Theorist bell hooks often writes about criticism as a way of knowing and as a way of loving. Guiding us away from understanding projects of literary and cultural criticism as personal attacks, hooks promotes critical thinking as an ethic with the potential for collective empowerment. Using bell hooks' reflections as springboards for critical reading, conversation, and analysis, this course considers the productivity and the limits of theory and its relationship to literature. Specifically, “Literary Theory” introduces various schools of critical and literary thought, and discusses how these approaches convey meaning. Approaches will include Psychoanalysis; Marxism; Feminism; Reader-Response Theory; Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Theory; African American Critical Theory; and Post-colonial Studies. The first half of the semester will be spent becoming familiar with major tenets of literary theory. Later, we will consider how these theories can be put to use in the reading of literature.

 

A prerequisite for English majors that must be taken before or concurrently with any 4000-level course. Prepares students to enter the field of literary studies by introducing three genres and key literary concepts. Course emphasizes close textual analysis and basic research skills. Topics vary depending on instructors.

 

Introduces various schools of critical and literary theory to bear upon the interpretation of literary texts, such as new criticism, psychoanalysis, myth studies, poststructuralism, phenomenology, feminism, postcolonialism, Marxism and more.

 

In this course, we will be reading works of world literature, mostly in translation, that focus on ethics, alternative realities, the nature of nature, and the meaning of life. We will be reading works translated from Sanskrit, Japanese, German, French, and Polish. The focus in the course will be on alternative world views and the ethical challenges and existential opportunities offered by them. Coursework will consist of 4 assigned essays and weekly simple-answer quizzes. This course will be taught via zoom online. The lecture-discussions also will be recorded and posted under the zoom tab on Canvas and it is possible to take the course entirely as an asynchronous course at your own pace.

 

This course examines (de)constructions of identity and the aesthetics and politics of representation in Latinx memoirs, a genre that fuses, to borrow American Studies scholar Isabel Durán’s phrasing, “personal story and cultural critique.” Through a critical engagement with an expansive array of films, graphic novels, poetry, prose, or a mixture thereof, we will interrogate how Latinx memoirists either disrupt, resist, or (re)produce dominant discourses of Latinidad. We will thus be paying special attention to how Latinx memoirists narrate, whether consciously or not, their own identity formations and negotiations in relation to issues of class, ethnicity, gender, national identity, race, sexuality, and power. We will, moreover, consider how Latinx memoirs deal with themes of community, borders (both "real" and imagined), diaspora, exile, (im)migration, language, memory, history, and (un)belonging.

 

This course examines the dynamic relationship between the aesthetics of Asian American cultural production and the political histories of various Asian American communities. In addition to analyzing the literary conventions and representational forms employed by Asian American texts, we will discuss how Asian American literature and film engage larger political and cultural questions about race, gender, citizenship, imperialism and belonging in the U.S. Our study will be organized around four major events in Asian American history: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the subsequent exclusion of Asian immigrants in the decades that followed; the incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans during World War II; the racial politics of imperial war and Islamophobia in the post-9/11 United States; and the sharp increase in anti-Asian racial violence during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ethnic Studies Certificate

This course engages film and literature by LGBTQ cultural producers to interrogate the politics of representing racial, gender, and sexual identities. By paying attention to formal narrative and visual techniques, intertextual citations, the politics of adaptation, and the larger contexts in which queer cultural productions emerge, we will examine the dynamic relationship between film and literature in the construction of LGBTQ identities, politics, and communities. Topics of discussion will include the history of sexuality; gender, family, and domesticity; queer of color interventions and Black lesbian feminisms; queer and trans subcultures and activism; AIDS and the politics of collective mourning; and queer migration, imperialism and globalization. Through close reading, collaborative discussion and critical writing, students will gain a working understanding of the lexicon of queer theory, which they can then utilize in their own interpretations of literary and cinematic texts.

