EN 101. Introduction to College-Level Reading And Writing.3 Credits.
This course introduces students to the rhetorical reading, writing, and analytical skills that lay a foundation from their first-year in college, through their general education classes, into their majors, and throughout their twenty-first century personal and professional lives. We read across multiple genres that provide students with examples of the kinds of texts they are likely to encounter in college and beyond. By the end of EN 101, students have developed the foundational skills that prepare them to productively participate in global citizenship to support their own and others' life-long success. Portfolio assessment; grade of C- or better required to pass EN 101. Full-time students are expected to have completed EN 101 and EN 102 by the end of three semesters. Refer to the undergraduate Academic Good Standing Policy for details.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Fall and Spring
EN 101I. Introduction to College-Level Reading And Writing Intensive.3 Credits.
EN 101I is essentially the same course as EN 101; however it meets five hours per week. This class is intended for students who feel that they may need more support in complex reading and/or essay writing. The additional class time allows for more contact with the professor and more feedback and discussion with peers. Portfolio assessment; grade of C- or better required to pass. Full-time students are expected to have completed EN 101 and EN 102 by the end of three semesters. Refer to undergraduate Academic Good Standing Policy for details.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, All
EN 102. Reading, Writing, & Research In College and Beyond.3 Credits.
As we enter a new technological era the importance of strong writing and original research skills to personal and professional success remains a human-centered capacity. The ability to use inquiry and analysis, and to construct an original persuasive argument based on evidence and reasoning, not simply the reiteration of the already known, is essential to the innovation organizations and institutions rely upon for their growth and continued success in the twenty-first century. Students continue to actively develop the strong communication and critical thinking skills that they began to develop in EN101, which are foundational for life-long success, enabling them to productively participate in global citizenship. Portfolio assessment. Full-time students are expected to have completed EN 101 and EN 102 by the end of three semesters. Refer to the undergraduate Academic Good Standing Policy for details.
Prerequisites: Take EN 101 or EN 101I.
Offered: Every year, Fall and Spring
EN 102H. Honors Academic Writing and Research.3 Credits.
This EN 102 class is reserved for Honors Program students and exceptional students from Fall EN 101 classes. Portfolio assessment.
Prerequisites: Take EN 101.
Offered: Every year, Spring
EN 103H. Advanced Academic Writing and Research.3 Credits.
This course satisfies all first-year writing requirements. Through readings of a broad range of academic texts, students learn to write for academic success. EN 103H integrates the practices of academic reading and writing so that students learn to think critically and creatively as they conduct inquiry in diverse and increasingly rigorous scholarly contexts. With instructor guidance, students undertake self-directed projects and develop rich collaborations among peers, including shared commentary, research and revision, enabling students to identify and transfer best practices to their future performance as readers, writers and thinkers across disciplines, and within their chosen majors. Portfolio assessment.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Fall
EN 200. Special Topics in Literature.3 Credits.
Students are introduced to readings in literature dealing with a single theme or specific problem, e.g., mystery/detective fiction, masterpieces of Jewish literature, comedy, etc. The course may be repeated for credit when topic changes. Specific titles are announced from time to time.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: As needed
EN 201. Creative Writing.3 Credits.
This course blends seminar and workshop approaches to the reading and writing of imaginative literature. Students compose and revise original works in multiple genres, maintain a writer's journal, and assemble a comprehensive final portfolio.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, All
EN 202. Introduction to Creative Nonfiction.3 Credits.
Students read a variety of short works with an eye toward understanding the stylistic techniques employed by contemporary writers of creative nonfiction. Students are then asked to employ a number of stylistic techniques in their own short works of creative nonfiction. The class emphasizes reading like a writer, writing as a process, the writing workshop, and careful revision and editing.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Fall
EN 203. The Art of the Sentence.3 Credits.
To communicate, to influence, to tell stories, to add beauty to the world: we use sentences continuously for all our human purposes. However, we learn how sentences work when we are very young, promptly forget, and spend the rest of our lives groping blindly. In this class, we will re-light your understanding and explore just how much a sentence can do. We will learn to write better sentences for all our personal, professional, and creative endeavors. And we will read better, attuning ourselves to the persuasive power of words and the artfulness of fine language.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Spring
EN 204. Reading Literature.3 Credits.
