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Independent Study in Nonfiction Writing
Tutorial instruction oriented toward some work in progress by the student. Requires submission of a written proposal to a faculty supervisor. Section numbers vary by instructor. Instructor permission required. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- Jackson
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Breton
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- DeBoer-Langworthy
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Foley
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Readey
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stanley
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Arnold
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Schapira
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Ward
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Hipchen
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Undergraduate Independent Study in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures
Tutorial instruction oriented toward a literary research topic. Section numbers vary by instructor. Instructor permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Bryan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Foley
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rabb
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Redfield
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rambuss
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Kuzner
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Scozzaro
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Undergraduate Independent Study in the Enlightenment and the Rise of National Literatures
Tutorial instruction oriented toward a literary research topic. Section numbers vary by instructor. Instructor's permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Burrows
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Egan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Khalip
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Gould
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Nabers
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rabb
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rooney
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Redfield
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Anderson
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Parker
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Undergraduate Independent Study in Modern and Contemporary Literatures
Tutorial instruction oriented toward a literary research topic. Section numbers vary by instructor. Instructor's permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Armstrong
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bewes
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Burrows
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Egan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Abdur-Rahman
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Foley
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- George
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Katz
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Kim
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Murray
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Nabers
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Reichman
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rooney
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rambuss
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Gandhi
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Smailbegovic
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Quashie
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Ramirez-D'Oleo
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Readey
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Graduate Independent Study in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures
Section numbers vary by instructor. May be repeated for credit. Instructor's permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Bryan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Egan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Foley
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rabb
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Redfield
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rambuss
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Kuzner
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Scozzaro
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Graduate Independent Study in the Enlightenment and the Rise of National Literatures
Section numbers vary by instructor. May be repeated for credit. Instructor's permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Burrows
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Egan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Khalip
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Gould
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- McLaughlin
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Nabers
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rabb
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rooney
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Redfield
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Anderson
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Parker
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Graduate Independent Study in Modern and Contemporary Literatures
Section numbers vary by instructor. May be repeated for credit. Instructor's permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Armstrong
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bewes
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Burrows
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Abdur-Rahman
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- George
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Katz
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Kim
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Murray
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Nabers
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Reichman
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rooney
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stanley
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rambuss
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Gandhi
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Smailbegovic
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Quashie
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Ramirez-D'Oleo
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Preliminary Examination Preparation
For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the registration fee to continue active enrollment while preparing for a preliminary examination.
- Schedule Code
- E: Graduate Thesis Prep
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Thesis Preparation
For graduate students who have met the residency requirement and are continuing research on a full time basis.
- Schedule Code
- E: Graduate Thesis Prep
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The Roaring Twenties
This course examines U.S. culture of the 1920s, with particular attention to phenomena that came to be mythologized as the “roaring twenties”—flappers, movie culture, literary and cultural innovation, primitivism and exoticism. We will read fiction and some poetry in the context of movies, publicity, and advertising. Class discussion will focus on analyzing texts with an attention to language and form, as well as connecting these texts to their cultural contexts. Enrollment limited to 19 first-year students.
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The Claims of Fiction
This course explores the interplay of tropes of strangeness, contamination, and crisis in a range of novels and shorter fiction, in English or in translation. We will ask why social misfits and outsiders somehow become such fascinating figures in fictional narratives. How do these fictions entice and equip readers to reflect on collective assumptions, values, and practices? Writers will include Baldwin, Brontë, Coetzee, Conrad, Faulkner, Ishiguro, Morrison, Naipaul, Rushdie, Salih, Shelley. Limited to 19 first-year students.
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Modernist Cities
In the early twentieth century, modernist writers headed for New York, Paris, London and other cities, and based their literary experiments on forms of metropolitan life. We will discuss chance encounters, cosmopolitan and underground nightlife, solitary wandering, and bohemian communities. Writers may include Barnes, Dos Passos, Eliot, Hemingway, Hughes, Larsen, Joyce, McKay, Rhys, Woolf. Enrollment limited to 30.
