Upcoming Spring 2027 Courses

001 In Person

MW 3:30-4:45 PM

Instructor: Meg Lota Brown and Amanda Shufflebarger

Social Justice Movements is a community-engaged course which fulfills the “Building Connections” General Education requirement. The course situates local challenges – water, housing, and migration – within the historical context of social justice movements. Students will engage in sustained, community-embedded service-learning projects in collaboration with a Tucson-based organization that is actively involved in their social justice theme. Students will work with their respective organizations to identify a question, conduct research, and propose an advocacy plan.

101/201 Fully Online

**7-Week First Session**

Instructor: Dennis Wise 

Monsters are cool—but they’re also interesting, and also sometimes deeply problematic. The category of the “non-human” (or, more broadly, “the Other”) raises key questions about human identity, human values, and the cultural boundaries we construct to cordon off the horrific, the weird, the frightening, the monstrous, or the non-human. As a result, we won’t focus simply particular monster-types like the zombie, the vampire, or the cyborg. Instead, we’ll look at monster-figures in literature and film as key indicators of cultural history: the symbolic carriers of cultural values, problems, and ideological tensions. These cultural issues can include things like political dissension, systems of religious belief, social order and disorder, human nature, or distinctions of race/class/gender. As we’ll see, monsters often become symbols in the cultural, political, and intellectual clashes that mark Western history. In order to better understand our cultural roots, then, we have to come to terms with the historical and ideological tensions behind those clashes. In this course, we’ll discuss these tensions through well-organized analytical arguments that present strong textual evidence and display critical thinking.

ENGL 160D2: Nonhuman Subjects: Monsters, Ghosts, Aliens, Others

110/210 Fully Online

**7-Week Second Session**

Instructor: Dennis Wise 

Monsters are cool—but they’re also interesting, and also sometimes deeply problematic. The category of the “non-human” (or, more broadly, “the Other”) raises key questions about human identity, human values, and the cultural boundaries we construct to cordon off the horrific, the weird, the frightening, the monstrous, or the non-human. As a result, we won’t focus simply particular monster-types like the zombie, the vampire, or the cyborg. Instead, we’ll look at monster-figures in literature and film as key indicators of cultural history: the symbolic carriers of cultural values, problems, and ideological tensions. These cultural issues can include things like political dissension, systems of religious belief, social order and disorder, human nature, or distinctions of race/class/gender. As we’ll see, monsters often become symbols in the cultural, political, and intellectual clashes that mark Western history. In order to better understand our cultural roots, then, we have to come to terms with the historical and ideological tensions behind those clashes. In this course, we’ll discuss these tensions through well-organized analytical arguments that present strong textual evidence and display critical thinking.

ENGL 178 Dragons, Elves, and How to Build Imaginary Worlds

001 In Person

MW 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: Dennis Wise 

Building things is fun …. but have you ever tried building an entire world? For anyone who’s ever dipped into Star Wars, Dragon Age, or The Lord of the Rings, you already know that creators in film, fiction, and gaming have always borrowed heavily from real-world history and cultures. Accordingly, as an introduction to their techniques, we’ll take a “cultural history” approach to two legendary entities born of Faërie-land: Dragons, and Elves. From ancient Greece through modernity and the Middle Ages, these dangerous creatures of wonder and madness have evolved to meet the needs of new creators and new literary settings. In ENGL 178, we’ll thus learn how to adapt the legends, myths, and cultures of Earth world into new, wondrous worlds of your own invention.

Our course will culminate in a “legendarium,” a codex of world-building artifacts that’ll be graded for completion. Although some people assume that world-building only involves narrative fiction, ENGL 178 acknowledges that world-building happens through many different artworks. As such, artifacts can also include music, poetry, the fine arts, material cultures, bestiaries, treatises, map-making, wisdom contests, chronicles, prophecy, and more. With dragons and elves as our guide, you’ll hone your talents in creating a fully realized, fantastic imaginary world.

