English - Current Courses
FALL 2022 Undergraduate Course Descriptions
Download the PDF of our course descriptions and flyers here!
Note: courses are in order by class number, followed by last name of professor
ENG 221: Literature, Nature and the Environment
Dr. Katey Castellano
M/W/F, 12:40-1:30 PM
HBS 10
This course will explore inspiring and strange stories about human relationships with land, plants, and animals. Students can expect to emerge from the class with a working knowledge of concepts from the environmental humanities and a better understanding of how to relate a literary work to its historical, political, and cultural contexts. This class fulfills the General Education Cluster II literature requirement. It also counts towards the Environmental Humanities/Studies minors and the English major/minor.
ENG 221-0002: Literature/Culture/Ideas
Dr. Burgers
Tuesday & Thursday, 9:35-10:50 AM
Burruss Hall 0036
To date, the written word has been one of the most powerful and consequential technologies ever invented. As a medium for data storage and representation, books are unsurpassed in durability, security, and backward compatibility. Despite this, the world of literature and the world of technology are often viewed separately, as if they have nothing to say to each other. This course questions this neat distinction. Through an eclectic mix of written narratives and digital projects, we will investigate how literature can give us insights into the ramifications of technological change, and, conversely, how computational methods can enhance our study of literature. Students are invited to check their intended majors at the doors, and explore the quantitative side of the humanities and the qualitative side of the sciences. The only prerequisite is an open mind. This class fulfills the General Education Cluster II literature requirement.
ENG 221H (Section 0001): Wild Things: Children’s Literature, Animals, and Ecology
Dr. Danielle Price
Tuesday & Thursday, 9:35-10:50 AM
Location TBA
The Lorax, Charlotte the Spider, Fantastic Mr. Fox: children’s literature is full of talking beasts and animals. Often these animal characters reflect social concerns. This course explores and analyzes the use of animals in children’s literature, moving toward contemporary texts with an environmental purpose. We will consider such questions as: How do these animals reflect our ideas about children and the world we live in? What is the function of these animals in their particular texts? What does it mean to speak with as opposed to speaking for something? Course materials will include fables and folktales, picture books, novels, and film.
ENG 221H: Wild Things (Section 0003): Children’s Literature, Animals, and Ecology
Dr. Danielle Price
Tuesday & Thursday, 2:20-3:35 PM
Location TBA
The Lorax, Charlotte the Spider, Fantastic Mr. Fox: children’s literature is full of talking beasts and animals. Often these animal characters reflect social concerns. This course explores and analyzes the use of animals in children’s literature, moving toward contemporary texts with an environmental purpose. We will consider such questions as: How do these animals reflect our ideas about children and the world we live in? What is the function of these animals in their particular texts? What does it mean to speak with as opposed to speaking for something? Course materials will include fables and folktales, picture books, novels, and film.
ENG 221H--0002 Literature/Culture/Ideas - Topic: Native American Literature: Seven Generations Forward, Seven Generations Back
Dr. Henigman
Tuesday & Thursday, 12:45-2:00 PM
Keezell G8
This course will examine works by Native American writers from the 20th and 21st centuries, with attention to how they embody their histories, look to the future, and assert Native political and rhetorical sovereignty. Genres will include long and short fiction, historical fiction, memoir, poetry, Native futurism, science fiction, and horror, with some attention to video and film.
ENG 222: Genres (speculative Fiction and Poetry)
Dr. Sharon Cote
Tuesday &Thursday, 11:10 AM-12:25 PM
Burruss 0232
In this course we will focus on a humanistic examination of some major philosophical and social themes in speculative fiction and poetry. Also, while discussing a diverse collection of both relatively contemporary and more historical speculative works, we will be led to consider the cultural factors that influence ideas about genre, including the speculative literature in general and the boundaries between prose and poetry in speculative literature. We will think about literary "greatness," and about the problematic notion of canonicity in the humanities. More generally, we'll challenge our own first responses to readings and hone our ability to evaluate literature and its potential as a gateway to new ideas and insights. Finally, through all these efforts, we'll work on improving our basic ability to approach ANY text (ie. not just "literature") and, in fact, any communicative act critically, developing basic vocabulary and skills in the techniques of textual analysis.