Why is literature such a powerful force in human lives? Written stories and poetry have been an important cultural power and force by helping people envision themselves and their society and by asking us to consider important questions about our human bonds and relationships. Judging from contemporary debates about what we read, as well as the purpose of reading, understanding literature still seems a necessary and worthwhile practice. This class will consider the why of literature: by strengthening how we read it, we will find its still powerful purpose in our society. We will read short stories, poetry, and a short novel, argue and debate meanings and learn how to use literature to ask probing questions about humanity and its discontents.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Spring
UC: Humanities
EN 205. Introduction to Fiction Writing.3 Credits.
This course introduces students to the process of fiction writing. Writing prompts derive mainly from our reading and discussion of published short stories. Participants also read and discuss a handful of pieces "on writing" by established writers to help guide the process. The course is designed to help students hone their craft by writing habitually, composing numerous beginnings, and then working through a selective process to find and complete those pieces with the greatest potential to succeed. Throughout the semester, students draft, revise, edit and polish a total of four short stories. This a foundational course in fiction writing, which means that we focus mainly on the basics of character development and prose style.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Fall
EN 206. Introduction to Writing Poetry.3 Credits.
This course gives students a strong foundation in the formal traditions of poetry in English from blank verse to free verse. Students work closely with Robert Pinsky's "The Sounds of Poetry" to get a grasp of the basic, formal principles of the art, the better to hear poems and understand the ways in which they work. Students explore a variety of poetic forms, reading and discussing poems that exemplify these forms and practicing their own poems based on these models. For the final project of the semester, students assemble a portfolio of all their work, introduced by a reflective essay.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Fall
EN 207. Interactive Storytelling and Narrative.3 Credits.
This course explores the craft and purpose of interactive storytelling. Course content will cover both the creation and analysis of various interactive texts. Students in this class will combine basic coding language with creative writing principles to produce a complex interactive narrative. The interactive narrative will serve as a semester-long project that emphasizes autonomous characters, a responsive setting, and meaningful story branches navigated by a user. Students will also develop a theoretical understanding of interactive media.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: As needed
EN 209. Love Stories.3 Credits.
Everyone likes a good love story, right? And everyone hopes, and expects, to have his/her/their own "love story" someday. These stories are everywhere: on TV, in movies and in books we read. This course will explore the idea of love in literature throughout the modern era: how it is part of many of our great narratives, contextualized by its culture and history. In literary history, there are some iconic love stories that we still value, that we still see as universal. If we take love seriously, can we question it? Is it a universal human emotion apart from history or politics? Is love contextualized within an historical moment, by heterosexual normativity, by our notions of family and marriage, by race and class? What are we taught by literature about love?
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Spring
UC: Humanities
EN 210. The Art of Poetry.3 Credits.
Students undertake close reading and discussion of the genre of poetry not limited by historical period. Attention is paid to technique, formal and stylistic qualities, and repeated themes in an attempt to experience and understand poetry.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Spring
UC: Humanities
EN 211. Introduction to Editing.3 Credits.
Students are given editing tools to workshop their writing projects from outside the course. Focus is on the formal elements of writing but also their relationship to meaning, purpose, and authority. Seven-week, hybrid.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Fall
UC: Breadth Elective
EN 212. The Personal Essay.3 Credits.
This course features a historical analysis of the genre's origins across 30 centuries of writing--from the earliest records of writing, to contemporary American writers of the form. Theoretical analysis of the genre draws on Greek conceptions of "persona" to modern psychological ideas of "personhood" and "impersonation," to linguistic considerations of the first-person singular and plural pronouns. The five-paragraph format also is drawn into theoretical discussion and practical critique. Students write several "personal" and "academic" essays.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Fall
UC: Humanities
EN 213. Nature Writing.3 Credits.
In a world that has become all too human, we have looked to nature to fill a void. Modern nature writing documents a search for comfort, peace, and a better way of living. At the same time, this romantic search offers a very limited understanding of nature. Mass extinctions, evolution, changing climate, biophilia, the world perceived by other animals: nature writing has also tackled these varied topics, these other ways of thinking about "nature." Thus, this class will examine a breadth of approaches to nature and nature writing. In addition to analytical writing, students may also complete creative nature writing of their own.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Fall
UC: Humanities
EN 215. Studies in Travel Writing.3 Credits.
This genre-based advanced writing course provides both a historical overview of travel writing and the travel writing that occurs in more contemporary texts, both fiction and nonfiction. It explores the ways in which authors create narrative personae, construct texts to persuade readers to their perspective, and help to compose the identities of the peoples and cultures about whom, and to whom, they write. Emphasis is on the sustained examination and practice of student writing.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Spring
UC: Humanities
EN 216. Advanced Editing.3 Credits.