001 In Person

T/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Staff

Introduction to Nonfiction Writing introduces students to the glorious art and craft of creative nonfiction, where the self encounters the world and each illuminates the other. This course focuses on reading nonfiction (memoir, personal essay, travel essay, literary journalism, lyric essay, and more) like writers, focusing on questions of craft. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments in several modes of nonfiction writing. We will begin to share our work with peers and learn to give and receive craft-focused feedback, then use that feedback to revise and rewrite. No previous experience in nonfiction or creative writing is necessary.

ENGL 201 Introduction to Nonfiction Writing

002 In Person

T/Th 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Staff

Introduction to Nonfiction Writing introduces students to the glorious art and craft of creative nonfiction, where the self encounters the world and each illuminates the other. This course focuses on reading nonfiction (memoir, personal essay, travel essay, literary journalism, lyric essay, and more) like writers, focusing on questions of craft. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments in several modes of nonfiction writing. We will begin to share our work with peers and learn to give and receive craft-focused feedback, then use that feedback to revise and rewrite. No previous experience in nonfiction or creative writing is necessary.

ENGL 201 Introduction to Nonfiction Writing

003 In Person

M/W 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: Staff

Introduction to Nonfiction Writing introduces students to the glorious art and craft of creative nonfiction, where the self encounters the world and each illuminates the other. This course focuses on reading nonfiction (memoir, personal essay, travel essay, literary journalism, lyric essay, and more) like writers, focusing on questions of craft. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments in several modes of nonfiction writing. We will begin to share our work with peers and learn to give and receive craft-focused feedback, then use that feedback to revise and rewrite. No previous experience in nonfiction or creative writing is necessary.

ENGL 201 Introduction to Nonfiction Writing

110/210 Fully Online

**7-Week Second Session**

Instructor: Staff

Introduction to Nonfiction Writing introduces students to the glorious art and craft of creative nonfiction, where the self encounters the world and each illuminates the other. This course focuses on reading nonfiction (memoir, personal essay, travel essay, literary journalism, lyric essay, and more) like writers, focusing on questions of craft. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments in several modes of nonfiction writing. We will begin to share our work with peers and learn to give and receive craft-focused feedback, then use that feedback to revise and rewrite. No previous experience in nonfiction or creative writing is necessary.

ENGL 209 Introduction to Poetry Writing

001 In Person

T/Th 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Staff

Introduction to Poetry Writing introduces students to the art and craft of poetry. This course focuses on reading poetry like writers, focusing on questions of craft. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments. We will begin to share our work with peers and learn to give and receive craft-focused feedback, then use that feedback to revise and rewrite and write new poems. No previous experience in poetry or creative writing is necessary. 

ENGL 209 Introduction to Poetry Writing

002 In Person

M/W 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Staff

Introduction to Poetry Writing introduces students to the art and craft of poetry. This course focuses on reading poetry like writers, focusing on questions of craft. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments. We will begin to share our work with peers and learn to give and receive craft-focused feedback, then use that feedback to revise and rewrite and write new poems. No previous experience in poetry or creative writing is necessary. 

ENGL 209 Introduction to Poetry Writing

003 In Person

M/W 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Staff

Introduction to Poetry Writing introduces students to the art and craft of poetry. This course focuses on reading poetry like writers, focusing on questions of craft. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments. We will begin to share our work with peers and learn to give and receive craft-focused feedback, then use that feedback to revise and rewrite and write new poems. No previous experience in poetry or creative writing is necessary. 

209 Introduction to Poetry Writing

111/211 Fully Online

**7-Week Second Session**

Instructor: Staff

Introduction to Poetry Writing introduces students to the art and craft of poetry. This course focuses on reading poetry like writers, focusing on questions of craft. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments. We will begin to share our work with peers and learn to give and receive craft-focused feedback, then use that feedback to revise and rewrite and write new poems. No previous experience in poetry or creative writing is necessary. 

