Course Descriptions | Spring 2025
Course Descriptions | Spring 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
WC – Written Communication
Undergraduate Courses
ENGL 301 | Medieval and Renaissance Horror (AH) (GCI)
British Culture to 1660
MWF 12:40-1:30 | R.D. Perry
The past decade or so has witnessed a veritable renaissance in the genre of the horror movie. This class will use the recent horror renaissance in order to think about horror in a very different period: the premodern. We will ask where and of what horror consisted in the premodern world. If premodernity itself is understood as horrific by modernity, could it even experience horror as a distinguishable category of experience? Was horror just the appropriate reaction to everyday life or was it instead, as it is for us, a genre that encodes specific cultural concerns? In addition to watching several recent horror films, we will read works of medieval and early modern literature, roughly from Beowulf to Shakespeare, to think through how those writers and audiences understood what we think of as the defining aspects of horror.
Requirements
Attendance, two papers, and three tests.
ENGL 302 | Fugitive Spaces in British Literature (AH) (GCI)
British Culture 1660 to Present
MWF 9:10-10:00 | John Han
This course explores spaces in British literature that allow characters to escape authority, conventions, traditions, and even meaning itself. Thus, this course will examine the representation of such spaces as the underworld, the sewer, the alley, the street, the attic, the hill, etc, in order to examine how major philosophical movements, changes in cartography, and rapid technological advancements inflected the literary perception and representation of space in British literature 1660 to the Modern. We will read texts including Milton’s Paradise Lost, Pope’s Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad, Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness as well as poems and novellas that stage these spaces.
Requirements
Attendance, 2 papers, and final exam.
ENGL 332 | Men, Marriage, and Motherhood (AH) (GCUS)
Women in American Literature
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.
ENGL 333 | Black Belonging (on Dispossessed Indigenous Lands) (AH) (GCUS)
Black American Literature and Aesthetics
MWF 9:10-10:00 | DeLisa Hawkes
How have Black American authors unpacked Black belonging in their writings, and more specifically, how have they done so with attention to the US as a nation built on dispossessed Indigenous lands? This course will contemplate these questions through novels, poetry, and essays written by Black American authors.
Requirements
Attendance, active participation, pop quizzes, discussion board posts, two short essays, and a final paper.
ENGL 336 | Caribbean Polyrhythms (GCI)
Caribbean Literature
TR 2:30-3:45 | Gichingiri Ndigirigi
ENGL 336 focuses on contemporary Anglophone Caribbean literature’s deployment of anarchic aesthetics informed by the polyrhythms of Africa, Asia, Europe, and America. We study the works of the most prominent writers who push the boundaries of modernism, speculative fiction, life writing, and Western genre conventions more broadly. Discussion of Caribbean popular culture is integrated into the course to illuminate the ways Carnival and other festivals, popular genres like reggae, calypso, and soca animate the literature. By the end of the course, students should be able to competently analyze Caribbean texts using conventional literary tools—or explain aesthetic justifications for deviations from convention, comprehensively situate the texts in an emergent literary tradition, and explicate its larger contexts. Major authors include Kamau Brathwaite, George Lamming, Earl Lovelace, V.S. Naipaul, Jamaica Kincaid, Derek Walcott and Nalo Hopkinson.
Requirements
Attendance, two papers, mid-term and final exams.
ENGL 339 | Fantasy to Cyberspace (AH)
Children’s/Young Adult Literature
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).
ENGL 339 | Children’s/Young Adult Literature (AH)
Children’s Literature
TR 11:20-12:35 | 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 | Human Life in Space (AH)
Science Fiction and Fantasy
TR 4:05-5:20 | Amy Elias
Today space advocacy for orbital flight and space exploration, settlement, and colonization is debated across fields, from Elon Musk to Joon Yun; the Space Exploration Alliance was formed in 2004 to “advocate for the exploration and development of outer space” to members of the US Congress. But fiction has been exploring space since Lucian of Samosata’s A True History in the 2nd century CE and has always asked how space connects to human aspirations, human values, and human needs. This course looks at contemporary space travel fiction from modern allegory to hard SF to examine what space travel can mean to us as humans with AI, and what kinds of space worlds are built and why. The course may sync with Astronomy 490, which blends SF into its astronomy instruction, giving students the opportunity to work across fields and apply humanistic values concerning space travel, life in space, and world-building.
Requirements
Attendance, quizzes, midterm and final, course project.
ENGL 341 | Religion and Spirituality in American Literature (AH) (GCUS)
MWF 10:20-11:10 | Dawn Coleman
This course focuses on American fictions from 1945 to the present that draw on diverse religious and spiritual traditions to address the challenges of the modern world. Authors studied include luminaries such as Flannery O’Connor, Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin, Leslie Marmon Silko, Philip Roth, and Lydia Millet, considered with respect to relevant traditions such as Christianity, Daoism, Native American spirituality, Judaism, and secular spirituality. No prior knowledge of religion or spirituality is necessary.
Requirements
Attendance, active class participation, reflection assignments, two take-home midterms, a 5-page essay, and a take-home final exam.
ENGL 342 | Literature and Medicine (AH)
MW 10:20-11:10, F Online Asynchronous | Stan Garner
This popular course examines literary representations of illness, medical care, and biotechnology through the study of fiction, drama, poetry, essays, nonfiction, and film. It asks the following questions: How have writers represented and given meaning to illness and health? How are these states and experiences invested with social meanings? How has literature clarified the stakes of biomedical ethical debates? Finally, how have writers responded to pandemics and other public health crises throughout history? This course will be valuable to English majors, students contemplating careers in medicine and health, and students with other plans who are interested in the human body and the stories we tell about it.
Note: May be taken for Honors-by-Contract.
Requirements
Two papers, weekly Spotlight worksheets, participation in online discussions, midterm and final exams.
ENGL 345 | Graphic Novel and Comics (AH)
TR 11:20-12:35 | Laura Hoffer
Is there a difference between comics and the form (not genre) known as the graphic novel? If so, what is that difference? Using Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics as a springboard, this course offers students the opportunity to investigate the comics form and its appearance in various graphic novels. The class will cover the coining of the term “graphic novel” in 1964 and explore a variety of texts that engage topics such as race, gender, LGBTQ+ rights, disability, and, of course, superheroes, including Watchmen, Fun Home, and The Black Panther Party.
