100 and 200-Level Courses

Below are descriptions for our 100 and 200-level courses. H after a number indicates the Honors version. Courses that satisfy VolCore requirements are identified in this way:

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

ENGL 142 | Speaking of Sports

This course presents an introduction to literary representations of sports, one of the oldest and most varied of literary topics, as well as how one talks about those sports. It will explore a wide variety of sports, both individual and team, for both men and women, and it will look at different ways of representing those sports, including poetry, drama, novels, film, television, and audio formats. Students will be asked to think about how one represents not only what it feels like to play a sport, but also what it means to watch or be a fan of a sport, and the way that community forms around different teams, individuals, or activities. Students will learn how to express themselves clearly and effectively in oral presentations, by talking about a topic they are passionate about: sports. They will consider how to present different material to diverse audiences and they will learn how to find information relevant to these presentations.

ENGL 145 | Literature Now (AH)

Literature Now examines how current events, social movements, technological advancements, and cultural shifts are reflected in and shaped by contemporary literature. This class will focus on works created during the last 25 years that provide a range of perspectives. In this class, students will engage with literary discussions that are still in progress, inviting them into a deeper, more open-ended discussion of how literature works. This course will use the familiarity of the present as a window into the history of literature and literary studies.

Life Among the Stars

TR 12:55-2:10 | Melinda Backer

This course invites students to explore the rich and diverse contemporary literary landscape by reading fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, and graphic narratives. Readings will include a variety of perspectives and styles that demonstrate the vitality of the literary arts in our current moment.

Requirements

Response papers, midterm and final exams, group presentation, reflections, quizzes, in-class discussion questions.

ENGL 150 | Appalachia Now (AH) (GCUS)

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

ENGL 155 | Environmental Literature (AH)

Environmental Literature focuses on literary engagement with living ecosystems by diverse authors. Through genres such as fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, graphic novels, and film, students will explore themes that might include storytelling and nature writing; animal, plant, and climate studies; disability and nature; and consumer culture and sustainability.

Reading the Environment

MWF 10:20-11:10 | Jeff Amos

Requirements

Attendance, two papers, journal, presentation, and creative final.

ENGL 200 | Language, Linguistics, and Society

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

ENGL 201 | 207H | British Literature (AH)

This course follows the development of British literature and provides an overview of major British texts, authors, schools of thought, events, and literary movements. Literary works are examined from a variety of perspectives. Historical events, religious practices, the rise of theater, political systems, artistic works and artifacts, social customs, and gender norms will figure into the course’s discussions, with key literary texts serving as the focus of analysis.

Note: the Honors section also satisfies the WC category.

Swords, Dragons, and Stages

TR 12:55-2:10 | Scott MacKenzie

This course surveys British literature from its beginnings around 600 CE through the mid-seventeenth century, tracing its evolution from early Celtic and Anglo-Saxon works to the achievements of Renaissance drama and poetry. Readings include foundational texts such as Beowulf, Cædmon’s Hymn, Anglo-Saxon elegies, selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, plays by Shakespeare and Marlowe, the poetry of the Metaphysical writers, and Milton. To cover nearly eleven centuries of literary history, the course explores representative genres, movements, and cultural contexts with close attention to issues of faith, authority, and gender. Because of the historical and linguistic distance of these works, students will practice close reading in discussion and writing assignments to uncover how texts create meaning. The course also examines women’s roles, voices, and representations, considering how questions of gender and power shaped the creation, reception, and legacy of medieval and Renaissance literature.

Requirements

Midterm, final, quizzes, and one paper.

ENGL 206 | 217H | Introduction to Shakespeare (AH) (WC)

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

ENGL 209 | 218H | Introduction to Jane Austen (AH) (WC) (GCI)

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

ENGL 210 | Disability and Literature (GCUS)

This course explores literary representations of physical, cognitive, and other forms of disability. It poses the following questions: What stereotypes have been applied over the centuries to people whose bodies and minds deviate from what society defines as “normal?” What has “normal” meant at different historical moments? How have writers with disability reclaimed their experience, challenges, and abilities as a way of celebrating the spectrum of human embodiment? The course will also look at the medical and social models of disability; the intersections of disability with race, gender, and socio-economic status; and the literary strategies that writers with disability have employed to tell their stories. Genres include fiction, non-fiction forms such as the memoir, graphic narratives, poetry, plays, and film. Topics and texts may vary.

Bodies, Minds, and Worlds

MWF 11:30-12:20 | Rob Spirko

This course examines what happens when human bodies and minds encounter worlds not designed for them. Disability touches on all aspects of life and gets to some fundamental questions. Who really counts as human? Who counts as normal? How do disabled people express their experience and viewpoints on the world? How do we understand our own bodies and minds? How do the authors we read—and how do we ourselves—deal with long-standing ideas about what it is to be able-bodied and able-minded? When your own story doesn’t match up with the world’s story about you, what do you do? We’ll be reading fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and film. From canonical authors to social media influencers, the range of expression is as broad as the range of disabilities.

Requirements

Daily/weekly short informal writings, 2 papers with multimodal options and a final essay/exam.

ENGL 221 | World Literature (AH) (GCI)

The course emphasizes the literary, cultural, and human significance of selected Western and non-Western great works. The class looks at their cultural/historical contexts and the enduring human values that unite different literary traditions. Special attention is given to critical thinking and writing within a framework of cultural diversity as well as comparative and interdisciplinary analysis.

