Upcoming Courses

001 In Person

M/W 5:00-6:15 PM

Instructor: Staff

 

002 In Person

T/Th 3:30-4:45 PM

Instructor: Staff

 

003 In Person

M/W 3:30-4:45 PM

Instructor: Staff

Students will gain a working knowledge of these concepts and terms: memoir, personal essay, portrait, travel essay, literary journalism, narrative voice, dialogue, metaphor, image, scene, narrative summary, reflection, and research. Students will read selected texts and discuss craft elements in works of literary nonfiction. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments in several modes of nonfiction writing (i.e., portrait, travel essay, memoir).

 

001 In Person

T/Th 11:00 AM-12:15 PM

Instructor: Staff

 

002 In Person

T/Th 2:00 -3:15 PM

Instructor: Staff

 

003 In Person

M/W 3:30-4:45 PM

Instructor: Staff

The beginning course in the undergraduate poetry-writing sequence. Method of instruction: class discussion of student poems, with some readings of modern and contemporary poetry. Workshop sections are limited to 20 students. Priority enrollment given to Creative Writing majors and minors.

 

“Let it Go” and come learn about fairy tales! What meaning do these beautiful tales of survival hold for you? In this class, we will read multiple variations of classic fairy tales from around the world. We will follow their breadcrumbs from communal storytelling into literary culture and Disney, and from childhood to adulthood. The folkloric writing assignments in this class are designed to spark your curiosity and encourage your confidence. Our resilient guides include Little Red Riding Hood, Donkeyskin, Hansel & Gretel, The Little Mermaid, Elsa & Anna, and others. Prepare to be enchanted. All course materials will be available on D2L, apart from “Frozen,” a movie, which you will need to rent or purchase to watch (even if you have seen it before, you'll need to see it again!).

From the “origins” of Children’s Literature to the current day call for diverse voices in the genre, this course examines the development of concepts of the child, children’s literature, and Western Culture. We will read a broad spectrum of historical and contemporary U.S., British, and world literature, and works representing a variety of genres and cultures. Through a survey of folk tales, picture books, middle grade novels, young adult novels, and graphic novels, we will consider the historical development of children’s literature as well as its dual agenda of instruction and amusement.

What can the study of popular cultural forms like Television, Films, Advertisements, Video Games, Facebook as well as cultural practices like shopping, viewing habits, and other modes of consumption reveal about US American Values? How do representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality disseminated within these popular texts shape the way we come to see others and ourselves? These are some of the guiding questions we will be exploring in our study of U.S. popular culture. Through an examination of both critical essays and primary texts, students in this course will learn not only how to critically read and interpret various cultural forms, but also will come to understand the ways in which popular culture structures our day to day lives.

 

What can the study of popular cultural forms like Television, Films, Advertisements, Video Games, Facebook as well as cultural practices like shopping, viewing habits, and other modes of consumption reveal about US American Values? How do representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality disseminated within these popular texts shape the way we come to see others and ourselves? These are some of the guiding questions we will be exploring in our study of U.S. popular culture. Through an examination of both critical essays and primary texts, students in this course will learn not only how to critically read and interpret various cultural forms, but also will come to understand the ways in which popular culture structures our day to day lives.

 

Close reading of literary texts, critical analysis, and articulation of intellectually challenging ideas in clear prose.

 

For these sections of English 280, we will read a wide-range of different types of literature: short stories, poems, plays, novels—as well as some texts that are not so easy to classify. We will discuss the challenges that each of these different literary forms present to us as readers, as we try to interpret and make sense of them. Over the course of the semester, we will discuss the varied elements that comprise literary works, the varied aspects that one might consider when analyzing a literary text and different interpretive approaches to literature. We will also discuss literary tradition and why it matters when thinking about individual texts. For the reading list, I am selecting texts that are not only moving and meaningful, but also creative and inventive; texts that not only offer us insight into the world and its endlessly varied communities and human relationships, but also that amplify our understanding of literature and what it can do. The reading list for the course will likely include short stories and memoirs by Bret Harte, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Paul Bowles, Leslie Marmon Silko, Clarice Lispector, and Rosario Ferré; the play “Zoot Suit,” by Luis Valdez, Volkswagen Blues (a delightful road trip novel), Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, poems by Martin Espada, and Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer prize-winning, graphic memoir about the Holocaust, Maus. Expect to write several short papers over the course of the semester.

