Undergraduate Course Descriptions

Spring 2027

FYEN 102A: Becoming Rich 

MW 12:30-1:45 [CRN ]
Instructor: Sam Taylor

Everyone, especially in America, wants to “be rich,” but being rich is first of all a state of mind. As an introduction to college life and success, this First-Year Seminar focuses on how to be rich—in body, mind, and spirit. On one side, this includes practical lessons on financial literacy to make you savvy in the modern marketplace and stock market, as an earner, saver, investor, and borrower. At the same time, we will question and expand our notion of what it means to be rich, experiencing the sensual and spiritual richness of the world all around us. We will cultivate presence and meditative awareness, as we read and write poems that praise the common things of our world and awaken us to the abundance of our human inheritance. Readings will include selections from Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, Ross Gay, Walt Whitman, Anne Carson, Basho, Issa, Rumi, Gregory Orr, Mary Oliver, Li-Young Lee, William Carlos Williams, Naomi Shihab Nye, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, and Lewis Hyde.

FYEN 102S: Confronting American History Through Story & Song

TR 2:00-3:15 [CRN 21857]
Instructor: Sam Taylor

This First-Year Seminar proposes that we are most empowered to live authentically and realize our values when we first face the truth of our personal, cultural, and national stories. Through literature, music, film, poetry, and historical documents, students will examine competing narratives of American history and identity and explore how those narratives are constructed, challenged, and revised. As Americans, we frequently grow up with a story of exceptionalism that presents the United States as the greatest nation on earth. While this nation certainly boasts rich cultural and political traditions, it also carries histories of racialized injustice and genocide that have often been minimized, denied, or whitewashed. This course invites students to confront these histories, with particular attention to Black and Indigenous experiences, while also applying the idea of "facing it" to their own lives, values, and contemporary challenges. Key questions include: How do we realize the ideals of America in an authentic way that acknowledges and repairs its history? How do we realize our own values in our own lives?

ENGL 198: English Careers Seminar (8-Week, first Session Course)

MW 12:30-1:20 [CRN 21932]
Instructor: Dr Katie Lanning

This one-credit seminar is designed to help students at the start of their English, Creative Writing, or Applied Linguistics major. The course will introduce students to all of the possibilities that the English degree has to offer. We’ll work closely with the Shocker Career Accelerator to understand the skillset that English degrees instill in their majors and how to find meaningful experiences – from campus involvement to future job prospects – that best align with those skills. We’ll practice building a portfolio of professional materials that can grow with you through the major, and learn ways to find applied-learning and internship opportunities during your time at WSU. The goal of this seminar is to equip majors with a clear and productive pathway through the degree that best aligns with each student’s
interests and aspirations. This is an 8-week seminar that will meet twice a week.

LING 152: Language of Food

TR 12:30-1:45 [CRN 21931]
Instructor: Dr Mythili Menon

Overview of the important facts about what language is, how it works and of the ways in which researchers in linguistics and in other disciplines, such as psychology, philosophy and anthropology, explain and make use of language.

WEIS 190: Diverse Women In Pop Culture

Online [CRN 21972]
Instructor: Dr Chinyere Okafor

Examines how women of various races, classes and ethnicities are represented in a wide variety of popular media. Encourages the critical analysis of why and how these popular representations are politically and socially significant in shaping society's perceptions of women. Also explores women's popular genres.

ENGL 210: Composition: Business, Professional, and Technical Writing

Multiple sections and instructors

This course provides instruction and practice in writing the kinds of letters, memos, emails, proposals,
and reports required in the professional world of business and industry. It emphasizes both formats and
techniques necessary for effective and persuasive professional communication. We will also discuss job
application materials such as resumes and cover letters. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 101, 102 or instructor's
consent. May be taken as part of the Professional Writing and Editing Minor. [WC]

ENGL 230: Exploring Literature

Online [CRN 21949]
Instructor: Melinda DeFrain

General education humanities course. This course is a general education class meant to guide students in critical reading of period- and genre-specific literature, including and specifically drama, fiction, and poetry. The class will focus in part on your reception and engagement of literature using critical reading strategies and discussions with classmates. Reading stories lets the audience step out into a different environment without responsibilities or anything on the line. You become a 3rd party entity that gains insight into a world and situations that aren’t your own. Hopefully, after reading and engaging with a piece, the audience walks away with new perspective that can transfer to life outside of the pages. [TA, CL]