 

This class will pursue a chronological examination of African American literature, considering the historical, cultural, and social contexts that have shaped African American literary production. We will explore various literary movements (such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Protest Period, and the Black Arts Movement) and discuss ongoing debates: What is black writing? What is the role of the African American writer? What is the function of African American literary art? How does one define a black aesthetic?

Ethnic Studies Certificate

This course will provide you with the opportunity to explore the work of several major and emergent Jewish-American fiction writers. Following the path of Jewish-American fiction through the early 20th century to the present this survey is designed to introduce you to the Jewish-American literary tradition and the cultural issues informing this tradition and Jewish-American identity, in general. To name just a few of the issues that have engaged the Jewish-American imagination: family, marginality, the Holocaust, Gentile-Jewish and Black-Jewish relations, Jewish feminism, Israel, the old world of Europe, and the role of religion in Jewish-American life. While we will focus primarily on the literary rather than the sociological, the novels and short-stories should provide you with a richer understanding of Jewish-American culture in this century than afforded by the more popular and pervasive media images of the Jew in America.

Ethnic Studies Certificate

In this course we will explore the idea of transformation—physical, emotional, spiritual, and creative—in fiction, plays, poems, and memoir, along with important motifs related to transformation. One motif concerns power and powerlessness, whether that power is political, erotic, supernatural, or creative. Another concerns transformation as an emotional/intellectual/spiritual process that is essential to growth and maturation, or what the psychologist C.G. Jung called individuation. A third motif concerns how authors borrowed and transformed elements from early works to create entirely different meanings in their own works. A fourth motif concerns transformation from one language into another and from verbal art into visual art.

Classical Studies Certificate

In tracing the development of a literary tradition in Tudor England, we will look at a range of genres, including sermons, literary theory, the sonnet sequence, and pastoral, erotic, and satirical poetry. The centerpiece will be The Fairie Queene by Edmund Spenser, an allegorical romance set in an Arthurian fantasy world of elves, giants, magicians, and dragons. Along with Spenser, featured authors will be Sir Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare. The literature will be discussed in the context of tumultuous religio-political events that took the lives of some of the writers we will study.

 

The seventeenth century in England was a time of tremendous upheaval and vibrant and varied literary output. The “scientific revolutions” of the era laid out early blueprints for what we know as “scientific method,” while European exploration of the Americas seemed to open up new worlds promising untold riches even as they resulted in problematic and violent encounters. In England, there were political revolutions and religious turmoil, while in in the domestic sphere the roles of the sexes were hotly debated. This course will examine the impact of these forces on the poetry, prose, and drama of the period, exploring work by the stunning so-called “metaphysical” poets Donne, Herbert, and Crashaw, political and religious writing by women, plays by Tom Ford and Aphra Behn, and selected travel writings, memoirs, and proto-science fiction texts. 

 

This course provides students with an opportunity for intensive study of selections from The Canterbury Tales. We will be looking at how the collection of tales, each told by a different pilgrim, places a number of opposing perspectives in motion. Often-intertwined topics will include love, war, power, sex, money, and religion. Among the highlights are The Knight’s Tale, The Miller’s Tale, and The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, but you are invited by Chaucer to choose the best tale. As we accompany Chaucer’s pilgrims on their journey, students will develop skill in reading Middle English and become familiar with some historical contexts of Chaucer’s writing—social as well as literary.

 

This class focuses on the works and cultural contexts of William Shakespeare. We will focus on a selection of his sonnets and four of his plays with strong points of connection to key moral and social issues that continue to matter in our own day. As we consider how Shakespeare engages with issues of gender and sexuality, power and consent, race, and colonialism, we will trace out how Shakespeare and his contemporaries helped shape present-day beliefs and discourses around these issues. Along the way, we will delve into the historical contexts and documents that shape Shakespeare’s works and will engage with critics and contemporary sources that help us question the role of these plays in our own day. We will also study Toni Morrison’s Desdemona as an example of a present-day author talking back to Shakespeare through a creative engagement with his characters and themes. 

