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.
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.
Literature for Hard Times
MWF 9:10-10:00 | Anne Langendorfer
Literature Now: Literature for Hard Times, students will join an ongoing literary discussion about how current events, technological advancements, and cultural shifts are reflected in and shaped by contemporary literature. Reading diverse literary works from the last 25 years, students will have the opportunity to ask questions about the nature of both the contemporary and the literary.
Requirements
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 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.
TR 2:30-3:45 | Margaret Dean
Life is a Netflix film and you are the main character. What does that really mean, though? Is it enough to stand on a balcony looking out at a beautiful view while holding a glass of wine and looking wistful? Does it mean putting your name on buildings, patents, and scholarships? Does it mean treating everyone else like NPCs?
This class is about how to shape your own story, how to understand the stories of others, and how to use our main character energy for good. You will watch and make short-form videos, look at and draw autobiographical comics, and read and write first-person stream-of-consciousness autobiographical fiction (don’t worry, I’ll show you how). We will learn by doing, learn from each other, and come to understand a bit more about who we are, what our story is, and why point of view is crucial to everything.
Requirements
Multiple creative projects, class participation, online discussions, and peer reviews.
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 Fall 2026
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 Fall 2026
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.
Kings, Fate, and Kingdoms
MWF 12:40-1:30 | Scott MacKenzie
This course will focus on stability and chaos in Medieval and Renaissance society. In particular, we will look at war, revenge, disease and old age as the destabilizing issues of a society and how kingship, the divine and the idea of “nobility (gentilesse, according to Chaucer) help stabilize their culture. English (to be defined throughout the course), British and Irish literature from the medieval period through the English Renaissance with a sustained thematic focus on kingship, sovereignty, legitimacy, and authority across the British Isles. Central to the course is a comparative sub-theme contrasting elective, customary, and contractual models of kingship (particularly in Irish and Welsh traditions) with sacral and divine-right models that emerge strongly in English political theology. Through poetry, drama, chronicle history, and prose, students will examine how writers imagine the source of royal authority, the obligations between ruler and people, and the moral limits of power.
Requirements
Quizzes, one paper, midterm and final exams.
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.
Madness in Literature
TR 9:45-11:00 | Bess Cooley
What does it mean to be Mad, mentally ill, or intellectually disabled? How do we categorize people using these terms? In this course we’ll explore how disability and madness appear in poetry, fiction, and drama, 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.
Requirements
2 presentations, multi-modal project, journals, and participation.
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 Fall 2026
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 Fall 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.
Not offered Fall 2026
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.
Native through Romantic Eras
TR 9:45-11:00 | Doug McKinstry
American Literature 231 will encompass Native American literature, explorer literature, the Puritan period, the Age of Enlightenment, the early and developing Romantic period. The course will examine Native creation myths and political writings; explorer diaries/accounts; Puritan prose and poetry; Enlightenment prose, poetry, autobiography; African American prose, poetry, autobiography; Romance-era fiction, poetry, essay, autobiography.
Requirements
attendance, two papers, quizzes/tests, Canvas discussions, a journal, and a vocal/visual presentation.
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 9:10-10:00 | Harry Newburn
This course (ENGL 238) seeks to introduce you to a selection of representative works that portray various forms, styles, and periods of American literature. This survey is made so that you may gain an understanding of the works themselves, knowledge of their literary/historical contexts, and a general but clear sense of how the forms of literature have progressed over this time period. This will primarily be a close reading course, where we will learn how writers use detail, form, and literary technique to develop their product. These details and patterns will of course include those familiar elements of fiction, such as plot, character, setting, point of view, style, and theme. We will read novels, short stories, poems, plays, and a few pieces of non-fiction. And since this is a writing intensive course, you will be expected to produce various kinds of written literary analysis.
Requirements
Attendance, two papers, three exams, ten short reading responses, and weekly quizzes.
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, racism and resistance, community and kinship, literacy, love, citizenship, and 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
Active participation, a presentation, informal writing assignments, two formal papers, and a final project.
ENGL 244 | Introduction to Games and Narratives (EI)
TR 12:55-2:10 | Brandee Easter
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.
Requirements
Participation, reading responses, game play journal, two exams, creative final project.
ENGL 250 | Popular Fiction (AH)
War Stories
TR 2:30-3:45 | Tyler Smith
War stories often promise heroism, sacrifice, and clear purpose. This course asks what happens when those promises break down. From ancient to contemporary literature, we will examine how people living through conflict struggle to balance duty, honor, loyalty, survival, and conscience—and how their stories attempt to make sense of experiences that often resist meaning. Rather than presenting war as a record of heroism or sacrifice alone, our texts explore uncertainty, contradiction, and aftermath: civilians caught in violence, soldiers facing impossible choices, and communities living with memory long after fighting ends. Writers also use irony, satire, and dark humor—not to make war light, but to reveal its absurdities and human costs.The course emphasizes ethical ambiguity, civilian perspectives, and the long aftermath of conflict, including trauma, displacement, and moral injury, showing how storytelling both reflects and resists the urge to make war appear coherent, meaningful, or noble.
Requirements
Attendance, two papers, weekly journal entries, and in-class presentations.
Supernatural Romance
MWF 9:10-10:00 | Randi Marie Addicott
Today, romance and fantasy are more popular than ever, particularly in the blended form referred to as “romantasy.” Despite being denigrated by some as escapist or silly, something about these genres speaks to the anxieties, needs, and concerns of vast numbers of readers today. Our class will explore various subgenres of the field—like urban, cozy, fairytale adaptations, and high—seeking to understand and ground the popularity of the genre in this historical moment. We will look at the tropes that are consistent across the genre and the way that authors either challenge or embrace them to drive their narratives. Texts may include Assistant to the Villain, The Serpent and the Dove, Legends & Lattes, and Espresso Yourself among others.
Requirements
Two papers, journals/responsive writing, final exam.
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)
Introduction to Legal Writing
TR 11:20-12:35 | Marcel Brouwers
Students will be introduced to several genres of legal writing, including briefs, memos, and legal correspondence, while engaging with real-world cases and legal issues.
Requirements
Attendance, case- and issue-specific documents, final portfolio.
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 2026
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.