121 courses with the subject ENGL, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
ENGL 0100Essentials for College Writing
3 (institutional) Credit(s) Offered: Fall This course explores writing as process and product to prepare the undergraduate student for college level writing. With many opportunities for practice, this course equips students with the essentials for planning, drafting, and revision of analytical and persuasive essays. Credits do not count toward graduation. Students must take Writing I and Writing II after completion.
Subject
ENGL
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester Writing I provides the undergraduate student with the foundation necessary for critical thinking through academic and other professional writing. Students will cultivate the skills of argumentation, uses of evidence, analysis, close reading of texts, and revision as essential elements of the college-level writing process.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester Expanding upon the argumentative and analytical emphases of Writing I, Writing II will foster research-based composition. In Writing II, students will demonstrate in prose their knowledge of rhetoric, employ a variety of research methods, and become familiar with latest information technologies.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Fall This course introduces theoretical and practical knowledge of English teaching and learning in the middle and secondary school. Teacher candidates consider the development of adolescents; explore the role of the teacher; learn ways to manage the classroom environment; learn instructional strategies to motivate and engage students with diverse learning styles, interests, and levels of readiness; and examine the use of assessment to measure student growth, and to plan, evaluate and strengthen instruction. A review of legal and ethical principles reinforces the importance of integrating culturally and linguistically diverse students and those with disabilities; collaborating with caregivers; and professional attitudes and behaviors in general. A pre-practicum of 25 hours in required.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 2000American Literature I: Legends/Massacres and Slavery/Freedom3
Credit(s) Offered: every semester The significant texts of American literature from early Native-American oral narratives to Civil War texts in a variety of genres, including poetry, fiction, sermons, journals, letters, and other historical documents are surveyed. We examine how and why certain issues (such as American identity, Puritanism, cultural conflict, gender and racial equality) recur and evolve throughout early American literature.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: as needed This class, conducted in English, traces major cultural and political moments in Latin America, Spain and the Caribbean from the 1920s to the present. We will explore cultural products from a broad range of genres and media (fiction, non- fiction, film, music) in order to reflect upon significant artistic trends, political movements and intellectual debates of the last century: modernism and modernity, citizenship and nationhood, revolution, subalternity, dictatorship and postdictatorship, political economy, migration, and globalization. Students will be expected to contribute oral and written assignments reflecting upon these works and- through these assignments as well as active participation in class meetings- will learn to think critically about Hispanic cultural production.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course will give students the opportunity to concentrate on a variety of cultural texts and phenomena through the lens of cultural and critical theory. The study of culture is an inherently interdisciplinary investigation, but one that draws heavily on critical theory and Marxist literary theory in its study of complex ideas and experiences. Cultural Studies engages with the study of the meaning and practice of everyday life and systems. In this course, students will consider the history of critiques of culture and the rise of cultural studies as a discipline. In learning to read the signs and signifiers of cultural systems, students will be able to consider topics including resistance and assimilation, subcultural identity, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, disability, globalization, national identity, and cultural geography.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every other year This workshop-based studio course encourages students to increase their stylistic flexibility by practicing rhetorical and literary devices, copying stylistic models, and adapting and inventing unique styles. Students will analyze short written texts from a wide range of styles and genres, rewrite pieces in diverse styles, and attempt to forge the styles of the authors we read. The course helps writers break from their stylistic habits and experiment with new ways to use language and explore their voice.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Fall This course provides an introduction to rhetorical theories and techniques for writers across genres and media as well as background in the history of writing and writing as technology. Students will see writing from many dimensions (as craft, communication, linguistic structure, cultural marker, historical record, and medium for language) and will engage with information on potential pathways toward professionalization.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Fall This course will provide students with the necessary skills and tools to effectively research and write articles for news publications. Students will learn how to evaluate newsworthy content, pitch story ideas, conduct in-depth research, interview subjects, and write news articles for various mediums.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Day course offered every semester. This course serves as an introduc tion to the elements of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Students will engage in in - class writing activitie s, discuss student - produced creative writing in the form of sma ll group workshops , and receive extensive feedback from the professor. Also, students will discuss assigned readings with an emphasis on craft . Students are encouraged to take this class prior to other creative writi ng courses . This course is available to majors and non - majors. Credit not awarded for both ENGL3500 and ENGL2040.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
cr.
