Upcoming Courses

This course examines how activists have mobilized social justice movements, including those that have defended the rights of women, immigrants, people with disabilities, ethnic minorities, and LGBTQ+ people. Students will learn about the history of human rights philosophies and the ways changes in media, society, and culture have shaped the rhetorical strategies used by younger generations of activists in movements such as Black Lives Matters and #MeToo.

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, profile podcast, food memoir, and manifesto. Workshop and revision will be important aspects of the course.

As a nation we seem more divided than ever. Anger, resentment, and calls for resistance against various cultural forces have been especially prominent since January of 2017. Add to this situation a pandemic, which is straining the infrastructural resources of every country in the world, and one can understand how the phrase “world on fire” applies.^[1] In this context, expressions of racism, misogyny, xenophobia toward immigrants, and general disgust directed toward those who look or behave differently become manifest. Unemployment, social marginalization, and a rapid increase in substance abuse and suicide among middle-aged men represent a societal tipping point.

The rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement, #MeToo, and immigrant activism point to a widespread recognition of how systemic abuses of power are being resisted strongly by certain demographic sectors. At the center of this storm of protest and resistance is the presidency of Donald J. Trump, whose unprecedented campaign and election fueled the rise of large-scale resistance movements among women, ethnic minorities, environmentalists, and ordinary citizens intent on defending constitutional norms and mainstream governmental institutions. At the same time, we must recognize a backlash against these movements represented by the rise of white supremacy and white nationalism.

In this course, we will explore the role of anger and resentment in the context of understanding this current historical and political movement that has made resistance fashionable again. How are anger and resentment mobilized to create coalitions around key social issues such as feminism (#MeToo), the Black Lives Matter Movement, immigration, as well as among those who constitute a general opposition to current policies on many fronts including healthcare, education, and corporate control of worker rights? How might we go about thinking about and discussing these oppositional movements that have tapped into widespread anger and disappointment in the state of American democracy? How have other oppositional movements, such as those expressing nativist and racial supremacist sentiments, channeled their anger and resentment in the age of Trump through social media?  These are just some of the questions that we will turn to in this seven-and-a-half-week course.

Possible Course Texts (available at U of A Bookstore or at an online bookstore):

French, David. Divided We Fall. America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. St.

     Martin’s Press, 2020

Rankin, Claudia. Just Us: An American Conversation. Graywolf Press.

Batya Ungar-Sargon’s Bad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy. Encounter Books.

^[1]See Amy Chua’s World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. Anchor Books, 2004.

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

 

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

 

“Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives.” wrote Audre Lorde. “It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”

In this class, we’ll learn how to write poems as castles, skyscrapers and the cozy cottages. We will read contemporary poetry to find the blueprints for our own work. A variety of writing prompts will help serve as the cornerstone for our imagination and inspiration. Then we’ll work on sharing, receiving feedback, and revising our own work as well as the work of our peers. 

 

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.

 

Multi-genre craft course introducing creative writing craft terms and concepts via intensive reading in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

 

In this course student will become familiar with the beginning techniques of writing for young adults taught through exercises, the writing of original stories, workshop, and reading contemporary works in this genre.  

Children’s literature scholar Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop says, “Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.” This is especially true of literature written for young audiences. In this class, students will learn to write for young adults. We will learn elements of craft, including character, plot, setting, narrative voice, and dialogue. Through writing prompts and exercises, we will tap into our imagination and find inspiration to write stories. We will read current young adult publications as models for our own work. Then we will develop a process for reading, critiquing, and revising our own work as well as the work of our peers. In this multi-genre class, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry will be welcome in workshop. 

 

When was the “New Testament” written, who wrote it, and why? What relationship does it actually have to the Hebrew Bible? This course is an introduction to the “New Testament” section of the Christian Bible with some attention to relevant sections of the “Old Testament,” apocryphal and other contemporaneous writings. In addition to originary contexts from the ancient times in which the books of the Bible were written, we will also be considering their historical, religious, literary and and intellectual legacies in the following centuries. Taking the approach of contemporary literary scholarship, we will seek to interpret the Biblical texts in relation to when they were written, read, and translated; the principal literary genres out of which they are composed (biography, letters, history, wisdom writing, poetry, prophetic and apocalyptic writing), and their ideological signification (what these texts have been used to explain and justify). There will be substantial weekly reading assignments. Writing assignments will include regular quizzes, a midterm, and final exam.