ENG 222-0002: American Short Fiction
Dr. Thomas Martin
M/W/F, 10:20 – 11:10 AM
Keezell Hall 308
In this course, which fulfills the General Education Cluster II literature requirement, we get to
immerse ourselves in reading and thinking about the stories in our anthology, The Best
American Short Stories 2011 edited by Geraldine Brooks. I will supplement these readings with many other stories, including Jim Shepard’s “Love and Hydrogen,” about the taboo relationship between two men on the airship the Hindenburg, Karen Russell’s poetic “Madame Bovary’s Greyhound,” rendered largely from the perspective of the dog, and Eric Puchner’s “Beautiful Monsters,” a science fiction story published in Tin House. There will be five unannounced quizzes to encourage close reading, one 2,000-word critical paper, and two exams. This course is open only to English majors, English minors, and creative writing minors.
ENG 222 (Section 0004): Ideology and Global Cinemas
Dr. Dennis Lo/Lawton
Tuesday & Thursday, 2:20-3:35 PM
EnGeo 1302
This course introduces General Education students to the politics, aesthetics, and social contexts of global cinemas, with a focus on films that explore shifting ideologies and cultural identities – class, gender, ethnicity, and race – in times of social tumult. Through weekly screenings, readings, and writing assignments, we will investigate how various genres of global cinemas act as forces of ideological critique in response to issues of geopolitics, globalization, colonization, nation-building, modernization, underdevelopment, migration, and social marginalization. Our survey of six major periods and various styles of socially-conscious global cinemas will span the continents of Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. We will proceed in a chronological order, moving from pre-war (Japanese, European), post-war (Italian, Indian), new wave (French, Japanese, Eastern European, American), and third cinemas (Latin American, African), to accented (Middle Eastern, Chinese) and transnational cinemas (global co-productions).
ENG 235: Survey of British Literature: Beowulf to the 18th Century
Dr. Dawn Goode
Tuesday & Thursday, 3:55-5:10 PM
Harrison Hall 2105
This chronological survey of British literature will introduce you to some of the major authors and texts of the Middle Ages through the 18th century. As with any survey course that tries to cover approximately 1000 years of literary production, many significant texts and authors have not been included; however, the works and authors selected give significant voice stylistically and thematically to the concerns and issues of their times. For each text, we will pay attention to the cultural, economic, and political context in which it was written and how the text both reflects and responds to this context. We will also explore how the formal literary elements of a text help create its meaning. Finally, we will examine many of our texts through the lens of social identity, namely in terms of issues of class, gender, and sexuality.
This course fulfills the GenEd Cluster 2 Literature requirement and one of the survey course requirements for the English major.
ENG 236 (Section 0001): Gender, Empire, and Literary Form in British and Postcolonial Literature, 1798-2000
Dr. Siân White
M/W/F, 11.30 AM-12.20 PM
Anthony-Seeger Auditorium 25
This course explores the evolving relationship between literary form and discourses of power in “British” literature over a span of 200 years. Students will begin by considering view and voice in literary and visual arts. Whose perspective is the work rendering? Who is speaking? What is the voice trying to communicate, and to whom? What impact do outside forces or influences have on the voice (including revolutionary idealism, industrialism, social convention, patriarchy, colonialism, racism)? What does the speaker realize or not realize?
Students will practice literary analysis and close-reading, and learn to frame voice against the backdrop of broader ethical, political, social and philosophical developments, paying special attention to the Woman Question, the expansion of Empire, and the challenges of modernity. Related subtopics will include the relationship of poet or author to the speaking voice; associated forms such as the greater Romantic lyric, the epistolary novel, autobiography, and dramatic monologue; how individual voices participate in or convey patriarchal, feminist, or colonial discourses. Authors will include Mary Shelley, Robert Browning, Charlotte Bronte, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, Zadie Smith, and others.
This course satisfies the literature requirement of General Education Cluster 2. Students can expect reading quizzes, formal writing assignments, multiple exams, and the opportunity to participate in class discussion.
ENG 239 (Section 0001): Telling Tales: Children, Trauma, and World Literature
Dr. Debali Mookerjea-Leonard
Tuesday & Thursday, 9:35-10:50 AM
Keezell G0009
The Holocaust, the Partition of India, 9/11, and other civil and political conflicts around the world as well as natural calamities have all claimed children as victims. Many have died but thousands of children have suffered through these disasters and lived to tell their tales. Examining memoirs and fictional accounts of children’s experience of war and violence this course will address the issue of children’s trauma. Through a rigorous engagement with the texts we will raise the following questions: How are children affected by the violence around them? How do they cope with trauma? How do they remember the disasters that overshadowed their lives? How are children’s experiences represented in literature? Why is the child-narrator a popular literary device in writings on social and political conflicts?
