ENGL - English

Prerequisites: Permission of the department and placement on Basic Skills Inventory test. May not be audited. This intensive course in expository writing emphasizes the fundamentals of grammar, sentence structure and paragraph construction. Learning involves three methods of instruction: classroom discussion, a writing laboratory, and tutorial conferences.

Prerequisites: Placement on Basic Skills Inventory test or permission of instructor. May not be audited. 
This intensive course in expository writing emphasizes the fundamentals of grammar, sentence structure and paragraph construction. Learning involves three methods of instruction: classroom discussion, a writing laboratory, and tutorial conferences. 

Prerequisite: Level II, III, or IV placement on the Basic Skills Inventory test. Open to transfer students who have completed the Composition requirement. This one-credit course provides students with a sound knowledge of the terminology and conventions of grammar, punctuation, and syntax. It is intended for students who seek certification to teach English in primary and secondary classrooms; but any student interested in the way the English language works is encouraged to take this course.

Prerequisite: Placement on the Basic Skills Inventory test. Open to freshmen and sophomores. May be repeated once with a different topic with the permission of the English Department Chair. Credit by exam. An expository writing course that emphasizes reading to become a better writer. Classes will focus on close reading, and students will respond to the texts in short analytical essays. Various topics offered each semester. May not be audited or taken without satisfactory performance on the Basic Writing Skills Inventory.

Prerequisite: Placement on the Basic Skills Inventory test. Open to freshmen and sophomores. Credit by exam. What is our human worth? Are we moral subjects to be respected, or objects fit for manipulation? How do various writers view this bedrock ethical issue? This course will have a look. Works will include Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants, Faulkner's A Rose for Emily, O'Connor's Guests of the Nation, and Erdrich's The Red Convertible.

Prerequisite: Placement on the Basic Skills Inventory test. Open to freshmen and sophomores. Credit by exam. Many British and American writers have dramatized the crucial and sometimes harrowing passage into adulthood. We'll consider how some of them have viewed this transition. Hawthorne, Frank O'Connor, Faulkner, and Louise Erdrich will be among them.

Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or permission of the instructor. May not be taken on an audit basis. An introduction to various forms of creative writing, this is an intensive writers’ workshop requiring active participation from all members. Individual conferences in addition to class meetings. May not be audited.

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above.  A study of world literature in translation particularly relevant to our own cultural heritage. Readings are drawn from the antique, classical, medieval and early modern periods, and typically include Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Ariosto and Cervantes. (H1,CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. This course will examine the history, development, literary devices, and production values of a variety of theatre and drama, from Ancient Greece and Rome to the nineteenth century. Playwrights studied may include Sophocles, Aristophanes, liturgical dramatists, commedia performers, Shakespeare, Jonson, Chikamatsu, Molière, Sheridan, Tyler and Daly. (H1, G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. This course will examine the history, development, literary devices, and production values of a variety of theatre and drama, from nineteenth century Realism to the present day. Playwrights studied may include Ibsen, Wilde, Chekhov, O’Neill, Miller, Williams, Albee, Beckett, Pinter, Shepard, Mamet, Wilson and Kushner.(H2, G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. This course explores how "literature" overlaps with "popular culture." We will consider several stories that have captured imaginations across boundaries of time and genre and examine the conventions, expectations, and possibilities of different genres and media. (CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. May be repeated with a different topic. A study of a significant theme or subject in selected works of literature. May be repeated with different topic.