This course integrates the study of border and migration themed literature with an experiential component that encourages students to recognize and engage with real-life borders in their lives and communities.  

The concept of the border will be addressed as both a political reality and an imaginative construct – an organizing principle for our desire to seek and transmit diverse experiences and knowledge-systems across thresholds. The guiding questions for this course will be: what does it mean to be a crosser of borders? How and why do notions of social, political, artistic, geologic and scientific thresholds continuously shift and change? To answer these questions, we will operate in an intermediate space between academic discipline and community engagement, research and creative practice. Authors will include Gloria Anzaldúa, Valeria Luiselli, Suzan-Lori Parks, Leslie Marmon Silko, Cecilia Viçuna, and more. 

“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, and middle grade 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 do we mean when we discuss “American Literature”? In this section of “Major American Authors,” we will explore the work of numerous American writers who identify as such while having been born elsewhere. In other words, we will read and study the work of immigrant writers who made their homes in the U.S. and wrote/are writing in English. We have all heard statements about the United States being a great “melting pot” of ethnicities and cultures, and this class will examine some of the ways in which this nation’s diversity accounts for and contributes to the richness and variety of our national literature. Here is a partial list of the authors we will read and the countries they came from before establishing themselves in the U.S.: Vladimir Nabokov (Russia), Junot Díaz (the Dominican Republic), Yiyun Li (China), Claudia Rankine (Jamaica), Gina Apostol (the Philippines), and Bharati Mukherjee (India). We will read a combination of novels, short stories, poetry, and essays by these and other immigrant writers. This is a reading- and writing-intensive course, and we will write regularly in order to closely examine these works in relation to form, themes, and context as we try to answer questions about how each of these writers and texts expands our notions about American literature.

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

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.

Comparative study of literature and cinema as aesthetic media.

This intermediate undergraduate workshop will be centered on the act of reading, writing, and understanding the experiential and research-based intricacies of creative nonfiction. To develop a deeper understanding of the genre, we will spend time reading a wide variety of essays and, in some cases, discussing the creative process with early-career authors as a way of discovering the breath of possibilities available to us within the nonfiction genre. The other central component of our time together will involve sharing new writing with one another, and creating a generative space for conversation, revision, and critique. Instead of bringing in work that is already finished and polished, you’ll learn to become comfortable sharing work that is fresh and in-progress, and to develop strategies for inviting feedback into your writing process.

Practice in writing short fiction.

 

Practice in writing short fiction.

In his introduction to the Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, Ilya Kaminsky writes: ​​"Languages are many, says Voznesensky, poetry is one. If this is true, then perhaps an avid reader of poetry from around the globe may have a chance to glimpse into the heart of the art of poetry itself— of that which exists between languages” (xviii). 

You’re here to continue looking for that heart, deepen your sense of personal poetics, and continue learning how to be a poet. There’s no right way to pursue these goals. Many intermediate courses continue this pursuit via the study of forms written in English, from the sonnet to the villanelle. Another common approach expands on the idea of form by focusing on the variety of modes poets are using in the United States today. Both of these approaches to teaching poetry writing are tempting: nothing can help release the most surprising and necessary poems from the silent rooms inside you like forcing yourself to write within established blueprints.

Our course will instead be organized around the principle that writing poetry is always an act of translation. To that end, to glimpse into the heart of the art of poetry itself, we will be reading poetry from the international anthology together. We will listen to the poems carefully; we will learn from poets as well as from translators. As Kaminsky writes, reading poetry in translation “teaches us about not only the genius of the poet translated but also the genius of what is possible in English.” As we work our way through this anthology together, you will expand your notion of what is possible for you by continuing to write poems and reflecting on your craft and process. We will have the rare, challenging opportunity to learn from one another— different humans, with different beliefs about poetry, each of us with dizzying unanswered questions about life and where/how a poem might enter the stage and help us through it.