This course fulfills Gen.Ed. Cluster 2 Group 3 (Literature) requirement; the survey requirement or the “Identity, Diversity, Power” requirement for the English major; it also counts towards the requirements for the World Literature minor.
ENG 239 (Section 0001): Studies in World Literature: Modern South Asia
Dr. Debali Mookerjea-Leonard
Tuesday & Thursday, 12:45-2:00 PM
Keezell G 0009
This course introduces you to representative works of modern South Asian literature. It aims to cultivate an awareness of the historical, cultural, and intellectual contexts of writings from South Asia through reading works both by Anglophone authors and writers from the region’s vernacular traditions.
Texts for the course have been selected from a range of genres—novel, short story, drama and poetry. Films will be used to provide a visual complement to the texts. Through close reading and analyses of literary texts, and discussions in class, which will be organized around topics such as nation and narrative; home; migration; violence; gender; marginality; and identity, the course endeavors to refine your skills of critical thinking, reading and writing.
This course fulfills Gen.Ed. Cluster 2 Group 3 (Literature) requirement; the survey requirement or the “Identity, Diversity, Power” requirement for the English major; it also counts towards the requirements for the World Literature minor.
ENG 239-0002: Literatures of Global English
Dr. Babcock
Tuesday & Thursday, 12:45-2:00 PM
Health & Behavioral St G010
This course serves as an introduction to world anglophone literatures since 1945, with special attention to English as a global language with a colonial history. Our texts are produced in places where, historically, English has been the language of imperialism and colonization, ranging from the Indian subcontinent, Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. Keeping in mind this bloody history, we will consider what it means to think in terms of a “global” English literature today, and identify common literary themes, problems, and strategies that have arisen across different areas of the world. How do postcolonial writers go about using English for their own purposes, occupying a potentially treacherous literary ground?
ENG 247 (Section 0001): Early American Literature
Dr. Molly O’Donnell/Webb
Tuesday & Thursday, 11:10 AM-12:25 PM
GS Theatre
English 247 (re)introduces students to major American literary figures and movements up to the Civil War. This large-section format will allow students to explore what might constitute the American experience and character, and what innovations the “new world” offered literary, as well as political, philosophical, spiritual, and cultural, history.
ENG 248: Survey of American Literature, 1865-present Dr. Allison Fagan
M/W/F, 10:20-11:10 AM
Harrison 1261
This course surveys the production of literature in the United States from the mid-19th century to the present, tracing the major historical and formal movements including regionalism, realism, naturalism, the Harlem Renaissance, modernism, minimalism, and postmodernism. We will explore narratives and counter-narratives, histories and counter-histories, seeking to understand how American literature presents multiple and even competing interpretations of American life. We will read selections from authors ranging from Ambrose Bierce to John Cheever, Langston Hughes to Toni Morrison, and Maria Cristina Mena to Sandra Cisneros, frequently discussing the alternating roles of the “native” and the immigrant in shaping American identity
ENG 260: Survey of African American Literature
Dr. Mollie Godfrey
M/W/F, 1:50-2:40 PM
EnGeo 2301
This course introduces students to major authors, literary forms, and movements in African American literature. We study the emergence and flourishing of African American literature over the past two centuries, noting common as well as diverging themes, techniques, and arguments over the coherence of African American literature as a genre. Throughout the semester we will explore antebellum, Reconstruction, Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights, Black Arts, and contemporary writers in their historical contexts as well as make connections between texts across historical periods. Students can expect to complete in-class reading and comprehension quizzes, group discussion board writing assignments, a midterm and final exam.
ENG 299: Writing About Literature
Dr. Mollie Godfrey
Monday & Wednesday, 9:35-10:50 AM
Keezell 107
This course enables students to succeed as English majors by fostering their abilities as careful readers, confident speakers, and sophisticated writers, while honing their skills in close textual analysis and argumentation. In addition to giving students the tools that they need to read and write about major literary forms (e.g., poetry, fiction, and drama), this course will familiarize students with basic research methods and will introduce them to the major schools of literary criticism. We will identify and evaluate these forms, skills, and critical perspectives in practice through a discussion of selected poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, fiction by Nella Larsen, and two plays by Suzan-Lori Parks.