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American Literature in the Era of Segregation
This course examines how American literature intersects with the legal, ethical, and racial discourses that defined the system of racial segregation. In doing so, the course will assess the ways that literary style and genre became inseparable from the culture of segregation. Authors include Mark Twain, Nella Larsen, William Faulkner, and Richard Wright.
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Shakespeare, Love and Friendship
Shakespeare portrays friends who are compared to a "double cherry"; a lover who wants to cut her beloved out in little stars; and subjects who sweat with desire to see their kings. How does Shakespeare imagine the possibilities and pitfalls of affection, whether personal or political? What happens to that affection when Shakespeare is adapted into film?
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England and the Renaissance
New approaches to Latin and Greek letters—the studia humanitatis—that flourished in 14th century Italy rapidly emerged in England in the early 16th century. What does it mean to claim that England had a renaissance? Texts include More's Utopia and Richard III, Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, Ascham’s Scholemaster, poetry from Wyatt and Surrey through Jonson, Donne, Herrick, and Milton.
Primary meeting Mon/Wed with online CANVAS discussions on Fridays.
- Primary Instructor
- Foley
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Spenser and Shakespeare
A comparative study of theme, form, and genre based upon paired works: Shakespeare’s Sonnets/ Amoretti; Faerie Queene I/King Lear; Faerie Queene III/Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Winter's Tale, Tempest, Venus and Adonis; Shepheardes Calender/As You Like It. Weekly short interpretative exercises (250-500 words) submitted as CANVAS discussions; draft (1250 words) and final essay (3000 words). Enrollment limited to 20.
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Realism, Modernism, Postmodernism: The American Novel and its Traditions
This course charts the course of American novel from the Civil War to the present. We will attend to the development of a distinctly novelistic literary tradition in American writing over the period and to the interactions between this tradition of literary novel writing and the emergence commercial novelistic generic forms (ie. the detective novel, science fiction). We will also consider the novel’s relations to alternative literary modes (narrative history, the sketch, the short story, the occasional essay) and to alternative media (film, television, music). Melville, Twain, DuBois, James, Fitzgerald, Hammett, Hurston, Wright, Nabokov, Butler, Morrison, Dick, Didion.
Primary lecture Mon/Wed and select ONE Friday conference section.
- Primary Instructor
- Nabers
- Primary Instructor
- Nabers
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
- Primary Instructor
- Gallardo
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
- Primary Instructor
- Ben-Meir
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
- Primary Instructor
- Marsh
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
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In Excess: Rossetti, Hopkins, Wilde
This seminar will be a focused close reading of three late Victorian writers whose works might be described as radically excessive insofar as they transgress and push beyond the limits of social, ethical, aesthetic, sexual, and political conventions. What does it mean to describe a text as excessive, and how can excess be considered as a constitutive part of its form? We will concentrate on poetry, plays, and theoretical texts, putting our authors into conversation with contemporary thinkers of excess. Enrollment limited to 20.
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Modern African Literature
This course considers themes, antecedents, and contexts of modern African literature and related forms. Our readings will include fiction in English or in translation, traditional oral forms like panegyric and festival poetry, and some films. We will examine how these diverse materials explore the interplay of ethnicity, nationality, and race. We will also address the issue of "tradition" in contexts where nationalisms of various stripes are becoming stronger, even as the world becomes more interconnected through trade, immigration, and digital technology. Authors will include Achebe, Adichie, Dangarembga, Kourouma, Ngugi, Salih, Soyinka, Wicomb. Films by Kouyaté, Loreau, Sembène.
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The Literature and Culture of Black Power Reconsidered
This course reexamines the Black Power movement as a signal development in American literature and culture. We will read classics from the period with a view toward reassessing the nuances and complexities of their form and politics. At the same time, we will recover less familiar texts that complicate conventional understandings of what defines this movement. Authors include Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, John Edgar Wideman, Ernest Gaines, and Amiri Baraka.