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 2100American Literature II: Making and Remaking America3
Credit(s) Offered: every semester This course surveys all genres of American writing from 1865 to the present, tracing the effects of social, economic, scientific and artistic turmoil on authors and their works. We explore the interconnections among succeeding eras of American literature: Realism, Modernism and Post-Modernism.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 2200British Literature I: Adventure and Transformation3
Credit(s) Offered: every semester Adventure and Transformation (Beowulf to Milton)This course surveys major British literary texts from the Old English period through the seventeenth century. The class explores the origins of early British writing , the development of major genres and forms, the voicings of genders, classes, races and religions, and the significant historical and cultural developments that influenced authors and defined the literature of this period.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 2210British Literature II: Revolution and Romance3
Credit(s) Offered: every semester This course examines British literature from the Restoration, Eighteenth-Century, and Romantic eras (1660-1834). The course considers how ‘classical’ and ‘romantic’ authors think about literary authority, influence, and imagination. It also explores cultural and historical contexts as they shape British literature and thought during these eras, with a focus on issues of race, class, and gender.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 2220British Literature III: Empire and Resistance3
Credit(s) Offered: every semester This course surveys British writers from the Victorian era to the present, tracing their responses to the revolutionary changes in art, music, science, social and economic classes and British imperialism. Representative authors include Dickens, Eliot, Trollope, Barrett-Browning, Wilde, Shaw, Woolf, Joyce and Beckett, authors whose depiction of human nature challenged contemporary concepts of gender, race and class. S
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: as needed This course explores the literature and culture of medieval Africa, the period approximately between 500-1500 CE, with a focus on the textual culture, including such works as the Malian epic Sundiata, of this time with an emphasis on how different geographies and groups of people interacted and influenced each other.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester This course examines individual, family and societal images of disability through autobiography, biography, fiction, poetry and children’s literature. Students will explore themes around the disability experience using reflective writings, class discussions and activities.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This basic course in script writing for film, television and multi-image productions includes information on the preparation of proposals, treatments, storyboards and scripts. Script formats include documentary, educational, corporate and dramatic film/video writing. Cross-listed with COMM 2320
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 2323Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Journalism3
Credit(s) Offered: Fall This course introduces students to big data and artificial intelligence as tools to uncover, investigate, and create journalistic work. Over the course of the semester, students will learn how to apply data sets and empirical findings to real-world events. Students will develop an understanding of how research data and theory can be used to produce deeper and richer reporting and learn how to write data-informed articles. Students will also be introduced to artificial intelligence systems used to enhance journalistic products.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every other year This course provides an overview of how digital technologies have augmented humanistic inquiry. Students will especially consider the challenges of preservation and ethical data use and structuring while they explore and build digital resources. Core outcomes of the course will be conducting archival research, digitization and metadata creation, digital textual analysis, textual markup, and web and document production and design. Each semester course projects will focus on a major concept or collection (i.e. gendered language in 1970s newspapers and magazines or mental health in the social media landscape). Cross-listed with COMM 2225
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester This course involves the critical study of literature and film as means to convey narratives. The conventions of various literary genres and types of films will be considered. Special attention is paid to the adaptation of novels and stories for the screen. Students study a dozen or more motion pictures in depth and compose six to eight critical essays.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fall semester This course is a survey of contemporary Latin American and Spanish film and literature. In regional and thematic clusters, students will explore how these texts and cultural media have explored questions of indigeneity, migration, borders, nationhood, identity, modernity, authoritarianism, history, memory & trauma, temporality, coloniality and other topics.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 2350American Political Film and Literature: Conspiracies & Controversies3
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course introduces students to divisive American political controversies of the past century and equips them to analyze Hollywood’s representations of these pivotal events, as well as political discourse in literature. In particular, you will examine cinematic and literary portrayals of the political process, labor and class struggles, and real and imagined government conspiracies. This course is writing intensive; students will write several short film analysis papers, as well as two longer, researched analysis papers.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 2400World Literature I: Myths and Traditions3
Credit(s) Offered: May be less than once every two years This course presents a selection of works from around the world, from ancient traditions up to the 16th century. We explore aspects of the human experience and how they are reflected in the literary traditions of these time periods. Focus is on the JudeoChristian and Greco-Roman foundations of Western literature, the Confucian, Hindu/Sanskrit, Buddhist, and Islamic underpinnings of literature in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and the colonization of North America.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every other year This course examines well-known literary texts and their adaptation into notable films by acclaimed directors. This course examines what in each pairing of texts and films is “great,” “classic,” noteworthy, or iconic, paying close attention to the specific contexts and languages of literature and film, their conventions, genres, and thematic emphases, while also developing an understanding of how to better read both literature and film.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 2500World Literature II: Cultures in Conversation3
Credit(s) Offered: may be less than once every two years This course examines a selection of major works from the mid-17th century to the present. We cover a wide span of cultures, narratives, and genres from the onset of modernity to the present. Focus is on literatures from a variety of non-western cultures and traditions and on interactions between cultures. By setting up various cultures in conversation with each other, students understand the ways in which modernity shapes itself through considerations of gender, class, race, etc.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every third semester This course introduces students to crucial global issues of our time, many of which principally concern developing, non-Western nations, but all of which will impact the future of the U.S. Through film viewings, readings, writing, and discussion, students will engage with global problems and learn to develop their own critical viewpoints on complex issues. Students will analyze both documentaries and narrative films as artistic treatments of human problems. Their final project will require an in-depth study of, and presentation on, media representations of global issues pertaining to one nation. Cross-listed with IDIS 2540 / POLS 2540