ENG 299: Writing About Literature
Dr. Dawn Goode
Tuesday & Thursday, 11:10 AM-12:25 PM
Keezell Hall 107
This course introduces students to the English major by developing their familiarity with literary genres, important theoretical concepts, and different approaches to literary analysis. With an emphasis on the processes of close reading, critical thinking, and revision, this course will hone students’ skills in analysis, scholarly writing, and research. Assignments will include multiple short essays, revisions of said essays, writing workshops and individual conferences.
This course is required for the English major.
ENG 299 (Section 0003): Writing About Literature
Dr. Danielle Price
Tuesday & Thursday, 12:45-2:00 PM
Location TBA
This is the gateway course to the English major. This course will prepare students to succeed as English majors by helping them hone their critical reading and writing skills, learn the vocabulary for literary analysis, and develop confidence in speaking about literature. We will read poetry, novels, and plays, and attend at least one play at the American Shakespeare Center's Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton. The course demands regular attendance, rigorous participation, and a readiness to take on the challenge of engaging in literary interpretation.
ENG 305: The Bible(s) as Literature
Dr. Gerber
Monday & Wednesday, 5:00-6:15 PM
Keezell Hall G0009
Adam, Eve, Moses, Abraham: all are important figures in the Bible that informs Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (the three Abrahamic religions). This course introduces how this shared book became not only a source of multiple faiths, but also a work of art that crossed centuries and continents. We will examine historical as well as fanciful approaches to this book, uncovering sources of contention between its three Abrahamic religions. Additionally, we will track the mindsets of sometimes absurd academics who tried to rewrite the Bible as a mythic literary history—converting this book of three faiths into a mysterious legend of its own.
ENG 308: Introduction to Linguistics
Dr. Sharon Cote
Tuesday &Thursday, 3:55-5:10 PM
Keezell 308
Language is an essential part of who we are as human beings. It has been described as a biological imperative, as a communicative tool, and as an art. We all have extensive and subtle language skills and, indeed, we all have opinions about what is good or bad language. Few of us, however, really understand what language is. This course is a broad survey of the theoretical, the historical, the psychological, the biological, and the sociocultural issues related to human language in general and English in particular. Objectives for this course include the following: for students to become aware of how important the study of human language is to understanding human cognition, behavior, and society; for students to learn that knowing the "structure" or grammar of a language requires much more than just knowing a set of rules for good and bad sentences and to understand that the study of language is more than just the study of grammar; for students to recognize some general types of variation in different human languages; for students to recognize syntax, semantics, phonetics, language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and other subfields of linguistics and to understand basic concepts and issues in these subfields; for students to gain some perspective both on how much has been learned about language and on how many more questions there still are to be answered; for students to be able to apply general linguistic concepts and vocabulary to particular examples and to related fields of research; and for students to have gained a novice ability to read additional linguistic sources and to apply the information in these sources to language as they find it in the real world.
ENG 316: Early Modern Drama
Dr. Mark Rankin
Tuesday & Thursday, 9:35-10:50 AM
Keezell Hall 0310
Comprehensive introduction to the non-Shakespearean drama of the early modern period (1500-1642). We will begin our study with the morality play tradition during its final flowering under Henry VIII and will proceed by genre through to the closing of the theatres in 1642. Emphases will include Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy, humoral and city comedy, the relationship between the staging of Renaissance plays and the emergence of plays in printed editions, the function of dramas as entertainment as well as political counsel, and more.
ENG 317: Studies in Shakespeare
Dr. Mark Rankin
Tuesday & Thursday, 2:20-3:35 PM
Keezell Hall 0308
Advanced survey of Shakespeare's plays, focusing on cross-genre continuity among plays, and situated in the theatrical, social, and political conditions of the plays original production and reception.
ENG 342: Early American Literature
Dr. Henigman
Tuesday & Thursday, 2:20-3:35 PM
Keezell 310
In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, the North American continent was a stage for contacts among many cultures and peoples – European, Native American, African. At the same time, practices and technologies of literacy were changing rapidly. We will look at the ways in which these two phenomena intersect over these centuries. This course fulfills the pre-1900 overlay requirement for the English major.
