Upcoming Courses
Winter 2020 Course Offerings
Looking for a class in Winter 2020-2021? Check out our great line up of literature, language, and writing courses to help round out your gen-eds, major requirements, or electives.
Visit the Schedule of Classes to find days/time for courses. Then register in the UAccess Student Center.
“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!).
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. And the older versions do not limit themselves to princesses in blue ball gowns and gruff but ultimately good-hearted bad guys. In this section of “Introduction to Fairy Tales,” we will view some of the iconic Disney versions of fairy tales, read the tales on which they are based, and think about what cultural and personal role these apparently deathless tales play, then and now. Work will consist of informal writing assignments and online discussion.
Readings
The required text for this class is an etext: Maria Tatar (ed.), The Classic Fairy Tales. Norton, 2nd edition. The URL is: https://www.amazon.com/Classic-Second-Norton-Critical-Editions-ebook/dp/B01NBWHWIN/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1545059704
In this short Winter Session, we’ll focus on the cinematic adaptation process from page to screen through three works by William Shakespeare. After an introduction to adaptation theories and processes by way of Romeo and Juliet, we’ll examine adaptations of power, family, and revenance in Richard III and Hamlet. The plural adaptations of these tragedies to film, from prestige period drama to “modernization" to parody, will be our focus. Regular discussion posts, two short creative-critical projects and a final summative essay. Asynchronous online, but not self-paced. Winter session requires daily login and interaction.
This course will explore the emerging genre of autobiography associated with explorations of populist anger, racial division, political resentment, sexual desire, familial and non-familial connections, and personal growth. We will read the following fictional and non-fictional works: Kiese Laymon’s Heavy: An American Memoir, Claire Dederer’s Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning, Rachel Cusk’s Transit, and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Sons. The course will introduce students to how the autobiographical genre creates conceptions of agency and personhood, in various life contexts. Students will write two short course papers during the summer session, in addition to writing D2L discussion posts in response to instructor and classmate prompts.
A survey of British and American literature to 1660, with emphasis on major writers in their literary and historical contexts.
Spring 2021 Classes
Looking for a class in Spring 2021? Check out our great line up of literature, language, and writing courses to help round out your gen-eds, major requirements, or electives.
Visit the Schedule of Classes to find days/time for courses. Then register in the UAccess Student Center.
Schedule of Classes UAccess Student Center
English 100 & 200 Level Courses
ENGL 160A2 explores the literature of food and its relationship to culture. Analyzing food as both personal and cultural symbol, students will develop an appreciation for how food traditions reflect and shape cultural societies and diverse worldviews. Students will explore their own food memories in reflective writing and storytelling to find connections between personal food histories and social and environmental justice. Using various rhetorical strategies and drawing from research, field study, and lived experiences, students will practice food writing for a variety of audiences, including digital and multi-media modalities, in four key genres: recipe, podcast, memoir, and food manifesto. Writing workshop and revision will also be an important aspect of the course.
The student 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. The student will read selected texts and discuss craft elements in works of literary nonfiction. The student will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments in several modes of nonfiction writing (i.e., portrait, travel essay, memoir).
The student 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. The student will read selected texts and discuss craft elements in works of literary nonfiction. The student will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments in several modes of nonfiction writing (i.e., portrait, travel essay, memoir).
The student 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. The student will read selected texts and discuss craft elements in works of literary nonfiction. The student will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments in several modes of nonfiction writing (i.e., portrait, travel essay, memoir).
With careful attention to language, form, and subject, poetry offers ways to be empowered and engaged with our experiences of place, time, and relations to others. The writer Meena Alexander has said, “[P]oetry’s task is to reconcile us to the world—not to accept it at face value or to assent to things that are wrong, but to reconcile one in a larger sense, to return us in love, the province of the imagination, to the scope of our mortal lives.” Poetry creates new worlds with language, the material of communication, information, expression, connection, meaning, seeing, hearing, and sensing. This is a course that will rely on a collaborative work environment. Throughout the course we will read a variety of modern and contemporary poetry, as well as essays about the poem to support our growing knowledge of the forms and concepts relating to the craft of writing poetry. You will be expected to write original poetry, participate in critique (workshop), and read assigned texts.
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.
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.