ENGL 232D: Literature In the Jazz Age

Online [CRN 21950]
Instructor: Kerry Jones

The 1920s was one of the most fascinating decades in American history. Coined “The Jazz Age” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, this course examines the aspects and attitudes of American life as reflected in some of the literature produced during the period. We will also examine the period from a historical perspective to establish the foundation on which this period – which lasted only ten years – briefly existed. Our course reader, Joshua A. Zeitz’s Flapper, will assist us with this, as will our novels by Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Ernest Hemingway (hopefully we can watch some documentaries and a silent film or two). Throughout this course, you should gain a deeper understanding of American youth culture, the social liberalism of the 1920s, and the Harlem Renaissance. This decade of glitz, glamour, gin, flappers, and false opulence eventually came to a stunning – and abrupt – end. [TA, CL]

ENGL 234: Young Adult Fiction

Online [CRN 21951]
Instructor: Dr Vanessa Aguilar

This course introduces students to a variety of fiction written specifically for young adults. In this course, we will examine the young adult “classics” from the 1960’s to the present day. Throughout the course, students will critically analyze the discourses that surround the YA fiction and the trends in the field. Students will read an array of genres such as fantasy, dystopia, and graphic novels.

ENGL 277: The Detective Story

MW 2:00-3:15 [CRN 22985]
Instructor: Dr Katie Lanning

The hard-boiled detective, the femme fatale, the whodunit – you are probably already familiar with the tropes of contemporary crime fiction. But what did representations of crime and punishment in literature look like before crime fiction was an established genre, or before there were even detectives or an organized police force? How did crime literature change with the advent of detective work? This course takes up these questions to study literary lawbreakers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This time span encompasses both a moment before “crime” and “crime fiction” were formalized as the categories we understand today and, especially toward the end of the Victorian period, a moment when criminology emerged not only as a field of serious study but also as a source of sensational entertainment. In this class, we’ll read popular fiction of the period in order to trace how the development of the literary genre of crime fiction, and at times even shaped, parallel developments in criminal justice. We’ll consider the different figures that populate the genre in these periods: the criminal, the police officer, the detective, and the reader. Readings include Moll Flanders, Lady Audley’s Secret, and stories by Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. [CR, TA]

WEIS 287: Women In Society

Online [CRN 21973]
Instructor: Dr Chinyere Okafor

Examines women's efforts to claim their identities from historical, legal and social perspectives. Includes recent laws relating to women, contemporary issues (such as rape, day care, working women, the future of marriage), agencies for change, theories of social change, and the relationship of women's rights to human rights.

Upper-Level Courses

ENGL 285: Introduction to Creative Writing

TR 12:30-1:45 [CRN 21817]
Instructor: Dr Adam Scheffler

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on." This famous quote, attributed to novelist and short story writer Louis L’Amour, suggests that rather than waiting for inspiration, or worrying if our creative writing is any good or not, we should simply put pen to paper and begin—and that’s probably pretty good advice. But it’s also incomplete advice: what should we write about, we might wonder, and in what genre and style? What techniques or craft elements might help us hone our writing and make it as effective as possible? And how can we develop our own voice, or revise our work to build on our best and smartest impulses?

English 285 aims to help you begin to answer these questions by offering an introduction to creative writing in two genres: poetry and short fiction. In this class, you’ll read compelling poems and stories by a variety of professional authors to help inspire you, and you’ll be given prompts to help push your writing in new directions. You’ll also learn about key craft elements in each genre—such as images, lines, and stanzas as well as structure, characters, and dialogue. And you’ll read and provide feedback on your peers’ poems and stories, which will help you to become a better editor of your own work.

