Upcoming Courses

160A2 Food Writing: Exploring Food Cultures through Literature

101/201 Fully Online

**7-Week First Session**

Instructor: Melani Martinez

ENGL 160A2 explores food writing 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 worldview. Course materials will focus on diverse perspectives with emphasis on marginalized groups such as migrant, incarcerated, and Indigenous food communities. Students will explore their own food memories in reflective writing and storytelling to find connections between personal food histories and social or environmental justice. Using various rhetorical strategies and drawing from research, field study, oral history, and lived experiences/traditional knowledge, students will practice food writing for a variety of audiences in four key genres: recipe card, multimo       dal food profile, food memoir, and manifesto. Workshop and revision will be important aspects of the course.

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

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 on particular monster-types like the zombie, the vampire, or the cyborg. Instead, we’ll look at monster-figures 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 must 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 on particular monster-types like the zombie, the vampire, or the cyborg. Instead, we’ll look at monster-figures 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 must 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 201 Introduction to Nonfiction Writing

001 In Person

T/Th 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: Paco Cantú

This introductory undergraduate course will be centered on reading, writing, and demystifying the wide world of creative nonfiction. Our central aim will be to grasp what it means to produce literary and personal writing that remains rooted in documented truth and lived experience. To develop a deeper understanding of the genre, we will become familiar with the creative “essay”–nonfiction in its shortest, purest form. In reading a wide variety of essays you will develop an understanding of the genre’s key components, and learn to build your own essays from the ground up, using the key building blocks of scene construction, character development, and research. A key component of our time together will involve the sharing of in-progress writing and the creation of a generative space for in-class conversation and feedback. Instead of presenting work that is already finished and polished, you’ll learn to become comfortable sharing writing that is fresh and dynamic, and to develop strategies for incorporating others’ feedback into your writing process as you learn to edit, revise, and refine.

ENGL 201 Introduction to Nonfiction Writing

002 In Person

T/Th 11:00-12:15 PM

Instructor: STAFF

Students will gain a working knowledge of these concepts and terms: personal essay, braided essay, archives, research, structure, voice, imagery, and characterization. Students will read selected texts and discuss craft elements in works of creative nonfiction. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments in creative nonfiction writing. The course emphasizes the breadth and depth of creative nonfiction as a genre, with room for the incorporation of art, music, sports, photography, science, medicine, and other topics of interest.

ENGL 201 Introduction to Nonfiction Writing

110/210 Fully Online

**7-Week Second Session**

Instructor: STAFF

Students will gain a working knowledge of these concepts and terms: personal essay, braided essay, archives, research, structure, voice, imagery, and characterization. Students will read selected texts and discuss craft elements in works of creative nonfiction. Students will develop writing skills by doing exercises and writing assignments in creative nonfiction writing. The course emphasizes the breadth and depth of creative nonfiction as a genre, with room for the incorporation of art, music, sports, photography, science, medicine, and other topics of interest.

ENGL 209 Introduction to Poetry Writing

001 In Person

T/Th 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: STAFF

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

ENGL 209 Introduction to Poetry Writing

002 In Person

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

Instructor: STAFF

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

ENGL 209 Introduction to Poetry Writing

110/210 Fully Online

**7-Week Second Session**

Instructor: STAFF

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

ENGL 210 Introduction to Fiction Writing

001 In Person

T/Th 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: STAFF 

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.

ENGL 210 Introduction to Fiction Writing

002 In Person

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

Instructor: STAFF 

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.

ENGL 210 Introduction to Fiction Writing

003 In Person

M/W 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: STAFF 

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.

ENGL 210 Introduction to Fiction Writing

004 In Person

M/W 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: STAFF 

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.

ENGL 210 Introduction to Fiction Writing

005 In Person

M/W 3:30-4:45 PM

Instructor: STAFF 

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.

ENGL 210 Introduction to Fiction Writing

110/210 Fully Online

**7-Week Second Session**

Instructor: STAFF

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.