ENGL 210 Introduction to Fiction Writing

001 In Person

T/Th 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Staff 

Introduction to Fiction Writing introduces students to the art and craft of fiction. This course focuses on reading stories and longer form fiction like writers, focusing on questions of craft and how we build and shape stories. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments. We will begin to share our work with peers and learn to give and receive craft-focused feedback, then use that feedback to revise and rewrite. No previous experience in fiction or creative writing is necessary. 

ENGL 210 Introduction to Fiction Writing

002 In Person

M/W 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Staff 

Introduction to Fiction Writing introduces students to the art and craft of fiction. This course focuses on reading stories and longer form fiction like writers, focusing on questions of craft and how we build and shape stories. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments. We will begin to share our work with peers and learn to give and receive craft-focused feedback, then use that feedback to revise and rewrite. No previous experience in fiction or creative writing is necessary. 

ENGL 210 Introduction to Fiction Writing

003 In Person

M/W 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Staff

Introduction to Fiction Writing introduces students to the art and craft of fiction. This course focuses on reading stories and longer form fiction like writers, focusing on questions of craft and how we build and shape stories. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments. We will begin to share our work with peers and learn to give and receive craft-focused feedback, then use that feedback to revise and rewrite. No previous experience in fiction or creative writing is necessary. 

ENGL 210 Introduction to Fiction Writing

110 Fully Online

**7-Week Second Session**

Instructor: Stephanie Pearmain

Introduction to Fiction Writing introduces students to the art and craft of fiction. This course focuses on reading stories and longer form fiction like writers, focusing on questions of craft and how we build and shape stories. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments. We will begin to share our work with peers and learn to give and receive craft-focused feedback, then use that feedback to revise and rewrite. No previous experience in fiction or creative writing is necessary. 

ENGL 215 Elements of Craft: Creative Writing

001 In Person

T/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Johanna Skibsrud

ENGL215 is a lecture and reading course, supplemented by small group activity and discussion. The course is designed to introduce students to basic terms and concepts utilized across the creative writing genres taught at UA: poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction. Exercises and prompts will encourage students to experiment with some of the tools and approaches highlighted throughout our readings and across the three genres, as well as to become better close readers of literature. The reading list for this course will be diverse and include excerpts from classic texts as well as from contemporary work by Tucson-based and/or visiting authors. Students will be encouraged to attend literary events in the community, read and recite texts out loud, experiment with a range of different styles, and keep a reading journal that documents the development of their thinking and creative writing practice over the course of the semester. Overall, our aim will be to develop comfort and familiarity with key terms and concepts used in core creative writing classes and be able to put them to work both through the creation of short original pieces of writing and through the discussion and critique of these pieces. Though this is a lecture course, students will learn to observe, describe, and offer concrete, constructive feedback to other writers in the class. The work will be creative (generated by prompts and imitations) and analytical (guided by specific assignments and questions about form, content, and meaning).

In Person

M/W 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Paco Cantú

In Tucson, we live within the most biodiverse desert in the world, situated at the crux of various social, cultural, and environmental pressures. In this experiential learning course, students will gain hands-on experience working with community partners to learn about social and environmental challenges and opportunities in Southern Arizona while using creative writing to reflect upon these issues and their experiences. We will meet with community experts from local nonprofits and take field trips to enhance our understanding of the region. Students will collaborate with nonprofit partners on work that has an impact in the community, and will learn to draw upon these experiences to craft research-based nonfiction, fiction, and poetry about the region. We will identify and experiment with a range of creative writing strategies, eventually developing a community engagement project that centers writing as a non-extractive practice that can help serve local communities. 

101 Fully Online

**7-Week First Session**

Instructor: Stephanie Pearmain

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 and children’s literature. 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 picture books, middle grade novels, and young adult novels, we will consider the historical development of children’s literature as well as its dual agenda of instruction and amusement.

ENGL 264 US Popular Culture and the Politics of Representation

101 Fully Online

** 7-Week first session

Instructor: Maritza Cardenas

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 US 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.