This is the advanced workshop in nonfiction which, we should start by admitting, isn’t a genre. Nonfiction is just a descriptor, and not a very good one, since intelligent people don’t entirely agree about what it describes and what rules of engagement practitioners and readers expect. Instead we often use the term creative nonfiction (a little better) or (even better to my ear) literary nonfiction, which at least properly owns its snobbery. And why not be a little snobby? After all, what we’re interested in is nonfiction writing that aspires to art and complexity and is serious about its craft.

More often than not we’ll be talking about the essay, which is both a sort of writing as well as a way of thinking and of being, even. Essaying is a way of engaging with the world. Essay, as you probably know, comes from the French, meaning to try, to attempt. That is, what we’re doing is inherently experimental: we’re trying something. Well, why should that surprise us? The history of literature is the history of experimental literature.

This workshop will be partly generative, especially in the first few weeks, after which most of our time will focus on your own works in progress. We’ll discuss your work—its best qualities, its shapes and possible shapes, its subjects, its moves, its material, its methodology, and directions for improvement and expansion—as a group. We do this not just to improve the work on the table in front of us, but as a way of talking about what we’re working on ourselves. So when we’re workshopping an essay on sea turtles or lobotomies or doll parts or goth songs or Final Fantasy XII by someone, we are always talking about your work. It is often easier to clearly see and talk about others’ work than our own.

The other thing we’ll be focusing on is research, which is a primary skill for the nonfiction writer. Though we can write about ourselves, we’re not always that interesting (we become a lot more interesting by having something besides ourselves to explore and engage with). And we only find out what we think by researching and writing about the world and its details.

During the second half of his career, Shakespeare wrote most of his great tragedies, his so-called dark comedies, and his late romances. We will read plays from each of these groups, including Othello, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. We will demystify the plays and make them accessible to modern readers. Two exams during the course, a final, and a term paper.

This seminar will attend to the question of “what can you do with an English major?” by shifting the question to “why does the world need English majors today?” Debates over the value of the liberal arts education have been around almost as long as the study of liberal arts. How is this world made better by young people studying literary works of the past?  Given the shift towards assessable learning outcomes, and a decline in the amount of literary reading and study in high school and foundations curriculums, the question seems more pertinent now than ever. This seminar will prepare its students to be able to articulate, for audiences who may not be English majors themselves, what the value of literary study is, and why the most recent trends in literary scholarship bear on the shared challenges of the post-COVID future.

As a class, the only required reading will be Moby-Dick and Billy Budd—two works by Herman Melville that deal directly with the challenges, pleasures, values, potentials, and dangers of interpretive practice. Students will also read and stay current with the most recent questions and developments in the “defense of the humanities” and “changes to higher education” pieces in newspapers, magazines, journals, and the twitter-sphere.

Written assignments, which will undergo extensive revision and workshopping according to the Calderwood Seminar format, will summarize recent articles on the student’s chosen author, orienting the conclusions of literary study outwards towards recognizable “big” problems currently. Those questions may include—media and misinformation, ecology and climate change, race and law, democracy and polarization, technology and feeling, class and labor, among others.

This seven-week, asynchronous online course introduces the theory and practice of professional and technical writing in academic, professional, and community contexts. Using open educational resources and library-accessible resources, we will learn about key concepts, values, practices, and areas of expertise. We will apply our learning in a course project that examines and reports on professional and technical writing in specific contexts chosen by students. This course fulfills a core course requirement for the undergraduate major and minor in Professional and Technical Writing.