ENGL 215 Elements of Craft: Creative Writing

In Person

M/W 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Kate Bernheimer

This Creative Writing class meets twice weekly and offers an experience centered on a program of five or six classroom performances by visiting authors (e.g., novelists – YA and literary -- memoirists, short story writers, song writers, spoken word poets, and others). Visitors are selected to showcase the variety of contemporary creative writing practices. Designed to enhance student experience of and dexterity with literary expression, and to stimulate dialogue, these curated presentations offer the opportunity to engage with emerging and internationally known visiting authors. Students will read and discuss works by visiting authors, complete guided experiments in the style of visiting authors, participate in Q&A sessions with visiting authors, take notes on visiting author performances, and complete one-page essay responses to visiting author performances.

ENGL 217 Introduction to Grammar and Editing 

Fully Online

110 **7-Week Second Session**

Manya Lempert

In this course, you will learn and apply contextual strategies for editing your own writing, as well as the writing of others, for grammar, style, and format. This course counts as an elective for the English major, the  Creative Writing major, the undergraduate Professional and Technical Writing Certificate, and the new undergraduate major and minor in Professional and Technical Writing.

ENGL 248B Introduction to Fairy Tales

Fully Online

101/201 **7-Week First Session**

Instructor: Kate Bernheimer

In this class, students will read fairy tales from antiquity to today. No prior experience with fairy tales is required. You will consider fairy tales as a literary art form through their aesthetics and ethics. You will be introduced to touchstone fairy-tale scholarship and practitioners, including by visiting novelists, architects, musicians, and others. You will collect oral literary folklore from family and friends for a living archive of international, multi-lingual fairy tales, write fairy-tale criticism, create your own fairy-tale works (literary or other), and do fairy-tale aesthetic forensics. We will consider how fairy tales think about character, art, and experience in times of duress; and how the fragility of hope operates as their lodestar. We will follow the breadcrumbs of this centuries old, contemporary, and futuristic art form from communal storytelling into literary culture and new media. Our resilient guides include Little Red Riding Hood, Donkeyskin, The Little Mermaid, and others. Prepare to be enchanted and skillful, like a fairy-tale hero.

ENGL 255 Intro to Engl Language

001 In Person

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

Instructor: Hayriye Kayi-Aydar

This course offers a captivating exploration of the English language and its multifaceted role in real-world and global settings.  We will begin by exploring foundational concepts in the areas of English phonology, semantics, morphology, and syntax. We will then transition to examining English and its role within various contexts, such as language teaching, language planning and policy, bi- and multilingualism, new technologies, etc. By the end of the course, you will gain a deeper understanding of the history of English and its growth as an international language.

ENGL 263 Survey of Children’s Literature

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

101/201 Fully Online

** 7-Week first session

Instructor: Mary Gray

This course will explore how American popular culture shapes, reflects, and challenges views of race, gender, sexuality, and class. We will consider how the various forms of media we interact with every day play an important role in defining our cultural expectations. How do we navigate gender norms while watching movies? How do TV commercials trace the boundaries of class belonging? We will also consider how different forms of media offer contrasting opportunities for representation. How does a popular sitcom contribute to the discourse around race differently from our online conversations? Throughout the course, students will gain an understanding of how participating in popular culture is a constantly shifting negotiation of ideas about identity.

ENGL 264 US Popular Culture and the Politics of Representation

110/210 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

001 In Person

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

Instructor: Micah Stack

This course will focus on great American short stories. Some of them will be really short, while others stretch into novella territory, but we will not look at novels, poetry, or plays—only works of short fiction. We will probably begin with some 19th-Century works and move more or less chronologically until we reach the present day, tracking changes and developments within American literature through the evolution of short stories and the eras of literary history they exemplify. So you could think of this as The Eras Tour…of American Short Stories. The reading list is still being refined, but some authors likely to appear on it include Herman Melville, Henry James, William Faulkner, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, David Foster Wallace, Yiyun Li, Nam Le, Gina Apostol, Garth Greenwell, and Jamel Brinkley.