By the end of the term, you’ll be asked to produce drafts and revisions of three poems and one short story. This class will provide you with lots of feedback to help you improve your writing and ensure that you feel proud of the work that you produce. With any luck, you’ll leave this class feeling more confident about how to approach your writing, excited to keep that faucet turned on and to see what you’ll write next. [WC, TA]

TR 9:30-10:45 [CRN 21818]
Instructor: Kerry Jones

It’s time to unleash that inner poet and storyteller! This course is your creative playground. In this course, we’re going to dive into the art of writing poetry and fiction with curiosity, courage, and a sense of adventure. Through writing exercises, workshops, and reading work that inspires, you'll learn to take creative risks, give and receive feedback, and shape your voice on the page. No experience needed—just a willingness to write, revise, and surprise yourself. As Flannery O’Connor once said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” [WC, TA]

ENGL 301: Fiction Writing

MW 11:00-12:45 [CRN 21819]
Instructor: Dr Jason Allen

This workshop-based course emphasizes storytelling through well-crafted scenes. We will focus on all of the key elements and techniques employed by published fiction writers, and students will write numerous short pieces, some which are spawned from in-class writing prompts. During in-class workshop sessions, students offer constructive criticism in order for the author to substantially improve their work. Close reading and discussions of selected published works further enable students to improve their own creative writing craft skills. We’ll use Orange World by Karen Russell, Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby, and Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy. Prerequisite: English 285 with a grade of B- or better [WC, TA]

TR 2:00-3:15 [CRN 21820]
Instructor: Margaret Dawe

English 301 continues the work begun in English 285 on writing literary fiction. Students will write a series of ten exercises and two short stories, and revise Story 1 or Story 2 for a final portfolio. Many of the exercises can be done to help with that final story revision. The exercises help students develop their craft. Topics include how to write a first line for a story, how to create characters who are complex and have rich inner lives, how to how to write dialogue and to combine dialogue with gesture, to name some. We’ll also read stories by published writers to study craft. The heart of the course is helping students to write a short story which is structured dramatically around a protagonist who experiences internal and external conflict and has a beginning, middle, and end, and to help students develop compelling characters. We’ll use What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers, 3rd edition, College Edition, by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter. [WC, TA]

ENGL 303: Poetry Writing

W 2:00-4:30 [CRN 21821]
Instructor: Sam Taylor

In this poetry workshop, we will focus on writing as a way of intimately exploring the world and the self. This course will include plenty of opportunities for playful fun, but it also requires an engagement with your whole being and should be entered with purpose and intention. Beyond any concern for product, we will prioritize each student's deepening relationship to the creative process itself-—beginning with freeing him/her from inhibitions, self-censorship, fears of vulnerability, and rational control, and guiding each writer to touch the world up close with the imaginative power of language. The poem will be presented as a field in which a vision of the world is enacted, a space in which indeed anything can happen. Throughout the semester, we will read diverse models of successful poems and gradually introduce formal considerations of the craft as we respond constructively to each other's work. [WC, TA]

ENGL 310: The Nature of Poetry

TR 11:00-12:15 [CRN 21822]
Instructor: Dr TJ Boynton

Poetry is the most caricatured and misunderstood of literary forms. Pop-cultural depictions of poetry portray it as a spontaneous gushing of flowery or sentimental language designed to woo a love interest, rhapsodizing over one’s passions, or brooding over one’s sufferings. Anyone who has these universal motivations and experiences can write poetry; they need only purchase a fountain pen and a moleskin notebook and find a secluded forest glade or a quiet corner of the local coffee shop. As this course will show, the popular perception of poetry is as wrong as it is clichéd. Poetry is not only a serious literary form marked by extreme technical discipline and imaginative creativity; it is, per square inch of text, perhaps the most difficult one to engage with in terms of both composition and reading comprehension. This course will train you in the concepts and skills required to appreciate and interpret this extremely challenging literary form. We will examine a wide variety of poetic genres by a historically and nationally diverse range of poets, and in the process we shall see that, in sharp contrast to its popular image, poetry is one of the most demanding and most rewarding of human creative pursuits. [TA, CL]

ENGL 315: Introduction to English Linguistics

Online [CRN 24082] [Cross-listed as LING 315]

or

TR 11:00-12:12
Instructor: Dr Mythili Menon

The main goal of this course is to introduce students to the basic methodology, linguistic principles, including phonological and grammatical concepts used in modern linguistics. A secondary goal of this course is to teach analytic reasoning through the examination of linguistic phenomenon and data from
English.