Continuation of Introduction to Editing. Students workshop their writing projects from outside the course, with attention given to revising, copyediting, and proofreading as overlapping and situated practices. Seven-week, hybrid.
Prerequisites: Take EN 211.
Offered: As needed
EN 217. Manuals of Style.3 Credits.
Students translate texts across a sampling of prominent style manuals and house styles, and they experiment with their own writing to invent a manual of style as the culminating project for the course. Students are exposed to practical and theoretical knowledge of how style is connected to the logic of a particular publication, organization, field, discipline, or division of knowledge, enabling students to produce and innovate in varied and changing editorial contexts. Seven-week, hybrid.
Prerequisites: Take EN 211
Offered: As needed
EN 218. Editing With Artificial Intelligence.3 Credits.
Students are introduced to prompt engineering and automatic writing evaluation as editorial practices while they reflect on the changing nature of authorship, editorship, attribution, documentation, and plagiarism. Student work undergoes formative assessment, and to reflect the learning curve of the course, only the Final Report is factored into the final grade for the course. Seven week, online. Hybrid
Prerequisites: None
Offered: As needed
EN 219. Jane Austen: Past and Present.3 Credits.
Jane Austen interpreted her culture in novels that have remained very popular, and we reinterpret it in our own time through filmed and other media adaptations. Her story as an female author has also become popular as has our romantic nostalgia for the Regency period. Both have created fan fiction and series of novels/short stories based on her characters, Jane Austen podcasts and speculation about the real Jane Austen in print and on TV. Jane Austen is both a product of her culture and a cultural product. We often interpret, and reinterpret, Austen and her work from our present historical and cultural viewpoint, but we might also look to the past that produced Austen and her novels as well. Why do we have this fascination with Jane Austen and her novels? What is the culture of Jane Austen, then and now?
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Spring
UC: Humanities
EN 220. The Short Story As a Genre.3 Credits.
This course asks students to explore several remarkable stories across more than two centuries and from a variety of cultures and perspectives. It also helps students to read as literary, writerly critics. The history of how the short story form itself - the genre - has developed is a corner stone of the course's structure. Authors discussed may include the following internationally recognized masters, among others: Poe, Melville, Chopin, Hurston, Kawabata, Hemingway, Baldwin, Bambara, Erdrich, Alexie, Zadie Smith, and Diaz.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Spring
UC: Humanities
EN 221. Listening to Hippies, Punks, and Rude Boys.1 Credit.
Music is integral to EN 223: Hippies, Punks, and Rude Boys, but we don't have time to discuss it in the main course. Thus, this optional, supplemental course provides the opportunity to listen to and discuss popular music that intersects with our reading in EN 223. The rewards are double: you discover new music and your reading of texts in EN 223 will be enriched. This class requires no special knowledge of music. You may rest assured that your instructor is tone deaf and that our study together will be cultural, not musicological.
Corequisites: Take EN 223
Offered: As needed, Fall and Spring
EN 222. Comics and Graphic Novels.3 Credits.
This course explores comics and graphic novels emphasizing contemporary works. Students consider the (often unnoticed) complexity of the comics form, as well as its historical development and representative genres. Readings are drawn from many different genres; and survey a wide variety of national origins, the better to represent the inevitable human diversity embodied in comics creation and reading. Students have the chance to develop an original portfolio that focuses on any creator, genre or theme of their choosing.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: As needed
UC: Humanities
EN 223. Hippies, Punks and Rude Boys.3 Credits.
In the years after World War II, youth culture became a significant part of British life. Year by year, decade by decade, new cultural types emerged: angry young men, mods, hippies, rude boys, punks, skinheads. In this class, students consider how these social types are represented by the literature of the period. Doing so provides us with a vantage point for considering the intersection of social identities (race, class, gender, sexuality) and the relationship between literary culture and wider cultural and historical trends.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Fall
UC: Humanities, Intercultural Understand
EN 224. Feminist Fictions: Utopias and Dystopias.3 Credits.
With the question of gender as its center, this course enables students to consider how women writers have contributed to the development of utopian and dystopian fiction. After reading some early utopian literature, we will concentrate on the transition of utopian to dystopian novels in the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Most utopian and dystopian fiction written by women examines how women have been defined in society and the consequences of that definition. Thus, we will raise questions about how women are defined in these texts, imagine the possibilities for social and political categories of gender and sexuality, and consider what these novels say about the limitations of women, their bodies/minds and their position in the social/political structure.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Fall
EN 230. Carbon Tales.3 Credits.