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. In this course, we will explore how "history" and "fiction" are defined, where they overlap, and where they (should) diverge. The focus will be on ancient Rome and late medieval/early modern England, as well as figures that have come to represent these societies in the modern imagination: Julius Caesar, King Richard III, and Queen Elizabeth I. (H1, CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of major works of modern English literature with an emphasis on the social, psychological, and religious implications of the notion that modern life is a spiritual wasteland, a dead land calling out for rebirth. Texts may include works by Conrad, Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, Forster, and Auden. (H2)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. Romantic motifs in English literature of the nineteenth century. Readings will include both novels and poems. Texts may be selected from works by Scott, Bronte, Blake, Byron, and Wordsworth. (H2)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of major themes in Victorian literature with emphasis on the impact of the industrial and scientific revolutions on society, religion, and art. Texts may include novels by Dickens or Eliot, essays by Mill, Carlyle, and Arnold, and poems by Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. (H2)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. This reading-intensive course explores how magic and mysticism were woven into the fabric of medieval society. We will consider the categories of magic, religion and science, and attempt to discover where they intersect and where they diverge. We will also look at how medieval articulations of magic survive and continue to influence the popular culture of today. (H1, CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of the major authors and themes of the American Transcendental and Anti-Transcendental or Dark Romantic movements. Texts will include essays by Emerson and Thoreau, novels and short stories by Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe, and poems by Whitman and Dickinson. (H2)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of ekphrastic writing, or literature on, about, or inspired by works of art. The course will be geared toward an interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between literature and the visual arts. Texts will include a range of classical to contemporary works by authors such as Homer, Keats, Wilde, Woolf, Auden, and Ashbery. (H2,CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above.  We will study the ways in which early African-American literary traditions have been formed not only by slavery, but also by community, geography, politics, and literature itself. Works may include slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Keckley, and Harriet Jacobs, as well as 19th century fiction by Harriet Wilson, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Chesnutt. (H2)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. This course explores the influences of blues, jazz, and spirituals; folklore; and socio-economic history on African American literature of the 20th and early 21st centuries. We’ll examine how survival and resistance become art forms in the work of authors like W.E. B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison. (H2)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. Through analysis and discussion of selected works of great literature, students will examine themes of vice and virtue. Topics may include the relation between individual and community, evil, ends and means, the good life, and moral conflict.(H2, CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. This course will focus on the legend of King Arthur, the mythical King of the Britons who (it is said) will return to help his people in their hour of need. From the earliest mentions of Arthur in the chronicles and myths of post-Roman Britain through the films, novels, and television of today, we will explore key points in the development of the Arthurian legend. (CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. May be repeated with a different topic. A study of a particular genre, such as the novel, the short story, poetry, drama or autobiography

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. Students will read, discuss, and write about a wide-ranging selection of short stories, studying authorial and historical technique, point of view, voice, structure, and subject matter. (H2,G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. We consider plays written by contemporaries of Shakespeare and his heirs. We will study dramatic traditions (such as revenge tragedy and social comedy) and theatrical contexts in the light of Elizabethan and Jacobean culture. The playwrights include Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and John Webster. (H1,G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. An introduction to the development of the American novel from the late nineteenth century to the contemporary period. May include works by Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, James Weldon Johnson, Art Spiegelman, Louise Erdrich, Alison Bechdel, and Leslie Marmon Silko. (H2,G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. We explore the major poetic traditions of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The sonnet, mythic/erotic narratives, religious lyric, and pastoral are among the many forms and conventions considered in the readings. The poets studied include Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, Herrick, and Marvell. (H1,G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above.

A study of American poetry by women from the seventeenth century to the contemporary period, with particular emphasis on BIPOC women poets.

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. How do we add our own stories to the palimpsest of American identity? In this course, we will explore how national and personal histories of ethnicity in the United States are handed down, revised, and contradicted in both autobiography and fiction. Authors may include Julie Otsuka, Sherman Alexie, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, Roxanne Gay, and others. (H2, G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of the forms and techniques of poetry, including both critical analysis and creative practice. We will read and analyze a variety of poetic forms, including sonnets, sestinas, ballads, villanelles, prose poems, and pantoums, by modern and contemporary poets. In addition to close readings of poems, students will write original poems in various forms. (G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of the richly various poetry produced in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. The course will focus on modern American poets such as Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and Elizabeth Bishop. (H2,G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. We will explore the development of the romance as a literary genre. Included in our investigation are societal influences on the texts and literary influences on society: how did authors use the genre to depict and interrogate ideals of gendered behavior in love and war? And how do these ideals continue to influence our society today? (H1, CT, G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. Explores British novels as sites of ongoing experimentation and development. Moves from the genre’s 18th century hybrid origins, to the romance and realist traditions of the 19th century, and into the modernist and postmodernist movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. Authors may include Swift, Sterne, Austen, Dickens, Hardy, Woolf, Ishiguro, and McEwan. (H2, G)

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition area of the core with a grade of C- or above. A study of the richly varied tradition of African American poetry from the eighteenth century to the present. The course will focus on the work of poets from the Enlightenment and antebellum eras, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and the contemporary period. (G, H2)

Offered at the discretion of the department. An opportunity for groups of eight or more students to study topics suggested by their special interests and those of the faculty and not included in the regular offerings.

