Course Descriptions | Fall 2025
Course Descriptions | Fall 2025
This page provides course descriptions for the current semester or the next. See the main UT Curriculum page for a list of all undergraduate courses on the books (not all are offered at any one time). See this page for our English 102 Inquiry Topics. See here for course descriptions of past semesters, undergraduate, and graduate.
Courses that satisfy VolCore requirements are identified in this way:
AH – Arts and Humanities
AAH – Applied Arts and Humanities
EI – Engaged Inquiries
GCI – Global Challenges – International
GCUS – Global Challenges – US
OC – Oral Communication
WC – Written Communication
Undergraduate Courses
ENGL 303 | American Cultures (AH)
Suspicious Minds, Spectral Evidence
MWF 1:50-2:40 | Brad Bannon
The impulse to suspect others of transgressing social, cultural, and moral norms, or of betraying their allegiance or loyalty to us, personally or collectively, has a rich tradition dating back to our nation’s first settlements and extending to the present. In this course, we will consider texts in which suspicion functions both to unify individuals in solidarity against a common foe and to divide them by cultivating an atmosphere of paranoia and a culture of recrimination. Authors will include Cotton Mather, Robert Calef, Shirley Jackson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Nella Larsen, among others.
Requirements
Attendance, quizzes, three short essays, and five discussions.
ENGL 332 | Women in American Literature (AH) (GCUS)
Men, Marriage, Motherhood, and Myths
TR 11:20-12:35 | La Vinia Jennings
English 332 examines selected novels written by American women in the twentieth century that treat diverse geographical regions, ethnicities, social classes, and cultures. Discussions will emphasize various institutions—patriarchy, marriage, family, and motherhood—and their impacts on female selfhood and identity.
Requirements
Attendance, two papers, and quizzes.
MWF 3:00-3:50 | Elizabeth Gentry
This class will examine writing by American women from the 19th to the 21st century with an emphasis on fiction. These writers represent a range of experiences as informed by geographical region, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality, providing rich opportunities for connections to the lives of contemporary American readers.
Requirements
Two writing projects, quizzes, and reading responses.
ENGL 333 | Black American Literature and Aesthetics (AH) (GCUS)
Feeling, Haunting: African-American Sentimental and Gothic Literature
TR 9:45-11:00 | Katy Chiles
This course will survey the way that African-American authors have engaged with and contributed to the literary genres of sentimental and gothic fiction. We will investigate how writers approached the historical reality of slavery and depicted it in their work. How did writers communicate what it might feel like to be enslaved or descended from enslaved people? How did writers portray the many ways that slavery haunted and continues to haunt texts, people, and cultural imaginaries? We will possibly read work by Solomon Northup, Hannah Crafts, William Wells Brown, Harriet Jacobs, Saidiya Hartman, and Toni Morrison. Requirements include active participation, a presentation, informal writing assignments, two formal papers, and a final project.
Requirements
Requirements include active participation, a presentation, informal writing assignments, two formal papers, and a final project.
ENGL 334 | Film and American Culture (GCUS)
T 9:45-12:35, R 9:45-11:00 | Eleni Palis
This course considers American film as works of art, as historical documents, and as powerful forms of cultural expression. Students will explore American film history, especially the consolidation of and aesthetic norms solidified by “classical Hollywood cinema.” Along the way, we will study American cinema through a variety of lenses, including formalism, genre theory, auteur theory, and with attention to gender, race, class, and sexuality. As we move across time and across the country, students will explore the relationship between American cinema and the historical, cultural, and political contexts that have shaped American movies.
Requirements
Course grades will be determined by regular attendance and participation, weekly quizzes, two analytical papers, and two exams.
ENGL 339 | Children’s Literature (AH)
Fantasy to Cyberspace
Online Asynchronous | Amy Billone
In this class we will watch the young adult as it floats from innocence to experience and back again in various genres from literature to video games to other forms of media today. We will study fairy tales, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Sherlock Holmes, Peter Pan, Narnia, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, The Hunger Games and a number of other works of interest to college students today.
Requirements
Written posts, video replies, final exam, final project (analytical or creative).
MWF 10:20-11:10 | Robin Nicks
From the earliest literary fairy tales through the graphic novels and picture books of today, this course will explore the evolution of children’s and young adult literature through the ages. We will focus our attention on changing perceptions of children and childhood, as well as what constitute appropriate topics for children and young adults and controversies surrounding certain books and authors. A major thread through the course will be how children’s and young adult literature reflects, reinforces, and/or critiques social norms of the eras in which the texts were written and published. Texts will include picture books, comics and graphic novels, poetry, novels, biographies or other informational works, films, and more.
Requirements
Weekly reading log, book bentos, and other literary analysis projects
ENGL 340 | Science Fiction and Fantasy (AH)
TR 9:45-11:00 | Mark Tabone
This course will explore literary, historical, and philosophical approaches to Science Fiction, paying special attention to the genre’s use of “fantastic” tropes and devices to speculate about humanity’s future as well as to critique the state of humanity in the present. As we examine various theoretical approaches to Science Fiction, we will read some of the most influential texts from the genre’s long history.
Requirements
Attendance, short response papers, two formal papers, and an exam.
ENGL 351 | The Short Story
TR 9:45-11:00 | Nancy Henry
American author Lorrie Moore has said: “A short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage.” The roots of the short story as a genre were established in the nineteenth century when stories filled the pages of periodicals, marking the emergence of popular sub-genres such as the ghost story and detective story. Starting with nineteenth-century authors such as Charles Dickens, we will move through the twentieth century and up to the present, examining how the different voices and traditions of authors including James Baldwin, Hisaye Yamamoto, Alice Munro and many others contributed to the economy of language, intensity and irony that is the modern short story. Emphasis will be on close, careful reading in-class discussion, and analytic writing.