ENGL 265 Major American Writers

150 Fully Online

Instructor: Lynda Zwinger

Please email instructor

ENGL 280 Introduction to Literature

001 In Person

T/Th 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: Daniel Cooper Alarcón

For this section 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—and 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 Martín Espada, and Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer prize-winning, graphic memoir about the Holocaust, Maus. Expect to write two or three short papers over the course of the semester. 

ENGL 280 Introduction to Literature

002 In Person

T/Th 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

003 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

110/210 Fully Online

**7-Week Second Session**

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 300 Literature and Film

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. Given the breadth and complexity of film and literature, including historical, technical, and narrative elements, our class is broken into three modules: “Film, Literature, and Aesthetics,” “Adaptation and Intertextuality,” and “Cultural and Ideological Connections.” We will survey a curated list of films and texts that serve as examples, emphasizing specific dimensions that support course outcomes. Class activities include asynchronous discussions, individual reflections, short essays, and a final multimodal project that synthesizes the course modules and materials. All of our readings and films are found on D2L, so that they may be easily accessed and revisited as often as needed.

ENGL 301 Intermediate Nonfiction Writing 

001 In Person

W 9:30 AM-12:00 PM

Instructor: Ander Monson

This semester we’ll start new nonfiction projects and read a lot of creative nonfiction, contemporary and classic. 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. We’ll write about music, about food, about movies and books and video games. Maybe board games too. We’ll write about the self, and we’ll write about the world, and explore how 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 also spend time looking at the way nonfiction (and all) writers interact with the world as readers, writers, editors, reviewers, fangirls, and literary citizens. We’ll also fool around with computer-generated prose and figure out what we (can and will) bring to the table as writers and investigators of all kinds of phenomena in the era of Large Language Models (“AI”). What makes our own writing better than what an AI can generate? What makes it ours? We’ll find out.

 “Essays…hang somewhere on a line between two sturdy poles: this is what I think, and this is what I am.” —Edward Hoagland

  This workshop will be largely generative, especially in the first half of the semester, after which we’ll shift more of our time to focus on your own works in progress. 

ENGL 304 Intermediate Fiction Writing Workshop

001 In Person

M/W 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: STAFF

Practice in writing short fiction.

ENGL 304 Intermediate Fiction Writing Workshop

002 In Person

T/Th 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Manuel Muñoz 

Practice in writing short fiction.

ENGL 309 Intermediate Poetry Writing Workshop

001 In Person

M/W 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Susan Briante

This is not a course in poetry but a lab in creativity. We’ll look at poems as instruments to inspire our experiments throughout the semester. How do contemporary poets do what they do? We will analyze, imitate, and innovate by reading and listening to a range of contemporary poetry (and some not-so-contemporary work as well).  We’ll share and respond to drafts of our writing in progress. We’ll collaborate and create together. We’ll go to readings at the Poetry Center—and hear some of the most exciting poets writing today. We’ll end the semester by creating a small zine or chapbook of our own poems.

ENGL 310 Studies in Genres: 

001 In Person

T/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Fred Kiefer

We shall be reading and discussing drama, poetry, and narrative. Our authors will include William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and D. H. Lawrence. Our principal topic will be “Women in Love.”

ENGL 310 Video Game Writing

002 In person

M/W 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Ander Monson

How do video games affect us when we play them? How do we experience narrative in video games differently than we do in movies or in books? What do video games bring out of us when we lose ourselves in them? And what do we bring from ourselves and our cultures to video games? This course focuses on writing (especially narrative) in video games and writing (analytical and subjective) about video games. We will play games and read about playing games as writers and artists, culminating in writing, play-testing, and revising a simple game.

