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 (OC)
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.
Not offer Spring 2027
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.
Not offered Spring 2027
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.
Not offered Spring 2027
ENGL 151 | Main Character Energy: Writing the Self (AAH)
A creative course in which students develop and practice the skills of personal narrative and creative expression.
Not offered Spring 2027
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.
Not offered Spring 2027
ENGL 161 | Women Writing the World (AH) (GCI)
This course explores literature by women with an international focus. Students will approach women’s literature of various genres and social contexts in conversation with issues such as nationality, representation, identity, and power
Not offered Spring 2027
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.
Houses and Hauntings
TR 12:55-2:10 | Molly Granatino
This course examines the haunted house in British literature of the 19th and 20th century. We will look at a variety of haunted spaces – from the cobweb-coated-ghost-infested haunted house to minds haunted by memories and trauma. We will travel through candlelit corridors of Gothic mansions and encounter the nooks and crannies of psychologically realistic minds.
Requirements
Attendance, weekly reading responses, mood boards, quizzes, one paper, one presentation.
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.
Not offered Spring 2027
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 and How to Have One
MWF 11:30-12:20 | Rob Spirko
In an age of virtual media and growing AI, we’re reminded that our human experience is tied to our physical bodies. For disabled people, those with unusual bodies and minds, this connection is even more significant; they are marked out as different by society and that affects how they are treated. Sometimes, as with the history of eugenics, it can be a matter of life and death. In this class, we’ll explore how authors discuss their experiences with variant bodies and minds. Along the way, we’ll learn about how our society makes assumptions about what is “normal;” how people tell stories about bodies, minds and experiences; and how we experience our own bodies, minds and places in the world.
Requirements
Frequent informal reflection and analysis paragraphs; 2 essays (photo, video, audio or written).
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.
Not offered Spring 2027
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.
Concentric Identities in African Literatures
TR 12:55-2:10 | Gichingiri Ndigirigi
How did modern African writers return the European gaze? How did Africans transition through colonialism and the institutions of western education? How did multiple transitions from the ubiquitous “village” the colonial school, onwards into modern cities in Africa and the west complicate the identities of African subjects?
Requirements
Attendance, two reflection papers, two quizzes, a mid-term and final exams.
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.
Not offered Spring 2027
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.
Rites of Renewal and Rebellion
TR 9:45-11:00 | Brad Bannon
English 231 provides students with an overview of early American literature ranging from first encounters and settlement 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): colonialism and imperialism; religious separatism; exceptionalism; revolution and national independence; literary independence; transcendentalism; dark romanticism; democracy; slavery; abolitionism; 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
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.
Not offered Spring 2027
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.
Laughing Matters: Black Humor and Critique
MWF 1:50-2:40 | Dionte Harris
This course explores humor and comedy in contemporary African American literature, film, and television. We will consider how writers and filmmakers use satire, parody, and other comedic forms to expose the racial and social forces that shape everyday life, including expectations about community and assumptions about gender, sexuality, and other aspects of Black identity. We will also examine how comedy responds to changing social conditions and challenges how Black life is represented. Possible texts include Issa Rae’s Insecure, Percival Everett’s Erasure, Lawrence Lamont’s One of Them Days, and Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You.
Requirements
Active participation, weekly response posts, a presentation, and two analytical essays
ENGL 244 | Introduction to Games and Narratives (EI)
This course explores the role of narrative in games, including branching storylines in video games and collaborative storytelling in tabletop role-playing games. We will examine how games tell stories through a combination of mechanics, worldbuilding, and player agency and what unique narrative opportunities games offer for storytelling.