ENGL 319: Editing Professional and Academic Writing

TR 11:00-12:15 [CRN 21823]
Instructor: Dr Carrie Dickison

Would you like your writing to flow better? Are you interested in a career in publishing or professional writing?  This class teaches you how to make written texts clear, concise, cohesive, and coherent. The first part of the class will review common grammar and punctuation rules with a strong emphasis on application. The second part of the course will focus on revising written texts for clarity, flow, and cohesion. You will leave this class with tools you can apply to any form of written communication, including academic papers, professional documents, and job application materials. May be taken as part of the Professional Writing and Editing Minor.

ENGL 323: World Literature

TR 12:30-1:45 [CRN 21824]
Instructor: Dr TJ Boynton

Great writers are inevitably inspired by—and sometimes even model their own creations on—the great works of the past.  As we consider the roles played by literature in human cultures and history, the relationships between newly-authored works of fiction, poetry, and drama and the prior works they draw upon proves especially illuminating.  What can we learn about literature by looking at its debts to what has been written before?  How do modern and contemporary books use previous stories, writing styles, and literary worlds to help shape their current visions?  How do this recycling and inspiration help bring those past, great works forward into the present, thus giving them new life and relevance?  These are the central questions this course will explore.  We will read three pairs of texts, each one containing an older, canonical work of literature and a more recent work influenced by it.  By placing these side by side, we will be able to shed light on the continued relationships the present world holds to the eras and cultures of the past, to consider the importance of literary and cultural artifacts to human history and the human imagination, and to draw connections between books written across millennia and the world.  Along the way, we will also develop our skills as close readers, as writers, and as thinkers about literature and will gain increased awareness of and insight into the diverse cultures from which our chosen texts originate. Authors we’ll read include J.M. Coetzee, Daniel Defoe, Homer, N.K. Narayan, Arundhati Roy, and Derek Walcott. [TA, CL]

ENGL 325: Introduction to English Studies

TR 2:00-3:15 [CRN 21825]
Instructor: Dr Vanessa Aguilar

In this course, we will examine the fundamental skills in the field of English. We will explore various genres such as poetry, essays, short stories, plays, fiction, and graphic novels. Students will learn how to identify each genre along with the conventions that define them. Additionally, ENGL 325 connects literary theory with the histories, cultures, and practices of literary analysis that contribute to literary interpretation. The course work includes conducting a close reading analysis, a research paper, and a zine presentation. [TA, CL]

ENGL 330: The Nature of Fiction

MW 12:30-1:45 [CRN 21826]
Instructor: Dr Jean Griffith

The writer Jessamyn West once wrote that “fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” This class will focus on the truths that are revealed to us by American writers from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. The course will also introduce students to the major elements of fiction (plot, character, narration, formal devices, setting, theme) and help you develop the critical reading skills needed to analyze these elements and how they work together. We will read works by writers such as Stephen Crane, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Shirley Jackson, and Ursula Le Guin. [TA]

ENGL 333: Literature and the Law

MW 12:30-10:45 [CRN 21827]
Instructor: Clinton Jones

Whether you're passionate about gripping tales of courtroom drama or moral dilemmas that stretch far beyond the courtroom walls, this course is your gateway to a world where law meets storytelling in profound ways. Literature and Law provides a thought-provoking journey through novels and films that ask the toughest legal and ethical questions of our time. Explore works like The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, a tale of revenge, justice, and the limits of the legal system; The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, an exploration of guilt, punishment, and redemption in Puritan society; Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, a true story of justice and mercy in the modern American legal system; and Love by Toni Morrison, a deep dive into familial disputes and the historical and personal consequences of injustice. Alongside these literary works, we’ll examine iconic legal films like 12 Angry Men (1957, directed by Sidney Lumet), a gripping exploration of the jury system and personal bias; The Jack Bull (1999, directed by John Badham), a Western legal drama about property rights and the quest for justice during the frontier era; Sleepers (1996, directed by Barry Levinson), which delves into themes of revenge, crime, justice, and the lasting impact of childhood trauma within the legal framework; and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979, directed by Robert Benton), a family law drama that challenges perceptions of parental rights and justice. The course requires no prior legal knowledge, and it is not a course in the study of law. This course should be of interest to anyone who wants to engage with the role of law in culture, the legal and literary representation of justice, and how law uses language. Students will engage with the legal and ethical dilemmas presented in these novels and films through discussion, mock trials, and debates. All majors welcome!!! [CR]