The 200-level course introduces the student to craft terms and concepts through lecture, exercises, and reading selections. The workshop method introduces the sharing and critique of original student work in breakout discussion groups. Students gain a working knowledge of basic craft terms and concepts such as character, plot, setting, narrative time, dialogue, point-of-view, voice, conflict resolution, and metaphorical language. The group will analyze readings from published authors are analyzed from a writer’s perspective. Students will identify and hone the writing skills necessary for success in fiction writing. Students complete exercises based on these elements and write at least one complete short story.
This course will introduce you to the craft and practice of fiction writing, with a focus on the short story. In this class, we’re going to attempt to do four things: (1) learn the elements of technique in the fiction genre, where we will emphasize the close study of major craft elements like character, plot/narrative arc, setting, point-of-view, voice/style, etc; (2) learn to read as writers, where we will engage with published works in classic and contemporary literature, with a view to identifying craft elements and strategies; (3) learn the language and culture of critique through workshops of original work (each student will submit at least one original story for workshop); and (4) demystify the writing life, where we will discuss creative writing practices and processes and discover artists with whose work we can develop personal connections.
The 200-level course introduces the student to craft terms and concepts through lecture, exercises, and reading selections. The workshop method introduces the sharing and critique of original student work in breakout discussion groups. Students gain a working knowledge of basic craft terms and concepts such as character, plot, setting, narrative time, dialogue, point-of-view, voice, conflict resolution, and metaphorical language. The group will analyze readings from published authors are analyzed from a writer’s perspective. Students will identify and hone the writing skills necessary for success in fiction writing. Students complete exercises based on these elements and write at least one complete short story.
The 200-level course introduces the student to craft terms and concepts through lecture, exercises, and reading selections. The workshop method introduces the sharing and critique of original student work in breakout discussion groups. Students gain a working knowledge of basic craft terms and concepts such as character, plot, setting, narrative time, dialogue, point-of-view, voice, conflict resolution, and metaphorical language. The group will analyze readings from published authors are analyzed from a writer’s perspective. Students will identify and hone the writing skills necessary for success in fiction writing. Students complete exercises based on these elements and write at least one complete short story.
The 200-level course introduces the student to craft terms and concepts through lecture, exercises, and reading selections. The workshop method introduces the sharing and critique of original student work in breakout discussion groups. Students gain a working knowledge of basic craft terms and concepts such as character, plot, setting, narrative time, dialogue, point-of-view, voice, conflict resolution, and metaphorical language. The group will analyze readings from published authors are analyzed from a writer’s perspective. Students will identify and hone the writing skills necessary for success in fiction writing. Students complete exercises based on these elements and write at least one complete short story.
This reading-based course will introduce students of creative writing to the most important terms and concepts utilized across the three genres taught at the University of Arizona: poetry, creative nonfiction and fiction. While we will spend the majority of our time reading, analyzing (from the perspective of craft) and discussing published work across a variety of literary styles, students will also have a chance to experiment in their own writing with some of the tools and approaches highlighted throughout our readings and across the three genres.
An English grammar and editing course in which students will learn and apply contextual strategies for editing their own writing, as well as the writing of others, for grammar, style, and format.
“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.
Students will learn to critically examine and write about Young Adult novels and to develop a better understanding of the genre as a whole. Students will discuss, explore, and analyze the ways in which cultural and historical contexts influence the production and themes of literature. Students will come to understand the ways in which Young Adult literature shapes understandings of adolescence.
Close reading of literary texts, critical analysis, and articulation of intellectually challenging ideas in clear prose.
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.
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.
Close reading of literary texts, critical analysis, and articulation of intellectually challenging ideas in clear prose.
English 300 & 400 Level Courses
“Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Our challenge as writers can perhaps be no more succinctly expressed than with these words. This introductory fiction workshop will ask you to do “the most difficult thing in the world” with the aim of expanding your thinking, your writing, and your thinking about writing. Using interdisciplinary, embodied and interactive exercises, you will be given the opportunity to explore a range of different approaches to working with theme, style, plot, character, voice, idea, and emotion. You will be asked to leave behind preconceived projects and expectations, to take risks, generate new writing, to read and respond to a diverse and rigorous reading list, and to engage generously with your peers.
All readings for this course will be made available by the instructor on D2L.