Requirements
Close reading exercises; critical analysis essays; quizzes; two exams; presentation.
ENGL 351 | The Short Story
TR 2:30-3:45 | Doug McKinstry
Students will read short stories spanning the life of the genre. American and British authors will be a primary focus, but five or six continents will be represented. Slight emphasis may be on mystery and sci-fi/fantasy genres. Course requirements will be three open-book tests, two short papers, a journal, and a brief oral report. Class meetings will feature lecture and discussion, small-group activity, a few exercises in creative writing, one or two viewings of film adaptation.
Requirements
Graded class requirements will be three open-book tests, two short papers, a journal, a brief oral report.
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.
ENGL 355 | Rhetoric and Writing (WC)
MWF 12:40-1:30 | Hooman Saeli
This course provides students with a foundation in the theory of rhetoric, writing, and genre. Through readings, class discussions, student-led presentations, and major writing projects, the course explores contemporary theories of rhetoric and their relationships to writing and, subsequently, develops students’ discipline-specific knowledge of rhetoric and writing skills. We will consider ways in which rhetorical situations contribute to evidence-based, genre-specific, audience-focused, organized, and well-established arguments. Specifically, we will closely examine how writers construct their identities, engage audiences, and move readers to action through shared/conflict values. Major writing projects will involve students analyzing published writing from various critical perspectives as well as producing a variety of genres for rhetorical ends.
Requirements
3 group presentations, 4 HW assignments, 3 writing projects.
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
Weekly readings, videos, quizzes, worksheets and discussions; tech writing projects.
ENGL 360 | Technical and Professional Writing (WC)
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.
ENGL 360 | AI & Nuclear/Digital Security (WC)
Technical and Professional Writing
MWF 11:20-12:35 | 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 should a Cylon attack become eminent. 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 360 | Let’s Build a Campus on Mars (WC)
Technical and Professional Writing
TR 9:45-11:00 | Jeff Ringer
This is a hybrid course that requires in-person attendance for two 50-minute class sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Students will be required to complete extensive asynchronous reading, writing, and other activities outside of class.
Congratulations on being named to the University of Tennessee’s taskforce for the Interplanetary Campus on Mars initiative! As a member of the ICoM taskforce, you’ll have the opportunity to provide guidance to the UT community concerning the development of UT’s first interplanetary campus. Those issues range from questions about basic human survival and logistics to questions about how students might thrive on Mars. You’ll provide guidance to interested parties by researching and writing a variety of genres, such as feasibility reports, proposals, definitions, instructions, public service announcements, procedures, and policies. Working in smaller teams, you’ll keep the taskforce leader apprised of your progress via regular memos, emails, and progress reports. Resources will include the novel and movie forms of “The Martian”, NASA’s extensive website, and episodes from streaming series like “Away.”
Requirements
Extensive writing, including emails, reports, memos, definitions, and instructions, capped off with a collaboratively-written recommendation report or handbook for ICoM
ENGL 363 | Writing Poetry (AAH) (EI)
MWF 12:40-1:30 | 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 response to the world.
Requirements
Attendance, discussion board posts, in-class discussion, poetry workshop.
ENGL 363 | Writing Poetry (AAH) (EI)
TR 9:45-11:00 | Jose Hernandez Diaz
This class is for students interested in writing poetry and working with generative prompts. We will have close readings and discussions on contemporary poetry masters like Diane Seuss, Eduardo C. Corral, Joy Harjo, Ada Limón, Alberto Rios, Dean Young and Claudia Rankine. We will study a range of contemporary poetry forms and styles including odes, prose poetry, and haiku. In addition to the close readings and discussion, students will work with generative prompts crafted by the instructor. One-on-one feedback will be provided by the instructor. Feedback will consist of attention to line break, form, voice, style, and other elements of poetry.
Requirements
Attendance, participation in discussions, two papers, creative portfolio.
ENGL 364 | Writing Fiction (AAH) (EI)
MWF 9:10-10:00 | Elizabeth Gentry
This class invites students to learn the craft of short fiction with the goal of becoming better readers and writers of fiction. We will analyze the core elements of published short stories, practice our own writing through low-stakes exercises, produce a short story to share with the class, and revise the story based upon peer and instructor feedback.
Requirements
Attendance, participation, writing exercises, peer reviews, original story, revision.
ENGL 364 | Writing Fiction (AHH) (EI)
TR 2:30-3:45 | Sarah Harshbarger
In this section of English 364 we will use the short story to explore lots of aspects of reading and writing fiction. We will spend the first half of the semester reading published stories paired with craft readings and discussing concepts such as character, setting, conflict, and plot, and we will spend the second half of the semester workshopping short stories of our own. You will write and submit two major drafts of a short story, and you will submit those drafts along with Writer’s Notes at the midterm and final. While I don’t expect you to be one hundred percent done with your story (are we ever?) by the end of the semester, I do expect you to move through all of the stages of the writing process with it, including drafting, workshopping, conferencing, and revising. These steps, from reading about craft through the final draft of your story, are meant to help you grow as reader and writer.
Requirements
Attendance, participation, discussions, two story drafts, and peer feedback.
ENGL 365 | Writing the Screenplay (AAH) (EI)
TR 11:20-12:35| 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, creating mood and atmosphere, the development of theme 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
Attendance, class participation, writing exercises, writing a screenplay.
ENGL 365 | Writing the Screenplay (AAH) (EI)
MWF 12:40-1:30 | Emily Moeck
In this class we will examine and practice the art of screenwriting. We will interrogate story and cinematic structure—through reading full-length scripts and, occasionally, watching the films produced from those scripts—in an attempt to understand what makes screenwriting different from other creative writings, and, more generally, what makes film different from other narrative arts. Through this work, and the practice and analysis of our own writings, we will consider character development, tension, structure, visual storytelling, and other craft and narrative techniques and concerns. By the end of the semester, you should have a foundational understanding of what makes a high quality screenplay, the craft choices screenwriters use in creating stories for film, and the developed the materials to complete a feature-length screenplay of your own.
