100- & 200-Level Courses

This course presents an introduction to the rich and vibrant literary and artistic culture of Appalachia. Students will experience a wide variety of art that represents the diversity of the region of Appalachia, including short stories, novels, poetry, photographs and films, music, and storytelling.

Language, Linguistics, and Society, examines how language communicates any variety of meanings, how it functions, and what investments various groups have to frame it.  The course analyzes how these frames have a variety of motives, and how the narratives that develop from these frames shape our point of view about the world we live in, how it works, and what we believe is important.

This course follows the development of British literature through the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Restoration, and eighteenth centuries. It provides an overview of major British texts, authors, schools of thought, events, and literary movements from this time period. Literary works are examined from a variety of perspectives. Historical events, religious practices, the rise of theater, political systems, artistic works and artifacts, social customs, and gender norms will figure into the course’s discussions, with key literary texts serving as the focus of analysis. Authors studied might include Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Shakespeare, Milton, Jonathan Swift, and Samuel Johnson.

Note: the Honors section also satisfies the WC category.

Note: the Honors section also satisfies the WC category.

This course invites students into the worlds of Shakespeare: the richly imagined worlds of his plots, characters, settings, and themes; the historical world of early modern England, an era of monarchy and rebellion, religious conflict, global exploration, and debates over gender and sexuality; and the worlds of scholarship that debate Shakespeare’s work and legacy. Working closely with the language of his plays, we will also explore questions about reading fictions, world-making, and theatrical performance in Shakespeare’s time and our own.

This course offers an overview of Jane Austen’s work, its context in Regency England (1810-20), and a study of her writing style during her literary period. We will generally read at least a couple of novels by Austen in parallel with contemporary adaptations of her work in fiction, film, and other genres. We also discuss Austen’s contributions to the “romance” genre and the marriage plot, as well as her trademark realism, her use of satire and irony, her memorable characters, and the role played by women in Regency culture and literary history.

Not offered Fall 2024

This course presents works of World Literature from Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance (3000 BCE to 1660 CE). The course emphasizes the literary, cultural, and human significance of selected Western and non-Western great works. The class looks at their cultural/historical contexts and the enduring human values that unite different literary traditions. Special attention is given to critical thinking and writing within a framework of cultural diversity as well as comparative and interdisciplinary analysis.

World Literature II: The Eighteenth Century to the Present

TR 9:45-11:00 | Martin Griffin

This course examines why some types of literature moved easily from country to country and from language to language, and why others remained territorially bounded and had more difficulty crossing borders. We will read a few key works of fiction and drama from the 18th century down to today, but also explore the geographical spread of the novel and how we might be able to map literary culture locally or internationally.

This survey of modern African literature looks at a fairly turbulent period in African history—the onset of colonialism followed by the era of decolonization. We explore modifications to traditional arts and Western genres to represent modernizing Africa. We read some literary-critical and historical essays for context as well as representative poetry, fiction, and drama. Where literary texts depart from Western conventions, students are encouraged to investigate the ways a literary text functions as a cultural argument and the ways non-Western cultures tell or dramatize stories. Major authors include Achebe, Mariama Ba, Bessie Head, La Guma, Ngũgĩ, and Soyinka.

The course focuses on Anglophone Caribbean literature and popular culture from its beginnings during the era of slavery to the present. We cover a variety of genres including slave narratives, autobiography, memoir, Bildungsroman, fiction, short story, a play, and probably some poetry. We pay attention to themes in the literature including slavery, displacement, migration, romance, the search for identity, the allure of England, American consumerism, and the touristic commodification of the Caribbean. By the end of the course, students will be able to analyze Caribbean texts, situate them in an emergent literary tradition, and explain the larger contexts. Major authors include Equiano, Mary Prince, Claude McKay, Erna Brodber, Kamau Brathwaite, Lamming, Lovelace, and Naipaul.