Practice in writing short fiction.
This course is an intermediate poetry workshop, but it also acts as an introduction to poetic forms and “formations.” This class will be part workshop, part poetic analysis of exemplary traditional and inspired form poems. There has been over the last three decades much debate about the place of traditional poetic forms in American poetry today, but we can all agree that some of our finest poets wrote—and are writing—sometimes in traditional form, and that practicing forms is good foundational training in technical discipline, compression, and revision. In this course, we will be concerned with the study, analysis, and writing of good poetry in both traditional and invented forms. We will also consider a poet’s role in society as well as that of art.
We will begin by discussing vibrant examples, including some contemporary poetry that is formally influenced, but not strictly speaking traditionally formal. Each student will be asked to produce and to workshop formal, free verse, and invented poetry herself/himself. Writing in forms can help make one aware of the value of each word—and syllable—as well as each sound and stress. The class will be a forum in which matters of poetic form—large and small—are explored and tried out. Our goal will be that even those with great formal expertise will have the opportunity to challenge themselves and expand their range of skills.
It is no secret that mass incarceration has become one of the most important issues defining contemporary U.S. culture, at home and abroad. This class will frame this national problem through a local lens, balancing readings that discuss the historical causes of mass incarceration, including the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws, the evolution of harsh sentencing laws, the role of bond and bail legislation, and gender dynamics, with a focus on local prison populations and those who are involved in trying to mitigate the challenges facing them. We will invite a variety of guest speakers to visit our class, including a local public defender, an activist who works in the women’s prison in Perryville, social workers who talk about the challenges facing recently released individuals, and formerly incarcerated activists. This course will also include an opportunity for students to participate in developing courses for the Prison Educational Program, to be taught in the local Arizona State Prison Complex here in Tucson. We will discuss how to work collaboratively with incarcerated students in order to develop meaningful pedagogy and the specific challenges involved in developing curriculum among a diverse group of students with different educational backgrounds, scattered across a number of different yards.
Alexander Pope claimed that in poetry sound must seem an echo to the sense. But how exactly does this echo work? And what happens if we reverse the order and say, sense must seem an echo to the sound, as often happens in nursery rhymes, nonsense verse, experimental writing, and song lyrics? In this class, we will examine the ways in which the new and rapidly expanding field of sound studies can help us answer these and many more questions about the work of sound in, and on, literature. Sound studies combines a variety of disciplines in order to listen to the ways in which different theories and practices of sound connect with each other. It combines literature, poetics, music, performance, film studies, linguistics, acoustics, environmental studies, recording arts, history, philosophy, and more. In this class, we will deepen our knowledge about the relationship between sound and literature by listening closely to poetry, prose, songs, performances, and musical works. We will also read statements and essays that will deepen and complicate our sense of the world in and through sound. Ultimately, we will think through the ways in which literature helps us hear our environments' and each other with a critical and empathetic ear.
This course offers an introduction to queer theory and culture, looking at what happens to literature and film when one looks at it through the prism of sexuality and gender. We will be interrogating the meaning of sex, sexuality, gender, and sexual / gender identity in a variety of contexts: in terms of the experience of authors, the constitution of characters, the meaning of settings, the relationship of literature or film to larger political issues, the practice of reading, shifting historical meanings, temporality, religion, and in relation to race, class, and able-bodiedness. We will be examining not only how sexual discourses constitute the shifting meaning of “gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer” identity and experience, but “straight” or “normative” identities and life narratives, as well.
Yet the very notion of a "sexual identity," no matter how broadly defined, begs a number of questions. What is gender, anyway? How is it experienced socially, erotically, in the body? How do we think of sexuality? Is it a kind of appetite one is born with, akin to hunger or thirst? A drive that aims toward a very specific kind of object? Or is it something that is excited from without, responding to cultural stimuli that tell us what we want? Does one "choose" a sexual identity, is one born with it, or is it something that develops and changes over time? And how is it similar to (or different from) racial or class identity as a political category of exclusion and oppression? How does sexual desire relate to the production of gender—both for the desiring self and for the desired object?
Study of English form and use in relation to social and cultural contexts. Topics include regional and social dialectology, attitudes toward variation and change, strategies of interaction, gender and language use, and politeness, power and politics.