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: may be less than once every two years The course examines the style, narrative techniques, symbols, and historical settings of the Old and New Testaments. We examine the Bible as a work of literature by thinking about and identifying themes, forms and historical and cultural contexts. We read the Bible in translation and will reflect on how this affects our interpretations.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every third semester This course is an introduction to mythology, with an emphasis on the myths, epics and plays of ancient Greece and Rome. These may include the works of Homer, Euripedes, Hesiod, Virgil, Ovid and others.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every third semester This course presents works by significant ethnic writers, such as James Baldwin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Zora Neale Hurston, M. Scott Momoday, Toni Morrison and Leslie Marmon Silko. Cross-listed with AAST 2650
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 266019th Century African American Literature3
Credit(s) Offered: Fall In this course, we will encounter the poetry, fiction, journals, essays, speeches, and songs of nineteenth-century African-American writers. By paying close attention to the personal as well as cultural forms of expression, we will observe how the anguish, joy, and even the mundane aspects of the early African-American experience translate into a distinct canon of literature. Representative authors include Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Frances E.W. Harper, Pauline Hopkins, and W.E.B. Dubois. Cross-listed with AAST 2660
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 267020th Century African American Literature3
Credit(s) Offered: Spring This course surveys the major periods, genres, and authors of African-American literature in the twentieth century. This course also connects African-American literature to the representation of Blacks in music, film live performance, media, and society in general. Representative authors include James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, and Toni Morrison. Cross-listed with AAST 2670
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: may be less than once every two years Significant stories by some of the world’s great writers are read and analyzed to show the evolution of the short story form.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 2710Introduction to Science Fiction and Fantasy3
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course will serve as an intensive introduction to the interconnected genres of science fiction and fantasy. We will read a number of significant authors and texts on three related levels; defining specific formal and thematic elements of each; thinking about some of the main sub-categories and periods through which the genres have developed; and working to develop overall concepts and definitions about the genre’s form, content, and goals.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester In this course, we will develop techniques to read, understand, perform and appreciate poetry. Through exposure to a wide variety of poetry, we will examine the mechanics of poetic form and also consider the function of poetry in the world, its future and the formation of personal identities through language.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester The mystery novel/crime story genre is explored through a range of authors and time periods, including stories from Poe to Conan Doyle, classic British fiction, and its distinctively American counterparts, and significant contemporary works.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every other year This course explores lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues in society and literature. We examine the historical and current construction of gender and identity. Students interpret fiction, nonfiction, and poetry using multiple perspectives; additionally, they interpret contemporary cultural texts, such as speech, art, advertising, and film.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester This course covers central principles and practices of journalism. Students will study ideas of credibility, accuracy, the First Amendment, the roles and responsibilites of the press, and the function of the journalist within a democratic society. Students will discuss the challenges facing the industry, the impact of changing priorities, and consumption of news products. This course will provide a foundation for students interested in professional news writing. Cross-listed with COMM 2800
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester The course studies the oral tradition in European and non-Western contexts. Students examine the oral tradition in classic works as well as its continuance in fairy tales, popular music, story theater and performance art. Students will consider the structure and presentation of traditional, individually composed and family narratives. Each student will give at least two oral presentations before an audience.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester The course serves as an introductory survey of both classic and contemporary children’s literature. Texts are studied from a variety of perspectives in the contexts of both childhood and society.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester This course is a survey of literature for young adults intended to develop the aesthetic and literary judgment of participants through the study of selected authors and genres. The special challenges and concerns of pre-adolescence through young adults will be explored. Such works as realistic fiction, young adult classics, historical novels, and science fiction will be examined.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 2951The Grammar Dilemma: Grammar Instruction in the Middle and Secondary School3
Credit(s) Offered: may be less than once every two years Designed for prospective English teachers, students will develop a comprehensive knowledge of English grammar and the pedagogical strategies for helping secondary students develop necessary proficiency in English grammar.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester An introduction to the academic study of English and the different ways readers can connect to, think about and experience literature. The course provides an overview of the discipline’s issues and theories and gives students experience in writing practical criticism and using research tools and methods.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every third semester This survey course focuses on non-English language Drama across the ages. The works of the Golden Age of Greece, Moliere, Pirandello, Dario Fo, Brecht, great Spanish writers like Calderon, Lope de Vega and Lorca, Japanese masters like Chicamatzu and Kanimi, might be studied in this course.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every third semester This is a survey of American Dramatic Literature from its beginnings in the prerevolutionary British Colonies to the present. The course involves critical reading of dramatic texts. Students will attend productions of plays on and off campus studied in the class. Students will engage in active discussion and analysis of these plays and will be required to write papers on particular authors.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 3015Writing the Science Fiction and Fantasy Novel3
