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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
- Taylor
- 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
- 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
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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
- 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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Earth Poetics: Literature and Climate Change
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time and calls for new strategies of collective action, but also for new ways of conceptualizing and attending to the changing Earth. This course will address how literary texts can help us develop our understanding of environmental change by attending to the material entanglements between nature and culture.
All ENGL 0100s will be temp capped at 100 with reserved seating/registration as follows: For the SPRING term: semester-level 01/04 = 25 each; and 02/03 = 5 each Yielding: 60 total (40 remaining spots for upper-levels: seniors/juniors).
- Primary Instructor
- Smailbegovic
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America Dreaming
What ever happened to the American Dream? How is American literature a series of dreaming--fantasy, utopia, dystopia, antislavery, reform, the West, and escape. Fiction, film, the essay, the nonfiction novel. What makes for an "American" myth? How is it exported to the world?
ONLINE primary lecture M/W and select ONE Friday IN-PERSON or ONLINE conference section.
All ENGL 0100s will be temp capped at 100 with reserved seating/registration as follows: For the SPRING term: semester-level 01/04 = 25 each; and 02/03 = 5 each Yielding: 60 total (40 remaining spots for upper-levels: seniors/juniors).
- Primary Instructor
- Gould
- Primary Instructor
- Gould
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
- Primary Instructor
- Darrow
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
- Primary Instructor
- Mcnish
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
- Primary Instructor
- Rasch
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
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The Terrible Century
Although the term "terrorism" was coined in the 18th century, and although its contemporary resonance has reached an unprecedented pitch, the truly terrible century was arguably the 20th. This course introduces 20th century literature in English through a historical and philosophical examination of terror and terrorism. We will focus on several historical contexts, including: British colonialism in Ireland and Africa, South African apartheid, and the post 9/11 world. Readings include Conrad, Bowen, Gordimer, Coetzee, Foulds, Walters, Hamid. Enrollment limited to 19 first-year students.
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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.
This hybrid class will contain both in-person and remote instruction. I am expecting that all students on campus will have an opportunity to enjoy some in-person experience of lecture and discussion each week. On campus students should also expect to have some remote learning activities each week. Students taking the class in an exclusively remote format may join classroom sessions via Zoom. If in-person enrollments are more than 19, students will be asked to attend class sessions on a rotating basis.
- Primary Instructor
- Murray
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American Literature and the Constitution
A study of the interactive relations between US literary constitutional and literary history, with a special emphasis on how American constitutional discourses and American writers have framed and conceived of the interplay between civil rights, racial equality, and economic privilege.
Primary lecture Tuesdays and select ONE Thursday Conference Section.
- Primary Instructor
- Nabers
- Primary Instructor
- Nabers
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
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The Art of the Novel: Henry James
Henry James wrote about fiction as a form of experience: "The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things." He advises the writer, "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!" In this course we will read James's critical writings and his major works in the novel and short story. Enrollment limited to juniors and seniors.
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'We have not yet heard enough, if anything, about the female gaze': Contemporary Writing Not by Men
The concept of the "male gaze" has been central to feminist critiques of cinema. In developing the concept, Laura Mulvey refused to posit a corrective “female gaze” – which makes Maggie Nelson's remark about the female gaze in literature all the more surprising. This course discusses experimental writing primarily by women through the proposition that, without the male gaze, writing has the potential to be an “astonishing equalizer.” Writers include Cusk, Fitzgerald, Gladman, Quin, Z. Smith, Spark, S. Hartman.
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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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Shakespeare: a Politics of Love
This seminar will explore certain of Shakespeare’s plays—mainstays such as Romeo and Juliet and Othello but also more marginal texts, such as All’s Well and As You Like It—in order to discern a politics of love. Enrollment limited to 15.
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Consciousness and the Novel
How does the novel represent conscious life? Intensive study of literary examples from the 18th through the 20th centuries (Richardson, Sterne, Austen, Dickens, Joyce, Woolf, and Morrison) will be accompanied by selected theoretical readings on challenges to the grammatical model from historical and cognitive methods and from affect theory, race and gender studies, and theories of the posthuman. Enrollment limited to 15.
- Primary Instructor
- Armstrong
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Black Feminism: Roots, Routes, Futures
This graduate seminar pursues an interdisciplinary investigation of black feminist theories, methods, praxes, and politics. Using a black feminist lens, it investigates legacies of racial slavery and colonialism; the pathways and promises of African diaspora; citizenship, labor, and the law; theories of the flesh and changing definitions of kin; human ontology and the mutability of gender; black expressive practices and emancipatory politics. Enrollment limited to 15.
