Course Descriptions | Spring 2026

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). You can also view past-semester undergraduate and graduate courses.

Courses that satisfy VolCore requirements are identified in this way:

AH – Arts and Humanities
AAH – Applied Arts and Humanities
AOC – Applied Oral Communications
EI – Engaged Inquiries
GCI – Global Challenges – International
GCUS – Global Challenges – US
WC – Written Communication

Grad Courses

100 and 200-Level Courses

Online Courses

Course Conversations

Undergraduate Courses

ENGL 301 | British Culture to 1660 (AH) (GCI)

Premodern Beasts

TR 2:30-3:45 | Mary Dzon

This course will explore some famous as well as lesser-known literary works from the medieval and early modern periods, with special focus given to animals and hybrids and their relationship to humans. The theme of premodern beasts will enable us to sample a variety of genres and to explore issues such as personal identity, gender, nature vs. nurture, and society and the environment. Texts will be available in modern English translation, though students will be encouraged to read selections from Chaucer in the original. Readings include Joyce Salisbury’s The Beast Within, the medieval Bestiary, the Lays of Marie de France, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and the romance Sir Gowther, plus selections from Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser and John Donne.

Requirements

Response papers, an exam, and a short paper.

ENGL 303 | American Cultures (AH)

Witch Trials, Warfare, and Utopias

TR 9:45-11:00 | Marie Taylor

This course will examine the literary production associated with the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. In the first half, we will read text leading up to the trials focusing on the role that colonization, religion, gender, magic, medicine, and race played in setting the stage for the trials. Then, we will analyze the trial transcripts, letters, sermons, and other documents associated with the trials themselves. Finally, we will explore the literary aftermath of the trials and discuss the continued repercussions of the trials today. Along with the trial transcripts, we will also read Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), Thomas Harriot’s A Brief and True Report (1588), John Smith’s The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1620), as well as Indigenous treaties, medical treatises, monstrous birth narratives, indentured servant petitions, sermons, and scientific treatises. This course will include visits to both the Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collection and University Archives as well as the McClung Museum.

Requirements

Participation, short response papers, a group presentation, and a final project.

ENGL 332 | Women in American Literature (AH) (GCUS)

Men, Marriage, and Motherhood

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 research papers, quizzes, and participation

MWF 9:10-10:00 | Robin Nicks

This course traces the development of literature by American women from Anne Bradstreet through current authors like Louise Erdrich. Our focus will be on the ways that texts express developing views on gender roles, as well as the different approaches that each writer has in offering criticisms of her culture and engaging in political and social debates of her time. Authors may include Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Shirley Jackson, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Louise Erdrich, and others.

Requirements

Papers, semi-daily responses to reading.

ENGL 335 | African Literature (AH) (GCI)

Transplants in African Literature

TR 11:20-12:35 | Gichingiri Ndigirigi

The course surveys representative major works contemporary African literature through the prism of transplantation. We study the transplantation of Western genres and their conventions onto African spaces and the modifications that are made to them by African writers intent on representing an identifiably African experience. We also follow cultural transplants from “local” spaces denoted by the ubiquitous “village” into modern schools, the African city and, increasingly, cities in the West. The course meets VolCore’s AH and GC-I requirements as we explore how the transplants from traditional spaces negotiate different ideas about what it means to be human even as they embody the histories, experiences, religions, languages, and/or embrace cultural products of social, ethnic, and cultural groups outside of the United States. If diasporas are defined by contrapuntal pulls, “living here but desiring or keeping alive the memories of another place,” we study how the new global Africans embody these pulls. We also probe the ways these multiple locations and implied audiences shape the cartographies and aesthetics of the new African writing.

Major authors include Adichie, Dangarembga, Fugard, Ngũgĩ, Selasi, and Soyinka.

Requirements

Attendance, two short papers, a mid-term and final exam.