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Medieval Manuscript Studies: Paleography, Codicology, and Interpretation
How do you read a medieval manuscript? This course teaches hands-on methodologies for deciphering the material text, including palaeography (history of scripts) and codicology (archeology of the book); contemporary models of interpreting scribal texts, including editorial theory and analysis of readers' reception; and medieval concepts of textuality and interpretation, including medieval theories of authorship and the arts of memory. Prior course work in Middle English or Latin or other medieval language recommended. Not open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 20. Instructor permission required.
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Neuroaesthetics and Reading
Analysis of the theories of art, reading, and aesthetic experience proposed by neuroscience and cognitive science in light of traditional aesthetics and contemporary literary theory. Enrollment limited to 20. Prerequisite: At least one course on neuroscience or cognitive science and one 1000-level literature course. Instructor permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Armstrong
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Cronenberg/Lynch
A genre-oriented study of two major contemporary expressionist filmmakers, David Cronenberg and David Lynch, by means of juxtaposing some of their key works. Films by Cronenberg: “The Fly,” “Videodrome,” “Crash,” “A Dangerous Method,” and “Maps to the Stars.” Films by Lynch: “Eraserhead,” “Blue Velvet,” “Wild at Heart,” “Mulholland Drive,” and “Inland Empire.” Enrollment limited to 20 juniors and seniors. Instructor permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Rambuss
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The Sublime
This course tracks the notion of the sublime from its classical sources through eighteenth-century British and German poetry and philosophy, to twentieth-century theory, with some consideration of the visual arts and other media. Authors to be studied include Longinus, Milton, Burke, Wordsworth, Kant, Hegel, Derrida, Lyotard, Jameson, among others. Enrollment limited to 20 juniors and seniors.
- Primary Instructor
- Redfield
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Waves and Edges: Poetry and the Sea
In her poem “The Map” Elizabeth Bishop writes: “Land lies in water; it is shadowed green. / Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges / showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges…” This class will examine how such edges between sea and land can be thought and represented in poetic texts, while also considering environmental effects of climate change.
- Primary Instructor
- Smailbegovic
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Persons and Things in Early Modern England
What was legal personhood in early modern England and who did it include? Was it always bad to be treated like a thing? What did legal and literary fictions have in common? We will examine the interplay between early modern persons and things, considering literary examples of subjectification, objectification, and anthropomorphism as they relate to questions of pleasure and value. Enrollment limited to 15.
- Primary Instructor
- Scozzaro
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Technologies of Memory
From archives to monuments, photographs to films, sound recordings to selfies to Twitter feeds, modern life has reached a saturation point of object-driven memory. This course examines modes of capturing memory in the 20th and 21st centuries, and asks what replaces the medieval memory palace as an imaginary habitat for recollection.
Enrollment limited to 15.
- Primary Instructor
- Burrows
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The Art of Craft
What can traditional crafts teach us about our writing? How does building a house or stitching a quilt help us appreciate the ways we can build creative texts? We will consider such questions to help us reflect on our writing as a craft, to invest the key tenets of craft in our writing process, style, and form, and to forge an innovative portfolio of work of which we can feel justly proud. Writing sample required. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed during the first week of classes. Preference will be given to English concentrators. Instructor permission required. S/NC.
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Nature Writing
This course seeks to develop your skills as a sensitive reader and writer of the natural world. You will build a portfolio of revised work through a process of workshops, tutorials, and conferences, and engage in discussion of a range of written and visual narratives with reference to their personal, political, and ecological contexts. Writing sample required. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed during the first week of classes. Preference will be given to English concentrators. S/NC.