ENGL 264 US Popular Culture and the Politics of Representation

110 Fully Online

** 7-Week second session

Instructor: Maritza Cardenas

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 US 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.

ENGL 265 Major American Writers

150 Fully Online

Instructor: Lynda Zwinger

Why do people read, watch, tell, and re-tell stories? Why do stories beckon us across time, history, and cultures? The influential American psychologist Daniel P. McAdams's answer to these questions is that stories can help us to better understand ourselves, who we are, who we want to become. We tell our own stories to identify who we are, and, most importantly, to rethink and retranslate our experiences; stories have an impact on our lives, growth, and well-being. In this section of English 265 Major American Authors, we will read some classic literary texts, paying close and particular attention to language, narrative, and our own ongoing interaction with the text.  You will be reading and writing interpretive reflections on your reading every week,  posting them to our D2L site; two short reflective analytic essays based on that work will also be required.

ENGL 270 Topics in Literature

150 Fully Online

Instructor: Lynda Zwinger

So many of us grew up on Disney's version of fairy tales; they are a part of people's childhoods and in fact are enjoyed by people well beyond their early years. Beautiful, witty, and timeless, for many people Disney means fairy tales. But fairy tales are very old forms of narrative entertainment, with some of them harking back to even older forms. We find fairy tales in virtually all cultures, and in fact, many of the tales we consider “ours” come to us from Germany, England, Russia, Scandinavia, the Caribbean, and Africa. For example, our first set of readings, “Little Red Riding Hood Stories” contains versions from Germany, France, Italy, and South Africa.  

In this section of "Introduction to Fairy Tales," we will read and think about what cultural and personal role these apparently deathless tales play, then and now. Work will consist of reflective writing assignments and online discussion.

You will also need to buy this ebook: https://www.amazon.com/Classic-Second-Norton-Critical-Editions-ebook/dp/B01NBWHWIN/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1545059704

ENGL 280 Introduction to Literature

001 In Person

M/W 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: Staff

Close reading of literary texts, critical analysis, and articulation of intellectually challenging ideas in clear prose. Different sections of the course may be based around themes, such as madness, utopia and dystopia, American identities, detectives and detection, or love and knowledge, that the class considers from a variety of perspectives.

ENGL 280 Introduction to Literature

002 In Person

M/W 11:00 AM-12:15 PM

Instructor: Staff

Close reading of literary texts, critical analysis, and articulation of intellectually challenging ideas in clear prose. Different sections of the course may be based around themes, such as madness, utopia and dystopia, American identities, detectives and detection, or love and knowledge, that the class considers from a variety of perspectives.

ENGL 280 Introduction to Literature

004 In Person

T/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Staff

Close reading of literary texts, critical analysis, and articulation of intellectually challenging ideas in clear prose. Different sections of the course may be based around themes, such as madness, utopia and dystopia, American identities, detectives and detection, or love and knowledge, that the class considers from a variety of perspectives.

001 In Person

T/Th 3:30-4:45 PM

Instructor: Peter Figler

English 300 is a comparative study of literature and cinema as aesthetic media. We will survey a curated list of films and texts that serve as examples, emphasizing specific dimensions that support course outcomes. We will focus on adaptation (book-to-film) in broad ways and will use one novel to examine the process more specifically. Class activities include discussions, individual reflections, short writings, and a final multimodal project that synthesizes the course modules and materials. Most texts and films are found on D2L, so that they may be easily accessed and revisited as often as needed.

001 In Person

M/W 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Staff

Intermediate Fiction Writing focuses on continuing to develop students' skills as serious fiction writers at a higher level. This course is typically taught in the workshop format and focuses on reading as writers, generating and revising fiction, developing your voice as a writer, sharpening your abilities as a constructive reader of your peers' work, and learning how to use that feedback to revise stories and longer-form fiction projects. 