ENG 367: Latinx Literature
Dr. Allison Fagan
Monday & Wednesday, 1:50-3:05 PM
Keezell G003
ENG 367 Is a class that explores the stories of contemporary U.S. Latinx writers who trace their heritage to Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Central and South America. In addition to considering how race, nation, and ethnicity shape our understandings of Latina/o/x identity, we will also discuss the influencing forces of gender, sexuality, religion, class, and language.
This class counts as a course directive form the LAXC minor for this Fall 2022.
ENG 368-0001: Found in Translation: Women from Latin America
Professor Delgadillo
Monday & Wednesday, 1:50-3:05 PM
Burruss Hall 0036
In this class we will read and think critically about works from Latin American women writers from the 20th and 21st century. We will discuss together the themes, topics, and political views of the writers, while understanding the context in which they existed and created. Through an approximation to their craft, we will also try to understand the historical and social perspectives of Latin America. And, by reading the works in translation, we will also question what it means to move between languages, cultures, and countries.
ENG 370 / WS 370: Queer Literature: Queer Identities, Queer Communities
Dr. Dawn Goode
Tues/Thurs (12:45-2:00 PM) & Thursday Film Session (5:30-7:30 PM)
Keezell G310
This course is an introductory survey of LGBTQ+ literary and social history. While most of our texts will be novels, we will supplement these with short stories, and possibly with memoirs or other forms of creative nonfiction. Through the texts of LGBTQ-identified authors, we will trace the evolving construction of queer identities and queer communities through the 20th and 21st centuries. We will also explore how queer subjectivity intersects with other forms of social identity, including gender, class, race, and nationality. Potential authors include James Baldwin, Jeanette Winterson, E.M. Forster, Carmen Machado, Patricia Highsmith, Leslie Feinberg, Randall Kenan, Christopher Isherwood, Ocean Vuong, and Chinelo Okparanta.
As a mandatory component to the course, we will view documentaries / films relevant to both queer history and contemporary queer reality. These screenings will take place Thursday evenings from 5:30—7:30pm.
This course fulfills the English Major Overlay requirement for “Identity, Diversity, Power,” and is cross listed as a Women’s Studies Minor elective.
ENG/SMAD 380: Introduction to Film
Dr. Dennis Lo
Tuesday & Thursday, 11:10 AM-12:25 PM
Keezell G008
This class provides an introduction to the methods of studying film as one of the dominant mediums of creative expression and mass communication since the early 20th century. We will examine how the language and aesthetics of film impact audiences emotionally and psychologically, as well as convey cultural values and ideas. Seminal films from a broad range of genres, countries, and periods will be examined through various historical lenses, including the technological innovations, economic changes, political transformations, and global cultural movements that informed cinematic developments. To foster a critical understanding of the important roles that films play in shaping various societies and cultures, students will be exposed to major theories in film studies and be equipped with the basic vocabulary of film analysis.
In the first few weeks of the course, we will practice the basic principles of film analysis by focusing on how elements like narrative form, mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sounds work in unison to create meaning. The following weeks present analytic frameworks that will help students develop an awareness of industrial and aesthetic alternatives to mainstream Hollywood cinema. The final part of this course builds upon these foundations to examine films from a global perspective. We will study the historical significance and aesthetics of films that question the ways in which political, economic, and social conditions have shaped national, racial, class, and gender identities.
ENG 391-0001: ENG 391-0001: Nothing more marvelous than reality: Creative Non-Fiction
Professor Delgadillo
Monday & Wednesday, 9:35-10:50 AM
Keezell Hall 0307
There are facts, and there’s the language that constructs the facts. In this class we will ask those questions –who? How? When? Why?, etc…– to understand the power of storytelling that comes from questioning our reality. We will study works of creative non-fiction ranging from punk oral histories to personal essays that deal with the challenges of writing about and within violence, to craft together a story that challenges the facts that we consider the truth.
