Courses
2023 - 2024
For this academic year's course catalog, please visit our Academic Catalog site. For courses currently offered, please refer to the Schedule of Classes.
Introductory Topics to Literature introduces students to the study of literature by providing students with a broad overview of a literary topic, genre, or tradition chosen by the professor. Topics may include space and place in literature, politics and literature, current events and literature, economics and literature, etc. Genres may include poetry, the short story, the novel, drama, detective fiction, science fiction, domestic fiction, etc. Traditions may include African American literature, queer literature, British literature, postcolonial literature, etc. The course teaches students how to read, analyze, and enjoy literature as well as write about literature. It also teaches students why studying literature in college is important to their personal, professional, and civic lives.
A general category used only in the evaluation of transfer credit.
Theory and practice in essay and other academic writing, allowing students to concentrate on mastering styles appropriate to their own academic or personal needs.
This course will teach students skills and materials that are important in literary studies today. It will include methods of reading and writing literary criticism, research methods in literary studies, analytical practices, an overview of literary theoretical debates of the 20th century, and selected readings from contemporary theory. In each section, the teacher will use one or two literary texts to test interpretative and theoretical approaches.
An intensive study of selected writers, works, literary genres, or themes. May be taken more than once for credit.
A study of selected works by men and women writing in the 8th through the 17th centuries. With close attention to various genres and through various critical approaches, this course attends to literary and cultural developments as reflected in a variety of texts and contexts.
A study of selected works by men and women in the 18th and 19th centuries in England. The course pays close attention to various genres - satire, poetry, drama, criticism, and fiction - and is designed to sharpen students' reading, interpretive, critical thinking, and writing skills, while attending to literary and cultural developments in eighteenth-century, Romantic, and Victorian texts.
A study of principal plays, emphasizing the poetic and dramatic aspects of Shakespeare's work, as viewed through a variety of critical perspectives.
A survey of 20th-century poetry. Attention to major poets as well as literary schools will be enhanced by attention to the wider history, philosophy, and aesthetics of the time.
A survey of 20th-century fiction. Attention to major writers will be enhanced by attention to the wider history, philosophy, and aesthetics of the time.
A survey of literary nonfiction writing in the 20th and 21st centuries that will ground students in the history and more recent developments of the genre as well as the ethical dilemmas of the genre.
Crosslisting: JOUR 200.
Selected poetry and prose by women guide inquiries into writing and gender and into related issues, such as sexuality, history, race, class, identity, and power.
Crosslisting: WGST 225.
A historical survey of texts and literary movements in America before 1900. With attention to various genres and critical approaches, this course emphasizes literary responses to such issues as progress, national identity, race, gender, and the American landscape.
Offers a basic understanding of and experience in writing poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction and teaches students to pay close attention to language and narrative, central elements of all long-form nonfiction writing.
A survey of 20th-century drama with emphasis on British and American playwrights and an eye to female and minority dramatists disenfranchised from the main stages.
A study of selected works by and about bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender people.
Crosslisting: QS 250.
The survey will explore 20th-century literature in a range of genres and in relation to the historical and cultural movements of the century. Each section will focus on a specific topic or tradition in 20th-century literature, such as British, American, postcolonial Anglophone, Asian American, Jewish American, or African American literature.
This course is a survey of the major issues, movements, and/or themes in the study of Asian American literature and culture—including novels, poetry, performance, short stories, graphic novels, memoirs, and essays—with the goal of understanding them within the contexts of their production. Issues and topics may include immigration, diaspora, ethnic and gender formation, kinship and sexuality, interethnic dynamics, cultural nationalism and feminism, model minorities and Orientalism, assimilation, and generational conflict.
The Caribbean is home to hundreds of islands and many nations, but the shared history of European colonialism and the Atlantic trade in enslaved people has given some geopolitical coherence to the region, which is culturally, ethnically, racially, and linguistically diverse. Though literature from the Caribbean is written in many languages, this course surveys Anglophone Caribbean literature and it analyzes it within the historical, political, and social contexts of colonialism, postcolonialism, and diaspora.
Offers a historical survey of major texts, movements, and/or themes in the development of a distinct African American literary tradition. By examining texts from multiple genres and periods, students will be introduced to critical concepts central to the study of African American literature, including Middle Passage, slavery, diaspora, race, class, gender, sexuality, ecology, migration, language, and power.
A study of the literature of various ethnic, racial, and regional groups of the United States. This course explores cultural heritages, historical struggles, artistic achievements, and contemporary relations of groups in American society.
Crosslisting: BLST 255.
A study of contemporary Anglophone African novels, all of which engage with histories and experiences of European colonialism.
Crosslisting: BLST 260.
A study of humanity's relationship with and shifting conceptions of the nonhuman world. Reading selections vary, but generally include past and contemporary writers who reflect different ethnic and regional outlooks and who work in various modes, including literature, memoir, natural history, and science.
Crosslisting: ENVS 291.
An exploration of the ways in which literature and locale inform each other, this course focuses on a specific site or community. Through readings of literature “about” that place, the class investigates how cultural, social, historical, and/or institutional realities interrelate—as both cause and effect—with text. An optional trip to the place in question follows the semester.
A general category used only in the evaluation of transfer credit.
A study of major literary and cultural theories important to literary studies today. The course will emphasize readings in primary texts by critical theorists as well as applications of those theories to text of various kinds. The teacher may focus on in-depth studies of one or two critical or cultural theories.
An intensive study of selected writers, works, literary genres, or themes. May be taken more than once for credit.
An intensive study of selected issues, historical periods, theory and theorists, research, or pedagogy in composition and rhetoric.