ENGL 304 Intermediate Fiction Writing Workshop

002 In Person

T/Th 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: Staff

Intermediate Fiction Writing focuses on continuing to develop students' skills as serious fiction writers at a higher level. This course is typically taught in the workshop format and focuses on reading as writers, generating and revising fiction, developing your voice as a writer, sharpening your abilities as a constructive reader of your peers' work, and learning how to use that feedback to revise stories and longer-form fiction projects. 

001 In Person

M/W 3:30-4:45 PM

Instructor: Kyle DiRoberto

This course explores the power of narrative in the stories societies tell about those they accuse. Moving between fiction and nonfiction, we will examine plays, pamphlets, trial accounts, confessions, novels, and films about crimes both real and imagined. We will also investigate forms of criminal narrative from medieval ordeals and both witch and animal trials through murder pamphlets and popular gallows confessions. Turning to the modern era, the course will consider true crime in works such as the pamphlet Southern Horrors and in the novel In Cold Blood. Looking at the closely related narratives of resistance will put Cool Hand Luke in conversation with Anouilh’s Antigone, while works such as Twelve Angry Men and A Lesson Before Dying will allow us to investigate prejudice, judgment, and the administration of justice. Along the way, we will observe strange and changing forms of evidence, competing accounts of the accused, and the ways poverty, race, gender, religion, and nonconformity have made certain people especially vulnerable to accusation and prosecution. Across these texts, we will consider the power of narrative to produce and to contest the figure of "the criminal."

002 In Person

M/W 2:00-3:45 PM

Instructor: Sara Sams

In December 1900, Max Planck presented a paper on "the elementary quantum of action." Poets of the era took note. They asked: What is the most irreducible unit of a poem? Is the smallest bit an image, a rhythm, a word, a vortex? Over a hundred years later, the writer and editor Gilbert Adair sensed that our growing understanding of particle physics has had a lasting and dynamic relationship with our poetry. In response, he curated a discussion on Jacket2, inviting poets to consider how their engagement with science and scientific terms goes beyond recycling language. Adair postulates that contemporary poets do more than use terms like electron, wave, or valence as vehicles for metaphor; rather, as they respond to quantum mechanics, poets conceive of new disciplines.

In English 310, we will investigate these new disciplines. Building on work by literary scholars like Adair, Daniel Albright and Amy Catanzano, we will learn to distinguish between particle and wave poetics and read a diverse range of poetry through this interdisciplinary lens. We will also read poetic texts by physicists, considering how specialized language and particle physics are inherently intertwined. We will hear from physicists who write poetry and talk to them about their varied processes of inquiry. Finally, in Writing Experiments, we will enter the particle 

001 In Person

M/W 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: Susan Miller-Cochran

An introduction to key concepts and practices of professional and technical writing. 

ENGL 313 Intro to Professional and Technical Writing

101 Fully Online

**7-Week First Session**

Instructor: Shelley Rodrigo

An introduction to key concepts and practices of professional and technical writing. 

001 In Person

MWF 11:00-11:50 AM

Instructor: Paul Hurh

A survey of literature written in English in Britain and American from the 17th through the 19th centuries.  This course will read broadly through multiple significant literary movements and traditions during the period.

Some key titles include: Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Awakening, as well as poetry and short prose by: Pope, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Blake, Bradstreet, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson and others.

ENGL 380 Literary Analysis: Encounter

001 In Person

T/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Scott Selisker

This course will be an intensive introduction to the knowledge and skills required for reading closely and writing convincingly about literary texts. We will primarily be reading short but challenging works of fiction, poetry, and drama from a variety of time periods and contexts. Loosely linking these works will be the theme of encounter, and we’ll consider how writers dramatize different ways of seeing the world.

