English 100 | Academic Writing [W]
Focuses on rhetorical awareness. In this course, students will explore the reading and writing practices of the academic community. Through primary and secondary research, and through guided writing practice, students will critically examine what these practices mean and consider how students’ own reading and writing practices fit into those of “the Academy.” While additional texts may be assigned, writing produced by students in the class will serve as the principal texts of the course. Additional texts may include Graff & Birkenstein’s They Say/I Say, Harris’ Rewriting: How to Do Things With Texts, and Richard Lanham’s Revising Prose.
Prerequisite: FYS
Enrollment is restricted to first-year and sophomore students.
Sec. 01: Professor Uzendoski MWF 9:30–10:20 a.m.
Sec. 02: Professor Uzendoski MWF 10:35–11:25 a.m.
Sec. 03: Professor Lucas MWF 11:40 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
English 100-04 | Writing Enhancement in Academic Settings [W]
Includes reading and analysis of published essays, practice in research, and production of a research paper. Writing skills are designed to build fundamental skills step by step through exploration of rigorous academic content. Critical thinking skills move from skill building to application of the skills that require critical thinking.
Prerequisite: FYS
Professor Kang TR 9:30–10:45 a.m.
English 115 | Science Fiction [H]
This course focuses on works of literature that ask us to reflect on scientific, technological, and sociological issues by inviting us to enter alternative realities that are both like and unlike the world we live in. Who has control over and benefits from specific scientific and technological developments—and who lacks access and is harmed? When does reliance on technology become overreliance? Do new means of communication foster or thwart effective interactions between individuals? How might works of science fiction help us better understand climate change, imperialism, advances in medicine, or the causes and consequences of systemic racism, sexism and homophobia? These are just a few of the issues we’ll be discussing as we venture into the highly imaginative and thought-provoking texts of both well-known SF writers (Phillip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, Isaac Asimov, Octavia Butler, Ray Bradbury) and a host of important but less famous 20th and 21st century writers of science fiction.
Professor Uzendoski MW 1:15–2:30 p.m.
English 128 | Jewish American Literature: Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
American Jewish writing has been shaped as much by social, cultural and political considerations as by literary ones. In this course, we will consider the Jewish American experience in American literature by focusing on Jewish American texts—fiction, essays, film and television—that define, revise and critique “American identity.” What is the role of national, personal and cultural histories, of language and gender, in Americans’ self-definitions? What is the relationship of “Jewish American” literature to the American literary canon? How is it shaped by questions of what constitutes ethnicity and how does that reveal itself in these works? As we examine these multi-layered concerns we will also look at the stereotypes that are confronted and upheld in these texts. We will explore the various ways the Jewish American experience has been defined and examine its connection to immigration, acculturation, alienation and the rise of material wealth. We will investigate a fundamental question: Is there such a thing as “Jewish Fiction” and if so, will it continue to evolve? Students will read and watch texts by writers such as Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Adrienne Rich, Allen Ginsberg, Art Spiegelman, and Joan Silver to explore these and other concerns as they gain fluency in thinking and writing about contemporary literature through discussion, essay responses, and class presentations. A mid-term paper, and a final assignment are also required.
Prerequisite: FYS
Professor Gilmore MW 11:40 a.m. – 12:55 p.m.
English 135-01 | Literature and the Human Experience: American Gothic [H,V]
The Gothic literature genre flourishing across Britain in the 18th century was later used by emerging authors of American literature to capture the political / cultural anxieties haunting citizens of the new nation. The monstrous, macabre, supernatural, and broody aesthetics of the Gothic genre retain a significant niche in American popular culture today—think Harry Potter and the Twilight franchises, or the recent explosion of Gothic TV series like American Horror Story, The Haunting of Hill House (2018), Wednesday (2022), The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), and Agatha All Along (2024). In this course we will investigate why America, supposedly valuing “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” gives rise to so many narratives obsessed with death, forms of captivity, and the melancholy of the human experience and/or the nation. We will read some of the first American Gothic authors including Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allen Poe to learn how their texts depicted the early American experience, and expose who was marginalized with these depictions. We will also read modern American literature written by a diversity of authors including Shirley Jackson, Maryse Conde, and Waubgeshig Rice, to understand how Gothic forms continue to be used to critique settler colonialism and America’s dark past.