Requirements
Assignments will include in class writing, reading quizzes, mid-term and final exams.
ENGL 355 | Rhetoric and Writing (WC)
Online Asynchronous | Robin Nicks
This course serves as an introduction to the rhetoric and writing concentration of the undergraduate major in English and covers both theory and practice, focusing on multiple modes and genres of writing. Students will learn rhetorical theory, discourse analysis, and more as we analyze rhetoric produced by and about communities in our lives to better understand audiences and how to better reach them. The course requires extensive reading and writing, with review and revision at all stages of the writing process.
Requirements
Discussion posts, semi-daily homework assignments, proposals, 3 major projects, and reflections.
Narrative, “Good” Writing, and GenAI (335/357)
M Online Asynchronous, WF 10:20-11:10 | Jeff Ringer
This course invites students to question their assumptions about rhetoric and writing in two distinct, yet related ways. First, it invites students to think about the effectiveness of rhetoric and writing at a subterranean level, in terms of the narrative structures that often operate beneath the surface but shape readers’ responses in profound ways. Students will read rhetorical theory toward that end, conduct analyses of their own writing, and engage in deep revision to achieve the rhetorical goals outlined in that theory. Second, the course invites students to interact with generative artificial intelligence to investigate whether tools such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or UT Verse can produce the same kind of narrative-based writing considered during the first part of the course. The course culminates in a public-facing project wherein students convey something about what they learned for an audience of their choosing.
Requirements
Four major projects; discussion boards; attendance and participation.
Rhetoric and Writing Saves the World!
TR 11:20-12:35 | Jake Buller-Young
In ENGL 355, we will ask what rhetoric and writing means for us beyond the academy—or, in the provocative words of Patricia Bizzell, whether composition studies can save the world. This writing-intensive class will provide students with a foundation in rhetoric and writing, including overview of contemporary theories of rhetoric and how they apply to written texts, both inside and outside of the university. We’ll also critically examine the affordances and constraints of generative AI tools. By the end of the class, students will be equipped with their own rhetoric and writing toolbox, understanding how writers construct texts, choose genres, engage audiences, and move readers to action.
Requirements
Three major projects, in-class participation, and regular reading responses.
ENGL 360 | Technical and Professional Writing (WC)
Writing for Remote Work
Online Asynchronous | Sally Harris
In this fully online, asynchronous class, students develop rhetorical strategies for clear communications and for working in teams remotely. They also hone critical thinking skills by analyzing the content, channels, genres, and audiences of their communications. Students complete seven projects, including genres such as process descriptions, application materials, proposals, and major reports. Additionally, they work in teams strengthening their online collaboration and document creation skills.
Requirements
Quizzes; discussion posts; peer reviews; major assignments such as process descriptions, instructions, reports, and proposals.
Online Asynchronous | Daniel Wallace
This is a great time to be sharing complex ideas with the public. Thanks to new tools that enable writers, organizations, and companies to communicate effectively with an engaged audience, it is possible to earn a living, make a difference, and find a community through serious writing. This course introduces you to the major forms of technical writing: the instructional guide, the complex essay, the proposal, and others. We will approach these forms as if we are each forming our own email newsletter or similar writing enterprise: you will finish the class with a portfolio of technical writing you can show to a future employer or use to begin your own independent venture.
Requirements
Five major assignments, discussions, homework assignments, and a final exam.
MW 11:30-12:20, F Online Asynchronous | Sean Morey
This course will use a streaming series, such as The Expanse, as a foundation for exploring technical and professional communication in the context of space exploration, political systems, and futuristic technologies. Students will analyze the show’s themes, technologies, and ethical dilemmas to develop skills in technical and professional writing, including creating reports, manuals, proposals, and policy documents. Through a combination of critical analysis and practical application, students will learn to communicate complex ideas clearly and effectively while considering the societal and ethical implications of space exploration and colonization.
Requirements
Attendance, technical and professional writing assignments such as manuals, reports, instructions, proposals, and other genres.
Digital Security, AI, and Nuclear Conflict
MWF 10:20-11:10 | Anne Snellen
Several hacks have occurred throughout the 12 Colonies. Though we have received no clear indication of culpability, some veterans of the Cylon Wars worry these hacks may precipitate a larger event, prompting the question, “have we adequately prepared for a full-scale Cylon attack?” To prepare, this class will create technical writing to disseminate to Colonial personnel in the wake of a Cylon attack. To aid in our research, we will study Battlestar Galactica as well as primary sources and other materials. If we are lucky enough to survive Cylon attack, focusing on human adoption of artificial intelligence technology is easily transferable to other disciplines. Those who study digital security, robotics, nuclear safety, political diplomacy and emergency preparedness often use killer robots as a generic stand-in for specific enemies or other disasters. Thus, the writing skills you learn in this class can be transferred to other non-Cylon contexts—should we survive.
Requirements
Large manual, reports, graphics and character/situation study, DBAs.
ENGL 361 | Introduction to Publishing
MWF 11:30-12:20 | Erin Smith
Introduction to Publishing will introduce students to the foundations of publishing across a range of categories including books (trade, scholarly, and small-press) and periodicals (print journals, print magazines, and online publications). The course will explore the main phases of the publishing process: Acquisitions & Editorial, Design & Production, and Marketing & Publicity. Topics will include methods of evaluating, editing, producing, distributing, and promoting book projects and publications; the organizational and economic structure of publishing companies; current issues in publishing, such as intellectual property rights, plagiarism, generative AI, censorship, diversity; and the increasing fragmentation of the marketplace.