ENGL 313 Intro to Professional and Technical Writing

101/201 Fully Online

**7-Week First Session**

Instructor: STAFF

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

ENGL 325 Contemporary Literature and Digital Media

001 In Person

T/Th 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: Scott Selisker

How have literary expression and our understandings of the self changed alongside the media technologies of the twenty-first century? This course examines the place of fiction among social media, big data, fan fiction, video games, and the many other forms of entertainment that compete with it today. To do so, we’ll learn about the history of media forms, and some of the methods of media studies, which consider how media forms shape the stories they convey. We will read short fiction, novels, essays, a play, poetry, and experimental forms that ask how technology might affect the human condition, including concerns about privacy, identity, politics, memory, and more. Along the way, we will encounter some of the history of experimental literature, and we’ll consider what forms the future of literary expression might take. Assignments include a presentation, a digital commonplace journal, two research-oriented papers, and a reflection-based final exam.

ENGL 347 English Literature with an Accent

001 In Person

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

Instructor: M’Balia Thomas

Everyone has an accent, but not all accents are created equal. Some are heard as “neutral” and others as markers of difference. This can have serious implications in the real world, impacting employment, health care outcomes, asylum claims and even perceptions of victim testimonials. It can also result in a specific kind of injustice--a testimonial injustice. In this course, students will examine English language literatures and cultural production (podcasts, audiobooks, film, and television) related to accent, voice and social identity. Students will gain broad understanding of the politics of literary voice and accent, while learning to use their own accented voices to produce close, critical readings and informed social interventions.

ENGL 373C British and American Literature: From the Roots of Modernism to the Present

001 In Person

T/Th 12:30-1:45 AM

Instructor: Scott Selisker

A survey of British, American, and World Anglophone Literature, from the roots of modernism to the postmodern and contemporary period, with an emphasis on major writers in their literary and historical contexts.

ENGL 380 Literary Analysis

001 In Person

T/Th 9:30-10:45 PM

Instructor: Peter Figler

English 380 is a course in advanced literary analysis, emphasizing close reading and critical theory. We will study several key theoretical and historical movements as they relate to literature and literary form, focusing most closely on the novel, though we will examine other genres and forms along the way. Classes will generally be driven by discussion and interpretation, though on occasion I will lecture. The final texts and authors are being determined but will include authors such as Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead, Jhumpa Lahiri, Don DeLillo, Kyle Baker, and others.

ENGL 380 Literary Analysis

002 In Person

M/W 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Jennifer Jenkins

This course examines basic literary aesthetics as the foundation of poetic, fictive, dramatic, and visual narrative meaning. We will develop close reading skills by studying poetic form, meter, rhyme, tropes, schemes; narrative structures and devices; literary genre forms, dramatic structures and conventions, and filmic narrative conventions. These fundamentals will inform our analysis of the ways in which meaning is constructed through a marriage of form and content in literary and filmic texts. Students will master basic terms, concepts, and conventions of poetic, dramatic, fiction, and filmic aesthetics, and demonstrate that knowledge in analytical essays based on close reading. Honors credit available by contract. 

ENGL 389 Introduction to Publishing: The Children’s Literature Market

001 In Person

T/Th 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Stephanie Pearmain

This course will provide an overview of the Children’s Literature literary publishing industry. It is designed to provide aspiring editors and writers basic knowledge of the field including research and discussion of: writing, picture book genre overview, editing, querying, publishing trends, agents & agenting, submissions, digital publishing, and publishing houses. This course will focus works for children and young adults. We will be partnering with Make Way for Books for the first half of the semester, and students will create potentially publishable works. Students will have the opportunity to write, edit, and submit picture book text.

ENGL 396A Southwest Field Studies: the Power of Place

001 In Person

W 3:30-6:00 PM

Instructor: Jennifer Jenkins

Using the Arizona-Sonora Southwest as the content area, this junior-level place-based learning (PBL) proseminar focuses on deploying the English major’s reading skills in the interpretation of Place. We will visit notable cultural places in the region and learn to read the narratives embedded in landscape and the built environment. Students will also learn to use the primary sources in UA Special Collections to frame their readings of Southern Arizona places. All field trips will take place during scheduled class time. Student projects will develop in consultation with the professor, and may span the range of creative to critical written and multimedia texts.