Credit(s) Offered: every other Fall This production writing course provides the opportunity to plan and then begin a genre novel project over the semester. Students will also develop world building resources and timelines for completing the novel once the official semester is over.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every third semester This course surveys the dramatic Literature and theatre movement from roughly 1800 to the present. Students will read and analyze works of Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Brecht and Beckett among others. The class covers such movements as Realism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Absurdist Drama and the Dada movement.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Spring Students in this course will combine theory and practice for an in-depth exploration of a specific area of technical, industrial, or business writing (such as financial reporting or public health communication). Students will learn to first identify the distinct features of the focus industry or field, and then produce documents that follow its expectations and requirements. Their writing will represent deep investigation and advanced understanding of the way the focus field communicates within itself and to the general public.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Special topics taken in a foreign study program. The topics covered in this course will vary according to the location of the program, duration of travel, and specialty of the respective instructors. Each version of the course will concentrate on the literary culture of the locale of the program and incorporate the value of travel and intellectual inquiry in the experience of reading, writing, performing, and/or teaching. Possible locations abroad include England, Ireland, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, India, the Middle East, South Africa, etc.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 3026Genres, Forms, and Themes in Creative Writing3
Credit(s) Offered: annually This writing-intensive workshop course combines theory and practice for an in-depth exploration of a specific genre, form, or theme in creative writing (previous course topics have included environmental writing, geography of story, and black feminist discourse). Students will learn and apply new writing skills and techniques to craft original creative pieces informed by the course topic. Their writing will represent deep investigation and advanced understanding of the chosen genre, form, or theme.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every other year Not all literature is the plot-based, character-driven storytelling we know and love. This course explores techniques and genres of writing that are open to creative experimentation, play, and risk-taking. Students read literature that breaks from convention and write creative pieces that push the boundaries of storytelling. These could include cross-genre and multimedia work, anti-narrative writing, appropriated/found writing, generative literature, and constraint writing. Students’ creative works are deliberate experiments that hypothesize and reflect upon the effect of their choices as writers.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every other year In this class, we will read and write fiction, persona poetry, and investigative creative nonfiction. Students will learn different research methodologies writers use and how writers use sources such as the Internet, archives, and expert interviews. Students will apply such research methodologies to various writing assignments.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course is an introduction to primary texts of the global medieval period, c. 500-1500, and explores the interconnected literary history of these traditions. Possible readings include Beowulf, Malory’s Morte d’Arthur., Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, the Epic of Sundiata, and Norse sagas. Genres covered may include epic, history, poetry, mysticism, hagiography, romance, and drama. Coursework will include a semester-long writing and research project.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every other semester This course in Playwrighting will teach students the craft and art of Playwrighting for the Stage. The course will have a professional orientation for Theater Concentration Majors but welcomes all serious upper division students as well. The aim of the course is to foster and augment the motivated student to engage in the writing of new theater works in the professional arena. Cross-listed with THEA 2750
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course examines fiction, drama and poetry written in Britain and its former Commonwealth since World War II. Special emphasis is placed on the role imperialism and decolonization has had in literature. Authors examined include A.S. Byatt, Derek Walcott, Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie and Michael Ondaatje.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every second semester Not all literature is printed in a book. Some are performed or visually and sonically designed, others tattooed or crafted, and still more are programmed. This creative writing workshop course introduces students to digital and digitally inspired literature that build on conventions beyond the printed book. Students read and discuss electronic literature, hypertext, artists’ books, mobile literature, multimedia literary texts, interactive fiction, and cross-media adaptations. Students then write and workshop original creative projects for and with new media.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every third semester Students will examine poetry and prose from the entire century of Irish writing in this course. Special emphasis is placed on Joyce and Yeats as major writers whose influence continues to shape Irish writers and thinkers. Other authors covered include Roddy Doyle, Lady Gregory, and Sebastian Barry.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Spring This course studies the history of the English language, theories of language acquisition, and psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic topics. Students will also develop understanding of language systems and grammatical theories.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: once every two years Chief modern poets of America and England are introduced and close reading is encouraged in the lyric form of writers such as Eliot through Lowell, Plath and other end-of-century writers. Emphasis is on these creators as precursors in a tradition.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course investigates Jewish American participation in the stages of American literary history, but it also examines the larger framing influences that Jewish culture has had on America and the ways in which Jewish Americans have successively reinvented themselves both as Jews and as Americans. Our exploration of Jewish American culture will extend to include attention to the history of Jewish life in America, as well as Jewish contributions to such aspects of the national culture as language, film, music, and diet.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every third year This course explores literary representations of the Jewish experience from the early modern period to the present-day. Texts to be examined include works of fiction, poetry, drama, autobiography, and film deriving from distinctively Jewish traditions on five continents.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every third semester This class will provide a selective survey of European Literature from the Medieval period to 1800, at time period which lays the foundation for many poetic, prose, dramatic genres of Western literature and which spans many political, social, cultural developments. Special emphasis is given to the development of the novel, women’s writing and the development of a “European” literature and tradition.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Fall Strong writing comes from good editing. This class explores different types of editing – developmental, line-editing, and proofreading – for the various stages in the editorial process. Students also learn about the relationship and collaboration between editors, writers and agents,- the submission and selection process, writing for special markets, and trends or practices in publishing. Students produce an issue of Route 2, the campus literary journal, and hone their editorial abilities through applied projects.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
COMM 3870 or ENGL 2020 or ENGL 2040 or ENGL 3510 or ENGL 3520 or ENGL 3870 or ENGL 3890 Meets
ENGL 3080European Literature II3
Credit(s) Offered: every third semester In this course we examine some of the most important recent European works from the past three hundred years. Works read cover not only the different cultures that constitute Europe, but also reflect the changing political landscape that has shaped the landmass that is identified as “Europe.”