Requirements
Creative Drafts, Reading Responses, Attendance, Participation, Peer Feedback, Final Portfolio.
ENGL 369 | Writing Creative Nonfiction (AAH) (EI)
TR 12:55-2:10 | Gabriel Reed
“Creative nonfiction” texts describe factual experiences and situations through creative techniques found in both poetry and prose. This course will survey the formal and historical development of creative nonfiction, with example essays charting its evolution from Montaigne to the present, and will include thorough creative experimentation in the genre, with an emphasis on reading responses and workshops.
Requirements
Short exercises; two longer essays (memoir or personal story and a travel essay); peer workshops; responses to classmates’ drafts; a final portfolio with one revised essay.
ENGL 369 | Writing Creative Nonfiction (AAH) (EI)
Online Asynchronous (Distance Learning Only) | Margaret Dean
The term “creative nonfiction” refers to essays that are grounded in fact but use tactics of creative writing to achieve their purposes. These creative tactics can include description, scenes, dialogue, and most importantly, a strong sense of voice. Units will include the history of creative nonfiction as a genre and the ethics of truth and lies in creative nonfiction.
Requirements
Students will write one full-length essay, multiple short assignments, and many responses to peer essays and published work.
ENGL 371 | How English Became English (GCI)
Foundations of the English Language
MWF 11:30-12:20 | Roy Liuzza
This course will examine English language and culture through the first half of its 1500-year history. The class begins with some basic concepts about language and language change, including phonology (where sounds come from and how they are made), orthography (how language is represented visually), morphology (how words are formed), syntax (how words are put together) and semantics (how words mean). From there we will move to the prehistory of English, including the Indo-European language family and its reconstruction, and then chronologically forward through Old English (before 1100), Middle English (12th-15th centuries), and Early Modern English (16th-18th centuries). Along the way we will explore a number of ideas about language – the notion of linguistic correctness, the construction of standard and non-standard English, ‘literary’ language, simplified or plain language, pidgins and creoles, lexicons and dictionaries, and issues of language contact, change, and variation.
Requirements
Attendance, participation, quizzes and take-home exercises, midterm and final exams, research project.
ENGL 372 | The Structure of Modern English
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 WH assignments, 2 writing projects, 3 group presentations, 2 exams, 1 final presentation.
ENGL 376 | How to Get Lit (WC)
Colloquium in Literature
TR 8:10-9:25 | Tom Haddox
What is literature? What does it include and exclude? Why bother reading it? Why study it, as opposed to just reading it for pleasure? What things does it provide that other kinds of writing do not? How do you look for these things in literature, and how do you know when you’ve found them? Finally, how do you talk to people who can’t, or won’t, “get lit”? These are a few of the fundamental questions that we’ll consider and debate, as we develop our skills in close reading and argumentative writing. English 376 fulfills the WC Volcore requirement. It is also a required course for English majors in the Literature concentration.
Requirements
Attendance, active participation in class discussion, four reading journal entries, two exams, two longer papers.
ENGL 381 | Early American Material Culture (AH)
American Tales, Songs, and Material Culture: An Introduction to Folklore
TR 12:55-2:10 | Marie Taylor
Like Madonna, Early Americans were “living in a material world.” Storytelling, communication, and other linguistic interactions were shaped not only by intellectual and imaginative aims, but by the physical world as well. Drawing upon developments in New Materialism, this course will investigate the role that bodies, objects, and the natural world played in textual production in North America before 1800. We will think not only about the material practices required to facilitate book production, but also about the materials and practices that facilitated craft, trade, diplomacy, entertainment, and religion. As part of the course, we will make extensive use of UT’s resources including the Hodges Library Archives, the McClung Museum, and UT’s Makerspace.
Requirements
Attendance, papers, discussion boards, and final project.
ENGL 389 | Literature of the English Bible (AH)
MWF 11:30-12:20 | Randi Marie Addicott
Aside from its position as the sacred text of a major world religion, the Bible is also a text with a wide variety genres including but not limited to poetry, folktales, ritual, and narratives ranging from apocalyptic to biographical. Analysis of those forms can reveal much about the culture that surrounded those genres; further, looking at different translations can demonstrate how later cultures shifted those narratives. Therefore, our perspective will not be theological or devotional but historical and analytical. Class readings will draw on both the Hebrew and Christian Testaments as well as secondary materials.
Requirements
Attendance, annotated bibliography, two papers, journals, midterm and final exams.
ENGL 406 | Cultures of the Stage (EI)
Shakespeare’s Contemporaries I: Renaissance Drama
TR 11:20-12:35 | Heather Hirschfeld
This class picks up where Shakespeare classes leave off: with the provocative, rich, sometimes decadent plays written by the dramatists (Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Webster and Elizabeth Cary) whose work was essential to the flourishing of English Renaissance stage. The course introduces students a variety of playwrights and plays of the early modern period and the continuity of their themes and conventions. We focus on the development of London as a theatrical community, paying special attention to the emotional effects of playing and to the representation of the kinds of political, social, and economic issues that still concern us today. Our goal is to understand the early modern theater as a total enterprise–as an entertainment industry and culture that involved more than just words on the page.
Requirements
Short response papers; one biographical essay; one exam; one final research paper.
ENGL 410 | Bodies and Souls in Early Modern Poetry
Donne, Milton, and Their Contemporaries
TR 2:30-3:45 | Anthony Welch
Aristocrats kissing trees; lovers dissected on autopsy tables; petticoat fetishes; angels firing heavy artillery. This course explores the poetry of seventeenth-century Britain, from John Donne’s racy love poems to John Milton’s astonishing religious epic, Paradise Lost. We will study a wide range of poets, including Herbert, Jonson, Lanyer, Herrick, and Marvell, and the critical debates that have sprung up around them. For all its beauty and polish, their poetry took shape in an age of violent social upheaval. We will read their writings against the backdrop of the scientific revolution, religious conflict, gender debate, and a bloody civil war. A central theme will be the tangled relationship between flesh and spirit, between the worldly and the divine, that endlessly perplexed the early modern imagination.