Professor Lucas MWF 1:40–2:30 p.m.
English 135-02 | Lit & Human Experience: Introduction to Queer Literature [H,V]
This course navigates the history of queer life in America, which we will explore via a mix of media including poetry, journalism, film, and literature, including primary texts from James Baldwin, Rita Mae Brown, and graphic memoirist Maia Kobabe. While the course spans history from the mid-century until today, we will focus especially on the 1970s (the gay liberation movement) and the 1980s (the HIV/AIDS epidemic) to better understand how these two decades indelibly shaped how queerness is lived and perceived in the US. Over the course of the semester, we will have open and honest discussions about the trials and successes of queer life and artistic practice, all while considering our own positions in relation to the course materials. At times, these works of art will remind us of the histories of oppression that attempted to stifle queer expression, but my hope is that another narrative emerges from the material, one of pride and perseverance via the expression of queer love and liberty. Assignments will ask you to respond both critically and creatively to course materials.
Professor Bruno TR 9:30 a.m. – 10:45 p.m.
English 146 | Black Writers: Intro to Early African American Literature [GM1, V]
This course follows the development of African American literature from the late 18th century to the mid-20th century. Through an array of novels, autobiographical texts, essays, poetry, and drama, we will interrogate how literature informed and reflected the evolving relationship between African Americans and their sense of social, political, and legal belonging in the United States. We will grapple with the following questions: How did African American writers understand and articulate race, citizenship, and belonging in the context of the nation? How did literature enable new ways of engaging with these issues? And how might we begin to see the early formation of an African American literary tradition? Course authors will include Frederick Douglass, Frances Harper, W.E.B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, and Lorraine Hansberry.
Professor Brown MW 2:45–4:00 p.m.
English 151-01 & 02 | Introduction to Creative Writing [W]
An introduction to the fundamentals of creative writing, focusing on strategies for generating, developing, revising, and editing across genres such as poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Through intensive reading, writing, and discussion, students will explore ways to enhance their own creative processes as they identify and attempt to duplicate techniques employed by imaginative writers.
Open only to first-year students & sophomores.
Professor Campbell Sec. 01 MW 11:40-12:55
Sec 02 MW 1:15-2:30
English 151-03 & 04 | Introduction to Creative Writing [W]
A French professor in college once told me: “A good poem does what it says.” This means that if the poem is about grief, then it should also instill the sensation of grief in the reader. The same professor later told us about a conversation between the famous Impressionist painter, Degas, and the Symbolist poet, Mallarmé. Degas told Mallarmé that he wanted to write as well as paint. He said that he had some great ideas for poems, but he could not seem to articulate them when he sat down to write. Mallarmé responded: “This is because you don’t write poems with ideas, but with words.” Studying creative writing is not just about understanding different models of storytelling, but actually exploring the detailed processes of composition, meter, the materiality of language, and how the outside world shapes our interiority, narrative prowess, image-making, and the dimensionality of our protagonists. This course will sharpen your group workshop, critical thinking, close-reading, and imaginative skills.
Open only to first-year and sophomore students
Professor Fernandes Sec. 03 T 8–10:45 a.m.
Sec. 04 M 1:15–4:00 p.m.
English 202-01: Writing Seminar: Writing Place [W]
Issues related to place dominate modes of human thought and behavior: the displacement of peoples from their physical land; the politics of cyberspace and virtual realities; the concept of utopia—Greek for no place—and dystopia, its dark mirror image; the structuring of our lives around home, work, and school. This course focuses on how writers construct and center place in writing. Readings and in-class activities will focus on places near and far, and you will write creatively and analytically about where you grew up and spaces we all occupy together as citizens of the College. The course places strong emphasis on writing process, revision, and collaboration. You will do in-class writing most days and informal writing for homework. For your major assignments, you will compose first drafts, workshop writing with peers, and make draft revisions.
Professor Bruno TR 1:15–2:30 p.m.