ENGL 361: Major British Writers II: The Battle of the Books Part 2 

MW 11:30-12:15 [CRN 21953]
Instructors: Dr Francis X Connor and Dr Katie Lanning

Join Dr. Connor and Dr. Lanning in the sequel to English 360: Battle of the Books, for Battle of the Books Part Two! By 1800, England had established itself as a major literary, cultural, and military power whose might and reach would grow throughout the nineteenth century. The sun would never set on the British Empire…until it did. In the early twentieth century, two devastating global conflicts inspired writers to question longheld narratives about their country and its literary canon, paving the way for a more fragmented and skeptical Britain. We’ll discover how the waxing and waning of the British Empire,  the rapid expansion of the book trade, and the emergence of mass communication technologies reconfigure English literature into a new, global Anglophone literature. We’ll start with William Blake and end with Zadie Smith; in between, we’ll read the era’s superstars – Charles Dickens, James Joyce, Agatha Christie, and Samuel Beckett — and a few important writers who should be superstars— Ann Radcliffe, Mina Loy, and Caryl Churchill among them. [TA]

ENGL 362: Major American Writers I

Online [CRN 21828]
Instructor: Dr Rebeccah Bechtold

Ever wonder why Edgar Allan Poe is a master of horror? Or where the idea of the “Yankee” in “Yankee Doodle Dandy” comes from? Have you ever wanted to trace the rise of abolitionist thought or the origin of the women’s rights movement in the United States? Have you ever wondered about how our history—of captivity and enslavement, of resistance and rebellion—informs the stories we tell about “America”? If so, come take ENGL 362, a survey of American literature and culture from exploration through the Civil War. This class will introduce you to the representative works and historical events that frame our understanding of early American literature; throughout the semester, we will be reading the writings of Anne Bradstreet, Phyllis Wheatley, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and more! [TA, CL]  

ENGL 365: African-American Literature

MW 11:00-12:15 [CRN 21829]
Instructors: Dr Jean Griffith

ENGL 376: Writing Graphic Narratives

MW 2:00-3:15 [CRN 21830]
Instructor: Dr Darren DeFrain

Have you ever thought about authoring your own graphic novel or comic book? This class will help students get familiar with the conventions for writing and publishing comic book scripts and the steps for seeking publication. The class will also be run in a workshop format so students can get feedback from their instructor and peers aimed at helping them produce the best possible script.  Here's the unsexy nuts and bolts stuff: General education humanities course. Graphic narratives (graphic novels, comics, comix and more) bring together text and genre-specific ways. This course seeks to examine and explore the graphic narrative by looking at diverse historical examples of graphic narrative scripts, completed comics, and industry-specific methods and expectations. Writers need not have any drawing experience or skill. The course includes a workshop for student-produced work in addition to lectures and discussions of canonical comic texts. 

ENGL 377: Graphic Novels

MW 2:00-3:15 [CRN 21831]
Instructor: Dr Darren DeFrain

You know you want to take this course. Comics and graphic novels are bigger and bigger drivers of American culture. By the end of this semester successful students should be armed with the ability to speak and write informed, articulate and literary responses to questions related to the historical, cultural, and aesthetic concerns of the graphic novel. Students should have a functional understanding of sequential art, visual rhetoric, and visual analysis and be able to apply these learned skills to the larger world. 

ENGL 401: Fiction Workshop

MW 2:00-3:15 [CRN 12000]
Instructor: Dr Jason Allen

Similar to ENGL 301, ENGL 401 is also a workshop-based course, though at this level we strive to create longer, more complex stories, and in some cases the opening chapters of a novel. There is greater emphasis on thorough revisions of short story and chapter drafts, with the goal of creating publishable work by the semester’s end. For both 301 and 401, we also read some published novels and stories and discuss them in terms of their writing craft. Close reading and analytical discussions of both peer work and of selected published works will further enable students to improve skills as a creative writer, editor, and critic of contemporary fiction. We’ll use Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, and Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy. Repeatable for credit. Prerequisite: ENGL 301. [WC, TA] 