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Offered every spring semester. This is the first of two English methods courses and will focus on content pedagogy at the middle and secondary level. Teacher candidates design and implement standards-based instruction and assessments that are aligned with best practices for teaching English. Special emphasis is placed on employing a variety of instructional practices and classroom management strategies that provide learning opportunities for diverse student populations and enhance multicultural pluralism. Disciplinary literacy is particularly emphasized to enhance reading, writing, speaking, and listening in English. A pre-practicum of 25 hours is required. Students pursuing initial licensure will be required to complete two ESE required gateway tasks in this course. Candidates must pass the gateway tasks to continue on within the licensure concentration.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course examines the narrative and stylistic conventions of war stories, along with the cultural and political implications of screen images and written accounts of violent conflict and its effects. Our main focus will be films and literature that address the human costs of modern warfare and thereby question war itself. We will explore texts representing the experiences of women as well as men and individuals with a range of national, cultural, and political backgrounds.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 3091Asian Cinemas: Eastern Visions in a Post Colonial World3
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course is a survey of classic and contemporary Asian film. The history of colonialism and imperialism in South and East Asia, a legacy that figures prominently in the films we will study. Assessing the stylistic and narrative conventions of Indian, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean cinemas, we will recognize how these storytelling traditions often contrast with Hollywood and other Western cinemas. We will become acquainted with the work of some of Asia’s greatest directors.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every third semester This course will survey significant works from writers across the Atlantic; that is, writing from and about the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and England. By interrogating canonical and non-canonical writing within the particular context of transatlantic cultural exchanges, the course will consider the ways in which cultural and historical factors shape and change the literary subject.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester The course investigates significant novels such as Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina representing various countries and periods, as well as stages in the development of this literary form.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 3120Golden Age of English Renaissance Literature3
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course focuses on the poetry, prose and drama of the English Renaissance’s Golden Age, roughly 1530-1625, beginning with poetry of the Tudor period and ending with drama from the reign of the Stuarts. This period encompasses the work of some of the greatest and best-known English authors, lays the foundation for many genres of literature, and encompasses many political reigns and social and cultural developments. The course will examine major literary forms and genres and topical/thematic concerns of writers, linking these to key social, political, and historical developments.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 3210Major American Writers of the 20th Century3
Credit(s) Offered: may be less than once every two years The varied creativity of American writers in this century is explored through the study of fiction, drama, poetry, criticism and the essay.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course provides a close examination of several representative works by major American novelists between 1800 and 1950.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: May be less than once every two years Literature by and about women is examined in light of their roles in society, at work and in relationships.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 3460Rebels in American Film and Literature: Race, Gender, and Class Outsiders3
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester Students in this course will explore significant trends and breakthroughs in Hollywood’s representation of racial minorities, women, gay people, and the incarcerated. You also will read key literary texts by marginalized voices in society and study the work of scholars in the field of representation studies, learning to apply their methods in your own analytical writing. This course is writing intensive; students will write several short film analysis papers, as well as two longer, researched film analysis papers.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Spring This course combines theory and practice in examining the unique challenges inherent in writing for the World Wide Web. Students learn the conventions, ethics and laws governing various forms of online writing, including online discussion and reviews, blogs, Web pages, wikis, ezines and collaborative fiction. Students then put this knowledge into practice, creating original content for the Web.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester This course encourages students to explore the writing processes in a supportive workshop. Students will draft, revise, and complete two short fictional pieces, either short stories or segments of longer works. Writers will receive guidance in refining their use of fictional techniques and will learn to develop voice and theme to create effective short stories and novels. Writing partners and peer editing groups will work together to give and receive useful and compassionate editorial feedback.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester In this workshop course challenges students to grapple with poetic technique and, in the process, discover their own voices as poets. Students immerse themselves in the traditions of formal verse and write their own poems in a variety of closed and open forms. Students will revise and assemble a selection of their best work for a final portfolio.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester In this course students will become more effective film critics by becoming more knowledgeable and literate as film viewers. Film criticism encompasses several different forms of journalistic writing, including the movie review, essay, blog entry, and theoretical article and book. Students will read and respond to the work of pioneering film critics, particularly Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, as well as view challenging films that push the limits of mainstream and art cinemas and illustrate the difficulties inherent in judging any movie based on personal taste alone. This course is writing intensive: students will write six polished film reviews and one longer analytical paper over the course of the semester. There will also be reading journals and frequent peer review workshops in class, as students will respond to each other’s reviews in writing and in discussion. Our consistent focus will be on film criticism as part of a larger conversation about art and media, rather than an isolated act of self-expression.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course addresses some broad intellectual problems and themes in play analysis and theater practice. This content represents an effort to acquaint students with the best plays written and produced during specific historic periods, and to engage them in the analysis, criticism, dramaturgy, staging, and performing of some of these plays.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 3600Language, Literature, and the Digital Humanities3