How did the U.S. and its diverse literary tradition get its start? Why are texts written long before Independence considered “American”? Did Pocahontas really save John Smith from execution at the hands of her father, Powhatan? Why did Black Hawk claim that “land cannot be sold,” and how did an Englishman in his late 30s become the most persuasive rhetorician of the American Revolution? Find out the answers to these and other questions about our national origins as we explore early North American literatures from the period of colonialism until the Civil War. We’ll examine encounters and tensions between Native Americans and the Europeans who arrived on their shores and explore how African-Americans used language to challenge racial oppression. We will grapple with central aspects of Early American Literature, including colonialism, Indigenous sovereignty, religious separatism and Puritanism, American exceptionalism, feminism, revolution and national independence, Enlightenment thinking, Pragmatism, Transcendentalism, Dark Romanticism, slavery, abolitionism, and Civil War. Throughout, we’ll focus on how written texts both established and contested the nation-state, the individual, and the divine.

Note: the Honors section also satisfies the WC category.

In this course we will be exploring America’s past through the lens of the origin story. What does it mean to tell an origin story? Why are origin stories different for different folks? How does the story of our past shape our understanding of the present and our goals for the future? In our readings we will look at origin stories from Indigenous authors like Samson Occom and Elias Boudinot, we will think about how African American authors like Olaudah Equiano and Harriot Jacobs challenged America’s origin story, and we will see how authors like Judith Sergeant Murray and Margaret Fuller brought their own voices to national debates about America’s past, present and future as they attempted to expand the scope of America’s origin story. We will also examine the ways in which origin stories changed over time by comparing the writings of John Winthrop, Benjamin Franklin, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Along the way, we will analyze the methods and materials of storytelling by investigating local archives and examining historic objects. Assessment will be determined through participation, short papers, quizzes, and a digital project.

Note: the Honors section also satisfies the WC category.

This course traces the development of American literature from 1865 until the present day. Students will read major works of American fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction, examining them from a variety of perspectives and situating them within ongoing debates about the meanings of American cultural history. Authors to be read might include James, Stephen Crane, Eliot, Cather, Faulkner, Hurston, Stevens, Wright, Tennessee Williams, O’Connor, Bishop, Morrison, Ashbery, Barthelme, Wilson, and Harjo.

Note: the Honors section also satisfies the WC category.

In this course, we read the beautiful and profound works of the Black American literary tradition as they engage issues of enslavement and freedom, racism and resistance, community and kinship, literacy, love, and citizenship. Moving from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, our reading might include poetry, slave narratives, autobiographies, short stories, plays, and novels. Paying attention to the historic contexts of these texts, we learn to read and write about the themes that emerge in these literatures. Major Black Writers that we might study include Phillis Wheatley Peters, Frederick Douglass, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Yaa Gyasi, among others.

Popular Fiction

TR 12:55-2:10 | Sally Harris

In Whodunit? we will become literary detectives. We will read British and American detective short stories, novels, and plays from the 19th through the 21st century. Through this genre of literature, we will discuss plot and character development, narrative techniques, and the relationship between literature and social issues. We will also delve into social constructs of crime, power, and justice.

Introduction to Poetry invites you to learn more about the language, history, and analysis of poetry by reading and examining poetry in detail. We will be looking at both classic and contemporary works as we think about form (meter, rhyme, rhythm, and other technical aspects) as well as literary-historical context in order to help us better inform our understanding of the genre. This course prepares students to appreciate poetry as a distinct mode of artistic expression while gaining critical tools for the perceptive reading and enjoyment of poems.

TR 11:20-12:35 | Bess Cooley

Anne Bradstreet was the first published American Poet. Gertrude Stein’s poems and “salons” changed Modernism. Audre Lorde described herself as a “Black feminist lesbian warrior mother” and used poetry for activism. “Lady poets” haven’t just repeated what men have written. They’ve shaped and changed it, even when they weren’t “supposed” to be writing or publishing it. As a class, we’ll explore how women poets fundamentally altered the world and craft of poetry, and read the male poets who were writing with, to, and around them, as well. We’ll focus on both themes and craft in poetry, and write some of our own.