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 novels, a play, poetry, and experimental forms that ask what technology might be changing about 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 will take.

This course offers an introduction to queer culture (and a little bit of theory), 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, gender 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” or “gender identity," no matter how broadly defined, begs a number of questions. What is gender, anyway?  How is it experienced socially, emotionally, intellectually, erotically, in the body? How do we think of sexuality? Is it a kind of appetite one is born with (or not), akin to hunger or thirst? A drive that aims toward a very specific kind of object? Or is it something 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, both as a source of solidarity and 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.

Literary history—in one sense, this single subject forms the core of studying English literature. Which old books have people throughout the centuries found fascinating, and why? How do people radically different from us in perspective and outlook comprehend their worlds? An old joke goes that a true survey course must range from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf, but of course that’s impossible. Already in this class we cover a 1,000-year stretch; even that barely scratches the surface. Yet we’ll take journeys through historical ages only dimly understood by most people—the “Dark Ages,” the Middle Ages, the English Renaissance and Reformation. But we’ll also see how those ages flourish in texts that range across a hundred thousand adaptations, from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (basically Arthurian fan-fic) to The Lord of the Rings. In ENGL 373A, we’ll ultimately study the earliest beginnings of English literature up through the early Modern period. We’ll breathe in the romance of the old, where far from the daringness of the avant-garde or the technological cutting edge, we’ll find world-views and wisdom buried deeply by time. We’ll uncover strange new literary modes and techniques, and we’ll delve into nuances of creative adaptation through the centuries. Not everyone takes 373A already knowing that they love literary history … but everyone will leave having learned what they have missed. 

This course will familiarize students with the sweep of twentieth-century literatures in English, with the goal of introducing some touchstone figures and movements from U.S., British, and other global Anglophone contexts. The course format will tend toward lectures, but will also include discussion and short group assignments. The course will help you situate twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary works in relation to their social and political contexts first and foremost, and we'll also consider works in relation to the histories of literary markets, institutions, and media technologies. While we'll generally steer toward shorter works, the course will be fairly reading-intensive. Course requirements will include three tests, a small-group reading journal and discussion board, occasional in-class group assignments, and a final paper.

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 a 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.

This course will focus on literary depictions of gardens, as we study the art of “close reading,” which is a foundational approach to literary analysis. Gardens open onto questions of gender, class, and empire, among others. Gardens may be haunted or medicinal, cherished or neglected, and are replete with history. Expect gothic and surrealist gardens, and to see from a snail’s point of view. From Milton’s Eve’s pride in horticulture to Victorian fiction’s killer orchids, we’ll consider the meanings that reside in gardens. From America to Jamaica and New Zealand, we will see flowers as secret code (expressing personality, sexuality, or cultural identity). Literary texts will be paired with scholarly essays that model close reading and contextualize the works.

You will linger over sentences, reading slowly, making observations about grammar, world choice, and figures of speech, to understand how lines of creative writing are chockfull of meaning. We will enjoy parallels, too, between close reading and gardening (cultivating attention to ecologies and systems of words). Look forward to sharing a presentation on one literary text, short weekly responses, and several brief close reading essays.

This course offers an introduction to the various modes, techniques, and terminology of practical criticism. We will be asking questions such as: What is literature? How do we determine whether a text is literary or not? Where does literary meaning reside? Who or what counts as an author or writer? What is the role of the reader? What is the relationship between literary form and content? Between literary texts and their historical contexts? Between a literary work and the imaginative activity of our psychic life? What role do judgment and criticism play when it comes to reading literature? How does literature interact with/contribute to/critique structures of cultural difference and social inequality? What is its relationship to the values of justice or truth?

These are some of the theoretical questions we will explore in this class. We will read dense and difficult but intellectually rewarding theoretical works that reflect on such questions from a variety of perspectives. In the process, you will encounter some of the grand debates about the nature of literature, while also learning what is at stake in different approaches to reading and criticizing literature.