ENGL 339 | Fantasy to Cyberspace (AH)

Children’s/Young Adult Literature

TR 12:55-2:10 | Amy Billone

In this course, we fly from innocence to experience and back again in various genres ranging historically from fairy tales to the Golden Age of Children’s Literature to the most popular appearances of the young adult in literature and various other forms of media today. We will tackle the question of how to hold onto what we loved about being young as we move into more mature landscapes. The class moves forward chronologically from myths and fairy tales to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Secret Garden, Sherlock Holmes, Peter Pan, Narnia, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, The Hunger Games, dystopian literature and media, and a number of other works of interest as we explore the transition from fantasy to cyberspace in the 21st century.

Requirements

Attendance, participation, final project, weekly quizzes, discussion posts, midterms and final exams.

ENGL 340 | Science Fiction and Fantasy (AH)

Space Travel and the Good Life

TR 4:05-5:20 | Amy Elias

Today everyone from Elon Musk to Joon Yun wants to get us into space; the Space Exploration Alliance was formed in 2004 to “advocate for the exploration and development of outer space” to members of the US Congress. In this course we will read 20th and 21st-century space travel fiction and some film that includes alien contact, multiverse travel, and time travel to examine what space travel can mean to human aspirations, human values, and human needs today. The course will connect with Astronomy 490, which uses a SF scenario to teach students astronomy; putting a natural science and a humanities classes in dialogue will give 340 students the opportunity to work across fields to apply humanistic values in fiction and film to worldbuilding problems concerning travel and life in space.

Requirements

Attendance, course project, work portfolio, two tests.

MWF 10:20-11:10 | 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 342 | Literature and Medicine (AH)

Online Asynchronous | Stan Garner

This fully-online 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 who want a powerful new way of thinking about literature and creative writing, 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.

Requirements

One paper, weekly discussion posts and Spotlight worksheets, midsemester and final exam

ENGL 346 | The Gothic (AH)

Monsters

TR 12:55-2:10 | Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud

This course is about monsters, imagined and real, and their enduring popularity in literature and film. We’ll start with their mythological and medieval origins before examining their explosion in Gothic literature, starting with Frankenstein (1818) and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) into more recent cases, including some films. We’ll ask about distinguishes human and inhuman (“us” and “them”), how monsters are made, and whether they can be redeemed. We’ll read a bit of monster theory and discuss other Gothic tropes such as hauntings, the undead, the underground, science gone rogue, violence, bloodlust, repressed desires, doppelgangers, superstitions, and secret histories that need exposing.

Requirements

Attendance, research essay, weekly reading responses, and in-class essay quizzes.

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.

TR 2:30-3:45 | Tanita Saenkhum

This course, which is writing-intensive, provides students with a foundation in the theory of rhetoric and writing. Through readings, class discussions, and major writing projects, the course explores contemporary theories of rhetoric and their relationships to writing and, subsequently, develops students’ knowledge of rhetoric and writing skills. We will consider ways in which rhetorical situations contribute to strong, audience-focused, organized, and well-established arguments. Specifically, we will closely examine how writers construct their texts, 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. To this end, students will be able to understand “the relationships between community expectations and the individual writer, … [the] community and individuality (Hyland, 2015, p. 33).

Requirements

Discussion posts, three major writing projects, final reflection, attendance & participation

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 359 | Peer Tutoring in Writing: Theory and Practice (EI)

MW 3:00-3:50, Friday Asynchronous | Kat Powell

This course provides an introduction to theories and methods of providing effective feedback to student writers. It includes direct experience tutoring students in a writing center setting.

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.

Online Asynchronous | Jeni Wallace

This course will introduce you to genres of professional and technical writing, such as SEO, digital content design, brochures, instructions, proposals, reports, and manuals. We will consider generic cexpectations, the rhetorical situation, design and layout, style and clarity, restrictions of the medium, and how all these elements interact.

Requirements

Discussions, Blog Posts, Reflections, Instruction Manual, Newsletter.

Digital Security, AI, and Nuclear Conflict

TR 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 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.