Humans perform stories to understand themselves and the world they live in. This course introduces students to the pleasures of reading and writing about drama, one of the oldest and most vital literary genres. Students read comedies, tragedies, and other genres from a variety of countries, cultures, and historical periods to experience the history of drama as an international art form. In addition, because drama is designed to be performed as well as read, students view clips from video productions of individual plays. No experience reading or seeing drama is required.

English 253 invites students to read diverse fictional styles and genres published from the eighteenth century to the present. Students will trace how fiction emerges from a cultural and historical context and engages with social debates over gender, race, sexuality, class, economics, religion, philosophy, and the environment, among others. Readings will emphasize the novel but may also include novellas and short stories. While this course focuses on literary analysis, it also encourages students to take pleasure in reading fiction. The class may also address the works’ aesthetic merits and contemporary relevance; fiction as it relates to questions of truth, lies, and plausibility; and the implicit contract between authors and readers.

MWF 12:40-1:30 | Elizabeth Gentry

This writing intensive (WC) and Arts and Humanities (AH) course explores the question, “What does it mean to be human?” through the contemporary understanding of wellbeing. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), neglecting any one of the eight dimensions of wellness—emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical, environmental, financial, occupational, and social—negatively impacts overall quality of life. How do fictional characters—characters from various cultural, historical, and environmental contexts and with distinct identities in terms of gender, class, race, and sexuality—pursue health and happiness, react to circumstances outside of their control, become their own worst enemies, and remind us all of what it means to be human?

MWF 10:20-11:10 | Hank Backer

Gothic Fiction will trace the origin of the gothic novel from its origin in 1700s Europe to its reinterpretation in the American South. Just as science fiction is fascinated with the future, gothic fiction is haunted by the past; so what can writers like O’Connor, Chestnutt, and Faulkner tell us about the antebellum South? How is an old form like the gothic novel reinterpreted by contemporary writers like Moreno-Garcia in Mexican Gothic?

Not offered Fall 2024

In our lives, we occupy multiple public communities beyond school—social, professional, political, online, service, faith, and others. We engage both as readers and writers with numerous public texts to help us understand and respond to these communities and the issues that affect us. In this course, you will both analyze and produce public writing for various “rhetorical ecologies”—interconnected webs of communicative situations. You will gain a thorough understanding of how people respond to public issues by rhetorically analyzing how events unfold through public texts as well as by evaluating the genre conventions of these texts. Then you will craft your own rhetorically-minded public writing to inform and persuade others to take action.

Special Topics in Professional Writing

TR 11:20-12:35 | Marcel Brouwers

This course introduces students to fundamental document genres used by the legal community. Building on a review of American civics, precedents, and legal traditions, students will work with real and hypothetical cases to draft appropriate documents that require careful examination of the issues at play. This course gives undergraduate students interested in legal careers exposure to the kinds of writing law students will be interpreting and generating, including memos, briefs, and summaries.

English 263 offers an introduction to creative writing with an emphasis on composing fiction and poetry. We will study successful models of stories and poems, learning a vocabulary for discussing the craft of writing. Assigned readings (from contemporary authors) will stimulate discussions and provide models for what creative writing is and can be. Low-stakes writing exercises will give us a chance to try out the techniques we are learning to observe and describe. Formal responses to our peers, analysis of readings, and presentations will help us sharpen our analytical and formal writing skills

Not offered Fall 2024

This course introduces students to the critical skills necessary for understanding and analyzing narrative cinema. Students will watch selected world cinema features and learn how to “read” images as film-texts. The course will emphasize specific aspects of film style and narrative form through analysis of scenes from films screened each week and from a range of outside examples. Relevant historical and cultural background will also be used to inform readings of movies shown. As they learn the vocabulary of filmmaking and film criticism, students will also be asked to consider the politics of image-making and the power of cinema.

This writing-intensive course focuses on workplace communication and professionalism. In this course, students analyze the rhetorical elements of workplace texts, as well as the rhetorical situations in which they are created and read, so they can produce professional communications that respond appropriately to a variety of workplace situations and audiences. By emphasizing the importance of audience and contextual awareness, this course prepares students to communicate with professionalism in their future workplaces.