English 202-02 | Writing Seminar: Univer$ity [W, H]
How did our specific idea of the university develop? What social, cultural, and political realities sustain its existence in the United States? This writing-intensive course engages students in a semester-long exploration of the contemporary campus–its histories, cultures, geographies, vulnerabilities, and powers. With academia as our subject and Lafayette a case study, students will develop their ideas and observations into works of public scholarship. Students will discuss, analyze, and present on shared articles as well as engage with Davarian Baldwin’s In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower. Through professor feedback, peer review, library visits, community interaction, and full-group workshops, students will conceive, pitch, refine, draft, and revise two research essays related to the abstract and material life of contemporary institutions of higher learning.
Prerequisite: FYS
Professor Awake MW 1:15–2:30 p.m.
English 202-03: Writing Seminar: Writing for the Ear [W]
StoryCorps. The Moth. Serial. Code Switch. The Daily. These are all examples of podcasts heralding a resurgence in audio storytelling, an ancient tradition that creates an intimate experience for the narrator and audience. But writing for broadcast is different from producing content for the eye. In Writing for the Ear, we’ll focus on producing stories designed to be read out loud using a more concise and conversational style than writing for print, but with the same emphasis on clarity, authentic voice, and powerful word usage. You will learn to find stories, conduct interviews, write and edit scripts, and produce compelling audio stories that resonate with listeners. The final project involves
producing your own podcast. Out-of-class assignments include listening and responding to a diverse variety of audio stories and podcasts to discern how sound and effective storytelling techniques can enhance your own work.
Prerequisite: FYS
Professor Parrish TR 9:30–10:45 a.m.
English 202-04 | Writing Seminar: Linguistic Justice [W]
This writing-intensive course seeks to define linguistic justice by exploring issues of language and social justice in a variety of contexts, including race/ ethnicity, education, health, law and policy, gender identity, and social activism. We will consider how various language ideologies can shape how we see and move through the world, when and why we value some kinds of language use more highly than others, and how these ideologies can result in linguistic prejudice and contribute to social inequity. Via writing, reading, and discussion, we will grapple with what it means to enact linguistic justice in classrooms, the workplace, and the community.
Prerequisite: FYS
Professor Kelenyi TR 11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
English 205-01: Introduction to English Studies I [H]
This course will introduce you to some of the important questions that you should be asking yourself as an English major: How do we read a text? Why are certain texts “literary”? How does literature relate to culture? What is critical theory and why should we care about it? We will spend much of our time carefully reading, re-reading, and thinking about complicated but richly rewarding literary texts and examples of critical theory. You will learn not only to close read these texts, but also to view them from a number of different angles. By the end of this course, you should be prepared not only to write and speak knowledgeably about different literary genres—short stories, novels, poetry, drama—but also to create compelling, well-supported arguments about such texts, and to think flexibly about the different ways one might approach literary and cultural questions.
Required of all English majors and minors.
Prerequisite: Any introductory English Department course (101-199) or AP credit, or permission of instructor.
Professor Belletto TR 8–9:15 a.m.
English 205-02 | Introduction to English Studies I [H]
Centered around a diverse set of short-stories, poems, novels, and graphic novels, this course is designed to initiate you into the practices of literary appreciation, analysis, and interpretation– practices vital to your success as an English Major or Minor. We will be interested in what makes texts “literary,” and in how analyzing texts from a scholarly perspective opens up ways of reading. We will also use art-making in the classroom to respond to literary works, and try our hand at writing creatively. In doing so, we will experience innovation and diversity through personal creativity.
Required of all English majors and minors.
Prerequisite: Any introductory English Department course (101-199) or AP credit, or permission of instructor.
Professor Rohman TR 9:30–10:45 a.m.
English 206-01 | Literary History: Theorizing Early Modernism [H]
This semester we will focus on texts that were originally written during the Early Modern period (16th through 17th centuries) and then radically re-written or re-interpreted according to romantic, modern, or postmodern sensibilities. Our primary texts will be supplemented by critical essays on the question of periodization and the origins of terms such as “classical,” “Renaissance,” “Reformation,” “Early Modern,” “Restoration,” “Romanticism” “Modernism,” and “Postmodernism.” One of our goals will be to determine the range of choices made by readers, publishers, critics, and authors that contributes to the construction of literary history. Primary texts will include Beowulf, Gardner’s Grendel, More’s Utopia, Huxley’s Brave New World, Milton’s
Paradise Lost, Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Othello in relation to postcolonial and contemporary re-imaginings of Shakespearean romance and tragedy.