Black Lives Matter is one of the civil rights movements that we will examine to consider how disenfranchised groups have mobilized to demand their rights at pivotal moments in our history. We will begin with nineteenth-century abolitionist and suffragist movements, then turn to women’s and civil rights movements in the 1960s, and conclude with GLBTQ and immigrant rights movements. We will examine how activists’ rhetorical strategies have evolved along with changes in media in ways that are shaping the distinctive historical experiences of Gen Z. These examinations will help us assess how the COVID pandemic has exacerbated systemic racial and economic inequities.
This workshop course culminates with creating a short documentary film on a social justice issue using the Adobe multimedia applications that are freely available to all UA students. The other major assignments are a testimonial essay and an intergenerational essay in which students will interview people from other generations on their perspectives on a social justice issue.
English 373A introduces students to major works from the Anglo-Saxon or Old English period to the late seventeenth century. We will begin with one epic poem, Beowulf, and end with another, Paradise Lost. In between in chronological order we will read lyrics (short non-narrative poems), sonnets (a type of lyric), drama (plays), and more. We will set the readings in their historical context and at the same time consider how they speak to us today. The class meets Mondays and Wednesdays with a discussion section on Fridays. There will be three short papers, in-class writing assignments (including at least ten short-answer quizzes), and a final examination.
ENGL 373B covers Anglophone literature from the Restoration of the British monarchy in 1660 to the end of the Victorian Age, in two hemispheres and on two islands. As such, it addresses a wide variety of texts associated with exploration, colonialism, slavery, power, sex, gender, race, and human relationships to Nature and to concepts of deity and the self. We’ll read works in a variety of forms—satire, drama, poetry, prose fiction, political address, dictionary entries—and literary movements and periods, including Restoration, Early American, Augustan, Federalist and Early Republic, Gothic, Romanticism, Victorian, Realism, and Decadence. Weekly writing, two essays, and a final exam.
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This course teaches the skill of literary analysis, with an emphasis on close reading, through the rigorous study of poetry, short fiction, and novels. The themes for the texts are the pastoral and the rural, subjects that roughly concern the construction of “nature” as beauty on one hand, and explore the relation of individual identity to society on the other. Some of the writers we will read are: Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, Gwendolyn Brooks, Christopher Marlowe, C. Day Lewis, and Emily Dickinson. Students will learn both basic and advanced terms for the study of literature, will be introduced to some key concepts in literary theory, and will be prepared, through a demanding course of analytical writing and revision, for the raised expectations of precision, originality, organization, and logic that they will encounter in the upper-division courses.
As a gateway course for the English major, this class will focus upon the basic elements of literary analysis. To that end, we will take texts apart in order to see how they create specific effects and meanings. We will in particular attend to properties of sound, syntax, rhetoric, form, and narrative in a variety of works in a variety of genres in order to create coherent readings of literary works. This course will, in particular, move in a cumulative mode, from the smallest units of the English language—phonemes and syllables—to the more expansive concerns of performance and narrative. We will also examine how a well-developed practice of close reading informs basic theories of literary criticism, and we will use these theories by the end of the semester. Our readings will range from Old English lyrics to contemporary poetry, and from Shakespearean drama to modern short stories. This is a writing intensive course, meant to prepare you for upper division work in the department.
Introduction to the various modes, techniques, and terminology of practical criticism.
This is a course in “close reading.” The reading assignments will be short, to allow us to pay close attention to individual texts and individual passages. We’ll read many poems some short stories, and perhaps one novel, with an eye toward mastering the close reading techniques crucial to the sort of literary analysis we practice in upper-division literature courses (and beyond). For this live online course, regular attendance at Zoom classes and regular participation in online discussion boards are required. Students will write roughly 7-8 short papers (1-2 pp. each), and 2 slightly longer papers (3-5 pp. each). There are no exams.