Requirements
Active participation, weekly discussion board posts, two essays, and one exam.
ENGL 414 | The Romantics
TR 11:20-12:35 | Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud
The British Romantics (1789-1820s) lived through many social upheavals, resulting in the modern freedoms and divides that define us today: the rise of democracy, activism, mass media, feminism, individualism, alienation, sexual nonconformity, commercialization, industrialization, technological advances, and class conflict, to name a few. In this class we’ll examine how the Romantics felt about these changes, mostly through the poetry for which they remain famous. We’ll read poems by Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth, among others, as well as a representative novel from the period.
Requirements
Two papers, a letterpress poster, weekly discussion posts, and online quizzes.
ENGL 422 | Medieval Women’s Literary Culture
Women Writers in Britain
TR 2:30-3:45 | Mary Dzon
This course seeks to examine the strategies that medieval women employed to legitimate their authority to speak and write, and the types of texts they used as ways to express themselves, develop their talents, and pursue their interests. We will attempt to reimagine the cultural settings in which medieval women lived, made use of books, and produced their texts. Some of the issues we will consider include: the states of life and activities available to medieval women, the link between sexual status and female authority, the permeability of gender, the portrayal of female non-conformity, the dissemination of women’s writings within medieval textual communities, and the fate of medieval women’s writings within modern literary and historical studies. Works to be studied include the poetry of Marie de France, the letters of Heloïse, The Book of Margery Kempe, The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan, and the Lives of female saints.
Requirements
Besides doing a handful of Discussion Board posts on our weekly readings, students will take a midterm, do a presentation, and write a short essay, in preparation for which they will construct an annotated bibliography. Students may also produce a creative comparative work, if they prefer.
ENGL 431 | Families, Kinship, and Belonging
Early American Literature
TR 9:45-11:00 | Marie Taylor
In Early America the concept of family central to communal identity though family was not limited to genetic relations. For early Puritans, family included like minded Christians, like wise, for Indigenous people, one’s kinship ties determined how one lived one’s life. In this course, we will explore Early American texts through the lens of family by deterring how the concept of family is changing in this time period. We will explore questions such as what does it mean to be part of a family? Who is allowed to join a family? What does it mean to be kicked out of a family? How are family politics intertwined with power, status, and control? Among the texts will be Olaudauh Equino’s An Interesting Narrative, Susana Rowson’s Charlotte Temple, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, and William Apess’ A Son of the Forest.
Requirements
Attendance, short papers, final project.
ENGL 436 | Reading History, Race, and the Mind of the Writer
Modern American Novel
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 historical, racial, and political themes and stylistic elements. The class will identify, compare, and contrast the driving historical and aesthetic forces at work in and between these selected works.
Requirements
Attendance, two papers, and quizzes.
ENGL 439 | Gender and Sexuality in African American Cinema
Race and Ethnicity in American Cinema
MF 12:40-1:30, W 12:40-2:40 | Dionte Harris
This seminar is dedicated to examining gender and sexuality in African American film. We will use film (and television) as our primary medium to focus in on debates in Black studies, women, gender, and sexuality studies, and film and cultural studies, outlining and probing the most generative currents of these schools of thought. We will consider how the filmmakers, producers, and artists studied employ race, gender, and sexuality as a medium for social critique and artistic innovation in the Black social imaginary.
Requirements
Active attendance, quizzes, response posts, short presentation, analysis paper, research abstract, annotated bibliography, and research paper.
ENGL 443 | Early Black Writing Now: The Antebellum Black Atlantic (EI)
Topics in Black Literature
TR 11:20-12:35 | Katy Chiles
Why does the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century African slave trade continue to impact contemporary American literature and culture? How did early African-Americans describe the slave trade and life in the Americas? This course will begin to answer these questions and more. We will consider how texts written by black authors are part of what we call the “Black Atlantic”: a transnational cultural space produced by travel across the Atlantic Ocean—to and from Africa, the Caribbean, the United States, and Great Britain. We will examine how these writings explore the “impossible” place of many of these writers who, although living in a certain country, were not considered “citizens” before the law. From the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, texts might include first-person narratives by Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, and Frederick Douglass; Phillis Wheatley’s poetry; and Martin Delany’s Blake.
Requirements
Active participation, a presentation, informal writing assignments, a close reading paper, an annotated bibliography and abstract, and a final paper.
ENGL 444 | Appalachian Literature and Culture
MWF 12:40-1:30| Bill Hardwig
This class will investigate the complex history of the Appalachian region. By tracing key traditions and events in Appalachian history, literature and arts, we will examine the various ways in which Appalachia was understood and described (from within and from without). This class is interdisciplinary in design, and we will approach our topics by looking at literature, history, photography, music, and popular culture. Along the way, we will unearth the heterogeneity (of people, ethnicities, opinions, and communities) in the region commonly known as Appalachia.
Requirements
Two papers, 3 exams, micro-essays.
ENGL 452 | Staging the Modern World (EI)
Modern Drama
TR 9:45-11:00 | Stan Garner
This course will explore the development of modern drama from the realist revolution of the late nineteenth century through the Second World War. In addition to studying important playwrights and plays, we will consider a range of issues that characterize this, one of the greatest and most daring periods of dramatic art. Because plays are designed for the stage as well as the armchair, we will also consider the challenges and opportunities involved in reading dramatic texts. By seeing clips of videotape productions and by attending to the performance dimensions of individual plays, we will cultivate the art of “theatrical” reading. We will read and discuss plays by the following playwrights: Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Yeats, Gregory, Synge, O’Neill, Glaspell, Treadwell, Pirandello, Brecht, Williams, Garro, and dramatists of the French Avant-garde and the Harlem Renaissance.
Requirements
Paper, resource portfolio, ten blog entries, live production worksheet, midterm and final exam, attendance and participation.
ENGL 454 | International Modernism and Its Legacies
20th-Century International Novel
TR 9:45-11:00 | Lisi Schoenbach
In this class, we will consider a diverse group of twentieth-century authors and their international locations, following the walking routes of characters through urban, rural, and sometimes imaginary spaces. We will ask ourselves what it would mean to have a truly “international” literary movement. In answering this question, we will consider how and why questions of national identity, home and exile, center and periphery, movement and migration, exoticism and regionalism figure 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 may include works by Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Nella Larsen, Teju Cole, Elena Ferrante, Christopher Isherwood, W.G. Sebald, and China Miéville.