 

This course surveys some of the major examples of the “literature of adolescence” as it developed over the course of the twentieth century into our own, and with an emphasis on the intersections between writing for young people and the fantasy tradition in literature. Although precursors to modern fantasy writing such as fables, folktales, fairytales, and many other traditional forms of storytelling were not originally intended for exclusive consumption by young people, in modernity they quickly became associated with childhood and contributed in a major way to the development of children’s and adolescent literature as a distinct form of writing. Authors to be read include J. R. R. Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin, Nnedi Okorafor, Daniel José Older, Akwaeke Emezi, and others. This course will prove particularly helpful to students interested in teacher certification or otherwise working in education, but all interested students are welcome.

 

This course examines (de)constructions of identity and the aesthetics and politics of representation in Latinx memoirs, a genre that fuses, to borrow American Studies scholar Isabel Durán’s phrasing, “personal story and cultural critique.” Through a critical engagement with an expansive array of films, graphic novels, poetry, prose, or a mixture thereof, we will interrogate how Latinx memoirists either disrupt, resist, or (re)produce dominant discourses of Latinidad. We will thus be paying special attention to how Latinx memoirists narrate, whether consciously or not, their own identity formations and negotiations in relation to issues of class, ethnicity, gender, national identity, race, sexuality, and power. We will, moreover, consider how Latinx memoirs deal with themes of community, borders (both "real" and imagined), diaspora, exile, (im)migration, language, memory, history, and (un)belonging.

 

In this course, we will be focusing on the genre of noir in both literature and film. We will be viewing six noir films and reading and discussing the six noir novels that they are adapted from. The focus in the course will be on the differing modes of expression afforded by film and fiction and the differing ways in which we interact emotionally and intellectually with each as viewers and readers. The course will begin with a discussion of two critical essays that consider the noir genre in regard to ethics and existentialism, topics that we will consider throughout the course. All of the films will be screened in the classroom. Course assignments will include 3 out-of-class essays and 7 in-class quizzes.

 

As a study in Literature and Environment, this course will explore the intersecting histories of literary expression, landscape ideology, colonialism, and historical trauma. We shall question popular understandings of “environment” and “nature” that have historically privileged such aesthetic traditions as “wilderness” over the economic imperatives of survival, or habitability; and we shall, consequently, consider competing notions of “environmentalism.” We shall also query how, in an era marked by cataclysmic shifts to our global climate, we can begin to think collectively about the fate of our species without ignoring the long history of economic development that has rendered postcolonial states more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Finally, we shall follow thinkers like Sylvia Federici in imagining not a “planet of slums” but a “planet of the commons,” and a future beyond apocalypse. Readings shall include works by Jamaica Kincaid, Mahasweta Devi, Indra Sinha, Tommy Pico, Imbolo Mbue, and others.

 

This course will provide us with the opportunity to explore various influential literary traditions/themes/movements in 19th Century America and the authors associated with these traditions. In order to lend the readings some coherence, I’ve focused on an admittedly limited number of traditions and selected writers whose work might be considered to be in dialogue with one another, both aesthetically and socially. Specifically, we will train our attention on the following traditions/themes/movements: Transcendentalism, Race and Slavery, Poetry, the Novel, the Gothic, Feminist Currents, and the Literature of Post-Industrial America, which leads us into the 20th century.

 

1. Through exercises designed to help you find new approaches to writing prose and poetry.
2. By reading and discussing works of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.
3. By spending significant time on writing as well as on the revision process.

Professional & Technical Writing Certificate

Guidance and criticism for beginners in writing prose fiction and poetry.

Professional & Technical Writing Certificate

WAC; Professional & Technical Writing Certificate

Prepares the student to write professionally for audiences within and outside a corporation or nonprofit enterprise. Proofreading skills stressed.