ENGL 404 Advanced Fiction Writing: What do you know?: Writing and the Imagination, A Studio Course 

001 In Person

T 9:30 AM-12:00 PM

Instructor: Johanna Skibsrud

Conceived as a project-based studio course, this senior-level creative writing workshop investigates diverse styles and approaches to writing fiction with the aim of expanding our collective sense of creative possibility. We’re often told, “write what you know!,” but less often pause to reflect on what this really means, and requires of us as writers. Everything we know of the world—whatever we encounter of it through direct or mediated experience, as well as everything we’ve ever dreamed about, feared, or imagined—can become the material for writing.  Whether we’re working on a science fiction novel or an autobiography, thinking of knowledge and experience in these broad terms, may enrich our writing and expand our ways of knowing both ourselves and the world around us. This workshop will propose numerous creative exercises with an emphasis on embodiment and play. The overall aim will be to build a concrete skill set for increased attention to what we may not yet even realize we know. This is a studio-based course, i.e., it is active and participatory, with an emphasis on creative process and production. Through diverse creative exercises and discussion, its goal is to emphasize the possibility of honing new forms of attention. Coursework and discussion will also encourage reflection on the ethical implications (the possibilities, but also the potential limitations) of fiction writing.  Students will be invited to think the continuities between contemporary fiction and the Ancient Greek concept of poiesis—meaning, literally, “the activity in which a person brings something into being that did not exist before.” Through thought, writing and performance-based exercises aimed at expanding a sense of both readily available and possible material, this course challenges students to bring about something “that did not exist before.”

All course readings will be made available to you online, as PDFs, or as handouts in class. 

ENGL 404 Advanced Fiction Writing

002 In Person

Th 9:30 AM-12:00 PM

Instructor: Manuel Muñoz 

Conceived as a project-based studio course, this senior-level creative writing workshop investigates diverse styles and approaches to writing fiction with the aim of expanding our collective sense of creative possibility. We’re often told, “write what you know!,” but less often pause to reflect on what this really means, and requires of us as writers. Everything we know of the world—whatever we encounter of it through direct or mediated experience, as well as everything we’ve ever dreamed about, feared, or imagined—can become the material for writing.  Whether we’re working on a science fiction novel or an autobiography, thinking of knowledge and experience in these broad terms, may enrich our writing and expand our ways of knowing both ourselves and the world around us. This workshop will propose numerous creative exercises with an emphasis on embodiment and play. The overall aim will be to build a concrete skill set for increased attention to what we may not yet even realize we know. This is a studio-based course, i.e., it is active and participatory, with an emphasis on creative process and production. Through diverse creative exercises and discussion, its goal is to emphasize the possibility of honing new forms of attention. Coursework and discussion will also encourage reflection on the ethical implications (the possibilities, but also the potential limitations) of fiction writing.  Students will be invited to think the continuities between contemporary fiction and the Ancient Greek concept of poiesis—meaning, literally, “the activity in which a person brings something into being that did not exist before.” Through thought, writing and performance-based exercises aimed at expanding a sense of both readily available and possible material, this course challenges students to bring about something “that did not exist before.”

All course readings will be made available to you online, as PDFs, or as handouts in class. 

ENGL 412 Design for PTW

150 Asynchronous Online

Instructor: Sean Rys

In this course, students learn the history, key theories, and conventions of document design practices, and produce professional documents in which they apply design principles using industry-standard software applications (InDesign and Illustrator) in the Adobe Creative Cloud. In addition to written analyses and reflections on their work, students can expect to design both print and digital documents that include brochures, pamphlets, newsletters, programs, infographics, and other professional documents. In the process, they will explore how a document’s rhetorical situation — its intended purpose and audience — shapes the choices designers must make with respect to its type, genre, platform, and graphic elements. At the course’s conclusion, students will assemble their work in a portfolio and will reflect on the effectiveness of their rhetorical choices across the span of the semester.