Not offered Spring 2027
ENGL 250 | Popular Fiction (AH)
Detective Fiction: Realistic, Romantic, Speculative
TR 2:30-3:45 | Doug McKinstry
Encompassing both detective/mystery and science-fiction genres, English 250 Detective Fiction: Realistic, Romantic, Speculative will examine a gamut of detective subgenres: classic whodunit, hard-boiled, police procedural, amateur, speculative/science-fiction. Themes will include the dichotomy and interplay of romance and realism; the evolution of urban noir; the detective as existentialist; social fragmentation; race, ethnicity, and gender; imperialism; alternate perceptions and experiences of “reality.” English 250 Detective Fiction will begin with Poe’s intricate creation of the detective story and track its evolution through several outstanding forms. The course will examine short and longer prose fictions from among these authors: Edgar A. Poe, A. Conan Doyle, Anton Chekhov, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Georges Simenon, Philip K. Dick, P. D. James, Walter Mosley, Lynda La Plante, Sara Paretsky, China Mieville. Students will have several opportunities to examine film adaptations of notable detective stories/novels both on- and off-syllabus.
Requirements
Attendance, two papers, three tests, a journal, some quizzes.
The Rise of the Machine in Sci Fi
MWF 11:30-12:20 | Sara Melton
Speculative fiction/fantasy on the role of technology and artificial intelligence in the future, sometimes even technology that gets used responsibly and makes the world better. We’ll read short stories and novels (and watch film adaptions) from several historical and contemporary writers of speculative fiction, including works from Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot series, Martha Wells’ Murderbot series, and of course Asimov’s I Robot.
Requirements
Two exams, two essays, and assorted quizzes and in-class activities.
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)
Death, Dying, and the Undead
MWF 12:40-1:30 | Molly Granatino
This course explores the myriad ways the universal and inevitable human experience of dying (and the condition of being dead) can be represented in literature, from carpe diem poetry to ghostly visitation. The reading assignments for each class session highlight a particular theme or approach to this representation, discussed in tandem with the formal elements of poetry, short stories, and novels. The course begins with a poetry unit where students are presented with diverse thematic takes on conceptualizing death, such as the glory/horror of dying in battle, dying young and living well before death. The next unit introduces students to the Gothic and Southern Gothic literary traditions via short stories, touching primarily on themes of murder and sudden death. The third and final unit examines the undead through novels about ghosts, vampires, and the lingering legacy of an unburied body. Satisfies UT’s General Education Requirements in both AH and WC.
Requirements
Weekly reading responses/annotations, two papers, one extended annotated bibliography
Phantom Minds: AI & Literature
TR 9:45-11:00 | Jeff Amos
To listen to AI hype cycle, automated “artificial intelligence” is coming for every part of our lives. It will make the movies you watch and the music you listen to; it will code the next generation of software products; it will replace your doctor, your lawyer, your teacher, your therapist—and someday, if the tech companies succeed, they tell us it will either destroy humanity or usher in a utopian world without labor, money, or death. In this class, we will look at the history of technological progress, particularly automation, and interrogate its effects on labor and the cultural imagination. Starting with the 19th century Luddite Rebellion, the first labor movement opposed to automation, and expanding through 20th and 21st century literature, we will examine dystopian and utopian philosophies, the uncanny, labor history, and the hopes and fantasies shaping politicians’, media, and tech leaders’ visions for the future of “AI.”
Requirements
Attendance, short response and analysis reflections, and final multimedia project.
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 Spring 2027
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)
Horses in Literature
TR 12:55-2:10 | Nancy Henry
Before the invention of the automobile, horses were everywhere. Their numbers peaked in the nineteenth century when the economy ran on horsepower. In the twentieth century, horses lost their economic and military centrality, and took a new place in the cultural imagination as working companions and athletes. This course will look at the role of the horse from the nineteenth century to the present in novels such as Black Beauty, National Velvet, and The Horse Whisperer, as well as in short stories, poems, and films. We will consider larger cultural questions such as why women seemed to take over from men when the horse lost its economic centrality and how the language of breeds and breeding intersects with human categories such as race and class. What do horses symbolize today and why have they persisted as objects of human fascination?
Requirements
Oral presentations, midterm exams, final research project.
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.
Not offered Spring 2027
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.