This course is a requirement for the new English concentration in Publishing that launches in Fall 2025.
Requirements
Research project, group project, presentation, interview, and discussion posts.
ENGL 363 | Writing Poetry (AAH) (EI)
TR 11:20-12:35 | Iliana Rocha
This course provides a focused instruction to the joys and insights of poetry through an attentiveness to craft (tone, persona, voice, literal and figurative imagery, diction, poetic forms, style, symbolism, myth and archetype, allusion, sound). Specific aims of English 363 are, primarily, to increase the ways we can all become more curious and engaged readers of poetry; to inspire confidence as writers thinking through the work of both established poets and that of our peers; and to provide us with the vocabulary to respond critically to literary texts, as well as to our own poems. In exploring how contemporary poets are in conversation with voices from the past, we will learn that poetry, too, can be an instinctive and necessary response to the world.
Requirements
Attendance, class leadership, discussion board posts, workshop, final portfolio.
MWF 10:20-11:10 | Abhay Shetty
This course aims at helping students close-read poems for delight as well as critical analysis, so that they can be conscious of the layers of awareness, thought, feeling, attention, and love needed to create poetry. We will read various forms of poetry, including free-verse, from poets around the globe, across time.
Requirements
Attendance, presentations, peer work analysis, assignments, and final portfolio.
ENGL 364 | Writing Fiction (AAH) (EI)
MWF 11:20-12:20 | Titus Chalk
Explore the imaginative work of writing short fiction, via a focus on the craft’s key aspects such as image, character, voice, setting and storytelling. Each week, we will read how major writers approach their work and study contemporary short stories, on the way to producing our own. Expect to learn not only elements of fiction writing, but also how to sharpen your critical toolkit via workshops of peers’ work.
Requirements
Reading, writing, revising, plus active participation.
TR 12:55-2:10 | Michael Knight
This class is designed to provide an introduction to the craft of writing fiction with a focus on the short story. Students should leave this class with a basic understanding of core elements of the short story form (character, plot, structure, point of view, setting, language, imagery and so on), the ability to recognize how those elements function in published fiction and the ability to put those core elements into practice in fiction of their own.
Requirements
Writing exercises, one full length short story and a revision of that story.
ENGL 365 | Writing the Screenplay (AAH) (EI)
TR 4:05-5:20 | Michael Knight
This class is designed to provide an introduction to the craft of writing screenplays. Students should leave this class with a basic understanding of the core elements of the form (dramatic structure, imagery and visual storytelling, building characters and conflict and so on), the ability to recognize how those elements function in a feature length film and the ability to put those core elements into practice in screenplays of their own.
Requirements
Writing exercises, workshop, revision.
TR 2:30-3:45 | Margaret Dean
Before they performed, photographed, scored, or edited, films are written. Screenplays create the earliest versions of the characters, stories, and themes that will become iconic—the first step of a collaborative art form. In order to gain an understanding of screenplay structure and form, we will read produced and unproduced screenplays in multiple genres. A series of structured exercises will lead to a treatment for a feature film, look book, and sample scenes.
Requirements
Attendance, online discussion, a variety of exercises, a treatment for a feature film with sample scenes.
ENGL 369 | Writing Creative Nonfiction (AAH) (EI)
MWF 12:40-1:30 | Catherine Garbinsky
Over the course of the semester we will explore creative approaches to writing nonfiction in a variety of forms including the lyric essay, the hermit crab essay, literary journalism, and memoir. We will read the work of emerging and established contemporary writers within the genre such as Eula Biss, Ross Gay, Michelle Zauner, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil. During this course we will also consider the many ways an essay can develop from the pre-writing stage through revisions, giving you the opportunity to develop your own personal writing process.
Requirements
Short exercises; two longer essays ; responses to peer essays and published work read, a final portfolio with one revised essay.
ENGL 370 | Multimedia Storytelling
TR 12:55-2:10 | Brandee Easter
Requirements
ENGL 371 | Foundations of the English Language (GCI)
How English Became English
MWF 12:40-1:30 | Scott MacKenzie
The main goal of the course will be to trace the evolution of the English language through its 1500-year span using historical linguistics, literary and cultural document and analysis. We will discuss English’s position in Indo-European and examine its development as a Germanic dialect. Next, we will witness its evolution and proliferation of the language as it fragments into Old and Middle English dialects and develops in the hands of writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser and John Milton. We will follow its flowering into a self-confident language as witnessed by the work modern authors such as Samuel Johnson, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. Lastly, we will study the state of American speech of the present day.
Requirements
Attendance, 2 exams, quizzes and one paper.
ENGL 372 | The Structure of Modern English (GCI)
MWF 1:50-2:40 | Hooman Saeli
This course explores the complexities of contemporary English from a linguistic perspective. We will study how English works linguistically—from its phonology (system of sounds), the makeup of its words (morphology), to its syntax (grammatical structure), and how we use it in ongoing speech (discourse and pragmatics). We will cover how English varies, how it has changed, and how a linguistic understanding of English language makes us better consumers of the information in the world around us.
Requirements
10 homeworks, 2 writing assignments, 4 presentations, 2 exams.
ENGL 376 | Colloquium in Literature (WC)
MWF 1:50-2:40 | R.D. Perry
This class poses two related questions: “What is literature?” and “What should we do about it?” The “we” of the second question could be broad or specific enough to include literary critics, students of literature, English majors, or the members of this class. We will spend the semester trying to figure out what it means to be a reader of literature. What intellectual, artistic, psychological, and ethical lessons are we trying to learn from literature? What different modes of reading are available to us? Why do different texts seem to invite or benefit from different sorts of readings? We will focus these questions around a variety of theoretical approaches, including feminist, Marxist, psychoanalytic, post-structuralist, and postcolonial. We will spend time developing a shared vocabulary for literary study, sharpening our close reading skills, developing literary arguments, and positioning ourselves within current critical debates.