Game Design

TR 8:10-9:25 | Jamal-Jared Alexander

Students are introduced to professional workplace writing, transitioning from writing for academic audiences to writing workplace technical documents. Throughout ENGL 360, students will design and write professional documents, synthesize and evaluate arguments on technology and society, and collaborate in teams to present technical information. Specifically, students will be introduced to game design by thinking and making critical choices while engaging in practice and design application. This is a practical course where students are provided with transferable skills in which they will design a board game (including packaging) in groups. Students will be taught about inclusive design for diverse audiences, exposing them to new and divergent perspectives that include all communities and body types.

Requirements

Attendance, class exercises/activities, and major assignments.

ENGL 361 | Introduction to Publishing

TR 11:20-12:35 | Erin Smith

ENGL 361 (Introduction to Publishing) will introduce students to the foundations of publishing across a range of categories including books and periodicals. 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; and the increasing fragmentation of the marketplace..

Requirements

Presentation, Editing Project, Design Project, Marketing Portfolio, and Job Materials Project

ENGL 363 | Writing Poetry (AAH) (EI)

MWF 10:20-11:10 | 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, class leadership, final portfolio

TR 9:45-11:00 | Natalie Graham

In this course emerging writers practice to recognize and develop essential poetic elements such as tone, voice, imagery, diction, forms, and sound. Over the course of the semester, students will develop curiosity and confidence to use poetry to engage the world around them while developing the vocabulary and critical tools necessary to analyze literary texts—including their own work. This course also introduces students to the modern publishing industry, providing insights into how new poets navigate publication opportunities. As a workshop-based creative writing course, participation is vital.

Requirements

Students are required to complete discussion boards, writing exercises, peer workshops, recitations, and a final portfolio of revised poems.

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. We’ll read published fiction as well as instructive nonfiction about the elements of fiction and the writing process.

Requirements

Attendance, quizzes, peer feedback, one short story, one revised short story.

TR 2:30-3:45 | Emily Moeck

This class is designed to explore the craft of writing character-driven fiction with a focus on the short story. Toward that end, we’ll be reading a lot of published fiction and material about the writing process. Assigned readings and short creative writing assignments will stimulate discussions and provide models for what fiction writing is and can be. In the second half of the semester, students will be producing their own works of fiction, which will be workshopped by the class. Workshops allow us to learn collaboratively, using each other’s work as models. A rigorous but supportive workshop environment also provides an ideal opportunity for sharpening critical and analytical skills.

Requirements

Attendance, one creative short story, a handful of short creative writing assignment and reading responses, revision work

ENGL 365 | Writing the Screenplay (AAH) (EI)

MWF 4:10-5:00 | 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.

TR 11:20-12:35 | Abhay Shetty

Students will be introduced to the art and craft of writing screenplays. By focusing on screenplays – conventional and experimental/innovative – we will aim to understand the fundamentals of a screenplay, what makes it different from other forms of narratives, and how the difference can be consciously applied/developed in creative ways to create a strong feature-length screenplay.

Requirements

Attendance, participation, reading responses, writing exercises, and a screenplay.

ENGL 369 | Writing Creative Nonfiction (AAH) (EI)

Exploring Creative Nonfiction Genres

TR 12:55-2:10 | Laura Hoffer

Within the rich spectrum of creative nonfiction, you will find literary journalism and object essays and food writing and travel essays and memoir and flash nonfiction and so much more. This course will introduce you to many of those genres and familiarize you with the vocabulary and techniques employed by creative nonfiction writers. You will investigate a wide range of published material in this course, including a book on the craft of writing creative nonfiction (Tell It Slant) and creative work by established and emerging writers such as Roxane Gay and Dara McAnulty. This semester, we’ll also pay particular attention to the personal writing process and consider the many ways an essay can develop from the pre-writing stage through revisions, giving you the opportunity to discover more about your own individual writing process.

Requirements

Attendance; short exercises; two longer essays (memoir or personal story and one other genre; peer workshops; responses to classmates’ drafts; a final portfolio with one revised essay and a piece of flash nonfiction.