ENGL 380 Literary Analysis

002 In Person

M/W 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Pete Figler

English 380 is an advanced literary analysis course centered around close reading and the application of critical theory to works of literature. The goal of the course is to provide you with a set of critical and interpretive strategies that you can always draw on to think, discuss, and write about literary works. To that end, over the course of the semester, we will read a wide range of different types of literature, including poetry, drama, fiction, essay, and memoir. We will discuss the challenges that each of these literary forms present us as readers, as we try to interpret and make sense of them. We will also 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. You will have reading assignments for each class session and will be expected to contribute to our class discussions each time we meet. There will also be a midterm essay and a final paper assignment. Class meetings are discussion-based and regular participation in those discussions (small or large group) is a course requirement.

001 In Person

T/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Sylvia Chan

Problems of representation are at the heart of the experiences of physical suffering and medical care; how has literature defined and redefined its relationship to these experiences? Topics include empathy and its alternatives, illness and metaphor, and the evolution of the surface-depth model of the self. The course centers on major works of literature that engage the imaginative potential of medicine and the narrative structures of disease and suffering. How do we tell and narrate human pain and suffering?

From Alice in Wonderland to contaminated substances of chemotherapy treatments, poisons, toxins, and banned substances have always been literature’s and medicine’s most harmful and compassionate weapon. Poisons require bearing witness to what medical ethics call the power of proximity, of listening and paying attention with diagnosis, consensus, and empathy. This interdisciplinary course explores “poisonous” genres in narrative, medical, and health humanities. Students will study how writers and medical practitioners use poison as investigative agents: we will consider how a patient or community of our choice is affected by poisons, create data visualizations and responsible settings and storytellings for our patient-based community, and develop a premedical writing packet. The course is ideal for students interested in applying to the University of Arizona’s Honors Early Assurance Program (HEAP), American Medical Association medical schools, or other premed-related opportunities.

7-Week Second Session Fully Online

Instructor: Susan Briante

Explore the relationship between people, place, and the more-than-human world through environmental writing. In this course, you’ll read and discuss classic and contemporary poetry, essays, and fiction centered on the environment while developing your own voice through research, field observation, and creative experimentation. Designed for students in both the sciences and the humanities, the course will offer you new ways to engage with complex ecological issues and to sharpen your writing through sustained attention to the environment. You’ll share works in progress with classmates, learn through discussion and feedback, and complete the course with a portfolio of your revised creative work.

001 In Person

M/W 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Hayeon Lee

Introduction to Publishing: Sonora Review Edition offers hands-on and academic experience and training in literary publishing using one of the oldest student-run literary journals in the country, Sonora Review, as a model of experiential learning. Build and hone useful professional skills like literary editing, evaluating literary submissions, and preparing work for publication, and help actually produce and publish this well-respected national magazine.

001 In Person

W 9:30 AM-12:00 PM

Instructor: Ander Monson

The Advanced Nonfiction Workshop is where we will start new nonfiction projects and continue old ones. We’ll further refine our craft through reading, writing, and revising creative nonfiction, with a particular eye on the ways in which the ways writers of nonfiction interact with the world. In nonfiction the self—the I—is transformed by its encounter with the world, and the world is brought to life as it is witnessed and explored by the self. With a focus on research and going out into the world to bring stuff back, we write by bringing the world to the self and the self to the world. We’ll read and write about food, games, films, books, music, science, landscape, ourselves, other people, and other weird phenomena. We’ll write and publish new work and become better readers, writers, and literary citizens.

ENGL 404 Advanced Fiction Writing

001 In Person

Th 9:30 AM-12:00 PM

Instructor: Kate Bernheimer 

This is a Writing Emphasis Course for the Creative Writing Major. Discussion of student stories in a workshop setting.

ENGL 404 Advanced Fiction Writing

002 In Person

W 9:30 AM-12:00 PM

Instructor: Manuel Muñoz

This is a Writing Emphasis Course for the Creative Writing Major. Discussion of student stories in a workshop setting.

001 In Person

T 9:30 AM-12:00 PM

Instructor: Susan Briante

In this advanced poetry workshop, we’ll situate ourselves within a creativity lab as we experiment with new perspectives, accept new challenges and hone new poetic tools. We will share and respond to drafts of our work-in-progress. We’ll collaborate and inspire one another. We’ll also take advantage of the amazing poetry readings on campus to learn from some of the most exciting poets writing today. Over the course of the semester, we will build a class anthology of our favorite poems. And, by the end of our time together, we will have created a poetry chaplet or zine. 