ENGL 403: Poetry Workshop

W 2:00-4:35 [CRN 21833]
Instructor: Sam Taylor

In this poetry workshop, we will focus on writing as a way of intimately exploring the world and the self. This course will include plenty of opportunities for playful fun, but it also requires an engagement with your whole being and should be entered with purpose and intention. Beyond any concern for product, we will prioritize each student's deepening relationship to the creative process itself-—beginning with freeing him/her from inhibitions, self-censorship, fears of vulnerability, and rational control, and guiding each writer to touch the world up close with the imaginative power of language. The poem will be presented as a field in which a vision of the world is enacted, a space in which indeed anything can happen. Throughout the semester, we will read diverse models of successful poems and gradually introduce formal considerations of the craft as we respond constructively to each other's work. [TA]

ENGL 504: American Lit II: Natives and Strangers: Migration, Immigration, and Belonging in American Literature and Culture, 1865–1945

MW 12:00-3:15  [CRN 21834]
Instructor: Dr Jean Griffith

This course will explore the relationships between rootedness, between belonging to a place, and movement, uprootedness. A massive increase in immigration from Europe and elsewhere, the resettlement of millions of Americans from East to West, and the Great Migration of formerly enslaved African Americans out of the South all took place in the decades between the Civil War and World War II. What, if anything, does “home” mean in such a context? Where, if anywhere, can Americans locate their “roots?” How do strangers become natives? Reading works by Robert Frost, Willa Cather, James Baldwin, and others, we will explore how the interactions between natives and strangers shaped the way Americans define themselves, each other, and the nation.

ENGL 505A: The Personal Essay

T 4:30-7:00  [CRN 21835]
Instructor: Dr Adam Scheffler

You may not like writing five-paragraph essays about Shakespeare. But what about writing to figure out what you think about the internet, American politics, sex, dealing with grief or anxiety, or your own mortality? The first half of this class will examine stand-out published essays that merge personal anecdotes with beautifully articulated, nuanced thinking on a variety of topics (from vegetarianism to sexting to conspiracy theories, to what we owe the homeless). In the second half of the class, you will write, and we will workshop, a personal essay of yours written about any topic you choose, so long as it is something that’s been weighing on you and that you haven’t yet figured out. 
 
The world today is uniquely frightening and chaotic, and learning to make sense of it is harder than ever—especially when we’re tempted to outsource our thinking to AI and/or are being prodded by the algorithm and inundated with shallow “hot takes” online. But the personal essay, the essay written proudly in the first-person from the author’s perspective, that explores its topics with nuance and an open mind, offers you a powerful tool to practice thinking for yourself, and to make sense of the issues most pressing to you, while also trying to write something beautiful in the bargain.
 
Reading assignments may include essays by Zadie Smith, Mary Gaitskill, David Foster Wallace, George Orwell, John Jeremiah Sullivan, James Baldwin, Rax King, and others, as well as excerpts from novels of ideas by Sigrid Nunez and J.M. Coetzee, and video essays by the YouTuber Natalie Wynn (aka Contrapoints).
Prerequisite: ENGL 285

ENGL 527: Victorian Literature: Monsters of the Nineteenth Century

Online [CRN 21954]
Instructor: Dr Carrie Dickison

From Frankenstein's Monster to Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde to Count Dracula, many of our most enduring monsters emerged from nineteenth-century texts. This seminar examines these figures and their twentieth-century counterparts through a range of theoretical lenses in order to trace the evolution of the monstrous "other." Readings include Marry Shelly's Frankenstein, Polidori's The Vampyre, Le Fanu's Carmilla, Bram Sroker's Dracula, Marryat's The Blood of the Vampire, and Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. [TA]

ENGL 533B: Contemporary American Literature

Online [CRN ]
Instructor: Dr Jason Allen

This advanced level course is offered for both advanced undergraduate students and graduate students alike and focuses on 21st Century American literature, primarily authors with particular interest in the working-class American experience. The reading list consists of ten books, constituting a diversity of contemporary American voices, and this list is meant to invite students to deepen their understanding of the rich diversity of our American society and to empathize with a wide variety of individuals. Each featured author focuses on issues of American identity, with most stemming from socioeconomic concerns and marginalization in its myriad forms in present-day America. Through your analyses of these works, you may call into question the notion that every American has an equal opportunity to achieve the “American Dream”, or this question may exist as subtext to your main thematic interests, though you are free to focus your analyses on any themes within the assigned reading that interest you most, and for which you can then engage an audience thoughtfully through your academic writing. 