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Writing for Activists
How can writing support and further change? In this course students will practice grant applications, budget narratives, mission and strategy statements, press releases, position papers, op-eds, and other writing strategies with practical application in activist work. We’ll read examples and theoretical grounding, and guest speakers will introduce us to writings and needs specific to a range of fields. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed during the first week of classes. Preference will be given to English concentrators. Instructor permission required. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- Schapira
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Reporting Crime and Justice
Crime and justice stories are people stories. The drama of everyday life is played out every day in courtrooms. This advanced journalism course will get students into the courtrooms, case files and archives of Rhode Island's judicial system and into committee hearings at the State House where they will report on stories that incorporate drama, tension, and narrative storytelling. Prerequisite: ENGL1050G, ENGL1050H or ENGL1160A (Advanced Feature Writing). Enrollment limited to 17. Instructor permission required. Preference will be given to English concentrators. S/NC.
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Special Delivery: Letters and Diaries
For the advanced writer. While letters and diaries are constrained by "dailiness"--the writer's informal situation in time--they often form the basis of more formal communications, including the novel. We will keep diaries as self-conscious intellectual enterprises and write letters to address their roles in various literary modes. The final project will be an epistolary essay incorporating structures and motifs from both sub-genres. Writing sample required. Instructor permission required. Prerequisite: ENGL0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed during the first week of classes. Preference will be given to English concentrators. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor permission. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- DeBoer-Langworthy
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Anne Carson, Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine
This advanced writing workshop will consider hybridity and formal experimentation through the work of three prominent contemporary practitioners. We’ll examine how the range of formal strategies these authors employ resist the limitations of genre and category, invent new ways of reading and writing nonfiction, and create space for a broader, more inclusive, more expansive possibilities for representing lived experience. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Writing sample will be administered on the first day of class. Not open to first-year students. Instructor permission required. S/NC.
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My So-Called Life: The Art of the Literary Memoir
The literary memoir offers students inspiration and warning as to the possibilities and limits of using their own experience as text. We study personal essays, narratives, and prose poems by a variety of writers. Advanced writers only. Writing sample required on first day of class. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed during the first week of classes. Preference will be given to English concentrators. Instructor permission required. S/NC.
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Introduction to Creative Nonfiction
Designed to familiarize students with the techniques and narrative structures of creative nonfiction. Reading and writing focus on personal essays, memoir, science writing, travel writing, and other related subgenres. May serve as preparation for any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Writing sample may be required. Enrollment limited. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
Spring 2022: ENGL0930 section 03 is reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Hardy
Spring 2022: ENGL0930 section 03 is reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Readey
Spring 2022: ENGL0930 section 03 is reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Rush
Spring 2022: ENGL0930 section 03 is reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Ward
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The Artist in the Archives
While artists can benefit greatly from archival work, they are not typically given the tools to make use of these institutions. This writing intensive course takes a two pronged approach to the problem: embedding students in archives both at Brown and RISD to produce creative, lyrical, and multi-media essays; and exploring how artists have used these institutions for information and inspiration. Enrollment limited to 17. Writing sample may be required. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart
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Narrative
This course offers a broad exploration of the many kinds of essays you can write in creative nonfiction. We will be looking at how authors structure their pieces and the range of narrative techniques they often use. You can expect workshops, in-class prompts and readings by Jamaica Kincaid, John McPhee, David Foster Wallace, Annie Dillard, David Sedaris and others. Enrollment limited to 17. Writing sample required. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
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True Stories
This class will allow confident writers to explore and develop their creative nonfiction writing. We'll focus on two structures--nonfiction narratives and essays--with occasional forays into other forms. Students will work simultaneously on several small assignments and two larger, self-directed pieces. Readings will include cultural reportage, lyric memoir, science and nature writing, standard and hybrid essays. Enrollment limited to 17. Writing sample required. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- Schapira
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Sportswriting