001 In Person

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

Instructor: Frederick Kiefer

This course looks at the second half of Shakespear’s career. And what is distinctive about the years, roughly 1600 to 1612? Shakespeare, who had excelled a as master of comedy during the 1590s, turned increasingly to tragedy. Why? No one knows. Some have suggested that the mood of England turned darker following the death of the popular Queen Elizabeth in 1603. She was succeeded by James I, son of Mary Queen of Scots. He looked good on paper, having been king of Scotland. But he would prove a very unpopular monarch. Personally unpleasant in manner, he shrank from his public responsibilities and gave scandal by his affairs with young men. James never wanted to marry, but he had to take a wife in order to produce heirs to the throne. That was his principal job. Today, ironically, he’s best known for the Bible that bears his name: the King James Version. 

Whatever his liabilities as king, James proved an asset to Shakespeare. One of his first acts was to take Shakespeare’s company of actors under his own patronage. The company would become known as the King’s Men, and they would be the most prestigious and successful of all London theater companies. They performed Shakespeare’s plays along with the drama of his contemporaries. 

We shall be reading the major tragedies (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth) and a selection of Shakespeare’s late comedies. As we read and discuss, we shall endeavor to keep in mind that Shakespeare was an actor as well as a playwright and that he wrote his plays for the stage not the study. 

001 In Person

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

Instructor: Tiffany Portewig

This course introduces students to rhetorical principles underlying the theory and practice of grant writing for a range of funding organizations. People who specialize in Professional and Technical Writing (PTW) are often asked to support and sometimes organize grant writing efforts for their employers. Students will learn stages of a grant writing process by applying critical and rhetorical thinking to the research, planning, development, and revision of a grant proposal. By the end of the course, all students will develop a full grant proposal for the project of their choice and have the opportunity to submit that proposal for consideration to the funding organization.

150 Fully Online

Instructor: Hayriye Kayi-Aydar

This course will provide a general overview of the TESOL profession covering prominent theories, methodologies, and procedures influencing the field. Throughout the semester, students will engage in a range of theoretical, pedagogical, and reflective activities to inform their instructional practices. They will also become familiar with diverse educational contexts in which English is taught and learned as well as standards, materials, methods, and assessment tools used in such settings.

001 In Person

M/W 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Kyle DiRoberto

This course explores literary language through the tools of linguistics and approaches literature as an extraordinary laboratory for language theory. Readings in linguistics and language theory may range from Saussure to Lakoff and will be brought into conversation with short fiction, excerpts from novels, and poetry. Literary readings may include writers such as Dickinson, Williams, Stein, Hemingway, Baldwin, Joyce, Morrison, McCarthy, O’Connor, Erdrich, Nabokov, Faulkner, Borges, and Language poets such as Bernstein. We will investigate how writers exploit the resources of language to create style, voice, character, consciousness, ambiguity, and literary form. Students will learn to make precise observations about how language works and turn those observations into compelling interpretive arguments, asking throughout what literature can teach us about language and what linguistics can teach us about how literature works.

001 In Person

T/Th 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Bojan Louis

Studies in Native American Literature

150 Fully Online

Instructor: Stephanie Troutman Robbins

This course examines writing and expressive forms created by African Americans and members of the Black Diaspora. Course content is multi-genre and multi-modal and includes literature, essays, non-fiction, poetry, spoken word, short story, speculative fiction/fantasy, memoir, novels, art installation/exhibit, music and film. These cultural texts will allow us to see the ways in which African Americans have contributed to, have been influenced by, and have transformed America, and continue to do so. We will be interrogating not only the historical and political contexts of the works, but also the ways in which issues of gender, sexuality, and class (i.e. socioeconomic status) specifically inform the works. 