Requirements
A short essay, a final essay, short writing assignments and active participation.
ENGL 456 | American Empire Fictions
Contemporary Fiction and Narrative
TR 11:20-12:35 | Tom Haddox
In this course, we’ll read six acclaimed novels written by American writers and published during the Cold War (1945-1989), the period when many would argue that the United States in fact became an empire. We’ll read Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, John A. Williams’s The Man Who Cried I Am, Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, and Don DeLillo’s White Noise. We’ll use these novels to consider just how the Cold War changed—for better and for worse—just how Americans related to each other and to the rest of the world, and how they thought of their history and their individual identities.
Requirements
Attendance, active class participation, reading journal entries and in-class writing, two exams, final paper.
ENGL 460 | Technical Editing
Online Asynchronous | Sean Morey
The focus of English 460 is writing and editing for the world of work: government, industry, science, technology, and business. It offers theory, practice, and evaluation of editing skills, as well as orientation to careers and concerns in technical/professional communication. Though it focuses on the skills necessary to intelligently edit the text of documents, this course embraces a larger range of editing considerations, such as organization, layout, and visuals. For this semester, we will consider how generative AI affects the profession of technical editing and experiment with editing technical documents produced by gen-AI.
Requirements
Two major editing projects, smaller scaffolded editing assignments, discussion posts, and attendance; a contract grading will be used for assessment.
ENGL 463 | Advanced Poetry Writing (EI)
TR 4:05-5:20 | Cornelius Eady
This course is a generative workshop. Poets write, Poets read. These two statements will be the emphasis of this course. You will be doing three main things here: 1) weekly writing and revising your own work (including exercises and prompts), 2) Doing close reading of the poems assigned. 3) Interviewing visiting poets about craft. In this course, you will not only get a general sense of the craft of poetry, but how, though live interviews, it is put to use by working, contemporary poets. Your workshop drafts will not be graded. Your final will. The “final” in this workshop will be a chapbook of 8-10 of your best poems written and revised over the semester, with a short, (two page min) introduction written in the third person by the author, due the last day of our exam week, along with a portfolio, set up on Canvas of all your prompts, and any re-writes you made during the semester, again, either posted on Canvas, or sent to me via e-mail as a PDF. The chapbook must include a cover, cover art, a title page, and a table of contents. If the student prefers, the chapbook can include media. The chapbook can be more than 10 poems, but it cannot be less than 8. Again-8-10 POEMS is the goal. 4 poems that make up 8 -10 PAGES is only 4 poems and will be marked down. Students who have taken my class before will write an introduction that compares the work of their earlier chapbook to the one they wrote now.
Requirements
Attendance and participation: 10% Exercises and prompts: 25% Author interviews: 20% Chapbook (8-12 pages) 45%.
ENGL 464 | Advanced Fiction Writing (EI)
TR 4:05-5:20 | Michael Knight
This course is designed as a continuation of ENG 364. We will be focused on workshopping your original novels and short stories with the goal of applying the lessons of craft learned in 364 and enhancing your knowledge of style and technique through the workshop experience.
Requirements
Attendance, class participation, writing and revising fiction.
ENGL 469 | The Art of Memoir
Advanced Creative Nonfiction Writing
W 5:10-7:55 | Margaret Dean
This course will explore the scope of contemporary creative nonfiction and support writers in the creation of a suite of essays or other major creative nonfiction project. Wide readings within the genre will give us a grounding and frame of reference; students will read contemporary essays, submit a substantial collection of work (including revision), and participate in workshops of student essays (including written feedback for each workshop). To some extent this course will build on the work of English 369 (Writing Creative Nonfiction), but 369 is not a prerequisite, and writers new to the genre are welcome.
Requirements
Attendance, extensive writing assignments (including revision), written workshop notes.
ENGL 474 | Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language
MWF 11:30-12:20 | Tanita Saenkhum
This course provides an introduction to some of the major basic theories, key concepts, and issues surrounding teaching English as a second/foreign language in different contexts and settings. We will consider various topics related to English language teaching, including first and second language acquisition, learner variables in language learning, and traditional and innovative approaches to language teaching. Through readings, class discussions, and assignments (e.g., teaching observation and teaching demonstration), students will be able to design English language lessons that address the learner needs and institutional context, among others. The course aims to develop students’ knowledge about English language teaching and to prepare them to work with linguistically and culturally diverse English language learners.
Requirements
Class participation, weekly discussion questions, a teaching observation report, a teaching demonstration, and a final project.
ENGL 476 | Second Language Acquisition
MWF 9:10-10:00 | Rima Elabdali
This is a hybrid course that requires in-person attendance on Wednesdays and Fridays. On Monday, students will be required to complete asynchronous readings, writing, and discussions outside of class as well as attend individual conferences with the course instructor
This course introduces students to the field of second language acquisition (SLA) or, in other words, the learning of more than one language. The course provides students with a broad overview of theoretical underpinnings, empirical research, and the history of the field. The main purpose of the course is to help students attain basic SLA literacy. Through readings, discussions, and assignments, we will explore cognitive, linguistic, sociocultural, and critical perspectives on second language acquisition, examine typical language learning processes and outcomes, and consider how cognitive factors (e.g., age, aptitude) and dimensions of human difference (e.g., race, socioeconomic status) affect these processes and outcomes.
Requirements
Attendance + participation, class discussions, and a research project (e.g., topic pitch, annotated bibliography, research proposal, first draft, oral presentation, final draft).
ENGL 477 | Pedagogical Grammar for ESL Teachers
MWF 10:20-11:10 | 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 feedback, among others. The course will also offer cover materials development, task design, and classroom 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
Class participation, a “current events related to grammar” presentation, a grammar-focused communication task design, and a final project.