- Primary Instructor
- Abdur-Rahman
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Writing About History
This course introduces students to the practice of writing about history, including crafting news, features, and memoir pieces. Readings include works by Jill Lepore, Ta-Nehisi Coates, David McCullough, Iris Chang, Henry Louis Gates Jr., John Hersey, W.E.B. Du Bois, and others. Students will strengthen skills in primary and secondary research, interviewing, writing, and revision, utilizing Brown’s libraries and other archives. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Class list 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.
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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 2021 ENGL0900 section 01 is reserved for first-year students; section 03 is reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Jackson
Spring 2021 ENGL0900 section 01 is reserved for first-year students; section 03 is reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Ward
Spring 2021 ENGL0900 section 01 is reserved for first-year students; section 03 is reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Preston
Spring 2021 ENGL0900 section 01 is reserved for first-year students; section 03 is reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Piduri
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The Thoughtful Generalist
This *ONLINE* section of “ENGL1030: Critical Reading and Writing II: Research” will prepare you for academic and real-world discourse. In Canvas, you will discuss essays demonstrating deep research distilled into engaging intellectual journey. You will research and revise four explanatory, analytical, persuasive essays, using varied sources to explore subjects or issues of your choice. Mandatory peer reviews and conferences ONLINE. Enrollment limited to 17. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
This class will be conducted asynchronously, three times a week, through CANVAS. Online written discussions of readings and draft uploads will be due Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays by midnight, with responses and peer reviews due the following day. Some additional research and revisions may be required on weekends. Mandatory conferences with the instructor will be held via Zoom, Google Hangout, or FaceTime.
- Primary Instructor
- Taylor
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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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Advanced Feature Writing
For the advanced writer. Nothing provides people with more pleasure than a “good read.” This journalism seminar helps students develop the skills to spin feature stories that newspaper and magazine readers will stay with from beginning to end, both for print and on-line publications. Students will spend substantial time off-campus conducting in-depth interviews and sharpening their investigative reporting skills. The art of narrative storytelling will be emphasized. Prerequisite: ENGL1050G or 1050H, or published clips submitted before the first week of classes. Class list reduced to 17 after writing samples are reviewed. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
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Advanced Creative Nonfiction: Writing with Food
This course examines writing about food and how writing affects food and food culture. We shall explore the relationship of food to the pen through reading classic texts, writing in and out of class, guest lectures, and touring culinary archives. The goal is to polish personal voice in menus, recipes, memoir, history, reportage, and the lyric essay. 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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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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Swift, Pope, Johnson
The course provides in-depth study of three major writers of the eighteenth century and will include cultural contexts. Readings include Gulliver's Travels, The Rape of the Lock, and Rasselas. Enrollment limited to 20.
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Firing the Canon: Early Modern Women's Writing
Rediscovery and reconsideration of works by early modern women have changed the literary canon; these once-neglected works are becoming mainstream, and they are changing the way we read 'traditional' texts. The reading in this course includes poetry, letters, drama, essays, fiction, and life-writing by authors including Lanyer, Wroth, Cavendish, Behn, Manley, Haywood, Scott, and Montagu.
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How Poems See
What makes poems and pictures such powerful forms of life? Why do pictures have so much to tell us? How do we see things in words? How do graphic images, optical images, verbal images, and mental images together constitute ways of understanding the world? Looking at poems and images from Giotto and Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Dickinson and Turner through such modern poets and painters as Stevens, Ashberry, Warhol and Heijinian, we will study sensory and symbolic images, the uses and dangers of likeness, and the baffling confluence of concrete and abstract, literal and figurative, body and mind, matter and spirit.
This class will be conducted asynchronously through twice weekly CANVAS online written discussions due Tuesdays and Fridays by midnight, an online class journal on weekends, and ZOOM open house sessions.
All ENGL 0100s will be temp capped at 100 with reserved seating/registration as follows: For the SPRING term: semester-level 01/04 = 25 each; and 02/03 = 5 each Yielding: 60 total (40 remaining spots for upper-levels: seniors/juniors).
- Primary Instructor
- Foley
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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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New Worlds, New Subjects: American Fiction at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
In 1900, the historian Henry Adams declared, Americans lived in a world so radically transformed that “the new American … must be a sort of God compared with any former creation of nature.” This new world had many progenitors: Darwin’s theory of evolution; Nietzsche’s theory of the will; Freud’s theory of the unconscious; the rise of the mass media; the industrial production line; the triumph of consumerism; mass immigration; Jim Crow; the New Woman. This class reads works of fiction from the turn-of-the-century in the context of these transformations. Writers include Freud, Nietzsche, Stephen Crane, Henry James, and Edith Wharton.
- Primary Instructor
- Burrows
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Monsters in our Midst: The Plantation and the Woods in Trans-American Literature
This course focuses on how literary and visual culture grappled with land as a topographic entity in relation to race, gender, and time. Students read literature about the Caribbean and parts of the U.S., produced from the 19th century to the present. Readings include Marlon James's The Book of Night Women and Jean Rhys's Wide Saragasso Sea.