We live at an unprecedented juncture in human and natural history: the burning of greenhouse gases for energy has transformed the world, initiating a period of human abundance and environmental destruction. In this class, students read texts that address the environment, seeking to understand the rhetorical and generic gestures through which we engage our carbon-based realities.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: As needed
UC: Humanities
EN 235. Lit by Women.3 Credits.
With questions of gender at its center, we will consider how women writers define problems of gender faced by "women" and how those writers imagine/reimagine and define/redefine the potential of their gender and sexuality. By paying close attention to the social and historical context of women's literature, from Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World (1666) to Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel, Handmaid's Tale, and to women writers' critiques of how and why gender is positioned in social and political structures, we will analyze how important women writers have embraced utopian and dystopian literature as a means of envisioning alternative societies.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Fall
UC: Humanities, Intercultural Understand
EN 240. Fictions and Fantasies in Historical English Literature.3 Credits.
This course covers imaginative literature written in English from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. Although these works are historically distant from us, their writers were asking questions that still matter: what should the balance of power be between men and women in the home, or in society? What kinds of resistance are legitimate for people who are oppressed? What would a just society look like? We will address these questions as we read fictions and fantasies from the 1300s to the 1700s, in genres as different as romance, satire, tragedy, comedy, and epic.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Spring
EN 241. Medieval Romances.3 Credits.
This course addresses initially the discrepancy between the contemporary notion of "romance" as a love story and as a literary genre encompassing a hero's quest with knights, sword fights, magic, and often courtly love. Texts include Middle English verse romances (in translation) popular in 13th-14th C England, with particular attention to the Arthurian legend as well as social, cultural and historical factors that gave rise to this popular literary genre. Some attention will be given to the attraction of 20th-21st C audiences to elements in medieval romance as a means to express beliefs, ideas, and values of a particular time and place.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Fall
UC: Humanities
EN 250. Survey of English Literature II.3 Credits.
This course explores the literary history of English literature from Romanticism to Modernism. Students gain an understanding and appreciation of this literature through the study of the cultural milieu, the literary work itself, and the life of the author.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Spring
UC: Humanities
EN 255. The Supernatural in 19th Century British Literature.3 Credits.
Monsters, Vampires, Ghosts, and Zombies. Need I say more? All these supernatural phenomena have their origins in nineteenth-century British literature, and the stories we tell about them, whether in film or on TV or in contemporary fiction, still use the same motifs as the original texts. They may "update" them, but they are largely indebted to the originals for their reason to exist. In this course, we'll study the originals and find out what's so interesting about them and why this ill-begotten progeny is born in the nineteenth century. Among some poetry and shorter stories we'll read those novels that endure the most: Frankenstein, Dracula and Jekyll and Hyde.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Spring
UC: Humanities
EN 256. The Fantastic & Magic Latin American Literature.3 Credits.
This course explores iconic Latin American literature in fantastic and magic realism. We examine how the fantastic and the magic emerge in narrative configurations. We explore how they appear through irruptions of possibilities that the imagination invokes, and through the interaction of different cultural perspectives without one being dominant. The course is taught in English. Original Spanish texts will be available.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: As needed, Fall
UC: Humanities, Intercultural Understand
EN 260. Survey of American Literature I.3 Credits.
This course explores the development of American literature as reflected in the works of major authors and works from the Colonial era through the Civil War. Students gain an understanding and appreciation of this literature through study of the cultural background, the literary work itself, and the life of the author. Major authors may include Bradstreet, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne, Melville and Davis.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Fall
UC: Humanities
EN 265. Black Writers in and Beyond the US.3 Credits.
This course brings together an array of texts by Black writers; we focus on authors who have lived in the United States, but we consider Blackness as a social construct that varies geographically and historically. We will study fiction, nonfiction, poetry, novels, and film from the 18th-21st centuries to consider what they can tell us about race and nation, past and present, ourselves and each other. We will begin with literature written under slavery and Jim Crow. Our reading of Black writers will be informed by Critical Race Theory, particularly the key concept of Intersectionality. We will also discuss the key interrelation of Black writing with Black music.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Fall
UC: Humanities, Intercultural Understand
EN 266. Shakespeare At the Movies and Beyond.3 Credits.