 

This course will consist of both hands-on and academic experience and training in journal publishing; specific sections will be tied to one particular English Department journal.

How do we understand the relationship of desires, wishes, and fantastic imaginings found in literature, film and culture to the concrete social relations that we live out? When and in what ways do psychic or representational processes constitute the way we narrate our lived realities? How might films, television, and literary works be thought about in terms of the screening of fantasy and ideology? How does fantasy and our inner imaginary life determine the meaning of humor, horror, romance, and other cultural genres?

This course explores one set of possible answers to these questions located at the intersection of psychoanalytic and sometimes Marxist theories of culture. In this course, we will consider the psychoanalytic tradition’s approach to fantasy as a constitutive psychic process that shapes our experience of narrative, familial relations, sexuality, humor, horror, and trauma, among other things. We will then synthesize these insights with the Marxist understanding of ideology’s key role in reproducing social relations. We shall trace this line of thought from the work of Sigmund Freud right through the synthetic work of Louis Althusser.

Our principal focus will be on film, but we will also read a few shorter literary works along the way. I have chosen cinematic and literary texts that will allow you to ask these kinds of questions and develop powerful strategies for answering them. Assignments will include two short papers and a longer research paper.

This junior seminar immerses you in Virginia Woolf: novelist, essayist, feminist. This course also demystifies research in English. What is research in English? How do you do it? You’ll come away from this class knowing how to combine close reading with discussion of literary criticism. You’ll know what literary criticism (and literary and social theory) are and how to place them in conversation with your own ideas about literature. You’ll learn how to find sources in the library and how to cite them.

Woolf is a great springboard for this because: 1) a single-author course allows us to take our time and learn about her life, art, and historical moment, and 2) there is a great deal of debate surrounding her work. We’ll consider Woolf’s broader cultural context: London at the height of the British Empire, as global anticolonial movements grew ever stronger. Via Woolf we'll raise questions about the first and second world wars, British imperialism, literary modernism, representations of consciousness in the novel, and the relations between literature, the natural sciences, and the other arts. Woolf’s fiction opens onto questions of disability, race, class, sexuality, and education, among others. Be prepared to dive into Woolf’s short stories, short prose relating to art and politics, novels Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, and longer essays A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas. 

We’ll also enjoy the poems, stories, and plays of other modernists like Claude McKay, Una Marson, and Katherine Mansfield, alongside exciting literary criticism that will enrich your thinking about the art and period. You’ll see what a range of interpretive approaches Woolf’s work invites. Expect to contribute regularly to discussion forums, to create one class presentation, and to compose one creative and one critical piece on Woolf.

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

 

This course offers an opportunity to write and think creatively, learn about the craft of fiction writing, incorporate rewriting into the writing process, and develop as an articulate and generous critic of fiction. Your time will be divided between writing and rewriting your own work, reading and commenting on peer manuscripts, and reading and discussing (mostly) contemporary fiction. Emphasis throughout the semester will be on participation and building a community of literary peers.

 

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

As the advanced course in our sequence, this iteration of ENGL 409 requires you to practice habits that will sustain your poetry writing long after you’ve earned your degree: discussing your friends’ drafts alongside contemporary books of poetry, and writing your own poems with an eye toward creating longer, collected works that you could submit for chapbook and even full-length book publication.

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 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. Roughly 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.

This course will focus on a selection of Shakespeare’s late comedies, tragedies, and romances. We will examine the art of these plays, looking at Shakespeare’s language, his dramatic technique, and his development as an artist. To gain a more complete understanding of these works, we will also study them in their historical context. The birth of nationalism, the emergence of capitalism, and the Reformation, for example, will involve us in discussions of economic, religious, racial, and gendered identity. But we will not limit ourselves to just this plurality of forces.  Employing the interdisciplinary theorizations of Shakespeare in the twenty-first century, we will also consider how alternative subjectivities reconfigure our understanding of authorship both then and now. By employing actor-network theory, new materialism, and post-humanism, we will explore how these plays and their modern adaptation offer creative potentialities and new networks of understanding.   

 

English 443 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, in order 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 three 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 being offered Live Online for the entire semester.