This course introduces students to the practice of sportswriting, including writing sports news, features, and columns. Readings will include works by Rick Reilly, Bill Simmons, Frank Deford, Karen Russell, Allison Glock, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, W.C. Heinz, and others. Students will develop skills in analyzing, researching, writing, revising, and workshopping in the genre. Enrollment limited to 17. Writing sample required. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
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Line Work: Experiments in Short-Form Writing
This class is based on the premise that to improve your writing, you need to write often. By responding to almost daily drills, you will develop a regular writing habit and explore a range of styles. We will take your most successful pieces through a series of workshops, helping you refine your work and ultimately build a writing portfolio. Enrollment limited to 17. Writing sample required. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart
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Intellectual Pleasures: Reading/Writing the Literary Text
Riffing on the generative tensions between intellectual rigor and aesthetic pleasure, this seminar will examine (through the theoretical framework of cognitive poetics) a richly diverse range of literary texts, from Susan Howe to Beowulf. Our objective: to develop an awareness of language that will reshape how we read and how we write literary texts in various genres. Writing centered. Enrollment limited to 12. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- Stanley
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Critical Reading and Writing I: The Academic Essay
An introduction to university-level writing. Students produce and revise multiple drafts of essays, practice essential skills of paragraph organization, and develop techniques of critical analysis and research. Readings from a wide range of texts in literature, the media, and academic disciplines. Assignments move from personal response papers to formal academic essays. Enrollment limited to 17. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
Spring 2022: ENGL 0900 sections 03 and 04 are restricted to first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Jackson
Spring 2022: ENGL 0900 sections 03 and 04 are restricted to first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Stanley
Spring 2022: ENGL 0900 sections 03 and 04 are restricted to first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Adhikari
Spring 2022: ENGL 0900 sections 03 and 04 are restricted to first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Lasasso
Spring 2022: ENGL 0900 sections 03 and 04 are restricted to first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Mcnish
Spring 2022: ENGL 0900 sections 03 and 04 are restricted to first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Holman
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Advanced Creative Nonfiction: Biography
Biography, one of the oldest forms of creative nonfiction, tells the life story of a person, idea, place, or thing. We consider old and new forms of biography, experiment with those forms, and practice them as a method of inquiry as well as presentation of self. We also explore biography’s connection to journalism, autobiography, memoir, and history. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed during the first week of classes. Preference will be given to English concentrators. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- DeBoer-Langworthy
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Writing the Family
“You must not tell anyone” writes Hong Kingston’s auto-fictional narrator—and then a book of family secrets follows. This class examines how authors (authorized or not) use their families as subject matter, storying family and family life. Over the term, we’ll work on developing a practical and theoretical ethics of family-writing while contextualizing and practicing writing nonfiction about the family. Enrollment limited to 17. No prerequisites. Writing sample required. Instructor permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Hipchen
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How To Read A Poem
It is difficult to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there. Poet William Carlos Williams captures this course’s focus on the special ways that poetic language represents and gives shape to human experience. Organized around concepts and practical skills, the readings cross historical and geographical boundaries.
All ENGL 0100s will be temp capped at 100 with reserved seating/registration as follows:
For the SPRING term: semester-level 02/04 = 25 each; and 01/03 = 5 each Yielding: 60 total
(40 remaining spots for upper-levels: seniors/juniors)
- Primary Instructor
- Rabb
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Matters of Romance
Narratives (1100-1500) of men, women, and elves seeking identity on the road, in bed, and at court. Readings (in modern English) include Arthurian romances, Havelok, lais by Marie de France, and Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale." Primarily for freshmen and sophomores. Students should register for ENGL 0100D S01 and may be assigned to conference sections by the instructor during the first week of class.
All ENGL 0100s will be temp capped at 100 with reserved seating/registration as follows:
For the SPRING term: semester-level 02/04 = 25 each; and 01/03 = 5 each Yielding: 60 total
(40 remaining spots for upper-levels: seniors/juniors)
- Primary Instructor
- Bryan
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Inventing Asian American Literature
What insights can literature provide into the complicated workings of race in America? What role can the invention of a literary tradition play in illuminating and rectifying past and present injustices? We explore these questions by examining how the idea of an Asian American literary tradition came into being and by reading influential works that have become part of its canon. Students should register for ENGL 0100V S01 and may be assigned to conference sections by the instructor during the first week of class.