ENGL 480 | Fairy Tales
Fairy Tale, Legend, and Myth: Folk Narrative
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 | Nabokov’s Novels and Stories
Major Authors
TR 9:45-11:10 | Stephen Blackwell
Nabokov is famous for writing some of the most beautiful prose of the 20th century, as well as some of its most beguiling novels. In this course, we will examine how Nabokov’s literary art confronts the ethical implications of existence and, especially, of the use of language. What responsibilities does one take on when one decides to engage with others, or to address or describe them with language? How does the desire to create beauty or art relate to other facets of human desire—for power, love, control, physical gratification, wealth, fame? How does the creation of art bring into focus some of the major ethical concerns of life? In this course we will explore these and other questions posed by Nabokov’s rich and diverse literary output
Requirements
Three 1,000-word essays, one 2,500-word essays, attendance, quizzes, an annotated bibliography of around 10 scholarly articles or chapters.
ENGL 482 | Henry James in 2025
Major Authors
TR 2:30-3:45 | 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 take in a few of his more famous short stories and novellas including “The Beast in the Jungle” and “The Turn of the Screw,” a couple of longer novels such as The Wings of the Dove (and watch the 1997 movie adaptation of the same name), and some of 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 couple of shorter response papers, an in-class mid-term, and a final take-home paper on a research topic reflecting the student’s own interests.
ENGL 483 | Philosophies of Modernism
Special Topics in Literature
TR 12:55-2:10 | Lisi Schoenbach
This course will examine the ongoing conversations between modernist authors and the philosophical thinkers who influenced them and were influenced by them. Authors such as Woolf, Joyce, Proust, and Stein have long been recognized for their aesthetic and formal experiments, their revolutions in style and genre. However, modernist authors not only rethought the novel, the play, and the lyric poem; building on the revolutionary ideas of their moment they also reimaged philosophical problems, including induction, consciousness, perception, memory, time, and identity. We will explore these shared preoccupations in the work of authors including Gertrude Stein, Henry James, William James, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, Henri Bergson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Mann, John Dewey, Jean Toomer, Max Weber, and W.E.B. Du Bois.
Requirements
Requirements include: active class participation, research presentation, short response papers, final paper.
ENGL 484 | The Art of Prose Poetry
Special Topics in Writing
TR 2:30-3:45 | Jose Hernandez Diaz
This class is for students interested in exploring prose poetry and working with generative prompts. We will have close readings and discussions on prose poetry masters like Charles Baudelaire, Marosa di Giorgio, Ada Limón, James Tate, and Claudia Rankine. We will study a range of prose poetry styles including fabulism, surrealism, and realism. In addition to the close readings and discussion, students will work with generative prompts crafted by the instructor. One-on-one feedback will be provided by the instructor. Feedback will consist of attention to voice, style, persona, and other elements of prose poetry. We will read and discuss an influential essay by Pulitzer winner, Charles Simic, on the subversive nature of prose poetry.
Requirements
Attendance, two papers, creative portfolio.
ENGL 485 | Doing Things with Words
Special Topics in Language
TR 4:05-5:20 | Thorsten Huth
This course investigates how language use creates meaning. The premise is that using language is not just “saying” something, but that “saying” serves the overall purpose of achieving specific actions. In conversation or on the phone, in group chats, memos, or emails: How do we know what people mean based on what they say? Words can achieve countless actions: We greet, we compliment, we invite, and we request things from others. Furthermore, we greet back, respond to compliments, and decide whether to accept an invitation or to decline a request. To achieve and recognize these actions, understanding words alone is not sufficient. Words always interact with a host of contextual resources that are highly systematic while varying across cultural and linguistic lines. Drawing primarily from research in linguistic pragmatics and interactional linguistics, participants in this course explore the nature of meaning and learn to unpack the basic architecture of talk.
Requirements
Attendance, response papers, research project.
ENGL 489 | Film Genre/Film Noir
Special Topics in Film
MF 10:20-11:10, W 10:20-12:20 | Eleni Palis
This course considers the classical period of film noir and the enduring legacy of neo-noir in contemporary American cinema. Film noir is a French term retrospectively applied to a wave of dark, brooding mystery and crime thrillers produced during and after World War II. This course will echo the retrospective gaze of the neo-noir itself, considering classic noir from the 1940s and 1950s alongside neo-noir films of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. What can this popular film genre tell us about Hollywood’s representation of crime and punishment, gender and sexuality, heroism and anti-heroism, race and ethnicity—especially as it has been adapted, revised, and reanimated by neo-noir? The importance of setting, lighting, cinematography, and montage to the creation of shadowy noir world will allow us to sharpen close viewing skills. As we consider films that revise the classical noir representations of gender and sexuality, students will be able to pursue their own research on film genre formation, generic revision and fusion, and onscreen representations of crime, sexuality, gender, and race.
Requirements
Grades are determined by attendance, weekly discussion posts, a scene analysis or video essay, and a final research project.
ENGL 493 | The Big Ears Festival
Independent Study
MWF 12:40-1:30 | Urmila Seshagiri
NEW COURSE! Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival is an eclectic, brilliant, and inspiring gathering of musicians and performing artists from around the world. Now in its 12th year, Big Ears takes place in downtown Knoxville and offers festival-goers 200 concerts, workshops, film screenings, poetry readings, and other performances by artists ranging from Esperanza Spalding, Meshell Ndegeocello, Bela Fleck, Rufus Wainwright, Zakir Hussain, Yo La Tengo, and Taj Mahal. Intimate solo concerts, bands in large venues, open-air jam sessions on Market Square, talks by scholars of jazz history: Big Ears is an immersive celebration of art, language, music, and creative collaboration. This course will take a deep dive into the careers of diverse 2025 Big Ears artists prior to the March 27-30 Festival; we will spend 4 days attending performances at Big Ears; students will then give presentations about artists of their choosing. Thanks to a generous donation from the Big Ears Festival, each enrolled student will receive a free pass to the Festival (a $400 value). Students are responsible for their own transport to downtown Knoxville for Festival events and must be available to attend concerts on all four days of the Festival, Thursday-Sunday, March 27-30, in addition to the once-weekly class session during the semester. Enrollment for this course is by application; please fill out this Google Form by Oct. 25.