ENG 391: 0002: Introduction to Creative Nonfiction
Erica Cavanagh
Tuesday & Thursday, 11:10 AM-12:25 PM
Keezell 307
In this introductory workshop, you will read a wide array of creative nonfiction, an expansive genre that includes memoir, personal essays, flash nonfiction, lyric essays, literary journalism, video essays, and even podcasts that draw from the techniques of personal essays and literary journalism. The purpose is to expose you to as many styles as possible within a semester so that you can learn what’s possible in creative nonfiction and, just as importantly, so you may find a style that works best with your sensibility and the content of each piece you set out to write.
Nonfiction is rooted in actual experiences as opposed to fabricated ones, so the writing you do in this class will draw from your personal experiences and observations about the world. You’ll also learn the techniques writers use so you can transform your life’s raw material into stories. These techniques include choosing specific, vivid details that help build characters, setting, and scenes. Over the course of the semester, you’ll be assembling a toolbox of narrative forms, literary devices, sentence rhythms, and more to help you become a writer with the tools to write well beyond this semester.
ENG 392: Poetry Writing
Prof. Greg Wrenn
Tuesday & Thursday, 12:45-2:00 PM
Keezell 308
“If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain." —Dolly Parton
The heart of this course is your original writing, which you'll share in supportive workshops to encourage creativity rather than nitpick. And you’ll be reading some of the most stunning poetry we have, by greats such as Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, and William Shakespeare. By the end of the class, you’ll read poetry more deeply and write more poignant, beautiful poems. You’ll have generated a great deal of new poetic material, having developed a sense of the limitless possibilities that the creative life offers.
ENG 393-0002: Fiction Writing Introduction
Dr. Thomas Martin
M/W/F, 11:30 AM – 12:20 PM
Keezell Hall 308
In the first part of this course we will study stories by an array of writers—Roxane Gay, Jhumpa
Lahiri, Celeste Ng, Joyce Carol Oates, and George Saunders—with an eye to making you more sophisticated readers. I will introduce aspects of literary fiction—such as point of view, dialogue mechanics, and dramatic reversal—to enhance your grasp of how it works. I will give you writing exercises to help generate material for your fiction. In the second part of this course, we will discuss John Dufresne’s The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction. In the last part, we will workshop your fiction and find ways to make it better.
ENG 393-0003: Fiction Writing Introduction
Dr. Thomas Martin
M/W/F, 1:50 – 2:40 PM
Keezell Hall 307
In the first part of this course we will study stories by an array of writers—Roxane Gay, Jhumpa
Lahiri, Celeste Ng, Joyce Carol Oates, and George Saunders—with an eye to making you more sophisticated readers. I will introduce aspects of literary fiction—such as point of view, dialogue mechanics, and dramatic reversal—to enhance your grasp of how it works. I will give you writing exercises to help generate material for your fiction. In the second part of this course, we will discuss John Dufresne’s The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction. In the last part,we will workshop your fiction and find ways to make it better.
ENG 393-0004: Intro to Creative Writing- Fiction
Professor Baltazar
Tuesday & Thursday, 9:35-10:50 AM
Keezell Hall 0307
This introductory course focuses on familiarizing students with essential craft elements and narrative techniques that inform fiction writing. We will read and discuss work from a wide range of writers including Octavia Butler, Brian Evenson, Angela Carter, and Sequoia Nagamatsu to better understand the many possibilities of how stories might be put together, and how elements like point of view, character, and dialogue function within them.
The emphasis of the class will be on experimenting with these elements through generative writing exercises in and outside of class. Toward the end of the semester students will build on the experience gained through these exercises by workshopping a completed draft of their choosing. Any genre or form of fiction is welcome.
ENG 403: Romantic Literature and the Caribbean
Dr. Katey Castellano
Monday & Wednesday, 5:00-6:15 PM
Keezell 310
Beginning with Tacky’s Revolt in 1760 and ending with the Baptist War in 1832, this class rethinks the Romantic period through the lens of Black abolitionist revolt in the British colony of Jamaica. Resistance to plantation economies will be traced through three types of primary texts: 1) life narratives of formerly enslaved people, 2) the travel narratives of Europeans, and 3) contemporary fiction by Black British writers that reinterprets those narratives. By juxtaposing Romantic-era and contemporary texts, the seminar will focus on the crucial role of the literary imagination in recovering histories of Black Caribbean place-based resistance.
ENG 407: Twentieth Century American Poetry
Dr. Mark Parker
Tuesday & Thursday, 2:20-3:35 PM
Keezell 107
Close readings of poems by T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, and John Ashbery. Special attention paid to crucial books of poetry: Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations, Williams’ Spring and All, Stevens’ Harmonium, and Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. This course might be of especial interest to students with serious commitments to writing poetry.