Requirements
Participation, two tests, discussion posts, a midterm and a final.
ENGL 398 | Junior-Senior Honors Seminar (WC)
The Stories of Psychoanalysis
MWF 11:30-12:20 | Heather Hirschfeld
This class will address a particular intersection of theory and literature in psychoanalytic thought. Exploring the connections between psychoanalysis and literary structures and conventions, the class will be an exercise in reading “stories” of psychoanalysis: the stories psychoanalysis uses, the stories psychoanalysis tells, and the stories that tell us something about psychoanalysis.
We will look at the stories of psychoanalysis from a number of angles. We will read a variety of Freudian and more recent psychoanalytic theorists to understand their vocabulary and principles and to appreciate the literary structures and allusions that inform them. These readings will be paired with literary works that speak in a variety of ways to such theoretical concerns. Ultimately this class aims to present–and to question the value of–psychoanalysis as a critical or interpretive theory whose practical and critical implications are available for use in literary contexts. It will thus stress the kinds of research skills required for writing an honors thesis, and students who will be moving on to 498 will be encouraged to pursue their specific thesis interests within the frame of the course.
HONORS SEMINAR: Enrollment is limited to students who have maintained 3.5 GPA in the major and completed two upper division (300 or 400 level) English courses.
Requirements
Response papers, research skills assignments, final research paper.
ENGL 401 | Medieval Literature
Journeying in Medieval Literature and Culture
TR 2:30-3:45 | Mary Dzon
Focusing on the theme of journeying in a broad sense, students in this course will read several medieval literary texts and will also consider medieval sources such maps, sacred images and objects from distant lands. We will ponder why medieval English readers were so interested in texts that feature journeys within and beyond Europe, as well as trips to uncanny realms that resist description. Travel, quest, pilgrimage, spiritual progress and Otherness will be our main concerns. Readings include selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, The Travels of John Mandeville, the romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the autobiographical Book of Margery Kempe.
Requirements
Requirements include a few short response papers, an exam, and a literary analysis essay.
ENGL 404 | Shakespeare I: Early Plays
MWF 1:50-2:40 | Anthony Welch
This survey of Shakespeare’s early plays explores the first half of his career, culminating in Hamlet. We will read six plays, including romantic comedies (such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream), histories (such as Henry V), and early tragedies (such as Titus Andronicus). Together we will trace Shakespeare’s evolution as a playwright over the first decade of his professional life, as he learned how to capture the human experience—love and heartbreak, cruelty and tenderness, joy and despair, revenge and forgiveness—in bold new ways. You can expect to work closely with Shakespeare’s dramatic language, learn about Elizabethan acting and stagecraft, and get acquainted with the social world of early modern England. We will also sample a range of modern critical approaches to Shakespeare’s work, and we will glance at the plays’ rich performance history, both on the stage and on film.
Requirements
Active participation, weekly discussion board posts, three critical essays.
ENGL 420 | The 19th-Century British Novel
TR 11:20-12:35 | Nancy Henry
Realism sounds like a straightforward description of a literary style, but in fact realism as it developed in the nineteenth century encompassed a variety of narrative modes including the sensational, sentimental, gothic and melodramatic. This class focuses on the history of the nineteenth-century British novel with particular attention to the emergence and predominance of realism in the Victorian period (1837-1901). We will trace the strategies used by nineteenth-century novelists such as Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot (Marian Evans), Anna Sewell, and Oscar Wilde to represent the past and present British world to their readers. Examining the moral, social, economic and political critiques that became central to the novel form, we will also consider the history of literary critical approaches to interpreting these novels. The emphasis will be on close, careful reading, in-class discussion, and analytic writing.
Requirements
Assignments will include in class writing, reading quizzes, mid-term and final exams, as well as a research project.
ENGL 421 | Modern British Novel
Modern Times, Modern Experiments
MWF 10:20-11:10 | Urmila Seshagiri
This course will introduce students to the radical, controversial, and beautiful fiction that came out of the modernist movement in Great Britain. Focusing on modernist representations of time, space, and consciousness, we will examine the relationships between social change and artistic experimentation in the early twentieth century. We’ll also explore various cultural discourses circulating in Britain between the turn of the century and the 1930s: aesthetics, psychology, industrialization, mass culture, the decline of the British Empire, debates about gender, and, perhaps most crucially, the trauma of the Great War. We’ll investigate the modern era’s promises and anxieties not only through experimental novels and short stories by Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, D H Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, and Jean Rhys, but also through artwork from the women’s suffrage campaign, manifestoes by Imagists, Vorticists, and Futurists, contemporary film adaptations of literary texts, and documentaries about art and history. By the end of the semester, students should be familiar with the complex fields of meaning – aesthetic, social, political – that accrued around the word “modern” in twentieth-century Britain’s dynamic artistic circles.
Requirements
Attendance, two essays, midterm, journals, in-class presentation, final exam.
ENGL 424 | Jane Austen
TR 12:55-2:10 | Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud
In this class, we will read five of Jane Austen’s six published novels, one adaptation, as well as watch a couple of cinematic versions. We will discuss the life of Austen and the cultural and historical contexts in which she wrote, including the French Revolution and Britain’s war with France, the impact of the industrial revolution, issues of rank and class, gender and sexuality, the rise of political radicalism and conservatism, the Regency of the 1810s, and the literary emergence of Romanticism.