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

Attendance, papers, quizzes, presentations, and exams.

ENGL 376 | Colloquium in Literature (WC)

Introduction to Theory

MWF 12:40-1:30 | Lisi Schoenbach

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

Attendance, two papers, presentation, final exam.

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 404 | Shakespeare I: Early Plays

Thinking with Shakespeare

TR 12:55-2:10 | Heather Hirschfeld

This class explores the shape of Shakespeare’s early career as a writer for print and performance. Our texts represent a variety of dramatic forms, which we will link together by a recurrent interest in how Shakespeare thought about the stage, how his characters think on it, and how we can think about them. We start with The Comedy of Errors before moving to the romantic confusions of Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night. We’ll then turn will turn to the historical questions of Richard II and the violence of Titus Andronicus before finishing the semester with the achievement of Hamlet. Our aim is to become careful and creative interpreters of Shakespeare’s verse and dramatic structures, understanding them in terms of his cultural, social and political contexts and their relevance to our own world.

Requirements

Close reading assignment, reflection papers, editing assignment, final essay.

ENGL 405 | Shakespeare II: Later Plays

TR 11:20-12:35 | Anthony Welch

A survey of Shakespeare’s dramatic works after 1600, including the ‘problem comedy’ Measure for Measure, three great tragedies (Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth), and an enigmatic late romance (The Winter’s Tale or The Tempest). In our journey across the dark and beautiful landscape of these plays, we will explore some key concerns that preoccupied Shakespeare in his final decade as a dramatist, such as the tangled web of gender, race, and power; the joys and torments of sex, marriage, and generational change; and the meaning of human action under the sway of time and death. We will also study Shakespeare’s language and dramaturgy, situate his writing in the social world of early modern England, and see how his plays have been interpreted by generations of editors, performers, and literary critics.

Requirements

Active participation, brief weekly reading responses, and three essays.

ENGL 412 | Late Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Jane Austen’s Bookshelf

MWF 11:30-12:20 | Hilary Havens

Jane Austen and her novel Northanger Abbey (1817) will form the focal point of this class and a means to explore the major themes that influenced politics and culture within the later eighteenth century, especially the cult of sensibility, but also concerns regarding female conduct, individual rights, the British empire, and the Gothic genre. We will read some later eighteenth-century novels, poems, and a play related to these themes that inspired Austen, as well as selections from concurrent philosophical texts and conduct material. Students will also acquire expertise in the digital humanities, including digital mapping and text visualization tools, and they will learn how to use Oxygen XML Editor in order to create, edit, annotate, and publish digital editions, which will be the focus of the final project. We will have sessions with McClung Museum and Hodges Library special collections to view their 5 first-edition copies of Austen’s novels.

Requirements

Attendance, participation, weekly postings, two papers, two tests, and a digital edition project.

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 stylistic 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, quizzes, and participation.

ENGL 454 | 20th Century International Novel

Somewhere, Nowhere, Everywhere: International Modernism and its Legacies

MWF 10:20-11:10 | Lisi Schoenbach

In this class, we will consider a diverse group of twentieth-century authors and international locations. 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, and how they incorporate the figures of the expatriate, exile, traveler, tourist, refugee, wanderer, nomad, conqueror, and flaneur. We will also examine more local forms of movement, as we follow our authors in tracing the walking routes of their characters through urban, rural, and sometimes imaginary spaces.

Requirements

Short response papers, two five-page papers, final exam, class participation.

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)

THE BODY

MWF 11:30-12:20 | Iliana Rocha

Development of skills acquired in basic poetry-writing course. ENGL 463 explores the body as both subject and site of poetic inquiry, focusing on how writers engage with experiences of trauma, resilience, and transformation. We will read poets who use language to navigate memory, injury, pleasure, survival, and repair—writers who show how the body can become archive, metaphor, and agent of meaning. Students will experiment with their own creative work through prompts that invite attention to sensory detail, movement, and somatic practices, alongside close reading and discussion of assigned texts. Our goal is not perfection but curiosity: to discover how writing about the body might expand ways of thinking, feeling, and being. By semester’s end, students will have built a portfolio of original writing and gained tools to critically and creatively approach one of the most pressing questions in contemporary poetry: how do we put the unspeakable into words?