ENG 420: Introduction to Narrative Theory
Dr. Heidi L. Pennington
Tuesday & Thursday, 11:10 AM-12:25 PM
Keezell 310
Roland Barthes claims that “narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself.” Barthes is one among numerous scholars who point out the prevalence of narratives in—and thus their significance to—diverse human societies. Our thoughts, our daily language, and the media we consume are saturated by narrative forms. But what is “narrative?” How do narratives work? How do different narrative practices and techniques make meaning(s) in different times and places? Over the last century, the study of narrative has evolved into a complex and multifaceted field called narratology that strives to answer these and other questions. This class offers an introduction to the foundational concepts, terms, and debates that comprise the contemporary study of narrative. Introduction to Narrative Theory will challenge students with a rigorous reading schedule primarily focused on theory. In class, we will carefully trace the arguments of each assigned theorist, contextualize their ideas, and apply the analytical tools they proffer to the interpretation of narratives in poetry, short stories, novels, and film. Together we will acquire a flexible set of analytical tools for students to hone and deploy in their studies, their creative work, and the narratively informed worlds beyond the classroom.
ENG 433: North African Novels
Dr. Sofia Samatar
Monday, 4:10 - 6:55 PM
Keezell 107
An environmentalist fable of the Sahara Desert. A psychological drama woven with folktales. A love story set in Cairo during the Arab Spring. These different descriptions point to the diversity of the contemporary novel in North Africa. In this course, we'll explore what's been happening in the region's literature from the middle of the twentieth century to the present day, reading novels from Sudan, Egypt, Libya, and Algeria.
English 494: Advanced Poetry Writing
Prof. Greg Wrenn
Tuesday & Thursday, 2:20-3:35 PM
Keezell 307
"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet,
then you must write it.”
--Toni Morrison
In this course, building on the lessons of English 392, we alternate between workshopping your work and closely studying poetry collections by Louise Gluck, Tracy K. Smith, Eduardo C. Corral, and others. Craft elements such as rhythm, rhyme, syntax, lineation, metaphor, and imagery are emphasized. Your final project consists of a poetic sequence, a series of related poems that build off one another. While this course closely considers technique, it is ultimately meant to support you as you gradually clarify your poetic vision.
ENG 496 (Section 0001): Worldbuilding in Fantasy and Science Fiction
Dr. Sofia Samatar
Monday and Wednesday, 1:50 - 3:05 PM
Keezell 107
In this creative writing workshop, we will read and write fantasy and science fiction, focusing on how writers imagine and construct other worlds. What elements go into the development of a fantasy world? What sort of research do science fiction writers employ to tell stories set on distant planets? How is worldbuilding related to character, dialogue, and plot structure? We'll discuss these questions and more as we work on our own imaginary worlds.
ENG 496-0002: Writing in the Dark: Horror Fiction
Professor Baltazar
Tuesday & Thursday, 11:10 AM-12:25 PM
Burruss Hall 0036
In this class, we will explore one of our oldest storytelling traditions through a combination of writing exercises, workshop, and discussion of selected readings. What frightens us, and why do we sometimes enjoy this feeling? What is a monster? How might these be culturally informed and how can understanding this make our fiction stronger? Together, we will investigate the wide range of tropes, conventions, and subcategories horror encompasses to better inform chilling tales of our own. Topics will include: understanding fear, monsters, the uncanny, the importance of atmosphere, the role of empathy, body horror, cosmic horror, and much more.
ENG 496: 0003: Food Writing
Erica Cavanagh
Tuesday & Thursday, 12:45-2:00 PM
Keezell 307
In this food writing workshop, we will read and write memoir, recipe essays, and other forms of nonfiction that explore the ways food shapes our lives. The works we read will offer you tools for writing your own stories about family, friends, culture, longing, gluttony, memory, hopes, envy, and much more. We’ll also pay attention to how writers put stories together through vivid details, sentence rhythms, and structural maneuvers. In our writing activities, we’ll hone our skills in developing memorable characters, evocative settings, and layered scenes that deliver the story you were meant to tell, and through our writing workshops, we will help each other refine the quality of our writing.