Primary lecture Mon/Wed and select ONE Friday conference section.
All ENGL 0100s will be temp capped at 100 with reserved seating/registration as follows:
For the SPRING term: semester-level 02/04 = 25 each; and 01/03 = 5 each Yielding: 60 total
(40 remaining spots for upper-levels: seniors/juniors)
- Primary Instructor
- Kim
- Primary Instructor
- Kim
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
- Primary Instructor
- Manansala
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
- Primary Instructor
- Javaid
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
- Primary Instructor
- Dun
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
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Senior Honors Thesis in English
Independent research and writing under the direction of a faculty member. Permission should be obtained from the Honors Advisor in English. Open to senior English concentrators pursuing Honors in English. Instructor permission required.
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Senior Honors Thesis in Nonfiction Writing
Independent research and writing under the direction of the student’s Nonfiction Writing honors supervisor. Permission should be obtained from the Honors Advisor for Nonfiction Writing. Open to senior English concentrators pursuing Honors in Nonfiction Writing. Instructor permission required.
- Primary Instructor
- Schapira
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Modernism and Race
An exploration of the ways in which assumptions about racial difference are perpetuated or challenged by modernist experiments in form. Readings include W. E. B. DuBois, Joseph Conrad, Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, Nella Larsen, William Faulkner, and Richard Wright.
- Primary Instructor
- Armstrong
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Poetic Modernisms: Now!
This course is a survey of modernist poetry that explores how key works by figures such as Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore have continued to shape poetic forms and possibilities throughout the twentieth century and into the contemporary moment.
- Primary Instructor
- Smailbegovic
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Somebodies, Nobodies, and Other Others: 18th-Century Women's Writing
Women wrote and published in unprecedented numbers for the first time during the eighteenth century. Recovery of their important work is ongoing. Revolution, globalization, and other changes in private and public life prompted writers like Elizabeth Haywood, Mary Montagu, Ann Finch, Charlotte Lennox, Frances Sheridan, Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Burney to redefine gender roles and challenge cultural prohibitions against female authorship. Enrollment limited to 20.
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Courses of Interest to Students Concentrating in English
These courses, offered in other departments, are cross listed with the English Department and do not require advisor approval to count toward the concentration for English concentrators. Please refer to the primary department for registration details.
Ethnic Studies
ETHN 1751B Feeling Minor
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Postcolonial Theory
In this introduction to postcolonial theory we will consider key Western sources (Hegel, Marx, Lacan, Levi Strauss, Emmanuel Levinas); anticolonial manifestos (Gandhi, Fanon, Césaire, Memmi); political and ethical practices (civil disobedience, armed struggle, friendship). In addition to canonical critics (Said, Bhabha, Spivak), the course will review new interests in the field (transnationalism, non-western imperialisms, the environmental turn). Offered as a collaborative humanities seminar in Spring 2022, Postcolonial Theory will host and think with a series of guest scholars.
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American Degenerates
Colonial British-Americans were called, among other names, monstrous, wild, impotent, and grotesque. They could not, it was said, produce writing worth reading. We will explore the ways in which American writers embraced and/or challenged these charges of cultural and bodily degeneracy. In the process, we will examine the development of modern notions of literature and identity. Students should register for ENGL 1310B S01 and may be assigned to conference sections by the instructor during the first week of classes.
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Risk/Rupture/Remains: Contemporary Queer Media and Poetics
How can we imagine life in a world preoccupied with queer and trans loss? This course introduces contemporary experiments in queer and trans survival across poetry, film, theory, and video games. We will read, watch, and play with particular attention to Black and Indigenous art in the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic. Artists may include Dionne Brand, David Wojnarowicz, CAConrad, and Porpentine. Enrollment limited to 17.