ENGL 414 Advanced Scientific Writing

001 In Person

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

Instructor: Aimee Mapes

Please email instructor

ENGL 430 User Experience Research

001 In Person

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

Instructor: Tiffany Portewig

This course offers students an opportunity to learn and practice user experience (UX) research methods and skills in engaging communities at every step of their writing and design processes. This course will focus on understanding design traditions and processes, evaluating and testing designs, developing research protocols and conducting research, and reporting on their research. Students will engage in hands-on UX research projects through a collaborative, campus based UX project or a project they choose.

ENGL 431A Shakespeare: Twelve comedies, histories and tragedies from the period 1590-1600 (including Hamlet)

001 In Person

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

Instructor: Kyle DiRoberto

This course will introduce you to Shakespeare’s early comedies, histories, and tragedies. We will contextualize his works in the historical realities of the early modern period corresponding to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the early plays significantly focus on gender, the body, and the construction of power. But we will also learn about the major preoccupations of the Elizabethan era, paying particular attention to the social, political, economic, legal, and religious changes that are reflected in the plays. Finally, as Mark Olshaker reminds us, “every age gets the Shakespeare it deserves,” and as the experience of our current age is informed by its relationship to new media and the globe, our exploration of Shakespeare will also include the proliferation of interpretations that a post-print global culture demands. Not only will we read, interpret, and write about Shakespeare, but we will also explore the adaptation of Shakespeare in both Western and non-Western productions, social media, and digital games.

ENGL 431B Shakespeare

001 In Person

T/Th 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: Fredrick Kiefer

This course looks at the second half of Shakespeare’s career. And what is distinctive about the years, roughly 1600 to 1612? Shakespeare, who had excelled as a 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.

ENGL 434B Renaissance Literature

001 In Person

M/W 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Meg Lota Brown

The social, economic, religious, and political instability of the seventeenth century informed some of the most brilliantly anxious literature in the history of England. As some authors strained to construct coherent identities, hierarchies, and worldviews, others challenged received notions about what is sacred, natural, or true. In the midst of such tensions, the writers we will discuss produced gorgeous, funny, complicated, disturbing, and infinitely interesting works of poetry and prose. One of our goals will be to examine not only how these texts-- and the culture in which they were embedded-- constructed meaning, but also why it is important for us to undertake such an examination. We will consider how reading seventeenth-century literature enables us to understand more fully our own constructed selves. Another goal of the course is that we will become more careful readers and more effective writers, honing analytical and communication skills as we explore Renaissance authors’ engagement with language and culture.

ENGL 443 Mexican American Literature

001 In Person

T/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Daniel Cooper Alarcón

English 443/543 is an upper-division course for the study of Mexican American and Chicanx literature written in English or translated into English.  The course is designed to give you a clear understanding of the historical development of the Mexican American literary tradition, with an emphasis on landmark works and a focus on events and issues that impacted and influenced its evolution.  Thus, we will take care to situate the literary texts within their historical moment and we will read them alongside of historical material, to better understand the social context within which the literature was produced.  Finally, we will spend considerable time looking closely at individual texts: critically analyzing them, interpreting them, and discussing their implications.  Course requirements will include two medium-length papers, as well as regular contributions to class discussion.  The course will begin with a study of the corrido tradition and move on to the short stories of María Cristina Mena and Mario Suárez, the novel Pocho, the poetry of the Chicano Movement, the play Zoot Suit, and the novels Face and So Far from God, with additional readings to be determined. Please note that this course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

ENGL 455 Teaching English as a Second Language

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.