Requirements

Attendance, class leadership, literary analyses, final portfolio.

ENGL 464 | Advanced Fiction Writing (EI)

TR 2:30-3:45 | 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 466 | Writing, Layout, and Production of Technical Documents

TR 9:45-11:00 | Jamal-Jared Alexander

This is a service-learning course that will provide you with a solid foundation of knowledge about visual communication design to enable you to make and defend design decisions when creating documents for professional contexts. You will engage in iterative design. You will learn about the human visual system and how the human body perceives visual information. You will learn about sketching, typography, color, and graphics. You will have multiple opportunities to apply your skills within complex, real-world contexts by working in teams to develop a set of documents for a client and by pitching a new design for a window film.

Requirements

Attendance, class exercises/activities, and major assignments.

ENGL 469 | Advanced Creative Nonfiction Writing

MWF 3:00-3:50 | 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, multiple writing assignments (including revision), written workshop notes.

ENGL 470 | Special Topics in Rhetoric

MWF 1:50-2:40 | Brandee Easter

Requirements

ENGL 474 | Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (EI)

Online asynchronous | Thorsten Huth

This fully online course introduces major theories, key concepts, and issues in teaching English as a second or foreign language across diverse contexts. Topics include first and second language acquisition, learner variables in language learning, and both traditional and innovative teaching approaches. Students will engage with readings, online discussions, and assignments such as teaching observations and demonstrations. By the end of the course, students will be able to design English language lessons that address learner needs, institutional contexts, and broader educational goals. The course develops knowledge of English language teaching while preparing students to work effectively with linguistically and culturally diverse learners.

Requirements

The assignment types in this course include weekly responses, a teaching observation or book review, a teaching demonstration with supporting components (lesson plan, reflection, and peer feedback), and a final research project.

ENGL 476 | Second Language Acquisition

MW 9:10-10:00 | Rima Elabdali

This is a hybrid course that requires in-person attendance on Mondays and Wednesdays. On Fridays, 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 base, and 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 research perspectives on second language acquisition, examine typical language learning outcomes and processes, and consider how cognitive factors (e.g., age, aptitude) and dimensions of human difference (e.g., race, socioeconomic status) affect these outcomes and processes.

Requirements

Attendance + participation, class discussions, multi-step collaborative research project (i.e., synthesis of research studies, data collection and analysis, and group presentation and paper), final reflection essay

ENGL 477 | Pedagogical Grammar for ESL Teachers (EI)

TR 12:55-2:10 | 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 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

Attendance & participation, “current events related to grammar” presentation & written summary, mini research project, grammar teaching guide

ENGL 480 | Fairy Tale, Legend, and Myth: Folk Narrative

Fairy Tales

TR 11:20-12:35 | Amy Billone

In this course, we study early versions of fairy tales that span the globe, all of which are still immensely popular today. While we might associate fairy tales like “Snow White,” “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin” and “Rapunzel” with famous Disney movies, we will study early versions of these stories that were not originally aimed to be told to child audiences. We will ask the question of what makes these fairy tales capable of transcending age in their expected audiences while also transcending time in terms of their popular appeal. Together we will look back on our own pasts to remember which fairy tales we knew when we were young and in which formats as we compare our past selves to our current and future selves while simultaneously understanding the complexity of an evolving global phenomenon.

Requirements

Attendance, participation, final project, weekly quizzes, discussion posts, midterms and final exams.