Prerequisite: Any introductory English Department course (101-199) or AP credit, or permission of instructor.
Professor Cefalu MW 11:40 a.m.–12:55 p.m.
English 206-02 | Medieval-ish: The Idea of the Middle Ages [H]
The problem with defining the Middle Ages, as one scholar notes, is that everyone sees what they want: “The Renaissance invented the Middle Ages in order to define itself; the
Enlightenment perpetuated them in order to admire itself; and the Romantics revived them in order to escape themselves.” The upside is that one can learn a lot about how a given period saw itself by looking at its idea of the Middle Ages. This course takes some foundational medieval and early-modern texts—Beowulf, Hamlet, and tales of King Arthur—and asks how later periods made these stories their own. We’ll find that Hamlet, for instance, draws on much earlier medieval ghost stories even as Shakespeare’s play itself continues to haunt the Gothic imagination centuries later. As we read these texts in relation to one another, we’ll consider how the idea of the Middle Ages helped give rise to the very notion of a literary tradition in English. We’ll also explore the ways in which this tradition depends critically upon the imagined colonization of a variety of marginalized borderlands, from the Welsh marches to the past itself as a “different country” that’s always threatening to encroach upon our modernity.
Professor Wadiak TR 1:15-2:30 p.m.
English 240 | Introduction to Writing & Rhetoric [W]
This writing-intensive course examines the history, theory, and practice of the expansive and interdisciplinary field of Writing Studies. Beyond learning about the type of writing that happens at college, we will study writing’s role in constructing and maintaining social identities, paying close attention to how our written selves both liberate and constrain us while engaging in various forms of self-expression. The central concern of the course is how writing is entangled in societal expectations for and understandings of appropriateness, conventionality, and value; we will look at how scholars in Writing Studies reveal, resist, and teach about and around writing’s dominating effects. For example, we will explore the intersecting racial, classed, and cultural forces that propel efforts to standardize written English. While an important goal for this class is to gain familiarity with the foundational commitments of Writing Studies, an equally urgent one is for you to gain a critical awareness of your own research and writing processes and add and refine flexible strategies to these processes for enactment in college coursework and beyond. To do this, the course positions you as critical consumers and producers of information.
Prerequisite: FYS
Professor Kelenyi TR 9:30-10:45 a.m.
English 247-01 | Nature Writing [H, GM1, W]
Nature writing as a genre has long been concerned with questions of how to understand humans within and as nature. In this course, we will study a range of writings, from Thoreau to today, as models for our own writing, emphasizing close observation and revision as vital ways to consider small intricacies of natural life as well as complexes of gender, race, and the engineering of space — all of which make up our own ecosystems.
Prerequisite: FYS
Professor Campbell MW 2:45-4:00
English 254 | Humor Writing [W]
Unleash your inner funny and learn how to write with a side of wit and a dollop of snark by studying and dissecting the work of exceptional humor writers and stand-up comedians. You will learn techniques to invigorate and enliven your writing while generating new perspectives through humor. You may even produce some LOL belly-busting or inside-where-it-counts material to employ on dates, job interviews, and family gatherings. Assignments include listicles, essays, advice columns, a campus guide as well as a 5-minute stand up routine, which you will perform as your finale assignment. We will also delve into the history of standup comedy, learn what makes something funny, and cheer each other on in a supportive and respectful environment.
Prerequisite: FYS
Professor Parrish TR 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
English 256 | Intermediate Fiction Workshop [W]
In this Intermediate Fiction Workshop, you will continue to practice and discuss many phases of the writing process–note taking, drafting, revising and offering feedback–so that you can continue to develop your own process and discipline. Students will work on specific fiction-writing muscles: developing character, dialogue, setting, voice, point of view, etc. The focus of our readings will be on a different aspect of craft every week. Your writing will be the primary texts, and reading and critiquing the work of your peers will often contribute to your own revisions. In workshop, we’ll discuss all aspects of storytelling. We’ll look at “what works,” and “what doesn’t work,” but more importantly we’ll investigate why something is not successful on the page. In doing so we’ll look at the tools we have as writers: plot, structure, setting, point of view, pace, diction. All these aspects of craft help us make the decisions we make as writers. How do we decide the point of view of our stories? How do we introduce a character and make her come alive? How can the setting reflect a character’s inner life? How do we turn truth into fiction? These are the kinds of questions we will try to answer in our own work. We will also read published work by authors such as Carmen Maria Machado, Susan Choi, Denis Johnson and Justin Torres to explore those same concerns: what are the complex decisions authors make in constructing their stories. How do published writers explore their own issues of craft?