As elite as they can seem today, Shakespeare's plays were part of popular culture in his time. Hordes of regular Londoners went to see them, eagerly anticipating new plays and reliably re-watching old ones. Even now, Shakespeare's work continues to take on new meaning in modern contexts, whether it's being used to explore racial dynamics in an updated movie of West Side Story or challenged in a video game that encourages players to avoid Ophelia's tragic fate in Hamlet. Adaptations of Shakespeare's work adopt various approaches. Some simply update the plays to make them more relatable to modern audiences; others talk back to them, reimagining them with new political priorities or from a minor character's perspective; still others translate them to cultures and times radically different from their own.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every other year, Fall
UC: Humanities
EN 270. Survey of American Literature II.3 Credits.
This course explores the development of American literature as reflected in the works of major authors from the Civil War to the present. Students gain an understanding and appreciation of literature through study of the cultural background, the literary work itself, and the life of the author. Major authors include Emily Dickinson, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, Philip Roth and Marilyn Robinson.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Spring
UC: Humanities
EN 277. Literature of the Americas.3 Credits.
Focusing on the 20th to 21st centuries, this course examines writers from Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States, who typically emerge from historically underrepresented groups. These literary works engage the lived experiences of indigeneity, enslavement, imperialism, migration and globalization, to explore the ties that bind the many peoples of the Western hemisphere.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Spring
UC: Humanities, Intercultural Understand
EN 280. The European Tradition in Literature I.3 Credits.
This survey course presents selected European masterpieces, both written in English and in translation, including representative selections from Homer to 1700. Emphasis is on literary and philosophic values with attention to methods of literary analysis as applicable to works by Virgil, Dante, Cervantes and others. The course presents historical backgrounds and study in the generic traditions of literature.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Fall
UC: Humanities
EN 281. The European Tradition in Literature II.3 Credits.
This survey course presents selected European masterpieces, both written in English and in translation, including representative works from 1700 to the present. Emphasis is on literary and philosophic values with attention to methods of literary analysis as applicable to the works of Moliere, Voltaire, Rousseau, Goethe, Pushkin, Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Mann and Kafka. The course combines historical backgrounds and study in the generic traditions of literature.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: Every year, Spring
UC: Humanities
EN 299. Independent Study.1-3 Credits.
In-depth focus on a specific author, topic or area. Topic must be specified in advance.
Prerequisites: None
Offered: As needed
EN 300. Special Topics in Literature.3 Credits.
This course explores readings in literature dealing with a single author, theme, or specific problem. The course may be repeated for credit when topic changes. Specific titles are announced from time to time.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: As needed
EN 301. Advanced Fiction-Writing Workshop.3 Credits.
This advanced fiction-writing course uses a workshop approach to help students understand and experience the process of drafting, revising and editing short stories, as well as the importance of reading and critiquing the work of their peers. Students read contemporary short fiction and give formal presentations on print and web-based literary journals and magazines. Each student chooses a public venue (e.g., public reading, website, blog, etc.) and presents selections from his/her work. The final portfolio represents the breadth of the students' work, including multiple drafts of stories, workshop comments, reading responses and a writer's journal.
Prerequisites: Take EN 201 ,EN 202 or EN 205.
Offered: Every year, Fall
EN 302. Advanced Creative Nonfiction.3 Credits.
This advanced writing course focuses on the reading and writing of creative nonfiction. Students read essay and book-length works of creative nonfiction along with works that theorize problems in writing creative nonfiction, with an emphasis on understanding authorial presence, issues of audience, questions of truth, memory, time, and structure, and artistic techniques. Students are asked to employ what they learn from studying works of creative nonfiction to their own longer works of creative nonfiction.
Prerequisites: Take EN 201, EN 202, or EN 205.
Offered: Every other year, Spring
EN 303. The Art of Audio Narrative.3 Credits.
This course is about storytelling. Students learn the basics of multitrack audio recording and mixing. They write and produce fiction and nonfiction audio narratives. Each project is shared in a stimulating and mutually supportive workshop environment. Students read and listen widely to gain a sense of the history and theory of radio art. Participants also spend time identifying target audiences and looking at ways to distribute student work to the larger world of public and independent radio.
Prerequisites: Take EN 201, EN 202 or EN 205.
Offered: Every other year, Fall
EN 304. Junior Seminar in Critical Theory.3 Credits.
Junior Seminar introduces students to principles and textual questions that permeate and animate contemporary literary studies. Students gain knowledge of current theoretical terminology, and some of its implications for the ways we read and analyze texts in the discipline of English. A major focus of the class is on how these principles and terms are put into practice in scholarship on literature. The Junior Seminar is a preparation course for advanced work in the English major, particularly the Senior Seminar. This course must be taken in the junior year.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every year, Fall
EN 306. Advanced Poetry Writing Workshop.3 Credits.