Prerequisite: ENGL 219. May not be taken on an audit basis. 

This workshop course is designed to help the student understand the principles of dramatic writing through lectures, workshops, and staged readings of student work. Students will learn about dramatic structure, character, dialogue, and various approaches to theatricality. Suitable for all levels of experience.

Prerequisite: Completion of any 200-level English course; or permission of the instructor. This course is an introduction to the dramatic works of Shakespeare. Although some attention is devoted to the historical moment in which he produced his plays, the primary focus is on Shakespeare’s language and theater. Filmed versions of the plays will be used to supplement textual analysis. (WS)

Prerequisite: Completion of any 200-level English course; or permission of the instructor. A study of the selected works of the medieval poet who helped start the tradition of writing poetry and prose in English. The class will focus primarily on The Canterbury Tales; it will also introduce students to Middle English, so that the poetry may be appreciated in Chaucer’s own language. Special attention will be given to the history and culture of England during Chaucer’s lifetime. (WS)

Prerequisite: ENGL 219 or permission of the instructor. This workshop-based course follows ENGL 219 and involves a concentrated study of the art of creative nonfiction. Students will gain an awareness and appreciation of the elements of creative nonfiction, and in particular, the personal essay. During the workshop portion of the course, students will write and present original essays and comment on the essays of other members, both orally and in writing.

Prerequisites: ENGL 219 or permission of the instructor. This workshop-based course is a follow-up to English 219, the introductory creative writing course. In 326, students will study particular techniques for fiction (point of view, narrative voice, dialogue, character). Short writing and reading assignments will help students continue honing their craft. Each student will have four workshops, as well as individual conferences with the instructor.

Prerequisites: English 219 or permission of the instructor. This workshop-based course is a follow-up to English 219, the introductory creative writing course. In 327, students will study particular techniques for poetry (image, diction, form, line length, and line breaks). Weekly writing and reading assignments will help students continue honing their craft. Each student will have four workshops, as well as at least two individual conferences with the instructor.

Prerequisite: Permission of the department. May be repeated once. The assistantship offers students the opportunity to refine their editing and leadership skills as they work with students in the Academic Services Center. Under the supervision of the Academic Services staff, assistants serve as teaching and tutorial aides to students seeking to improve their basic writing skills.

Prerequisites: Completion of any 200-level English course; or permission of the instructor. May be repeated with different writers. A study of one or more significant writers or a distinct school of writers.

Prerequisites: Completion of any 200-level English course; or permission of the instructor. An in-depth study of two prominent twentieth-century American poets, Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath. In addition to a close examination of Bishop's and Plath's poems, short stories, novels, letters, and journals, the course will use recent criticism and biographical sources to help illuminate the works in question. (WS)

Prerequisite: Completion of any 200-level English course; or permission of the instructor. A close analysis of the art of Jane Austen, emphasizing the resources of her language and her powers of social perception. Reading will include Austen's six completed novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. (WS)

Prerequisite: Completion of any 200-level English course; or permission of the instructor. An analysis of the lives, art, and ideas of E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf. Texts may include Forster's A Room with a View, Howard's End, and A Passage to India, and Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves. (WS)

Prerequisite: Completion of any 200-level English course; or permission of the instructor. A study of three of America's most influential contemporary Native American writers. The class will explore these authors' historic and cultural contexts to some degree. Readings may include Silko's Ceremony and Storyteller, Erdrich's Antelope Wife and Tracks, and Alexie's short story collections and novels. (CT, WS)

Prerequisite: Completion of any 200-level English course; or permission of the instructor. This course is an in-depth study of the two most important poets of nineteenth-century America, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. In addition to a close examination of Whitman's antebellum poetry and Civil War work and Dickinson's manuscript fascicles and letters, the course will use recent criticism and biographical sources to help illuminate the works in question. (WS)