Prerequisites: Eng 151 or 247 or 254 or 255 or 257 or EVST 247; or permission of instructor
Professor Gilmore MW 1:15–2:30 p.m.
English 265 | Dostoevsky in Global Context [GM2, H, V, W]
An examination of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s major novels and journalism in the context of his transnational legacy. We examine problems of reading Dostoevsky in the 21st century stemming from his Christianity, politics, and contribution to the global art of the novel. Of special consideration will be the texts and reception of two influential novels, Notes from Underground and The Brothers Karamazov. Key theoretical approaches to his work will be discussed. All readings in English.
Cross-listed with REES and CL.
Professor Ceballos TR 1:15–2:30 p.m.
English 271 | Dancing Cultures [H,V, GM2]
What is dance? What constitutes performance? In this course we explore how the body, identity and culture are represented through aesthetic traditions, cultural contexts and texts from many genres in order to create social and cultural meanings. We examine how performance and dance are connected to questions of gender, ecology, and national identity. Students will consider embodied knowledge practices as they are represented textually in memoirs, essays, films, and graphic novels. The course is for all students interested in movement studies and in the cultural and textual exploration of dance practices.
This course has no prerequisites and is designed for ALL students. No dance experience is required.
Professor Rohmam W 8–10:45 a.m.
English 327 | The Victorians [H,W]
The Victorians examines the prose, poetry and fiction of the British Victorian period (~1837-1901). We explore how these works of literature respond to and influence central Victorian themes including the industrial revolution, debates about gender and sexuality, conflicts between faith and science, and British colonialism and empire. Authors include well-known names like the Brontës, Dickens, and Tennyson, as well as less familiar writers who tackled these issues from a wide array of social and intellectual perspectives. The Victorian era marks the dizzying rise of the industrial, capitalist, modern urban age. Its literature—energetic, challenging, and extraordinarily creative—reflects the excitement and anxiety of a society awash in profound and rapid change.
Prerequisite: ENG 205 or permission of the instructor.
Professor Armstrong TR 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
English 329 | American Decades: 1950s [GM1,H,W]
Believe it or not, the 1950s were some of the most exciting years in American literature. Think back to the books you might have seen on the “Summer Reading” table at bookstores around the country: J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s—these are all works written during the 1950s that are for many readers still relevant in 2025. In addition to these works, some of the best and most important novels of the twentieth century were published during the 1950s, including Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, William Gaddis’s The Recognitions, Ann Petry’s The Narrows, and William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch—and this is not the mention the great poetry by Sylvia Plath, Gwendolyn Brooks, Frank O’Hara, Ted Joans, Charles Olson, and many others who were
writing in the 1950s. These authors and works have been enormously influential since their publication. In fact, once one begins to look, one sees the influence of a 1950s sensibility not only in literature, but also in popular culture, from the television series Mad Men to the 2015 Oscar-nominated film Carol, based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, to the more recent film Don’t Worry Darling (2022), which holds a distorted mirror onto 1950s assumptions about gender and sexuality. In this course, we will explore the 1950s as a fascinating, dynamic decade for American literature and culture. Far from the cartoon, Leave It to Beaver-version of the 1950s in which everyone is a straight, white, Protestant suburbanite, we will use literature as a way to understand the diversity of mid-century America: the 1950s were not only years of Cold War and conformity, but also of a second renaissance in Black writing, of an early flowering of the counterculture, and of the cohesion of literatures that could be identified as queer and Asian-American. In order to understand the range and complexity of 1950s literature, we will likely read Salinger’s Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, John Okada’s No-No Boy, Ellison’s Invisible Man, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind and Like One of the Family, Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly, Last Summer, Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus, either Nabokov’s Lolita or Pale Fire, as well as poetry of the New York and Confessional schools, and short stories by Flannery O’Connor and others.