Requirements
Reading quizzes, weekly reading responses, a group multimedia project/adaptation, and a final research paper.
ENGL 434 | Modern American Literature
MWF 12:40-1:30 | Bill Hardwig
In this class, we will explore the uneasy relationship between US racial dynamics and the promise of the nation. Through the reading of literature, we will trace important cultural moments, aesthetic movements, and racial history of the twentieth century. Beginning with the Harlem Renaissance and Modernism, we will move through several decades by examining literature in the context of W.E.B. DuBois’s 1903 declaration: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”
Requirements
Attendance, 2 Papers, 3 exams, quizzes and micro-essays.
ENGL 436 | Modern American Novel
Reading History, Race, and the Mind of the Writer
TR 2:30-3:45 | La Vinia Jennings
English 436 provides a critical introduction to prominent twentieth-century American novels written between 1920 and 1980 and their defining socio-political themes and constituent elements. The class will identify, compare, and contrast the driving political, historical, cultural, and aesthetic forces at work in and between these selected works.
Requirements
Attendance, two papers, and quizzes.
ENGL 453 | Contemporary Drama (EI)
TR 11:20-12:35 | Stan Garner
This course will explore the principal movements, playwrights, and dramatic works that characterize American, British, and world drama since 1945. In addition to studying the range of styles and techniques that this drama presents, we will consider the following issues: absurdism and the crisis of meaning; the politics of gender, race, and sexuality; metatheater; drama and popular culture; theater and performance; postmodernism and the staging of history; globalism in the theater; reimagining “America”; drama on film. Dramatists will include the following: Williams, Miller, Beckett, Stoppard, Churchill, Soyinka, Shepard, al-Hakim, Hwang, Kushner, Parks, Garro, Alfaro, and FastHorse.
Requirements
Two papers, 10 short play-reading responses, midterm and final examinations, Theatre Live worksheet, attendance and participation.
ENGL 454 | 20th-Century International Novel
Somewhere, Everywhere, Nowhere: International Modernism and its Legacies
TR 12:55-2:10 | Lisi Schoenbach
In this class, we will consider a diverse group of twentieth-century authors and international locations, as we trace the walking routes of their characters through urban, rural, and sometimes imaginary spaces. We will consider how and why questions of national identity, home and exile, center and periphery, movement and migration, exoticism and regionalism figure so prominently in the literary innovations and historical moments referred to as “modernist.” We will also consider how contemporary novels respond to these questions, and to their modernist precursors. Readings will be taken from Proust, Woolf, Larsen, Baudelaire, Mann, Sebald, Isherwood, Mieville and Cole.
Requirements
Assignments will include two short essays, informal response papers, one presentation, and active class participation.
ENGL 455 | Persuasive Writing (WC)
TR 4:05-5:20 | Brandee Easter
Requirements
ENGL 459 | Contemporary Poetry
TR 11:20-12:35 | Ben Lee
This course surveys English-language poetry from the second half of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first. We’ll discuss poets known for their originality and cultural impact, the historical pressures to which they responded, and the literary-historical assumptions that have shaped the reception of their work. Key terms orienting our discussions include modernism, postmodernism, confessionalism, colonialism, and open form. We’ll pay close attention to the political gestures contemporary poets have made through their formal choices, and we’ll ask ourselves how contemporary poetry has been shaped by and responded to globalization. Is all poetry global now, or are local/national landscapes and poetic identities just as prevalent as ever?
Requirements
Attendance and participation, short response essay, short listening essay, final essay, final exam, and either a recitation or brief in-class presentation.
ENGL 461 | Global Communication for Science and Technology (GCI)
MWF 11:30-12:20 | Jamal-Jared Alexander
Given the global nature of contemporary workplaces, knowing how to communicate effectively with an international audience is even more important for technical & professional communicators in the age of AI. This course explores the importance of cultural humility by learning the communication practices/customs of people from different cultures and countries in the context of science and technology. Students will learn how to communicate with high-context and low-context cultures, and how media and marketing play a vital part in medical, business, and technical discourse. This course prepares students to make informed and effective decisions as technical communicators in a global work environment.
Requirements
Attendance and major assignments.
ENGL 462 | Writing for Publication
Online Asynchronous | Sean Morey
This course will explore publishing for academic audiences. Specifically, we will attempt to write an academic article for a specified journal by the end of the semester. As part of this writing process, we will experiment with how generative AI can assist us in the writing process.
Requirements
A draft of an academic article, as well as scaffolded writing projects (such as abstracts, annotated bibliographies, literature reviews, etc.), and discussion posts; contract grading will be used for assessment.
ENGL 463 | Advanced Poetry Writing (EI)
TR 12:55-2:10 | Cornelius Eady
Requirements
ENGL 464 | Advanced Fiction Writing (EI)
MWF 1:50-2:40 | Chris Hebert
This class is for students with experience in fiction writing who are looking to deepen and sharpen their critical abilities and writing skills. Throughout the semester—through a combination of readings and workshops—we will be revisiting and reinforcing the core elements of fiction, such as concrete detail, character, conflict, plot, and scene. But we will move beyond them as well, exploring new techniques and new complexities, seeking to broaden our understanding of how fiction works and what it can do. Students should expect to put significant time and effort into their own and their classmates’ work.
Requirements
Students will write at least two works of fiction and one substantial revision, along with occasional exercises. There will also be regular assigned readings of stories and essays on writing craft.