Credit(s) Offered: every other year This course immerses students in digital humanities and its application in literary study by actively contributing to or collaboratively building new DH projects on significant literary works, authors, genres, or periods. While students may be using existing data sets and materials, the focus of the course will be on building and not simply using data or digital works that augment how we understand literature in a digital age. Project methods and topics will differ depending on the instructor. Potential methods employed may include distant reading strategies and quantitative analysis of textual material, computational linguistics, digital archive management, or text encoding for digital edition publication.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 3620The Classical Tradition in Western Literature3
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester An examination of some of the most influential texts of classical antiquity and the subsequent literary tradition that arose in the West. Students will read epics, lyric poetry and drama, which may include selections from Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Euripedes, Aeschylus, Terence, Seneca, and contemporary works influenced by the classics.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every third semester This course explores a wide range of fiction and literary practices of some leading African writers. The course pays close attention to particular oral, literary and visual strategies used by African writers to create multiple versions of “life” in Africa during pre-colonial, colonial and contemporary times. It also raises and engages a wide range of crucial questions and ideas that pertain to African cultures, politics and societies.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every third semester This course looks at some examples of Anglophone literature that emerged in South Asian countries after their independence from colonial rule. We will examine the literature of these countries to evaluate their adaptation and resistance to Western culture. The first part of the course deals with the theme of “Empire Writes Back,” where colonial representations of the native and the native’s self-representation are examined side by side. The second part of the course delves into other complex issues within the formation of postcolonial identity, such as questions of gender, race, and class within postcolonial discourse.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every third semester In this course, students read and discuss fiction by writers from different parts of the Caribbean to gain insight and broaden their understanding of fiction produced in these Island nations. The course’s focus is on the relationships between culture and society as this fiction is examined against specific historical, cultural and political backgrounds. It also inquires into values associated with questions of identity, family, ideology, etc.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 3730Comics and the Graphic Novel as Literature3
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course will examine illustrated narrative and sequential storytelling as literature. We will examine the changing role of illustration in books, newspapers and popular magazines from the 20th century to the present. We will consider in particular the comic strip, comic books and graphic novels and their uniqueness as literary forms. We will study pioneering writers and artists who have brought the graphic novel form to mainstream cultural acceptance both in America and, as manga, in Japan and China. The course will include such figures as Will Eisner, Katsushika Hokusai, Frank Miller and Wei Dong Chen.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester Guided practical experience in content creation, design and production of a college newspaper. Students fill staff positions as reporters, copy editors, photographers, graphic designers, and section editors. Class environment mirrors that of a professional newsroom. Effectiveness is gauged by detailed weekly analysis of the ongoing journalistic process and product.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester Magazine writing is deceptively simple. But the easier and more pleasant something is to read, the harder it likely was to write. In this course, students establish sound practices as freelance writers. They gain knowledge of magazine markets, write query letters, and learn to understand the readership and publication preferences of various magazines. Students will break down parts of a print magazine, compare print and online publications, and look at content and stylistic differences within markets all to help them hone angles on stories they can sell to magazines looking for freelance work. The course would be helpful not only to journalists or content developers but to students of any major who might want to write professionally in their area of expertise.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
COMM 2800 OR COMM 3870 OR ENGL 2030 OR ENGL 2800 OR ENGL 3540 OR ENGL 3830 OR ENGL 3870 OR ENGL 3890 Meets
ENGL 3860Writing for Organizations3
Credit(s) Offered: every semester This course looks into the distinct rhetorical situation (audience, purpose, voice, etc.) of writing for organizations such as corporations and non-profits, both large and small, publicly traded and closely held. Coursework will extend beyond producing documents such as annual reports and codes of conduct, to also develop and practice literacies and skills that are flexible enough to be applied to a variety of situations and prepare students not only to succeed, but also to innovate. Cross-listed with COMM 3860
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester This workshop course covers all aspects of developing, writing, and crafting articles that demonstrate effective use of story angle, genre conventions, and voice. Magazine features rely on solid but fresh research and effortless style, so the course emphasizes reading, research, and peer and self-editing. Students practice interview and research techniques and write in several major sub-genres of magazine features such as profiles, op-eds, and service pieces. The course is especially helpful to students interested in journalism, public relations, content development, or marketing. Cross-listed with COMM 3870
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester Students will be introduced to the academic discipline of folklore and to a range of cultural traditions found in the United States. Folklore includes traditions that are informally propagated, adaptable to individual innovation and common to cultures around the world. Emphasis will be on verbal forms, i.e. oral traditions studied through textual analysis as a form of literature.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester This course investigates the stylistic, social, persuasive, and literary dimensions of creative nonfiction. Students read and discuss contemporary nonfiction and gain experience writing in its various sub-genres, which may include memoir, biography, essays, and literary journalism. Students hone strong writing through workshops, critiques, and revision and reflect on their development as a writer all while compiling portfolios of their work in the course.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester This rotating course explores in depth the works and career of a major author who has made significant contributions to literary tradition. Students gain a unique understanding of literature by tracing out a variety of themes and genres within the author’s major and minor works. Through close attention to a single author students also learn first-hand how biographical, historical and literary contexts come to shape artistic output; the course also includes research and readings in literary criticism on the author.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Repeatable
may be repeated for credit up to three times (for a total of four).