Prerequisite: ENG 205 and ENG 206, or permission of instructor.
Professor Belletto TR 9:30–10:45 a.m.
English 337 | Milton Seminar [H,V,W]
“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary.” These famous lines from Areopagitica (1644) were written by John Milton, not only one of England’s greatest national poets but also a profoundly influential theologian, philosopher, and revolutionary apologist for the execution of England’s King Charles I, in 1649. In this course we will read Paradise Lost in its entirety and selections from Milton’s prose and other poetry, focusing not only on literary themes, style and genre but also on the place of Milton’s writings in the history of religious, ethical, and political thought. We will devote considerable attention to Milton’s handling of some time-worn theological/philosophical questions, including his conception of the nature of God, the problem of evil (why does an omnipotent and unqualifiedly good God allow for the presence of evil in the world?), the free will defense, and the causes and ethical consequences of the Fall of Adam and Even from
innocence. We will also discuss in detail Milton’s radicalism, including both his theological “heresies” and left-leaning political sympathies in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. With regard to the specific literary narrative of Paradise Lost, we will consider Milton’s unique conception of the creation narrative and the “characters” of Adam and Eve, Christ, God, and arguably Milton’s most magnificent creation, Satan. Was Milton, as William Blake provocatively asserted, “of the devil’s party without knowing it?” Why does Milton depict Adam and Eve as hard laborers in so-called Paradise? To what extent do Adam and Eve show vice before the Fall proper? In raising and attempting to answer these questions, we will spend considerable time reading secondary criticism on Milton’s theological and philosophical viewpoints.
Professor Cefalu MW 1:15–2:30 p.m.
English 353 | Advanced Journalism [W]
Advanced Journalism takes the fundamental principles of news reporting and writing acquired in ENG 231: Journalistic Writing to the next level. The goal of the course is to improve your writing skills and sharpen your reporting skills while producing and publishing stories that matter. There will be a progressive emphasis on research, interviewing, writing, and editing as well as the strategic use of data as a reporting tool. We will also carefully question entrenched biases in power structures while considering how our own positionality as a racial, social, political, cultural, and economic being could affect our journalism. The course may result in professional clips and journalism experience that will enhance your resume.
Prerequisite: ENG 231: Journalistic Writing
Professor Parrish TR 2:45–4:00 p.m.
English 355 | Race Theory: Reading Blackness [GM1, W]
This course takes Black literature as an entryway into understanding how the way we read race changes according to various social, political, cultural, and linguistic contexts. We will interrogate what it means to both literally and figuratively read and interpret the text that is race. This course will examine how Black writers and intellectuals have deployed reading and translation in their engagements with theories of race and experiences of racialization. We will ask, what is race? How do we read it? And how does translation —both linguistic and cultural— complicate the way we read Blackness specifically? These questions will guide us through a multidisciplinary line of inquiry; the literature we read will be accompanied by critical and theoretical texts from Black studies, literary studies, and translation studies. Major course authors will include Toni Morrison, Franz Fanon, Jamaica Kincaid, George Schuyler, and Nella Larsen.
Prerequisites: ENG 205, and a literary history course (ENG 206, ENG 210, ENG 211, ENG 212, or ENG 213), or permission of the instructor
Professor Brown MW 11:40 a.m. – 12:55 p.m.
English 356 | Queer Literature: Queer Coming-of-Age Narratives [GM1, V]
The coming-of-age story—or Bildungsroman—is one of the most popular and celebrated forms of literary invention. These narratives chart their protagonists’ ascent to adulthood, often focusing on formative experiences such as education, familial relationships, and early explorations of love and sex. While some of these hallmarks of maturation can be seen as universal, they are also deeply shaped by the standards of heteronormativity. In this class, we will limit our focus to queer coming-of-age narratives, exploring how societal norms of gender and sexuality shape, confine, and liberate the queer protagonists on their journey to adulthood. After establishing a foundation for our course topics via a handful of theoretical and sociological texts, we will read literary fiction and nonfiction from around the globe and consider how each protagonist navigates their coming-of-age experience in unique ways, applying an intersectional analysis to each reading. Writing assignments will ask you to respond critically and creatively to course materials.