ENGL 471 | Sociolinguistics
MWF 3:00-3:50 | Thorsten Huth
This class probes language as it is socially situated. In what ways does our talk change depending on who we are as people, who we interact with and what those interactional goals are, and what linguistic repertoires are available to us? We will read about the theories that inform our understanding of socially-situated language, explore them by reading the work of others who have applied (and in many cases, been the origin of) these theories, and use our knowledge to draw conclusions about our own language and the language of those around us.
Requirements
Attendance, response papers, presentation, final project.
ENGL 477 | Pedagogical Grammar for ESL Teachers (EI)
MWF 11:30-12:20 | Tanita Saenkhum
This course explores different approaches to teaching grammar in second language (L2) classrooms. We will examine pedagogical grammar research and its implications for L2 instruction. Topics covered in the course include grammar in use, grammar acquisition processes, and grammar instruction, among others. The course will also cover materials development, task design, and assessment. The major goals of this course are to develop students’ understanding of grammar instruction and to prepare them to work with linguistically and culturally diverse English language learners.
Requirements
Grammar teaching guide, “current events related to grammar” presentation, mini research project, attendance & participation.
ENGL 480 | Fairy Tale, Legend, and Myth: Folk Narrative
Fairy Tales
Online Asynchronous | Amy Billone
What makes fairy tales popular today? In this class we will study the evolution of popular fairy tales from Greek mythology to the Arabian Nights through versions of stories by Basile, Straparola, Perrault, the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. We will simultaneously trace the cinematic and televised adaptation of these stories by Disney and other major media outlets.
Requirements
Written discussion posts, video replies, final exam, final project (analytical or creative).
ENGL 482 | Major Authors
Herman Melville
TR 9:45-11:00 | Dawn Coleman
Herman Melville is a titan among American writers and a master of world literature. In poetic prose that swings between epic grandeur and popular humor, he tells enduring stories of earnest men faced with unsettling ambiguities. Our course begins with Typee, a novel based on his time as a castaway among a South Seas Indigenous tribe, an experience that made him famous as “the man who lived among the cannibals.” We then read his magnum opus, Moby-Dick, and several of his shorter masterpieces, including “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” “Benito Cereno,” and Billy Budd. To explore his historical context and significance, we set his writing alongside contemporaries such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederick Douglass, critical and biographical essays, and twentieth and twenty-first century art inspired by Melville’s work. Even if you don’t learn to love Melville by the end of the course (and most students do), you will understand him thoroughly.
Requirements
Three take-home exams, a final presentation, and a 2500-word final research paper, plus several assignments leading up to it.
ENGL 483 | Special Topics in Literature
Native American Literature
MWF 12:40-1:30 | Marie Taylor
In this course, we will read a wide range of literary works by Native American authors to help us better understand the stories of America’s Indigenous people. By looking across a range of genres, regions, and tribes, we will develop the skills necessary to interpret Indigenous literature within a variety of contexts. We will also learn about a few of the larger movements in American history that have shaped the experiences and perspectives of Indigenous writers. Finally, we will analyze Indigenous texts using an Indigenous Studies approach which prioritizes Indigenous land rights, tribal sovereignty, Indigenous communities, and language. The course will include also include campus field trips to the McClung Museum and the UTK archives.
This course will become English 446 (Native American Literature).
Requirements
Attendance, short papers, presentations, and final project.
ENGL 489 | Special Topics in Film
Adaptation, Videographic Criticism, and Remix Culture
T 12:55-2:10, R 12:55-3:45 | Eleni Palis
Throughout film history, continual exchanges between film and other forms, especially literature, theater, and more recently, graphic novels and video games, have shaped film history; it is almost impossible to study film without an eye to adaptation. This course begins with well-worn questions about “textual fidelity” across literary-film adaptation and then expands to debates about remix practices, digital mixes, and mash-ups, the ethics of appropriation, videographic criticism, and adapting “archives.” For these archival questions, we will visit the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound (TAMIS) and consider access to and appropriation of small-gauge formats with 16mm film and projection.
Requirements
Course grades are determined by regular attendance, weekly discussion posts, and a video essay leading up to a final research project.
Graduate Courses
ENGL 540 | Readings in English Literature of the 19th-Century I
Romanticism and the Birth of Ecological Thought
TR 9:45-11:00 | Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud
British Romanticism is renowned for its intense attachment to nature, which “never did betray the heart that loved her,” as Wordsworth memorably put it. This course examines the historical context for this investment in the environment – industrialization, urbanization, tourism, alienation, climate disasters, scientific advances – as well as the dawn of ecological thinking in both Romantic-era writing and Romanticist scholarship. We’ll pay especial attention to the impact of Romantic attitudes toward nature in contemporary eco-criticism and the ways the Romantics anticipated or strayed from contemporary understandings of the environment and its relation to humanity.
Requirements
Reading responses, a presentation, and a final seminar paper.
ENGL 560 | Readings in 20th-Century Literature
“Worlding” 20th-21st Century African Literature
MW 2:30-3:45 | Gichingiri Ndigirigi
Edward Said suggested the need to study “the bonds between texts and the world” as he probed the novel’s realistic affirmation and naturalization of particular “values, ideas, but not others” (The World….) In this course, we read the works of major African writers who have successfully navigated the bonds linking texts to Pascale Casanova’s “world literary space” in which what is judged “worthy of being considered literary is brought into existence” through affiliative networks where prestigious literary prizes play a major role. With five winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, at least two Neustadt Prize winners, and several Booker prizes, the “young” African literature has become “worldly.” We sample texts by first generation African authors whose works interrogated the Africa normalized in the European imagination before moving on to the later generation of African writers that comprises the New African Diaspora. Whereas European travel writing privileged the European “seeing eye” ala Mary Louise Pratt, the New African Diasporic Writing foregrounds the global mobilities of ‘the traveling African’ at home in multiple locations on the globe. We follow cultural transplants and transnational subjects who complicate locality. If diasporas are defined by contrapuntal pulls ala James Clifford, “living here but desiring or keeping alive the memories of another place,” we probe the ways the new writing normalizes intercultural identities and how its implied audiences shape the cartographies and aesthetics of the new “worldly” African writing. Works by the most prominent writers in the last fifty years and the relevant theory/literary history will be focal. Authors include Achebe, Adichie, Gordimer, Gurnah, Ngũgĩ, Selasi, and Soyinka.