This course assumes a prior foundation in the reading of poetry and the practice of writing in traditional forms and seeks to push students to write original poems in a contemporary idiom. Students write a poem on assignment each week, drawing from readings of contemporary poetry collections as well as additional model poems. Students perform their own work publicly and attend literary events to observe and respond to how other writers perform their work. This practice culminates in a public reading given by the whole class. The final project is to assemble a chapbook of poems.
Prerequisites: Take EN 201 or EN 206.
Offered: Every year, Spring
EN 308. Composing America: Rhetoric and Reality.3 Credits.
This research-based, advanced composition and period course crosses the divide between the study of literature and the study of rhetoric. Students investigate the intersections between literature and literacy/composition practices in the U.S. from World War II through the Vietnam War (1939-72ish). Participants consider how the U.S. has been composed/constructed through acts of reading, writing, and instructional rhetorical methods by studying a variety of texts ranging from war correspondence to drama, novels, anthropology and works of nonfiction.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Spring
EN 320. Studies in the Novel.3 Credits.
Students explore the development of the novel from its beginning to the present through discussion of the theories of prose narration. Special attention is given to characteristics of the genre. The course may be repeated for credit when topic changes (e.g., American novel, English novel, Continental novel).
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Spring
EN 321. The Modern Image.3 Credits.
The Twentieth Century was saturated with potent images: Yeats' rough beast slouched towards Bethlehem to be born, Chaplin lost his mind in the machine of industry, Heaney cut Irish peat into verse. The anxiety and awe of the modern world have been captured in printed words and celluloid dreams, a creative tradition in which we still participate. In this class, we will examine how these images work, why they have been so indelible, and what they say about the century that birthed them. Our study will focus on poetry and film, with possible forays into fiction and funny books; our reading will be mostly British and Irish, but our viewing will meander through film history. Students may engage in critical analyses and creative practice, the better to appreciate the impact of verbal and visual images in how we create and consume culture.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every Third Year, Spring
EN 322. Modern British Literature (1900-1945).3 Credits.
This course focuses on readings in British literature of the early 20th century. Students study writers such as Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce, Yeats and Eliot against a background of social and political crises from 1900 to 1950.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Spring
EN 323. Contemporary British Literature (1945-Present).3 Credits.
Devastated by Hitler's Blitz, Britain watched its empire crumble and its global power recede. In a nation of social troubles, British writers began again to write for the public. From the Beatles to the Rushdie affair, British culture has thrived in the face of rapid change by producing a literature of social engagement and aesthetic vibrancy. This course includes texts that speak to these wider historical currents and the aesthetic and intellectual life of Britain since 1945.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Spring
EN 324. The Gothic Novel.3 Credits.
This course offers a historical survey of the Gothic genre, from Horace Walpole's 1764 "The Castle of Otranto" leading to its many variations in subsequent centuries: terror narratives, the political gothic, the female gothic, science and crime and the postmodern gothic. The course considers the Gothic genre's deployment in historical, social and cultural contexts, as well as the structural and epistemological changes that have emerged since the late 18th century.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every Third Year, Fall
EN 325. History of the English Language.3 Credits.
This course introduces students to the origins and development of the English language and to its social, cultural and historical contexts. It is required of all English majors in the MAT program.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every year, Spring
EN 330. World Literature.3 Credits.
This course addresses literary topics by reading texts drawn from various national, regional or transnational literatures.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Fall
EN 331. Classical & Contemporary Literature.3 Credits.
For centuries, an educated person was expected to read the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. Now, we expect an educated person to have read in a variety of social identities and experiences. This class brings these two literatures and attitudes together. We will read Classical Greek and Roman literature in translation and consider the intriguing trend of Twenty-First Century writers, mostly women, who are retelling these myths today. Why does a Muslim woman want to re-write Sophocles? Or a working-class writer want to think about the Greek elites? How can we learn to read both these literatures differently by putting them together?
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Fall
EN 332. Myth in Children's & Adolescent Lit..1 Credit.
Students enrolled in EN 331 have the option to take this add-on course. The class will be offered online, asynchronously. We will begin by reading some secondary texts to orient ourselves to children's and adolescent literature as traditions. From there, we will proceed to a study of a variety of recent works that deal with classical mythology.
Corequisites: Take EN 331.
Offered: As needed, All
EN 338. American Liturature by Women Of Color.3 Credits.