WAC; Professional & Technical Writing Certificate

WAC; Professional & Technical Writing Certificate

ENC 3213: Professional Writing will teach students the basics of professional composition, which entails specific formatting requirements and stylistic nuances that vary from academic writing. This course will provide instruction on common types of professional documents, such as emails, formal reports, job application letters, résumés, and web-oriented materials. The course will also include instruction on conducting job searches, completing workplace research, designing appealing documents, and providing constructive peer feedback. Many assignments will have a connection to the student’s chosen career field. Students will learn to harness their own voices for workplace success and develop their own professional brand. The overall goal of the course is to prepare students to write confidently and competently in a professional setting.

WAC; Professional & Technical Writing Certificate

Using elaborate tree diagramming and Chomskyan linguistic theory, the course will teach students to describe the structure of Modern English sentences. The textbook is Max Morenberg’s Doing Grammar.

English as a Second Language Studies Certificate

This Research Intensive (RI) course facilitates completion of the honors thesis—a 20-40 page project that makes an original contribution to the discipline. Honors Research will expose students to the standards and best practices of research-level literary scholarship while also preparing the ground for the students' intended research topics. The course may include library research visits, presentations on different research and analytical methodologies, and peer editing workshops. At the end of spring semester, students will present their theses at an Honors Research course event or the Undergraduate Research Symposium. Honors Research is offered once each spring.

Undergraduate Research Certificate ; English Honors Program

Topic: Writing About Writing. This course focuses on the study and practice of writing by building on skills developed in lower-level composition courses. As a class, we will read and write about ideas, myths, and experiences of writing as well as engage with common discussions in writing studies. We will begin by exploring writing experiences in our own lives before considering current debates about writing. Through discussing, investigating, and writing about writing we will gain knowledge about how writing works to grow as stronger, more confident, and more rhetorically aware writers. This course is especially well-suited for English majors, Education majors, and students pursuing the Certificate in Professional and Technical Writing.

WAC; Professional & Technical Writing Certificate

Language is a marker used to define who we are, how we are perceived, and how we act. It is both the medium of expression we use to understand the world and the cage we live in.  The rhetoric of race can be used to shape public discourse, policy, beliefs, perceptions, and actions by tapping into our cultural fears or concerns, cultural expectations and values, and social interactions. It can be used to create change and sustain the status quo at the same time. The rhetoric of race shapes all of our lives whether we realize it or not, and it impacts how we deal with each other, as well as what we say and write on a daily basis. This course explores these concerns in the adolescent novel The Hate You Give, the long form journalism Rising Out of Hatred, presidential addresses from a few recent presidents, and academic/historical/memoire How to Be and Anti-Racist. While this class will not try to convince you to think one way or another about race or racism, it will not shy away from difficult questions. It is the kind of course that you will remember and will shape your work for years to come.

WAC; Professional & Technical Writing Certificate

Concentrates on essentials of the short story form through emulations of varied modern authorial styles. Point of view, narrative form, voice, creating characters, tone and atmosphere are some of the topics covered. Students write several stories, revise and critique. Reading consists of single-author collections and anthology selections. Course may be repeated for credit once.

 

Offers a thorough grounding in the fundamentals of writing poetry. By the end of the semester the student will have been introduced to such tools of poetic language as diction, connotation and word music; such techniques of poetic form as meter, stanza, enjambment and free-verse lineation; and such tools of poetic vision as image, metaphor and analogy. Course may be repeated for credit once.

 

WAC; Professional & Technical Writing Certificate

This is an advanced course in creative writing (mixed genres) in which students study technique and craft in order to produce an honors thesis of creative work. This course provides a structured framework for students in the Creative Writing Honors track to complete their honors thesis (either a work of fiction, nonfiction or a collection of poetry). It examines works of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction in more depth and with more of an eye toward craft than may have been possible in previous coursework. We will also discuss possibilities for graduate programs in creative writing.

Creating Writing Honors Program

This is an advanced course in creative writing (mixed genres) in which students study technique and craft—much of this primary and secondary reading material tailored to individual student interest—in order to produce advanced creative work. This course provides a structured framework for students to complete original fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, which culminates in a thesis proposal. It examines works of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction in more depth and with more of an eye toward craft than may have been possible in previous coursework. We will also discuss possibilities for graduate programs in creative writing.