Requirements
Attendance, presentations, final paper.
ENGL 575 | Issues in Second/Foreign Language Rhetoric and Composition
Teaching Second Language Writing
M 5:10-7:55 | Tanita Saenkhum
Teaching Second Language Writing introduces students to issues related to the teaching of second language writing in different institutional contexts and settings. We will explore the characteristics of diverse groups of second language students and their writing. We will also consider various instructional approaches and strategies, including course and assignment designs, reading-writing connections, teacher and peer response, grammar instruction, error treatment, classroom assessment, plagiarism and textual borrowing, text selection and material development, and online writing instruction. One of the major goals of the course is to develop students’ understanding of the nature of second language writing as well as various issues and concerns when working with second language writers.
Requirements
Weekly assignments (e.g., teaching context description, syllabus analysis & design, genre analysis, writing prompt, assessment rubric, peer response task, position statement on error correction), teaching philosophy, electronic-teaching portfolio (final drafts of weekly assignments), and attendance & participation.
ENGL 580 | Fiction Writing
T 5:10-7:55 | Margaret Dean
This course will explore the craft of fiction writing for serious practitioners. Stories and novel excerpts by students will be discussed in workshop throughout the semester, and written responses to workshopped pieces will be a significant part of the work of the course. Readings will include published fiction and craft essays; students will be responsible for presenting craft talks on specific aspects of fiction.
By permission of instructor only.
Requirements
Attendance, participation, writing fiction, workshopping, revision.
ENGL 581 | Colloquium in Poetry
Embodied Verse: Poetry and Somatics in Creative Practice
R 5:10-7:55 | Iliana Rocha
ENGL 581 will explore the intersection of poetry and somatics, investigating how the body’s internal wisdom, sensation, and movement can inform and transform the creative process. Through a combination of close reading, embodied poetic exercises, and generative writing, students will engage with contemporary and historical writers who center the body as a site of knowledge, memory, and creation. The course will also introduce somatic practices—such as breathwork, mindful movement, and sensory awareness—to deepen the connection between the physical self and the act of writing, which radically attunes us to the present moment. At critical time when the intellectual (the head) has been unproductively separated from the felt experience (the heart), the major objective of this class is repairing the fissure through poetry—the genre can serve as a medium processing complex embodied experiences that resist quantification and articulation. Readings by poets such as Audre Lorde, Ocean Vuong, CAConrad, and Bhanu Kapil are instrumental in the development of this course, but students will be responsible for assigning book-length poetry connections (as well as theoretical texts on somatics, phenomenology, and embodiment) while producing their own work considering the body as archive and text; embodied poetics and sensory imagination; intersections of identity, trauma, and healing; and the role of rhythm, breath, and movement in poetic form.
Requirements
Attendance, workshop, class leadership, final chapbook.
ENGL 585 | Issues in Rhetoric, Writing and Linguistics
MW 12:55-2:10 | Lisa King
As a survey of contemporary research in rhetoric, writing, and linguistics, this course will provide a broad foundation for studies in rhetoric, composition, and language as well as an overview of recent research and hot topics in these fields. The course will provide students with opportunities to do some exploratory work in areas such as classical rhetorics, various composition pedagogies, archival work, feminist rhetorics, critical pedagogy, genre theory, cultural rhetorics, visual and material rhetorics, technology in rhetoric/composition, and more.
Requirements
Required work for the course will include readings, participation in class discussion, discussion posts, a book review, research presentation, and seminar paper based on the presentation.
ENGL 590 | Topics in Critical Theory
Critical Race Theory
TR 2:30-3:45 | Katy Chiles
This course will survey the exciting subfield of critical theory that has come to be known as critical race theory. We will read some of the important, foundational work in critical race studies, and then we will focus on critical race scholarship from a number of different fields. Thus, the course will both introduce students to critical race theory broadly and demonstrate how this approach has contributed to the students’ own fields of interest. The course will also introduce students to the number of fantastic courses and scholars working in Critical Race Theory at UTK.
This course can count toward the Social Theory Graduate Certificate and the Africana Studies Graduate Certificate.
Requirements
Requirements include active participation, a presentation, informal writing assignments, and a formal paper.
ENGL 620 | Studies in Medieval English Literature
Literature, the Laity and Spirituality Late-Medieval England
TR 11:20-12:35 | Mary Dzon
In this course, we will explore Middle English literature that engages in vernacular theology, sampling a range of authors, including Richard Rolle, Geoffrey Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and John Capgrave. We will also cover several anonymous texts from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, such as Middle English lyrics, imaginative accounts of the otherworld, and treatises written to aid with gospel meditations. Areas of focus will include depictions of saints and sinners; connections between gender and emotions; and discourses concerning the roles of language and images within medieval piety. No previous background in medieval literature and language is presumed, though a willingness to read selections in Middle English is essential.