Questions? Please email the instructor at nathanso@arizona.edu
This course will consist of both hands-on and academic experience and training in journal publishing. All students who are chosen for this course will be Editorial Assistants for Sonora Review, the University of Arizona's prize-winning, graduate student-run literary magazine. Sonora Review has published countless notable authors, including Aimee Bender, Maggie Nelson, David Foster Wallace, Joy Harjo, and Barbara Kingsolver, just to name a few. Several of our undergraduate Editorial Assistants have gone on to attend prestigious MFA programs and to publish award-winning books. Homework for the course will consist primarily of reading, providing brief feedback on, and selecting submissions we’ve received from authors. These submissions will be published in our annual print journal and our online journal. Students may choose which genre(s) they want to read for (fiction, poetry, or nonfiction). This is a live online class. Class time will largely be spent discussing these submissions, as well as learning about the publishing and editing processes. Students can also expect to complete a few non-submission readings and short writing assignments throughout the semester. Note: students may take ENGL 389 multiple times for credit! To apply for this course, complete this form: https://tinyurl.com/engl389app. If you have any questions about the position or the application, please email Instructor / Editor-in-Chief Kevin Mosby at kmosby@email.arizona.edu.
This course will consist of both hands-on and academic experience and training in editing and publishing in the Children’s Literature market. All students who are chosen for this course will be Editorial Assistants for 389Literary, a pop up editorial literary agency for children’s picture books.
389Literary opened for submissions in Fall 2020 and received 300 picture book manuscripts. Student editors will read query letters and manuscripts, read comparable titles, do market research, write jacket copy and pitches, and provide professional level feedback to writers. Submissions include new and established writers from around the globe.
Class time will largely be spent discussing these submissions, as well as learning about the publishing and editing processes. Students can also expect to complete a few non-submission readings and short writing assignments throughout the semester.
This is an online course though students will work with the professor to schedule meetings via zoom once per week.
To apply for this course, please email Professor Stephanie Pearmain at Pearmain@email.arizona.edu. Include a letter of interest and relevant experience.
This course will focus on a variety of 19th- and 20th-century short stories drawn from the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Flannery O’Connor, and Sherman Alexie. Some of the main threads tying together these stories are elements of the grotesque, the labyrinthine, paradox, and the uncanny, often as challenges to hegemonic culture. Thus, the texts have thematic and structural echoes. We will, unfortunately, be reading some of these works in translation. I have tried to locate the best translations available. If you read German or Spanish fluently, the class will be grateful for any comments on the accuracy of the translations. We will discuss the stories in the context of various literary theories and methodologies, including biographical, historical, and philosophical contexts, Marxism, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and cultural studies. Stories will be read as closely as time permits. The syllabus may, for this reason, be flexible. Students will write comments and observations on readings in preparation for class and will have occasional in-class writing periods. The course also requires a midterm essay and a final essay, and complete an annotated bibliography in preparation for the final essay. Instructions for these assignments will be posted on D2L. Students will share their work in class as part of the participation grade.
This course will focus on a variety of 19th- and 20th-century short stories drawn from the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Flannery O’Connor, and Sherman Alexie. Some of the main threads tying together these stories are elements of the grotesque, the labyrinthine, paradox, and the uncanny, often as challenges to hegemonic culture. Thus, the texts have thematic and structural echoes. We will, unfortunately, be reading some of these works in translation. I have tried to locate the best translations available. If you read German or Spanish fluently, the class will be grateful for any comments on the accuracy of the translations. We will discuss the stories in the context of various literary theories and methodologies, including biographical, historical, and philosophical contexts, Marxism, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and cultural studies. Stories will be read as closely as time permits. The syllabus may, for this reason, be flexible. Students will write comments and observations on readings in preparation for class and will have occasional in-class writing periods. The course also requires a midterm essay and a final essay, and complete an annotated bibliography in preparation for the final essay. Instructions for these assignments will be posted on D2L. Students will share their work in class as part of the participation grade
This advanced workshop in literary nonfiction will challenge its participants to blend research and personal narrative in a single, ambitious, “braided” essay modeled on the work of such writers as Priscilla Long and Reg Saner. The approach will be step-by-step, resulting in an essay of some 20 pages or more. You will learn new research skills, lyrical approaches to factual material and historical scene reconstruction.
This is a Writing Emphasis Course for the Creative Writing Major. Discussion of student stories in a workshop setting.
This is a Writing Emphasis Course for the Creative Writing Major. Discussion of student stories in a workshop setting.