Professor Bruno TR 11:00–12:15
English 361 | Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry [W]
In this course, students will strengthen their close reading and writing skills, collaborate on workshop guidelines, produce a portfolio of revised poems, experiment with writing prompts, study poems within their socio-political contexts, and analyze three collections of contemporary poetry. Advanced poetry is a course that asks students to consider a number of artistic and ethical questions related to writing: Do you have a philosophy of line? What do adrenaline and pause have to do with flow? What linguistic reflexes do you rely on in your own work? What models of craft do we not talk about and why? What can we write about and what is emotional voyeurism when choosing material? How can we transform the language of critique from a specific mode of positionality within the canon to one of opacity, empowerment, and expansion for poetry on the fringe of hegemonic culture? This class is going to be both ambitious and fun, a space of self-exploration and expression, but also (hopefully) a space where you can witness your writing (and self) developing over the course of the semester.
Professor Fernandes M 7:00–9:45 p.m.
English 363 | Advanced Nonfiction Studio [W, H]
This is an advanced writing course designed for juniors and seniors who have taken at least one intermediate or advanced creative writing, rhetoric/composition, or journalism course. Through seminar-style discussion and analysis of two book-length works of nonfiction as well as shorter pieces, students will sharpen and contribute to our collective understanding of the various styles, traditions, unspoken rules, and audiences for general interest nonfiction writing. The seminar component of the course, which focuses on outside texts, will serve the studio portions of the course, which are based on analyzing student work through peer-review. In addition to an intimate and active engagement with shared texts, students will shape, draft, and revise publication-ready, MFA-application ready works of their own that incorporate – in ways unique to each student – elements of autobiography, reporting, research, and criticism. Students will read full length works of creative nonfiction by authors like Alexander Chee and Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, as well as shorter works and excerpts by Cathy Park Hong, Geoff Dyer, Saidiya Hartman, Hanif Abdurraqib, Lynn Nottage, John Berger, Leslie Jamison, and Teju Cole. Through a critical and autobiographical engagement with other forms of art, such as music and film, students will also hone their voice and vision as writers, culture workers, and critics.
Prerequisites: ENG 151 and one other ENG 200-level Writing Course
Professor Awake T 1:15–4:00 p.m.
English 370 | Special Topics: Animal Ecologies, Earthly Humanities [GM1, H, W]
Why has studying animals and animality in literature emerged as a fresh, pressing part of our discipline in the last twenty years? The question of language itself is at the core of how we now view animals as akin to humans. Animals are not “outside” the technicities of language; rather we share languaging capacities with other creatures. Thus the literary and the animal are natural partners, in this core respect. The current ecological crisis further presses us to articulate humanity’s place in a more-than-human world, where climate change, extinction, and changing views about the objectification of nature and animals call us to a more horizontal affinity with other creatures. Moreover critical fields such as feminist studies and race theory continue to engage with ethical and epistemological links to the category of species. This course follows these developments by looking at modern and contemporary literature through an animal and environmental lens, reading novels, poetry, and graphic novels, alongside important works of theory in the Environmental Humanities.
Prerequisites: ENG 205
Professor Rohman TR 1:15–2:30 p.m.
English 383 | History of the Novel [H,V]
This course explores the surprising history of the most familiar and “natural-seeming” of literary genres, asking what specific conditions made its rise and development possible. As we read and think together about a number of early novels and some more recent ones, we’ll be interested in books that really are “novel”—that do something new. They might challenge us to contend with the complexities of a story voiced by multiple narrators (As I Lay Dying), dramatize in their fragmented narrative an attempt to grapple with profound trauma (Beloved), or ask us to piece together the story that emerges from a ceaseless string of letters of recommendation dutifully composed by a bored professor (Dear Committee Members). As we read, we’ll grapple with a number of theories of the novel—what it is and where it comes from—and explore debates about what novels should look like, from the play between wit and sentiment in the eighteenth century, to the tension between “romance” and “realism,” in the nineteenth, to recent debates over formal experimentation, representation, and the line between fiction and memoir.
Professor Wadiak TR 2:45–4:00 p.m.