When Audre Lorde writes, "I remember how being young and Black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell," she alludes to the complexities and contradictions of intersectional experience. Women of color in and beyond the U.S. have used a variety of written expressions (poetry, essays, fiction, and more) to explore intersectional identity and to create opportunities for understanding and coalition across boundaries of race, gender, sexuality, class, and even nation. This course offers a comparative approach to the study of BIPOC women writers to analyze their specific points of view and to locate their common concerns. We also interrogate the categories themselves: U.S., "literature," "woman," and "color," as principles of inclusion/exclusion.
Prerequisites: Take 1 group; Take WGS 101, WGS 101H, WGS 102 or WGS 102H; Take 1 course; From Subject EN; at level 200, 300 or 400;
Offered: As needed
EN 340. Immigrant Fictions.3 Credits.
This course explores fiction by/about immigrants, examining U.S. history and culture through their stories. Participants focus primarily on 20th- and 21st-century texts by Jewish, Latin American, Caribbean, Asian and African migrants to understand how they represent the race, class and gender barriers (and opportunities) that underlie the American Dream. We also use critical scholarship on racial formation, immigration, citizenship, human rights and diaspora to produce presentations and essays. Students use these concepts to help theorize how the most marginalized "aliens" have made America the complex and contradictory nation it is today.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Spring
EN 341. Chaucer and the Medieval Period.3 Credits.
This course presents a critical interpretation, in its historical setting, of the chief imaginative work in England of the period, "The Canterbury Tales." Additional works of Chaucer and other representative dramatic and lyric poetry also are included. Attention is given to the cultural and artistic setting.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every year, Fall
EN 343. Shakespeare's History and Comedies.3 Credits.
Shakespeare spent the first decade of his career honing both his comic craft and his political insight. This class studies Shakespeare's comedies and histories in two different contexts: his and ours. To understand what his plays meant in his own time, we read his works alongside short texts from the Renaissance that address similar themes, such as disability, marriage, or tyranny. We also read them with scholarly works that interpret them for modern readers. Throughout, we explore how best to bring Shakespeare's works to the public today.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every Third Year, Fall
EN 344. Shakespeare: Tragedies and Romances.3 Credits.
This course considers the second half of Shakespeare's career alongside contemporary primary sources and modern critical sources that address themes of the plays (such as witchcraft, tyranny, race, desire, and festivity, among others). We will focus on the tragedies and romances of the 1600s, including some of the following plays: Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, All's Well That Ends Well, Pericles, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Fall
EN 345. English Literature of the Renaissance.3 Credits.
This intensive study of the principal genres of 16th-century English literature, including lyric poetry (Sidney) and Romance such as "The Faerie Queen" (Spenser), places special emphasis on the major works of the Elizabethan period. Some attention is given to the medieval background, Renaissance art and music, and Continental literature.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Spring
EN 348. Milton and the 17th Century.3 Credits.
This intensive study of literature within this revolutionary period emphasizes the cultural context for poetry, prose and drama in England from 1603 to about 1665. The course focuses on Milton's "Paradise Lost" and on works of other major writers, such as the metaphysical poets (Donne, Marvell, Herbert), and Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon and Thomas Middleton (drama).
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Spring
EN 350. 18th Century British Literature.3 Credits.
Scholars claim that literature, as we recognize it today, is an eighteenth-century "invention" by a new commercial print culture for a growing literate public. Debates over the value of reading quickly arose with the emergence of new forms of writing-was reading literature a cultural good or would new ideas lead to contention and power among the less privileged classes? To understand how and why literature is a necessary invention at this historical moment, we will read about the "rise" of print culture and the many other historical changes of the period, such as the rise of the colonial empire, slavery and the change from a poetics of the elite to the aesthetics of feeling. This course will explore cultural changes wrought by the emergence of new forms of writing which may seem, by contemporary standards, rather strange: Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Pope's "Essay on Criticism," and Haywood's Fantomina, among others.
Prerequisites: Take 1 EN course at the 200 level or higher.
Offered: Every other year, Spring
EN 352. British Romanticism (1785-1832).3 Credits.
This period of time is revolutionary: the Industrial Revolution, the agricultural revolution, the political revolutions in France and America, a literary revolution that constructs a broader reading public, and a print revolution that expands the publishing industry. In this course, students question what these revolutions have to do with novels, poetry and essays of the period, and explore how literature of this period help "revolutionize" the individual, nature and society at the same time that it seems to "romanticize" them.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Spring
EN 355. Victorian Literature (1832-1901).3 Credits.
