQIA+ positive, neurodiverse-safe space where each student feels not only heard but necessary to our conversation. Prerequisites: WRR or its equivalent and at least sophomore status. GE: WRI. OLE Core: CRE, WAC.
English 296 Screenwriting – O Safdie
Old Major Reqs: Genre, Post 1800
New Major Reqs: Elective
Students learn the techniques of screenwriting, including how to write a treatment, to create backstories, and to break down scenes. Each student produces and revises a narrative screenplay. Prerequisites: WRIT 120 or equivalent and at least sophomore status. OLE Core: WAC.
Level III
English 347 Postcolonial Literature – S Ward
Reserved seating available for Seniors who are majoring in English, English with CAL, and Creative Writing
Old Major Reqs: 300-Level (Literary Studies)
New Major Reqs: 300-Level (Literary studies), Anglophone Literature
This course will study postcolonial literature from across the British empire and the Anglophone postcolonies. Novelists, poets, philosophers, revolutionaries, anthropologists, and psychologists will guide us through a set of overarching questions: What has it meant to be a subject of European empire and a citizen of postcolonial nation states? How do the experiences of the imperial past resonate in the postcolony and the (ex-)metropole? And what place have the literary arts occupied within this conversation? We will inform our encounters with literature by reading in the fields of postcolonial studies, history, film, the visual arts, music, and dance. Possible writers include Jean Rhys, Zadie Smith, Paul Gilroy, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Jasbir Puar, Mohsin Hamid, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Flann O’Brien, and Michael Ondaatje. Prerequisites: ENGL 185 plus at least two English courses at level II, or permission of the instructor.
English 372 Advanced Fiction Writing – S Nagamatsu
Reserved seating available for Creative Writing Majors (regardless of class year) and Seniors who are majoring in English or English with CAL
Old Major Reqs: 300-Level (Creative Writing Workshop)
New Major Reqs: 300-Level (Creative Writing Workshop)
Students develop and complete individual projects in fiction, deepening and polishing their work. Assignments include multiple pieces of short fiction, the opening chapter(s) of a novel, an analytical presentation of a published short story, and a world building group project culminating in a website. Class sessions are devoted to discussion of craft, examination of literary models (both short stories and novels), and workshopping of student writing. Prerequisites: Completion of English 293 or permission of instructor. GE: WRI.
English 373 Advanced Creative Nonfiction Writing – K Schwehn
Reserved seating available for Creative Writing Majors (regardless of class year) and Seniors who are majoring in English or English with CAL
Old Major Reqs: 300-Level (Creative Writing Workshop)
New Major Reqs: 300-Level (Creative Writing Workshop)
Students deepen and strengthen their work in creative nonfiction. Class sessions are devoted to development of writing strategies and analysis of professional and student writing. Prerequisites: Completion of English 291 or permission of instructor. GE: WRI.
English 380 Shakespeare – M Trull
Reserved seating available for Seniors who are majoring in English, English with CAL, and Creative Writing
Old Major Reqs: 300-Level (Literary Studies)
New Major Reqs: 300-Level (Literary Studies), British Literature
Students consider in depth some of Shakespeare’s most popular plays and also explore some of the less-frequently studied classics. Students examine a wide range of genres and types of plays, view recorded productions, and attend performances when available. Prerequisites: ENGL 185 plus at least two English courses at level II, or permission of the instructor.