ENGL 483 | Special Topics in Literature

American Crime Fiction From Dashiell Hammett to True Detective

TR 12:55-2:10 | Martin Griffin

Dashiell Hammett wrote the first substantial American detective novels of the twentieth century, of which the most important is The Maltese Falcon, published in 1930. Some eighty-plus years later in 2014, the TV drama series True Detective appeared on HBO, signaling the continuing popularity of this genre of narrative and its ability to take stories into unsettling and sensitive areas. Over the intervening decades, crime fiction, especially in the more skeptical and probing mode known as noir, developed in complexity, and has had in some ways a profound influence on American culture. Along with Hammett, we will read a few of the authors who opened up the genre to new styles and different voices, including Raymond Chandler, Margaret Millar, and Charles Willeford.

Requirements

Two short papers, an in-class mid-term, and a final research paper. Engaged participation in our class discussions will be expected to a reasonable extent.

ENGL 489 | Special Topics in Film

Film Noir and its Afterlives

M 11:30-1:30, WF 11:30-12:20 | 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 a shadowy noir world will allow us to sharpen close viewing skills. As we consider films that revise the classical noir representations of gender, sexuality, race, and class, 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, 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. 13.

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 495 | Introduction to Rhetoric and Composition

AI and the Future of Writing

TR 9:45-11:00 | Jeff Ringer

In AI and Writing, Professor Sid Dobrin observes that writing instruction has not changed much in recent decades, largely because it hasn’t needed to. He then suggests that everything changed with the arrival of ChatGPT in 2022. Given a technological advancement like generative AI, have writing and writing instruction changed forever? If so, how might we need to think about them differently? We’ll explore these questions by reading current scholarship about how generative AI is changing writing and writing instruction. We’ll also delve into related historical developments, such as the various literacy crises that changed views of writing; the role that new technologies play in shaping writing instruction; and the developments of movements like process and the social turn. Along the way, students will have the opportunity to reflect on how past, present, and future developments might change writing and writing instruction as we know it.

Requirements

Regular reading, discussion boards, presentation, two major writing projects

ENGL 499 | Careers for English Majors (AOC)

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

MW 11:20-12:35 | 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.

Requirements

Attendance, multiple projects, two presentations, course design portfolio.

TR 12:55-2:10 | Jeff Ringer

Requirements

Requirements include extensive reading and discussion, weekly responses or mini projects, a teaching philosophy, and a teaching portfolio.

ENGL 521 | Readings and Analysis in Selected Areas of 16th- and 17th-Century Prose, Poetry, and Drama

Readings in Seventeenth-Century Poetry: Critical Receptions and Controversies

TR 2:30-3:45 | Anthony Welch

This course examines the poetry of seventeenth-century Britain with a focus on its critical reception. Moving from John Donne’s Songs and Sonnets to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, we’ll take a long view of the major critical responses, disputes, and controversies that have sprung up around these works over the last four centuries. Our case studies will include Donne and misogyny; Richard Crashaw and bad taste; Andrew Marvell’s politics; Aemilia Lanyer and canon formation; and the notorious problem of Milton’s Satan. We will find that these debates reflect—and in many cases helped to shape—the history of literary scholarship itself. This course is intended to serve as a broad introduction to late Renaissance poetry and will draw widely from the MA and Ph.D. comprehensive exam reading lists.

Requirements

Active class participation, an oral presentation, a critical summary of an article or book chapter, an annotated bibliography, and a seminar paper.

ENGL 589 | Special Topics in Language

Texts and Tactics: Theories and Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis

MW 12:55-2:10 | Rima Elabdali

Have you ever wondered how language can do more than just communicate, how it can construct narratives, shape identities, and reinforce power? This course offers a comprehensive introduction to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as both a theoretical framework and a methodological approach for examining the relationship between language, power, and ideology in society. We will explore these topics through readings, discussions, data analysis workshops, and students’ own research projects. Through close analysis of texts and spoken interactions from domains such as media, politics, education, law, and everyday conversation, students will learn to identify discursive strategies and unpack the linguistic mechanisms that sustain or challenge power relations.

Requirements

Attendance + participation, data analysis workshop (collaborative project), and a multi-step individual research project (e.g., topic pitch, annotated bibliography, research proposal, first draft, oral presentation, final draft).