- Primary Instructor
- Jackshaw
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Literature and the Social Contract
This course considers imaginative works (short stories, novellas, films) through the prism of moral and political philosophy. We will focus on how representations of right and obligation inform notions of self, other, and the il/legitimacy of authority. Readings include: Hobbes, Rousseau, Kafka, Adichie, Mann, Melville, Orwell, Octavia Butler, Rawls, Le Guin, Yuri Herrera, Murayama, and Agamben. Enrollment limited to 17.
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Wild and Unruly: Black Women’s Belonging, Place, and Self in Storytelling
How are belonging, place (or geography), and self expressed by women of African descent across the Black Atlantic? How do literature and other cultural productions help black women creatively navigate senses of self and place? Through the lens of the wild and unruly, this class asks how black women find new ways of expressing the human existence. Enrollment limited to 17.
- Primary Instructor
- Sobande
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Comedy and Cruelty
Modernity is often conceived as tragedy—this course imagines otherwise. We will explore the usefulness of the comic frame in the wake of (economic, political, environmental) disaster through 20th-/21st century novels/films by Joseph Conrad, Frank Capra, Ralph Ellison, Samuel Selvon, Paul Beatty, Jordan Peele, Anna Burns, Bong Joon-Ho. This class investigates the possibility of joy in an age of disappointment. Enrollment limited to 17.
- Primary Instructor
- Ciccone
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Show Me the Money: Advertising and Capitalism in American Literature
This course examines the intersections of capitalism and advertising in 19th and 20th century American Literature. Central to this investigation will be questions of identity and representation. Each class begins with a discussion around a print, digital, or video advertisement, and engages a variety of works and authors including Harriet Jacobs, Henry James, Herman Melville, Mad Men, amongst others. Enrollment limited to 17.
This course is being offered online-only.
- Primary Instructor
- Halstead
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Giving way: Poetry, Performance, Film
This course will engage with artistic forms that creatively respond to the present by both heeding its demands while also expressing alternatives to its norms. They map out, figure, and perform various (im)possibilities of existence. Our archive, informed by artists such as Adrian Piper and Lyn Hejinian, will consist of apparitional experience, ecstatic dance, magical sentences, etc. Enrollment limited to 17.
- Primary Instructor
- Rosenberg
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Medieval Race
In this course, we will explore the historically specific contours of race in England and interrelated cultural regions during the High and Late Middle Ages, as well as learn and practice how to read Middle English. No previous knowledge of medieval literature or Middle English necessary. Not open to first-year students. Enrollment limited to 20.
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You Better Work: Sexuality, Labor, Blackness
This seminar takes a historical, theoretical, and interdisciplinary approach to sexuality, labor, and blackness in the United States. We will engage in black feminist, trans, and queer methodologies of selected literature, film, and artwork while we also consider the limits of labor as a conceptual apparatus. Thinkers include Samuel R. Delany, Saidiya Hartman, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Tourmaline. Open to juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 20.
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Literature and Social Mobility
This class examines cultural narratives about people who rise, fall, or remain stuck within systems of social stratification. We'll consider how such stories are celebrated, critiqued, or otherwise used to make a point about the nature of wealth, debt, discrimination, assimilation, merit, or luck. Readings will consist of novels and memoirs, along with material from disciplines like sociology and economics.
- Primary Instructor
- Gastiger
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New and Imagined Worlds in the English Renaissance
In the centuries following the “discovery” of the Novus Mundus or “New World,” European playwrights, poets and thinkers created a startling diversity of their own “new” or imagined worlds, which sometimes took license from fantastic contemporary reports of overseas discoveries. How do imagined lands comment upon our own? What freedoms and possibilities arise from the ability to imagine alternative worlds?
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Journalistic Writing
This course teaches students how to report and write hard news and feature stories for newspapers and online. Students learn to gather and organize material, develop interviewing techniques, and hone their writing skills – all while facing the deadlines of journalism. The first half of the semester focuses on “hard" news: issues, crime, government, and courts. The second half is devoted to features, profiles, and narrative story telling. Writing sample required. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed in first week of classes. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
This course is reserved for first-year and sophomore students only.
- Primary Instructor
- Batten