During the Victorian period, the industrial age in England reached its height as the nation expanded its cultural and economic boarders to become the world power that was the British Empire. It was a time when immense wealth was coupled with immense poverty, and "propriety, duty and family" was the slogan of Victorian morality but hidden in the open was the growth of brothels and the drug trade. It was the first age where literacy was widespread, and reading was the primary entertainment for the elite and the masses. Students explore the variety of literature in which the Victorians imagined themselves and the world they lived in.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Fall
EN 358. English Elective.3 Credits.
Prerequisites: None
EN 365. The American Renaissance (1830-1865).3 Credits.
This course presents a study of the dichotomy in the literature of the American Renaissance as reflected in such works as "Self-Reliance," "The American Scholar," "Civil Disobedience," "Walden," "Song of Myself," "The Scarlet Letter" and "Moby Dick."
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every year, Fall
EN 366. Modern U.S. Literature (1900-1945).3 Credits.
The early 20th-century movement known as Modernism was an exhilarating time when the Western world's artists and thinkers were exploring how to represent human experience authentically. In the context of U.S. contributions to this era, students investigate questions of aesthetic innovation (especially in poetry), literary subgenres, popular vs. high culture, and national and ethnic identity (including the Harlem Renaissance). Representative authors might include Cather, Frost, Hammett, Hemingway, Hurston, Larsen, Stein, Stevens, Toomer and Yezierska.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Fall
EN 367. Contemporary U.S. Literature (1945-Present).3 Credits.
After World II, the U.S. experienced profound change, including the Atomic Age and the Cold War (and later wars on drugs and terrorism), unprecedented global travel and migration, Civil and Human Rights movements, and astonishing technological revolution. Engaging these seismic shifts, cultural expressions have changed as well. This course focuses on the late 20th- to 21st-century writers who reimagined our world, among them Postmodernists such as Nabokov, political writers such as Kerouac, writers of color such as Morrison, and poets and innovators of form such as Plath or Anzaldua.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Spring
EN 380. Realism and Naturalism in U.S. Literature (1865-1930).3 Credits.
U.S. Realism and Naturalism were late 19th-/early 20th-century aesthetic movements that emerged after Romanticism. The nation's post-Civil War mood produced a literature that reflected forces from industrialism and social migration to Darwinism and the "New Woman." In this course, students examine literature written in relation to those forces and specifically study how the novel matures in the U.S. tradition. Authors may include Twain, James, Chopin, Chesnutt, Howells, Wharton, and Crane.
Prerequisites: Take one 200-level English course.
Offered: Every other year, Fall
EN 390. Environmental Writing.3 Credits.
This course considers the rhetoric of environmental communication. How can we write to reach audiences both professional and public? Explaining scientific knowledge is tricky at the best of times, but environmental communication is now burdened by extraordinary political, social, and cultural complexities. You will develop your rhetorical sensitivity and linguistic facility by analyzing historical examples and practicing genres (both technical genres like the proposal and public facing ones like articles and essays).
Prerequisites: Take EN 101 and EN 102; or EN 103H.
Offered: As needed
EN 399. Independent Study.1-6 Credits.
In-depth focus on a specific author, topic, or area. Topic must be specified in advance.
Prerequisites: Take EN 101.
Offered: As needed
EN 414. Editorial Internship.3 Credits.
Students collaborate as an editorial team on a volume of Double Helix: A Journal of Critical Thinking and Writing. Under the guidance of the Associate Editor, with oversight from the Editor, students work with professional manuscripts, from submission through publication, acquiring experience with all phases of the editorial process. Students who complete the internship receive three course credits, are permanently listed on the journal site as Assistant Editors for that volume, and gain hands-on experience applicable to editorial positions in all fields.
Corequisites: Take EN 216 or by permission of the instructor.
Offered: As needed, Fall
EN 460. Senior Seminar Capstone.3 Credits.
Senior Seminar focuses on sustained intellectual inquiry about literature, highlighting your own literary interests. It offers students the opportunity to develop expertise on a text/field/question of their choice, while providing them with a process and a community to rely on for support and feedback. In this course, students conduct independent research on a literary text. Building and contributing to an intellectual community, students write, revise and present a major argumentative essay.
Prerequisites: Take EN 304.
Offered: Every year, Spring
EN 470. Senior Thesis.3 Credits.
Senior thesis is open to English majors who are candidates for honors in English. Candidates must be recommended by a member of the English faculty, who consents to serve as adviser for the thesis. This adviser and the student select two additional faculty to serve as a reading committee for the student's final thesis presentation.
Prerequisites: Take EN 204 or EN 304 and one 300-level English course.
Offered: Every year, All
EN 499. Independent Study.3 Credits.
Prerequisites: None