ENGL 590 | Topics in Critical Theory

Dungeons & Deconstruction

F 9:10-11:55 | Brandee Easter

This course takes up Dungeons & Dragons as a central text for exploring intersections between critical theory and software studies. We’ll read work from scholars such as Wendy Chun, Alexander Galloway, N. Katherine Hayles, and Friedrich Kittler to ask how rule-based media and systems—both digital and analog—are uniquely expressive and persuasive. Through a semester-long campaign, we’ll explore how power and play intersect and rethink how “software” offers a theoretical frame for critical engagement with a variety of cultural forms.

Requirements

Participation, reading responses, book review, conference paper.

Virginia Woolf and Modernism

MW 12:55-2:10 | Urmila Seshagiri

This seminar introduces students to the daring, dazzling innovations of Virginia Woolf’s short stories, novels, and biographies: The Life of Violet, Monday or Tuesday, Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One’s Own, Flush, Between the Acts, and A Sketch of the Past. Students 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. We 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. Finally, we will consider Woolf’s legacies in contemporary fiction, the performing arts, film, 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 response papers, in-class presentation, final research paper.

ENGL 594 | Film History, Form, and Analysis

MW 2:30-4:30 | 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 595 | Digital Humanities

MW 9:45-11:00 | Hilary Havens

This course is an overview of the tools and theory of Digital Humanities and is the foundation course of UT’s graduate certificate program in Digital Humanities. Topics include digitization and textual encoding; computational literary studies and visualization; metadata and data cleaning; GIS and spatial inquiries; social media analysis; and digital storytelling. Students will create a DH final project related to their research interests. The final week of the class will teach students how to promote their newly-acquired DH skills on the academic and non-academic job markets. In the spirit of DH, all of the class readings are open-access or available through the UT libraries page.

Requirements

Attendance, participation, two short reflection papers, mini-presentation, project review, and final project.

ENGL 621 | Studies in Chaucer

Chaucer and the Problem of Form

TR 4:05-5:20 | R.D. Perry

Geoffrey Chaucer was a poetic experimenter. Sometimes these experiments are manifestly successful—as in the case of what might be his single greatest achievement, Troilus and Criseyde—but some are what we might consider, at some level, fascinating failures—like Anelida and Arcite, a poem that was perhaps too formally strange to finish. This course will take a tour through the different poetic trials of his early career as we use them to ask a variety of foundational questions about the nature of literary form: what makes a work of art successful? How does it establish its own terms and boundaries? By what logics does it begin, proceed, and conclude? What, most simply, makes a poem good? In addressing these issues, we will avail ourselves of some general works on formalism, including a full reading of the foundation of all aesthetic theory, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment. We will also read some important works of what is called New Formalist criticism, both generally and in relation to Chaucer studies, along with some critical works that contextualize Chaucer historically.

Requirements

Participation, presentation, and research paper.

ENGL 651 | Studies in Victorian Literature

George Elliot

11:20-12:35 MW | Nancy Henry

2026 marks the 150th anniversary of Daniel Deronda (1876), the final novel of Victorian author, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). This course will consider the continuing relevance of Eliot’s fiction through a deep dive into her most important and ambitious works, Middlemarch (1871-2) and Daniel Deronda. Emphasis will be on close reading in historical context. The extensive critical attention that these novels have received offers an opportunity to survey the history of critical trends from the twentieth century to the present including new criticism, post-structuralism, new historicism, post-colonialism, and ecocriticism.

Requirements

Assignments will focus on professional development and may include a book review, a conference paper, and a final research project with an eye to future publication.

ENGL 660 | Studies in American Literature

Making and Unmaking the Self in Colonial America

TR 12:55-2:10 | Marie Taylor

In this course we will look at the literary production of colonial America, focusing primarily on the 17th and early 18th century to understand how people are identifying themselves and others through print. We will look at travel narratives, captivity narratives, indentured servant accounts, as well as letters, sermons, and short stories from a wide variety of perspectives to identify how definitions of the self were used to determine hierarchies and power structures in the colonial world. We will also spend time looking at the discussion and production process surrounding the largest print venture in the colonies, the creation of the 1663 Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God, the Wampanoag Bible, as a way of thinking about how literacy, religion, colonialism, and race came together to make and unmake the people living in the space of early America. The course will include trips to the Hodges Library Archives and the McClung Museum.