Requirements
All students MUST commit to attending all four days of Big Ears 2025 (March 27-30) and attending a MINIMUM of 12 events. Required work: 3 short response papers, Playlist Project, final presentation..
ENGL 494 | Cultural Rhetorics (EI) (GCUS) (WC)
TR 12:55-2:10 | Lisa King
This course endeavors to think of rhetorics – all rhetorics – as culturally situated. In this class, we will be reading about and examining rhetorics of race, ethnicity, cultures, gender, sexuality, class, abilities, etc. to understand rhetoric’s relationship to these constructions and how they intersect and relate to one another. We will explore categories of writing, texts, digital rhetorics, performance, popular culture, material rhetorics, visual rhetorics, and more. Our reading will cast a broad net, and provide you with opportunities to both expand rhetorical and cultural knowledge and dig into a rhetorical phenomenon of your choice for further research.
Required Texts and Materials:
- Burgett’s Keywords for American Cultural Studies, 3rd edition, ISBN 978-0-8147-0801-9
- Access to a computer, the internet, and Canvas to access posted course materials
Requirements
Coursework will include class discussion, reading, regular discussion posts, three written projects (two with presentation components), and a final portfolio
ENGL 499 | Careers for English Majors
Online Asynchronous (1st Session) | Daniel Wallace
English majors bring strong writing, analytic, and communication skills to today’s job market. But translating what they studied in the English classroom into the language of careers and employment can be a tricky task.
This fully-online, asynchronous 1-credit class will help students understand how to approach jobs in diverse fields, market their skills through compelling application materials, and learn how to take the initiative in their job-seeking and career development. The interactive course will include opportunities for feedback, questions, and discussion. At the end of the course, students will have prepared various materials for the job market (resume, job letters, narratives)
Graduate Courses
ENGL 505 | Composition Pedagogy
TR 2:30-3:45 | Lisa King
English 505, Teaching First Year Composition, provides students with a foundation in the theory and practice of teaching writing. The class will offer regular opportunities to engage with key scholarship about writing instruction and to participate in hands-on, problem-oriented learning. We will read widely about various aspects of writing pedagogy, grapple with ways to apply our knowledge in the classroom, and hone our abilities to investigate teaching challenges. Students will leave 505 with a general understanding of contemporary writing pedagogy and rhetorical theory, particularly as it applies to UTK’s first-year composition program. Students will also have the opportunity to craft their thinking about teaching writing into a teaching philosophy, a genre that benefits students on the job market.
Requirements
Requirements include extensive reading and discussion, weekly responses or mini projects, a teaching philosophy, and a teaching portfolio.
ENGL 505 | Composition Pedagogy
TR 12:55-2:10 | Jeff Ringer
English 505, Teaching First Year Composition, provides students with a foundation in the theory and practice of teaching writing. The class will offer regular opportunities to engage with key scholarship about writing instruction and to participate in hands-on, problem-oriented learning. We will read widely about various aspects of writing pedagogy, grapple with ways to apply our knowledge in the classroom, and hone our abilities to investigate teaching challenges. Students will leave 505 with a general understanding of contemporary writing pedagogy and rhetorical theory, particularly as it applies to UTK’s first-year composition program. Students will also have the opportunity to craft their thinking about teaching writing into a teaching philosophy, a genre that benefits students on the job market.
Requirements
Requirements include extensive reading and discussion, weekly responses or mini projects, a teaching philosophy, and a teaching portfolio.
ENGL 513 | Medieval Horror
Readings in Medieval Literature
MW 2:30-3:45 | R.D. Perry
What does the genre of horror look like in the Middle Ages? For most scholars, the answer to this question has been simple: it doesn’t look like anything because medieval horror does not exist. This class will challenge that assumption by exploring those medieval works that contain aspects that we can recognize as related to horror, if not as a genre than as a mode, a series of formal strategies meant to produce fear. We’ll trace a roughly chronological order, moving from Old English through some prominent works in other languages and into late Middle English. We will also consider a variety of general medieval forms—lyric, epic, romance, and drama—all while covering works by some of the most beloved and famous medieval authors and works—Geoffrey Chaucer, Dante, Marie de France, the Old English Elegies, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, amongst others.
Requirements
Attendance, two shorter papers, and one longer paper.
ENGL 531 | Performing the Global Eighteenth-Century
Readings in English Literature of the Restoration and 18th-Century
TR 9:45-11:00 | Misty Anderson
This course focuses on the production of modern gender, sexuality, and race in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century drama. While the development of the novel cultivated discourses of interiority, the stage attended to the complex “surface” of the self, where we perform gender, act out class, and embody national identity. These scripts of identity form as an extractive global economy that depends on chattels slavery takes its modern shape as well. We will use short examples from relevant poems, essays, and fiction to provide context for our conversations. The course begins with the irreverent Restoration stage (1660-1688), moves to the more politically engaged plays of the early 18th-century that lead up to government suppression of theatrical expression in the Licensing Act (1689-1737), and then looks briefly at a few examples from the later 18th century (1738-1800). I presume no prior knowledge of the period on your part; supplementary background and critical readings will help map the historical context you will need to understand the plays and acquaint you with the outlines of critical debate in the field.
Requirements
The course includes two significant experiential and practical components: a field trip to the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies in Savannah, GA (Feb. 6-8), and participation in the R/18 Collective’s monologues project with the assistance of our MFA actors. Expectations include regular short responses to the readings and an 8-10 page conference paper or alternate assignment.
ENGL 590 | Black Queer Theory
Topics in Critical Theory
M 5:10-7:55 | Dionte Harris
In his introduction to Brother to Brother: New Writing by Black Gay Men, the late black queer poet and activist Essex Hemphill argued that the “creation of evidence of being,” through the development of a black queer intellectual tradition, is “powerful enough to transform the very nature of our existence.” Following Hemphill’s cue, this seminar is dedicated to Black and feminist, trans, and queer critical thought, considering how writers and artists employ race, gender, and sexuality as a medium for social critique and artistic innovation in the Black social imaginary. Focusing on contemporary African American literary, critical, and cultural productions, we will consider the complex ways race, gender, and sexuality operate in the constitution of the category of human-as-Man while also providing the conditions of possibility for otherwise ways of being. Topics of discussion include race, gender, and sexuality, black study, queer study, questions and theories of the Human, social death, Afropessimism, bodily vulnerability, Black feminist, trans and queer practices of world-making, and Black queer becomings.