This is the advanced course in the undergraduate poetry-writing sequence. Our class time will mostly be divided between close reading seminars and studio time in which we draft out of a range of prompts and exercises, transitioning to whole-group critiques when appropriate. We will read contemporary and canonical poets across cultures and write brief craft analyses of their work. While this course is about writing better poems, it is ultimately about learning new ways of seeing, feeling, thinking, and being; it’s about expanding your tool kit for self-invention and for world-invention. Students may present longer works for discussion and may work toward culminating projects such as chapbook manuscripts and longer poem sequences. Class size is limited to 15 students. Creative Writing majors and minors will be given priority.
This course will begin by contextualizing the rise and use of threshold concepts in the field, such as those articulated in Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle’s edited book, Naming What We Know, and its follow-up, (Re)considering What We Know. How did composition studies reach a place in its disciplinary history that the articulation of threshold concepts became necessary? What questions or problems do threshold concepts respond to and answer? What “crises” do they resolve? How far has the field travelled from the rather dire diagnosis for the future of composition teaching provided by Sharon Crowley in her Composition in the University?
At the same time, we will trace Sid Dobrin’s concept of “post-composition” and Raul Sanchez’s theories of identity in and through writing to upset some of composition studies’ commonplaces. Furthermore, we will think about composition theory in the wake of new materialist critiques, such as those offered by actor-network and post-humanist theories (Rickert, Boyle, Rivers, Rice, Hawk, and Gries), anti-colonialist and anti-racist critiques (Ruiz, Baca, Cushman, Villaneuva, Perryman-Clark, Craig, etc.), and translingual approaches (Canagarajah, Lee, Jordan, Ayash, etc.)
This course will help grad students in RCTE develop a more complex understanding of what writing is and what it does. Naturally, we will downshift to consider classroom pedagogies, attitudes toward textual appropriation, and redefining a place for writing studies beyond an English department.
In this course, students learn how to apply localization strategies to the development, editing, and management of content in ways that are responsive to and inclusive of linguistic and cultural differences. This is a Wildcat Writers course, which means students will be partnered with a Tucson High Magnet School 11th and 12th grade mythology class. Together, students will work on collaborative comic composing projects and engage in shared meaning making.
English 427 introduces students to the most admired (and sometimes problematic) parts of the Canterbury Tales and their backgrounds. The class will be interdisciplinary in spirit with attention to contemporary history and art. I will give quizzes, announced and unannounced, two short papers, and a final examination at the time scheduled by the registrar.
This course offers students an opportunity to learn and practice methods and skills in engaging user communities at every step of their writing and design processes and reporting effectively on their research. By partnering with UX@UA, the course provides a user-centered, collaborative space for students to gain research skills, get hands-on experience, and develop communicative, cultural, and technological resources in and beyond the classroom. This course fulfills a core course requirement for the new undergraduate major and minor in Professional and Technical Writing.
During the first half of his career, Shakespeare wrote most of his romantic comedies, most of his history plays, and several of his best tragedies, including Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. We shall read a selection of these plays, paying close attention to language, character, and dramatic action. We shall also endeavor to keep in mind that Shakespeare was himself an actor and that his plays came to life on a stage. We will demystify the plays and make them accessible to modern readers. Two exams during the course, a final, and a term paper.
The goal of this course is to deepen our understanding of Shakespeare’s plays and of why they continue to be popular more than 400 years after they were written. We will examine one aspect of their popularity by studying some of their film adaptations. The course includes plays from three different genres—comedy, tragedy, and history; all but one of the works will be paired with film adaptations. We will focus on ways in which the written and cinematic texts are not only embedded in their particular culture but also expressive of cross-cultural concerns.
In addition to thinking critically about Shakespeare’s gorgeous, funny, complicated, disturbing, and infinitely interesting drama, students will learn the language and methods of film analysis, refine their visual literacy, and develop more effective communication strategies. One of our objectives will be to examine how the author, directors, and actors engage their audiences and construct meaning. Another objective will be to consider how reading Shakespeare and his cinematic interpreters enables us to understand more fully our own culture and our own selves.
A general overview of the profession covering prominent theories, methodologies, and procedures influencing the field.