ENGL 468 Writing in the Practice of Law

001 In Person

T/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Matthew Abraham

This course will introduce students to the genre of legal writing by exploring how lawyers and judges represent legal concepts and problems in legal briefs and court opinions. Students will learn about how legal arguments are structured in the context of everyday legal issues that touch upon the most intimate parts of our lives. By developing an understanding of how legal arguments work in leading judicial opinions, students will develop an appreciation for how legal writers shape the law through effective advocacy and the thoughtful use of rhetoric.

ENGL 470 Literature and Major Philosophical Traditions

150 Asynchronous Online

Instructor: Lynda Zwinger

Please email instructor

ENGL 471 Law and Literature

001 In Person

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

Instructor: Dennis Wise

Oliver Wendall Holmes, the famed jurist, once wrote that from the desire for revenge grows the law. Although there are many ways to structure a course like this, several of which we’ll touch upon—for instance, publishing and the First Amendment; narratives about legal conflict; and law as literature—our version of ENGL 471 will mainly take Holmes’s insight as our foundation. For those of us interested in Anglo-American common law (I imagine the great majority), since our system operates on certain principles and premises that are highly historical, we’ll cast these principles into sharp relief by comparing and analyzing them with other significant ways of settling disputes historically. We’ll delve into the sagas of medieval Iceland, for instance, a country that had many laws but no police force, prisons, or army, plus the dramatic transition of Homeric Greece into Athenian democracy. We’ll then cast our sights on more contemporary issues of vengeance within Anglo-American law, however well hidden: legal thrillers (a la John Grisham), retributive vs. corrective justice, and the perpetual conflict between natural law and positive law.

In the end, both literature and the law do something similar: they each codify a deeply held set of social values. All literary texts, in one way or another, partake in a kind of legal reasoning. By taking ENGL 471, you too can dive into this rapidly growing field of study.

ENGL 495A Professional Development Colloquium for Creative Writing Majors 

001 In Person (2 UNITS)

W/F 10:00-10:50 AM

Instructor: Farid Matuk

This seminar-style course is intended for Creative Writing majors in their junior or senior year. Students working in all genres will have the opportunity to glean professionalization skills and career path guidance from a range of visitors that can include UArizona CW major alumni, visiting authors, literary agents, book and literary journal editors, and UArizona MFA Program alumni. This class will sometimes co-convene with a graduate section of Colloquium, offering undergraduate Creative Writing majors an exceptional opportunity to be mentored by current graduate students in the highly competitive UArizona MFA Program in Creative Writing, and to interact in an intimate setting with authors who come to campus for the MFA Program’s Distinguished Visitor Series in Creative Writing and the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center reading series. 

ENGL 496A Auth,Period,Genres+Theme: The American Gothic

001/002 Limited to English Honors / Honors Students - In Person

T/Th 11:00 AM-12:15 PM 

Instructor: Paul Hurh

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. 

ENGL 496A Early Modern Poetry: Tradition, Innovation, and Revolution

003 In Person

M/W 2:00-3:15 PM

Instructor: Kyle DiRoberto

From the Petrarchan sonnets of Thomas Wyatt to the political and religious upheavals of the Puritan Revolution, early modern poetry was a space of intense artistic experimentation and ideological contestation. This course explores how poets shaped and responded to shifting socioeconomic, aesthetic, political, and religious discourses, from the Tudor court to the Restoration. We will explore many of the major poetic schools of the era—including but not limited to the Metaphysical poets (e.g., John Donne, George Herbert), the Cavalier poets (e.g., Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick), and Baroque poets like Richard Crashaw, among others. We will also examine the influential female poets of the era such as Aemilia Lanyer, Lady Mary Wroth, Katherine Philips, and Aphra Behn. Finally, we will not neglect the great John Milton, whose poetic works engage directly with the intellectual and religious conflicts of the English Civil War and its aftermath.

Through close readings, historical analysis, attention to prosody, and poetic form, the course will explore how poetry negotiated themes of love, power, and devotion. No prior experience with poetry is required, only a willingness to engage in close textual analysis and critical discussion