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Not offered Spring 2025

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

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

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

Note: the Honors section also satisfies the WC category.

Note: the Honors section also satisfies the WC category.

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

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

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

Not offered Spring 2025

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

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

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

Note: the Honors section also satisfies the WC category.

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

Note: the Honors section also satisfies the WC category.

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

Popular Fiction

TR 11:20-12:35 | Melinda Backer

In this course, students will examine how the tropes of sci-fi comment on and critique contemporary reality. The course will cover topics such as critiques of heteronormativity in science fiction, futures that imagine alternative epistemologies of sexuality, futures without binary sex/gender systems, the question of what roles sexuality plays in robotics and Artificial Intelligence, post-humanism, dystopia, and other speculative futures. While the course will focus on literary sci-fi, we will also examine instances of queer science fiction in film and television. This course will begin with an examination of gender and feminism in science fiction in literature from the 60s and early 70s. We will then examine queer utopias and cityscapes from the 80s to the 2000s. The last unit will focus on space, examining found families and queer futurity.

Popular Fiction

TR 2:30-3:45 | Tyler Smith

This course explores the evolution and impact of comics, cartoons, and illustrated media, from classic comic strips to contemporary graphic novels. Students will analyze the cultural, social, and political significance of visual storytelling, examining works like Superman, Static Shock, and graphic memoirs. We’ll discuss how comics engage with issues such as race, gender, and identity while also exploring the techniques of visual narrative. The course includes opportunities for students to create their own comics, culminating in a final project. No prior experience with comics is required—just a passion for storytelling and art.

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.

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

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

Themes in Literature

TR 2:30-3:45 | Mark Tabone

This course focuses on science fiction that examines humanity’s relationship to nature and the environment. We will look at works from the twenty-first century genre known as “Cli-Fi” which speculate about possible future effects of anthropogenic climate change. However, we will also look back through literary history to examine the influence of science, the Enlightenment, industrialization, romanticism, and the Judeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions on the ways we think, imagine, hope, fear, and write about the environment. Using fiction as our guide, we will discuss the current state of our changing environment as well as the ecology, science, technologies, worldviews, and developments that led to this point in history.

Themes in Literature

TR 11:20-12:35 | Bess Cooley

What does it mean to be “mad,” mentally ill, or intellectually and/or developmentally disabled? How do we categorize people using these terms and what do we really mean when we use them in conversation? In “Madness” in Literature we’ll explore how disability and Madness appear in American literature, both in poetry and fiction, focusing on what ideas about and reactions to “”being Mad” or “being normal” over time have taught us about what it means–and what we assume it means–to be human.

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

Special Topics in Professional Writing

TR 9:45-11:20 | Beth Meredith

Partnering with local non-profits in the community, this course will teach students the fundamentals and mechanics of proposal and grant writing as well as the political and social aspects of grant writing, as they develop their skills in identifying sources of grant funding, doing useful research to support their applications, and tailoring their proposals to specific audience interests.

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

Not offered Spring 2025

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

This 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.

Note: this course is under consideration for the VolCore AH, AOC, and EI categories. The cross-listing with English will officially take effect in Fall 2025 but credit in English can be granted retroactively.

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.