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: may be less than once every two years This course focuses primarily on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales as well as his Troilus and Criseyde and other more minor texts in context of the history and culture of fourteenth-century England. Students learn to read Chaucer’s Middle English and recite it. The Tales are studied both in the framework of the interrelated stories told by the pilgrim characters on the way to Cantebury and individually as they represent various medieval genres and issues of concern and interest to audiences both contemporary and modern.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Spring semesters concurrent with the Practicum This course is taken in conjunction with the practicum. Using peer collaboration and self-reflection, teacher candidates explore strategies to improve instruction, promote positive student behavior and social-emotional growth, and provide leadership at a school-wide level. The course also serves as a culminating experience in which candidates produce a Teacher Work Sample (TWS), a multi-step performance assessment that models the planning-teaching-assessment cycle of the professional educator, and that provides evidence of the candidate’s readiness to teach. Cross-listed with BIOL 4012 , CHEM 4012 , ENGT 4012 , HIST 4012 , MATH 4012 , and SCI 4012
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 4020Shakespeare’s Drama: Text and Performance3
Credit(s) Offered: Spring This course studies several of Shakespeare’s dramas with a focus on the thematic issues raised by the plays in the texts and in performance. Examination involves not only reading and critical interpretation, but also attention to performance traditions and recent interpretations/adaptation of these works on stage and screen.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Fall This course will study selected poems and plays from Shakespeare’s canon, examining particularly his treatment of power, love, gender, and the other. We will consider: Who and what is Shakespeare? Why is Shakespeare considered the world’s greatest author? To what purposes have Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s texts been put in literary, historical, ideological, education and cultural terms? How do contemporary readings, films, and production of Shakespeare (re) present Shakespeare?
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 4040Major English Writers of the 17th Century3
Credit(s) This course will survey one or more genres, for example, the dramas of Jonson, Webster, Behn and Congreve; the poetry of Milton, Donne, Herbert, Herrick, Marvell, Dryden, Wroth and Phillips; and prose work by Browne, Fell, Astell and Pepys.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course introduces students to some of the rich critical and theoretical traditions surrounding one of the truly great modern literary forms, the novel. Our discussions will move between crucial works of English literatures and influential theoretical texts as we explore the social conditions that led to the emergence of the novel. We will also discuss issues of class, gender, and imperial power in major works of Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Burney, Johnson, Austen, Edgeworth, Heywood, and others.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course examines Early Modern British women writer’s‚ works in relation to gender study, proto-feminism, society, literacy, creativity and female authorship and authority. Key issues covered include the evaluation of women’s writing in relation to canonicity, the integration of women’s voices into literary history, and consideration of the genres women writers used relative to their social roles.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course seeks to provide coverage of the “Big Six” British Romantic poets - Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats - while challenging the notion that these few poets define what we think of a “Romantic Poetry.” Through careful readings of women writers and less well-known male writers, the course explores a full range of historical, intellectual, and social events from 1789-1834.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester Significant novels demonstrating the changing cultural milieu and varying approaches of the genre during this period are examined and discussed.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This class focuses on the development of literature in the face of changes in science and industrialization in the 19th-century British Empire. Authors studied included Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Barrett-Browning, and those who comprise “The Golden Age” of British Children’s Literature.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course examines the major texts and trends of what is now called High Modernism. Authors studied include Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester The course will stress the development of what is a conspicuously American type of humor. The course begins with the quintessential American humorist and satirist, Mark Twain and then explores a range of comic genres and themes, from black comedy to feminist humor, that continue to enliven our national popular culture in many media. This course explores the writings and career of Mark Twain, and humorists who share the Twain legacy, including American film comedy and stand-up comics.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 4200The Romantic Movement in U.S. Literature 1810–18603
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester This course begins by considering similarities between British and American Romanticism, then it explores the movement’s orientations towards nature, the supernatural, race, gender, and the individual’s role in society. Key authors for this course include Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Melville, Dickinson, and Whitman. While the focus will be on careful readings of selected texts, we occasionally consider how principles of Romanticism appear in the arts of painting, music, and dance.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester The seminar examines topics for literary analysis and research as selected by the instructor. The seminar is required for English majors taking the literature track. Junior/Senior standing required. Others are admitted by permission of instructor.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Repeatable
may be repeated for credit up to three times (for a total of four).
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester Theories about literature are examined, and their practical application in the classroom and in one’s own reading is discussed. Approaches to different forms of literature as well as a survey of changing historical perspectives are also explored.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 1200 and satisfactory completion of one 3 credit literature course at the 2000 or 3000 level, or permission of instructor.