Requirements
Term paper, annotated bibliography, in-class presentations, and a few response papers
ENGL 630 | Studies in Renaissance Literature
Renaissance Impersonations
MW 12:55-2:10 | Heather Hirschfeld
This class will capitalize on the multivalent concept of “impersonation” to organize our study of the English Renaissance stage and its environs. We will focus on the ways in which the stage thematized, dramatized, and materialized residual and emergent ideas about character, personhood, subjectivity, and objectivity. In the process we will become familiar with the rich corpus of professional public drama that flourished on the stage between 1576 and 1642; we will also engage with primary and secondary sources that offer new methods and approaches to the study of theater history. Our reading list will include plays by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Middleton, Dekker, Jonson, and Brome.
Requirements
Two short assignments, one critical bibliography or bibliographical essay, and a final research paper and presentation.
ENGL 670 | Studies in 20th-Century Literature
Temporalities of Modernism
TR 9:45-11:00 | Lisi Schoenbach
This course will address the times of modernism—not just the historical period or its particular moment, but the meanings of time that were addressed, questioned, represented, and created by modernist works. We will explore some of modernism’s characteristic temporalities, including the pleasures of everyday life, the bittersweet pull of nostalgia, the radical break of the manifesto, the management and processing of trauma, the reconceptualizing of history, and the theory of prediction. We will think about time’s different scales, speeds, and affective meanings, and how modernism helped to shift our understanding of how time is lived, felt, and creatively expressed. Readings will be taken from Sebald, Joyce, Proust, Woolf, Barnes, Morrison, Isherwood, and Kafka.
Requirements
QA presentation, a seminar paper, additional informal writing assignments, and active participation.
ENGL 671 | Studies in 20th-Century Literature
Henry James in 2025
F 9:10-11:55 | Martin Griffin
Only a few years ago, the fiction of Henry James, born in New York City in 1843, was regarded as one of the peaks that a serious student of literature had to climb. Whether it was American realism, the rise of the international novel, or the history of Modernism, James was at the center of the project of literary study itself. Times and academic tastes have shifted, however, and now one can ask, what exactly is the status, and what is the significance of James’s work as we come to the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century?
Reading around the James canon, we will begin with some of his more famous short stories and novellas including “The Beast in the Jungle” and “The Turn of the Screw” proceeding to The Wings of the Dove, a major novel from his mature period after 1900 (and we will watch the 1997 movie adaptation of the same name); and conclude with his more urgent essays published at the beginning of World War I. We will also read Colm Tóibín’s 2004 novel The Master, an epic attempt by a contemporary author to project himself into the inner landscape of Henry James’s own somewhat enigmatic life as he faces both a creative and a personal crisis.
Requirements
Requirements will include a readiness to dive into James in 2025, a short response paper, and an final seminar paper of 16-20 pages including notes and bibliography.
ENGL 682 | Advanced Studies in Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics
The Discourse Based-Interview
F 12:30-3:15 | Jeff Ringer
This course focuses on the discourse-based interview (DBI) as a method of conducting qualitative research aimed at uncovering the often tacit knowledge that makes rhetorical action and written production possible (Baird & Dilger, 2022). It does so by inviting students to engage with methodological literature about the DBI and with empirical work that employs it. Students will read widely in qualitative research methods to understand the DBI’s epistemological assumptions and theoretical frameworks. Students will also explore adjacent methods and methodologies, including stimulated-recall interviews (Bloom 1954; DiPardo, 1994), think-aloud protocols (Perl, 1979), screencasting (Blythe & Gonzalez, 2016), and artifact-based interviews (Ammerman, 2021). Projects include a replication of Odell, Goswami, and Herrington’s (1983) original study and a seminar project wherein students will design and carry out a DBI-based project. As part of the seminar project, students will complete their CITI training and navigate the University’s Human Research Protection Program to submit an IRB proposal.
Requirements
Extensive reading and discussion; discussion boards; DBI replication study; original research seminar project
ENGL 688 | Studies in Literary Criticism
Drama, Theatre, Performance
TR 2:30-3:45 | Stan Garner
This course examines the intersecting fields of drama, theater, and performance theory, with special focus on developments within these fields during the last thirty years. After preliminary consideration of Plato, Aristotle, Bertolt Brecht, and Antonin Artaud, we will spend the rest of the semester considering current approaches and methodologies specific to the study of drama, theatre, and performance inside and outside the theatre. Topics will include: political theater; performance studies; gender and sexuality studies; disability studies; postcolonial and critical race theory; intercultural theater, cognitive approaches to performance, theater and new media. A core of required texts will be supplemented by readings available electronically. Although this course will prove particularly useful for students with primary or secondary interests in drama (of any period), it is also designed for students in other areas who are interested in exploring a variety of theoretical approaches to specific issues, texts, and mediums.
Requirements
Seminar paper, two presentations and handouts, attendance and participation.
ENGL 690 | Special Topics
Herman Melville
TR 12:55-2:10 | Dawn Coleman
This course explores the writings of Herman Melville (1819-1891), one of American literature’s most influential authors. We will examine how his writing spoke to the urgent topics of his own historical moment, especially slavery, and how it transcends that moment to address persistent modern problems, including white supremacy, ruthless capitalism, environmental destruction, religious disagreement and uncertainty, the fragility of democracy, and the function and value of art. Our goal is to develop a rich understanding of Melville’s varied writings and of the multidimensional critical conversation that has accrued around these texts. We will also attend to the many twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists and adaptors whom Melville has inspired. The course culminates in a final seminar paper that demonstrates your ability to make an original contribution to Melville-related scholarship.
Requirements
Active class participation, “questioner” contributions, enrichment presentation, close reading paper, abstract, annotated bibliography, three-page draft, final presentation, and final seminar paper.