A study of selected works of major and representative writers working in the genre of the short story. This course may focus on a few specific writers (such as Eudora Welty or Raymond Carver), or on selected schools and movements (such as the avant-garde, naturalism, or modernism), or on special topics within the field (such as postcolonial fictions or Southern writing).
Historical and contemporary African - American women's literature grounds an inquiry into black women's literary and intellectual traditions within the matrix of race, gender, class, and sexual relations in the United States.
Crosslisting: BLST 325, WGST 325.
A study of Native American literature that will provoke considerations of Native American cultural and religious traditions, historical and legal struggles, artistic achievements, and contributions to contemporary American culture.
Intensive study of drama from 1956 to the present, with an emphasis on British and American playwrights. The course will focus on the issues, problems, techniques, and generic forms particular to contemporary drama, with interest in the emerging drama of minority, female, and GLBTQ playwrights.
Crosslisting: QS 351.
This course will explore the English novel by studying special thematic topics, its evolution, and/or developmental influences. The course might include such authors as DeFoe, Fielding, Austen, Bronte, Gaskell, Dickens, Eliot, or Hardy.
This class studies the movements and traditions within contemporary novels, focusing on such writers as Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Zadie Smith, and Salman Rushdie.
This class studies the schools, movements, traditions, and innovations within contemporary poetry, focusing on selected works of such writers as Anne Carson, W.S. Merwin, Carl Phillips, and Charles Wright.
A study of the development of the English language and its dynamic presence in the world today. In addition to surveying the history of English from its Indo-European origins to the present time, units within the semester cover general linguistics topics, contemporary literacy controversies, and the social implications of dialect variation and changes in usage.
Special topics courses studying the textual forms of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland from 500 to 1500 CE.
Selected works in translation from the Middle Ages through the 21st century. Depending on the topic of the seminar, authors studied may include such diverse figures as Chrétien de Troyes, Dante, Christine de Pisan, Cervantes, Madame de Lafayette, Molière, Goethe, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Calvino, and Christa Wolf.
An analysis of the interrelationship between the cultural phenomenon and the literature of the Harlem Renaissance, particularly the way in which the social, economic and political conditions of the era helped to shape the literary art of the 1920s.
Crosslisting: BLST 355.
A study of representative samples of Black literature ranging from slave narratives to contemporary Black fiction.
Crosslisting: BLST 356.
Readings in literature and criticism from Asia, Africa, Latin American, and the Caribbean, in response to the experience of colonialism.
Crosslisting: BLST 357.
Offers the student an opportunity to develop, with the help of an interested professor, a special program of study in a given topic for one semester. May be taken more than once. Directed Study credit may be used to count toward an English major, but it may not be used in place of required 300-level courses.
Offers the student an opportunity to develop, with the help of an interested professor, a special program of study in a given topic for one semester. May be taken more than once. Directed Study credit may be used to count toward an English major, but it may not be used in place of required 300-level courses.
Offers the student an opportunity to develop within a semester a wholly individualized program of study, to be supervised by an interested professor. Independent Study credit may be used to count toward an English major, but it may not be used in place of required 300-level courses.
Offers the student an opportunity to develop within a semester a wholly individualized program of study, to be supervised by an interested professor. Independent Study credit may be used to count toward an English major, but it may not be used in place of required 300-level courses.
A study of selected works of poetry, prose, and drama from 1500-1660.
Special topics courses based in the literacy culture of England from roughly 1640-1800.
Selected topics in the literature of 19th-century England. The course may focus on Romantic or Victorian authors or representative writers from both eras.
Selected topics in the literature of 19th-century America.
Selected topics in the writings of colonial and early national America.
Studies in the production, reception, and sociopolitical context of British drama from roughly 1660 to 1800.
An advanced workshop course in fiction writing. Students will be asked to read a wide selection of short fiction and to complete and revise a significant collection of their original work. Students will attain a working knowledge of fictional forms, techniques, and aesthetics.
Prerequisite(s): ENGL 237.
Gives students in-depth experience in narrative writing in a variety of literary nonfiction forms, ranging from the lyric and personal essay to long-form reportage.
Prerequisite(s): ENGL 237.
An advanced workshop in poetry writing. Students will be asked to read a wide selection of poetry and to complete and revise a chapbook collection of their original works. Students will attain a working knowledge of poetic forms, techniques, and aesthetics.
Prerequisite(s): ENGL 237.
This course explores nonfiction storytelling across multiple platforms. Students will learn how to edit audio and video stories using relevant and up-to-date programs. Most importantly, they will learn which is the most effective vehicle for the story they are telling..
Crosslisting: JOUR 201.
This course explores how a range of nineteenth-century American authors represented the natural world, examining how those representations of nature are informed by gender, class, and racial identities and how they become implicated in discourses of nationalism and imperialism.
Crosslisting: ENVS 391.
A general category used only in the evaluation of transfer credit.
A required course for senior English literature majors that offers students the chance to engage in intensive study of a particular theme or topic. All sections require frequent short reports to the class on research or reading. Each student will write a long paper as the basis for a seminar presentation. While the senior seminar is required for senior English literature majors, all senior English majors and minors (including both literature and creative writing students) may take the course and count it toward their 300-level major requirement. May be taken more than once for credit.
Senior students may work on an individually designed project for as much as two full semesters.
Senior students may work on an individually designed project for as much as two full semesters.
This year-long project is required for a concentration in creative writing. Conducted under the directorship of a writing professor, each project will include an individual reading program and will result in a significant book-length manuscript of the student's creative work.
This year-long project is required for a concentration in creative writing. Conducted under the directorship of a writing professor, each project will include an individual reading program and will result in a significant book-length manuscript of the student's creative work.