In this upper-division seminar, we will delve into Victorian literature and culture, focusing on the latter half of the nineteenth century. We will learn about the British Empire and opposition to it in this period. We will also study scientific, artistic, and sexual movements of these decades, as well as economic and political ideas. We will consider the figure of the "New Woman” in life and art, as notions of gender equality changed in Britain and beyond. We will also reflect on current debates in Victorian studies: what counts as Victorian literature? Who decides and on what basis? In terms of reading, expect to sample gothic short stories and marriage plots gone awry; imperialist and anti-imperialist fiction and history; burlesques, poems, essays, and more. While Victorians were prolific – think of the many novels published serially in periodicals – our reading will be manageable!
Specific titles may include: George Eliot, “Janet's Repentance” (realist short story); Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla (vampire novella); Vernon Lee, Hauntings (ghost stories); William Howard Russell, excerpts from My Diary in India, in the Year 1858-9 (journalistic memoir); Charles Dickens, letters (on political controversies and social issues); Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret (play, adapted from her novel of the same name); Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Bildungsroman); Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole (autobiography); Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (children’s literature, fairy tales); Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped (young adult historical fiction / adventure); Charles Darwin, excerpts from On the Origin of Species (science writing); Friedrich Engels, excerpts from The Condition of the Working Class in England (writing on labor and industrialization); poetry ranging from “dramatic monologues” to political ballads housed in Scottish and English archives.
This course will explore certain philosophical questions explored in the writings of Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche that have had a lasting influence on the writings of many of the major writers such as Kafka, Camus, Sartre, and Beckett. We will begin this course with some reflections on ancient Greek tragedy, primarily Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, to prepare the ground to think about the questions and concerns of those nineteenth-century luminaries. We will focus on some excerpts from the major works of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and on Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and “The Grand Inquisitor.” (Some discussion of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov will take place during the course even if you haven’t read those novels; it would be great if students read these hard-to-put-down novels during the Christmas break.) Among the other works to be discussed fully will be several of Kafka’s short stories, Camus’ The Stranger and The Plague, Sartre’s No Exit as well as a couple of his short stories, and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Students will write short papers on each of the major texts discussed in class and take a final exam.
In 1948, the carrier ship Empire-Windrush sailed from Jamaica to England, carrying the first members of an entire generation of emigrants from Britain’s colonial empire who would revitalize and irrevocably change the course of post-war literature in England and in English. This course will consider a group of authors writing from 1948 to the present whose work has shaped the landscape of writing in Britain. They’ve done so by exploring the entanglement of race and empire, aesthetics and politics, English and other languages, a range of emigrant experiences, colonial and post-independence histories, Brexit and its significance for contemporary Black British writers, among other themes. These writers experiment with a variety of new fictional and poetic forms, and imagine into being new forms of citizenship, art, and communal experience.
While we will begin with the Caribbean and the Windrush trajectory, we will move forward chronologically and outward geographically to read authors from a variety of national and colonial backgrounds from around the (former) British empire; this will give us a sense of the sheer breadth of post-Windrush and post-empire literary product (and will include brief excursions into the visual arts, broadcasting, and music). Possible course authors include: Bernardine Evaristo, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jackie Kay, Zadie Smith, Winsome Pinnock, James Berry, Benjamin Zephaniah, George Lamming, Grace Nichols, Stuart Hall, Afua Hirsch, Johnny Pitts, Kwame Kwei Armagh, David Dabydeen, Jean Binta Breeze, and Shola von Reinhold.
In this multi-genre course, we will read the work of contemporary Indigenous Women writers, from the Erdrich sisters to Kelly Jo Ford, Layli Long Soldier, and Claire Meuschke. Through the careful study of selected texts, we will develop techniques and structures with which to craft and develop our own narratives and poetic creations. Using these modes will help us illustrate the consequences of the social forces and continuance that have become central to the work of Indigenous artists and writers.
Over the course of the semester, we’ll read eight books together—four works of fictions and four poetry collections—as well as work by Mishuana Goeman, Jodi Byrd, and Audra Simpson among others. As we read and discuss these texts, we’ll explore the narrative and poetic techniques that these Indigenous writers employ to add to and continue the flow of storytelling and literature while also disrupting and “remapping settler geographies in order to center Indigenous knowledges” (Goeman). We’ll follow a thirteen-year-old Ojibwe boy as he ventures on a quest to heal his mother who slips into a solitary abyss following an attack; witness four-generations of tough, complicated Cherokee women; enter a future where Indigenous people are hunted for their bone marrow; experience a variety of poetic lyric and form that call-to-action, nourish, and cultivates the apocalyptic and violent aftermaths imposed upon Indigenous peoples.