 

A general overview of the profession covering prominent theories, methodologies, and procedures influencing the field.

American poets were instrumental in shaping the movement known as modernism. Stressing experiment and innovation, their work challenged conventional conceptions of poetry, creating a hyper-textual space in which competing idioms, discourses, and models of social and political action could jostle freely. (Contemporary poetry, especially so-called “composition by field,” is very much an outgrowth of modernist practice.) We will focus on the work of such major American modernist poets as Eliot, Pound, Williams, H.D., Stevens, Moore, and Crane. We will stress close reading of individual poems but will also explore modernism as a program of literary and cultural innovation.  Requirements: three short papers (3-5 pp. each), or two short papers plus a journal of imitations; a final exam.

 

This course will provide an opportunity to read, consider, and discuss a diverse array of texts we might broadly categorize as travel literature. Our goal will be to identify the conventions of the various manifestations of this genre, as well as the different kinds of cultural work that travel literature performs at different historical moments. As our starting point, we will take the European discovery of the New World in the late fifteenth century and pay attention to the ways in which travel narratives became a crucial means by which Europeans attempted to understand and control this exotic, new space and its inhabitants. As the course progresses, we’ll think about how travel narratives were altered to accommodate new philosophies, ideologies, and artistic movements, and, as I hope the term “travel fictions” suggests, we will think about how and why these narratives often misrepresent, distort, and fabricate notions about the people and places they purport to describe. We will also read a wide range of travel fictions that purposefully raise questions about different types of travel, including exploration, tramping, immigration, and tourism. And, we’ll consider how travel narratives and travel fictions often borrow from one another, mutually reinforcing ideas, tropes, and modes of representation. Finally, we’ll think about how reading and writing have become an integral part of traveling–shaping not just itineraries, but perceptions and beliefs about the places travelers visit.

We will read memoirs, short stories, and essays by Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, María Cristina Mena, Jamaica Kincaid, Rudolfo Anaya, and Leslie Marmon Silko.  We will also read three novels: The Sheltering Sky (Paul Bowles), Jasmine (Bharati Mukherjee), and Volkswagen Blues (Jacques Poulin).  You will be asked to write two medium-length papers and to participate regularly in class discussion.  Please note that this course is being offered Live Online for the entire semester.

When the Bajan poet and theorist Kamau Brathwaite notes that “The hurricane does not roar in pentameters,” he lays claim to a unique formal inheritance for writers in the Caribbean: that the history, geography, and geology of the Caribbean tasks the artist with innovating to meet the demands of representing what he elsewhere calls the submarine unity of this region. This class will examine how writers in the Caribbean from the mid-twentieth century through the present have risen to this challenge, formally innovating beyond the boundaries of English-language literary traditions. Specifically, we will focus primarily on writers who confront the entanglement of memory, history, and community in the Caribbean context. We’ll supplement our reading of creative texts with theory and criticism that explores the implications of this work for literary cultures in the Caribbean and the wider Anglophone world today.  Likely course authors include: Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, Lorna Goodison, Jamaica Kincaid, Earl Lovelace, Marcia Douglas, Dionne Brand.

Study of Haiku in English (17-syllable, 5-7-5 traditional form): history, theory, American reception, and personal practice. Written work will consist of short essays on poems/poets, haiku (ungraded), a critical review of a collection or journal of haiku.

The development and exchange of scholarly information, usually in a small group setting. The scope of work shall consist of research by course registrants, with the exchange of the results of such research through discussion, reports, and/or papers.

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

 

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

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.

Students will explore the theories and practices of professional and academic portfolios while simultaneously designing and developing an adaptive identity and a professional persona for post-graduate settings. Students will synthesize work from past and present courses and experiences. They will make complex composition decisions about content, design, structure, and media of their portfolios in connection with identifiable elements of a given rhetorical situation. Students will discuss and apply legal and ethical issues related to portfolio development and publication of 21st century digital identities.

A culminating experience for majors involving a substantive project that demonstrates a synthesis of learning accumulated in the major, including broadly comprehensive knowledge of the discipline and its methodologies.  Senior standing required.