Requirements

Short papers, discussion posts, group presentations, and a final project

ENGL 662 | Studies in American Literature

Appalachian Literature in a Post-Regional Context

TR 11:20-12:35 | Bill Hardwig

Ever since it has been defined as a region, Appalachia has been understood as rooted in a particular geography and exhibiting a unique culture. In other words, Appalachia has been seen as different, as “in but not of America.” This class will explore the tension between the rise in popularity in Appalachian literature and the concurrent critical trend that questions identity- and region-based models of affiliation. How do we understand Appalachian literature when the idea of Appalachia as a coherent region has been questioned for decades? What do we do with the tendency in Appalachian literary studies to emphasize the unique “Appalachianness” of the material in this context? This class will combine a focus on key Appalachian literary and critical texts with recent approaches to literary studies, such as Bill Brown’s “thing theory,” Rita Felski’s ideas about the limits of critique, and recent articulations of regional/place studies.

Requirements

Seminar paper, reflection essay, micro-essays, presentations

ENGL 686 | Studies in Creative Writing

Forms of Fiction

T 5:10-7:55 | Michael Knight

In “The Art of Fiction,” Henry James writes that, “The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary is that it be interesting,” an assertion as applicable, at least for the purposes of this class, to the short story and the novella. He goes on to assert that, “The ways in which [fiction] is at liberty to accomplish this result strike me as innumerable and such as can only suffer from being marked out, or fenced in, by prescription.” My basic idea here is that we might begin with the assumption that Henry James, however vague, however quick he might be to dismiss “prescription,” is in fact correct. Through a combination of outside reading and workshop, we will discuss how fiction works in all its methods and modes and what differentiates its various forms—the short story from the novella, the novella from the novel—beyond the obvious generalization of page count. In the process, we might also hash out elements of craft that all good fiction, regardless of style or content or genre, have in common, as well what constitutes “interesting” in a work of fiction, and apply those elements in our original work. Readings may include Anton Chekhov, Carmen Maria Machado, Phillip Roth, Clair Keegan, Toni Morrison and others.

Requirements

R 5:10-7:55 | TBA

Requirements

ENGL 690 | Special Topics

Rhetoric, Vulnerability, and Writing Technologies

TR 9:45-11:00 | Sean Morey

This course explores how rhetoric, vulnerability, and writing technologies intersect to shape the possibilities and risks of communication. Writing is always a vulnerable act—open to interpretation, misrecognition, or erasure—and technologies of writing amplify or constrain this exposure. From classical rhetoric to digital platforms and AI, we will consider how tools of inscription mediate rhetorical agency, relationality, and ethics. Readings draw on rhetorical theory, media studies, and feminist and critical technology scholarship. Coursework emphasizes critical analysis and invention, reflective writing, and a final research project focused on a rhetorical examination of a chosen writing technology.

Requirements

Attendance, Annotated Bibliography, Weekly Responses, Final Paper

Understanding Classroom Interaction

T 4:05-6:35 | Thorsten Huth

What happens when teachers and students talk in classrooms? This course treats classrooms as dynamic interactional spaces, analyzing how teacher talk, student talk, and peer interaction shape teaching and learning. Using authentic transcripts and empirical studies, we examine how linguistic, temporal, sequential, and embodied resources combine to create meaning in classroom interaction. While not a pedagogy course, the insights gained directly inform pedagogical frameworks across disciplines. The seminar benefits anyone studying teaching, preparing for a teaching career, or seeking an empirical foundation for understanding classroom discourse.

Requirements

Assignments for this course consist of required readings, weekly written response papers, transcription analyses, in-class presentations, and the development of a formal research proposal.