Primary lecture M/W and select ONE Monday, Thursday, or Friday conference section.
- Primary Instructor
- Ramirez D'Oleo
- Primary Instructor
- Ramirez D'Oleo
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
- Primary Instructor
- Brown
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
- Primary Instructor
- Maldonado
- Schedule Code
- C: Discussion Section/Conference
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Scholarly Writing for Journal Publication
Writing and professionalization workshop intended for graduate students in literary studies. Topics covered include selection of journal; framing, structuring and composition of the article; the logistics of peer review; sharing and workshopping drafts; working with academic mentors and advisors. Every passing student will have a publishable article under consideration by the end of the semester. Enrollment limited to 12 English Ph.D. students. Instructor permission required. S/NC.
- Primary Instructor
- Quashie
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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 2021 ENGL0930 sections 01, 03, 06, and 07 are reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Arnold
Spring 2021 ENGL0930 sections 01, 03, 06, and 07 are reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- DeBoer-Langworthy
Spring 2021 ENGL0930 sections 01, 03, 06, and 07 are reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Hardy
Spring 2021 ENGL0930 sections 01, 03, 06, and 07 are reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart
Spring 2021 ENGL0930 sections 01, 03, 06, and 07 are reserved for first-year and sophomore students.
- Primary Instructor
- Hipchen
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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.
- Primary Instructor
- Armstrong
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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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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.
Cogut Institute for Humanities
HMAN 2401B Thinking Breath: An Inquiry Across Philosophy, Literature, and Performance
HMAN 2401C Inscribing the Event: Poetics and Politics of the Date
Ethnic Studies
ETHN1750S Extravagant Texts: Reading the World Through Asian American Literature
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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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The Origins of American Literature
Where does American literature begin? Can it be said to have a single point of origin? Can writings by people who did not consider themselves American be the source of our national literary tradition? Does such a tradition even exist and, if so, what are its main characteristics? How does one understand the various diverse traditions that constitute American literature, including African-American, Native American, and many others, into a single object of study--or does one even need to? Authors may include de Vaca, Anne Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin, and Phillis Wheatley.
This course will be conducted asynchronously. We will not meet together as a class or in sections. We'll use announcements, assignments, forum posts, and elements drawn from online and tabletop games (including but not limited to a story that ties all course elements together, avatars, quests, etc.) to form a class community and get to know one another.
- Primary Instructor
- Egan
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Fantastic Places, Unhuman Humans
This online course asks: What can the grotesque, monstrous, and even alien creatures found lurking in an extraordinary range of literature across many centuries reveal about the different ways humans have imagined what it means to be human in the first place? Is the human a unified, single category of being at all? Authors may include Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, and Poe.
This course will be conducted asynchronously. We will not meet together as a class or in sections. We'll use announcements, assignments, forum posts, and elements drawn from online and tabletop games (including but not limited to a story that ties all course elements together, avatars, quests, etc.) to form a class community and get to know one another.
- Primary Instructor
- Egan
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American Misfits: Short Story Collections of Marginalized U.S. Subjects
What does it mean to not “fit in” in the U.S.? How does crossing international borders and waters reshape perceptions of home? This course investigates how short story collections, in form and content, depict experiences of fragmented memory and bifurcated national identity among marginalized peoples. Authors include: Chimamanda Adichie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Sandra Cisneros, Leslie M. Silko, Junot Díaz, Galang, Viet Nguyen. Enrollment limited to 17.
- Primary Instructor
- Lafferty
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After the Human?: Literature at the End of the World
What does it mean to be human? From zombies to aliens, cyborgs to talking bears, contemporary fiction is rewriting our most fundamental categories of identity. This course explores what’s at stake in how we define ourselves, and the challenge ‘nonhumans’ pose to our beliefs about right and wrong, good and evil. Authors include: Ishiguro, Jemisin, Tawada, Vandermeer, Whitehead, and Miéville. Enrollment limited to 17.
This course will be conducted asynchronously. Short lecture videos will be posted on the days our class meets and otherwise, we will be using emails, assignments, and a shared Google doc to form a class community. A few optional smaller group meetings will be held via Zoom based on interest. For more information, please see the course syllabus or feel free to email the instructor.
- Primary Instructor
- Prior
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Radical Pasts, Radical Futures: Literature and the Left
This course examines American literary representations of leftist social movements in the late twentieth century, including the antiwar movement, anticolonialism, and Black Power nationalism. The class explores autobiographical and journalistic accounts published during the U.S. counterculture as well as novels that present this radicalism after its decline. Authors include Norman Mailer, Angela Davis, Joan Didion, E.L. Doctorow, and John Wideman.