Requirements
Attendance, presentations, canvas posts, formal paper.
ENGL 594 | Graduate Film Studies
Film History, Form, and Analysis
MW 1:50-3:50 | Eleni Palis
As an introduction to film studies at the graduate level, this course aims to equip students with up-to-date perspectives, methodologies, histories, and film theories of contemporary film and media studies. Students will master analytical, historical, technological, and aesthetic film fluencies, allowing them to craft persuasive, publishable film scholarship and to teach introductory film history and analysis. We will proceed through film theory, from psychoanalysis and semiotics to feminist film theory, critical race theory in film, genre theory, auteur theory, star studies, and theorizations of the film archive. Throughout, we will follow the work of Black feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, attending to the ways race and ethnicity intersect with sexuality, gender identity, class, and ability.
Requirements
Course grades are determined by regular attendance and participation, leading one discussion, weekly responses to films and readings, one scene analysis, and a final film research paper.
ENGL 611 | Studies in Beowulf
MW 9:45-11:00 | Roy Liuzza
This seminar consists of a close reading of the heroic poem Beowulf in Old English. As we progress through a translation of the poem, we will work on acquiring a perspective on the history, language, culture, and literary history of early Medieval England. Along the way we will also examine the history and present state of Old English studies.
NOTE: this class builds upon material studied in English 610. If you wish to take the class without having had 610, please see the instructor before registering.
Requirements
Course requirements include attendance and participation, class presentation, and a research project.
ENGL 631 | Renaissance Epic: Spenser and Milton
Studies in Renaissance Literature
TR 11:20-12:35 | Anthony Welch
An epic poem, wrote John Dryden in 1697, is “the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform.” Why did this ancient literary form loom so large in early modern Britain? This course examines the era’s greatest epics—Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590) and John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and Paradise Regained (1671)—with an occasional glance at their contemporaries’ epic writings and commentaries. Our goal is to explore how these authors transformed their classical and medieval literary models to craft a distinctly early modern art form: audacious, grandiloquent, yet also deeply self-conscious, skeptical of its own heroic ideals and unsure whether to honor or defy the literary past. We will also ask how Spenser and Milton grappled with epic poetry’s social and political ideology: its aristocratic elitism, its concern with national and religious identity, its gender dynamics, its portrayal of heroic violence, and its troubled history as a tool of colonial empire building.
Requirements
Requirements include active class participation; an oral presentation; a critical summary of an article or book chapter; an annotated bibliography; and a final research paper.
ENGL 670 | Virginia Woolf
Studies in 20th-Century Literature
F 9:10-11:55 | Urmila Seshagiri
Virginia Woolf transformed English literature. This seminar focuses on the daring, dazzling innovations of Woolf’s short stories, novels, and biographies: Monday or Tuesday, Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, Flush, Between the Acts, and A Sketch of the Past. Students will consider Woolf’s role as an influential publisher of modern literature, a prolific critic and essayist, a committed feminist, a member of the fabled ‘Bloomsbury Group,’ and an active patron of the arts. We will explore how two world wars and the campaign for women’s suffrage shaped Woolf’s art, and we will read works by her contemporaries (Forster, Eliot, Larsen, Lawrence, and Mansfield, and others). Finally, we will consider Woolf’s legacies in contemporary fiction, the performing arts, and the world of independent publishing. Secondary readings will address modernist cultural history, feminist history and theory, queer theory, the history of the English novel, and theories of biography.
Requirements
Attendance, weekly responses, in-class presentation, final seminar paper.
ENGL 680 | Language Ideologies and Educational (In)Justice
Advanced Studies in Rhetoric, Writing and Linguistics
MW 12:55-2:10 | Rima Elabdali
This course explores critical perspectives on language ideologies from a variety of disciplines and traditions, including linguistics, education, sociology, anthropology, geography, and political science. We will focus on how ubiquitous beliefs about language are deployed to rationalize and implement unjust educational policies and processes in a variety of settings. Some of the key topics include language standardization and hierarchies, the co-naturalization of language and race, linguistic nationalism, language commodification and securitization, and the relationship between language ideologies and spatiality. We will explore these topics through readings, discussions, data analysis workshops, and students’ own research projects. Students in ENGL 680 will investigate how language ideologies seep into the macro and micro-processes of education in school, community and university settings and explore the social justice implications and opportunities for reform in these educational spaces.
Requirements
Attendance + participation, leading class discussions and data analysis, and a multi-step research project (e.g., topic pitch, annotated bibliography, research proposal, first draft, oral presentation, final draft).
ENGL 686 | The Novel
Studies in Creative Writing
T 5:10-7:55 | Chris Hebert
This is a graduate-level class restricted to students with extensive fiction-writing experience. Permission of instructor is necessary for enrollment. We will be exploring the art of novel- writing both as readers and as practitioners. Our reading will consist of novels and crafts essays. The workshop portion of the course will be dedicated to the students’ own work. Students will be expected to make presentations on topics related to the craft of novel writing.
Requirements
Attendance, participation, presentation, multiple pieces of original creative work, peer reviews.
ENGL 686 | Form as a Radical Act
Studies in Creative Writing
R 5:10-7:55 | Iliana Rocha
This course provides a focused instruction on received and classical forms, along with contemporary iteration and invention. We will engage with and compose alongside formal properties, paying special attention to how poets of color like Wanda Coleman, Jericho Brown, and Terrance Hayes reconceptualize what form is and does. Craft texts will help inform and contextualize form while providing opportunities for writers to disrupt the tradition. In general, the poets we will read continue to have a major impact on contemporary poetry and on our understanding of form, and we will prioritize voices that have been historically absent from the canon. Students will write in a new form each week, lead class discussion on a form, invent a new form, and, finally, produce a chapbook showcasing their forms.
Requirements
Write in a new form each week, lead class discussion on a form, invent a new form, and, finally, produce a chapbook showcasing their forms.