ENGL 536B: Contemporary Writing By Women

Online  [CRN 21955]
Instructor: Dr Chinyere Okafor

Different forms of expression by novelists and playwrights as well as researchers are studied through feminist lens that enrich the student's understanding of women and gender experiences. Texts on feminist theories and approaches are used to appreciate the creative works. Emphasis is on the intersection of gender with other axes of power such as race/ethnicity, class and postcoloniality. Focus is on African and African American works. Students need to be prepared to go out of their comfort zone, to terrains that are unfamiliar to some - feminism, postcolonialism and African literature.

ENGL 547: Latinx Literature

R 4:30-7:00  [CRN 21836]
Instructor: Dr Vanessa Aguilar

How do we witness? What does it mean to faithfully witness? How can we become witnesses while engaging with Latinx Literature? Through this frame of reference, we will explore themes of (im)migration, exile, displacement, race, class, gender, social justice, etc. Students will engage with novels, poetry, plays, and short stories, drawing broadly from the 19th to 21st centuries.

ENGL 577: Digital Textual Editing

M 4:30-7:00  [CRN 21837]
Instructor: Dr Francis X Connor

First, what this class is not: we're not learning line editing, proofreading, or how to tell an author what 10,000 words need to be excised from their manuscript.

This course is an introduction to scholarly textual editing, the foundational practice of literary scholarship. It concerns how texts are created, from an author's mind to a written page to a printed book, all with a particular attention to how texts are reshaped, deformed, re-imagined along the way. Textual editors use this knowledge to create critical editions, which are printed or digital projects in which the editor makes an argument about what a text should be (e.g., demonstrating the author’s intended text, a publisher’s intended text, a text as represented in a particular document, and so on.) Whenever you've read a Norton Anthology, a Penguin Classic, the Oxford Complete Works of [your favorite author], or other such things, you've engaged with the work of a textual editor. In recent years textual editing has moved from a book-ish practice to an electronic one, with many recent scholarly editions being Born Digital.

In this class you will take the first steps to become a scholarly textual editor. We'll grapple with the core issues of textual theory, which we will apply through workshops and coursework as we gradually initiate a short edition of our own design. We'll think about the nature of ERROR, theories of print and manuscript transmission, constructing commentaries and annotations, deciding when spelling and punctuation do and don't matter, deciding when authors do and don't matter, and other such things. In our Book Technologies Lab, we'll copy some manuscripts and set some type to think about how the process of creating a book could impact its meaning. To familiarize ourselves with the basic tools of Digital Humanities we'll be gently introduced to XML-TEI, and we will think about how we can use digital large language corpora in our work. In short, this course is an opportunity to approach literature with closer attention to its subtleties and complexities than you ever have before, and to develop a better understanding of how meaning is made. May be taken as part of the Text Technologies Minor.[TL]

ENGL 668: Field Methods In Linguistics

R 2:00-4:30 [CRN 21838]
Instructor: Dr Mythili Menon

Cross-listed as LING 668. Students learn how to collect and analyze data from a language unknown to them by interacting with a native speaker – course language consultant. Students gain some familiarity with the phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax of the language, while developing techniques for studying an unfamiliar language more generally and for managing the data collected. Repeatable three times for a total of 9 credit hours. Course includes service-learning content. Prerequisite(s): ENGL 315/LING 315.

ENGL 680: Theory and Practice in Composition

Online  [CRN 21957]
Instructor: Melinda DeFrain

This course is designed especially for prospective and practicing teachers. It will introduce you to theories of rhetoric and writing, major research questions in the field of composition studies, and best practices for teaching writing in schools and colleges. We will investigate writing processes, analyze varieties and examples of student writing, and hone our own writing skills by drafting, revising, and evaluating our own and others’ work. As we read significant publications in the field, we will continually consider the relationship between theory and classroom practice. Assignments will give you experience reading pedagogical and theoretical texts; posing complex and worthwhile questions about the teaching of writing; performing research and synthesizing your findings; drafting course materials for current or future writing classes; and responding effectively to student writing. Topics of discussion will include teaching the writing process; developing writing assignments; teaching sentence structure and grammar; and responding to and assessing student writing. May be taken as part of the Professional Writing and Editing Minor. [WC]