Thinking about Emotions in the Premodern World

TR 11:20-12:35 | Mary Dzon

Are emotions culturally contingent and yet recognizable in works of literature written in different times and places, by premodern authors operating within different traditions? How can emotions be managed and manipulated? Why are some passions and the actions they inspire praiseworthy, while others are reprehensible? Sampling premodern works from different parts of the world, with emphasis given to literary texts featuring anger and vengeance, students in this course will address such issues as well as others. Readings include selections from well-known works of literature and thought, and also anonymous texts popular in their time and even afterwards. These include: Euripides, Medea; Seneca, How to Keep Your Cool; Prudentius, Soul-Battle; Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (selections); William Shakespeare, The Tempest; a late-medieval Life of St. Katherine of Alexandria; and medieval werewolf tales.

Requirements

A few response papers, a midterm, a presentation, and short essay or creative project.

ENGL 225 | Introduction to African Literature (AH) (GCI)

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

Not offered Spring 2026

ENGL 226 | Introduction to Caribbean Literature (AH) (GCI)

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

TR 2:30-3:45 | Gichingiri Ndigirigi

Survey of anglophone Caribbean literature from its beginnings up to the more contemporary period. We will cover a variety of genres including a slave narrative, autobiography, memoir, bildungsroman, conventional novel, and some short stories.

Requirements

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

ENGL 231 | 237H | American Literature: Beginnings to the Civil War (AH) (GCUS)

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

Note: the Honors section also satisfies the WC category.

Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Romantics

TR 9:45-11:00 | Brad Bannon

English 231 provides students with an overview of early American literature ranging from first encounters to the antebellum period and the end of the Civil War. Over the course of the semester, students will develop a greater sense of American history and culture by becoming familiar with the central narratives and themes with which the critical study of early American literature is concerned, including (but not limited to): religious separatism; exceptionalism; colonialism; revolution and national independence; literary independence; transcendentalism; dark romanticism; democracy; race; gender; and civil war. In the process, students will also gain insight into the variety of early American life and thought, learn to carry out sophisticated written analyses of course texts using the tools and terminologies of literary study, and enhance their ability to read, write, discuss, debate, and think critically.

Requirements

Reading responses, quizzes, exams, discussions.

ENGL 232 | 238H | American Literature: Civil War to the Present (AH)

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

Note: the Honors section also satisfies the WC category.

MWF 1:50-2:40 | Doug McKinstry

ENGL 233 | Major Black Writers (AH) (GCUS)

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

Black Fire: Literature and Liberation

MWF 1:50-2:40 | Katy Chiles

In this course, we read the beautiful and profound works of the Black American literary tradition as they engage issues of enslavement and freedom, Black success, racism and resistance, community and kinship, literacy, love, citizenship, and Black joy. Moving from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, our reading includes poetry, slave narratives, autobiographies, and novels. Paying attention to the historic contexts of these texts, we learn to read and write about the themes that emerge in these literatures.

Requirements

Participation, presentation, two papers, and a final project.

ENGL 250 | Popular Fiction (AH)

Dystopian Literature

TR 2:30-3:45 | Erin Smith

This course will explore the ways in which race, class, and gender are central to the discussions of future worlds and how the very real terror of marginalized communities manifests in fiction. Texts from this course will explore the ways in which writers have used speculative fiction in order to subvert our current realities and explore their potential ramifications.

Requirements

Two papers, video project, discussion posts, attendance.

ENGL 251 | 247H | Introduction to Poetry (AH) (WC)

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

ENGL 252 | 248H | Introduction to Drama (AH) (WC)

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

ENGL 253 | 258H | Introduction to Fiction (AH) (WC)

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

ENGL 254 | Themes in Literature (AH) (WC)

Money, Jobs, and Happiness in Literature

MWF 10:20-11:10 | Sara Melton

This course will trace attitudes toward people and work and purpose in literature, and consider the predominant philosophies of work: Utilitarianism, for instance, the Protestant work ethic, and what critic Ruth Danon has called “the myth of vocation”–that is, the tendency to expect of one’s work more than it can usually provide: self-esteem and satisfaction, for instance. The course will also cover science fiction and speculative fiction works, which consider what work and careers might look like in the future.

Requirements

Two exams, one research essay, one presentation, quizzes and informal writings, class participation.

ENGL 255 | 257H | Public Writing (WC)

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

ENGL 260 | Special Topics in Professional Writing (WC)

Not offered in Spring 2026

ENGL 263 | 277H | Introduction to Creative Writing (WC)

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

ENGL 278H | Honors Themes in Literature (AH) (WC)

Not offered Fall 2025

ENGL 281 | Introduction to Film Studies (AH)

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

ENGL 285 | DH 200 | Introduction to Digital Humanities (AH) (EI)

This course is an introduction to methods and topics in Digital Humanities (DH) and is the foundation course of UT’s DH minor. The class will explore humanities approaches to technology and its role in society and culture from an interdisciplinary perspective. Students will acquire technical skills and learn about current issues such as AI and ethics, digital media and communications, user experience, and beyond by balancing scientific and computational methods with humanities practices such as analysis, critical thinking, and artistic creation. Topics include metadata and digital archiving; crowdsourcing; text encoding and visualization; digital storytelling; social-media network analysis; and digital gaming. Readings throughout the semester will contextualize each of these topics alongside intersectional themes. In the spirit of DH, all of the class readings are open-access or available through the UT libraries page.

ENGL 295 | Writing in the Workplace (WC)

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