Prerequisites: Completion of any 200-level English course; or permission of the instructor. Students engage in an intense analysis of the work of Dante Alighieri. Our primary focus is Dante’s epic allegory, the Divine Comedy, but we will also study the Vita Nuova and passages from Dante’s other works to provide a context for his masterpiece. Two writers who significantly influenced Dante (Virgil and Augustine) will also be considered. (WS)

Prerequisites: Completion of any 200-level English course; or permission of the instructor. A study of utopian thought from Plato's Republic through contemporary science fiction. Texts may include St. Augustine's City of God, The Rule of St. Benedict, Campanella's City of the Sun, More's Utopia, Bellamy's Looking Backward, Gilman's Herland, Huxley's Brave New World, as well as films such as Gattaca and Minority Report. The course will also include a study of experimental utopian communities. (CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of any 200-level English course; or permission of the instructor. As they move between two worlds—the infinite possibilities of spirit and the nightmarish limits of the physical—writers, artists and philosophers of the Renaissance offer images of what it means to be human. Those imaginings anticipate many modern assumptions and dilemmas. Readings may include Boccaccio, Erasmus, Rabelais, More, Montaigne, and Shakespeare. (H1, CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of any 200-level English course; or permission of the instructor. A study of modern English literature and of the social and intellectual contexts that shaped that literature. The class will focus on works that reflect and continue to affect Western culture and its sense of the modern. Texts will include selections from poetry, fiction and non-fiction by authors such as James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and Virginia Woolf. (H2,CT)

Prerequisite: Completion of any 200-level English course; or permission of the instructor. How does the American landscape function in our imagination, our policies, our lives? This reading-intensive course covers a wide range of environmental works: political, scientific, philosophical, autobiographical. Authors include Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Leslie Marmon Silko, Annie Dillard, Gary Snyder, Jack London, and Eddy Harris. (H2, CT)

Prerequisites: 6 credits in literature at or above the 200-level and permission of the instructor. Independent work in English, American or world literature. Conferences.

An upper-level special topics course offered at the discretion of the department. The content and methods vary with the interest of students and faculty members

Prerequisites: 21 credits in English and permission of the department chair. Supervised off-campus learning in an organization or institution approved by the department for an entire semester or an equivalent summer term. Grading is on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis

Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. Basic linguistic concepts and methodology as applied to the English language—its history, structure, varieties and acquisition. Special emphasis on the social aspects of English.

Prerequisite: ENGL 313 or permission of the instructor. An examination of how directors have adapted Shakespeare’s plays to the medium of film. Our work will involve close reading of six plays and analysis of 12 to 15 film versions. Each student will present a seminar paper at the end of the course. (CT)

Prerequisite: ENGL 219 or permission of the instructor. 
This advanced fiction workshop intensifies and expands upon the writing and critical reading skills covered in English 219 and is designed for those students who are serious about refining their craft. It is also geared toward those students enrolled in the M.A. program in Curriculum and Instruction who are now or will soon be teaching creative writing. Students will develop and refine elements in their fiction such as voice, structure, dialogue, setting, and pacing.  (CW)

Prerequisites: ENGL 219 or permission of the instructor. This course follows up the ENGL 219 introductory creative writing course, and is designed for those students who are serious about refining their craft. It is also geared toward those students enrolled in the M.A. program in Curriculum and Instruction who are now or will soon be teaching creative writing. A key difference between ENGL 421/521 and 219 is that this course will be devoted entirely to the writing of poetry. (CW)

Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. An in-depth study of two writers who embrace language and celebrate the human spirit. Readings may include Faulkner’s The Unvanquished, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!, as well as Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved, and Jazz. (WS)

Prerequisites: ENGL 311 or permission of instructor. Advanced study in an area of current interest to faculty and students, including an introduction to major schools of contemporary criticism. Juniors and seniors will explore a topic, period, author or question in literary history or theory.

Prerequisite: By invitation of the department. The departmental honors paper is a two-semester senior-year program designed for students who wish to pursue intensive research or special projects in close coordination with faculty advisers. Departmental honors students are known as the Christine P. Tischer Scholars and receive 6 credits for this work.

Prerequisite: By invitation of the department. The departmental honors paper is a two-semester senior-year program designed for students who wish to pursue intensive research or special projects in close coordination with faculty advisers. Departmental honors students are known as the Christine P. Tischer Scholars and receive 6 credits for this work.