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. We will explore how gothic conventions are adapted by emerging literary movements, and we will study them through several theoretical lenses including: Marxism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, critical race theory, feminist theory, among others.
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.
We shall take as our starting point the words spoken by Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek. His word “space” has an aura of the unknown and uncharted. The word signals adventure and wonder. Space can prove says, “New philosophy [science] calls all in doubt, / the element of fire is quite put out; / the sun is lost, and the earth . . . / ‘Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone.” John Milton in Paradise Lost captures the disorientation of vast distance when Satan looks from hell to earth and finds a “wild abyss.”
Clearly, the expanses of space unnerved Shakespeare’s culture. Perhaps that is why people were so anxious to contain and shape the world around them, whether indoors or outdoors. To accomplish this goal, they employed the arts of architecture, painting, garden design, and poetry.
This interdisciplinary seminar will look at the literal, literary, and artistic handling of space. How have people organized and divided space? What cultural significance does the treatment of space have? What are the implications for an understanding of the world around us? The course is not chiefly about space as understood by scientists or mathematicians. Instead, we will focus on the artistic expression of Shakespeare’s culture, especially as it manifests itself in buildings, paintings, the landscape around stately homes, and the arrangement of lyrics in a collection of poems.
Over the past 70 years, writers from the Caribbean have made an indelible imprint on the entirety of literature written in English. This class will focus primarily on writers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries who use their work to confront the entanglement of memory, history, and migration. We’ll supplement our reading in literature with theory and criticism that explores the implications of this work for literary cultures in the Caribbean and the wider Anglophone world today. Likely authors include David Dabydeen, Jamaica Kincaid, Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, Lorna Goodison, Curdella Forbes, Jean Rhys, Marcia Douglas, and M NourbeSe Philip.
This senior seminar will immerse students in contemporary migration literatures, specifically written under the sign of return. Over the course of the semester, we will read narratives of reverse migration, second-generation return, temporary return, post-conflict return, economic and labor migration, ancestral pilgrimage, and deportation. We will analyze how the temporality of return animates the literary apprehension of the present. Finally, we will compare narratives of return across genres, as we engage in analysis of novels, memoirs, poetry, short stories, interviews, essays, and films. Course texts may include works by Agha Shahid Ali, Amit Chaudhuri, James Clifford, Teju Cole, Edwidge Danticat, Mohsin Hamid, Saidiya Hartman, Jhumpa Lahiri, Valeria Luiselli, Hisham Matar, Edward Said, Rebecca Solnit, and Yi-Fu Tuan, along with relevant literary criticism and scholarship. Animated participation in class discussion is expected as well as commitment to close, critical reading and learning the methods of literary research and argumentative writing.
Professional & Technical Writing Courses
Building on the close reading, focused research, and reflective writing done in your general education writing courses (ENGL101 and ENGL102 and their equivalents), this course emphasizes the skills of rhetorical analysis, research, persuasion, reflection, and revision in specific professional and technical contexts. It is designed to help students learn to write for varied audiences and situations, find and evaluate sources, and make critically aware decisions about how best to achieve their purposes. The immediate goal of this course is to prepare students for further research and writing in future professional settings.
This course emphasizes communicating scientific knowledge. You will learn strategies for and get practice in developing, testing, and delivering scientific and technical reports for specific audiences. Whether you bring a project to the class or develop a project for the purpose of the class, you will have opportunities to get feedback on your project in various stages of preparation. ENGL 414 counts as an elective for the undergraduate Professional and Technical Writing Certificate. ENGL514 counts toward the Graduate Certificate in Science Communication.
This course is the final step toward completing the Professional and Technical Writing Certificate at the University of Arizona. In this one-credit, pass/fail, asynchronous online course, you will work with your instructor to build a portfolio that satisfies the certificate program requirements and that is tailored to your professional interests and goals. Weekly steps, benchmarks, and feedback will help you stay on track to complete the portfolio in 7.5 weeks.
In this course, students work with the instructor to design and complete a capstone project and to compile a portfolio of their work in the professional and technical writing major or minor.