This hybrid class will contain both in-person and remote instruction. I am expecting that all students on campus will have an opportunity to enjoy some in-person experience of lecture and discussion each week. On campus students should also expect to have some remote learning activities each week. Students taking the class in an exclusively remote format may join classroom sessions via Zoom. If in-person enrollments are more than 19, students will be asked to attend class sessions on a rotating basis.
- Primary Instructor
- Murray
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“Strangeness” at The Margins: Black and Queer Narratives
Anchored in black and queer studies, this course will think within “weird” and unusual narratives. How do sexual, gender, and racial identities work together in ways that produce “strange” literature? What might we gain through careful attention to the techniques used in reading/writing marginal selves through oddness? Figures will include Janelle Monae, Toni Morrison, Prince, Sigmund Freud, and Ralph Ellison. Enrollment limited to 17.
This course will run asynchronously. We will be making use of various Canvas features which may include: text, video, and other multimedia posting. Although not required, there may be limited opportunities for small (synchronous) group discussions via Zoom throughout the semester. For more information please see the course syllabus and/or email the instructor listed.
- Primary Instructor
- Clifton
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Critiquing the Cultures of Kinship
What produces family relations outside blood-kinning? What binds “normal” families, and how are ideas of origin tied to the “normal”? Students will write researched essays that address literary and cultural representations of families that cohere without blood kinship—including Superman, Jane Eyre, Elf, Steve Jobs, and Frankenstein—probing the impact of practices and technologies that produce enfamilied selves outside biogenesis. Open to juniors and seniors. Writing sample required. Prerequisite: ENGL 0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Class list will be reduced to 12 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
- Hipchen
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Beowulf to Aphra Behn: The Earliest British Literatures
Major texts and a few surprises from literatures composed in Old English, Old Irish, Anglo-Norman, Middle English, and Early Modern English. We will read texts in their historical and cultural contexts. Texts include anonymously authored narratives like Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, selected Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, and texts by Sir Thomas Malory, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Aphra Behn. Enrollment limited to 30.
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Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads
An introduction to and close reading of the Lyrical Ballads, one of the most radical and innovative volumes in British Romantic literature. We will pay special attention to the aesthetic, historical, ethical, and political dimensions of the text, patiently working through the poems and prefaces, as well as reading antecedent texts, in order to understand why the book was an experiment for its authors, and what are its enduring effects on our contemporary moment.
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The Late 60s: Film Countercultures
On representative late-60s counterculture movies concerned with antiauthoritarianism; hippy Bohemianism; social and sexual experimentation; dropping out; and psychedelia. Bookended by rock music festival documentaries (Monterey Pop; Gimme Shelter; Woodstock), the seminar is mostly concerned with feature films (The Graduate; Bonnie and Clyde; 2001; Midnight Cowboy; Easy Rider; Medium Cool). It will also consider some underground art cinema of Kenneth Anger and Andy Warhol. Enrollment limited to 20 juniors and seniors in English and MCM. Instructor permission required.
Weekly synchronous seminar, online and in-person (if circumstances allow). Some asynchronous engagement, including weekly Canvas discussion posts. In-person attendance capped at 19.
- Primary Instructor
- Rambuss
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Reading Narrative Theory
Narrative is a powerful category of analysis spanning genres, historical periods, media forms, and the distinction between the "fictional" and the "real." This course examines major narrative theorists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will focus on literary examples, such as theories of the folktale and novel, and scholarship that interrogates the work of narrative in historiography, in cinema and television, and in extra-literary contexts (in the struggle of political campaigners to “control the narrative” or debates on narrative in gaming, medical research, law, and theory itself). Limited to 20 senior English concentrators. Others admitted by instructor permission only.
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Midsummers
A traditional occasion for festivity and misrule, midsummer has been important to writers since medieval times. Spanning Shakespeare to Aster, Midsummer to Midsommar, the course includes Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Korine’s Spring Breakers. How are midsummers represented? What’s the difference between country and city, nighttime and daytime? Do things ever go back to normal, or can a party last forever? Enrollment limited to 19 first-year students.
- Primary Instructor
- Scozzaro
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Shakespeare
We will read a representative selection of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances, considering their historical contexts and their cultural afterlife in terms of belief, doubt, language, feeling, politics, and form. Students should register for ENGL 0310A S01 and may be assigned to conference sections by the instructor during the first week of class.
- Primary Instructor
- Scozzaro
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Contemporary Asian American Writers
In this advanced writing workshop, we will explore the work of Asian American writers who are engaging with questions of race and ethnicity; self-invention and identity; visibility and representation. We'll consider how authors use writing to give voice to marginalized experiences, preserve cultural memory, and redress injustice. Guest writers will read from and discuss their own work. Prerequisite: ENGL0930 or any 1000-level nonfiction writing course. Writing sample required. Class list will be reduced to 17 after writings samples are reviewed during the first week of classes. Preference given to English concentrators. Instructor permission required. S/NC.