A central goal of the course will be to gain an understanding (or enhance your existing knowledge) of the historical, cultural, creative and political ways in which authors and writers create texts centered in, from and through various Black experiences. The course will also attend to a variety of literary genres, including contemporary, hybrid compositions—as the term African American Literature may suggest a traditional canon or subject matter, but is nuanced, complex and evolving as new authors and writers emerge and hidden figures come to light, generating content and forms that transcend and in some cases destabilize familiar categories.

001 In Person

T 4:00-5:40 PM

Instructor: Staff

***ONE-UNIT COURSE*** 

Senior-level workshop in translating, adapting and applying English major skills to multiple career paths.  Students will research graduate and pre-professional programs as well as entry-level positions in fields they choose.  Students will finish with an informed and workshopped set of application materials for an entry-level career position or a graduate program.

001 In Person 

W/F 10:00-10:50AM

Instructor: Paco Cantú

***TWO-UNIT COURSE*** WHEN REGISTERING PLEASE CHOOSE 2 UNITS. 

This TWO-UNIT seminar-style course is intended for Creative Writing majors in their junior or senior year. Junior/Senior-level colloquium in translating, adapting, and applying Creative Writing major skills to multiple career paths. Students will research career fields and graduate and preprofessional programs and be in conversation with professionals from these fields. Students will finish with an informed and workshopped set of application materials for an entry-level career position or a graduate program. When registering for this course please choose TWO units. Please make sure you have the right amount of total units.

001/002 HONORS SECTION

T/Th 3:30-4:45 PM

Instructor: Paul Hurh

(*Enrollment Restricted to English Scholars and Laureates Students)

This course will chart the American adaptation of the gothic literary tradition over the past two centuries.  The texts and films for this course will be drawn from the horror genre, and we will consider how their specific contours are shaped by the specific political, social, economic, sexual, and racial tensions of the developing United States. 

003 In Person

T/Th 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Fred Kiefer

What’s the key to reading plays with enjoyment and appreciation? Clearly, we do not read them the way we read poems. We do not read them as though they were novels or collections of stories. Plays require a knowledge of theaters and theatrical conventions. Plays require at least an acquaintance with audiences who paid good money for entertainment. Ideally, plays require an alertness to issues that preoccupied society when the plays were written. And in the theater we need to accept the ground rules of the playwright: that is, we accept the world of a play in whatever way the playwright defines it. A play’s imaginative world may be very different from the one you and I inhabit every day. But that’s the way drama works. As long as we accept this “contract” with a playwright, we possess the means to interpret drama with confidence and pleasure. We shall keep in mind that, above all, playwrights sought not to moralize or indoctrinate but to engage the emotions of men and women witnessing the performance of comedies and tragedies.

Our course will look at the best plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries and discover their strategies for engaging people eager to be moved. Our plays will include The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, Much Ado about Nothing, A Woman Killed with Kindness, and The Duchess of Malfi. Our goal will be to enhance the ways we read drama and so consistently improve our understanding of theatrical scripts. 

004 In Person

T/Th 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: Scott Selisker

This capstone seminar will focus on two major American authors: William Faulkner and Toni Morrison. Both authors explored themes including memory, family, the legacies of American slavery, and the meanings of identity. They used innovative techniques that make their work both challenging and rewarding, and their influence shows in much contemporary literary writing. We'll read five novels slowly—The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved—alongside a number of short stories, essays, and a film. We'll deepen our understanding of both authors by reading into their historical contexts (literary, political, philosophical) and by exploring a range of strategies for interpreting their work. Requirements will include a presentation and discussion-leading session, a few short written assignments, two short papers, and a research-based final paper.

150 fully online

Instructor: Tiffany Portewig 

In this course, students complete an experiential learning capstone project in professional and technical writing. The goal of the capstone project is to learn and apply strategies for developing, managing, and documenting a quality professional and technical writing project. Students will also create a portfolio based on student goals to showcase and reflect on their learning in Professional and Technical Writing courses.