ENGL 4600Literary Cult of the Virgin Queen3
Credit(s) Offered: every fourth semester Representations of England’s controversial “Virgin Queen” (1558-1603) were central to the nation’s literary, artistic, and cultural life. This course examines key texts about Elizabeth I by contemporary writers and courtiers like Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Walter Ralegh and William Shakespeare, as well as literature by lesser-known male and female writers of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
ENGL 4700Teaching Reading and Writing Across the Content Area3
Credit(s) Offered: Spring This course focuses on theoretical and practical knowledge of teaching reading and writing across content areas in secondary schools. Teacher candidates study and reflect on diverse approaches to teaching content, and the use of assessment to measure student growth with the goal of improving instruction and learning. Special emphasis is placed on developing competencies through collaboration with peers and self-reflective practice. A pre-practicum of 25 hours is required.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Fall In this capstone course, students will collaborate with one another, a faculty member, and a community partner to plan a final, community-engaged capstone project that will be completed in a subsequent semester. Cross-listed with DMI 4799
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Completion of all other Digital Media Innovation major requirements
ENGL 4800Digital Media Innovation Capstone Fieldwork3
Credit(s) Offered: Spring The capstone course allows students to work either individually or as a group, synthesizing and applying what they have learned in their earlier Digital Media Innovation coursework as part of an ambitious semester-long project in collaboration with community partners. Cross-listed with DMI 4800
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Will require project proposal approval by instructor
ENGL 4850Methods in Teaching English (5-12) II3
Credit(s) Offered: Fall This is the second part of the methods course that focuses on English studies pedagogy at the middle and secondary level. Teacher candidates continue designing and implementing standards-based instruction and assessments that are aligned with best practices for teaching and learning in English Studies. Special emphasis is placed on employing a variety of instructional practices and classroom management strategies that provide learning opportunities for diverse student populations and enhance multicultural pluralism. Moreover, teacher candidates will gain knowledge in using technology to facilitate teaching and learning appropriate for the needs of diverse learners and across varied subject areas. This course also addresses select English Studies subject matter knowledge (5-12) required by ESE. A pre-practicum of 25 hours is required.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Spring Teacher candidates complete a practicum in an educational setting under the direction of a supervising practitioner who is certified in the area of licensure sought by the candidate, and under the guidance of a program supervisor. The purpose of the practicum is to ensure candidates are ready to teach and make impact with students on day one in a classroom. Targeted and specific feedback on observations of candidates, measurement of candidate impact on student learning, student feedback and additional evidence will be used to demonstrate and improve candidate performance on Professional Standards for Teachers indicators and the Candidate Performance of Assessment.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
4.5
Credits (max)
4.5
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: Spring Teacher candidates complete a practicum in an educational setting under the direction of a supervising practitioner who is certified in the area of licensure sought by the candidate, and under the guidance of a program supervisor. The purpose of the practicum is to ensure candidates are ready to teach and make impact with students on day one in a classroom. Targeted and specific feedback on observations of candidates, measurement of candidate impact on student learning, student feedback and additional evidence will be used to demonstrate and improve candidate performance on Professional Standards for Teachers indicators and the Candidate Performance of Assessment.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
4.5
Credits (max)
4.5
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester The Independent Study is for English Studies majors excelling in scholarship and can be taken upon approval of both department chair and advising instructor. Course of study, meetings, and credit are arranged with advisor.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester The Internship provides an opportunity to gain valuable on-the-job experience for university credit by working in business or industry. Students select field placement where they can use their abilities as communicators, learn new skills, and sample a potential job market. The Internship is a recommended component of the English Department Writing Track.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester The Internship provides an opportunity to gain valuable on-the-job experience for university credit by working in business or industry. Students select field placement where they can use their abilities as communicators, learn new skills, and sample a potential job market. The Internship is a recommended component of the English Department Writing Track.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
6
Credits (max)
6
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester The Internship provides an opportunity to gain valuable on-the-job experience for university credit by working in business or industry. Students select field placement where they can use their abilities as communicators, learn new skills, and sample a potential job market. The Internship is a recommended component of the English Studies Department Professional Writing Concentration, although all majors are encouraged to pursue this option.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
9
Credits (max)
9
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester The Internship provides an opportunity to gain valuable on-the-job experience for university credit by working in business or industry. Students select field placement where they can use their abilities as communicators, learn new skills, and sample a potential job market. The Internship is a recommended component of the English Department Writing Track.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
12
Credits (max)
12
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
Credit(s) Offered: every semester This course is the culminating learning experience for all English majors, in the four different but equal tracks; namely, literature, education, professional writing, and theater. Students taking this course will engage with questions such as: what does it mean to be an English Major? What do theater, secondary, education, literature, and professional writing students have in common as they look ahead to their professional lives post graduation? In this capstone course, through various classroom activities and requirements that include a senior portfolio, students will explore their intellectual commonalities and probe the significance of what it means to be a student of the liberal arts.
Subject
ENGL
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credit(s)
Type
course
Edition
2025-2026
Catalog
Fitchburg State University 2025-2026 Undergraduate Catalog
